This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Toxic Productivity with Israa Nasir | 254

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

We’ve become obsessed with productivity, confusing it with busyness and setting unrealistic expectations to perform 24/7—leaving us feeling guilty when we’re not “doing enough.” That’s exactly why I’m excited to dive into the topic of toxic productivity with today’s guest, Israa Nasir. Israa, a New York City-based psychotherapist, writer, and founder of WellGuide, brings deep expertise in mental health, identity formation, and healing, particularly for AAPI first- and second-generation immigrants. She has spoken at prestigious organizations like Google, Meta, and Yale University and serves on the Mental Health Advisory Board for PopSugar and August. Her new book, Toxic Productivity: Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More, offers strategies to break free from the hustle culture and reclaim what truly matters. Because at the end of the day, it won’t be the hustle, emails, or to-do lists that define your life—it’ll be the joy you shared, the impact you made, and the legacy you leave behind. So let’s stop glorifying busyness and start embracing a life worth celebrating. Connect with Our Guest: Israa Nasir Website: https://www.israanasir.com/  Book: https://www.israanasir.com/toxic-productivity  IG: https://www.instagram.com/well.guide/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@israajnasir LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/israanasir/ Related Podcast Episodes: A Better Way to Define Success with Stella Grizont 7 Keys to Unlock Your Dynamic Drive with Molly Fletcher Can’t Get No Satisfaction with Dr. Julie Landry Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kalil, and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast, which I'm infinitely grateful for. And for those of you who rate and review this podcast, you get an extra special spot in my blanket for it. But it begs the question, why? Why with all of the demands on your time and all of the podcasts out there do you find yourself here? Probably not the best question for a host to ask out loud, but I am curious. I hope it's because you find value. I hope it's because our topics and conversations find you at just the right time and have you feel,

think, or act differently than you might otherwise. I hope it's because you enjoy hanging out with me and our incredible guests who constantly expand both our brains and our hearts. In short, I hope this podcast makes you and your life better in some way. I'm also curious about how you listen, because my guess is that you tune in while you're doing something else, like driving or on your commute, while you're working out, or while you're getting something done, like folding laundry or answering emails. Okay, maybe you're wondering where I'm going with this. Yeah, I'll land the plane here.

My point is that I'll bet either because of your never-ending to-do list or because of an inner desire or expectation to always be productive, that you're often multitasking. You might even feel like you need to justify the choices you make with your time, even your downtime, with how to make them more productive. Trust me, I've been there, on the verge of a breakdown, asking myself if there's a more productive way to take a break. Here's the problem as I see and experience it. We've become obsessed with productivity.

We've confused it with busyness. And we've set this expectation at 24-7, so we literally feel guilty when we're not being productive. Which is why I'm excited to be talking about toxic productivity on the show today. And thrilled to introduce our guest, Isra Nasser. Isra is a New York City-based psychotherapist, writer, and founder of WellGuide, a digital community for mental health awareness. A fellow child of immigrants, she has specific focus on mental health identity formation and the healing of the AAPI first and second generation immigrant community. Isra has been featured in many major publications and has

been invited to speak at corporations such as Google, Meta, and Yale University. She sits on the Mental Health Advisory Board for both PopSugar and the menstrual health product and advisory brand, August, and her book, Toxic Productivity, Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More, just hit the shelves. Isra, thank you for being here to talk about a topic that I think we're all dealing with, but not necessarily aware of, this idea of toxic productivity. So let me start by asking, what does productivity even mean? Well, that's a really great question, Nicole, and thank you for the introduction. To me, productivity means you are able to complete the things that bring you closer to your broader goal or your broader purpose.

