The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 488: Cassie Holmes - How To Expand Your Time, Focus On What Matters Most, & Live A Happier Life

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. Receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right! Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Cassie Holmes is a Professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. Cassie is an expert on time and happiness. Cassie is the author of the book, Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most, which is based on her wildly popular MBA course, "Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design." Notes: What do the happiest people do? They have strong, supportive relationships They feel a sense of belonging They feel safe and healthy "We have control over what we do and how we spend our time." Turn routines into rituals - Cassie does this for her Thursday morning coffee dates with her daughter. I do the same going to the pool with my daughter. Time poverty is prevalent for 50% of Americans. How to handle back to back to back meetings? It's unsustainable. Your team needs you to be full. Over time, you will not perform at an optimal level if you don't give yourself time to think, reflect, analyze the situation, and make a decision. Do a time tracking exercise and analyze what is the best use of your time. Block time on your calendar each day for yourself. And hold to it. Learning from admired elders – Ask, 'what is your greatest source of pride?' 'what is your greatest regret?' - Invest the time to learn from someone who is older than you that you admire. How to be happier? Unhappy activities can be made less painful by reframing them (bundling them with something fun or remembering its purpose–why you're doing it) Reflect back on your last two weeks. When did you feel the most joy? A weekly coffee date with your daughter? Swimming together? Whatever it is… How can you intentionally create more moments of joy for yourself? If you have less than two hours of free time (leading to feelings of stress) or more than five hours of free time (undermining your sense of purpose), you'll likely feel unsatisfied in your life. In between is the sweet spot— and most of us can achieve this with a few simple exercises provided in this podcast.  Why we tend to put off current enjoyment for the sake of tasks we "should" do and why we should do this less. Dr. Holmes says we need to identify and commit to activities that make us happy so we don't later feel regret from missing out on life's good stuff. Focusing on time increases happiness because it motivates you to spend your time more deliberately. Recognizing that your remaining time is limited and thus precious helps you savor life's everyday moments of joy. Tracking Time Exercise: based on how you're currently spending and actually experiencing your hours, identify which times are truly the most and least happy. Connecting socially, spending time outside, and being mindful during the hours you spend have the greatest impact on the happiness experienced in your day. The Five Whys Exercise: uncover your purpose. Eulogy Exercise: learn what really matters to you by how you hope to be remembered. Gallup Poll: Do you have a best friend at work? Counting times left exercise: How many times have you done it in the past month? How many more do you have left? How many meals will you share with your parents? Realize that it's probably not that many. That realization will help you cherish the time.

Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader.

Text Hawk to 66866. Now, on tonight's featured leader to the great Cassie Holmes is a college professor at UCLA. Cassie is one of the world's leading authorities on time and happiness. She is the author of a great new book called Happier Hour, How to Beat Distribus, How to Beat, Extraction, expand your time, and focus on what matters most. A few of the topics we cover. How to better manage your calendar to optimize for peak performance and happiness. And then three exercises you can implement right now to live a happier, more fulfilling life.

Then the questions to ask yourself to minimize regret and maximize, maximize. enjoyment. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. It's Cassie Holmes. Cassie, it's great to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thank you, Ryan. It's a treat to be here. So I want to start with a big question to start high level and then we'll drill down a bit. Yeah. What have you found to be the commonalities among the world's happiest people? That is a right. That is a right. really good question. It's not just my examination of the commonalities, but I can definitely speak to what the research has uncovered. And the answer is pretty straightforward, surprisingly or not, that it is about having strong supportive relationships, having a genuine sense of connection and belonging, which involves feeling known and sort of genuinely knowing another person. And so this is, um, shows up in the data in lots and lots of ways. And even it shows up in everyone is familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, um, which, you know,

at the very basic, at the bottom of the pyramid of the things that we need in order to survive and thrive are these physiological needs like safety, health, food, water, but just beyond that, once you have your physical health and safety and food and water, it is the most basic psychological need is social connection and belonging. And then, you know, sort of as you progress up the pyramid towards self-actualization, you know, which we are ideally striving towards, then you get sort of closer to more individual pursuits but my answer for you of happy people are those that have good relationships that have good friendships who's the happiest person you know me yourself that's pretty awesome if true

