Blog
What a 17th century French mathematician has to teach us about digital distraction
Here’s something that I can’t get out of my mind recently:
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
— Blaise Pascal
Pascal’s quote is fundamentally about solitude and connecting with yourself. Living in the early-to-mid 1600s, he defined solitude as sitting quietly in a room alone. Which makes sense — at that time, there wasn’t much you could do except connect with yourself when you were in a room alone.
In 2019, by contrast, you can be in a room alone, and yet not be truly alone. If you’re reading the news or watching Netflix or scrolling social media, you can avoid any kind of connection with yourself.
This quote made me wonder: Sure, most of us in 2019 evade solitude by using technology. But is the desire to evade true solitude even more fundamental than that? Have we always avoided the uncomfortable feelings and thoughts that can come up when we’re alone?
I get why we do it. And yet, solitude can be so helpful for shifting from being reactive to being intentional, processing feelings, doing focused work, and thinking big picture.
What do we gain when we avoid true solitude? And what do we lose?
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
An easier way to improve productivity
Here’s something I try to live by:
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
You know that project you’ve been meaning to work on more?
That person you’ve been meaning to talk to?
That exercise class you’ve been meaning to go to?
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.
I’m not against having standards, but so often we don’t actually do the friggin’ thing because we are afraid it will go… badly. Or weirdly. Or not-excellently.
If we write that novel despite feeling uninspired, it will be cringe-worthy.
If we say I’m sorry or I love you or I wish we talked more, it will be awkward to get the words out.
If we show up at the exercise class, we’ll barely be able to do 35%.
And yet:
Isn’t writing a cringe-worthy novel better than always wondering if we could?
Isn’t fumbling the words to “I miss you” or “we need to talk” better than letting those feelings stay unsaid?
Isn’t showing up and letting ourselves look sweaty and foolish better than…not?
Isn’t anything worth doing, worth doing badly?
So here’s my invitation for you, this week: What in your life is worth doing? Could you let yourself do it badly?
As always, you’ve got this. I’m rooting for you.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
Unplugging from technology + Technology Overuse Syndrome (TOS) (Which I made up, but is also real)
I’d like to name a condition. It’s not a new condition, but I’m not sure that it has an official name and I think it needs one. I’m calling it Technology Overuse Syndrome (TOS), and here are the symptoms that I’ve noticed in myself:
Never feeling like you have enough time, or like you never quite get to things that matter to you
Feeling at least a little emotionally tired, much of the time
Feeling low-level anxiety, much of the time
Wondering if your brain isn’t as sharp, or your focus isn’t as good, as it used to be
Having trouble focusing on a single task without doing some technological “checking” (of the news, email, social media, etc.)
There’s quite a lot of research suggesting that the constant use of technology is making Gen-Z/iGen teenagers the most stressed-out, anxious, and depressed generation yet.
I’m not sure why it would have that effect on teens and not have at least some effect on adults, too. Sure, adults are more fully formed, but so many people I talk to experience low-level anxiety and tiredness much of the time. It’s true that there are many causes — our jobs ask a lot of us, we have kids, we’re busy — but I also think that many, if not most, of us are suffering from TOS without realizing it.
The treatment for TOS, in my experience, is getting more intentional about your technology usage.
Becoming “more intentional” doesn’t mean that you can’t use technology for pleasure. It doesn’t mean that you can’t use technology to numb out when you’ve had a tiring day or you just need a break.
It just means that you don’t accept, blindly, the way that technology tends to suck you in. It means you ask questions like, “Does this serve me?” and “What am I wanting this particular technology usage to give me?” and “Am I avoiding something?” It means that you, gently and gradually, adjust your technology usage so that you maximize the benefits while reducing the downsides.
On a personal level, I’ve been shocked by how much getting more intentional about my technology usage — not perfect, just more intentional — has improved my focus, given me more time, and, more importantly, reduced that low-level fatigue and anxiety.
I’ve also found it to be a remarkably useful intervention with my clients. Getting more intentional about technology gives them more time, emotional resilience and energy, and clarity about what they want and how to move forward — no matter what our coaching topic is. And, shockingly, there are very few downsides (the only one is that you may have to become aware of challenging feelings that were under the surface — but this is a pretty common side effect of coaching, more generally.)
So, this weekend, I wanted to say: Do you experience the symptoms of TOS? Are there any other symptoms that I haven’t identified? (If so, hit reply on this email and let me know! Or leave a comment!)
And, of course, if you’re experiencing the symptoms, what could be one, small step towards doing something about it? Here’s a couple of ideas:
Today, each time before you check your email or Instagram, write down: What am I hoping that this will do? (Entertain you? Numb you? Distract you from your stress or fatigue?)
Afterwards, write down: Did this do what I hoped it would do? Somehow writing it down draws your attention to it in a different day and forces you to be more honest about what’s serving you and what isn’t.
Just once today, when you’re about to check Facebook or your favorite news site…don’t. Lie on the floor or sit in a chair and look out the window or go outside for 90 seconds. Do you feel bored? Notice what feelings are in your body. Notice what you’re truly needing in this moment.
Or, if you’re in LA, join my 6-week Tech With Intention group! Starts Feb 6 :)
As always, you’ve got this. I’m rooting for you.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
A poem to help you follow your dreams (even if it's just getting your to-do list done)
Here’s something that gripped my heart recently:
Suppose that what you fear
could be trapped,
and held in Paris.
