April 23, 2025 • 30 mins
Feel like you have too much to do and not enough time to do it all? That feeling is sometimes called "time poverty." We'll talk more about that and how our perception of time is often distorted by chronic stress. We'll even dig into that buzzy-term "adrenal fatigue" and the importance of finding the sweet spot of stress and busyness. Most of all, we'll cover some practical tips for shifting from autopilot to mindful awareness, helping you to step out of busyness while also identifying what truly feels like time well spent.
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Sources and Notes:
- Joy Lab Program: Take the next leap in your wellbeing journey with step-by-step practices to help you build and maintain the elements of joy in your life.
- Annie Dillard's website.
- Jonathan Gershuny: "Work not leisure, is now the signifier of dominant social status."
- Closing poem excerpt: Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata"
Full transcript here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast,where we help you uncover and
(00:03):
foster your most joyful self.
Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr.Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of
soulful and scientifically sound tools tospark your joy, even when it feels dark.
When you're ready to experiment withmore joy, combine this podcast with the
full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
(00:26):
Hello, I'm Henry Emmonsand welcome to Joy Lab.
And I am Aimee Prasek.
So today we are talking about resilience.
That's our Element of Joy for this month.
And we're digging into anotherhabit, I think you can call it that,
uh, but a habit that can depleteus, that can pull us away from
(00:50):
our natural state of resilience.
And that habit is busyness.
Everybody's like, oh,getting tight busyness.
It's sort of the state of our society.
And we, we talked about busyness in ourElement of Joy, Equanimity last month.
Henry, you called itdo-too-much-ism I think,
Did
I
I.
(01:13):
So we're actually gonna go deeper, Ithink more of this mindset of busyness
and even more specifically, something thatresearchers sometimes call time poverty.
So time poverty is the feelingof having too much to do and
not enough time to do it.
(01:33):
Probably sounds familiar for a lot of us.
So quickly, busyness isreally interesting I think.
There's a lot of research to say thatstaying busy is really good for our
cognitive health and for our mentalhealth, especially in our elder years.
And then there's all this research on howbusyness is wrecking our mental health.
(01:56):
So there's something more subtle herethat we need to kind of get a handle on.
And I think it has less to do withreally how many activities we have
on our calendar, in some capacity.
And more to do with why we thinkthere's so much to do, why we feel,
feel so strapped for time, and whywe might struggle to do less if there
(02:20):
are in fact too many things in ourcalendar, and also what we actually
consider to be time well spent.
So I wanna dive into all that today.
Let's talk about thoughtsand feelings first.
Dive right in.
So I think it's really importantto start off by considering our
(02:41):
perception and our stress state ratherthan how many activities or tasks or
responsibilities we might actually have.
So we can put those aside even for now.
And that's because when we are ina chronic state of stress, then
we will always be short on time.
It is a story of our nervous systemwith too much stress and without
(03:03):
release, we kind of get amped upand burned out at the same time.
It's like the worst combinationwith that chronic state of stress.
There's just no way to think that youhave a leisurely amount of time to finish
anything to accomplish what you want.
Your brain just can't go there.
(03:23):
Um, Henry, you talk about adrenal fatiguein a really interesting way, and I think
it relates here to how our sense of timecan get hijacked, if that makes sense.
Do you wanna get into that a bit?
Sure, sure.
But let me come back to thatin a, in a minute or two.
'cause, um, something that you said,just brought up a memory of a quote
(03:48):
that I recently heard again, I'veheard it before, and I think a lot of
folks are familiar with this quote fromAnnie Dillard, a writer Annie Dillard.
So I think it fits with whatyou're talking about, Aimee.
So here's, here's the quote as, asbest I remember it, how we spend our
days is of course, how we spend ourlives, what we do with this hour,
(04:13):
and that one is what we are doing.
So it kind of sounds,sounds obvious at one level.
Right?
But I
think there's somethingpretty profound in this.
And after that, seeing that thosefirst two lines, I think she goes
on to talk about schedules and howwe use them to sort of, as in her
words, to create some sort of ascaffolding on which we can break our
(04:37):
work into smaller chunks and that,
and we're sort of building our daysout of that scaffolding, if you will.
But what strikes me about this quoteis, number one, it just feels true
to me, and I bet it does to a lot of
people.
How we spend our days is of course,how we spend our lives, and maybe
(04:58):
it's that, that resonance of truththat makes it such a well known quote.
It also feels important to me,not just true but important.
And so when I just recently heard it,somebody read it aloud at a contemplative
service, I was at my ears just perkedup and I thought, okay, listen up.
This is important.
(05:19):
Yeah.
And to me it says that our lives arebuilt brick by brick, board by board.
So the stuff I fill my days with isnot just random, meaningless busyness.
It might seem that way at times,but it actually becomes my life.
(05:40):
So if I go through my daysoverly busy and stressed, my life
becomes overly busy and stressed.
I know, it just sounds sological, so common sense.
But I know for me, when I getoverly busy and stressed, I am not
thinking about it this clearly,
(06:01):
Probably because in thatmoment I am not very conscious.
I'm basically on autopilot.
So I think that might give us a cluehow to break out of this pattern,
you know, to, to raise our awareness.
And I think, we'll, we'llget back to that later.
So let me now pivotback to adrenal fatigue.
Yeah.
(06:22):
The adrenal fatigue is a term Ithink you'll find mostly in the
holistic health or wellness community.
A lot of more, you know, Westernmedical doctors don't believe in it.
