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Speaker 1: We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Bridgid Shulty. Overwhelmed
Speaker 1: doesn't ever go away. So it really becomes much more
Speaker 1: how you look at it, what you choose to think about,
Speaker 1: what you choose to do. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is
Speaker 1: Bridgid Shulty, an award winning journalist for The Washington Post
Speaker 1: and Washington Post Magazine. She was part of a team
Speaker 1: that won the Pulitzer Prize and is also a fellow
Speaker 1: at the New American Foundation. Bridget is a regular contributor
Speaker 1: to the She the People blog and has written for
Speaker 1: Style Outlook and other outlets. She writes about work life
Speaker 1: issues and poverty, seeking to understand what it takes to
Speaker 1: live the good life across race, class, and gender. Her
Speaker 1: recent book is called Overwhelmed, Work, Love, and a When
Speaker 1: No One Has the Time. Here's the interview, Hi Bridget,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me. Your book is called Overwhelmed, How to Work,
Speaker 1: Love and Play when No One Has the Time. And
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the book a lot. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: really interesting things in it that we'll talk about. And
Speaker 1: I certainly, I think suffer from a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that you describe in the book. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to talking about it me too, I believe me.
Speaker 1: I uh, I'm a work in progress. Yeah. I would
Speaker 1: say it's safe to assume that you wrote the book,
Speaker 1: you did a lot of research, and still being overwhelmed
Speaker 1: is something that comes and goes, I would assume in
Speaker 1: your life. I guess the thing that I really learned
Speaker 1: is overwhelmed doesn't ever go away. You know. There's just
Speaker 1: a lot of forces out there that kind of propel
Speaker 1: us to overwork and overdo, and technology keeps us on
Speaker 1: all the time. So it really becomes much more how
Speaker 1: you look at it and how you manage it, and
Speaker 1: what you choose, what you choose to think about, what
Speaker 1: you choose to do. Well, let's use that as a
Speaker 1: place to transition into the parable. Um our show is
Speaker 1: called The One You Feed, and it's based on the
Speaker 1: parable of two wolves. And in that parable, there's a
Speaker 1: grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you how that parable applies
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Well. I have to tell you I first
Speaker 1: heard that parable a couple of years ago and it
Speaker 1: really really hit me, um, when I was writing this book,
Speaker 1: or getting ready to write this book. Um, I think
Speaker 1: it was really the first time that I was able
Speaker 1: to kind of step off this treadmill of just being
Speaker 1: constantly busy and on the go and just filling my
Speaker 1: life with stuff and doing and going. And I had
Speaker 1: that moment to reflect a little bit, and I realized
Speaker 1: that so much of my life had been driven by
Speaker 1: fear um. And you know, I have often woken up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night with anxiety and panic.
Speaker 1: And I read that that parable of the wolves, and
Speaker 1: and it just really it just hit me how much
Speaker 1: I had been feeding the wolf of fear. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't get you where you want to go. Your book
Speaker 1: is called Overwhelmed, and you refer to something as the overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us what you mean by that when
Speaker 1: you say the overwhelm? Yeah, I decided to. You know,
Speaker 1: when you write a book, you can kind of get
Speaker 1: to make up your own rules. So I decided to
Speaker 1: turn it into its own noun because I just wanted
Speaker 1: to describe what just felt like a state of being,
Speaker 1: not just not just that I was experiencing, but so
Speaker 1: many of the people that I was interviewing or or
Speaker 1: talking to, our reaching out to, We're feeling this just
Speaker 1: this kind of um almost this feeling like you are
Speaker 1: underwater and you are swimming against the tide, and you
Speaker 1: are swimming as fast as you can, and you're sort
Speaker 1: of underwater and you're kind of out of breath, and
Speaker 1: it's just this, this this feeling that life had become
Speaker 1: almost unmanageable, almost unbearable in a certain way. That's why
Speaker 1: I decided to create its own, its own noun to
Speaker 1: to kind of refer to the state of being. Really,
Speaker 1: one of the things you said in the book is
Speaker 1: that this this goes for stress as well as the
Speaker 1: overwhelmed that it's not necessarily what's happening, how busy we are,
Speaker 1: or what the stress in we are under. It's what
Speaker 1: we think about what's happening or how we feel. How
Speaker 1: overwhelmed do we actually feel, versus how much are we
Speaker 1: actually doing. Business has really become a badge of honor
Speaker 1: in a way we show our status. So there are
Speaker 1: these external pressures that keep that sense of over alum
Speaker 1: spinning and churning. And so where the choice comes in
Speaker 1: is is recognizing or taking the time to to recognize,
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, is this what I really believe? Is
Speaker 1: this what I really want to be doing? Is this
Speaker 1: what I think or am I just automatically responding to
Speaker 1: these external forces. So it is a measure of of
Speaker 1: taking that kind of a pause, if you will, to
Speaker 1: get a little bit clearer about just about the circumstances
Speaker 1: and where you are and the choices that you're making.
