Well with Arielle Lorre - 358: Why We Should Undercommit, Embrace Mediocrity and Unsubscribe from Toxic Productivity with Israa Nasir

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Israa Nasir is a New York based psychotherapist and founder of WellGuide, a popular digital community for mental health awareness. She joins the show to discuss her new book, TOXIC PRODUCTIVITY: Reclaim Your Time and Energy in a World That Always Demands More. We talk why we use productivity to cope with uncomfortable emotions, how to shift from chronic doing to being, how to change bad habits, embrace mediocrity and why we need to learn how to undercommit. We also talk about our shared love for jumbo jigsaw puzzles, dopamine menus, and tips for overachievers to find balance. This episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.Go to tryarmra.com/BLONDE or enter BLONDE for 15% off your first order.Go to betterhelp.com/FILES to get 10% off your first month.Visit DrinkLMNT.com/BLONDE to get a free sample pack with any purchaseGo to start.culinahealth.com to book your first session with a registered dietitian today.Visit qualialife.com/BLONDE for 50% off of Qualia Senolytic and code BLONDE at checkout for an additional 15% offVisit article.com/BLONDE for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following podcast is a dear media production. In a world of ever-changing wellness trends and information, what does it mean to truly be well? I'm Ariel Lori and I'm going to explore this with you. I am bringing you candid conversations that will equip you with everything you need to live your best life and look good doing it. Think of well as your go-to resource for all of the latest in wellness and me as your internet bestie.

Well, let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited for you to hear today's episode. I have to admit two things. One, I came away from this conversation with such a girl crush on my guest. I am talking to Isra Nasser. She is a New York City based psychotherapist, but more on her in a minute. The second thing is that going into it, I wasn't sure that I would really relate to this topic. And I was worried that it might be a little bit heavy and negative to be totally. honest, toxic productivity. Sounds pretty bad, right? But I came away from it with so many amazing tips and applicable things that I can do in my life to change habits and uncommit so that I'm not so chronically stressed. And it was just a really, really fun conversation. So Isra is a New York City-based psychotherapist, writer, and founder of Well Guide,

a digital community for mental health awareness. And she has a new book out called Talk productivity, reclaim your time and emotional energy in a world that demands more. So in this book and in this episode, she reveals the hidden roots of hustle culture and dismantles the myth that doing more makes you worthy. It's a really, really great episode. Something that I loved that she shared about was how bad habits are so easy because they're frictionless. But we can take the same framework that we have around bad habits and apply them to good habits and make good habits because frictionless as well. And I know that all of us have behaviors that we want to change, but it can be really hard and uncomfortable. And she has great tips for doing that. She has tips for overachievers

to find balance. And she has a really great dopamine menu too. It's just such a fun, relatable conversation about something that we all struggle with. So please enjoy Isra Nasser. Welcome. Hi. Hi. I'm so excited to be here. I'm really excited to have you here. I don't think that I have had a guest on who's talked about toxic productivity. And we were talking a little bit before we started recording about how people might hear this and think that it doesn't apply to them and not identify with it. But it can also be a little more subtle, right? And it can show up in ways that we may not identify with as toxic productivity, even though we all know that we're living in hustle culture. And, you know, you talk about glorifying the grind. And we're also talking

about how there's kind of a shift away from that, but that it's adopting a lot of the same framework. So I would love to start there. And maybe you can tell us how you landed on toxic productivity. Yes. So I do think that a lot of the things that we do fall under the same paradigm of toxic productivity, but maybe because it's not work related, we don't see it like that. And I think that's what was happening with me. So a couple of years ago, The way I kind of got to this topic and got to this book and exploring it was really from my own struggles. A couple of years ago, I had just moved to New York and I was literally going out every single day. Every single day I had like a stacked calendar.

And that went on for about a year. And I was also working at the startup. So super lean early stage. I also launched my own wellness platform for a mental health education, and I'm going out, and I was just trying to do all of the things. And over time, in that year, I realized that I was starting to feel very disconnected from my life. And everything that I had worked towards in my 20s, I was achieving at this point because, you know, the time had passed.

