What Your Senses Can’t Perceive & What Happens When You Are Too Productive - SYSK Choice

Summary

Summary of "What Your Senses Can’t Perceive & What Happens When You Are Too Productive - SYSK Choice"

Something You Should Know
Host: Mike Carruthers
Release Date: March 8, 2025

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In this enlightening episode of Something You Should Know, host Mike Carruthers explores two profound topics: the limitations of human sensory perception compared to other animals, and the psychological ramifications of excessive productivity in modern life. Through insightful conversations with Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong and writer/podcaster Madeline Doerr, the episode delves into understanding our place in the natural world and reevaluating our relationship with productivity.

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1. What Your Senses Can’t Perceive

Guest: Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist and author of An Immense How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us

Mike Carruthers begins by highlighting the intriguing ways in which human sensory perceptions are limited compared to those of many other creatures. This segment features an in-depth discussion with Ed Yong, who sheds light on the concept of "umwelt" — the unique perceptual world each species inhabits.

Key Discussions:

• Human Sensory Limitations:

  • Humans cannot perceive ultraviolet light, a capability common among many other animals, especially birds. This means humans see far fewer colors compared to the vibrant spectra birds can experience.
  • Ed Yong emphasizes, “There are types of light, types of color that we can't sense. There are smells that we don't smell. There are sounds that are below or above our range of hearing” ([00:16] Ed Yong).

• Concept of Umwelt:

  • Each species experiences a “umwelt,” or a subjective slice of reality tailored to its survival needs.
  • Evolution fine-tunes these senses; for example, some fish can detect electric fields in murky waters, allowing them to navigate and hunt without relying on vision ([07:06] Ed Yong).

• Dogs’ Perception:

  • Dogs primarily rely on their sense of smell to interpret the world, which provides them with detailed social information and environmental data.
  • Ed Yong shares personal insights about his corgi, Typo, explaining how allowing dogs to engage in their natural sniffing behaviors enhances their happiness and reduces anxiety ([17:06] Ed Yong).

• Advanced Hearing in Animals:

  • Many birds possess faster and more acute hearing than humans, enabling them to detect intricate patterns in sounds that humans cannot perceive.
  • Creatures like bats and dolphins use echolocation, while whales utilize infrasound for long-distance communication, showcasing the vast diversity in animal auditory capabilities ([19:49] Ed Yong).

• Philosophical Insights:

  • Referencing Thomas Nagel’s essay “What is it like to be a Bat?”, Yong acknowledges the inherent challenge in comprehending the subjective experiences of other species, despite technological advancements ([22:07] Ed Yong).

• Bees and Co-evolution:

  • Bees' color vision has driven the evolution of flower colors, illustrating a symbiotic relationship where sensory capabilities shape the environment and vice versa.
  • Ed Yong marvels at how this interplay between bees and flowers defines beauty from both perspectives ([25:57] Ed Yong).

Notable Quotes:

• Ed Yong: “Each creature is really only perceiving a thin sliver of the fullness of reality” ([05:29] Ed Yong).
• Ed Yong: “The senses also shape the world around us in profound ways” ([25:57] Ed Yong).

2. What Happens When You Are Too Productive

Guest: Madeline Doerr, writer and podcaster, author of I Didn't Do that Thing: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt

Shifting focus from the natural world, Mike Carruthers engages in a compelling dialogue with Madeline Doerr about the pervasive culture of productivity and the accompanying guilt tied to it.

Key Discussions:

• The Productivity Paradox:

  • Society's relentless push to optimize time often leads to burnout, guilt, and a diminished sense of self-worth.
  • Madeline Doerr observes, “We are told to optimize our lives so that we have more time and then we just fill that with more optimizing of our lives” ([32:30] Madeline Doerr).

• Productivity vs. Busyness:

  • Doerr distinguishes between being productive (meaningfully accomplishing tasks) and being busy (filling time without substantial outcomes).
  • She notes that while productivity can be fulfilling, busyness often serves as a façade for genuine achievement.

• Impact of Social Media:

  • The curated nature of social media exacerbates feelings of inadequacy and perpetual underachievement by showcasing only the highlights of others’ lives.
  • Madeline Doerr: “There is a level of curation happening. And that can mean that we spiral in comparison and we see our real life and our incomplete to do list” ([39:28] Madeline Doerr).

• Managing Productivity Guilt:

  • Doerr suggests building buffer times into schedules to accommodate unexpected interruptions, which can alleviate the pressure and guilt associated with unmet tasks.
  • She introduces the idea of an “attention hour” to assess and redirect focus towards meaningful activities ([43:37] Madeline Doerr).

• Myth of Balance:

  • The pursuit of perfect work-life balance is unrealistic and can lead to stagnation. Instead, embracing the natural ebb and flow of priorities fosters greater kindness towards oneself.
  • Madeline Doerr: “Balance is often portrayed as the cure all... there is no such thing as a perfect balance” ([47:06] Madeline Doerr).

Notable Quotes:

• Madeline Doerr: “The surest way to waste time is to worry about wasting it” ([35:18] Madeline Doerr).
• Madeline Doerr: “If you are spending that 20 minutes scrolling social media mindlessly... it is about asking yourself whether that is a waste of time or whether maybe it is” ([43:37] Madeline Doerr).