i mean really you got to say more about that well it is what i study um and it is not only what sort of is underlying what I study, but is driven by my wanting to understand what are the characteristics and the decisions actually that drive my experience in the day-to-day and satisfaction with life overall, such that all of us can make decisions that contribute to that. I mean, when you look at what are the inputs into people's happiness, there is a lot that's outside of our control, our inherited disposition, sort of were you born a naturally glass half-full type person or more of a natural grump where you see

the annoyances of one's situation? That has actually a really big effect. Life circumstances that we don't have a lot of control over, have some effect, but a surprisingly small one. And I teach this, a course, among our MBAs and executive MBAs at UCLA. And I start the course by pointing out that these life circumstances, like level of wealth, how attractive you are, marital status, these things that people think, you know, having a big house, if only I had this, then I would be happy.

and what the research actually speaks to is that those life circumstances do have some effect, but a surprisingly smaller impact than we think. And so those are things that we don't have a lot of control over. The thing we do have control over is what we do, how we spend our time, and how we approach that time and sort of what we are thinking and doing in the day-to-day. And that has a significant and significantly larger impact on our happiness. And when I say happiness, it's how we feel in the day to day as well as how we feel about our lives overall. So there's this emotional component as well as this evaluative component.

So this is sort of what I've set out to do. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have a more cheery disposition. But of course, we're all subjected to some circumstances in life that make it a little more trying. And so it is relying on these tools that the research identifies. How should we be thinking? What should we be doing? How should we be spending our time and executing on that? What are?

That's a lie. I know. You're like, where do I go over there? I mean, I'm taking notes. What are some things? So I think we could learn some actionable take. ways by diving when you surprised me a bit by saying that but I'm glad that you did so I'm going to dig in more when it comes to what you actually do so that I could learn from you others could learn

from you to say okay what can I do to make each day better to make it happier to make better use of my time so the natural follow-up would be well what do you actually do to be the happiest person that you know now that I'm like it's friends How about I am very happy? I don't want to be a relative. Okay, I'll take it. Relative thing. Well, there's a lot.

I mean, it's sort of unpacking how to, so I guess one of the barriers that I have experienced to my sort of chosen happiness, so to speak, that so many people experience as a barrier is this feeling of not having enough time, of time being that primary limitation. And this sort of acute feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it is what we in the research, the term is time poverty. And it is prevalent.

It is, I conducted a national poll that showed that. almost half of Americans feel time poor. It is experienced, women tend to experience it more than men. Working parents are particularly time poor, but all types of people feel a lacking sense of time. And it is a barrier because it limits us from really wonderful things in our life. So our research shows that when people feel time or they are less healthy.

So they are less likely to exercise, which, as we can talk about, is a mood booster and a contributor to happiness. People are likely to delay going to the doctor. So people are less healthy. They're more likely to eat fast food, which is less healthy. So people are less healthy. They're less nice. So when we feel time poor and like we're in a hurry,

we become particularly stingy with our time, not spending the time to help others. And we can also talk about one way to increase your happiness is by actually doing acts of kindness. When we feel time poor, we feel less confident. Like we're able to accomplish the goals that we set out to do. And our research shows that when people feel time poor, they are less happy. They feel more stress and worry in the day-to-day. They feel less positive emotion, like enjoyment.

in the day-to-day, they feel less of a sense of meaning, less sense of satisfaction. And I can absolutely say that that time poverty or feeling time poor that I don't have enough time has been and continues to be a barrier that I am working against. And actually, with some of my colleagues, Hal Herschfield and Marissa Sharif, we look to identify what is the relationship between the amount of discretionary time we have in our happiness to answer this question, my sort of personal question, my research question. If I had a whole lot more time, would I be happier? And what the results showed us, we analyzed data from tens of thousands of working and non-working Americans. And what we found was, yes, having too little discretionary time is bad. People are unhappy. That was me. But what was surprising is that we found that among people who had a whole lot of discretionary time, as in in this data set at least more than five hours of discretionary time

in a regular day to do what they wanted, you actually saw that they were less happy. And in digging into that, it's really that people sort of are averse to being idle. You know, we want some time to be able to spend on the things that we care about and that interest us and maybe even to relax. But if you have a whole lot of time spent relaxing, then people feel a lacking sense of productivity and purpose, and that leads to less satisfaction. So to insert, sort of touching back to this question, what do I do for happiness? Well, I did not actually click my job.

