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Oliver Burkeman, “It’s Worse than You Think”
This passage is one of Oliver Burkeman’s most powerful formulations because it reverses the entire problem of living.
The crucial sentence is not really “the plane has crashed.”
It is:
“Now … what might be some good things to do with your time?”
Burkeman is saying: stop treating life as a temporary emergency from which you must eventually escape into a state where everything is finally okay.
1. THE “PLANE CRASH” IS BIRTH
Normally the implicit model is:
Life begins → something is wrong → fix everything → become secure → then live.
Burkeman reverses it:
Life begins → limitation is already here → uncertainty is already here → mortality is already here → NOW WHAT?
The “crash” is not some future catastrophe.
It is:
- you were born finite
- you have limited time
- you cannot do everything
- you cannot please everyone
- you cannot eliminate uncertainty
- you cannot prevent every loss
- you cannot become perfectly competent
- you cannot control how others respond to you
- eventually, you die
So the fantasy is not that life contains difficulties.
The fantasy is:
“Once I solve enough difficulties, I will finally arrive at real life.”
Burkeman's argument is that you are already in real life.
2. THE BRACE POSITION
This is psychologically brilliant.
Imagine passengers sitting on an airplane thinking:
“I must remain extremely vigilant so that the plane doesn't crash.”
But suppose the plane has already crashed.
Then continuing to sit in the brace position is pointless.
And yet this is how human beings often live.
Psychological brace position
- “I must make the right career choice.”
- “I must avoid making mistakes.”
- “I must become successful.”
- “I must get my finances completely secure.”
- “I must become spiritually advanced.”
- “I must make everyone like me.”
- “I must understand exactly what I'm doing.”
- “I must eliminate anxiety.”
- “I must finally become the person I should be.”
All of these can become attempts to prevent life from being what it already is.
And that's the paradox:
The attempt to secure life becomes the way we fail to live it.
Burkeman explicitly frames his approach as “imperfectionism”: not waiting for a future state in which life is finally under control, but acting meaningfully within finitude now.
3. “IT'S WORSE THAN YOU THINK” → FREEDOM
This is the strange part.
Normally:
“Things are worse than I thought” = bad news.
Burkeman:
“Things are worse than you thought” = potentially liberating.
Why?
Because the impossible task becomes visible.
Suppose you believe:
“I should be able to get everything done.”
Then every unfinished task represents personal failure.
But if you understand:
“There will always be more things worth doing than I have time to do.”
then unfinished things cease to be evidence that you have failed.
They become an unavoidable consequence of being finite.
This is a profound shift.
Before
I haven't finished everything → something is wrong with me.
After
I cannot finish everything → therefore I must choose.
And choice becomes possible only after accepting limitation.
4. FINITUDE CREATES PRIORITY
This is perhaps the deepest practical implication.
If you had infinite time:
nothing would have to be prioritized.
You could do everything eventually.
But because you don't have infinite time:
Every “yes” contains a “no.”
If you spend three hours reading one book, you have necessarily said no to thousands of other books.
If you spend an evening with a friend, you have said no to work.
If you become a doctor, musician, parent, monk, engineer, artist, etc., you necessarily don't become many other things.
So limitation isn't merely an obstacle to life.
Limitation is what gives life shape.
5. THIS IS WHY “MAKE THE BEST OF IT” CAN BE MISUNDERSTOOD
It sounds like:
“Life is terrible, so try to make the best of a bad situation.”
That's not quite it.
The deeper meaning is:
Stop demanding that reality become different before you permit yourself to participate in it.
That's radically different from resignation.
Resignation says:
“Nothing matters, so why bother?”
Burkeman's position is closer to:
“I cannot do everything, therefore what genuinely matters enough to do?”
The limitation increases the importance of choice.
6. THE QUESTION CHANGES
This is perhaps the central transformation.
Old question
“How do I get my life under control?”
New question
“Given that I cannot control life, what is worth doing?”
Or even more simply:
“Here I am. What now?”
That is why the ending of the passage is so important.
Not:
“How do I escape the island?”
But:
“What might be some good things to do with your time?”
The question is no longer about escape.
It is about participation.
7. THIS CONNECTS STRONGLY TO YOUR BALSEKAR DISCUSSION
There is an interesting bridge here.
Balsekar says, in the formulation you were examining:
Events happen. There is no individual doer thereof.
