JOSH: Hello, and welcome to Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg, the podcast about ideas that matter. I'm Josh Castle, the producer of the podcast, and I'm so glad you've joined us today. In this episode, Spencer speaks with Israa Nasir about connecting productivity to values, maintaining self-worth, and redefining ambition and finding balance.

SPENCER: Israa, welcome.

ISRAA: Hi, Spencer, it's so nice to be here.

SPENCER: Great to have you. So what is toxic productivity?

ISRAA: Gosh! Toxic productivity, to me, is when we develop a really unhealthy relationship between how good we feel about ourselves and something that has an outcome. So at work, your physical fitness, your relationships, it can be any outcome, but how good you feel about yourself, how connected you feel with others, how valued you feel, all of that starts to hinge on these outcomes. And so, we get into this very unhealthy mindset.

SPENCER: So would it be something like, "Oh, if I don't lose 20 pounds, I'm not a good person," or "If I don't get this promotion at work, then I'm not worthwhile," that kind of thing?

ISRAA: Absolutely. "If I don't get the promotion, I'm a loser. If I don't get the promotion, I am the worst person on my team." And that naturally bleeds into other parts of the way we see ourselves.

SPENCER: Do you think that's a common problem, that people tie their sense of identity to these outcomes?

ISRAA: I think it's definitely a very common occurrence. Whether it becomes a problem or not is contingent on many things, but it's certainly a very common occurrence for people, because that's just how we're raised. Think back to the way you were in school; you probably got some special treatment from your parents if you did really well in your academics or in sports. And so, we quickly developed this connection between acceptance, belonging, and value in other people's eyes and doing well at something.

SPENCER: So do you think it ultimately comes down to a social phenomenon where we learn that we're good or bad based on what we achieve or what outcomes we hit?

ISRAA: I am of the mindset that, yes, this is a learned behavior. And I find that to be a very empowering perspective because anything that is learned can be unlearned.

SPENCER: What should we anchor our sense of worthiness to?

ISRAA: Oh my gosh, the magical question. So the way we see it is that our sense of worth needs to be an independent variable in our life. So, in social experiments, science experiments, there's an independent variable that doesn't change when all of the other things change in the environment. And there's a dependent variable that does change when things change in the environment. So when we are in toxic productivity, our self-worth is kind of like a dependent variable. It changes when things change in our life; you get dumped by somebody, you get fired, you don't lose weight, or you lose weight. But self-worth is your inherent value as a human being, and that needs to remain unchanged. And to me, that is anchored in our values. And so, I think when we can connect our productivity to a value system, it becomes more meaningful and purposeful.

SPENCER: What does that mean, connecting our productivity to our values?

ISRAA: So I feel a lot of us — and I myself included, by the way — a lot of us don't really know what our values are. We inherit values from our family, our culture, and we also inherit values from our peers and the community that we're in. We just believe that these are the things that we have to do and the way we have to live, and these are things that have to be important. What connecting your productivity to your values means is putting your time, energy, and resources into the things that actually matter to you, not the things that you think you should be doing because other people are doing it and you're going to be left behind, or because other people are doing it and you need to be as good as them. A really good example of that in today's current atmosphere is owning property. A lot of people think that owning property is a really important milestone that everybody has to hit. And if you don't, there are all of these very negative terms to describe you, like "failure to launch," "millennial babies," "arrested development." But maybe you don't have that as a value driver that you want to own property. You'd rather redirect your finances to experiences and travel and not really be moored or anchored to one place, doing things that will align you closer to what really matters to you. Putting your productivity in that bucket is, to me, living a more meaningful life.

SPENCER: So we've talked about two things so far: one is connecting your self-worth to outcomes, and the other is aligning productivity with your values. How do those two ideas relate to each other?

ISRAA: Your outcomes need to be connected to your values, so what happens is you become more value-driven. The things you do to achieve those outcomes become healthier productivity because when you are working towards a value-driven outcome, you are more connected to what makes you feel good. When you are just driving yourself to work more because you're comparing yourself to somebody else, you don't feel good enough without it. You have this anxious, perfectionist mindset, or you have a lot of shame because you don't have something that somebody else does, or you haven't achieved something. When you start to be productive towards reaching that goal or that outcome that's not really connected to your values, or you're just doing it because you should, it becomes a very disconnecting experience internally for us. But if we can take a step back and assess or examine the intentions we have behind why we do the things we do: Do we really have to do them? Why do I even want this goal? Why am I putting this time pressure on myself to achieve X thing before Y timeline? Getting into this curious mindset will help you see that you might need to update the outcomes that you're chasing.

SPENCER: So if I chase outcomes that are deeply in line with my values, that definitely seems better. But will that prevent me from making my self-worth about those outcomes? Or is that an additional problem where even if my outcomes are aligned with my values, I might still wrap up my sense of being a good person or being worthwhile in achieving those outcomes?

ISRAA: That's an interesting paradox. I think anytime we put any sort of yardstick or measuring stick to something, the toxic productivity mindset can really set in. The difference, though, is that when we are value-driven, we are a little more aligned with our own self. We know what makes us feel good and what doesn't make us feel good. It's easier to have boundaries when you are doing something that has a deeper connection with who you are, and so we are better able to manage the toxic habits if they come up.

