From "Bad Busy" to "Good Busy": Reinventing Your Approach to Productivity with Kate Sotsenko

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspiration to help you operate at your fullest potential, integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. I'm your host, Ashish Kothari, the founder and CEO of Happiness Squad and author of the bestselling book Hardwired for Happiness. I will be your personal guide on your journey to explore the many facets of happiness, well being and flourishing, from personal growth to building more positive environments at work. In each episode, we will share powerful insight, tips and stories from our guests who are leading experts, company executives, and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge. Whether you're looking to overcome life's challenges, to go from good to great, or to enhance your team's performance through flourishing, this podcast is the place for you to find more joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Join us every week as we rewire for happiness together.

Hi dear friends. Welcome to another episode of the Happiness Squad, where we have a truly special guest with us, Kate Sotsenko, who's the Visionary founder of TheGoodBusy.com Now, Kate is on a mission to transform the way we perceive and manage busyness in our lives. Who doesn't need that? Busyness seems to be a common word by which we always if somebody asks.

You how are you?

Most often we reply busy. She's a former junior tennis player and has a rich background of 15 years in retail and hospitality. Kate now dedicates herself to helping mid to senior leaders truly reclaim their time and find more joy outside of work. In this episode, we'll dive into Kate's journey of discovering what truly gives her energy at work and how that revelation led her to create the Good Busy. Kate will share her insights on the pervasive issue of busyness, its underlying causes and practical strategies to eliminate unnecessary tasks. We'll explore her unique Good Busy framework which emphasizes pausing, preparing, moving forward, playing and reflecting to create a more fulfilling work life. So whether you're constantly overwhelmed by your to do list or just looking for ways to be more intentional with your.

Time, this episode is packed with actionable.

Advice that can help you transform your bad busy into good busy.

Kate, it is so lovely to have you with us today and thank you for joining to share your insights around eliminating busyness in our lives. It's such a common issue that people are facing.

Yeah. Hi Ashish, thank you so much for having me. And hi everybody. Yes, it's a very common word.

Let's put it this way, you Know, it was amazing. You know, when I was at McKinsey, you used to ask people, there would also be always this difference. People ask me, how are you? And I always say, I'm awesome. And everybody stepped back because the most common response, in fact, we decided to address it right, as a partner group. People asked, how are you? And I think it was like, busy. I'm like, is that a good thing to be busy? Like, is that a bad thing to be busy? So I'm really excited to dig into this. But before we go there, talk a little bit, Kate, about what inspired you, right, to make all of your work that you're doing now. What inspired you to start the good busy, and what was the journey that you took that got you to where you are right now?

Well, I'll try to make a long story as short as possible. So actually, it all started about eight years ago. I attended a leadership workshop with a professor from IMD Business School in Lausanne. And I remember we got this question from him. He asked us what at work sort of gives you energy? And that was a question that I've never asked myself before. And he said something else, this kind of state with me. He said that it's not because you are really, really good at your job, that it gives you energy. And since that moment, I sort of started looking for what actually gives me energy at work. Because I was. My background is in client relationship management and client experience. I worked for luxury brands and hospitality and retail. And I was, I think, very good at my job. I worked for great companies. But at that exact moment, I was asking myself that question, does what I do give me energy? And so I continued this reflection for quite a few years because I'm sort of not the type of person who jumps, you know, into things. I need to think them through. And I promised to myself that until I find exactly what gives me energy, I will not move out. Sort of where I was the expert at that time. And I think five years ago, my manager introduced me to executive coaching. And for me, coaching was sports, because I played tennis for 10 years when I was younger, so I wasn't necessarily aware of business coaching. Mentorship, yes. Training, yes. And I loved training. That was one of the things that gave me energy, but not coaching. And we started actually using more and more coaching in our own work. So coaching became 80% of my work at a certain point. And so I asked my manager to support me and sponsor my training, coaching, training, so that I can actually get an expertise there as well. And that's how basically I became a coach and then why the focus became on productivity, it is because I've always been an organization freak. I don't know if it's linked with a little bit of OCD as well. You know, we all have something, but I never, I would say I had a lot of questions of people how you do that. And I've always given credit to my organization skills and I love reading a lot and sort of I combined all of this together and that's how basically the good busy came to life. It was not the exact name, it was the theme and I always use that. And to your point, I used to always answer that when people ask me, how are you? I used to answer, I'm busy. But for me that was a good thing. So. And I, you know, I saw people say, oh, I'm so sorry. Me too. And I'm so. But why are you sorry? I think it's a great thing to be busy. So this is basically overall the story and where I am now and when it comes to LinkedIn, because that's how we met as well. I never intended to post any content and create content on LinkedIn. That was just, you know, sometimes things happen in life. I went on LinkedIn to post once to say, well, I'm going to start my own adventure. I'm starting a coaching company, productivity, you know, consulting business. And I saw that people were posting and creating educational content on LinkedIn and I said, well, what if I tried? And here I am a year and a half.

