Speaker 1: Welcome to Time Out. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space,
Speaker 1: activists on the gender division of labor, attorney and family mediator.
Speaker 1: And I'm doctor add Nerukar, a physician and medical correspondent
Speaker 1: with an expertise in the science of stress, resilience, mental health,
Speaker 1: and burnout. We're here to peel back to layers around
Speaker 1: why it's so easy for society to guard men's time
Speaker 1: as if it's diamonds and to treat women's time as
Speaker 1: if it's infinite like sands. And whether you are partnered
Speaker 1: with or without children, or in a career where you
Speaker 1: want more boundaries, this is the place for you for
Speaker 1: all family structures. We're here to take a time out
Speaker 1: to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim our time.
Speaker 1: Add I want to tell your story. I live for
Speaker 1: your stories. Well, this is something I think you can
Speaker 1: relate to. And I called the case of the drunk
Speaker 1: Man's Jackets. So I woke up at five am one
Speaker 1: morning to catch a flight for one day work trips Seattle,
Speaker 1: right after Ben was born. And you can picture the
Speaker 1: scene right. I was carrying my breast pump my purse
Speaker 1: on my shoulder, my laptop, my carry on bag with
Speaker 1: tons of documents, and I remember I pulled up to
Speaker 1: the curve at departures around seven am, and I get
Speaker 1: a text from Seth. He set seems apparently loves to
Speaker 1: send me text the d d um. But his text said,
Speaker 1: some guy left his jacket and beer bottle on our lawn. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking that's weird and gross, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: what was I supposed to do about it? From the road,
Speaker 1: So I put the drunk ey's jacket out of my
Speaker 1: mind for the day, and as the plane took off,
Speaker 1: I began prepping for the Family Foundation board meeting that
Speaker 1: I was leading that day. So I land in Seattle.
Speaker 1: I pumped for twenty minutes in the airport. How many
Speaker 1: of us have had to do that go into one
Speaker 1: of those weird pods or more likely to stairwell. And
Speaker 1: I arrived in my client's boardroom and I lead this
Speaker 1: all day meeting with three generations of family members that
Speaker 1: have been feuding so badly when I met them that
Speaker 1: every time my client's son would open his mouth, my
Speaker 1: client would storm out of the room. This day, I
Speaker 1: felt really proud of myself that all three generations around
Speaker 1: the table were communicating with grace and humor and generosity.
Speaker 1: So the meaning finishes, and I knew I had to
Speaker 1: pump again, but because of the sex noises. I don't
Speaker 1: know if they still do that a d D if
Speaker 1: your clients tell you that. But the sex noises my
Speaker 1: pump me. I was too embarrassed to use the family
Speaker 1: boardroom restroom, and so I found myself, as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: really pumping in a dark stairwell of the building parking garage,
Speaker 1: pumping into plastic bags before I raced on the plane
Speaker 1: to get home. So I pull up to my house
Speaker 1: around ten thirty that night, completely exhausted as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: and as I'm dragging my carry on bag, I see
Speaker 1: a crumpled up jacket and a broken beer bottle. It
Speaker 1: was still there. Add you know, I decided to give
Speaker 1: Seth the benefit of the doubt because I figured, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe he was dead or maybe trapped under a giant boulder.
Speaker 1: So after I put the breast milk bottles in the refrigerator,
Speaker 1: I started lugging myself up the stairs and guess what
Speaker 1: I find? Seth outstretched on the bed, but definitely not dead.
Speaker 1: In fact, he cheerfully told me that he had four
Speaker 1: hours after the kids went to bed to check email,
Speaker 1: watch Sports Center, work out, and finish a power Point deck,
Speaker 1: plenty of time to decompress from his long day, yet
Speaker 1: not enough time, apparently to clean up the drunk guys
Speaker 1: stuff he discovered on our lawn sixteen hours earlier. And
Speaker 1: so I go back downstairs because actually, why did I
Speaker 1: do this? That I reflect on this now because what
Speaker 1: jackets are gross, but more importantly because I had a
Speaker 1: toddler at the time, and the shattered beer bottle felt
Speaker 1: like a safety hazard for my kids. And so I
Speaker 1: put on a pair of rubber gloves I had left
Speaker 1: over from school sandwich duty. I grabbed a trash bag,
Speaker 1: I walked outside, I threw the gross stuff in the bag.
