Dorie Clark and Rahaf Harfoush - How to Make Time for Creativity

Hello, friends. This is Dori Clark, and I am here with Rahaf Harfoush. She is the author of the book Hustle and Float. She is also the author of the forthcoming book Humane Productivity. I think we could probably all use a little bit of that these days. And this is part of our weekly Newsweek interview show Better, just live every Thursday at noon Eastern, 9 Pacific. Rahaf, so glad to have you here.

Oh, Dori, always so fun to chat. I'm so excited.

Thank you. So we're going to be talking today about how to make time for creativity and also, of course, about productivity, which is a favorite topic of both yours and mine. So I would love to just hear from you. First of all, lots of people are familiar with the phrase hustle and grind. You wrote a book, your most recent previous one called Hustle And float. Tell us a little bit what you mean by this and why this is a way that we should be reframing things.

Okay, so you totally push my buttons. Anytime I hear the words hustle and grind, I like get so worked up because it's so violent. And the entire language around the way we talk about work is just— it doesn't sound very pleasant, you know, rise and grind. And it's just so harsh. And I've never found that it reflected the type of cycles and the type of energy that I needed to produce my best work, being somebody who, you know, would self-describe as an ambitious high performer. And so hustle and float actually originates from a whitewater rafting term that a friend of mine told me, who his dad works as a river guide. And he said, to have the perfect whitewater rafting trip, you need to have the exact right mix of hustle and float. There are periods where you hustle, right? You have to paddle. You've got to fight against the current. You've got to navigate obstacles. You've got to get to where you need to go. And then there are these periods where you lift your paddle out of the water and you let the river do the work. Too much hustle, you get tired. It becomes dangerous. Your judgment becomes compromised. Too much float and you're never pushing yourself. You're never growing. You won't go somewhere interesting. You're sort of letting the river make decisions for you. And so you want to have these combinations of states. And when I heard that, I just thought, wow, This applies to creative work. And how interesting that we have become so obsessed with hustling that we have forgotten how to float. And as more and more people say that they're feeling burned out, that they can't have time for their creative ventures, that they aren't getting great ideas, that they're really struggling, it's like, well, is it really a mystery that we've eliminated this fundamental state, the state of floating, which is essential not only to high performance but To creativity.

I love that. We're here with Rahaf Harfoush. She's the author of the book Hustle and Float, and I am loving it that it is a term coming from whitewater rafting. What it always makes me think, think about is, I, you know, I was thinking kind of like a Muhammad Ali, like, you know, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. You know, it's— I guess, I guess that's, that's a little bit, um, warlike as well, but, uh, maybe not quite the right metaphor.

It is.

I like where you're going, Rahaf. And welcome to the great friends who are tuning in from around the world to join us for this conversation. Again, this is Newsweek's weekly interview show, Better. We want to say hi to Renee, who's here from Costa Rica. Rosinda's here from Madrid. Karen from Boston. We've got David is joining us from Indianapolis. Michael is from Iowa. Rita Marie tuning in again from Ireland. Hello. Tanya is here from Sacramento. Mohammed from Pakistan. Danilo from Brazil. We have Bona from India. We have so many great friends from all over. We're glad to have all of you. And please feel free to type into the chat box your questions about creativity, productivity, and more for Rahaf Harfoush. Rahaf, your new book is— that's going to be coming out next year. It's called Humane Productivity. Some people might think that's an oxymoron, but I like where you're going with it. Why? Why is this the next step? step for you? What, what is it that has captured your attention about productivity? And what is it that we all need to learn about it? Because I think it's something that we aspire to but struggle with.

