Ignoring The Most Important Data Source: Ourselves – Why Are We Still Doing That?
No Vacation Required
Beyond External Validation: The Power of Turning Inward
Why do high performers often struggle the most when the spotlight turns from their professional achievements to their personal growth? We dive into the "externalization trap," where expertise in an external mission leads to a surprising resistance toward self-knowledge. We explore why we are trained from childhood to analyze the world around us while remaining strangers to ourselves, and how this disconnect creates the "dissonance" so many feel in their daily lives.
From the story of a State Department expert to the "Office Mom" who cares for everyone but herself, this episode examines how to apply the same data-driven rigor we use at work to our own internal development. Learn why self-knowledge is the ultimate "good data" for decision-making and how building an inner compass provides a level of agency that no social media feed or professional title can ever match.
Onward and Inward,
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CHAPTERS:
(00:00) Why are we still doing that?
(01:27) The Externalization Trap: Why high performers resist looking inward
(05:20) Case Study: The "Office Mom" and the gap in self-care
(08:04) Downplaying Wins: Why talking about success feels uncomfortable
(11:52) Good Data: Applying professional evidence-based logic to personal growth
(13:56) The Root Cause: Why we aren't resourced for introspection at age seven
(17:16) The Benefits of Alignment: Systems that work with your energy
(21:12) Fulfillment is an Inside Job: Moving past the need for external validation
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Internal Data Drives External Success: Self-knowledge – understanding your strengths, values, and personality – is the "good data" required to make strategic, effective decisions in every role you play.
The Discomfort of the Inward Turn: Personal development often feels harder than external work because it lacks the immediate validation we are used to; acknowledging this resistance is the first step to overcoming it.
Fulfillment as an Inside Job: Relying on external sources like social media or others' approval for validation is a "boundaryless" approach that leads to burnout and dissonance.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Kent: Welcome to the No Vacation Required podcast where each episode we ask, why are we still doing that? Building a life you don't need a break from starts by letting go of templated ideas of success. And letting go of templated ideas of success requires each of us to ask, why are we still doing that? Why are we still doing that to the actions we've put on autopilot in the interest of pleasing family, fitting in with friends, and aligning with the dream of the planet?
Welcome. We're talking about measures of success and that you, we, we all get to define our own measures of success. And right away, I want to encourage you to, if you haven't read our last couple Substack posts, do that. One is on defining success in terms of career. The most recent one is on defining success regarding time, which scratches the itch that most people have needing and wanting more time. And our previous podcast, we talk a lot about redefining how you define success in relationships. But we have a few things to say about time, don't we?
Caanan: Do. I'll just say first here that time is something that we continue to struggle with. I'm very proud of us because through all of the work we've done over the years, we've done a lot to make sure that we have a lot of time for each other and the things that matter most to us. But we're still saddled with the same lack of time that everybody else is. They're 24 hours in a day and it all seems to go by way too quickly.
Kent: And we're ambitious.
Caanan: And we're ambitious. We have this running joke — I think you mentioned this in the post, in our recent Substack post — where at the end of the day, we will often say, well, that was a great day, but I didn't get done so much of what I wanted to get done. And when one or the other of us recap what we thought we could achieve in the day, it's ridiculous. It's, "I didn't climb that mountain I wanted to climb. I didn't do that week's worth of work that I thought I could get done in the last two hours of the day." So we're always joking about that. And I just want to point out that we've got ideas for how to recapture some time for yourself and focus on what matters most to you. But this is a hard one. And it's something that 15 years into no vacation required, we still struggle with.
Kent: Yeah. And time's an important one because we're getting increasingly hyper-productive in society and it leads to sort of other maladaptations that I'm excited to talk about today. Yes, so check out our latest Substack post. We get into time a lot and this is something we've done over the decades so much client work on because as we said in the last podcast, everybody wants more time. There's some really fun sort of time mapping exercises that we won't get into in this podcast, but really reveal how you're using time. And if you read that post, you'll see that a big part of the problem is that we've become so efficiency focused that we in fact have eliminated all of the things that bring us joy and that actually, yeah, I'm gonna say it, take time, but you need to do things that take time in order to feel human, in order to regulate your nervous system.
So as we talk about in the post, companies offering lunch and dinner so you can work right through them and people are ordering their food to be delivered and they're outsourcing chores. And this has a much longer negative reach than just time. Yeah. Caanan, do you want to talk about this?
Caanan: Yeah, I'm just. I have this note here that the American Psychology Association talks about how astronomically high stress is right now. I don't have the figures in front of me, but believe me, they're like jaw-dropping. And it's funny because we live in a time where we can pretty much outsource every aspect of our life. And we're constantly being told that by doing that, we'll have more time. I just have to say here that this whole notion of outsourcing to get more time, of optimizing to get more time, of having greater efficiency so you have more time, is a total lie.