Speaker 1: But I think that one of the things that was
Speaker 1: very powerful as I was doing the research and looking
Speaker 1: into time and time use research is that really it's
Speaker 1: our perceptions of time, our perceptions of stress, our perceptions
Speaker 1: of our lives that are in many ways much more
Speaker 1: real than than what somebody from the outside looking in
Speaker 1: on us might might think our lives are about. And
Speaker 1: there's so much really fascinating research that say, for instance,
Speaker 1: stress it's the perception that it's really bad for you
Speaker 1: that leads to so many sort of bad outcomes. In
Speaker 1: one of the studies that I was looking at, I
Speaker 1: spent some time at the Yale Stress Center to try
Speaker 1: to understand what stress and overwhelmed was doing to our brains.
Speaker 1: And what they found is that if you'd been through
Speaker 1: stressful events but also had the perception that you were
Speaker 1: very stressed out, your prefrontal cortex, the gray matter in
Speaker 1: there um, this is our sort of executive part of
Speaker 1: our brain that that that that structure was fully smaller
Speaker 1: in volue than people who did not feel so stressed out,
Speaker 1: it did not have that same perception. So so I
Speaker 1: think that's two things that that's really important to remember
Speaker 1: that there are these external pressures for overwhelm uh, and
Speaker 1: that it really takes some time to kind of step
Speaker 1: out of that, to get some clarity, to make different
Speaker 1: choices so that your perceptions can become clearer and change
Speaker 1: about your own life. Yeah, I think there's so much
Speaker 1: in there. And I think we've probably all had the
Speaker 1: experience of having very similar days as far as everything
Speaker 1: that had to happen and there being a lot packed
Speaker 1: into it, and some days we feel like, oh, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got this under control. In other days it just
Speaker 1: feels insane and we're really you know, and it's it's
Speaker 1: that that is all perception. But it's always interesting to me, how,
Speaker 1: you know, perception is one of those things that we
Speaker 1: have some degree of control over and then at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, external circumstances also are it's that combination between
Speaker 1: the two that is challenging. Again, one of those moments
Speaker 1: where it was only in hindsight that I got some
Speaker 1: perspective on it. You know, a couple of years ago, UM,
Speaker 1: my daughter was taking a ballet class in the afternoon
Speaker 1: at four thirty, which for most working parents is an
Speaker 1: impossible time for it to take your child to a
Speaker 1: dance class. So I had hired an after school babysitter,
Speaker 1: high school, high school student, and she called me at
Speaker 1: the last minute to say she couldn't take my daughter
Speaker 1: to ballet class. So, without even thinking I was really
Speaker 1: stressed out, I was working on a big story on deadline. Um,
Speaker 1: without a second thought, I just I just immediately assumed
Speaker 1: I had to take my daughter to ballet class. And
Speaker 1: I left work and I rushed home, and I'm stressed
Speaker 1: out of my mind, and I've got my BlackBerry in
Speaker 1: one hand, and I'm making phone calls and I'm yelling
Speaker 1: at her to get her you know, get her tights on,
Speaker 1: and let's go, let's go, let's go. And I drop
Speaker 1: her off and we're getting a big fight on the
Speaker 1: way down there. And it was only in hindsight that
Speaker 1: a friend asked, It's like, well, would your babysitter couldn't go,
Speaker 1: Why did you think you had to go? And It
Speaker 1: was really in kind of taking that moment to sort
Speaker 1: of take a breath and step off the treadmill that
Speaker 1: I realized, you know, I was so I had been
Speaker 1: such a guilty working mother, feeling so guilty that I worked,
Speaker 1: and that I was, you know, not giving my kids
Speaker 1: this perfect stay at home mom childhood that I just
Speaker 1: couldn't even bear the thought of her missing a ballet
Speaker 1: class because I was working. I mean, I was I
Speaker 1: couldn't even see clearly. And uh and so I guess
Speaker 1: that's what I mean by you know, sometimes we don't
Speaker 1: even have perspective on why we're doing things. And it
Speaker 1: was only in hindsight that I thought, you know, she
Speaker 1: could have missed that class. You know, I didn't have
Speaker 1: to take her. I am not a bad mother because
Speaker 1: I work, you know. And and sometimes we just get
Speaker 1: so busy and we just get so overwhelmed we don't
Speaker 1: take the time to you know, to get that perspective, dude,
Speaker 1: to think more clearly about about our lives. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'd like to explore some of that a little bit
Speaker 1: later on, around that ambiguity about Okay, I feel like
Speaker 1: I have to do all these things. Um, I was
Speaker 1: struck though with that idea of business as a social status,
Speaker 1: because once upon a time being idle was considered the thing.
Speaker 1: If you if you could be idle, that was social status.
Speaker 1: It was only the you know, the poor who worked
Speaker 1: so hard. And it's interesting that that's flipped so much
Speaker 1: on its head. It's crazy, isn't it. I mean, that
Speaker 1: was a really fascinating thing. You know, the whole history
Speaker 1: of of the of leisure, if you will, throughout human history.