And I think it's because they're lookingat it in a very strict way that, if
they measure the adrenal hormones, youknow, like, cortisol or adrenaline even.
(06:44):
They're almost always normal.
There's some rare conditionsthat, that they are too low and
they has, that's a true medicalillness that needs to be treated.
But, but they don't, if they don'tsee that in the lab test, then they
kind of toss out the whole concept.
But I find the conceptuseful and here's why.
This is how I think of adrenal fatigue.
(07:06):
I think that we are designed forstress, really well designed to
handle stress, the stress response hasgotta be one of the strongest, most
universal aspects of our physiology.
But our our bodies are made to respondwell to short term stress, not long term.
(07:29):
And I think over the long term, thisfinely tuned system starts to break down.
It gets frayed around the edges.
No matter how resilient you are to beginwith, there is a limit, I think, to how
long you can endure these high levels ofstress hormones without something going
(07:51):
wrong, something in your body going wrong.
'Cause eventually the body canget depleted and that's, to me,
that's what adrenal fatigue is.
It's a state of depletion so thateven if something comes along that
you really should feel stressed about.
You cannot mount that response.
It's just, you just don't haveit in you to do it anymore.
(08:14):
And I think that that one ofthe most challenging parts of
this state of being is fatigue.
Yeah.
If you get that depleted, you get,you can get really fatigued and
sometimes it can be severe andyour motivation can just tank.
So it might look a lot like depressionto some folks and maybe it, it
(08:38):
could even turn into depression.
And, but this is a state that is verymuch to be avoided, if at all possible.
Because once we get into that stateof depletion, although we can come
back from it, it's, it can take awhile and a lot of effort to do.
So, back to the quote.
That's why I was so struck withit, because I think it's worth
(09:00):
paying attention to how we spendour days now, because it's going
to become our lives down the road.
I, I hadn't heard thatquote before actually.
It makes me think too that so oftenwe spend our days thinking that,
or not thinking, not aware, butin such a way that we're hoping
(09:25):
a different outcome for our life.
We're, we're engaged in theseactivities that we believe will,
fundamentally change our life later.
And I love this to think about, no, those,those bricks you're laying are your life.
Obviously, we are laying that foundation.
You can't separate those two things.
So we have to wake up for it.
(09:47):
I love this.
That's something we do a lot here atJoy Lab, in the podcast, in the program.
How can we actually wake upto our life, actually tap into
what is good as well right now
?So let's, let's keep doing just that.
I wanna bring back this busyness wordto talk about how we might resist giving
(10:13):
ourselves more time to do things thatgive us joy, things that we enjoy.
Why we might stick ourselves in this cycleof sort of feeling so busy all the time.
And there are two reasonsI wanna highlight.
The first is a cultural shift, and thesecond has to do with fears around our
(10:34):
thoughts and emotions that might riseup when we stop moving around so much.
So the cultural shift, Iwanna hit on that first.
I'll quote the sociologist, JonathanGershuny, who recently said, "Work
not leisure, is now the signifierof dominant social status."
(10:56):
I think the fact that hesays work is really key here.
He doesn't say productivity even.
He doesn't say mastery, just work,just quantifiable, punched in hours.
Yeah, he doesn't say meaning.
No, no,
He says, work.
Yeah, that, that the quantity of work isa signifier of dominant social status.
(11:21):
And I'm just thinking about these picturesor stories of founders sleeping at the
office, working so many hours that theycan't eat a meal or carve out enough
time to sleep outside of the office,let alone build any real friendships or
treat the people around them very well.
As long as they're working aroundthe clock, then it must be good.
(11:42):
So we've glorified the grind, reallythe exhaustion, not the outcomes,
not the impact, um, let alonethe wellbeing of anyone involved.
And there's a phenomenon here thatI think is helpful to understand.
It's known as effort justification.
It's something we all do really.
(12:02):
Essentially, we tend to thinkthat harder work or more work
must be more meaningful work.
That it'll have a bigger payoff,that it must be worth it.
It's a fallacy.
I mean, it's a great survival strategy forus to be willing and motivated to work.
plant and gather up the food beforethe winter hits, build a shelter
(12:22):
quickly before the rainy season.
This drive to persevere has alwaysbeen a survival strategy, of course.
It's why we need our motivation.
So hard work is not a bad thing.
Like think of those days where you workreally hard, like on a project with
your team, physical or cognitive work,I think, and you get it done or you're
(12:44):
practicing something and you see yourprogress and then your head hits the
pillow and you're like, yes, we did that.
I did that.
So productive hard work when we havethe resources to give it, um, and, and
can see its impact-- that's particularlyhelpful-- can be so rewarding.
The problem is when we conflatemore work with better outcomes,
(13:08):
it's just not the case.
There is a really nice bell curve here.
We've talked about bellcurves a lot lately.
Perfect for equanimity and resilience.
They, they sit on the bell curve quitewell, so there is this bell curve where
enough work, which includes work that ishard or challenges us that is optimizing.
(13:30):
We actually need thatto live a joyful life.
I truly believe that weneed to be challenged.
When we have too littlework, not enough challenge,
we have negative health, healthoutcomes and the other side of that
curve at the bottom, what I'm notingnow, too hard work, or in our modern
case, really just too much workequates to negative health outcomes.
(13:55):
So why do we do this?
Henry, do you wanna talk about thefears that we may have around not being
busy, challenging the social signifier?
Sure.
But I also really wanna reinforce whatyou said, Aimee, about the, the bell curve
of busyness.
