Latest / College Is Fine, Everything's Fine / #47 Work Smarter Not Harder with Dr. Jessica Stern

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#47 Work Smarter Not Harder with Dr. Jessica Stern · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

.  So I'm actually thrilled. You know, a lot of times we'll have people that are from our past or that we've, we've met at some point, but I, I actually found you and pitched you.  So specifically because, , You know, and I'll, I'll do a longer bio, but yes, you're Dr. Jessica Stern and I found you through your work with WonderMind. But before we even go there, I'll say that you're a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor, you're a radio host, you are a consultant with various things, but I'll stop there. Why don't you share a little bit about your, you know, your main bullet points? What do you want our listeners to know about?  Absolutely. So like you mentioned, I'm a clinical psychologist. I do a variety of different things. I do therapy. I work with individuals in consulting capacities. I do a lot of work with companies, organizations of all sorts. I'm a radio host on SiriusXM. I also have a consulting and speaking firm called Three Lemons. And I am an advisor to the I'm the advisor and produce content for Wondermind, which is a mental health fitness company co founded by Selena Gomez and Mandy Teefee, and I just love chatting with people in all different capacities about how to live their best lives, how to engage their values, and how to support their personal and workplace endeavors.   Yes, I'm so thrilled to meet you because, of course, I see the content you put out and as I was working through and looking around,  for other reasons, kind of in my other daytime job, , thinking about things like the mental health ecosystem. , I know our topic really and why we're having you on today is because you do a lot of work with people and for people to think about productivity and how to sort of optimize productivity. And it's something we get asked about a lot,  from our listeners. So, before we get started into the productivity bent or the study skills, we'll start with some fun stuff, which is Wonder Mind. And it says, and it describes itself as a mental fitness ecosystem. And I was so curious about that idea. And I love that idea, but share more about what that means to you and to the founders.   Absolutely. So I think the idea behind it really started based on this concept of fitness. And when we as individuals want to take care of our health, whether it's through exercise or other things, we engage a variety of different skills or activities, techniques to be able to integrate them into our lives on a day to day basis. And then we practice those things, and then it maintains our health. The idea specifically behind a mental fitness ecosystem is learning skills and strategies and being able to share information with the public that they can use on a regular basis in those moments that are tough, but also those moments that are good where they can practice mental health. And so. Even if you're in therapy and you're going to therapy once a week, let's say, whatever it might be, what kinds of strategies can you use in between those sessions or if you're not yet in therapy or if you've graduated from therapy, being able to think about what you can do to maintain your own toolkit, your own skill set on a regular basis and so how to sort of, you know, pump and use those muscles, not just in your body, but in your brain as well to keep you Moving and grooving and growing.  Moving and groving and growing. Maybe we should talk, we should title the episode  moving going to timestamp it. No, I, I mean, one of the things I always say to college students that I work with, I'm like, I am not teaching you anything that I don't do myself.  Everything that I'm learning are things that I do to maintain,  a stable mood or have more joy and pleasure in my life. And so I love the mission behind that because I think that in the same way that people know to exercise consistently to, I don't know. decreased likelihood of heart disease, potentially. I don't think a lot of people are aware of what are the factors that contribute to preventing the onset of some psychological issues. That's beautiful.  Um, all right. So, but we're talking about Oh, yes. or productivity fitness. So we have a lot of our listeners who've said like, all right, yes, thanks for all this stuff about emotion regulation, but like, how do I actually do some stuff that's really important, which is study, get ready, do, you know, the work I need to do between classes, et cetera. And so. You know, study skills have a lot of different components to it. You know, it has motivation, organizational skills, anxiety management. But before we start to break this topic down into smaller parts, I wanted to start with the big question, which is, are you just born with these things? Are some people just born with it?  And if not, how could you learn it more? You know, so if you don't have it, are you screwed?  No.  Oh, good. Okay, good.  You are not screwed. There's hope.  