Speaker 1: That was always throughout human history what you aspired to. Um,
Speaker 1: the Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorston Veblen, which
Speaker 1: is sort of the classic on leisure theory. You know,
Speaker 1: it sort of went back to Barbarian times that once
Speaker 1: we figured out how to survive, uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: you had enough food and you had shelter and you
Speaker 1: had clothes. Um, you know, once we figured out how
Speaker 1: to survive, then our society is very quickly stratified. And
Speaker 1: the higher your status, the further away from that kind
Speaker 1: of drudgery, the drudge work of daily life. You got
Speaker 1: you know, from farming and from the house cleaning and
Speaker 1: from cooking. And those tended to be high status men
Speaker 1: who were the leaders and the priests and the warriors,
Speaker 1: and you know, you weren't always at war, so when
Speaker 1: you weren't at war, the warriors got to hang around
Speaker 1: and play games. And you know, the priests weren't always
Speaker 1: you know, saying prayers, so when they weren't, they got
Speaker 1: to sit around and think great thoughts. And the philosophers
Speaker 1: the same way. And that's sort of throughout human history.
Speaker 1: The higher your status, the less you kind of quote
Speaker 1: unquote drudge work you did. And uh, and that's never
Speaker 1: what that was never true for women, which was so
Speaker 1: interesting that if women had kind of leisure time, it
Speaker 1: was all as a reflection of the men in their
Speaker 1: lives because their father had high status, or a brother
Speaker 1: or an uncle, or a husband or a son or
Speaker 1: as one woman said, well that's why one researcher said, well,
Speaker 1: that's why women used to become nuns. That was that
Speaker 1: was the way they could get leisure time and away
Speaker 1: from the drudge work in a society sort of a
Speaker 1: socially acceptable way. I mean, I don't want to know.
Speaker 1: I'm sure people had very honest vocations as well, but
Speaker 1: I do think that was sort of a funny comment. Um.
Speaker 1: But but you're right in the last century that's completely
Speaker 1: turned on its head. In the mid centuries, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, there were people who were looking at how
Speaker 1: productive we were after World War Two, looking at all
Speaker 1: of the income gains, and they just figured, boy, we
Speaker 1: have got it wired. By the you know, by now
Speaker 1: by the you know, the nineties, they were predicting we'd
Speaker 1: work maybe four days a week, maybe six months a year,
Speaker 1: that we'd all retire at thirty eight, you know, that
Speaker 1: we would have these long lives of leisure, and people
Speaker 1: were some people were heralding it, saying, this is great.
Speaker 1: So you know, everybody can explore their passion and a
Speaker 1: hobby and you know, even the lowliest carpenter can become
Speaker 1: a painter if they feel like it. And others were
Speaker 1: really worried, like, oh my goodness, what are all of
Speaker 1: the great unwashed masses going to do with all of
Speaker 1: this free time on their hands? And they were they've
Speaker 1: answered that, right, right, so it is right, but it
Speaker 1: is interesting. So now you know, you've got billionaires who
Speaker 1: jet around the world and they're you know, they're doing
Speaker 1: great things there, you know, malaria, solving world problems, but
Speaker 1: nobody is nobody is bragging about sitting around idly. You know,
Speaker 1: that's not the people that we look up to anymore. Well,
Speaker 1: what I thought was interesting in that is, I think
Speaker 1: it's there's I think there's some clear reasons maybe why
Speaker 1: some of that has happened. I think as for some
Speaker 1: of us, work becomes um i'll call it higher up,
Speaker 1: you know, higher up the drudgery scale. Right, it's less drudgery,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, there's some real enjoyment and love
Speaker 1: in it. Those things blend blend together. Um. The other
Speaker 1: thing that and you you sort of presented both sides
Speaker 1: of this argument, some people saying, look, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of back to that, um, you know, idle hands. People
Speaker 1: who are idle aren't happy. And then the flip side
Speaker 1: being well, we're just compulsively busy, and what's that what's
Speaker 1: the middle ground? But you said that in the book
Speaker 1: that there is um that a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: understand what leisure really is. That's so true. I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, when I first started working on the book,
Speaker 1: I sort of thought, you know, leisure was a waste
Speaker 1: of time. You know, I was very work identified. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that most of us in the United States are.
Speaker 1: We're a very work focused culture, you know, and we
Speaker 1: do believe in hard work. That is sort of part
Speaker 1: of the American way, if you will. Um. And so
Speaker 1: there's this feeling that somehow you're kind of a whimp
Speaker 1: or a little bit of a woos if you take
Speaker 1: time off, for if you take vacation or um, you
Speaker 1: know that you can't hack it or what did Margaret
Speaker 1: Thatcher say something like, you know sleep is for whimps?
Speaker 1: Or you have t shirts that says I'll sleep with it,
Speaker 1: I'm when I'm dead. And the idea is, you know
Speaker 1: you're working, and you're right, a lot of our jobs
Speaker 1: are what the Greek philosophers would have considered leisure, you know,
Speaker 1: science and writing and uh, you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: we're all out in the fields toiling all day. So
Speaker 1: you're right. Our our jobs have changed, Our work has changed,
Speaker 1: the nature of it has changed. It's much more engaging
Speaker 1: and intellectually stimulating and fun and and and pat we
Speaker 1: get passionate about it. So it does make it harder
Speaker 1: to pull away from it. Um. But leisure really it's
Speaker 1: so it's so interesting. I read this one book that
Speaker 1: sort of opened my eyes. It's called leisure the basis
Speaker 1: of civilization, and by this German philosopher and I picked
Speaker 1: it up. It's like, what what's he talking about? But
Speaker 1: he made the argument that it was really only in
Speaker 1: leisure time when you are away from the getting and
Speaker 1: the doing and the earning and you have kind of
Speaker 1: a timeless state, if you will. You know, the psychologists
Speaker 1: would call it flow, when you were kind of out
Speaker 1: of the hurly burly and the grind. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: that's really when art has been created, or philosophy, um, literature,
Speaker 1: great discoveries, it's all been in moments of leisure. You know.