'Cause I, I think it's that there is awindow of busyness and there's also a
(14:18):
window of stress that is the sweet spot.
You know, it's, it's the right placeto be and if we're below it or above
it, we just don't feel as good.
So, as an example, I'm thinking aboutthe many patients I've seen over the
years who have had to take time offof work simply because they're not
(14:40):
functioning well enough at that momentto, to keep doing what they're doing.
And when that, when it comes to thatpoint, I often caution them ahead
of time that even though they'll berelieved for a while of the, the excess
stress of work that they, it's reallyimportant to sustain some kind of
(15:04):
structure and some degree of activitybecause going from way too much to
way too little in one short period oftime is not good for people's mood.
So they, they've gotta find enoughthings that feel meaningful and that
get them up and kind of organizetheir day around so that they don't
(15:27):
sink even further into depression.
So I think that might be one ofthe fears that, that can lead to
chronic busyness that if, if I stopmoving as fast as I am used to,
I
might just sink into this state of torporor you know, losing all motivation and
(15:48):
just not being able to get going again.
And I think there's some legitimacyto that concern, but not as
much as we usually give it.
Sure.
To me, it's, it's surprising how littleit takes to provide sufficient structure.
Literally, it can be just one or twothings planned in a day that don't
(16:11):
have to even take up that much time.
That can be enough.
But I think the more commonpattern is just to stay busy.
Because if we stop, then anotherfear we have is that we will be
overwhelmed by our emotions thatwe are running so fast to avoid.
(16:32):
Yeah.
And I will admit, there have been timesin my life where I have done that.
I've stayed super busy in order toavoid what I've, what I'm feeling.
And it does seem to workactually after a fashion.
That's why I think we keep doing it.
It seems like it's working.
And it's surprising to mehow long you can keep doing
(16:56):
this
Oh yeah.
just to keep youremotions at arm's length.
But you can't do it forever.
That's kind of the key, is you are justkicking the can down the road, You're
not solving a thing by doing that.
And I, I think if we just stopto think about it just for a
moment, we would know that.
(17:17):
But therein lies the problem.
We don't stop to think, we don'tbecome conscious of what we're doing.
We just keep doing it with a really,really low level of awareness.
Now, I will also admit thatthere are times that I do this
consciously, on purpose, which Ithink is probably a little bit better
(17:40):
than than the unconscious, butyou know, honestly, it's still
not a great long-term strategy.
So the way out of this, I think, is tolearn how to turn toward our emotions
rather than avoiding them.
And that's, that's a bigger topic.
Maybe something will take up inanother episode, but it is absolutely
(18:01):
worth it to learn that skill nomatter where one is in their lives.
Yeah.
Some folks asked me, you know, I didmy high school in Minnesota and I did
my undergrad, mainly in California.
And they asked me, whydid you go to California?
(18:23):
And my answer is, 'cause I wasrunning away from my problems.
I mean, wasn't to go to thisgreat school or something.
I literally spun a globe and landedon the central coast of California.
Well, was this as far asyou could go and still be in
I know I didn't need a passport.
and you know what though?
(18:44):
Well, who came with me on that trip?
All those bad feelings.
All those feelings that I was trying torun from, they are, they're just as quick.
Um, yeah, we should talkabout this on another day.
But I think what we're gettingat here is the awareness.
Waking up to our life and to ourresilience, not just those, tough
(19:07):
feelings we might need to move through.
and releasing this, this grip onbusyness as an unconscious habit that
we may have, we may have adopted.
And when we let go of that andsee what we are doing, see what
is, then we can choose, we can tapinto our resilience and choose.
(19:29):
Joy Lab Program folks, that's our"see what is, accept what is, choose
wisely" formula that Henry walks usthrough in a few of our Experiments.
So it's coming in here as well.
The last bit we wanna get intohas to do with what we consider
to to be time well spent.
(19:50):
And then I think this can be amissing link in a lot of cases.
And this matters because when weinclude things in our day that we enjoy,
then we will feel less time poverty.
And likely have better mentalhealth and physical health outcomes.
It's kind of that simple.
(20:11):
But the challenge can be determiningwhat time well spent means to you.
How do you wanna spend your time?
What do you wanna learn orexperience in this life?
Who are the people or creaturesyou wanna connect with?
Because that connection isuplifting and builds you up.
And I think it is really common toactually not know those answers.
(20:34):
But only we can answer thosequestions for ourselves.
Only we know what istime well spent for us.
So one way to inform those questionsis to actually log how we spend
our minutes throughout the dayand how we feel during those
activities, which can take some work.
But I think it can be helpful.
You can use pencil paper, a timemanagement app however you want but,
(20:59):
maybe do it for a, a full week or at leastthree days and note what you're doing
and how you're feeling when you do it.
I think what many of us will findsurprisingly is that we have more
time during the day than we thoughtwe had, where we are choosing
how to spend our time and we'rechoosing things that we don't enjoy.
(21:22):
And I think when that slaps you inthe face, there's a, a gut answer
that can come up to tell you, ah,here's what I wanna do instead.
I'll give an example.
Actually, I downloaded this stupidsolitaire game on my phone thinking
it would be relaxing, fun little game.
(21:44):
'cause my, my grandma, you guysknow where I'm going with this.
My grandma had taught me solitaire.
I would play a two personversion with my dad.
It has like all these great memories.
So I was, I was in the spaceof I can, it's like an evolved
gaming opportunity for me.
But that flipping game, it was soextravagant and extra gamified, like
(22:07):
pinging my dopamine all the time.
