The One You Feed - Brigid Schulte on Strategies for When You're Overwhelmed

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Brigid Schulte is an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post and Washington Post magazine. She was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize. She is also a fellow at the New America Foundation. Brigid is a regular contributor to the She The People blog and has written for Style, Outlook, and other outlets. She writes about work-life issues and poverty, seeking to understand what it takes to live a good life across race, class, and gender. Her recent book is called “Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time“.In this episode, Eric and Brigid discuss the common struggles and strategies for dealing with being overwhelmed.Join us on Sunday, February 27th for a FREE. live Webinar: “Learn the #1 Spiritual Habit to Unlock Energy and Ease in your Life”.  Eric will walk you through the process he’s used for 20+ years to help himself (and thousands of others) move forward with ease, even when circumstances are everchanging and feel out of control.  But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Brigid Schulte and I Discuss Strategies for When You’re Overwhelmed and…Her book, Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the TimeDefining “The Overwhelm”How our perception of time and stress negatively affect the brainThe internal and external pressures to do too much.The history of leisure and idleness and how it is nowThe two qualities of leisure: choosing the activity and having control of your timeContaminated time is when you’re caught up in your thoughtsMindfulness as a powerful tool to deal with overwhelmThe challenges and learning to handle ambiguityBroadening our perspective when managing timeThe importance of planning the most important tasks in our life firstPulsing is the practice of managing work cycles Brigid Schulte Links:Brigid’s WebsiteTwitterFacebookWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Brigid Schulte you might also enjoy these other episodes:Deconstructing Yourself with Michael TaftTime Management for Mortals with Oliver BurkemanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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this episode with Bridget Schulte. Overwhelm doesn't ever go away. So it really becomes much more how you look at it, what you choose to think about, what you choose to do. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction.

How they feed their good wolf. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Bridget Schulte, an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post and Washington Post Magazine. She was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize and is also a fellow at the New American

Foundation. Bridget is a regular contributor to the She the People blog and has written for Style, Outlook, and other outlets. She writes about work, life issues, and poverty, seeking to understand what it takes to live the good life across race, class, and gender. Her recent book is called Overwhelmed, Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. Here's the interview. Hi, Bridget. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Your book is called Overwhelmed, How to Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time. And I enjoyed the book a lot. There's a lot of really interesting things in it that we'll talk about. And I certainly, I think, suffer from a lot of the things that you describe in the book. So

I'm looking forward to talking about it. Me too. Believe me, I'm a work in progress. Yeah, I would say it's safe to assume that you wrote the book, you did a lot of research, and still being overwhelmed is something that comes and goes, I would assume, in your life. I guess the thing that I really learned is overwhelmed doesn't ever go away. You know, there's just a lot of forces out there that kind of propel us to overwork and overdo and technology keeps us on all the time. So it really becomes much more how you look at it and how you manage it and what you choose, what you choose to think about, what you choose to do. Well,

let's use that as a place to transition into the parable. Our show is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of two wolves. And in that parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you how that parable applies to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I have to tell you, I first heard that parable a couple years ago

and it really, really hit me. When I was writing this book or getting ready to write this book, I think it was really the first time that I was able to kind of step off this treadmill of just being constantly busy and on the go and just filling my life with with stuff and doing and going and I had that moment to reflect a little bit and I realized uh that so much of my life had been driven by fear um and you know I have often woken up in the middle of the night with anxiety and panic and um I I read that that parable of the wolves and and it just and it just hit me how much I had been feeding the wolf of fear. And it doesn't get you where you want to go. Your book is called Overwhelmed, and you refer to something as the overwhelm.

Can you tell us what you mean by that when you say the overwhelm? Yeah, I decided to, you know, when you write a book, you kind of get to make up your own rules. So I decided to turn it into its own noun because I just wanted to describe what just felt like a state of being, not just that I was experiencing, but so many of the people that I was interviewing or talking to or reaching out to were feeling this just this kind of um almost this feeling like you are underwater and you are swimming against the tide and you are swimming as fast as you can and you're sort of underwater and you're kind of out of breath and it just this this this feeling that life had become almost unmanageable almost unbearable in a certain way uh that that's why I decided to create its own noun to kind of refer to the state of being, really. One of the things you said in the book is that this goes for stress