Speaker 1: When you look at the right brothers, their work was
Speaker 1: at a busy bicycle shop in Ohio. They closed up
Speaker 1: their shop and they went to North Carolina and in
Speaker 1: their playtime, in their leisure, they invented the airplane. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a it was a real eye
Speaker 1: opener for me. And so you know, people have asked, well,
Speaker 1: what is leisure time? And I think the best, you know,
Speaker 1: the best definition came from a leisure researcher I spoke
Speaker 1: with who has spent a career looking at lee sure,
Speaker 1: and he said, it's, first of all, leisure is really
Speaker 1: completely unique to the individual. It's leisure is what leisure
Speaker 1: is to you. Whatever it's going to refresh your soul,
Speaker 1: whatever gives you kind of juice in the moment. And
Speaker 1: he said for it to feel to feel like true leisure,
Speaker 1: you need to qualities. One you have chosen this activity
Speaker 1: or or or not an activity. And to you have
Speaker 1: control over the time. And when you have those two
Speaker 1: elements and you've chosen it and it's something you want
Speaker 1: to do and it's it's giving you joy or refreshing you,
Speaker 1: then that's leisure. Yeah. What I think is so interesting
Speaker 1: is how for many of us something that we will allow.
Speaker 1: Let me say this, I will allow something that is
Speaker 1: leisure to blend that line into work. Like I enjoy it,
Speaker 1: I'm loving doing it, I'm controlling the time, and then
Speaker 1: the pressure starts on I should do more of it. Well,
Speaker 1: if I did this, then it would be you know,
Speaker 1: with music, I had to really take a step back
Speaker 1: for me with playing guitar and take it totally as
Speaker 1: a enjoyment leisure thing instead of thinking it needed to
Speaker 1: lead somewhere or something had to happen. It's so American, though,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Listen oh god, I totally I totally get that.
Speaker 1: There was a several years ago I learned how to
Speaker 1: play the I or is learning how to play the
Speaker 1: Irish harp and it was beautiful and I loved it
Speaker 1: and it was so fun. But in the back of
Speaker 1: my mind it was so weird. I had this bizarre pressure, boy,
Speaker 1: I better get good so that I can cut a
Speaker 1: C D. And I'm like, where is that coming from.
Speaker 1: You're not a musician. But it's like, you know, we
Speaker 1: do have that, yeah, that American idol. Think again, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: if I'm going to do something, I gotta be like,
Speaker 1: I gotta be amazing at it, rather than boy, I
Speaker 1: really like the sound of this Irish harp and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to play it for fun. And we have
Speaker 1: a hard time in the United States doing things just
Speaker 1: because they're fun. You use a term in the book
Speaker 1: called contaminated time. I love that term. That was another revelation.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. Writing this book was sort of like
Speaker 1: the biggest gift. I got to basically report our modern lives.
Speaker 1: You know, what a what a great gift. And I
Speaker 1: was talking with it's a it's a term that time
Speaker 1: use researchers and sociologists use. And basically what that means
Speaker 1: is that when you're so in your head, when you're
Speaker 1: so caught up in your thoughts and you're worrying about
Speaker 1: the future, and you're uh, you know, ruminating about the past,
Speaker 1: and you're going over your to do list and you're
Speaker 1: thinking about all the stuff you gotta do and how
Speaker 1: busy you are and how busy you should be, and
Speaker 1: how much more you've got to do, you're kind of
Speaker 1: everywhere and nowhere, you're not in the moment, and it
Speaker 1: contaminates your time. You could be on a bike ride,
Speaker 1: you could be at dinner with your family, you could
Speaker 1: be you know, even on vacation. But what's going on
Speaker 1: in your head is really what your reality is. And
Speaker 1: if if what's going on in your head is like
Speaker 1: the toilet running of thoughts, then it's completely polluted and
Speaker 1: contaminated your time. And I love that because that was
Speaker 1: so it was so apropos. I have plenty of instances
Speaker 1: where I've looked up and you know, you don't know,
Speaker 1: you don't even remember, like how you've driven someplace because
Speaker 1: you've been so lost in your thoughts. And for me,
Speaker 1: again with the you know, talk about the two wolves
Speaker 1: usually feeding the one that was anxious, worried and afraid. So, um,
Speaker 1: that's why I love that term. I think it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's one that we can all unfortunately relate to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: until I heard that from you, I used to refer
Speaker 1: to contaminated time as any time I had to spend
Speaker 1: Chris over here. But now I know it's a poor guy.
Speaker 1: He's not on Mike, so I take advantage of it.
Speaker 1: But now I relate with that so much that it's
Speaker 1: that it's that not being where you are at all.
