Life Uncut - When it's all too much - The Overwhelm

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Welcome to your big meaty episode Lifers.Today we are unpacking 'the overwhelm.'If you don't know what that is, we'll walk you through it but it's likely that you've felt it; particularly in the last few years.In this episode, we unpack how the consistent and relentless overhaul of news, information and expectations of us are leaving us feel overwhelmed and anxious ALL THE FUCKING TIME!We have Sam Koslowski from The Daily Aus join us to chat about:-emotional fatigue with news-compassion fatigue and desensitisation of what's happening around us &-the privilege debate with switching off.We also speak about how parenting and our work loads are contributing to our sense of feeling overwhelmed.We hope you feel less alone and like you're able to relieve a little bit of pressure off of yourself after this episode.Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your friend, tell your dog and share the love because we love love!!!xxxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode is recorded on Gadigal land of the Aurora Nation. Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany and this is our fifth attempt at an intro. This look today is not off to a flying start but it can only go onwards and upwards from here let me tell you that. Also I kind of feel like we've gone back

to 2021 because instead of us, Britt and I being together in the same room, gazing into each other's eyes, Britt is currently in Port Macquarie and we are recording this via Zoom, just like the old days. Yeah, it is very similar to 2021 in terms of, yep, it's long distance. That's where we're doing the record. We're in different locations, but that's where the similarities end, Laura. I am not overseas with a lover. No, I am in Port Macquarie. We're like, we can't even laugh about this. Well, we are. It's been a long, hard fall. I'm in Port Macquarie just for not even 48 hours, actually. I ducked up to see my family because my family's still in Port Macquarie. I hadn't seen my nieces and nephews in a little while. My sister Sherry decided to come down

from the Gold Coast, so we sort of met halfway. So very last minute with about four hours notice. It's probably the most spontaneous thing I've done in a while. Packed up a bag and threw Delilah in the back of the car and off we went up the coast. I have a story for you that will make you feel slightly better. Okay. This is good. We're getting back on track. Okay. So do you remember how we went to that women's day lunch recently and we were given a goodie bag? I mean, yes, we do very little. So I remember it well. It was about two weeks ago. So we were given a goodie bag at this women's day lunch. And one of the things that was in the goodie bag was a vibrator. There was so many nice things and now that we're living in this sexually inclusive world where you know women's

sexuality is being more celebrated part of the international women's day goodie bag was a vibrator now i have said on this podcast before i have never owned a vibrator this was news to me i was very excited oh my god you used it i was gonna give the girl a whirl yeah look i tried how does one try like what could have possibly gone wrong in the moment you opened it to activation. I was by myself. I got it out and I was like, it's too big. How does one use this? It's too fucking big. You tried to use it in the packaging. I tried to use the fucking case, everybody. Not the vibrator that's inside. I mean, to be fair, it looks pretty nice and it's soft and it's very smooth. So you tried to put the whole, like the whole casing inside you.

Look, I didn't get very far. I was like, Matt's just walked in. Matt's just walked in. He's heard. Do you want to join in on this conversation? I was going to say, this is not great for Matt. Goodness me, I could only dream of being this size. Laura, did it actually, how far in did it get?

Well, no, not very far at all. Where was I? What was I doing? I don't know. You're probably out in the couch. You had the kids. No, I just was like, I wonder, I wonder what that would. And then I was like, no, that's way too big. And it wasn't until I heard something rattling around inside that I realized

actually the vibrators inside the packaging and you shouldn't stick the whole packaging inside yourself. But did you not think that the key word here is vibrator? So how did you think that was to vibrate, Laura? I'm so confused. Look, there's a fatal flaw in this. I told you i had never used one before and i know that i don't know it seemed like a very penis shape the packaging is extremely penis shaped it's pink everything about matt's in the background holding it now matt's like i might go try this out can we get rid of it please it's making me feel very inadequate but wait when you look at what it actually when you look at what it actually looks like that should make you feel a little bit less inadequate still inadequate get rid of it he's

like still that thing's going in the bin i love that you did that and that you had no idea and And also you didn't put two and two together with the word vibrator and how you would press on when it's in its packaging. Well, I mean, look, I did realize pretty early on in the piece, I realized, but then I also figured out that it wasn't charged. You've got to charge this thing. It's got like a USB port and everything. It's got a USB port. Your girl's getting sexually explorative. I'm trying, but it didn't go to plan. You can do some work at the same time. You've got like a little SIM card in there. You can just pop it in, charge it up, do your work. you can multitask. But yeah, that was my little accidentally unfiltered story was that I really

tried. So what happened by the time you figured it out, you just gave up. You're like, fuck, I can't be bothered anymore. Like how long were you trying to figure this out for? Surprisingly, I wasn't that aroused anymore. I look, the moment had come, the moment had gone. And then I was like, this is really cutting into my ability to just go to sleep. So I might just do that instead. The moment had come and that was the only thing that came. Yeah. Yeah. Cute. Okay. Love that bit. Well, you're going to have to try again soon. You can't just give up because you couldn't figure it out okay my new thing though is it's like now that matt knows about it i'm gonna have to use this as a couple's tool you know i can't just be like sorry matt once again

i've had a good old time and didn't include you in it i mean you don't have to but sure why not why if especially if you haven't used it before why not ask him to use it there you go laura report back next week maybe we'll do that and then you've got some homework for the week i want to hear about uh your experiences next week i really considered whether to share this story or not and I was like, do I sacrifice my dignity for content? Do we have any left? That is the question. Let's move on. Let's just move on from my story. Like I said, let's talk about what the episode's about. Okay. So the episode that we're doing today is something that I think everybody in this current climate is experiencing to various degrees. And that is, we're talking about the overwhelm. Now

feelings of overwhelm can creep in, in many different areas of life. I know that as a mum, it is a conversation that I have literally on repeat with all of my friends who are mums how overwhelmed they feel from just the surmounting pressures not just around parenting but around work and then we're also unpacking what it is like at the moment in terms of the news and how the news is just this we're constantly being bombarded with like the urgency and the desperation and the dire straits of the world and how that's all contributing to this feeling of being wildly and incredibly overwhelmed. Yeah, I don't really know of anyone at the moment, like anyone in my life that I ever speak to that I say, hey, how are you? Every response is, oh, just so busy or so

stressed or I've got so much on or there is a lot of external sources at the moment that are causing a lot of people stress and exactly that, the word overwhelm. And just last week, I was at the dog park and I was talking to the other dog mums because that's what we do. I guess it's the equivalent of when you take your kids to the playground. We're talking to all the other dog mums and one of them just said I've turned the news off I can't watch it anymore it's too overwhelming she's like I don't want to know about it anymore every time I turn it on all I can hear is you know all these depressive things and I just thought to myself that is really really true but what's what's the answer is the answer to turn the news off is the answer to shut the world out

so Laura and I had a discussion about it and we thought this is a really great episode because everyone in our life everyone we know right now has the same feeling of stress and overwhelm so it's a really good one. And we speak to Sam from The Daily Oz. A lot of you might know The Daily Oz. If you don't, it's a really great Instagram site that presents the most important parts of the news every single day. We've been big fans of them for a long time. So the man behind the account, Sam, he actually joins us in the episode to really nut out what it is about the news that can be overwhelming and what we can do about it when we do feel like it's starting to become too much. Yeah, as well. And then unpacking, there's a few other parts of this, which I think are really

important because it's it's one thing for us to sit here and be like oh we're so overwhelmed by the news how about being the people who are in the news like life is very very hard for a lot of people at the moment and it's a privilege to be able to just turn the news off and not care about what's going on in the world so we do unpack that and then also touch on this idea of what is doom scrolling so like being perpetually bombarded by data being perpetually bombarded by content and what impact that has on our ability to, one, to be happy, but also what impact that has on our feelings of anxiety, on our feelings of stress, on our feelings of overwhelm and how all these things contribute and factor in together. Speaking of overwhelm, this is a nice little