I had put in the work. I was getting the results of the things that I had been pursuing for so long. But there was this, like, disconnect. like a disengagement, sometimes I felt extremely under-fulfilled and bored, even though I was just constantly doing stuff. And I'm a therapist. So my first thought was maybe I'm like getting depressed. And so I did like a, you know, there's a like a self-assessment you can do. And I didn't meet the criteria. So I was like, okay, well, it's not that, but there's something definitely that needs to change. Something is wrong. Because I,

shouldn't feel this way. Like I should feel more fulfilled or happier or I should feel like I have some balance, but there was just no balance in my life. So I just started doing a lot of reading and research on this kind of stuff. And I just continued to stumble upon social science research on behavior, motivation. The question I was trying to answer for myself is like, why do I keep doing this stuff that's not making me happy? Why do I keep feeling so compelled? Like there was like a compulsion. Like, I have to do this. I have to go out. I have to maximize my time in New York, right? And so all of that reading eventually started showing me that our unaddressed negative emotions are actually in the driver's seat for a lot of our behavior. And I just kind of

started writing a lot about it. And that's how the book came to be. So by that do you mean we, are driven by distraction essentially. Like we have these negative emotions. They're uncomfortable. And so we find ways to like deflect from them, distract from them. I would use the term coping because we are trying to cope with those feelings by giving it a different meaning. So if I have a lot of shame about not being good enough, let's say, I don't want to deal with that. So I'm going to cope by trying to make myself good enough. So I'm going to tap into this hyper-productivity mindset and growth mindset and try to like optimize all the things and use all the systems and read all the books. So it's less about distracting ourselves from it. I think there's an element of that,

but we're trying to cope. So we're trying to use productivity as a coping tool for very uncomfortable emotions. So you explained a little bit about how it showed up for you. What are some other ways that this shows up for people and maybe some of those more subtle ways. Yeah. So, I mean, personal growth, it can really tap into toxic productivity. Self care and wellness definitely taps into it. I think we can become very ambitious and goal oriented and that can become very toxicly productive, which over time is counterproductive, right? So if you are trying to optimize your wellness and you're very unintentional about what you're doing, but you're only doing it because other people are doing it or somebody told you that you have to do it, eventually that's going to start making you feel

unwell because you're just doing stuff, you're forcing yourself to do things, you're not really engaged in present. So it can show up there. It can show up in relationships as a, like an ideal image that needs to be achieved in the relationship. So any kind of milestone marker, in our life can become like can fall under toxic productivity. That wellness piece is so interesting to me and I'm sure that resonates with a lot of people listening because, you know, this is a wellness podcast. I have all the wellness girlies. But I know for myself, like I definitely got stuck in this cycle years ago of, I guess it

would be toxic productivity. I was doing these things and I wasn't doing them for myself. I was doing them because I thought that that was what I was supposed to be. be doing. And I think a lot of people can probably relate to that and have found themselves in that place. And I feel like the pendulum is swinging a little bit now where people are going, wait a second, like this doesn't feel good. And I don't know why I'm doing this. And this doesn't resonate. But then it's almost like we swing to this other extreme, right? Is that something that you experienced in your own journey? Or is it just something that you see, you know, in your practice with people? I'm sure you have a lot of

very high functioning people. High functioning overachievers. Yeah. Definitely. Yes. So I definitely see this pendulum swinging where people went too extreme into wellness and trying to like really optimize for everything and create these markers of success as being these wellness markers, right? And so it's, it was about like which classes you're going to, what you're drinking, what you're putting in your water, like all of those things. But it didn't happen to me, but I have seen people go with the completely. opposite way and just say all of this is overrated. None of this matters. And I think that is a like a fallacy, this like black and white thinking is what actually keeps us trapped in toxic productivity because it's either you're productive or you're lazy, you're healthy or you're unhealthy, right? You are in a healthy relationship or you're not. But what that does is it actually takes away the nuance of the process. So I think what's important is that we all find our own way of engaging with these things, of engaging with personal growth, of engaging with wellness,

of engaging with relationships. And that requires introspection. That requires you to really be intentional. But honestly, like, you can't be intentional about things you don't know. Yeah. That was going to be my next question. It's like, how can somebody identify if they are caught in one of these cycles and then go a little bit deeper and find out what exactly is the emotional trigger that's leading to this behavior? I think that the best way to do that is to become like an observer of your own life. So if you're listening to this or you've come across the book or you saw some Instagram content that makes you just pause a little, I think what I would love for people to do is to reflect on

the last three weeks of their life and pay attention to where they spent their time and energy. because those are the two most important resources that we have. And retroactively look back and think about why you did what you did, why you made the decision you made. Did you get the outcome you were hoping for? How did you feel before and after? And doing that kind of analysis helps you realize that you're pouring into things that might not be value aligned

or they might not be as beneficial to you. And by observing yourself, you recognize your patterns. And once you recognize your pattern, then you can take the next step of asking the question of what is this telling me? What am I really trying to achieve by doing this? So what I did, right? So I was definitely in this mindset in terms of my social life, right? And I was putting a lot of pressure on myself. There's a lot of comparison. There was a lot of like, if I'm not there, like, you know, like, why am I not there? Like, other people are having fun. Like, why didn't I get invited, like that kind of just very chaotic. So I did like an inventory of every single thing