And so there is a through line in the things that you are doing day to day and month after month that actually brings you closer to your goal. And I make a distinction between busy and productive. So busy are the things that we kind of just have to check through because things have to be done, right? But your true productivity is just a measure of how aligned your tasks are to a broader purpose and vision for your life. Okay. I love that definition, bringing you closer to your goal or purpose. I guess my follow-up question is how often in our days do you think we are actually meant to be or being productive? And I say that because as I said in the opening, I think we think it's supposed to be every minute of every day. And that just isn't realistic in my experience, especially when you tack on busyness and to-dos and things like that. So what would be a healthy or productive

idea about how often we should be being productive? I think that depends on the season you're in in life. One thing is for sure that you're not meant to be productive every waking moment. That's foundational. But sometimes you have seasons in life that are asking more of you if you are a working mom or you have a deadline coming up at work or you're launching a new thing. And that's something that's a goal that you're working towards. But I will say, I think when we think about being productive, we think about just kind of like hammering things out for hours on end. And the reality is our capacity to have focused and sustained attention, according to research, is kind of caps out at 90 minutes in one go. And usually around the 45 minute mark, you might start noticing that you are fidgeting or you might be kind of like getting hungry or irritated. Your

body might start aching. Those are signs your body is giving you that you need to stop. You need to take a break because cognitively at like a brain level, we're not meant to be processing productively continuously. And so I would say when you think about productivity or, you know, chunking out your time to do things that are really, you know, meaningful to try to have it structured in more of like a spurt as opposed to like a marathon, like working session for anything. So what I'm hearing is if our body and brains are telling us to take a break, right, at that 45 to 90 minute mark, it's actually most effective to listen as opposed to what I think

a lot of us try to do is push through it or think that there's something wrong with us. Like, why can't I just focus or something along those lines? Is that what you're saying? Yes, absolutely. I think that we are very comfortable in ignoring our body's needs. You know, we tend to disregard, like our body comes last for most people when it comes to sleep, when it comes to food, you know, when it comes to movement,

but the body and mind are constantly working together. They're constantly in communication and both of them together are always telling us things, you know, and, but we've just come so far removed from our body. Like how many people skip lunch to just finish this email, finish the report, finish the thing, or, you know, you're kind of rushing from one thing to the other, one errand to the other, and you're kind of just snacking on protein bars in the car. And, you know, how many of us like will sleep late, wake up early and sacrifice sleeping because that's the thing we take away from. But if you actually give your body the adequate time to rest, you are going to be better able to have sustained productivity.

And that's the whole point, right? The opposite of toxic productivity is not having no productivity. The opposite of toxic productivity is sustainable, healthy productivity that can last over a lifetime without burning you out. Okay. I love this concept and I'm going to be honest, like my brain is resisting a little bit. And I think it's because I have decades of experience, whether it be in my previous corporate life of like trying to be productive all the time and getting the message that I should be and like this desire toward goal achievement and getting everything done. I love what you're saying. It feels true for me and it's so counter. I think the messages we're getting from everyone and everywhere else.

Yeah. I think one thing we often do is intertwine productivity and time management. Any thoughts on that? Absolutely. I have so many thoughts on that. So time management is a really important aspect of being organized. And being organized helps you have better productivity. But I genuinely believe that a lot of our productivity habits and productivity behaviors are actually driven by unresolved difficult emotions and, you know, powerful emotions like shame and guilt, the desire to be, you know, on par with your peers or social comparison and what that, like the feelings it activates for us around inadequacy and self-worth, the pressures of perfectionism and anxiety around that, these powerful emotions drive a lot of our productivity habits. And good time management

skills can absolutely set you on a path to be organized. However, if you don't resolve these very deep-rooted emotions, when there is an emotional crisis or when there is low resilience or when there is a high-stress moment in your life, those emotions will get into the driver's seat. And they will start driving you towards toxic productivity, towards unhealthy productivity, and eventually towards burnout. Because our emotions are an extremely powerful motivator for behavior. And unless we bring awareness to what is really going on underneath the surface, time management skills are a little bit of a superficial layer of behavior change. And we can do that really well when we are at peace. But if we don't fundamentally change or become aware of our emotions and know how to manage them, the behavior changes are hard to implement when you are in a

high stress situation. That's kind of my whole thing. I'm not knocking time management. I think that's so important. I've had to work very hard at building many organizational systems and time management and punctuality and all of those things, right? But procrastination is a great example of this. People often think that procrastination is just a time management issue. You didn't organize your schedule. You didn't plan your tasks in advance. You didn't think through how much time that would take, which is all true. But procrastination at its core is anxiety. It is avoidance happening in your subconscious mind. Something about this task is giving you anxiety, so you're pushing it off. It's not just a byproduct of poor time management.