So here's the thing, everybody. It's, you know, I'm not against productivity. Being productive is good. Getting big things done is good. Going after your goals and pushing yourself is good. Productivity is just a system. It's a strategy that you apply to figure out how to get from point A to point B. My The problem is that our current systems of productivity, the systems that most people use to measure how they get from point A to B, is based on outdated models of thought that were developed during the Industrial Revolution that were never meant for creative work. They're systems that were designed for manufacturing, for standardized tasks. They're systems that were designed for somebody that was doing the same thing over and over and over, who at the end of their shift could point to a pile of widgets and say, I produced the right amount for my shift. We are all in a creative knowledge economy. And this doesn't mean that you have to be an artist or a writer. If you are a thinker or a researcher, if on your job you're collaborating, if you're managing people, if you're helping customers, if you're spotting opportunities, if you're doing communications or designing strategy, or if you work in really any capacity, you're a creative thinker. So, humane productivity just says, okay, These outdated systems are not working. They are not working. They are failing us. The World Health Organization declared burnout was a global occupational hazard. So clearly, our systems are failing us. So instead of saying, don't work hard or don't pursue your goals, humane productivity asks, what would it look like if we built a system, a strategy, a methodology for our own productivity, but one that is aligned, that is built from the ground up by us for us based on our individual wants and needs and energies and rhythms and cycles. And the book is a result of all these experiments that I've done with so many people as to try to figure out how to make it work for them. And what I've learned is everybody has their own unique system. And when you work in alignment with that system, you end up actually exceeding your own expectations.

I love it. That sounds very compelling. We're here with Rahaf Harfoush. If you want to learn more about her and her work, just go to rahafharfoush.com. And if you want to go deep on this question of productivity and what it means, how we can actually make it work for us, I'll give a little plug here because it's very exciting. Earlier this week, one of my TEDx talks just got picked up on the main TED channel. If you want to see it, it's about—

Oh, congrats!

Oh, thank you so much. It's about the real reason we're all so busy and what you can do about it. Folks can check it out at go.ted.com. So lots

of that link so fast. The second I heard about it, I was like, I need to learn. So I hope everyone does too.

Thank you so much. I love it. We want to say hi to some of the great friends tuning in and joining us from around the world. I love our international audience. We have Nitra here from India. We have Pauline who's joining us from Santa Fe. Adnan is here from Turkey. Lorena is here from Hacienda Heights, California. That sounds nice. We have a LinkedIn friend from Brazil. We have India from California. That's slightly confusing, but I'm glad you're here, India. We have Ryan from the UK. We've got Michael is here. Renee is here from Denmark. Farha from India. We have a very good Indian turnout here. Varun is here from Ohio. Patrick from Germany. Mustafa from Saudi Arabia. We've got Huber from TW. I don't quite know what that is, but welcome. And Jefferson from Brazil and many more. Type your questions for Rahaf Harfoush into the chat box. Rahaf, so inquiring minds want to know, what is your daily routine? Or if not a daily routine, a weekly routine? You're writing this book on humane productivity. Presumably you are at least striving to live it out. What does it look like? I know you live in rural France, so I'm assuming it involves gathering eggs from chickens by hand and lolling in fields of lavender. Please tell me that's true. How do you spend your days and your weeks?

And I open up an egg and it's a chapter fully formed. So, it's very, very exciting. So, I built Humane Productivity because from my own personal life, I do a lot of different things. I know a lot of people who are watching might also relate to this. But I have a— I run a think tank. So, I do research and client-facing projects. I do speaking. I do teaching. I do writing. And my biggest struggle is so many of these systems, these other people's productivity systems that we were trying to fit into my own life expected me to do the same thing every day or every week. And Dori, I'm sure you relate, like my weeks don't look anything alike sometimes. So yes, I live in the French countryside, but sometimes I'm in my apartment in Paris, sometimes I'm on the road. I'm currently in the south of France. I'll be in, you know, Asia next month. And so it's, it's one of those things where I thought, okay, If I want to get big things done, I know we all understand that consistency is key. But how do you build consistency? How do you make regular strides and make progress when your days are very inconsistent? And so what I do was I developed a system where every week I look at the week ahead and actually work based on like a 90-day work by a quarter, sort of a quarter quarter outlook, a 90-day sprint. And so I have my goals for the quarter and then I work backwards. And what I do is I look at my months and I say to myself, okay, I'm traveling this week. I know I'm going to be on the road. I know I'm going to be jet-lagged. I know I'm going to be in airports. I know I'm going to be in hotel rooms. So what is my expectation for what I can get done? I can probably— my writing might suffer. I need to be in my little office to write, but maybe I can supercharge my research. Maybe I can supercharge other things. So what I try to do is I try to adapt as much as I can to my energy states, to the seasons, to the state of flow. So for example, it's really nice. The weather's shifting in France, and now I have responsibilities where in the morning I have to like water the plants and take care of the garden. I don't have to do that in the fall or in the winter. And so my day-to-day schedule is one that looks at the week ahead, and it says, where are the pockets? That are important for me to carve out? How can I protect my energy? How can I protect my time? And how can I make sure that I'm making progress but in a way that respects the fact that it's not reasonable to expect me to do the same type of work when I'm at home as when I'm moving from hotel room to hotel room and client event to client event? And what I found is it just, it's so powerful to give yourself permission. You might not be traveling but you might have weeks where family's visiting. You might have weeks where you have a conference You might have weeks where you have personal obligations, graduations, birthdays. So it's wild to expect yourself to show up in the same way all the time. It's just not human.

