Oliver Burkeman

Biography

Oliver Burkeman is a best-selling author and journalist. For many years he wrote a popular weekly Guardian column, This Column Will Change Your Life exploring social psychology, self-help culture, productivity, and the science of happiness. In his books, he continues to write on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment.

He has written several books including Four Thousand Weeks, Time and How to Use It, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, and Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done.

Four Thousand Weeks was named one of the best books of the year by the Financial Times. The title is a reference to the average lifespan of a human. Here, Oliver explores why the central challenge of time management isn't becoming more efficient, but deciding what to neglect; why, in an accelerating world, patience is a superpower and why, in conditions of limitless choice, burning your bridges beats keeping your options open.

His work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Psychologies Magazine, and New Philosopher. He has a devoted following for his writing on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment.

Oliver hosts the BBC Sounds podcast series Inconvenient Truth which explores the social, psychological, and personal consequences of convenience culture, and considers if making our lives easier, may be inadvertently making them less meaningful. 

Oliver is a winner of the Foreign Press Association's Young Journalist of the Year award and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the What The Papers Say Feature Writer of the Year award. His BBC Radio 4 Collection, Epidemics of Modern Life, looked at busyness, anger, positivity and the decline of nuance, why these problems are widespread and how to tackle them.