Speaker 1: And I'm not one of those people that I think
Speaker 1: sometimes we overplay it, like mindfulness, like we should be
Speaker 1: aware of everywhere, Like you know, sometimes driving home, it's
Speaker 1: perfectly good place for me to be thinking about something else.
Speaker 1: I don't need to be paying attention to every you know,
Speaker 1: little spot on the road. I don't think, right, I
Speaker 1: think that there's a place for being in your thoughts.
Speaker 1: But I think what what you said there is when
Speaker 1: it's those other moments that we're trying to do something relaxing,
Speaker 1: or we're trying to be with our family or do
Speaker 1: something fun in our mind is just always on what
Speaker 1: we still have to do. Yeah, And I do think
Speaker 1: that's a really important distinction though, that you make that
Speaker 1: there are there are a couple of different states of
Speaker 1: mind that can be beneficial and you know, and that
Speaker 1: you can kind of choose to flip to. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I try to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: I still get lost in my thoughts and anxiety and worry,
Speaker 1: and I would say, what I'm what I'm getting better
Speaker 1: at is interrupting it, you know, stopping it, stopping the
Speaker 1: kind of the crazy, stupid busy train, you know, stopping
Speaker 1: those negative thoughts and just saying, Okay, I see you,
Speaker 1: there you are again. Um now I'm going to think
Speaker 1: about something else. So so I try not to spiral down,
Speaker 1: you know, like I used to. But I think it's
Speaker 1: really important that mindfulness is a very powerful tool and it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it does amazing things. I was just talking to one
Speaker 1: of the Harvard neuroscientists who uh, you know, put some
Speaker 1: people through an eight week long mindfulness based stress reduction
Speaker 1: program and then compared what happened to their brains against
Speaker 1: a group of people who did nothing, nothing different for
Speaker 1: eight weeks, and she found changes in five different regions
Speaker 1: of their brains, which was fascinating. They got they got thicker,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was about attention and um, kind
Speaker 1: of your self identity, your sense of self, I mean
Speaker 1: really important regions of the brain. So my fulness is
Speaker 1: I think a really important tool that we can all
Speaker 1: learn to use. But it's not like like you say,
Speaker 1: it's not a state that that's particularly natural to humans.
Speaker 1: And there also is a really good argument for spacing out,
Speaker 1: for getting lost in your thoughts, you know, as long
Speaker 1: as you are ruminating and kind of going down the
Speaker 1: going down the drain of negativity. But you know, there's
Speaker 1: really great research again about being idle, spacing out, doodling, daydreaming,
Speaker 1: that that's often the precursors for insight creativity, and and
Speaker 1: that's not mindfulness. It's actually a different brain system that
Speaker 1: gets lit lit up. So you actually those are two
Speaker 1: really great states of mind. So, yeah, be mindful and
Speaker 1: then we don't feel like being mindful space out right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a you know, there's a place for
Speaker 1: everything right or or that middle ground. Um, you said
Speaker 1: one thing in the book, and this just blew me away,
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things that I instinctively like
Speaker 1: want to debate because I'm like, that can't be your
Speaker 1: but I'm sure it's from a study. But that the
Speaker 1: average high school kid today experiences the same level of
Speaker 1: anxiety as a fifties psychiatric patient. That blew my mind
Speaker 1: as well. And that does come from a study. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, that's when when you look at the research
Speaker 1: about anxiety and look sort of what all of this
Speaker 1: buzziness and over work is doing to us, it's really
Speaker 1: really quite sobering. The World Health Organization did a global
Speaker 1: mental health survey a couple of years ago, and the
Speaker 1: United States they rated as the most anxious country in
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, that's that's astounding. Where the richest
Speaker 1: country we are, you know, the leaders of the free world,
Speaker 1: And they determined that in our lifetimes, fully one third
Speaker 1: of us will be so anxious as to be diagnosed
Speaker 1: with an anxiety disorder. So at that point, you really
Speaker 1: do you have to you have to step back and say,
Speaker 1: you know it's not you know, yes, there are individual
Speaker 1: tools and strategies you can use, but there is something
Speaker 1: in the water going on here. When you've got that
Speaker 1: level of anxiety going on. Yeah, you know, in a
Speaker 1: country like ours. Yeah, the cultural pressure is absolutely there. Um.
Speaker 1: You talk about ambiguity in the book. Explain what you
Speaker 1: mean by ambiguity, and then what are some strategies for
Speaker 1: dealing with it? Yeah, ambiguity is tough. You know. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the way that people have described it
Speaker 1: as sort of like you you're kind of fighting a
Speaker 1: battle that's kind of no win because you're sort of like,
Speaker 1: well if this, uh, you know, doesn't really I don't
Speaker 1: know if I want this one to I don't know
Speaker 1: if I want that one to win. You're not really
Speaker 1: committed fully to anything. Um, And you know, boy, I
Speaker 1: have struggled with that a lot in my life, just
Speaker 1: to kind of I don't know if this is the
Speaker 1: right thing. I I don't know if I should be
Speaker 1: doing something else. Am I doing the right thing with
Speaker 1: my life? What about this? You know? And it can
Speaker 1: really pull you down and it just canna leave you
Speaker 1: sort of in this kind of paralyzed state. And so honestly,
Speaker 1: the best way to deal with it is just to recognize,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, the answers are not clear.
