(The Atlantic) – Oliver Burkeman has become an unlikely self-help guru by reminding everyone of their mortality.

But Burkeman’s enterprise—to free people from traditional, silver-bullet self-help while selling them his own carefully packaged counsel—is a tricky one. Burkeman himself doesn’t seem like an obvious advertisement for anti-productivity: Only three years after the success of Four Thousand Weeks, he has arrived with what he bills as a higher-efficiency follow-up, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, a 28-day “retreat of the mind.” So I couldn’t help wondering how he would align his stop-and-smell-the-roses ethos with a more streamlined, regimented how-to book. I was eager to talk with the man who has seemingly mastered the art of not mastering time. (Read More)