Arianna Huffington

a lot of us are feeling burned out. A recent study found fifty of people surveyed reported feeling burned out at work. Can't you relate to this? Oh my god. If that's you, I know you'll find this conversation helpful. Enjoy. I love that you asked this ahead of time. Yes, exactly. We are both in them lingua franca suetz, I can't see what does your say mine? When mine says who run the world? Uh? Mine says onward, upward, in ward.

I like that. Oh my god, I like that. And I like people who manage their time well, particularly someone who's written books about sleep. So I wouldn't have started with this, But let's talk about time and your relationship to uh. Healthier otherwise than how it's changed over the years, your relationship with time and how you manage it or let it go, or what you view about your relationship

with time. Thank you so much. First of all, I'm so happy to be here with you, and I love this question because I feel that time is really the only thing that we can choose beyond the obvious and necessary things we all have to do how to spend it, and time is our life, and the opportunity cost of everything we're doing is enormous. You know, I started economics at Cambridge and the only thing I remember is opportunity

cost and diminishing returns. Opportunity costs. Anytime you choose to do something, you are saying no to something else, whether it is sleep, resting, recharging, being with people you love, anything,

So that's important. The other thing is the concept of diminishing returns, which also has to do with time, because we were brought up thinking that if we work longer, we're going to be better at what we're doing, but in fact there is their diminishing returns, and working longer it's not working smarter, is no more productive or more effective. But what if people don't work for money or that,

or aren't goal oriented. They just are people who work, meaning that's sort of a hobby to they enjoy it. They enjoyed doing something, whether it's gardening with obsession, or cooking or uh anything that they just like researching that a person has that personality where it's sort of always on, and no matter how many times they try to meditate or try to do what society wants them to do about that, they still are That is that wrong? I mean,

how does someone determine what the truth is? There's nothing wrong about any of that. I'm one of the people who absolutely loves what I'm doing. You know, I could have retired many many times. I launched the Huffington Post at fifty five and Thrive at sixty six when many people retire. So um, I find that when I take care of myself, when I'm fully recharged, I just bring

so much joy into what I'm doing. Yes, when I'm exhausted and depleted and burned out, even if I'm doing the my favorite thing in the world or having dinner with my favorite people, I'm depleted. Yes, bring my full self to work. I love that because I think that I always say that the best ideas come between sleep and weak, and that while everybody wants to grind, I think that creativity doesn't come forth when everything is so crowded. I have to do this, I have to do that.

I'm thinking about this, I'm working on this versus just letting it breathe. It's like a wine that needs to breathe in order to reach its full potential. Absolutely. In fact, do we have so much data on that? You know, people having their best ideas in the show, Oh well, while they're fly fishing or gardening or knitting or or whatever they're doing that doesn't and fully engage their brain when they are not operating from that pretty frontal cortex.

So your scientific and research based So how so all of that is sort of working. So how do you because you're an expert on this, So if you're stressed out and you're overwhelmed, do you feel like, well, I'm not even doing what I'm supposed to be doing because I'm so proactive and I'm so you know, you must be some level of a perfectionist and some level of type A to have gotten here this way. So how what is your style? Your work style, your attempt at

balance style all that whole genre. Well, you know you, and I decided to wear a lingua franca sweaters and I'm wearing the motto for my life and for thry it on my sweater Onward Upward, inward. I'm definitely Taipei. I'm definitely onward and upward, and I'm definitely about results

and achievement. But I have learned that life is shaped from the inside out, and for a large part of my life I didn't pay importance to the inward part until I collapsed two years into building the Huffington Post and hit my head on my desk and broke my chicken bones. So I actually paid a heavy price for not including the inward and now that I have included it, and I've seen how transformational is the but it has

in life. But I'm completely a work in progress. I never have any expectation that I'm going to do this journey perfectly. And one of the things I gave up in my life is perfection is my When I when I was forty, i am did an exercise which I highly recommend to everyone, which is I made a list of projects that that we're on my kind of legue to do list you know how we think I'm going to become a good skier, and I'm going to learn German, and I'm going to learn to cook. And I decided

