Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #53 How to Do Less, Do it Better and Live More with Elizabeth Emens

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

Do life’s mundane tasks like paying bills, answering emails or booking appointments feel like a whole other job? The stuff of life never ends. It piles up in junk drawers, steals our time, weighs on our minds and, if avoided for too long, can have painful consequences. We are all drowning in things to do and it is a major stressor on our bodies – impacting our health, wellbeing and the quality of our relationships. A big part of the problem is that this “life admin” is invisible: we forget it exists, and the people around us don’t value the labour involved. Not only that, but the constant bombardment of unwanted work gets in the way of our big life goals and our self-care. This week, I talk to professor of law and author of ‘The Art of Life Admin’, Elizabeth Emens, about how we can make this work visible, better manageable and fairer. She gives some brilliant tips on how we can all steal back some time to do the things we want to and bring more calm into our lives. I hope you enjoy the conversation! Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/53 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And that's why also in the interviews I did, this can be such a point of tension for couples. Because if, you know, if you don't do the dishes, they pile up in the sink unless someone does them. And you can see someone doing the dishes. You know, people often don't appreciate it enough. But you can, it's visible. You can see it. It's visible in a different sense. This work literally is often invisible because it so often is happening in our minds or in our devices.

because it so often is happening in our minds or in our devices. And so one of the things I hope we can all do is do more with gratitude around life admin. Hi, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, medical doctor, author of The Four Pillar Plan and television presenter. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform

the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier, because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome to episode 53 of my Feel Better, Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. Today's guest on the show is Elizabeth Emmons, professor of law and author of The Art of Life Admin. Do life's mundane tasks like paying bills, answering emails or booking appointments feel like a whole other job in themselves? For many of us, our to-do lists are never done. us, our to-do lists are never done. This is actually one of the reasons why I wrote my book The Stress Solution, because this constant bombardment of things to do can really have a negative impact on the way that we feel. We're all drowning in things to do and it's a major stressor on our bodies, impacting our health, well-being and the quality of our relationships.

A big part of the problem is that this life admin is invisible, we forget it exists, and the people around us don't value the labour that is often involved. Not only that, but this constant flow of unwanted work gets in the way of our big life goals and our self-care. In today's conversation, Elizabeth and I discuss how we can make this work more visible, In today's conversation, Elizabeth and I discuss how we can make this work more visible, more manageable and fairer. She gives some brilliant tips on how we can all steal back some time to do the things we want to and bring more calm into our everyday lives. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a very quick shout out to our sponsors who are essential in order for me to be able to put out weekly podcast episodes like this one. Athletic Greens continue their support

of my podcast. Now, as you know, I prefer that people get their nutrition from food, but for some of us, this is not always possible. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. If you are looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing

20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. So Elizabeth, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. Hey, not at all. So you're over from America at the moment promoting your brand new book, which is called here in the UK, at least the Art of Life Admin. How to do less, do it better and Live More. That's a very powerful sell. It's something that I think would appeal to a lot of us. I'm just intrigued, what is a professor of law doing, writing a book about life admin? Well, this project started in my own life.

And then it developed into a surprising research project. So it started because there was a moment after my second child was born when I realized that I was completely overwhelmed. And I was overwhelmed in a way I hadn't expected. So I knew that having children would involve a lot of hard work and also a lot of joy. But I didn't expect that there would be this kind of invisible layer of office work filling my mind and my time. And first, I thought I was just personally failing and I should somehow be able to organize or meditate my way out of it. But I looked around and it seemed, as I looked more closely, that a lot of the people around me seemed to be struggling with this invisible layer of office work as well. And so I started thinking about this as a small research project to think about how law and markets could help with this thing I came to call admin or life admin. And within a short while, when I started presenting this paper

just to law professors in my academic setting, they responded so intensely. I got these responses, how did you see into my mind and my marriage? You've named this thing that I didn't know had a name. And so I realized I needed to extend this project more broadly. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you've really hit on something in your book, a real sign of the time, something that is affecting so many of us now from day to day that we're just swamped. We're drowning in things to do. And I think that these things are major stressors on our body. They impact our health, our well-being. They affect the quality of our relationships, how we feel about ourselves. And it's interesting how you start the book,

which is, this is the book that I thought I didn't have time to write. It's also the book you think you don't have time to read. And you say very clearly that the reason for me and perhaps for you is admin. So what is life admin? What are those things that you are specifically referring to in your book? So life admin is this invisible office type work that is the sort of work that managers and secretaries, also known as admins, do in the office for pay, but that the rest of us do, all of us do in our lives invisibly and for free. It's things like the daily things and monthly things, paying bills, filling out forms. It's the aggravations that come up. It's lost luggage admin. It's broken technology admin having to get it fixed. It's also the kind of work that often

hits us around major life events, both happy ones like a new baby or a wedding can come with waves, onslaughts of this labor, but also really painful junctures of life, like an illness, an aging parent who's ill, a child who's ill, a death in the family, a divorce. Often these really painful life events are compounded by this onslaught of invisible labor that's filling our mind and our times just when we really need to be taking care of ourselves and each other. And this barrage of life admin that many of us are experiencing day to day now, even at the weekends, what consequence do you think that's having on us? It has a number of consequences. I mean, one basic thing is that it takes up time that means

we can't spend on other things. So we can't spend on our relationships, on our self-care, on our meditation practice or our exercise or whatever we do for ourselves. It also isn't in of itself stressful. It fills our minds and makes it hard to get into the flow with what we're doing and with connecting to others. There also are financial consequences when you don't do it, when you don't get it done. In the US, for instance, there's a study of the foregone savings due to people who are homeowners not refinancing their mortgage when they could to the tune of $5.4 billion, often because people just fail to open a letter or make one phone call. So it sounds trivial, but it really can add up.

