Ep. 221: Can Parents Do Deep Work?

00:00:00.000 | I think that the deep pain point relates to sort of the envy of often husbands, fathers

00:00:09.600 | who have a setup that is more conducive to longer stretches of work time.

00:00:16.600 | What's ironic though, I think, is that part of why it's hard as a mom, and I'm saying

00:00:21.600 | this with a lot of stereotypes in hand and I recognize that and I apologize, is that

00:00:26.000 | part of what makes it hard to have those long stretches is the guilt that interrupts.

00:00:36.000 | I'm Pal Newport and this is Deep Questions, episode 221.

00:00:43.500 | If you're new to this program, it's where I answer questions from my audience about

00:00:48.960 | the struggle to work and live deeply in an increasingly distracted world.

00:00:54.440 | If you want to submit your own questions, there's a link right in the show description.

00:00:59.440 | I'm here at my Deep Work HQ.

00:01:01.400 | I'm joined by my producer, Jesse.

00:01:05.600 | Jesse, I got a couple pieces of administrative work to do here, a couple announcements to

00:01:13.680 | make, but I wanted to talk first about what's coming up in the show because I'm kind of

00:01:16.240 | excited about it.

00:01:17.240 | We have a guest.

00:01:18.240 | Nice.

00:01:19.240 | And we're going to actually integrate a guest into a fuller episode.

00:01:23.320 | We're trying something new here.

00:01:24.400 | So we have a deep dive coming up.

00:01:26.520 | After the deep dive, we have a guest, which I'll tell you about in a second.

00:01:29.280 | And then after the guest, there is a little bit more to do.

00:01:34.320 | We are going to talk about the guest and one extra issue that I wanted to bring up.

00:01:41.680 | So the guest we have today coming up a little bit later is Yael Schonbrunn from Brown University.

00:01:49.720 | Yael is an assistant professor of psychology and she has a new book out.

00:01:54.240 | I'm holding it up to the camera for those who are watching called Work Parent Thrive.

00:02:00.320 | It takes a psychological approach to the issues that arise from being a working parent.

00:02:07.760 | We hear about this a lot.

00:02:08.760 | Jesse, would you say this is like one of the, I don't know, top five topics we hear is from

00:02:12.940 | people who are confused, emotional, frustrated, or looking for help on the struggle of having

00:02:19.300 | a career while also having kids.

00:02:20.880 | It's definitely one of our top issues.

00:02:22.280 | A hundred percent.

00:02:23.960 | And Yael has a fantastic approach that's rooted in acceptance commitment therapy.

00:02:28.060 | As we'll talk about in this interview, it's different than the existing approaches to

00:02:32.120 | this issue.

00:02:33.360 | It doesn't supplant them, it complements them.

00:02:36.340 | But as you'll see, it's incredibly aligned with the deep lifestyle, values-driven, lifestyle-centric,

00:02:44.800 | career planning style approach we take to the show.

00:02:47.480 | Now we have a bonafide PhD psychologist who actually knows the research, who's going to

00:02:52.480 | help you tackle these issues of being a parent and work in a way that we talk about, but

00:02:58.040 | with much more professional gravitas.

00:03:01.600 | So I'm really looking forward to that.

00:03:03.120 | A couple of administrative announcements.

00:03:05.560 | We got the event coming up, the live event for those of you in the DC area.

00:03:09.560 | Next week, it's Monday, November 14th at 7 p.m.

00:03:13.280 | I think I have that right, at East City Books in Washington, DC.

00:03:17.920 | I will be moderating a conversation with David Sachs about his new book, The Return of Analog,

00:03:25.600 | or The Future is Analog.

00:03:26.600 | Do I have that wrong, Jesse?

00:03:27.600 | Let me see.

00:03:28.600 | Let me look it up here.

00:03:30.000 | The Future is Analog.

00:03:31.000 | I said that wrong.

00:03:32.000 | His first book was The Revenge of Analog.

00:03:35.100 | His new book is The Future is Analog.

00:03:37.920 | There we go.

00:03:39.360 | David is really pleased with this promo right now.

00:03:43.240 | David somebody has a book that's called Analog Something.

00:03:46.280 | I don't know.

00:03:48.240 | Sometime in November, I'm going to talk about it somewhere, so whatever.

00:03:52.840 | David Sachs' new book is The Future is Analog.

00:03:56.680 | He is doing a bookstore appearance on November 14th at 7, in which I will be moderating a

00:04:01.320 | conversation with him.

00:04:02.320 | Jesse is going to come, too.

00:04:03.320 | We're going to kind of treat it like a live episode of the Deep Questions podcast.

00:04:07.440 | I'd love to see you.

00:04:08.920 | The other administrative thing I want to point out is we've been doing interesting things

00:04:13.200 | with the YouTube page.

00:04:14.840 | So youtube.com/CalNewportMedia.

00:04:19.520 | In addition to full episodes being on there and clips from the episodes, we've done now

00:04:24.280 | four weekly update videos where I talk about some of my personal struggles as a professional

00:04:33.040 | writer, professor, and podcaster to do deep work and balance that amidst all the demands

00:04:38.720 | of the shallow.

00:04:39.720 | So you get a sort of inside look into my life and my work, which I don't always get in that

00:04:44.360 | much detail on the show.

00:04:45.760 | I don't always get in that much detail about myself in my articles.

00:04:49.520 | So if you're interested in my struggles and my strategies and how I try to make my life

00:04:54.440 | work, you should check out those videos over at youtube.com/CalNewportMedia.

00:04:57.760 | Discussion of the interview and one extra point that I wanted to bring up.

00:05:05.160 | So I think it's a good game plan.

00:05:06.680 | Let's get started now with the deep dive.

00:05:09.600 | The topic of today's deep dive is the 20% paradox.

00:05:17.560 | Now I wanted to choose a topic that was going to be relevant to the interview that follows

00:05:21.800 | in this episode.

00:05:22.800 | So stick around for the interview that follows because you're going to see some deep connections

00:05:28.080 | between what my guest has to say in this topic I wanted to tackle here up front in the show.

00:05:34.920 | So what is the 20% paradox?

00:05:37.600 | It is the observation that if you take a knowledge worker who is burnt out or stressed about

00:05:44.400 | their work, which let's be honest is a large percentage of knowledge workers right now,

00:05:50.100 | and you measure how much work are they doing above the threshold of sustainability.

00:05:56.660 | So the level where if your work is below this volume, it's pretty sustainable.

00:06:01.440 | You're not super stressed about it.

00:06:02.540 | Your job is just what it is.

00:06:04.080 | How much work are they doing above that threshold?

00:06:06.940 | What you find consistently is that it's going to be somewhere around 20% too much work.

00:06:15.400 | Not 60%, not 200%, not 100%, but it's always right around 20%.

00:06:21.600 | Now there are people who do, let's say 100% too much work.

00:06:24.680 | So if we just for the sake of round numbers, say nine to five, five days a week, if your

00:06:30.920 | work fits comfortably in there, that's pretty sustainable.

00:06:34.440 | We're used to that.

00:06:35.440 | We'll be okay with it.

00:06:36.440 | It's possible.

00:06:37.440 | Some people work a hundred hour weeks and they need all a hundred hours to get things

00:06:40.320 | done.

00:06:41.320 | I know some people like that.

00:06:43.520 | That's very rare, right?

00:06:45.560 | Most people, it's about 20%.

00:06:46.720 | It's like me today.

00:06:47.720 | I'm a little stressed out today because I have probably one hour too much stuff on my

00:06:53.400 | schedule.

00:06:54.400 | If there was one hour worth of work removed, like an appointment removed from today, from

00:06:59.040 | my schedule, then we would be okay.

00:07:03.280 | I'd have time to get everything done.

00:07:04.720 | I'd have some margin.

00:07:06.520 | The day would end at the normal time and I'd be okay.

00:07:08.880 | I don't have quite enough time after I record today's episode.

00:07:12.120 | I'm running out the door.

00:07:13.120 | 20% too much.

00:07:14.120 | And this is what you find more or less when you study stressed out knowledge workers.

00:07:21.300 | So why do we fall?

00:07:22.480 | Why is the source of stress always coming from this relatively narrow quantity of overwork?

00:07:30.720 | The wrong answer, the answer we tell ourselves when we interrogate our burnout is that I'm

00:07:38.200 | being asked to do the amount of work I'm being asked to do is about 20% too much.

00:07:43.720 | I just look, I can't just say no to my boss.

00:07:45.560 | This is what's on my plate.

00:07:46.560 | And what's on my plate is about 20% too much.

00:07:48.480 | It's I'm being asked to do too much.

00:07:51.000 | The reality is though, in almost every case, you're saying no to most things that you're

00:07:57.520 | asked to do.

00:07:59.320 | Most people don't realize this, but you're turning things down implicitly or explicitly

00:08:05.800 | through direct conversation or indirect action all the time.

00:08:10.760 | And this kind of makes sense, right?

00:08:12.080 | Like what, what are the chances that of all the different people in your life, in your

00:08:15.640 | professional life who could make requests of you, who can put work on your plate?

00:08:19.640 | What are the chances that it just works out that all of the different requests that they

00:08:23.720 | throw your direction in an ad hoc manner with just slaps, checks and grabbing you at a meeting

00:08:28.320 | or emails?

00:08:29.320 | What's the chances that when you add up all that work, it ends up to be exactly about

00:08:32.800 | 20% too many hours.

00:08:35.080 | That's not going to happen.

00:08:36.080 | That would be a cosmic coincidence.

00:08:37.880 | That's rolling 17 dice and having them all come up threes.

00:08:42.400 | What's really happening is that you're getting asked to do things all the time.

00:08:45.880 | If you really added up the work of all the things you could be doing and all the things

00:08:49.440 | you could be accepting, it would be more hours than there are in the week.

00:08:53.240 | It would be impossible.

00:08:54.240 | You're saying no to most things.

00:08:56.640 | The things you say yes to ends up being about 20% too much.

00:09:02.680 | The reason why I think this happens, and I've talked about this before on the show, but

00:09:07.440 | let's make it really clear here, is not about the logistics of work.

00:09:14.320 | It's not about administrative philosophies.

00:09:18.020 | It's not about time management strategies.

00:09:20.040 | It's about psychology.

00:09:23.200 | It is difficult for humans to say no to other humans that are making a request of them.

00:09:29.440 | This would make complete sense if we want to put on our somewhat suspect pop evolutionary

00:09:35.480 | psychology hat.

00:09:36.480 | This makes sense.

00:09:37.480 | I want to avoid just those stories here, but this makes sense because we're a tribal species.

00:09:42.000 | We're used to living in a small tribe of people who are related to us that we're fiercely

00:09:46.800 | loyal to.

00:09:47.840 | In the tribal context that dominated for the first 300,000 years of our species existence,

00:09:53.880 | requests were probably pretty serious and there would be a real social consequence to

00:09:57.440 | saying no.

00:09:58.440 | When your tribe member says, "I need you to watch my back as I attack this mammoth," if

00:10:03.040 | you say no, that's a problem.

00:10:05.720 | You're going to get a rock to the back of the head.

00:10:08.080 | As you can tell, I know a lot of really good details about Paleolithic life.

00:10:12.120 | All right, so we take requests from people we know in our tribe seriously, so it's very

00:10:16.840 | difficult to say no.

00:10:17.840 | Okay, this is a mismatch, of course, for a world of 700 other employees in your organization

00:10:23.240 | and human resources and other types of groups within your company that all need different

00:10:27.400 | things from you and who can make requests with basically no friction by sending you

00:10:30.400 | a quick email.

00:10:31.680 | That brain, that Paleolithic brain is a mismatch here because here it's not life and death.

00:10:38.200 | Someone asking you to come participate in a panel is something that it's not a big deal

00:10:42.840 | if you say no to.

00:10:43.840 | No one's going to get a rock to the back of their head.

