B is for Balance

When we feel balanced, we feel calm, grounded, and clearheaded. But I think it's safe to say that it's challenging to feel in balanced when there are so many important domains in our lives.

Achieving balance in your life is less about the quantity of time spent but rather the quality of the time.

And if you want to learn more about how to live a "balanced" life, I highly recommend Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.

The essential premise of Four Thousand Weeks is that an average person lives for only four thousand weeks. All of human history has taken approximately 310,000 weeks. We are but a blip, and knowing this, Burkeman asks the reader, how will you get everything done?

You don’t. Plain and simple.

The key, Burkeman states, is not eschewing stuff you don’t want to do in favor of what you do want to do but choosing what matters most at that moment ... from among all the things you do want to do.

In the latest aliquot & experiments, we examine the forces that motivate us. You can bolster your internal motivation by creating a "DONE" list; taking action within 5 seconds; using WOOP to create a plan; and surrounding yourself with supportive messages and music.

Resources

You can learn more about motivation by reading Steve Magness’ book Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness. New York; HarperOne, 2022.

Quote to Contemplate

Research has shown that of all forms of human motivation the most effective one is progress. Why? Because a small, concrete win creates momentum and affirms our faith in our further success.

-Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Discplined Pursuit of Less

When was the last time you experienced a moment of awe? Wonder isn’t hard to find — you just need to allow your heart to fill with amazement. The world is full of magical experiences patiently waiting for you to discover.

Watch the Video and leave a comment about a recent awe experience for you.

Be sure to check out this delightful book by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (University of Mississippi Professor of English) about the natural wonders in our world that we often overlook:

Nezhukumatathil A. World of Wonders: In praise of fireflies, whale sharks, and other astonishment. Minneapolis, MN; Milkweed Editions, 2020.

Play is not frivolous. It is not a luxury. It is not something to fit in after completing all the important stuff. Play is the important stuff. Play is a drive, a need, a brain building must do! -Jeff Johnson and Denita Dinger, Let Them Play

Neuroscience and Play

Humans are born with seven emotional processing systems, and play is hardwired in the midbrain. Thus, play is among our most basic instincts and motivations. Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College, shared during his TED talk that, play is nature’s way of ensuring we acquire the skills needed to successfully develop into adults. A life deprived of play leads to maladaptive behaviors and the inability to engage in social interactions without fear.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct.
- Carl Jung, Psychoanalyst

And the kinds of play you most enjoy seem to be linked to your play personality. Dr. Stuart Brown has identified eight play personalities which are described on the National Institute of Play website. He believes individuals fit naturally into a few play personalities with a prominent preference or favorite form of play. I am definitely the Kinesthete and the Creator/Artist. I suspect Stuart is a Storyteller and Explorer.

1. Decide what fun means to you. List the activities you enjoyed as a child and brainstorm an adult version. For example, if you liked climbing trees as a kid, perhaps rock climbing is something you’d like to do as an adult.
2. Be intentional about setting aside time for play. The goal of having more fun is just as important as goals like losing weight, starting a small business, or earning extra income. Plan for one day a week when you are going to have 2 hours of fun!
3. Create a play drawer at work. And use it during times when you need a work break and feel the need for some fun. Think Legos, Play-Doh, coloring, and puzzles.
4. Combine fun with other activities. Gamify exercise - like playing HORSE with your kids. Try a new exercise that you consider atypical but fun. Pole dancing, anyone?
5. Help organize a group (aka committee) at work that plans fun events and activities.
6. Make playtime an opportunity to connect with your significant other.
7. Not very creative? Befriend a fun person and follow her lead!
8. Hang out with kids. They know how to play and will be happy to have you join.