Speaker 1: I throw the trash bag into the bin, and I
Speaker 1: come home. But my active resistance that night, as I
Speaker 1: was doing this was that I finally timed myself. And
Speaker 1: all in all, it took twelve minutes, twelve minutes from
Speaker 1: putting on those rubber gloves to finally peeling them off
Speaker 1: and dropping them at the foot of seth side of
Speaker 1: the bed, where I looked him in the and said,
Speaker 1: you're fucking welcome as I stormed off. Why I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this as an intro to this episode
Speaker 1: today is I realized I was so upset because sess
Speaker 1: morning text wasn't a can you believe this text, but
Speaker 1: a I don't have time, this is on you? And
Speaker 1: I began thinking about twelve minutes. Those twelve minutes multiplied
Speaker 1: by thousands over the course of almost a decade of
Speaker 1: marriage and two kids at the time of this is
Speaker 1: on you required to get through each of my days,
Speaker 1: and that's when I realized that women are racing against
Speaker 1: the clock from the moment we wake up. This episode
Speaker 1: is about why, Why was this on me? Why is
Speaker 1: this on us? So? What's so fascinating to me? This
Speaker 1: idea of time is so unique to women versus men,
Speaker 1: And not only do women value time differently than men,
Speaker 1: but also across the lifespan, we value time so different.
Speaker 1: And you and I have talked about this before. We
Speaker 1: are both moms and wives, and our husbands are amazing.
Speaker 1: We married feminist husbands who totally support our decision to
Speaker 1: work and thrive and be working mothers and have a
Speaker 1: dual income household and all of these things, and yet
Speaker 1: these stories continue to happen to us and women everywhere.
Speaker 1: I have several patients women who are cancer patients, and they,
Speaker 1: you know, have had families and work hard, and then
Speaker 1: they get that diagnosis of cancer. So many of these
Speaker 1: women that have come to me will often say that
Speaker 1: it was their cancer diagnosis that was that wake up
Speaker 1: call for them or that aha moment. So I've seen
Speaker 1: from my patients women may have had a certain kind
Speaker 1: of job or a different kind of family structure and
Speaker 1: then completely usurp and change everything about their life, so
Speaker 1: they might quit their job or go into a line
Speaker 1: of work that they've always wanted to do. I've had
Speaker 1: some patients suddenly decided to be children's authors or painters
Speaker 1: or fashion designers. But it's their hearts calling. They weren't
Speaker 1: listening for decades. And it's always shocked me that it
Speaker 1: takes something like a life altering cancer diagnosis for women
Speaker 1: to reclaim their time. And I've had patients who have
Speaker 1: been healed. But the crux of all of that is
Speaker 1: that they finally start valuing their time on a deep
Speaker 1: cellular level. Oh my god, I love this so much
Speaker 1: because I think about the healing versus a cure, right,
Speaker 1: The idea that there's a cure to this on you
Speaker 1: text is a fallacy because it's a practice, and so
Speaker 1: healing is so much more of a active verbs because
Speaker 1: you can take agency in your own life. And what
Speaker 1: I like to say, and as Seth is so proud
Speaker 1: of me now and brings fair play everywhere that my
Speaker 1: healing journey. When people say what started it? Or how
Speaker 1: did you get to a place where your time is
Speaker 1: now being valued within your marriage, my prescription is, well,
Speaker 1: just write a book about your partner that portrays them
Speaker 1: in a terrible light, because that was my healing journey.
Speaker 1: But the good news about this podcast is you don't
Speaker 1: need to do that. We're going to do it for
Speaker 1: you and with you, and it starts with communicating with yourself.
Speaker 1: And the premise of this episode is that I wish
Speaker 1: I could talk to myself back then and say, this
Speaker 1: is not about you and Seth. You have a great partner.
Speaker 1: You are in a messed up society and system that
Speaker 1: values and treats Seth time as if it's finite and condition.
Speaker 1: As you and your partner and the ones around you
Speaker 1: to treat your time as if it's infinite. What I
Speaker 1: mean by that is that if women enter male professions,
Speaker 1: salaries automatically go down. We hear from society that breastfeeding
Speaker 1: is free when it's really hours, it's a full time job,
Speaker 1: but somehow apparently it's free only in a world where
Speaker 1: women's time is infinite. And finally, I will say that
Speaker 1: the things that's been hardest for me though, as we
Speaker 1: talk about reclaiming our time, is that it starts with
Speaker 1: the messages we tell ourselves. And so these were the
Speaker 1: four most popular ones. And I'm centering women married to
Speaker 1: men right now, because even though this occurs in many
Speaker 1: different family structures, this is where often the problems start,
Speaker 1: with these heteronormative societal roles that we get stuck in.
