Journalist and author Oliver Burkeman is a well-established voice in today’s papers. An inspiration for any young writer and an all-round very nice guy, Burkeman began his journalistic career in the hallowed, dimly lit Varsity offices. After editing Varsity, he went on to have an extremely successful career in both print and paperback. I caught up with him last week to talk about his industry breakthrough, his former student anxieties, and his latest project: fatherhood.

I was interested to learn whether the Christ’s College alumni had known as an undergraduate that he wanted to write:“I had pretty one-track thoughts about this for a very long time, rather boringly”. Burkeman recalled how, as a primary school student, he would put together 1-page newsletters at home and distribute them to his classmates — a hobby that he has kept up to this day with his successful bi-monthly newsletter, The Imperfectionist.

Writing has always played a huge part in Burkeman’s life. In his household growing up,“lots of esteem was given to the role of journalism and newspapers″ and a copy of The Guardian always lay on the breakfast table. How exciting it must have been when, at an early stage in his career, Burkeman began to write for that very newspaper, going on to have a successful column that ran for over 14 years. Burkeman himself describes his journalistic breakthrough as “quite weird” due to the fact that he achieved his fantasy career goal so soon after university.

'An editor of a newspaper should want his or her journalists to be writing about things that they want to write about'

Through ‘This column will change your life’, Burkeman provided his faithful readership with plenty of helpful advice for many years. I asked him, if he could give one piece of advice to his student self, what would it be?

“It would have to be some version of ‘chill out’” he says, “it couldn’t not be”, noting how the stakes were not as high as he thought they were at the time. “I think I might have been quite a bit less anxious if I had heard that advice from my future self”.

It is clear Burkeman is still shocked, in part, by his success, noting with surprise how a reader said they had grown up with his column. He thinks this is flattering, if also “quite terrifying”. While citing the deadline discipline for weekly articles as a good thing,  Burkeman did comment on the constant need to keep ideas for his column fresh: “You try to come up with a good idea; sometimes you do, but other times you have to go with one of your more rubbish ideas”. He does, however, recognise that, apart from anything else, this was a “good learning experience”. “One thing I’ve never found hard is knowing that I want to write and chasing the feeling of freshness to know what to write next. An editor of a newspaper should want his or her journalists to be writing about things that they want to write about”.

Burkeman’s most recent book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals has received international acclaim: both a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. Its premise is tackling the fact that “we live in an age of impossible demands, infinite choice, relentless distraction and spiralling global crises.” So, what’s his key to staying positive? It appears family life and fatherhood help Burkeman the most: “One thing I’ve really found about becoming a father” — Burkeman’s son is five years old — “and about adult life in general, is that it creates these sorts of webs of obligation and takes your schedule out of your hands in certain ways, which wasn’t true when I was in my early twenties.”

'We live in an age of impossible demands, infinite choice, relentless distraction and spiralling global crises'

“It’s sort of a weird insulting comparison to my family to compare them to newspaper deadlines, but it’s clearly good for me not to have total control over my daily schedules” he jokes.

Burkeman claims that harnessing a ‘pessimist’ mindset has been the key to his success: “We’re in this predicament as humans having incredibly limited time. It’s just the way it is, so you might as well get on with doing interesting and meaningful things with your life.”

‘Might as well’ is seemingly his mantra. Given that Burkeman speaks a lot about “productivity debt”, I wondered how he juggles this feeling alongside parenting a young child?

“Er… badly!” he says, concluding about parenthood that “certain things that are true for everyone become intensely hard to ignore. The fact that time is finite, for example: your ability to control your day is severely challenged by the fact that toddlers don’t respect your daily schedule”. He also notes on fatherhood that it is “really annoying that if you want to model certain attributes for your child you have to assume them yourself,” calling this an “alarming realisation”.

His advice for budding authors and journalists is to “make a productive nuisance of yourself”. He notes how, through the nature of digital writing (Twitter threads, for example) budding writers can connect to an audience of people around the world who can give them feedback on their work — a resource he didn’t have access to when starting out.

“Find your tribe of people who like your stuff” he says. His direct advice? “Just do write stuff. Say you’re a freelance journalist, because you are a freelance journalist the moment that you say you’re one.”

Burkeman frequently writes book reviews for The Guardian so, eager to end on an interesting question, I asked him: if your life so far was a book, how many stars out of five would you give it?

'...you are a freelance journalist the moment that you say you’re one'

“How could you not give your life four stars?” he laughs, “in the sense that I’m so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. I’m so proud of the things I’ve done. It would be really weird to give it three, but really arrogant to give it five.” Deciding on a tagline for his life so far was a difficult challenge for Burkeman, but after a considerable think he concluded: “pretty enjoyable and good, and somewhat accomplished — all things considered”. Personally, I think this is a modest understatement of a life full of both professional and personal achievements.