Israa Nasir
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Toxic productivity is when our relationship to the things that we do and the outcomes that we're pursuing becomes extremely unhealthy. So essentially, three things happen, and there's not a particular order to it. And you can have one without the other, but there are these three hallmarks, if you will. which is you are singularly focused on outcomes that are somewhat arbitrary.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Like you've inherited this checklist or you think that you have to do something by a certain timeline. So there's this like outcome that you're singularly focused on. And when you get singularly focused on it, the other thing that happens is that you're Everything else becomes secondary.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So your wellness, your relationships, your financial health, your friendships, like all of these things become secondary. Your joy, doing things for fun, like all of that becomes secondary to this goal that you are pursuing. And you are like pursuing for the sake of pursuing. So you're like an autopilot.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
You're just doing, you're doing, you set these goals, but you're not really thinking about why, right? And finally, the third thing is that how you feel about yourself and how you view yourself in relation to others becomes completely dependent on the outcomes.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So whether you feel like a valued member of community, whether you feel like a valued member in your family, all of that becomes contingent. on this outcome that you are pursuing. So more often than not, and maybe this is relevant to the despair thing that you were just mentioning, is that more often than not, we start feeling really bad about ourselves, even though we are achieving.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So that's what I was sharing in my story is I was doing all the things, but I was feeling bad about myself. I was not feeling good. I did not feel like I was achieving.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Hyper-optimization I think is just one of the biggest It's like one of the hardest things to conceptualize because right now we can really optimize every minute of our day. We can biohack, right? And we can measure everything in our bodies and how much we're eating. We can really measure, track everything. But I think this idea of social comparison with status markers has always been around.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And social comparison is like an evolutionary mechanism, right? So it's supposed to keep you safe by making sure that you belong with the rest of your community so you're not standing out. And what's happened is our technology has changed so fast that our mind has not caught up to how fast and how much we are comparing ourselves.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So hyperoptimization is really just a way to make sure that you are meeting this standard of optimizing your time, resources, energy, body, food, wellness, relationships, all of that stuff. And you have this yardstick that you're measuring yourself against. And so that I think is a really unhealthy way of trying to improve and engage in personal growth.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And both for being hyper-optimized and being extremely busy, chronic busyness, both of those things signal to other people that you are very valued, that you have it together, that you are needed, that whatever skills you have are very valuable. And that's why you're so busy all the time. And you're able to manage a lot of things. And all of these things are... status markers.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
They put us in competition with each other. And I think the force behind it is a feeling of belonging, a feeling of acceptance and a feeling of being valued. And these three things are foundational human needs. Like we need to feel accepted and have belonging and be valued. We've just found this very unhealthy way to get to that feeling now. which is through productivity.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I really like that concept that you're talking about of unmattering because that's one of the things that people are trapped in is how can I be like extraordinary? How can every experience I have be extraordinary? And I think on my end, something I talk about is how can we welcome being mediocre in some places in our life, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Because everything cannot be extraordinary and everything cannot matter, right? And everyone cannot matter. But I think the way our society has changed over the last 30 years has a big role to play in this idea. You see a lot of people get a lot of success at a very early age with the advent of startups and social media.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Like you see these like young people create these enormously influential platforms, right? Like Facebook, for example. And so I think like in the last 30 years, we've seen these like handful of of stories in people who have become exceptional. And the cultural consciousness has now become that, well, it could be possible for you too. You can also do this. And so we have this idea that
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I have to matter as well. And I have to be exceptional. And I think that's really driving people to do a lot of things that they don't feel very aligned with. They might not even be intellectually interested in. Now I live in New York city. And so I meet a lot of people who have these like goals around. I was saying things like, Oh, I want to start a company and exit.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I want to do, I want to launch a startup and then have it be acquired. But the, the, There's no connection to the product or the service. It's like the idea is to create a company and sell it. And because the goal is to be this exceptional entrepreneur. But I think we're not really connecting it to the things that are aligned with us.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I think it's the same thing across the board when it comes to toxic productivity. So yes, like entrepreneurs, some entrepreneurs will just chase the outcome. Oh, I just want to like exit at X million dollars or whatever, but there's no like alignment with value. That happens at the micro level in our daily lives as well.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