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Conclusion

This episode of Something You Should Know masterfully intertwines the exploration of sensory perception with the introspection of personal productivity. Ed Yong’s insights into the limited yet specialized senses of animals challenge listeners to appreciate the diverse ways life on Earth experiences reality. Concurrently, Madeline Doerr’s discussion on productivity urges a reevaluation of societal pressures, advocating for a more compassionate and balanced approach to how we measure worth and manage time.

By bridging these two topics, Mike Carruthers encourages listeners to both expand their understanding of the natural world and cultivate healthier personal habits. The episode serves as a reminder to respect the intricate beauty of animal perceptions and to seek fulfillment beyond the confines of relentless productivity.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ed Yong: “Each creature is really only perceiving a thin sliver of the fullness of reality.” ([05:29] Ed Yong)
• Madeline Doerr: “The surest way to waste time is to worry about wasting it.” ([35:18] Madeline Doerr)

Recommendations:

• Books:

  • An Immense How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us by Ed Yong
  • I Didn't Do that Thing: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt by Madeline Doerr

• Podcast:

  • Routines and Ruts by Madeline Doerr

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By engaging with the content of this episode, listeners can gain a deeper appreciation for the complexities of sensory biology and adopt more intentional approaches to productivity, ultimately enhancing both their understanding of the world and their personal well-being.

Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

Today on Something you should know. Whether you're left handed or right handed has a strong influence on decisions you make, then how we humans perceive the world is different than the way a lot of other creatures do.

[Ed Yong]

We cannot see ultraviolet light, which the vast majority of animals with eyes can see. We see very many fewer colors than almost every bird can perceive.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also something to consider if you ever thought of smuggling your own snacks into a movie theater. And our obsession with productivity and not wasting time.

[Madeline Doerr]

We tend to worry about the time that we're wasting. And the surest way to waste time is to worry about wasting it. So if we take away the worry about wasted time, maybe we can see the time that we enjoy wasting is actually not wasted time.

[Mike Carruthers]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Today.

[Mike Carruthers]

Something you Should Know with Mike Carruthers hello, welcome to another episode of Something youg Should Know. Thank you for joining me. I don't know if you knew this or not, but the upper right side of a menu or a webpage or even a newspaper, the upper right side is often considered prime real estate. It's the first place people look if they're right handed. Left handed people actually see the left side sooner. Cognitive scientist Daniel Casasanto says our hands and eyes have everything to do with how we interact with the physical world, and our handedness can have a lot to do with the decisions we make. Dr. Casasanto asked participants in a study to decide between two products to buy, two job applicants to hire, or two alien creatures to trust. Right handed participants regularly chose the one on the right side of the page, while lefties chose the one on the left side of the page. People tend to prefer things they see or experience on the same side as their dominant hand. That's apparently because they're easier to reach, perceive, and interact with. And you can use that phenomenon to your advantage by catering to someone's dominant side in professional or personal situations. And that is something you should know as you travel through life on this planet. You see the world as it is, right? Well, not exactly. What you see is the world the way humans see the world. But other creatures on the very same planet see a very different world in very different ways. And so what makes this so interesting to me is that if animals see things so differently than we do, who's right? What is real? And does it even matter? Here to discuss this and give us some understanding of exactly how other creatures perceive their own reality is Ed Yong. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning science journalist and staff member at the Atlantic. And he's author of a book called An Immense How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us. Hey, Ed. Welcome to Something youg Should Know.

[Ed Yong]

Hi, Michael. Thanks for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

So when I look out the window, what I see isn't necessarily all that's there. It's just all that's there that I can perceive, which is a little hard to get your head around. So help me get my head around that.

[Ed Yong]

So I'm sitting here experiencing the world around me. The sights, the sounds, the textures, the smells. And I think you're right that it doesn't occur to most people that that experience is only partial. And yet it is. There is so much about the world that we are missing. There are types of light, types of color that we can't sense. There are smells that we don't smell. There are sounds that are below or above our range of hearing. Other animals can tap into that. And so each creature is really only perceiving a thin sliver of the fullness of reality. And I find that really fascinating. There's a word for this idea. The word is umwelt. It comes from the German for Environment, but it doesn't mean the physical environment. It means the part of the world that each creature can tap into, that each creature can sense, can perceive. And that part is always limited. I find that idea, the umwelt concept, to be incredibly humbling. It means that for all our vaunted intelligence, humans really are still only perceiving a small fraction of all there is to perceive, and that our understanding of the world could be greatly expanded by taking into account the senses of other animals.

[Mike Carruthers]

I would imagine that the reason creatures see that little slice that is uniquely theirs of the bigger reality is because that's what they need to see. That's what they need to perceive in order to survive.

