Life Uncut - How Productivity Has Hijacked Your Life - Uncut with Israa Nasir

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Ever feel as though you’re not quite able to ‘do it all?’ During the past 2 decades, there has been a huge push into the world of ‘hustle culture.’ So many of us feel like we are constant hot messes, rushing around to try and get a million things in our day done.  Joining the podcast today is Israa Nasir, New York based psychotherapist and author of the new book “Toxic Productivity.”  Israa is here today to help us let go of the belief that our value is defined by how busy and successful we feel. Israa speaks about this as someone who currently has skin in the game, not from a place of hindsight. We are all having to manage this idea of toxic productivity now! We chat: Productivity no longer just applies to work. It’s infiltrated our romantic relationships, friendships, parenting and personal health Productivity guilt; the guilty feeling when we ‘relax’ The need for external validation can look like people pleasing or a workaholic Chaotic state of a dysregulated nervous system becoming familiar e.g. ”I do my best work under pressure.” “I thrive in chaos.” Dynamics that keep us constantly busy, but never satisfied such as; self-worth, shame, social comparison, burnout, and perfectionism Cultivating a healthier perspective on achievement to understand, manage, and shift our intense emotions  You can find more from Israa, including her new book at her website  You can follow Israa on Instagram    You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! Xx  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura. And today we are talking about something I think we are slightly guilty of, Laura. No, I think we're very guilty. You're definitely more guilty than me. I feel like in the last two decades this idea of hustle culture has taken over. The idea of this, the more that you do, the more successful you are and the more value

you have in the world. I don't even know if it's just taken over. I think that sometimes we find ourselves on the hamster wheel and also just don't know how to come off it because like the way in which we structure our lives requires us to be so busy and do so many things. And then once you're at that place in life, it's like, well, how do you stop? I mean, that's the question I seem to ask myself quite a bit. Well, someone that's dedicated a lot of her time to trying to understand this is Israel

Nasir. Isra is New York based. She's a psychotherapist and she's the author of the brand new book, Toxic Productivity. I actually have a hard time saying that because my head wants to say toxic positivity. Toxic Productivity. And today we're going to unpack exactly what that is, how we think we can let go of our belief that our value is defined by how busy and successful we feel. Isra, welcome to the podcast. Hi, I'm so excited to chat with the both of you. you are literally on the other side of the world for me. So it's really nice to kind of chat with people who are in so far away places and get their perspective as well. Well, I mean, I think the interesting thing is that regardless of being on literally the opposite side of the world, I feel

like the sentiment is the same. It doesn't matter where you are, especially when you're in this phase of life and particularly for a woman as well. We start every episode the same way. It's called our Accidentally Unfiltered Story. You said, unfortunately, you do have an embarrassing story to share with us. And I can't wait to hear it. It was literally the cringiest moment of my life. And I can now talk about it without passing out from embarrassment. So I used to work at a startup and I had transitioned from like being a therapist to working at a startup in like operations. And a lot of tech tools were new for me, like Slack and Zoom and Excel, because therapists pre-pandemic were not using any of this stuff, right? Everybody was going into therapy

offices. And I remember we were pitching to a client, which was a external business client. And I was the one who was presenting and I was supposed to share my screen. And I literally shared the wrong screen that, that had a Slack open where a group of coworkers were talking about that client. It was the most embarrassed. Yeah. Oh God, it was horrible. I did not even realize it. What did the Slack say? They were just kind of talking about the difficulties of working with this client and trying to like, you know, close the deal. And I did not even realize it until somebody on the client side said, I think you're sharing the wrong screen. I got fired for a day yeah yeah I got fired for one day he took me back like literally the next day but I

did get fired for that one day the learning was don't talk on any other communication channels while presenting like just don't do it that was my learning but also it's not fair that you're the one that gets into trouble for that because that is an easy mistake to make the bigger mistake there is everyone bitching in slack about the client like that's the I mean yeah maybe it's there's a few lessons to learn in that story I think there are multiple people at fault here I'm sure there's some kind of sentiment somewhere that says that I shall not gossip or something like that about my shitty clients I think a lot of people have heard of the concept of toxic productivity and I think in the name

