Escape the cult of busy!

0:02 A listener production. Hey there, this is Crappy to Happy with Tiffany Hall and Cas Done. Thanks for joining us. We're so excited you founders. Here in this series, we're going to look into ways that you might be feeling a little bit crappy and give you the tools and tips that you need to feel happy and awesome. Now. I'm Tiffany Hall. I am the founder of weight loss and wellness program TIFO dot com. I'm an expert trainer. I was a trainer on the TV show The Biggest Loser, and I'm a six damn black belt in taekwondo. But joining me throughout this series is my better half, Cas Done. So Cass, tell us a little bit about yourself. Hi.

0:48 Yeah, I'm Castune. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, and I'm a mindful less meditation teacher, and I am the resident psychologist on tifxo dot com, which is how you and I have come to know each other and work together. So we work together with our community to help people to live happier, healthier lives. And I think in this series what we want to do is we want to really nail all of those things that cause people to feel crappy, and there are many of them, as we both know. So, you know, people feel unhappy with their body, they feel stressed, overwhelmed and busy, they're perfectionists, self critical, not getting enough sleep, you know, a million reasons.

1:28 Why people feel crappy. And so what we hope to do is to give you the tools and the techniques and really practical things that you can go out and apply straight away, practical and change your life and go from feeling crappy to feeling a whole lot more happy. And it doesn't have to be a life overhaul, does it. Absolutely not. Little simple strategies and useful things that people can go out and do straight away. Straight away. And we're going to start with talking about this cult of busyness and overwhelmed and stress. Great topic, So, Cas, why we so busy? Great question. Look, I think that generally speaking, we all, you know, we really are doing a lot. We're working and juggling family priorities and you know, kids and all sorts of other things, trying to stay fit, trying to eat well, and we have a lot to do. But I think also, I mean, I suspect also that business is not so much as a physical thing, but it's a mental thing, Like we have this kind of mind state of being permanently busy, constantly thinking about the next thing we need to do, and we have this culture of multitasking, trying to fit so much into a small amount of time and feeling constantly stretched.

2:40 You know, would you agree? I agree, and I agree. It's become a little bit competitive, busier than you. I am so. Busy, busy you think you're busy. Yeah, it's annoying on Facebook, you know, everybody, I'm so busy. We're over sharing. It's pressure. So we start, how do we start think that that is a real thing. And look, I think also we need to kind of straight up front. We need to make the point that there is no such thing as multitasking. Everybody thinks, they say, everybody know, they're devastating. There is no such thing as multitasking. All we are doing is switching tasks, constantly switching from one thing to the other. And it makes us feel good because we feel like we're getting a lot done and we get that kind of little dopamine hit in our brain that says I can tick things off my list. And actually, at the end of the day, if you look back, you're not getting that much done. And also, every single time you switch from one task to another, it takes something like twenty five percent more time to refocus on the first task.

3:41 And studies have shown that you lose forty percent productivity really by multitasking, absolutely absolutely, and this has been proven. This is this is kind of a big topic for me. I like this topic. This has been proven with like getting people to do one task solidly for say thirty minutes, and then giving them a break and then getting them to switch to something else. And if you think about it, how often do we actually spend thirty minutes on a task? So this drop in productivity is even when you've got a big. Stretch of time, so we should be chunking. But most of the time what we're doing is we're working on a document, but we're checking Facebook, and then we're getting a text message on our phone. Then I've got an email, and. So this multi this task switching, sorry, is not just like I'm working on this for half an hour and that for half an hour. It's like thirty seconds, five minutes at a time we're switching.

4:27 So we're actually we're. Just losing so much productivity and creating this constant mental stress and cognitive overload which is actually proven to be really bad for us, really really bad for our health and wellbeing. So I think we need to really rethink that that. Whole idea. Yes, because it's very popular and fashionable to be a multitasker. I'm pregnant at the moment, I'm eight months, but I'm running a business and I can do it all. And you know, it's very hard, and people sort of wear it as a badge of honor, absolutely, especially women. Absolutely, we wear it as a badge of honor. And do you know what, I also sometimes think as well as just this whole culture of fitting more in and having a busy life means having a full life or an important life. Sometimes this is the clinical psychologist to me, I think that people kind of stay busy to run away from the things they don't want to face in their life.