as well as the overwhelm, that it's not necessarily what's happening, how busy we are, or what the stress in we are under. It's what we think about what's happening or how we feel, how overwhelmed do we actually feel versus how much are we actually doing. Busyness has really become a badge of honor in a way we show our status. So there are these external pressures that keep that sense of overwhelm spinning and churning. sense of overwhelm spinning and churning. And so where the choice comes in is recognizing or taking the time to recognize, wait a minute, is this what I really believe? Is this what I really want to be doing? Is this what I think? Or am I just automatically responding to these external forces? So it is a measure of taking that kind of a pause, if you will, to get a little bit

clearer about just about the circumstances and where you are and the choices that you're making. But I think that one of the things that was very powerful as I was doing the research and looking into time and time use research is that really it's our perceptions of time, our perceptions of stress, our perceptions of our lives that are in many ways much more real than what somebody from the outside looking in on us might think our lives are about. And there's so much really fascinating research that, say for instance, stress, it's the perception that it's really bad for you that leads to so many sort of bad outcomes. In one of the studies that I was looking at, I spent some time at the Yale Stress Center to try to understand what stress and overwhelm was doing to our brains. And what

they found is that if you'd been through stressful events, but also had the perception that you were very stressed out, your prefrontal cortex, the gray matter in there, this is our sort of executive part of our brain, that that structure was fully 20% smaller in volume than people who did not feel so stressed out and did not have that same perception. So I think that's two things that's really important to remember, that there are these external pressures for overwhelm and that it really takes some time to kind of step

out of that to get some clarity, to make different choices so that your perceptions can become clearer and change about your own life. Yeah, I think there's so much in there. We've probably all had the experience of having very similar days as far as everything that had to happen and there being a lot packed into it. And some days we feel like, Oh, okay, I've got this under control. And other days it just feels insane. And we're, we're, we're, you know, and it's, it's, it, that, that is all perception, but it's always interesting to me how, you know, perception is one of those

things that we have some degree of control over. And then at some point, you know, external circumstances also are, it's that combination between the two that is, is challenging. Again, one of those moments where it was only in hindsight that I got some perspective on it. You know, a couple of years ago, my daughter was taking a ballet class in the afternoon at 430, which for most working parents is an impossible time for it to take your child to a dance class in the afternoon at 4.30, which for most working parents is an impossible time for it to take your child to a dance class. So I had hired an afterschool babysitter, a high school student, and she called me at the last minute to say she couldn't take my daughter to ballet class. So without even thinking, I was really stressed out. I was working on a big story on deadline. Without a second thought, I just immediately

assumed I had to take my daughter to ballet class. And I left work and I rushed home and I'm stressed out of my mind and I've got my Blackberry in one hand and I'm making phone calls and I'm yelling at her to get her tights on and let's go, let's go, let's go. And I drop her off and we get in a big fight on the way down there. And it was only in hindsight that a friend asked, it's like, well, when your babysitter couldn't go, why did you think you had to go? And it was really in kind of taking that moment to sort of take a breath and step off the treadmill that I realized, you know, I was so, I had been such a guilty working mother, feeling so guilty that I worked and that I was, you know, not giving my kids this perfect stay-at-home mom childhood that I just couldn't even bear the thought of her missing a ballet class because I was working. I mean, I couldn't even see clearly.

And so I guess that's what I mean by, you know, sometimes we don't even have perspective on why we're doing things. And it was only in hindsight that I thought, you know, she could have missed that class. I didn't have to take her. I am not a bad mother because I work. And sometimes we just get so busy and we just get so overwhelmed. We don't take the time to get that perspective, to think more clearly about our lives. Yeah. And I'd like to explore some of that a little bit later on around that ambiguity about, okay, I feel like I have to do all these things. I was struck, though, with that idea of busyness as a social status, because once upon a

time, being idle was considered the thing. If you could be idle, that was social status. It was only the, you know, the poor who worked so hard. And it's interesting that that's flipped so much on its head. It's crazy, isn't it? I mean, that was a really fascinating thing. You know, the whole history of leisure, if you will, throughout human history, that was always, throughout human history, what you asp aspire to. The theory of the leisure class by Thorstein Veblen, which is sort of the classic on leisure theory, you know, it sort of went back to barbarian times that once we figured out how to survive, you know, and you had enough food and you had shelter and you had clothes,

you know, once we figured out how to survive, then our society's very quickly stratified. And the higher your status, the further away from that kind of drudgery, the drudge work of daily life you got, you know, from farming and from house cleaning and from cooking. And those tended to be high status men who were the leaders and the priests and the warriors. And, you know, you weren't always at war. So when you weren't at war, the warriors got to hang around and play games. And, you know, the priests weren't always, you know, saying prayers. So when they weren't, they got to sit around and think great thoughts. And the philosophers the same way.