And instead, I've been really deliberate in spending more of my time on ways that feel worthwhile and fulfilling and minimizing the amount of time that I spend on activities that feel more wasteful. And so, and we can sort of dig into that. But I think that that is what has sort of shifted me from this like stressed, time poor, less happy state to the sort of the day to day that I am living right now, which I feel very happy and very fulfilled.

and yes, very busy, but days I feel fulfilling and not just full. What advice do you have? Thank you, Cassie. I appreciate it. I mean, I think that's super helpful, as well as all of the research in the background. So when I work with leaders, one of the common things I hear is like we actually pull out their calendars and look at them every day and look at them for the week, looking at them for the month. And there's a lot of them, especially if they're like a VP level or kind of that level where they're both managing all of their people and they're managing up. So they go both ways. And obviously they have peers that collaborate with. Let's say it's a VP and a Fortune 500 company. And you pull their calendar out and it's back to back to back to back to back to back to back.

And a lot of those meetings, though, they're fulfilled. They're happy. They're helping their people. They're helping them, you know, advance in their careers and achieve goals and earn a living to create economic security for their families. like that it's it's rewarding work but it's nonstop and it at times i look at and say i don't know how you do it um what advice do you have for that person where they are back to back to back to back all day some of it though is good and some of it they're exhausted from what what advice for that person yeah and i think that there's there's a lot to unpack there because um it is the back to back to back

these breaks to sort of sustain and sort of fill one's own energy, the back to back to back to back is unsustainable. And so not only for sort of your own sake of making sure that you do carve out some time to take care of yourself so that you feel better, but also for the folks that you're working with and, you know, those who are on your team under you as those that you're sort of supporting within your organization above you, they need you to be full and energized as well. So when, you know, like with happiness as this objective, it's, it's important. It's not just this sort of frivolous idea of like, oh, wouldn't it be nice to feel good and to feel good about my life. It is important, and research shows that when people feel happier, they are

more helpful to those around them. They are better colleagues, more willing to sort of support their colleagues as well as the organization. When people are happy, they're more creative and adaptive in their problem solving. And so you see that actually happy employees are rated as better employees by their managers. Happy managers are rated as better leaders by their employees. In our interpersonal relationships, too, you see that when people feel happy, they like others more. They are liked by others more. And there are these health ramifications that you react better to physiological stressors. So it's like taking care of your emotional well-being is not a sort of selfish, frivolous pursuit. It is absolutely helps.

those around you again, those on your team and those above you. How do you do that? And it does require taking stock of the time that you're spending. So when weeks are full of back-to-back meetings, you do need to take stock of which of those ways of spending time are indeed worthwhile, which are actually not particularly crucial to your sort of longer-term goals. And one way to do that is actually doing a time-tracking exercise. And it is about taking stock to identify what are the worthwhile and what are the wasteful ways of spending. And what it is is over the course of a week, I actually suggest doing two weeks, because it's a more sort of complete gauge or reflection of the typical activities that fill your weeks.

For each 30-minute increment, you write down what you're doing and not only what you're doing, so it wouldn't just be work meeting because that wouldn't be informative because the whole day is work meetings, but what are, like, what are, what is the particular meeting, whom is it with? And in addition to writing down what you're doing, also rating on a 10-point scale, how happy, but that includes satisfying, worthwhile, fulfilling, meaningful, useful, you know, was, did you feel from that time? And what you have with this sort of data set at the end, even though the sort of process of tracking can feel quite, tedious, the amount of information and valuable information that you gain looking back is really informative because from it you can identify, all right, what are those activities that were the most