00:10:46.080 | No one's going to get gored by a mammoth, but our brain is concerned.

00:10:49.240 | So we have a hard time saying no.

00:10:51.400 | It's a psychological problem.

00:10:53.620 | What helps if we feel overloaded and stressed?

00:10:58.840 | This gives you, from an internal psychological perspective, coverage to say no.

00:11:05.640 | Not coverage to the other person, coverage to yourself, your brain, your Paleolithic

00:11:10.720 | brain.

00:11:11.720 | "We can't say no.

00:11:12.720 | We can't say no."

00:11:13.720 | You're like, "I am so stressed."

00:11:14.720 | You're like, "I mean, we got to say no.

00:11:18.160 | We're overloaded.

00:11:19.160 | I mean, look, this is an extreme circumstance.

00:11:20.760 | I normally would say yes, but there's these other factors like our cortisol is up, our

00:11:24.680 | schedule's packed.

00:11:26.320 | With reluctance, we have to say no."

00:11:28.560 | I really do think this is a big source of the 20% rule is that we implicitly engineer

00:11:34.680 | the volume of our acceptances to get us a workload that's just heavy enough that we're

00:11:38.000 | in a persistent state of low-grade stress.

00:11:40.840 | And then that is where we then feel comfortable saying no to what follows.

00:11:43.640 | The reason why we don't curve our workload 20% less below the sustainability threshold

00:11:50.600 | is because when our work is sustainable, we don't have the psychological cover to say

00:11:54.120 | no.

00:11:55.120 | It's a self-reinforcing feedback network that has a convergent steady state at the stressful

00:12:03.040 | side of that threshold.

00:12:05.680 | So I think this is really important.

00:12:08.280 | The other person doesn't care as much as you think when you're politely saying no, because

00:12:12.440 | you've already said no to them probably seven times for other things.

00:12:14.720 | You just didn't realize it.

00:12:15.720 | They don't care.

00:12:16.720 | They don't know the difference.

00:12:19.280 | Your CV, your resume, your bosses, you think they really would know the difference between

00:12:22.920 | if you spent 20% less time.

00:12:24.840 | That's not going to show up.

00:12:26.240 | There's so much noise and how many things get accomplished or this thing took this much

00:12:29.680 | more time than this thing.

00:12:30.680 | It's all a little bit apples to oranges.

00:12:32.880 | 20% less work doesn't necessarily even show up in a way that anyone is ever going to notice.

00:12:37.820 | The outside world can't see things at that granularity, but it can make all the difference

00:12:42.700 | to your personal sustainability, your personal satisfaction.

00:12:45.860 | It's a small epsilon that if you close it, lots of good things happen, but it's psychologically

00:12:51.100 | difficult to do.

00:12:54.500 | So partially this is just expository.

00:12:58.540 | It's a theory.

00:13:00.540 | We're all stressed, but not like completely 100-hour week overloaded because it's a coping

00:13:04.660 | mechanism.

00:13:06.340 | Partially this is also advisory.

00:13:08.020 | If we understand the 20% paradox, maybe we will be a little bit more emboldened to just

00:13:13.420 | shave that extra epsilon of work off and fall back to a more sustainable place.

00:13:18.500 | When we understand that we actually say no implicitly all the time, we do not have 60

00:13:25.020 | hours of work exactly being put on our plate.

00:13:26.700 | We have 200 hours being put on our plate and we say no to most of it.

00:13:30.100 | Then saying no a couple more times is not so fraught, but it's going to make all the

00:13:33.780 | difference in the world.

00:13:34.780 | It's going to be one less meeting today, ending your day and moving to a shutdown ritual

00:13:39.420 | one hour earlier than normal, starting your day one hour later, one more project off your

00:13:43.820 | plate, one more year in between book projects.

00:13:47.260 | I don't know.

00:13:48.260 | Whatever adds up to 20% in your particular professional world, it can make all the difference.

00:13:52.060 | So anyways, keep the 20% paradox in mind.

00:13:55.940 | It's a big driver of stress.

00:13:57.940 | It's largely psychological.

00:14:00.300 | Psychological problems have internal solutions.

00:14:02.580 | So we have some hope here that we can make a difference.

00:14:07.140 | All right.

00:14:08.700 | Now coming up next is our interview with Yael Schonbrunn.

00:14:13.180 | Before we get there, let me first briefly mention a sponsor that makes this show possible.

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00:19:12.980 | Let's now get into our conversation with Yael Schonbrunn.

00:19:17.040 | Yael, thank you for joining the Deep Questions podcast.

00:19:21.840 | If I understand correctly, we have you on your book launch date.

00:19:27.080 | So your new book, I'm holding it up here, Work, Parent, Thrive, that we'll be talking

00:19:31.760 | about came out on the day we're recording this.

00:19:33.520 | So by the time you're hearing this podcast, it is widely available.

00:19:38.820 | So as I mentioned before, I hope this is a nice distraction from the internet pulling

00:19:43.200 | at your attention every five or 10 minutes.

00:19:47.040 | So we're appreciative to have you here.

00:19:48.960 | Yeah, I'm so grateful to be here.

00:19:51.200 | Thank you so much for having me on.

00:19:53.120 | Appreciate it.

00:19:54.300 | So our plan is I want to get into your book and the big approach and some of the nitty-gritty

00:20:01.680 | details later, time permitting.

00:20:05.340 | We're going to get your expert opinion on some relevant issues we talk about a lot here

00:20:10.320 | on the show.

00:20:11.320 | But we should start off by just getting people up to speed with who you are.

00:20:15.580 | So let me know what I'm missing here.

00:20:18.680 | Assistant professor, psychology at Brown University, also mother of three children.

00:20:26.140 | Okay, that's correct.

00:20:30.620 | And your book, Work, Parent, Thrive, where did this come from?

00:20:36.460 | Well, it came from my own challenges as a working parent.

00:20:41.140 | I think what most authors say is they write the book that they wished was available at

00:20:46.900 | some point in their life, and that was definitely the case for me.

00:20:51.940 | Like many people, I struggled a lot when I first became a working parent.

00:20:55.220 | And I really wanted something that was positive and where I could use the resources that I

00:21:00.180 | already had to guide me through what felt really challenging.

00:21:03.260 | And most of what I found in the bookstore felt pretty negative, like talking about the

00:21:09.100 | structures of society that weren't adequate and policy and workplace and marital inequalities.

00:21:15.860 | And while all of that may be true, I sort of wanted something where I could actually

00:21:20.380 | today start to create a better existence for myself.

00:21:24.780 | And so instead of relying on the bookstore, I started diving into the academic literature

00:21:29.300 | as people like you and I do.

00:21:30.860 | And I found some really cool concepts.

00:21:32.540 | The first and most important one is this concept of work-family enrichment.

00:21:36.500 | So we usually talk about work-family conflict, but there's this other side where there's

00:21:40.980 | actually a lot of evidence.

00:21:41.980 | And most people, if they think about it, can actually identify some of these kinds of experiences

00:21:45.980 | for themselves.

00:21:46.980 | But work-family enrichment is this idea that our two roles help each other out.

00:21:51.620 | And then once I had that in mind, I started diving deeper into science of creativity,

00:21:55.660 | science of rest, stress research, relationship research.

00:21:59.980 | And I found all of this different evidence that really our roles can help each other

00:22:05.020 | out.

00:22:06.020 | And we're so focused on the conflict between them that we're really missing the ways that

00:22:10.220 | our roles work better together.

00:22:12.180 | And so I decided to write a book about that.

00:22:14.460 | And the result is what you're holding in your hands.

00:22:16.460 | Well, I mean, it's one of the things I love about this book is I think your approach on

00:22:20.820 | this issue of working parenthood is something new.

00:22:25.540 | And so maybe we'll step back and lay the foundation of what is new about this approach.

00:22:31.420 | Let me tell you my theory about books about work and parenthood.

00:22:34.900 | And then you can tell me if I have it right.

00:22:36.420 | And then we can see if this makes sense for your book.

00:22:38.580 | Because I get a lot of questions about this because we talk about work and productivity

00:22:42.020 | night.

00:22:43.020 | So many questions, so much emotion, curiosity, frustration, anger on this topic.

00:22:48.780 | It's a huge topic, especially with my audience, which is all sort of aging into parenthood

00:22:52.220 | right now.

00:22:53.220 | Let me know if this is right.

00:22:55.940 | Before your book, it seemed like the spectrum of work parenting book was the, I call it

00:23:00.740 | the Laura Vanderkam, Bridget Schultz spectrum.

00:23:03.380 | And you can tell me if I have this right or not.

00:23:05.820 | But at Laura's side, it's like practical time management.

00:23:10.220 | Like, okay, it's hard to be a working parent.

00:23:12.740 | So like, here's some things that might help.

00:23:15.060 | Bridget's side is more, we need to emphasize the essential impossibility of this task as

00:23:20.820 | a way to motivate more systemic reforms.

00:23:24.260 | And there's kind of mutual suspicion.

00:23:26.500 | Like if you give concrete time management advice, you might undermine the message that

00:23:30.220 | this is hard enough that requires systemic change.

00:23:32.340 | And on the other way around, well, if all we're focusing on is emphasizing how impossible

00:23:35.860 | this is inventing, people could be less stressed if they would ever.

00:23:41.540 | Your book seems to be, it's like triangulate.

00:23:43.220 | It's a different, it's not on the spectrum.

00:23:45.500 | It's doing its own thing because you're applying psychology.

00:23:50.300 | So you described the book as taking an inside out approach.

00:23:54.560 | So maybe we could get into that.

00:23:56.660 | So what is this approach?

00:23:57.660 | I think it's different than either of those two approaches.

00:24:00.020 | Yeah, exactly right.

00:24:02.020 | And so I do want to emphasize, I think that the Bridget Schulte kind of mentality of the

00:24:09.340 | structures being inadequate and progress being necessary is absolutely right.

00:24:14.900 | And Laura Vanderkam's idea about, that we can get more out of our time if we're deliberate

00:24:19.660 | about it and strategic about it.

00:24:21.780 | That's all absolutely correct.

00:24:23.500 | But I think what it does miss, and this is kind of what you're pointing to, that my book

00:24:27.020 | tries to do is this psychological piece that there's this huge element of working parenthood

00:24:32.500 | and why it's hard.

00:24:33.780 | That is just fundamentally human.

00:24:35.620 | Like as humans, we're drawn to different roles.

00:24:38.100 | We want to love deeply.

00:24:39.580 | We want to contribute meaningfully.

00:24:41.740 | And that is a part of what makes for a human, like a fulfilling human life.

00:24:46.540 | But inherent in that is if you're drawn to multiple roles that demand a lot of you, there's

00:24:51.140 | going to be conflict and it can't be fixed in the way that we might fix a machine, in

00:24:55.740 | the way that we might fix something in our house, because it's a human problem.

00:25:00.860 | And so what is so, I mean, if you think about it, it's almost surprising that it's missing

00:25:05.100 | because it's such a human problem.

00:25:06.420 | And yet there's nothing in the literature before my book that really addresses the psychology

00:25:11.020 | of this, of how we are drawn to lots of different roles and that actually being drawn to lots

00:25:15.100 | of different roles and participating in them is good for us.

00:25:19.580 | And yet it comes along with this tension that exists between demands.

00:25:24.460 | And so what I talk about is that a lot of what's out there offers these outside-in approaches

00:25:29.540 | of we got to make changes to the structures around us, to our workplaces, to our marriages,

00:25:33.940 | to social policy.

00:25:35.660 | And that includes time management.

00:25:37.460 | That's kind of like an outside approach, outside-in approach.

00:25:40.220 | And what I talk about is drawing on research and practices from clinical psychology to

00:25:44.900 | change how we think about working parenthood and how we approach it sort of from more of

00:25:49.980 | a psychological perspective.

00:25:52.380 | And so I do think it's a pretty different approach.