Speaker 1: One my partner makes more money than me, or somehow
Speaker 1: my job is more flexible. When we know that if
Speaker 1: a woman is a lawyer and a man is a doctor,
Speaker 1: she thinks her job is more flexible. If the woman
Speaker 1: is the doctor and the man is the lawyer, her
Speaker 1: job is toda more flexible. Number two women across the
Speaker 1: globe in seventeen countries said to me that they're wired
Speaker 1: differently for care that they are better multitaskers. For that one,
Speaker 1: I had to go to another doctor, a neuroscientists, and
Speaker 1: I had to ask him are our women wired differently?
Speaker 1: Are our brains wired for multitasking caregiving? And indeed he
Speaker 1: just looked at me and said, well, I guess culturally,
Speaker 1: definitely not neurologically. That was a hard one for me
Speaker 1: to hear. Number three And the time it takes me
Speaker 1: to tell him her they what to do, I should
Speaker 1: just do it myself. That's a classic devaluing of your
Speaker 1: future time. According to professor and friend Dan Arielli, who's
Speaker 1: a behavioral economist and popular author, and finally, the one
Speaker 1: that makes me laugh the most, my partner is better
Speaker 1: at focusing on one task at a time, and I
Speaker 1: can find the time. And so I like to say,
Speaker 1: unless we're Albert Einstein, we can funk with the space
Speaker 1: time continuum. There's actually no way to find time. There's
Speaker 1: no way to find time, and so what happens does
Speaker 1: that just leave to burnout if we think our time
Speaker 1: is infinite. So, as you were sharing each of those
Speaker 1: toxic messages, in my mind, I was saying, yep, number two, yep,
Speaker 1: number three. Yep. So what I've seen in my clinical practice,
Speaker 1: and many doctors will attest to this as well, is
Speaker 1: that men and women, like you said, inherently see time differently.
Speaker 1: Women will say I don't have enough time. That typically
Speaker 1: means that they don't have enough time to do all
Speaker 1: of the things on their to do list that they
Speaker 1: need to do, which includes work responsibilities, family responsibilities, home responsibilities.
Speaker 1: But when you ask them where do you fall on
Speaker 1: that list, they are not even on that list. So
Speaker 1: we often say in pop culture, put yourself first, or
Speaker 1: fill your own cup before you feel someone else's. But
Speaker 1: it is truly a paradigm shift because many women do
Speaker 1: not even put themselves on that list. Men also feel
Speaker 1: time crunched, but in a different way. It's very work centric,
Speaker 1: and the women I'm talking to, they have jobs outside
Speaker 1: the home or even in the home. They work so much,
Speaker 1: so this is not a career specific view. This has
Speaker 1: been very much a gendered view. Wow, I love that
Speaker 1: so much, And I want to go back to something
Speaker 1: you said about women inherently valuing their time different than men,
Speaker 1: because I think the word inherent is important in here
Speaker 1: because it's not neurological it's not biological. Inherently is because
Speaker 1: we have been conditioned from birth to believe that having
Speaker 1: it all means doing it all, and once you're done
Speaker 1: with wiping the asses and doing the dishes and securing childcare,
Speaker 1: there's literally no time left. Everything I had been taught
Speaker 1: about having time choice over how I used my life.
Speaker 1: Being in the best decade ever women can do what
Speaker 1: the same as anybody else does was was really it
Speaker 1: was really a lie. You know. It's interesting about multitasking
Speaker 1: is that it actually has a negative impact on the brain.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this idea of women doing everything and
Speaker 1: feeling like it's a badge of honor to be able
Speaker 1: to do it all and have it all, and I'm
Speaker 1: so on top of things. It actually is not healthy
Speaker 1: to multitasks. So that's another societal norm that we need
Speaker 1: to blow up that doing it all at the same
Speaker 1: time isn't a badge of honor. It's actually impacting your
Speaker 1: health in a negative way. You know. In mindfulness, we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about the timelessness of the present moment.
