easy, actually does do it

what if productivity could be easy

Lately, I’ve been trying to wake myself up to a simple prayer: what if it could be easy?

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

If you have a secure attachment and only get anxiety for real stuff that will for sure happen like missing your flight when you’re in line for TSA, you probably don’t subscribe to this newsletter and this question probably won’t work for you. Half of the population’s minds astonishingly seem to already be set to “the easy setting” and I for one, find it equal parts delightful and infuriating. When I meet someone new, one of my favorite questions to ask them is “what does your inside voice sound like?” I had an ex-boyfriend who told me it sounded like a coach, challenging and encouraging him everyday to be and do better. I met someone last year who had aphantasia, a disorder affecting 1-3% of the population where their brains can’t conjure any mental images, and he longly paused when I asked him. “I don’t have one,” he said as my jaw visibly dropped. I thought about all the ways that my life would change and my choices would be different if I didn’t have a critical voice inside my head judging all of them.

The inner critic’s main goal is to be a door stopper to your wildest dreams. It’s there to warn you about every failure of the past and every potential risk for the future. Like the ultimate gasliter, it weaponizes your past failures against you. Instead of pointing out how resilient you’ve been in the face of challenges and how impressive you are for still standing strong, it will warp those experiences with a pessimistic slant to convince you to never put yourself out there again. The inner critic is always very selective with its memory. It won’t remind you that you survived that breakup, it will convince you that you should just never fall in love again. The mean voice inside your head seems to have one goal and one goal only, to sabotage you, but it’s actually just your brain trying to protect you. It’s trying to save you, it’s just doing it with the worst advice ever.

And the reason your inner voice is so effective is that it’s powered by thoughts which are processed much more quickly than language. Your mean voice is not just like one person talking to you, it’s like having eighty of them doing it at the same time, because thoughts are so rapid and chaotic that they most often don’t operate in full sentences or sometimes even full words. The average person will have 6000 thoughts every single day. And because of negativity bias, your brain will probably pay more attention to the thoughts that are not good.

Instead of trying to shush that voice into submission, try countering those negative thoughts with positive open-ended ones instead. I find that having an arsenal of positive questions is one of the best ways to disarm my critic. Since she is always asking me if I’ve thought about the worst case scenario, I respond by asking her to reflect on the best case scenario. When she convinces me that my success has to be earned and it has to be hard, I ask her what if it could be easy?

The truth is that easy, actually does it. When things are easy, they historically are more likely to get done. When I look back at my most crucial life events, it wasn’t because I suffered through them and forced an outcome, it’s because I let them unfold in the exact way they were supposed to. Whatever you’re struggling with right now, whether it’s a work thing or a conflict with someone you love, what would it look like for you to approach it in the most relaxed way possible?

Before you go, I’d love if you listened to my latest episode of Race to 35 where Monica Padman and I realize that egg freezing is a lot like having a fantasy football league growing inside of you. I talk about the time I interviewed for Anna Wintour and we also have meaningful conversations about modern families with one of my all-time favorite people, Andrew Solomon. I hope you enjoy it.