Look, you know, I've loved, I've loved how succinct and how practical some of the tips are. And I especially wanted to have you. Right, because so many people are wrestling with this. I mean, it's really amazing to me, Kate, because that I know where it comes from, right? But if you think about our efficiency, right, as a generation to get things done, how much can we do with how much effort? It was up 90%, 90% faster, almost everything. There is so much friction that we've removed from our lives. Travel. How hard was it to book, travel or change? Travel, banking, groceries, ordering food, meeting with colleagues around the globe. 25 years ago, email didn't exist pre Covid zoom. And all of this wasn't that much. Of course, we did video conference and there was so much time to organize. And then now with AI, right, what used to take an hour now takes five minutes. And it's probably even better. So so much efficiency. I mean, we should be swimming in free time. We should be taking more Vacations, we should be more present, but that's not our reality. We are actually busier than our parents, right, who were busier than their parents. And so, you know, I think we have to actually address this and we have to make it practical and understand what's behind this, what is getting in our way and how do we actually get out of it. How do we get out of it? How are we creating our own issues, not others creating our issues? Right, so that's the next question that I want to ask you. So as you've done work, as you've read, as you've been now working and coaching so many other clients, what are some of the challenges or drivers behind the bad Busy, if you will.

Yeah, so that's a very good question. And I love how you explained all of this earlier, I think because, especially because of everything that is so easy. And so, you know, we have this distance, right? You are sitting in the US right now and I'm sitting in Cyprus. We have this distance but there is this proximity that has been created, right? And so we have the proximity to everything through social media, through Internet. And so we constantly are exposed to visual cues, right? We're constantly exposed to information. And we are, you know, I always say that we humans do not invest enough time in learning ourselves. We invest more time in learning the technology, whereas the technology is investing in learning us. And that's how. I don't like the, you know, sometimes if you use the word manipulation, but the. This is how the technology sort of uses the knowledge of the human being to sort of, kind of, I wouldn't say help us navigate, but sort of, yes, manipulate us into certain decisions. Right. And to certain words and needs. So for me, I think the fact that everything is so is just close to your tips. We want more and more things, but the reality is I love this concept of paradox of choice and I read this book by Barry Schwartz and, and there is a wonderful tech doc as well where he talks that the more choices, the more ideas, the more options we have, the harder it for us it is to take a decision and the harder it is for us to be satisfied. So he gives this concept, he talks about this concept of maximizer and satisfies. And to your question, what do I notice the most working with my clients is that majority of people who are incredibly bet busy are those who are maximizers. They are constantly looking for more and they are looking for better, they are looking for faster. So all this, er, you know that whatever you want to mention, like whatever objective you want to use. So most of them, when we start our conversation, and I say, well, fantastic. This is what is happening now. Thank you for sharing. What do you want instead? And many of them say, I don't know, because this is not the question that they've asked themselves in the past because they've never stopped. They were. They, they know that there is everything that's going and they don't have enough time to stop. So they don't have enough time to ask themselves this question. But the thing is that when we don't know what we want, it's very hard to get it. We, we're constantly going to be looking for something and we're constantly running after something, and that's how we end up in the hamster's will. Right. So for me, this is the biggest problem. We. I love Simon Sinek, and I think we all believe that we need to start with a why in terms of productivity, why is the driver? But in order to be productive and satisfied at a certain point with your results and outcomes, you need to start with the end in mind. So with a what, what is your destination? Where are you going? And how would you know that you got there? Because a lot of people use the things like, I want to be productive, I want to be happy, I want to be satisfied and fulfilled. What does this actually mean? Because being happy for you is probably being next to the mountain, and being happy for me means being next to the sea. Right. So we all have this different definition of happiness and we just forget to define these terms. What are we looking for? And that's why we keep on just going in circles and adding stuff instead of eliminating things.