• E is for Explore 
• P is for Play

How we play is related, in myriad ways, to our core sense of self. Play is an exercise in self-definition; it reveals what we choose to do, not what we have to do. We not only play because we are. We play the way we are. And the ways we could be. Play is our free connection to pure possibility.
- Estroff Marano

Seena

[Editor’s Note: Occasionally, we invite a guest author to write an essay about something they are passionate about related to our well-being. Brent is a colleague and friend who is crafting his own path. After being an educator and clinical pharmacy cardiology specialist for 10 years, Brent recently shifted his career by pursuing a Ph.D. in organizational science. But you don’t have to return to school or pursue a Ph.D. to craft your job!]

A more recent approach to job crafting suggests that we can craft our job by making changes to the demands of the job and the resources available. Job demands are those aspects of work that require our effort. Job demands include both challenges and hindrances. Challenge demands, such as workload, can be overcome with effort and can promote personal growth when we encounter them in the right amounts. Hindrance demands are difficult—and sometimes impossible—to overcome, and they impede our growth. Examples of hindrance demands include organizational politics and interpersonal conflict. Job resources are those aspects of work that help us manage demands, such as support from a supervisor or coworker, or characteristics of the work itself, such as having the autonomy to make decisions about how we accomplish the work. Under this model, we can craft our jobs by optimizing challenges (i.e., not too low, not too high), decreasing hindrances, and seeking resources

1. Reflect on your job and brainstorm where there may be opportunities for job crafting. What tasks or relationships might be amenable to crafting? What are some barriers holding you back at work, and how might they be removed? If they cannot be removed, could you benefit from some additional support to help you manage them?
2. After brainstorming some possible ways to craft your job, the next step is to try them out! Studies show that it may only take a few weeks to start experiencing the benefits of job crafting.
3. The final step is to evaluate whether the changes were beneficial. Do they provide a greater sense of meaning or fulfillment? Do you feel less burned out and more engaged at work?

  -Brent

• Hidden Brain Podcast: You 2.0: Dream Jobs [Shankar Vedantam interview Amy Wresniewski about job crafting]
• Dutton JE & Wrzesniewski. What job crafting looks like. Harvard Business Review, March 12, 2020.

I recently deleted my email client (Outlook) from my phone. Not my work email account, the entire app! I deleted Twitter too. I deleted Facebook and Instagram a long time ago. I have a computer at work and in my home office to check email. I don’t need it on my phone. I really don’t need more distractions in my life. So I’m trimming back on the apps on my phone and going on a digital diet. I’m working on some permanent changes in my digital (dietary) habits.

A digital diet is a metaphor that I think is particularly apt for our times.  Our diet is a quantitative and qualitative description of the food we consume.  Not only what we consume but how much and how often.  As a clinician who’s worked with a lot of people living with diabetes, I get a 24-hour diet history to better understand someone’s eating habits.  What they ate, and how much. When they ate.  What was happening before they ate. Was it prompted by boredom or something emotionally stressful?  Did they feel hungry?  Many people can recall these kinds of details when prompted to reflect on the previous 24 hours.  But not everyone.  Some really aren’t very attuned to their eating habits. Some minimize how much and how frequently they eat due to shame. For some, this is a very helpful exercise – helping to uncover some of the barriers to achieving a healthier life.

There are lots of parallels here.  We now consume digital products, in a wide variety of forms, every day.  Indeed, they’re perceived as “essential” to our lives.  Perhaps not as essential as food or shelter, but most of us wouldn’t function very long without our digital devices. They interface and control so many facets of our lives, it’s hard to imagine life without them.

Consuming digital content and using digital devices isn’t inherently good or bad. Indeed, there are so many ways they can enrich our lives and make things more efficient, convenient, and engaging.  But like food, indiscriminate and mindless consumption of poor quality, highly processed, and empty calorie digital content isn’t adding value to our lives.  When it’s not making you healthy, wealthy, or wise, it’s time to consider a digital diet.