SPENCER: Can you maybe just give a couple examples?

ISRAA: Usually, when we have a healthy connection to our values, we also understand that this is something that will take me XYZ time to make or to get to or to achieve.

SPENCER: So if we choose our outcomes wisely so they're actually aligned with our values, does that prevent toxic productivity? Or could we still have the sense that this outcome, even if it's something we value, we're setting our self-worth based on it, so we're going to feel really horrible about ourselves if we fail, even though it's a value-aligned outcome?

ISRAA: Yes, that is an interesting paradox, and to that, I would say, managing the toxic productivity mindset has effectively three different domains, and our values are one part of it. When we have outcomes that are based in our values, we are less likely to feel disconnected. We are more likely to have motivation in finding purpose and meaning. However, before that, I think it's important to address toxic productivity habits foundationally within us. A lot of these habits have been hard-coded. They have been glorified from the beginning in our work ethic; our communities and cultures really value these traits that are actually harmful productivity habits. If you think about it, there are three pieces to this. One is, where are you deriving your self-worth? Can we disconnect self-worth from achievement? Second is, what are you actually pursuing: your own value-driven behaviors or somebody else's or the community's, or the things that you should? The third piece is your emotional regulation. How do you actually manage difficult, harmful, negative, uncomfortable emotions that drive you as a coping skill to do more, to achieve more, to constantly engage in productivity? It's a layered phenomenon, if you will.

SPENCER: I see. So there are these different pieces to it, and any of those could go wrong in a way that causes us harm or causes us to pursue things that aren't meaningful to us.

ISRAA: I wouldn't necessarily use the term wrong because it puts a very black-and-white binary on it, and people sometimes can see it as a moralistic judgment. Productivity culture has a lot of moralistic values attached to it. I see it more as overdoing one part or being off balance. Productivity on its own is a good thing, and pursuing things that might not be fully aligned but are necessary for your lifestyle is also important. At the same time, you don't want to be off balance, where you're only pursuing things because you live in a really expensive city and need to make money, or you're only pursuing things because you need to feel good about yourself. It's more about finding balance so that we have healthy productivity and sustainability in our productivity.

SPENCER: One question that's come up on the podcast before is: is high self-esteem a good thing? Because some people will say, "Yes, it's very good. It's very important." Others will say, "No, actually, you don't want to have high self-esteem. It's better to have something else, maybe self-compassion or self-love." And I'm wondering where you land on that?

ISRAA: I think that all of those things are important components of a healthy sense of self. So we've got self-esteem, self-worth, self-compassion, and self-awareness. We have these things that all need to be working in harmony for us to have an overall secure sense of self. And sometimes one thing is not working and the other is, and the other thing's not working, and the third thing is, and so we'll always have something that's not meeting the mark, and that's okay, because we're constantly evolving. We're constantly changing. The piece about self-esteem, I think a lot of people confuse self-esteem and self-worth. Self-esteem is based on external achievements. Self-worth is your inherent internal value as just a living, breathing human being. It is a value you have as a person, whereas your self-esteem is built on your achievements, your external markers of success. Some clients have also told me that high self-esteem can lower their motivation. If they're achieving all the things, they fear that they'll lose the motivation to continue to do more, and so they kind of become really mean to themselves. A lot of times, you'll meet people who have really high self-esteem but are very insecure internally, and it's like, how do these things actually match? But that's because internally, people are constantly shaming themselves, so they continue chasing success and achievement so that they don't lose steam. And shame-based motivation is very powerful.

SPENCER: Do you think we can have too much self-esteem, where it actually starts becoming a problem for us?

ISRAA: I think so. I think that people can sometimes overestimate their capacities. Stepping a little outside of psychological jargon, we have all met people who are genuinely arrogant. I think the human experience does live on a spectrum, and for sure, especially when your entire sense of self is coming through your self-esteem only, then for sure, that can become a problem, because then you don't have self-compassion, because you cannot tolerate mistakes, you can't fail, you cannot be rejected. You have to always get how you feel about yourself from the things that are outside of you, so they're outside of your control. And that's a very unhealthy place to be in, because it's very painful. It's emotionally very painful.

SPENCER: When we talk about self-worth, it seems that by talking about it as the independent variable, you mean to say that it shouldn't depend on any external factors. You should think of yourself as having self-worth, no matter what you do, whether you behave well or behave badly, whether you achieve your goals or not. Is that accurate?

ISRAA: Yes, the way I see it, that is accurate, because self-worth asks you to create a distinction between who you are and what you do. So let's say you behave poorly at an event. Your self-worth should be able to distinguish between "I did something bad" versus "I am bad." It's important to hold yourself accountable and say, "I did something bad. I shouldn't behave like this. I should not have spoken in this way or whatever." But it shouldn't get to the place of, "I'm bad. I'm such a loser, no one's going to ever want to talk to me again. My friends don't like me because I'm not worthy of being invited to another event because I did." That place can become really scary, and it can cause us to act in unhelpful ways.

SPENCER: Do you think there are some people, though, that should view themselves as bad because they actually are doing evil things in the world, or they're actually mistreating people regularly? Or do you think even in that case, they should have a sense of self-worth?