Then you would have
the courage to go
everywhere in the world.
All the directions of the compass
open to you
except the degrees east or west
of true north
that lead to Paris.
Still, you wouldn’t dare
put your toes
smack dab on the city limit line.
You’re not really willing
to stand on the mountainside
miles away,
and watch the Paris lights
come up at night.
Just to be on the safe side,
you decide to stay completely
out of France.
But then danger
seems too close
even to those boundaries,
and you feel
the timid part of you
covering the whole globe again.
You need the kind of friend
who learns your secret and says,
“See Paris first.”
— “Fearing Paris,” by Marsha Truman Cooper
Oh man. That last line — “See Paris first” — it reverberates through me every time I read this.
Can I write it again? SEE PARIS FIRST.
Of course, the question is: What is your “Paris”? To me, it’s that nagging feeling that something needs your attention. It’s that subtle “something is off” feeling about something in your life.
Most of us will travel the whole world, going everywhere except our own “Paris.” We’ll work on all kinds of parts of ourselves…except that one. But, of course, the longer we wait, the more complex, gnarly, unsettling “Paris” becomes.
So, today, let me be that kind of friend for you.
Today, let me suggest: Hey you, why don’t you see Paris first?
…
I first read “Finding Paris” in James Hollis’ lovely book “Swamplands of the Soul,” which I highly recommend.
As always, you’ve got this. I’m rooting for you.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
A quiz, helpful to help you figure out what you want
Today, I have a quick, helpful 3-question quiz for you (who doesn’t love a quiz?):
Question #1: How do you feel, in this moment?
Answers to this question must be physical sensations — things that you can feel in your body. “Sad” or “Happy” are not physical sensations.
You might have an easier time if you used this great list — try to complete the sentence “I feel ______ in my ______” (e.g., I feel buzzy in my belly. I feel fluttery in my chest.)
Question #2: How do you want to feel today?
Answers must also be actual physical sensations — “I want to feel light and energized today.”
Question #3: What actions can you take, today, to feel that way in your body?
Be realistic, please.
…
So often, when we think about what we “want,” we think about what we want to achieve (“I want to get everything done on my to-do list”) or emotions we want to feel (“I want to feel happy!”)
Achievements and emotions are great, but they can also be surprisingly difficult to control. Maybe you’d like to do everything on your to-do list, there simply isn’t time, or the other people’s actions get in the way. Maybe you do everything “right,” but you still don’t feel happy!
Physical sensations, however, are often more within our control.
I might not be able to “force” myself to be happy, but if I notice that I want to feel “relaxed and open,” I can take actions that make me feel more relaxed and open in my body — even in the midst of an incredibly busy day or at a crowded social event. And if I feel more relaxed and open, I will have an overall improved sense of well-being — even if I still have some lingering sadness, for example.
When I took this quiz, at 2:14 pm on a Tuesday, I noticed that I was feeling a little trembly and fluttery in my chest and belly. I’d like to feel spacious and calm.
I spent a couple of moments thinking about what I wanted to prioritize, for my afternoon and evening (stretching my body, not filling every moment of downtime with entertainment, staying off of the internet except for work). Sure, I already knew that those things made me feel good, but if I hadn’t done this exercise, I probably would have spent my time differently.
So, how do you want to feel today? What actions can you take that will help you feel that way?
You’ve got this.
Katie
p.s. Given the season that we’re in, this is a great one to do before a challenging (or even very exciting!) holiday party or event.
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
How disconnecting from social media has helped improve my friendships
At the beginning of the year, I was chatting with my lovely sister-in-law. She had stopped using social media, and what she told me about her experience landed in my gut:
I met up with some friends who I hadn’t seen in a while, and I realized that since I hadn’t been on social media, I didn’t know what they’d been up to. It was actually really nice — hearing what they’d been up to without having already heard about it on Instagram.
I realized that I don’t *want* to know what my friends are doing through social media. I want to hear it from them, directly.
Hearing about her experiences helped me name a subtle feeling that I hadn’t been able to previously put into words: I didn’t feel great when I saw friends’ posts on social media.
On one hand: Duh. There’s no shortage of research linking social media use to envy, loneliness and depression.
But on the other hand, I hadn’t really acknowledged to myself before the subtle ways in which social media was affecting how I felt about my relationships.
If I was being truly honest with myself, two things were true:
I didn’t love looking at posts by my old friends who lived far away. When we did catch up, I was so happy to hear that they were having fun. But somehow watching on social media emphasized a slight feeling of distance between us, and made me feel more disconnected from them.
I also didn’t love looking at posts from new friends, who I was just starting to get to know. Their social media presence, while always very nice, gave me a different experience of them than actually being with them directly. I wanted to get to know the real them, not their online personas.
Inspired by that conversation, I’ve mostly stayed off of social media, too, for the past eight-ish months.
The results? On a personal level, I’ve loved it. I haven’t noticed any reduction in the quality of my most important relationships. On the contrary — I really enjoy being able to hear what my friends are up to without having heard about it on social media first. I love forming connections with new friends, without being influenced by their online presence. That subtle sense of envy or eavesdropping has faded away.
And, of course, there’s the extra time!
So here’s my question for you: How might your experience of your personal relationships be different if you only heard from your friends directly, not through social media? What would you lose, and what would you gain?
