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  • Published: 1 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529939538
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $28.00

Meditations for Mortals

Four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts





From the author of the global bestseller Four Thousand Weeks, a liberating four-week journey towards a saner, freer, more meaningful, more enchantment-filled life.

Banish burnout. Choose calm. Embrace life. One day at a time.

‘Full of wisdom and comfort … a really important book' CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN, author of Ultra-Processed People

Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life – one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves. Designed as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind’, it offers daily wisdom, solace and inspiration to aid a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled way of living.

Addressing fundamental questions about how to live, Oliver Burkeman proposes a powerful new guiding philosophy of ‘imperfectionism’. How can we embrace our limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do?
What if being truly productive means letting things happen, not making them happen?

Reflecting on philosophy, literature, psychology, religion and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective. The result is a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.

'Thoughtful, level-headed, and useful ... a book to meditate upon' THE TIMES

'Oliver Burkeman has a way of giving you the most unexpected productivity advice exactly when you need it’ MARK MANSON, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

'Meditations for Mortals offers a practical path toward personal transformation … A must-read' CAL NEWPORT, author of Slow Productivity

  • Published: 1 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529939538
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $28.00

About the author

Oliver Burkeman

Oliver Burkeman is an award-winning feature writer for the Guardian. He writes a popular weekly column on psychology, ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’, and has reported from London, Washington and New York.

Also by Oliver Burkeman

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Praise for Meditations for Mortals

Oliver Burkeman has a way of giving you the most unexpected productivity advice exactly when you need it

Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

A very special book. We should all read this - for the sake of our aching world as well as the state of our souls

Krista Tippett, author of Becoming Wise

A practical path towards personal transformation. A must-read

Cal Newport, author of Slow Productivity

Bracing and refreshing ... This book is both a comfort and a challenge — exactly what our trying times demand

Daniel H. Pink, author of The Power of Regret

Full of wisdom and comfort. I enjoyed every page and read it in a single sitting. This is a really important book about embracing truth and reality

Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People

A delightful, engaging, rigorous and reassuring book – so intelligent and questing and intimate. I read it in one go. The world would be a better and less frightening place if more people would stop what they are doing and read this book

Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of Write It All Down

A deeply helpful reflection on how to permit our lives a sigh of relief. Moments stopped me in my tracks. Oliver is a steersman through sanity and must be read alongside any attempts at self-improvement

Derren Brown

I'm sceptical about self-help - but a four-week 'mind retreat' changed me ... [Meditations for Mortals] teems with good sense, sensibly dispensed

i

Thoughtful, level-headed and useful ... a book to meditate upon

The Times

Life-changing

Stylist

Illuminating ... Burkeman's insight [is] always clear-eyed and jargon-free ... reassuring and constructive

Guardian

Full of wise advice on not getting overburdened by work

The Times

A bracing read ... I'd bet that his audience will finish it in one sitting ... uplifting

FT

A must-read for anyone struggling with perfectionism, imposter syndrome, or feeling in need or direction

Psychologies

If there are two people who have changed my life - or encouraged me to configure it differently - then one of them is Oliver Burkeman ... Insightful and wise

Pandora Sykes
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