Yeah, you're right. These things do sound completely trivial, don't they, on one level. But I think if we all think about our own lives, I would imagine there's very few people listening to this right now who aren't feeling a bit swamped with life. I know I've got so many unopened letters at home. Sometimes you certainly want to go into the study and look at them because you know, it's going to take so much time. I guess, I think of a friend of mine

who sometimes he's a doctor actually, but he doesn't see patients on a Wednesday and he's trying to spend his Wednesdays doing other things, you know, educating himself, reading a little bit. It's a strategy he's tried to adopt to actually help him grow. But what's interesting is often I speak to him and he'll say, I spent the whole day just doing stuff like sending emails and just getting the washing machine fixed. And before you know it, you feel busy as though you've done something, but you actually find at the end of the day,

A, you haven't achieved very much in terms of what you wanted to achieve. And then often people feel quite stressed that actually I've done so much today, but I don't feel like I've done anything that I wanted to. Is that something you've seen in your research? Absolutely. So I did interviews. I didn't want to just write about me and the people I knew. And so I did interviews

and conducted brainstorming sessions around life admin. And it's really pervasive. People struggle with this. And one of the things about it is precisely what you're saying, which is that we can spend the whole day doing it and then wonder, where did my day go? All these things are considered time wasters. And they do genuinely get in the way of doing our important but not urgent things. What in Stephen Covey's work in his urgent and important matrix are the things that are often our big life goals and our self-care are the things that often get put off because these may arrive. You know, there's an increasing frequency with which they reach us. You know, their email inbox, but everyone knows our email inbox is backlogged. So now they text instead, right? And so the request, there's an escalation so that the bombardment with this kind of labor comes at a greater frequency and therefore a greater cost to our ability to be at ease. Yeah, I think this is

a source, a huge source of stress in the modern world. And I think the way you describe these life admin tasks reminds me of, in my book, The Stress Solution, I talk about this whole idea of micro stress doses, and this whole concept that we've all got our own personal stress threshold, and this whole concept that we've all got our own personal stress threshold and that will differ from person to person. And on each day, we're exposed to multiple micro stress doses. These are things that in isolation probably don't do much that we can handle, but they accumulate one after the other and they add up and they get us closer and closer to our stress threshold.

An example I use is let's say you're in bed in a deep sleep and your alarm goes off at 6.30 and it jolts you out of your deep sleep. That's micro stress dose number one. You look over and you think, I'm going to snooze it because I need some more sleep. You put the alarm on snooze. Six minutes later again, it jolts you out of your snooze. Micro stress dose number two. Then you think, I'll quickly look at my phone. You look at your email and look at four work emails that you've not replied to. And that's stressing you out already. Microstress dose number three. Then you get a notification on your mobile phone that you need to pay your gas bill, as you're just saying. They now text us with these reminders. And I sort of make the case that before you know it, before you've even left your

house in the morning, you've maybe been exposed to 10 or 15 micro stress doses. That means you're much closer to your own how, I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say how devastating the consequences are on us for the way we feel, but also I think our stress levels and our health and wellbeing. Your book is full of strategies in terms of what we can do about this. And I wonder if you could talk through some of those, some of the things as you're going around, you know, doing interviews, promoting the book, are there certain strategies that are really resonating with people? Absolutely. One of the things I've tried to do in the book is to collect some of the strategies

book is to collect some of the strategies in the back so that while one is reading, or if one has to dip in rather than go through the whole thing, because it's a real problem, as I say, in the opening that you read, I was very aware of trying to write a book for people who have no time about having no time, right? How do you do that? And so one thing I tried to do was have strategies throughout the book, but also to collect them so that no one had to make a to-do list, in a sense, from the book as they went. I tried to make, in a sense, the list at the end and then to organize those around the moment of life one is in. Because what you've just described about the stress threshold is similar to what I talk about in that there's a kind of divide, I think, around quantity, how much admin we have. When your admin rises above a certain level, like you're going through one of those painful events that I mentioned earlier, you're going through someone, your spouse has just died, or your aging parent has to move from their home into a retirement home or something. You're often, or you are in a sandwich,

is one, the people who have aging parents and also children they're taking care of at the same time. When you're in one of those onslaughts, all of the accumulated 100 admin tasks added up is more, in a sense, each of them taking one minute than if you had a hundred minutes worth of one admin task. That there's some accumulated number of these things that when they're filling your life, the overwhelm is so great that I think it's really actually hard to understand from the outside if you're not in it. So someone looking at you might think, oh, you've been through someone died. outside if you're not in it. So someone looking at you might think, oh, you've been through, someone died, you know, you're in a sad moment, but they don't see that you're also completely overwhelmed with this labor. Well, anyway, one of those moments, it doesn't help if someone gives you the life hack and suggests, this is a good time to make an important documents repository, where you have all your important documents and put them in a file and scan them and have them accessible by your phone and your laptop. You know, that's I have

in my list of, you know, ideas to try for when you're in a moment where you can make a process improvement. That's helpful at that moment when you have a little time. When you have no time, when you're in an admin onslaught, you need quick fixes, right? And so then you need something that's more responsive to that moment. And so the first list I have is for when you're in, when you need an immediate fix, when you're in an onslaught. And so one example of that is to start with a simple to-do list. One surprise of my research was how many people had gone back to paper, especially many of my super doers, the people who are doing this well and pretty happily, had actually gone back to a paper list. And I use any more. When I'm in a really tough day, I use a paper list. And at the top of it, I put my good day list. So I put the things that are important but not urgent that I try to do

every day. Meditate, write, exercise, yoga, those sorts of things to remind myself. So you're writing them every day, even though you know... Even though I know them in my head, I put them at the top of the list. And then I also keep in my phone, I like to have a longer running list that I do have with me, but I do it in the Simple Notes app in my phone. I tried a lot of different apps. And in there, I have written at the top also the list for every day, the good day list for every day to remind myself of those important but not urgent things. And so starting with the simple list and giving up on the idea that there's going to be a magic tool that's going to solve it all, that's one global strategy

for when you're in an onslaught. And I can go through some more if you'd like, but I... No, no, sure. I'd love to give the listeners lots of tips and strategies. Is there a danger that when we're making a to-do list, we can put too many things on it, which then becomes a source of stress? Is part of your strategy to really prioritize, like, what are the most important things I need to do today? Absolutely. Well, that's a reason too, to have always at the top, the important things I need to do today. Absolutely. Well, that's a reason to have always at the top, the important things that are the to-be items, in a sense, as Tara Brock, the meditation teacher says. Yeah, I've listened to a few of her meditations. They're really good.

Yeah, I love her. On your to-be list, to have in some sense your to-be list at the top of your to-do list to remind yourself. But also, there are ways that you can bypass the to-do list altogether to keep things from getting off there, to keep things from ever ending up on that list. Now, one thing you've said is just deciding certain things you don't do. And I talk about that as a strategy, too, is deflecting certain items and making those choices. But also, there are things that requests people make of us all the time, like, you know, oh, do you know a good eye doctor? You probably get a lot of requests for doctors, right? Can you recommend this? And you have a choice in that moment. You could say, oh, yes, I'll find that in my email and I'll send it to you.

