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Lessons - Why Emotional Mastery Beats Time Management | Israa Nasir - Mental Health Educator · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore why productivity is less about time and more about emotions,
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  and how over-optimization can leave you feeling disconnected.
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  Learn how to reflect on your recent choices to uncover what drives your actions,
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  why the urge to stay busy often hides deeper emotional needs,
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  and how real success begins with paying attention to how you feel.
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  What I wanted to start this was with a line in your book where you say that productivity isn't
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  about managing time, but rather how you manage your emotions. So this is a very interesting
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  sort of novel cake on productivity. So talk to me about that line and then what you mean by that.
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  I think that one of the things that I found very absent in the productivity literature when
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  I was doing research is for my own self, originally that's how this book came to be. I was trying
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  to figure myself out. The thing that I kept coming up against is I can do all of the things,
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  but it's not changing how I feel. And then I would see that with my clients as well,
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  you know, as a therapist, I do a lot of work and behavior change, and that's something you come up,
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  you know, people say often in therapies, like, okay, will I change my habits? I'm doing all the
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  things, but it's not changing how I feel. And that kind of pinged me into looking into the literature
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  between like the connection between our relationships and motivate, I mean, our emotions and our
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  motivation. So I got really into like social motivation theory, social learning theory,
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  emotional needs, core needs. I started reading about that. And that's where I really came to this
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  conclusion myself, which was that, you know, our emotions drive all of our behavior.
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  Whether it's positive or negative behavior, our emotions are the foundation of how we show up
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  in the world. So it only makes sense that when we are trying to be hyper productive, that we are
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  trying to manage some emotion, whether we are pursuing a positive emotion through the productivity,
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  or we're trying to avoid a negative emotion through using productivity as a coping skill.
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  So that's kind of where I landed, even in my own experience, is, you know, I know that I was using
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  hyper productivity and optimization and being chronically busy to avoid a set of difficult
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  emotions. I think that really hits because even when you say it, the immediate reaction is,
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  yeah, most likely that is what I'm doing when I'm trying to over optimize or get an extra five
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  or 10% out of my day, even though I'm already putting it an hours. But that's very hard for
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  people to unpack because I think that if we talk about productivity, people don't usually tie it
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  to emotion, probably until it's too late, probably until that productivity and that that hustle culture
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  has basically ruined their life to a degree. So somebody listening to this, they want to unpack
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  even where that comes from or how they can start looking inside to figure out what drives their day
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  today. Where do they start looking? What are some of the questions that even like you asked yourself
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  when you understood that you were over optimizing or trying to be too productive?
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  So I didn't think that I was over optimizing what I realized is that I was disconnected.
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  I think that's a really good, I don't want to use the word good, but it is a good red flag to look
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  out for. It's one that you can't ignore is, are you feeling engaged in your life? Because no one's
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  going to sit there and think, oh, I'm really hyper optimized, right? It's just not the way we think
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  about things. And anyway, hyper optimized is a very rewarded, glorified thing. So you're not
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  going to question it like that. What you want to tap into is how do you feel after you do certain
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  things or how do you feel before you do them? So for anybody who was a little curious about, hey,
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  where do I sit on this spectrum? I wonder what my relationship to productivity is, is what she's
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  saying relevant to me? If you want to do that kind of examination, what I would say, and this is what
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  I did, is kind of look back to the last three weeks of your life and look at everything that you did,
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  everything you committed yourself to, the things you took on, everything you said yes to,
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  and then do a little bit of like an energy emotion audit. Just reflect back and think about,
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  okay, did I like the feeling I was having going into this? Was I dreading this interaction?
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  Was I kind of so tired? I was a dragging myself to this thing. How did I feel afterwards?