00:25:55.240 | And what's interesting is, and you're sort of saying like there's tension between the

00:25:58.260 | Laura Vanderkam and the Bridget Schulte camps, is that I think there's going to be tension

00:26:02.340 | between my camp as well, because people are so invested in sort of defaulting to this

00:26:08.800 | narrative because it's been so dominant for so long.

00:26:11.860 | And so I think it can be uncomfortable to think about this as a human problem because

00:26:16.020 | we so badly want this to be something that can be fixed.

00:26:19.860 | And I argue that it can't, not at least in the traditional way that we think about fixing

00:26:24.460 | problems.

00:26:25.460 | Yeah.

00:26:26.460 | And I'll tell you why part of why this resonated is I saw this reflection too early in my own

00:26:30.820 | writing career where I was writing student advice books.

00:26:35.660 | And my first books on student advice were very just purely tactical.

00:26:41.500 | Let's talk about the strategies for how you study, how you manage your time.

00:26:45.740 | And then once I actually started advising students, so over email and in person, I just

00:26:50.580 | met with real students, there was a shift in my work where I realized the human side

00:26:53.780 | was so fundamental that there was this big shift where the psychological reality of the

00:26:58.860 | role that school played in people's minds and ambition and burnout and the human side

00:27:05.180 | really opened a lot up.

00:27:06.800 | And so I'm already predisposed towards adding the human side so important.

00:27:10.660 | And I think that's why I like this.

00:27:12.340 | So let's go back then to the, you mentioned before, and this is early in your book, we

00:27:17.380 | think now as working parents that we have a parent role and a work role and they're

00:27:22.060 | in conflict and we just wish they could both be optimal as if they're done in isolation.

00:27:26.580 | And we see it as a problem when one pulls from the other.

00:27:29.420 | You say psychology tells us something different.

00:27:31.500 | Multiple roles could be good.

00:27:32.500 | They can enrich each other.

00:27:33.500 | So, so walk us through that because I think this is, this gave me some optimism.

00:27:36.980 | Yeah.

00:27:37.980 | I mean, it's pretty cool when you think about it.

00:27:40.580 | So it's sort of, there's these two competing models and one is the scarcity model where

00:27:45.740 | like we have a finite amount of time and energy and attention.

00:27:49.420 | And this is where work family conflict thinking comes where we think, you know, if we're working,

00:27:53.980 | then we're not parenting.

00:27:54.980 | And so we're dropping the ball on parenting.

00:27:56.340 | And if we're parenting, then we're really screwing our work life over.

00:28:01.460 | And that there is some evidence to that, right?

00:28:05.060 | There is finite time and energy and you got to sleep for some of the hours of the day,

00:28:09.420 | but there's this other theory called role accumulation.

00:28:12.900 | And the idea there is that each role can kind of feed each other.

00:28:16.700 | And I think about this in three distinct pathways.

00:28:19.140 | So we can think about the skill transfer.

00:28:21.340 | So we have multiple roles, but whenever we're in a given role, we're probably building a

00:28:25.580 | skill.

00:28:26.580 | So Cal, when you're on this podcast, you're thinking deeply, you're asking provocative

00:28:30.100 | questions, you're paying attention to technology.

00:28:33.140 | So you're building skill.

00:28:34.660 | And in some ways that feeds back to your parenting role.

00:28:37.620 | You can ask your kids deep questions.

00:28:39.220 | You can teach them about technology.

00:28:41.100 | When you're parenting, you're certainly building skills.

00:28:43.380 | You're building skills and empathy and perspective taking and being incredibly patient.

00:28:48.540 | And guess what?

00:28:49.540 | All of those skills tend to be really beneficial in the workspace.

00:28:53.180 | So that's skill transfer.

00:28:54.180 | Then there's the buffer effect.

00:28:55.620 | And this is the idea that when we have a stressor in one area of our life, it can sort of be

00:29:01.060 | buffered by positive experiences that we might have in another.

00:29:05.340 | So if you have a rough day at work, you get to go home and hug your kid.

00:29:09.100 | If your kid is going through a super rough developmental stage, you can go to work and

00:29:12.380 | have a positive experience of mastery.

00:29:15.740 | The final pathway is the additive effect.

00:29:18.060 | And that's the idea that happiness in at least one definition that psychologists use is built

00:29:24.100 | on a meaningful life.

00:29:25.540 | And the more roles we have, the more opportunities that we have to build meaning, to have a sense

00:29:29.960 | of purpose and contribution.

00:29:32.420 | And so in that way, having lots of roles, although they might sort of take time that

00:29:39.140 | takes us away from the other role, can actually offer us opportunity to build more meaning,

00:29:45.060 | more purpose.

00:29:46.300 | And so in these various pathways, there's opportunity for the roles to kind of help

00:29:50.940 | each other and help us sort of grow bigger.

00:29:53.100 | So it's this kind of Taoist idea where you have the yin and the yang pressing against

00:29:57.340 | each other.

00:29:58.340 | And if you sort of zoom out, the yin and the yang together are greater than the sum of

00:30:03.300 | their parts.

00:30:04.420 | And that's the idea of work family enrichment.

00:30:06.540 | So we're stepping away from the scarcity model and into this accumulation enrichment model.

00:30:11.680 | And that's the mindset shift that I'm hoping to leave people with through the book.

00:30:15.180 | I mean, I love that mindset.

00:30:18.420 | It's like an implication of what you're saying, for example, is, you know, when you're the

00:30:23.380 | working parent and you're frustrated that I have something taking my time away from

00:30:28.100 | work, I have to leave early to pick up my kid, you tell yourself a story that if I had

00:30:32.340 | no kids and I only had this job, I'd be doing so much better.

00:30:35.620 | Man, I'd really be killing at this job if I just had more time.

00:30:38.500 | But the counterfactual might not be that.

00:30:40.420 | Well, you would have more time, but there's these skill transfers you're missing.

00:30:44.420 | Also, would you really be happier?

00:30:46.340 | So OK, if you could add an extra two hours a day and maybe even there's like some promotions

00:30:51.200 | that happen faster if you had a more monolithic source of meaning in your life, that's very

00:30:55.660 | unstable.

00:30:56.660 | I mean, this is an implication, I guess, right?

00:30:59.420 | Like the counterfactual, if I could just be a parent and do nothing else or if I could

00:31:03.060 | just have a job and do nothing else, it's not so clear that that would be a better parenting

00:31:07.540 | experience or that that would be a better professional experience.

00:31:10.700 | Right.

00:31:11.780 | And the other point I'll just kind of add on is that the mindset that we take impacts

00:31:16.780 | how we engage.

00:31:17.780 | So if I think to myself, my work is so bad for my kids, then I'm going to be really sheepish

00:31:25.860 | and ashamed when I'm with my kids or when I tell them that I have to go and they're

00:31:29.540 | going to pick up on those cues.

00:31:31.020 | And it's probably going to I'll actually back up a little bit.

00:31:33.740 | There's this very interesting study on low wage earners and the early years of parenting.

00:31:38.940 | And one analysis that the researchers did was comparing different cultural populations.

00:31:43.760 | So they looked at beliefs about the impact of work among African-American moms and among

00:31:48.900 | Latina moms.

00:31:50.180 | And this is just a statistical finding.

00:31:52.540 | Obviously, this is not always true, but on average, African-American moms were more likely

00:31:56.740 | to think that work was something to be proud of and that it was good for the family, whereas

00:32:00.740 | Latina moms were more likely to think that work their work was going to cause irreparable

00:32:04.940 | damage to their kids.

00:32:06.780 | And what the research study found is that those differences in the beliefs about the

00:32:11.020 | impact of work on their kids were associated with depression symptoms over the first year

00:32:16.340 | of their child's life.

00:32:18.100 | And those depression symptoms were associated with how the parents interacted with the kids.

00:32:22.880 | And so you have parents working and this is sort of controlling for supervisor support

00:32:27.460 | and number of hours and various other things.

00:32:30.700 | The mindset that we have about work really changes the way that we participate in our

00:32:35.300 | work and also the way that we participate in opportunities to engage with our kids.

00:32:40.500 | And so it's even more than just sort of like on the face of it, what you're doing, it's

00:32:45.060 | like the how you're doing it.

00:32:46.460 | And the mindset can really contribute in ways that I think are beyond what we fully understand.

00:32:52.300 | Interesting.

00:32:53.500 | And then how does labeling play into that?

00:32:56.620 | Something else you talk about is distancing from unhelpful labels.

00:33:01.100 | Is labels the cognitive, whatever, signifier of an underlying mindset?

00:33:07.060 | What do you mean by that advice?

00:33:08.540 | Yeah, so labels are kind of like the specific words that your mind spits out that are sort

00:33:14.500 | of based in mindsets.

00:33:16.380 | Mindsets are sort of like this filter and the labels come out of the filter.

00:33:19.860 | So if you sort of walk around the world thinking, you know, work is so bad for my kids, then

00:33:25.980 | you're probably going to spit out the words like bad working parent, neglecting parent,

00:33:31.100 | or you know, failure in some way.

00:33:34.280 | And so it's sort of like the broad filter generates, helps you to generate the specific

00:33:39.820 | words.

00:33:40.820 | And what we understand about the way that people connect to words is that, you know,

00:33:45.560 | if you're connected to I'm a bad working parent, it's more likely to again, contribute to how

00:33:50.680 | you feel and also how you engage in the world.

00:33:53.000 | So they're all connected, but they're sort of, you know, at different levels of processing.

00:33:57.640 | What about like self descriptions as busy, I'm overloaded, I'm stressed out, the knee

00:34:04.880 | jerk, how are things going?

00:34:06.320 | Oh, it's completely crazy.

00:34:07.440 | It's completely busy.

00:34:09.520 | Does that fall into that same category of labels?

00:34:13.360 | Yeah, it does.

00:34:15.680 | And I think the important thing is to recognize that like the human brain labels, that's just

00:34:19.720 | something the human brain does.

00:34:21.160 | You know, we categorize, we have to understand a very complex world that has input coming

00:34:25.320 | in from internally and from externally in such high abundance that it's hard to process

00:34:30.760 | it unless we sort of categorize things.

00:34:32.760 | And labeling is one of the ways that we categorize.

00:34:36.120 | And labels, therefore, aren't bad.

00:34:38.160 | They're not good or bad.

00:34:39.160 | They just, it's just what our brain does.

00:34:41.040 | The thing that I try to call attention to, and this is based in the kind of therapy that

00:34:44.960 | I practice, which is an evidence-based therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy,

00:34:49.280 | is that there are times when connecting to certain words or certain stories can really

00:34:54.720 | drive unhelpful behavior that is sort of the antithesis of how you want to show up in whatever

00:34:59.800 | the role is.

00:35:01.480 | So if, you know, there's really interesting studies that, you know, stereotype threat,

00:35:06.280 | like if a woman is taking a math test and they've been exposed to some words like, you

00:35:11.320 | know, women are bad at math, your mind getting consumed with that really interferes with

00:35:16.320 | your performance.

00:35:19.400 | And so in that way, the labels that we connect to can be really problematic.

00:35:24.800 | But then there are some labels that are quite helpful.

00:35:26.480 | Like if before I get on a podcast, I'm feeling kind of nervous and I connect to a label of,

00:35:30.880 | you know, I'm articulate, like that might actually help me perform better.

00:35:35.720 | So the labels themselves aren't good or bad.

00:35:38.000 | It's more just figuring out what labels are helping us to live in accordance with how

00:35:42.920 | we most want to live and which ones are interfering.

00:35:45.840 | And when we notice labels that are interfering, and often it's those negative, rigid, really

00:35:50.960 | extreme black and white kind of labels, that's when it's useful to notice them, unhook from

00:35:57.040 | them and connect with labels that are more value aligned.

00:36:00.600 | So like, what are some examples of common negative labels that working parents get stuck

00:36:06.200 | on?