ISRAA: Gosh, this is such an interesting question. It's hard to talk about this without entering this moral space, and there is a lot of literature on moral development and moral psychology as to why people behave the way they do, but it's an evolving science because our morality changes as a society over time. But having a social activist lens through it, I will say that I think there are some people who definitely engage in bad behavior, and it is purely evil. If you want to look at it from a neurological perspective, some people have empathy centers that don't work well, some people are raised in a very entitled way, and so their brains have developed in a way to view the world in a certain way. So, yes, I think that people can be held responsible for their actions, and there can be people who purely behave badly, and they should be treated as such.

SPENCER: Then that raises an interesting question, where people who have persistent self-doubt about their own worth might think, "Maybe I'm really one of those people, maybe I'm one of the bad ones, and I've just been pretending, and really, there's something fundamentally wrong with me." You shouldn't see this with people who maybe have scary thoughts, but they wouldn't act on them: angry thoughts, or destructive thoughts. Or maybe there are people that just whenever they make a minor mistake, they blow it out of proportion, and they think it's a gigantic mistake, and it indicates something deeply flawed about them. So then they start thinking, "Maybe I am really deeply bad."

ISRAA: That is a very interesting point. So I'll say two things to that. The first is that our thoughts don't make us good or bad. Whether it's about productivity, whether it's about another person, really, it's how we act that defines whether that behavior or that choice or that decision was bad. One could even argue from a philosophical perspective that even if someone does something bad, they are not inherently bad themselves, because we can kind of go back and connect the dots as to what led them to this behavior. But again, it becomes very fuzzy at the intersection of politics, justice, morality, background, and all of those things can converge, and it's really difficult to have a very concrete answer to this. But what I will say is, you are not to judge yourself on your thoughts, because thoughts are fleeting. Thoughts are very short neurological experiences in our brain, and our thoughts are not always true. They're not always facts, and a lot of thoughts are impulsive reactions for poor emotional regulation. What we do have control over is how we behave: the choices that we make, the decisions that we make, and how that impacts the people around us. Those are the things we can be accountable for. And for the people who catastrophize, to your second point, "I did this small thing, but it's a big thing, and I'm deeply flawed." I would say the same thing, the thought that you have about the catastrophe is not always true. And so one of the best practices that we have to engage in is to learn how to regulate our emotions in the face of distressing thoughts, and then also learn, once we've regulated that emotion and come back to homeostasis, to question our thoughts. We have to get in the habit of examining our thoughts. We have to get in the habit of fact-checking ourselves. A lot of times we can spiral into a very negative space because we don't question our thoughts.

SPENCER: I think a lot of people don't realize how weird the human mind is. I mean, you only have access to your mind, so you don't get to hear the thoughts going through other people's minds, and if they have strange thoughts, they're probably not going to tell you about them. Maybe if they're really close friends, or they're a very unusual person, maybe they'll tell you. But I think it's actually just really normal that people have a lot of thoughts that they don't share and that would be weird, or other people would find it weird if they shared them. But because people don't share them, everyone kind of feels, "Oh, my mind just has weird thoughts." And maybe that even scares them, because they think, "Maybe there's something wrong with me, that I have these thoughts that I consider bad, and if I acted on them, I'd be a bad person. So maybe that means, really, secretly I'm a bad person."

ISRAA: For sure, we can really quickly get into a space of judgment when we examine our thoughts in that way, and we think that nobody else is having the same experience. The thing I'd say is, I'm a really big proponent of collecting data about ourselves. The whole world is doing it for us, but we don't pay attention to our own data. What I mean by data is our behavioral patterns. If you are somebody who struggles with negative thoughts about yourself or about others, as long as it's not in the realm of violence, because that takes it to a different place. But if you are somebody who struggles with negative thoughts and then you judge yourself for it, then I would ask you to reflect on your last three major relationships, your last three major friendships, and the last three weeks of your life. This is an arbitrary number, but that gives you enough information to see whether or not your thoughts have translated into actions or choices. Ask yourself, "how did this mindset show up in my friendships? How did this mindset show up in my last relationship? Did it get in the way? Did it improve the relationship? How did this mindset, or the thoughts that I'm having, get in the way of my last three weeks? Did I skip multiple parties because I believe that nobody really wants to go out with me and people just invited me out of pity? Did I isolate myself now?" You can start to see this pattern of what your accountability is in this piece, and whether or not your mindset is impacting your life.

SPENCER: What should they do with that information? Let's say they find that their thoughts did affect their previous relationships or did affect the last three weeks of their life.

ISRAA: In therapy, there's this technique called opposite action. It's predominantly used in DBT for emotional regulation, but I find it to be a very helpful tool in general: do the opposite of what you're thinking. If you feel like isolating, reach out and connect with somebody. If you feel like rotting in your bed, get up and get out of the couch. If you feel like not moving your body and you've been feeling really sluggish, self-sabotaging because you're in a spiral, get out and get some movement, get some sun; do the opposite if that's accessible and feasible for you. That's one thing you can do. The second thing you can do, once you recognize the pattern, is make an active plan for yourself. Make a commitment that, borrowing the same example, "Next time somebody invites me, I'm going to go. I'm going to go to at least one event in the next month." Give yourself a small goal to achieve and make a commitment to yourself for that. Get somebody in on it; have an accountability partner who can help you make these changes. If it is extremely overwhelming — I know that therapy, unfortunately, is not the most accessible health service, but it's the most accessible it's ever been in its history — see if you can get a therapist to help you through this, whether it's through your work or a community center. Educational institutions have very low-cost therapists who are therapists in training. So maybe that's an avenue you can explore. If it is an overwhelming thing for you, then definitely having a professional support you and guide you is beneficial.