And you can actually tackle procrastination really well if you learn to identify what the signs of anxiety are for you and learn to examine that anxiety. What am I anxious about? Is it a fear of failure? Is it a fear of success? Is it feeling inadequate that you don't know how to do it well? Are you comparing yourself to other people, right? Perfectionism is a huge driver of procrastination because you're so afraid things won't be perfect that you push it down, you avoid it. And so I think our emotions are always in the background and it's something we don't like talking about because it's not tangible. Agreed. And again, my brain is just spinning. I feel like what is popping up for me is when I go toxic productivity, usually what's in the driver's seat are those feelings of shame or needing to prove myself or comparing myself to somebody else and wanting to be better or come out ahead or perfectionism. When I am defining productivity based on what other people see and experience, I have a higher probability of leaning into toxic productivity versus when I go back to your original definition of, is this going to bring me

closer to my goal and my purpose? And if the answer is yes, then that is a great productive choice. But how often I make choices that fall into this productivity category because of not that reason, not because I can see that through line to how it's getting me closer to my goal or purpose, but because I feel like somebody else is expecting me to, or I want to show somebody how committed I am or how good I am. Any reactions to that? Am I capturing what you're saying? Yeah. So it's a multifaceted thing. And I think there's a couple of constructs that drive unhealthy productivity. And the one that you're speaking of right now is the social comparison.

So social comparison is also a really powerful motivator of human behavior. It is very much coded within our brain to compare ourselves to our peers. And it's like an evolutionary mechanism. It's meant to be protective, right? If you think about very small hunter-gatherer societies, being able to quickly compare yourself to your peers, let you know whether you are good enough to be safe, right? But what's happened is our society has evolved faster than our brain has evolved. So now that mechanism of comparison is taking in information from all over the world. Like I can get on social media and compare myself to a woman who's living in Australia, whereas before I wouldn't have access

to that information. And so comparing yourself to others in this today's digital world really heightens the drive for toxic productivity. Because when you compare yourself to somebody else, you often feel behind. And feeling behind is the activating trigger of the toxic productivity mindset, right? And baked into that is external validation. Like so many of us do things because we want praise. We want, you know, achievement. I think in the intro, you said that you were also a child of immigrants. This is

something that's very common in immigrant families. You know, this desire for achievement, if you're raised as a good girl, right? If you had good girl syndrome, if you're demanding perfection, your parents were demanding perfection from you as a child, all of these things really make you bank on external validation. If other people think I'm good, then I must be good. And if other people don't think I'm good, then I'm not good. And that's too scary. It's unsafe. It feels painful.

And so we do all of these things to prove to others that we are good so that we can prove it to ourselves. And that's why I say that one of the most important things that we have to do is to really connect to our intentions. So people often ask me you know what should we do if we have toxic productivity and oftentimes they're listening they're they're wanting me to say something super tangible like a hack you know like a oh if you do this then that will happen but the truth is I think it's more important to understand your intentions so my whole thing is to get people to ask themselves two really important questions. Why do I do the things I do? And do I have to do them? Do I have to do them? Do I have to do them? Right? It's like if you put the emphasis on different things,

the question becomes different, but I want you to think about all of it. By connecting to your intention, you can start to really separate yourself from other people's opinions. Yeah. I mean, just even asking myself that question, why do I do the things I do? And again, I go back to your, if the answer is because I see that this is going to bring me closer to my purpose, then that would be more inspiring and feel better and healthier than because I'm the oldest child of immigrant parents and I need to prove myself to everyone, right? Yeah. So I love both of those questions. And especially, like you said, the emphasis on do I have to do them? Is there another option I think is really important, especially for women? Because we often think we're supposed to be the ones. I might just add to that a little bit is, yes, we often do think we're supposed to be the ones, but I think through socialized conditioning, we also end up

believing that we are the only ones. Like we are the only ones who can do this. Other people in our lives are not competent enough. They are busier. They are all of these, you know, stories that we've constantly been told. So women tend to overfunction a lot. And that really feeds into this toxic productivity mindset, right? This idea that I'm the only one who can do it right. I'm the only one who can do it best. I'm the only one who knows how to do it. All of that creates a system in your families, right, that people start to rely on you. And that you're the only one who can do it, you are also thinking you're the only one who can do it.