Speaker 1: So even if it's fifteen minutes or ten minutes a day,
Speaker 1: it's that sense of timelessness that childlike wonder that we
Speaker 1: can create, which has so many therapeutic benefits apps. And
Speaker 1: by the way, thank you for saying that, because I'm
Speaker 1: sort of sick of productivity books as I read each
Speaker 1: one of them. It seems like we just get these
Speaker 1: ridiculous messages like wake up an hour earlier or find
Speaker 1: two uninterrupted days a week, and it's unrealistic. It doesn't
Speaker 1: speak to people without extreme amounts of privilege. And so
Speaker 1: the last toxic time message I want to talk about
Speaker 1: before we get to bring on Bridget Chalty, who is
Speaker 1: the queen of talking about productivity and time, is this
Speaker 1: message of if you're so overwhelmed, get help. So many
Speaker 1: people say that to women, and I find it really
Speaker 1: toxic because not only does it not recognize that most
Speaker 1: of the work that is leading to women being diagnosed
Speaker 1: with twice as many anxiety disorders as men is the
Speaker 1: cognitive labor. The way we've looked at time, the way
Speaker 1: we talked to women about time since we are born.
Speaker 1: It needs to be blown up and needs to be
Speaker 1: seen as toxic and there has to be a new
Speaker 1: way forward. So we're going to get to talk to
Speaker 1: my great friend and fellow activists Bridges Shelty today who
Speaker 1: literally wrote the book on being overwhelmed, and I cannot
Speaker 1: wait to welcome her into the studio. Bridge Shelty literally
Speaker 1: wrote the book on being overwhelmed. She's the author of
Speaker 1: the New York Times best selling book over Work, Love
Speaker 1: and Play When No One Has the Time, And it's
Speaker 1: really a book about time pressure, gender expectations, and the
Speaker 1: overwhelm of modern life. So we're so happy to have
Speaker 1: her here today. High Bridget, Hi, great to meet you.
Speaker 1: Do you know that I've read your Guardian piece multiple
Speaker 1: times from two thousand and nineteen. You know it's so
Speaker 1: funny about that pieces. It keeps showing up on Twitter,
Speaker 1: like from all around the world, and that peace came
Speaker 1: out of such a moment of frustration. And I tried
Speaker 1: to write it for a year, and every time I
Speaker 1: went to sit down, I was like, mom, can you
Speaker 1: do this? I thought it was like a cosmic joke
Speaker 1: that I couldn't even find the time to write that piece.
Speaker 1: And for our listeners who don't know it, can you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about what the article it
Speaker 1: was Bridget that went so viral. So I'm a journalist
Speaker 1: and a writer and spent most of my career at
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, and I kind of fell into writing
Speaker 1: about time and women and work life issues that resulted
Speaker 1: in this book called Overwhelmed, Work, Glove, and Play. When
Speaker 1: no one has the time really thinking about women and time.
Speaker 1: And I'm working at the Better Life Lab and there's
Speaker 1: a kind of a million balls in the air, but
Speaker 1: my identity is always as a writer first, and I
Speaker 1: was feeling just this real pain that I didn't have time.
Speaker 1: I wasn't making the time to write and create and think.
Speaker 1: And so somebody at a conference said, oh, you should
Speaker 1: read this book about how the great artists made time.
Speaker 1: Maybe that can give you some advice. So I read
Speaker 1: this book. I got it for myself for Christmas. This
Speaker 1: was going to be like the key for me to
Speaker 1: understand how I could make more time to be creative
Speaker 1: and write. And I started reading and they were really interesting.
Speaker 1: They were sort of the back stories of a lot
Speaker 1: of great artists. But about ten pages in and I
Speaker 1: just started getting really kissed off because just about every
Speaker 1: single artist was a man. And it's like the writer
Speaker 1: he didn't even understand the picture that he was painting,
Speaker 1: you know. He talked about Freud and how he had
Speaker 1: all of this time and space to think, and part
Speaker 1: of it was because his wife laid out his clothes
Speaker 1: every morning and even put his toothpaste on his toothbrush,
Speaker 1: you know. And they talked about Gustaf Mahler, and you know,
Speaker 1: he was married to this young, really up and coming composer,
Speaker 1: but he wanted her to walk with him while he
Speaker 1: thought about music, and he didn't want her to make
Speaker 1: a sound, and she wasn't allowed to create, or you know,
Speaker 1: her whole purpose was to help him create. The more
Speaker 1: and more I read these pieces, the angry and angrier
Speaker 1: I got because it was such a reflection to me
Speaker 1: about how women have never had this kind of space
Speaker 1: or time to create and think that that's considered selfish.
