Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Are *these* Making You LESS Productive? | Mini Episode

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Another Thursday, another mini episode!Every Thursday, we’re sharing the Buy or Bye Bye segment from one of your favourite Her Discussions episodes - a breakdown of what actually works for your health. This week, we're revisiting our episode with Lily Silverton, founder of The Priorities Method.In the full episode, we discuss:🧠 the 2 question mindset to shift your priorities 💼 how to separate work from your identity ⏰ the truth about 5am mornings 💭 how to analyse where your time goes ✨ why chasing perfection can backfireListen to the full podcast here:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6aqkTbdRWLfFer515zRGwS?si=TZuEbTy4SJ6uHWYTVoxjGQ YouTube: https://youtu.be/-9AynHB4Vu4Links to subscribe / follow:* Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/her-discussions-by-dr-faye/id1835829612⁠⁠⁠* Spotify: ⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/5viLYizHD4Zy6J42iqtPRo⁠⁠⁠Can I ask you a BIG favour? 💙* Please leave a review or rating. It helps us grow the podcast and bring you more amazing guests.* Share with someone who needs this; it might help them live a happier, healthier life.* Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests. I'll leave the link here: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==⁠⁠⁠🛑 Disclaimers:Opinions are my own. This content is for educational / entertainment purposes and not medical or financial advice.

From morning hockey with a cup of coffee to Timbits and road trips. Tim's and Canadian Tire have always gone together. Now it's official. You can now earn Canadian Tire money at Tim's. Link your Triangle Rewards and Tims Rewards accounts to earn twice with every Tim's run. Terms and conditions apply. Visit timhordens.com slash triangle for details. But first we have a section of the podcast called Buy or Bye Bye.

So I am going to show you some products. Okay. And I would love to know whether you would buy these products or you would say bye bye to them. meaning goodbye. Okay, I can't wait. And the only rule is we love nuance. You know, on social media, there's way too much short-clipped, viral click-basedy opinions. And I think that in this day and age, that is what we're lacking.

We're lacking a balanced approach. So with all that being said, first up, vision boards. Vision boards. Vision boards, I guess, is a bar. essentially. I think they are really effective for some people. I think some people work, have a fantastic visual memory and that having that there for them and being able to create it is really impactful. Being able to create it and then look at it and refer to it and visualize it is really impactful. But I also think that for some people, myself included, they find

them a bit cringe. And then there's another whole group of people who make the vision board, but don't fucking do anything on the board. So you can't have the board if you're not going to put in the effort and you're not going to make it happen. So I think there's some of this like you spoke about before, you know, you get to January, you make the vision board, but you don't actually think through what are the steps, what are the sacrifices, what are the huge things that I need to do in order to actually make these things happen? And then I think, If you're in that category, then vision boards are very demotivating because then you've got this thing you've created that's maybe too many.

As you spoke about earlier, I think before we were recording, you know, you've got too many things on there that you're probably not going to be able to envision, bring them into life. And so it can be really demotivating. So I think, you know, if you love vision boards and you find that they work for you, buy them, stick with them. If you don't, don't feel that you need to do that. Yeah.

I'm going to sound like a massive hypocrite now. But one of my issues with vision boards is exactly like what you've said. It's focusing on the results and not the process. The process, yeah. And also I think it takes us away from enjoying the process as well when we're so focused on the end product. But also I think there's this tendency for vision boards to be so aesthetic. It's almost the green juicification of wellness. 100%.

And I also think about, do you remember when you were, I mean, there's a little bit of an age gap between us, But when I was younger and I did any vision stuff, it was always about cutting out bits from magazines, but it wasn't polished. You weren't going for like this perfect polished identicate as you say like the match era drink and then the beach shot in a bikini and, you know, whatever it is. It was more diverse and interesting than that, I think. And obviously we have become quite limited in our thought process of what we should be visioning and what good visioning looks like. what aesthetic visioning looks like for sure. And everyone has the same aesthetic. It's not, it's not varied.