happy, the most worthwhile within the week, as well as what are those that are the worst? And of those that are worthwhile, it's not just the activities themselves, but what were some of the the commonalities across those sort of happiest activities. And so that you can pick out, oh, it's, you know, this type. You know, it is engaging on this particular project or in this particular way, such that you can, in crafting your time going forward, is making sure that you do carve out and prioritize and make the time for that. but just as helpful is actually looking at the least happy ways of spending. The dimensions when I've had my students do this that sort of pop out as the most least happy

ways of spending seem to be those that thwart our sort of drives, our fundamental drives of relatedness. So anything that makes you feel lonely or disconnected is actually pops up often. as being the least happy. Those that undermine our agency, so our sense of control, those are things that really feel obligatory and not at all that you had any say in that time. Those are things that pop up,

as well as those that make us feel less competent. So competence is another drive. So that make us feel sort of productive. And those, that's where you sort of pick up on the, these ways that feel like they really do feel like a waste. Those are the activities that you should minimize and remove from your schedule, if possible. If they are necessary but unhappy, then there are other ways that you can, or strategies that you can use to make those times feel less wasteful.

So bundling strategies. So bundling is a strategy sort of identified by researchers, Katie Milkman and colleagues and it's basically you take something that isn't fun that you have to do like i mean i'll go outside of the work realm folding laundry but you know you have to do it and you can think about what within the work day are those the folding laundry equivalents it's like it has to be done it's not fun to do it is there another activity that actually is feel does feel worthwhile that you can do at the same time to not only sort of motivate you to do that activity, but to make that activity more enjoyable.

Completely agree. I wash the dishes and that is great podcast listening time. I don't love it, but I actually kind of look forward to it because I know I'm like, I got a good podcast queued up. I'm going to really wash these dishes well because I'm thinking and learning and experiencing good storytelling typically. So you mentioned the exercises and one of the exercises of the exercises of the exercises of, you is time tracking. There are other ones throughout your book. And one that I particularly like,

because I've been doing it for a while that I love for you to expand on, is called the learning from admired elders exercise, where essentially you identify an elder whose life you admire and interview them. Can you share more about the research behind this and why people should implement this activity right away? Yeah, and I love that exercise. So as we are making this about in the day to day about how to live a good life. There are those that have done it. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. And so this is an opportunity to identify someone from your perspective, has done it,

has lived a good life and asked them about it. And so that their experience can inform our choices right away. And so in identifying, so identify someone whom you admire, who is sort of further along in life, and ask them the questions that I find so insightful, is to ask, what is your greatest source of pride, as well as what is your greatest source of regret? And as I've, again, these are exercises that I assigned to my students. And it's interesting because over the years of conducting this exercise, I have my students reflect back on what they heard from these admired elders. And these admired elders run the gamut.

I mean, many of them are very supremely professionally accomplished from different places around the world. And they're time and time again, as in every section of the class that I've been teaching for years, I asked them. And it is very stark. So 75% of people, their greatest source of pride, are their relationships. Interestingly, greatest source of regret was not spending enough time on relationships. So this is going back to your very first question. What's the thing that makes people happy is? This is what's the thing that is so critical for living a good life?

It is investing in the people. I love this exercise. I do it semi-frequently on the way. this podcast, and the one I think of the most is probably episode 4-57 with Ken Blanchard. Ken's kind of done what I want to do from a leadership perspective of writing books and teaching and sharing and helping other people. But when I asked him about kind of the best moments of his life, he said, you know what, recently for Margie, my wife's 80th birthday party, you know, she's 80, so they've been around

longer than us. And he said, we went to Hawaii, which is where she loves the most. We rented a giant house and filled it with all of the people we love. That was a magical moment. I would encourage you to create magical moments in your life. That's what it's all about. And I thought, whoa, what am I doing to create magical moments? Whatever it is for the people I love the most and to use our time, treasures and talents

to create more of those moments. Like that's the whole point, right? So what are we doing if we're going to grind away and work so hard though? How are we being intentional about creating those moments? And I think that exercise that you write about in your book is so useful for something like that. Yeah. And I will point out that those magical moments are so important. And they don't have to be giant.

