Ep. 74: Do Nothing with Celeste Headlee (Part 2)

Tamzin B. Smith

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We’re back again this week with journalist Celeste Headlee, whose conversation with Dr. Jack Muskat, Medcan’s clinical director of mental health, was so captivating, we had to dedicate two episodes to it. In her book, Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving, Headlee argues that our obsession with productivity is enabling burnout culture and harming our health. When we last left Headlee and Dr. Muskat, the duo had explored the surprising historical evolution of work and how one restorative train trip forced Headlee to unplug and rethink her own relationship to her job. This week, they dive into the lifestyle changes we should all be making in order to break out of this vicious work cycle we’re trapped in, so that we can embrace the restorative power of leisure.  

LINKS
Celeste is quite active on Twitter and Instagram.

Read more on Headlee and her work at her website, and check out her book Do Nothing.

An interview Headlee did with NPR leading up to the book’s launch. 

Here’s a WHO article categorizing burn-out as an “occupational phenomenon.”

INSIGHTS

Data from the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization shows a concerning trend for those spending long hours at work. “Overwork can kill you,” says Headlee. The WHO findings show an increased risk for premature death caused by heart disease and stroke for those who work more than 55 hours a week. But the real kicker? Headlee says research reveals that the net difference in pay for someone working 55 hours versus someone working 35 hours is only 6 percent. [04:20]

So what can we be doing to more effectively combat burnout in the workplace? Headlee thinks one of the solutions is better management practices. One of the problems with remote working, she says, is that managers started instituting more intrusive policies because they didn’t trust their employees to be productive from home. It had the opposite effect—as a manager “your job is actually not to manage a team, it’s to coach them and give them the tools they need for success.” [05:58]

But surely the cult of productivity is good for something. For example, Dr. Jack Muskat points out that coming up with a vaccine in 11 months doesn’t happen without some serious work. Headlee notes that working to solve a crisis is different from an ongoing 50- or 60-hour work week. Throughout history, humans have worked in pulses. For example, at harvest time they’ve come together (and worked long hours) to bring in the crops. The main difference? Afterwards, “they were given a nice, long break.” That is “the rhythm of homosapiens,” Headlee says. [09:42]

And for the younger generation? Headlee notes that the host of work-related worries Gen-Z deals with is the upshot of a society that brainwashes its members into believing they’re only valuable if they’re working. In reality, “it is a delusion to think that if you keep pushing your brain, it helps you get more done.” The brain, and humans in general, benefit from recovery time. Headlee notes that studies on productivity show that those who work 10-15 hours a week are generally the most productive (on a per-hour basis). Plus, humans are naturally equipped to work in teams, and yet most of what we’re taught growing up is about individual responsibility. Working in a group is a skill that has to be developed—training people to work by themselves won’t do them any good in the real world. [10:55]

To the CEO or executive that says they have no time for hobbies: Headlee doesn’t believe you. “You have more time than  you think,” she says. You have to find where the “leak” is (i.e., are you scrolling Instagram in between emails?) and plug it with something that’s just for pleasure—something that doesn’t go on a CV, that won’t be beneficial for your career or even go on social media. That, she says, is the kind of leisure that we’re missing. [15:56]

“I want people to experience boredom again,” says Headlee. Why? Well, your brain hates the state of being bored, so it will start to wander. A wandering brain will start to make surprising connections, like remembering that you haven’t called your favourite aunt in a while. And the only way to accomplish this is by truly separating work from leisure and giving your mind the freedom to just wander. [19:51]

EPISODE 74: DO NOTHING WITH CELESTE HEADLEE (PART 2) FINAL WEB TRANSCRIPT

Christopher Shulgan: Welcome to Eat Move Think, episode 74. I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. We are back with part two of our fascinating conversation with journalist Celeste Headlee, who is the author of the book, Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving. Headlee is an expert in human nature, conversation and finding well-being. And her book argues that we are obsessed with work and productivity to the point that it's literally killing us.

[00:00:37.15]

Christopher Shulgan: Last week, Headlee and Dr. Jack Muskat, clinical director of mental health at Medcan, explored how the industrial revolution was a turning point that changed how we work—for the worse, Headlee says—and the case for letting go and embracing true leisure. When we last left them, Headlee and Dr. Muskat were talking about a restorative train trip that Headlee took that forced her to unplug and rethink her relationship to her own work. In the second half of their discussion, they examine the lifestyle changes we should all be making in order to actually do, well, nothing. There's a larger aim of the changes both Headlee and Dr. Muskat discuss: to restore balance and leave time for restoring and rejuvenation in our work-obsessed lives. Wouldn't that be nice? Here's their conversation.