…
I will also acknowledge that many of us use social media for professional reasons, and cannot simply stop using it. But I think that it’s possible to get at least some value from this idea, even if we can’t completely stay off social media for professional reasons (or simply if we don’t want to for personal reasons!). How could you customize this to your situation?
I’m in your corner rooting for you.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
This is for when you don't feel like doing anything
Here’s something I’ve been reminding myself lately: Something is better than nothing.
Oh, I opened my internet browser to “quickly check something important” …. and now it’s 10 minutes later and I’m watching unnecessary YouTube videos?
Something is better than nothing. Ideally, I would’ve closed the browser eight minutes ago. But now is better than 30 minutes from now.
Oh, I thought I would just bake chocolate chip cookies without eating any dough … and now I’ve eaten eighteen spoonfuls?
Something is better than nothing. Ideally, I would never overdo it on cookie dough. But stopping now is better than eating ten more large spoonfuls in a weird haze.
Oh, I’m sitting down to write and I have nothing to say?
Something is better than nothing. Ideally, I would always feel confident that I’m a great writer. But promising myself, “Your only job is to show up for 15 minutes; it doesn’t matter what you produce” is better than nothing (and can often lead to that solid hour of good writing).
Oh, I have no motivation to move my body today but know it would be good for my mood?
Oh, I don’t have enough money to max out my 401(k) and my emergency fund?
Oh, I have a goal, but I don’t have as much time and energy to pursue it as I’d like?
In case you’ve forgotten:
Baby steps count.
Partial credit is real.
Something is better than nothing.
Did you like this essay? Sign up for my newsletter to get helpful + encouraging essays like this every other Sunday. It’s free! :)
As always, you’ve got this. I’m rooting for you.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
One way to tell if a choice is "right"
Here’s a reminder: Don’t forget that there are levels of “yes.”
A “hell yes” is not the same as a “just-clearing-the-bar yes.”
There’s a “good-enough-for-this-year yes” and a “good-enough-for-today yes”
A “slight yes," a "moderate yes," and a "strong yes"
Different decisions require different levels of “yes.” Just because it’s a “yes” of some kind, doesn’t mean you should do it. Time and energy and money are all limited and sometimes you’ve gotta make hard trade-offs.
Lately, I’ve been talking to a lot of people about whether or not to get married to someone they’re dating. It’s been coming up with old friends, and also with people I've just met. Marriage is a complex, personal decision, but I found myself saying this over and over, and it seemed to resonate just about every time. I think it applies to other decisions, too — what job to take, where to live, and whether get ice cream or buy those sequined shoes.
So, in case it is helpful: Don’t forget that there are levels of “yes.” Just because it’s a “yes,” doesn’t mean you should do it.
You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
6 reasons you may be feeling chronically stressed, anxious or emotionally tired
Here are six things that I’ve come to deeply believe:
1. The opposite of being busy or having “too much” to do isn’t having the “right amount” to do.
The opposite of being busy is having too little to do. The opposite is boredom. Allow me to illustrate:
On the right side of the spectrum, you’re busy and have too much to do. You’re overstimulated — there’s so much going on! On the left side of the spectrum, there is too little going on. You’re bored. You could go for some more stimulation.
And of course, in the middle of the spectrum, you’re just right — just the right amount of stimulation + activity.
2. You can’t be truly bored if you are on the internet.
There’s just too much to do there. The internet is inherently stimulating. Even if you aren’t actually interested in what you’re looking at, you aren’t on the left side of the spectrum because there’s always more things to click on and explore. Your mind is still moving quickly, transitioning from one thing to another.
Don’t believe me? Think of a time when you were super bored and found yourself clicking from thing to thing: skimming an article, then quickly looking something up on Wikipedia, and then quickly checking social media or your email. Sure, you might have found all of it uninteresting, but you were doing lots of stuff.
3. If you haven’t felt it lately, boredom can feel very, very uncomfortable.
If we’re used to always being on the go, when we slow down it can feel excruciating. Don’t believe me? Try to spend an afternoon in your home, neither reading nor going on a screen.
As a result…
4. A majority of adults feel bored rarely, or never.
There’s either always “too much” to do, or “just the right amount.” Remember that spectrum I mentioned? Here it is, again:
We’re existing on either the middle or the right end of that spectrum. We’re never, or hardly ever, on the left side. So our average is somewhere closer to the right side of the spectrum. We’re chronically somewhere on the “having too much to do” side.
5. As a result, most of us are chronically stressed, anxious, or tired.
Because we’re chronically busy and overstimulated, we are also chronically stressed, anxious, or tired (emotionally or physically).
And, of course, there are many good reasons for this. Many of us are working long hours, we’re encountering pressure at work, we have significant personal responsibilities, and the state of the world or politics may be stressful.
But many of us don’t realize how we are contributing to our chronic stress, anxiety, or fatigue. Remember #2? We think that after a long day of working or wrangling our children watching something on Netflix, or reading articles online, will make us feel better. And the truth is that it does make us feel better, at least in the short term. However…
6. There’s a certain kind of emotional and physical recovery that can only happen when we have too little to do.
When we get bored and under stimulated, our bodies and our minds relax deeply, allowing for a profound level of emotional and energetic recovery. (Of course, if we’re not used to doing so little, some uncomfortable feelings or thoughts might come up at first, before that relaxation happens).