itself it kind of self-explains what it is but I'm really interested in how does one define when productivity becomes toxic? Like when does the overachieving and the want to do more slip into an area where it's no longer healthy for us and no longer serving us? I think the biggest red flag to look out for to understand whether or not your talk, your productivity is toxic or not is whether the outcome that you are pursuing is connected to how you view yourself in relation to other people, in relation to your community, your family, your work. So that's like a really big sign because our productivity is healthy if we're pursuing it and failure doesn't shatter our self-worth, right? But if our self-worth is completely contingent on the outcome, then our

productivity has moved away from just trying to achieve things to a place of trying to prove our value and our worth in our communities, in our workplace relationships. That's one sign. The other sign is when you don't really know the why behind what you're doing so a lot of us just kind of do stuff because other people are doing it we're competing with other people our parents have told us to do it right and we're just kind of on the hamster wheel but we have no intentionality we just have these arbitrary goals like i have to buy a house before 35 i have to be married by 30 I need to have all of my kids before 32. I need to have X salary before 38.

Like we have all of these timelines, but there's no rationale behind it. And so that's also like, why are you pursuing what you're pursuing? That can, you know, move you into the realm of toxic productivity. And the final one is when your productivity comes at the cost of other equally important things in life. So your wellness, your health, your relationships all become secondary to the pursuit. and that's when your productivity becomes unhealthy. As you were saying that, I was asking myself a lot of questions

and I think it's become so much worse with the introduction and the takeover of social media because there's this constant comparison culture. So once upon a time we might have been pretty content with just going to our 9 to 5, coming home, spending time with the kids, going to bed, but now we're seeing everyone else overachieve. Everyone else is starting their little businesses.

So all of a sudden you think, oh, well, should I be doing that? Should I, oh, my God, they've bought this property with a farm. Should I be doing that? And I think that that's what feeds back into this pretty toxic loop of wanting to do more, but not understanding why. And even when you just said that, in my head, I'm constantly saying to myself, oh, I need to start a business. And I think that's because Laura has one. I'm like, oh, well, we're the same person and Laura's doing it. Should I be doing it? But then there's the other half of me that says, well, I actually really like my life balance. And this is what

I meant before when I was talking about how do you get off that hamster wheel? There does come a point where you cannot do everything and you are sacrificing parts of your life. And I think a big thing that we ultimately sacrifice when you're someone who prioritizes work often, the thing that you sacrifice is your relationships, whether that's your relationships with your friend or your relationships with your romantic partner, or even sometimes time with your kids, like there is always an inherent sacrifice that happens. Can you talk us through, Isra, around where this can apply to different parts of life? Are we solely talking about work or does this affect other areas of our lives as well? I think in the last 25, 30-ish years, it has really changed

because the relationship we have to work has changed. Like 30 years ago, when my dad would come home from work, like that was it. If his boss needed something, he'd have to wait till the next day. So what's happened is our work culture has permeated the rest of our life. And what that's done is this mindset has permeated the rest of our life. So not only are we bringing our work home and there's no boundaries, the way we operate at work, which is about efficiency and optimizing, maximizing competition, achievement-oriented, goal-oriented mindset, we've taken that and we've put it into our romantic relationships, our friendships, our personal health, our parenting, it actually permeates a lot of different domains now. And the research also shows that what burnout

used to be considered just a workplace issue, the latest research is showing that you can actually burn out in a romantic relationship. You can experience burnout as a parent for young kids or caring for elderly parents yourself. And so this mindset can really show up anywhere because it's a framework. It's a framework that we take to our life and it's rooted in how good we want to feel. So if you don't feel good about yourself, you're going to find many different ways to tap into this mindset so that you can feel good about yourself. Is this something that you personally had skin in the game with? Like as someone who has written a book on it, who has dedicated their research to it. What was your experience with toxic productivity? Yes, I definitely have. I will

use present tense. I have skin in the game in this. I literally canceled the doctor's appointment this morning because I just had so many stacked meetings and I had to go to the gym because I hadn't gone to the gym in like four weeks. So I literally canceled my doctor's appointment. So that's the trade-off, right? Like you're constantly doing a trade-off. And I'm very mindful of this right now, because I know I'm in a season because I'm doing a lot of interviews for the book coming up. So I'm looking at this as a sprint. But I think five, five to six years ago, this was my whole life. So right now, it's exceptional for me to be in this mindset where I can tap into it when I need to. Five years ago, up until five years ago, it was just the way I lived my life. And

