[Ideas] Oliver Burkeman: The Negative Path to Happiness

For a civilisation so fixated on achieving happiness, we seem remarkably incompetent at the task. The advantages of modern life seem incapable of lifting our collective mood. Wealth doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness. Romance, family life, and work often bring as much stress as joy. We can’t even agree on what ‘happiness’ means. Are we engaged in a futile pursuit? Or are we just going about it the wrong way? Oliver has some of the most truthful and useful words about happiness in recent years. 

Wednesday 21 October 12.30-2.00PM Lunch Talk

While in Brussels, Oliver Burkeman offered valuable and tested tips on how to stop promising to make time for work – and actually get things done. Oliver writes This column will change your life, a regular column for Guardian Weekend investigating productivity and mental wellbeing. During the lunch talk, he drew upon psychological research and personal experiments to help you manage your own time more effectively, beat procrastination and start fulfilling your true creative potential.

ABOUT

Oliver Burkeman is a journalist running a popular weekly column in The Guardian – This Column Will Change Your Life. He is a winner of the Foreign Press Association’s Young Journalist of the Year award and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2006. He is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking (2012), which explores the upsides of negativity, uncertainty, failure and imperfection.

GOOD READS

This column will change your life (Guardian weekly).

The Antidote, Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking (2012). HELP!: How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done (2011). 

KEY LINKS

www.oliverburkeman.com

thiscolumnwillchangeyourlife