Like you had to check in every twohours to get extra points and stuff.
gosh.
left.
A meeting once to get my points.
And then one night I playedfor three hours and I came out
(22:27):
of this fog like, where am I?
What just happened?
And I realized at that moment,this does not feel good.
But I had, you know, it, it took awhile to get there, probably five
weeks of stress with this game.
it just surprised me.
(22:48):
I, and I knew that moderatingmy time was not an option.
I couldn't do it.
I did not have the self-control.
So I deleted it and I told myhusband, if you see me playing this,
take my phone away legitimately.
And I didn't wannadelete it but I knew it.
I had this unhealthy relationship with it.
It was definitely not serving me.
(23:10):
So maybe you have somethingthat obvious in your day and,
and it's not even that obvious.
It, it, for five weeks I wasstressed with this stupid game.
The fact that it stressedme out was surprising.
but unconsciously it was having negativeimpacts on me for quite a while.
So.
Aimee, I have a friend who,who got tendonitis in her
(23:33):
thumb from playing solitaire
Yeah, I think it's calledlike trigger finger.
Yeah.
and that's what, that's what,finally got her to delete it.
right?
Do we have to have like,yes, physical diagnoses?
let's get there sooner, you know,before we sort of come out of a
comatose state at night under like, justcompletely confused as to what happened.
(23:57):
Like we can do this sooner.
So all that to say, right, we'rewaking up to this, we're seeing
the bricks, we're laying down.
What bricks do we wanna take away?
That would be the solitaire game for me.
Um, and so maybe documenting thosetimes can help you get there sooner than
how long it took me to figure out thiswas a bad thing that needed to leave.
(24:18):
and then you might decide, cool,what could I replace it with?
I could play solitairewith a real life human.
You know, so
Wait, is that still solitaire?
no, there is a two person game,
Okay.
but my husband and I are like, let's startplaying cards or Dominoes is another game.
So, you know, or puzzling, likeif there's some type of that that
(24:39):
you wanna do, then put it in ina way that nourishes you more.
So, and I think the funny thing is, isthat when we do that, when we have a
healthy balance in how we spend our time.
We include activities that welike, we will, we will actually
feel like we have more time.
It's that time poverty perspective.
(25:02):
And we may not change anyhours on the clock, right?
Like we may be as busy as we werebefore with as many activities,
but our perception changes.
We can do it.
If I did it, y'all can do it.
Oh, geez, I'm still laughingabout the, the solitaire
See there's, there's too many of us.
(25:24):
Oh yeah.
I probably got tendonitis too.
I get it.
So I, I also love the suggestion of,of kind of logging, keeping track,
raising our awareness about how thechoices we make really impact us.
So I, I'm going to offerup a shortcut for that.
Um, 'cause I.
(25:44):
think that this is something you cando in real time, like moment to moment.
And it's, it's, I think it'skind of foolproof if we, if
we really just get a, a littlebit of practice at this.
and here's an added benefit to doing this.
It, it is a way of practicing mindfulness.
It's, it's a way of exercisingour mindfulness muscles.
(26:06):
So here's, here's my idea.
Whatever you're doing, whoever you arewith, just turn your attention for a
moment, just for a second, uh, to yourmidsection, your chest or your belly.
And notice whether in that very momentyou feel expanded or contracted.
(26:30):
Or you might feel neutral.
Okay.
It's, but it's one of those three things.
This does not take any time.
It only requires a subtlemomentary shift in your focus.
And try to do this withoutjudging the state that you're in.
(26:50):
Don't say to yourself, "Oh, this is good.
I'm expansive," or "This isbad, I feel con constricted
or flat." No, Just notice it.
And then if you'd like.
Start making different choices,choosing to spend your time doing
things or being with people withwhom you feel more expansive and
see then what happens to your life.
(27:16):
I love that we do this work, henryand I talked, we were talking
about this before we went on.
We don't just talk about thisstuff, we live this stuff and
also we screw up on this stuff.
If I would've done that on day fourof my solitaire situation, I would've
realized that this is not great.
(27:40):
So sometimes these things,it just get like another
reminder, I can check back in.
So, if you're surprised by the things thatmaybe you were doing unconsciously, like
Henry said, we don't need to judge it.
Ah, okay.
I can change this.
So I appreciate that wisdom.
Another reminder to engage in those,just those daily practices of mindfulness
(28:02):
that can help us to wake up, and see somethings that we might be unconscious for.
Brilliant.
And you note takers.
If you need to document it, youcan use my strategy as well.
Oh, I'm sure there's an app for that.
There's got to be.
absolutely.
So our next episode will actually kindof hit on the other side of this bell
(28:22):
curve I think that we brought up today.
So, we'll talk more about feeling dulland disconnected, so maybe not frantic
and busy, but kind of shut down.
Mm-hmm.
And like today we'll talkabout how we can open up.
Wake up to tune into our resilienceand be more present for our life.
So, to close us today, I wannashare some wisdom from Max
(28:45):
Ehrmann, from his poem, Desiderata.
These are just a few lines from it.
I think it speaks to our, our combo today.
And I, I hope you really soakparticularly in the last few lines.
Here it is.
" Do not distress yourselfwith dark imaginings.
Many fears are born offatigue and loneliness.
(29:10):
Beyond a wholesome discipline,be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, noless than the trees and the stars.
You have a right to be here, and whetheror not it is clear to you, no doubt,
the universe is unfolding as it should."
(29:31):
Thank you for listeningto the Joy Lab podcast.