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SPENCER: You mentioned the opposite action, which is a classic technique from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and it's really fascinating to me because essentially it says, "Do the opposite of what you feel like doing." For me, I see this being really useful in certain areas. Sometimes I'm really tired; what I feel like doing is lying down, but that's just going to make me more tired. What's actually good for me is to go outside and go for a walk or even maybe go on the treadmill, and I'll actually feel much better and happier. But at the same time, there's something really critical about listening to your body and going with your intuition on certain things. Our body and intuitions often tell us useful information, like, "Oh, I'm hungry right now; I should probably eat." Or, "Hey, I'm getting a bad vibe from this person. Maybe I shouldn't let this person into my life." How do you think about that? When you use the opposite action versus trusting what your body's telling you?

ISRAA: I use the opposite action myself and also recommend it to others as a way of an entry point of reflection into that moment and as a coping skill over a difficult time. We can definitely engage in healthy behavior until it becomes unhealthy as a way of coping. If we take food, for example, "Yes, I'm hungry; I should eat." But do you have a pattern of using food as an anxiety management tool? If you have that pattern, or if you tend to self-sabotage by eating a lot of stuff that makes you feel not great afterward or drinking too much and that makes you feel bad afterward, sometimes it's really important to stop and find the intention behind why you want to do the thing that you're wanting to do, and then see if the opposite is actually going to help you feel better. It is a point of inner reflection that we all have to do in a very short amount of time. It's almost like a split-second thing, but we do have to get in the habit of examining our intention as to why we want to do the thing that we're doing at that moment and if it's going to serve us in the short term or the long term. A really good example I hear from almost all of my clients when I'm practicing is, "Scrolling makes me feel good. Why would I ever stop scrolling?" I'm talking about doom scrolling on Instagram or TikTok. But here's the thing: it can make you feel good for some period of time. Sure, it's a healthy distraction from a negative emotion. But if I know I have to sleep and I should sleep because it's two o'clock now and I have to wake up in the morning, but I feel like scrolling because it's giving me some entertainment and managing my nighttime anxiety, at that point, I have to question myself: is doing the opposite of what I feel like doing going to be more beneficial? In this example, it is.

SPENCER: So maybe the fundamental thing is, when our body tells us that we feel like doing something, or we have a desire to do something, sometimes, by following that desire, it leads us to the thing we value. If I'm really tired, I might have a desire to lie down, and I might take a nap, and then I might feel better. Okay, that makes sense if I have time to take a nap and it's not going to screw up my sleep later." But other times, if you push in the direction of the way you feel, it actually leads contrary to your own values. "Oh, wait, if I actually lie down now, I'm going to get more tired, and I don't have time to take a nap, and I'm going to be even more exhausted when I go into the next meeting or something." Something like that.

ISRAA: Yeah, just questioning your intention. And there is a level of self-awareness that we have to continuously build about what we are pursuing, what we are doing. Honestly, for example, working out is one of my most difficult tasks, but I constantly have to do the opposite action whenever I have a block of time during the day because I didn't work out in the morning. I have to push myself and be like, "Okay, no, I know you feel like just sitting on the couch in this 90-minute block between meetings, but you should just get up and do this 40-minute workout."

SPENCER: One thing that we touched on very briefly, but I think it's worth going into more detail, is the link between emotion management and productivity, or emotional regulation and productivity. How are they related?

ISRAA: Our emotions are like the undercurrent that is always at play behind the scenes. The research I did around human behaviors, motivation theory, and social learning made it clear that, a lot of times, we use unhealthy levels of productivity to cope with difficult emotions. An emotion like shame, if that's the undercurrent in your life and it's always running in the background, you're going to be motivated to do a lot, to constantly keep moving, to constantly keep achieving, to try to continuously alleviate that shame. I feel like a lot of productivity literature, rightfully so, is very behavioral. It's very much about changing your habits, time management, and organization skills. I think all of those things are important, and what's also important is something we have not been paying attention to, which is the emotions that drive our behavior. We can set up all of these great systems and habits, and they'll work great during peacetime, but if you haven't resolved heavy, difficult, impactful emotions, the moment there's a crisis, the moment there's a dip in resilience, all of those systems will fall apart because your emotional volatility will take over, and then we fall back to our unhealthy coping skills, which for a lot of people is just doing more.

SPENCER: So are you suggesting that people sometimes are just trying to be productive because they are trying to change the way they feel about themselves? This futile method for feeling better is to work harder and try to achieve more, thinking that "Oh, if I just achieve enough, then I'll feel okay."

