Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Welcome to the Glass Ceiling and Sticky Floor podcast, the podcast where we get real about the challenges that women face in work, life, and leadership. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, HR executive, keynote speaker, and executive coach, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. This is the space where we call the paradoxes, being told to lean in but not too far, to speak up but not too loudly, to be ambitious but not too ambitious. Does that sound familiar?

Erica: We're over all that. Here, we break down the sticky floors that keep us stuck from imposter syndrome and perfectionism to burnout and fear and give you real strategies to shatter those glass ceilings once and for all. So if you're ready to rewrite the rules, own your power, and take your career and life to the next level, you're in the right place. Y'all, today's guest is coming in hot with a truth bomb for every high achieving woman who's ever felt like rest is a reward, and burnout is just part of the deal. Israa Nasir is a psychotherapist, mental health advocate, and founder of Well Guide, a platform that is flipping the script on mental health, and y'all know I am here for some good mental health and mental wellness.

Erica: She is also the author of Toxic Productivity, reclaim your time and emotional energy in a world that always demands more. And let me tell you, the minute I saw the title of that book, I knew I had to have this woman on podcast. But Israa is an expert in emotional intelligence, sustainable self care and dismantling the perfectionism that is keeping so many women stuck. If you've ever felt guilty for slowing down, or like you're crazy, and you're only as valuable as your output. This conversation is for you.

Erica: Israa, welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm good. Thank you

Israa: for having me. I'm excited for this conversation. Well, girl, I think I stumbled upon your book on LinkedIn by chance.

Erica: I stumbled across a local connection, Does it come from personal experience?

Israa: Yeah. It comes from personal experience, and it's rooted in psychological research. So I'm a therapist, as you mentioned. And so a lot of my personal growth is always about reflecting and, you know, all that stuff. So but I was raised in a very standard immigrant home where overachieving was the norm and rest wasn't really something that was part of the family culture.

Israa: And I grew up with a lot of big ambitions. Right? And we're all sold a story that if you do, like, a, b, c, d, eventually you're gonna be happy. Right? And that happiness is at that last check mark. You get everything and you'll be good. And so, like, I think most of my twenties was, like, spent trying to make it through the checklist. And the promised land of happiness when time came, didn't come. So here I am in my early thirties. I've just gotten married. I've just moved to New York City. I'm pursuing a career in digital health. And it's supposed to be like, this is it. I've made it. I've done the things.

Israa: But I wasn't really feeling happy, I wasn't even feeling satisfied, I was feeling very disconnected from my life. And so like I mentioned with that introspection came the question like, am I depressed? Am I like high functioning depression or anything like that? So I started doing a little bit of like you know exploration on that, spoke to my doctor and I didn't really meet the criteria for a clinical diagnosis and yet I still knew something was wrong in the way that I was feeling. And so because it wasn't internal to me, I looked external to me.

Israa: And I started looking at what is motivating me, why do I do the things that I do, you know, is there some kind of like research around why people pursue things even though they don't want to and does it make them happy? And that kind of led me down this path of looking at like human motivation theory, social development and learning theory. Like I just started reading a lot of papers to try to make sense of what was going on and that culminated in this essay that I wrote on toxic productivity. Because as I was reading this research and then I was going to bookstores to look at, you know, books that I might pick up, like in the self help genre, there is this huge gap. The research is saying that our emotions drive our habits.

Israa: And if we have unresolved emotions, especially the difficult ones, like shame and fear of missing out, fear of being left behind, not belonging with your group, your peers, that emotion, if you don't process it, drives you to do more as a way of feeling better about yourself. And I saw that in my therapy sessions with my clients as well. Right? But the books were only telling you that, hey, you just gotta change your habits. You just gotta build a system. You just gotta, like, shift, like, when you wake up or whatever. Right? Like, and so, like, the books were very habit oriented, but the research is very emotion oriented. So I wanted to bridge that gap. So that essay then eventually became this exploration of what are the emotions that we are not looking at that are driving this unhealthy behavior, including my own. And that essay became the foundation for this book.

