554: How Doing Less Results in Achieving More with Celeste Headlee

Pete Mockaitis
Celeste, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Celeste Headlee
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat again. And, first, I was very curious, as you filled out the form, you mentioned that your dog has a best friend whom your dog texts. Please explain.

Celeste Headlee
Well, I mean, obviously, I text on behalf of my dog.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Celeste Headlee
But they have a very close relationship, and my dog has a very expressive face, so I read the facial expressions and then I text it. My neighbor across the street has a dog named Choco, a lab mix, and they took her away for three months. They went on a road trip, and so Sam has missed Choco horribly, so the dogs would text back and forth to each other for the three months while Choco was away. Their reunion was lovely.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is lovely. Well, that explains a lot. I mean, I was very intrigued, like, “How is this working in terms of texting? And is the best friend another dog or is it a…?” Now, that’s all good and clear. I’m curious how they got to be so tight to begin with. What forges a bond between the dogs?

Celeste Headlee
I really don’t know. My dog is pretty particular about which dogs she likes and which she just tolerates. The vast majority of canine kind belongs in the second category, she’s fine with them but she just tolerates them. But something about Choco, the very first day they met, she just fell in love. That was her puppy, and they have been bonded. They’ve been a bonded pair ever since.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so talking about pair bonding, the last time we discussed, we had a great conversation and listening and such, and that was a fun one. So, listeners, that is over at Episode 221 if you’d like to resurface that one. But now you’re onto some new territory, or maybe, I imagine, there’s some interrelationships there. You’re talking about doing nothing, well, your book title I love, “Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.” Captivating and I think resonant for many. So, boy, there’s lots to say here, but maybe I’ll just put you on the spot. What’s maybe the most fascinating and surprising thing you discovered when you were researching and putting this book together?

Celeste Headlee
I think that number one is how long this has been going on, right? Because this sort of modern hustle culture that is making so many of us unhappy, I think we tend to associate it with technology and social media and some very recent developments. But when I started researching it, it dates back to 19th century Scotland.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s where hustling began?

Celeste Headlee
Yes, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
The Scottish hustlers.

Celeste Headlee
The Scottish engineer. Funnily enough, one of the things I talk about is how we’re always trying to have the best, the ultimate, which is, in moderation, that’s a wonderful impulse, but that Scottish engineer, he wasn’t inventing the steam engine, he had a steam engine, he thought it was terrible so he was just trying to improve it. And that’s how the Industrial Revolution began. So, that was the biggest surprise for me that this has been going on for well over 250 years.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you’re saying that the start of hustle culture coincided with the start of the Industrial Revolution in that I guess there’s an optimizing mindset. Or are you also saying that individual workers are like, “Oh, wow, okay. I do more, I get more”?

Celeste Headlee
Okay. So, human beings did things and lived a certain way for most of our 300,000 years on the planet. I’m talking about homo sapiens. And when the Industrial Revolution came along, it literally changed everything, and that’s another surprising thing for me, because when you’re in history class, AP US History or whatever, and you’re learning about the Industrial Revolution, I don’t think you really understand how much changed, and how not only our work changed but like almost every aspect of our lives and our personal relationships. But the biggest thing is that time became money.

Time did not equal money before the Industrial Revolution. In other words, your task, that what you made was what was worth something. It didn’t matter how long it took you.
another thing that shifted during the Industrial Revolution is, before that time, first of all, we didn’t work very much. Medieval serfs worked less than half a year. And it was because of this idea that, number one, most people were at some level entrepreneurs. Even serfs had a certain amount of land that they farm for themselves. They got done putting their two hours in for their lord, or whatever, and then they went home, and they took care of their stuff. You had all these women who had knitting businesses and quilting businesses, and they made textiles and all these other things. The Industrial Revolution just decimated the female business owner population.

[06:38]

But, also, it sort of disempowered a lot of workers. So, whereas, you would’ve had all these different workers with their own set of tools, when they moved into a factory, they no longer owned the tools, they no longer owned the product left. It became this very centralized industrial culture, and people, for the first time in like the early 20th century, more people lived in cities than they did in rural areas. Just like literally everything changed. And it happened so rapidly that people weren’t quite ready for how dramatic that change was.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s kind of where it began. So, it wasn’t the internet, it wasn’t the iPhone, it wasn’t Instagram. It was the Industrial Revolution. So, that’s handy to orient kind of what’s going on there. And so then, if your advice is…the title is “Do Nothing.” Is that what you suggest is the answer to our overwork, overdoing, underliving world? What do you mean by that and how is that an optimal answer kind of relative to our alternatives?