And the reason I say I'm being a hypocrite is because a lot of our thumbnails, we use quite a vision boardee. But because they do really well and they epitomize a concept, you know, quite well. People recognize the images. You're right. If you go through a magazine, what you pick out is going to be so different to the exact same images that everyone else is picked out on Pinterest. Do you make vision boards yourself?

And if so, what is your process? No. No. Okay. I just don't see how I would. make something that would inspire me like that. But I'm also, I can't visualize. So I have Afantasia. I, you know, me and my boyfriend, we literally watched it as high a YouTube video all about this. Can you explain what it is to people? Because I think it's so, so wild. So I only found

this out two years ago, yeah, I think, or maybe less than that. And obviously the interesting thing is that I've been teaching visualization for 10 years. And I had absolutely no idea, Faye. that when people say visualise that they could see things inside their head so all I see is black and that sounds dark, it's not, it's very soothing in one way I think not having visual imagery

but yeah, so I can't see a thing so when I was saying to people you know, visualise an orange and describing it in detail I thought that everyone else was having the same experience as me which is that I use words to imagine and describe something

but I do not actually see the visuals. I'm going way off tangent but this is also really interesting to me as someone who was in a creative industry as well, the visualization. Yeah, it's such an interesting topic. I will maybe have to link the YouTube video that we watched on the science of it because it's brilliant. Anyway, I won't. It also means you've got no memory.

Oh, wow. So there's a really big link. My memory is terrible. It's why I gave up politics and human rights because I was going to do law. A memory was atrocious. And it's really, really linked to a really poor memory. Wow. So I can watch a film and a couple of months later I'll turn to my boyfriend.

My boyfriend, turn to my husband. Jesus. Sorry, Dan. And be like, oh, look, that film looks good. We should watch that. And he'll be like, we literally just watch that film. Oh, my gosh. Oh, well, we'll come on to your visualization methods a little bit later on.

The 5am Club. Again, if you love getting up at 5am, if you are a really early morning person and you thrive within that framework, then fantastic. Stick with it. Like, I'm not saying don't do it at all. if you are not a 5 a.m. kind of person, do not force yourself to get up at 5 a.m. and feel like shit. So you may find that you get up at 5am and it works really well for you

and actually you feel good even though you're not a morning person. Again, I don't think that anyone should be doing anything repeatedly in the name of wellness that doesn't have a positive impact overall. So you can obviously, I get up at 6 a.m. most days. I don't always want to get out of bed at 6 a.m. Sometimes I do. I'm also a morning person, but sometimes I really don't, and I'll mostly still get up because I know that if I get up and I do my meditation and I have a tea without the kids around and but a yoga, I'm going to feel much more set up for the day. So I'm not saying that don't push past like an initial discomfort. However, if it leaves you feeling really depleted for the rest of the day and if it leaves you feeling anxious when you don't do it, then I would

suggest that it's not a good idea. And the 5am club, is that what it's called? the book is one of the worst written books. I have ever read in my entire life. The fact that that is a bestseller to me is the biggest joke. What, I've never read it. Why is it so badly written? He is such a terrible writer. Oh wow. The concept is insane. It's a blog post, not even a blog post. It's like a one page of a book post that book, which is essentially get up at 5am. Oh God. Do a bit of movement, do a bit of reflection, do a bit of silence, do a bit of creativity. That's it. It's two lines.

Could have been an email. Could have definitely been a text. Brilliant. Okay. So that's me. Nice. I'm a recovering 5am clubber. Okay.

Feel free to lead over and smack me across the face when I say it is. When I was working for the time in the NHS. And I started YouTube in when I was in medical school. So mainly because I didn't know anyone who else was who was a doctor and I wanted to share my life. They told me not to apply for medical school in my school. So I wanted to show other girls like me. This is what medical school is like. It's not that scary.