that you can complete a project by dropping it. So I just dropped these projects. I realized how I realized, Yes, it would be great to be a good scire, but realistically, I'm never going to put the amount of time and energy to become a good scare. So why have you at the back of my mind drawing energy? That's interesting? I like that. I it's funny because I have talked about fewer buckets full. How you know, whether it's social engagements or work. We say yes, and you put it

on the calendar. It's just a pen to the paper. You don't think about at it, and we get drained. And so I I say that I think that we have to choose the things that have an emotional, spiritual or financial r O. I you know, what's going to give me the return of my investment and sort of what I'm I'd rather have four buckets full than twelve a third fall if that math is right, you know what I mean? Like, I'd rather just focus on So

that's effectively what you're saying. And I love that because it means letting some things go and just focusing on only what you love or you just can't turn down for financial reasons, or you have to do it, or it's giving you a philanthropic uh reward. I love that exactly. And that's connected to your first question about time, because suddenly you have time available and not everything is so

crunched up? Right? Do you like the nothing of the time, just like doing nothing, not not meaning you're replacing that with some other meaningful thing like yoga and meditation, but like zero. Well, I love feeling that time with walks on our hikes, are being with friends, are breathing and meditating and um you know, taking that hand. That Buddhist spiritual teacher who died recently said it's never been easier to run away from ourselves. So because of social media

and our phones, we almost never do nothing. Like if I was having lunch with you and you're five minutes late, I would go to my phone instead of sitting there breathing, thinking, um whatever, like and and that's something which I'm definitely working on myself. And to just take this few minutes to just be I that is such a problem that needs to be solved because your baby sat by your phone. Your baby sitting your phone, we could do so much because of the phone. I don't have an office that

I go. I mean I have it, you know, I work from home. I have a separate structure that my staff works in. We call it the wee work. But you just don't need to do any you know. It's a crutch. It's it's actually and it used to be better when we were on airplanes and you couldn't use them because you can't. It's like a hit. You take the hit, you get the you get the WiFi, and

you take the hit that you should probably avoid. Yes, and that's something which we're doing a lot about a drive, you know, one of the six journeys that for us lead to a complete and whole life a sleep, food, movement, money, and connection. The sixth one is focus. How can we and manage and the onslaught of news, information, notifications? And how can we set boundaries? And our philosophy is that you can only do that through microsteps, you know, tiny

daily incremental steps. So we have hundreds of them. One of my favorites here is too set boundaries at night, like picker time, whatever time it is that you declare, this is the end of my work, This is the end of my doom scrawling the news. Yes, it is the end of scrawling on Instagram or TikTok. And I mark that end by turning off my phone and charging

it outside my bedroom. It's a great thing, and I've done it and I've broken it, and you're correct, I'm doing And that's a great one because it's so easy. And let's pretend you couldn't sleep on night. Okay, so you can't sleep, do something else. Read physical books. I have a pile of physical books on my nightstand that have absolutely nothing to do with work, you know, novels and poetry and philosophy. And if I can't sleep, I

will play one of them. And I have a small iPad that has nothing but spiritual meditation, sleep meditations, nothing else, though, glat I'm not going to get hooked and start looking at my texts or my social media. And you know, we all have a lot of will power, and I don't trust my way power. I don't trust myself. I don't I'm very disciplined. You are very disciplined. I don't trust myself. I don't want It's like it's I feel like I'm an alcoholic, and if alic, I can't say, oh,

you know, I'm I'm so disciplined. No, I don't want a bottle of wine in front of me. Well, you can remove and you can't remove food which you have to eat every day, and you can't remove this technology and these messages. You're right, So this is the hardest thing. I love that you just are in this space talking about this. We dabble in it, we talked about it, but you live in it, and I think it's just

so helpful. And you made you know, you've you've been UM vocal and involved in politics and women's issues, and then you're into UM wellness. So what are you most focused on now? And how would you if you were sitting next to someone and they asked you what you do for a living or who you are and they didn't know, how would you describe your journey, your life,

your career. I'm one thousand percent dedicated to Thrive, the company I launched in twenties sixteen that works with dozens of companies around the world to improve the well being and mental health of their employees. The mis statement is um our goal is to end the stress and burnout epidemic. That was our mission statement in twenty sixteen, where not