00:36:08.840 | I think any, you know, failure, falling short, overwhelmed, unfair, those kinds of labels

00:36:18.520 | can be really problematic for performing.

00:36:22.360 | I'm trying to think of other ones that are common, but those are the ones that pop to

00:36:28.600 | mind.

00:36:29.600 | And we've talked about, because I'm a fan of acceptance commitment therapy, we've talked

00:36:33.400 | about on the show some, and Stephen Hayes' book was inspirational to me.

00:36:38.000 | So we've talked some about on the show, I'm assuming some of the same strategies that

00:36:40.440 | come out of ACT, like the labeling the label as a way to distance, like, "Oh, all right,

00:36:46.480 | mind, there goes the, you know, I am a terrible parent.

00:36:50.440 | I'm never around.

00:36:51.440 | All the other parents are better than me story.

00:36:52.720 | All right, I know that story.

00:36:54.120 | Thanks mind.

00:36:55.120 | I'll get back to that later."

00:36:56.120 | Is that same strategy?

00:36:57.120 | That's exactly right.

00:36:58.120 | Yeah, there's a number of those, but that's the simplest one is I'm having the thought

00:37:01.840 | that you thank your mind.

00:37:03.080 | I mean, often this is kind of what you're pointing to, your mind needs to be thanked

00:37:06.280 | because it's trying to do you a favor.

00:37:07.920 | And that is actually one of the functions of labels is like, if you've identified that

00:37:13.200 | parenting well is important to you, which probably is, then your mind is trying to prompt

00:37:17.840 | you to do better.

00:37:18.840 | So calling you out as not doing well is an effort to sort of get you to put in a little

00:37:23.360 | bit more energy.

00:37:24.360 | The problem is that it sometimes doesn't work very well because when we feel ashamed of

00:37:28.000 | ourselves that actually isn't when we do our best work in any role.

00:37:32.040 | And so thanking your mind for caring enough about the role and then connecting to a different

00:37:36.260 | kind of strategy.

00:37:37.440 | So unhooking is called diffusion and acceptance and commitment therapy is one strategy.

00:37:42.880 | You can also do different imagery techniques of like seeing the words on a screen or you

00:37:47.000 | can write them down and fold it up and sort of put it to the side.

00:37:51.080 | Or you can do this very cool strategy called that is this practice called milk, milk, milk,

00:37:55.440 | where you repeat the word over and over again until you kind of realize that words are just

00:38:00.040 | kind of sounds and it helps you to kind of unhook from the meaning that we attach to

00:38:05.640 | it.

00:38:06.640 | So there's all these very cool strategies in the act that are really fun to use and

00:38:10.440 | very helpful.

00:38:11.440 | Yeah.

00:38:12.440 | So I want to get to what I think one of the core issues is on this topic with my admittedly

00:38:19.040 | narrow audience, but this is just the the core sub issue that I would say underlies

00:38:25.360 | a lot of the correspondence I get from people, which is ambition.

00:38:30.520 | Right, because there is this fundamental reality and I'm struggling with this.

00:38:36.600 | A lot of my audience is struggling with this.

00:38:39.040 | If you're a high achieving, ambitious person, there's no way to avoid if you have a family,

00:38:45.320 | you will it will reduce the number of things you can accomplish per whatever unit time.

00:38:51.600 | I mean, so we can talk academia since we're both professors.

00:38:55.160 | I mean, for sure, I would publish more papers if I if I didn't have kids like just in most

00:39:01.080 | fields, if you're very ambitious, you have something like that.

00:39:03.680 | A lot of what I'm hearing from people in their 30s who are just starting families is coming

00:39:08.520 | to grips.

00:39:09.520 | Well, how do you deal with this reality?

00:39:11.000 | I'm an ambitious person, high achieving person in my professional life that is being curtailed

00:39:16.480 | some.

00:39:18.280 | So how do we address that specific subfield with the type of ideas we've been talking

00:39:22.400 | about so far?

00:39:23.400 | Yeah.

00:39:24.400 | Well, so I have to share that my first entry into popular press writing was a 2014 New

00:39:30.480 | York Times piece that I wrote and the title was A Mother's Ambition.

00:39:33.640 | And it was all about my own struggle with becoming a parent and sort of drawing back

00:39:39.520 | on my ambitious academic pursuits to be more the kind of parent that I wanted.

00:39:44.200 | And it was and is a challenge because ambition is it's it's like a personality trait.

00:39:50.360 | It's pretty static and that's definitely a trait that I hold.

00:39:54.480 | And yet, I mean, I have just written a book.

00:39:57.160 | So on some level, I am ambitious, but on many other levels, I've really drawn back because

00:40:01.360 | of the parenting role that I've adopted and the way that I do it.

00:40:05.020 | And I think the answer that I have to what do we do with ambition if we've decided to

00:40:10.120 | participate in lots of roles is clarify your values.

00:40:13.640 | So this is a practice that's really central in ACT, which is to identify what how you

00:40:19.320 | most want to show up in the world in whatever role, in whatever context you're sort of looking

00:40:24.800 | at.

00:40:25.880 | So values are different than goals.

00:40:27.880 | So if you think about the metaphor of climbing a mountain, a goal would be the destination

00:40:31.920 | of getting to the top of the mountain, whereas values describe the quality of action, how

00:40:35.960 | you're taking the journey.

00:40:38.320 | So you could do it ambitiously, right?

00:40:40.040 | You could like try to get a really good workout and get to the top of the mountain as quick

00:40:43.440 | as you can and beat all your friends.

00:40:45.720 | Or you could take it slowly and enjoy the sights and the sounds.

00:40:48.720 | And you might decide to bring your kids along and then you're going to go really slowly,

00:40:52.320 | but it might be really fun.

00:40:54.280 | And then if the weather changes, you've got to shift your value and prioritize safety

00:40:58.320 | if there's a storm over getting to the top of the mountain.

00:41:01.280 | So values shift based on context.

00:41:04.120 | And you may still want to get to the top of the mountain, but decide to take the journey

00:41:07.760 | differently based on what's going on around you and inside of you.

00:41:11.840 | And I think being able to do that values clarification work can be really helpful.

00:41:18.200 | And again, that doesn't mean it's not uncomfortable to sort of draw back on ambitious pursuits

00:41:22.560 | in the service of participating in more roles.

00:41:25.760 | But it does help you transcend that discomfort because you're clearer on what you want to

00:41:29.400 | stand for.

00:41:30.400 | So for me, I have really slowed down my academic trajectory.

00:41:35.080 | I've been lapped many times over by colleagues who started at the same time as me and who

00:41:38.840 | I thought I'd be moving along with.

00:41:42.840 | But because I've been really clear on what's important to me and what kind of a meaningful

00:41:47.160 | life I want to be living, I have been able to tolerate it.

00:41:53.960 | But it doesn't mean that it's been easy.

00:41:55.440 | There's been lots of moments that are and continue to be pretty uncomfortable for me.

00:41:59.600 | Well, this has basically become a personal therapy session for me.

00:42:02.920 | So I do appreciate this.

00:42:05.800 | I mean, I just got back from I don't know if you have the same experience, but when

00:42:09.000 | you go to academic conferences, the interactions with the people who have just sprinted beyond

00:42:16.240 | you, who you were together with, like you went to grad school together, and it's always

00:42:20.480 | a good shaking.

00:42:23.240 | So then what about, OK, this is great.

00:42:26.480 | The two elements you mentioned that I want to highlight here that makes this hard is

00:42:30.440 | the peer comparison and then unfairness.

00:42:33.320 | So there's all these like systematic unfairness in all of this.

00:42:38.320 | So no kids versus kids, you have a leg up in a lot of things.

00:42:44.440 | Men versus woman, dad versus mom, the mom almost always is going to have the bigger

00:42:49.600 | hit than even their partner or the dads that you know.

00:42:53.440 | So there's all these different field versus other fields.

00:42:56.360 | Some fields are more flexible and can deal with parenthood and other fields.

00:43:03.640 | It's no, it's unrelenting.

00:43:06.000 | Professors have it easy compared to law partners.

00:43:08.080 | You say, well, wait a second.

00:43:09.080 | You can like just go home if you need to.

00:43:11.960 | And there's not someone who's clocking your hours.

00:43:14.960 | So how do we psychologically deal with peer comparison and unfairness?

00:43:20.680 | So I mean, what I think peer comparison does is it triggers envy, jealousy, and I'm a psychologist,

00:43:26.840 | so I always think about the function of emotions.

00:43:29.320 | How are emotions serving us?

00:43:31.760 | Most emotions are wired in for self-protective purposes in some form or another, survival,

00:43:36.440 | reproduction, belonging to the group, protecting our kin.

00:43:40.640 | Jealousy I think is one of these emotions that is less about survival and more about

00:43:44.960 | highlighting what's really important to us.

00:43:47.440 | So I think it's one of those really useful emotions because it tells you like, I really,

00:43:52.920 | this thing is really important to me.

00:43:55.220 | And so when you engage in a peer comparison, you see somebody lapping you or sprinting

00:44:00.560 | past you.

00:44:01.560 | I think it's a moment to pause and say, you know, I'm not doing that.

00:44:06.120 | Do I want to be doing that?

00:44:07.880 | Like is that a choice that I would make even if it means giving up on these other things

00:44:12.800 | that are the reason that I'm being lapped?

00:44:15.320 | So for me, and maybe for you too, it's really identifying, like I decided not to be hardcore

00:44:21.800 | in academia so that I could pursue popular press writing and so that I could be a more

00:44:25.780 | engaged parent.

00:44:28.120 | Would I choose to go back in full throttle so that I could stay in line with my peers?

00:44:35.700 | And that helps me to clarify my values.

00:44:37.440 | Like what do I really want?

00:44:39.160 | Right?

00:44:40.160 | Because it's easy to sort of get caught up in the jealousy and instead to kind of unhook

00:44:44.420 | from it and get curious about it and use that as an opportunity to reconnect to what really

00:44:48.960 | matters to you.

00:44:49.960 | And if you decide, you know, I'd give it all up for that, you know, a CV that looks like

00:44:54.680 | my colleague who's so impressive, then that's really good information.

00:44:59.480 | I imagine that for most people, like you gave up whatever you gave up for a reason and reconnecting

00:45:04.460 | to that reason can be really helpful in transcending the discomfort of that envy.

00:45:08.600 | Does that make sense?

00:45:10.160 | Yeah.

00:45:11.160 | And is it similar for unfairness?

00:45:12.160 | So, you know, COVID lockdown and you're watching colleagues without kids doing better than

00:45:18.580 | normal because like, great, I can just focus on my work while those with kids, the term

00:45:22.860 | we kept using on the podcast is this is a dumpster fire and I don't think people are

00:45:26.160 | recognizing like how impossible it is.

00:45:28.700 | And everyone's just pretending like, well, we're on Zoom.

00:45:30.420 | It's okay.

00:45:31.420 | It's not okay.

00:45:32.420 | We have three kids in the house and it's chaos and it's terrible.

00:45:35.660 | Is that a similar thing?

00:45:36.660 | So how do you deal with that type of fairness?

00:45:39.100 | Like, man, it's not jealousy, but it's frustration.

00:45:43.080 | Yeah.

00:45:44.080 | I think unfairness is sort of a really important emotion, right?

00:45:49.600 | This feeling of injustice because it points to the fact that there's a wrong that needs

00:45:54.480 | to be righted or action that needs to be taken to make things better.

00:46:00.080 | And I can very much relate to what happened during the pandemic and being home.

00:46:04.680 | And I actually, my husband has a very static schedule and he needed to be on calls from

00:46:10.640 | nine to five.

00:46:12.160 | So I would parent and then I was under contract to write this book.

00:46:14.800 | So starting at like five o'clock after I had just done a day of homeschooling and parenting

00:46:18.240 | and making the meals and not having any reprieve, that's when I would start my writing.