I thought that that is the way you're supposed to live if you want to be ambitious. So to me, there was no distinction between ambitious and unhealthy. Like I was stressed out all the time. Well, that's just a by-product of being ambitious. You know, like I don't have time to eat. I'm like rushing through things. Oh, well, that's just what happens if you're like an ambitious person. That's just what happens if you are trying to make things happen. And so you accept that this is just a truth, right? But it's not. And I think like a turning point came for me because I didn't hit a breaking point, but I definitely hit a turning point. And the turning point for me was that I realized that all of the things that I had set this like stage for or you know planted the

seats for in my late 20s early 30s ish which I was getting the result of wasn't actually making me feel happy so I had done the hustle and I'd done all the things and I just you know put in all of my efforts into being multifaceted and doing like so many things but like five years ago I was getting the return but I wasn't getting the feeling I still felt like I should do more I still felt like that this wasn't enough, like I need to keep doing it. And so I started feeling really disconnected from my life. I was very disengaged. Do you think we become addicted to stress? I think like at a physiological level, there is a component of becoming very familiar with the state of stress in your body. It doesn't really act as like an actual addiction. So I

sometimes feel like hesitant to use that word because like addiction is such a complex physical thing. But I think there are aspects of it. There are aspects of addictive behaviors towards stress because we become very, you might have heard people say things like, oh, I feel the most comfortable in chaos, or I do my best work under pressure, right? I write my best papers two nights before it's due. And that's really because the chaotic state of a dysregulated nervous system and stress hormones becomes familiar and so our mind puts working hard success and that dysregulated feeling together and so we do become a little dependent on needing that it's so funny you say that because even here at life uncut our motto is don't worry we thrive in chaos um which

is such a dumb motto we need to get a new one we don't want to thrive in chaos we want to just thrive producer keisha just looked up as you said that and was like oh fucking guilty no we want a thriving what a thriving page I I didn't mean it like that I um but I do think that there is a strength to people who can thrive in that because I can like you can throw shit at me and I'll I'll manage it I will navigate it so I have a lot of self-trust but we don't want our default setting to be thriving in chaos yeah we do need to be able to do it I latched onto something that you said then around your own experience of like feeling as though you needed to do more and I I mean I'm I think a lot of people do have this, especially if you are someone who is entrepreneurial or you're

a businesswoman, this feeling is of like, it's not enough. And it's not about the money. It's not about the achievements even like, and I'm conscious about making it about myself. Like I feel guilty when I'm not doing something. I almost have this thought that I'm like, I'm not doing enough. But like, how do you kind of rewire that in your brain? And how do you sit with that? Because it really is something that I think a lot of people experience this feeling of like, but it's not enough. I need to be doing more. It's like a guilt when you're not doing something, when you're relaxing. Yeah. So that's known as productivity guilt. And a lot of people feel it. So if you're not being productive, you feel guilty and guilty is a, you know, guilt

is an emotion that tells you that you're doing something wrong. And that's why to alleviate guilt, we want to act and change something in our environment. So we don't feel like we're doing something wrong, right? And it's different from shame, which is telling you that you are wrong. So you are not good enough versus I'm not doing something good enough, right? And we can have both productivity, shame and guilt. But I think like one of the reasons we feel productivity guilt is because our models of success are often overworked people. So you might look at a parent figure who is very successful, and they might have been people who woke up early and made the cookies and went to work and were part of PTA, like you might have parents who are very over functioning,

right? Because my parents definitely 100% very over functioning. And so that's one thing we see, you know, pop culture models of success, what does that look like somebody who's over functioning, and then you go into school, like at a foundational level, and you learn that if you're idle, you're not doing something right, you're like, you're missing something, you're forgetting something and so this idea of resting being harmful becomes very solidified in our mind and so our body is not used to it and so we get very overwhelmed when we are not doing something coupled with that is the nebulous goals like if you think back to when you were younger and you were setting goals for yourself or even right now for this podcast for your business for your

families, the goals are often really nebulous. They're not like very concrete. And so what happens is we don't have a good definition of enough, especially like for, so I sometimes work with founders around like founder mental health. And one of the most common things I see is they have these external achievement markers and a very vague goal of what is good enough. So if you don't intentionally design what enough feels like, nothing is going to feel enough. So I think those are the two things is like learning how to incorporate rest and regulate the feelings of guilt and having a very clear intention about what you're pursuing. Off what you said, Laura, when you're like, I feel guilty if I stop for a second, I think it's