[00:01:23.25]

Jack Muskat: Hi. Welcome to part two of Do Nothing with Celeste Headlee. I'm Dr. Jack Muskat, clinical director of mental health at Medcan, and I'm here with journalist and author Celeste Headlee. Celeste and I spoke about her most recent book, Do Nothing, and today we're going to continue our discussion on the interesting topic of how we've created a cult of efficiency that has robbed us of our ability to enjoy ourselves and feel human.

[00:01:51.01]

Jack Muskat: How did you manage to keep the key things that are important to you? Because one of the challenges we have, it's not just good intentions, but as you said earlier, structurally, it's very difficult to change things. So what did you change? What we were able to do that allows you to sustain the "do nothing," or the leisure? Did you have a plan when you came back? What met you when you got off at—I don't know, was it Union Station or wherever you were?

[00:02:17.10]

Celeste Headlee: I did exactly what I want people to do right now in this moment, which is I basically said, "You know what? The assumptions that I've been making for almost all of my working life are just wrong. They're founded on air—nothing behind them. So what if I start from scratch? What if I start to create routines and patterns for my days, and habits just based on whether they serve me or they don't?" And that required me to sort of figure out how many hours can I work per day before I start to lose focus, which it turns out it's a little over four hours. That's all I've got. So if I only have, you know, four, four and a half hours of focus, what's the best time for me to do focused work? What's the best time for me to have calls like this one, or do writing? Do I need to work out every day? What's the best time for me to work out?

[00:03:12.08]

Celeste Headlee: I just basically threw everything out: baby and bathwater, and just said, "I'm going to start over." And in a way, we're in another one of those moments, assuming you don't work for a company making mistakes. We're in this moment where you can sort of hit the reset button, which is what I did, and think about what was working, and what doesn't work in the end at all? What was I doing because I was told it would work? All those articles that we see that say "The Nine Things Successful People do Every Morning," right? To what extent was I replicating what other people told me was good? And could I get rid of it? And it turns out, I could get rid of most of it. You know, you mentioned earlier how productive I am. And the truth is, I'm productive now in less than half the time of work that I spent before.

[00:04:03.22]

Jack Muskat: And that's very encouraging, because we need a carrot and we need some rewards to get people to change. I was quite concerned, I think I read somewhere in your book that someone who works more than 50 hours a week isn't earning a lot more money than someone who just works 35 hours a week.

[00:04:21.14]

Celeste Headlee: Six percent. And we just got data from the WHO in partnership with the International Labour Organization showing that working more than 55 hours a week leads to premature death, can lead to premature death because of heart disease and stroke. I mean, we're not talking about "is associated with," we're not talking about "correlated with," we're talking about the World Health Organization saying overwork can kill you.

[00:04:49.14]

Jack Muskat: It's true, yeah. As we're looking forward, you know, and as you're telling us, the counterintuitive information around overwork, burnout, and the inability to be productive and make good decisions, what can employers or should employers be doing? I mean, there seems to have been a lot of talk about flexible workspace. We're all concerned—both in Canada and in the US—what this hybrid model is going to look like, what is Zoom fatigue going to look like in the fall as people, some go back to work, some don't? What are the things that employers need to be mindful of, so that people can be more productive, less sick days, happier, more competitively profitable because you're making better business decisions, and you have lower turnover? I know you have six hacks about getting your life back on a personal level, but I think in reading them, they could certainly operate at the corporate level and at the organizational level, and if you wouldn't mind sharing with us how you would see that happening. You're probably already instituting some of that yourself in your work.

[00:05:58.23]

Celeste Headlee: Absolutely. I mean, the first thing is to stop controlling your employees time, because they need to take breaks, and they need to take real breaks. You know, most people get up from their computer and say, "I need to walk around a little," and the first thing they do is look at their phone. People need to be able to walk away. For example, Microsoft did brain scans of people separated into groups: those who just went from one meeting to another and those who took at least 10 minutes in between. And you can see on the brain scan, those who are going from one meeting to another, the stress build up over the course of a day. So you don't need an hour for every meeting. By using agendas for meetings, and keeping strictly to that time, you can cut down the length of meetings. You also need to cut down the number of meetings—there are too many meetings. And you don't need to invite everybody and the kitchen sink to meetings. Managers especially need to be very intentional and careful before they call a meeting and who they invite, and keep it very, very quick.