Erica: Okay. So can you define toxic productivity for me?

Israa: Toxic productivity is a framework. It's not necessarily only about your job. It can be about any area of your life, but it's a frame of mind that we have about what makes us worthy. And in the framework, we believe that if I just acquire more achievements and if I just hit more milestones, I will be more valuable, not just to others, but to myself. And so we become obsessed with outcome and achievement. And so in this framework, in this frame of mind are activated a lot of dynamics, like feeling a lot of shame if you're resting, feeling guilty for being behind from other people. Right? So you're comparing yourself all the time. And so your metrics of success are constantly moving because you're trying to feel good about yourself through external reward. That's what toxic productivity is. It's an unintentional, you know, very external other oriented desire for success, but it doesn't really fulfill you because it's not aligned with your values.

Erica: And I think that all of that aligns with so so much of the way a lot of the women who listen to this podcast feel right now. And I know that that a 100% taps into how I felt as a chief people officer, just always climbing the ladder next, next, next, thinking that promisely and is just like one rung away on that corporate ladder. And I love this idea that it's it's about looking external, not looking internal. So how then can we shift internally so that we don't get wrapped up in those outcomes and tying our worth to those outcomes?

Israa: So according to research, there's two types of motivation that we all need. So it's not like one is better than the other. We need the external motivation. It fuels creativity. It fuels collaboration. Right? If we just kinda look at human behavior. But equally important is internal validation, and that's the piece that is missing in our culture today. So everything that I talked about, like, you know, you were like, oh, yeah. This really, like, is gonna resonate with the people who listen. That's because our work culture is foundationally built on these principles. Our work culture is built on comparing yourself to other people. Our work culture is built on utilizing shame and guilt as a way to motivate people. It's no wonder that everyone is feeling this and everyone is questioning like, is ambition even real? Like, should I be productive? What does this matter? And you see this younger cohort of, you know, workforce individuals who are questioning if they want to be managers, if they you know, you see the trend of, like, Gen z declining management positions. You see this trend of quiet quitting. Right? People are craving, like, a provincial, quote, simple life. It's because the work culture is built on these, like, unhealthy, unsustainable dynamics. Now as a way to kinda shift or balance your motivation, both internal and external, is we have to build some habits that don't necessarily include an external marker of success. That's something that's missing in everyone's life right now, especially because of the performance culture of social media. We don't do anything for ourselves anymore. You know, you could be having breakfast and you want it to be aesthetic and I'm guilty of it too.

Israa: Right? And you post it on Instagram or did you even go to travel if you don't post 27 stories about it? Like was it real? Like so like social media has become this like existential space for us because we think that we don't exist if we don't post on it. But the moment you post something, it becomes a performance and it's no longer internally motivated. It's externally motivated. So to bring this balance back, I ask people to do three things. One is to engage in creative hobbies that you are not monetizing, that you are not taking photos of, you are not talking about it, and you are not putting it on Instagram. Okay? You are doing the knitting or the running club or the whatever just for yourself. Like, you are not allowed to perform it. The second is to engage in like what I like IRL community, so in real life community. So have a dinner party and just be present with the people who are there. Do not take any photos of it. Meet your friends in a completely unaesthetic, non reviewed restaurant. Right? Like, really try to step away from this performance culture in your community. Because even our friendships, which are meant to bring us joy, have become comparative, performative.

Erica: You see

Israa: a lot of pressure in bachelorette parties. You see a lot of pressure in bridal showers now, which are meant to be loving community. Events have now become these performances. Right? And so engage in community, get a creative hobby, and the final one, it's gonna be very hard if you have perfectionists listening, is identify areas in your life where it's okay to be mediocre and be mediocre. So invite, like, a good enough mindset into your life in places where it doesn't matter that you be perfect. If the dishwasher is loaded imperfectly, let it be. If the couches, like, the cushions are not karate chopped, let it be. Right? It's it's okay. Meet your friend without doing a full face of makeup. Let it be. And so, like, where can you be mediocre so that the things where you need to be perfect and excellent in are actually getting your energy? That was a very long answer, but I think these are the these are the ways.