Speaker 1: I am uncertain. I'm going to choose one thing and
Speaker 1: just go with it and you know what, and it
Speaker 1: may be the wrong choice and I'm just gonna make
Speaker 1: it anyway. It's almost like we're too paralyzed to make
Speaker 1: a choice because we're so afraid it's going to be
Speaker 1: the wrong one, um, you know, or there are two
Speaker 1: good choices and you honestly don't know which one to
Speaker 1: do to choose, and I think living like that, living
Speaker 1: in that state of ambiguity can be very painful, uh
Speaker 1: you know, um, And it takes a lot of energy
Speaker 1: and kind of SAPs you. I can say that from
Speaker 1: personal experience, and so sometimes it's just like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm gonna make a decision. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go with it and um and if it's the wrong one,
Speaker 1: you know that, revisit it and make another decision down
Speaker 1: the road. I think that ambiguity is in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, is a result of I think, what what
Speaker 1: should be considered a positive life? Right? The one that
Speaker 1: I run into all the time is like there's not
Speaker 1: enough time to do all the things that I care about.
Speaker 1: That's ultimately probably a good problem. You know that I've
Speaker 1: got enough things to care about. My life is full
Speaker 1: enough that I have to make that decision but boy,
Speaker 1: it does become very painful. And I think you're you know,
Speaker 1: I think your point is right sometimes just making a decision.
Speaker 1: The other thing, I back to your thing about ballet
Speaker 1: classes to try and get things in perspective like you
Speaker 1: can't you can't be everywhere, or I can't be everywhere
Speaker 1: all the time for everyone. That's just the reality, and
Speaker 1: that's okay. And um, we'll talk about time management or
Speaker 1: time plan in a minute, because I think that's you've
Speaker 1: got some good stuff in there that I was very
Speaker 1: similar to what I do with people I'm I'm working
Speaker 1: with in a one on one way. So I was
Speaker 1: glad to glad to see that. But I think sometimes
Speaker 1: it's having a wider time perspective. So if I look
Speaker 1: at just tonight, you know, my my daughter's ballet versus work,
Speaker 1: that's very difficult. But if I broaden that horizon out
Speaker 1: a little bit and I try and keep those things
Speaker 1: balanced over a broader time horizon, it becomes a lot
Speaker 1: easier to do because I can make I've got more
Speaker 1: chances to make adjustments and balance things out. But I
Speaker 1: tend to go right to that minute, like, Okay, these
Speaker 1: three things that need done right at the same time,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. Someone is screwed. This sucks. Whereas
Speaker 1: if I, you know, again, broaden it out over the
Speaker 1: next month, I can probably make sure everybody's taken care
Speaker 1: of to some degree. Right. I think having that broader
Speaker 1: perspective is so important. You know, we do tend to
Speaker 1: think I got to get all of this done, or
Speaker 1: if we think, you know, the only way to have balance,
Speaker 1: if you will, is to do work and have time
Speaker 1: for my family and play every day, and that's just
Speaker 1: really not realistic. There are going to be days when
Speaker 1: you know, when work is going to take precedence and
Speaker 1: there's some deadline or there's something going on that's just
Speaker 1: going to be very heavy work. There are going to
Speaker 1: be other days when your family is going to take
Speaker 1: precedence and a kid is sick or you've got to
Speaker 1: go to a doctor's appointment. That's just the way it's
Speaker 1: going to be. There's gonna be this kind of constant
Speaker 1: ebb and flow, and you know there are going to
Speaker 1: be hopefully days that you will take to play and
Speaker 1: put everything else on on the on the back burner
Speaker 1: that that that might be on the weekend. Um. So
Speaker 1: it's really much more a sense of how do you
Speaker 1: integrate these different parts of your life? And one of
Speaker 1: the things that's helped me is, again, like you, if
Speaker 1: I look on a day to day basis, I'll feel
Speaker 1: like a failure because I won't get to everything. But
Speaker 1: if I broadened out, I started looking at my calendar
Speaker 1: over a month and I was like, oh I did
Speaker 1: I did make time for that. Oh look, I did
Speaker 1: make time for that, you know. And I do think
Speaker 1: that that helps you um to kind of to see
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of different moving pieces in
Speaker 1: your life. You can make time for more of them
Speaker 1: when you have that bigger perspective. But I think the
Speaker 1: other thing that's important again, it goes back to, like again,
Speaker 1: having to make choices being busy. Sometimes it is not
Speaker 1: a function of doing a bunch of stuff we don't like.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's doing a lot of stuff we do like.
Speaker 1: And if we don't want to be so busy, then
Speaker 1: we have to make some choices that some things might
Speaker 1: need to wait, or sometimes some things you might just
Speaker 1: not do it at all. I think we all in
Speaker 1: this culture, and I'm guilty of it certainly. How are
Speaker 1: you doing busy? Busy? Busy? What I've tried to start
Speaker 1: doing is get away from it as a complaint because
Speaker 1: I'm clearly choosing it right, Like, I mean, I've recognized
Speaker 1: that with myself, Like I put, I keep stacking things
Speaker 1: into my life that I want to do and that
Speaker 1: I care about, and I just feel like it's not fair.