Yeah, I think it's. And it's very, you know, it's very deeply rooted. Right. In our neuroscience. So that's at the heart of the work. And many of our listeners, you know, I've talked about this. You know, we are. Our brains evolved to keep us safe, not happy. And our hunger. Right, right. This desire for more. I mean, if you look back, you know, if I have more stuff than my ancestor, you know, than my predecessor who lived in the cave next to me. Higher chances to find a mate, higher chances to kind of procreate and have. Right. I think that's kind of where our, our full desire for more, more, more comes from. It comes from a fundamental sense of safety and be able to continue forward. Right. The problem is, you know, we went from my neighbor next door to my neighbors in my neighborhood to today, we can compare against anyone and everyone out there, Right. In fact, it was funny. I was talking to somebody the other day and they talked about, I've got 80,000 followers, but I really look at the person who has 300,000, I say, oh my God, they have more than me. Right. Versus I'm like, what is that for in the first place? Right. And so I think we are always comparing. And when we compare, deep within, our hunger is not for more. Right. And that's why I love what you just highlighting from your work, too. This maximizer satisfies our hunger within. If you really turn inwards, I find is not for more. Our hunger is for all. And that's like, you know, that hunger never gets satisfied because the moment we get to one, we want the next. Right. Then we want the next, then we want the next. Right? And so this turning into what gives us satisfaction and hence get there through a process of elimination rather than through a process of addition is a really, really important concept. And yet, Kate, it's a very scary concept because knowing what you want, most people don't know what they want. And then change, changing from what's actually getting me. You know, they've gotten promoted, they have a house, they're making money. Changing and stopping can sometimes be the hardest thing. And so what are some ways in which you help your clients? Number one, discover what is it that will really bring more satisfaction in their life. And second, you know, let's go there. Next is how do you actually then help them make the journey? Because the journey is the hardest part.

Of course. Yeah. But it's good to highlight that the journey starts with ourselves. Right?

Because absolutely.

