🎙️ Beyond Busyness: Overcoming Time Poverty with Peggy Sullivan | You Winning Life Podcast Ep.190

Hey everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. Today's guest is Peggy Sullivan, the author of Beyond Busyness. And today we're going to have a really great conversation about navigating overwhelm. And we've all been there. We all feel like we've been on a hamster wheel, constantly running but never quite getting ahead, especially when we're answering busy when we're asked how we are. And we're always mistaking busyness for being successful or having something meaningful in our life. But what if there was a way to break free from this cycle, to move beyond the constant hustle and instead achieve more by doing less? And that's exactly what we'll be discussing with our guest today, She's going to help us understand that busyness is not a badge of honor, but rather, it can be a crippling addiction that keeps us from becoming who we're meant to be. So hope you enjoy. And Peggy, thank you for joining us today.

I am so happy to be with you today. Thank you, Jason Wasser.

All right. Thanks for joining us again. And, you know, this is such an incredible topic because like you share and you've talked about is, you know, so many people just give the answer when asked, how are you? And right, the one that— the word that they constantly use is the word that you're basing your book on. I'm busy, right?

And I'm so busy. My son said it to me yesterday. I'm like, how come you haven't called me, Brandon? I'm so busy.

Makes so much sense. And my, my going joke is, you know, I like hanging out in Boulder, Colorado. I have some really close friends there. And, and I joke there, the rest of the world talks about what are you doing and, you know, what's going on in your world, like, oh, being busy. And in Boulder, I joke, they like to say, you know, when you ask them, so what's going on in your world? And they're like, oh, well, they'll ask you, what are you working on? You know, in other words, what's this internal thing that you're doing to improve yourself? So I'm hoping part of our conversations allows people to have that shift on being busy to really feeling more secure with themself. And I know that's the intention of your book. So right off the bat, like, I kind of just wanna start with this idea, you know, I'm a therapist And, you know, we're in a world just in general with this instant gratification, on-demand streaming. And you describe busyness as an addiction. So I'm curious if you can elaborate on that, about what makes it an addiction rather than simply just a bad habit.

Sure, I'd love to talk about that. And I do believe that busyness is absolutely an addiction. The American Psychiatric Association describes addiction as being something that takes you away from normal behavior. You're compulsive about it. Yesterday I was talking with somebody who told me that they emptied their trash so they could cross something off their to-do list. And too many times we, we just wanna cross things off of the to-do list, but they're not meaningful. They're not intentional. They don't align with our values. And the thing about busyness is we get a hit of adrenaline when we get something done. It's neurological. So it makes us feel good. So we continue this habit because it is neurological. And yes, it is habitual. But in my opinion, I am a busyness addict. My name is Peggy Sullivan, and I am a busyness addict in recovery. And I have to work at it every day because the honest reality is I keep on falling back into old habits. But when I catch myself, When I do the things that keep me much more intentional, the amount of joy that I have in my life, the way that I achieve my goals, the way that I show up for my teams, for the people that I work with, for the universe, it's just so much more rewarding and really much more productive. And so busyness doesn't equal success and busyness doesn't mean you're productive. Not at all.

Yeah. So when you're talking about the word rewarding, right, I feel that that leads us into a big part of what you talk about. And we can circle back to this, you know, as needed. But I'm a big fan of core values and values-based decision-making. And I know that's one of the steps in, in your busy busting process. So I don't want to jump ahead. But I know that I talk a lot with my clients, whether it's entrepreneurs or families or couples, that you know, they have to have their brand, they have to have their core values, and they can make decisions from that place instead of being compelled or obligated by some narrative, right? Whether it's theirs, whether it's an intergenerational theme, whether it's cultural, where they can take back their identity, where they can take back their, their focus and maybe even decide what they, what they want their purpose to be. So I know that you, you joke that busy is a four, four-letter word that we need to wash out. Of our mouth, right, when we say it. And a lot of people wear this busyness as, as a badge of honor, right? Last night was the Super Bowl. And I'm wondering, and maybe, you know, if this was part of any of the studies or relative to any of the studies and interviews you did, where how many people probably watched the Super Bowl and had that on their calendar and had to schedule their weekend around that because of something that is a cultural phenomenon even if they don't even care about doing that thing. So I'm wondering if anything has come up in your research or conversations about that type of situation.