And you are becoming more and more resentful because it's not true. You know that in your intuition, but everybody is constantly telling you that you're the only one who can do it. And we see this a lot in like the unequal distribution of labor in a home. That's what I was thinking, especially as moms. Oh gosh, yeah. I mean, I think that a really great example of this, not to take a little slight tangent, but I do want to add this. Really great example of this is the loading and unloading the dishwasher. I have female friends who have a very particular way that they want the dishes to be loaded.

And because other people cannot do it, like there are male partners, this is in straight relationships, because the male partner cannot do it exactly that way, the load of the emotional and mental labor of doing the dishes falls on my friend. But she's also taking it on because she also believes that this is the best way to do the dishes and only I can do it this way. But by this mindset, you alienate the other person into believing that they are incompetent. And now you're stuck because they're going to believe they're incompetent. You're believing that this is so simple. Why can't you do it? It breeds so much resentment and so what one of the things I offer in the book uh as a solution if you will is to do things good enough you know to do things kind of like mediocre to to let things be a b effort if it's not needing

to be an a so if the dishwasher is not completely aligned then that's okay because it's not needing to be an A. So if the dishwasher is not completely aligned, then that's okay. Cause it's not the end of the world as long as the dishes get done. Right. And so that way you can shift out of this mindset of over-functioning in every area of your life. You can shift out of this mindset of like, only I can do this and nobody else can do this. And you know what that does? It leads you to overcommit in your life. And overcommitting is a really big red flag of toxic productivity. Well, first I feel a little called out because I have a thing with the dishwasher. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. No, it's so good. It was literally perfect. And I've had to ask myself, like, is this the hill I want to die on? And the answer is absolutely not. I mean, it does not matter in the grand scheme of things. It is not at

all aligned to my goal or my purpose and who cares. And then I was getting frustrated that my husband wasn't loading it or like it was being, and I'm like, I had to acknowledge that I set it up to be this way. Right. I was getting annoyed by the way, and like, oh had to acknowledge that I set it up to be this way, right? I was getting annoyed by the way, and like, oh, there's water in the cups. And that was something I had to untangle because to your point, I'd created this situation. I'd enabled this feeling that I was the only one who could do it and it needed to be done right. Yeah. And so it was a wonderful example. I call the like be effort

or good enough. I call it strategically half-assing things. Like just deciding that this isn't that important. So we're just going to half-ass this one. And I only full-ass the things that really, really matter. Right. So again, you're speaking, I think to many of us. So how do we cultivate a healthier perspective on achievement and all of those things so that we can shift our emotions or let go of some of those ones that aren't working for us that are in the driver's seat. It's something that it's kind of like a, gosh, without sounding like a cliche, it is like a journey. It's like stepped. It's not something that we just do. Toxic productivity habits kind of permeate our whole lifestyle. And you're not just like an over-functioning overachiever at work. You might become an over-functioning and overachiever in your personal relationships, in your marriages, as a parent, in your friendships. You might be the girl who's making the itineraries, laminating them for the group trip, making the reservations.

It's very rare that somebody is just one thing in one domain of their life. This is a lifestyle change. I want people to a lifestyle change. And so I want people to be really patient with themselves. I want people to realize that this is a stepped process, but it's a stepped process in the, in service of their own happiness. It's not a chore. It's not another checklist that you have to go through. It's not, it's not another like achievement marker that you want to put on yourself and be like, oh gosh, my goal this year is to be the best personal development person. In the next six months, I'm going to glow up and I'm going to change my life and I'm going to check this off.