I think that's such an interesting point because you're right. We do try to regiment things and often don't give ourselves a lot of space or a lot of grace when the situation has changed and made things really difficult. I mean, certainly during the pandemic, all of a sudden it's, you know, oh, and now you have to homeschool 3 kids. It's a little hard to keep up the pace when things like that are thrown at you. So, I think that's an excellent point. We're here with Rahaf Harfoush. If you want to learn more about her and her work, including her previous book Hustle and Float and her forthcoming book Humane Productivity, just go to rahafharfoush.com. And if you want to make sure that you sign up to get notified about these, these terrific Newsweek Talks that happen every Thursday noon Eastern, 9 Pacific, and make sure you never miss them. Just go to my website, go to dori-clark.com. You can download a free self-assessment there and you will be added to the email list and get notifications. So we're here talking about how to make time for creativity and productivity. And a question came in, Rahaf, that I thought was a good one here from a LinkedIn user. This friend says, I try and focus on productivity, but I often find myself going down a rabbit hole searching for additional information. How do you balance productivity and not getting sucked into, oh my gosh, what would be the most important thing to do? Or, oh, I really can't do anything because I actually need to research it more. We've all sort of been there. How do you balance that out?

I think the biggest thing I can tell you is that you don't need to look externally. So many people are looking externally for other people's morning routines. Other people's strategies. And my biggest advice, if you take one thing away from this live, it's to focus on getting to know yourself. So many people don't understand their own creativity. Our creativity has ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys. Some of us are super creative in the morning. Some of us are super creative late at night. Some of us have different creative rhythms. Some of us, our creative periods are 10 minutes, which you can do a lot in 10 minutes. Some of our creative rhythms are 45 minutes. And so what you want to do, stop looking outwards and start looking for the answers inside of yourself. Ask yourself, you know, am I in alignment with my energy? Am I in alignment with the type of tasks that I'm doing? Am I honoring, you know, the conditions that I need in order to be able to create? Like, for example, I know this is going to sound a bit odd, but I can never do any writing on planes. I just can't. I have a lot of friends who love writing on planes. I can't. So why would I try their productivity tips when they're gonna be like, go write on planes, when it doesn't work for me. Instead, what I said was, okay, if I'm gonna be on a plane ride, what can I do that helps me move ahead? So for me, it's reading, it's researching, it's taking notes. And for a friend of mine, she's like obsessed with writing on planes. So instead of looking outwards at what other people are doing, we need to look inwards. And I think this is part of the problem, and this is what humane productivity attempts to solve. It says you don't— you, you're the only one that knows you, so you have You have to build your own system. You'll never stumble upon the right system. You'll never find the right system. We have to be empowered to build our own system because, as you said earlier, some of us have kids, some of us have elder care, some of us have other obligations and other hobbies and other things we have to do. So how could somebody, somebody else figure out our life when we can be like the captains of our own fate in that way?