Speaker 1: Actually just it's it's back to that perception thing. When
Speaker 1: I feel like it's being done to me. I'm so busy,
Speaker 1: then I get stressed and when to go, no, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm making this choice. I chose to take
Speaker 1: this on. I chose to take that on. I don't
Speaker 1: have to. Then I get I'm able to breathe a
Speaker 1: little bit deeper. But I definitely do do it to myself. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think I must prefer it that way because
Speaker 1: keep doing it well, you know, and that's something that
Speaker 1: only you you can answer. But but sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we do keep doing it that way because
Speaker 1: it's just what we've done for so long, you know,
Speaker 1: we're used to it, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: us don't know what we do being idle with or
Speaker 1: with leisure time. I mean, I still struggle with that.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a study not long ago that
Speaker 1: some people preferred receiving an electric shock rather than just
Speaker 1: being alone in a room with our own thoughts. So
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of crazy, But we do live
Speaker 1: in a culture where, um, kind of taking the foot
Speaker 1: off the gas pedal at full throttle is really an
Speaker 1: uncomfortable thing to do. Yeah, yeah, it is. And I
Speaker 1: think it's it's back to that, particularly if your leisure
Speaker 1: activities tend to be, you know, active ones. I've I've
Speaker 1: just kind of learned through experience over life that I
Speaker 1: am one of those people that being left to idle
Speaker 1: has not proven to be good for me in the past. Um,
Speaker 1: And I think everybody is a little bit different. I've
Speaker 1: just kind of learned that about myself. But the key
Speaker 1: is to be able. Can I live that way without
Speaker 1: stressing myself out. One of the things that you talked about,
Speaker 1: and I first learned this, I think from from Stephen Covey, um,
Speaker 1: and you talk about putting the big pieces of your
Speaker 1: calendar in first. And I think the analogy that I
Speaker 1: read that he had, although I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have heard it, is that idea of if you
Speaker 1: have like a jar and um, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: plan your time, and you you put the big rocks
Speaker 1: in and it seems like it's full. But then you
Speaker 1: can put all the gravel in it still fits in.
Speaker 1: And then you can put pebbles in, and then sand
Speaker 1: and then water, and and you just kind of there's
Speaker 1: lots of room for the little stuff if you get
Speaker 1: the big important stuff in place first. Yeah. Yeah, that's so.
Speaker 1: That was a real lesson to me because I think
Speaker 1: so much of my own overwhelmed. It was sort of
Speaker 1: it was also partly my approach to things. And I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure why I did it. I think I
Speaker 1: was always sort of revving and panicked. I mean, I
Speaker 1: stopped drinking coffee. I was always so stressed out, you know,
Speaker 1: I drink decap off and I always still kind of panic.
Speaker 1: And I would sort of approach the day thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought all this stuff to do, so I'll just
Speaker 1: get this little stuff out of the way, and then
Speaker 1: i'll clear the decks and I'll get to the big step.
Speaker 1: I'll just get it out of the way. I'll just
Speaker 1: cross all this stuff off my to do list, and
Speaker 1: then I'll get to the big stuff. And then I
Speaker 1: would find that I would get caught up in the
Speaker 1: little stuff, and then it would take so much longer
Speaker 1: to get to the bigger stuff, and then I'd kind
Speaker 1: of get lost in the bigger stuff, and then it
Speaker 1: would be late, and then it would be time to
Speaker 1: come home, and then I didn't want to leave that
Speaker 1: bigger stuff. And and yet the next day it's like
Speaker 1: I never learned the lesson talk about like hitting yourself
Speaker 1: over the head with a hammer. Every single day, I'd
Speaker 1: start with the same way, Well I'll just get this
Speaker 1: little stuff out of the way, and it was crazy.
Speaker 1: And so it's really true. I have now. I have
Speaker 1: my running partner and I when we go for a
Speaker 1: run in the morning, will stop and we'll say, what's
Speaker 1: your one thing, And instead of thinking about the seventy
Speaker 1: five things I've got to do, it really helps us
Speaker 1: focus on what is the one most important thing, and
Speaker 1: then I really try to do that first. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's such sound strategy. You talk about something in
Speaker 1: the book called pulsing. Can you explain what that is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was something that I learned from Tony Schwartz, who's
Speaker 1: the founder of the Energy Project, which is just a
Speaker 1: really wonderful organization. They do doing some really interesting work
Speaker 1: and from his books and from some of his research. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he makes this argument that we have ninety
Speaker 1: minute attentiveness cycles during the day, just like we have
Speaker 1: ninety minutes sleep cycles at night. And so, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: his whole theory is, you know, we breathe in and
Speaker 1: out our heartbeats. We have these kind of natural kind
Speaker 1: of rhythms, you know, even stress, we have stress and
Speaker 1: release that that is sort of the way humans have evolved.
Speaker 1: We have our brain waves, you know, And so he said,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't we have attentiveness cycles that would also kind
Speaker 1: of you know, cycle or pulse, and so so his
Speaker 1: we had a very funny conversation. I when I called
Speaker 1: him up for my interview with them. The first thing
Speaker 1: he said is, I bet you're writing your book the
Speaker 1: same way I wrote my first couple. And I said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? And he said, change to your
Speaker 1: desk with your button to chair for ten hours straight.