a lot of people talked about burnout. Now burnout has moved to the top of the agenda and we are working with them millions of employees and I have I feel so blessed to be able to have an impact on so many people's lives, that to be able to reduce their stress and and when you reduce stress and and avoid burnout, you improve health, you improve productivity, you

improve the quality of life. And among all the journeys that I mentioned earlier that are in our up and on the web and whoever people are like, if you're on Slack, we can bring them to you on Slack, If you're on teams or web bags, we can bring them to you there. One of my favorite features in our product is a sixty second reset. I so love that because it's based on the latest neuroscience that it takes sixty to ninety seconds to course correct from stress. Wow,

that's amazing. So stress is unavoidable, but cumulative stress, which is the killer, is avoidable. So bringing reset into people's lives is such a big priority for me, Bethany, because as you said earlier, you know, if you tell somebody you know your stress take twenty minutes to meditate, they may roll the rise and they're not going to do it. It's digestible. Yeah, if you tell them you're stressed, can you are up? And he certainly are up. Is not

consumer facing, so please don't look for it. But if you're in a company that has brought in thrive like Fighter or Accentu or Sales for are dozens of others. You can download resets, hundreds of them and they remind you to take conscious deep breaths for sixty seconds, or remind yourself of what you're grateful for, which is an antidot to stress and anxiety, or simply get up and stretch and the impact is amazing. And my favorite things that you can create your own personalized reset. Who thinks

that give you joy? I love this. I want to ask you about the overused term or underused term work life balance. And so many people are going through this with the pandemic right now, so post pandemic or semi post pandemic from both sides, from from employers. I'm hearing from that they're saying, you know, I feel that in person is very important because you're connecting, you're talking, you're not you know, someone's not home just laying in a

couch versus sitting in a structured, dressed environment. Um, it's become we can't unkno that you don't have to be in person to get things done. So now that's something

that's out there. And I was talking to a CEO of a major company yesterday and he said to me, you know, we have to be happy too, meaning we're so we've gone so much in one direction to make employees happy, like it was the Jeffrey Katzenberg if you if you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday, that comment that was explosive years ago. So the pendulum has swung. And now I'm speaking to CEOs who are saying it has to work for us too.

So you're trying to bend over backwards to create a work life balance. But then we all we don't know. You don't know what's right, what's wrong, what's balanced. You can't go back to what it was or the way that we came up. You and I came up and burn out nation. So where is the where's the real line, where's the real balance for employers and employees. I actually don't like the term work life balance. I think it's

completely unrealistic. Um we use the term work life integration, work life harmony, work life band, whatever you want to use. There's never a day or a week when you're when you can balance work and life, you know the days I mean. We launched a mental health Pledge and over eighty companies signed it to commit not to cut down on mental health and well being offerings. We launched it in a week with a full page out in the New York Times. We all worked very hard, we worked weekends.

We we loved it, you know, we got tremendous joy from seeing it come to life. But there was no balance. You know. Then, I'm I'm going home to New York on Tuesday. I'm spending time with my daughters. That won't be balanced because that's for a while. So that's my priority. So in terms of working from home, as you said, I love that phrase. I wrote. I wrote it down, Bethani,

and I'm going to use it and get it. We cannot un we cannot unkn you know what we know, which is you don't have to be in the office to work. We cannot know that. But also and we need to realize that when we are together, there is amazing stuff that happens. There is that we build social capital, we collaborate. So we need to be much more intentional about building about that that social capital, about finding ways to collaborate which don't involve you have to be in

the office for five days a week. You're saying the same thing you said before. You're saying, how are we using that time? So when we are together, it's the same thing you were saying before. How are you using that week when you launch? How you're using the week after? So how you know what I mean? Like the doom scrolling, the online shopping, that's just like a brain suck of

your energy. That's not That's neither social building social capital with people you work with, nor laying like a vegetable relaxing because that's what you like to do. It's just a weird purgatory of of of unfulfilling activity exactly. And you know you can be in the office and be scrawling Instagram and TikTok. It's not if you're frustrated or is entful and you're not happy. I don't know how

that is good for the employer. I mean, I think people need to have choices, and and obviously let's let us just stress the fact that some people don't have choices because they need to make a living in a particular industry. And we are talking from the point of view of people who have been privileged to be able to work from home during a pandemic. The majority of people in the world have not been able to do that.