5:24 You really do. Yeah. Do you know a lot of people come to me and through my weight loss and wellness program tiffects soo dot com, they say I need to lose weight, but I'm too busy, And I just say, well, you're not too busy. There's no such thing as too busy, you just haven't got your priorities right. Such a great point. It is like what are we putting our energy on and are they really the important things? Are we taking off a to do list? Or are we actually really looking at what are the important things and where should we best be spending our time and energy and then focusing our attention on those things that make life more meaningful and purposeful and joyful as opposed to just frenetically. Absolutely busy, perpetually busy. I think the healthier you are, the healthier your business will be, the healthier family will be, the healthier your community will be. So you do have to put some emphasis in that. And I will come back to talking about how to conserve your energy when you're incredibly busy.

6:16 But first up, I really want you to tell us, Cass, where do I start. I'm sitting at home and listening to us chat away and I'm thinking, yeah, okay, but I am feeling really overwhelmed. I'm in a brown paper bag and I can't see the way out, Cass, where do I start? Can I just make the point that probably you're sitting and listening to this, you're not actually sitting and listening to us. Right now, you're probably cooking dinner, going for a walk, like checking your Facebook. Yeah, because that's multitasking, wealthy, put it down and just listen to us, please. So there is point number one, I guess is to try to practice this novel idea of single tasking, just doing one thing at a time. It is really when you try to do it, it is really painfully uncomfortable because we are so not used to doing it. And that's a big part a you know, it's it's caused by this technology society that we live in. We are constantly distracted by pins and emails and you know, our phones in our pockets constantly. So so we need to address that, that cole concept of unplugging and taking some break from the screens and the distractions. And I'm really deliberately setting those boundaries. We need to also look at this idea of just focusing time on one.

7:27 Task and. Giving it a good, you know, a good chunk of our attention. I mean I could go I could I could go on and on of it, I could continuing list off. Yeah, And I think your point is really important in you know, choosing your priorities and creating downtime. Deliberately slowing down. It's not a sexy idea, but it's a really important idea. Deliberately slowing down and making space even just to do nothing, just to you know, you think about when you if you just think about a normal day, you go to a coffee shop and you're meeting a friend, and you've got five minutes. Before your friend arrives, Phone comes out, phone comes out.

8:07 Struggle. We cannot, we cannot just sit and deliberately do nothing. I ask people in my work and in my psychology practice. I am a very very strong advocate obviously for mindfulness, meditation or just being more mindful in life generally, and I ask people if they can sit down and practice some meditation for five or ten minutes a day. And the amount of people who come back and tell me that they found it absolutely extraordinarily difficult to just sit and breathe and not do anything, and to tolerate that discomfort of not doing something for ten minutes out of a day, come cass, What have we become? So there's a shift that needs to happen.

8:48 I think it's so important that we recovery. We need to embrace this we need to embrace this slow the slowing down, and that's a good start. That's a good start, just sitting and creating space. Why do you think people find it so difficult to meditate? I think because of this almost like adult add that we've all developed, which is directly as a result of our addiction to our smartphones, the fact that we we have become accustomed to our brains been constantly needing some stimulation. So even when we're sitting still, even when our body is actually still, our mind rarely is like our minds are constantly wanting to go to thinking, worrying, planning, you know, wondering.

9:38 And so when you ask people to just sit and be with their thoughts or their feelings, that's what they notice is that their mind never stops. And if you ask people to sit and be with their thoughts and just not react to them or give in to them, not believe every story that they tell themselves, it's just like there's this constant urge to get up and move or do It's just we have sort of just lost this capacity as a society really to just sit and. Be still and to just let our minds just go quiet. Cas Is there any negative impact on our brains in that we are so frenetic. Yes, yes, like actual brain development actual.