I had gone to in the last three weeks. And I did like a little chart and I was putting in like how I felt when I left. And I realized that there were certain events with certain people that every time I left, I would feel bad. Like I would just kind of feel bad about myself. I would kind of just feel like bad, like a nebulous bad. And I was talking to my friend and I was like, like he's that one who actually kind of was like, you know, every time you leave certain groups, you call me on the way or I get a voice note and you kind of describe what happened. And then you're like, oh, like, I just kind of feel bad. I wish I didn't even go. Like, I wish I just stayed at home and watched like something. And that brought up to me that there is a pattern there. And I had to

really question that. And then I had to do the hard work of changing my habits. So you observe, you draw a conclusion, and then you change your own. habit. And that hard work was saying no to an invite, sitting with that anxiety. Yeah. I'm laughing because I'm, as you were talking, I'm thinking back to my my past three weeks and I'm like, ooh, I mean like hyper productivity, spreading myself in between work, travel, social stuff. And I'm curious why. I mean, it is fulfilling in some ways, but I'm sure if I were to actually look at it. And I mean, first thing I said to you, I think when you came in here, I'm like, I'm struggling today. So I have all these other things going on. I'm probably running myself into the ground in

some ways. And like, why? And I'm such a proponent of like pen to paper and inventory. And I talk about this a lot on my podcast because I'm in recovery. And that was like one of the most revealing things I ever did in my life was when I first got sober, did all of these inventories. And I saw the thinking patterns, behavioral patterns, and it was like the most valuable thing I've ever done for myself. So I still advocate for that and for people listening. Like it's such a simple thing that you can do because we think that we know when it's in our head. And then there's something about getting it down on paper where it does become just very clear. And I love what you're saying about like how it's not black and white. It's not like binary. There's so much

nuance, but it's hard for us to see unless it's right in front of us. And you can't really lie to yourself when you're writing. Exactly. Exactly. Once it's out there, you can't deny it, right? So then you have to be confronted with it, which is why I think people don't like doing it. Yeah, because they know something's going to cup up. One of the things I do sometimes with some clients who really struggle with negative self-talk, right? Like the inner critic, the judgment is very powerful for overachievers. And a lot of people who struggle with productivity often see being mean to themselves as motivation. Like, you know, you have to be mean to yourself. You have to like kind of talk to yourself like a drill sergeant to get, get up and get going. So I get them to just, there's this exercise

called free writing. It's a journaling exercise where you set a timer and you have to continue to write until the timer goes off. And you can't stop. So, I mean, it was creating. when we used to write literal pen to paper. So you actually, the original instruction is you can't lift your hand. So even if you've run out of things, you just have to like start describing the room you're in or the temperature or what you ate. Like, you know, you just have to keep writing. And then we go back and then we highlight all the mean words. And it's incredible for someone to see how mean they are to themselves.

Because like sometimes a whole sheet is like just like highlights of like things you would literally never. ever say to another person. Wow. Millions of Americans live with chronic health conditions linked to nutrition. However, only 0.2% of the U.S. population has ever seen a registered dietitian. This is absolutely crazy to me. But it also makes sense. Many people don't know that they can afford to see a registered dietitian or they think dietitians are there to force them to give up their favorite foods. So Kalina Health wants you to know that that is not true. And if you want to, to take a deep dive on this, go back a couple weeks and listen to my episode with Vanessa Rosetto. She's a registered dietitian and the founder of Kalina Health, and she is absolutely amazing.