Speaker 1: And I kind of laughed and like, well, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I thought that's the best way to work, right, just
Speaker 1: power through and sit there and just keep at it
Speaker 1: and go, go, go. And he said that he's he
Speaker 1: doesn't work that way anymore. He said he works in
Speaker 1: what he calls four nineties. So he'll work for ninety
Speaker 1: minutes and then take a break, and then I work
Speaker 1: another ninety minutes. And then he said, and then he'll
Speaker 1: completely change the channel from like ninety minutes and go
Speaker 1: for a run or go do something completely different to
Speaker 1: kind of give his brain a completely different kind of
Speaker 1: mode to be in, and then come back and do
Speaker 1: another couple nineties. And he said he's more productive now
Speaker 1: than he's ever been, and he's written his books and
Speaker 1: like half the time. So I'm not quite at the
Speaker 1: ninja level of Tony Schwartz. I think that's pretty amazing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's harder to do, you know, when you
Speaker 1: have deadlines or you're trying to work with other people.
Speaker 1: But when I can, I really do. For my book
Speaker 1: in particular, I wrote my whole book in pulses and
Speaker 1: it made a huge difference. And now that I'm working
Speaker 1: at the Washington Post again, uh as a staff writer,
Speaker 1: when I can, I try to work in those really
Speaker 1: concentrated chunks of time. And I will say I have
Speaker 1: been far more productive, particularly as we move more to
Speaker 1: digital and you have to be, you know, the more productive,
Speaker 1: and uh, I it's it's really it's it's been very
Speaker 1: noticeable to me. That's been much more productive and it's
Speaker 1: much easier, you know, when I focus on the big
Speaker 1: stuff first and I and I do work in those
Speaker 1: concentrated pulses. Yeah, it's remarkable how much can get done
Speaker 1: in short, very extremely focused bursts the time with breaks
Speaker 1: in between. I mean, it really is a it's a
Speaker 1: fundamentally different way to approach getting work done than most
Speaker 1: of us do, which is to settle in at a
Speaker 1: desk for a long period of time and do a
Speaker 1: bunch of different things scatter shot. Um. Yeah, the transformation
Speaker 1: in myself and and in people that I work with
Speaker 1: who put that into place is dramatic. Um. We are
Speaker 1: very near the end of time, but I wanted to um,
Speaker 1: not the end of all time, the end of this show, thankfully,
Speaker 1: as far as I know anyway. But you've got a
Speaker 1: line in the book, and I think you it was
Speaker 1: a quote from someone, but I thought it was such
Speaker 1: a great, great line and such a reason sort of
Speaker 1: why I started doing this show and why the parable
Speaker 1: is important to me because my mind tends to go
Speaker 1: to to by default, not necessarily the best places, and
Speaker 1: it was that entropy, disorder, chaos, and decay is the
Speaker 1: default option of consciousness. Yeah. That was from research that
Speaker 1: Chick sent me high Dead when he wanted to try
Speaker 1: to understand people's not only what they did with their time,
Speaker 1: but their perception of it. And he came up with
Speaker 1: this it's called it experienced sampling method, and he gave
Speaker 1: people beepers and he would beat them at random times
Speaker 1: through the day and ask them not only what they
Speaker 1: were doing, but how they felt about it and what
Speaker 1: they were thinking about. And he initially thought, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm going to hear great thoughts, and people are
Speaker 1: gonna be dreaming great dreams, and there's going to be imagination.
Speaker 1: It'll be awesome. And then what he found after he
Speaker 1: actually beeped people and asked them what they were thinking,
Speaker 1: that it was all chaos, negative thoughts, you know, craziness.
Speaker 1: And and that's when he really realized that it would
Speaker 1: take work and will and practice to really change the
Speaker 1: way we think. Yep. And I think that is absolutely
Speaker 1: it's certainly my experience, you know, it's and I when
Speaker 1: I talked about why we started the show, that was
Speaker 1: a big part of it was just to give me
Speaker 1: away to learn more about how do I I think
Speaker 1: that you know, to use the parable. I think the
Speaker 1: bad wolf is pretty good at feeding himself. There's lots
Speaker 1: of food laying around sound, it's just everywhere. He's always hungry.
Speaker 1: You know. It's the good wolf, at least for me,
Speaker 1: that needs the uh, that needs the extra effort in
Speaker 1: getting fed. Yes, that's so true. And I will say that.
Speaker 1: You know, I've always kind of suffered from insomnia, and
Speaker 1: so one of the things that I started doing a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago is like when I have an
Speaker 1: attack and I can't sleep, I'll just take a breath
Speaker 1: and I just start listing everything I'm grateful for, you know,
Speaker 1: and and then my my good wolf gets gets nice
Speaker 1: and foot by bye. Yeah, that's a great way to
Speaker 1: go to sleep. Well, thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time. Um. I know, despite writing your book, um,
Speaker 1: you still have a very busy schedule. So I appreciate
Speaker 1: you fitness in I'm happy to do it. It was
Speaker 1: wonderful talking to you. Take care Okay you too. If
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