And now it has to go on your list. Another option is to say, oh, just wait one moment. Let me just look and I'll give it to you right now while the person's standing there and they're there to, you can text it to them or email it to them and when they can still give you the information and it never ever lands on your list at all. And so the list hasn't gotten any longer. And we often before I saw life admin as a thing, before I saw it as something that was coming at me about to land, I was much I didn't appreciate how easy it could be in certain moments to put the things aside, to deal with them right away. Yeah, you know, I think you've really touched on it on a very important point, which is by labeling this problem as a thing, we make it something that we can think about and therefore deal with. Because for many of us, it's hidden. It's there in the background. We don't think about it. We just wonder, why was I stressed all the time? You know, we're always, you know, we're trying to take our kids somewhere, let's say, but in the background, mine is, oh,

I need to pay that bill. Oh, you know, they need that form filling in. Oh, it was meant to be in yesterday. I've got to fill in that form for tomorrow morning. I know many parents feel that, and it's just a constant barrage of things to do. And it's not only actually doing those things. It's also the fact that if you've not done them, I feel sometimes they take up. There's a cognitive cost to them. You're nodding your head. There is. a Gernick effect. That is the way that unfinished tasks take up more mental bandwidth than completed tasks. So it's like if you leave the kettle to boil and you answer the phone, part of your mind

is still over there with the kettle that's about to boil. And so in that way, all of our unfinished tasks are taking up bandwidth. And so that's why one of the things is if you put them on a list, and for some people, putting them on a paper list seems to more completely close that loop. Yeah, I'm one of those people. Yeah, I'm very much, I like making them on paper. It doesn't seem to do the same thing for me when I do it electronically. Now, I do. I also use a notes app if I'm on the move and I suddenly think, oh, these three or four things need doing today. I love the notes app because it's very simple.

It's very low barrier to entering it and just popping my things on. At the end of the day, I sort of delete it when I've done it. And I think I feel good. It makes me sort of feel that I've closed that. But yeah, I very much like to use paper. I think talking about the kettle and trying to do something else at the same time, it makes you think of multitasking, which is something we talk a lot about how we can do many things at once.

And you talk about, there's a section in your book that you title Stealing Focus. And you have a quote from, is it Publius Sirius? To do two things at once is to do neither. And that quote just speaks to me. I know this week I've been on the phone a few times to various people and often you're on the phone and you think, oh, I'll just open up my email at the same time. And you realize you're not being present to that conversation. You're sort of semi doing your emails and you're semi having a phone call. It's very unsatisfactory because you're not doing anything properly. And I sort of feel quite fatigued by it. And I think there is a cost, isn't there, by multitasking? Absolutely. Well, the research suggests too that other than for routine activities like walking and talking at the same time,

we don't really multitask. We don't do things at the same time. We really just switch back and forth very, very quickly. And so each time we are losing, we're draining focus from the other activity. And there's research specifically that suggests that women do more multitasking, especially when they're with their children, and they actually suffer more from it. But I think anyone can relate to the ways that it can be painful to be trying to do two things at once, particularly when you're trying to relate to another human being. Now, some of the time we have to do it. And one of the things I think is interesting about admin is also the ways we judge each other. So there are ways that people can be judged for the fact that they're in their phone trying to take care of something. And this is part of the invisibility of admin. It can look

like maybe they're just playing a game or something, but they may actually be making a doctor's appointment for their child or something that really does need to get done. And if you can block out time to do it, so you really honor it, that can make it less painful and sometimes even pleasurable. That was a surprise of my research was how many people said, actually, when they give this, it's due. It can even be a little bit pleasurable. That makes sense to me. I know like if I have, if I've got a day where I'm working from home and if I am organized and I make that list and sometimes what I'll do is let's say I'm writing for example I know for me I'm more creative in the morning that's when I get all my ideas up so I've got my spark and my energy and so I'll try not to do admin then because I feel admin takes less cognitive capacity let's

say than trying to write something. And then once I've finished, I'm taking a break, then I'll do my admin. But if I actually have it scheduled as a half hour block, I feel like I get more done. And it feels good at the end of it. You think, I actually quite enjoyed that. You feel you're sort of ticking off your boxes, aren't you? And going, okay, I've done that. I've done that. I've done that. It's almost like a power session. But if you don't have a plan, it can easily just infiltrate your whole day and affect you when you're doing other things like you're trying to be in a meeting, but you know, at the back of your mind, I've got to do that. I've got to do that. When this meeting's finished, I'll try and get a minute to do it. And it's quite draining. It is. There is some kind of admin that you can't help but have to deal with all the time.

I call this bombardment admin. And it depends if you take care of children or you have to be the point person for the babysitter who takes care of children. Those things do come at you and you have to deal with them. You just can't say, you know, school that's calling because your child is sick. I'll just get back to you in three hours when I finish my writing. And so one of the things is recognizing that that job of being a point person is a is a wearing job and that in couples, if they can trade it off or at least honor in some way the the kind of work that is and and that it really does get into the flow and that, you know, someone can swap out and do something else to really help out. OK, at dinnertime, I'll make dinner and do the dishes. So you can actually have a good, you know, 45 minutes of quiet by yourself to get some writing done because I know you spent all day dealing with the babysitter back and forth. So one part of this is recognizing that there are different textures to different kind of

admin and some of it we can't put off until later. But some of it we really can. And one of my – I have these admin personalities I discovered from the research. And one of my proudest avoiders told me that when he was on an overseas flight once doing his taxes, he actually – he kind of enjoyed it because he was stuck there. There wasn't anything else to do. You know, it's been compared to doing a crossword puzzle, say. You know, you can feel like, yeah, I accomplished that.

And so I have a whole chapter on admin pleasures. There's a way if we can get in touch with them. And they're different for different people. They're not exactly the same. Some of us like paper. Some of us really like high tech. Some of us like marathons where we get it all done. And some of us like short sprints.

You know, there are different modes for each of us really like high tech. Some of us like marathons where we get it all done. And some of us like short sprints. You know, there are different modes for each of us. And, you know, if you find those, then when it's time to really get this stuff done, then you can make it a little bit better. And that's a relief. I like that, that we can take pleasure in these things because, you know, maybe it's not a chore. Maybe it's a chore because we're trying to juggle it with everything else. Maybe actually there is something innately pleasurable about completing the admin tasks of day-to-day life. But the reason we find it a chore is because we don't have a plan. We don't have a strategy. We're trying to mix in to everything else we're doing in our lives and it's having a consequence. I love this idea that within a relationship of being aware of each other's admin burden and just trying to say, hey, look, you know, I'm going to get the kids dinner tonight and actually get them ready for bed. You have an hour to yourself where you can write or you can go and read. And it's something I think my wife and I really, you know, I think we've just fallen into that recently as a way of just really understanding that actually having a bit of dedicated time to yourself where you don't have to worry about other things can be incredibly beneficial.