10:21 Yes, yeah, funny you should ask. So this whole idea of being constantly busy, and particularly I go back to this multitasking, which is what we're really talking about, this constant kind of moving and switching attention. So what we know is that it actually has a negative impact on the part of your brain, actually changes the structuring and function of your brain in the parts to do with empathy, cognitive control, and emotional control. I read one study that showed that multitaskers performing a cognitive task showed a drop in IQ equivalent to people who had been pot smoking the night before. I'm not joking.

11:01 And we you know, we just tend to cut corners, make mistakes, issues, impact on our decision making, memory, learning, and we just are losing the attention, sorry, losing the capacity to sustain attention. There's a there's a term called continuous partial attention, and that's how we live. We don't ever really sustain attention anymore. So. Things that require sustained attention. Like reading or you know, writing a book, or you know, just getting a job done, working on a project. These things require sustained attention. And we we honestly, we've all got this kind of adult add where we can't do it anymore. I even I do meditate every day, and I notice it myself.

11:42 And that's the impact of the smartphone culture. Ah, and the impact of this whole busy, busy, busy culture. Yeah, competitive busyness. Well, Cas, you put me onto meditation. We started, you know, tif Exo started up, and we had the diet covered, the training covered, and the mindfulness really important. And I knew the key to changing your body and changing your lifestyle wasn't about training the body, It was about training the mind. Absolutely. So you came on board and you were teaching everyone. And I've always loved visualization and the power of all of that. But to sit there and meditate, I was saying to you, Cass, I haven't got time. So people are at home and they're like, I've got three kids, I've got a job, my husband works long hours. You know, can you tell us some of the benefits of meditation that will just make me sit down for five minutes and give this a go instead of trolling Facebook.

12:37 Well, if you've got five minutes to troll Facebook. You've got five minutes to meditate, right, It's not that we don't have the time, it's that we give our time to other things. And so what I would say is the benefits. I mean, you know, this isn't a whole show about meditation, but it is a really important. It is a really important and. Pretty critical tool that we can use to help us to start to slow down and to escape that cult of busyness that we're all caught up in. So you know, mindfulness meditation has been proven to reduce stress and anxiety, to lower blood pressure, boost your immunity, reverse the aging process. I could go on and on, improve working memory, decision making, focus, the research, there are reams, there's decades now of research proving the benefits, and it actually people think they don't have time, but taking time out, whether it's ten minutes or twenty minutes to do something like a meditation practice, actually improves your efficiency exponentially. So you actually get that time back over and over, you know, throughout the day, you actually gain it back with the improvements in your efficiency and your productivity.

13:46 That's what I found, Cass, And you've helped me so much because I've found with five minutes and then building up to ten minutes of meditation a day and working it in and scheduling it in to my day, just as I would a meeting or workout. I'm more productive, I'm more clear headed, I am more present with my my husband, and everything just becomes a little bit easier because my emotions are more in check. I feel more fit. Yeah, emotionally yes, I think. I love that. I love hearing that because that's what happens. That more present that you just talked about, you know, being more present. When we're chronically busy, we're never really present. We'reever like right here, our mind's off onto the next thing, and so that just slowing down and being more present to what's happening.

14:34 It's for relationships, for you know, everything, it's for everything. If you're missing our lives, we're missing our. Lives because an email will come in and it will stress me out. Instead of being stressed by that email, if I do a meditation first thing in the morning, I all of a sudden go into problem solving mode. Fix it. I can deal with that. I have more confidence. It's the same as if you do a workout and you have the endorphin hit you feel a little bit more resilient. So I can't I can't talk it up enough meditate people, But cas, I have to ask you, how would you start? So there's so many meditations out there, there are so many apps, there's do you have a breathing thing that we could start with? Or where do you start?