And then, eventually, doing anything can start to feel interesting.
This happened to me recently — one Sunday night when I truly had nothing to do, after being bored for about an hour, I found myself ironing my sheets, which had never, ever happened before. It ended up being relaxing and weirdly fun and satisfying (not to mention how amazing it was to have ironed sheets!
And the next morning, I was excited to start working again, because I had been so pleasantly bored, calm, and under stimulated the night before.
…
I want to be clear: I’m not trying to say that many of us aren’t genuinely way too busy. Many of us are! We have way too much to do! All the time! There’s a wide range of things that we can do to target those issues.
And yet, I also know that most of us are also spending a lot of time engaging with technology — about four hours on our phones according to one study, and perhaps as many as 11 hours a day on some combination of television, computers, and smartphones. Of course, much of that may be for work, but I suspect that many of us are spending a significant chunk of it engaging with technology for pleasure.
It’s worth asking: is it possible that we are contributing — perhaps unintentionally — to that feeling of overwhelm or anxiety or fatigue…through overstimulating ourselves during our downtime?
How much time are you actually spending on the left side — the bored, under stimulated side — of the spectrum?
I’m rooting for you.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
Why a 5-year-plan may not work
Just a quickie for you this week — a quote that’s been swirling inside of me lately:
“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path.
“You own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”
— Joseph Campbell
How many of us have anxiety, fear, or hesitation because we can’t see the next eighteen steps of our path?
How many of us cling to paths that may not be right for us, simply because they offer more clarity, certainty, and well… a path forward?
Of course, it’s sometimes true that you do know the next eighteen things you need or want to do. On the first day of medical school, perhaps.
But often — and especially with big life questions — you don’t.
Often the path is made with every step you take.
Often you can only see one step in front of you at a time.
What’s stopping you from taking that next right step?
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
Are you frustrated with your eating?
In addition to my general coaching practice, I also do some work specifically for people who struggle or feel frustrated with their eating. I’ve been running small, virtual group classes called Dessert Clubs on that topic for four years now, and my next round starts in October. I only offer them twice a year, and if you’d like to learn more, you can do so here. Or, below is some more information:
Does this describe you? :
You’re a smart, capable, pretty-much-together person. Even if it’s not perfect, you’re generally happy with your career or your schoolwork or your relationships or friendships, or your parenting.
And then there’s your eating.
Your eating is this weird, complicated thing that sometimes feels…well, out-of-control.
Sometimes, when you’re alone in the house, or after everyone else goes to bed, you stand next to your kitchen cabinet and eat chips out of the bag, and it’s almost like your brain goes blank because then you eat way more than you intended to. You also really, really hope no one walks in on you right then.
Sometimes you eat three donuts from the break room at work while you’re finishing up a presentation. Even though you don’t even like donuts that much and you weren’t hungry and you promised yourself you wouldn’t do this.
It’s not like you don’t know how you “should” eat. You do! You know what’s healthy and what’s not, pretty much. You know what a “reasonable” quantity of chips or cookies or ice cream would be. You know what a healthy dinner or lunch or breakfast would be, too! And you do eat that way, a fair amount of the time.
And then there are those other times. When you don’t eat in a way that makes you feel good, and you don’t even know why.
…
I want to be really clear — I’m not saying that the problem with this type of eating is that it’s “unhealthy” or anyone who eats in this way is a bad person.
The problem is this:
You know that you’re eating in a way that doesn’t serve you, and you can’t seem to stop doing it.
The tragedy of all of this is that we are often genuinely hurting ourselves. Sometimes physically — we may make ourselves feel bloated or sick. But certainly emotionally, too — we might feel anxious or guilty, or worry about our eating all the time. Many of us will go on diets or eat less to try to “make up for” our indulgences, and it can sometimes feel like it takes an insane amount of brainpower and effort, and energy to deal with our eating and our weight.
If that feels like you — if you are exhausted and annoyed and tired with all of the ups and downs of your relationship with food — I want you to know this:
1. It’s not just you.
It’s not just you. It’s really not. This kind of eating is sadly common, across genders and age groups — though I find that it is particularly common with women because society’s strict messages about body size can set off a chain reaction that eventually results in many of us having unhappy relationships with food.
Even though most people don’t talk about it, many people feel alternately exhausted (with all the effort it takes to “manage” frustrated eating) and annoyed (because they, inevitably, over-eat, and want to kick themselves).
2. You don’t have to feel this way forever.
You really, really don’t. It is possible to have a relationship with food where you consistently eat in a way that supports your overall well-being — so yes, sometimes that means healthy or nourishing foods, but at other times that means foods that give you pleasure or enjoyment, and in a quantity that also makes your body feel good.
But in order to stop, you have to understand why you do this.
In the past, when I would overeat and sometimes feel out of control, I would feel so guilty and promise myself that I wouldn’t do it again. But of course, I did do it again, because just resolving to “not do it again,” doesn’t do anything to address the deeper, underlying reasons why I did it in the first place.
Actually healing your relationship with food requires a deep examination of why you eat the way you do. It also requires taking action — to interact with food differently from the “just stop overeating!” way we’re used to doing it.
That is the core work of the Dessert Club — small group classes that I’ve been running for four years now (!!), and which start up again in a couple of weeks.