I know someone who gave you a lovely quote for your book, Cal Newport, who calls your book a timely and necessary a must read. I've spoken to Cal recently on the podcast, and he talks about the importance of high quality leisure time. And I think, you know, your strategies to help us get on top of life admin and deal with it more effectively will also help free up time for that high quality leisure time. So, you know, one of the things you actually, I think, recommend to people is, you know, the time that you save by adopting your strategies, don't just waste it, do something, you know, do something meaningful with it. Yes. And that's the thing is what you're saying about the fact that we can enjoy this if we dedicate time to it is true for a lot of kinds of admin.

Now, for what it's worth, no one I spoke to said that they enjoy lost luggage admin. There's certain kinds of admin that I think it's really hard. If you're in a real conflict with someone, enjoyment is too high of a bar. But, and there's a reason I think too, that we've trained ourselves not to like it because there are higher priority items that are more meaningful, of a higher value that we'd like to spend our time doing. I mean, no matter how much meaning I can make out of filling out the school forms for my children, I would rather be meditating. Now, I can try to make that into a meditation by feeling, connecting with the meaning in some way of the fact that I

like my children's school and I feel fortunate that they're enjoying it or whatever that is. And that can help. But I still hope to find ways also to have it take up less time so that I can do the other things that I value more highly. And so that's part of the interesting challenge here. that's part of the interesting challenge here. Do you feel that this is a problem that is worse today than let's say it was 10 or 15 years ago? And I guess what I'm getting at is technology has, in so many ways, was meant to save us time and make things easier. And I wonder if it really has done that. Of course, I think it can do that if applied appropriately, but 15 years ago, if you're booking a holiday, people will be maybe going to a travel agent and saying,

hey, look, I want to go here at this time. What are my options? And with the advent of budget airlines and cheap flights and the ability for us all to book our flights on our smartphone now, something that we weren't doing 15 years ago, we're now doing ourselves. So we're now going on holiday,

so we're booking our own flights. We're booking our own transfers, let's say, from the airport to where we need to go. I know it sounds trivial. It's not those micro stress doses. In isolation, these things aren't very much. Of course, yeah, just go on for 10, 20 minutes, compare flights and book the ones that I want. But when you add it on to, you know, overloaded lives that people are already struggling with, I think it's really tipping

people over the edge. Yes, there are many more portals and fewer people, right? And you may have noticed that the sales department is always open all hours, but the customer service department closes at five. It's very hard to get to people who will help you solve problems now. And technology, as you say, does offer many advantages. Right. I mean, I listen to your podcast on my phone. Right. When I was traveling, I could do that. Right. That's an advantage of technology. I can listen to meditation apps on technology. But it also is both what brings us the admin with this increased frequency and it's what the companies are finding as a cheap way to employ fewer people, give us less customer service that is hands-on,

and have us spend more time fighting with their websites. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, monitoring our use of technology and having some sort of rules around it, I think can be incredibly helpful. Is there something you've seen particularly useful around that, around technology? Well, one of the things that this is where being a law professor does come in in the book, which is that I have a chapter that is about legal and societal changes that we need around admin. And one of them is that we need a clear metric for evaluating companies for how they respect our time, not just our money. So, you know, you can find ratings, but the ratings often conflate, you know, how friendly their customer service is with how much they respect your time

and how cheap their products are. All of it's mixed together. I just want a clear respect our time rating scheme. I also want companies to give us back our time when they waste it. So if your cell phone provider overbills you, say, 100 pounds, and you know that eventually after you fight with them, you will get that money back. But the hours that you spent having to fight with them in order to get that money back, you can't get compensation for in most places. And yet, if a company through its breach of contract wastes another company's time, they can get compensation for the employees' wages, for the lost time of employees. But for us as individuals, we generally can't recover

for that lost time. And we should be able to do that. Not because most people are going to have the time to do the suing the company admin. But if a few people do, or it's tacked on to other lawsuits, and there have been some lawsuits, and a few in the states that have been favorable, and there's an ombudsman approach in this country that works sometimes, that will change the terms of the interaction with companies around this work. I love that. I really do., you know, it reminds me of last week when I had to phone up my broadband company and it took me two hours, two hours. And you think, you know, and for what, just a minute saving or a few issues that couldn't be dealt with online. And do you think that's two

hours of my working day that I've just wasted listening to, I can't remember what music it was now, but you know. Right, that's two hours that you'll never get back. And that's part of why this project, you know, as you mentioned, mindfulness is something that I care about in meditation practice, I care about. But this project partly came also out of my frustration with the sense that I got from some people around me that somehow I should be able to meditate my way out of these problems. And I don't think we can fully. This is a collective problem. We do need some collective solutions. We need some changes to markets, to law, and with our relationships. If I have some tax paperwork that's due today at three o'clock, I can't go to yoga tax paperwork that's due today at three o'clock, I can't go to yoga with the two hours of free time I have in my day. The paperwork won't get done by my going to yoga. There's just no way that

will happen. So I can't, the work of well-being has to also involve collective action to make this better and an individual recognizing, making this visible so that we honor the fact that some of the time this really is the thing that has to get done. And so we have to find our best way through it. Yeah, I think it's such a great point. And to go back to the call I had with the broadband company, yes, ultimately, you get what you want at the end. Maybe there's a goodwill gesture made sometimes, but it never compensates you for the time. No one factors that in. The company doesn't. Often we don't even. Often we don't factor it in. So I think that's really important. I think what you're saying about collective versus individual responsibility really, in many ways, mirrors the health world.