Celeste Headlee
Well, the point being that idleness is not laziness. In other words, a fisherman is busy while he’s idle. Same with most security guards, right? They’re working while they’re idle. Whereas, if you’re bike-riding, you’re actually quite active when you’re at leisure. Our ideas of these concepts of leisure, laziness, and idleness are really kind of screwed up, and partly because we have this sort of work addiction so we don’t really understand that idleness is required by the human body and the human mind.

The human mind just doesn’t persist. That’s not how it works. It pulses. It needs regular breaks, it needs rests, and in order to do its absolute best work, it needs short bursts of focused attention. And at this point, very few workers really get focused time when there’s no distractions. You walk through an office and you’ll see everybody with like 50 tabs open on their browser, and their email open, and their smartphone there, and their Fitbit, and their Slack going.

People don’t work without distraction, and yet that is the most fertile ground for the brain in terms of creative problem-solving and productivity. So, number one, we’re not as productive as we think we are. That’s a delusion. And, number two, you need downtime. That’s how you keep your brain working at its best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I think I buy that in terms of that’s what would make for some great outcomes during the course of doing your work. And so then, when we talk about doing nothing, what does that look, sound, feel like in practice?

Celeste Headlee
First of all, I’d say try out boredom. Try to feel bored again. And in order to do that, you need to put away your smartphone. I am not the person that’s going to tell you to get rid of your technology. I think technology is fine. But I do think you have to put limits on how much you use it. So, every once in a while, put your smartphone away, go take a walk without your phone. Sit down on the couch and just sit there for a little while and see what comes to mind.

Every once in a while, I say, “Oh, my God, I have a porch,” or I remember my porch. Maybe I’ll go sit on it for a little while, and I just force myself to sit. And if you do that, frankly, you can’t do it for a really long period of time. Your brain just doesn’t like to be bored, and so things will come to you. You’ll start thinking about stuff. You’ll maybe remember that kit you bought to make your own, I don’t know, apple hard cider or whatever, “Oh, yeah, maybe I want to do that. Maybe I want to do work on playing the guitar,” or whatever it may be. But things will come to you, and you’ll remember things, and there’ll be new thoughts.

All the time that you’re idle or bored, your brain is still working. It’s working almost exactly as hard as it does when you’re trying to make it do productive work, right? So, when it’s idle though and not focused and directed, what it’s doing is like sifting through memory, sifting through information that you’ve taken in, thinking of things that you haven’t thought in quite some time, and it’s making new connections. It’s making surprising connections.

And so, you’re going to have, perhaps, thoughts you’ve never had before. That won’t happen if you’re always directing your mind to do something and produce something. You need to let it sort of sit back and kind of browse through the shelves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. So, you’re saying it’s key that we have some time for this idle stuff as opposed to being go, go, go, go, go sort of constantly, and that’s counterproductive to our ends. Could you share some of the most striking, I guess, studies or data points or numbers that reinforce this for the workaholics who need a little bit more encouragement?

Celeste Headlee
Well, we have a lot of different case studies that prove this point, and one of the ones that I revisit a couple times in the book is Sahlgrenska Hospital. And one of the reasons I think it’s so striking is because we think of the medical profession as just requiring punishing hours. They have cots in their break rooms for a reason. And so, Sahlgrenska Hospital was having a huge productivity problem. Their staff was working incredibly hard, and yet the wait to get a surgery done was months long, and they were just completely overwhelmed, and they decided to experiment with cutting hours.

So, in this one orthopedic unit, they cut everybody’s hours down so they never worked longer than six hours at a time. Six hours at a time. I mean, think about that in a hospital. And they had all these funds set aside prepared to hire on a bunch more people to cover the gaps. But what they found was they didn’t have to hire anybody. In fact, productivity went up, the wait for surgery went down to just a few weeks. You could get in within two or three weeks. And they actually found they were not only getting more done in less time but the morale went straight through the roof. Why? Because they were actually getting rest.

Surprisingly enough, when the brain is rested and the body is rested, you make way fewer errors. And errors is wasted time, right?