00:46:22.480 | It was really painful.

00:46:24.680 | And I would get really angry with my husband.

00:46:27.040 | How unfair is it that you can read an email and talk to adults and I have to sort of be

00:46:31.500 | at the service of three small little beasts who I love, but also I need a break from.

00:46:36.520 | And it actually, like for many people, it helped me to say, you know what, this isn't

00:46:41.400 | working.

00:46:42.400 | We need to renegotiate some of the responsibilities within our constraints, right?

00:46:47.000 | Like we need his job.

00:46:48.220 | We need my job.

00:46:49.600 | We love our kids.

00:46:50.600 | We're not going to toss them out.

00:46:51.720 | But within what is possible, we needed to renegotiate how we did things in our home.

00:46:57.400 | Sometimes that's not possible, right?

00:46:58.840 | Because there's these social policies and workplace rules and some marriages aren't

00:47:03.660 | as lovely as mine.

00:47:05.140 | I'm totally unprivileged.

00:47:07.020 | But I do think that injustice points to some action needs to be taken or we need to find

00:47:12.740 | a different way to handle what is.

00:47:15.780 | And that's where some of the tools, again, from psychology can be really helpful.

00:47:19.300 | Like if you can't make changes, can you change how you tolerate what is unjust, right?

00:47:25.900 | Can you sort of use it as a learning experience for you or sort of like make meaning out of

00:47:30.680 | your suffering?

00:47:31.680 | This idea from Viktor Frankl's wonderful book, Man's Search for Meaning.

00:47:35.700 | So there are different ways to tolerate it, even if you can't make changes.

00:47:38.480 | But often that sense of injustice or anger is a prompt to try to pursue some change.

00:47:44.320 | Right.

00:47:45.320 | That makes sense.

00:47:46.320 | There's a two-pronged approach there.

00:47:47.800 | Yeah.

00:47:48.800 | Let that point you towards changes you can make.

00:47:51.720 | If it's within your own family, maybe it's we need to renegotiate these rules or renegotiate.

00:47:56.580 | I've heard this a lot.

00:47:59.840 | Renegotiate careers in the family, like this notion of is the default just going to be

00:48:04.520 | that you get to do your career without change and I'm going to sort of make some changes

00:48:09.700 | and maybe we both should.

00:48:11.700 | I know a lot of people who do.

00:48:12.820 | Maybe we should both make some changes in our careers to make this more so there's the

00:48:17.020 | prompt for change or within a workplace.

00:48:19.660 | Like the way we have this set up is that these guys over here get all these advantages that

00:48:23.320 | aren't really serving the company.

00:48:24.320 | It's just arbitrary.

00:48:25.320 | Can we change something about how we do this?

00:48:28.280 | And then for the unfairness that's never going to go away or what's residual, then we have

00:48:34.800 | working on how we react to it too.

00:48:37.200 | And then it kind of overlaps some of what we're talking about with jealousy.

00:48:40.480 | And there's also going to be some stuff that's just annoying and we can't change.

00:48:43.640 | Don't let it consume because we have our values.

00:48:45.580 | We know what we're doing.

00:48:46.580 | Exactly.

00:48:47.580 | Exactly.

00:48:48.580 | Yeah.

00:48:49.580 | Yeah.

00:48:50.580 | Yeah.

00:48:51.580 | So let's make this concrete.

00:48:52.580 | Let's say we have an assistant professor.

00:48:55.220 | You know, like my scenario is probably similar to yours.

00:48:57.580 | I started having kids after my first year as a professor.

00:49:02.020 | So it was sort of like early on.

00:49:05.320 | If we're putting all this advice into practice, like one thing you might say to that professor

00:49:11.040 | is figure out your values as a parent in academia.

00:49:16.060 | Figure out a vision for your life and career that's very meaningful and is tractable and

00:49:23.380 | serves those roles and then pursue that.

00:49:27.680 | And it might be like, I love being an academic.

00:49:29.100 | I want to do important work on this topic.

00:49:31.260 | I want to be a parent and I want to be around my kids during this age.

00:49:34.980 | And there might be a very tractable way to do that, which maybe tenure comes a little

00:49:38.140 | later.

00:49:39.140 | Maybe it's less awards as some of the hard charging peers.

00:49:42.740 | But in the end, if I'm getting you correct, it doesn't matter.

00:49:46.380 | You were doing really important academic work.

00:49:48.060 | You could be a professor.

00:49:49.060 | You could be a parent.

00:49:50.060 | Like you could, you know, it's in the end, you're able to hit your values.

00:49:54.100 | You have a lot of ways to get there.

00:49:56.300 | And that's somehow separate from have I maximized some sort of utility function.

00:49:59.460 | If I maximize the number of papers, am I the best?

00:50:03.540 | You know, in my group that these sort of superlatives don't really have a bigger, as big a role

00:50:08.660 | to play as a value driven vision that is tractable to pursue.

00:50:14.380 | And I think, you know, in essence, what you're doing there is you're separating out the outcome

00:50:18.260 | from the process.

00:50:19.260 | And that is what values work helps you to do too.

00:50:21.660 | So we can have sort of outcome goals.

00:50:24.180 | Like I hope to have X number of papers or to have achieved full professor by whatever

00:50:28.900 | age or to have my kids launched in a certain way.

00:50:32.260 | Those are sort of like end goals that we want to get to.

00:50:36.500 | And those are important to have because they kind of give us a direction to move in.

00:50:39.940 | But even more important, I would argue, is the process is like how we get there.

00:50:44.500 | So if what it takes to get to a CV, as long as, you know, you would ideally want, you

00:50:50.340 | know, this sort of maximized outcome requires you to never be around for your kids, you

00:50:55.660 | know, that is that a quality of action you want to embody over the next 10 years while

00:50:59.940 | your kids are still in the house.

00:51:02.180 | And one way that I think is really useful to think about this is like thinking for this

00:51:06.220 | is like a perspective taking exercise.

00:51:08.300 | So think forward to 30 years if you've gotten to somewhere in the realm of, you know, what

00:51:12.900 | your goals are.

00:51:13.900 | You know, I'm a full professor and doing well and happy and my kids are doing well and very

00:51:19.380 | healthy.

00:51:20.380 | How would I like to look back on this phase of life?

00:51:24.020 | What would I be most proud of having done in this stretch?

00:51:27.780 | What would I regret having done in this stretch?

00:51:30.500 | And you can think about it as it relates to the balance of working parenthood or the balance

00:51:34.680 | of whatever roles you participate in.

00:51:38.340 | Because it helps to sort of unhook from like what sort of emotions are driving you to say

00:51:43.940 | like, oh, my God, but what if I pass this up by taking that future perspective of yourself?

00:51:49.500 | Now, of course, you still want to get to that future perspective, that future position that

00:51:54.820 | feels desirable.

00:51:55.820 | So you do have to consider opportunity costs, right?

00:52:00.940 | Like if you're doing one thing in a given moment, you're probably not doing the other.

00:52:05.260 | Or if you're doing both, you're not doing either well.

00:52:07.220 | So there are opportunities and costs to consider.

00:52:10.000 | And again, this is where values come in handy because you can sort of decide, you know,

00:52:13.920 | in what way do I want to participate in work so that I can also participate in parenting?

00:52:19.400 | What would that look like?

00:52:20.400 | How would I describe the quality of action?

00:52:23.340 | So whenever I mentioned values on this show, which I usually do in an ACT context, people

00:52:27.060 | always ask, OK, but how do I articulate those?

00:52:31.140 | So what's the guidepost we have for if I'm sitting down, I'm a frustrated working parent,

00:52:35.060 | I want to start from scratch with your approach.

00:52:37.100 | How do you approach values?

00:52:38.300 | Like what does that mean?

00:52:39.700 | You break it down by areas of your life.

00:52:41.420 | Is it vision based?

00:52:43.260 | Walk us through that.

00:52:44.260 | Yeah, so it is based on specific domains of life.

00:52:50.220 | There's some exercises that I can share.

00:52:54.060 | One is called the bullseye exercise.

00:52:55.500 | If you do a Google search, you can find it.

00:52:57.380 | One is called the eulogy exercise.

00:52:59.660 | And they help you to sort of like narrow in, like, you know, on your work life or on your

00:53:03.180 | family life or on your leisure or on your spirituality.

00:53:06.380 | And you sort of think about, you know, what are the qualities that you embody moment to

00:53:10.980 | moment?

00:53:12.540 | You can get even more specific.

00:53:14.020 | So I do a lot of couples therapy and the values exercise that I have actually breaks relationships

00:53:18.040 | down into 10 different domains.

00:53:19.420 | So like, how do you fight?

00:53:20.940 | How do you manage finance?

00:53:21.940 | How do you manage your intimate life?

00:53:23.660 | How do you manage co-parenting?

00:53:25.220 | How do you manage in-laws?

00:53:26.580 | Things like that.

00:53:27.900 | And so in each of those more specific domains, you think about, you know, what are sort of

00:53:32.380 | like the high level ways that feel important to show up moment to moment.

00:53:37.060 | So for example, when I we all fight with our partners, right?

00:53:40.420 | If a couple doesn't fight, they probably don't have a lot of intimacy.

00:53:43.700 | The goal is not to avoid fighting.

00:53:45.100 | The goal is to fight in ways that are value aligned.

00:53:48.060 | So for example, respectfully or productively or with curiosity.

00:53:53.860 | So it's sort of like quality of action.

00:53:55.620 | Do you think about like adverbs that describe how you do something?

00:53:59.260 | But there also needs to be a lot of nuances.

00:54:01.100 | You identify values because for example, you might say, you know, in my friendships, I

00:54:04.500 | just want to be kind.

00:54:05.500 | It's so important to be kind.

00:54:06.740 | But what if a friend is taking advantage of you?

00:54:08.660 | So you kind of want to build in some qualifiers.

00:54:10.820 | So you know, kind and when I'm in a relationship where somebody is being respectful of what

00:54:17.220 | matters to me.

00:54:19.540 | And same thing goes, you know, for the most uncomfortable moments of life.

00:54:22.540 | Those are the one, those are the areas.

00:54:24.220 | So like when work and parenting conflicts, how do I value showing up?

00:54:29.620 | So my value might be, you know, to pause and get curious and to try to keep the ball rolling

00:54:37.380 | in both domains, even if it's going to be more slowly than if I only was participating

00:54:42.680 | in one domain.

00:54:43.740 | So that's a lot of words to describe my value, but that's, that pretty much nails it for

00:54:47.700 | me.

00:54:49.260 | So it doesn't have to be one word, but you sort of want to get at the gestalt of like,

00:54:54.980 | how do you most want to show up in this particular area that matters to you?

00:55:00.220 | And again, you know, values clarification is most important for the areas that are tricky,

00:55:05.420 | like the role tension that most of us experience.

00:55:09.620 | You're speaking our language.

00:55:11.060 | I'm smiling here because we talk about this on the show a lot, that this notion of the

00:55:15.580 | deep life and developing the deep life.

00:55:17.500 | And it's very breaking things down into roles, establishing values for roles.

00:55:21.980 | My listeners, you can now see that there is a commonality of acceptance, commitment therapy

00:55:27.180 | behind both of our thinking, because there's so much alignment with what you're saying

00:55:31.660 | and things I've been talking about.

00:55:35.340 | You know, I have a couple out of left, not out of left field, but just sort of assorted

00:55:39.300 | issues that come up specific to this topic.

00:55:44.360 | What do you think about this?

00:55:45.980 | There's an interesting tension maybe between shifting the nature of your work to something

00:55:52.780 | like part time versus just shifting the role that your job plays in your life.

00:56:00.220 | And I have this pet theory I want to get your expert take on, that especially with ambitious

00:56:04.540 | people when they feel there's the conflict and they want to get rid of the conflict and

00:56:10.500 | reorganize their work and family life around values, that they want there to be a dramatic

00:56:15.300 | thing that happens.