segue into a story I want to tell you about, about a man in the US named Simon Jackson. Now, Simon Jackson lives in Seattle, which after some Googling is definitely in, I think, the top 10 most expensive cities to live in. Top 10, top 15. Don't quote me. We'll look it up. Well, Simon Jackson decided to really capitalize on the COVID situation and everyone emptying their offices and working from home situation. So his office decided to send everyone home like everyone else did. So his offices were empty. Now he decided, I see an opportunity here. I am going to stop paying rent in my ridiculously overpriced apartment in my ridiculously overpriced city. And I'm going to move into my office cubicle, not an office, an office cubicle and live rent free. So he packed

up his apartment and moved into his office. I'm envisaging one of these cube farms, like a literal open, an open plan office where you sit adjacent to somebody. How would you fit your stuff in? And also where did you even find this? This is on Ladbible. This is where all the hard hitting facts come from. It's a real lowbrow article, everybody. This is exactly right. It's one of these, like, you know, it's a big, it's picture a whole floor of an office that's all open and you just have those little cubicles so it's not glassed off there's no doors there's nothing it's just like that tiny screen like a divider that comes up to your nipples and then you've got your desk the moment the workday finishes most people are

careening out of the office let alone trying to pretend like you're leaving the office to then stay there and come back for the night time well he puts all these like his little office drawers he takes his clothes so that's his cupboard so he's put his put his clothes in his office drawers he's got a sleeping bag he just sleeps on the floor like it's a full camp set up in his office but he's like bingo I will just live for free there's no commute I can do my work but for some reason actually not for some reason it's just what our generation does he thought it would be a brilliant idea not to just move in but to tiktok the whole thing to document the whole thing and upload it to social media because our generation can't fart without recording it so that's what

done. It's generated 13 million views. So it's gone viral. If you were to do this and not tell anyone, you could probably get away with it for a very, very long time. The man's never going to be a spy. He's never going to be in the FBI. He moved in, he put it up, 13 million views. And of course, one of those views was his boss. So how long did he live in his own cubicle for? I don't think it was very long. I think it happened really quickly. And he got the sack. His boss called him It was like, bro, I've seen that you're living in the office because there are 13 million people who have seen that. You're fired.

So he kicked him out. Well, he's pretty much like you either move out and you can keep your job or you're fired. And the guy's like, well, I'm famous now on TikTok, so I quit. He described the stunt as a bit of a protest. This is his quote. It's a bit of a protest and it was aimed at drawing attention to the difficulty of affording an apartment in Seattle

on his current salary. So I guess, I don't know if that's what he set out to do because I don't think he thought he was going to go viral. I don't think he set out being like, yes, this TikTok of me moving into my office is going to make 13 million views. But I think once it did, he was like, you know what, let's capitalize on this and let's really say this is, I'm doing this because I can't afford, you're not paying me enough to live in this ridiculously expensive city.

I have had my staff before, we have an upstairs from the shop and it's got like a little bathroom. It's got a kitchen downstairs. I have had my staff let themselves into the shop after having a blinder of a night a belter in Sydney and go upstairs and sleep on the couch and then have a shower and get ready for work the next day and I never found out until somebody told me at a Christmas party that that's what they were doing I guess I don't really care oh my god that's so funny but I don't really care but at the same time imagine if somebody moved into your office space like they're living there where are they

sleeping where are they showering where are they eating their breakfast like what how do they manage to get through this, but also still keep a productive work-life balance. I would love to know where he's showering and cooking his food. Did he have a little camp stove? Did he bring some baked beans? Like how was that happening? But I guess he could afford to eat out now. He's not paying rent. Also using the office microwave. Well, okay. So he said, quote, they do not pay me enough to do both, i.e. work, live, commute. So a matter of protest, I'm going to live at my job and we'll see how long I can get away with this. So it turns out it wasn't very long. It was four days. He lived there for four days. And he became TikTok famous. But in four days, he kickstarted

his career. So he said now he's going to focus on his brand. So he is now a TikToker. He probably earns more money on TikTok than he's ever going to earn in his office. So I guess this worked out really well for him. I guess one of the parts of this, and like, as much as it's a funny story, the back end of it is actually kind of shit. Like nobody wants to work so hard to then still feel like at the end of the week that they can barely afford their rent and I think so many people even living in Sydney had those same feelings of like I work my ass off and then 90% of my income goes towards paying rent to live wherever it is that you've got to work and actually there is a report that's just come out the Demographia's international housing affordability of 2022 it came out in March

and it says that Sydney is the second most expensive city in the entire world to buy a house and basically if you go through this list it's got 20 different cities on the list Hong Kong's number one Sydney's number two but then almost every single Australian city like major city is on that list in the top 20s it's wild I mean like it's such a catch-22 because we are so privileged in Australia like we're such a great country in so many ways but fuck me we are so expensive it is so expensive to live and do you know the shock that I got when I moved because I'm a country girl from Port Macquarie but the shock I will never forget when I started to look for rentals when I first moved to Sydney and I put in my rental amount I think it was $300 a week

I remember typing $300 a week and this one place came up that sounded too good to be true it was like a five minute walk to the beach you'll be sharing the area with like three other people but they were all young working professionals you can move in next week everything was amazing then I was like brilliant I clicked on and started to go through the photos and I had a lot of like location photos and not a lot of anything else and then the fine print down the bottom it said what they were renting out was a tent in the backyard I'm not kidding but three hundred dollars a week fuck off yes and I nearly don't I thought it was a prank I was like I'm this is camera I'm on camera but they were renting out because obviously they couldn't even afford their

own rent and housing was so this was like it was in demand so they rented a tent it was like I mean it was a big tent. It was like, I think it had an extra room. It was a pretty big dome tent. Was it like share facilities of the kitchen and the internal bathroom? You've got like, here, come use our share facilities, the laundry and everything else. And if you want to watch TV, you can come sit on the lounge. But at nighttime, you've got to go back to your tent. I don't even know if you were allowed in, but it was like, no wonder there were no electricity bills or internet included. They were like, no bills. You don't need to pay anything. It's because there is no electricity. You live in a tent. So this, okay. But you know what? I actually

read this report and this is on boss hunting, but like I read the report and I guess at the start, I was like, oh, that's so overwhelming to know how expensive it is to live in Australia. But there's also something incredibly like satisfying in being validated. I think we all know how expensive rent is here. I think we all know how expensive it is to even try and remotely get into the housing market. Yeah. Too much avocado on toast. I think it's almost unfair. I think that there is this expectation or this like assumption that our generation is spending all our money on frivolous things but I think that our generation we almost can't get ahead to buy the house you know what I mean like buying the house is so far in the future it's such an unachievable goal for

so many people that we're not motivated to save for it because even if you saved for 30 years you might not even still be able to pay off the house totally but this is what the report says it says Sydney's medium house price is 15 times more than the average household income and it's only beaten by Hong Kong, which is 23 times the collective annual take home. It is freaking wild. But yeah, look, I mean, as we said, it is an incredibly expensive place to live, but it's also an incredibly privileged place to live as well. Okay. Well, enough about the depressing talk about how no one can afford anything except an avocado. Speaking of the overwhelm, what a perfect segue into that topic. But first, before we get into talking about the overwhelm, we have our

favorite part of every episode and that is accidentally unfiltered all right brit you can kick it off with accidentally unfiltered uniro numero one okay guys i work full-time from home and have 2.5 year old twins as you can imagine my days can be somewhat chaotic well this morning i was super busy with work and i was trying to get my kids organized for a nap when i had a missed call from a very very important client i had decided to call him straight back because you know hashtag multitasking his phone went to voicemail so I hung up I was talking with my babysitter saying oh no answer it's okay I don't like him anyway oh it smells like poo in here which one of you guys did a poo oh now I need to do a week can you hold the baby I'll be back in a

second god knows what else I said just as I went to put my phone on the table to my shock I had been recording a 25 second voicemail the entire time telling this very important client how much I didn't like him I almost died I called him straight back and said I am so sorry I just accidentally left you a voicemail talking to my kids please don't listen and delete it and we can continue the conversation now oh do you know though I don't think I don't think people listen to voicemail I do yes I never listen to voicemail messages never maybe her saving grace is that she called him so quickly back that he was like well there's no point in listening to it but I definitely listen to my voice messages no because my voicemail message it usually like predicts