You can do it too sort of thing. But then I started doing that. I started working full time in the NHS. And I was terrified of losing this community that I'd built up. So I would wake up at 5am every single morning. I would do two hours of work. So I'd work till 7, quickly shower, get up. And then just a half an hour to get ready,

shovel something down my face, going to work, be in for work for 8, sometimes be doing a 12-hour shift, 8 till 8, get back, and then I do an hour of work on social media. And then I remember on my days off, so maybe I'd have four, four, 12-hour days where I was doing two hours in the morning, one, two hours at night,

and then going to sleep, waking up, doing it again. And on my days off, I'd have so much to do, editing YouTube videos, getting them up, whatever. I would tell myself I'm not allowed to leave the house until I've finished my to-do list. Really, really, really challenging for me. and really one of my close friends, do you know Savannah Satchdev?

She's brilliant and she's one of my closest friends now, but I saw one of her YouTube video, one of her social media clips that came up and it said, never trust an Indel thought. And I just remember I was locking myself away in the pursuit of achieving things. And just feeling, you know, awful about myself.

I'd never been more productive in my entire life. And I just, I would sit inside and I just have these anxious spirals of yourself. you're not doing enough. You could be doing so much more. Look at this person. Look at what they're doing. I've never compared myself more to anyone else,

despite doing so much. And then I saw this video from her, and she said, never trusted Indel thought, like, go outside, go outside. And yeah, I think that's why I really wanted you on the podcast as a guest, because I think what you stand for is what I wish that, that Faye could have heard.

Yeah. So I'm recovering 5 a.m. I think also if you think of what you were doing, the work that you were doing during the day was so demanding physically, mentally, emotionally, on every level. And then that sort of thing around socials and wanting to provide, you know,

inspiration to girls like you. Like that's also quite a heavy reason to be doing something. You know, it's a strong and it's a beautiful reason, but there's also layers to that that maybe some people on socials don't have. they just want to be famous or they just want to, you know, they just find something interesting. So there's those layers, which would have brought so much more to the surface. And then also like physiologically, you're probably just quite tired.

Like if you're waking up at 5am and you've got those demanding days and you're not sleeping very much, as we all know, it's just much harder to do anything or regulate anything on our minds or to see, you know, to be able to see properly that like, oh, I actually am being really productive and what I'm doing is incredible. and look at what little me would think of this. Isn't that fantastic? And to not have that perspective because you're just exhausted. Yeah, exhausted, absolutely.

And waking up and literally I would wake up, I wouldn't look at my phone, I'd go straight to my desk. And then I'd shut my laptop and go straight to bed. And now I try and at least shut my laptop off seven just to make sure that I'm getting that time because our body doesn't know. You know, our body needs to have time to wind down. we can't just go from work mode snap off to bed.

Especially when work mode is screens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I love a tangent. Love a tangent. Mindfulness apps.

Yeah, I like mindfulness apps. Nice. I do like mindfulness apps. Again, it's how you use them. It's your relationship with them. Like I use Insight Timer. I'm also a teacher on Insight Timer, so there's lots of my meditations on there.

Excuse my ignorance. What's that? It's one of the big, it's one of the big, it's like headspace. Yeah. And I personally just use a timer. But I think that they can be really helpful. What I worry with people is that they start to become a tool that people feel like a slave to as opposed to serve to buy.

And this is my problem with a lot of wellness stuff, is that what starts out as wanting to feel better becomes something that you believe if you don't do, that you're morally failing. And I think that can happen with mindfulness apps. So you start off by being like, oh, I should do some mindfulness. Someone said this. I'm feeling really stressed. And you do it. And then you feel better. And then you stop doing it or you forget to do it. And then you really beat yourself up for it because you haven't done your daily mindfulness. And then the app is giving you a little thing a nudge saying, why haven't you done this? And, you know, come on, come back, et cetera, which is very smart in terms of behavioral psychology. But I think can often

lead people again in our modern lives where we, we never feel like we're doing enough. Right? We always feel like we're failing. We're always falling behind. And I think those can add to that sense of, am I doing enough? What do you do when that voice? comes into your head. That fuck off. Love. I swear quite a lot, so I really do. I spend a lot of time trying to remind myself

that life is messy and complex and that we are not here for perfection. We are here to live and experience our lives to try and kind of be okay with whatever is going on. And that's true mindfulness, right? The truth of you're thinking about actually practicing mindfulness, it's being okay with whatever the current situation is and whatever's going on.