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  And you know, the two main questions you eventually want to get to are, do I have to do all the
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  things that I'm doing? And why do I do the things that I do? And you have to really kind of follow the
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  why in that question because the knee jerk reaction is, well, I have to do this because nobody else
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  can do it. I have to do this because of course I have to do it. It's my job. It's my role. It's who I
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  am. That's what I do in my friends group. We have to continue to follow that. Like, okay,
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  why do I have to be the person that does it? Why can't somebody else do it? You know, and just
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  continue to follow this why until you get to the core and you realize that everything you're
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  committing yourself to is feeding some emotional need of yours. When did you start to go down this
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  rabbit hole? I mean, the book is called toxic productivity. So what was the the inflection point
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  in your life that helped you understand that productivity can even be toxic because we're worse,
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  we even jumped into this and we went so deep into the emotional component and productivity,
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  but I think that even to back it up a little bit, like you mentioned, productivity is actually
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  glorified. So I think we even have to start by making the argument, why is some productivity even
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  toxic? But was it something that triggered in your life? Was it something that triggered with one
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  of your clients? Was it sort of like this repeating that you saw again and again and again in your
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  work? What was the light bulb moment that put you on this path and you and made you sort of
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  realize like, oh, this is something that we should probably talk about and figure out because this
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  is not a great direction for high performers, high achievers, type A people to go through their
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  entire life optimizing and being, you know, continually more productive. There was like an inflection
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  phase. It wasn't like one moment, but there was a phase and what was happening at that time is
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  there was a big gap between how people viewed my life and how I viewed my life. So, you know,
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  in my 20s, I come from a very high achieving family, right? You have to do well and we're
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  immigrant. So like you have to do well. And so I had done a lot of stuff in my 20s to set up,
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  you know, to meet the checklist of things like study and this and extracurricular and try to
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  start my own like digital health startup. It was just like this checklist, right? So in my early
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  30s, I was starting to get like the the outcome of all of that work. So I was I was meeting the
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  the deadlines or I was getting the goals that I had set out to achieve, right? But on the outside,
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  it really looked like I had all of it figured out. People would often say to me, oh my gosh,
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  like you do so much, your life looks so like you must be so happy now that you've done this thing,
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  you got this thing. And oh, I remember you were working on this like two years ago, like now you
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  have it, right? You do all of these things, you do all these things. But like there was such a big
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  gap between how people saw my life and how I saw my life. And it was continuous. Like everywhere I
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  went, people would say these things to me, but on the inside, like I just didn't feel it. I just
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  didn't feel it. And it felt really weird. Like the first couple of times people said it, I was like,
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  okay, whatever, like they they see my life a certain way, you know, you see a certain section of
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  someone's life. But I think like with enough people saying it, I kind of got a little worried
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  about myself. I started thinking that, no, maybe I have a high functioning depression because
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  why don't I feel good about my life? Why do other people feel like I should feel good about my
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  life, right? And so I did a little bit of like self discovery. I did like self assessment on
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  depression and I didn't meet the criteria for it. And so I was like, well, if it's not that,
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  then there is something. So now I've ruled out the big thing. So that's kind of when I really went
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  into this, this exploration of what's going on. And one of the, one of the things, one of the most
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  common things people were telling me about me is that I was really busy all the time. So I started
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  there. You know, sometimes it's worth listening to what people around you are saying. We don't
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  necessarily need to be influenced by other people's opinions. But I think it's worth examining
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  if there's a certain thing that repeatedly comes up over and over again. And so I was like,
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  am I too busy? Because to me, I was being normal. Like this is just, this is just being ambitious.
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  This is just normal. And so that's kind of that's where it began. So what did you, what did you,
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  by the way, this resonates so deeply? This everything you're saying, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's exactly
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  how my life is right now. So maybe there's a lot that I can learn from this. So what did you
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  discover about yourself when you started to do this, this introspection? I discovered that I was
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  over committing. I was saying yes to too many things. And the reason was I didn't want to feel
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  like I was missing out. I didn't want to feel like I was missing opportunities. I had this like very
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  powerful scarcity mindset just across the board. Professionally in my personal relationship,
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  in my, even in my marriage, in my friendships, like I had this like scarcity mindset that was
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  driving me. And I was very afraid that I was going to miss out on something. I'm going to lose out
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  an opportunity. I'm not doing the thing the right way so that there was this fear of not being on
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  the path. And that was really driving me to just constantly over commit. And that's like this
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  beginning of this, right? Like that's, that sets a foundation for you to constantly be on.
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