[Ed Yong]

Yeah, that's right. Evolution tunes an animal's umwelt, an animal's senses to its particular needs. We humans have very good eyes, we have decent hearing. But we don't, for example, sense electric fields of the kind that every living thing inevitably produces. There are fish that can sense those electric fields. They tend to live in very, very murky water, where vision isn't very useful, but an electric sense is very useful. These fish produce their own electric fields, like living batteries, and they sense the ways in objects around them distort and deflect those fields. That allows them to navigate through these incredibly murky, often dark waters without the need for vision. Likewise, in a similar way, animals that tend to navigate over incredibly long distances, like songbirds or sea turtles, have the ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field. It's almost as if they have living compasses inside their bodies. And that gives them a way of knowing the right heading, knowing where they are in the planet at any given time, without the need for senses that could be more easily occluded, again, like vision or smell.

[Mike Carruthers]

So one of the things that interests me about this is if there are other creatures that smell things we can't smell or see things that we can't see. How do we know that? Because if we, if we can't see them, how do we know that they can see them?

[Ed Yong]

Yeah, that's a great question. So in a lot of cases, scientists do simple experiments where they expose an animal to a particular thing, let's say a sound that is too high pitched for us to hear, or a smell that at concentrations below, what we can detect. It's easy enough to do that, and then you can look at the animal's reactions. But then often it's the reverse. The discovery of these incredible senses comes from watching animals behaving in unusual ways and asking how Are they doing that? Bats, for example, can echolocate. That means they produce high pitched calls and they listen out for the rebounding echoes and they use those to navigate through the dark world around them. Echolocation was discovered when scientists watch bats flying through rooms that were so dark they couldn't possibly be seeing anything. And yet they were swerving around obstacles, they were plucking insects out of the air. How were they doing that? At the time when, at a point when people managed to create ultrasonic detectors, detectors that could recognize the very high pitched calls that bats were producing, people realized that they were actually creating and listening to these sounds well above the range of human hearing. So that's a great example of how these senses tend to be discovered. It's a mix of curiosity, of careful observation, and of using technology to compensate for our own sensory shortfalls.

[Mike Carruthers]

When you look at our ability to perceive the world compared to, say, other, well, any other animal, I mean, do we, do we tend to do better than most? Do we see and perceive less than many? Where are we on the scale?

[Ed Yong]

You can sort, you can draw some comparisons. So vision is a good example. For example, humans have incredibly sharp vision. Our eyes have better resolution than the eyes of almost any other animal, except for birds of prey like eagles. So we're very good at seeing things in great detail. A lot of the patterns that we can see on animal bodies aren't actually visible to the animals themselves. A lot of the spots of butterflies or zebra stripes look like just, they just fade into gray to the eyes of a lion or another zebra. But there are always trade offs with the senses. So eyes can either have exceptional resolution or exceptional sensitivity, and they can never have both at the same time. So the trade off for our incredibly acute eyes is that they fail very easily when light gets dim. So our night vision is very poor compared to other mammals. But the sharpness of our eyes is excellent. Our hearing is very good, but it's limited in its range. So things like bats and dolphins can produce high pitched sounds that we can't hear. Even rats and mice, which humans have studied for centuries, have been having animated ultrasonic conversations that we have been completely oblivious to for most of that time. Throughout all of that time, our sense of touch is very good. Our fingertips are exquisitely sensitive. But there are other animals, like sea otters, that have hands that are just as sensitive, but are also very, very fast. They not only have incredibly sensitive fingers, but they can use those fingers to detect food that's buried or hidden much more quickly than a Human could. And then there are senses that we absolutely do not even have. We cannot sen the earth's magnetic field like a humble robin or even some kinds of insects can. We cannot see ultraviolet light which actually the, the vast majority of animals with eyes can see. We see very many fewer colors than almost every bird can perceive. So we are very good in some areas, Very, very poor in a lot of areas. And that's kind of the norm for the animal kingdom. You know, nothing can sense everything because as we've said already, nothing needs to.

[Mike Carruthers]

We're talking about how different creatures on this planet see the world differently than we do. And my guest is Pulitzer Prize winning author Ed Yong. His book is called An Immense How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us. So my wife had some friends over and I asked them, have you ever shopped at or heard of quints? Because I had just heard they were going to advertise here and I didn't know much about them so I wanted to know what other people knew. And all of them except one I think said, oh, I love quints. Their clothes are fabulous. Well, since then I've gotten two cashmere sweaters, a couple of polo shirts, and I wish you could see them here. You can hear, that's the sound of my Mongolian cashmere sweater. And their cashmere sweaters start at $50. They also have these iconic 100% leather jackets, pants for every occasion. Quint's has everything for men and women and their clothes are really high quality. The best part, Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quint's cuts the cost of the middleman and then passes the savings on to us. Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices. Look, just go check out Quint's, see how great their clothes look and how amazing the prices are and buy something. It's a great way to support this show and I know you're going to love it. Indulge in affordable luxury. Go to Quince.comSYSK for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U-N-C-E.comSYSK to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comSYSK recently I was asked to try a supplement called Mitopure and then talk about it here. And I said, well let me check it out. So Mitopure is a precise dose of Urolithin A. That's a metabolic compound that is clinically proven to target the effects of age related cellular decline. And it's also found in small amounts in certain fruits and nuts. Now, as I've talked about many times here, I work at staying fit and healthy. It's important to me. And when I researched some studies online and found Urolithin A, which is what Mitopure is, is shown to deliver double digit increases in muscle strength and endurance and I saw that it was safe to take, I started taking it and I've been taking it a while now and I see a change. I have noticed improved muscle strength and endurance. Mitopure works by promoting an essential cellular cleanup process. It clears out dysfunctional mitochondria and it's the only Urolithin a supplement on the market clinically proven to target the effects of age related cellular decline. So look, I invite you to join me and awaken the strength, power and resilience already in you with the first and only supplement clinically proven to rejuvenate health at the cellular level. And I'd love to hear about your results. Timeline, that's the company behind Mitopure. Timeline is offering 10% off your order of Mitopure. Go to timeline.com something that's T I M E L I N E timeline.com something so Ed, talk a little bit about animals that are maybe closer to home, like dogs and cats. Animals that we see more frequently and we observe their behavior. We're not necessarily sure what we're observing, so might be interesting to find out.