because it's a learned trait. You don't know any different for so many years you've run your businesses and you have your kids. And I remember when we started this podcast, we're a few years deep and I was a hospital worker. So I was doing shift work, doing this on the side. We're doing this all hours of the day like it was non-stop there wasn't one day off and I had a really hard time when it was time to give up my hospital work and just do this because what it did give me was a few extra days a week that I was like I actually have time to do something I want to do right now and at the start it was I was filled with so much guilt that I thought I'm going to do all these extra things to fill my days very slowly I started to just start to enjoy those days off and now I

can genuinely say I'm happily in a place where if I have a complete day off where I do not do one bit of work, I don't feel any guilt because I've redefined my own idea of success. And my personal idea of success is to live a comfortable life with work-life balance. Success for someone else might look differently. It might be all the big mansions, all the cars. But for me, I want to be able to go for a swim and go to the gym and go to a sauna, but also have a job that fills me and I've managed to do that, but it took a long time of introducing those feelings. So if you're never going to introduce a day off or go into the gym for yourself, your body can't regulate the feeling because you don't know what it is. Have I said the right thing? Am I explaining

myself well? Because you're the doctor here. No, no, no, not at all. Not at all. I think you're absolutely correct because when we are not familiar with something, it feels scary and dangerous. And our mind cannot always differentiate between healthy and harmful or happy and sad. The only thing your mind can actually look for is, is this a threatening situation? And unfamiliar is threatening to our mind, right? So that's why sometimes good habits are so hard to build. It's because they're unfamiliar and your mind is like red alert, like, no, no, no, we don't do this. We don't do this at all. Like, let's just say safe and safe can be a harmful habit. That's a comfort zone for you. There's this really great quote that I love. And I put

it in the book as well. It's from Mary Estelle. It's from like literally the 17 or 1800s, but it goes something like we go on in vice because we are unacquainted with the joys of virtue. So I think like, that's the same thing is we are so as a society, we are so unacquainted with the joys of resting, having boundaries, having a clear definition of what enough feels like having intentions. Like we're just so unacquainted with that because the moment you start school, the moment you start school, it changes. People are telling you what you have to do, what you need to do, collect all the gold stars, be like the other kids, right? Here's all these 17 extracurriculars that you have to excel at. So like it just begins so early.

Do you think as well that there are personality types that are more prone to this type of over-committing and toxic productivity. For example, I would assume that people who have people-pleasing tendencies, who really want to be almost told that they're doing a good job or prove that they're doing a good job, may be more aligned with this type of overloading their life. Yeah. So there's definitely a couple of emotional dynamics that are running the show. So the need for external validation can look like people-pleasing, but it can also look like somebody who's a workaholic, right? So the foundation is external validation. The foundation is not really feeling a sense of belonging. So utilizing achievement as a, as a way to connect

with other people and realizing that when you are doing things, people love you. These are the three things that are happening in the background. And so this can show up as people pleasing as being a workaholic. Sometimes birth order can get into it, right? Like, because you might've been the eldest child, or sometimes the eldest daughter, a lot of parentification can happen. And so you feel responsible, and you tend to over function, which means doing everything for other people. But there's not like particular personality types. But there are definitely certain people who might skew a little more this direction, because of the way they were raised. So people pleasing, for example, is like a learned behavior, you learn very early that if I don't rock the boat,

my parents will be happy. If I don't say what I need, I don't stress out my mom or my dad. Like it can happen as early as like age one or two, where you learn safety because people pleasing is a safety mechanism, right? It's not helpful as an adult, but it can be when you're a child. And so it's really like this idea around toxic productivity is very much a learned behavior. Perfectionism and toxic productivity very much go hand in hand. I find that the perfectionism literature, the stuff I was reading, to me, it felt like the most in sync vehicle for toxic productivity. Like every aspect of perfectionism taps right into the mindset and our culture, our hustle culture, you know, late stage capitalism really hones in on it and glorifies it.