someone to text and it's like you know the person that you've missed a call from so then I just call them back I never ever ever go in and listen to recorded voicemail messages well that's worse Laura because that means well that means it turned her message into a text and sent it to him that is not a better option I don't like him and it smells like poo in here I don't like that either I don't like him at all that's what she said I don't like him at all can you imagine if I was a client I was just about to drop some money actually do you know what's funny Laura I don't know if you know this this has happened to us before on the life fun cut oh god what have you done we had a client it wasn't me it was one of the clients we had a client and I'm never gonna

say who and I don't know maybe I'll listen and know but I don't know they were talking to us there was an email chain. Initially, they reached out about working together, maybe doing some advertising, what that would look like. And initial, you know, so I wrote back, very professional, wrote back my, you know, response. And I was like, we'd absolutely love to. Here's our media deck, anything you need to know. Then this person, oh, I feel awkward about this already. Do we want this on the podcast? Well, they, it was not too bad, but they obviously thought they were forwarding the email to their boss and the rest of their colleagues to see if they thought it was a good idea but I was still on the email chain and it was like a shit fire I didn't know what to do

they messaged them and they were like hey guys just looping back in with the life uncut podcast again I know we discussed them last year but we didn't go ahead they can be pretty funny this is what they said they can sometimes be pretty funny do you guys want to jump on board with them this time and I was like I need this to stop now before something happens I was like I don't want to please abort mission I don't want to know what else you think of me I wrote back what do you mean sometimes no I didn't I just wrote back really quickly and I was like no sorry I went right back and as I did someone's obviously highlighted because there's about five people on this chat someone's highlighted to the person they figured out that I'm still in the chat so they started to

write back to each other really positively about us and then they were like and then they included me again they're like oh Brittany we'll have this discussion and get back to you so someone's realized anyway they never sponsored us man this this just makes me feel so uncomfortable i'm sure this has happened to so many people where they've been accidentally included on an email i'll never forget when i was a kid and well i wasn't a kid i was in my 20s that makes that makes me feel like a kid it was like a day ago it was it was actually last week a girlfriend of mine sent a group facebook message she meant to just reply to one person but she wrote back to the entire group and called somebody else in the group a lot of very colorful names and i was just reading these

messages coming through like does she realize that she's sending this directly to our friend anyway if you can get through a lifetime without this happening to you you're better people than we are okay well i have an accidentally unfiltered story which it kind of goes off my story that i told earlier about like having the an incorrect usage for a certain product and this is also bad because she was quite old from the age of 18 this is also like your vibrator experience from the age of 18 to 21 i was using tampons incorrectly so basically from the time that she started using tampons she was not using them correctly very very incorrectly as embarrassing as this is to admit i would put the tampon in sideways think like a hot dog style with my labia as the bums of the tampon

over the hot dog it was only when my boyfriend caught me wedging it in that he taught me the correct way to insert a tampon emphasis on insert not sliding it in sideways so embarrassing it would always lick I would never understand why girls were always saying that tampons were better than pads and it's taught me a very important life lesson about never skipping the instruction manual could you imagine let me get this right so when she wedged it in like a hot dog if you sit between the labia that means it wasn't even inside of her it was like it was loose in between on the outside she was putting it in long ways yeah but inside or just or just on the bottom like a plug no I think she was like tucking it inside her labia but doing it long ways not obviously vertical

like she was putting it in landscape instead of putting it in portrait that's why it was leaking it wasn't even in there how can you even walk around with that no it wasn't oh my god that's so funny it was like that was the most perfect description it was a it was the hot dog in a bun that's how she was do you know though this reminds me so much so my sister growing up always thought and we're talking about this the other day that's why I read when I read this I was like there has to be other people out there who have definitely used tampons or thought that they were used in a different way my sister thought that when you took the wrapper off them that they unfolded into a pad oh she just thought that they were wrapped up really tight into a

tampon but she didn't understand that you actually inserted it she thought it must have just been a pad that expanded once you open the packaging so did she used to unravel it oh you never asked like pulling the insides out no I think by the time she got her period she figured it out purely because she was forced to but uh no there was a very long period of time there where she thought that tampons were actually just big vacuum sealed pads so anyway that is enough of that let's get into the chat about overwhelm okay so for pretty obvious reasons we wanted to do an episode on talking about the overwhelm because I don't know about you. Actually, I do know about you, Brittany. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I think that this is

just such a common state at the moment. The amount of people just subjectively that I'm friends with who are feeling incredibly overwhelmed, but also it just, it seems to pop up so much in conversation. And I think that we've actually become accepting of it. Like it's normal to just be perpetually overwhelmed when we were unpacking this and thinking about like okay obviously it's a state that so many of us feel at the moment I was thinking what is my like how do I feel about the overwhelm like how do I feel when I'm in this constant state of like things are a little bit too much and you know that meme that's going around at the moment and it's the girl who says I do not have time for this. I do not have time for you. I do not have time for this. I do not have time

for you. That is me. That is how I feel when I'm in a state of just being a fucking overwhelmed. I just want to push everything and everybody away and try and get through the to-do list. But sometimes I think you have to have a bit more introspection and like realize actually it's not what everybody else is doing to you or for you. It's your inability to set good boundaries. That's probably the real problem here. And now overwhelm is a little bit different to say burnout, because I think that like when you get to a point of being burnt out, you can usually identify that that's what's happening. And it's usually got a bit of a cause and effect. But I think the reason why overwhelm can really creep in is because it doesn't necessarily have an end to it. It's just

this feeling that is so compounding by all the small things that are happening in life and makes you feel very much like your life is completely out of control, but also that you don't have enough time or you don't have the ability to manage everything that's going on around you in a healthy way. I think an easy way to think about the difference with those two, Laura, is when you think of burnout, we can recognize it because usually you're like, I am exhausted. I am cooked. I am done. I'm packing up shop. I'm zipping my tent up and I am going to just take some time out. But the difference with overwhelm is that it's like burnout, but with an added layer. So it's burnout, but you add a mental layer. So instead of just feeling like physically run down,

it's this emotional toll that it takes on you simultaneously, which is why I think it's so much worse because you can feel overwhelmed without physically feeling burnt out. So I think this is a really good way to differentiate the two as well. But I also think with that, like it can creep up. That's the thing with feeling overwhelmed. It's the relentlessness of it, the relentlessness of the everyday. And one of the reasons why we first thought we wanted to talk about this topic is purely because of how overwhelming the news cycle has been recently. And like with everything that's been happening in Ukraine, off the back of everything that's been happening with COVID, and then there's fucking Japanese encephalitis is here. It just

feels like there's always something that is so urgent and pressing and scary. And that can be incredibly overwhelming. Now, the news is one part of this and I think it's one part that we really wanted to recognize. However, I don't think that it's necessarily the main part or the only part. I think that we every single day are exposed to so many stresses and there is this incredible data overwhelm that we experience as well where we are constantly on our phones, we are constantly being bombarded with emails or text messages or Instagram updates and even when we're not being actively bombarded by it. We're passively being bombarded by it, by simply consuming content. Now I did a little bit of a deep dive. This is what I came up with. There is 333.5 billion emails

sent every single day. 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram every day. And there are over 200 million business profiles using Instagram every day, which just means when you think about 200 million business profiles, that just lends itself to the amount of advertising and marketing that we're being exposed to constantly. And there is no respite from that. So just a few days ago, actually, this is funny that you say that. I had somebody email me that said, hi, Brittany, just following up because I haven't, I sent you an email two days ago and I haven't heard from you yet. I think maybe my emails are going to junk. That's what they said. And I wrote back and I said, oh, hi, look, in complete transparency, I have 7,221 unread

emails. I don't think it's in the junk. I probably just have, I was like, I just haven't got to it yet or it's been lost. I was just really honest. I was like, like it's, I mean, maybe if it was seven weeks ago, I was like, I probably just haven't got it yet. I was like, do you want to just resend it to me? It wasn't in my junk. I just have 7,000 emails. And this has happened to me before. Okay. That may lend itself to like your level of organization. I feel like that that is an excessive amount of emails, but don't you think it's interesting though? And we do like, I think that most people experience this especially when it comes to emails you might have a plan for your day like you might have a to-do list you might have some organization that makes you feel