We start creating these goals that are like not necessarily connected to our value system. They're not really even connected to our lifestyle, but we were just like, okay, I have to do this. I need to do this. Other people are doing it. I'm going to look bad if I don't do it. I'm going to be left behind if I don't do it. And so we start chasing these outcomes, but they're not value aligned.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And eventually we burn out.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So, I mean, there's two things that can happen in a workplace, right? And we need to be mindful of both things. One is there is a certain level of pressure and expectation that can't come from a workplace that does not allow you to say no, right? So that is one track of what can occur. The other track is we think that we can't say no.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
We assume that we can't say no, or we actually don't know how to say no, right? And that's what's going on with Sarah is that she did have the ability and she had the, I guess, like the freedom to not take on more work, but she was doing it to herself. And the reason that can happen is that we have a lot of fears around saying no.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And that really is something that kickstarts this toxic productivity cycle is we feel like we can't say no and or we don't know how to say no. It's too uncomfortable. It comes from a place of fear of being rejected, abandoned, seen as not competent enough, especially in the workplace. And so because we can't tolerate that discomfort, we just say yes.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And we choose to tolerate the discomfort of being overworked. So instead of choosing the discomfort of disappointing somebody or just like the discomfort of saying no yourself, you'd rather choose the discomfort of overworking and tiring yourself out. And I think that in a lot of workplaces, this is also really valued. You get a lot of reward for it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So it's hard to see it as a quote unquote bad thing. However, if you are somebody who, while listening to this, you're like, oh, wait, I wonder if this is me. I would say two things. I would say first is try to think about all of the things that you have said yes to, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Every single thing, every extra thing that you said yes to at work, and then try to correlate it directly to some kind of deliverable or metric of success that you actually have at work. chances are, if you're overworked, everything you've said yes to does not directly connect to your personal metric of success or deliverable in your role.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And I think it's important to remember that it's good to have some out-of-role deliverables as well. But try to do this analysis to see how much of the work that you're doing actually is not going back towards your deliverables. So Is it actually giving you the return that you're looking for if it's not improving your metric of success, professional success, right? That's one thing you can do.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Another thing you can do is to talk to somebody that you live with and ask them how they view your relationship with work. Because a lot of times we have these blinders on, we're so outcome driven, and And we don't really see the things that we're sacrificing, the things that we're flaking on, you know, how is it impacting other people? Because we're so laser focused on our own success.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So ask somebody you live with and ask them how they view your relationship to work. And when you get the answer, like, I want you to just quietly listen to them. I don't want you to prepare a response. I don't want you to give them a yes, but this was happening. Or, but if I, if I didn't like some kind of justification, just listen to them and see what comes up.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I think that we can learn a lot from the people we live with.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So because we live in such an urgency culture, right, we have notifications pinging our phone 24 hours a day. We get like news notifications telling us that we need to read stuff all the time. Anywhere you go, people are like, oh, have you watched a show? Have you read this book? Did you listen to this podcast?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So we're trapped in a lot of urgency culture and urgency culture does not allow you to prioritize because urgency culture is telling you everything is important. The new show that came out on Netflix is just as important as this podcast that came out. And it's just as important as this new self-help book. And it's just as important as.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
the course that you have to take for work when just as important as doing everything for your relationships. So we can't prioritize because that makes us feel very uncomfortable and scared. And it's very threatening to think that something is not important. And the Pareto principle is really that 80% of the outcomes of your life are driven by 20% of the input that you're putting in.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Some entrepreneurs will just chase the outcome. Oh, I just want to like exit at X million dollars or whatever. But there's no like alignment with value. That happens at the micro level in our daily lives as well. We start creating these goals that are like not necessarily connected to our value system.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