And that's sort of throughout human history. The higher your status, the less you kind of, quote, unquote, drudge work you did. And that was never true for women, which is so interesting that if women had kind of leisure time, it was all as a reflection of the men in their lives because their father had high status or a brother or an uncle or a husband or a son. Or as one woman said, well, that's why one researcher said, well, that's why women used to become nuns. That was a way they could get leisure time and away from the drudge work in a society, sort of a socially acceptable way. I mean, I don't want to, I'm sure people had very honest vocations as well, but I do, that's completely turned on its head. In the mid-centuries, in the 1950s, there were people who were looking at how productive we were after World War II, looking at all of the income gains, and they just figured, boy, we have got it wired by now. By the 1990s, they were predicting we'd work maybe four days a week, maybe six months a year, that we'd all retire at 38, that we'd have these long lives of leisure.

And some people were heralding it, saying this is great, so everybody can explore their passion and a hobby. And even the lowliest carpenter can become a painter if they feel like it. And others were really worried, like, oh, my goodness, what are all of the great unwashed masses going to do with all of this free time on their hands? And they were actually worried about it. American Idol, I think we've answered that. Right, right. The voice.

Right. But it is interesting. So now, you know, you've got billionaires who jet around the world and they're, you know, they're doing great things. They're, you know, malaria, solving world problems. But nobody is, nobody is bragging about sitting around idly. You know, that's not the people that we look up to anymore. is I think it's, there's, I think there's some clear reasons maybe why some of that has happened. I think as for some of us work becomes, um, I'll call it higher up, you know, higher up the drudgery scale, right? It's less drudgery and it's, you know, there's some real enjoyment and love in it. Those things blend, blend together. Um, the other thing that, and you, you sort of presented both sides of this argument, some people saying, look, you know, sort of back to that, you know, idle hands, people who are idle aren't happy.

And then the flip side being, well, we're just compulsively busy. And what's that, what's the middle ground? But you said that in the book that there is, that a lot of people don't understand what leisure really is. That's so true. I didn't. You know, when I first started working on the book, I sort of thought, you know, leisure was a waste of time. You know, I was very work identified. You know, I think that most of us in the United States are. We're a very work-focused culture, you know, and we do believe in hard work. That is sort of part of the American way, if you will. And so there's this feeling that somehow you're kind of a wimp or a little bit of a wuss if you take time off or if you take vacation or, you know, that you can't hack it. Or what did Margaret Thatcher say?

Something like, you know, sleep is for wimps. Or you have T-shirts that say, I'll sleep when I'm dead. And the idea is, you know, you're working. And you're right. A lot of our jobs are what the Greek philosophers would have considered leisure. You know, science and writing and, you know, it's not like we're all out in the fields toiling all day. So, you're right. Our jobs have changed. Our work has changed. The nature of it has changed. It's much more engaging and intellectually stimulating and fun and we get passionate about it. So it does make it harder to pull away from it. But leisure really, it's so interesting. I read this one book that sort of opened my eyes. It's called Leisure, the Basis of Civilization. And it was by this German philosopher and I picked it up. It's like, what? What's he talking about? But he made the argument that it was really only in leisure time,

when you are away from the getting and the doing and the earning, and you have kind of a timeless state, if you will, you know, the psychologists would call it flow, when you're kind of out of the hurly burly and the grind. And, the grind, that's really when art has been created or philosophy, literature, great discoveries. It's all been in moments of leisure. When you look at the Wright brothers, their work was at a busy bicycle shop in Ohio. They closed up their shop and they went to North Carolina and in their playtime, in their leisure, they invented the airplane. So, I mean, it was a real eye-opener for me. And so, you know, people have asked, well, what is leisure time? And I think the best, you know, the best definition

came from a leisure researcher I spoke with who spent a career looking at leisure. And he said, first of all, leisure is really completely unique to the individual. Leisure is what leisure is to you. Whatever is going to refresh your soul, whatever gives you kind of juice in the moment. And he said, for it to feel like true leisure, you need two qualities. One, you have chosen this activity or not an activity. And two, chosen this activity or not an activity. And two, you have control over the time. And when you have those two elements and you've chosen it and it's something you want to do and it's giving you joy or refreshing you, then that's leisure. Yeah. What I think is so interesting is how for many of us, something that we will allow, let me say this, I will allow something that is leisure to blend that line into work.