[Ed Yong]

So dogs live in a world that's dominated by smell. Smell is a primary sense for them. It's the way that they explore, it's the way they socialize, they experience the world. And I think humans often forget this because certainly those of us who can see are so dominated by vision that we assume that other animals do the same. I have a dog. His name is Typo. He's a corgi. When we go on walks, I often see other dog owners yanking their dogs along. To them, the walk is a means of exercise or travel from A to B. But that's a bit of a shame because if you actually let dogs do their own thing on a walk, which I try and do with mine, often what they want to do is they want to sniff. They will spend a long time sniffing a random piece of pavement or a random fence post that another dog has just peed upon. You know, all dog owners, I'm sure, are very familiar this feeling when you're walking along quite happily. And their dog grinds to a halt and just starts very intently exploring something around it. And that speaks to how important smell is to them. When my dog sniffs a patch of pavement that another dog has peed on, it feels a lot to me, like me checking a social media account. That dog starts sensing which other dogs have been around in the neighbourhood. It can tell stuff about those dogs health, you know, maybe what they've been eating recently. It's a, it's a social update from a distance. And that's just one of many types of information that dogs are getting by sniffing the world around them. I think, you know, by depriving dogs of that, we're really severing them from a really important part of their life. It would be as if you and I went on a hike and every time I stopped to appreciate a beautiful viewpoint, you clapped your hands over my eyes and dragged me along. You know, I think that dogs, when they are allowed to smell and when they're allowed to have agency over what they choose to sniff, studies have shown that they tend to be happier, they tend to be less anxious, more optimistic, you know, and that's something that dog owners can give to them by thinking about the way they sense the world.

[Mike Carruthers]

And I've also heard that dog's hearing is very good. It's certainly better, I guess, than human hearing in the sense that they can hear sounds, hear frequencies that we don't hear. But is a dog's hearing spectacularly good or is it just a little better than ours?

[Ed Yong]

Their hearing is very good, they're very good at localizing sound, so telling which direction a sound is coming from. But you know, human hearing is also pretty exceptional. We have very decent hearing, we have good localization, we can hear over a wide range of frequencies. If you want to think about really incredible hearing though, there are all kinds of examples around the animal kingdom. So most birds have much faster hearing than we do. So that is, they can resolve very, very fast moving changes in pitch or volume that our ears can't pick up. So if you've ever listened to a songbird singing and wondered and had this strange feeling that there's probably more in that song than we can hear, then you'd be right. There are a lot of intricacies in the songs of songbirds that humans just can't pick out and that they absolutely can. You know, like one easy example of this, there is a bird called the whippoorwill that makes a song that sounds to a human like it's got three syllables. It actually has five in it. It's just that they happen too quickly for us to pick out. But when a mockingbird mimics the song of a whippoorwill, it gets all five syllables because its hearing is that much faster. And then there are creatures that have hearing that can hear sounds beyond what we can hear. Either ultrasonic calls that are too high pitched for us to hear, or infrasonic calls that are too low pitch for us to hear. Ultrasonic calls are really good for sensing the environment. So bats and dolphins use those to navigate with echolocation to an extent in environments that we couldn't navigate in. Infrasonic calls travel over very large distances. So whales, the biggest whales, like blue whales, can use infrasound to communicate over distances of kilometers, miles. Some people argue that they might even be able to hear each other over the span of an entire ocean.

[Mike Carruthers]

When you understand how some of these other creatures perceive their reality, does it give us any real insight in it, in what it's like to be them?

[Ed Yong]

You know, let's go back to bats. Bats are a very famous example of this because the philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote this essay called what is it like to be a Bat? Where he argued that even if you imagined yourself using echolocation or flying through the air with leathery wings, you would never really be able to get in, get, get into the head of a bat to really understand what its subjective experience of echolocation was like. And he's right. You know, echolocation is a strange sense because bats need to produce sound in order to hear the rebounding echo. So by listening for the sounds that they produce, you can get us. You can sort of get a sense of what information they're trying to wrest from the world. When a bat is scanning open air, it's producing different kinds of sounds than when it is trying to hunt down a fast moving insect. So by recording the bat's core, you can kind of get at its intent. You can almost read its mind. And yet there is still that gulf that Nagel described where you still don't really know what it is like to be a bat, to get inside the head of a bat, to imagine the conscious experience of a bat. So science and technology can certainly take us a long way, but there is this gulf that we will never be able to cross. And the only way to cross it really is by making what one scientist, Alexander Horowitz, described to me as informed, imaginative leaps.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, and that's what's so interesting, and that's the big mystery because, like, even with my dog, I mean, when I walk my dog, sometimes she'll stop and roll around in the ground and rub her neck on a specific spot. And I have no idea why or what that does for her, what itch, that scratches, but it clearly must be pleasurable, and I'll never know.