Perfectionism is one of those few emotional dysfunctions that are highly glorified and rewarded. Because at the end of the day, perfectionism is just anxiety, right? It is anxiety manifesting itself as a way to control things. You are so anxious about what the outcome could be, what somebody else might think of you, what a mistake might mean for you that things need to be perfect. It's just exercising control. And there's three forms of perfectionism, right? So there's one that I demand from myself. There's one that I demand from you. And there's one where I need you to see me as perfect. There's like three domains of perfectionism and all of them fit into toxic productivity. The more perfectionist you are, the more productive you're going to want to

be. I feel like there's someone in this room. In an unhealthy way. I'm feeling very pointed right now. This is a personal therapy session for Laura. Oh my gosh. I'm just out here attacking you since the moment I got on. I'm so sorry. But these are good things. This is a safe conversation. I think a lot of people can identify with this. And like we've covered, like a lot of women, I mean, I don't know whether it is just gendered, but I do think a lot of women, especially who are juggling households and also now in the world we live in juggling really successful businesses, they're often running households and also are the main income earners in their own homes as well.

Do you think that there is often a sense of, okay, well, I'll prioritize myself down the track. Like I'll, I'll finish this bit. I'll get through this thing. I'll earn X amount of money or I'll, you know, get this business set up to a place where it's stable. And then I'll focus on myself, my relationships, all these other things that we all know should be priorities in life. I don't think that people intentionally want to be on the hustle culture train for forever. It's almost just pushing their own

happiness down the road a little bit. And they think that they'll get to it when they can. Yeah, absolutely. I literally did it this morning. I was like, I'll go to the doctor after this book comes out. And so it's very easy to disregard yourself, unfortunately. It's very easy for everybody to disregard themselves, irrespective of gender. However, there is a very undue pressure on the modern woman today. Whether you are married or not, children or not, there is this dichotomy of needing to be very successful in the workplace, yet still maintaining some of that traditional domestic labor, which predominantly falls on women, right? And it doesn't even matter what culture you are like, this is across the board. And I think that's why you're seeing so

many high numbers of women not wanting to get married and have kids because one of the reasons they cite is that and I mean, I'm married. So like, there's pros and cons to both things. But I think the research is just showing that our society needs to change a little bit. But yeah, I do agree that there is like a little bit of like a gender divide in the way this manifests itself. The myth is that, oh, the next milestone is going to be it. That's the milestone I'm going to arrive at. But that actually doesn't happen because when we are in this like toxic productivity mindset, we don't actually stop to celebrate small achievements. we're not really looking at the small picture we're always looking at the big picture and so what happens is when you arrive at the finish line you're so unaccustomed to celebrating yourself that you're like no no there has to be something else like i have to like there's a new

goal that you will set so there is this like moving goal post like think about it yourself you might have said you know what once i hit x amount of revenue that's it i'm not going to do anything but when you hit that x amount of revenue another opportunity will present itself because now you've crossed a threshold of revenue. And then you're gonna be like, you know what, maybe I will do this, this one more thing. And then the same thing happens over and over and over again. It's because we don't learn how to celebrate small things. And I know it sounds so trite. And like, everybody says, like, celebrate your wins and whatever. And you see it on like quotes that you can put over your bed. But it's actually true. Like, this is a very true fact

that we need to learn how to practice gratitude without feeling like we are feeling ambitious. But I also think it's a generational thing. Even if it's unintentional, I think a lot of people don't have the choice not to hustle anymore. And that's just because of things like the cost of living. So I think that even if it's, you're not the perfectionist and the character traits that you said before, some people don't get the choice, but to have to hustle just to survive. Absolutely. I completely agree. And no, there's like a lot of great books that do talk about like rest and taking breaks as being privileges, which I'm super mindful of. And I mentioned this a little in my book as well, because like, my parents did not have this privilege. They're, you know, immigrants twice in two different countries, they did not have a choice at all. But what I think what I want people to take away from my work is that you might not be able to control all of your circumstances. but you can create small pockets of peace and joy in your day. And it doesn't have to look big. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to require money. It does require a shift of perspective.

So there are many people in this world who unfortunately do have to work multiple jobs just to literally keep the lights on, right? Inflation is increasing globally everywhere. However, that being said, how do we disconnect how good we feel about ourselves from our outcome? Like, yes, you have to work and make money. Absolutely. But who you are should not be contingent on that. How good you feel about yourself should not be contingent on that. Right. Because when that happens and people lose their jobs, like really bad outcomes can occur. like, and we saw this in the pandemic, right? Like a lot of people ended their lives because their livelihoods ended and it becomes too overwhelming. And I think that's what I want. I want people to have just like pockets of peace in their day. And that's why I'm a really big fan of micro habits. Like I'm never saying that someone should do something for 60 minutes.