[00:07:00.17]

Celeste Headlee: Another thing is that, you know, going back to those six drivers of burnout, remember that one of them is feeling that you're not in control. And one of the things that many managers did during the pandemic was, you're going to work from home, I don't know that I trust you to actually get work done, and so they started instituting all these policies to micromanage employees, which was absolutely the opposite of what they needed to do. So the other thing is let go. Your job is actually not to manage a team, it's to coach them, and give them the tools that they need for success. If you don't trust an employee to work when they're supposed to be working, that's a problem in and of itself, right? That's not going to be solved by micromanagement. So give your employees autonomy.

[00:07:47.18]

Jack Muskat: Right.

[00:07:47.26]

Celeste Headlee: Also, another driver is lack of appreciation. This was not among my tips, because this is something that a manager needs to do. And you need to really keep track, and be aware of every single person's contribution. Because we know that who gets appreciated and who gets credit for good work is very often highly gendered and highly racial. So, A) let people take real breaks, let them get up and walk away. If they need to go home, let them go home, right? We should be focusing more on going back to a task-based model whenever possible. I tell my employees, "If you get your work done in two hours' time, that's your work day. What I'm interested in is getting this work done, it's not how many hours you're sitting at your desk.

[00:08:33.29]

Jack Muskat: Right. And that's great, because I'll just pay you for two hours, you see?

[00:08:37.13]

Celeste Headlee: [laughs] No. Absolutely not.

[00:08:38.29]

Jack Muskat: A-ha. So now we're reaching the kind of where the heads butt, where you get this challenge between the way in which we're restructured economically and the way in which we're valued. And there's always been a push-pull between the employee—you know, when I do my corporate work, and I talk about, you know, the two circles, the employee's looking for a sense of mastery and competence in what they're doing. They want a sense of meaning, and they want recognition. And the employer's looking for productivity, utility and profitability. And so the balance has to be, we have to make sure the employee is fed well enough emotionally and psychologically to do a good job, but at the same time, the productivity has to be meaningful. It's really finding where's that entry point? And what can people do? I will say this: if it wasn't for capitalism and productivity, we wouldn't get five vaccines in 11 months. And most of those were US-based companies. So we'd have a tremendous ...

[00:09:37.19]

Celeste Headlee: Maybe.

[00:09:38.07]

Jack Muskat: ... tremendous. You don't think? You don't think they were working at it?

[00:09:42.16]

Celeste Headlee: Absolutely. I think they were working very hard. But that absolutely is the pattern that humans have kept going back all the time we have record of is that when called upon, when it's a crisis, when it's needed, we work very long hours, and we work quite hard to meet demand. As long as after they finished, they were given a nice long break.

[00:10:02.18]

Jack Muskat: Right.

[00:10:02.29]

Celeste Headlee: That's the rhythm of homo sapiens.

[00:10:06.02]

Jack Muskat: Right. And what we're missing to your point is that harvest party.

[00:10:10.04]

Celeste Headlee: Festival.

[00:10:11.04]

Jack Muskat: Festival. Pardon me. The harvest festival, and the opportunity to celebrate. Are there any things that have come up in the past year, or as we go forward through the summer and look at the fall—you gave us some great pointers on what we could do at work, but are there any other things that in your experience, you feel—particularly for younger people, I do some work with Gen Z, and they're really struggling. They started work during a pandemic, they haven't been onboarded, they haven't been to the office, they're worried about their future, they're worried about school failure, they're worried about what they can be. Basically, they're worried. And I almost want to tell them, "Chill, it's going to be okay." How would you approach them? What are some of the messages we could give that newer generation that's entering the workforce?

[00:10:56.01]

Celeste Headlee: I would say first of all, the pressure that you're feeling is a form of brainwashing that has been in place since at least the beginning of the 20th century, and every generation has leaned into it. This idea that you should feel guilty or bad about yourself if you're not being productive, it is literally brainwashing. I'm not speaking metaphorically. This is part of the history that I talked about in the book, that it was literally designed to manipulate people, and that worry is a product of that. It means that the brainwashing has been successful. And you have to sort of unplug, you have to take the red pill and unplug yourself from the matrix to sort of see what's actually happening.