[Ed Yong]

Yes, I think that's right. You know, my dog and I can communicate. We absolutely can. You know, I can tell him things, and he doesn't speak English, but he obeys certain commands. He understands certain bits about my mood. I can do the same. I can take guesses about what he wants. I can tell when he's hungry, when he wants to play. And I, having learned about the senses of animals, I can guess at what he gets when he sniffs as we walk, what he might hear, what he might feel, but I don't entirely know. And here is an animal that I love very deeply and that I spend every day with. There's always going to be that gap. But even if we'll never fully know the answer, it is glorious and beautiful to try and imagine, to try and cross that gulf, even if we'll never be fully able to. Because trying to do that teaches us so much more about the creatures that we share our lives and our planet with, and it shows our world in a new light. When I watch typo sniffing his way along the street, it changes my understanding of the blocks that I walk along. It changes my sense of how quickly the neighborhood changes, what kinds of information are seeded in the very ground that I don't have access to. It makes the world, and it makes my dog feel that much more miraculous to me.

[Mike Carruthers]

Lastly, talk about bees, because they seem like they're really interesting creatures and we see them all the time and not sure what they do and why they do what they do, but so talk about them.

[Ed Yong]

Let me tell you the. The really cool thing about bees. So bees pollinate flowers, as we know. If you took all the colors of all the flowers in the world and you did an analysis and asked what kind of eye would be best at seeing these kinds of colors, what kinds of. What kind of color vision would be best at discriminating all the flowers on the world? What you get is something very much like a bee eye. It is an eye that has three kinds of color sensing cells, much like humans do, but that, unlike us, are most sensitive to green, blue, and ultraviolet. You would therefore think that maybe bees have eyes that are really well adapted to seeing flowers, but that's actually completely wrong, because bees or insects that gave rise to bees came first and then flowers evolved. So what actually happened was that flowers evolved colors that ideally tickle the eyes of bees and other insects. And that's incredible to me because we often think of the senses as these passive receptacles for information, right? Like I'm sitting here, light is entering my eyes, sound is entering my ears. I'm not doing anything. They feel like they receive. But in doing that, the senses also shape the world around us in profound ways. The way the eyes of bees and other insects determined the kinds of colors that flowers eventually evolved. So beauty as we know it is not just in the eye of the beholder. It arises because of that.

[Mike Carruthers]

I. Well, I love this conversation because it makes you think about something that you never think about. The way other creatures, the way other animals perceive their world, which is also our world, but perceive it in such a different way than we do. I've been talking with Ed Yong. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning science journalist, a staff member at the Atlantic, and author of a book called An Immense How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Ed. This was a lot of fun. Shopify has been a sponsor of ours for a long time and I've learned a lot about them. What you need to know is that Shopify is the business behind the business that makes the selling and shopping part of any business. Simple. Which is why so many businesses, I mean like literally millions of businesses, use Shopify to make everything run smoothly. Shopify is the number one checkout system on the planet. If you have a business, Shopify should be the business behind your business. Businesses like Gymshark, Magic Spoon, even companies like Mattel and Heinz use Shopify. And they could use anybody. One really cool thing Shopify has is shop pay shop. Pay boosts conversions up to 50%. If you have a business, big or small, or you're just starting out, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Which is why you need Shopify. Businesses that want to grow, sell and succeed do it with Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout as Mattel or Magic Spoon. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.comsysk all lowercase go to shopify.comsysk to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comsysk Many times I have mentioned how I love to cook. Yeah, but not Every day. Which is why it's always a good day when I see a box of Factor meals outside my front door. Factor delivers chef made gourmet meals that make eating well so easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes. Because on those days that I don't want to cook, I still want to eat well. And factor meals are just so good, right? I mean, this is not frozen food. These are fresh meals. And they have all kinds of dietary preferences like calorie, smart, protein plus keto or vegetarian. Now, I'm an adventurous eater, so I try a lot of different factor meals. I tend to like any of their meals that have a sauce. I know that sounds weird, but I love their sauces. Now, these are the kinds of delicious meals that can show up at your door in just a few days. Smoked Gouda chicken with roast potatoes, Parmesan and garlic cream Shredded beef. That garlic cream sauce is one of those really good sauces. Fiesta salmon with black bean and corn saute. Eat smart with Factor. Get [e-mail] FactorPodcast and use Code Factor Podcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's Code [e-mail] FactorPodcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. And I'll put that code in the show notes. It seems so many of us are caught up in this endless quest. Endless desire to be productive, to get more done, to search for the perfect system or routine that will help us get everything accomplished on our to do list. And then we feel guilty if we don't get everything on that list accomplished. It's a productivity grind and it can really wear you down. There's gotta be a better way. And here to help you find that better way is Madeline Doerr. She is a writer and podcaster. Her podcast is called Routines and Ruts and she has a book out called I Didn't do that Thing. Letting Go of Productivity Guilt. Hey, Madeline, welcome.