There are lots of ways we use our devices in unhealthy ways. Sometimes we use our digital devices to ward off boredom.  Sometimes we use them to avoid negative emotions.  Sometimes we gorge ourselves on digital “stuff”, like eating a big Costco-sized bag of a salty/sweet snack, that leaves us feeling queasy. And like a 24-hour diet history, it can be an eye-opening exercise to analyze our digital habits. Many people simply have no awareness and couldn’t accurately recall all of the digital content they’d consumed in the past 24 hours.  And others can’t admit to themselves or others, perhaps due to shame, how unhealthy their habits have become.

Distraction Generators

...the engagement never ends. Not long ago, surfing the web, however addictive, was a stationary activity. At your desk at work, or at home on your laptop, you disappeared down a rabbit hole of links and resurfaced minutes (or hours) later to reencounter the world. But the smartphone then went and made the rabbit hole portable, inviting us to get lost in it anywhere, at any time, whatever else we might be doing. Information soon penetrated every waking moment of our lives.
 
  -Andrew Sullivan, in I Used to Be A Human Being (The New Yorker, Sept 19, 2016)

I’ll admit that I’ve been lost in a digital vortex from time to time.  I’ll start by watching a Youtube video on how to unclog a drain and then, an hour later, I’m watching a video about how to set up Kanban boards in Asana.  What can I say, I’m prone to watching productivity videos and those clever folks at Google know it! One of my colleagues at work quips that computers are $1500 distraction generators.

Hopefully, this isn’t news to you but “free” services available on the Internet make their money on advertising. Thus, capturing and maintaining our attention is critical to their business model.  And that’s the Faustian deal we’ve made with Google, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook ... you name it. They provide us with a service and we give them our attention (and our data). These systems are designed to keep our attention as long as possible. We all have a negativity bias - it's hardwired into us. So what enrages, dismays, or provokes fear, will keep our attention. We might intellectually understand that our emotions are being manipulated but, nonetheless, we can’t easily turn away from something that outrages or frightens us.

Psychological and Physiological Consequences

The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.
 
-Cal Newport, in Digital Minimalism

Social media capitalizes on our need for connection. And yet, ironically, the apps are putting more distance between us and the connections we seek. It quickly becomes a vicious cycle. We feel stressed. We feel disconnected. So we turn to Facebook or Reddit to escape and to be a part of something.  But instead, it elicits social comparison, envy, outrage, and loneliness.

Our smartphones all too often pull us away from reality –— what’s tangible and right in front of us. In his book Stolen Focus: Why We Are Distracted and How to Think Deeply Again, Johann Hari recounts a visit to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s opulent home in Memphis, Tennessee. For more than a decade his nephew had longed to see it. It was a dream trip. There were no tour guides at Graceland - everyone was given an iPad. As the visitors walked from room to room, pictures of each room appeared on the screen. When they got to the infamous “jungle room” (Elvis’ favorite), a couple, each with an iPad in hand, looked in amazement at the jungle room on their screens, swiping between images. Not once did they look up to actually look at the room. Off in the corner, his nephew was fully absorbed Snapchatting (is that a word?) with friends. No one was present, experiencing the moment. Perhaps you’ve witnessed similar scenes in your life — friends, family, students, colleagues so absorbed with their smartphones they aren’t present.

Our digital devices are keeping us up at night. Not only does the light emitted from the screen fool our brains, but the stimulation from the content keeps those neurons firing. Our thoughts are still swirling away when we eventually turn the device off. Today, the average American sleeps 20% less (almost 2 hours less) than people did in the early 1900s. In addition to fatigue and a host of chronic illnesses, sleep deprivation further hinders our ability to focus.

Addressing the Problem

We’ll need to address this problem at the individual and system levels. Smartphones have only been with us for about 15 years; so it’s little wonder that we are only now learning about their true benefits and harms. There is now widespread recognition of the psychological harms that digital devices and social media apps cause, particularly adolescents.(Valkenburg 2002) Our devices make us always “on” and available to the demands from work, contributing to significant increases in stress and anxiety among working adults, particularly knowledge workers.(Mahalingham 2022) We’ll need to advocate for systemic solutions to address these widespread problems. This will require a cultural shift and perhaps even legislation to ban certain practices. For now, it’s up to individuals to take some measure of control over their digital devices.

Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.
 
- Cal Newport, in Digital Minimalism

Since deleting email from my phone, I've felt less anxious about work piling up. And I’ve been reading more books - which is great. And I’m looking for other ways to be more intentional about the apps I have on my smartphone and my device usage. If you feel you would benefit from a digital diet, consider trying some of these strategies:

• Turn Off Notifications. This is an easy first step and can dramatically reduce the number of interruptions during the day. Do you really need to be alerted every time someone posts something on your feed? Or sends you an email? Or pings you? Or instantly alerted that something went on sale at Lululemon? Turn off notifications on your phone, tablet, and computer. Or, at the very least, block all of them when you are trying to do some focused work.

• Delete and Unsubscribe. Intentionally delete apps from your phone that you don’t really need on your phone. You can access email on your computer. Sure, it's convenient to have email on your phone, but do you really need it? Facebook? Instagram? Pinterest? Twitter? TikTok? Unsubscribe to services that don’t add real value to your life. Or only access them using your computer.

• Monitor, Track, and Block.  Becoming more self-aware of your device usage can be powerful.  There are a variety of tools available to help, and they also can be used to block certain apps during specific times of the day.  Apps like QualityTime, StayFocused, Space, and OffScreen.

• Charge Your Devices In Your Office, Not Your Bedroom. If you want to reduce the temptation to use your phone or tablet in bed, don’t make them readily available in your environment. Have a charging stand or table in another room (e.g., home office, guest bedroom) on the other side of your home. Create a ritual of putting your devices “away” when it's time for bed.

• Lock the Phone Up. The K-Safe or Kitchen Safe is selling like crazy on Amazon. These devices were originally designed to “lock up” foods, like cookies, to prevent people from snacking at night. The lock is set for a specified period of time (e.g., 10 hours) and can’t be unlocked. The only thing you can do is smash the container - which would take some significant effort and would be costly. This is a helpful commitment device. While it doesn’t totally eliminate the temptation, it helps you keep your commitment to not use the phone.

• Leave the Phone at Home. Going for an afternoon outing, a day trip, a weekend getaway ... or perhaps a 10-day vacation? Consider leaving the phone and other devices behind. This is going to be a hard one because you’ll probably feel unsafe without your phone. But if there is a real emergency, there will be plenty of people who will let you borrow a phone!

• A 30-day Digital Detox. This is dramatic, but it can be very effective. Cal Newport in his book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Life of Focus in a Noisy World recommends taking a 30-day break from your digital devices and apps (to detoxify your brain). Then slowly reintroduce your device(s) and very selectively download apps that truly support something that you value and can’t be achieved in some other way. As you reintroduce them into your life, carefully consider how you use your device(s) and apps in ways that maximize their value while minimizing their potential harms to your attention.

We all need to learn how to recapture our focus so that we can connect with the people we care about, get the work done we value, and experience awe and gratitude. These are the essential building blocks of wellbeing, a life well-lived.

What have you done to limit mindlessly consumption of digital junk food?  Are there nutritious apps that add value to your life?  Our devices and apps are tools.  It's up to us to use them wisely and advocate for policies in the public interest. Leave a comment. Share your successes and failures.

Cheers-

Stuart

References

Valkenburg PM, Meier A, Beyens I. Social media us and its impact on adolescent mental health: An umbrella review of the evidence. Curr Opin Psychology 2022; 44: 58-68.

Mahalingham T, Howell J, Clark PJF. Attention control moderates the relationship between social media use and psychological distress. J Affective Dis 2022; 297: 536-41.