Because then you're taking the same mindset and putting it onto your personal development and growth. So we don't want that. We actually want to break out of this like achievement-oriented mindset towards everything. And the first thing I'll say is you can't change something you are not aware of. And so self-awareness is, I think, one of the most underrated tools of happiness. A lot of people, especially like in my work as a therapist, a lot of people will say things like, I was so much happier when I didn't know this stuff, right? And I was just like so much happier when I didn't realize that these were my dynamics. And to them, I always challenge and say, were you happier or were you just ignorant? Because the problems were still happening. You just didn't

know why they were happening. And so self-awareness about your patterns is really important. So the first step, like a tangible step, I say, this is an exercise as well in the book, is do like a time-energy audit. So be really aware for like the next two weeks of where you dedicate your time and where you dedicate your energy. Where are you putting your resources? Time and energy are really important resources, right? And both of them are like finite to some degree. So do an audit, become aware of your patterns. Our patterns tell on us. And while you might maybe think to yourself, I'm just a really, I'm like an empath. I love being there for other people. I'm just like a really great friend.

But you're tired and you're frazzled and you feel like this overwhelming sense of pressure to constantly respond to people and be there for them. And then you do a time energy audit. And in two weeks, you see that you are dedicating at least 20 hours a week to other people, but not getting that in return. Now, that's a really great tell, right? That's a little amber flag for you to take a look at what is really going on. Like, how are you filling your resources and your cup back? So time energy audit is a really good way of understanding what's going on with you. I think another really good way to break out of this achievement trap is to examine the things you are working towards. I meet a lot of

people who have these goals that they decided at some point in their life. I want to have a six-figure salary by I'm 27. I want to retire by 46. I want to have all of my kids and pay off my house before I'm 37. I want to be a millionaire by 37 and start my own business? And I always ask those people, my question is, like, what is driving this? What will happen if you're not a millionaire by 37? What happens if you hit it at 40, right? We have all of these unnecessary goals that we just adopt at some point in our lives. And then we just kind of work towards them unthinkingly, unintentionally, our life becomes structured around it. And we put these timelines. And I think it's really important to question our ambitions. Like, what are we working towards? Why do I want these things?

What will happen if I don't get it? What am I afraid of? Right? Like, what will happen if I don't get it? And also, like, what's the experience I'm looking for, right? Like what will happen if I don't get it? And also like what's the experience I'm looking for, right? What do you think that that's going to create for you? And then being open to your point, like if your goal is to make a million dollars, will you get the experience you're looking for if you make 990,000? I have been sort of self-reflecting on a lot of those, I'm just going to say made up goals that I've been operating out of and really questioning them and how often there is an experience that I'm looking for, something I want to feel or create for myself, but how often there are so many other ways to get what it is that I want. And then also noticing how being attached to that arbitrary goal has me operating in ways that don't make me feel good or don't actually feel like good choices for me in my current situation. Yeah. The problem is that this is so normalized, right? We think that this is just part and parcel

of being alive. And I'll say this from my own personal experience. Through most of my late 20s, early 30s, I genuinely believe that being stressed was a byproduct of an ambitious person. I just believe that if you're ambitious, if you're trying to do things, if you're trying to make a mark on this world, of course you have to be stressed. You have to be frazzled. You have to do a lot of things. You have to have a very jam-packed calendar. And you just have to be moving from one thing to the next at this exorbitantly fast speed. I just accepted the fact that being unhealthy was just a part of modern life. But that's actually not true. You can be successful. Absolutely. You can be ambitious, but you don't have to be burning out