They're not really even connected to our lifestyle, but we're just like, okay, I have to do this. I need to do this. Other people are doing it. I'm going to look bad if I don't do it. I'm going to left behind if I don't do it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So everything is not important. I think that's the thing I really want people to realize is every single thing is not important. And prioritizing your tasks, prioritizing your obligations, prioritizing the things you say yes to, all of that is really important so that you can actually
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
really pour in to the things that are value aligned, that will give you a return that makes your life more meaningful. Because if you are putting energy into everything equally, everything is not putting itself back into you equally. An example I'll use is some people really define themselves by the role they play in their relationships.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And this can really tap into the productivity mindset where you're like, I have to be the best friend, parent, partner, coworker, like all of those things, right? And
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
the truth is like every relationship is not going to give back to you in the same way so knowing who to invest the time and energy in and who to have better boundaries with is so important and we can't do that if we don't prioritize things and there are a lot of techniques we can use to prioritize i personally use the eisenhower matrix
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
which is like a little quadrant and it tells you what's important, urgent, what can be delegated to somebody else and what you can just take off your list. But there's a lot of other ways you can prioritize as well. It can be as simple as like an actual rank order to-do list.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So binary thinking, it's like a cognitive thinking trap, right? It's like a way that we get stuck. And I think in cognitive behavior therapy, it's called black and white thinking. Well, whatever phrase you want to use, binary thinking has no space for nuance. it's very clear. Things either are one way or they are the other way, right? And very few things in life are that clear.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
But in the toxic productivity mindset, if we think about achievement as binary, right? So you might think if I didn't get the promotion, that I'm a failure, that I'm not a good worker, I am not good at my job. So the binary mindset is promotion or you suck at your job. But the truth is you might not get the promotion.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
However, you might have displayed a lot of growth and leadership and making your coworkers feel comfortable. All of those things are also markers of success. They are markers of being a good worker, being a good employee. But if we're trapped in the binary mindset, we don't consider any of that. We don't think about any of that. We don't value any of that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So the process and the nuance that is in between the spectrum gets completely lost. And what that does is it keeps us trapped in this negative mindset that I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough because I didn't get this thing that, and only that thing shows that I am good enough and I didn't get it. So I'm not good enough.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
and you can see this in relationships you can see it as parents you can really see it in even in daily habits so if i'm resting i'm lazy so there's only two options you're either hyper productive or you're lazy but that's not true right like rest can be productive and but we don't think about it like that You see this in wellness habits.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
People will start working out or eating healthy at the beginning of the year, and they'll tell themselves that they have to do it every single day, or they have to do a 60-minute workout. And if you don't hit that 60, then it's like, oh, I guess I'm not going to do it because I can't do the 60 minutes. So I can only work out for 60 minutes.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And if I can't do 60 minutes and I'm not working out, I'm not taking care of myself. But you could do a really good 20-minute workout and still have the benefits of physical movement.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So my husband and I decided to take like an unplugged vacation. We both were just very stressed at work and stuff. So we were like, you know what? We're going on vacation. Let's not take any work. Let's not take our laptops and stuff. And so it was very intentional. We just wanted to be just, we didn't make any reservations. There was nothing that we could be working towards.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
It was just stretches and stretches of free time. Right. But when we got there, I couldn't turn my brain off. I really felt like I had to use this time because I was in this like really beautiful place. I had this, all these ideas about what it means to be a writer and where people write their best work, right? All of these like imagined standards. these imagined expectations.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And I couldn't really unplug. And in my mind, I kept trying to force myself to write or think about something profound. And when I was struggling with that, I was starting to be very critical of myself and judgmental, like, why can't you do this? Why can't you write? Everyone's going to figure out you're not a writer.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And then when that judgment happened and I became aware of that judgment, then I became even more judgmental. And I was like, well, you came here to unplug and now you're not even using that time to relax. You're wasting this vacation. Just a lot of chaos, really just emotional chaos in the mind. And I really became absent. I became absent from the moment.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I was in this beautiful place and I couldn't really tap into the beauty around me or even like the fact that I was spending time with my partner. And eventually it took like doing something as silly and trivial as making a sandcastle together. That made me realize that sometimes just being in the present moment is really the way to just be more compassionate with yourself and