But I know, and now we work with Walmart. They have two point two million associate as they called them. The vast majority had to go to the store every day, right, So I think when we have this conversation, we need to be very cognizant of this double reality in the world. Totally. It's an elitest conversation in a way. Yeah, absolutely, that's absolutely true. That's so interesting. Or people couldn't work it all their businesses is dissolved. So that's another layer that's interesting. Um.

You you undeniably love to solve problems. You like to think about the human condition, you want to do something about it, you like to take action. Do you think you'll get into politics in the future. Oh God, no, God, no, okay, yeah, because people ask me that, and I think it sounds like a disaster. I just because you'll be shackled, shackled and having a kiss babies all day. No, it's it's never even crossed my mind. I I feel truly blessed

to be doing what I'm doing. I have no plans to do anything else except I'm going to be a grandmother in August. I'm very excited about that. So I think it's it's so great to be able to have reached the point where I love what I'm doing. I've built a fantastic team. We doubled our team during the pandemic. I'm looking forward to meeting a lot of them that I've hired without meeting, and then to continue to to have a real important people's lives and learn, continue to learn.

I think I'm a lifelong learner like you are, so reading and talking to people who have different viewpoints on exactly what you called the human condition, especially during a time when a lot of these existential questions about what

is a good life are so key. You know, because you and I talked at the time when I wrote my book Thrive and then the book was about redefining success to move beyond just money, powers lash status, to include well being and health, to include giving, to include a sense of wonder about life, so being able to practice that and also help other people connect with that part in themselves. This is a real gift have you made.

Do you have any glaring mistakes in parenting that you've had, or any regrets in being so busy, any relationship to guilt with having grazing two daughters, wild building an empire, because I know we all go through that. And Wall Street Journal reporter once told me never to apologize to your kids about working, which stuck with me forever. I didn't even have a child, but for some reason it just stuck with me, And I wonder about that for you. Absolutely.

First of all, I'm really convinced that they take the baby out and they put the guilty in. Oh. Yes, I literally have never met a working mother myself included, who is not guilty. Right I am? I was perpetually guilty. I mean my daughters now tease me about that. You know, I always felt, um, I was not a good enough my there because I had also an amazing mother, an amazing mother like the mother I was always comparing myself to even though you know, I did a lot of

things that I think are important. If you're a working mother, that makes it clear to your children that even though you're working and working hard, there are your priority emotionally, my children are my priority. I I think you'll like this because if we have similar thoughts about things, if you're present in each people try to divide half. I'm calling somebody else while I'm pretending I'm with my kid,

but I'm not present. I'm I'm I'm over in work thinking calling the nanny or I don't have a nanny, but whatever people are doing versus I'm present in this, and you're you know the boundaries. I'm at work and I'm you're present for these people that you're working with, and you're present in that, and then everybody feels like they're getting what they need. Absolutely, I think that is

the key. And we have a piece on our Thrive website that I love by Philip Schneider with Them, the chief business officer at Google, and he wrote how he came home from a trip and he told his young children He's gonna take the playground, and the little boy

said oh no, can't the babysitter take us? And he was kind of a crestfallen and he asked why, and the little boy said, because when you're in the playground, you're always on your phone, right And you know, he wrote about it, and he told me what an incredible response he got from from googlers because he said, from that moment on when he was with his children, he

was not on his phone. It's a great that's a good second rule from today that after eight o'clock is digestible, and so is that not to be on your phone with your kids. That's I'm I'm gonna do that starting today. I'm not always, but I am sometimes, and that's a good rule. So I know you have what did you say after eight o'clock? You said? You said, well, I'm

going to do after eight o'clock. You said, set the time, and I thought eight o'clock is reasonable and the charging outside the room, and I've done it before and it's worked and I've slept better. And I'm just you know, like you said, we we we we just don't have willpower. And I'm going to just implement at least that for myself. But I want to make it clear that it doesn't have to be eight o'clock. Right, No, no, for everybody listening, it's my choice. It's my body, my choice, right everybody.

