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Addicted to Busy
- Why Life Has Got So Hectic
- Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman
- Length: 1 hr and 8 mins
- Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Anthropology
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oliver Burkeman explores why people are often more successful - as are organisations, armies and governments - when they focus on reasons they are likely to fail; asks where happiness comes from, and whether we look for it in the wrong places; explores a phenomenon that has come to be called 'fungineering' – attempts to boost happiness in the workplace; and confronts what many of us see as the most negative of all experiences: death.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oliver Burkeman turns decades of self-help advice on its head and paradoxically forces us to rethink our attitudes towards failure, uncertainty and death. It’s our constant efforts to avoid negative thinking that cause us to feel anxious, insecure and unhappy. What if happiness can be found embracing the things we spend our lives trying to escape? Wise, practical and funny, The Antidote is a thought-provoking, counterintuitive and ultimately uplifting listen, celebrating the power of negative thinking.
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-
Why Are We So Angry?
- And What Is It Doing to the World?
- By: Oliver Burkeman
- Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman
- Length: 1 hr and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why is everyone so angry nowadays, and what is it doing to the world? In the developed world we live in a blessed epoch, a time and a place where life has never been better. Infant mortality has been all but abolished, we have greater personal choice than ever before, we have access to technology that would have been seen as the stuff of science fiction little more than a decade ago. We are safer and wealthier than at any time in human history. So why are we so damn angry about everything?
-
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Modern Society Anxiety
- By Stingray on 14-01-21
-
The School of Life
- An Emotional Education
- By: Allain De Botton, The School of Life
- Narrated by: Alain de Botton, Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
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Story
This is an audiobook about everything you were never taught at school. It's about how to understand your emotions, find and sustain love, succeed in your career, fail well and overcome shame and guilt. It's also about letting go of the myth of a perfect life in order to achieve genuine emotional maturity. Written in a hugely accessible, warm and humane style, The School of Life is the ultimate guide to the emotionally fulfilled lives we all long for - and deserve.
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- Narrated by: Simon Callow
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Animal Farm is George Orwell's great socio-political allegory set in a farmyard where the animals decide to seize the farmer's land and create a co-operative that reaps the benefits of their combined labours. However, as with all great political plans, some animals see a bigger share of the rewards than others and the animals start to question their supposed utopia.
-
-
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- By Anthony on 15-06-14
-
Silence
- In the Age of Noise
- By: Erling Kagge
- Narrated by: Atli Gunnarsson
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Behind a cacophony of traffic noise, iPhone alerts and our ever-spinning thoughts, an elusive notion - silence - lies in wait. But what really is silence? Where can it be found? And why is it more important now than ever? Erling Kagge, the Norwegian adventurer and polymath, once spent 50 days walking solo in Antarctica with a broken radio. In this meditative, charming and surprisingly powerful book, he explores the power of silence and the importance of shutting out the world.
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A short but charming antidote to busy modern life
- By Jack Williamson on 17-11-17
Summary
There's a ritual of the modern workplace - one you've heard and most likely indulged in yourself. It's the call and response we go through when you ask a workmate how they're doing: 'Busy!' 'So busy.' It is pretty obviously a boast disguised as a complaint. And our simultaneously grim and half chuckled reply comes as a kind of congratulation: 'Ha, better than the opposite.' When did we start doing that?
As if he didn't have enough to do, Oliver Burkeman explores this epidemic of busyness to reveal that it may not be what it at first seems. He asks if we are talking ourselves into feeling overwhelmed with busyness and if our problem with busyness is not that we do not have the time but rather we literally do not have the head space. He questions whether people have become addicted to busy, either because it makes them feel like heroes fighting the odds or because problems can be avoided by never sitting still.
Finally, he examines whether the solution to busyness is perhaps not to work harder and organise ourselves but to indulge in a little idleness.
Oliver Burkeman is an award-winning feature writer for the Guardian. He writes a popular weekly column on psychology, ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’, and has reported from London, Washington and New York.
Produced by Peter McManus.
This programme was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as Oliver Burkeman Is Busy.
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- CC
- 09-11-18
Riveting ... and enlightening.
I intended listening to this audiobook at least two times. Why? Because it is fascinating, entertaining and short. I’ve just finished my first listen and now I want to go back and take a few notes. Recommended.
2 people found this helpful