Those magical moments are actually, you'll see very often right there in our daily lives. It's just sometimes we miss them because we're not paying attention because we're distracted. And an example. And so I talked about the time. tracking exercise as a way to identify worthwhile ways to spend. But another thing that you can do, and I would encourage you to do, and as an exercise in the book, is just reflecting back over your last two weeks, what were those moments where you felt the most joy? And no matter how busy we are, there are those joyful moments. Now, for me, my joyful moment, or one of them, is my week

coffee date with my daughter. She is seven. And this is time that it is a half hour. And it is like, it's an everyday, it's not every day. It's not every day. It's every week. But it's a very routine functional activity on the face of it. It is dropping off my son and before dropping off my daughter before going into the office. I need a cup of coffee. So we stop at a coffee shop. And it is my caffeine fix, right? But actually what it is, it's this 30 minutes, and we've turned what is a routine, which is mindless, into a ritual, which is special and carries meaning. And that 30 minutes every week, it is so special. So my daughter and I, we like turn on the same songs because it's a ritual as, you know, we're driving to the coffee shop. At the coffee shop, my phone is nowhere in sight.

do list that runs through my head constantly is quieted. I am there with her. She gets her hot chocolate. I get my coffee. And we are just in it together. And we get to it like that 30 minutes, it's only 30 minutes, but it has such a profound impact on how I feel over the course of the rest of the week. So it's like we look forward to it. So there's that anticipation. Of course, when we're in it, we're delighting in it, but also I can reflect back on it. So it's like that 30 minutes influences my mood not only for the rest of my day, but like my satisfaction when I think how happy am I am in my own life. I'm like, I am going back to your initial question, I am really happy. I have these people that I love so much and I feel absolutely connected, even though I

am working a lot and I'm not available at all times when I am there with them. I'm totally in it. And so that, it was, you know, like, amazing to have like, you know, an 85th or 80th birthday with like a house full of people. But we also have these people that are already sometimes in our house. And these friendships that are available, you know, to us and our, you know, family. And to the extent that we notice those little moments, those ordinary moments of joy, that can have a really big impact. And so no matter how busy, you know, you are in the back-to-backs meetings, that you feel that you are fulfilled, that you don't have this sense of regret. And actually, speaking of regret, your question about the interview

exercise, I just got an email actually yesterday, which filled my heart, one of my former students, let me know that from that exercise, he actually interviewed his grandfather, and his grandfather has since passed since he did the exercise. And it was, so at his funeral, he actually shared some of the learnings from the interview that he conducted. And he feels so grateful for not having sort of missed out on asking those questions for someone whom he admired so much. And it also allows that person sort of legacy to live on. So all to say, the thing that, you know, we absolutely do want to avoid is regret at the end of the day, not, you know, at the end of the week where, you know, did you not take that one extra meeting? But at the end of the weeks

in years, are we living the life that we want to be living? Wow. I love that. Every 100th episode of this podcast, I have my dad and my brother on. And it's funny, we ask each other questions during that podcast that we probably never would if we weren't like recording and having microphones in front of us. And I'm grateful that I have these kind of checkpoints over the years. And we'll continue to do it every 100th episode just to kind of like see what's going on. And since the first one, like my dad's retired and it is complete, his life's completely changed just to hear how it was at the beginning of those first recordings now to where we're at. I look forward to them, even though they're every hundred episode.

And the other part you mentioned, and I'm so glad you brought this up is a good reminder. Like last, I brought this up a couple episodes ago, but it's worth it saying again, especially when you talk about your Thursday coffee dates. because the reflection part's critical, I think. At the end of last summer, I did that kind of reflection as school was starting. And I noticed, and I asked, like, you know, what was the best part about the summer? And the best part for me about the summer was throwing my six-year-old daughter, Charlie in the air at the pool where she'd like to, like, you know, just launch out of the pool and kind of come down. Biggest smile in the world on her face.