Like I enjoy it. I'm loving doing it. I'm controlling the time. And then the pressure starts on, I should do more of it. Well, if I did this, then it would be, you know, with music, I had to really take a step back for me with playing guitar and take it totally as a enjoyment, leisure thing, instead of thinking it needed to lead somewhere or something had to happen. That's so American though, isn't it? Listen, oh God, I totally get that. There was a, several years ago, I learned how to play the, or was learning how to play the Irish harp. And it was beautiful and I loved it and it was so fun. But in the back of my mind, it was so weird. I had this bizarre pressure. Boy, I better get good so that I can cut a CD. And I'm like, where is that coming from? You're not a musician.

But it's like, you know, we do have that. Yeah, it's that American Idol thing again. It's like, oh, if I'm going to do something, I got to be like, I got to be amazing at it rather than, boy, I really like the sound of this Irish harp and I'm just going to play it for fun. We have a hard time in the United States doing things just because they're fun. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag,

it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves

and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You use a term in the book called contaminated time. What does that mean? I love that term. That was another revelation. It's so funny. Writing this book was sort of like the biggest gift. I got to basically report our modern lives. What a great gift. And I was talking with, it's a term that time use researchers and sociologists use.

And basically what that means is that when you're so in your head, when you're so caught up in your thoughts, and you're worrying about the future, and you're ruminating about the past, and you're going over your to-do list, and you're thinking about all future and you're, you know, ruminating about the past and you're going over your to-do list and you're thinking about all the stuff you got to do and how busy you are and how busy you should be and how much more you got to do. You're kind of everywhere and nowhere. You're not in the moment and it contaminates your time. You could be on a bike ride. You could be at dinner with your family. You could be, you know, even on vacation, but what's going on in your head is really what your reality is. And if, if what's going on in

your head is like the toilet running of thoughts, then it's completely polluted and contaminated your time. And I love that because that was so, it was so apropos. I have plenty of instances where I've looked up and, you know, I've looked up and you don't even remember how you've driven someplace because you've been so lost in your thoughts. And for me, again, talk about the two wolves, usually feeding the one that was anxious, worried, and afraid. So that's why I love that term. I think it's one that we where you are at all. And I'm not one of those people that I think sometimes we overplay it like mindfulness, like we should be aware of everywhere. Like, you know, sometimes driving home, it's perfectly good place for me to be thinking about something

else. I don't need to be paying attention to every, you know, little spot on the road. I don't think right, I think that there's a place for being in your thoughts. But I think what what you said there is when it's those other moments that we're trying to do something relaxing, or we're trying to be with our family or do something fun, and our mind is just always on what we still have to do. Yeah. And I do think that's a really important distinction, though, that you make, that there are a couple different states of mind that can be beneficial, and that you can kind of choose to flip to. One of the things that I try to do, I mean, and that you can kind of choose to flip to, you know, one of the

things that I try to do, I mean, I still get lost in my thoughts and anxiety and worry. And I would say what I, what I'm getting better at is interrupting it, you know, stopping it, stopping the kind of the, the crazy, stupid, busy train, you know, stopping those negative thoughts and just saying, okay, I see you, there you are again. Now I'm going to think about something else. So I try not to spiral down, you know, like I used to, but I think it's really important that mindfulness is a very powerful tool. And it's, it does amazing things. I was just talking to one of the Harvard neuroscientists who, you know, put some people through an eight-week

long mindfulness-based stress reduction program and then compared what happened to their brains against a group of people who did nothing, nothing different for eight weeks. And she found changes in five different regions of their brains, which was fascinating. They got thicker, you know, and it was about attention and kind of your self-identity, your sense of self. I mean, really important regions of the brain. So, mindfulness is, I think, a really important tool that we can all learn to use. But it's not, like you say, it's not a state that's particularly natural to humans. And there also is a really good argument for spacing out, for getting lost in your thoughts, you know, as long as you aren't ruminating and kind of going down the drain of negativity.