like you've got some structure around what you need to achieve in a day then you open your emails and your emails are literally when you think about it they are somebody else dictating your to-do list for the day that is somebody else who's decided that their priorities need to be your priorities and they need to be done on their schedule and we've created this culture where it's like people expect to get a reply to an email within 24 hours and if you're already overwhelmed if you're already in this state of like fuck there is not enough hours in the day for me to be able to get through the entire mental load that I'm carrying that adds to those feelings of I can't do anything well. Yeah and it's these day-to-day things that creep up on us and we're going to get

into it in a second as well Laura with other external sources like having children trying to get them to preschool so you can go and start your workday. So you can even open your emails with your 7,000 unread emails. Everything in life at the moment with the news on top of that is contributing to this feeling of a lot of people feeling overwhelmed. And I had a look at the level of stress out of interest in the U.S. at the moment. And I picked the U.S. because it's such a large population. But nearly half of the U.S. adults say that stress has negatively affected their behavior last year. So that was last year. And statistics aren't out this year. It's early into the year. So 50% of people now are feeling like what's happening in their life is not only

overwhelming, but then has a negative impact on them. Yeah. And I guess like the big thing with this, like, and in terms of like talking about overwhelm as a feeling, when we talk about, I think there's lots of different feelings in terms that get thrown around, like stress, anxiety, burnout. We talk about these concepts a lot, but in terms of overwhelm, I think it is the relentlessness that really plays a massive part in this conversation. And it's the feeling that there is no end in sight that makes people feel incredibly overwhelmed. I think before we go any further to unpack, there's actually some real physiological triggers and some real physiological reactions that your body can have and that you have when you are incredibly

overwhelmed. When you're at a point of just total saturation, your brain can't physically take on any more tasks or do any more. There's a feeling of complete brain fog where you feel forgetful and you don't feel like you're across all the tasks that you have to have. You can also have visceral physical reactions to this where you might feel sick. You might feel like internally anxious. It might affect your sleep or your ability to, I mean, we all know what that's like where you're lying in bed at nighttime and you're thinking, oh fuck, I have to do my tax or thinking about the massive to-do list. And so instead of just going to sleep and getting some productive time, you might even get up and go and answer the emails or answer whatever it is that's

stopping you from being able to sleep. It's feeling like there's so many things to fit into a day and there's just physically not enough hours or you can't possibly take on anything else to care about. And it also makes you, if you're in this state of overwhelm, it also makes you really quick to be frustrated with people. I think I know personally, whenever I'm at that capacity, if somebody is taking too long or if they're doing something which is going to impact my time and my day, my reaction to that, like my feelings of frustration and annoyance are a lot more severe than what they should be because all I'm thinking is like how am I going to get through everything else I've still got to do today. It's interesting Laura because this is something

that's been going on for a long time but Harvard researchers have actually come up with a name that has to do with COVID and the pandemic and lockdowns they've called it pandemic brain now this is from Harvard so you've got to believe it it's called pandemic brain and it's a phenomenon unreserved in people that have come out of this extensive lockdown where stress-induced neuroinflammation can actually be seen on the brain and it's caused fatigue and loss of concentration and mood changes. So people now that are going through this and experiencing it, I think that it helps a little bit to be able to tie it to, oh, okay, this is actually something that there's a reason I'm feeling like this and maybe I can start to work towards it. We're going

to talk about things later on that you can do when you are feeling like this. But for me, my response and I often go through periods of overwhelm but I think a couple of days ago Laura you are going to remember this but I think this is a prime example of what happens to me when I'm very overwhelmed and I'm feeling high levels of stress and emotions and everything else I my emotions are like I cry at the drop of a hat where I'm not usually crying I've talked about this in the past but it was last week Laura and Mitch and Keisha so all of our radio crew they were encouraging me to get back into the dating scene and they were like hey why don't you download some of the dating apps and get back on there and I just within two seconds in front of

everyone I started crying I was crying at the thought of going back on to a dating app but that was tied to the feeling of overwhelm because there was so much stress and pressure in my life that I can't even fathom right now how I'm feeling getting back into the dating life and the feeling of how do I have time? I remember thinking to myself, I don't even, whether I'm emotionally ready right now, I don't even, I was like, how do I find the time to sit there, create a profile, start scrolling, starting from scratch again, going on these initial dates. I was like, then you go on a date and it doesn't work out and you've wasted that time that I could be doing something else. And I got myself into this, such a head spin and everyone, you all just looked at me. You were

like, whoa, it's okay. We just, we just said, why don't you download nap? And I started crying and I was like, what is wrong with me? But I guess it's because when you're in that stage and when you're already overwhelmed you're not thinking about the one thing that's been proposed you're not thinking about oh okay well it's just it's just downloading an app and going for a flick you're thinking about all the other aspects of that you're thinking about well what does then that mean and then how does that lead into the next thing so you're actually looking at like the really big picture and I think it's the big fucking picture that becomes so overwhelming the other part of this which is so important to touch on and it's really like in everything that

I deep dived in conversations around overwhelm. It was the one thing that kept coming back as being just so prevalent throughout all the research and that is parenting. And I think for anyone who is a mom or if we have dads listening as well, the relentlessness of parenting is a huge contributing factor to people feeling overwhelmed. And I think one of the big reasons for that is because there's no switching off. Of course you have to be grateful and we feel so grateful and it's almost like any time as a parent you complain about being a parent you also then have to have the caveat of like oh but I really love my kids of course you fucking love your kids we all love our kids but the feeling that you are on from the minute that you wake up

until the minute you go to bed and the fact that you also don't necessarily have control over your day because like well what if they get sick or what if all of a sudden daycare calls and you've got to go pick them up and you know the schedule gets thrown out of whack because these tiny little people are so wild and uncontrollable and dependent yeah and just when you think you've got things down pat and just when you think you might have some plan or some structure that makes you feel in control of your life shit just goes out the window again and so I think a big portion of this conversation around overwhelm actually comes down to control and how we feel like we have such a huge lack of control in our lives and then that and the lack of control and

the lack of being able to do anything is also why the news is such a huge part of this because with everything that's going on in the news at the moment we feel like we can't do anything we feel like we can't help and it's that it's the hopelessness it's the helplessness that's incredibly overwhelming yeah and look we're going to get into our chat with sam from the daily oz pretty soon and in that i talk a little bit about something that i personally do and i can't really stop myself from doing it and that is something that is called doom scrolling it's this idea that you don't get pleasure from reading about horrible things at all because I absolutely do not but I'm just so obsessed with knowing what is happening in the world that I can't stop and then I get into

this rabbit warren so some people can read the news on a surface level something so for example it could be something horrific like what's happening in Ukraine right now they read on a surface level and they get what they need and they can stop but there are a bunch of people myself included that need to know more and it's so upsetting and the further I go and the more I read the more stress I'm getting the more upset I'm getting I'm just addicted and I can't stop and it's it's detrimental in hindsight because then I'm you know screwed for the rest of the day but don't you think it comes down to us and not that it's all obviously there's lots of loads of really bad things that are happening but like the headlines are so they're so dramatic it's so

sensationalized it's so urgent and every time you get on and you do read the news or you see certain news sources I think it's the like the crazy urgency of just how dire straits everything is and we're so negatively geared it's a psychological defense mechanism we're so in tune with reading negative news and we want to read negative news because kind of like helps us cope in a weird way where we're like well now that we know what's happening we feel like we have some protection to it why don't we seek out positive news in the same way or why does positive news, not get clicks on websites, but negative news does. Well, so most of the time I would agree with you that in life in general, news headlines are sensationalized and dramatic. At the moment,