So like you were talking about the time when you had all the really, really intense days, and I'm sure you still have really intense days in life trying to say, okay, well, this is that intense day. And if I missed the mindfulness app, whatever I was meant to do, I'm just going to be kind to myself about that. I'm just going to give myself a little break. And if I know that it's really impactful and really helpful for my mental health,

then I'm going to, you know, make sure that I get up tomorrow and do it a bit earlier. Or if I fail that day, or if I don't succeed that day, then I'll do it the next day. And so on. So just giving yourself a break and going a little bit gentler on yourself,

I guess, is the dream. I have this fear that if I'm gentle, on myself, I won't do anything. Have you ever experienced that? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, how do you manage that? I think it's a little bit easier in your 40s. Fine.

I do think having age, having children, being shown with children that they're like, you can't control everything and you can't optimize your days in the way that you once thought you could or could. And understanding that your attention and your time is limited and that those resources are limited, I think it's easier to be. more emotionally and mentally forgiving as you get a little bit older. I think in your 20s, at least I definitely had much more of a propensity towards self-flagellation. And it's that funny thing because, you know, in your 20s, I don't know if this is your experience, but I hear it a lot

from when I give workshops and talks of people feeling like they are already falling behind, right, that they haven't done enough. And, And I think for most people, not everyone, that starts to diminish the older you get, which is kind of ridiculous because surely the older you get, the more you should be like, oh my God, I've got less time. Yeah. And have I done enough? But first of all, you start to do more things.

And also you start to understand maybe more of what matters. You start to listen to yourself and what works for you a little bit more. So yeah, I would say that it's very, very common in your 20s. Yeah. And social media doesn't help. Oh, social media really, really doesn't help. And I didn't have social media on my 20s, really. I mean, we have Facebook, but.

Yeah. Not in the way that you guys do. Habit trackers. Love a habit tracker. Nice. Yeah, I love a habit tracker. I've got one in the journal in the Priorities Method Journal. There's a plug.

Again, I think they can be really helpful as long as they continue to serve you and not you serving them the other way around. So it's really that thing of with any. wellness tool with any productivity tool. It's making sure that it is supporting your wellness as a 360 degree human and not just your wellness practice or productivity practice or whatever that is. So making sure that it's supporting your mental health, your emotional health. And if it's becoming something where you are using it to beat yourself up or you're feeling terrible or if you don't have that one tick on one day, then you're feeling like shit about yourself,

then I would reevaluate your relationship with it. But provided you can use it in a way where, you know, it's, I might miss one or two, three of these a week, that's all right. As long as I keep going, you know, consistency over time, over long periods of time is much more important than whatever we can tick seven days off in a row. You know, rather someone was ticking off three days a row for three months and seeing that. So yeah, that's where I stand. What about you?

I would be that person. I would do seven days religiously for a month. miss one day because I was away or whatever. Never again. Never again. Never again. Yeah. And then I heard maybe it was a podcast, maybe it was but God knows it now, but the someone said the best thing that you can do is when you set up that habit tracker say, I am going to fail. One of these days, I will fail, or I will miss a day. Fail is probably the wrong word. And actually the power is in getting back on the horse, not. A hundred percent. Not letting guilt and blame send you into a spy.

or we just don't do it again. Yeah, it's baking it into the cake, like in your mind. So the practice of doing this is also the practice of not doing this. Oh, I love that. And not all the time. Don't not do it all the time because then you're not doing it at all. But having that idea of like sometimes I won't do this. And that is a healthy, normal to be expected experience.