Such a great point. We're here with Rahaf Harfoush. If you're enjoying this conversation, please hit the like button and the share button on your social network of choice that you're watching this on. That way your friends can benefit from Rahaf's insights as well. We also want to say hi to some of the great folks tuning in and joining us. Laura is here. We have Sushma from India. Jake is here from Doha. We have Todd from New York. We have Carla from Cabo Verde. Nathaniel's joining us again from Austin. Michelle's here from Bakersfield. We've got Mohammed in Nigeria, Eugenia, a frequent viewer from Costa Rica. We have Kusai from Thailand. We have Jorge, Syed from Pakistan. We have, uh, Silindile, welcome from South Africa. Cheryl is joining us from Minneapolis-St. Paul, Calvin from Charlotte, Hélène from New York City, Rebecca from San Francisco, and many more. And Hélène actually had a great question for you, Rahaf. Yes. She is curious, she wants to know, How can we protect our own rhythm when our boss is just not having it? For those, for those of us who work inside organizations, we might even, we might know, we might be aware of what works best for us and they don't care. What do you do in that situation?

So, this is a great question. I think the important thing is to remember that every individual has some small circle of control that they have influence over. And if it's not during your working days, maybe it's in your mornings or in your evenings, and maybe it's in your lunch hour. So for example, if you want to protect your energy, what you could do is you could say to yourself, when I go for lunch, even if it's just 30 minutes, I'm actually going to put my phone down. I'm going to leave my phone at my desk. I'm going to tell my colleagues I'm going for lunch, and I'm going to give myself 30 minutes of complete de-stimulation, disconnected time in order to recharge my creative energies. And I know this sounds simple, but I work with a lot of people in organizations, and they themselves have developed expectations where they think they need to be available all the time. And what's really interesting is when you get teams together and you ask them, do you expect your colleague to be available 24/7? Everybody says no, but yet everybody internalizes this idea that they have to be available. So I find if your boss isn't necessarily on board, what you could start doing is by clearly communicating with your colleagues and say, you know, I'm just stepping away for 15 minutes to you know, go get a drink or to go do whatever. But for those 15 minutes, many people are not taking the right type of restorative breaks. They're swiping on social media. They're, you know, in on their Twitter. They're following up on their news. And if you want to make time for creativity, you have to give your creative tank the chance to fill up. And if you're at a job where you're constantly creating ideas and producing things and, you know, doing a lot of knowledge work, if you don't take care of that tank during the day, you're gonna get home and you're gonna be completely empty and you're not gonna have the energy to do anything. And so for me, I always tell people, if you're at work, you have to be very protective of your time. Honestly, even 5 minutes. Research has shown that even if you put your phone down for 5 minutes, you do some deep breathing exercises, you stretch your neck out, you, you know, you can do this and you can just like ease the tension of your face for 5 minutes. Does a lot to reset. And so we are not being protective enough of our own energies. If you wake up in the morning and that's your creative time, maybe you get up in the morning and you don't check your email. You just wait. Maybe you give yourself 30 minutes to journal, to sketch, to breathe. I'm a night owl, so I wake up in the morning and I have coffee. I don't do anything enlightened. I just have my coffee and I wake up. But my evening hours I will always like disconnect as of like, say, 10 PM, and then I'm just disconnected and I can just have time to let those creative juices flow. Because here's the thing that I want to tell people, and this is a really important message: when people think creativity, they think about the output, right? They think about, okay, I'm going to be writing, I'm going to be creating, I'm going to be making. But in actuality, a large part of creativity is thinking. It's invisible. It's, it's, it's— you, you're just like walking your dog and you're thinking about something. You're exercising and you're thinking about something. You're washing your dishes and you're thinking about something. And so many people skip that step and they go right to like the output. And so how can you find tiny pockets of time where you can give your brain the chance to de-stimulate and to think about some of the creative stuff that you want to prioritize?