Yeah, absolutely. I think for some people it comes a little bit more naturally. Some people are a little bit more likely to find those skills on their own or naturally. Through just day to day living, whereas other people it might require a little bit of problem solving, it might require you to step out of your comfort zone a little bit, it might require a little bit more practice. But I think absolutely you can learn to jive in the way that works for you. A lot of the work that I do actually is related to ADHD. And I work with individuals both with and without ADHD and I think a lot of times people with ADHD think I can't do the normal things, I can't do the things that everybody else does. And the really cool thing is that in certain capacities they can, it just might require a little bit of a different strategy. And then in some cases they find something new that works even better for them. And so I think it's just about flexibility and being able to dissect the problem that comes up for you, identify the obstacles that are getting in the way, and then to kind of work around those. But I definitely think there's hope. I like the idea of it being that, , some people might have strengths in one area and then it's just about trying to figure out where to fit in the new versus you have to sort of start with this blank slate and just get good at everything.  Absolutely, because everybody has skills, everybody has strengths, and being able to leverage your strengths I think can be really powerful. And that's something I talk a lot about both with my clients in therapy, but also with companies when I'm doing consulting on a team level. I talk a lot about this on the radio as well, which is, I think a lot of times we focus on the areas where we really struggle or the areas that are hard for us, and I think it's important to do that because we want to be able to, you know, fill in any gaps that we have, but leverage your strengths too because you have those, and being able to maximize those can be really empowering.    One of the things you mention is to work smarter, not harder. aNd I see this all the time with college students, they'll, they think it's like the hours they put in that is going to lead to like, A different, you know, product and sometimes I'm like, I just, I think what you're doing during those hours might actually be something you should be more aware of and how you're doing it.  Cause sometimes they just disproportionately, they're like, I'm just not going to sleep for like four days and I'm going to study so much and they still get like a poor outcome. So, so why don't you talk about that sentiment and what would that mean for college students?  I'm so glad you bring that up, and I can give a college or a study specific example, and then I can talk about it out there in the real world, too. Not that, not that college isn't the real world, let's be real,  so one of the biggest things, and I'll use the example actually you just talked about, is people will oftentimes hustle, stay up really late, and just try and grind the study. The issue is that if you're really tired, let's say, your brain is actually not going to be maximizing, it's not going to be running on its peak, and you're actually probably going to be wasting time. And so, if you can have two hours, let's say, of really cognitively efficient time, time where you're alert, time where you're using your strategies well, whether that's memorizing, whether that's problem solving, whatever it is related to the course that you're studying for, that likely is going to be much more meaningful than doing four or six hours of poor quality or cognitively inefficient study time. And I think that's where people really burn themselves out a lot, is that they stay in the library, let's say, for too long. Like, I know for myself, if I stayed in the library for too long, like, I would just be running on empty, and I would literally not get anything meaningful done if I was there past my prime. And so, that's where I think being efficient in terms of studying can be really important. Something I encourage people to do is to figure out what times of the day you are most alert Based on what you need to do, and then to match that towards what you need to do. So for instance, and this works in the workplace, I do this all the time with people in their workplaces as well. Is, let's say you're most alert between like let's say 10 and noon. Okay? Do your most cognitively demanding work when possible during that time. Some people are night owls. Some people really thrive between 8 and 10 p. m. let's say. If that's the case, do your most cognitively demanding work then. Because if you're not going to be doing that, then you might potentially again be running on empty. Now, that's obviously an ideal circumstance. Sometimes we don't have that luxury or that flexibility to be able to do that. But if you can approximate that, that can be really helpful. So that way you're. Essentially, that you're not just wasting your energy.   right? I can remember times where I, I would be there and I'd just be reading. It's like my eyes would go across the words   Mm  in sort of an automatic way, but nothing was being uploaded . So yeah, that certainly strikes a chord.  All right, so one way to really optimize it is to find the time where you're naturally more awake. You know, I have a friend who, actually another psychologist, she's a night owl. She is better at doing things at night. I would crash and burn if I did it that way, and I've tried, so  Yeah. so So I, if I were studying late at night, it just wouldn't have been as efficient for me, but there are people who have, I think, a different rhythm. So, all right, so that's one, but what about other key skills that you feel like people could learn and practice? If you had, I don't know, we don't have to do a top 10 list, but if you had like, here's a few just to have in your toolkit that most people can use to improve or enhance what they're already doing.   