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who had been dealing with a lot of chronic pain and other issues, kind of non-specific, that no practitioner could figure out. And then she started seeing, somebody, I don't know exactly what field she was in, but she had her do this 20 minutes of writing, handwriting every morning and just do like a brain dump about everything that was like making her mad and things like that. And her pain went away, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah. She said a lot of the issues, the health issues that she had been dealing with kind of healed themselves, disappeared, which I thought was so fascinating. But I think that that's kind of a testament that our thoughts really do create our realities because our thoughts become behaviors and

you know, we're acting on those consciously or subconsciously. And so if you're talking to yourself in such a terrible way or if you're a perspective about things or harboring resentment, like all of that, I really do believe that that can create your reality and make you experience some of these things. Totally. I think stress. So essentially what happens is you have a negative thought or you are mean to yourself or let's say you didn't get the thing that you wanted like whatever the triggering incident is your body experiences it as stress so it releases the stress hormones and all of like the neurochemical reactions to a stressful situation now if you were chronically experiencing an elevated level of stress hormones for sure you're going to feel it in your body and simply

releasing the stress through behavioral changes does impact it for sure. So I'm not surprised that her body started feeling better when she started releasing that stress. Yeah. And I think we're all holding on to so much stress now because whether somebody is identifying with toxic productivity or not, I feel like we're all in this cycle where it's like there is no time to just be. And I know that you talk about like being rather than doing. But we wake up in the morning. We reach for our phone. We're on the phone first thing, whether we're working or we're texting or we're on social media. And then we're on our phones all day and we're going through our days and we're kind of stuck in autopilot and, you know, we're in this grind culture. So even if somebody isn't experiencing like

quote unquote a stressful situation, you know, work stress, relationship stress, whatever it is, like there is this undercurrent of just chronic doing. Yes. Yeah. Like a low grade stress. Like that's kind of what I, what I see it as is just like kind of like just slowly in the background. Like it's kind of like elevator music.

It's just kind of all around us. And it's certainly amplified by some of our behaviors that we are choosing, right? When I wake up, the days I pull my phone and I go right into Instagram, like I made that choice. and it immediately dis-regulates my nervous system. Even if you're not reading the news, just the act of scrolling and processing information,

it can be very dysregulating so early in the morning. I think we stopped paying attention to stress because it was so overused. Everybody was talking about stress. Everybody was talking about burnout. And I think we just started seeing it as like a natural extension of modern life. Like I'll tell you, if candidly for me, when I used to be stressed out before, like around like productivity and achievement and getting

my outcomes, especially in my late 20s onwards, I genuinely just accepted that being stressed out, being overwhelmed and being frazzled is a natural consequence of being ambitious. You know, like if you want to get somewhere in life and you're not stressed, like you're not doing it right. So I think like there's also this like narrative that you have to be stressed out if you want to be successful. And the people who are not stressed are just kind of like flusy, you know, they're just kind of like chilling and like very flowy gowns. And, you know, like there's this like conception of people who are not stressed as being very woo-woo. But I don't think that that is a really healthy way of living. I certainly was not very healthy. Yeah, it's that glorification again. And you see it in other

aspects of, you know, life, wellness, all of that. I mean, look at like exercise. People think, oh, you're not sore, then it wasn't effective. And it's like it doesn't have to hurt. Like none of this has to hurt. I mean, how can people shift from toxic productivity to just being productive and effective in whatever areas of their life they want to be without crossing that line? I think the first thing we want to be able to do is to be still. And you know, we were talking about doing versus being a couple of minutes ago.

asking someone to just sit and be completely unstimulated is so difficult to do. Like when I tell people to do it or the first time I started doing it, it was just weird. It was super weird for me to sit down. No music, no TV, no phone, nothing. Just me sitting there. It just feels like the most foreign experience. But that is the truest experience of being with yourself and being in your body, right? So I think the first thing people can do is to try to create pockets of time where they can just be completely unstimulated and just be, have no agenda.

We're not even journaling. Like we are not doing anything. We're just sitting. And in order to do that, you have to look at your calendar and make space for it. So one of the things that I ask people to do, and I do this myself, especially recently, is to kind of like under commit. So do one less thing. So have you heard of the quote? It's often said that Coco Chanel said it.

And I think she did because it sounds like her is, you know, when you accessorize and you're leaving your house right before you leave, take one thing off. Yeah. Because there is a tendency to put too much on when you're getting dressed. It's the same mindset. There's a tendency to put too much on your calendar. So for me, it's like I call it the Chanel rule. Just take one thing off a week or under commit to one thing.

a week. If you have an hour-long meeting, change that by default on Google or whatever calendar you use to 50 minutes or 55 minutes. Like, try to give yourself some time back. Because when you start undercommitting, you create pockets of space for yourself. And sometimes you look at our calendar and we see it empty slot and we are immediately ready to give it away. So another thing you can do is to block it off as a meeting with yourself. I had a client once who would literally literally say, like, meeting with her own name. Amazing. Yeah.