If you enjoy today's show, visitJoyLab.coach to learn more
about the full Joy Lab program.
Be sure to rate and review us whereveryou listen to your favorite podcasts.
Please remember that thiscontent is for informational
and educational purposes only.
It is not intended to provide medicaladvice and is not a replacement for advice
(29:54):
and treatment from a medical professional.
Please consult your doctor orother qualified health professional
before beginning any diet change,supplement, or lifestyle program.
Please see our terms for more information.
Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast,where we help you uncover and
(00:03):
foster your most joyful self.
Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr.Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of
soulful and scientifically sound tools tospark your joy, even when it feels dark.
When you're ready to experiment withmore joy, combine this podcast with the
full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
(00:26):
Hello, I'm Henry Emmonsand welcome to Joy Lab.
And I am Aimee Prasek.
So today we are talking about resilience.
That's our Element of Joy for this month.
And we're digging into anotherhabit, I think you can call it that,
uh, but a habit that can depleteus, that can pull us away from
(00:50):
our natural state of resilience.
And that habit is busyness.
Everybody's like, oh,getting tight busyness.
It's sort of the state of our society.
And we, we talked about busyness in ourElement of Joy, Equanimity last month.
Henry, you called itdo-too-much-ism I think,
Did
I
I.
(01:13):
So we're actually gonna go deeper, Ithink more of this mindset of busyness
and even more specifically, something thatresearchers sometimes call time poverty.
So time poverty is the feelingof having too much to do and
not enough time to do it.
(01:33):
Probably sounds familiar for a lot of us.
So quickly, busyness isreally interesting I think.
There's a lot of research to say thatstaying busy is really good for our
cognitive health and for our mentalhealth, especially in our elder years.
And then there's all this research on howbusyness is wrecking our mental health.
(01:56):
So there's something more subtle herethat we need to kind of get a handle on.
And I think it has less to do withreally how many activities we have
on our calendar, in some capacity.
And more to do with why we thinkthere's so much to do, why we feel,
feel so strapped for time, and whywe might struggle to do less if there
(02:20):
are in fact too many things in ourcalendar, and also what we actually
consider to be time well spent.
So I wanna dive into all that today.
Let's talk about thoughtsand feelings first.
Dive right in.
So I think it's really importantto start off by considering our
(02:41):
perception and our stress state ratherthan how many activities or tasks or
responsibilities we might actually have.
So we can put those aside even for now.
And that's because when we are ina chronic state of stress, then
we will always be short on time.
It is a story of our nervous systemwith too much stress and without
(03:03):
release, we kind of get amped upand burned out at the same time.
It's like the worst combinationwith that chronic state of stress.
There's just no way to think that youhave a leisurely amount of time to finish
anything to accomplish what you want.
Your brain just can't go there.
(03:23):
Um, Henry, you talk about adrenal fatiguein a really interesting way, and I think
it relates here to how our sense of timecan get hijacked, if that makes sense.
Do you wanna get into that a bit?
Sure, sure.
But let me come back to thatin a, in a minute or two.
'cause, um, something that you said,just brought up a memory of a quote
(03:48):
that I recently heard again, I'veheard it before, and I think a lot of
folks are familiar with this quote fromAnnie Dillard, a writer Annie Dillard.
So I think it fits with whatyou're talking about, Aimee.
So here's, here's the quote as, asbest I remember it, how we spend our
days is of course, how we spend ourlives, what we do with this hour,
(04:13):
and that one is what we are doing.
So it kind of sounds,sounds obvious at one level.
Right?
But I
think there's somethingpretty profound in this.
And after that, seeing that thosefirst two lines, I think she goes
on to talk about schedules and howwe use them to sort of, as in her
words, to create some sort of ascaffolding on which we can break our
(04:37):
work into smaller chunks and that,
and we're sort of building our daysout of that scaffolding, if you will.
But what strikes me about this quoteis, number one, it just feels true
to me, and I bet it does to a lot of
people.
How we spend our days is of course,how we spend our lives, and maybe
(04:58):
it's that, that resonance of truththat makes it such a well known quote.
It also feels important to me,not just true but important.
And so when I just recently heard it,somebody read it aloud at a contemplative
service, I was at my ears just perkedup and I thought, okay, listen up.
This is important.
(05:19):
Yeah.
And to me it says that our lives arebuilt brick by brick, board by board.
So the stuff I fill my days with isnot just random, meaningless busyness.
It might seem that way at times,but it actually becomes my life.
(05:40):
So if I go through my daysoverly busy and stressed, my life
becomes overly busy and stressed.
I know, it just sounds sological, so common sense.
But I know for me, when I getoverly busy and stressed, I am not
thinking about it this clearly,
(06:01):
Probably because in thatmoment I am not very conscious.
I'm basically on autopilot.
So I think that might give us a cluehow to break out of this pattern,
you know, to, to raise our awareness.
And I think, we'll, we'llget back to that later.
So let me now pivotback to adrenal fatigue.
Yeah.
(06:22):
The adrenal fatigue is a term Ithink you'll find mostly in the
holistic health or wellness community.
A lot of more, you know, Westernmedical doctors don't believe in it.
And I think it's because they're lookingat it in a very strict way that, if
they measure the adrenal hormones, youknow, like, cortisol or adrenaline even.
(06:44):
They're almost always normal.
There's some rare conditionsthat, that they are too low and
they has, that's a true medicalillness that needs to be treated.
But, but they don't, if they don'tsee that in the lab test, then they
kind of toss out the whole concept.
But I find the conceptuseful and here's why.