ISRAA: Absolutely. I think a lot of people think that happiness is on the other side of achievement, so I'm just going to continue to be miserable in this journey. But you know what? That other side of achievement will never come, and so happiness will continue to feel like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow; it doesn't exist. A lot of people use productivity to alleviate guilt. Guilt is a very action-oriented emotion. It's a very externalizing emotion. Guilt is telling you that you did something bad; you have to fix it. A lot of people have a very guilt-based reaction to resting, to taking breaks, to not being productive, and that makes them uncomfortable, so they just jump back on the hamster wheel of work. The very intense emotions of fear, rejection, and abandonment that come with perfectionism and social comparison are very powerful drivers, and people will overachieve to feel better about themselves.

SPENCER: I've heard about a related concept before, but I think you're making a little bit of a different point. The way I've heard this talked about before is people often think, "Once I achieve XYZ, I'll be happy. Once I have a big house, or once I have enough money, or once I live in the place I want, I'll be happy." Very often, that doesn't pan out, because once they have the more stuff or the place that they want, it turns out they just get used to that very quickly, and they're on this kind of hedonic treadmill. They're always thinking that it's going to make them happy, when really they're just going to revert back to where they feel. But I think you're making a somewhat different point, which is that people are chasing these things not just because they think the thing will bring them happiness, but because they think it's going to change the way they think about themselves. But the reality is, the way they think about themselves has nothing to do with how much they achieve fundamentally. Is that right?

ISRAA: I would say that's accurate. The point about the hedonic treadmill, to me, is a little more than just getting used to it. Because that feels like lifestyle creep. "Now I'm used to a two-bedroom house; now I need to have a three-bedroom." It's beyond that. We actually don't get the satisfaction that we were chasing. When you come into this very toxic productivity mindset, when you achieve the thing that you are meant to achieve, the thing that you are chasing, the fact that you achieved it somehow diminishes that feeling of, "Damn, I achieved it." Because there are these high standards in the background that are kind of running. You're like, "Wait, now I have to achieve something else to feel good," because you're never actually going to feel good about yourself through achievements; that's not going to happen. You feel good about the thing you achieved, but you won't feel good about yourself. That's why paying attention to self-worth and really building this emotional reserve, understanding your emotions, is so important, because you will always feel empty when you get to the achievement. In my book, Toxic Productivity, I talk about this great Greek myth about the myth of Sisyphus. He was a king who got banished, and his eternal task is to roll a boulder up a hill, and as soon as he gets to the top, the boulder falls, and he has to do it all over again. That's all he's doing for eternity. That is what chasing achievements to feel good about yourself feels like. You get to the top, and there's another hurdle you have to climb, because now this is not good enough, and so we can stay stuck on that forever.

SPENCER: So how does emotional regulation tie into being successful, rather than merely feeling better?

ISRAA: When we have dysregulated emotions, we can tap into toxic productivity. We can be very reactive. We can disregard our health and wellness. We disregard our relationships. Ultimately, all of those things, when they are dysfunctional, can impact your success. This term success means different things to every single person on this planet. But if you are unhealthy, have no relationships, and are very reactive everywhere, with everyone all the time, you are not going to be successful in any definition of that word, because human beings require certain things to feel good about their lives. We can devalue our relationships and chase ambition, but eventually you're going to feel very lonely, and that's going to make you feel unsuccessful. Emotional regulation, to me, is honestly one of the most underrated things when it comes to success, productivity, and ambition. We just don't talk about it enough. I'm not sure why, really. But if we can relate to our productivity from the lens of a regulated emotional health, we are going to be better decision makers. We are clear in our thinking. We can be really balanced. We can understand that I need rest right now. I'm not going to work through being sick, or we can understand that taking a vacation actually makes me a better worker or a better boss when I come back, because I'm coming back refreshed with creative ideas. When we're regulated emotionally, we are more collaborative with other people, we are more intuitively connected to ourselves. But when we're not emotionally regulated, we might get short-term results, but we're not going to get long-term success. You might be a very successful leader at your workplace, but if you have a really bad temper and tend to lash out at people, yell at the intern, and scream at the admins, there might be a day when you're not able to regulate your anger because you don't have to in this workplace, and you say something to a client that gets misconstrued, and then you might lose your job, that client, or that role. Emotional regulation is a really important part of being successful, and I just don't think we talk about it enough.

SPENCER: So is emotional regulation fundamentally about being less reactive to things — you don't blow up in anger, you don't get intensely sad over something minor — or are there more elements to it than that?

ISRAA: There is the element before the changing reaction to response, which is identification and awareness. As a therapist, I often work with people who have never done therapy before, and I'll ask them, "Can you name all of the emotions?" Most of the time, people can come up with two or three in themselves. It's very difficult for people to identify what emotion they're feeling and really be able to understand where it's coming from. Emotional regulation is understanding where the emotion is coming from, what the emotion is, and then choosing a healthy, constructive response instead of being reactive. That shows up in the toxic productivity mindset as well. When we are feeling guilty about resting and we don't know how to navigate that guilt, we don't know where it comes from, and we feel very unsettled by feeling guilty, we are more likely to skip the rest and jump into work. You might know people who wake up on Sunday and don't have any plans, or they start feeling very antsy about having so much time. They think, "I should be doing something on Sunday." They don't know how to navigate that feeling and sit with it, so they will open up their laptop and say, "I'll just shoot out a couple of emails." They haven't really rejuvenated or rested that Sunday, so they just worked instead, and it made them feel productive, so they didn't have to deal with the emotions.