And it was not time for her to do shit. Yeah. Like, it was not time for her to do errands. That was just her time to be. So undercommitting creates space. And even if you do 10 minutes a week, that's enough. You know, we don't have to do an hour. We don't have to do it daily.

And then once you create space, just sit in stillness. That will springboard you into a different lifestyle. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, I think that's the real challenge is. like, what do we do when we have nothing going on? I was thinking about this yesterday. I don't remember why, but I was like thinking back to when I was younger, like pre-cell phones when I still had my license. And I was like, what did I do like at stop? You're just like sitting there. I mean,

what did we do in the grocery line? Like, because now it's just like, oh, you have a free second, pick up your phone. And that was a habit that I was able to break a little bit when I started doing TM in 2018 and you know that's 20 minutes in silence twice a day and I was like I'm sorry what that's a lot yes it's very daunting but you have a mantra and it's like very effortless and it's become increasingly harder for me which is interesting you would think that it would come a little more naturally like over six years but I think it's kind of a shift in my habits and a shift in the culture where it's just like we are so used to doing even when you're doing nothing. It's like, oh, I have five minutes. Like let me go in my inbox and see if there's anything that I need to respond to or let me check my,

you know, account and let me do this and that. So it is like a physiological, physical thing where I'm sitting there and I'm like uncomfortable because I feel like I need to be doing something. And something that's actually helped me a lot with this, if anybody wants my tip, even though I'm not the expert here. But I was in Martha's Vineyard over the summer. with my boyfriend and his family and they were doing thousand piece jigsaw puzzles. And it was, I mean, it is doing, but we would put music on and we would sit there like his niece and his sister-in-law and I. And we would just like zone out and just work on this puzzle. And it was the most relaxing thing for me. And so I started doing it now. And it's something that I can do.

We're like, yeah, I'm kind of doing something. But I'm also so relaxed. I'm not thinking about work. I'm not thinking about anything except for like this task at hand, which is very enjoyable for me. And I feel like it's given me a lot of my time back because otherwise I'd be sitting on my phone. Yeah. I resonate with that so much. I recently became a puzzle of early last fall. No way. I used to hate puzzles because I was like, who has the time? Who are these people sitting on their dining table and just wasting time? And then something happened last fall and I was like kind of stuck in the manuscript and I had to like you know really rejig a lot of and I was just stuck I was so stuck and what would happen is I would have these like bouts of being really

frustrated with writing and what I would do is I would pull up my phone or turn on Netflix or the Disney channel right and just like distract myself from that discomfort but then I had a puzzle lying around so I started doing it and it truly is a really really really great way to decompress because what's happening when you're puzzling is you're actually engaged. Your brain is working. It's processing information because you're tactile. You're looking at shapes and colors. You're searching for stuff. So you're just challenged enough that you're, the rest of your mind can process your thoughts. You can be in your body, right? So it's not like your thoughts can wander because you're just challenged enough. And I think that's why puzzling or knitting or

or things that have this like brain body connection, but still give you some cognitive space to just decompress, are so helpful. And I think it also requires that you are truly present. You have to be there. Yeah. You must be visually there, tactically there. So your senses are engaged.

It's like a hugely underrated activity. But sometimes I think about it. And a lot of like the old-timey activities are making like a comeback. because I think there was a lot of virtue. Like, you know, I think a very long time ago, people will sit in, like, quilting circles or knitting circles. It probably wasn't even that long ago. It was probably like the 50s or something.

I don't know why I'm thinking of, like, the 1700s. Churning butter. Yeah. Exactly. No, like this was the 50s probably. Or people would sit around a radio and listen. But because that was the only time they were going to get that, they were completely engaged.

Right now, I recently watched a movie for the first time and so long without putting up my phone. It's hard. It's so hard. But I had to set that intention. I was like, I'm going to put my phone aside. It was a fall guy. So it was a very, very entertaining movie.

And I was like, I'm not going to pull it up. And it was like a very excellent experience. Yeah. Yeah, it's so hard. I have an easier time if I'm with somebody else and we're like watching something together. but if it's just me, forget it. It's really difficult. I also feel like with the puzzle thing, I am getting a little bit of that dopamine.