So what do you mean by a micro habit? Let's expand on that a little bit. Yeah. So a micro habit is literally doing the smallest unit of behavior change that makes sense in your day to get an impact, right? So that can look like if you're a really busy person and you can't work out for 60 minutes a day, see if you can work out for 20 minutes and really give it your all. I used to do 90 second meditations in between meetings because obviously after that embarrassing incident, I was like on probation. So I was very stressed out. I was very stressed out and I was like just so in my head but the more stressed out I was the more the quality of my work was suffering like it wasn't making me a better worker I was just like in my head right

so I started doing like 90 second meditations in between meetings and what I tell you that it had the same impact as it does when I do like a 15 minute it was the same just regulating my body that's a micro habit a micro habit can be not opening your email while having breakfast small thing right how long do we have breakfast for on a weekday probably 10 minutes like that's how long I take to eat my yogurt bowl but I won't open Instagram I don't read the news and I won't read my email when I'm eating breakfast so these are just like very very small things like let's say you get home Laura and you know you have like a full evening with your kids and everything sit in your car for three minutes and just do like a doodling exercise and cry she does she

does that I mean sure you can yeah crying is a great regulator by the way I literally cried earlier today twice because TikTok just sometimes has the saddest videos of like I don't know like old people dancing or like siblings hugging each other when they're children and I'm just like crying but it's a great regulator apart from changing micro habits and and creating small behavioral changes. What are some other things that we can do? Because it really does feel like we live in a culture where the framework of that culture is built for us to constantly be productive. Yeah. Constantly be striving. And it's, it is really, really hard to go against what feels as though is the norm. If you're listening to this and you're like, okay,

maybe I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel, but there's no way I can do anything differently. My life is my life. I love my life. That's one of the things a lot of my clients say sometimes to me. They're like, well, I love my life. I love the way I live. Why would I change it? And that to me shows that there's a little bit of a disconnect between how you're feeling and how you view your life. Because you might be feeling miserable, but you're slogging through life because you're getting the outcomes that you want, but you're miserable all day. You're snappy with your partner or your friends, right? Your health is very poor. So I think one of the things that's really helpful, and this really helped me, especially

when you're trapped in this mindset that I have to do the things I'm doing, like I must, of course, like, why would I not do them is to genuinely sit down and be very honest with yourself. You could do it with a friend who you're very comfortable with, and they are somebody who will be honest with you and just reflect on, just reflect on the last three weeks of what you did. And for every single thing that you committed yourself to ask yourself, did I have to do this?

Right? why did I do this? And did I get the outcome I wanted? Like do this kind of audit of your time and energy spent because time and energy are like, they're kind of like finite resources. You can't, you don't have unending energy either, right? Unless you fill it up. So I think like doing an audit is really helpful because what I learned as somebody who was over-functioning, going out every single damn day, like this, this girl was going out seven days a week. It was ridiculous. Saying yes to absolutely everything without even having even a sliver of intention. When I did this audit and I really sat down, I created a chart and I wrote down, like, did I actually have to do this? Did I get the ROI I wanted? Like, what was I even hoping for doing this? I realized that there was a lot of stuff in there that I could have just said no to. like there was a lot of things that I felt compelled that I had to do that I really didn't

need to do and even as like a parent you can think about it and say like do I really need to put my kids in five different things because that's five things that I also have to commit to right as somebody who is dating you have to think about like do I really have to go out on unintentional dates seven nights a week like do I have to or can I have intentional dates but have like two a week right so I think it's like thinking through those type of things it's really important I think a really huge life shift for me was when I'm 37 and it probably happened in my early 30s was when I understood that the power of saying no to something that you don't want to do because so often when you say you used to go out seven nights a week I could think of nothing worse that gives

me anxiety but I used to do it and the guilt from saying no the guilt didn't come from letting my friends down because I don't think they could care less if I went. The guilt was on myself. I used to be like, what a loser. You can't spend your life inside with your dog. I used to convince myself that I had to live my best life. I had to always be socializing, but that's not how I fill my cup. And that is not me personally living my best life. So I think once you can start to be exactly what you just said, super intentional about what it is that you want in your life and what fills your cup, and then realizing that no doesn't have to be like a nasty, dirty word. we spoke about before what this productivity this toxic productivity can do to you physically in