Very often, I think in today's world, and there are so many headlines that sort of blame the companies, but I always say the company is just a group of people and every single person is part of the group. So we can wait for others to make the change, or we can start making the change that we want ourselves. Right. So to your question, and I like how you mentioned sort of it starts from within, because everything starts from within. And I believe we, we still have this misconception of productivity. First of all, that productivity is an external game, but in reality it is very much an internal game. And I call it a game of decisions. So it's not about the tools and systems. Yes, they come in place, and yes, they'll help you to make the work more efficient and go faster, but they do not choose what kind of work you are going to do. You are the one choosing. And I think that because of the speed we Live in. In today's world, it's very hard for people to imagine that actually you can achieve the exact same results but going slower. And they can be much of like, you can even increase the quality of those results. Because we all know these rules. You know, the 80, 20 rule, we know, you know, that 20% of actions give us 80% of results, right? So we all know that. We know the paradox of choice. We know that, but we have still the difficulties, to put it in, in practice. And that's all about the mindset. And that's, in my view, where coaching comes in handy. And coaches have. Coaches too. I get coached almost every week because we all have our limitations, right? We all see the world from our own lens. And sometimes we need that person who tells us things that we don't see because they're, you know, they're either left or right. So I'll give you two examples. I have one. My, myself. So when I was working a couple of years ago with an executive coach, I remember sharing how overwhelmed I was, you know, and how many things I was doing, but how helpful I was. And I didn't understand why other people were not sort of welcoming that. And my coach looked at me and said, well, Kate, I'm noticing that pattern. Somebody is asking you for tea and a cookie, and you bring out 20 options for tea, 20 cookies, 20 cakes, biscuits, everything, you know, so it's like, of course you're overwhelmed. You're just doing too much, but that's your choice. And that just stayed with me, you know, because I realized that I was the one doing too much. Another personal example that I have is that every time I made a switch, a company switch, and I resigned, my workload dropped by 50%. And it made me constantly realize that the person who was adding so much task on the plate was not the company, or I call it the company, it was me. So, and then, for example, I worked with a client. So this particular client called themselves a meeting holic. Everything need to be needed to be a meeting, and everything was important. And it was the same thing when they were talking to me, I was listening to them and they were leaving in meetings. And then, well, usually the way I work with clients is that we do the coaching. But before that, they take my online course. And on the first session, the client just jumped right in and said, oh my God, it's me. The problem, you know, because they read the concept about the maximizer and the satisfies, and they said, well, I never know what I'm doing. In the meeting, it's like everybody, one person has a question, and I'm jumping and I'm offering a meeting. And so it really, truly helps sometimes to just click, pause. And that's where my framework starts, the good, busy framework. You click pause, you ask yourself, what is the end goal? Because if there is no end goal, there is no point of starting that task. And so sometimes it's very hard. The pace is extremely harsh and even more difficult for people who work for very big companies and you come from one of them. I worked for a big company as well, because everything is urgent, everything is important. There is so much pressure. But the fact is that probably 80% of that pressure we put on ourselves. Ourselves. And one key skill that I recommend here to everyone and the one that I focus on in my framework, is to ask more questions. In the workplace, we don't ask enough questions. If your boss tells you, I need this report, we say, okay, and we start doing it. We don't ask, what is it for? Who is it for? What is the main message that you want to communicate? When is it? When do you need it by? Right. Because there is a big, big chance. When I started doing that, I realized that 80% of the time, I've already had the report. I didn't need to do this from scratch because it's always the same information. But because we don't ask enough questions, we say yes too quickly, and then we overwhelm ourselves. There is a great quote from. From a book called the Coaching Habit. It's a fantastic book. I recommend everybody to read. And the quote says that questions help us to say yes more slowly. And it's absolutely true. And that's how. That's, for me, one of the best ways to slow down in the work.

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Yeah, look, I mean, there is so much. There's so much that you covered, and I love how you integrating in your own journey and for others, all these different components that are out there. So I think this notion of slowing down, stepping back to go faster is a very powerful concept, dear friends. Right. That I want you to take away. If you know, it's this notion of who needs to meditate. Those who have no time need that the most, right? It's the reality because you get that moment of clarity. So if you are too busy, slow down. If you're running too fast, slow down. And that balcony moment can make such a, such a big difference because you can start to focus on what matters, right? What really matters in the moment. I think the second one, Kate, I love your invitation to ask more questions because especially in the worlds I operated it, right? And if you're a consultant or if you're a banker or if you're a private equity or you know, one of the senior leaders, you have gotten there because your bar for what's good enough and your push to get there is higher than many other people. So implicitly you will, like Kate, have 20 options for teas and 20 options for cookies and go a lot more detailed than you might even think is actually needed from the person asking you, by the way, I would love to come join you for tea. If we get 20 options and cakes and cookies and everything else with it, why not?

Kate, I don't cook, but I'll serve you tea.

There we go. Right? But this notion of ask questions to clarify requests because so much of the busyness comes because we haven't clarified what's actually the deliverable that we need to produce. When is it needed? At what level of detail or perfection does it need to be, how current it needs to be? Is it okay if I give two, two or four weeks because trends haven't changed as much, or does it really need to be right now because you're going to make a decision right now with it, Right. I think really, really powerful. And I think the third one that I also really loved. It is true that if we for everybody else, something can be urgent. I 100% get that. But just because it's urgent for you doesn't mean it's urgent for me. And we can either live our life servicing those who are shouting the loudest, or we can live a life intentional and true to us, right? And again, that's an inner move. Because if my hustle for self worth is about Kate liking me, then I'm going to try everything to have Kate like me and everybody else. And then I hate myself because I'm Actually sabotaging myself because I'm overwhelmed, one day I'm going to leave, or even the work that I'm doing is not enough. So those three things are really what's important to you, not necessarily what's important to others. Take the time to step back and think and number three, ask a lot of questions. I love those. I love those because I think they can be so powerful in sorting through this mess. So walk us. You mentioned your framework. You mentioned a couple of key elements. You have a course, Kate, take us through what are the different elements of, of the framework that you help your clients deploy.