I disagree. I think that unfortunately, at the moment, they're not sensationalized. A lot of the headings are what they are and you click into it and the article is actually worse than the heading. But that is because of what the world's going through at the moment is, you know, something we haven't been through in a very long time. But I was talking about this with my family last night. we had a big debate around the dinner table and I really loved that. And I hope that this conversation today ignites other conversations. But unfortunately, because I follow, I don't know if you follow them, Laura, but you guys, if you follow me on Instagram, you might see I post them to my stories a lot of the time. They're called Good News Movement. It's purely just an Instagram

site that posts really fucking good things, like really happy things, really positive things, really cute things. They're amazing. And it makes you feel so good. Like I'll watch it and I feel so happy that I want to share it with other people but there have been plenty of these sites that have said yeah look we don't get the clicks that the doomsday news gets we definitely don't but it's not about that it's just about providing people with a bit of an outlet so we're going to talk about coping mechanisms at the end but right now in this moment I can tell you that that is something really really great that I do myself to try and balance what we just said about reading this perpetual wave of really traumatic news yeah I fully agree with you the only thing that I think

in terms of like the news cycle. And when I say that it's sensationalized, I don't mean that there's not horrendous and hideous things that are happening in the news. I guess it's also the unrelenting nature. Like there is a new news article. It's not just one publication that covers one bad thing. It's everywhere that that's why there has to be some choices about dipping in and dipping out. And now we do cover this with Sam and it's really important. We think it is absolutely critical that we all are linked into the news, that we all know what's happening in the world that we take some level of responsibility, but it's also important to take care of yourself at the same time. Okay. Well, I want to get into the chat now with Sam from The Daily Oz. So if

you don't know what The Daily Oz is, it's an Instagram page. It's also now a newsletter, a website and a podcast, but it offers young Australians and around the world now, but it's Australian based, a digestible and super engaging way for them to consume news. Now, Sam tells us, So it's run by Sam and Zara. They tell us that the reason they started this Instagram page at the start was for this exact reason. They were like, there was no way to consume the news in a really concise and precise manner. There were hundreds of articles on everything.

It was all, is this true? Is this factual? Is this too much? I've had enough of reading this. It's too traumatic. They saw an opening to say, hey, young people want to stay up to date, but they don't want this perpetual feeling of being dragged down and this perpetual feeling of overwhelm. Now their Instagram grew very rapidly. They have over 330,000 followers now. And I actually got on

board with them quite early on because for that exact reason, I was young and I was like, I want to know what's happening in the world. I want it really quick. I want it in one place that I know I can go to and I can trust that what I'm consuming is factual because that is something else we need to speak about. How do we know what we're consuming is even factual? There's so much misinformation out there so when we decided to talk about this we thought what a brilliant person to get on the podcast to talk about the feeling of being overwhelmed by things like the news than someone that literally spends all day every day all night consuming news around the world so we've got sam on sam welcome to life uncut thanks for having me guys sam i want to

hit you with hard questions first we're stoked to have you here but with a name sam kozlowski Does anyone ever think you're related to Monsters, Inc.? All the time, and I'm going to give you one guess in my dad's name. Literally one guess, and if you get it, you win $100 million. I do need $100 million. Mike Kozlowski. It is Mike Kozlowski. Is it?

It is. Shut up. He's a lot better looking than the Monsters, Inc. character. That's good for him. We're glad. But, no, going through school with that last name, and especially with my dad with first name Mike, it was a real honour, and I'm now no longer scared of monsters.

Or truly character building, one of the two. I was Sam Kay at school as they used to call me. So Sam, a lot of people might know you, not necessarily you, but they might know your podcast and your news site, your Instagram. You are one half of the Daily Oz. Now you might forget, but you slid into my DMs when you started and you asked me to help promote your site. And now I feel like I need to ask you to promote mine because you've overtaken me. You're so big. The Daily Oz is so incredible. It's definitely my go-to news site. Just give us a little bit of a background on you and how you got there and how the Daily Oz came to be? Firstly, Britt, we'd love to help you

out. So just shout me out. So the Daily Oz is basically our way of trying to make the news accessible on Instagram because the news is very complicated. It's very scary. And there's actually not a real way for you to engage with the news if you haven't grown up with it and you don't have some degree in economics or politics. And we didn't think that was okay. And we didn't think that you should be able to not have access for free, especially to news that really, really matters. And the best way to talk to people is where they're already at. So if, you know, if everyone was still sticking around on Facebook, that's where we would have done the daily Oz, but people, our friends, our mates were on Instagram and that's where we wanted to do it.

So when I think when we slid into your DMs, our whole point at that stage of our journey was like, we need to get this as far and wide as we can because everyone who follows us loves it. We just need to have people get to know us. And now we've got 330,000. How many people do you have engaging with your website or engaging, not just through Instagram, but do you know how many people you're having like on a monthly overview, engaging with the news that you guys are creating? Between Instagram, newsletter, podcast, video, we have like almost 3 million people a month. Insane. And that growth happens so quickly. And I guess that shows you how much need there was in the world. Because I remember when I didn't know you and obviously it was used to you trying

to get the daily oils out to people. I remember you saying, can you please help us get to 100,000 followers. And then you blinked an eye and you're at over 300,000. So it goes to show you where we all are in the world. And I know for me, I'm an avid newsreader, but I would wake up every morning and I would scroll every news site. And I was, even as a teenager, I used to, I was a bit of a sicko. I loved the bad news, but I don't know why, but I've always wanted one place. And that's why when I saw your site, I was like, this is fucking brilliant. It's like, and this is why it's grown so quickly because everything you could possibly want is in two scrolls. And you know, what's weird It's that it wasn't done before.

Like it doesn't seem to be that complicated of an idea. We really just go, okay, there's a thousand words on this topic. What are the hundred words that somebody needs to know if they've got three minutes? And I'm a bit surprised that it hasn't been done more, but we seem to be doing really well. And I think it shows that young people actually give a shit. Young people aren't dumb.

And that's really important for us to remember. But it also reinforces this idea that like we want short and sharp content. You know, like the new generation have been conditioned in a way that the content that we're consuming is X amount of words. And I wouldn't say that it's an overall attention span thing, but like we consume a lot more content in a very short period of time. Now, the topic that we're talking about and this whole episode is focused around overwhelm. Feeling overwhelmed comes in many, many different ways. And I read something that you said recently, you said, I usually browse perhaps 20 or 30 news sites and I spend literally

all day on Twitter. I am never not keeping an eye on what's trending, breaking or being debated. When you run a news platform that primarily uses Instagram as a media channel, can you ever actually switch off from that? Totally never. And that frustrates my girlfriend and it frustrates the people around me. And the way that I view it is that I just need to be the front line to make everyone else be able to switch off. And I'm kind of happy to do that for a few years. And Zara and I really, honestly, I know that sounds kind of like we're masters, but we really are happy to be kind of the people who filter through what you need because it's not for everyone, but it is almost impossible because you don't know when something's going to change

so quickly. I mean, like even if we prepare a whole piece the next day, the whole situation could be totally different and that's news. So how does that work for you then? Do you have 20 news sites? You've said 20 to 30. Do you have alerts on for those sites? Or do you just have to consciously yourself every hour log on scroll have a read see what's relevant well now we have a phenomenal team of journalists so now it's a lot easier no need to brag you've got a huge team okay we get it look the media empire is growing um and it's not just Zara and I now having to cover everything but we still funnily enough we still literally just sit there like I'll go home and watch an hour of news before bed even though I pretty much know what they're going to

say does it become overwhelming like I mean for somebody who doesn't have that option who can't just switch off and be like, cool, I'm going to have a social media detox cleanse this weekend. How do you deal with those feelings? And is that something that you have experienced in the last couple of years? I think there's kind of two different elements here that are playing around. There's the feeling of overwhelm and there's a feeling of desensitized. And desensitized is that sense of like you read something really, really terrible that's happened and you don't really feel anything. And you feel a sense of kind of, oh, well, I've almost read something worse. You were saying when you used to read the news like you were chasing the morbid stuff it means that we

kind of build this catalog in our head of what's the most morbid thing we've ever read in like news theory a lot of people use 9-11 as their like reference point and so if something isn't as dramatic as 9-11 then well it's kind of just you know it's only a flood it's only a hurricane it's only a double murder all of that kind of stuff which is wild super wild to the overwhelm point totally totally and we see big dips in our engagement when things get too much and so one of the posts I'm the most proud of ever is when we as a news company said, Hey, audience of 200,000 or whatever it was at the time, we think you should take the weekend off. We think you should say enough news for now. We'll let you know if there's anything super important, but you need