This is how I think of adrenal fatigue.
(07:06):
I think that we are designed forstress, really well designed to
handle stress, the stress response hasgotta be one of the strongest, most
universal aspects of our physiology.
But our our bodies are made to respondwell to short term stress, not long term.
(07:29):
And I think over the long term, thisfinely tuned system starts to break down.
It gets frayed around the edges.
No matter how resilient you are to beginwith, there is a limit, I think, to how
long you can endure these high levels ofstress hormones without something going
(07:51):
wrong, something in your body going wrong.
'Cause eventually the body canget depleted and that's, to me,
that's what adrenal fatigue is.
It's a state of depletion so thateven if something comes along that
you really should feel stressed about.
You cannot mount that response.
It's just, you just don't haveit in you to do it anymore.
(08:14):
And I think that that one ofthe most challenging parts of
this state of being is fatigue.
Yeah.
If you get that depleted, you get,you can get really fatigued and
sometimes it can be severe andyour motivation can just tank.
So it might look a lot like depressionto some folks and maybe it, it
(08:38):
could even turn into depression.
And, but this is a state that is verymuch to be avoided, if at all possible.
Because once we get into that stateof depletion, although we can come
back from it, it's, it can take awhile and a lot of effort to do.
So, back to the quote.
That's why I was so struck withit, because I think it's worth
(09:00):
paying attention to how we spendour days now, because it's going
to become our lives down the road.
I, I hadn't heard thatquote before actually.
It makes me think too that so oftenwe spend our days thinking that,
or not thinking, not aware, butin such a way that we're hoping
(09:25):
a different outcome for our life.
We're, we're engaged in theseactivities that we believe will,
fundamentally change our life later.
And I love this to think about, no, those,those bricks you're laying are your life.
Obviously, we are laying that foundation.
You can't separate those two things.
So we have to wake up for it.
(09:47):
I love this.
That's something we do a lot here atJoy Lab, in the podcast, in the program.
How can we actually wake upto our life, actually tap into
what is good as well right now
?So let's, let's keep doing just that.
I wanna bring back this busyness wordto talk about how we might resist giving
(10:13):
ourselves more time to do things thatgive us joy, things that we enjoy.
Why we might stick ourselves in this cycleof sort of feeling so busy all the time.
And there are two reasonsI wanna highlight.
The first is a cultural shift, and thesecond has to do with fears around our
(10:34):
thoughts and emotions that might riseup when we stop moving around so much.
So the cultural shift, Iwanna hit on that first.
I'll quote the sociologist, JonathanGershuny, who recently said, "Work
not leisure, is now the signifierof dominant social status."
(10:56):
I think the fact that hesays work is really key here.
He doesn't say productivity even.
He doesn't say mastery, just work,just quantifiable, punched in hours.
Yeah, he doesn't say meaning.
No, no,
He says, work.
Yeah, that, that the quantity of work isa signifier of dominant social status.
(11:21):
And I'm just thinking about these picturesor stories of founders sleeping at the
office, working so many hours that theycan't eat a meal or carve out enough
time to sleep outside of the office,let alone build any real friendships or
treat the people around them very well.
As long as they're working aroundthe clock, then it must be good.
(11:42):
So we've glorified the grind, reallythe exhaustion, not the outcomes,
not the impact, um, let alonethe wellbeing of anyone involved.
And there's a phenomenon here thatI think is helpful to understand.
It's known as effort justification.
It's something we all do really.
(12:02):
Essentially, we tend to thinkthat harder work or more work
must be more meaningful work.
That it'll have a bigger payoff,that it must be worth it.
It's a fallacy.
I mean, it's a great survival strategy forus to be willing and motivated to work.
plant and gather up the food beforethe winter hits, build a shelter
(12:22):
quickly before the rainy season.
This drive to persevere has alwaysbeen a survival strategy, of course.
It's why we need our motivation.
So hard work is not a bad thing.
Like think of those days where you workreally hard, like on a project with
your team, physical or cognitive work,I think, and you get it done or you're
(12:44):
practicing something and you see yourprogress and then your head hits the
pillow and you're like, yes, we did that.
I did that.
So productive hard work when we havethe resources to give it, um, and, and
can see its impact-- that's particularlyhelpful-- can be so rewarding.
The problem is when we conflatemore work with better outcomes,
(13:08):
it's just not the case.
There is a really nice bell curve here.
We've talked about bellcurves a lot lately.
Perfect for equanimity and resilience.
They, they sit on the bell curve quitewell, so there is this bell curve where
enough work, which includes work that ishard or challenges us that is optimizing.
(13:30):
We actually need thatto live a joyful life.
I truly believe that weneed to be challenged.
When we have too littlework, not enough challenge,
we have negative health, healthoutcomes and the other side of that
curve at the bottom, what I'm notingnow, too hard work, or in our modern
case, really just too much workequates to negative health outcomes.
(13:55):
So why do we do this?
Henry, do you wanna talk about thefears that we may have around not being
busy, challenging the social signifier?
Sure.
But I also really wanna reinforce whatyou said, Aimee, about the, the bell curve
of busyness.
'Cause I, I think it's that there is awindow of busyness and there's also a
(14:18):
window of stress that is the sweet spot.
You know, it's, it's the right placeto be and if we're below it or above
it, we just don't feel as good.
So, as an example, I'm thinking aboutthe many patients I've seen over the
years who have had to take time offof work simply because they're not
(14:40):
functioning well enough at that momentto, to keep doing what they're doing.