00:56:17.020 | So to get a dramatic improvement, I need something dramatic.

00:56:20.700 | So I need to reconfigure my job, quit this job, do something else part time, become a

00:56:25.900 | freelancer, formally negotiate a much reduced hours.

00:56:30.340 | Whereas in a lot of cases, probably the right thing, you could just internally reconfigure

00:56:34.520 | your engagement with that job in a way that is completely satisfactory with the employer.

00:56:40.700 | Maybe there's a psychological impact like, well, I'm in the same job, I'm not doing as

00:56:43.500 | well as my peers.

00:56:45.340 | Have you thought about this at all?

00:56:46.340 | Or what's your thoughts on this tension between the dramatic transformation of your job versus

00:56:52.500 | transforming the role your existing job plays in your life when you're going through this

00:56:57.020 | type of thinking?

00:56:58.020 | It's an interesting question.

00:57:00.660 | And what I think is actually interesting is I went through a pretty dramatic shift when

00:57:05.540 | I became a parent where I went pretty part time.

00:57:09.140 | And one thing that I just want to point out is it did not eliminate the conflict, right?

00:57:14.020 | Because now I was an ambitious person who was working part time and that was deeply

00:57:18.260 | uncomfortable.

00:57:19.260 | So I think one thing that you're pointing to is a lot of the time, these dramatic changes

00:57:23.780 | that we might pursue in order to eliminate the conflict doesn't actually eliminate the

00:57:27.300 | conflict because, again, that's an outside solution for an inside problem, mismatch.

00:57:32.360 | When we apply an outside solution to an inside problem, we tend to make the initial problem

00:57:36.620 | worse.

00:57:37.620 | And I think that's one of the main tenets of acceptance and commitment therapy is that

00:57:42.820 | that which we resist persists and grows stronger, at least from a psychological perspective.

00:57:47.140 | So trying to solve internal problems with those kinds of solutions tends to make the

00:57:52.260 | problem worse, not better.

00:57:54.540 | What this makes me think, by the way, is sometimes dramatic changes are actually the best thing

00:57:59.340 | to do, but you need to do the inside out work first.

00:58:04.460 | And that, I would assume, would make it way clearer if there's some sort of big change

00:58:08.740 | that you want to make in your working situation.

00:58:10.480 | You would be doing that from a foundation of great internal clarity if you've already

00:58:14.660 | clarified your values, changed your psychology, really understand work and other things in

00:58:20.020 | your life.

00:58:21.020 | And if you've done all that work, I assume you can probably be much more accurate and

00:58:25.800 | strategic and effective in making changes.

00:58:29.580 | Then you really realize, oh, yeah, I got to quit this job.

00:58:32.900 | This is never going to work for me.

00:58:34.220 | Or, oh, this job's fine.

00:58:35.220 | I just need to change this.

00:58:36.220 | But without the inside out work, sometimes it feels like from the listeners I hear from,

00:58:40.740 | they are, before they do that work, are just trying to shake up the Rubik's Cube or whatever.

00:58:48.260 | That's not a good metaphor.

00:58:49.260 | But you know what I mean?

00:58:50.260 | I just want to do something dramatic because I feel like there's dramatic issues.

00:58:54.660 | And that can go really awry if you're not coming from a foundation of, I know exactly

00:58:58.060 | why I'm doing this.

00:58:59.060 | Yeah.

00:59:00.060 | And sometimes, I mean, you're kind of pointing to this, but sometimes shaking things up can

00:59:03.260 | give you greater clarity.

00:59:04.820 | And maybe part of the clarity is, I was trying to solve this thing that I'm unhappy with

00:59:09.100 | from the outside.

00:59:10.100 | And actually, what I really need is to reset what I'm thinking and feeling and what my

00:59:14.660 | expectations might be so that whatever changes on the outside actually have the kind of impact

00:59:21.000 | that I'm looking for.

00:59:22.000 | Again, though, I just want to make clear, it isn't likely that we're going to get rid

00:59:26.300 | of the conflict, especially if you're an ambitious person, especially if you want to participate

00:59:29.760 | in multiple roles.

00:59:30.760 | So being clear that whatever change you make probably isn't going to undo that, but that

00:59:35.940 | your goal is to sort of create a life where you can have more satisfaction.

00:59:39.260 | So there are outside-in changes that are going to be helpful.

00:59:42.220 | And if you sort of in tandem do this inside-out work, it tends to be much more effective.

00:59:46.380 | And from the example that I was sharing of my own history, I made this dramatic change

00:59:51.420 | to my professional life.

00:59:52.940 | I was still deeply unhappy because now I was home more with my kids who I adore, but also

00:59:57.500 | feeling so unsatisfied with how I was progressing in my work life.

01:00:01.860 | And it required me to really think through how did I want to proceed in my work life.

01:00:06.100 | And that was work that actually really was helpful.

01:00:08.820 | I still am not as involved in academic work as I was when I first became a parent, but

01:00:15.860 | I feel good about it because I did the values clarification work and sort of am constantly

01:00:21.380 | reconnecting to what matters and how do I want to show up given that these are the choices

01:00:25.700 | that I've made.

01:00:26.940 | So it's a little bit like you have to make the right choices and then you have to make

01:00:30.740 | the choices right for you.

01:00:32.780 | I mean, that's sort of, we have to do both sides, right?

01:00:36.460 | Not every situation is going to work, but lots of situations can work if we make them

01:00:40.720 | work for us.

01:00:41.720 | Oh, excellent.

01:00:42.720 | So yeah, if you've made the choice with a clear value-based reason, there will still

01:00:48.380 | be hardship.

01:00:49.380 | It's not going to eliminate hardship.

01:00:50.540 | It's not going to eliminate tensions, but you'll be much better able to get through

01:00:54.620 | these hard moments and difficulties because you know why you did it.

01:00:59.260 | So it's not about eliminating hardship.

01:01:01.100 | Oh, everything's fine now.

01:01:03.100 | And I'm just happy and feel really good.

01:01:04.820 | It's about you're in a position where when these various hardships come, you are resilient.

01:01:09.220 | You say, yeah, this is hard.

01:01:11.100 | This has been a hard six months.

01:01:14.020 | But I knew this when I signed up for this setup and I believe in why I did it.

01:01:17.920 | And so I'll get through this or it's not going to be existentially destabilizing.

01:01:22.060 | Exactly.

01:01:23.060 | I mean, they've done randomized control trials of acceptance and commitment therapy for things

01:01:28.900 | like addiction.

01:01:30.640 | And when you are clear on your values, it doesn't mean that you don't have an urge

01:01:34.220 | to use, but it means that you're better able to transcend that discomfort because you're

01:01:38.620 | connecting to a value of taking care of your health and getting clean and being a good

01:01:43.140 | partner to your partner and being a good parent to your children.

01:01:48.100 | And again, it's still deeply uncomfortable, but by using your values as a guide rather

01:01:52.700 | than your emotions or even your thoughts, you're better able to stay the course and

01:01:56.920 | transcend those discomforts that you can't avoid.

01:02:00.640 | So let me, I'm going to get your take on, you can be a proxy for my audience here, on

01:02:05.940 | a complaint I get a lot that I feel that I don't fully understand it, though I'm very

01:02:11.940 | empathetic to it.

01:02:12.940 | And I'm going to ask you to sort of on behalf of half of my audience, maybe unpack what's

01:02:17.580 | going on here.

01:02:18.580 | So I talked about this on the show, but I get this complaint a lot about the concept

01:02:23.020 | of deep work in particular.

01:02:25.700 | And it's typically from working moms.

01:02:27.860 | And it's typically either the form of the complaint is either, I can't, how can you

01:02:34.340 | do deep work if you're a parent?

01:02:37.020 | Or easy for you to say, but like deep work is only possible if you have a partner doing

01:02:44.980 | all the labor.

01:02:47.560 | And there's a lot of like emotion behind these complaints.

01:02:50.180 | And so at first, in my typical sort of guy, technical mindset, I was, well, logically

01:02:56.500 | speaking, I do not understand these complaints.

01:02:58.340 | Deep work is just talking about the relevant, in the hours that you're normally working

01:03:02.140 | already, regardless of your situation, just allocating the email checks and minimizing

01:03:08.220 | context shifts and making optimal use of cognitive.

01:03:11.660 | It says nothing about how much you should be working or whatever.

01:03:14.300 | But I quickly learned, now there's something much more deeper and emotional and true going

01:03:17.300 | on here.

01:03:18.300 | So I'm going to put you, you can help me proxy for this.

01:03:22.580 | Yeah, I mean, so maybe educate me a little bit on where's the pain point?

01:03:29.180 | Because I want to understand well, when there's a real sort of visceral pushback to the idea

01:03:36.060 | of deep work from the context of being a working parent, in particular, working mom.

01:03:44.500 | Yeah.

01:03:45.500 | I think that the deep pain point relates to sort of the envy of often husbands, fathers

01:03:55.460 | who have a setup that is more conducive to longer stretches of work time.

01:04:02.300 | What's ironic though, I think is that part of why it's hard as a mom, and I'm saying

01:04:07.220 | this like with a lot of stereotypes in hand, and I recognize that and I apologize, is that

01:04:11.540 | part of what makes it hard to have those long stretches is the guilt that interrupts.

01:04:16.620 | I could put my children in much more childcare and my husband would be fine with it, but

01:04:21.180 | I feel really uncomfortable about it.

01:04:22.940 | And I certainly felt desperately uncomfortable about it when my children were infants.

01:04:28.180 | And that wasn't something he struggled with.

01:04:29.780 | Now, whether that's socially driven by the lessons that were taught as young women and

01:04:33.900 | young men as we age, or whether it's biological, I think is a really complicated question to

01:04:39.260 | answer.

01:04:40.260 | I think there's evidence on both sides, but the fact of the matter is moms tend to feel

01:04:43.300 | more guilty about time away from their kids than dads do, just on average.

01:04:48.020 | This isn't always the case.

01:04:50.060 | So I think that's one of the tricky points.

01:04:52.780 | And so when you use the word deep work, people automatically think it's many hours, although

01:04:57.140 | you define it in a much more nuanced way that you can do deep work in shorter chunks of

01:05:00.900 | time.

01:05:02.020 | And that's really what I advocate in my book is figuring out how to more mindfully drop

01:05:06.220 | into work, how to use some of the behavioral science that we know is really helpful for

01:05:10.580 | getting into the mode of deep work more quickly and efficiently.

01:05:15.100 | And also recognizing that while task switching or role switching does cost us something in

01:05:21.140 | terms of the energy that it takes, that the more we do it, the more we practice doing

01:05:25.740 | that role switching, the more facile we get at it.

01:05:28.980 | But also, it's a both and.

01:05:31.180 | Also we don't want to do it too much because then we really do end up with what Bridget

01:05:34.060 | Schulte calls confetti time, time confetti, I think it's the term.

01:05:38.140 | So it's complicated.

01:05:40.700 | It is emotional.

01:05:42.380 | And it can feel like an injustice.

01:05:44.900 | Like why do I feel so guilty when you can sort of be free to go to work?

01:05:48.180 | And I think that is the part that I'll at least just speak for myself that I used to

01:05:52.660 | get very, very hung up on.

01:05:56.500 | That's really useful, actually.

01:05:57.500 | I mean, I really appreciate that.

01:05:58.980 | I mean, just to echo it back, but I think I understand what you're saying is, no, it's

01:06:03.100 | not about the physical act of deep work, which is just, oh, I have an hour to work.

01:06:07.900 | Like why don't I focus on one thing for the first 45 and then do the small things at the

01:06:13.860 | end instead of interleaving it?

01:06:15.220 | Yeah, anyone in whatever their situation is can change their ratio of deep to shallow

01:06:19.180 | work.