This whole idea that, yes, you know, I can write a book on trying to help inspire people to make individual changes. You've got a brilliant book on how people can actually be aware of life admin, be aware of the cost, but then you provide really actionable strategies on what people can do about that to improve their lives. But all these things that are reliant on us as individuals trying to make a difference, ultimately the big changes are going to come when society, whether it's on health, when we make it easy for people to make the healthy choice, or companies and employers, and everyone really respects time, gives time its worth, and says, actually, we're not going to waste your time. We're going to make it easier. How do I as a company make sure that I only contact

my clients or a customer when I absolutely need to? How can we make the billing process more efficient? And I guess this is where things like direct debit come in, I guess. I don't know. Do you cover direct debit in the book? Is that something? Yeah, it's one in the epilogue. I talk about some things that have gotten better. And one of them is that my health insurance works differently in the US. And I talk a little bit about that as well. Because when I was at Cambridge, as a graduate student, I remember the experience of going to the doctor on the NHS and not having insurance and forms to fill out. And I know some of that has changed, but it was at the time an experience like floating, not to have the apparatus that we have in the States. But one thing that has changed for me is that my employer made a change to how it deals with the health insurance and this tax scheme that relates to that in the U.S. pre-tax savings account, where it all happens

automatically through the insurance company and through my account, where it all happens automatically through the insurance company and through my bank, and it all switches automatically. And the employer just chose to do that. Now, I also interviewed people who employers made changes to their health plan, health care plan, that added, you know, one woman said it added 80 hours of labor on her part, on her own time, in a year. And the employer could make that switch. Nothing holds the employer accountable for the fact that in my instance, I got lucky and my employer made a good change. And in her instance, she got unlucky and they didn't. And one of the things that this should also make us think about is the way that the admin of poverty is different than the admin

of plenty of wealth. When you have means and money, your admin more often involves private entities, actors that want you to choose them and buy their products. It involves choice, which can be very taxing. And when you don't have means, you're usually dealing with public benefits, with hassled frontline workers who themselves need stress relief. And the stakes can be very high. I'm an admin avoider with my snail mail. I have the pile of mail in my hallway you were describing in your office. And I can leave that for a week or two. I have that privilege. If you have a housing benefit, at least in the US, if you don't open your mail for a week or two, you could lose your housing.

And that's a different kind of thing. And one of my aims in this project is for us to understand the different kinds of admin that other people are doing, both so we can make policy changes, but also so that we can develop a little more admin compassion. so that we can develop a little more admin compassion because no matter whether someone else's admin is worse than yours yours still counts we all suffer in different ways everyone suffers in different ways and in around admin as well yeah i think this whole idea of you know different socioeconomic classes and how their admin, you know, still just as relevant but affects them in different ways. It's something on reflection now I think about my seven years where I worked in a place called Oldham, which is in North Manchester. I worked right in the centre and the community I served there as a doctor was, you know, of a lower socio-economic group,

lots of people were on benefits. Lots of people didn't have employment. And a huge part of my job was often dealing with the stresses that comes with the fact that they weren't employed, that they were on benefits, they couldn't afford the things that they perceived other people could afford. And the fact that actually to get anything done, whether it was benefits, whether it was an assessment, there was a barrage of paperwork that was really, really stressful for them on top of already stressful lives. And I didn't really think about it at the time because obviously you've named this thing Life Admin. I don't think I really, I don't think they did. I don't think I did. We really gave a name to it that actually this is another stressor in your lives. We don't think about

that. I don't know if the DWP, the Department of Work and Pensions, thought about that. I know this week I have been helping my mother. We've got these things in this country called blue badges. So if people have got mobility issues or a disability, they can have a blue badge which enables them to park in certain spaces. So nearer the supermarket storefront, let's say, for example. And my mother has a spinal scoliosis, and her mobility has declined a lot. And she has a blue badge. Now, her last one, she's had it for about 10 years now. Every five years, I think they run out. And she asked me to help her renew it. And you know what, I've been trying to do it for weeks.

I've just not had the time. And every time I go around to do it, there's just something else that we need. So it took hours to accumulate all the documentation. There's no way her, you know, she doesn't use computers that much, that she could use that. So it was a huge stress for her. It was a stress for me because I'm super busy with my job at the moment. And I know my mum needs her blue badge and I want to get it for her. But every time I'm round, there's just a barrage of things to do. And, you know, it comes at a cost. And it's really interesting to reflect on that. And I think that cost not only affects the way we feel, I think it affects our health. I agree. I agree. And she doesn't see all that

work you did. Now, I don't know your mother, so she may well appreciate it, but she didn't see any of that. When you show up with the blue badge or she receives it in the mail or whatever, it could have been that took you 30 seconds. That's part of the invisibility of this labor. And that's why also in the interviews I did, this can be such a point of tension for couples. Because if you don't do the dishes, they pile up in the sink unless someone does them. And you can see someone doing the dishes. People often don't appreciate it enough. But you can – it's visible.

You can see it. It's visible in a different sense. This work literally is often invisible because it so often is happening in our minds or in our devices. It so often is happening in our minds or in our devices. And so one of the things I hope we can all do is do more with gratitude around life admin. And we know the research that gratitude is good not just for the people being appreciated, right, but for the person who's experiencing genuine gratitude has benefits, emotional and physical benefits. If you spend all day cooking a beautiful meal for someone, there's a decent chance someone will say thank you. If you spend all day working on the blue badge,

maybe that's a one-off someone will, but if you spent all day just dealing with the car registration or passports or something, it's quite possible no one would even know, much less say, thank you so much. That's an amazing thing you did for me. But it is, and it's often more taxing than the physical activity of cooking, which, you know, can be work, but also can have a pleasure to it of that physical immersion that admin is hard to get. Yeah, you're so right. There is that hidden nature to it. And, you know, my mom's incredible. You know, she's not that au fait with technology. And I suspect in her head,

it's very much been a case of, you know, I'm sure she was thinking, well, I think it doesn't take long to get a blue badge. You just need to, you know, fill in a quick form and you'll get it. So I think, you know, I've not had that conversation with her. I'm going to now to see how long she thought it took me. But I wonder if this is something that is really impacting our relationships. And I'm really interested, you've interviewed, I think, over 100 people to get their experiences, to help you conduct your research, help you write this book. Do you think this is the sort of thing that really impacts our relationships? And, you know, one party in a relationship doesn't really understand what the other half is doing, how much they're doing, and because they can't see it, they're taking it for granted, which can lead to resentment, frustration, and ultimately tension. Yes. And one thing that's interesting is that I think in some couples, both people actually might be doing different parts of this labor and neither knows. So they could both be feeling unappreciated and unseen for what they're doing. But one interesting part of

what I learned from the research was that admin is sticky in the sense that it tends to stick where it lands. So whoever first, it can involve skills. So whoever first learns how to navigate the blue badge, you might now be the point person for blue badges if there are any other family members who need that, right? The first person who calls the exterminator is likely to be the one who keeps up that relationship. And this can be true of any kind of household labor,

of course. But admin in particular is very information dependent. You tend to need to know things and you tend to need to know people. So that's why it's easier to go to someone else's house and do their dishes after dinner than to, say, make their grocery list, right? Because to make their grocery list, you need to know, right, what people eat, who the family members are, what they like, what they don't like, what the meal plan is for the week. And so it's harder to pass this back and forth. Now, the bright spot is once you see this, then you can start to make different choices around it. I mean, you can make a choice about who, where the first landing spot is. But also if you already have, if you're already stuck, you can start to make a choice like, you know, someone who says, oh, where is our, you know, car registration or something?