But, you know, there's really great research, again, about being idle, spacing out, doodling, daydreaming, that that's often the precursors for insight, creativity. And that's not mindfulness. It's actually a different brain system that gets lit up. So you actually, those are two really great states of mind. So yeah, be mindful. And then we don't feel like being mindful, space out. Right, right. Yeah, I think there's a, you know, there's a place for everything, right? Or that middle ground. You said one thing in the book, and this just blew me away, and it's one of those things that I instinctively wanted to debate,

because I'm like, that can't be. And I'm sure it's from a study, but that the average high school kid today experiences the same level of anxiety as a 50s psychiatric patient. That blew my mind as well, and that does come from a study. You know, when you look at the research about anxiety and what sort of what all of this busyness and overwork is doing to us, it's really, really quite sobering. The World Health Organization did a global mental health survey a couple years ago, and the United States, they rated as the most anxious country in the world.

Whoa. I mean, that's astounding. We're the richest country. We are, you know, the leaders of the free world. And they determined that in our lifetimes, fully one-third of us will be so anxious as to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. So at that point, you really do, you have to step back and say, you know, it's not, you know, yes, there are individual tools and strategies you can use, but there is something in the water going Explain what you mean by ambiguity. And then what are some strategies for dealing with it? to kind of know when, because you're sort of like, well, this doesn't really, I don't know if I want this one to win. I don't know if I want that one to win. You're not really committed fully to

anything. And boy, I have struggled with that a lot in my life. Just kind of, I don't know if this is the right thing. I don't know if I should be doing something else. Am I doing the right thing with my life? What about this? And it can really pull you down and it just can leave you sort of in this kind of paralyzed state. And so honestly, the best way to deal with it is just to recognize, I don't know, you know, the answers are not clear. I am uncertain. I'm going to choose one thing and just go with it. And you know what? And it may be the wrong choice and I'm just going to make it anyway. It's almost like we're too paralyzed to make a choice, because we're so afraid it's going to be the wrong one. You know, or there are two good choices, and you honestly don't know which one to do, to choose. And I think living like that, living in that state of ambiguity can be

very painful. You know, and it takes a lot of energy and kind of saps you. I can say that from personal experience. And so sometimes it's just like, well, I don't know, I'm going to make a decision, I'm going to go with it. And if it's the wrong one, you know, revisit it and make another decision down the road. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that

when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It could be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think that ambiguity is, in a lot of ways, is a result of, I think, what should be considered a positive life, right? The one that I run into all the time is like, there's not enough time to do all the things that I care about.

That's ultimately probably a good problem. Right. You know, that I've got enough things to care about. My life is full enough that I have to make that decision. But boy, it does become very painful. And I think you're, you know, I think your point is right. Sometimes to make that decision. But boy, it does become very painful. And I think you're, you know, I think your point is right. Sometimes just making a decision. The other thing I, back to your thing about ballet class is to try and get things in perspective.

Like you can't, you can't be everywhere or I can't be everywhere all the time for everyone. That's just the reality. And that's okay. And we'll talk about time management or time planning in a minute, because I think that's, you've got some good stuff in there that was very similar to what I do with people I'm working with in a one-on-one way. So I was glad to see that. But I think sometimes it's having a wider time perspective. So if I look at just tonight, you know, my daughter's ballet versus work, that's very difficult. But if I look at just tonight, you know, my, my daughter's ballet versus work, that's very difficult. But if I broaden that horizon out a little bit, and I try and keep those things balanced over a broader time horizon, it becomes a lot easier to do because I can make,