Absolutely. And let's just break the rules and skip to number 3.

Okay.

I have a 3-step busy-busting process, and step 3 is what I call values vibing. And I've been speaking for many, many years, and when I first started I spoke a lot about values alignment and values management. And I would get up in front of a group and I would ask people what their values are. And they would write one or two things down, but inevitably they'd look at their neighbor or they'd start Googling values. And it just seemed to me like people were more obsessed with what values look good on paper, what their neighbors were doing, than truly something that was meaningful to them that brought them joy. Brought them hope, brought them meaning, brought them love. And so I went on a quest to find out what are the values where when we get to the end of the day, we say, "Gosh darn, I had the best day ever, and I'm gonna do the same thing tomorrow." And I researched 12,000 individuals. And what I learned is that there are 4 core values that equate to happiness. Quality of life. Connection is one of them. And I'm not talking about the internet. I'm talking about human connection. Growth is one of them. My dad used to say, "Tuts, a day without learning something is a lost opportunity." Authenticity is the next one. And authenticity, I'd like to tell people, it's not about having the courage to step into your own truth, but accepting everybody else's truth and understanding that there are lots of ways to get to the end zone. And then I, the last one is energy, which is something that I think we're all hiccuping on right now in terms of mental energy, exhaustion, burnout, whatever word of today you wanna use, but not having the energy to do the things that you really want to be doing. So very quickly, it's, it's the 4 values that if you stick to these 4, they could personalize towards what you need and what's important. But energy, connection, growth, and authenticity. Studies show you will get to the end of your day with a wow, I had a great rewarding day.

Hmm. And one of the things I'm thinking about as you're talking about is, right, we have these core values and then the other side would be anti-values. And, and it comes to my mind often, and I hear this day in and day out, week in, week out, is the justifications we create to not stick with this, right? We say we want X, but yet we still play over here with stories, excuses, and justifications. Is there any anecdotes, uh, that you can share? Or, you know, not only an anecdote as anecdotal stories, but an anecdote to solve the problem, um, about people you've, you've, you've, uh, interviewed and talked to you about how they moved through being so overwhelmed, so busy, into a more purposeful and meaningful experience?

The average person has what I call idleness aversion, and that is the thought of doing something simple or doing one thing at a time and not multitasking is, is just something they don't want to be doing. It's not socially respected. You know, there are studies that show people would rather be stuck with a pin than sit and do nothing. And studies have shown people would rather be stuck with a pin than sit and do nothing. But truly, I believe it gets back to two other things. The first two steps of my process. One is eliminating low-value transactions. We all spend time on things we know that aren't important. So why do we do it? We only have 24 hours in the day. We got to get rid of them. And then the other thing is how we view happiness. I wrote my first book about happiness and it was called Happiness Is Your Responsibility. And I, I wrote that book because I watched my mother die and she was very ill for 3 years. Very, very ill. A lot of pain, a lot of sadness. And the last week of her life, She was happy and she had a big smile and she was eating hot fudge sundaes for lunch. And she was back then listening to the boombox and doing the finger dance. And it was such a profound change in her. I asked her, I said, Mom, what's going on? She says, I get the secret. I said, what's that? She says, happiness is your responsibility. We wait for these big things that we have no control over. Happiness is a destination, a thing. I will be happy when I get a promotion, when I get a new house, when I get married, when I have a baby. But you know what? Happiness is these tiny little micro moments we get to make for ourselves every day, no matter where in the world. I eat a couple of pieces of dark chocolate at 11:00 AM. And yes, cocoa lights me up. When I have cocoa, I get this endorphin rush and it makes me feel good. But for 2 or 3 minutes, I close my eyes, I— on the candy. And when I wake up, it's like I pushed a reset button. And we forget about these micro moments. I call it mojo making, these little things that we can control, walking outside, feeling that sun on your face. You know, I get up in the morning, first thing I do is I brush my cat because it brings him so much joy and he starts purring. And it just makes me feel good that I can let him feel good. And there are lots of little micro moments that we have if we take a moment to enjoy them.