And you say, OK, this time I'll find it for you. But you come with me and you'll see where it is. Or the eight-year-old who says, where's my hairbrush? And you can say, OK, eight-year-old, I'll help you find your hairbrush this time. But let's now talk about where you're going to keep your hairbrush so that next time you actually know where it is. So the way you can start to unstick yourself once you see the stickiness. Yeah, absolutely. I think, as I said to you, I brought a copy of my book for you as a gift. And I think you're going to like the introduction because I talk about something that we term in

our house, the cupboard of no return. That's cupboards where, you know, there's all kinds of things in it. There is golf ball, there's one of my kids gloves know there's all kinds of things in it there is golf ball there's one of my kids gloves there's a research paper that I meant to put in my first book that because I couldn't find it I didn't make it and it's we termed it that because you know once something goes in there yeah you know often it never comes out and I think that for me that cupboard symbolizes and I think I certainly hope there's one in every house otherwise it makes me feel quite bad but I think this whole idea that that cupboard is not only where a lot of your stresses go just knowing that it's there full to the brim is a source of stress

and I think life admin really really plays into that it's all part of the same thing. I think life admin, this burden that we're now facing is a huge stressor. And because I know we've said it already, but I think the key point is you've given it a name, you've labeled it. So it becomes a thing now that we can deal with. We've got the knowledge now to go, hey, okay, what I'm going to do about this invisible burden. One thing that's interesting, though, is that we do have different admin personalities. And so we are relating to it differently already. And some of us are quick to do it. So there's this idea of pre-crastination. There's this research on people's tendency, some of the time, to do unimportant tasks too soon. So pre-crastination

rather than procrastination, right? So filling out that online survey instead of writing your book, you know, that kind of move. I'm not sure what you're talking about. We have to be aware of this, but the super doers, so the four admin personalities I found, and there's a quiz at the back. I try to make this enjoyable too, pleasurable. Hey, that sounds fun. Yeah. A quiz to find out your admin personality, but are the super doer, the reluctant doer, the admin avoider, and the admin denier. And so the first two are basically doing it or getting it done. And the last two are not. The difference is in how they feel about it. So the super doer is doing it and feeling pretty good about it. And the reluctant doer is doing it, but really wishes they didn't have to. That's my usual center of gravity. The admin avoider is not doing it,

but feeling bad, either feeling guilty to whoever is doing it instead or feeling embarrassed. Or I even heard the word shame sometimes in my interviews, which is a big word. It was surprising to hear, but for the ways it's catching up with them, the things they're missing out on or losing or late fees or penalties because of not doing it. And then the admin denier is not doing it, but actually feeling okay about it because the admin denier doesn't really think admin's a thing at all. And it's usually in a pretty privileged position, either a young person or someone who's had other people to take care of this life admin for them. And they sound like they're a hierarchy, you know, like the best thing to be as a super doer. But what I learned is that actually I could gather strategies from each of the four personalities.

And so that's how I organized the individual strategies is, you know, like from an avoider, you can learn the strategy of trusting. So trusting that the neighbors near your new home know when to put their rubbish out. So rather than calling up the sanitation department or looking online or seeing if there's a letter, you just poke your nose out each day and say, oh, wait, oh, okay, it's Thursday. That's when I'll put my rubbish out. Some of the time trusting is a strategy we can use. And especially if we can find nodes of information on certain topics, we can trust that person rather than having to reinvent the wheel ourselves. So that's an avoider strategy, but just

an example of how we can learn strategies from these different personalities and try on a new personality rather than having to remember a million strategies. Yeah, I think that's great. And it really is. I'm looking through this admin personalities quiz at the moment in the back of your book

and I'm literally chomping at the bit to do it on myself. And I'd love my wife to do it as well because I suspect with all these sort of things, really, we're starting to understand ourselves better. So, yes, on one level, this is about life admin. But on a deeper level, it's understanding your default settings, how you operate day to day, whether it's admin, whether it's the fact that you're not achieving the health goals that you want to achieve. And often, I think this quiz would be really helpful for people because they would understand, oh, this is my default setting. These are the things that drag me down sometimes. And even just knowing that often is all it takes for people to change.

But when we're invisible to it, we just think, why are we not getting anything done? Why am I still making the same New Year's resolutions here in 2019 that I was in 2010 without any progress? And it may be that we've not identified or we're trying to use a strategy that we've read about that works for somebody else. But that strategy ain't ever going to work for me. Yes. Yes. But that strategy ain't ever going to work for me. Yes.

Yes. And I have a chapter on called, jokely, called Admin That Can Fix You, just meaning that admin can get in the way of most any goal we're trying to achieve if we ask what role does life admin play or could it play in this problem or in its solution, then we have a better chance of achieving that goal. So if let's say, you know, you want to change your eating habits, you know, people often think, okay, well, that's going to take some willpower, you know, and maybe some knowledge about the right diet or whatever. But people rarely appreciate how much admin goes with changing your eating habits. You know, you have to find new recipes. You have to find off sometimes new places to shop for food. You have to know where to find the food quickly during your day. It's one thing at home. But, you know, when you're out and about, if you're starting to eat differently, where do you find

the food that you actually can eat and like? You know, where does the time come to do all that work, mental labor and searching labor research in order to make this habit shift? And so unless we say, I'm going to block out, say, let's say this month, I'm going to, you know, I know zero some other area, the news, or, you know, I'm going to go off Facebook or whatever for the month, because actually, I'm going to try to change my diet. And I know I'm going to need an extra two or three hours a week just to make the mental work and the research work of making this life change. And so if we ask the admin question as part of what we're doing to try to make a change, it can really help us get there. And if we don't ask the question, it can be an invisible drag

that we just didn't see that was the thing that prevented us from getting where we were trying to go. Yeah, Elizabeth, I think that's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Because I think, yes, there's life admin and how we can reduce that, how we can make it more efficient for us to get that done. But this is a slightly different point, isn't it? This is about understanding that there is an admin cost to almost anything we choose to do. And you really have got some lovely examples in the book, like choosing your hobbies. And, you know, are you choosing a hobby and a partner?'s say you're a tennis player I thought that was a great analogy you know you need to find the right court you need to find the right time with someone else is your partner someone who gets back promptly

to emails and you know because otherwise it can soon become a new burden on you that you're trying to do something for your well-being for your enjoyment yet actually it's taking you know for that one hour game a week you might be spending two or three hours. And then you can do that sort of sum and go, actually, I'm not sure it's worth it, or I need a different partner. And I think it's a new example about diet is fantastic. How many of us, you know, we're recording this, what is it now, middle of January. Okay, I don't know when it will go out, but we're in the middle of January at the moment. And so many people are trying to change their diets at the moment. But how many people have actually not only looked at the foods they want to eat, but have said, OK, right, well, this is quite a significant change.