to take some steps back because it's too much. And I think we're in that spot right now, actually, like there is a lot happening. Well, cause at the end of the day, if it's not something like 9-11, I know there is a lot going on in the world. If at the end of the day, the same news is still going to be there in two days. I think a lot of us in the world are desensitized now. And I'm going to use the example of the word terrorism. Terrorism back at 9-11, back in those days, it stopped the world. Every single person knew about it. Everyone was petrified. And that's the word terrorism comes from. It incites terror. I don't know if this is just me now, but it's almost like now I hear of a terrorist attack and it just doesn't have the same effect. It doesn't

really stop people in their tracks anymore. You sort of like, oh my God, this happened. It's horrific, but it doesn't have the same impact that it once did. And that's because I think we're desensitized. There's so much of it. It's so available. And that's the point. It's too much of it. So it's a 24 hour news cycle. When 9-11 happened, that was the first world event where there was like rolling coverage. And that was the first world event where people actually sat in front of a television. I was six. And I remember turning on ABC News when it was meant to be ABC for kids before school and sitting there for two hours before my parents realized I was there watching this thing. And now everything has rolling coverage. I mean, like I saw a thing

that beginning of COVID, CNN were doing like a case toll in the bottom right-hand corner, which was like ticking over as the cases were accumulating. For COVID? For COVID. Like that's a wild kind of sense of momentum that you feel. Wild. I was going to say that is like, that's the word, you know, we talk about you using the example of terrorism, but I think like the more like recent one is the word COVID at the beginning, we were too petrified to leave the house. And now we're like, ah, no one even looks at the daily tolls

anymore or where it's at in. And I feel like the other part that you touched on there in talking about being desensitized, do you think that there's different parts to it in that? I guess like we're desensitized to like the volume or the facts almost, but I don't think that we're desensitized to the humanizing stories. And it's almost like sometimes the news cycle or the media has to like really find those harrowing individual stories and that's where the empathy cuts through that's where it really hits you at home and I think about what's happening in Ukraine at the moment and it's all been a lot of information but the one story that's cut through was the bombing of the maternity ward and the woman and the baby who died and it was that singular story

I think that's what's really cut through everybody's empathy fatigue and feelings of like oh that's happening but you know I can't do anything about it and now there is universal outrage around it. And let's like break that down and think about why that's the case. It's because we're all human beings and our psychology means that we relate to people. We don't relate to stories as much or situations. We relate to other human beings. And, you know, there's lots of things that come into this, but human stories are, you know, the most successful posts that we had and by successful, I mean traffic, not successful as in positive, but the most successful posts we had during COVID was stories of how hard it was for nurses. And it was quotes from nurses. And

that kind of thing meant so much more to our audience than just, you know, some big policy announcement or some definition of what a close contact was and all that kind of stuff. It's news is people's lives. We're reporting on real human beings there. I was having a conversation with my sister just a couple of days ago, and I sent a podcast to her to listen to on what's happening in Ukraine right now. And I said, isn't it crazy that we're all given the facts we read the news we know what's happening but I listened to the New York Times has the daily I listened to that and they were actually interviewing people from Ukraine that were living in the subways that were trying to get over the border and the second I heard their voice

from living in that situation I was in tears and I said to Sheridan all of a sudden it's like you know what's happening and you feel sorry for them but when you hear someone's story and I think we found the same thing with the floods here in Australia the second you hear someone's real their real plight, their real story, their sacrifice, what they're going through. It intensified that for me 100 times over. We are incredibly privileged that we are able to turn the news off when we are overwhelmed. What are your perspectives on this, on the debate of the privilege that we have to be able to turn off the news and to be able to disassociate with something that makes us feel uncomfortable? It's both fair and not fair to say I'm too

overwhelmed with the news right now in Sydney, Australia, or wherever you are in the country, and I just need it to go away. It's fair from the perspective of it should never be a matter of somebody's got it worse over there. And we have really serious problems in our own lives. And whether that be mental health or financial struggles or, you know, existential questions about climate that we're thinking about that day, that doesn't invalidate your problems. The fact that you need to take a step back from a seriously demanding new cycle. And I'm not just talking about like i've been doing this for quite a while now this is a particularly shit time like this is like worst of the worst at the moment so it's no surprise at all that people want to switch

off on the other hand putting your head in the sand and not thinking about the things that's happening in the world around you can also be a sense of ignorance we know there's a very thin line between privilege and ignorance and and all that kind of thing i think a lot of people are switching off at the moment with ukraine in particular because they feel helpless and that sense of like even with the floods there was a sense still that although we couldn't do anything there and then for the people whose houses were in danger we could donate money and we could kind of activate on social media and and we could put pressure on government the ukraine situation feels totally out of control and yes you can donate money and all that kind of thing but it feels so

damn huge that i'm not surprised that people are switching off i think the important thing for people who are feeling overwhelmed by the news and are having this battle about privilege is to think of it as a scale you don't need to read the news 16 times a day you can check in once a day with the news and be okay with the fact that that update's going to last you 24 hours so if we approach this privilege debate as like a bit more of not just black and white but like somewhere in the middle and honestly that's what we're trying to do at the daily oz is like if you're trying to read only five minutes a day of news let us help you with that but it doesn't need to be switching on or switching off. It can be somewhere in the middle. And I think that's a really good point

to make is that I think there is a balance between the privilege of switching off and staying up to date. But I think what it is, is you can choose the level. So maybe you say today, I'm not going to worry about COVID. I'm going to deal with that next week. I'll just find out what's happening in the Ukraine or vice versa. Or for a prime example is if you guys are feeling overwhelmed by the news, but you do want to stay up to date because you do care. sites like yours are so great because you can read a headline. You can get some facts. You don't have to go and listen to somebody that's going through it. Like I said, I do. You don't have to go to that level. You don't have to go to that depth. So there are ways, I guess, for you to manage

your overwhelm and manage the stress and the fatigue. And our coverage could very well still overwhelm you. I have one other tip though. If you're feeling super, super overwhelmed about the news and you still want to be feeling like you're on top of the news and being informed, go and look up Stephen Colbert on YouTube and watch him make fun of the news for 10 minutes a day because he'll actually tell you what satire yeah he stands up at the beginning of his late night tv show in America which is watched by millions of people and he says things like how bloody stupid is Putin he's done this this and this wrong and he actually portrays what you need to know in the information but he kind of makes light of it but he makes light in such a nice way that he's using

humor as a management tool for the dire situation. And sometimes I find that unbelievably helpful. Honestly, if I could be anyone in the world, it'd be him. Like the joy of delivering news, making people laugh and informed is like the dream. So have you ever felt a day where you're like, I don't want to do this today. I do not want to look at the news. I don't want to turn my phone on. I want to throw it in a lake. Have you ever felt that, but you just have to force your way through it? I have felt that. And Zara and I are really open with each other about when we need the other person to take a bit more of the weight there. I'm sure it's like when one of you guys don't feel like recording a podcast, you kind of lean on the other one and say, I need you to

lead this. Oh no, we love it all the time. No, but I mean like, so Laura and I, and I think this might be something that a lot of our listeners don't realize, and this is not a complaint because we love it so much, but there are some times where we'll go to each other and if there have been 200 ask uncuts come in so people write their questions or their problems if there have been like weeks and weeks and weeks of really really hard ones and we're writing back to these people sometimes we end up being a therapist to a lot of people and we love it we want to help everyone but sometimes we'll be like i need to tap out of socials for a couple of days because like for exactly that i'm so overwhelmed right now and i just need to take a breather so it's definitely

something that that we feel for sure and you do you sort of pass the baton a bit and i guess it depends on who you are as an individual person like what's your level of like deep empathy and how you respond to information some people are more hugely affected by other people's stories than others you know I think that there's a scale of this as to how we feel overwhelmed or how we receive that but I definitely think at this time there is a lot of it going on and there is a lot of feelings around the general conversations that I hear of people being like I have so much anxiety and it's like of course you have anxiety it's because of the state of the fucking world that's why you have anxiety and we're sitting here going there's like an invasion happening

and COVID numbers are scaling again and then like all of a sudden there's killer mosquitoes I think I sent it to you guys and I said would you believe that now Japanese encephalitis has made its way to mosquitoes here in New South Wales and it tells you not to go camping I'm like what is happening like honestly we didn't need that in the news cycle we're doing fine thank you very much thanks for coming go back get out of here but that that was actually a moment where i didn't like fully switch off because i was a bit curious about killing mosquitoes but i was like i was like hang on a minute like this is just getting a bit ridiculous now like let's just take this kind of like jumanji it is like you think it's all better and then something else crawls

out the window the world is satire at the moment almost like when i read about the killer mosquitoes which was only in the last two weeks i didn't have the shock i was like oh my god there's another a killer thing but it wasn't shocking i was more just like adding it to the list of things to be careful of or go get some mosquito repellent and that's why sometimes i actually am uncomfortable with people saying oh that wasn't on my 2022 bingo card with some things that are like properly traumatic and very very serious issues because like that's like kind of to the privilege point like well hang on we can't predict when there's going to be terrible things no one wants there to be terrible things like of course it wasn't in anyone's plan of the year do you think that

You've got to make light of it sometimes. That's what I was going to say. Do you think it comes back down to that whole feeling of like, well, when everything's so doomed, a lot of people deal with like the shitty times with humour? Yes. It's being human. It's being human.