In the lead-up to the Dessert Club, my newsletter will have more essays about eating, the deeper meaning behind why we over-eat or sometimes feel out-of-control around food, and what you can do about it.
And, of course, if you really want to do something about it, I’d urge you to consider joining a Dessert Club. I only offer these groups twice a year! Here’s what one past participant said:
"I used to wake up and plan each meal that I would eat, how many calories I could eat, the times I was allowed to eat, etc. Of course, I used to break these rules all the time because I would feel hungry and then feel angry with myself.
But ever since I learned about intuitive eating from you I've stopped overeating and the stomachaches have stopped! I feel so happy every day waking up knowing that I can eat whenever and whatever I want as long as I'm hungry and I stop when I'm full. No gimmicks, dieting, restrictions, guilt -- it's wonderful to feel free.
Thank you, thank you SO much, Katie, for leading such wonderful sessions! You truly changed my life and helped me out of a cycle I thought I'd be stuck in forever. I'll certainly recommend the Dessert Club to anyone I know who is struggling with food. Thank you!"
Here’s information on the upcoming groups:
Tuesdays, starting October 8
4 pm PST/7 pm EST
Learn more
Wednesdays, starting October 9
7 pm PST/10 pm EST
Learn more
And no matter what path you take with all of this, please know that I’m rooting for you.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
Meditation + people with anxiety
I’ve meditated, on-and-off, for many years now. But unlike some of my other habits (like this or this), I never quite made it a consistent, long-term practice. Until I read this:
“I’ll say it dead straight, because this is how it was presented to me: when you’re the anxious type, meditation is non-negotiable.”
(That quote is from Sarah Wilson, in her lovely book on anxiety, First, We Make the Beast Beautiful.)
Wilson doesn’t say that meditation will 100% cure a tendency towards anxiety. It doesn’t.
But does it help? Yes, it does.
So I’ll ask: are you the anxious type?
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
The Robot Fantasy (or: one reason you "can't get things done")
Many people I meet have something I call “the robot fantasy.” As in: they’d like to be a robot.
Of course, if you casually asked, “would you like to become a robot?” they’d laugh and say no. But then, later, they’d find themselves deep in fantasy:
I wish I could just get my entire, 16-point to-do list done every weekend.
I wish I could just work at my intense job, pursue my passion project with vigor, be a good friend and partner, exercise, and make healthy, delicious food — every single day.
I wish I could stop getting physically and emotionally tired!
In other words: I wish I could stop being a human!
Humans are, by nature, not robots. Yes, we can accomplish a great deal. Yes, we can check items off a to-do list. But we can’t just program ourselves — beep bip boop — and then expect ourselves to execute whatever plan we come up with. Even if there’s technically enough “time” to work and exercise and do everything our kids need and sleep and remember to buy that birthday gift…we may not be able to do it.
Because we’re also stoppable. We have emotions and thoughts and we need time to rest and re-charge — often more time than many of us think we “should” need.
(Saying that you “shouldn’t” need so much time to rest, of course, is another way of saying I wish I was a robot.)
Sometimes the first step to building a life that works better for you means admitting:
Fine, I will never be a robot. So what can I do with my measly humanness?
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
5 ideas for finding more friends as an adult
Last week I wrote about friendship, loneliness, and why it’s not surprising that you might need a new friend or two.
This week, I wanted to share five ideas about how to actually make those new friends, all from Shasta Nelson’s lovely book, Friendships Don’t Just Happen: The Guide to Creating A Meaningful Circle of Girlfriends. They’ve been helpful for me in my process of making new adult friends, and hopefully, they’ll help you, too:
1. Long-distance friends aren’t the same as local friends.
Many of our long-distance friends are very important to us. We’ve known them a long time, and have a deep intimacy with them. That’s great!
But, Nelson argues, long-distance friends aren’t a substitute for local relationships. Even if you talk on the phone regularly, and see each other once or twice a year, it’s nearly impossible to be creating as many new memories or sharing our day-to-day lives in the same way as you could with a local friend. For that reason, Nelson considers long-distance friends to be a separate category of friends — she calls them “confirmed friends.”
Realizing this was a big shift for me. I have a number of close friends living across the country from me, who I’ve known for a long time and deeply value. Of course, I have no plans of losing touch with them and I hope to have them in my life for a long, long time. But Nelson’s argument made me realize that if I plan to live in Los Angeles long term — which I do — I have to develop a stronger circle of close, local friends.
2. If you want to have close friends, you have to start with friendly acquaintances.
I’ll admit: What I truly want is a handful of close, intimate friends. The kinds of friends who celebrate birthdays together and call to check in if we know the other is having a stressful week. The kinds of friends who I can be truly honest and authentic with. I have some of those, but could use a few more where I live.
But Nelson’s book pointed out that the only way you get to close, committed friends is by making friendly acquaintances first. She has a great model of friendship as a five-stage spectrum (you can see the full model here) from acquaintances on the left to deep, committed friends on the right.
Her point is that all friendships — no matter how deep or intimate they may eventually be — start out as friendly acquaintances. Some friendships will progress through the stages of increasing depth and intimacy, and some won’t. And, frankly, it can be hard to tell at the beginning which ones will make it all the way to what she calls “commitment friends,” the deepest level of friendship.
But you have to start out with a lot of casual acquaintances and see who goes deeper over time. As someone who loves deep connection, this was a little tough to accept.