And when that, when it comes to thatpoint, I often caution them ahead
of time that even though they'll berelieved for a while of the, the excess
stress of work that they, it's reallyimportant to sustain some kind of
(15:04):
structure and some degree of activitybecause going from way too much to
way too little in one short period oftime is not good for people's mood.
So they, they've gotta find enoughthings that feel meaningful and that
get them up and kind of organizetheir day around so that they don't
(15:27):
sink even further into depression.
So I think that might be one ofthe fears that, that can lead to
chronic busyness that if, if I stopmoving as fast as I am used to,
I
might just sink into this state of torporor you know, losing all motivation and
(15:48):
just not being able to get going again.
And I think there's some legitimacyto that concern, but not as
much as we usually give it.
Sure.
To me, it's, it's surprising how littleit takes to provide sufficient structure.
Literally, it can be just one or twothings planned in a day that don't
(16:11):
have to even take up that much time.
That can be enough.
But I think the more commonpattern is just to stay busy.
Because if we stop, then anotherfear we have is that we will be
overwhelmed by our emotions thatwe are running so fast to avoid.
(16:32):
Yeah.
And I will admit, there have been timesin my life where I have done that.
I've stayed super busy in order toavoid what I've, what I'm feeling.
And it does seem to workactually after a fashion.
That's why I think we keep doing it.
It seems like it's working.
And it's surprising to mehow long you can keep doing
(16:56):
this
Oh yeah.
just to keep youremotions at arm's length.
But you can't do it forever.
That's kind of the key, is you are justkicking the can down the road, You're
not solving a thing by doing that.
And I, I think if we just stopto think about it just for a
moment, we would know that.
(17:17):
But therein lies the problem.
We don't stop to think, we don'tbecome conscious of what we're doing.
We just keep doing it with a really,really low level of awareness.
Now, I will also admit thatthere are times that I do this
consciously, on purpose, which Ithink is probably a little bit better
(17:40):
than than the unconscious, butyou know, honestly, it's still
not a great long-term strategy.
So the way out of this, I think, is tolearn how to turn toward our emotions
rather than avoiding them.
And that's, that's a bigger topic.
Maybe something will take up inanother episode, but it is absolutely
(18:01):
worth it to learn that skill nomatter where one is in their lives.
Yeah.
Some folks asked me, you know, I didmy high school in Minnesota and I did
my undergrad, mainly in California.
And they asked me, whydid you go to California?
(18:23):
And my answer is, 'cause I wasrunning away from my problems.
I mean, wasn't to go to thisgreat school or something.
I literally spun a globe and landedon the central coast of California.
Well, was this as far asyou could go and still be in
I know I didn't need a passport.
and you know what though?
(18:44):
Well, who came with me on that trip?
All those bad feelings.
All those feelings that I was trying torun from, they are, they're just as quick.
Um, yeah, we should talkabout this on another day.
But I think what we're gettingat here is the awareness.
Waking up to our life and to ourresilience, not just those, tough
(19:07):
feelings we might need to move through.
and releasing this, this grip onbusyness as an unconscious habit that
we may have, we may have adopted.
And when we let go of that andsee what we are doing, see what
is, then we can choose, we can tapinto our resilience and choose.
(19:29):
Joy Lab Program folks, that's our"see what is, accept what is, choose
wisely" formula that Henry walks usthrough in a few of our Experiments.
So it's coming in here as well.
The last bit we wanna get intohas to do with what we consider
to to be time well spent.
(19:50):
And then I think this can be amissing link in a lot of cases.
And this matters because when weinclude things in our day that we enjoy,
then we will feel less time poverty.
And likely have better mentalhealth and physical health outcomes.
It's kind of that simple.
(20:11):
But the challenge can be determiningwhat time well spent means to you.
How do you wanna spend your time?
What do you wanna learn orexperience in this life?
Who are the people or creaturesyou wanna connect with?
Because that connection isuplifting and builds you up.
And I think it is really common toactually not know those answers.
(20:34):
But only we can answer thosequestions for ourselves.
Only we know what istime well spent for us.
So one way to inform those questionsis to actually log how we spend
our minutes throughout the dayand how we feel during those
activities, which can take some work.
But I think it can be helpful.
You can use pencil paper, a timemanagement app however you want but,
(20:59):
maybe do it for a, a full week or at leastthree days and note what you're doing
and how you're feeling when you do it.
I think what many of us will findsurprisingly is that we have more
time during the day than we thoughtwe had, where we are choosing
how to spend our time and we'rechoosing things that we don't enjoy.
(21:22):
And I think when that slaps you inthe face, there's a, a gut answer
that can come up to tell you, ah,here's what I wanna do instead.
I'll give an example.
Actually, I downloaded this stupidsolitaire game on my phone thinking
it would be relaxing, fun little game.
(21:44):
'cause my, my grandma, you guysknow where I'm going with this.
My grandma had taught me solitaire.
I would play a two personversion with my dad.
It has like all these great memories.
So I was, I was in the spaceof I can, it's like an evolved
gaming opportunity for me.
But that flipping game, it was soextravagant and extra gamified, like
(22:07):
pinging my dopamine all the time.
Like you had to check in every twohours to get extra points and stuff.
gosh.
left.
A meeting once to get my points.
And then one night I playedfor three hours and I came out
(22:27):
of this fog like, where am I?
What just happened?
And I realized at that moment,this does not feel good.
But I had, you know, it, it took awhile to get there, probably five
weeks of stress with this game.
it just surprised me.