Well, it sounds like a mindfulness practice, right? One of the things that I do when I first wake up is directly from my phone is hit play, and I have some surround sound speakers, uh, throughout my, throughout my place, and music is already playing by the time, you know, I fully get out of bed. And I set that rhythm every day just to get that, that energy and that vibe flowing. And, you know, it's usually more upbeat music, and it can range from, you know, reggae to, you know, whatever it might be, something that you know you're— is going to bring some, some smile to your face in some type of way, because I realized, or I would love to do a study on this one, is, is what's the impact on reggae music and depression? Because I think it's impossible to be depressed while listening to reggae music. And I don't know if there's a study out there on that, but since you interviewed so many people, I would love to— we could put that one into play somewhere in the universe. But I know that's like, you know, there's— when we create these rhythms and rituals, and, and you, like you said, mojo making, I, I like using a similar idea of that that, that it's compounding interest, that we think we're going to have this exponential result the first time we do it. But when you do this every day for a week, a month, 6 months, whatever it may be, and you know that it adds that value to your life and it's intentional, which is, I think, what I want people to hear you're saying. I take that piece of chocolate, but I'm also really being mindful in that moment, knowing that there's going to be some neurotransmitters are going to be connecting and refiring and it's going to bring you that peace and that joy at the same time.

It's totally a mindful process. I literally take the 3 pieces of chocolate, put them in front of me, unwrap them one at a time. I smell them and that is heaven on earth. It smells so good. Then I close my eyes and I pop one in my mouth at a time until it's gone. And then I pop another one in and it's, it's just literally 3 minutes of heaven on earth. It just tastes so good. It feels so good. It's such a small thing to do, but I'm more creative, I'm more focused, I'm in a better mood. I mean, why wouldn't we do these things if this is the effect? And that is the effect. The neuroscience of happiness.

Yeah. And for people out here who are listening to this, you have, you have an opportunity to explore what that might be for you, right? It's like you're like Peggy saying it's chocolate. For me, it's music in the morning. Not that I'm opposed to good chocolate. I'll happily take any good chocolate that you would share with me, but I don't want to eat your 3 pieces. I'll have your 4th. Um, but I think we have an opportunity now to— with everything is available to us. And here's the cool thing, right? If you're not sure, you know, buy it on Amazon, even though, you know, we may or may not want to support it, but we can bring it back and send it back in 30 days if you don't like it, right? So, you know, have you heard, you know, anything that you would say were some unexpected things that people were enjoying and they were finding kind of as a grounding or refocusing experience in their life over some of your research?

Yeah, I mean, I get back to my corporate days, and I worked at UnitedHealthcare, and I managed thousands of people in the customer service industry. And they have a hard job. And in healthcare, it's especially hard. So when I was brought in to improve their service metrics, You know, everybody kept on saying, including my management, you should look at a process, a system, you know, something like that, some type of technology. And I said, no, I'm going to focus on the people. And we're going to introduce what I call happiness rituals. And we're going to see what happens if we spend 8 minutes every day on happiness rituals, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. There's no, no surprise metrics went up 33% in 6 weeks, 33%. So if you're looking to engage your employees, if you're looking to get more productive, if you're looking to create a place that people want to work, check it out. It really doesn't cost anything. And after a couple of weeks, you will notice measurable difference.

So how would, how would you suggest someone who wants to try this and they're, they're by themselves, maybe they, they don't have anybody else at home. How, how do they get that support of saying, listen, I want to make this part of my life. I want to add, I want to add by subtract, right? I want to subtract busyness and add more meaningful and intentional things. What are some of the ways, you know, to really make this stick? Because we know this is a lifelong process. You talk about that. We know any habit is a lifelong practice. But what are some of the other resources or tools someone should be considering when implementing this and trying to add this to their life?