But it was also a relief — it reminded me that it’s normal if none of the people I meet “feel like” close, intimate friends. They aren’t that kind of friend! They will only feel like friendly acquaintances. And then, as I invest in those relationships, we’ll see what they become.
3. The two most important characteristics of a deeper friendship are intimacy and consistency.
Consistency means “regular time spent together,” and intimacy means “sharing that extends to a broad range of topics and increases in vulnerability.” I think this makes a certain amount of intuitive sense: the more time you spend with another person, and the more you both share intimately with each other, the deeper your relationship will become.
But notice what this definition excludes: how much we like each other.
The truth is that even if you really like another person and they like you, you might not become friends. How often have you met an interesting person, had a fun or deep conversation, and thought hey, I’d like to see them again! And then you never saw them again or never saw them frequently enough to actually become friends. If there’s no consistency there (and intimacy, of course), you won’t become friends.
Of course, how much you like the other person will influence whether you’re willing to be consistent and intimate with that person. But there could be people who you like quite a lot, and still the friendship never quite gets off the ground. It is the consistency and intimacy which are bedrock requirements.
As a result…
4. You’ll have to initiate. And initiate again.
Nelson points out that women, in particular, may enjoy being pursued, and may be used to having someone else initiate other key relationships:
“In romance, we want to be pursued. In job interviews, it’s up to the HR team to make the offer. But in friendship, there isn’t a clear conductor of this symphony, a leader in the dance. We’re just two women who probably could use more support in our lives, but if we both sit back and hope the other reaches out, then I’m afraid that we’ll end up with a company of disconnected, depressed, lonely women… So we’re going to initiate. Yes, we are. Again. And again.” (107)
Most people I know are comfortable initiating at least once. Maybe even twice. But pretty soon, we start to keep score: I initiated last time, it’s her turn this time.
Nelson’s radical point is that we may have to initiate, and then initiate again. And then a third time and maybe a fourth. Of course, we shouldn’t initiate every day, and we should pay attention to signals from the other about whether they’re interested in our friendship. But if we don’t see each other regularly (point #3), a friendship will never take off. So if we want more meaningful relationships in our lives, we may have to initiate more often than our initial instincts would go for.
5. One last thing
Here’s some tough love, from Shasta Nelson:
“If you tell me that you want to foster more meaningful friendships, then my response back to you will always be: tell me who you have scheduled in the upcoming two weeks and I’ll tell you if you’re on your way to stronger friendships.”
The only way to make more friends is to spend time with potential friends. There is no substitute. And given how busy most people are, this time often must be scheduled in advance.
…
Was this helpful? What are your takeaways? I’d love it if you’d leave a comment below.
And as always, I’m rooting for you in the week ahead.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
If you're feeling lonely, here's a concept that helped me
I’ve had two big moves over the past few years — from New York to North Carolina, and then from North Carolina to California. Both times, after the initial exhilaration of a new home wore off, I looked around and realized I had very few, or no, friends where I lived.
So I started to try to make more friends. I started going to more events, but every time I met someone who I was interested in getting to know more, it seemed like they already had plenty of friends. Why would they want to be friends with me?
I felt kind of needy, as I tried to initiate spending more time with interesting people.
But it turns out that lots of us need more friends! In Friendships Don’t Just Happen: The Guide to Creating A Meaningful Circle of Girlfriends, Shasta Nelson pointed out two things that really surprised me:
People, on average, replace half of their close friends every seven years, according to researchers in the Netherlands. Half! So most people you meet will probably be looking to meet at least a friend or two.
Many of us aren’t doing a great job of finding the new friends we need. A quarter of us have no one with whom we share deeply. Another quarter has only one person — likely a significant other or spouse — so we’re deeply vulnerable to a potential break-up, divorce, or death. That’s about half of us with one or zero close confidants or friends. The other half of us have an average of two.*
Nelson’s book is mostly a how-to guide for making meaningful adult friendships. And if I’m being honest: at first, admitting that I was reading a book like that seemed, well, embarrassing. Does admitting that I need more friends make me seem needy?
And yet, here’s something else that Nelson wrote, which I really needed to hear:
“Loneliness is not about social skills, likability, or the kind of friend we can be to others.”
I realized, in reading it, that I’d been subconsciously judging myself for being lonely. On a subtle level that I hadn’t been able to name until I read the book, I’d been assuming that people who are likable enough, who have strong enough social skills, and who are great friends, don’t get lonely. Have you ever felt that way?
But everyone needs new friends — frequently! And everyone gets lonely! If we’re going to replace half of our friends every seven years, we’re definitely to feel twinges of loneliness sometimes.
Nelson’s book had a couple of good, practical points about how to actually make more friends, which I’ll share next week. But for today, I just want to remind you:
Just like hunger tells you that it’s time to eat,
Or fatigue tells you it’s time to sleep,
Loneliness tells you that it’s time to put in some effort to generate new, meaningful relationships.
None of those experiences — hunger or tiredness or loneliness — necessarily have anything to do with you as a person: your worth or value or likeability.
It’s okay to be lonely. It’s normal to need new friends. And if you meet a new person who seems interesting, there’s a good chance they might be looking for a new friend, too.
*This data is from research published in the American Sociological Review in 2006, cited in Friendships Don’t Just Happen.