I've got more chances to make adjustments and balance things out. But I tend to go right to that minute, like, okay, these three things need done right at the same time. I can't do it. to that minute, like, okay, these three things need done right at the same time. I can't do it. Someone is screwed. This sucks. Whereas if I, you know, again, broaden it out over the next month, I can probably make sure everybody's taken care of to some degree. Right. I think having that broader perspective is so important. You know, we do tend to think I got to get all of this done. Or if we think, you know, the only way to have balance, if you will, is to do work and have time for my family and play every day. And that's just really not realistic. There are going to be days when, you know, when work is going to take precedence and there's some deadline or there's something going on that's just going to be very heavy work. There are going to

be other days when your family's going to take precedence and a kid is sick or you've got to go to a doctor's appointment. That's just the way it's going to be. There's going to be this kind of constant ebb and flow. And, you know, there are going to be hopefully days that you will take to play and put everything else on the back burner that might be on the weekend. So it's really much more a sense of how do you integrate these different parts of your life. And one of the things that's helped me is, again, like you, if I look on a day to day basis, I'll feel like a failure because I won't get to everything. But if I broaden it out, I started looking at my calendar over a month. And I was like, Oh, I did, I did make time for that. Oh, look, I did make time for that.

You know, and I do think that that helps you to kind of, to see that there are a lot of different moving pieces in your life. You can make time for more of them when you have that bigger perspective. But I think the other thing that's important, again, it goes back to like, again, having to make choices. function of doing a bunch of stuff we don't like. Sometimes it's doing a lot of stuff we do like. And if we don't want to be so busy, then we have to make some choices that some things might need to wait or sometimes some things you might just not do it at all. I think we all in this culture, and I'm guilty of it, certainly. How are you doing? Busy, busy, busy. What I've tried to start doing is get away from it as a complaint because I'm clearly choosing it, right? Like, I mean, I recognize that with myself. Like I put, I keep stacking things into my life that I want to do and that I care about. And I just feel like I can't, it's not fair. Actually, just it's, it's back to that perception thing. When I feel like it's being done to me, I'm so

busy. Then I get stressed. And when I go, no, you know what what I'm making this choice I chose to take this on I chose to take that on I don't have to then I get I'm able to breathe a little bit deeper but I definitely do do it to myself um and I think I must prefer it that way because I keep doing it well you know and that's something that only you you can answer but but sometimes you know I think we do keep doing it that way because it's just what we've done for so long. You know, we're used to it. And I think a lot of us don't know what we do being idle with leisure time. I mean, I still struggle with that. You know, there was a study not long ago that some people preferred receiving an electric shock rather than just being alone in a room with their own thoughts.

So, I mean, that's kind of crazy, but we do live in a culture where, um, kind of taking the foot off the gas pedal at full throttle is, is really an uncomfortable thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I think it's, it's back to that, particularly if your leisure activities tend to be, you know, active ones. I've just kind of learned through experience over life that I am one of those people that being left too idle has not proven to be good for me in the past. And I think everybody's a little bit differently. I've just kind of learned that about myself. But the key is to be able, can I live that way without stressing myself out? One of the things that you talk about, and I first learned this,

I think from, from Stephen Covey. Um, and you talk about putting the big pieces of your calendar in first. And I think the analogy that I read that he had, although I think a lot of people have heard it is that idea of if you have like a jar and, um, if you're trying to plan your time and you, you put the big rocks in and it seems like it's full, but then you can put all the gravel in, it still fits in. And then you can put pebbles in and then sand and then water. And, and you just kind of, there's lots of room for the little stuff if you get the big important stuff in place first. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that was a real lesson to me because I think so much of my own overwhelm, it was also partly my approach to things. And I'm not quite sure why I did it. I think I was always sort of revving and panicked. I mean, I stopped drinking

coffee. I was always so stressed out. I drink decaf and I was still kind of panicked. And I would sort of approach the day thinking, okay, I've got all this stuff to do. So I'll just get this little stuff out of the way. And then I'll clear the decks and I'll get to the big stuff I'll just get it out of the way I'll just cross all this stuff off my to-do list and then I'll get to the big stuff and then I would find that um I would get caught up in the little stuff and then it would take so much longer to get to the bigger stuff and then I'd kind of get lost in the bigger stuff and then it would be late and then it would be time to come home and then I didn't want to leave that bigger stuff. And yet the next day, it's like I never learned the lesson. Talk about like hitting yourself over the head with a hammer every single day. I'd start with the same

way. Well, I'll just get this little stuff out of the way. And it was crazy. And so it's really true. Now I have my running partner and I, when we go for a run in the morning, we'll stop and we'll say, what's your one thing? And instead of thinking about the 75 things I've got to do, it really helps us focus on what is the one most important thing. And then I really try to do that first. Yeah, I think that's such sound strategy. You talk about something in the book called pulsing. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, that was something that I learned from Tony Schwartz, who's the founder of the Energy Project, which is just a really wonderful organization. They do doing some really interesting work. And from his books and from some of his research,