One of them, and this is going to sound so obvious, but I do have to say it out loud, is to reduce distractions, and people are probably like, yeah, we know that, okay, everybody knows that. But I think to be really observant about what your distractions are I think can be really powerful. And similarly, to actually set boundaries where you can. So this is a tip that I really like giving people, because you're like, Ooh, I never thought about that. Which is, let's say you only have one computer, let's say you have one laptop, and that's where you do all your stuff. So you do your study work there, you play your video games there, you do your online shopping there, etc.  If you open up that window, let's say it's Chrome or Safari or Firefox or whatever it might be, and you're going in to look at your outline for the exam or to read your online textbook or whatever it might be, you're going to see your bookmarks of all the other things. Reddit, Amazon, all the things, and you are more likely to be distracted. So what I encourage people to do, especially if they don't have different computers, is to actually set different browsers for different functions of your life. So let's say, for instance, Chrome is your study work one. The bookmarks you have are just related to school, okay? And then the other browser is going to be your fun one. That can have all your other bookmarks. And that might sound really simple, but what that does is it creates different sets for your brain where it can create those correlations and those associations for each function.  So what you can do is you can do that such that you're able to get into that set a little bit more thoroughly and then let's say when it's your break time, your lunch time, in the evening, whatever it might be You go to your fun browser, and then you do your fun things. I actually do this for myself in my own capacities. And so in the different aspects of my job or my work, what I do is I'll have different browsers for different functions of my job. So for my business, let's say I'll have one browser where it has all of my administrative tools, my accounting tools, all the other things that I need to do to run my business, and then I might have another browser where I do other types of work where I can. Get into that focus. And so I think there's a lot of power behind being able to create those sets and those boundaries. And the reason that I highlight the boundaries piece is I think we often times think about boundaries related to interpersonal relationships. Like, I'm gonna tell so and so in my family not to talk to me about this topic. And we know that that's awesome, it's great, it's great to have those Boundaries But you can actually be creative with your boundaries and use them in other ways, in other capacities of your life. Yeah. Boundaries for yourself.  All right. So different browsers. That is a good little hack. I love that. I also super, super love Do Not Disturb and the focus modes. I actually use the focus modes in a lot of different capacities. So, I'll have, I have my work focus mode. I have my Do Not Disturb, which I use when I'm doing things like this, or the radio where I want to hear from literally not a single soul, because I have to focus. I also have a personal focus mode, where if I'm, let's say, spending time with my partner or friends, but I want to make sure that I'm accessible to other people in my life that might need to get a hold of me when I'm in an emergency, but I also want to be really focused, I have just notifications from just a few people. And so I love that. I'm a huge proponent of that.  The other thing I would say is and again, this is another obvious one But I think it's one that. we sometimes neglect is make sure that you set up your  space in a way that has all the comforts that you need and also all of the Physiological resources you need water snacks, etc  because that can reduce the need for us to get up and sort of You Interfere with our flow. Now it is important to get up. I will say it's important to take a break and to move yourself and things like this.  But set your space up a little bit, you know, make sure you have, I have a, you know, essential oils that I have on my desk research, you know, it was mixed a little bit on essential oils, but I say it can't hurt. So why not?  Um,  it, if you like it, try it.  Yeah, totally. Exactly.   So  if you could sort of picture a perfect desk, I, you know, I have, we probably all have various versions of what that looks like, but you have certain creature comforts, right? I know for yes, water, hydration, all those things. Sure. Maybe a coffee depending on the time of day, but also, you know, some people.  can use a little music in the background. Some  Mm hmm.  that they need to just have on hand. But I love that idea of planned breaks as opposed to just you getting kind of distracted and they get peppered in a non planned way. What would be a planned break though? When you say take a break, what does that look like when you get up from your desk and come back?  That's an excellent question. I would say it varies a little bit depending on the person and depending on the task. , for some people, if they take too long of a break, they're going to come out of their task too much where it's going to be hard to get back? in. So maybe just a five minute, you know, break. Snack, bath, or break is a good idea. Whereas for some people, or even in the same people, but in different tasks, actually stepping away is really important because what oftentimes gets, happens is we get stuck in whatever we're doing. Especially, let's say someone's writing a paper. I think this is a great example. You're writing a  paper and you're having writers block and you're like, I can't see past this paragraph and I have no idea what to write next.  