Choosing an Absorbing Life Over Self-Optimization
Stop trying to be a better person and focus instead on leading a more absorbing life. — Oliver Burkeman
—What lingers after this line?
One-minute reflection
Where does this idea show up in your life right now?
The Trap of Perpetual Self-Improvement
Oliver Burkeman’s line points to a familiar modern pattern: treating life as an endless project of self-upgrading. “Trying to be a better person” can quietly become a moralized form of optimization—more habits to install, more flaws to correct, more proof to gather that you’re improving. Yet the finish line never arrives, because the standard keeps moving. From there, the quote invites a reframe: if constant self-scrutiny makes you anxious, rigid, or self-absorbed, it may be working against the very goodness you’re chasing. In Burkeman’s broader work, such as *Four Thousand Weeks* (2021), the pressure to manage the self perfectly often reads as a refusal to accept human limits—an approach that can drain life of its immediacy.
What “Absorbing” Really Means
An “absorbing life” isn’t necessarily a glamorous one; it’s a life that catches your attention and holds it. The emphasis shifts from polishing your inner résumé to being genuinely engaged with something outside your own performance—work that matters to you, relationships that demand presence, or pursuits that require real concentration. This idea connects naturally to the psychology of flow: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s *Flow* (1990) describes deep absorption as a state where self-consciousness recedes and the activity itself becomes intrinsically rewarding. In that sense, absorption is not self-neglect—it’s the experience of self-forgetfulness that often accompanies meaning.
From Moral Accounting to Lived Attention
The quote also critiques a subtle kind of moral accounting: measuring your day by whether you were disciplined enough, mindful enough, or enlightened enough. While reflection has its place, an identity built around “becoming better” can turn every moment into an audit. That audit tends to pull attention inward—toward image, virtue signaling (even to yourself), and fear of backsliding. By contrast, focusing on absorption redirects attention outward and forward. Instead of asking, “What does this say about me?” you’re more likely to ask, “What is this calling for?” The transition is small but powerful: it moves you from self-evaluation to participation.
Meaning Grows from Commitment, Not Perfection
Once you prioritize absorption, you often end up committing to things that resist perfection: raising a child, learning an instrument, doing community work, building a business, writing, caregiving. These arenas reward persistence and presence, not a flawless self. Interestingly, they also tend to cultivate character indirectly—patience, courage, humility—because they confront you with reality. This is where the quote becomes almost paradoxical: you may become “better” precisely by stopping the attempt to optimize yourself directly. The goodness emerges as a byproduct of showing up for demanding, meaningful commitments rather than curating a perfected identity.
Practical Shifts Toward Absorption
A useful next step is to notice which activities make you forget to monitor yourself—where time passes differently because your attention is held. Then, rather than treating those as indulgences you must justify, you treat them as clues to what a fuller life looks like. This can be as ordinary as joining a local choir, volunteering weekly, or taking on a long project with no guarantee of mastery. At the same time, absorption usually requires boundaries: fewer platforms that invite constant self-presentation, fewer goals framed as “fixing yourself,” and more time protected for deep work or deep play. Burkeman’s broader argument in *Four Thousand Weeks* (2021) supports this: because time is finite, choosing what absorbs you is also choosing what you will not chase.
A Different Kind of Ethics
Finally, the quote suggests an ethics grounded less in self-improvement and more in aliveness. When you are absorbed, you tend to be more responsive, less performative, and more available—qualities that often benefit others without turning ethics into a personal branding exercise. This doesn’t mean abandoning growth or responsibility; it means relocating them. Instead of polishing the self in isolation, you grow in the context of life’s real demands—work, friendship, art, service, love—where attention is the scarce resource. In the end, Burkeman’s provocation is that the most humane route may be to stop treating yourself as a project and start treating your life as something to live.