Speaker 1: We talk about me time as if it's something that
Speaker 1: only weak, stupid people would want, and a woman's work
Speaker 1: is never done. And so it may me angry that
Speaker 1: the author couldn't even see that the men were able
Speaker 1: to have this space and they were able to really
Speaker 1: have this wonderful full family life and the women, for
Speaker 1: the most part, we're not. And it was sort of
Speaker 1: one more indication to me of how we just don't
Speaker 1: get it. Women have never had a history or culture
Speaker 1: of having time to themselves, And I just thought, what
Speaker 1: have we lost? Wherever you sat on the gender spectrum,
Speaker 1: we all deserve time to be as fully human as
Speaker 1: we are. All time is crazy equal, and you are
Speaker 1: our leader and fearless warrior. And I will just reflect
Speaker 1: on how powerful your work has been to me. A
Speaker 1: lot of what you talked about is time choice. You know,
Speaker 1: when Seth was coming home from work and he had
Speaker 1: four hours after our kids went to bed too work out,
Speaker 1: check powerpoints, finish a deck, b Shakespeare or Freud, or
Speaker 1: have as time to think great. I was doing things
Speaker 1: in service of our house until my head hit the pillow,
Speaker 1: and um, I remember going to him and saying, I
Speaker 1: just want equal time choice. I want as much choice
Speaker 1: over how I used my day as you have. And
Speaker 1: that is why I'm resenting you so much, because you
Speaker 1: look so free, and I think the problem is all
Speaker 1: the productivity researchers. Besides, you assume that we can have
Speaker 1: this uninterrupted time for deep work that is just not
Speaker 1: afforded to women. You know, when you look at the
Speaker 1: history of women's time, women have never had concentrated, uninterrupted time.
Speaker 1: Think about it. The good wife kept the children and
Speaker 1: everything away from the husband so that he could be
Speaker 1: in the study. The good secretary her time was interrupted
Speaker 1: so she could protect the boss's time. So women's time
Speaker 1: has always been fragmented, interrupted, moving from thing to thing.
Speaker 1: Leisure for women tends to always have this moment of
Speaker 1: your checking everybody else's emotional temperature. Is everybody else having
Speaker 1: a good time? Did I plan this right? Somebody described
Speaker 1: it to me. It's like maybe you're at the pool,
Speaker 1: but you're like the fireman. It's not pure leisure to yourself.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what this fight is for women
Speaker 1: to see that they deserve this kind of time and
Speaker 1: to work together because your partners have to work with
Speaker 1: you as well. Just like they need and want unstructured,
Speaker 1: concentrated time, women need that too. And then we need
Speaker 1: to work on these larger work systems and policy systems
Speaker 1: to make sure that all people have access to that.
Speaker 1: You know, as I was doing research, I came across
Speaker 1: this quote. To be interrupted is to be disrespected, And
Speaker 1: so think about it. With women's time being so interrupted
Speaker 1: throughout all of human history, it's a sign of enormous disrespect.
Speaker 1: So R. E. S. P. E c. T. It's time.
Speaker 1: It's time for women to respect ourselves, to demand it,
Speaker 1: but also for others to recognize that we deserve it.
Speaker 1: So indeed, is gonna ask you a couple of practical
Speaker 1: questions about how we can start reclaiming our time. But
Speaker 1: before that, I never asked you this personally. I've never
Speaker 1: given you the toxic time quiz. I thought it would
Speaker 1: be fun to ask you how many of these messages
Speaker 1: you heard in your research? I love it as long
Speaker 1: as you know, like full disclosure from the outset. I
Speaker 1: may research this stuff, but I'm still working on all
Speaker 1: of it. So how many of these messages have you
Speaker 1: heard or said to yourself? My paid hours are worth
Speaker 1: more than your unpaid hours. It's not worth it for
Speaker 1: you to work. What did you do all day? Why
Speaker 1: are you wasting time doing that? You're so lucky you
Speaker 1: don't have to go to work. Well, if you don't
Speaker 1: have enough time and you're so overwhelmed, just get help.