So my framework is very simple. So it starts with a pause. So you start with the end in mind. So where's the destination? You mentioned earlier, we don't clarify the deliverables enough, so we don't know what we need to deliver. So when we do, we don't know when we got there. Then the second part is about the rewind and I call it the preparation. And this comes from sports. So for me, going to play a tournament, when I play tennis, for me, without preparation, it's not worth it because you're going to lose. So oftentimes when we just take simple examples like meetings, most of the meetings, let's be very real, there is no preparation required, majority of them. And so we end up having unproductive meetings because we come unprepared. And then we have so many questions. There are things that are missing the key people, I may say. So if we did the preparation before, we would be much more productive and we would go much faster in the meeting. So the third one is going forward. So here is, is where you take the decision with what is that that you're going to take forward and what you're going to postpone on the side. So a lot of meetings, I take meetings as the example because it's the evil of the workplace today, in my opinion. It's. We often take too many topics to the same meeting and the agendas become extremely long. We don't have a clear goal because obviously we have too many topics. So this is the moment where you decide sort of what to proceed with and what don't. What. What you. What you don't. Because for me, again, productivity is about elimination, is not about adding in. And then the next one is play. So this is where you press the button and you actually play. And here the most important thing is monotasking. So again, in meetings, I have this statistic that I read about 90% of people admit to multitasking in meeting. Honestly, I think 10% align because I don't know one person in this world who hasn't multitask. I did multitask in meeting a lot. But the thing is that again, it comes back to our mindset and what's within the psychology. We think that we notice much more than we actually do is the attention bias. But in reality, we only notice what we focus on. We see what we focus on and we hear what we focus on. So when you're in a meeting and you're focused on your email, you're no longer sort of hearing what the other person is saying because you're not hearing, you're not asking questions. So when you leave the meeting, you say it was useless because you didn't hear any information, you didn't ask any question that potentially could have given you an answer that you could use in your work. And what happens, it creates a meeting about meeting because you end up needing to clarify certain information. Right? And then the last step. So that's the fifth step, I call it the replay. Replay is all about the reflection. And I think that a lot of people have difficulty to build habits. It's because they miss that crucial part, that last step. They try to repeat things that are not working because they read that somebody is doing them. And so they have to do it. Right? Because if it worked for them, it should work for me too. Well, it's not the case. There is no one fit all approach. And so this reflection part, the replay, truly helps you to understand what to eliminate. If it's not working, take it out. There are thousand other ideas and tools that you can try, right? Because you need to find what works exactly for you. I'll give my personal example, the famous book the 5am Club Tried. It absolutely doesn't work for me. I'm a 6am 7am person. But there are many people who love it and fantastic. But if I continue doing that, I would be a very, very unhappy person. So replay truly helps you to understand what to drop and what to keep. And when you keep things that are working for you, it becomes so easy to become disciplined in them. You start just repeating them because you see results. And when you see results, that gives you happy hormones and happy hormones. Well, when we are happy, we are more motivated, right? We want to do stuff. Emotions, especially all emotions are contagious. But positive emotions are especially contagious for others. And they give us an additional push and motivation for ourselves. And so it's basically 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So play Rewind, forward, play, up. Sorry, pause, rewind, play. I'll try it again because you know, and get confused myself.

So pause, prepare, go forward, prepare.

Yes, Forward, play and replay. Yes.