while doing it. There are healthier ways to get to the same destination. And I think inviting people into self-awareness and reflection and thinking about their intentions, I think all of those things help you realize that because that's what happened with me. I had to build a practice of, but it took me like, honestly, like feeling really miserable in my life to get there, unfortunately. I was literally thinking, I wish you would have told me this in my 20s. And then my follow-up thought was, I don't know if I would have listened. I don't know if I would have believed it because I had to hit burnout and stress and being miserable for me to realize.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people operate in this binary that you're either productive or you're lazy. You're either like hyper ambitious or you're just kind of like a lost person. And there's this like very discrete binary in our mind. And so anything that doesn't fit the productive or ambitious bucket, like we immediately ascribe to bad, right? And then the moment there's bad, it becomes moralistic. And now you're like, I don't want to be bad. That makes me feel bad. I'm not going to be good enough. And so we overcompensate. And the truth is that the binary doesn't exist. And it's very hard to see because I definitely, just like you, if someone had told, like, if I go back to my past self and I'm like, hey girl, like you don't have to, you

don't have to do all these things. Like you'll still be successful. I would straight up laugh. I would just be like, that's just old people talk. You're just older now and now you're tired and you can't do all these things and blah, blah, blah. Like it just really horrible, you know, productivity mindset. So, but it's, you know, it's a, it is a personal journey because there's so many personal drivers that are

operating behind the scenes. One last question I have to ask is when we're doing something and we catch our brain going, you could be being more productive right now. I just think of the example of I was sitting and doing a puzzle and I started feeling guilty about it. Like I should be doing something else. When we're in those moments, any advice of what we can tell ourselves or ask ourselves to sort of break that pattern of feeling like we always need to hustle and we always need to be productive? Yeah. So the goal is not that that voice will go away because that's a really difficult thing for people to get to, including myself, because the negative criticism self-talk is so deeply

ingrained. And that takes a very long lifetime of intentional self-talk to get rid of. So I don't want anyone to be like, I shouldn't ever have these thoughts. It's okay if you have the thought. What we need to get better at is to counter that thought. So in the same way, our critical self-talk has so much power and influence, our positive self-talk has the same impact on us if we allow it to flourish, right? Our thoughts have so much power. And if we can have the negative impact, we can also have the positive impact. So when stuff like that happens to me, because it does happen and it still happens, I always, depending on my mood, I will very nonchalantly respond to it in my head. I will say something like, okay, that's fine, but I'm doing a

puzzle right now, right? Like again, grounding yourself in the present moment or using positive self-talk to counter it. Yes, I could be doing something productive, but doing a puzzle is making me feel good right now. Right? If doing things in a restful way is really triggering for you, because it can be for some people, I recommend putting a timer on it. And that will ground your anxiety. That will ground that productivity guilt that you're feeling.

Because you can set the timer and you can say, you know what? I will rest for 15 minutes. I'm allowed that. And then I'll be productive again after. And that really helps anchor that anxiety. So you can actually be present in that activity that you're doing. I love all of that. And I also am thinking of something you said earlier about this time and energy study of how much we give our time and energy out and just maybe reminding ourselves in those moments, this is about getting the energy back in, right? Like those things make me feel happy and more filled up and all of that so that I can have the time and energy to give out for those things that I have coming up or for the productivity moments that are on my calendar. Exactly. Yes. It's reframing

rest as a part of being more productive instead of something that's outside of it or something that you have to earn. Isra, this conversation has been wildly fascinating. I am sure you can smell the burning that's coming from my brain and I cannot wait to read your book and I know other people will as well. Thank you. So the book is Toxic Productivity. It's available on Amazon or wherever you buy books. And the website is isranasser.com. We'll put that and all of the other links to social media and all that in show notes. Isra, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, friend, it's time that we

redefine what it means to be productive. Toxic productivity tells us we're only as good as what we get done. It has us chained to never-ending to-do lists, multitasking our faces off, saying yes when we really want to say no, addicted to achievement, and trying to prove ourselves to everyone else. But here's the deal. At the end of the day, whenever that may be, I highly doubt your eulogy will highlight how much you hustled, how many emails you answered, or how perfectly you juggled your to-do list.

It won't be about how well you multitasked or how many hours you worked. Instead, it'll be about the impact you made, the people you loved, and the lives you touched. It'll be about the moments that mattered, the joy you shared, and the legacy you leave behind. So let's stop glorifying the hustle and start living a life that's truly worth celebrating. One that's committed to being overdoing. Because that is woman's work.