It's 100% a management skill. And like I don't do that necessarily with those things, but I know that I manage all kinds of stress and awkward situations and uncomfortable situations with humour as well. And I think we sometimes see a lot of people go too far and they miss the mark online and then they get torn to shreds. But at the end of the day, like you just said, No one wants these bad things happening.

We all just manage things in a different way. And so the challenge for us is how do we stay positive? How do we stay mentally healthy? How do we not get overwhelmed, but also stay informed? And I'm going to like hold firm on that point about staying informed. I don't actually believe it's good to just switch off entirely. I think you can do it in moderation. For somebody who's reporting the news, there's obviously an incredible amount of pressure,

one, to make sure that it's accurate, that you're well-researched, but also that you're delivering it in a way that the people that you're delivering it to are able to digest it and you're not putting in your own personal flavor of like your opinions how do you do that in a very objective way without becoming emotionally invested in the information you're presenting the first way to answer that is that we get it wrong all the time great because we do too yeah like it's like almost daily we get it wrong and that's because our mission is to try and do it objectively which is unbelievable it's so much easier to write with your opinion and just to say like whatever you want to say, but that's not what we think we can add value. Yeah. When you are strongly disagreeing

with what you're typing, but you're like, Oh, I just need to get it out there. No. And the other way that we try and keep objective is let people talk for themselves. So let's say our prime minister says something controversial about women, hypothetically, then we'll let the comment and the quote be there for itself. We don't need to add color and flavor and like readers can figure it out and that's a really powerful tool is saying so-and-so said this so-and-so said that that's all you need to know yeah and actually just like that is at its root that's news news is just this is what's happened not necessarily this is why it's happened this is what it means but just this is what's happened and that for a lot of our readers is like if they're not reading a heap and

heap and heap of like commentary and all that kind of stuff that's actually what they need this is a super boring question everyone but i think it's so important i think news validity and making sure you are not getting misinformation because there is a lot out there. And Laura and I have been on the wrong end of that stick before over the last couple of years when we've done our own research and maybe we've pulled something from a site

that we thought was accurate, but it wasn't. And I think a lot of people have that. There's so much misinformation circulating about everything. How do you decide what is a worthy, trustworthy new site? And do you have one or two that are your go-to that you know are really reliable?

The way that we decide whether a news site is reliable is purely based on their reputation and their form. So like, let's take the New York times, for example, like these guys are just never wrong. Okay, great. Cause that's who I go to. They're amazing. They're phenomenal. And often the ones that are never wrong are also the ones with the most money. And because they can hire then fact checkers and editors and sub editors and proofers and like crazy amounts of resources. But you kind of get a sense of like these are the guys who if they say it and they can show you like how they've confirmed it, they're on the money. There's a really interesting part of the news that not many people know about

and that's called news wires and news services. And the whole idea there is like let's say you're a newspaper in Sydney and you don't have the money to send somebody to Ukraine right now, but you still want to report on Ukraine. You can actually subscribe to these global services that send a reporter that all these news publications can use that report. So that's what the Daily Oz does except with photography. So obviously we don't have the resources to send a photographer

even to the floods in northern New South Wales, but we subscribe to a service called AAP, Australian Associated Press, and they send the photographer. And now that's why you kind of see the same photos in all these different news sites. But the result of them is that they're always really good. So if the Newswire say it, if the New York Times say it, then you can start thinking like this is really happening.

what you don't want to do is take news off a tweet or daily daily mail sam thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing your insight i think that pleasure guys it's very much a reflection of where we're at in the world at the moment and then talking about the overwhelm is something that's so relevant to so many people so we truly appreciate your perspective on this you keep finding the good fight sam i will i'll keep doing all the hard work so that everyone feels calm so that we don't have to do that yes it's going to be okay everyone and can you share for everybody where they can find you on instagram have a look at us on instagram at the daily oz aus it's where both of you guys get your news it is actually i love it

thanks see you guys i think it's so great in this conversation to have been able to speak to someone like you said brit who literally cannot switch off from the news and like you know we mentioned this at the beginning overwhelm is not just something that is dictated by what's happening and the news cycle, it is absolutely prevalent for so many reasons. And I think it is the bombardment of data and the bombardment of us increasingly taking on more and more work and feeling more and more stressed and putting ourselves into this position where it's the lack of control of our own lives that leaves us feeling totally overwhelmed and totally above our heads. I think it would be really helpful to talk about some of the ways to cope with this,

because when you're in it, it often feels like, well, there's no way out. And that's why we can have these really strong adverse reactions to it. Why we feel like we can't get sleep, why we feel like we're quick to anger. Or one of the research studies that I read, which this goes back to 2015, but there was a research study that was conducted for parents and for mums, a thousand working mums were surveyed. And the study said that one in four working mums will cry at least once a week because of how overwhelmed they feel by the amount of work and the toll that being a working mum takes on them. So like we said it presents itself in so many different ways from so many different factors of life but how do you fix it and what do you do? I mean we can talk

about what to do and how to fix it but I want it to be really well known here that it is easier said than done a lot of the time. So obviously one of the main things that they say you can do especially this is harder if you have run your own business but in terms of work so let's focus on work first not with the little kitties in terms of work it's about trying to set some work times for yourself so saying okay my work day will be whether it's five o'clock six o'clock seven p.m it's to set that time for yourself and try to stick to it now I have tried to do that before I really have but I think the problem is and this is probably more when you run your own business or if you take your work home. So when I was working in an emergency department, very high levels of

stress, exhausting nonstop. But the second I walked out that door, I didn't take my work home. There was no capacity for me to take my work home. My patients are left there. So for me, it was really easy. I walked out the door of the hospital and it was done. But since having my own businesses, I try to switch off. I'm like, yep, switch off at 7pm. But then I have this feeling of, well, it's still going to be there to do it tomorrow. No one else is going to do it. So I may as well keep on churning through it because I'm like, yeah, I could have the night off, but I'm going to wake up at 7am and the same amount is going to be there plus some. So you just keep going. And sometimes I'm emailing clients, they've written back to me being like, why are you

emailing me at 1am? Because I'm like, oh, I just, you know, I just happened to be on my computer. But for me, it's just going to accumulate. So that's something that I need to work on. there's this old adage as well which is like you quit your nine to five to work 24 7 I think that a lot of people who run their own businesses can totally relate to that sort of mentality yeah and so off the back of that it comes down to okay are you in a position where maybe you can delegate better these are just questions you need to ask yourself are you doing work that somebody else maybe that works for you could be doing maybe a family member could be helping you is there any way you can you can delegate or are you being a perfectionist where you need to oversee

everything so these are questions you can ask yourself moving forward but at the end of the day if you can't switch off because you have that level of work you have to find some other things that you can integrate into your life so maybe that is meditation maybe that is a yoga class or some level of exercise I can't stress this enough speaking of stress it doesn't matter how busy you are incorporating 30 minutes to one hour of exercise a day is known to decrease your stress levels and personally it is so beneficial so even when I'm run off my feet I will like slap my laptop down and I'll just go for a walk, get some vitamin D, get some fresh air, get some steps and come back. And I always feel better. So if you can't delegate and you can't do anything about