Kent: Yeah.
Caanan: It's an absolute lie. We all know we don't get more time when we outsource these things that are supposedly negative — doing your own laundry, making your own dinner, going grocery shopping. I think in the post you say buying stamps. I don't know if anybody still buys stamps, but these are the voting. These are the chores. Okay, you can't outsource voting, but people just don't do it anymore because you can't outsource it. Right? Yeah. There's the lie that outsourcing and efficiency-izing will give you more time. And there's also the lie that the things you're being told are negative in your life, chores, are things you should get rid of. They are not. In fact, Kent, you just said it. These are the things that if you take the time to do, they actually bring you joy and they actually make you healthier.
Kent: Yeah, and Caanan is extremely passionate about this for a lot of reasons. This is the actual 4th big thing. We've been talking about this for a couple of podcasts, a couple of posts now. People want better careers, which we've talked about, better relationships, we've hit on that too, more time as we're talking about now and in the last Substack posts. But the fourth one is better health. And as Caanan is saying, there's this link between this hyper efficiency culture and declining health metrics.
Caanan: Yeah. And, you know, we're not saying that you need to churn your own butter, although if you want to do that, that would probably be really fulfilling. But you do need to look at the very things that you're being told you need to optimize out of your life and say, wait, this is backwards. I need to be doing things that allow me to work less so that I can spend more time doing chores because those things bring me joy, they make me fulfilled, they make me feel productive, and they make me healthier.
Kent: Yes, because way back in the day, we glommed onto the unhealthy idea of workism. Go back and listen to all our episodes of the Stop Hating Mondays podcast because you know what you're being efficient for. You're being efficient so that you can do more work and your employer knows it. So turning this around is very important.
Caanan: And you know why you're working more? This is so sick. You're working more so that you can afford to outsource the things that bring you joy.
Kent: Yeah.
Caanan: How gross is that?
Kent: Yeah.
Caanan: Next topic. Optimizing your life actually costs a lot of money.
Kent: Yeah. Well, it's interesting too, because also in this post, we talk about, you know, wanting to make, wanting to have — I gave away the punchline — wanting to have banana bread, and Caanan was like, let's make it. In this efficiency culture, the 1st place your brain goes isn't let's make whatever. So just like Caanan was saying with time, this too is a constant reminder for us. Let's make our own banana bread. Caanan is passionate about taking the time to make the oatmeal that actually takes time.
Caanan: It makes me sad. I was just thinking like people became aware of this a little bit during the pandemic when we were forced to take the time and do things for ourselves. And sadly, some of those important lessons have fallen away as we've all gotten back to our productivity efficiency culture. But our advice to you is pretty basic. Do the chores, make the oatmeal. These are the things that make for a rich life, not that extra report you got done today.
Kent: Yeah, for sure.
Caanan: Okay, we want to talk about money for a second. It's the least interesting of the five things that people want more of, want to change, but we're going to keep it short because I have very little patience for talking about money. So here's what I'll say about money and Kent jump in here if something comes to you. But our take is everybody says they want more money. But if you have enough money to cover your fundamental needs — and we are recognizing that a lot of people don't, and that's a tragedy, especially in a country with so much wealth — but if you are fortunate enough to have enough money to cover your basic needs, you don't really want more money. What you really want is more freedom.
Kent: Yeah.
Caanan: Everybody says they want more money, but the things they want more money to spend on are really freedom related. They want to travel more. They want to see the world. They want this. They want that. So I'm just going to posit that when you think I want more money, you need to stop yourself. Again, assuming you have enough to cover your basic needs and think, no, I really want more freedom. And you know what you do to get more freedom? Focus less on getting more money and do the things that we talked about in the last segment. Free yourself up to make your oatmeal. Free yourself up to vacuum your own carpet.
Kent: Free yourself up to get bored. By the way, like we need to do that ourselves, but it sounds good, yeah. Evaluate your relationship with money. We were talking to a dear friend the other week and she said, you guys have always looked at this differently. And we haven't always looked at it differently. In these stages of our life together, asking this question, why are we still doing that? It's definitely a thing we had to evaluate because as Caanan pointed out, we have these upwardly mobile careers, we're hitting all the marks, winning at everything. And when you decide to have different individualized measures of success, you know, you have to look at money as well. If we're going to say our relationship is more important or our health is more important, in our case, the same amount of money wasn't going to be rolling in. So you definitely have to look at this, but the beauty is it's yours to control. Nobody can tell you what success looks like. Well, they can tell you and you can nod your head and have your own definitions of success regarding all of these things: career, relationship, time, health, and money.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the No Vacation Required podcast. If you want a life you don't need a break from, a life where you live from a place of commitment and not comfort, join us for regular new episodes where you can always count on us to find a tired tradition and to ask, why are we still doing that? And if you're ready for change, come find us at the Change Laboratory.