terms of burnout and stress and we know the effects stress can have on the body but what does this have what effect does this have in a relationship when you are very disengaged from your values right that's what toxic productivity does like in your example you're going out and doing all these things but that's not what your values are you're just doing what you're doing right? What that does is it like creates a gap between how you show up and who you really are in relationships. So you might push productivity-based agendas on your partner or your friend, right? That you're just kind of forcing them to do things because you think you have to do them because they're so important to you. When we're trapped in this mindset, everything feels

mission critical, everything. So you become very critical of other people. You become critical of yourself. You can't tolerate mistakes. And all of that erodes trust in a relationship. Like if your partner or your child or your friend feels like they have to walk around on like eggshells around you because you don't take mistakes really well, or you demand perfection from them. And that can really erode a relationship. The other thing it also does is when you're physically stressed out, you can't be very emotionally present for another person. You're irritable, you're angry, you're disconnected honestly when people get super stressed out your sex life suffers like it has this it has this like ripple effect and i think the core of the problem is that we don't actually

pay attention to our emotions that's the crux of toxic productivity we have shame and guilt the fear of missing out or what you were just talking about brit like that inner voice telling you that you're bad you're a loser you're not doing things enough all of those things are emotional reactions. And because we can't regulate our emotions well, because none of us were taught it, we start doing, we start moving. And then we realize that productivity is a great coping skill. If I'm productive, I don't have to think about shame. If I'm going out, I'm not going to sit at home and call myself a loser, right? So then we're off to the races. It's very hard to stop that. How do people find that balance? I mean, Israel, you've even mentioned a few times that

for someone who studies it, has written a book all about it, that you're still someone who's guilty of the practices of deprioritizing yourself and, and prioritizing the things that maybe essentially aren't as important, but obviously it's like, they're screaming at you and you feel like you have to do them. How do we overcome this or can we overcome this? The reason I share like my struggle so candidly, which again, like people will be like, well, she hasn't figured it out. Like, why am I going to get her book? Yeah. What hope have I got? No, the reason I share it so candidly is because I don't want to create some like imaginary distance between me and other people where they have one more person to compare themselves to. Right. It's not like I'm like some world renowned expert like Esther Perel, but it's really becomes even harder when you're like, wow, that person has it figured out. I guess there's something wrong with me. The truth is we are a constant work in progress. There is no healed version of a human being. And

if anybody is peddling that message to you, they are trying to exploit you. There is no healed version because we are constantly growing. We are constantly evolving. We're constantly changing. The key is, can I bring a little bit more balance to my life than I was able to before? right so right now I'm in this and I'm struggling with it but six years ago I didn't even have the awareness like I couldn't even tell you that I was struggling right so this is huge progress for me and for me to be able to say no to opportunities for me to be able to say you know what this is a six-week sprint and after six weeks I'm done like I'm not doing anything I'm not even doing a book tour immediately my book tour is in like two months because I'm just taking the holiday season

off. And so that's growth. And so we are never getting to a place of completely overcoming these things that are A, so deeply ingrained in us, B, so rewarded in our culture, and C, might be circumstantial restraints. If I were to say to people, hey, you just have to heal your toxic productivity, then if your life doesn't afford that, you're going to feel bad. And it's just unrealistic. So the goal is to constantly check in with yourself. The goal is to choose a better habit every single time. If you can, the goal is to be gracious with yourself. When you do make mistakes, when you do fall to old habits, you know, of coping in an unhealthy way, the goal is to have awareness and make decisions with intention. And the truth is the more we practice

the stuff, the better we get at pushing it away. Do you think we ultimately just have our priorities a bit skewed up because of the way that this society is built, that we've put work, we've put achievements at the top of the pile, and then family and relationships and everything else kind of comes secondary? This is like an existential question. And I do genuinely believe that contemporary culture has kind of flipped what is important. And that's why you're seeing high rates of loneliness, like extraordinarily high rates of loneliness right now across the ages. I think a report came out last summer that young adults had the highest rates of loneliness. These are like high school kids where previously it was older post-retirement adults having higher

rates of loneliness. What has happened to our world where kids who see their friends every single day for eight hours are feeling lonely, right? That's why we have so many chronic illnesses. That's why we have so many poor maternal health outcomes because there's nobody to support these women who are having kids because everyone's living outside of their community, right? And this is like, I could rant about this forever. This is absolutely, I think that we don't,