Pete Mockaitis
I see, yeah.

Celeste Headlee
You’ve done work that has to be corrected.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess that’s kind of a spooky thing if all the surgeons were making errors previously.

Celeste Headlee
I’m not trying to give you nightmares.

Pete Mockaitis
The United States error situation. Well, I buy that in terms of you make the errors which require fixing. Or even if it’s not an explicit, “Ooh, you did A when you should’ve done B,” I think about it sometimes like you just didn’t have the idea that would’ve been five times as fast as what you did instead. It’s like, “Oh, I could’ve done that.”

Celeste Headlee
Think about it this way, the way that we’re working right now where we’re either in burnout or on the edge of burnout. What’s happening neurologically is that you’re so stressed and overwhelmed that you’re in fight or flight. That means the part of your brain that is ruling your brain in making decisions is your amygdala. Now, your amygdala is the oldest evolutionary part of your brain. It is your monkey brain. And that is the one that you want if you’re being chased by a tiger. You want absolute pure instinct to take over. Like, you need that one to take the wheel when you’re in crisis, and then hand the wheel back because that is the toddler in the room.

Then you want the rest of your brain, especially your prefrontal cortex, which is right behind your forehead, that’s what you want generally making your decisions. That’s the part that thinks twice. That’s the part that considers. It’s mature. It’s your executive thinking capacity. But when you’re in burnout, it’s your amygdala all the time. You’re in fight or flight all the time, which, number one, means you’re stressed. Your cortisol levels are quite high. Your heart rate is usually elevated. And, again, you are making decisions based on fear. You’re not making decisions that are carefully considered. You’re making decisions instinctually, gut instinct, which means you’re making bad decisions.

You’re not just making bad decisions about what to do at any moment at a time, you’re making bad decisions about your priorities, you’re making bad decisions about what to eat, how much sleep you need. All the things that you need to do, you’re making bad decisions. And so, of course, it’s wasting your time, of course it’s not leading you to the kind of creativity and innovation most of us want. If we could just relax a little bit and create an environment in which your body and brain can do their best work, you will not lose productivity. In fact, you might find, just like the hospital did, your productivity will go up.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, recently, we had Michael Hyatt on the show who told a similar story about free to focus and his executives, and they grew revenue, and they worked less, like 11 hours a week less. So, I mean, that’s a message that I love hearing because I would like to work less and achieve more, so it sounds very appealing. Do you have a sense for what is the sweet spot either on a weekly work-hour basis or a daily kind of on/off rest cycle basis? Like, what’s your hunch for productivity maximization? What’s the ballpark range of how much is too much versus not enough versus just about right?

Celeste Headlee
So, we do have a lot of these records. Some of the most productive people in history worked maybe four or five hours a day. They ran a study at the University of Illinois in which they followed…

Pete Mockaitis
I.L.L. That’s right.

Celeste Headlee
That’s right. Is it your alma mater?

Pete Mockaitis
It sure is.

Celeste Headlee
They followed, and this is a while ago, I want to say it was the 1970s. It could’ve been the ‘50s. In any case, they followed a whole bunch of scientists around for quite a length of time, and they found the least productive among them were the ones who worked more than 50 hours a week. The most productive were those who worked between 12 and 20 hours a week. Charles Darwin worked four hours a day. Charles Dickens worked four hours a day. Prionka Ray worked four hours a day. We happen to know, just based on anecdotal evidence, that the average person has maybe four hours of focused work in them on any given day.

Now, that said, obviously that’s an average. I had to figure it out for myself. And, anybody, I explain how to do that in the book, but you’re going to have to find out for yourself what is the amount of time that you can work before it starts becoming counterproductive. But if you think that it’s eight hours or, God forbid, 10 or 12, that’s wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s intriguing. I guess with the examples that you gave us, I think that makes a ton of sense in terms of like scientists. Like, those who need a breakthrough, or a great idea, or an innovation, then that totally adds up, “Hey, you need more idle time so your brain can do all those things you were describing that can lead you there.” And then, as opposed to when you’re in an Industrial Revolution type mode, it’s sort of like you don’t need to get a great idea, but you do need to, I don’t know, tighten a bolt or kind of whatever, stick this thing in that thing. Although, those jobs are fewer and fewer, and not ones that mostly is less some tasks.