I don't know if you get that. But when I can figure something out, I get that hit. And I think that's another thing. We're probably so addicted to our phones because we're getting this like dopamine. I'm sure that by now you guys have all heard about Armour Colostrum. You've probably seen a lot of your favorite creators and more on social media using it. It has been the best kept secret of industry insiders for a while, but finally the word is getting out. And for good reason, Armourke Cholostrum is everywhere these days. And to be totally honest, when I first

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That's article.com slash blonde for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. This show is sponsored by Better Help. It is November. It is the month of gratitude. And when I think about all the people in my life that I'm grateful for, there's one person that I just absolutely have to include and that is my therapist. I have been sharing some tidbits from my therapist on the podcast. If you missed my solo episode last week, I shared this pearl of wisdom that he shared with me that is kind of cliche, but really, really changed my perspective when it came to how I am expending my time and my energy. He said that the grass is greener where you water it, which we've all heard. But then he said, but we don't have an

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Yeah. So for me, so we are living in a very urgent culture, right? So the dopamine system is on overdrive for everybody. And sometimes I genuinely feel like my brain feels fried. Yeah, me too. Like it's like spazzed, right? Constantly, yeah. And it's because it's like working so hard.

So the healthy dopamine menu, like what you said about puzzling, is extending the time through which you receive the dopamine. So you're increasing the lag between doing and getting the dopamine. And to me, that is a slower life, right? Like I understand I can't be provincial and move to like the fields of France and like churn my own butter. Like I can't do it. Yeah. Right. Like that's that's not what I want to do, but I do want that essence of that slow life in balance with the things that genuinely are urgent, right? When we think that everything is

urgent, then we're constantly stressed out. But if I can build slowness in my life, then I can be urgent for the things that really matter. So my dopamine menu, non-negotiable, is a slow morning, which I didn't have today, which is why I'm like not my best. Yeah. You know, like that's why I asked for a coffee when I got in because I had. hadn't had a coffee because my morning was just very, very, it was just like not slow, you know. But other than that, like my default mornings are super slow. I try to be very single tasked when I'm eating. It's not always possible, but I try to do that.

So that makes me feel really good. And a small thing that I like doing, and I don't really know what the science behind this is, but I like buying myself flowers. And I like taking the time to create the, the bouquet when I bring it home. So I'll bring a bouquet home. I'll open it up on the counter and I'll just put it in the vase, like in multiple vases. But that is an act of being so present, right? And I feel great every time I see the bouquet for the rest of the week. And that gives me a little bit of dopamine. So I think it's really important to find things like that.

I definitely do not read my emails when I'm having breakfast. Nothing is happening when I'm having coffee and breakfast. I mean, on the days I'm feeling a little like more anxious, I'll put on like a very gentle show, like the great British bake show. Love. Love that. I love it so much. Or like a documentary, like a nature documentary like David Annborough and Planet Earth. Those are like the things that I definitely intentionally try to do.

It makes such a big difference. And I talked about this on a recent episode where only once I've done this in the last few months. But I usually wake up and I'm like, I'm productive in the morning. Like when I first wake up, that's when I have my energy, my brain's firing. So I go like right into email. And that's when I'm like creative and I'll post whatever content I have. I'm aware of the fact that by like 10 o'clock my brain is fried. So I was like, I'm going to try something different. And I stayed off my phone till nine. By 630, I'm like, I don't know what to do with myself. What do I do with my hands? Yeah. Where do we put them? I'm like, okay, I'm going to like do some stretching. And then I'm like, I guess I'll do like guasha, you know. But it made such a huge difference in how I feel. And obviously people don't have to do three hours, whatever you can make work. and I don't have kids and I don't have to like be at a job at you know eight or nine in the morning that kind of thing. I have a lot of autonomy. But it was very very like jarring the difference and how I felt when I did that. But it's so hard I think to implement these things because one, they're so habitual. And two, like back to the urgency thing, it does feel like things are urgent. And it's like this pressure that we put on ourselves. I think there was a study. I actually heard about it on armchair expert and I don't remember the numbers, but they said like whatever percent, 80s, 90s percent of the emails that you feel like you need to urgently respond to actually resolve themselves before you even respond.

I find that that potentially could be true. Sometimes like I'm reading emails that I don't have to give a response to, but I'm just reading them, you know? And it's like, why am I lurking in an inbox? Why am I even on this thread? There's so many things that contribute to us feeling this urgency. things like being put on an email thread, but you don't really need to be there. Things like being invited to meetings that you don't really need to be in.