I love it. You know, I love, I love the simplicity of it, especially around pause and prepare. Right. That preparation is so important and absolutely so much of meetings are inefficient and take a long time or we need to meet again and again because the person who's putting the meeting, first of all hasn't actually stepped back and said, do I even need the meeting? And second is what am I trying to achieve? What is the information? Who are the people? Right? So preparation and agendas are so, so, so important. You know, I'll add one thing, Kate, that's been working. Try this or have your. If you might already be doing this with your clients. But the other thing that I've really tried and has worked very well is almost invite clients to start every meeting when they show up to play, actually with one mindful minute to create this break for everybody in the room between the other meeting they came from to this meeting. Right. So really break. So now you're really present the number, by the way, right? Like that I was researching. So talking about attention bias only. We only notice 5, 10% even when we are paying attention. Forget about when we are not, right? And everybody's. I'm sure if you haven't seen this video with this people throwing basketball or ball at each other and then say, hey, listen, count the number of times the white team passes the ball. And so many of the people miss this huge massive black gorilla that walks in and out. Like, how many saw the gorilla? Nobody saw the gorilla. Like what? And that's that attention bias, right? So now imagine when you are multitasking, you're not there, you're missing out so much of the information. Secondly, you are actually taking longer to do even the task that you are doing because you do have information coming in. You are accumulating stress. Context switching is taking more energy out of you so that the next meeting and the next meeting, right. Is going to be further kind of energy reducing. So there's so much, so much bad from that comes from it. I think you absolutely have to eliminate that. And I love this notion of replay because again, reflection is not something that a lot of people do right at the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of the month, really saying, hey, what's working for me? What I do out of my habits, what's working for me? And what's not working for me. So I can prune the things that are not and I can add more of the things that do. So it's beautiful. I love it. Talk to me a little bit, Kate, around personal practices that you do to really nurture yourself and to make sure you are at your best. Of course, all of these practices, I'm sure you, you try and live them, but what are some other ways in which you take care of your physical, mental, spiritual, emotional well being? What are some things you've integrated to make sure you are at your best?

Good question. So for me, I think it happened again around that time. Eight years ago, I started the gratitude journal. And that completely changed the vocabulary that I use, not just outside, but especially with myself. And I truly, because I've done so much work around the vocabulary, my personal vocabulary, I so much believe how words turn into thoughts, thoughts turn into actions, actions turn into behaviors, and behaviors turn into our lives. And that's basically gratitude is how I start my day and how I end my day. So I came up with sort of, you know, my own gratitude mantra in the morning. So just, I just say grateful things. You know, what I'm grateful for. I talk to Universe all the time. So there is a lot of things that I'm grateful for. But most importantly, I always say that I'm super grateful for safety, that I'm healthy and I have, you know, family that is healthy and safe as well. So these are the, the key ones for me that I will always say that I'm grateful for. That's in the morning and then in the evening. I have a gratitude journal where I write three things that I'm thankful for in a day. And it can be anything. Like, it can be sunshine, for example, it can be blue sky. It can be the fact that, you know, my sister cooked an amazing meal for me because again, I don't cook. She does. So then I added something last a year. Because I think that when you start working for yourself, a lot of people think that when they leave, you know, the corporate grind, it's so much easier. It's not easier, it's just completely different. You choose your heart, as they say, right? You choose your good and you choose your heart. So I think that when you work for yourself, you have to learn to give yourself a carrot and a stick. And the stick is not a difficult one for me. I'm quite disciplined. Maybe it comes from sports, you know, as well, but the carrot sometimes is difficult for me. So what I've added to my Gratitude journal is that I. One thing that I praise myself for in. During that day, what have I done? And it's not about work. It's just something that I've done for myself. That's what you mentioned. Just to be in that good shape, good mood, you know, good mental state. And then I add, I add also one that's called new thing that I tried today so it can be a new person that I've met. A new book that I started reading, a new concept that I learned about this is. And the idea of newness is a friend, a friend, a dear friend of mine introduced this to me. I love it and I think it's extremely powerful. It is because newness creates motivation, curiosity. And I sort of. It's very nice because we feel like we're going through our lives taking. You know, there is the stagnation period because, you know, every day we work and it's kind of the same and it's the same routine. But that newness reminding of yourself that you've tried something new today makes it more exciting. And that's basically it. That's what I sort of write in, in my journal. And then I add four for on the next page I add one word that is the. Usually it's the word that drives my emotion of the next day. I plan my day. So there is a great book that's called Plan your Tomorrow Today. So I play my day the night before and knowing exactly what I have planned. So I choose the emotion that I need. So when I have, for example, a workshop to deliver, I'll plan, you know, focus or inspiration or something like that. So if it's a day when I'm spending more time with my family, I would just say fun, enjoy, be present, you know, laughter or something like that. And it's incredible. Once again, I truly believe in the power of words on our brain. How you wake up and you kind of already feel that in the morning. And so it's extremely helpful for me. And so these are like the two practices that I do in the morning and in. In the, in. In the evening. And I do sports. I play sport for 10 years. So not doing sports, for me, it's not an option.