[00:11:37.02]

Celeste Headlee: The next thing I would say is that the idea that working longer hours makes you more productive is one hundred percent not supported by evidence. In fact, every single time we've tried to track this down, we find that among groups of people, you know, those who work, say, 10 to 15 hours a week are the most productive of all. They are more productive than those who work 50 or 60 hours a week. So it is a delusion to think that if you keep pushing your brain, it helps you get more done. No, you're going to make more errors, you'll be less creative, you'll be less innovative and you'll be exhausted.

[00:12:14.02]

Celeste Headlee: The last thing I would say is that we are, again, not working in concert with our own physiology and neurology, right? So human beings, our species works best in groups in pretty much every situation. We even know that a group of people including complete amateurs are more accurate in their decision-making than the most experienced expert, right? That's how well we work together. And yet, if you think about it, all through your schooling, all through your early years, you are never taught how to work in a team. Ever. You are taught to work individually, you're taught individual accountability, you're always taught the person, the person, the individual. And then suddenly, you're dumped into the workplace, and you're expected to work with other people. Well, teamwork is a skill.

[00:13:07.22]

Jack Muskat: That's right.

[00:13:08.25]

Celeste Headlee: It's something you have to develop and learn how to do. And so part of the stress that young people feel is that they're suddenly being asked to do something which is quite difficult cognitively and emotionally, and they have no idea how to do it. And so we need to stop training people how to work entirely by themselves, and start training people how to be good on a team.

[00:13:34.14]

Jack Muskat: Do you think that the answer is mentors, or that there's a buddy system? Or what do you see in terms of your own experience in work? I know you play a leadership role in the media business.

[00:13:44.17]

Celeste Headlee: It's a skill. You know, we're talking about—we say social skills, and we never stop to think of what "skill" means. Skill means it's something that can be taught and improved and practised. And it's the same thing with teamwork. You know, first of all, we don't even build our workplace cultures around teamwork. We build them around lionizing individuals, and the lone wolf, right? It cracks me up when people talk about, "I'm a lone wolf," when in nature, the lone wolf probably has mange and is gonna die, right? Like, that's a lone wolf, right? So we already have this culture that looks to Steve Jobs or to Jeff Bezos and raises them up like these isolated geniuses. We need to change what we emphasize, but we also need to just train people in how to work well in teams. We need to establish systems that are conducive to teamwork, we need to encourage cross-silo collaboration, we need to encourage transactive memory, so that not everybody has to know how the copier works. That's a waste of brainpower if every single person has the same information in their brain. When one person can know how it works, and then we rely on each other. And the same is true for all kinds of knowledge. We need to figure out and train each other and practice these disciplines of working well together.

[00:15:09.21]

Jack Muskat: Right. Even Einstein said he didn't know where everything is, he just knew where to find it. And, you know, in the minutes that we have left, it would be really, really helpful for us to kind of hear from you what we can do around leisure. You're not going to believe this, but I'm going to ask you a professional question that might help me, because most of my patients say to me they don't have hobbies. All our clients—I shouldn't say all of them, but we're a high-functioning team here at Medcan. We work with high-functioning executives and business owners and entrepreneurs, both male and female. And everybody is busy, and everybody loves what they're doing? But they're suffering from many of the things that you describe. But when you ask them, "Well, what would you do," and even those who have time ahead of them, they don't know what to say. And I'm wondering if you have some suggestions.

[00:15:57.09]

Celeste Headlee: Right. This is one of the things about the pandemic, right? Is, like, everyone was stuck at home and they realized, whereas past generations collected stamps and polished rocks, and, you know, did whittling, we don't have anything in our houses anymore to occupy our time. Like, this for many people was a revelation. So this was another one of these sort of a-ha moments for me was when I came home one day after a very busy and stressful day, I flopped myself down on the couch and I said, "I absolutely cannot bring myself to make dinner from scratch." And I love to cook. And as I'm sitting there on the couch feeling exhausted, I look into my kitchen and I just start taking notice of all the things that I have that save me time over what my grandmother had, right? And then I was like, well, that's kind of interesting. So I took a notepad and I walked around my house, and I started making a rough estimate of how much more time I should have each week than my grandmother did—who also was a school teacher, and also did slideshows after every vacation with her neighbours, and had barbecues, and was part of the Elk's Club and was part of a bowling club, right? She did all these things. And I have an extra, like, 18 hours a week that she didn't have. So where is the time going?

[00:17:12.01]

Celeste Headlee: To these high-powered executives who say they absolutely don't have time? I don't believe you. It's probably not true. You have more time than you think. which then becomes where is the leak?