I’m in your corner rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
Why you might be successful but unhappy (+ the chart that made me gasp)
I was sitting on a plane, reading a kind-of-dry book, when I saw a chart that made me gasp.
My husband, sitting next to me, asked to see what had made me react like that. So I showed him, and his eyes widened, too.
“I can see why you gasped,” he told me.
Here’s the chart, and I’ll explain what it means in a second:
This chart is based on a study by Tim Kasser and Richard Ryan, in 2001. They were interested in the relationship between attaining certain kinds of goals and people’s well-being. In particular, they distinguished between two types of goals: extrinsic vs. intrinsic.
Extrinsic goals include wealth or admiration or fame. They are things that we do because we like how they make others view us.
Intrinsic goals includes personal growth, close relationships, and community contributions. Typically, intrinsic goals feel good in-and-of-themselves, whether or not they impress or please others.
It’s worth naming that any given goal could be either intrinsic or extrinsic, depending on your motivation. For example, someone could play the piano simply because they love it (an intrinsic goal), or because their parents said they have to (an extrinsic goal).
In this study, Kasser and Ryan asked college students how much they felt they had achieved extrinsic goals (money, fame, appearance) and how much they felt they had achieved intrinsic goals (personal growth, close relationships, community contribution.)
Then, they separated the college students into four different groups:
High achievement on both categories
High intrinsic achievement, low extrinsic achievement
Low intrinsic achievement, high extrinsic achievement
Low achievement on both categories
They also asked those college students about their personal well-being — which they calculated by asking them about things like self-actualization, anxiety, and depression.*
So, back to that chart again:
Two things made me gasp about this chart:
1. Attaining extrinsic goals doesn’t really matter for well-being.
Look at groups 1 and 2. There was virtually no difference in well-being between students who had achieved bothextrinsic and extrinsic goals (group 1), versus students who had achieved intrinsic goals only (group 2).
2. But if you haven’t attained intrinsic goals, your well-being suffers.
I think that group 3, in particular, is very interesting. Those students had high achievement of extrinsic goals, but low achievement of intrinsic goals. If you saw them, you might see them as attractive or successful. But they had terrible well-being!
In fact, there’s not a ton of differences between students in group 3 (high extrinsic achievement, low intrinsic achievement) and group 4 (low achievement on both). A small difference, to be sure — it’s better to achieve something than nothing at all — but not as much as you’d think.
…
The reason that I gasped when I saw this study was because even though I’ve heard all of the classic reminders that “being beautiful or successful can’t buy happiness” and “good relationships are what matters most,” I can still find myself wanting to achieve “impressive” things, on some level. Don’t you?
I had never seen, in such stark terms, how little those things actually matter for well-being.
And so, here’s my offering for this week: Have you reflected on your goals lately? How many of your goals are intrinsic? How many are extrinsic?
* Technically, Kasser and Ryan compared goal attainment, on the x axis, and “correlation with well-being” on the y-axis in their original study, but Kasser, in The High Price of Materialism, simplified “correlation with well-being” to “well-being,” and I’ve chosen to do the same here.
(For anyone that’s curious, I originally saw this chart in Tim Kasser’s The High Price of Materialism, p. 44-46. I fully understood the study by going back to Kasser and Ryan’s original paper summarizing the data, which you can access here.)
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
Two ways I use the internet less - without a full-scale digital detox
I’m very interested in how technology affects our well-being, and how we can use it more intentionally. I’ve written about this topic before (here and here), but here’s one phrase that’s been ping-ponging around my head recently:
Just because some is good, doesn’t mean that more is better.
It’s easy to read that phrase and think, Of course. Duh.
But are you actually applying it in your relationship with technology? Do you actually say to yourself, for example, “I’ve noticed that 30 minutes of this app/activity/device brings me significant benefit, but past that point, do the downsides outweigh the positives?”
To give you some ideas of how to begin that process, I wanted to share how I’ve been applying it to one part of my relationship with technology: Internet browsing.
Internet Browsing and Intentional Technology Usage
I’ll admit it: I love browsing the internet for pleasure. I use social media rarely at this point, but I still have blogs and websites that I love to read. Plus, occasionally watching SNL videos can be so fun! I think some amount of internet browsing is “good” for me because it brings me so much pleasure.
But I started noticing that because I enjoyed the internet so much, it was tempting to do it all the time. Oh, I just woke up? Why not look something up on the internet? Oh, I have a few hours after dinner? Why not spend all of it on the Internet?
I often felt like time would fly by – and like I never quite had enough of it. I also started wondering if the internet was actually giving me all the pleasure and relaxation that I thought it did.
So here are two things that I started to do, to implement “just because some is good, doesn’t mean that more is better” with my internet browsing:
1. Not using the Internet after dinner
I used to spend most of my after-dinner time on the Internet. I was tired from the day, there was nothing urgent to do, so why not? But I also noticed that I often felt emotionally tired at the end of my night, even after spending a significant amount of time online, which I thought helped me relax. I wondered whether the internet — even though it’s quite pleasurable — wasn’t letting me emotionally recover.
So I decided that I’d explore just not using the internet after dinner. Here are some of the interesting things I found:
I felt calmer. The very first night I did this experiment, I read a book for three hours after dinner, when I might otherwise have been browsing the internet. When I finished reading, I thought to myself, “Wow, I feel so much calmer than I’ve felt in a while.” I noticed that my body felt noticeably less stressed than before, and my breathing was slower. This has proved to be consistently true and is the main reason I’ve stuck with it.