When our dog, Jed Walker, was just a pup I would find him waiting to greet me when I returned from work. Every day he’d be perched on our ottoman looking expectantly toward the entrance. As soon as I walked in the door and placed my work items aside, he would leap in a happy dance towards me. Having been a dog owner for decades, I can personally attest to how dogs are truly amazing and serve as great role models. They cheer us up in difficult moments, wake up with excitement to greet each day, and are happy just to be near us. Psychologist John Moore believes our pets tell us what happiness is all about if we carefully observe them. "Dogs are created for happiness. There is something in them that makes them wag their tail, try to lick us in the nose, look into our eyes and say ‘I love you’ in so many ways – no matter what happens in the world."

Practicing Gratitude

Engaging in Movement and Play

Taking a Break

Because dogs live in the present. Because dogs don’t hold grudges. Because dogs let go of all their anger daily, hourly, and never let it fester. They absolve and forgive with each passing minute. Every turn of a corner is the opportunity for a clean slate. Every bounce of a ball brings joy and the promise of a fresh chase.
  - Steven Rowley

Living in the Present Moment and Being Curious

Caring and Forgiving

Making Friends

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.
   - Milan Kundera

  Seena 

Thanksgiving is approaching and it made me think about how work has encroached into nearly every domain of our lives and the importance of breaks, holidays, and sabbaths.

Our lives have several "domains." I think of these as the buckets or areas of our lives that add meaning and satisfaction. These buckets generally include intimacy/marriage, family, friendship, community, spirituality, health, material wellbeing, and work. If you are like me, the work bucket takes up a lot of my time and attention. Don't get me wrong, I love my work but I often feel that the other buckets in my life aren't getting enough. I'm certain many of you feel the same.

I've never liked the term "work-life" balance. To me, it's a misnomer because it seems to suggest that the amount of time or energy (or both) that we put into work should be in "balance" with our "life". Of course, work is part of, not something separated from, our life.  For many people, it's a critical part of their identity. Plus our lives are never "balanced" in the sense that everything is given equal weight. In reality, the amount of time and attention we devote to the various domains in our lives fluctuates from week to week. And over the course of time, there are seasons to life during which we rightfully focus on different priorities. Nonetheless, whether you call it work-life balance, or work-life integration, or simply life integration, I sometimes feel like work has become a tumor that's metastasizing and taking away the life force from everything else.

I was born in the 1960s. Like today, years ago people worked hard. Many professionals worked 50 and 60 workweeks. And people had families. Many families had 3 or 4 or even 5 kids. And most people attended "church" (in 1965, nearly 80% of Americans belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque and regularly attended). And they were very engaged in civic organizations and clubs! And people had dinner parties and went to the theatre. How on earth did they have time for all of it?

Mobile Devices - Smart Phones. Let's face it, we're tethered to our work (and all of the other demands in our life) every waking hour. Our work has become "woven" into every domain of our lives. And many of us (not just our students) are obsessively checking our phones (or laptops or tablet devices) for emails, text messages, and our social media feeds. A recent study found that, on average, we check our phones every 17 minutes and spend 3 hours and 53 minutes per day engaging with our mobile devices. That's 26 hours a week. On average. I'm sure you've experienced students in class or colleagues during a meeting or perhaps even members of your family at the dinner table checking their smartphone, not once, but multiple times. So, while smartphones are incredibly helpful and convenient, our indiscriminate use of mobile devices is coming at a very high cost.

Email (and other ways of asynchronously "pushing" communications). Up until about 1995, the only way you could "assign" work or make a request of someone was to meet them face-to-face, call them on the telephone, or (I suppose) send them a letter. This created certain limitations because the request could only be made AT WORK and it gave the recipient of the request an opportunity to negotiate. Today, emails show up on our smartphones (which we have in our possession at all times) and they can be sent at any time (day or night). And from anyone. At a very low cost to the sender. This includes lots of people, companies, and entities we don't even know. I regularly receive requests to submit papers to the Journal of Practical Ethnography (and I have only vague notions about what ethnography is). And I've been asked to give the keynote address at the International Conference for Distinguished Scientists and Massage Therapists. [Ok - I made those up ... but many of the requests I've received seem equally absurd] My point is, we are awash in a sea of email messages which creates anxiety as we try (our best) to attend and answer them. Even if you delete tons of messages and diligently add the sender to your spam list, it still takes precious time and attention away from the work that really matters. And while email may SEEM like an efficient way to communicate, in reality, it's a lousy way to have a conversation (e.g. a back and forth dialog) for lots of reasons, but primarily because it's spread out over time. Bottom line - we need to rethink how we use email.