I love that. It's such an important point. Creativity is not just the output. Thank you very much. This is Newsweek's weekly interview show, Better. I'm Dori Clark, and we're here with Rahaf Harfoush. And we want to say hi to the great folks tuning in and joining us from around the world. Leonor is here from Columbus, Ohio. Luz is here from Mexico. Beth is here from Boulder, Colorado. Rio from the Philippines. Majid from Iran. Ankur from India. We have lots of great folks who are all here. Mario from Lisbon and more. Rahaf, a great question came in from Prashant, and he wants to know, what is the latest thing that you've changed in order to become more productive? What, what's something that you've tried or experimented with in recent times that might be helpful to share with others?

Doing less. Believe it or not, doing less. I have carved out time To just be. I have become incredibly protective of my downtime, whether it's the weekends or the evenings, whether it's a random Thursday. I have some flexibility to do that. But when I'm working even more regular hours, I really try to disconnect completely on the weekends. And what I find is that, you know, when you're thinking about your performance, many people think about, I'm going to be in flow, I'm going to excel. I'm going to perform. I'm going to show up. I'm going to grind. But resting and recovery is an essential part of the cycle. So one of the biggest things that I learned that made a huge exponential difference in my life was understanding that when I rested properly, when I disconnected, destimulated, actively focused on replenishing my creative energies, the next week, the next time I showed up I was on fire. And I have been able to, to produce so much more by not focusing on making sure every second of my day is productive. And so, you know, we are a group and a community of multi-hyphenates here. I know we do a lot of different things here. But I was able to write a business book while also writing a novel, while also writing poetry, while also creating video series. And I was doing so much more, but I was actually working less. I was still having lazy weekends. I was still playing video games and watching movies and Netflix. There was none of this idea of you have to shove every minute of your day with doing because the being, the recharging, the recovering, that is a part of the process. You cannot skip that. You cannot bring your best ideas, your best strategy, your best energy if you are sleep deprived and if you are, you know, struggling to recharge.

I love that. It is a clarion call here with Rahaf Harfoush, author of Hustle and Float. We have a quick question from Cynthia who's joining us from Los Angeles. She says, is there a general link for this weekly show so I can just calendar it? If any of you are wondering the same thing, the answer is yes. You can do dorieclarke.com/better and that will take you every week to the right link so that you can see this. So feel free to plug that into your calendar. Again, it's every Thursday at noon Eastern. 9 Pacific, and I believe it's 5 o'clock in London and probably 6 o'clock where you are in France, right, Rahaf?

It sure is.

All right, it sure is. Amazing. All right, so we have a question coming in from our friend Adnan in Turkey. Uh, this is intense, this is intense, man. Adnan wants to know, how do you deal with the creativity murderers? He says there's always some people around to oppose creative people. How do we, how do we deal with these murderers in our midst?

I mean, one, I love that term, creativity murderers. I might just use that, Adnan. So thank you so much for that. I love the visual. I think this goes back to one of the answers that I gave a little bit earlier, which is we have to ignore what other people are saying or thinking. And we have to start from the basis of what works for me might not work for somebody else. And that's okay. So if I know, for example, that I am a night owl, I don't care how many people tell me to have a morning routine where I meditate and journal, like, I'm just not going to do it. Doesn't work for me. So I don't need to. If you are a morning person, more power to you, right? And so I think the biggest thing is for you to be empowered and to gain accountability for your own creativity. You decide where your attention goes, you decide where your energy goes, and you decide where your focus goes. And those 3 things, they are your superpowers, they are your most important resources. So you have to protect them. So why would you let somebody else come in and try to like destroy that? So if somebody says something to you, like you should be getting up at 5:00 AM, you should be working 100 hours a week, you should be, you know, grinding, the rise and grind. Just smile and nod and say, cool, thanks. And just go and do what you're going to do. Because ultimately, the relationship you build with your creativity, I think, is the most important thing that you can do for your career.