[00:17:25.11]

Jack Muskat: Right?

[00:17:26.00]

Celeste Headlee: How do I plug it, and then what do I want to do with that time? What could I do that is completely meaningless? What do I enjoy doing? Whether it's baseball cards, or crosswords or Sudoku? What is it that you could do that you enjoy yet you would never put on your CV, that you would never put on your social media because it builds your brand? Do that.

[00:17:51.24]

Jack Muskat: And you need to elaborate a little bit more on that, because when you talk about leisure, leisure is not idleness, doing nothing. The closest I can come to it is what I would call the recovery day when you're a runner or an athlete, and you need a day for your muscles to recover. You're not doing nothing, your body is getting ready for the next day. And we don't know because we're so task-focused, so if we take up a leisure activity, most of my friends do it with an intent to be successful at it, to win. Again, they turn it into a task. And so I want you to kind of—because you broke through that, you know, type A approach to everything has to be goal oriented. How do you make the goal not a goal?

[00:18:39.01]

Celeste Headlee: Well I mean, the first thing is it's not leisure if it's preparing you for more work. The purpose of the work is to give you leisure. The more idle you are, the more free time you have, the more successful you are, not only as an organism, but as a person. The work is making that possible, not the other way around. So the leisure should have nothing to do with work. I like to think of it as like, you have to imagine that you have an open and closed sign, right? There's the shop of Celeste. And what time of the day do I flip that sign to "Open?" And what time do I flip it and say, "Be back in an hour after lunch?" And what time does it say "Closed?" And when it's closed, I am not checking email, I am not checking Slack, I am not reading up real quick on a memo, because the shop is closed. That's it. And you know what? Frankly, if that happens, if you say, "Here's my ending time," and it's 6:00 p.m., and you close your shop, and you sit on the couch, and you find you have nothing to do, I'm okay with that.

[00:19:52.01]

Celeste Headlee: Like, I want people to experience boredom again. That's a very fertile state of mind. That period where you're sitting down in your chair, and you're just kind of looking around, your brain hates it. It hates to be bored. So basically, what it's doing is, like, frantically taking note of things. Suddenly, things will bubble up in your mind you haven't thought about for years. It'll start to make surprising connections. You'll realize you haven't called your Aunt Mary in, you know, a year's time. You'll remember you were going to do that one puzzle that you never actually did that's in the back of your closet now. Things will bubble up, and they will surprise you. When you're not directed, you wonder. And just because of our phones, because of our lifestyles, we don't feel boredom anymore, and we don't wonder.

[00:20:42.27]

Jack Muskat: You write a lot about the relationship we have to time, and it's as if the more time we seem to feel we need, the less time we really have, but in this state of leisure, time seems to both expand and also compress, if that makes any sense.

[00:20:58.28]

Celeste Headlee: Oh, it makes perfect sense. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and you know, I love to garden. And I bake a lot. I really like to cook for all of my friends. And there were some recipes that have been sitting in my to-try folder in my recipe app for forever because I would look at the time it took to make them, and I'd be like, I do not have that kind of time. And as you say, once I reordered my life, not only did I have time, but those recipes both took longer and almost no time at all, you know? I'd be like, "Why didn't I make this before? I absolutely had time for this. So yes, you get a different relationship with time. The passage of time is not stressful anymore.

[00:21:43.18]

Jack Muskat: Right. And it's a space. And speaking of time, we're just about out of time, ironically. But I want to say the joy that you convey to us is so compelling and exciting and encouraging. And the book is called Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving, with our guest, Celeste Headlee. And it was a pleasure meeting you today. And I wish we could have as much fun doing nothing as you're accomplishing doing nothing, as contradictory as that sounds. So thank you again.

[00:22:14.18]

Celeste Headlee: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[00:22:16.16]

Jack Muskat: Thanks. Bye now.

[00:22:25.05]

Christopher Shulgan: That was the second part of Medcan clinical director of mental health Dr. Jack Muskat's conversation with Celeste Headlee, the author of Do Nothing. We'll post a link to that book at EatMoveThinkpodcast.com, as well as links and a full episode transcript.

Christopher Shulgan: Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Patricia Karounos is associate producer. Social media support from Andrew Imecs and Campbell MacKinnon.

Christopher Shulgan: Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow our host Shaun Francis on Twitter and Instagram @ShaunCFrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @Medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with more on the latest in health and wellness.

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