SPENCER: So when you're working with clients and you find that they struggle with emotional regulation, what are some techniques you teach them or use with them to help them learn more regulation?

ISRAA: The first thing for anybody who struggles with emotional regulation is to get connected with your body. People who struggle with emotional regulation are not very attuned to their body, so they're not very familiar with how their body reacts in difficult situations, what sadness actually feels like in their body, what anger feels like in their body, what fear feels like. So my first recommendation is to get connected with your body. For the people who are listening, I will say this: if you have any kind of history with physical trauma, it can be very dangerous to try to connect with your body. So anytime you listen to somebody come on a podcast and share techniques, just make sure it actually applies to your life. So, I just want to give that caveat.

SPENCER: You said "dangerous." What does "dangerous to connect with your body" mean?

ISRAA: I think people who have physical trauma, whether it's a car accident or sexual trauma, dissociating from the body was a protective mechanism, and our body really holds trauma. So if you try to go back in there, connect with your body, try to see where the anxiety is sitting, you might actually unlock a lot of trauma that maybe you were repressing, and you're not really ready to, or capable of, dealing with, so it can be very dangerous in that way. It can be scary, it can be triggering. This is for people who have a history of that; just be aware of hearing tips and stuff on podcasts and shows. It's just something I like to always say. If you don't have that, connecting with your body is the first place to identify your emotions.

SPENCER: Let's just clarify that for a second. So you're saying it can be scary. It can make them feel upset. Is that dangerous? Or is that just scary? Could it create harm for them?

ISRAA: It can be psychologically dangerous, Spencer, for people who have severe physical trauma because it can create a flashback, and flashbacks can be very harmful psychologically for people because it's re-traumatizing.

SPENCER: So what would that look like? They start reflecting on this feeling they have in their body, and then that feeling triggers a memory of sexual trauma or physical trauma they experienced?

ISRAA: Yeah. And then, the trauma gets revisited in the brain, and you might have a flash visual memory or a sound memory of it. Our brain doesn't differentiate between real and imagined, so it activates the body as if you were having the trauma right then and there, and it can be extremely overwhelming and psychologically dangerous for people. If you're not really accustomed to managing your triggers, you can lash out. Some people drink a lot; some people will use drugs to calm that moment. It's just not a good place to be in if you're not used to accessing your body and working through the trauma if you have a trauma history.

SPENCER: So what would you suggest in that case? If they have a trauma history, would they work with a therapist who specializes in trauma to help them work through that?

ISRAA: I'm not a trauma therapist, so my recommendation would be to find a professional. If you have a history of trauma, then absolutely it's not something you should be navigating on your own, because it's just too much for one person. So my recommendation would be to seek a trauma therapist.

SPENCER: Okay, so let's suppose that they don't have a history of intense trauma, and they can reflect on the emotions they're feeling. Is there a certain technique that you have people use when they do that, or is it more informal, just notice how you're feeling?

ISRAA: There are a couple of meditations people can do. You could do a body scan. You could do a visualization exercise about where the tension is sitting in your body. You can also do breath work. Breath work is really helpful in that, connecting with the ins and outs of your breath. There are multiple ways to do breath work. There are so many different strategies you can use, but really it's just about building body awareness. The reason that's important for emotional regulation is because our emotions are 90-second events in the brain, and in those 90 seconds, a physiological response is activated. Something starts to change in your body at a very physical level when you experience an emotion, and it's happening so fast that your body processes it first, and then your mind can kick in. Your cognitive center kicks in and says, "Oh, I'm feeling shame," but you'll probably feel it in your stomach first. That's why anxiety and gut issues are so connected. That's why people feel nauseous when they're anxious, or they have to go to the bathroom a lot when they're anxious, because these things are connected. By building this body awareness, you become able to recognize the red flags that you're feeling an emotion. That helps you identify emotions in yourself and also when they're coming, so you can use your coping skills before you hit the threshold of reaction, and that's when you become really good at managing your negative emotions so that you don't act in a reactive way.

SPENCER: So an example could be when you feel anxious, you start feeling it in your stomach first. Then you learn to notice that pattern, and you start observing, "Oh, I have this weird feeling in my stomach. Maybe I'm becoming anxious." Now that you've noticed in real time that you're feeling this emotion, you can handle it more productively because you have this metacognition related to it.

ISRAA: Yeah, it's called the observer mind. And you're right, it is a metacognition. It's like you're essentially narrating your experience to yourself, and that helps you access coping skills. You can say, "Oh, I'm feeling anxious. Last time I was anxious, I did this and it helped me, so I'm going to do it again." Instead of what you would have usually done, which is maybe firing off seven text messages to somebody in a state of anxiety, now you can really cope with it yourself and learn to manage that feeling.