[Madeline Doerr]

Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what is that thing? What is that quest? What is that big desire that we all have to wanna get more done, get everything accomplished and then when we we want to get more done, it.

[Madeline Doerr]

Is a curious thing, isn't it, Mike? That we are told to optimize our lives so that we have more time and then we just fill that with more optimizing of our lives. It's an endless game, it seems, and I think that it is a call for pause or a call for thought because isn't it that we should be optimizing our time so that we have more time for the things that meaningful or important to us? And productivity, it can be fantastic. We all need to get things done. But it's the never enough, never quite reaching an end point that can have us on this hamster wheel in our days. And it can contribute to things like burnout and overwhelm and stress and perhaps take us out of our lives.

[Mike Carruthers]

And doesn't it seem that no matter how productive you get, how many things you get done, you at the end of the day end up focusing on the thing you didn't get done and then that makes you feel guilty?

[Madeline Doerr]

It does. You can really spiral in these feelings of productivity guilt. And you can write off the whole day and deem it a failure because of that one thing that you didn't get done, or perhaps several things that you didn't get done. And so I think that where that really can stem from is this idea that in our society we've tied productivity to our sense of self worth. And when we do that, what we do is never enough. We never quite reach that feeling of being complete. Our to do list is never complete. And so I think we're set up to fail a little bit here because we're told that productivity is a measure of our worth, but it's never quite enough. And so we never quite get there and we pile on these feelings of guilt and shame at the end of the day. And so I think it's really about untethering that idea that productivity is the sole measure of our worth and we can find some, some other things in our days to count amongst the doing. And so it's always curious to me that you can get to the end of the day and have that, that guilt feeling and, and focus solely on the thing that you didn't do and overlook all of the treasures and all of the perhaps moments of connection that you had or the moments of kindness or what you learned, even the mistakes you make.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, I find it interesting that it seems like there's two kinds of time. There's either the time that you're being productive or you're wasting time. And there aren't a lot of other categories. It seems like just because you're not being productive doesn't mean necessarily that you're wasting time.

[Madeline Doerr]

Yes, I agree. I think that there's many, many categories in between. And even what we deem wasted time, I think is worth getting curious about because we're quick to call ourselves Lazy, or we're quick to say that we're wasting time, we're quick to say that we're procrastinating. But when we inspect that, we can actually see that sometimes it's those moments that are incredibly valuable. Are we procrastinating or are we actually thinking about the problem in a deeper way? Are we letting ideas sort of roll around in our minds before we take that action? And I think it's an interesting thing because we tend to worry about the time that we're wasting. And if anything, I think that the surest way to waste time is to worry about wasting it. So if we take away the worry about wasted time and we get curious about those moments, maybe we can see that the time that we enjoy wasting is actually not wasted time. Or we can see that it's thinking time. Or we can see that all important moment of rest and downtime.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, I love what you said, that there is no bigger waste of time than spending time worrying about wasting time.

[Madeline Doerr]

Yes, exactly. And something that's been really helpful for me is actually returning to one of my favorite books by Arnold Bennett. It's called how to live on 24 hours a day. And it was written in 1908. And so it's always a gem to kind of return to these texts and see that we've been grappling with these quandaries for many decades and centuries even. And what Arnold Bennett points out is that we cannot waste time in advance. So I think sometimes when we're caught in that productivity, guilt, feeling, or we're worrying about wasting time, we lament the morning that we might have wasted, for instance, and we carry that worry into the afternoon when actually we can't waste time in advance. So instead we can have this opportunity to turn over a new leaf. And what that means is that we can see that this moment in front of us is so far unspoiled, instead of falling further down that spiral that we can fall into, we can turn it over and begin afresh.

[Mike Carruthers]

One of the things I think people find frustrating is when you schedule your time, you schedule things to do and how long it's going to take. And however you schedule it, what you can't schedule is what you don't know. You don't know what's going to happen, what's going to come up, what emergency, what thing is going to need your attention that isn't on your list. And that causes frustration in a lot of people. It's like, oh, now I've got to waste time doing this. Other thing that wasn't in the plan.

[Madeline Doerr]

It'S inevitable, it's life. And so perhaps if we can build in some buffer room in our days and in our plans for those inevitable surprises, distractions and interruptions, perhaps that would be what can lessen that productivity guilt that we experience because we can see, oh, okay, so I didn't get that the thing done that I thought that I needed to do today because of this emergency and interruption. And that's life. And so I'm not solely to blame here. I think there's a fine line in terms of obviously there's these things that we want to accomplish in our lives to have a sense of meaning or satisfaction. And in many senses we do need to find that motivation within ourselves. But I also think that we need to acknowledge when perhaps there's things outside of our control that, you know, knock over our plans for the day.

[Mike Carruthers]

Still, there are people I know that I'm very envious of because they seem to get so much more done in a week or a day or what. You know, I'll see them on Facebook or something and hey, they're over here doing this. And then they did this other thing and I'm thinking, how do they get it all done? Is it me? And maybe they don't, or are there just some people who seem to get a lot more done than others?

