What If You Never Catch Up?

On making peace with time, letting go of control, and finally starting to live before it’s too late.

I used to believe that if I could just get through today’s list—just today’s!—then everything would click. I'd finally get ahead. I’d finally breathe.

It didn’t matter how many times I reached the bottom of my inbox, cleared out notifications, or reorganized my calendar. There was always something else waiting. A new email. A new responsibility. A new “urgent” that I hadn’t planned for.

It started to feel like I was living in a state of almost. Almost caught up. Almost ready. Almost free to live the life I was postponing until later.

But later never came.

That gnawing anxiety—the pressure to maximize every minute, to get “on top of things”—wasn't just stress. It was a symptom of something deeper: a broken relationship with time.

And that’s exactly why this week’s conversation with Oliver Burkeman struck such a deep chord with me.

You probably know Oliver from Four Thousand Weeks, a book that challenged the modern delusion that we can control time with enough hacks and hustle. His newest work, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, is even more radical in its simplicity.

Because what if the goal isn’t to control time… but to make peace with it?

But what does that even mean—to make peace with time?
And what happens when we stop trying to outrun our limits and start living within them?

🟡 For paid subscribers:
I’ve created a Companion Guide with takeaways from this episode to help you explore your personal patterns around time and productivity, a Digital Workbook to reflect on how to live more intentionally with the hours you have, and of course, the full ad-free interview with Oliver Burkeman—plus loads more premium Passion Struck content for those walking the path of intentional living.