Speaker 1: I don't have time, so can you. You're a better multitaskers,
Speaker 1: so you should just do it. My partner travels or
Speaker 1: goes to work early, so it's on me and the
Speaker 1: time it takes me. To tell my partner what to do,
Speaker 1: I might as well just do it myself. Yes, more
Speaker 1: time for myself would be great, but I really should
Speaker 1: go clean out the freezer. You know. I have to
Speaker 1: say all of them. I hear them all the time
Speaker 1: still in the research that I do. I have to say,
Speaker 1: my husband and I have been doing the awful lot
Speaker 1: of work. And it was really through the process of
Speaker 1: doing the research of the book that I recognized that
Speaker 1: I had to begin to respect my own time because
Speaker 1: nobody else was going to. I had to learn to
Speaker 1: disrupt my own mental models of everything that I had
Speaker 1: been taught. I had a breadwinner father, distant. I work,
Speaker 1: That's what I do. Don't bug me. And then I
Speaker 1: had a mother who she was a homemaker and drove
Speaker 1: the car pools and did nothing on her own and
Speaker 1: signed her checks Mrs Arthur A. Shalt Jr. It's like,
Speaker 1: who is that, you know? And she started sending things
Speaker 1: to me, Mrs Thomas M. Bowman. I started to send
Speaker 1: them act her saying I don't know who this is.
Speaker 1: That is not me, you know. So I have heard
Speaker 1: all of those messages, and they are very potent, and
Speaker 1: they're very powerful, and they get into your psyche. So
Speaker 1: the first step is just to be aware that it's
Speaker 1: out there and that you can make a choice. You
Speaker 1: can choose to think differently and honest to God. Awareness,
Speaker 1: education and recognizing that this is a choice. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not a baby step. That's an enormous leap. If
Speaker 1: all you do is work between your ears, that's going
Speaker 1: to pay off because then it will come out in
Speaker 1: day to day life. So it's sort of like constantly
Speaker 1: catching yourself. Somebody wants asked me, what's your best productivity tip,
Speaker 1: and I just said, compassion, because you know what, this
Speaker 1: is hard, and you're going to screw up and your
Speaker 1: partner's going to screw up because this is hard. We're
Speaker 1: pushing back against centuries of status quo thinking that's really
Speaker 1: outdated and really painful for women and honestly for men
Speaker 1: and anybody across the gender spectrum. So policing you into
Speaker 1: these very narrow roles that takes work. That's hard. So
Speaker 1: fall down, take a breath, forgive yourself, have some compassion,
Speaker 1: and begin again. I still picked up the drunk man's
Speaker 1: jacket and it was on my lawn for six So
Speaker 1: we still have a lot of work to do. But
Speaker 1: it's a practice. It's a practice. I think that's the
Speaker 1: best way to look at it. I'm working on my
Speaker 1: next book. It's about overwork. Guess what, I'm overworking working
Speaker 1: on my book about overwork. I mean, I know that
Speaker 1: I know that I'm doing everything wrong. We fall down
Speaker 1: begin again. You know. I love that you said that
Speaker 1: your first step is often the hardest, but the greatest
Speaker 1: leap that sense of awareness. It seems like it might
Speaker 1: not be a lot, but it actually is a great awakening.
Speaker 1: Can you talk to us a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what people can do to feel the greatest sense of
Speaker 1: equity or not feeling as overwhelmed as your book suggests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a couple of things. So when it comes to
Speaker 1: that sense of time to yourself, the sense that you
Speaker 1: don't have to be the one that does everything at home.
Speaker 1: I was really struck by this one study that was
Speaker 1: done back in the nineties asking women across the globe
Speaker 1: about leisure time and what do you do or what
Speaker 1: do you deserve? And what so struck me is that
Speaker 1: it didn't matter what country it was, how old the
Speaker 1: women were, what your religion was, Almost two have one
Speaker 1: every single woman in this study said, I feel like
Speaker 1: I don't deserve time to myself. I have to earn it,
Speaker 1: and the only way to earn it is to get
Speaker 1: to the end of a really long to do list.