[Madeline Doerr]

Well, I do have a suspicion that perhaps people aren't able. People aren't getting as much done as they might portray they are on social media. I think that it's so easy to curate our lives. And even when we look on social media, we know that it's curated, we know that we're looking at a highlight reel intellectually, but it can be difficult to untangle that feeling of comparison where we fall short. So I think that there's two things at play here. And the first is that there is a level of curation happening. And that can mean that we spiral in comparison and we see our real life and our incomplete to do list. But really it might be that other people also have things that are incomplete. It's inevitable as well, where no one is perfect. But the other side of this is that perhaps there are some people that have a greater capacity for productivity and perhaps they do get more done. Perhaps they have higher energy or more attention or more resources. Maybe they've got more assistance in getting things done. Maybe they've got a home gym and they're able to kind of get their 30 minute run in early in the morning because they don't have to sort of commute to a gym or something like that. There's all these different tweaks in our lives, and I think that when we're comparing, we have to remember that we're comparing apples and oranges because we're all individuals with variances. And I think that that can be really comforting to remember that we live in our day and nobody else's.

[Mike Carruthers]

Still, you must have found in your quest for, you know, the perfect productive day, there are some things I don't know, whether they're strategies or hacks or techniques or whatever that will help you get more done or will help you at least get to the things that you say are important and that some people do seem to do that better than others.

[Madeline Doerr]

Potentially people do. But I think that there's so many suggestions out there in terms of how to get more done and there's some really helpful tips. There's some great systems that work for people. I found that when I was in pursuit of being perfectly productive, I found that the hacks and the time management techniques became something that was something that I tripped over or became even further entangled by, because here was this promise, this solution, this hack will help you get more done. This hack will make you more successful and happier. And when I tried that and it still didn't work or I wasn't able to stick to it, I fell further into the productivity spiral. Because then I sensed that, oh, well, now not only am I feeling I'm falling behind, but I'm also failing at this simple hack that's meant to be able to sort of offer this cure and solution. And so I found that again, this can contribute to the spiral. And so instead of looking for this one size fits all solution, it's about finding what works for you. And it was a very freeing thing I found because those hacks can work for some people. And if it's working for you, that's fantastic. But the issue comes when it doesn't work for you and you feel further entangled. Perhaps that's a sign that you're looking in the wrong direction for the solution and it really has to come back to finding what works for you.

[Mike Carruthers]

Talk about distraction. Because people, I think, are easily distracted because there are so many. And you know, you can say, well, I was just being creative when I was looking at Facebook for 25 minutes. But no, maybe, but mostly you were just wasting time looking at Facebook. And maybe that's fine, but it does seem that we are easily distracted and then we feel bad about it later. Because we wasted that time, you know, looking at Facebook or whatever. But. But distractions are there, and some people give in to them and other people don't.

[Madeline Doerr]

Yes. I think the key to getting curious is definitely it requires a sense of being honest with ourselves. And so if you are spending that 20 minutes scrolling social media mindlessly, I think that it is about asking yourself whether that is a waste of time or whether maybe it is. Sometimes we need those moments of mindlessness, and they have their place. And again, acknowledging that we have been set up to fail here, and that these platforms and these devices do have a very addictive quality to them, and so they're designed to distract us. But when it comes to tackling those distractions in our days, again, it's acknowledging that there's an inevitability to them. An antidote can actually be to apply attention to things. And so rather than trying to eliminate distractions, I think that we would be chasing our tail all day. If we're trying to do that, we can focus our attention instead. And one suggestion could potentially be to set an attention hour. And so that's where you have this moment to really assess what you've been paying attention to. So if you pay attention to what you're paying attention to, you'll actually really be able to see this inventory of your life, and you'll be able to see whether it is. Whether you're spending your time the way that you wish to. And perhaps instead of saying, okay, well, I'm going to eliminate that distraction of social media, you can say, I'm going to pay my attention to cooking this beautiful meal for somebody or on this creative project that I really want to pursue.

[Mike Carruthers]

So let's talk about the difference between being productive and being busy, because I think there's a big distinction between the two. But I. Because I know a lot of people who are really busy, but they don't necessarily get a lot done. They're just busy being busy.

[Madeline Doerr]

Yes, there can be a real cult of busyness, and busyness can be worn as this badge of honor. We ask people how they are, and they often say busy. And I think that there's lots of different categories as well of busyness. Sometimes busyness is circumstantial. Sometimes busyness is something that we have put in place because we find that we need the momentum at this point in our life, or it could be even our natural frequency. Some people are. They thrive off being busy. It's that sort of adage of ask a busy person to do something, but then there's another category of busy where it is this badge of honor and they're busy to prove their sense of worth or to prove that they're in demand or that their lives are full. And I think that that can be. If it's your natural frequency and if it works for you, then that's great. I think that you'd find that those types of busy people aren't complaining about being busy. It's those that are complaining about being busy. And it's by their own design that perhaps is worth inspecting. And it differs from being productive in terms of those moments of true productivity when we're engaged and when we're perhaps in flow and we have that element of that creative lens applied to it. But when we're just busy for busy's sake, we're crowding our schedules without really thinking about whether these things that we're doing are what we wish to be doing in the limited time that we have.