But what do you play? Tennis.

It's very interesting. I still, I still do. Yes. But you know, it's interesting. In my 20s I was very much into sports that were very, very active. But now I am so happy to do yoga to. Three times, three times a week. So it really helps me to slow down. It's still powerful. It gives me a lot of energy, of course, but it, it allows me to be. To stay grounded. So yoga is one of the practices that I do weekly, two, three times a week. I play tennis again. Now it's getting hot, so it's a little bit more difficult. But then I swim, I paddle board, because that's what we do here in summer. So I, I stay active and I make sure that I have something active in a day. I skip something sometimes. For me, the Rule is always 80, 20. Nothing is perfect. So as long as you know, I do something 80% of the week, so you know, five days a week that I'm good, that's my good enough. It's never going to be perfect, but my good enough is my perfect today.

So, look, this was incredible. I love so many of these practices that you talked about that you personally do. I think what's a new thing you tried today really spoke to me as well as what are some things I praise myself for? I always start my days, Kate, with meditation. I always end my days with journaling or what's one good thing that's happened? I think these two are beautiful prompts for two reasons, actually, all three of them, even the gratitude one in the morning. Gratitude changed my life. I've shared that on this podcast a lot. But all three of them, what's beautiful about them is you look at the neuroscience behind it of what you're doing. Gratitude is going after the negativity bias. It's inviting us to connect to all the abundance that we have around versus what we don't have. If you don't do that, you can't. You will never be a satisfier. You'll always be a maximizer because you're looking at what you don't have, what you actually do. What's one thing I praise myself for fundamentally goes after our inner critic and our ability to constantly be, you know, we are always beating ourself up. And so instead, instead of beating ourself up, you are cultivating through daily practice, recognizing and appreciating yourself for all the things that you're doing today for yourself, for others. You know, you had a hard meeting, you messed up, but you're still alive. And you know, you're grateful that how you navigate it or that you are willing to not give up and try again. Right? We can find so many things about us that frankly others see, but we don't. And we are beating ourselves. So I love that practice because fundamentally, it's about rewiring ourselves away from that inner critic that we all have. And then the third thing about what's the new thing? I think it's a beautiful practice, both retro today and looking forward, because curiosity and wonder is how we can continue growing our neural pathways. We're always learning because as you said, if you're not learning and growing every day, guess what's happening? You're dying. And I love it because so many go through this mundane day to day. It's just the same thing. But I'm like, yeah, but that's because you're living the same thing, right? You can make a difference there. So I love them. Thank you, Kate. This was unbelievably rich conversation. I love what you're doing. Where can people find you? And anything we can do to support your work, it'll be our pleasure.

Thank you so much. Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. So I post content from Monday to Friday, a few times a week. So reach out. I answer all my DMs, so talk to me. I'll love to meet you. And then on my website, thegoodbeasy.com you can also subscribe to my newsletter. I send weekly secrets of how to be good busy on Mondays. So these are the best, three best ways to stay in touch with me.

Wonderful. Thank you. Have an amazing day. And yes, the next time I'm in Europe, I will come find you hopefully in Cyprus. I've never been and it's such a beautiful country and there'll be a good reason to come and hopefully get a chance to meet you in person.

Absolutely. It's worth. It's worth visiting.

Take care myself.

Thank you so much Ashish for having me.

Yes, thank you. Bye.

That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning.

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