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SPENCER: There was about a year in my life where I meditated pretty much every day in the morning, and one thing I found is that I seemed to increase my awareness of internal changes. I think it's because during meditation, you're very aware of what's happening inside you because you're focused on your breath or whatever the technique is. Many of the techniques are inward-focused, though not all. With the inward-focused techniques, you learn a more subtle awareness of internal changes. That's what started happening to me, and I felt it was helpful because it helped me be more aware of shifting emotions, very much aligned with what you're describing.

ISRAA: Meditation is a great way to get connected with your body. It is a practice that we build, and sometimes people get really daunted by meditation. Sometimes you can just take pieces of meditation to help somebody through a difficult moment, like visualization or a guided body scan.

SPENCER: You mentioned coping skills a couple of times. What's an example of a coping skill that you would teach your clients?

ISRAA: An example of a coping skill that I personally really like is when we are experiencing a very negative emotion and we don't really know what to do, is to change the temperature of your body somehow. That can be drinking a really cold glass of water or a really warm tea, putting an ice cube to the nape of your neck or the inside of your wrist, taking a really cold shower, but a quick one. That really helps regulate the emotion and the nervous system at a physical level, and it can really help shift out of an unhealthy mindset. That's an immediate coping skill. A more long-term coping skill that I really recommend people build, and it's something that's helped me in my journey with toxic productivity, is building a routine. Building your own routine is a very powerful coping skill, especially for moments or seasons of your life when things start to feel overwhelming. Having some kind of anchor point in your morning, afternoon, and evening doesn't have to be long, doesn't have to be aesthetic, doesn't have to be only one of four things, but doing something that's a routine in the morning, afternoon, and evening really helps anchor your day.

SPENCER: So what would a healthy version of that look like? Just to give an example of what might be in that morning, afternoon, and evening routine.

ISRAA: Yeah, I'll just share my own. It took me some years to kind of get here, but in the morning, I have a ritual that it doesn't matter what's happening, I have to do it, and it only takes 10 minutes, which is eating my breakfast and having my coffee undisturbed. I'm not checking emails, I'm not on Instagram posting or commenting. I'm just having breakfast, drinking my coffee. Sometimes I'll watch an old cartoon or something nostalgic, or a BBC Earth documentary, something very relaxing, but that's my morning. Those 10 minutes are a part of my morning, always. In the afternoon, I will take five minutes, and I sometimes really have to force myself to do it, to just go and put my legs up against the wall and lie down like that, because it helps me relax. That's just a grounding thing for five minutes. If you work outside of the house, it can be a walk, a three-minute meditation in a side room, journaling, or calling your mom — something you do in the afternoon. In the evening, I listen to brown noise, which is part of my nighttime ritual. It really helps me wind down, so it can be something like just listening to a playlist.

SPENCER: Yeah. I also have a morning routine that I find very helpful, where I do the same thing every morning, and I think it's really nice, in part because of the potential emotional regulation benefits, but also because it's just a really nice thing you can then stick healthy habits into. So once you have a routine, it's quite easy to add new things to it. A lot of the challenges in building the routine are in the first place, but you can iterate and modify it over time.

ISRAA: Absolutely I agree. Habits build on habits, and once you can find a routine that's very small, I think that's the thing I would encourage people to think about: what is the smallest unit of behavior change that you can incorporate into your day that will just shift you ever so closely to your final wellness goal? I noticed in myself that when I started doing these routines, I was able to tackle more things, like you just said.

SPENCER: That reminds me of Andy Matuschak. He has this great idea for forming habits, which is that you need to make the initial habit so easy that it's impossible to fail at it. It's like, wake up and do a single push-up. That's it. You never have an excuse to not do one push-up, or assuming you can do push-ups, just make it so small. And then, of course, once you get it, once you're doing it every day, then you can build on that. But the point is that often the most challenging part is to just get that first habit going. You might as well make it small to start, so that part is easy, and then you can build from there.

ISRAA: You also get a sense of confidence. That's the thing that I noticed in me; the biggest shift was I got this internal sense of confidence that I can make changes. I can change this habit. And the smaller the habit changes, the more likely you are to succeed at it. That's going to fill your resilience and confidence in making bigger changes for yourself.

SPENCER: Before we wrap up, another thing I would ask you about is ambition. I think living in New York like we do, we encounter lots of ambitious people who feel like they're never doing enough, they're never achieving enough, and they're constantly pushing themselves. Why do you think that people have so much ambition? And do you think it's a good thing or a bad thing?

