Sound Insight

Finding your rhythm in a world out of sync, part 3.

This episode was originally recorded in 2022. I updated it to include it as part three of my series Finding Your Rhythm in a World Out of Sync.

How many of us have tried to reduce our stress and improve our lives by becoming better managers of our time? What if we're building the wrong skill?

In this episode, I explore how developing your attention skills unlock your superpower.

1. How building the wrong skill is making us miserable.
2. How attention, not time, is the currency of greater value.
3. How your devices may be eroding your cognition and your ability to focus.
4. How the ability to observe, direct and sustain your attention is a superpower that you can develop.
5. Three critical skills attention training develops and how they can improve the quality of your life.

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Finding your rhythm in a world out of sync, part 2.

In part two of my series, "Finding Your Rhythm in a World Out of Sync", I introduce the connection between your best energy and your most important work. I share the results of an experiment I conducted on myself in an effort to overcome my life-long struggle to build a consistent and sustainable writing practice.

In this episode, I explore what is your most important work and how do you distinguish that from all the noise? What is best energy and how do you find yours? How do you deal with all the other important demands on your day?

And finally, what is possible for all of us, when we put our personal well-being at the center of our relationship with work.

By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.

Here are links to some of the sources I reference in the episode:

I reference Cal Newport's excellent book, Deep Work, which was very helpful in helping me understand both the conditions I needed to create and the benefits to my productivity and peace of mind of creating them.

For a deeper, and admittedly nerdier, dive into my BIG THING system, check out my post What's Your BIG THING: How to get traction on what matters most.

For more on ultradian rhythms, see the links and resources referenced in my post at The Slow Sip, Finding Your Rhythm in a World out of Sync.

For more on chronotypes, see this article from The Sleep Foundation, and find Dr. Michael Breus' free chronotype quiz, here.

A different path to balance.

In this episode, I explore the connection between the natural rhythms that govern our bodies, our environment, and our lives and their impact on our work. I discuss the significant upside for our health and performance when we pay attention to these rhythms and work with them rather than against them.

"When I let nature's rhythms guide my life, nature delivers. Adopting a more natural rhythm and pace in my work has delivered the single greatest boost to my creativity, productivity, and general well-being."

By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.

The elastic nature of comfort and courage.

"How does a woman who six short years ago, trekked one of the most isolated places on the planet, sleeping in freezing tents along side piles of goat dung, become paralyzed by the prospect of taking a 15-minute cab ride?"

In this episode, I share a personal and somewhat embarrassing experience of dramatic comfort zone shrinkage, as I reflect on the elastic nature of comfort and courage.

Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip.

By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.

Sometimes the hardest lies to spot are the ones you tell yourself. In this episode, I reflect on my descent into burnout and three pervasive myths and a lie that kept me in a destructive cycle of over-commit, crash, and burn.

Notes:

Here is a link to the poem "You can't have it all," by Barbara Ras featured in the newsletter The Marginalian by Maria Popova.

Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip.

By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.

Please take care of yourself.

The ideas, concepts, recommendations, and practices I talk about here are for general information purposes only and should not be considered advice for your unique situation or treatment for mental illness, trauma, or other health conditions. If you are having difficulty functioning or are experiencing persistent anxiety, depression, or other symptoms, please see your family doctor.

"I can't tell you exactly how I landed on the bathroom floor.

All I can tell you is, in that moment, the cold tile was soothing against my cheek. I felt the purest sense of exhaustion I'd ever felt. I was done. There was nothing left to do but lie there, astonished that my breath was still moving in and out of my body."

In this episode, I share the personal story of my experience with debilitating burnout. I talk about how I got there, the costs, and how it led me to the work I do today.

Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip.

By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.

Please take care of yourself.

The ideas, recommendations, and practices I talk about here are for general information purposes only and should not be considered advice for your unique situation or treatment for mental illness, trauma, or other health conditions. If you are having difficulty functioning or are experiencing persistent anxiety, depression, or other symptoms, please see your family doctor.

Welcome back for Season 3 of Sound Insight!

One of my New Year's resolutions is to read the stacks of journals collected in my closet. I've been journaling since I was about 15 years old. The greatest gift of this exercise is the opportunity to time travel, to be in a kind of conversation with my past self. Not to be fooled by a selective and unreliable memory, but to actually listen to the voice of my younger self.

What I didn't expect was what she would have to teach me.

Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip.

By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.

Please take care of yourself.

The ideas, concepts, recommendations, and practices I talk about here are for general information purposes only and should not be considered advice for your unique situation or treatment for mental illness, trauma, or other health conditions. If you are having difficulty functioning or are experiencing persistent anxiety, depression, or other symptoms, please see your family doctor.

What does it mean to lead from heart?

When we describe someone as 'having heart' we tend to mean two things: they show compassion toward others, and they demonstrate strength and courage. Leading from heart demands that we be compassionate. It also requires inner strength. When we work with leaders, we begin by supporting them to strengthen their inner core.

In this episode, Cathy explores:

• What it means to build a strong inner core and why it matters to leadership and to life.
• How training your inner core follows some of the same principles as physical core strength training.
• Three practices you can adopt to strengthen your inner core and build the essential foundation to lead and live with strength, courage, and compassion.

If you'd like an adapted transcript of this episode, you can find it on Cathy's Blog, Field Notes.

For more on self-compassion from pioneers in this area, read The Transformative Effects of Mindful Self-Compassion, by Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer.

For more on why so many of us struggle with self-compassion, read Why Is Self-Compassion So Tough? - Cathy Jacob

For more information on the leadership development programs referenced here, visit Fire Inside Leadership's website.

Three "in-the-moment" practices to reduce stress and support your well-being at work.

Why is work/life well-being so challenging?

In this episode, Cathy explores why so many of us struggle with work/life well-being.

• What makes this issue so complex?
• How does seeing it as a complex issue show us a way forward?
• How can we begin to take steps to create greater well-being in the workplace and beyond?

Finally, she shares three in-the-moment practices to reduce your stress, open up new possibilities, and put you in a better position to affect meaningful change.

If you'd like an adapted transcript for this episode, you can find it on Cathy's blog, Field Notes.

In this episode, I reference the work of David Snowden and the Cynefin Framework. You can find out more about his work here.

I also quote and recommend the book, Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead, by Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin.

After decades of promoting work-life balance, stress and burnout are still rampant, if not growing, in our organizations. Have our efforts to create work-life balance failed?

In this episode, Cathy discusses how our ways of thinking about work-life balance and quality time, which came into widespread use in the 1980's, not only failed to fix the problem, but in many ways, made it worse. She explores:

• The central problem with how most of us think about the struggle between work and personal life and the debilitating stress it creates.
• How our well-meaning advice on solving the work-life balance issue has exacerbated the problem.
• Her own experience with burnout, her process of recovery, and what she needed to unlearn to begin to forge a healthy relationship with work.
• A shift in perspective and a way forward for leaders that puts the responsibility for the problem where it belongs - within a complex relationship between the individual, the culture, and the organizations in which they work.
• Finally, she proposes that as we debate the future of work and what it will look like, we need to put personal and collective well-being at the center of the conversation.

You can find an adapted transcript of this episode on Cathy's blog, Field Notes.