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I think when we are truly present, when we're very engaged, our mind and body's in the same place, it's not like our thoughts are somewhere else. we can really be compassionate towards ourselves. And that does lead the way to a healthier relationship with productivity. It leads the way to sustainable productivity.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
It leads the way to understanding what makes you work and what makes you tick and what your own body rhythms are. Like self-compassion is like such a gateway into all of these things. But when we're busy doing and we're busy being critical of ourselves, we can't really access that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So I'm not familiar with the effortless perfectionism. Can you tell me what that means?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Yeah. Honestly, like the things that you were just describing right now, it makes me so sad. It makes me so sad that so many young people just move through life, never even getting to know themselves because they have just inherited an identity.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
You were good at one thing when you were younger and that kind of solidified this role in the family for you that, oh, well, you're like the smart one or you're like the athlete. And then that just takes you away from exploring who you are. And they're just like moving through what is meant to be like the most carefree time of your life. They're moving through it with so much pressure.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And you see this now in the high rates of adolescent mental illness, like depression and anxiety and suicide rates. But that's a little bit of a side. It just makes me sad because we have our whole lives to struggle through work and obligations and roles and all of that. And I don't think we should ever stop exploring.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
But I think when you're in school, you really have the ability to explore a lot of who you are. And unfortunately, that gets taken away by these kids. systems that are in place. But coming back to the effortless perfectionism, I think that fits in very well. There's three types of perfectionism, right? So one is the one where it is self directed.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So you demand perfectionism from yourself to is externally directed. So you demand perfectionism from other people. So you're relationships, your children, your coworkers, like you're demanding this emotional perfectionism from them. And the third is like perception.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So the perfectionism is centered on other people seeing you as perfect, other people like viewing you as somebody who doesn't make mistakes, who gets everything done right at the first try. And so I think it definitely fits into the toxic productivity framework because it's Nothing is ever good enough for a perfectionist because perfectionism is not possible, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And so this idea of never being good enough will continue to feed your desire to do more, to take on more, to prove yourself more, right? That, you know what, I am good. I am perfect. I don't make mistakes. And so that can create this. And I see it as like a duck in water, like on the surface, they look so chill.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
But underneath the water, their legs are just moving, just frazzled at a frantic pace. And I think that perfectionism is really just anxiety about controlling outcomes. Perfectionists often try to control everything around them. through perfectionism because it helps them give them a sense of control.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And so when working with people who struggle with perfectionism, one of the things I like to do when the client is ready is to get them to be comfortable and tolerate uncertainty. Because perfectionism and the drive for perfectionism gives you a lot of certainty.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
If I know what I'm going to get because I'm controlling for it through all of these perfectionist tendencies, then I have a very concrete path. So helping people get comfortable in uncertainty is really helpful in that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So in the book, I talk about these concepts in discrete chapters. There's like perfectionism, the inner critic, there's social comparison, shame. But the truth is like overlap because human beings are more complex than a series of chapters. And so you're right. These things are definitely very connected.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Social comparison is like I mentioned earlier, it's like an evolutionary mechanism that is meant to keep us safe. But right now it's an overdrive because we have access to a lot of information the way we didn't have before at all. So we just have more data points to compare ourselves against.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And it's interesting, like the research shows, we don't compare ourselves to people who are very different from us. we actually compare ourselves to the people around us. We compare ourselves to our peers in our community because whatever they've achieved is also likely possible for us because we're in the same community.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And what that does is it actually takes you further and further away from what matters to you. And so you compare yourself to other people and you see the standard that is set. And if you're a perfectionist, you'll want to meet that standard exactly as is or exceed it. But a lot of times, those standards are not our own.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
When we define goals based on comparing ourselves to other people, they are not our goals. Those are not our goals, right? We might think that they're our goals, but they're goals that we inherited, that we learned. And one of the case studies in the book is about a man who is really taking this productivity lens to his romantic life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And he's utilizing this optimization mindset as a way to get into a romantic relationship. And eventually in our work together, like we realized that, this idea that he needs to be in a relationship by X time was something that just came from his family. And he wasn't even sure why he wanted a relationship. He wasn't sure what he would be like in a relationship.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