(22:48):
I, and I knew that moderatingmy time was not an option.
I couldn't do it.
I did not have the self-control.
So I deleted it and I told myhusband, if you see me playing this,
take my phone away legitimately.
And I didn't wannadelete it but I knew it.
I had this unhealthy relationship with it.
It was definitely not serving me.
(23:10):
So maybe you have somethingthat obvious in your day and,
and it's not even that obvious.
It, it, for five weeks I wasstressed with this stupid game.
The fact that it stressedme out was surprising.
but unconsciously it was having negativeimpacts on me for quite a while.
So.
Aimee, I have a friend who,who got tendonitis in her
(23:33):
thumb from playing solitaire
Yeah, I think it's calledlike trigger finger.
Yeah.
and that's what, that's what,finally got her to delete it.
right?
Do we have to have like,yes, physical diagnoses?
let's get there sooner, you know,before we sort of come out of a
comatose state at night under like, justcompletely confused as to what happened.
(23:57):
Like we can do this sooner.
So all that to say, right, we'rewaking up to this, we're seeing
the bricks, we're laying down.
What bricks do we wanna take away?
That would be the solitaire game for me.
Um, and so maybe documenting thosetimes can help you get there sooner than
how long it took me to figure out thiswas a bad thing that needed to leave.
(24:18):
and then you might decide, cool,what could I replace it with?
I could play solitairewith a real life human.
You know, so
Wait, is that still solitaire?
no, there is a two person game,
Okay.
but my husband and I are like, let's startplaying cards or Dominoes is another game.
So, you know, or puzzling, likeif there's some type of that that
(24:39):
you wanna do, then put it in ina way that nourishes you more.
So, and I think the funny thing is, isthat when we do that, when we have a
healthy balance in how we spend our time.
We include activities that welike, we will, we will actually
feel like we have more time.
It's that time poverty perspective.
(25:02):
And we may not change anyhours on the clock, right?
Like we may be as busy as we werebefore with as many activities,
but our perception changes.
We can do it.
If I did it, y'all can do it.
Oh, geez, I'm still laughingabout the, the solitaire
See there's, there's too many of us.
(25:24):
Oh yeah.
I probably got tendonitis too.
I get it.
So I, I also love the suggestion of,of kind of logging, keeping track,
raising our awareness about how thechoices we make really impact us.
So I, I'm going to offerup a shortcut for that.
Um, 'cause I.
(25:44):
think that this is something you cando in real time, like moment to moment.
And it's, it's, I think it'skind of foolproof if we, if
we really just get a, a littlebit of practice at this.
and here's an added benefit to doing this.
It, it is a way of practicing mindfulness.
It's, it's a way of exercisingour mindfulness muscles.
(26:06):
So here's, here's my idea.
Whatever you're doing, whoever you arewith, just turn your attention for a
moment, just for a second, uh, to yourmidsection, your chest or your belly.
And notice whether in that very momentyou feel expanded or contracted.
(26:30):
Or you might feel neutral.
Okay.
It's, but it's one of those three things.
This does not take any time.
It only requires a subtlemomentary shift in your focus.
And try to do this withoutjudging the state that you're in.
(26:50):
Don't say to yourself, "Oh, this is good.
I'm expansive," or "This isbad, I feel con constricted
or flat." No, Just notice it.
And then if you'd like.
Start making different choices,choosing to spend your time doing
things or being with people withwhom you feel more expansive and
see then what happens to your life.
(27:16):
I love that we do this work, henryand I talked, we were talking
about this before we went on.
We don't just talk about thisstuff, we live this stuff and
also we screw up on this stuff.
If I would've done that on day fourof my solitaire situation, I would've
realized that this is not great.
(27:40):
So sometimes these things,it just get like another
reminder, I can check back in.
So, if you're surprised by the things thatmaybe you were doing unconsciously, like
Henry said, we don't need to judge it.
Ah, okay.
I can change this.
So I appreciate that wisdom.
Another reminder to engage in those,just those daily practices of mindfulness
(28:02):
that can help us to wake up, and see somethings that we might be unconscious for.
Brilliant.
And you note takers.
If you need to document it, youcan use my strategy as well.
Oh, I'm sure there's an app for that.
There's got to be.
absolutely.
So our next episode will actually kindof hit on the other side of this bell
(28:22):
curve I think that we brought up today.
So, we'll talk more about feeling dulland disconnected, so maybe not frantic
and busy, but kind of shut down.
Mm-hmm.
And like today we'll talkabout how we can open up.
Wake up to tune into our resilienceand be more present for our life.
So, to close us today, I wannashare some wisdom from Max
(28:45):
Ehrmann, from his poem, Desiderata.
These are just a few lines from it.
I think it speaks to our, our combo today.
And I, I hope you really soakparticularly in the last few lines.
Here it is.
" Do not distress yourselfwith dark imaginings.
Many fears are born offatigue and loneliness.
(29:10):
Beyond a wholesome discipline,be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, noless than the trees and the stars.
You have a right to be here, and whetheror not it is clear to you, no doubt,
the universe is unfolding as it should."
(29:31):
Thank you for listeningto the Joy Lab podcast.
If you enjoy today's show, visitJoyLab.coach to learn more
about the full Joy Lab program.
Be sure to rate and review us whereveryou listen to your favorite podcasts.
Please remember that thiscontent is for informational
and educational purposes only.
It is not intended to provide medicaladvice and is not a replacement for advice
(29:54):
and treatment from a medical professional.
Please consult your doctor orother qualified health professional
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