I need to plan meals for myself. I need to plan meals for my family, let's say. Where do I shop? All these things. And how much time that's going to take. So this is one of the factors that probably leads to failure on the lifestyle choices we're trying to make. Yes. And one of the things that has helped me when I wanted to up my yoga practice was making default plans, right? Slotting it in, finding out when the classes were. I now go to one of

these studios that is donation-based. I love these places. They have this wonderful feeling. I don't know if you have many of them in the UK now, but it's really become a wonderful phenomenon in the US. But slotting in, in my calendar on repeat when I'm going to do it and papering over that last. And then if I make plans with other people to go to the class, we make the plan. And if either of us cancels, the commitment is still to go yourself. So instead of it, it can be helpful to have the moral support of someone else and to plan it with someone else, even if that takes a little extra admin. But there needs to be a way that somebody else is canceling, right? Doesn't blow your exercise plan, if possible, right?

So trying to think about how do I make, or that if someone cancels the tennis match, that person is responsible for rescheduling. Yeah. So that that person picks up the slack. Having a strategy. Having a strategy. Having a strategy that recognizes this invisible layer of work.

One of the other areas in your book, which I loved, is you talk about find ways to make things end. And it's so nice for me to read that because I think intuitively over the last 12 to 18 months, I've had to implement a strategy to do that. Otherwise, these emails just back and forth go just on forever. And you send another one, another one comes back. And then, you know, and I probably contribute to these never ending emails as well. I think my default personality

is not to close things down. And you've got some strategies that this whole idea of no need to reply. Can you can you sort of elaborate on that a little bit? Yes. So I write NNR for no need to reply at the end of messages where I want to let the other person know they don't need to write back and say, got it or yes or thanks. Or I'll tell someone unless you tell me otherwise, you know, I'm going to assume this is the plan. No need to reply. And then they don't have to write back and say, yes, that's a good place to meet for dinner or, okay, you know, I agree to that idea. And so they know that there's a way to have it end. So NNR, I do it in text too, you know. Have you had to say, this is really speaking to me and I'm already thinking about how I can apply that. So did you have to educate your friends, your colleagues, your family, what NNR means initially?

I just put it, I just write NNR parentheses, no need to reply. And I do that until I'm sure someone knows it, until someone does it back to me. I just do that. And yes, it does take a moment to do that, to write the whole NN, no need to reply and NNR. I write both of them. Do you see what I mean? Until someone gets it. And then they, I know they get it because they'll do it back toR. I write both of them. Do you see what I mean? Until someone gets it. And then I know they get it

because they'll do it back to me. And then it's understood. So what's interesting about that for me is that you know it's going to take, let's say, five seconds more. So on one level, you've increased the time that it takes you to make that communication.

But you're, I guess, making that judgment that those five seconds that I'm adding now right at the start are going to save me minutes. Well, and it's related. Exactly. So it's both the NNR and then, you know, other strat. That's one example of making things sound. Another way is to propose a default plan. You know, you can go back and forth. Where are we going to have dinner? Well, where do you want to have dinner? What do you want? What do you feel like eating? Does this sound good? where do you want to have dinner? What do you want? What do you feel like eating? Does this sound good? You can also say, here are three ideas. I'm going to take the first one and make, you know, make a reservation unless I hear otherwise from you and we'll meet there at seven.

And then no need. And then NNR. And then if the person agrees to that, then, then they don't have to do anything else. The whole thing is ended. Yeah. One of my best friends who is one of the most productive people I know. He always gets so much done. And it's incredible. He's always scheduled his day, like everything from morning, afternoon, evening. If we ever go away, he's a big skier, I'm a skier. If we're ever out skiing somewhere, he's got everything scheduled. He's already booked the tables. He's booked the dinners. And what's really incredible, I used to know, where's the spontaneity gone? You know, it would be great not to have it booked. We'll decide. But I've realized actually that

by having that default plan, things happen. We get together, we do things. And I think actually people who make a plan for these sort of things actually end up having more spontaneity in their lives than people who don't. Is that something you found in your experience? Again, this is a place where I do think individuals vary. And what's most important is that people are able to be in a groove with each other. So if you understand your friend and why he's doing it and you appreciate it, then great. I'll have moments now where someone will propose a plan that I don't love and I'll think, is it worth it? And maybe it's not worth it. You know, their plan, I'm glad they made a plan. It was nice of them to make a plan. But also,

sometimes our plans can be, I have a little discussion of what I call minimizing social interactions. So planning for a lot of parents, there's this model of kind of intensive parenting, where you have playdates, you schedule a lot of these individual playdates. If you just say, we'll be at the playground at 3 on Saturday, you could email a whole group of people. And then even if no one shows up, your kid will have a great time at the playground. And it's so much simpler than, do you want to get together in writing to individual people? And it's so much simpler than, do you want to get together in writing to individual people? It's a little bit like the example, in fact, I use in the book.

It's analogous to, you know, the I'll be in the pub at seven where everyone knows what the pub is. Or, you know, I'll meet you at X cafe and everyone, all the friends know which place it is. And that happens, say, on Thursday night. Book clubs are like this, you know, low admin socializing where we don't even have to have a plan because we all kind of know it. And we just appear whoever can be there is there rather than having to make lots of individual dates. So your friend might or might not adopt that strategy. He might be a super doer who actually enjoys, you know, this kind of admin. He does. He might like it. And that's great. And that might work for you. But, you know, for some people, they might prefer to just say, you know, let's start the day and then we'll make a default plan of where we're all going to be. And, you know, if you don't show up, that's fine, too.