I'm a big believer in time blocking. And at the end of a year, I will time block out my workout. My thinking time, my— here's when I deal with the unexpected time for the rest of the year, for 1 year. So when all that stuff happens, because I want to work out, I am dedicated to it. And last minute, if I save it for last minute, it's not my schedule. It's not going to get there. So I just block it out and I just do it. And I've got blocked out time, sacred time where, you know, people come to me saying, well, can I squeeze in that hour? I'm like, no, that's my hour to deal with the unexpected. It happens every single day. I know I need the time. And so you need to plan for the unexpected. You need to be very, very planful. The average individual, 89% of the workforce, overschedules themselves so they don't have time to actually do their work. I mean, that's insanity. You know, we think it's the meetings that we need to go to. We need to be seen. We need to be on a conference call, a Zoom, something like that. And so we spend all days doing that and then we don't have time to get the really important stuff done. So I say schedule the really important stuff and start to say no. I have this practice where I don't take a meeting unless I get value or I give value. It's just that simple. I'm either gonna add value to the people on the call or I'm going to get value from the people on the call. And if I'm just there for a need to know or need to be seen, send it to me in writing.

Yeah, you're reminding me of a—

My time is precious.

Which makes so much sense. You reminded me of a story that I heard from one of my mentors that a friend of his had 2 or 3 kids, and every weekend the family was traveling, basically split up in 2 or 3 different directions because each of the kids were on some type of traveling sports team. And, you know, late elementary school, middle school, whatever it may be. So they were— family was a high priority to them, but yet the choices they were making was splitting up the family, right? Divide and conquer. One parent had to go with one or two kids one way, and the other parent had to go with one or two kids the other way. And although it was the investment into their family— we're doing this for our kids, we're doing this with our kids— but it separated the family as a whole unit. And I remember that person getting advice from someone and saying, why are you doing the traveling teams versus the local leagues, which was also being offered, right? Why do you have to go all over your state and get on planes and whatever it may be? And their thing was, well, we want to give our kids the best chance to possibly, if they want to play professional or get scholarships, to give them the best chance. And the person said to them, what colleges would you like them to go to? And they said, well, we named this place and this place. Okay. How much do you think it would cost to get one of the scouts from that team out to your house for a weekend? And they're like, I don't know, maybe $1,000 or whatever it would be. Okay, and how much a month do you spend on flights and gas and maintenance? And, oh, we spend, yeah, a lot of money. Well, do you think you can invite out these, these, these coaches, these people who are assessing players at that age already to see if your kid will have the skills to keep capitalizing on that and see if it's worth all this thing. And it was such a frustrating thing for that family to hear because, like, we wouldn't want to reduce the possibilities, but also they have no clue whether the kid really has the skills or not. And they're right. So, you know, there's so many ways that we create our limitations of what we think we want and what we need to do versus my kid really doesn't have that talent to play college ball or college whatever and get the scholarship and And if they do, here's what you need to do in order to get there. But it may not be more complexity in your life. So I'm wondering, like, what are some of the other just, you know, I know you talk about accountability and community, which I'm a huge fan of accountability groups. A moment ago you were talking about time blocking and I have my group once a week and we had to move it recently and it moved into my client hours and I realized which is my priority in order for me to be amazing for my clients. I need to have this weekly accountability group. And my concern was, well, if I move it into my hours, am I losing an hour of income? And once I let that go, because this is the priority in order to be the best for my clients, then it doesn't matter if it's during my client hours or not. It's actually just a necessity. So I'm wondering what some other approaches or tactics that, you know, might be thoughtful because we're all busy, we're all running around, we all get that instant gratification. But I know you say that No human is born being busy.

That's correct. And I think what is crucial to all of this is taking the time to define what success looks like. We usually say success looks like something professionally, or 2.2 kids, or I want a house and whatever it is we want. But really, when you think about it, what really lights you up? What makes you happy? And that is what success should look like. I know for me it's helping other people. I love giving. I love doing. I get super, super happy when I can help somebody accomplish something, whether it's just a couple of days ago, I helped an older woman in the grocery store and, and she was so grateful. It made me feel so good. And next Next thing I knew, her daughters were calling me, thanking me for helping her because they were out of town. And it just got to be this thing that just felt so amazing. So know what success looks like for you. You may be surprised. It may not be exactly like you think it is. I know for me, I redefine success all the time. And for me, success is I want to get a good night's sleep. I want my husband and my son to know that I love them. I want to add value in the world and help other people escape time poverty. I mean, though, if I can do those things during that day, then it's a darn good day. And it's not really about dollars and cents or accomplishments or checking boxes. So start with what success looks like. And it helps when you know what your values are. I do something called a values report card. And every night at the end of the day, you know, I think about what I'm grateful for. And then I think about my 4 core values. And I rank them 1 through 4. And the one that has the lowest ranking, I intentionally think about doing something with that the next day. You know, maybe, maybe I didn't focus on my energy. Maybe I didn't connect with my loved ones. Maybe I didn't learn or grow. And so I just do it the next next day. No long-term plans. I'll do it, you know, when I'm not busy. It's, it's like right here, right now. Be in the present. Make your present work for you.