And just again, again, again, again, we go for hours and I love it. So I thought about like, how do I make sure that, by the way, this doesn't cost any money. there's no renting of a house, there's nothing. She lives with me, right? How do I make sure I do more of that next summer, which is this past summer that we're kind of finishing up right now? And to do that, I had to plan well ahead of projects or books or different things I'm working on podcasts to record so that during the hot months,

I live in Ohio, during the hot months when the pools open, I need to have more free time than in the cold months. So it was worth it for me to stack extra work when it was cold to have less when it was hot so that we could go to the pool earlier and just launch her. And so I've done that so many more times this summer than last because I did the reflection exercise to say, what was it? And I realize as well, she's now seven turning eight soon, those days won't last forever, just like your daughter won't be small forever.

And the coffee dates, you could still do them, but they may change. So I think that's what's really important and why reflection is so important because we're all in such a hurry that we forget to kind of stop and reflect on the moments that actually do make us happiest. Yeah. And that's a really good point. And the reflection is key. Also, another exercise is this related to what you were just saying, is this counting times left exercise.

So I actually, and I did this using that my. coffee date with my daughter example. I calculate, so the first step is calculating how many times have you done it in the past? And like sort of before she started school and as I was home on maternity leave, it was my daily. So I'd bundle her up. I'd walk to the coffee shop and that was our little time. And so I calculated and she is seven that I have done.

We've had 404 coffee dates together in the past. But I also calculated even more importantly how many we have left. And while we are going, you know, for our coffee dates weekly now, you know, when she turns 12, she'd rather go to the coffee shop with her friends than with me. Then she's going to go up to college. And then she's going to, you know, she's anything like I was like moved to New York. So it'd be on the other side of the country. And so in calculating that and then how long I have to live,

I calculated that I have 280 approximately coffee days with my daughter left. So even though she is only seven, I have 30% of our coffee dates left together. And what that makes me do is the intention is not to make you cry. It is, or me cry. The intention is to realize just how precious and how those times, while they see, seem every day and mundane and accessible, they won't be there forever. And in recognizing just how precious they are, what it does is it motivates us to make the time, to carve out, to spend the time. And in addition, while spending that time, being fully attentive. Again,

putting the phones away, you know, turning the ringer off so that whomever else can't reach you, that you are getting the most of that time that you are spending. And as you said, like, you know, your preparation for your pool days with your daughter, yes, it does require preparation. So like on Wednesday night, I know that I might be staying up a little later to get a little bit more work done so that my Thursday morning, if it does, you know, I don't start meetings until nine because I'm on this coffee date, that's fine. I've made like it's important enough to make the time and to work everything else around it because those times are so precious.

They're not going to be there forever. And I don't want to regret not having that time together. I love to turn the routine into ritual. I think that's a quick takeaway for people to think about that, do the reflection. One of the other exercises that I feel like we're very aligned on is the get moving exercise. I don't know about you. I gather we're similar. Like every morning for me, I have to be in the gym or in nature or both in order before pretty much anything else.

It's the number one priority in my life because if I don't take care of my body, then nothing else matters. Think about when you're sick. There's only one wish you have when you're sick. It's to not be sick. So I think the same thing is how to be proactive and take care of your body. Can you talk about some of the research and the science behind the get moving exercise? Yeah. And this is one of those things, again, when I ask people to complete this sentence, I don't have time to. Exercise is frequently mentioned. And it is something that we neglect when we feel busy. But to your point, it is something not to neglect because it is so important. So research shows that exercising, it's a mood booster, basically. And it's not only how you feel while you're doing it, it's that mood boosting, that energizing

carries over into how you engage in the rest of your day. So it is worth the time. So exercise, it increases our self-esteem. It makes us happier. It increases our cognitive functioning. So that's a good thing. And so in the exercise and so I end the assignment. So when I actually give this assignment to my students, I tie a grade to it because I'm like, you guys need to make the time, need to make it a priority.