Burkeman is approaching from a very different philosophical direction, but there is a striking overlap.
The ordinary ego says:
“I need to get my life under control.”
Burkeman:
You cannot get life under control.
Balsekar:
There was never an independently controlling entity there in the first place.
That's a much more radical move.
Burkeman dismantles the fantasy of control.
Balsekar questions the controller.
8. BURKEMAN STOPS ONE STEP BEFORE ADVAITA
You could almost construct a ladder:
Level 1 — Ordinary existence
“I have to control my life.”
↓
Level 2 — Burkeman
“I cannot control life. I must live within its limitations.”
↓
Level 3 — Acceptance
“I don't need reality to become different before I participate in it.”
↓
Level 4 — Buddhist insight
“The demand that reality conform to my preferences is itself a major source of suffering.”
↓
Level 5 — Balsekar
“Who is this ‘I’ who believes it is controlling the happening?”
↓
Level 6 — Advaita
The separate controller cannot ultimately be found.
That is where the conversation becomes very interesting.
Burkeman is primarily giving you an existential/practical medicine.
Advaita asks a more ontological question:
Who is the person to whom this entire situation is supposedly happening?
9. “THE PLANE HAS ALREADY CRASHED” AND BALSEKAR'S “DIVINE HYPNOSIS”
There is an especially interesting connection to the Balsekar phrase you brought up earlier:
“Divine hypnosis.”
Suppose the hypnosis is:
“I am an independent person who must successfully manage this thing called my life.”
Then an enormous amount of suffering follows.
Because now:
- I must succeed.
- I must avoid failure.
- I must make the right decisions.
- I must control outcomes.
- I must become somebody.
- I must protect my future.
- I must eventually arrive somewhere.
Burkeman's insight is:
The future state in which everything is finally okay isn't coming.
Balsekar goes further:
The separate entity who imagines it is responsible for achieving that state is itself part of the appearance.
So you could put the two together like this:
Burkeman:
The plane has already crashed.
Balsekar:
There was never an independent pilot controlling the crash.
That's a fascinating philosophical convergence.
10. AND THEN THERE IS KRISHNAMURTI
Burkeman explicitly connects this outlook with Krishnamurti's famous formulation:
“I don't mind what happens.”
This does not mean:
“I don't care.”
It means something closer to:
“I am no longer requiring reality to obey my psychological demand before I allow myself to be here.”
That's extremely close to the “plane has already crashed” insight.
11. “I DON'T MIND WHAT HAPPENS” ≠ PASSIVITY
This distinction is essential.
There are two completely different meanings.
Passive version
“Whatever happens, happens. I won't do anything.”
Liberated version
“Whatever happens, happens. And given what is happening, what can I do now?”
The second is much more powerful.
You still:
- make decisions
- work
- love
- build things
- repair things
- argue
- apologize
- study
- create
- take risks
- care for people
But you stop demanding guarantees before acting.
12. THE DESERT ISLAND IS ACTUALLY A VERY GOOD METAPHOR FOR HUMAN EXISTENCE
Imagine waking up on the island.
You have:
- limited food
- limited time
- limited knowledge
- other people
- danger
- weather
- uncertainty
- no guarantee of rescue
There are two possible approaches.
Approach A
Spend your entire life asking:
“How do I recreate civilization exactly as it was?”
Impossible.
Approach B
Ask:
“Given the actual conditions, what can we build here?”
Now suddenly:
- shelter matters
- friendship matters
- cooking matters
- exploration matters
- stories matter
- music matters
- laughter matters
- learning matters
- helping someone matters
The island hasn't changed.
Your relationship to the island has changed.
13. THIS IS ALSO WHY MORTALITY CAN INTENSIFY LIFE
The fact that something ends doesn't necessarily make it meaningless.
It can make it precious.
A sunset doesn't become meaningless because it lasts twenty minutes.
A conversation doesn't become meaningless because it ends.
A childhood doesn't become meaningless because it cannot continue.
A human life doesn't need infinite duration to justify its contents.
This leads to a profound inversion:
The finite nature of life isn't merely the problem to be overcome. It is part of what makes particular moments matter.
14. THE “PRODUCTIVITY” TRAP
Burkeman's idea becomes particularly sharp when applied to productivity.
The conventional productivity fantasy is:
“If I become sufficiently organized, I will eventually reach the point where everything important is done.”
