Ashish KothariMake flourishing your competitive edge

Create Space, Boost Productivity: The Secret to Flourishing & Well-being #shorts #podcastclips

16 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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1:16

Short spoken clip (YouTube #shorts) where the speaker—who formerly reduced hours while at McKinsey and wrote the book Hardwired for Happiness—argues that flourishing requires creating empty space for reflection rather than continuous, back-to-back productivity measures; stopping activities that don't serve well‑being is often the right move. The speaker also mentions giving a recent TEDx talk.

Chapters

About seven years ago I shifted. Even in the context of McKinsey. I went part time, I went 70%. So I would literally have two and a half, three days of emptiness, of reading, sitting under a tree, sensing into what needed to emerge. I wrote a book hardwired for Happiness. To this day I maintain that practice right. I need space even in the busiest of days, being able to step back and sense and B because sometimes when we do that, we find things that we shouldn't be doing in the first place. Not doing them faster or changing what we are doing, but actually stopping. It's not working. That wisdom doesn't exist in a blind rush for productivity only measured as number of keystrokes on a computer now or how many calls did I do or how many emails did I write and how many memos or how many PowerPoint pages. I just gave a TedX talk 2 weeks ago ago and I said flourishing can't exist in days filled with back to back meetings with no space, even fire. You can take a bunch of wood that can burn, but if I suffocate it of oxygen, of space, there will be no fire.