He wasn't sure what his values were in a relationship, what he brought to the relationship, what he wanted in a partner. Like these things were things that he just had never thought about. And he just inherited this checklist because he was comparing himself to other people in his community and his family. So it can really disconnect you from your life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Gosh. So the reason I use the term audacity is because it takes a lot of emotional courage in a world that is constantly telling you that things are scarce. It does take a lot of emotional courage to tap into the abundance mindset. And I think like people use different language for it. People, some people call it the growth mindset. Some people call it like
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
abundance or gratitude, like whatever it is, but it is a very radical perspective because all we are told everywhere today is that time is running out. Things are running out. Opportunities are running out. You're not going to get there. You have to get there faster. You have to get there faster than the other person, whatever the goal is.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And the abundance mindset actually is more process oriented. It's not so outcome oriented. It tells you that the anxieties around limited finite resources are not always necessary or relevant to you. The abundance mindset helps you tap into other parts of your brain outside of just the fear center because the scarcity mindset is only existing in the fear center, right? You're activated by fear.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And that's why fear is such a powerful motivator for people to do things. People get married out of the fear of being alone. People buy expensive properties out of the fear of missing out. Like people make enormous life changes because of fear, but fear only accesses one part of your brain and the abundance mindset gets into so much more.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And it is honestly just like a more pleasant place to be in because it really helps you realize that Even if you don't get the thing at the time that you wanted, it's not the end of the world. There is more. There is more that you can do, more you can achieve, more you can pivot to, more you can accomplish. There's just more. If you allow your life to unfold.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I think that's the biggest thing for me is the abundance mindset allows you to have a story in your life. Whereas the scarcity mindset just wants the ending. It wants the ending now. Like you want to get to it now.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Hi, John. It's really nice to be here.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Oh, gosh. To me, that's the most important thing. I genuinely believe that we can have a healthier relationship with productivity if we have a healthier relationship with our emotions. And what does that mean? That means being able to identify, acknowledge, understand, and manage difficult emotions. Uh, difficult emotions are a really powerful motivator for all of this unhealthy behavior, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Perfectionism is fear, shame, guilt, um, the fear of missing out the inner critic, judgment, criticism, all of these negative emotions are driving us towards this unhealthy productivity.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
But if we can learn to really acknowledge and understand our emotions, if we can learn to hear the message that they're giving us, because all emotions are giving us some messaging, then we can really find our way back to a healthy productivity. Because then we're not going to be so reactive anymore. When we are emotionally driven, we are reactive. We are reacting to the circumstance.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
We are reacting to our emotions. So we're not very intentional, right? We don't make choices. We have reactions. But if we can not be overwhelmed by our emotions, we can hear them, we can process them, we can talk ourselves through it, then we become proactive in our life. Then we make choices. Then we can be intentional. The things we engage in become decisions. So we tap out of this autopilot.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And I think that does require emotional awareness. And so I hope that through this book and the work that I do, my other writings, my hope really is that this is a gateway for people to learn how to identify and manage difficult emotions. I think emotional awareness is the foundation cornerstone of our happiness and our wellbeing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Thank you. It's been a whirlwind of a journey and I've learned so much about myself in the writing process.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
My website is The Hub of Everything. So it's my full name, IsraNasser.com. If you want to learn more about the book, just go to the book page on there. But there's a lot of resources. I do, you know, corporate speaking. I write on Substack. Like you can find everything on my website.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Thanks so much. It was so nice chatting with you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Sure.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So I was actually studying environmental studies in undergrad and I wanted to go into conservation marine sciences. And one of the courses we had to take in second year was
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
human behavior and environmentalism so essentially that stream is about how can we get people to behave a certain way that is more environmentally friendly but that was like really my foray into psychology and i think i became so interested in human behavior and why we do the things that we do