And my intention is that once they are spending the time doing it, they will reflect on how impactful it was for their mood, their energy and how they engage with the rest of their day. And the answer is always like, oh, yes, this is important. This is something I need to make time for. And I do it too. It is my morning run. It is something that is I in those times where I have neglected it because I have felt too busy. You see the negative effects on my mood as well as time affluence. So actually our sense of how much time we have is perceptual. So it is this feeling of not having enough time to do all that you say. set out to do. But by doing things that actually increase your sense of self-efficacy, your feeling of being able to accomplish all that you set out to do, it actually makes you feel less time limited and more time affluent. And so through exercise, you can actually sort of give yourself, it starts you off, not only on the right foot, but it has a really positive effect of propelling you into a day

in a very confident and happy way. So good. Let's focus on one more exercise. You briefly mentioned it earlier, and that is the random acts of kindness exercise. What's the science behind why this one is something we all should implement immediately? Yeah. And it is doing nice things. for other people. It not only makes them feel better, it makes us feel good too. And science shows that.

And also, actually, as I was just mentioning, these ways of spending time that increase your sense of self-efficacy and therefore your sense of being able to accomplish and all that you set out to do and your time affluence, spending time to help others is one way you can actually increase your sense of how much time you had. And I have a research paper that showed that that sort of like giving time can give you time. And doing acts of kindness, it can be little. So research says that simply giving someone a compliment like a stranger or someone you know, even though you think it will be awkward perhaps and not, you know, like, sure, it will make them happy.

But research shows that it makes them significantly happier than you could ever think. And it's just as simple as, and it's also less awkward than you would think. And they are more surprised by it. Like, we think like, oh, they know that their shoes are cute or whatever. Like, but giving them the compliment, it has these wonderful effects. So like acts of kindness, it can be as simple as giving a compliment. It can be about spending time to help another, which can, as I said, the researchers can give you time. and it also just makes you feel good and happy.

So do it. Be nice. Absolutely. I think it's a good thing for all of us through the instant you finish listening to this one to go just do something. It doesn't have to be big, something small. I had this weird question to you, Cassidy, the same when I asked James Clear about habits, and that is, do you feel a pressure to be really happy?

Like when you're out with others, like do you feel this pressure to smile and to laugh and to appear or to be happy is because now you've written the book on a book called Happier Hour where they kind of expect you to be happy. What's that feel like? I'm good with it. So you don't. I don't feel added pressure.

I mean, again, it is a choice that I am making to prioritize. Do you think happiness for all people is a choice? Yeah, so that is touching back to what I was saying. We can make choices and how we spend our time, how we approach our time that have a significant influence on our happiness. And of course, there are days where I feel more down. There are, you know, like circumstances that hit me just like they do everyone. And so it's not being oblivious to that. It's just my choosing. It's like, okay. here we go, this is how I will get through this. And it's not to ignore the complexity of emotion that is so important. That's what makes our life rich and full. But I do choose the sort of positive end of that emotional spectrum and act accordingly. So it's not pressure in terms of from other people's eyes. It's more of a choice that I make. What about like, there's, there's a lot of talk about mental health, depression, things like that. How does what you do apply to people who may suffer

from those things? Yeah, it absolutely applies. And it's really, it's interesting because pre-pandemic, being a professor at a business school, I would have to make the case for why happiness is important. But unfortunately, these last couple years have shown all of us with depression rates increasing, anxiety rates increasing, all of us have experienced extreme negative emotion over these last few years. And so we don't take happiness for granted. And it is it is absolutely important to take care of our emotional well-being. And these exercises, these decisions are all in service of that getting us through the tough times and so that we can experience our days with more energy and with more brightness and more optimism.

You are a college professor. So I would imagine you have office hours or you have regular dialogue one-on-one with somebody who is in graduate school or maybe they're fresh out. So they're in their early 20s, let's say. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to somebody in their early to mid-20s? Yeah. I mean, my students are graduate students, their MBAs, so they're in their sort of late 20s to early 30s. But yes, my advice to them is to like it's, it's all about figuring out what is important to you and what are your values, what is your purpose. And to the extent possible finding a job that aligns with that. But in some cases, it's not so clear in hitting you over the head of like this is a purpose driven company and it happens to be like perfectly aligned with yours and it will help you pay your bills. But to the extent that you know what's important to you and you select a job that satisfies sort of your basic needs, you can also be very, again, it actually goes back to reflection. So one of the exercises, another exercise in the book is to help you identify your purpose as this five whys of why do you do what you do and then asking, well, why is that important? And then as you ask yourself, there are five layers of why, it will really unpack what is it that really drives you? What is your sort of overarching goal?