So good. This is Dori Clark. I'm here with the Newsweek interview show Better. Again, if you want to make sure you get notified about these shows every Thursday, you can follow me on LinkedIn and subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter. Just go to dorieclark.com/li and you can take care of that. We're here with Rahaf Harfoush talking about how to make time for creativity. And a question came in from, from Eugenia, possibly Eugenia. I am a little shaky on the Spanish, but welcome. She wants to know, I think this is something we've probably all Faced. She says, how do you handle the guilt of not being creative or productive enough? A lot of us put a lot of those psychological burdens on ourselves. Rahaf, what should we do?

Okay, so the first thing you have to do is to understand that there is an entire market out there that is designed to make you feel guilty. Because think about it this way, if every time you open up, you know, your social media, all you see are tips that say how to do more, how to do more, how to do more, then subconsciously, you're always getting the message that you're never doing enough. And this is something that's quite problematic because for many of us, we have associated our sense of self-worth with our productivity. We're a good person if we work hard. We are deserving of our success if we work hard. So for me, the big shift was to say, okay, I know that I cannot do my best creative work when I am burned out or when I am tired. It's just impossible. So I no longer feel guilty because I understand that me resting is just as important as me doing. I'm going to say that again because I really feel like people need to internalize it. Resting is just as important as doing. So when you are resting, you're not not doing anything. You are recharging, you are replenishing, you are de-stimulating, you are preparing, you are marinating ideas, you are planting seeds. This is actually incredibly important. And I think we all need to, every time you feel that guilt, to pause and to say, where is this guilt coming from? Is it coming from an outdated belief that says if I'm not always working, that I must not be invested in my own success? Because if that's the case, that's not helpful. So I, I want you to always bring it back to your body, bring it back to your alignment. And when you are resting, what you are doing is you are investing in your future creativity, in your future performance, and in your future capacity to create amazing things. You are investing, and we should be looking at that. You're not cheating time, you're not losing time, you are investing time.

So awesome. We have time, Rahaf, for probably just one more question for folks who are inspired by what you're discussing, who want to get started. Maybe, maybe they've been part of Camp hustle and grind, but they would like to make a shift. They would like to learn to hustle and float a little bit more. What is one tip that you could give them to get started or begin to recalibrate and reorient themselves more in this direction?

I really think it's about tracking their own energy over the day and just understanding, you know, when you need to take a break and, and to start this idea of, I'm gonna take 5 minutes to recharge. And everybody has a different cycle. I have this thing called the performance cycle, which is a 4-step cycle that every person has as they go through the creative process. But the catch is everyone's cycle's a different length. If you want to learn more about the cycle, there's actually a course that I've created on LinkedIn Learning called Humane Productivity, and you can go through the steps right there. But the first thing you need to do is you need to figure out what's working for you and what's not working for you. And in order to do that, you have to ignore the noise, ignore other people's advice, Stop trying to fit yourself in somebody else's routine and start from the beginning and say, what do I think about work? What do I think about creativity? What do I think about productivity? And how much do I know about my own energy systems? How much do I know about what I need to produce my best work? So, I would constantly ask yourself, what do I need to produce my best possible work? And then listen to the answer. The funny thing is we're so busy rushing. We're so busy searching for solutions that we don't even give ourselves the chance to answer that question. So everything you need is inside you already. Everything you need to do, you already know. You just have to prioritize that voice and invest in building a system that's gonna let you live a life that matters. Because at the end of your long life, productivity doesn't matter. At the end of it, no one says, well, I wish I spent more time on email. I wish I had a better to-do list. People say, I wish I lived a life that was more reflective of what I wanted. And that's what I want for all of

Absolutely. I think we all want that. And thank you for your great tips. Again, we've been here with Rahaf Harfoush. We've been talking about how to make time for creativity and be productive in your own way. You can learn more about her and her work at rahafharfoush.com. Her forthcoming book is called Humane Productivity. Watch for it next year. And if you've enjoyed this conversation, hit the like and share button so that your friends can benefit from it. I'm Dori Clark for Newsweek. Thank you for being here. Rahaf, thanks for being our guest.

Thank you so much, Dori.

Thank you everyone for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.