the level of emails you've got, there are other little things you can put into your life. It feels completely counterintuitive. Like I think like when you say that, just make more time for it. It's like when someone's stressed and they're like, just be less stressed. But it truly is the case. The problem with when you get to that entire oversaturation that comes with being overwhelmed, you feel like everything is breaking down. but I guess one of the things that I read which I really loved and something that I've tried to implement in my own life is like it's not a breakdown of your life like your life is not falling to shit but your thought patterns are the way that you perceive your life is falling to shit

and that's probably where you need to start the other thing as well is is that you might think that you don't have time to do anything or to get anything done or to be able to dedicate yourself to like getting through this task as in like you might not have time to go and exercise because the fucking, the to-do list is so long that you're already drowning. So you're like, I can't take an hour out for myself. But the problem is, is like when we get to that level of oversaturation, we are doing all of these tasks at a half capacity. We're so easily distracted. We're so easily to procrastinate because actually getting stuck into it is incredibly overwhelming at the same time. So it's this perpetual cycle that feeds into itself. Well, yeah, you can often

go for the walk or the exercise and come back and you think you've wasted half an hour, but you're going to work more efficiently after that so you're going to make up that time all of these things have to be attacked in different ways you can't just switch off from parenting you know you can't just say go for a walk sorry I'm done I'm locking you in your room the kids will be fine and that's why I think that parents are such a specific type it's such a specific type of overwhelm and that's where asking for help is so fucking important making sure you have the village around you making sure you have the support systems so that when you aren't coping there's somebody out there who can actually take a bit of the slack and give you that personal time

to be able to get on top of your own thoughts you can also look on your phone so maybe you think you're not spending that much time scrolling on instagram or doing mindless tasks on your phone you can look on your phone look at your screen time has it increased this week how many hours are you spending if you know that your work is based 90 on your computer and your phone comes back and because you'll probably be surprised your phone might come back saying you spent four hours on there that day. You can do things like you can put time caps. I know a lot of people that do this on their Instagram. So some people put 20 minutes and then it kicks them off. You can do that. There are things you can, if you are so obsessed with it that you can't control yourself

and you have no self-control, there are so many things in place to help you. Maybe you, if maybe you put your phone in another room for an hour, if you don't need it, if you're trying at the moment, I'm trying to do a new job on my computer. You can put your phone away in another room because I am the worst for it too. I will be in amongst my emails. Sometimes I'll stop in the middle of an email and without even knowing, and I'll be on Instagram. And I'm like, what am I doing? Isn't it crazy? You just pick it up. I think if we actually had like more awareness around how we subconsciously use these things, like it's so easy to be distracted. I was doing it last night when I was prepping for this. I was literally three quarters of the way through prepping this,

this fucking podcast record. And then I was like, why am I watching a meme of a cat licking a dog? like what am I doing and that's what happens I think it was only last week when we were just about to start an episode record and you were like I've just got to quickly do this last bit of prep and I was like yeah no worries and then I looked over and I was like Laura you're on Instagram and you're like I didn't even know how I got you were like I don't know how I got here because it's like it's subconscious you're like I'll do one quick swipe again before I get into my work so we don't even realize we're doing it but jump on your phone have a look at your screen time have a look at your Instagram time and it's definitely something that I think we can all think

about and do a little bit better. Reassessing what is it that makes you happy in life? How can you kind of claw back a bit of you time and be really, like we said, be really, really conscious of what it is that you're consuming, of what it is that you're putting your energy and your time into and putting those boundaries in place to say no. All right, guys, it is time for our suck and our sweet, our highlight and our low light of each and every week. Britt, do you want to kick it off or do you want me to? Yeah, I can kick it off. All right. My suck is that I came up to my parents' house and I brought Delilah. Now my parents have two dogs and a cat, a cat named George. Now I'm not a cat person, but Delilah has never met a cat. Delilah doesn't know what cats

are. She's never seen them. She's just a city slicking dog that goes to the beach and comes home. She's never been around them. Anyway, she, last night I could hear a kerfuffle and I came out of my room I'm talking like 2am and she was chasing this poor cat around the house I didn't know what she was going to do with him once she got to him so I ended up having to take George the cat and put him in my room so that Delilah couldn't be around him all night and he literally I didn't know this because I've never really had a cat he slept on my head the whole night so that was what my night was and I was like why do people get cats if they sleep on your face all night I was like I couldn't work it out I'm like is this an is this normal cat behavior I have seen what

your dog has done to a pair of shoes so I'm glad that you went and salvaged the cat but also yes this is what cats do that's why if you have a newborn baby and you have a cat they say that you have to keep the cat away because the cats can go and sleep on their faces and suffocate them because they're warm so they just want to be on you and around you and like in your personal space no you really brought that down quickly Laura that would have been a real suck but anyway what is your sweet for the week my sweet is that my niece and nephew like my brother's little kids are here and haven't seen them in a long time we've just had the most beautiful time getting ice cream, getting dinner. I gave them both $5 note and they just thought I was the best thing

in the world. I'm definitely buying their love. So that's a, that's a trick of the trade. If you haven't seen your nephews in a while, nieces and nephews, give them some money, but it's just been really nice to have some family time. Who do you think is like the crazy auntie? Do you get to be the crazy auntie or they think that you're like the normal auntie, the cool auntie? That was so funny because Sherry and Jay were arriving at about the same time. They were driving from Queensland. I was driving from Sydney, Port Macquarie's in the middle. So we left at the same time but when they pulled up they told me they were like damn it Brittany's already here she's already going to be buying their love because she's going to make them love because

that's what we do we all compete for the children's love so they were like damn it she's she's definitely going to give them money she's going to have already bought them ice cream so they love her more than they love them and it was true they walked in she's like what have you given them so far I was like well I've given them five dollars I've given them chocolate she's like damn there's nothing left for me I like that you're bribing them with five dollars Marley's way to love her is like, you just give her, you give her a gold coin. It's like, she's like a little magpie. She just wants like a gold coin donation. And she has a little collection of gold coins that she carries around in a little cup or whatever it is. She was always like, mommy, I need some more money. I was

like, yeah, me too. Pixies five. She knows that gold coin doesn't get you far anymore. Okay. My sweet for the week is, oh, my suck. My suck is that, you know, when you spend all fucking day cleaning and you think you're like, I'm going to have a deep clean day. And then the deep clean day just makes you really angry for no reason, just because you had to clean your own apartment. That was my suck. Well, it's not for no reason. You spent the whole day cleaning. Yeah, but cleaning just makes me mad. So we spent all of Sunday pretty much cleaning. And then I felt really residually mad after the whole thing. So that was my suck. And also the other part of the suck is like every time we actually clean, I never feel like the house is clean. Like we clean and

then instantly it is equally as messy as what it was before we even started. Like I can never tell the difference. So that is my suck. My sweet for the week is kid related. Lola took her first steps this week. She was at daycare. So I didn't see, I didn't even see her very first step. She was at daycare, but she basically was like holding onto the little play equipment. And then she just like motored across the room. She just walked the length of the daycare. She had none of this, like one step, two step fucking around. She was out of there. And then when I went to pick her up from daycare. Just ran a marathon. She went zero to a hundred. She literally probably already known how to do it for a while, but she's so lazy that she's like, I don't need to walk anywhere.

Someone's going to carry me. And then I got to daycare and the woman from daycare was like holding her hands and she was like, there you go, walk to mommy. And she just cruised across the room and walked me. And it was the best thing ever. So although I'm a terrible mom, I missed her first steps. So now she's walking. So now Lola is walking. You are not a terrible mother. I know, but you always get this guilt, right? Like you, of course you have to send them to daycare because it's just part and parcel of literally living life and getting stuff done. But then on the flip side of it, you miss these milestones and you think you get the guilt. I think every mom who kind of misses those milestones gets guilt for it. Well, that is it guys. I can't

wait to see a walk. I'm going to, I'm going to go for a little run with it. When does they run? She did it once and now she's like, cool. I know I can do it. And I'm not interested. She's back crawling she's she's literally regressed in the space of a week but anyway guys that is it from us we hope you enjoyed the episode we hope that you learned something if you're feeling like you are in a state of perpetual overwhelm at the moment know that you are absolutely not alone please tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends you share the love because we love love We'll be right back.