And through that identification, yes, it can help you sort of find a job. that might be aligned with that. But it can also help you figure out how you dedicate your time within particular jobs or even frame, reframe activities within that job so that you understand the why of it so that it doesn't feel so annoying and wasteful and that you're like, oh, this is in the service of my part. Like I understand why I am doing this, why it's important. And it makes that task feel more fun. And then it also makes you overall more satisfied in the work that you're doing. So I think that it is to the extent that identifying for each individual, and it's also really important to do this identification because it helps, there's this sort of nebulous general sense of what is success. And if you have that, like, what is success that's influenced by other people, like what's driving them?

that's not going to necessarily be intrinsically valuable for you. And then you're always going to be like measuring, how am I doing comparing to that person over there, which that social comparison is actually a great source of undermining one's happiness. Because there's always going to be someone better on whatever dimension. But once you've identified your own purpose, then that's actually your metric of success. You're like, how am I doing compared to what I say? is my goal and important to me.

And when you actually have little wins along the way, it's so satisfying because you're like, oh my gosh, I'm doing it. Well, last question. Speaking of one of your relationships in the acknowledgement section of your book, you said that your best friend is your brother Sam and you thank him for keeping you laughing from your childhood through now. What is it? What is it about Sam that makes him your best friend?

Well, he is always there. And no matter the circumstances, you know, again, to happiness being a choice. Some circumstances that we have been in haven't always been the happiest, but finding the way to make light of it. And he's funny. Like, I am not funny, but I enjoy other people's humor so I can laugh along. And so, yeah. I'm happy. but he's great. He does, he works in the marketing area in event, event sponsorship, sort of basically planning parties and fun experiential events for brands. Do you see each other much? Well, he was, he did the executive MBA program at Anderson at UCLA, and so that was really fun. He lives in New York.

He was in your class then? He couldn't take my class. He did help TA for my class, but he was in the program. And so being in the program, being from New York, he would fly in for his weekends of classes. And so I got to see him a lot then. And yeah, he's great. I love reading that. It was fun to see.

The book is called Happy Hour, How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time and Focus on What Matters Most. It was a joy to read. I like the structure, too, Cassie, because you give kind of end-to-chapter highlights, you give all of the exercises, which we hit on a few of the exercises, but there's plenty of others for you to, I would encourage people to dive into the book because there's a lot of both great storytelling, great research that obviously given your background, it's packed with that. But then practical application actually exercises that you could implement right now, that

could make a difference. So you kind of hit all the checkpoints, I think, of what a book needs to be. so that it could entertain you and form you as well as create action so that could better your life. So happy hour as the name of the book, Cassie, thank you so much for being here. I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for having me.

This was fun. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks. Cassie's smile and laughter is contagious. When she says she's the happiest person she knows, I believe her. And you could tell she radiates through the screen and I can imagine that she practices what she preaches. And that's just so cool to see.

I really enjoyed this one. I hope you did as well. A few takeaways from my notes. Learning from admired elders ask, what is your greatest source of pride and what is your greatest regret? invest the time to learn from someone who was older than you that you really admire, you'll be glad that you did. I mentioned Ken Blanchard at this point of the conversation when talking with Cassie, and I'm so grateful to have had conversations with people like him and many others who

have done things that I really admire have lived many more years than me, and they've done it in a way that I hope to do it as well. And then bundle something that isn't fun with something that is. Like I mentioned washing the dishes and listening to a podcast or listening to an audio book during a commute. Find a way to bundle something that isn't fun with something that is. Then, reflect back on your last two weeks. When did you feel the most joy? Cassie mentioned her weekly coffee dates with her daughter or me throwing my daughter

Charlie in the pool. Whatever it is, take the time to reflect on the last two weeks. Ask yourself, what made me feel the most joy? And then the next step is, how can you intentionally create more moments of joy for yourself? Put those on the calendar first. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the learning

leader show with Cassie Holmes, I think she'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcasts. You are giving me the opportunity to be really happy and to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.