Paula Rizzo explores three cultural approaches to productivity and wellbeing: hygge from Denmark, which uses cozy breaks like tea or reading to recharge; ikigai from Japan, aligning daily tasks with what excites you; and dolce far niente from Italy, intentional downtime that lets your brain cool down like a computer.
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Hey there, welcome to Inside Scoop. I'm Paula Rizzo. Today we're gonna go on a little trip. I love to travel. If you know this about me, I'm constantly looking for new places to, to go and new experiences to have. I just love it. I love to immerse myself in different cultures and learn about the food and, you know, how people live and all that. But maybe you didn't think of it this way. There are a lot of productivity tips and techniques that you can find from other cultures. And so I have pulled together a few of them and we're going to go on a little tour of the world so I can give you some of the best ones so that you can be more productive, just like everybody else in the rest of the world. But first, I have a free resource for you. It's also about trips. It's my trip checklist and you can grab it if you go to paularizzo.com/travel. There's a lot there of what you should bring and how you should pack and all of that. I hope that you check it out. I'm also a LinkedIn Learning instructor, and I have a few courses that will help in all areas of your life, including how to set boundaries and protect your time, which is very important if you want to make time for travel and you want to get out there in the world. You can check it out at linkedinlearning.com. And there's also a QR code there that you can, that you can take a photo of and send yourself right over there to take that, take that course. And I want to hear from you throughout this broadcast. If you have questions or thoughts, or maybe there's, you know, a productivity hack that you use in a different part of in the world that you want to tell us about, leave that in the comments below. I'll be checking there. And tag a friend if you have a friend who loves travel as much as I do, as much as maybe you do. Tag them here because it's kind of fun to learn different things about different cultures. So our first stop is going to be Denmark. We're going to head over to Denmark for some hygge. It's how you say it, hygge. And I like to think of hygge like a, like a hug actually, right? I talk about this in my book Listful Living. And the idea here is that it's the sense of coziness. It's a Danish word, right? And it's described as, um, you know, a coziness, feeling of contentment, wellness, uh, that, that's the kind of feeling that you want. And so people do this in Denmark, well, I think because it's so cold there and they need, they need some coziness in their life. But it's such a nice way of giving yourself sort of like a hug, giving yourself a little wellness moment. And you can do this in many, many different ways. Taking a break and doing something that really refills your tank, uh, something like drinking a cup of tea, having a game night with friends, anything that, that's sort of like taking you offline. Because we're on the computer all day, every day. We're on our phones, we're constantly doing things. What are those activities that you could sort of do that make you feel cozy and happy and, and like you're taking good care of yourself? You know, cooking dinner with friends, going for a picnic in the park, work, reading a book, anything that is just a little bit of time for yourself. And it doesn't have to be— when we talk about, you know, self-care, it doesn't have to be a week-long thing that you're doing, right? You don't have to do a game night every night. You don't have to, uh, you know, cook dinner with friends every single night. It's just one time that you do it that week, and you look forward to it, and it's a really nice thing that you can add into your— into your itinerary and into your schedule. Uh, you know, for me, drinking tea is one of the things that I love to do. Um, and then maybe reading, you know, a chapter of a book before I go to bed. That for me is like the, the sense of this hug, this hygge feeling. There are all different things that you can, that you can do to make you feel yourself feel good. If you have examples of how you use hygge in your life, leave it in the, in the comments below. I'd love to see that. Our next stop is to Japan. We're going to Japan for some ikigai. Ikigai is a Japanese concept that translates roughly into the happiness of always being busy. Or what you get up for in the morning. Okay. So it's a little bit different than the idea of hygge. This is the purpose. This is the why do you do what you do, right? Maybe if you love vegetable gardening, let's say, right? And that is what you love to tend to, that's your priority and that's what you do. And so this is very aligned also with things that I mentioned in my book, Enlistful Living, about coming to understanding what your priority is. And then that helps you to determine where you best spend your time. And that's what ikigai is all about, right? Being able to identify in your life and say, hey, these are the things that are really important to me. These are the things that make me get up in the morning, what I'm really excited about. And then does your to-do list align with that value? A lot of times it doesn't. And so that is something that, you know, we all sort of need to look at and not just once. This is something that you can reevaluate again and again because we all change, right? Your priority today might be sleep. You know, your priority in 3 weeks, 4 weeks could be something completely different. So being able to give yourself that time and focus to think that through is really important and is something that the Japanese do very, very well. And the last stop on our little trip around the world is to Italy, the place of my ancestors. What they say there is Dolce far niente. Now, you may have seen this in Eat, Pray, Love because they do talk about it a lot. And the idea here is the sweetness of doing nothing. Do you know how hard it is to actually do nothing? It's really hard when you're used to constantly doing and always having your phone, right? How many of you are literally this? I do this all the time. I'm watching TV and I'm also scrolling on my phone. Terrible. I'm supposed to be just relaxing and I can't. I have to constantly be doing something. So we have to sort of take this intention from the Italians and have the sweetness of doing nothing. Train yourself to do nothing. Sit and stare. I heard someone talk with Oprah about this once, actually, and people were like, this is so interesting. What will I do when I'm doing nothing? What are the things that— is there a list of things we should be doing when we do nothing? I feel like that because I'm like, you know what, I want a list of what I should be doing when I'm doing nothing. Literally nothing. Sitting, staring, breathing, right? Maybe meditation could be helpful for this. Just being able to just sit and give yourself a little bit of time. It does take time to develop this, this skill because we're so used to constantly going. There's a woman who I interviewed in both my books actually, Listful Thinking and Listful Living. Her name is Heidi Hanna. I've had her on Inside School Scoop before. She's a stress expert. And the way that she describes stress is really interesting because she says, you know, you're, you're constantly firing on all, on all cylinders. You're going, you're going, you're going. And then we don't give ourselves time to cool down. So it's almost like, uh, you know, the idea here is like a computer. You have that computer keep going, keep going, keep going. You never restart it. You never shut it down. It needs to cool off. We're the same. And so when you're, you're operating in stress, and you're doing a lot of things, right? Anything can be stressful. This could be stressful, doing this. If you're not used to talking in front of a camera, that could be stressful. But not giving yourself the downtime to do nothing, to cool off, is then when you get into trouble. That's when you get into chronic stress. That's when you can't then be able to give yourself some time to cool off. So it's really important that we embrace this idea from the Italians, the doing nothing. And you know what? Maybe at first you have to set a timer. Set a timer for 5 minutes of just sitting and doing nothing. I love the Calm app. I'm not sure if you've ever used it, but it's great. Calm.com, or if you go, you can download the app. It's a great way to just, you know, they have all kinds of music and background sounds and meditations and things for you to just sort of like turn off for 5 minutes, for 10 minutes, and then you can work your way up. I hope you enjoyed this trip around the world, and if you have any ideas from other parts of the world, please let me know in the comments below. I'm always interested to hear about how people are doing productivity in a different way, uh, that we can incorporate into our lives. But I think there's a lot here to learn from other cultures on how they approach work and life and stress and doing. And before I go, I want to give you a little free gift. If you go to list If you go to paularizzo.com/travel, you can get my trip checklist there with all of my best packing tips and things that you should bring on any international trip. Uh, and again, feel free to leave any of your comments below, share this with friends, and, uh, happy travels. I hope you enjoyed this, and I hope that I see you next time.