15:19 Look? I often will recommend to people to start with an app. There are plenty of free apps out there, and to start with something really brief, so you know, you and I have talked about the insight timer app, but people have their different preferences, and then you know, and then slowly build up. Start with three minutes, start with five minutes, but have the intention of building up that time because you know, three minutes nice, but probably not going to get those brain changes that we're talking about. So you need ten minutes at least today? Would you say? I would say fifteen to twifteen to twenty. And if you want to hear some of Castne's meditations, you can go to two dot com and there's plenty of mindfulness there, include them, and that we have meditation in action. But CASS one of the things that was life changing for me because I love lists. I do to do lists, and then I make lists off my to do list of like urgent to dos, and then I put them on the fridge. I notes post its on my mirror in the bathroom, and I'm surrounded by myself telling me what I need to do. And this was a way of survival because I have multiple businesses and projects and things happening. And then you said, how about you make a not to do list?

16:36 Yeah? I love it, so I think you should share with our listeners. I love the concept of the not do list. So you're right. We all have these endless to do lists. We rarely ever get to the bottom of them, actually, because there's always more things to add. And do you know what the thing is about to do lists is they make you feel better temporarily because you dump all that stuff out of your head onto a piece of paper and you go, oh god, I feel so much better now, and then you a lot of times you don't even actually get you. Never do do the list. My husband's peeling the posters off from weeks ago, saying you didn't update your Medicare number. You haven't done this, and I'm like, well, you not, haven't even changed my name to my married name on my license, like I was meant to three years ago. Like I'm just sad he's got so much to do, cass.

17:22 That is what a to do list is all about. It's just making you feel better temporarily and then still getting on with being chronically busy. So what I say is, get okay. If you've got a whole lot of stuff kicking around in your head, certainly dump it all onto a piece of paper. Write it all down. All of those things that are causing you to feel stressed, and they do cause you to feel stressed when you've got that cognitive overload of too many things on your mind, write them all down. And then this is a values question. Really, this comes step back to what is a big part of this busyness thing. Is what are you actually giving your time and energy to and are they actually the things that make for a more meaningful, purposeful, joy filled life or are you just doing a whole lot of stuff that at the end of the day adds up to nothing. So what are the things that are really important?

18:10 We spend so much time doing the urgent, the things that are immediately calling for our attention, like the email and the text message and the constant. Distraction what other people want from what other people. Want us to do, and not focusing on what is important for ourselves. So this is about what actually on this list is going to make take me closer to my longer term goals and directly aligned with the things that are really important to me for having a full, vibrant, meaningful life, things like my family and my long term career projects, or my health or my well being. And then all the other crap, cross it off, crap, all the stuff that is obligations, things that you've got to you think you've got to do to please somebody else, that you don't really want to do, you know, volunteering for something, going to that tapway party, to make up numbers, cross no, cross them off. How many things do we agree to do?

19:05 Yes, we don't need to do those things? Live boundaries. I'm eight months pregnant and everyone's saying you have to read this book, this book. I have a stat of baby books about parenting, and I'm just like, why do I have to read them? Why not just. Enjoy pregnancy in the moment? Is okay? People have been doing it for thousands of years I'm not the first exactly, so it all is happening, and cas, are you a big fan of outsourcing, Like, do you think that can help a little bit when you're busy and stressed? Yep, I really am. I think the thing with outsourcing so the thing with business, like, yeah, you know, we're talking a lot about this mental business and this sort of chronic business and unnecessary business business.

19:46 But the fact is that when you do have a job and kids, and you know, a career and a family and social life you want to maintain, you can have a pretty full schedule. And I think for women especially, not just women, but for women especially, this concept of having it all generally translate to doing it all. So we are not only back in the workforce, but we research is very clear that we still pick up the majority of household tasks. We pick up the majority of parenting, you know, where. The ones oftentimes you know, doing the volunteering at school or go dropping into the uniform shop for the mums out there. You know a lot of volunteering carts. Absolutely, and so I think we need to have a look at and we're not very good at asking for help, So I think it's really important to say, well, you know, maybe it's worth my sanity and it's worth me having time to spend with my husband, to spend sixty dollars to get a cleaner, to get the groceries delivered, to get the ironing time.