I bring all of this up because I believe we have some serious systemic and cultural problems that we need to figure out.  Yes, each of us has a responsibility to engage in self-care practices and attend to our own well-being. We need to take care of our bodies, attend to our thoughts and emotions, and cultivate positive social bonds. But having a counseling center and offering free yoga at work isn't going to solve the root causes of the current state of affairs. Don't get me wrong, yoga is great (you should try it!) but most wellness initiatives place the responsibility solely at the feet of the individual. We need to address the underlying issues.

Which leads me back to breaks, holidays, and sabbaths. Sixty years ago breaks from work were more commonplace and a cultural expectation. During a workday, we need a few breaks to reset. But most of us move from one meeting, one class, one obligation to the next without any breathing room. People used to take a break for lunch to eat with colleagues. Before the pandemic, it was one of my favorite times of the day - lunch, sitting with colleagues, and talking about whatever was on our minds. Now I just eat a "sad lunch" at my desk. In Sweden, it's a cultural tradition to take fika every day - to gather with colleagues for a scheduled pause to enjoy some coffee and cake and conversation. Taking collective breaks together, whether that is to enjoy some food or go for a short walk, helps establish cultural expectations and builds social bonds. We need more breaks.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it's all about giving thanks and spending time with family and friends. There is no expectation to buy people gifts. Plus, I enjoy cooking. Up until about 20 years ago, nothing was open (other than perhaps urgent care centers, hospitals, and police departments) on Thanksgiving. And nothing was open on Christmas. Or New Year. And I'm not sure when we started to treat Memorial Day, the 4th of July, or Labor Day like regular workdays - but many of us do now. Holidays used to be times we all would take off from work and collectively direct our attention toward something important, other than economic output, that we hold dear.

  Stuart

1. Podcast: The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. How to Be Happier at Work (with Dan Harris). Season 3. Published November 8, 2021. [And consider subscribing to the Happiness Lab podcast!]
2. Book: Newport C. A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload. New York: Portfolio Books, 2021.
3. Book: Burkeman O. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

This poem by Longfellow really speaks to me. Living a full life is about doing — acting in the present moment. The past is gone. The future can't be predicted. Let your actions (now) leave footprints on the sands of time for others to follow.

Enjoy

A Psalm of Life

   Learn to labor and to wait.

I am radiating with love and compassion.
I am full of energy and I'm overflowing with joy.

• be kind
• accept change
• be generous
• do great things

Today, I will focus on my breath, so I can be more aware my body and emotions, and respond with compassion.

AFFIRMATION by Eve L. Ewing

Speak this to yourself 
until you know it is true. 
I believe that I woke up today 
and my lungs were working, 
miraculously, 
my voice can sing and murmur and ask, 
miraculously. 
My hands may shake, but they can hold 
me, or another. 
My blood still carries the gifts of the air 
from my heart to my brain, 
miraculously. 
Put a finger to my wrist or my temple 
And feel it: I am magic. 
Life and all its good and bad and ugly things 
scary things which I would like to forget 
beautiful things which I would like to remember 
-- the whole messy lovely true story of myself 
pulses within me. 
I believe that the sun shines 
if not here, then somewhere. 
Somewhere it rains, 
and things will grow green and wonderful. 
Somewhere inside me, too, it rains, 
and things will grow green and wonderful. 
Sometimes my insides rain from the inside out. 
And then I know 
I am alive 
I am alive 
I am alive.

Seena