Celeste Headlee
Fewer and fewer but also, remember this, Henry Ford didn’t shorten his work hours for his workers to eight hours because he wanted to be generous. He shortened those work hours because he found that if they started working more than that, they started making errors and screwing things up to the point where productivity went down. We have known, even going back to the 19th century, we have records of businesses that when they shortened work hours, actually saw productivity go up, and that’s partly because of accuracy, it’s partly because the brain and body just worked better and they’re more fluid, and they’re just better fit to get things done when they’re well-rested and they’ve had breaks. So, it’s not just the knowledge worker. It’s pretty much any worker, you need rest.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And so, with those four hours, are there some themes or patterns in that they are more so in the morning, recently after sleep, or are they kind of like all over the place based on people’s unique cycles and ways of working?

Celeste Headlee
Interesting enough, again, we’re talking about averages here. So, the average person is actually better first thing in the morning if it requires any kind of real thought, and that’s especially true of people who are not morning people. So, the more tired and groggy you are, actually the more innovative you are first thing in the morning, oddly enough. Again, these are averages. You have to figure this stuff out for yourself, which means you can’t read some article on the web that says, “Oh, successful people wake up at 4:30 a.m. and immediately do hot yoga,” or whatever it may be. You need to figure out for yourself what works best for you. On average, mornings are good.

But there’s wide variance in the end. Maybe you have the kind of home situation where your mornings are noisy and chaotic. That used to be my life, in which case mornings were very difficult for me, and I would do some of my best work in the afternoon. That’s not true anymore, and now I’m back to doing my best work in the mornings.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny, when you mentioned chaotic mornings, I don’t know if you can hear the toddlers screaming.

Celeste Headlee
I can.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, ahh, that’s good feedback about the microphone selection.

Celeste Headlee
I remember.

Pete Mockaitis
The door blocks a lot but not everything. Anyway, okay, so that’s handy there. And so then, I want to get your take, when it comes to sort of the rest, the rejuvenation, you mentioned, hey, just being bored and trying that on for size is good and cool and helpful. What are some of the other perspectives or best practices in terms of really making the most of your rest time?

Celeste Headlee
So, I think the first thing is that you need to stop multitasking because the human brain can’t multitask. You need to stop trying to multitask. You need to start learning, and it is a learning process, learning to do one thing at a time. That is the way the brain works best. And when I say one thing at a time, let me be totally clear. That having your email inbox open all the time is distracting to your brain. Your brain sees that as you try to multitask, because even if you’re not actively looking at the email inbox, your brain is preparing for a notification to come in, it is devoting energy to that.

The same is true as if your smartphone is visible. Your brain is then trying to multitask, preparing for an alert to come in. It does not make a distinction between a notification coming on your phone and somebody knocking at the door. Same thing for your brain, so you have to put it out of sight. And if you really want to make the best use of what you have, your big, meaty, homo sapiens brain, give it its best environment, meaning that let it do one thing at a time. You will be shocked when you do that, how much you can get done. Close out your extra tabs and focus. Say, “Right now, this is what I’m working on,” and work on that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Understood. Well, tell me, Celeste, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Celeste Headlee
The last thing I would mention is that you may not actually have a great handle on how you’re spending your time. Time perception is generally low. Time perception is the accuracy with which you know how your time is spent and it’s, in general, fairly low. So, the first thing I had to do was track my time. I had to like spend a couple weeks, every couple of hours I would go back and say, “Okay, here’s what I did for a couple hours.” And I realized I was spending time on stuff that I really didn’t want to spend that much time on it. So, when you feel overwhelmed and overworked, it may just be that you’re not fully aware of where your time is going.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Celeste Headlee
I think it really relates in terms of becoming very focused on any one thing, and it’s a quote from Nietzsche, which says, I want to make sure I get this correct, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” So, I like that because sometimes we become so obsessed and focused on something, we sort of think the ends justify the means, and you can become a monster.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Celeste Headlee
So, I’ll tell you about one of my favorites which is this one in which they were testing stress responses. And they got this group of young girls together and they’d made them do a very stressful thing. They made them solve math problems in front of an audience. And, not surprisingly, the cortisol levels of all these girls went through the roof. They were very stressed out. Cortisol is your stress hormone. And they divided them into four groups.

