Help! Quotes

“the willingness to make small, incremental adjustments, to tolerate imperfection and bumpy progress, and not to throw in the towel in frustration the moment something starts to go wrong.”
― Oliver Burkeman, HELP!: How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people,’ the infinitely more sensible essayist Anne Lamott observes in her book on writing, Bird by Bird. ‘It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life … perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Help!: How to Be Slightly Happier, Slightly More Successful and Get a Bit More Done

“The advice of etiquette experts on dealing with unwanted invitations, or overly demanding requests for favours, has always been the same: just say no. That may have been a useless mantra in the war on drugs, but in the war on relatives who want to stay for a fortnight, or colleagues trying to get you to do their work for them, the manners guru Emily Post’s formulation – ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible’ – remains the gold standard. Excuses merely invite negotiation. The comic retort has its place (Peter Cook: ‘Oh dear, I find I’m watching television that night’), and I’m fond of the tautological non-explanation (‘I can’t, because I’m unable to’). But these are variations on a theme. The best way to say no is to say no. Then shut up.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Help!: How to Be Slightly Happier, Slightly More Successful and Get a Bit More Done

“passion is the feeling you get from mastering a skill, not some magical quality unrelated to hard work:”
― Oliver Burkeman, HELP!: How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done

“I love the Unsuggester, a feature of the books site librarything.com: enter a book you’ve recently read, and it’ll provide a list of titles least likely to appear alongside it on other people’s bookshelves. Tell it you’re a fan of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and it’ll suggest you read Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. And maybe you should.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Help!: How to Be Slightly Happier, Slightly More Successful and Get a Bit More Done

“They may never speak to you again, but that won’t matter: you will have won the argument, using Science.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Help!: How to Be Slightly Happier, Slightly More Successful and Get a Bit More Done