you know, he makes this argument that we have 90 minute attentiveness cycles during the day, just like we have 90 minute sleep cycles at night. And so, you know, his whole theory is, you know, we breathe in and out our heartbeats, we have these kind of natural kind of rhythms, you know, even stress, we have stress and release, that that is sort of the way humans have evolved, we have our brain waves, you know. And so he said, why wouldn't we have attentiveness cycles that would also kind of, you know, cycle or pulse? And so his, we had a very funny conversation when I called him up for my interview with him. The first thing he said is, I bet you're writing your book the same way I wrote my first couple.

And I said, what do you mean? And he said, chained to your desk with your butt in a chair for 10 hours straight. And I kind of laughed and like, well, yeah, because I thought that's the best way to work, right? Just power through and sit there and just keep at it and go, go, go. And he said that he doesn't work that way anymore. said he works in what he calls four 90s so he'll work for 90 minutes and then take a break and then work another 90 minutes and then he said and then he'll completely change the channel from like 90 minutes and go for a run or go do something completely different to kind of give his brain a completely different uh kind of mode to be in and then come back and do another couple 90s and he said he's more productive now than he's ever been. And he's written his books in like half the time. So I'm not quite at the ninja level of Tony Schwartz. I think that's pretty amazing. And sometimes it's harder to do, you know, when you have deadlines, or you're trying to work with other people. But when I can, I really do. For my book in particular, I wrote my

whole book in pulses, and it made a huge difference. And now that I'm working at the Washington Post again, as a staff writer, when I can, I try to work in those really concentrated chunks of time. And I will say, I have been far more productive, particularly as we move more to digital and you have to be, you know, more productive. And, uh, I, uh, it's, it's really, it's, it's been very noticeable to me that I've been much more productive and it's much easier, you know, when I focus on the big stuff first and I, and I do work in those concentrated pulses. Yeah. It's remarkable how much can get done in short, very extremely focused bursts of time with breaks in between. I mean, it really is a, it's a fundamentally different way to approach

getting work done than most of us do, which is to settle in at a desk for a long period of time and do a bunch of different things scattershot. Um, yeah, the transformation in myself and, and in people people I work with who put that into place is dramatic. We are very near the end of time, but I wanted to, not the end of all time, the end of this show, thankfully, as far as I know anyway, but you've got a line in the book, and I think it was a quote from someone, but I thought it was such a great line and such a reason sort of why I started doing this show and why the parable is important to me because my mind tends to go to, by default, not necessarily the best places. And it was that entropy, disorder, chaos, and decay is the default option of consciousness. chaos and decay is the default option of consciousness. Yeah, that was from research that Csikszentmihalyi did when he wanted to try to understand people's, not only what they did

with their time, but their perception of it. And he came up with this, it's called an experience sampling method, and he gave people beepers. And he would beep them at random times through the day and ask them not only what they were doing, but how they felt about it and what they were thinking about. And he initially thought, oh, I'm going to hear great thoughts and people are going to be dreaming great dreams and there's going to be imagination. It'll be awesome. And then what he found after he actually beeped people and asked them what they were thinking, that it was all chaos, negative thoughts, you know, craziness. And, and that's when he, he really realized that it would take work and will and practice to really change the way we think. Yep. And I think that is absolutely, it's certainly my experience,

you know, it's, and I, I, when I talk about why we started the show, that was a big part of it was just to give me a way to learn more about how do I, I think that, you know, to use the parable, I think the bad wolf is pretty good at feeding himself. There's lots of food laying around. It's just everywhere. He's always hungry. You know, it's the good wolf, at least for me, that needs the, that needs the extra effort in, in getting fed. Yes, that's so true. And I will say that, you know, I've always kind of suffered from insomnia. And so one of the things that I started doing a couple of years ago is like when I have an attack and I can't sleep, I'll just take a breath and I just start listing everything I'm grateful for, you know, and then my good wolf gets nice and

full. Bye-bye. Yeah, that's a great way to go to sleep. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I know despite writing your book, you still have a very busy schedule, so I appreciate you fitnessing. I'm happy to do it. It was wonderful talking to you. All right, take care. Okay, you too. to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level

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