One of the groups had no contact from their mother after this was over. One of the groups, their mother was waiting for them backstage. Another of the groups got a phone call from their mother, and the last group got a text from their mom, right? So, not surprisingly, the group that had no contact whatsoever, their cortisol level stayed completely elevated, there was almost no change. They were very stressed out. The girls whose moms were waiting backstage, they saw massive drop in their stress, they started to relax. Both of those were unsurprising, right?

But here’s the thing. The girls who got a phone call from their moms, saw their cortisol levels, their stress dropped at almost the same amount as those who had their mother waiting backstage. The girls who got a text, no change. That text did nothing to their stress levels. So, when we’re saving time and we think that we’re checking off the box by sending the text to someone, as far as your brain and your emotions are concerned, it doesn’t do it. We don’t recognize that as authentic social contact.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, it’s so…man, this is really hitting home because, just yesterday, it was my buddy Brent’s birthday, he listens to the show. Hey, Brent.

Celeste Headlee
Happy Birthday, Brent.

Pete Mockaitis
And I thought, “Oh, I should give him a call. But I’m hearing a thing, hearing a thing, hearing a thing, I don’t know.” And so, I texted him and didn’t call him, and I’m like, “I really should’ve called him.”

Celeste Headlee
Yeah, you should’ve called him. Sorry, Brent.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Brent, know I was thinking about you, but it did nothing for your biochemistry when I sent you that text message, okay.

Celeste Headlee
Exactly. Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you.

Celeste Headlee
Fascinating, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Humbled and corrected and learning. All right. How about a favorite book?

Celeste Headlee
A book I just finished reading not too long ago is called “The Paris Library,” and it’s a novel but it’s based on the true story of these librarians at the American library in Paris during the German occupation who hid away a lot of the books and made sure they were sending out books to all the soldiers. It’s just kind of like, I think the tagline is something like “Sometimes heroism comes from the quietest of places.” And it’s a war book in which there’s no violence, but there’s no lack of heroism because of that. I just really loved it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thanks. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Celeste Headlee
My favorite tool is my little GPS collar for my dog because when we’re walking in the woods and she’s not coming when I call her, I know exactly where she is, and I don’t have to worry.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it is handy. Thank you.

Celeste Headlee
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit, something that helps you stay awesome at your job?

Celeste Headlee
I make sure that I meditate every day. And I know it’s kind of like the gym, if you don’t go to the gym, you kind of feel icky. It’s the same thing for me for meditation, is that if I don’t do it, I can tell the difference, so I make sure that I do it usually in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote it back to you often?

Celeste Headlee
So, one of the things I’m always talking about is how human beings are a hive mind, and I write about this in this new book, that we do our best work in groups, not alone. And there’s tons of evidence that even the uneducated or ill-prepared group will outperform the most educated and experienced expert. So, one of the ways I explain this is I say, “There’s only two species that can take down a bison.” Have you ever seen a bison actually in person?

Pete Mockaitis
I think from a distance, like I’m in a train, so not up close.

Celeste Headlee
Yeah. So, a bison is a freaking impressive animal, right? These are like 2200 pounds of solid muscle. They can run more than 40 miles an hour. With their horns, they can pick up a truck. Like, this is an amazing beast, and not stupid. There’s only two species that can really take them down. They are, of course, wolves and humans. And what do wolves and humans have in common? They’re pack animals.

And this is just sort of a way of explaining how human beings have been so successful. It’s because we have to take down this incredible beast so we sit there and we have these communication skills that allow us to find out who’s the best on horseback, who has the best aim with a spear, who thinks geometrically and can peel one of them off of the herd, who’s the best at butchering an animal, who’s the strongest and is going to be able to get this thing onto the sled to get it back to the village. That’s what we’re able to accomplish with our advanced communication skills. And no expert is going to help you with some of these tasks that have helped us survived.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Celeste, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Celeste Headlee
Go to CelesteHeadlee.com, it’s where I gather all the info in one convenient place.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Celeste Headlee
Yes. Find at least 20 minutes a day when you don’t have your smartphone with you. Twenty minutes. You can do it. You can survive. As of 2007, before 2007, there was no iPhone. Like, it’s been very recent that we were able to survive without them. So, find 15 or 20 minutes, and you walk away and leave your smartphone.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Celeste, thanks for this, and good luck in all your adventures.

Celeste Headlee
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.