01:06:20.180 | But it's the reality, which I point out.

01:06:22.660 | So fair enough.

01:06:23.660 | Like I make this point in my book that the more deep work you can do tends to be correlative

01:06:29.100 | to career success.

01:06:30.340 | So more deep work is better than less.

01:06:33.380 | Men have an easier time doing more deep work than women for reasons that have nothing to

01:06:37.180 | do with the actual ability to do the work.

01:06:41.340 | That is very frustrating.

01:06:42.940 | I mean, if someone said, OK, here's the thing, people from most states get to work their

01:06:48.980 | jobs normally, but people from Maryland have to whatever, call in to the department or

01:06:55.580 | whatever, every hour or so.

01:06:56.580 | And there's all these other things that they put on citizens of Maryland.

01:06:59.660 | It's like taking up our time.

01:07:01.100 | I would be really frustrated.

01:07:02.100 | Like, look at all these people in Virginia.

01:07:04.940 | They're getting more done.

01:07:05.940 | They're not as interrupted.

01:07:06.940 | It's not fair just because I live in Maryland.

01:07:10.020 | So I'm echoing that back.

01:07:11.020 | Right.

01:07:12.100 | And I could imagine that being, I can empathize.

01:07:16.740 | I mean, I can kind of understand as best I can in my position.

01:07:20.580 | That kind of sucks.

01:07:21.580 | I think it does.

01:07:22.580 | The other thing to think about is, you know, how, what do we reward in our society?

01:07:27.340 | And what we do reward tends to be, you know, accolades and more lines in your CV and more

01:07:33.780 | money.

01:07:34.780 | And one of the things, one of the gifts I think of working parenthood, and this is particularly

01:07:38.380 | true for mothers because they tend on average to be more involved in the parenting role

01:07:44.300 | is that we tend on average to be stronger in the relational department, in the empathy

01:07:49.660 | department, in the perspective taking department, in the patient's department.

01:07:52.620 | And those skills are really useful at work.

01:07:54.060 | They just tend not to be rewarded or acknowledged as being as important.

01:07:58.940 | And so I think that is another piece that can get under people's skin.

01:08:02.900 | And I think for very good reason.

01:08:04.140 | And I don't really know what to do about that other than to recognize that they have inherent

01:08:08.080 | value, even if they aren't acknowledged with a promotion or a pay raise.

01:08:11.780 | Although I think that they should be.

01:08:13.660 | Concurrently to all of that, this inside out psychological approach of figure out your

01:08:19.260 | values in all of your roles, build a vision of your life that tractably satisfies these

01:08:26.740 | values.

01:08:27.860 | Be very careful from an ACT perspective about unhealthy mindsets or destructive labels.

01:08:33.100 | Look, you know, you find the enrichment between conflicting roles, not just what's negative

01:08:37.820 | about it.

01:08:39.260 | And then be willing to ride out the ups and the downs, the oh my God, like me not publishing

01:08:46.420 | a paper during the pandemic year was very traumatic for me.

01:08:49.740 | But being able to get through that because you're like, but I have this vision of my

01:08:53.060 | life and how academia fits in with my family.

01:08:57.740 | And that that's actually a very sustainable approach.

01:08:59.340 | I mean, to me, that's very optimistic because I think that's very useful.

01:09:01.780 | I mean, there's a lot of people in my audience who that type of specifics that's in your

01:09:04.940 | book, I should say the name again, work, parent thrive for everyone who is listening.

01:09:10.220 | That psychological approach is I think it's what people are missing.

01:09:12.780 | It's and as you say, it's not replacing the Schulte approach.

01:09:16.100 | It's not replacing the Vanderkam approach.

01:09:18.220 | It's adding a third point in that triangle.

01:09:20.820 | And we can we can abuse metaphors and say, yeah, we close in the shape now so that we

01:09:24.500 | have a whatever, a region of solutions or something like that.

01:09:29.500 | But that is very optimistic to me.

01:09:31.700 | I think that's also very useful to me.

01:09:35.020 | And I definitely got things out of this that's going to I'm going to use the the tune, my

01:09:39.980 | approach.

01:09:40.980 | So, yeah.

01:09:41.980 | Thank you for coming on the show.

01:09:44.020 | I think you've done a lot of us a lot of good today.

01:09:46.140 | Thank you so much for having me.

01:09:47.820 | It was so fun to chat with you.

01:09:49.660 | What an honor.

01:09:50.660 | All right.

01:09:51.660 | So remember, work, parent thrive, everyone.

01:09:52.660 | By the time you hear this interview, it's available everywhere.

01:09:55.420 | Go get your copy today.

01:09:56.980 | All right.

01:09:57.980 | So there we go.

01:09:59.620 | That was our interview with Dale Schoenbrum.

01:10:04.300 | So Jesse, I enjoyed that video.

01:10:05.940 | I want to interview, I should say, I want to talk with you about some observations I

01:10:11.140 | had, some takeaways.

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01:13:26.320 | All right, so let's talk about this interview, Jesse.

01:13:32.840 | The thing I noticed, and I mentioned this in the intro to the interview too, but it's

01:13:35.840 | really in my head right now, was the similarities between Yael's advice for dealing with being

01:13:43.320 | a working parent and the way we talk about the deep life here.

01:13:46.880 | It seemed really similar.

01:13:48.400 | You break it down into areas, you get your values, you build a value-driven plan, you

01:13:53.840 | pursue that plan, you don't get caught up in comparisons or just arbitrary goals.

01:14:02.040 | This is what I have a vision of my life that work fits in and my family fits in, and I'm

01:14:07.880 | going for that vision, and I'm going to stick to that vision.

01:14:12.400 | I'm not going to get too caught up in, "Well, I could have got a better promotion," or,

01:14:16.400 | "I could have spent more time."

01:14:17.400 | It's that lifestyle-centric, that vision-driven approach to career, speaking our language.

01:14:22.240 | Well, I think she did a pretty good job explaining a couple of things, especially when she was

01:14:27.040 | talking about the outcome versus the process.

01:14:30.520 | You hear that a lot in sports.

01:14:32.600 | I coach myself, and a lot of professional college sports talk about enjoying the process

01:14:37.600 | and stuff like that.

01:14:39.160 | She was talking about that as well in terms of work and jobs and balancing all that stuff.

01:14:45.240 | The other thing I thought was really interesting, she talked about revisiting, checking back

01:14:51.280 | in.

01:14:52.280 | I think what you say, she was talking about dealing with the internal, like doing inside

01:14:58.240 | out work.

01:14:59.240 | Then she was saying you need to check back in with the internal, and that goes directly

01:15:04.360 | in line with what you're talking about with your values document.

01:15:07.520 | You check in with it all the time because you look at it in your time management process,

01:15:11.760 | which makes a lot of sense.

01:15:14.820 | When you hear her talk about it that way, it suddenly makes it clear how volatile it

01:15:19.520 | would be to be going through life, especially in the situation of a working parent, where

01:15:24.440 | you weren't checking in.

01:15:26.400 | You didn't have a value-driven vision of what you're trying to do.

01:15:28.840 | If you were just bouncing from how you felt or events or crises day to day, that's got

01:15:36.320 | to be exhausting.

01:15:37.320 | You're like, "My God, here's another thing I didn't finish in time.

01:15:39.800 | Here's another potential project I could have done that I couldn't take on.

01:15:43.460 | This person's probably mad at me.

01:15:44.840 | I didn't get the cupcakes to my kid's school.

01:15:47.080 | I was late on getting this paperwork back."

01:15:50.600 | You just constantly be probably tearing yourself apart, which is the tone, I think, of a lot

01:15:59.000 | of reflective writing on working parenthood.

01:16:01.440 | It's very much this sort of Bridget Schulte, like everything is so stressful.

01:16:08.160 | It's all impossible.

01:16:09.860 | It gave me some optimism of if you have this value-driven plan, it's not going to seem

01:16:16.180 | impossible.

01:16:17.180 | It's not going to seem terrible.

01:16:18.180 | On the other hand, and that's the way I push this, and I think she was frank about it,

01:16:22.700 | it's hard when you're ambitious.

01:16:24.400 | You cannot do as much if you have kids.

01:16:27.220 | That's really hard for people.

01:16:29.600 | Even if you have a value, like I have a plan, it's a completely tractable plan.

01:16:33.460 | It respects multiple things I value.

01:16:35.020 | It's a great plan for a deep life.

01:16:37.480 | It's still kind of hard because that guy got a promotion, and I'm smarter than that guy.

01:16:44.740 | >> DAVE Yeah, she did a pretty good job of explaining the emotions of jealousy and giving

01:16:49.060 | a good definition for that too.

01:16:50.740 | >> DAVE Yeah, I think there's some great clarity.

01:16:52.780 | I think the reason why my deep life discussions sound so similar to what she's saying about

01:16:58.820 | working life, the common thread is acceptance commitment therapy.

01:17:03.460 | I guess I didn't realize how influential reading Stephen Hayes' book, etc., how influential

01:17:08.020 | that had been on my thinking about the deep life until I heard her framework that's built

01:17:12.640 | off that same thinking.

01:17:13.640 | I say, "Oh, that's very similar."

01:17:14.640 | So I'm having this revelation that, "Oh, I have a psychological approach in my work,

01:17:22.800 | an implicit psychological approach.

01:17:25.480 | We talk strategy, but we also talk a lot about the psychology, especially with the deep life

01:17:29.280 | stuff."

01:17:30.280 | I'm not explicitly thinking about that as psychological, but it really is.

01:17:34.560 | How you actually build an understanding of yourself and your life and what you're trying

01:17:38.380 | to do, she's much more rigorous about it.

01:17:42.340 | But it's interesting to know there's that psychological underpinning.

01:17:46.440 | I also thought it was interesting, her explanation for why people, when they write me and are

01:17:52.220 | like, "Easy for you to say," or, "How can you do deep work if you have kids?"

01:17:56.760 | And I was having such a hard time understanding it for so long because, again, I was so logical

01:18:01.260 | about it.

01:18:02.580 | The way she explains it, it's like, "Oh, that makes complete sense."

01:18:05.620 | The underlying thing is not, "I have my kid with me at the office," or something, and

01:18:11.580 | "He's interrupting me when I'm trying to do deep work," or something.

01:18:15.380 | That always just confused me.

01:18:16.380 | I was like, "Well, when you work, you work.

01:18:17.380 | When you're at your office, you're at the office.

01:18:19.140 | Do more deep than shallow work.

01:18:20.140 | What does that have to do with..."

01:18:21.580 | And the way she explained it, like, "No, it's especially for moms.

01:18:25.620 | You're being distracted by your kids and your families, even when you're not there with

01:18:29.020 | your kids and your families."

01:18:30.180 | Due to the guilt, right?

01:18:31.180 | The guilt.

01:18:32.180 | Yeah.

01:18:33.180 | Dudes don't have that as much.

01:18:34.820 | Yeah.

01:18:35.820 | Yeah.

01:18:36.820 | It's like, this is probably wiring stuff.

01:18:38.300 | We're like, I don't know, we're out there dragging back elk carcasses to the cave and

01:18:42.900 | we've like, "That's what we're supposed to be doing."

01:18:44.660 | You know, it's, we're wired in some way, we don't feel that guilt.

01:18:46.900 | So they're there even when they're not there.

01:18:48.860 | So that was a big confusion I had because I was like, "Is everyone, are people working..."

01:18:54.320 | This was pre-pandemic.

01:18:55.860 | Now this is a different situation.

01:18:57.660 | I was like, "Is everyone working at home without childcare?

01:18:59.780 | This doesn't make sense."

01:19:00.780 | But no, the guilt follows you even when you're at the office.

01:19:04.180 | And then just the unequal distribution of household work.

01:19:09.380 | The women do more than the men.