Speaker 1: So I bring that up because the first step is
Speaker 1: to give yourself permission to let that go, give yourself
Speaker 1: permission to recognize you don't need to earn it. And
Speaker 1: once you make that switch that it's important that you
Speaker 1: deserve it, that it's okay, that you don't need to
Speaker 1: feel guilty or ashamed. There's lots of really great strategies,
Speaker 1: and the easiest one is thinking about it as a
Speaker 1: practice and putting time in your calendar. So you want
Speaker 1: time to learn how to play the guitar, Okay, can
Speaker 1: you find thirty minutes on a Saturday on a Tuesday
Speaker 1: evening and put it in your calendar. Let everybody around
Speaker 1: you know so that they'll support you. And if they
Speaker 1: see you clean out the fridge, it's like, you know, Hey,
Speaker 1: wasn't this the time you were going to try to
Speaker 1: learn how to play the piano or watch this Ted talk?
Speaker 1: You wanted let people know what's important to you, get
Speaker 1: their support because sometimes it's hard. We can feel guilty
Speaker 1: or selfish. Get people on board and practice it. The
Speaker 1: other sort of great advice that I got was start small.
Speaker 1: Don't think that you're going to completely rewrite your calendar
Speaker 1: next week. Put on a timer and do something that
Speaker 1: that might be fun, that your soul might be calling
Speaker 1: out for. And sometimes we don't do that because we
Speaker 1: don't know. We get so busy, we don't really know
Speaker 1: what we want. When I've talked to leisure researchers, that's
Speaker 1: the one thing that they'll say, like people tend to
Speaker 1: not enjoy their vacations because they don't take the time
Speaker 1: beforehand to think what do I really need? And what
Speaker 1: their research has found is that if you take just
Speaker 1: like ten minutes before you plan a vacation and just
Speaker 1: take that breath and think, what do I really want?
Speaker 1: You know, do I want to go swimming outside? Do
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that I connect with certain people?
Speaker 1: Kind of get in touch with your own intuition, and
Speaker 1: then proactively say, Okay, this is what I'm going to
Speaker 1: use this time for. So take that pause to figure
Speaker 1: out what it is you really want and then kind
Speaker 1: of create that schedule or that time or that expectation
Speaker 1: that you'll have it. You can't manage time. You can't.
Speaker 1: What you can manage are your expectations, and you can
Speaker 1: manage your priorities for what you do in time. The
Speaker 1: last thing I'll say about that is in the United
Speaker 1: States and women in particular, we think of about it's
Speaker 1: like a pantry and you just got to cram all
Speaker 1: this stuff in there, and then we get all these kudos.
Speaker 1: Look at how busy I am. Look at all this
Speaker 1: amazing stuff I crammed onto my calendar. Rather than think
Speaker 1: about that cramming and kind of busy treadmill, think about
Speaker 1: your time and your schedule like an art gallery. Very mindfully.
Speaker 1: Choose those beautiful paintings that you want to spend time
Speaker 1: looking out or dealing with. And then in between the paintings,
Speaker 1: give yourself some white space to recover, to reflect, to prepare.
Speaker 1: Don't think about going from one thing to the next,
Speaker 1: to the next to the next. And there are days
Speaker 1: that we do get into code red. No matter no
Speaker 1: matter what you want, you know what you try. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be like that every day. You
Speaker 1: can recognize that there are choices that you can make
Speaker 1: so that you'll have more energy when code red does come,
Speaker 1: and then you can give yourself the permission to have
Speaker 1: a code green the next day. Our culture does not
Speaker 1: make it easy, there's no doubt about that. But the
Speaker 1: thing about practice is the more you do it, the
Speaker 1: better you get at it. And it all begins, as
Speaker 1: you said, with being able to take agency in our
Speaker 1: own lives in the midst of these messy systems. So
Speaker 1: thank you for giving us that ability to give ourselves
Speaker 1: the compassion to make it a practice. Thank you for
Speaker 1: your advice and wisdom. Bridget Oh well, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you all for thank you both for doing this and
Speaker 1: for really keeping these conversations going. Hi, it's me Eve,
Speaker 1: and I want to tell you about my latest book,
Speaker 1: Find Your Unicorn Space. So you're playing fair and have
Speaker 1: established equity in your home, but now what it's time
Speaker 1: to find your Unicorn Space. My new book will help
Speaker 1: you set personal goals, rediscover your interests, and reclaim the
Speaker 1: creative expression of self that makes you uniquely you. Find
Speaker 1: your Unicorn Space is a mix of research space, how
Speaker 1: to advice, and big picture inspirational thinking. I hope it
Speaker 1: can show you a clear path to reclaim your permission
Speaker 1: to be unavailable and manifest your own unicorn space. Find
Speaker 1: your Unicorn Space is available now wherever books are sold.