Things that could be 30-minute meetings, but you blocked off 60 minutes, right? Genuinely, things that could be an email. We did not need to all get together. So, like, I think workplace culture is very, very much tapped into urgency culture. But I think that when we, one of the reasons we fall into this habit, right, is because habits are both easy and hard to build if you know how to do it the right way, right? So like, it can be really hard to maintain a habit. But if you can find a habit that gives you like that dopamine hit or makes you feel good, it will become easier to like have that habit. If you can tack on

this new habit to an older thing that you're already doing, so then you can actually, you're more likely to succeed. And so I want people, and I say this to myself too, is if the bad habits can stick, then that means the good habits can also stick because the framework of the habits are the same. It's how are you actually utilizing them, right? So how can I make habits that are good for me that also feel good, that are very easy to do? Because our, quote, bad habits are very easy to do. There's no friction, right? And so how can I make my healthier habits friction less as well? What does that mean? So I was somebody who never ate breakfast, right? And I think that was just like a byproduct of having too much stress hormone in my body.

Like I didn't really wake up hungry. I was always in like go mode and I would drink coffee first, which immediately, you know. But I was like, I need to start eating breakfast. That needs to be part of my morning routine. So instead of just saying I need to eat breakfast, I thought about four things that I really love. I thought about how I can incorporate them easily into my morning. How can I set my kitchen up?

So it's very easy for me to access that. I selected things that are very quick that don't require too much ingredient or movement. And then I put my supplements right next to the coffee. And I was able to build this. And it took me, took me four months. And I started off with committing to two mornings only and then bumped it up and bumped it up over time. And now, like that is like a completely cornerstone part of my morning. But it takes time.

That's inspiring to hear because. I feel like a lot of us think that we need to overhaul our habits and get rid of the bad and embrace the good and that it happens overnight. And I've talked about this before also, but I think a lot of us get the fuckets where you're like, okay, I'm going to not be on my phone until 8.30 every morning. And then you do great for two days. And then you're on your phone at six in the morning the third day. And you're like, well, fuck it. Like this is my head. This is who I am. So I love that idea of. really implementing like small changes and building on that over time. Yeah. And also like the other thing that I find really helpful on top of that is to kind of like give yourself like an 80% success rate. So when you are starting a new habit, say to yourself, I think I'm going to hit a success rate of 80%. So for four days or five days out of the seven, I'll do the thing. And it's okay if I don't the rest of the time. Or if it's a really hard thing for you to, set up, give yourself like a 70% success rate. Don't go in thinking and anticipating and demanding

a 100% success rate from yourself. That makes the fuckets seem less likely to do because you've given yourself that window. You're like, oh yeah, like that's fine. Like I'm allowed two days this week to like pick up my phone at six. That's fine. Tomorrow I'm going to wait till late 30. And so I think that also has really helped me, especially with working out. I do not come from a very athletic family, you know, physical activity was not a part of like a big part of my childhood. And even to this day, working out is very, very hard for me. It is probably the hardest thing I do because I just can't get into it. And so this has really helped me where I'm like, okay, fine. If I don't have 60 minutes today, I'm just going to do a solid 30. I'm going to give

it my all. Or if I can't do four days a week, it's fine. I'll still do the three that I can this week. And if I can't make it to the Pilates class, I'll just walk to the the grocery store instead of ordering on Instagram. So I think it's these ways you have to be flexible with yourself and that can really lead you towards healthier, more sustainable productivity because you're giving yourself compassion and grace, which goes so much longer than shame and criticism. Yeah, I'm going to go for 50% for staying off my phone. I feel like I can do that. And then I would imagine that once you start doing this a little bit more consistently, that begets more consistency, right? Because especially when there are things that have a positive impact on your life,

like, that's going to motivate you to continue to do it more. Exactly. There's a quote I really love by Mary Estelle. How does she say it? Oh, we go on in vice because we are unacquainted with the joys of virtue. So we, and of course, it's like it's from the 1700. So it's a little bit moralistic. But to me, like I read it like in undergrad and it just stayed with me. So it's like, how can I find the good feelings in the good habits because I continue to do the unhealthy habits because I'm just so unfamiliar with the with the return or the value for example with exercise I just didn't know how good you would actually feel after consistently working out I just wasn't familiar and now that I am I can you know convince myself and talk myself into it and it makes it easier.