If you're really stuck and you've been stuck for a little while, I would say actually walk away from it for like an hour or so. And then come back to it. Or if you have the time, walk away from it for like a day. , and then come back to it. It's so funny, I tell the story a lot. We as humans have a really hard time stepping away from things cognitively. And we get really stuck in what we're seeing visually to the point where we can't see past it. And so the story I tell is when I was working on my dissertation, worked super, super hard, just as I'm sure both of you did, and I, my advisor said, okay, before you send it in, before you send your draft in, Take a break from it. Don't look at it for a few days. Go back and do your last review. I went back and found so many typos, let me tell you.  And that was because when I was staring at it for several days straight, I couldn't see  past those Because my brain was so far into it. So when I took a step back and I came back to it a couple days later, I was able to look at it with fresh eyes. And so if there's something that is particularly important to you, let's say it's a really important paper, whatever it might be, or you're feeling really stuck, let's , that could be a great idea. The only thing is you want to make sure that you budget enough time to do that because you don't want to be scrambling at the very end,  because that might cause more stress for you and actually potentially cause more opportunity for mistakes and things like that.   One thing that I think, and it goes back a little bit to this idea of being efficient, but there is just like with bandwidth that you have on the, you know, with your wifi, et cetera, like we have cognitive bandwidth. And I think once we hit it to your point, we won't catch those mistakes. And so I like the idea. And we actually know like through research, et cetera, et cetera, if you take that break, you actually recoup the bandwidth. So you could be doing something. And again, it's just not efficient to go so deep. And so you're saying like, you're kind of going in so deep. into it. You couldn't pull out and see it like the forest for the trees, kind of an idea. Um, but also helping people understand like. Everybody has a limit to their cognitive bandwidth, and it's not, and some people might have a longer one, but we all have a limit, you know, at some point we will all reach it, and I think we can probably think about times where we've, we've reached it, and no amount of sitting and staring or reading or anything is going to be able to, nothing can get filled, there's no more room,   I think that already, I mean, you've said so many great things if I could just kind of summarize and then we'll get to our last questions that, , really reflecting and be aware of what are these kind of critical periods in which you are cognitively in great shape and pairing. Maybe your most difficult task, which is this is always a lot of my patients are really willful about this I'm always like, why are you getting all your easy stuff out of the way and then at 11 p. m You're gonna tackle the thing that you find most aversive and most challenging, right? I'm like you need to reward yourself with that little Spanish Spanish quiz that you know, you're in Entry level Spanish, even though you're fully fluent. , because so I love that, that idea. So like having awareness, like when are you really,  cognitively sharp? How do you pair it with demanding tasks? . How can we structure the environment, control distractions, reduce distractions. So we're in a space that is going to set us up for success.  You know, the one thing that does come to mind that Sarah, you know, the word motivation,  I definitely think there are things we can do to increase our motivation, but maybe you could speak a little bit about that because I think it is related to productivity.  I agree completely, and it's funny because one of my favorite things to talk about on this topic is procrastination. , I, back when I was on Twitter, like I still technically have a Twitter account, but I don't use it anymore. , I guess it's now X. Um, I had a tweet that went viral all about procrastination. And the idea behind this tweet, it shocked me how viral it went, because I had never gone viral.  , but I think it, Well, thank you, I appreciate it. Not that that's the most meaningful accomplishment I've had in my career, but whatever. It shocked me because it felt like such a simple tweet to me, but I realized that it actually resonated with so many people. And so it's this idea that what I recommend to people is that you identify what it is that's leading to your procrastination, and I encourage people to think about a couple different questions. One is, are you overwhelmed by the task that's at hand? That's  Do you also not know where to start? Or instead, do you not know where to start?  Are you feeling bored by the task?  Does it align with your values?  And is there a way in which I can engage my resources or do I need to look for new resources?  And the reason I think this relates to motivation is oftentimes there's this misconception that if I'm not getting things done, I'm  lazy,  hmm.  if I'm not getting things done, I'm not smart enough.  hmm. Mm  is that often times there's a lot of other stuff that could be going on that could lead to this. And I think something I hear a lot from college students in particular is this level of perfectionism.  