There's a particular kind of tightness that creeps in when the world feels unpredictable. We tidy the to-do list, tighten the routine, optimise one more thing, all in an attempt to feel a bit more in control. 

Oliver Burkeman has a word for this: clenching. And he reckons it's squeezing the life out of us, even when it looks a lot like productivity. 

In this episode, I sit down with Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals, and former writer of The Guardian's This Column Will Change Your Life, to talk about his forthcoming book Aliveness and what he calls unclenching, learning to loosen your grip on certainty rather than white-knuckle your way through it. 

We get into flexible goals, why urgency is so often someone else's agenda in disguise, and how to stop tying your self-worth to your latest achievement. 

If you have ever hit a goal and felt the satisfaction evaporate within minutes, this conversation will change how you think about ambition altogether. 

Oliver and I discuss: 

• What "clenching" is, and why our instinct to grip tighter in uncertain times actually backfires 

• The insecure overachiever trap, and why hitting a goal rarely feels like enough for long 

• How Oliver's open list, closed list approach stops you drowning in fifty half-started things 

• Setting a "no later than" time instead of a strict start time, and why looser goals often get more done 

• Why urgency is so often someone else's agenda in disguise, and how to tell when it is genuinely yours 

• What Oliver actually does with the emails he has not gotten to yet 

Key quotes 

"If you have this feeling of aliveness, even the most difficult challenges are copeable with, and if you don't have this feeling of aliveness, even the most impressive accomplishments are kind of worthless." 

"You will do enough, because you will do everything that it's within your capacities and your energy levels and your talents to do, and that just by definition will be all that you could ever have done." 

Connect with Oliver Burkeman on X (Twitter), LinkedIn and his website. Check out his latest book Meditations for Mortals and look out for his upcoming book Aliveness in 2027. 

If you want more from Oliver, listen back to our earlier conversation on time management, a great companion episode to this one: (https://www.amantha.com/podcasts/want-to-make-time-for-the-things-that-count)