Speaker 1: So every episode of this podcast will be ending with
Speaker 1: an action atem for you are listeners that we call
Speaker 1: a time out. This is really a time for you
Speaker 1: to focus on yourself and reflect on what you're hearing today.
Speaker 1: And we're starting the conversation first with ourselves and then
Speaker 1: ultimately with our partners and others. I think Bridget has
Speaker 1: some important wisdom for us here a d D, and
Speaker 1: especially in this idea around having it all does not
Speaker 1: mean doing it all. And for me, when she talks
Speaker 1: about a crowded pantry, I feel like in that pantry
Speaker 1: are societal expectations. Things that we do by de fault,
Speaker 1: all the extra unpaid labor that possibly we should be
Speaker 1: distributing to. Our partners are roommates, our parents are colleagues,
Speaker 1: and so I want to take a page from Bridget
Speaker 1: and start thinking about how our lives can look more
Speaker 1: like art galleries and less like stale pantries. And I'll
Speaker 1: start with what I want to throw out. For me,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of societal expectations around gratitude, and so
Speaker 1: the first one would be thank you notes I hate
Speaker 1: writing them. I love gratitude, but not in that way,
Speaker 1: and so I'm done. I'm going to figure out how
Speaker 1: to express gratitude in a way that's simpler and easier
Speaker 1: for me than write handwriting and stamping thank you notes.
Speaker 1: You know. In reflecting on Bridget's work, I've thought a
Speaker 1: lot about my to do list, and in medicine, when
Speaker 1: we're seeing our patients in the hospital, to do list
Speaker 1: is literally what gets us through the day, and I
Speaker 1: am a master of to do lists. But what's happened
Speaker 1: over the years is that life has gotten complicated. You
Speaker 1: get married, you have kids, you have more and more
Speaker 1: work responsibilities, so that to do list just grows and grows,
Speaker 1: and what once was a four to ten box checklist
Speaker 1: now becomes a to do list of thirty items that
Speaker 1: you absolutely can't get done in a day. So for me,
Speaker 1: also in reframing bridgets lessons of moving from a pantry
Speaker 1: to art gallery, I'm going to really think about my
Speaker 1: to do list and instead of focusing on what do
Speaker 1: I need to do this week or this month, just
Speaker 1: focus on the day and the rest of the stuff
Speaker 1: can all wait. And so in this week's time out,
Speaker 1: we would love for you to think a little bit
Speaker 1: more deeply about what's crowding your pantry and how you
Speaker 1: can streamline that into a beautiful, curated art gallery with
Speaker 1: lots of works of art, but also plenty of white space.
Speaker 1: So this week we discuss why we have a time deficit,
Speaker 1: why we're always running up against the clock from the
Speaker 1: moment we wake up. Now if we get that time back, though,
Speaker 1: what do we do with it? When you have an
Speaker 1: extra time, when you have that white space, when your
Speaker 1: life is more like an art gallery and less like
Speaker 1: an over stuff pantry, what do you even do with
Speaker 1: that found time? We like to call that unicorn space?
Speaker 1: What makes you you and how you share it with
Speaker 1: the world, and we're going to teach you how to
Speaker 1: find it next week. Thank you for listening to Time Out,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine. I'm
Speaker 1: Ev Rodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller of
Speaker 1: fair Play and Find your Unicorn Space. Follow me on
Speaker 1: social media at ev Rodsky and learn more about our
Speaker 1: work at fair Play Life and I adoptor Adity Car,
Speaker 1: Harvard physician with a specialty and stress resilience, burnout and
Speaker 1: mental health. Follow me on social media at dr A
Speaker 1: d D The Root Car and find out more about
Speaker 1: my work at doctor a d d dot com. That's
Speaker 1: d R A D I t I dot com. Our
Speaker 1: Hello Sunshine team is Amanda farrand Aaron Stover and Jennifer Yonker.
Speaker 1: Our I Heart Media team is Ali Perry, Jennifer Bassett
Speaker 1: and Jessica Friendshitch. We hope you all love taking a
Speaker 1: much needed time out with us today. Listen and subscribe
Speaker 1: to Time Out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your favorite shows