Maybe it's perfectionism that was placed on you by yourself, or maybe by your parents, or by your culture, or whatever it might be. And so what I really encourage people to do is to figure out what is the friction between them and the task that they're procrastinating on.  So let's say, let's pick writing a paper as an example, because that's probably one of the more common college experiences that we procrastinate on and need to be productive on, is  one is  Do you know where to start? And so oftentimes people have a rough idea of what they need to do for the paper, but they don't know how to outline it or how to structure it or where to get their resources, their data, their information, whatever it might be. So figuring out where you want to start and how you want to structure that task, I think is helpful.  Another one is people find it oftentimes boring to write papers or some papers.  And.  dread.  Yeah.  absolutely, and there's a sense of dread, and I think one thing you can do is to figure out how you can pair it with a reward, so maybe that means your favorite coffee, or you guys had talked about music before, um, playing music. Now, uh, quick side note, people don't necessarily realize this, but there is music that is better than others to listen to when doing certain tasks, so music that doesn't have vocals, doesn't have lyrics, Is the best kind of music because what happens is when you listen to music with words That those words actually create a competing narrative in your mind that gets in the way of your thinking processes So that's why classical or jazz or those types of things are the best kinds of music to listen to when you're trying to focus bossanova, etc  Pairing it with something like that  the is it aligned with my values one is an interesting one when it comes to writing papers because at face value people are Like I don't really care about this paper But maybe your value is to do well in school, and  so doing well on the paper is actually aligned with the bigger value. So, thinking about that, and why is it important to you. And so, what I encourage people to do is to think about the different potential obstacles that are getting in the way of them getting better. Involved in that task and completing that task, um, which can be helpful. And I think this gets back to what you were talking about Liz before related to motivation. Because often times we are theoretically motivated to do the task. But that motivation is not accessible to us for these other reasons. And we feel a sense of dread or overwhelm or whatever it might be. We're excited by other things that we want to do that day. And so that impedes the motivation that we need to access in order to accomplish that particular task.  love the way you said that,  almost like asking, because I do think motivation and lazy get tied together and it's almost like it's, um, , a trait, like they almost assume it's something about themselves. But I love you said , am I having difficulty getting involved in a task? And I feel like that's really nonjudgmental.  It's just kind of like, I mean, who can't relate to that, right? It's not about Who has having a quality versus not having a quality. Exactly.  And I also think that it's, it's such a nice message too for the students who maybe have been told that they're lazy or  Mm hmm.  of their parents or someone else where it's just like, come on, don't be, you know, don't be lazy has been something that maybe they have been absorbed, you know, that they've absorbed from other people. So I like the idea of being like, wait, it's really just a problem to solve and kind of assess. You can be your own scientist about it.  All right. So this has been amazing, and I think it's probably just the tip of the iceberg of the advice that you have to offer. So one of the things I noticed when I was just crawling around, you know, stalking your website was that you have a productivity workbook on your site. So maybe you could give people a little trailer, like a little preview about what they could find in that, because especially if they want to hear more and they want more detail, I'm guessing that they can find it there.   Yeah, so it's a variety of different worksheets that are based on science and based on the work that I do, but they're very approachable and hopefully maybe even a little bit of fun. And there are a couple of different modules, so there's time management, there's task management, there's assessments of how to take a look at what thoughts are getting in the way, is there some perfectionistic tendencies, those types of things. There are also some personal productivity tips, so how to manage your finances, and the different chores you need to do in your home, and those types of things. And so, it really encourages people to investigate what's going on for them, again, in a non judgmental way, and to problem solve. I come from a very heady problem solving background, that's what I studied in grad school. And so, The idea here is to help people figure out how they can do that. And the workbook is very much tools based. So it's really encouraging people to learn tools, find their tools, maximize their tools, and to identify how they can get the things done that they need to do in a way that doesn't feel toxic or overwhelming.  I love it. All right. We'll make sure to include that in the show notes for any of our listeners who want to find out a little bit more and it's so lovely to meet you. I can see what all the buzz is about. Um, so thanks for coming on. We'll hopefully have you back. Oh my gosh. I would love that. So good to meet you guys.  meet you, Jessica. Thanks so much. I understand why you went viral.   Oh,   thank you!