20:47 You know, I never have time for iron ever, I don't know iron. I buy things that don't need iron. Yes, that's the way. Yeah, outsourcing is great, and that's why I did create my wellness program to effects so because I have time to get to the gym. So I was like, I need to work out at home. I need someone to tell me. I need a dietician to tell me exactly what to eat to fuel up. I need someone to help look after my mental health. Thank you, cas done. So you know that's stop shy. Yeah, one stop shop. So outsource if you can, if not, put it on the not to do list. I mean, cass, how important is it to have a perfect shower screen. I used to be crazy about clean shower screens, and now if there's shampoo dripping down it, I can deal with that.

21:30 Not do lists. Absolutely put it on the not to do list. So after the break, we're going to talk about more ways to deal with business. Overwhelm, feeling stressed. So stick around, Welcome back to Crappy to Happy with Tiff and Cass. Let's talk about self care now and conserving your energy when you're busy. Yeah. Absolutely, and I'm really interested to hear from you on this, Tiff. So, you are a woman who runs more multiple businesses, You juggle media commitments, You've got an active way range, you've written nine books, which is no mean feat. And you have a husband and a household to maintain. How do you manage your energy and your self care when you're so busy?

22:20 How do you do it all? Life's going to get busier with a newborn too. Oh my goodness, don't tell me. Being a mum isn't about stamina and scheduling and being busy. My gosh. You know you've got a gorgeous daughter. So look the way I see it, the healthier you are, the healthier your projects, your career, your businesses, your families, your communities, everything. Yeah. So I think coming back to you're not too busy. Your priorities have to be straight, and a huge priority should be energy conservation and looking after your self care. So I grew up in a family of black belts. My mum was the first female to earn her black belt in taekwondo and Australia. My dad was an Olympic coach for three four Olympics. So I grew up in this world about peak performance and performance state, and that was all about eating energy, food, moving your body, sleep, hygiene, and I grew up around Olympians. My dad was training Olympians when I was a little girl, and it was really fascinating seeing some of those things that he did with their mindset that have influenced how I manage my energy today. A big one going back to when you were talking about that white space and having a bit of space in your brain to just be on your own.

23:41 My dad would plan the Olympians recovery before he'd plan their training programs. So he would put in, Okay, we're going to do swimming, we're going to do stretching, we're going to do you know, a little bit of light conditioning on these days they were set in stone, and then around that he would plan their fighting and their taekwondo drills and of that. So interesting. So basically first so almost like forced downtime from an athletic perspective. Because you think about a competitor like they're they've got to you know, maintain their bodies and avoid injury and burnout and mental burnout. But as an athlete, you get downtime, you get off season, you get you're in competition mode maybe four times a year. The Olympics, you're in competition mode one day, but a lot of us are in competition mode all the time at exactly.

24:30 So then it's like taking those principles and bringing them into our day to day life and scheduling in that forced downtime. The force downtime and some non negotiables. So for me, yeah, of course I'm pregnant right now, I want to eat sugar. I have cravings like you wouldn't believe. But one of my non negotiables is eating energy food, eating whole foods, looking after my diet so I have energy to give to other people in my businesses and you know, daily life. So one of the things that I concentrate on, and we know that it's simple food, healthy food, you know what it is, whole foods. I don't cut anything out of my diet, and it's really important to keep your body fat low and your energy high and to have lean muscle mass and all of that for peak performance.

25:19 But one thing that's really ignored is our gut health and our stomachs. They work as a second brain and they affect our moods at energy levels, libidos, creativeness, immune systems. So when I'm eating, it's not just about you know, energy, It's about my whole nervous system and immune system and boosting that. And sometimes, you know, I'll feel like fast food or I feel I feel like junk food like any other person, but I know it's not going to give me the energy I need to do my job to give to my family, to those that I love. So it's about just having some of those non negotiables. Another non negotiable for me is, yeah, recovery. So whether that's putting in a holiday in the year to look forward to, making sure I meditate every day, putting the phone away in a point where I hand it over to my husband and he hides it from me because that's how much I love social media.

26:18 That's what we've come to, yes, and. Spending time with him or reading a book and not thinking about the email, and you know, having a lavender bath, you know, painting my nails without having a cup of tea and just trying to think about one things that I'm grateful for. Self care is so important, and then I think it's really important that you move every day. And part of movement, whether it's going for a walk or you're doing you know, one of my workouts at home in your living room, or you go to the gym, whatever you go is I love exercise because it creates clear work life boundaries and it's me. It's me time.