Yeah. And let's just unpack— you use the word, you know, a concept, time poverty. And I just want you to maybe take a moment and just unpackage that a little bit more because it's such a salient, uh, phrase. And, um, you know, we talk a lot about poverty and then, you know, first world, second world, especially in America. But, but what do you mean by time poverty and how much does that just really amplify what you've already been sharing with us?

Yeah, normally when we think about poverty, we think about lack of wealth or lack of income. But today's society, yes, we have lack of wealth and lack of income, but what people mostly have is lack of time to do the things that are important to them. And so I when I started out writing my book and doing all the research Beyond Busy for Beyond Busyness, I thought that busy was the word and that nobody liked being busy. But what I learned is that people love being busy, but nobody likes being time poor, not having time for the things that are most important to you. So I kind of shifted that paradigm and time poverty is really You know, getting to the end of your day, not having time for the things that were most important to you, your goals, your priorities, your loved ones. And I'm all about turning time poverty into time wealth. And it's actually not all that hard to do.

Hmm. What's your best guess about what a world would look like if more people were doing this?

We would all be more productive, healthier, happier. Productivity comes from focus. Productivity comes from intention. Productivity comes from rolling up your sleeves and, and knowing what's strategically important. So I believe we'd have a lot more love in the world. We would have a lot more prosperity in the world. And we would all be happier, healthier, and just better human beings to each other and in our world, in our lives that we live.

Yeah. So if I'm in my car, I'm listening to this episode, and there's so many good ideas that have already been shared. And everybody has their own personality predisposition, um, and they may want to get so busy trying to implement this that it defeats its own purpose, right? As, as our personalities can go. Is there one action today that the listener can take that would stand out to you, that if you're going to start, consider starting here?

I would tell people start with The Art of Subtraction and eliminating low-value transactions, because if you don't have time to be intentional, to be strategic, then nothing is gonna work. If all you're doing is running and stressed and anxious, then you're not gonna be as smart and as poignant as you need to be. So I would say start out with subtraction. Subtract something that has low value and make room for something that has more value.

Right. And if you're having difficulty figuring out what that is for you, then I would go back to your values vibing, right? What is— what are the values? Does this thing align with my values or go into your anti-values? Is this something I absolutely don't want in my life no matter what? Or these people— is this thing or people or experience contradictory to that value. I think that's a very good, you know, process that I love walking everybody through when I'm working with them. And it makes sense.

I invented a survey that I call the Busy Barometer. If people go to my website, they can take it for free. But it's a survey that interviews for 21 of low-value habits that contribute to us not being productive, healthy, happy, successful, strategic. And it will tell you exactly what to focus on first and just eliminate one low-value activity. It could be don't get up in the morning spending 2 hours looking at email. That's not a high-value transaction. Yes, it's important for you to get to your emails and be responsive, but We get sucked into the email rabbit hole or stop multitasking. Guess what? When you multitask, it takes 3 times as long. And oh, by the way, your work is going to be filled with mistakes. You know, we just need to sort of stop these, these habits. And I always tell people, people say, oh, changing a habit is hard. And I say, put your feet on the ground and cross a leg and they'll cross the right leg over your left. And then I'll say, okay, now try the other leg. And they'll be like, oh, this is uncomfortable. Uncomfortable. Now force yourself to do it 3 times. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. And then they'll be— it's more, it's more comfortable. And I know for me, I used to look at email first thing every morning and it was the email rabbit hole. So I got this big Post-it note, put it right on my screen that I saw every day that said no email before 10:30. None. And I would look at it and I'd want to rip the thing off and look at email, but I didn't. And after about a week and a half, I stopped doing it because I realized I got more done in the day than when I got sucked into the email rabbit hole.