If you wanted to be eleven o'clock, yeah, exactly eleven o'clock, but make it a conscious demarcation, exactly your phone life and your working life and surrendering to sleep. The truth, Bethan, is that seventy two percent of people sleep with their phones, nightstand or cuddled up with which means they're on their phones, crawling and handling things until they can't keep their eyes open. Yes, and then they turn off the light and they got

to sleep. And very often people wake up in the middle of the night, not because they're not tired, but because their brains didn't have a chance to slow down. I'm telling my whole staff. So that is a phone bed, you know. The only physical product that Drive has launched is a little phone bed at charging station that looks like a little phone bed. It has a blanket. You put your phone under the blanket, you tack it in, you say good night, I love Connect in the morning.

And I don't know if your daughter has a phone yet, Yes, I'm giving her a phone bed too. I love this bed for the whole family. I'm sending you want you on mahogany or lightwood. Oh, my house is very like Greenwich Country, so whatever you think, like dark wood, dark water, blackgany. And then it also teaches your child yes hygiene, Yes, doesn't sleep with you. It's a phone cleanse. It's like breakfast.

You have to break the fast, so you're breaking the phone has to break the fast to what percentage lucky? Do you consider yourself and what percentage smart? Oh? I consider life being a dance between making it happen and letting it happen. I don't know what the exact percentage is, but I know a thousand percent that I didn't make everything in my life happened, and that often some of the best things that happened in my life happened after very bad things in my life. Yes, my collapse that

led to so many amazing things. Or the man I was in love with in London in my twenties who wouldn't marry me. He didn't want kids, he just wanted cats. That prompted me to leave London and moved to New York simply to escape, right, you know? So many things in my life when I look back that we're not my doing. Well, those lead into the last question, which is your rose and your thorn of your career? And for you it sounds like it might be the same.

They might be the same. Well, um, no question. The thorn has been what I called the obnoxious roommate living in my head. H we are so similar. Noise, the noise, the voice of sell reaching myself up after a mistake. And I really had to work very hard two um quieter and on many days island sing that voice because I find it the most depleting, exhausting, unproductive thing anybody can do. Women have it more than men because we are perfectionists. And and now you know, I had dinner

the other night with Normallere. He's going to be one hundred years old in July, and he said the two most important words he wants to leave behind our over and next, that's my fiance is like that it happened. So what it happened? He said it to me fifty times a day. Okay, well it happened. That's then this is now like it's so we're the same, but it's part of your success though if not so it's a hard thing because it's your rose and your thorn, like part of your success is that voice. No, No, I

don't agree with that. I think it's entirely my thorn. Okay. Good. Now that I've been able to deal with it, and that obnoxioutary mate only makes very occasional guest appearances, I'm much more productive, I have more energy for things, etcetera. I think it's entirely my thought. Okay, God, I'm gonna that's the third thing I'm gonna talk about, the obnoxious roommate. I never write notes like this from myself after this, but today is a big educational day. Okay. And then

I guess your rose was the was at the collapse. No, my rose is that. Ever since I can remember, I always had a spiritual dimension to my life, not any particular religion, but a conviction and absolute knowing that we all have a place in us of peace, wisdom, strength, love, and that the journey of life is to keep connecting to that place in a deeper and deeper way. I

always believe that. When I was seventeen, I went to India and started comparative religion, and I saw that whether it's Christianity or Juday is more Zen or the bag Bada Gita or the tow They all say the same thing, that this is kind of our spiritual birthright, and anything we can do to connect with that place is the most important thing in my life. And I feel very blessed that I have a kind of path to connect to that place. I'm not saying I'm living there, but

I can connect to that place. It's the eye in the hurricane. Yes, there rose in my life. There's a line to which all things that here. It's an invisible line, but you know it's there, and you gravitate back towards it when things are good, when things are bad. It's just there. I like that. That's nice because that relates to religion, to culture, to other people. Probably. UM. I love that I could talk to you for days, um,

and I hope we get together at some point. But I really appreciate you, and I appreciate the passion and the quietness you put into everything. I really I like it. I could. I have my notes, and I can't wait to like to change some of these things because I feel the same way as you. But we get you just we'll do it later and I like it, so I appreciate you well. I loved every moment. I look forward to seeing you in New York and meeting your

very lucky fiancet. Yes, onward, upward, inward the name of the Dea and who run the world, to be honest, Yes, it both. Yes, um fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Arianna, Thank you, Bethany,