01:19:11.100 | And even if you're not doing that while you're at the office, it takes away from the energy

01:19:14.440 | and ability to do that extra, like that extra hour in the evening to like, "I can put my

01:19:19.020 | email off until the night and get more deep work done at the office."

01:19:24.240 | And so I think that was useful.

01:19:26.480 | I get why people are emotional about the topic.

01:19:28.760 | Yeah, for sure.

01:19:31.760 | So that's good.

01:19:32.760 | So I'm glad we had her on.

01:19:35.720 | Yeah.

01:19:36.720 | She, you know, just making that kind of comparison to sports.

01:19:40.600 | I have a couple of buddies that coach in the NFL and I always kind of ask them about, you

01:19:44.520 | know, and they talk about how like even professional athletes need to constantly be coached, you

01:19:49.620 | know, I mean, NFL coaches do that.

01:19:52.820 | And what she was saying, like revisit your values.

01:19:56.900 | I mean, that's like kind of coaching yourself and you constantly need to coach yourself

01:20:00.980 | to like stay grounded and true to your values.

01:20:04.420 | You got to keep coming back to that.

01:20:06.540 | You got to do it in partnership with your partner.

01:20:08.700 | Like that makes a big difference.

01:20:09.980 | Like you have to be on the same page.

01:20:11.560 | I've seen that not rip apart families, but it's definitely a anecdotally a source of

01:20:18.240 | stress that some families have come across or they've sent me messages have is if you

01:20:26.160 | and like your husband or your wife are doing your own thing.

01:20:30.040 | And the idea is like you're each your independent fiefdom, your careers, each your own thing.

01:20:36.560 | And we're each just trying to like, we shouldn't interfere with each other.

01:20:39.560 | It's not fair or stuff like that.

01:20:40.560 | It doesn't really work out as compared to like we're on the same page trying to figure

01:20:43.540 | out like what, how is our family going to make money?

01:20:46.660 | How are we going to find fulfillment?

01:20:47.660 | How are you find actualization?

01:20:49.060 | How does work fit into this bigger picture?

01:20:51.580 | Because otherwise you get through this weird sort of tit for tat situation of like, well,

01:20:56.060 | wait a second, how many hours did you spend versus me?

01:20:58.380 | Or like now, if I'm going to spend two years doing this in my career, then it'll be your

01:21:01.960 | two years, like this weird sort of accounting and resentment that happens.

01:21:07.100 | And that kind of comes out of this as well.

01:21:09.900 | It's an implication of what y'all was saying is like, you probably need to be building

01:21:13.560 | a common vision for your family, that work is going to be a big factor in because it's

01:21:18.000 | going to be the source of income and a one among several sources of personal satisfaction

01:21:22.820 | for both of you.

01:21:24.200 | So we got to figure out how work enters a bigger picture that you're trying to shape.

01:21:29.180 | But when you, maybe this is a millennial thing.

01:21:31.080 | We've talked about this on the show before, where we were presented when we were young

01:21:33.940 | with the idea that work should be your passion and the main source of your meaning.

01:21:38.160 | And it's like, no, work first and we figure everything else out.

01:21:42.760 | Bad things seem to follow.

01:21:43.860 | Or if it's like, I've seen this a lot of times, like this is a big opportunity.

01:21:49.820 | We got to just do this job wise and we'll figure everything out later, even if it's

01:21:53.640 | basically like devastating for the family, because there's this mindset of like, well,

01:21:58.600 | I'm not going to turn down a work opportunity.

01:22:01.880 | Yeah.

01:22:02.880 | Like she said, when she, you know, counsels couples, she has 10 different buckets that

01:22:07.720 | they go through.

01:22:08.720 | Yeah, man.

01:22:09.720 | I was thinking about that.

01:22:10.720 | I was like, that's a lot.

01:22:11.720 | I know.

01:22:12.720 | You need a spreadsheet to keep track.

01:22:13.720 | A lot of topics.

01:22:14.720 | Yeah.

01:22:15.720 | We're going to need a spreadsheet to keep track of it, but that's great.

01:22:17.160 | And so my, my, my, like one of my big takeaway messages I came from this is like, uh, I like

01:22:22.760 | to get these really practical, ideal takeaways.

01:22:24.920 | It's like just thinking a lot of it is like comfort in, you know, if you're a professor,

01:22:30.080 | you know, I have a plan that's going to get me tenure and have me do interesting work

01:22:36.040 | on things I think are important in a way that's sustainable with other things are important

01:22:40.080 | to me in my life.

01:22:41.080 | If I have a plan to do that, I should be happy with it.

01:22:44.400 | Even if that tenure comes three years later than this person, even if like you're like

01:22:49.080 | an associate for a while, even if these other people are getting, you know, more fetid.

01:22:54.000 | Um, and, and I'll talk about this in a later episode, but I'm realizing how much of my

01:22:58.560 | slow productivity philosophy is coming out of a reaction to entering this phase of parenthood

01:23:03.800 | for me, where my boys need so much time for me way more than when they were younger and

01:23:08.800 | slow productivity in some sense is a partially a tool for this type of situation.

01:23:14.520 | You're like, I can't, I actually have to temper my ambition.

01:23:17.760 | Some, I have less hours and slow productivity is a productivity philosophy.

01:23:22.880 | That's okay with that.

01:23:23.880 | It's like, yeah, that's fine.

01:23:25.200 | Yeah.

01:23:26.200 | You have less hours, but wait.

01:23:27.460 | Do stuff you're proud of, you know, uh, at a reasonable pace at a natural pace.

01:23:32.920 | Don't overload yourself.

01:23:33.920 | You want to look back 10 years and say, I did this, this, this, and this, which I'm

01:23:37.720 | very impressed by.

01:23:38.720 | Uh, it doesn't matter that you're spending 30% less time than you were five years ago.

01:23:42.880 | Like who cares?

01:23:43.880 | Like in the end you can come away 10 years from now having produced a lot of good stuff.

01:23:46.440 | So slow productivity maybe is really just my way of dealing with, I just have a lot

01:23:50.200 | less time than I used to.

01:23:52.560 | Plus when they get to high school, they're not going to hang out with you anyway.

01:23:54.640 | So yeah, then I'm advantage of it.

01:23:55.640 | Yeah.

01:23:56.640 | I'm going to be doing a lot less productivity to drown my sadness of them ignoring me.

01:24:01.360 | I'm going to be shooting emails off at six in the morning so that I can distract myself

01:24:07.320 | from my grief.

01:24:08.320 | Um, all right.

01:24:09.320 | So I want to real briefly before we, before we wrap up, uh, a listener sent a article

01:24:14.220 | to the interesting account, new product, com email address.

01:24:16.240 | I just want to talk about it briefly.

01:24:17.400 | I just, it seemed timely.

01:24:19.360 | Elon Musk just took over Twitter.

01:24:22.480 | Recently we've covered social media, Elon Musk, the role of social medias in people's

01:24:26.560 | lives.

01:24:27.560 | I just want to point out one factoid from this audience that I find to be optimistic

01:24:31.560 | and validating some of my predictions.

01:24:33.760 | So this is a Reuters article.

01:24:35.160 | I have it on the screen here.

01:24:36.160 | If you're watching on the YouTube channel, that's from October 25th.

01:24:39.120 | So it's from a week or so ago.

01:24:41.080 | Um, all right.

01:24:43.040 | So this is an article about what they call heavy tweeters and they note heavy tweeters

01:24:49.060 | account for less than 10% of monthly overall users, but generate 90% of all tweets.

01:24:53.920 | So we've heard this about Twitter before a small group of people do most of the tweeting.

01:24:58.480 | Uh, there's a report that leaked that showed that heavy tweeters are in absolute decline.

01:25:07.240 | So I think that's interesting.

01:25:09.400 | They had a, here's a slightly more extended definition of heavy tweeter.

01:25:13.800 | Uh, someone who logs in the Twitter six or seven times a week and tweets about three,

01:25:18.480 | uh, four times a week.

01:25:19.480 | So honestly heavy tweeter here, it's not really that heavy, but still, um, and they're in

01:25:24.920 | absolute decline.

01:25:26.320 | And so they did a little bit of a deep dive and said, part of it is that interest in world

01:25:30.720 | news as well as liberal politics showed spikes during major events, but the categories have

01:25:37.760 | since lost the highest number of heavy Twitter users and have shown no signs of recovery.

01:25:43.920 | So, so basically, uh, I think this is positive.

01:25:47.600 | What we're finding is, you know, people who were doing a lot of political tweeting really

01:25:52.600 | had lots of takes on things that were going on are leaving Twitter, uh, and aren't coming

01:25:57.760 | back.

01:25:58.760 | I think that's positive for Twitter, positive for our nation's mental health.

01:26:02.040 | If I have to guess what's going on there, it's, you know, uh, it rhymes with brump.

01:26:08.360 | You know, we had a certain president leave office who I think was a big generator of

01:26:15.240 | tweets, uh, from both sides.

01:26:18.640 | And I think the early pandemic generated a lot of, uh, tweeting as well about pandemic

01:26:23.000 | stuff and policy and everyone was at home.

01:26:25.420 | And so with Trump out of office and people no longer up to their eyeballs and pandemic

01:26:30.300 | stuff because everything's open and they're going on with their lives, they're leaving

01:26:34.320 | this platform.

01:26:35.520 | It's been, it burnt them out.

01:26:37.400 | It hasn't been super positive for them.

01:26:40.040 | I think that's a really good sign.

01:26:42.480 | The other group of heavy users who are leaving are, uh, a group that is users who are interested

01:26:49.480 | in fashion or celebrities such as the Kardashian family.

01:26:52.620 | They're just going to other platforms that are more visually appealing.

01:26:55.480 | They're going to tick talk, they're going to Instagram.

01:26:57.200 | So I care less about that, but I think, I don't know.

01:27:00.560 | I think this is positive that the, the, the very online people who are on there about

01:27:05.440 | political issues all the time, they're done.

01:27:08.600 | I think they're burnt out.

01:27:10.800 | Plus pandemic, they're like, okay, uh, let's move on with life.

01:27:14.320 | You know, the bars are open again.

01:27:16.480 | Let's go get a drink.

01:27:17.980 | Bad news for Twitter.

01:27:18.980 | Sure.

01:27:19.980 | But who cares?

01:27:20.980 | Cause that's the point I've been making again and again on the show.

01:27:24.080 | Uh, Twitter is being covered by the media as if it is at the core of our democracy,

01:27:28.960 | but that's mainly because media types use Twitter all the time.

01:27:31.600 | It's at the core of their lives.

01:27:32.960 | That's a narrow demographic.

01:27:34.340 | Most of the country doesn't care about Twitter.

01:27:36.440 | It's not that important.

01:27:37.840 | Um, it's only important to reporters.

01:27:39.920 | I'm generalizing a course.

01:27:41.200 | So, you know, when I see these sort of shifts happening, heavy political Twitter users leaving

01:27:46.480 | Twitter, I think that's probably better for the mental health of the country, better for

01:27:51.640 | the mental health of social media users, better for the future of social media.

01:27:55.480 | So I, I filed this under, uh, good news for most people, unless I guess your last name

01:28:02.160 | is Musk.

01:28:03.160 | So I don't know.

01:28:04.780 | Good news, right?

01:28:05.780 | Jesse, less people using Twitter.

01:28:07.800 | They can do other things with their time.

01:28:09.400 | Twitter melts people's brains.

01:28:10.520 | No one's happy on Twitter.

01:28:11.880 | Read more books, read more books.

01:28:14.200 | Um, sounds good to me.

01:28:16.200 | All right.

01:28:17.200 | Also sounds good as wrapping up this episode.

01:28:19.520 | Thank you, uh, to Yale for coming on and thank you for the listener who sent me this news

01:28:26.200 | article.

01:28:27.200 | We'll be back next week with another episode of the show.

01:28:29.440 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:28:31.680 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:28:35.040 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 221: Can Parents Do Deep Work?

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