I love it. I love it. And I would go so far as saying to people, like, an auto— set an autoresponder to people, right? If they're sending you email, I don't respond until such and such time, and I will not respond to you. After such and such time until 10:30, after 10:30 the next day, which is again going back to that accountability and community, but also setting a really, really good boundary. But I really like the idea, like, you know, the cool thing is, right, about implying this is that there's just good fun ways of thinking about this, right? Mojo making and values vibing. So I know, you know, when we're trying to come up with a cool concept, it's always good to have a fun name to remember it. But I really do resonate with, with this because, right, Mojo is like, where's your energy? Where's your focus? What's giving you that joy and that pleasure? And I haven't looked at, you know, and I like the way you're talking. I always talk about core values, but I've never heard it be described as values vibing, which is such a, right, such a, such a cool way. So first of all, thank you for making it even more fun in that regards. So I just want to go back and just, you know, one more thing and just talk about focusing on the values and not the goals, because I realize this and I don't know where I learned this from or something that I just, you know, maybe it's from that concept of like the 10x rule that what you describe as the, you know, that whatever you think you're doing, you know, just make it what would be the 10x version of that. But a lot of times I see people describing goals as what would really just be an action step. Right. So this is my goal. Okay. But what would it be like if you actually achieve that? Because they're only reverse engineering from that thing. But what if, what if you achieve that? What would then that help you to do? And I've never had someone look at it like you did from that focus on the values, not just the goals. So would you say that perspective is when someone is looking about what they want to accomplish and put on their calendar, What are some of the questions that you can additionally ask in addition to purpose and meaningfulness? Is another question one could ask, like I'm asking, what will then that help you achieve that's back in alignment with that? Or what are some other ways that you would present that to somebody?

Yeah, I like to think about it in terms of me and in terms of we. And in terms of me, I like to think about what makes What brings me joy? What makes me feel good? What makes me feel productive? And then in terms of we, I like to think about what can I do to make the world a better place? What can we all do to make life easier for our neighbors, for our friends, for our family? And so that is, you know, definitely something that I think is really, really important for all of us to look at.

Love it. Love it. All right. So as we, as we wrap up, let's, let's just share some places, right? You have the books that you've written. So let's, let's just— we have Beyond Busyness, which is the book we're talking about today. And the other one that you were talking about, again, the title one more time.

Happiness Is Your Responsibility. Go to Amazon and get them or go to my website, PeggySullivanSpeaker.com. But most importantly, I love meeting new people. Anybody that wants to reach out to me on LinkedIn, I just, I love community and I love helping people and I love connection. So reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you.

Awesome, Peggy. Thank you so much. And if you're listening again, please write the books, the time that people are investing into one creating a book, but also going around like Peggy's doing today to share her wisdom and experience and tons of wisdom and experience, Peggy, that you have.

Right?

Like, you know, if book isn't for you, I'm sure you know someone who can benefit from it. But really, if you know someone who could benefit from it, that means you probably could benefit from it too.

So the book, the book isn't what you think it is. Yes, it's prescriptive, but it's laugh your butt off funny. I'm a hot mess. I've gotten into so much trouble so many times, and I come out and share my hot mess stories.

And right from the go, I know that was right in the beginning.

Stories. So, you know, be prepared to laugh, because when we're laughing, um, that's when we're learning. So for me, laughter and learning go hand in hand. So buy the book if you want to laugh and you'll learn.

Yeah, it's definitely not a dry read. I remember right at the beginning when I was like, here's all the things that were like chaotic in my life. And, and I love that, and I appreciate that about the vulnerability, but also the realness that it's not just an standing from the high horse, right, and saying, here's where you can be, you could be just like me, as opposed to we all, we're all figuring this out. And, and I very much appreciate that. So, so everybody, if you're out there, you enjoyed this episode, please reach out, reach out to Peggy, reach out to me, let us know if you, if there's anything from this episode that you want to try, or maybe even need some support with, right, reaching out to Peggy to get some help and support with, with what you're doing, whether it's business or in other ways. And And as always, thank you so much, Peggy, for spending some of your time with us and really appreciate it.

Thank you, Jason Wasser. This was a blast. It's always so much fun. Good.

All right. We'll check you out on the next episode. We're getting closer and closer to episode 200, which is amazing. And I really want to thank everybody for continuing to be part of this journey with us. And we'll see you at the next episode.