ISRAA: I think there are certain hubs in the world that definitely attract more ambitious people, and so you become surrounded by them. New York City is definitely one of those places, but any very big metropolis can have that. You can have very ambitious people outside of that as well, but sometimes being around a lot of ambitious people makes you feel like you have no other choice but to be ambitious. You kind of borrow from other people what the definition of ambition is or what you should be doing. I definitely see that a lot here. I meet a lot of people who work in finance, and when I ask them why they pursued the career, many of them don't have a really great answer. It's just something they tapped into, and now that they're in this world, they have to rise through the ranks, because that's the only thing you can do; otherwise, you're a failure. And nobody wants to be a failure. I think ambition is a really important thing, but ambition out of balance is really harmful. I know that I said something like this before, and I want to clarify that I'm not anti-ambition and I'm not anti-productivity. What I am is pro-balance, and I don't think that ambition and productivity are the antithesis of balance. I think we can have all of these things. And I'm not naive. I want people to expand and start to reimagine the definitions of such things. When we think about ambition, the first thing that comes to mind is work success. But can we actually expand that definition to also mean success in other domains of life? Can we have an ambition to have extremely deep connections in friendships? Can we have an ambition to have fulfilling hobbies? Our ambition doesn't just have to stop at job titles, salaries, and how much we travel. This is an invitation for people to reflect on how they can redefine and reimagine ambition for themselves and productivity as well. One of my biggest things is, can we reimagine productivity to include rest, to include breaks? Stop thinking of rest as the enemy of productivity. When we have unbridled ambition and unbridled productivity, our health fails. A couple of months ago, there was news about a man who worked for one of the big banks here. I think he was a VP, and he worked 140 hours for some deal that they were closing. Then on the Monday the next week, this young 31-year-old man died of heart failure. This is not the first time this has happened, and I'm not bashing the finance industry. This happens in fashion. This happens in tech. Ariana Huffington has a famous story that she shares where she worked herself so much at the Huffington Post that she collapsed in her office, hit her face, and her face split open, but nobody was there, so she was just lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood for a certain amount of time. That was a big wake-up call for her. Unbridled ambition and unbridled productivity do become bad. That's why I use the term toxic, because for me, it is something that was good that has been overdone and now has become harmful. I want to bring us back to balance, and ambition can sometimes be a mask for anxiety, not feeling good enough, wanting to compete, comparing yourself to other people, perfectionism. I just want people to be a little bit more reflective about why they do the things they do.

SPENCER: What do you think the difference is between ambition that's healthily motivated versus a sort of unhealthy ambition?

ISRAA: I think the biggest flag is not disregarding your physical wellness. If you are ambitious at the cost of your physical wellness, you have crossed the threshold of healthy ambition, because nothing is more valuable than your health. The peak girl boss era of the 2010s or the 2000s tech bro era, just drinking Monster Energy and Oreo cookies and surviving, that's not healthy ambition. It should never be at the cost of your physical wellness, because it's not sustainable. We want our ambition to be sustainable, long-lasting, and meaningful. But if you disregard your health, then none of those things will be true. That's the biggest flag. Other flags are feeling constantly dissatisfied with your achievements, so you're on this hamster wheel of ambition. Are you actually chasing the thrill of achievement, or do you actually want the things you're achieving? Another one is disregarding your relationships. Relationships are an absolutely imperative part of human existence, and if you're devaluing your relationships, you're going to feel lonely and disconnected, and that's going to impact your mental health. In that way, your ambition becomes unhealthy.

SPENCER: What about when people's ambition is really about impressing others or raising their social status, or thinking that people will like them if they just achieve enough? Do you think that's inherently unhealthy, or is there a healthy version of that?

ISRAA: It's only healthy if you also get internal validation. What you described is external validation, and it is an important motivator. It helps us match with our peers, and it can really help us achieve a lot of important things. In that way, it's good. But if it's the only place you get validation, and you don't have the mechanisms for internal validation, then it becomes unhealthy. When we don't have internal validation mechanisms, we have no compassion for ourselves. We can't tolerate mistakes. We become very critical and demeaning to ourselves. The inner critic becomes very active, and we can berate ourselves, leading to very unhappy lives.

SPENCER: Final question for you, suppose a listener is wondering whether the kind of productivity they're engaging in is toxic productivity, what would you have them ask themselves to help them figure out whether it is toxic or not?

ISRAA: I would ask them to take an audit of their last three weeks and literally list out everything they committed to, everything they did, every event, every obligation, and then make a little column next to it, and ask yourself, "Did I enjoy this? Was it beneficial in any realm? (The benefit can just be socializing. It doesn't have to be anything negative.) But did I enjoy it? Was it beneficial?" Then reflect on this data set you have about yourself, and ask yourself, "Why do I do all of the things that I do, and do I need to be doing them?" If you realize that you're doing a lot of things that you don't need to be doing, and half the things on that list are making you feel bad, then that's a really good entry point into reflecting on your productivity habits.

SPENCER: Israa, thanks for coming on the show.

ISRAA: Thanks for having me, Spencer.

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JOSH: A listener asks, "If you could go back and change one thing you did in college or other higher education that you feel like would have a big positive impact on your life today, what would it be?"

SPENCER: One thing that comes to mind is: one time in college, I wanted to go talk to this Buddhism professor to ask him a bunch of questions. And another student talked me out of it. They were like, I wasn't studying Buddhism in school; I was studying applied math. And they were like, "Why would you go talk to the professor? They're a busy person. Why do you think that they would want to talk to you?" And so on. And they actually convinced me not to talk to the professor. And I think that their attitude is a really actually pernicious attitude. Now, maybe the professor wouldn't want to talk to me. That's fine. I could have gone, knocked on the door, and they could have politely declined to talk. That's fine. But I think that attitude — oh, yeah, well, who are you to go speak to someone or to try to learn about something? I was just really interested. I was curious to learn more about Buddhism and its philosophy. So I think that was kind of the wrong lesson to take at that time. And thankfully, I think I nowadays would have knocked on the door, but maybe I would have learned that faster if I hadn't adopted that attitude.