you know what's the biggest thing we don't prioritize? Playfulness. Adults don't play anymore. And we don't have any kind of creativity or craft. And that's why I'm seeing this interesting U-turn, at least here in New York, of like old school hobby clubs opening up. People are joining knitting circles. I see people go to pottery groups together. People have, I mean, book clubs have been around forever. People are

joining like running clubs and pickleball clubs. Like people are really craving community and toxic productivity thrives in a lack of community. I think also it's a common misconception that busy equals productive. Talk us through why that is not the case. When we are busy, we are essentially just checking off things that are not thematically connected to your broader goal. So you're just like checking things off because you said yes to them, you had to do them, it came up for you. But it's not actually moving the needle closer to your broader goal. Busyness does not have a purpose. I feel like true healthy productivity has a broader purpose, right? And we can only know what our purpose is, if we sit down and make intentions and stuff. But I think sometimes you

have to be busy because you have a million things to do. But if you are feeling really worn out and run down, like again, like take a look at all the things that you are committing to. Another thing is being busy makes us feel like we've done something, right? So I can go through my checklist and I can be like, wow, I took off like 17 items. But the bulk of like the thing that I really had to do, let's say I had to write an article, that still remains. So there's that, yeah, right? Like there's that purposeful activity. That's literally my job. I haven't done it, but if I showed you my to-do list right now, there's like 17 things I'm like, do, do, do. And it also gives you like a really quick dopamine hit. And so that's why people like doing busy work because it makes you feel

good in your brain. But busyness does not have a purpose. That's the difference. israel i have enjoyed speaking to you about this so much and i know that there are not it doesn't just happen to people who are successful working women like i think all of us have traits of this or can be prone to it purely because of the type of society that we all function within now but i do honestly think that if you are an entrepreneurial woman or you are someone who is finding yourself on the hamster wheel these are all qualities that so many people relate to and i know that we do very much so but I have loved understanding this and also understanding that it doesn't necessarily come with all of the solutions because I think that that's something that

I've struggled with before is almost like the preaching of like well this is how you fix the problem and I'm never going to go from being someone who works four different jobs to being someone who sits out in the meadows and meditates like the cavity between is too great and too vast I don't think it has to be that extreme no I know but I kind of when we've had conversations before it's often like people who have all of the answers or who are doing all the practices because they've had this incredible burnout then pivot in life. Whereas I really appreciate speaking to someone who is still, they're still a part and parcel of the hustle culture train. They're just doing it a little bit differently. Yeah. You know, I think one of the most common

reactions I get to the topic or the title is, is this an anti-productivity book? Like, you know, why are you against productivity? Productivity begets progress. And what I say to people like, this is not an anti-productivity book. Like I want people to be productive. I want people to be ambitious. I'm not asking you to tap out of the race. What I'm saying is be more intentional about what race you're running and do it in a healthier way. So it's sustainable. So you can do it your whole life. Like, you know, the way I was living in my twenties and my early thirties, like there's no way I would have had the sustainability and the longevity and the way I see my work right now and the way I make habits at certain times in my life, like I know that I could

continue to do this for a very long time. The last thing I'll say is it seems like a lot of your listeners are entrepreneurs and stuff. What I'll say to them is that your wellness, both emotional and physical, is a line item on your budget. If you are not well, then your revenue is 100% going to suffer even if you have a team so your wellness is absolute business priority right and I think we have to start seeing our wellness as part of our productivity as opposed to something that's outside of it that will get to later and we'll earn rest afterwards because you know I worked with some entrepreneurs and some friends of mine who have thriving businesses and every single one of them has said that, you know, Oh, I had like this moment of burnout and then I got sick and,

you know, some, something happened to their, I think I shared that one of the stories in the book is like, like literally her, her shit, this like beautiful beauty brand and still very successful, but they had a huge dip in the middle because she was not well. Yeah. Right. And so she had to kind of like pick back up again. And so it's really important to think of yourself like that. Isra, thank you so much. We actually have a meditation booked in now, so we have to go. um oh yay i love that we don't we're joking we have another interview i wish we did but maybe future laura and brit will schedule a 30 second yes we'll do a 30 second meditation so thank you so much we're going to link all of your details and social medias and your new book

in our show notes thank you for coming on the podcast today thank you for having me this was so fun We'll be right back.