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
that by my third year, I decided that I was going to do a double major in psych and environmental studies, hoping to marry the two. But the more I studied abnormal psychology and cognitive psychology and neuroscience and brain health and all that stuff, I just became more and more interested in putting my effort and energy and service towards supporting people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And that's really how I got into psychology.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I think there's a couple of factors. One is when it comes to an issue as broad as environmentalism, I think a lot of us feel like this is somebody else's problem to solve, or we alone do not have the resources to solve for something like this. It just feels like too much of a big problem. And I think we can get caught in the idea that my impact is not going to be big enough or large enough.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So it's not going to make a difference. And I think to some degree like that might be true around things like recycling and carbon emissions. I think corporations have a bigger impact than the individual person. So that's one thing. I think another thing is we are not immediately impacted by the environmental impact. So it feels far away. There's a little bit of a cognitive dissonance.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
And I think that it can feel very overwhelming to try to live and do the things to stay alive while at the same time doing something bigger than you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I think that one of the things that gets in the way of doing that is when we try to monetize our passions. Some things are meant to be non-monetary. And so what I would say to somebody who is feeling a little disconnected is try to see in your local neighborhood, like your local area, if there is a way that you can find some method of acts of service.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Because trying to change the world is a really big ask, but you can try to change your, you can make a small change in your immediate surrounding. So I think it's okay to have livelihood that doesn't include your passion or a service, but try to build that into your life in some way so that you can still get that feeling. And research has shown that
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
When we engage in acts of service, when we engage in volunteering or giving back in kind, not just monetarily, it has a very strong impact on our resilience, our hopefulness, optimism, and also physiologically, it helps release stress.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
My family's culture around success is very like hard work driven. So there's a lot of foundational ideas about the importance of hard work, doing things yourself, right? Like being very self-sufficient, thinking about how can you achieve the most that you can within your limitations, constraints, circumstances, whatever it is.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
There was never a pressure on a specific career specifically or an industry to follow, but there was a lot of talk about doing the best, being like more than average. I think that was like a really big part of the way my family's culture operates.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
The turning point for me was around five years ago or something like that, five years ago. I think given the culture that I grew up in, like my family's culture about like hard work and work ethic and doing the best and doing the most and trying to take every opportunity that comes your way, like that kind of stuff.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I think it had created this idea that I have to be doing a lot of things at the same time and that I have to be excelling at all of them and I have to be exceptional in all of them and all of that. And so it was like around a couple of years ago when I started realizing that I had a lot of the things that I was working towards in my 20s, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So I'd achieved the things that I had put my mind towards, and I had ticked off a lot of the checkboxes. But the feelings of something being missing, something not being right, like something feeling really off, like those feelings were still there.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
So I think it was like one of the first times where I was like, wait, I've done everything that I thought I was supposed to, or I wanted to, or the things that I thought that would get me to a certain place. So I felt like I had done all of that, but suddenly it still didn't feel like I didn't get a new feeling. The feeling was still old. of, oh, like maybe you could do this.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
Maybe you have to try that. And I started feeling really disconnected. I think that's a really big red flag that something is off. When you start feeling disconnected from your life, you become a little disengaged. I think a lot of people experience that as boredom, right? So like you're bored at work, you're bored at home, like you're
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
doing all the things, you're going to parties, but you just feel like under fulfilled, a little bored. And that was like a really big sign for me where I had to think about what needs to change in my life so that I can start feeling a little better.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
I mean, I think that you definitely can have a little bit of desperation or just like quietly. What I understand that to mean is just going through the motions, but you're not really like actively engaged in your life. There's like a desire for something different or more to feel something different, but you don't really know how to get there. So you're just doing the thing that you know best.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Israa Nasir on How to Break Free From Toxic Productivity | EP 533
how to do, which is to keep moving. And I think there is some validity in like moving, right? Like you don't want to stay stuck. But I think when we define ourselves through this movement is when we can have a little bit of a problem.