I think maybe the human psychology side of it is where if a habit is really difficult to build, like say, I don't know, going to the gym three times a week or whatever, or going out for a walk, it might feel like a really difficult habit to build. Our brain makes us think, okay, we've missed a couple days. To build it back up will be equally as hard as when we started. Even though that's not the case, you've already come so far in building it. It's a lot easier to rebuild it again. We remember the challenges, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's also like we both use the word failure as well. It's that thing that our brain goes, you failed by not doing this. And so that becomes demotivating. And we know that habit trackers are very effective because when you tick something off a to-do list or a habit tracker, whatever it is, you get a hit of dopamine. And that dopamine is a very helpful chemical that can neurotransmitter that you're going to get. If you want to stick with something, if you want to stay engaged with something,

you're not going to get that reward when you don't do something. And so part of it, I would say, in terms of getting back on is how you can trick yourself. Like you said, like what can you think about the positive experiences you've had to doing something and how can you assure yourself that a couple of days off or a week off or a month off, whatever it is, there's always time to get back onto something. Do you have any examples of how you've tricked yourself to get back into a habit that maybe you've lost? That's a good question. I really do love when it comes to habit setting.

I love the basing your identity around it. Yes. So rather than saying to yourself, I have to go to the gym, I have to go the gym, I have to go the gym. you say to yourself, I am the kind of person who really gets a lot out of moving my body. So you're not even, you're not putting some like moral placement on it. So it's not like I'm the kind of person who's really healthy, you know, because then when you don't go, then you feel shit about yourself. But it's trying to build and tie up your identity into a habit

so that you can remind yourself of that and think of it more along those lines rather than I have to do something. And also all those tricks of sort of working with language again of I get to move my body. I am very privileged that I have a body that can get up and work. I'll just go for 15 minutes. You know, future me is going to thank me all of that sort of stuff.

Making it really manageable. So rather than saying I have to do an hour, you just go, I'm going to go for 20 minutes. Yeah, trick yourself. There's always the trick with the gym as well of leaving your shoes and your gym outfit by the bed so that you get up straight into your clothing. From morning hockey with a cup of coffee to Timbits and road trips.

Tims and Canadian Tire have always gone together. Now it's official. You can now earn Canadian Tire money at Tim's. Link your Triangle Rewards and Tim's Rewards accounts to earn twice with every Tim's run. Terms and conditions apply. Visit timhordens.com slash triangle for details. that's a good one actually i need to i need to do that one because i actually can imagine when i was

working quite quite significantly gym i didn't even have gym membership didn't run and think i exercise maybe three times across the maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration maybe five times across the entire year like i did i never knew medical students who were incredibly uh at the gym and really healthy yeah yeah often they were the ones who were like uh partying the hardest but also um like going the hardest you know drowning their sorrows. drowning their sorrows and also had so much work to do, I don't think any of them were in the physical health.

Yeah, no, exactly. And then this year I've got a little bit more flexibility and a bit more time. It's really interesting, you mentioned the identity thing because, you know, people you meet and they say, oh, I have to go to the gym because it clears my head. And because I hadn't been exercising, I didn't identify with that statement, even though my head was a mess.

So I think the one way that I found myself getting back into that habit, bit is going, oh, do you know what, I should go to the gym to clear my head. I'm one of those people who goes to the gyms to clear their head. And actually, you know, you go and you feel 10 times better afterwards. It does clear your head. It does clear your head. But yeah, seeing myself with someone who, you know, went to the gym to clear their head. I love that. Yeah. So yeah, I love the identity shift. Accountability partners. Oh, 100% on this one. I'm 100% by on this one. We're just much more likely, all of the studies show that we are much more likely. to achieve our goals, quote, unquote, whatever that is, if we have a bit of accountability.

So I think the best possible thing is working with a friend, if they are the kind of friend that also stays on track with something, not if they are not sort of friend. But yeah, whether it's, you know, you can create accountability for yourself in lots of ways. There's an amazing, I don't know whether it exists here in the UK. I know it does in the States, but where you have an app, where if you don't do the thing you said you were going to do, you have to donate money, but you donate money to a cause you really, really, really disagree with. And that is incredibly smart in terms of like what that does to your brain and accountability. So that's, I don't know whether it exists here in the UK.

I've heard of sort of when I've given workshops with the States that we've spoken about. Something like that. Creating accountability when you're looking at change is so essential. Thank you for listening. If you would like to hear the full episode with even more jam-packed knowledge, then just click the link in the description.