I felt like I had more time. Somehow, my evenings have started to feel longer, even though they are often actually shorter, because…
I went to bed earlier. When I stayed off the internet after dinner, I kept finding myself getting tired earlier than I used to. It makes perfect sense — there’s no shortage of research on the negative effect of technology use on sleep. But it felt different when it actually happened to me.
I woke up earlier. It turns out that when you go to bed earlier, you tend to wake up earlier, too. I love mornings and had always wanted to get up earlier without sacrificing sleep, so this was a big perk for me.
I read many more books. The week that I’m writing this alone, I’ve started and finished two novels, and read some chunks of good nonfiction. This is an above-average week (the novels were both pretty fast reads), but I read a lot now.
2. Keeping a list of the things I’d like to “check” online
The internet makes it possible to get an answer to nearly any question, instantaneously. As a result, very tempting to look up the answer to any question, the moment we have it. It’s so satisfying to get an immediate answer! And it only takes a second!
But I started noticing that I was doing a lot of little “quick checks” throughout my day and wondered whether it was affecting my productivity and focus. Plus, even if the answer to my question could be professionally or personally useful, it was rarely true that I needed the answer to the question right then. I could usually wait at least a few hours for the answer.
So that’s what I started to do – I started keeping a list of “things to look up online” on a Post-it throughout my day. Then once a day, usually around 4 p.m., I look up as many of them as I please. I’ve definitely noticed that it helps me stay focused on the task at hand throughout the day, and it’s actually fun to be able to look up a bunch of things at once.
…
I like internet browsing — some of it is good for me. But using it whenever I had some leisure time wasn’t great for me, as it turned out. by not using the internet after dinner, I help myself have a calm and spacious, and more truly rejuvenating end to my day.
Similarly, I like being able to look up answers to my questions on the internet — some of it is good for me. But batching it helps me make sure I’m focused on what matters, rather than getting micro-distracted throughout my day. I can still get the answers to any questions that matter — I just have to wait a bit.
I’ll also say that I don’t do either of these practices 100% of the time. I’m not perfect, by any means. The good news is that I don’t have to do them 100% of the time, to experience real benefit.
How could you implement “just because some is good, doesn’t mean that more is better” in an actionable, concrete way in your life?
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
Ever have a vague sense that something is "off"? Don't ignore it
Sometimes what’s wrong feels nebulous:
It’s a subtle feeling of “not-rightness” that we only get in moments when we don’t have a lot to do.
It’s a nagging feeling in our belly that we need to make a change.
It's like we can only “see” what’s wrong out of the corner of our eye. And it's blurry.
Even more confusingly, we might feel fine a lot of the time! We go to work, spend time with our friends, our partners, go to the gym, and enjoy delicious meals. A lot of our lives are great!
And yet, we can’t shake the feeling: Something isn’t right. Something is “off.”
Here’s my suggestion: don’t ignore that feeling.
That feeling is important. It’s even life-affirming, even though it might also feel vague and confusing. But precisely because it's vague and confusing, and because there are concrete things that we've gotta get done in the here and now — laundry to do, reports to write, friends to see — we have a tendency to push it aside. I'll deal with it later, we think.
And then we never actually deal with it later.
Here’s what I know for sure about this nebulous feeling of not-rightness: you have to stay in the question.
“Staying in the question” means not ignoring it. In fact, "staying in the question" means revisiting this feeling that something's off and asking, What’s wrong? and What needs my attention? and What am I resisting?
Feelings like this respond well to patient curiosity, but it may take some time. (And, of course, support can be quite helpful.)
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
This might be why you're feeling stuck in life
When I studied improv comedy in my early twenties, teachers always emphasized “playing at the top of your intelligence.” Even if your character isn’t a Nobel Prize winner, “playing at the top of your intelligence” means that in every situation, she’s trying to be as smart and savvy as she can with what she’s got.
People who are playing at the top of their intelligence are more compelling to watch. The plots of their stories are more likely to move forward and not get bogged down in repetitive, boring, unnecessary stuff.
Are you playing at the top of your intelligence?
Many of us aren’t.
Many of us know, on some level, what’s working and not working about our lives. If we had a half hour of quiet to reflect, we could make a pretty accurate list of the things that are going great and the things we’d like to work on to have lives that are happier, healthier, more meaningful, or more productive.
Many of us don’t do that kind of reflection very much. We may think it’s because we “don’t have time,” but most of us have plenty of time for Netflix or YouTube or whatever our technological pleasure might be. I suspect the real reason might have more to do with how uncomfortable it can be to see ourselves clearly or how making changes might require time or energy or shaking up parts of our lives. We might have to seek out help to figure out our next steps.
The end result of avoiding this reflection and truth is the same: We’re not playing at the top of our intelligence.
But remember what happens with characters who do play at the top of their intelligence? They’re more compelling to watch. The plot of their lives moves forward and doesn’t get bogged down.
Isn’t that something we’d all like?
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
It's okay to change your mind
Here’s a reminder:
“You always have the right to change your mind.”
Even if you’d done something a certain way in the past…
Even if you thought something different before…
You still have the right to change your mind.
Now.
Here.
Today.
(That quote is from the always-wise Oprah, in this generally delightful video)
I’m rooting for you.
Katie
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!