[Mike Carruthers]

What is the myth of balance?

[Madeline Doerr]

Balance is often portrayed as the cure all. It's a balance. People say, oh, you just need to find a work life balance. But when you think about balance, if you think of it as a scale, it's constantly balancing. There's no such thing as a perfect balance. Because if there were, our lives in many ways would be stagnant, they'd be unmoving. And we're constantly balancing. And I think that in many ways I like to think of it as a wobble that we have in daily life. We wobble towards different priorities. Again, we might wobble towards different emergencies or interruptions that might occur in our day. And sometimes there's moments in our lives where different things take the priority. And so instead of finding this perfect balance where we're unmoving, if we embrace the fact that we're constantly in flux and we do wobble within our days, again, maybe we could find some more kindness towards those wobbles rather than judging them. And we could see that it's just part of the living. And so we can sort of take this idea of balance off its pedestal because we will never really arrive. And if we did, maybe we'd find it's kind of dull anyway.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, so much of what you've been talking about is how we feel about our productivity. Not so much the productivity itself, but on those, you know, those days where you really, you nail it, you just get everything done and everything goes well and that feels great. So you kind of want more of those days. But I don't know that those days are Anything other than just, you know, freak accidents that maybe that's not the goal. But those days sure do feel good.

[Madeline Doerr]

Yes, it can feel electric, can't it? Those days, Mike, where you do somehow manage to check it all off, or the day unfolded in the order that you thought it would and you feel like you're firing on all cylinders. It's a wonderful feeling. And I think that's perhaps why we chase productivity, because it does feel good on the days that we do the thing. But I think that it feels so good because in many ways it's a small miracle those days that they feel more enlivening because it doesn't happen every day. And so when they do happen, I think there should be a wonderful appreciation for them. But it's acknowledging that not every day is the same. And in many ways, we don't necessarily want the. That would become a Groundhog Day if what was once electric, if. If it happened day after day after day, it would lose its shimmer. And so I think we do want the variance. And perhaps it's about finding what works for you to set up the day in a way that might put you in a position to have one of those days. But acknowledge that we also have days that are littered with distractions. And sometimes the day is just not our day. But that doesn't mean that we are a failure and we need to. To spoil it completely. We can still find the small good things within days like that as well.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it's good to hear. I think for a lot of us, a lot of people, that that uneasy guilt feeling of not getting enough done or. Or that feeling that I'm wasting time if I'm not, like, on task all the time, that we all feel that at some time and maybe we. Maybe we just need to be a little kinder to ourselves. I've been talking with Madeline Doerr. She is a writer and podcaster. Her podcast is called Routines and Ruts, and you can find that wherever you listen to podcasts. And her book is called I Didn't do that Thing, Letting Go of Productivity Guilt. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here, Madeline.

[Madeline Doerr]

Thanks, Mike. It's been a delight to speak with you.

[Mike Carruthers]

As I'm sure you know, movie theaters don't want you to bring in your own snacks. Many theaters forbid it. They all frown upon it. You probably could get away with it, but according to David Callahan, who's the author of a book called the Cheating Culture, doing so is really wrong. As a guest, you should obey the rules of the establishment just like you would at any other business that serves food. Movie theaters make about 40% of their revenue from the sale of food and drinks. There's no doubt that the markups are sky high, but keep in mind that theaters have to share ticket sale revenue with film distributors and studios. In the old days, snacks and drinks were not allowed in most carpeted plush theaters. Then once TV came along, the theater industry had to pull out all the stops and allow people to have snacks. But you really should buy the ones they offer, and that is something you should know. Your rating and review would really help us if you could find the time to just take a moment, write a few words about this podcast and post it wherever you listen. I'm Mike, her Brothers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

[Tom Bilyeu]

If you don't understand what's happening in the world, you are already losing. I'm Tom Bilyeu, co founder of the Billion Dollar brand Quest Nutrition and host of Impact Theory. And every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I break down the biggest stories in politics, business, future tech, AI before they hit the mainstream. Information is power, but only if you get it fast enough to actually act on. That's why I record these episodes in the morning and drop them in the afternoon. So you're always ahead of the curve, getting unfiltered high signal insights on the topics that actually affect your future. And if if you want to be a part of the conversation, you can join me live on my YouTube and Twitch channels to help shape the topics, ask questions, and prep the episode with me in real time. The people who see it first win. The rest, they get left behind. If you want to stay ahead, think for yourself and take control of your future. Search for Impact Theory wherever you're listening right now. Until then, my friends, be legendary.

[Kristen Russo]

Hello, I am Kristen Russo. And I am Jenny Owen Youngs. We are the hosts of Buffering the Vampire Slayer Once More with Spoilers, a Rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are here to humbly invite you to join us for our fifth Buffy Prom, which, if you can believe it, we are hosting at the actual Sunnydale High School. That's right. On April 4th and 5th, we will be descending upon the campus of Torrance High School, which was the filming location for Buffy's Sunnydale High, to dance the night away to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right next to the Sunnydale High fountain, and to nerd out together in our prom best inside of the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All information and tickets can be [e-mail] prom come join us.