26:58 This is my time, whether it's five minutes or twenty minutes, whatever I have in the day, this is time that I give to myself, I give to my body, and I boost my energy levels so that at three o'clock I'm not reaching for a coffee in a chocolate bar. I've got more energy, and I think it's so important. In coming episodes, we will go through the benefits of exercise and the best ways to exercise and move. But if you are dealing with overwhelm and stress, don't take it out on yourself. Don't go and eat something you know is not good for you. Don't you know, take it out on your loved ones, But take it out in your Doughjang and the doughjang is the taekwondo term, and my background's in martial arts. Of your training space that can just be a mat on the floor in your living room, or it could be a gym, or it could be the local park. But I say, sweat it out, punch it out, take it out in that space, not on yourself, and then you feel more confident and resilient.

27:54 Yeah, that's a great point. I want to I love what you said. There about how you manage your energy and this and that whole idea of that forest recovery, and it reminds me of some really you know, interesting research that came out of I think Harvard and the concept of an energy pyramid. So what they basically conceptualized is that when we are like, we only have so much time, this is what you're basically saying, we only have so much time, but we all have renewable resources of energy time not renewable energy definitely is So how do we go about managing our energy for that whole peak performance thing? With that idea that you said about how we're not athletes, we don't have an off season. We've got to be on every day all the time. So the four levels of this pyramid were at the foundation that physical stuff, the nutrition, quality, sleep, you know, really looking after your physical health and energy. We get that, I think we all get that. And then above that there's emotional energy.

28:56 How do you replenish your emotional energy, and that is things like investing in relationships, focusing on positive like gratitude exercises. You know, the meditation. Spiritual has got its own Oh really yeah, okay. Emotional energy is that infusing that positive energy, psychological energy into your day deliberately. Then there is how you manage your intellectual energy, and that's all the stuff we were talking about with the sustained attention and avoiding distractions of social media and constant emails and setting clear boundaries about how you protect your intellectual like your mental space so that you can actually have time to focus on a task. And then above that was the spiritual energy, which is not a necessarily religious thing, but it's more like your higher values or the sense of purpose that drives what you should do. Yeah, so you need to be putting focus on how do you make sure that each day you're checking off I'm giving something, you know, to maintain my spiritual my purpose my biggermission in life, my protecting my intellectual boundaries, infusing positive emotions into my day. And then also at the back spaceline that that physical energy.

30:03 I think it's you've got to build that base. Hey, yeah, I think that's fantastic. I think it's I think it's yeah. Without you know, having the basic energy from good food and good sleep, what have you got? Like, I think it's so important. And also coming into that things like stretching. You know, you can do a quick neural stretch and that can affect your whole posture and you're breathing everything, and also managing cortisoles, stress levels, and cortisoles are stress hormone and cass you'll know better than me, but stress can affect your body and it can affect your brain. Oh yeah yeah, so yeah, Well, when you're chronically stressed, cortisol has massive impacts, negative impacts on your you know, your immune system, and it does affect your sleep and then sleep in turn affects your cortisole levels and it shuts down fat burn shots sound fat burning can you know, messes up with your hunger signals all of that, so we.

31:00 Yeah, it depletes it depletes energy. It's the enemy, isn't it. Yeah, So managing stress is so important. So you could be listening to all these tools and tips and thinking, gosh, now I'm stressed listening to this stressed episode because there's so much I could be doing. No, Cass always says, treat it as a buffet, pick and choose, and you might take on I'm going to start some meditation, or I'm going to try stretching, I'm going to move a bit. I'm going to perhaps try Casses not to do list, and you might take one thing and it will improve. But Cass, are you going to go from crappy to happy one day? Absolutely not. So we're talking about making little changes to daily habits to and then. See how they work for you.

31:40 On the next episode, we're talking diets, debunking the myths, what works, what doesn't. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tiff and Cass. We'll see you in the next episode. Produced by Daves Lensky, Audio production by Nick's lay Listener.