Okay I'm going to do that too yeah getting all the inspo over here last thing I want to touch on which I really love is this concept of embracing mediocrity. I feel like we all feel like we need to be living at a 10 or something. So let's talk about that a little bit. Yes. So I was literally allergic to mediocrity in my 20s. Like, my goodness, like everything I did had to be gold. Everything I did had to be like an A plus.

And it wasn't just school. It was everything. Like if I'm going out, I have to look my best every single time. It doesn't matter where I'm going. if we're having a party, like, it has to be like top-notch. Everything needs to be, you know, the best it can be. And what that does is it, A, puts this pressure on you for perfection to achieve things at the most optimal level.

And B, it actually robs you of your humanity. I think that's the more, like, it's the more heavier burden is because we as human beings are not meant to be exceptional and extraordinary every minute of the time. day. Our life is not meant to be what we see on like the highlight reels of people's Instagram or TikToks, right? Life is actually a series of mediocre moments that are punctuated by exceptional moments and extraordinary experiences. And if we can allow that, then we can actually find the beauty in our lives instead of chasing for a beauty in some ideal imagined scenario. And I think like some people call it romanticizing your life, right? Like being in the small moments. But I think,

like, I really want to welcome being mediocre in the places that require me to be mediocre. So I don't need to go to a Michelin-Star restaurant every time I go out, right? I don't need to go to a place that has, like, 5,000 reviews and it's like four stars on Google. I think I can just be chill. I can just walk into, like, a place and go and have a good meal, and it doesn't need to be exceptional. But what that also does is it gives me the energy to be extraordinary and exceptional. and the things that really matter, the things that are more value aligned to me. And that's, it's a really hard ask for overachievers. Like, oh my gosh, this took me like five, five to seven years.

I think it was seven years ago, 2016 or 17, whatever that was, when I really thought about, damn, maybe I should be a little mediocre. But I could never say it out loud. It was, it was too weird. It was kind of like, it feels like you're giving up. But you're not. You're actually embracing the wholeness of life so that you can actually just, have a beautiful and dynamic life.

Yeah. Reminds me a little bit of this conversation that I had with my therapist last week. And he was like, you know, it's cliche, but like things are greener where you water it, but you don't have an infinite bucket of water. So you need to choose. Like, where are you going to allocate more? You can't do it in all areas. And I was like, oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like priorities, right? Like, how do you prioritize your life? And I think what's really important, and I would. want people to remember this is your priorities will evolve as your life evolves. And there might be seasons where you have to prioritize work. Maybe something really major is happening. Maybe you need the money at that time. Like maybe this will really make your career into something. Right. So if you have seasons like that, you can tap into this like hustle mindset. But let that be exceptions in your life, right? Have seasons where you're like that instead of that being your whole life. Have areas where you allocate this, like this. like grind mentality instead of everywhere in your life and be comfortable with integrating breaks, pause, and rest into that. And I think like that's how we can shift our perspective on

productivity is we don't have to be productive all the time everywhere. And that leaves you room to be productive in the right places when you prioritize. Amazing. So many easy tips. I'm like, don't you feel so inspired now? I'm so glad. Yeah, but it's like very practical. I think, you know, people hear like, oh, my God, I'm going to have to, again, overhaul everything. And now I can't, now I can't be ambitious. Like, you know, these kind of misconceptions. And it's like, no, you can. And this is how you can do it in a more sustainable, effective way even. So amazing. Thank you so much for coming. Tell everyone where they can get your book. Yeah. So follow you. All of that. You have a great, great social media, too. Thank you. Thank you. Everything you need to know about me is on my website. So it's estranafter.com. There's a book page there that has all of the resources. with the book, you can order it anywhere books are sold. But that page has a lot of like resources, worksheets, reading guides and stuff like that. And then on Instagram, I'm very active. So if you want to send me a message and we can connect like, I'm always happy to chat with people. I think that's what makes my work very fun for me is I get a lot of DMs with people asking

questions and that inspires me to think about what are the pain points in people's lives that I can actually offer my insights on. And my insight is like one of many. And my insight is like one of many, but everybody lives their life differently. And so if you are more aligned with what I'm saying, like, I want to give you information that feels relevant. So yeah, Instagram is a great place to connect with me. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked the episode, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes such a long way in supporting the show. Follow the show over on Instagram at well.pod. You can also follow my personal Instagram at Ariel Lori. I'm always sharing great clips from the

episodes. And we also have full episodes on YouTube as well if you want to watch in entirety. Thanks for listening. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode. The children will not be Bezell stramble Sandvorter Actis forque Verquire,

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