From Self-Improvement to a More Absorbing Life
Stop trying to be a better person and start leading a more absorbing life. — Oliver Burkeman
—What lingers after this line?
One-minute reflection
What's one small action this suggests?
The Hidden Trap of Self-Optimization
Oliver Burkeman’s line cuts against the modern reflex to treat life as a perpetual upgrade project. “Trying to be a better person” can quietly become a never-ending audit of flaws—habits to fix, anxieties to conquer, virtues to earn—until the attempt at improvement consumes the very hours it claims to rescue. From there, it’s a short step to realizing the trap isn’t morality itself but the fixation on personal refinement as a primary life task. Burkeman’s broader themes in Four Thousand Weeks (2021) circle this point: time is finite, and using it mainly to perfect yourself can leave you strangely absent from the living of it.
An “Absorbing Life” as a Different Aim
Instead of measuring days by progress metrics, Burkeman proposes a shift in orientation: choose pursuits that absorb you—work you can lose yourself in, relationships that demand real attention, crafts that require patience, causes that invite contribution. Absorption here isn’t escapism; it’s presence, the sense that you are inside life rather than standing outside it grading your performance. This reframing matters because it relocates meaning from self-scrutiny to engagement. Rather than asking, “Am I becoming the right kind of person?” the question becomes, “What pulls me into deeper participation with the world?”
Why Improvement Can Become a Distraction
The self-improvement mindset often promises control: if you optimize enough, you’ll eliminate uncertainty and finally feel ready. Yet readiness is a mirage; life keeps arriving before the perfect plan is complete. In that light, the pursuit of “better” can function like procrastination dressed as virtue—one more book, one more routine, one more internal breakthrough before you begin. Seen this way, Burkeman’s advice is less anti-growth than anti-delay. The focus shifts from polishing the self to committing to something external—something that will remain imperfect, demanding, and worthwhile anyway.
The Ethics of Action Over Self-Assessment
There’s also an ethical undercurrent: being “a good person” is often revealed through concrete acts, not private self-evaluation. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (c. 4th century BC) frames virtue as habituated practice—courage and generosity formed through doing, not merely through intending or analyzing. Burkeman’s line echoes that older tradition: character emerges as a byproduct of a lived life, not as the sole object of life. Consequently, leading an absorbing life can be a more reliable path to goodness than fixating on goodness. When you’re deeply engaged—showing up, helping, building, listening—you may become better without making “becoming better” your main project.
Attention: The Real Currency Being Spent
As the focus moves outward, it becomes clear what’s truly at stake: attention. Self-improvement culture can devour attention with constant self-monitoring, while an absorbing life invests attention in tasks and people that return a sense of vitality. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on “flow” (Flow, 1990) describes how deep engagement can produce fulfillment precisely because self-consciousness recedes. In other words, absorption isn’t just pleasant—it can be structurally incompatible with obsessive self-judgment. The more fully you enter an activity, the less room there is for the inner commentator to run the show.
Practical Shifts Toward Absorption
The transition Burkeman implies doesn’t require abandoning reflection; it requires subordinating it to participation. One practical move is to choose commitments with friction—volunteering roles, creative projects, demanding friendships—because friction forces engagement instead of endless planning. Another is to accept “good enough” versions of routines so they support life rather than replace it. Over time, the metric changes: not “Did I improve myself today?” but “Did I show up for what matters?” That’s how an absorbing life builds—through ordinary decisions that place you, repeatedly, in the middle of lived experience rather than at its evaluative margins.