Yeah, no, I love that. I think there's so many great strategies in this book, Elizabeth. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for raising awareness of a hidden problem that I think many of us aren't really thinking about. One thing I'd love to ask you just to finish off is you say right at the start that you interviewed, you know, over a hundred people, you asked all of them, what is on your admin to-do list right now? So I guess my question would be before writing this book, if I had asked you what was on your admin to-do list right now and post writing this book, if I asked you the same question, what has changed? What's changed in general is that because I see admin, I make choices whether to deflect it or to do it and then how I do it. In the concrete sense of what's on my to-do list, an example of a change for me is that I, this year for holiday cards, so I make a book that might sound to some people like a lot of

admin. I actually, my kids and I memorize poetry together because I love poetry. And for me, that's not admin. It's fun. When I tried to teach my kids the ukulele, that was terrible for me because I don't know much about the ukulele. There was a lot for me to learn and that didn't go very well. But learning poetry is for me joy. And so doing it with my kids is joy. And so at the end of the year, I collect the poems and put them in a little book and it with a few of their drawings and make a PDF. And then we can use it for their teachers and has a lot of uses. And so instead of sending for me, sending holiday cards, individual holiday cards is admin. It's not joy. Some people it is. But some people love it. And this year. So I've done that in recent years. And then this year I went further in the past. I've sent that book out to family or friends individually, at least. Dear so-and-so, here's the book. You know, I hope you enjoy it. Because it seemed somehow like it was important

to have that be personal. This year, I sent it as a BCC list to all of the people on my list. And in the message, I wrote, here's this book, I hope you enjoy it, but there is no need to read this and no need to reply. And so you don't have to, my kids, you know, the poems we learned and their drawings,

if that's not on your list for you, if that's for you, admin, right now in your life, you don't, then great, don't do it. It's not, I mean, wishing that other people will spend their time in the way that is most meaningful to them is one of the things I really hope to get from this. And also so that all of our lives can become less stressful. That's why I appreciate the gift of your book. I'm really looking forward to reading it. I do think we all really could use relief. And this is one area where we can find some and help each other find some. Yeah.

And you know what? That's not really a point I really hadn't reflected on enough, which is it's not only about helping our lives improve how we feel, but it's about improving the lives of those around us. And you're really taking obligation off your network. You're sending that out and you're saying, Hey, guys, no need to reply. No need to read it. If you're too busy, if this doesn't speak to you, if it's not something that you're interested in, Hey, you know what? I'm cool with that. Rather than them feeling, Oh, you know, I've been sent that. They spent a lot of time and

effort on that. I need to absorb it. I need to send them a meaningful, I need to send her a meaningful email back to tell her that I've got absorb it. I need to send her a meaningful email back to tell her that I've got it. So I think this is really empowering and it really, it's, you know, be the change you want to see in the world, right? And I think you're really exemplifying that in terms of your behavior, what you've done with this book, but also how you're applying it in your own life. And you'll probably inspire people around you to also do similar things. And I certainly will be trying to apply this NNR. So anyone listening to this who gets texts from me regular, you will soon be seeing NNRs.

And I hope we can start using it. Elizabeth, the goal of this podcast is to inspire people to become the architects of their own health. We've covered a lot of topics today. There's so much more in your book. And I've got to say for those of you listening in america it's called the art of life admin here in the uk but in the states it's called life admin okay so if you're trying to look it up it's a slightly different name i know that's like my first book had a different name in america as well um can you leave my

listeners with maybe i don't know three or four top tips that they might be able to think about applying in their lives right now to improve the way that they feel? So starting with a simple to-do list, going back to paper, if paper appeals to you, putting that good day list at the top of your to-do list every day. What are the things that are on your to-be list? What are the things that you do to add meaning to your life and to take care of yourself and to reduce stress? And can those be on your to-do list? And can you find ways to make things end with NNR, with other strategies? Can you also find ways to have some things never land on your to-do list at all? Can you take care of them right in the moment? And can we also find

ways? I want to say that one thing I always hope, and I lead meditations, I run a mindful parenting group at my kid's school, and I say when I offer that, and I say when I offer this, let this not though in any way be one more area in which you're falling short. You know, so many of us, we learn a new strategy, we learn a new idea, and then we feel like this is one more way, right, in which I'm falling short. I will say, this is when you ask me how my life is different and it's better. It is different. It is better. And it's a work in progress. It's always a work in progress. You know, I haven't solved every part of this in my own life. It's ongoing and it is for all of us and we all have areas where we have you know shifts and improvements and areas where we we struggle and knowing that about ourselves and each other

a compassion for ourselves and each other to me has to be the ultimate message oh thank you I think that's very inspiring place to to lead the podcast um for people who want to connect with you are you on any social media channels, Elizabeth? Yeah, I'm on, as of recently, I've learned and then I've been learning. I've been reading Cal Newport also. And so I'm making choices about that that are mindful and minimalist. But I, yes, I'm on Facebook and Twitter

and I have a website, which is just my name, elizabethemmons.com. And it has the links for all of that too. Fantastic. So guys, all the topics that we spoke about today, all of Elizabeth's social media handles, her website, everything is going to be in the show notes page to this episode of the podcast, which is going to be drchastity.com forward slash life admin. So you can go there afterwards, you can see all the links. Elizabeth, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it and have a safe journey back to the States. Thank you so much. This was really fun. I really enjoyed it.

That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. I really hope you enjoyed the conversation. As always, do let both of us know what you thought of today's show by getting in touch on social media. Elizabeth is on Twitter at elizfemmons and on Instagram at lizemmons. You can also see everything that we discussed today as well as related links and articles

on the show notes page for this episode, which is drchatterjee.com forward slash 53. Many of the themes and issues that we discussed today on the podcast are topics that I have covered in my book, The Stress Solution. One of the themes in my book that is really resonating with people is this idea of micro stress doses. The little mini doses of stress that in isolation don't cause us any problems, but when added up on top of one another, can really start to bring us closer

and closer to our own personal stress threshold, which is when things start to go wrong. Having an understanding of where these micro stress doses live in your own life can be absolutely key in making sustainable lifestyle change and as a concept I bring it with many of my own patients. If you have not yet picked up a copy you can order the stress solution in all the usual places in paperback, ebook and as an audiobook which I am narrating. If you enjoy my weekly podcasts, one of the best ways that you can support them is by leaving a review on whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels. Or you can do it the good old fashioned way and simply tell your friends about the show.

Your support is very much appreciated. That's it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest episode. Remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.