But the supply of possible things to do is effectively infinite.
Therefore:
Productivity cannot ultimately solve finitude.
You can become extraordinarily efficient and still die with:
- unread books
- unanswered emails
- unrealized ambitions
- unfinished projects
- people you didn't call
- places you didn't visit
- things you never learned
So the objective cannot be:
Finish life.
It has to become:
Participate in life.
15. THE MOST RADICAL CONSEQUENCE: YOU ARE ALLOWED TO LEAVE THINGS UNDONE
This is psychologically huge.
You can say:
“I am not going to finish everything.”
Not:
“I failed to finish everything.”
But:
“Finishing everything was never available to me.”
Therefore:
unfinished ≠ failure.
Sometimes unfinished simply means:
human.
16. THE SPIRITUAL VERSION
And here the connection becomes even deeper.
Many spiritual seekers unconsciously create another version of the crashed-plane fantasy:
“Once I become enlightened, peaceful, awakened, liberated, disciplined, pure, etc., then I will finally be okay.”
The spiritual project becomes another attempt to escape the island.
Burkeman's insight could therefore be turned toward spirituality itself:
What if enlightenment isn't the condition you must achieve before living?
This is remarkably close to some forms of Zen.
And it resonates with the Balsekar material you were examining:
The search itself is something happening.
The seeker wants to arrive at a future state.
But who is the seeker?
17. THE BEAUTIFUL PARADOX
The paradox can be expressed in four lines:
I must get my life under control.
↓
I discover I cannot control life.
↓
I stop requiring control before living.
↓
I become free to actually live.
And Balsekar can take it one step further:
Who was trying to control life?
18. “HERE YOU ARE. HERE WE ALL ARE.”
This may actually be the most important phrase in the entire passage.
Notice that Burkeman doesn't say:
“Here you are.”
He says:
“Here we all are.”
That destroys another illusion: that your problem is uniquely yours.
Everyone is stranded.
Everyone is finite.
Everyone loses things.
Everyone has unfinished business.
Everyone is improvising.
Everyone is living under conditions they didn't choose.
Everyone is eventually going to die.
So the desert island becomes shared humanity.
And therefore:
The other survivors aren't obstacles to your perfect life. They are the people with whom the imperfect life is happening.
19. A VERY BALSEKAR-LIKE REFORMULATION
If I translated Burkeman's metaphor into the vocabulary we've been using in your earlier discussion, it might become:
The happening has already happened.
You didn't choose:
- to be born
- your initial body
- your parents
- your temperament
- the historical period
- your early conditioning
- the opportunities that appeared
- the things that happened to you
And yet here you are.
Then life unfolds.
The ordinary ego says:
“How can I make all this come out right?”
Burkeman says:
“Stop waiting for it to come out right. This is the situation. What is worth doing?”
Balsekar says:
“And notice that the one claiming to be the independent author of all this is itself part of the happening.”
20. THE WHOLE THING IN ONE DIAGRAM
THE ORDINARY HUMAN PROJECT │ ▼ “I must control my life” │ ▼ “I must avoid failure” │ ▼ “I must eventually arrive” │ ▼ CONSTANT TENSION │ ▼ BURKEMAN: “THE PLANE HAS CRASHED” │ ▼ Finitude cannot be eliminated │ ▼ Control is fundamentally incomplete │ ▼ Stop waiting for perfect safety │ ▼ “HERE I AM.” │ ▼ “WHAT IS WORTH DOING NOW?” │ ▼ ACT • LOVE • CREATE • CARE │ ▼ ACCEPT THE UNFINISHED REMAINDER │ ▼ BALSEKAR: “WHO IS THE DOER OF ALL THIS?” │ ▼ THE “I” IS ALSO HAPPENING │ ▼ DEEPER FREEDOM
The deepest point
I think the extraordinary thing about this metaphor is that it doesn't tell you how to make life safe.
It tells you something more radical:
Safety was never going to be the destination.
So the question changes from:
“How do I finally get life right?”
to:
“Given that this is the life that is actually happening, what is worth giving my finite attention to?”
And then, at the Advaita edge:
“Who is the ‘I’ that thinks it must get life right?”
That is where Burkeman's existential philosophy and the Balsekar/non-doership investigation begin to touch the same territory from opposite directions.
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