Erica: Yes. No, girl. And so many things popping off in my head that I was, like, writing little nuggets down. When you talked about, like, all of this performative society and how everything has to be perfect, like, it made me think about how I saw on the news all of the it's rush season for sororities. All of these sororities are putting on these perfectly curated videos where they're all dancing and with themes when in reality, like back in the day, back when, you know, like I was in college, it was just about going to the house and meeting those women and getting, you know, to know them. And now it's so different. But what I love and what you are true about is identifying areas where it's okay to be mediocre. So I would love to hear it straight from your mouth too, though. Israa, where are you okay with being mediocre?

Israa: Oh, many places. I don't necessarily need my home to look perfect all the time. Like, the bookshelf is, like, the one that's behind this camera right now. It's not organized. The books are just, like, fiction, nonfiction, whatever. Everything is just, like, meshed together. I take a very gentle approach to working out. Like, if I know that I don't have sixty minutes, I'll give like a twenty minute workout. I'm not trying to hit that perfect mark. I'm certainly very mediocre about how I hang out with my girlfriends. People come over, the house is what it is. It's fine. Like, it's not dirty, but it's not gonna be like Instagram Pinterest worthy. You know? I host dinner parties and the tablescape is just not a tablescape. It's just food on the table because we're just gonna hang out and we're gonna talk. We're gonna connect. We're gonna laugh. So I try to take this type of approach to the performative aspect of my life so that I can be the kind of person who shows up for my friends in a perfect way where it truly matters. You know what I mean? Like, take on the actual tenets of friendship instead of the performative aspect of friendship.

Erica: Yeah. And what I also find so interesting about all of this is, like, we think so much about all of these things. We spend so much of our mental energy worrying about all of these things, how my house looks, like, are my kids, you know, perfectly dressed with every hair combed right in place in the beautiful tablescape, when in reality, most of the times, our friends don't even, like, notice or care one way or another.

Israa: And, you know, and the people who will criticize that, I would invite you to question if they are good friends. And then the mackerel. Your house. Yeah. Someone comes to your house and you serve, like, the watermelon in, like, a ugly plastic tub and someone has something to say about it, like, where's the

Erica: better come for me in my ugly plastic tub.

Israa: What are we doing here? You know? And I think that we can also I think women sometimes and, you know, there's a lot of research on, like, the emotional mental load that women carry in the home especially in, like, the straight homes where you're married to a straight man. They are socialized in totally different ways than women. Right? And so they will I think women will take on a lot of, like, the perfectionist aspects of keeping a home. So it's like the dishwasher is a great example. Clothes needing to be folded the way that you want, right, for your partner, for your children as well as you. That's called externally oriented perfectionism. So we have this internally oriented perfectionism that's to yourself, but when you start externalizing it, you start wanting to exercise control on somebody else. And what's happening there is how good you feel about yourself is dependent on how perfect the other person is. Oh. And that creates so much stress in a relationship. You know? I see people fight about the dishwasher being this, like, focal point. Right? I keep coming back to because it's a very common issue. Right? It can be a breaking point sometimes where he just doesn't load the dishwasher properly. And I'm not trying to be too genderized, but the research is predominantly on heterosexual relationships. That's the bias in research right now. But I think, like, letting go of some of that is really beneficial to you, and it allows you to be more present in your relationship. Parents can bring this toxic productivity mindset to their children's academic and extracurricular success. So we have parents now who are their children are and I don't mean to call anybody out, but their children are, like, in six different things. Right? And you and your partner are coordinating, like, four different dropout schedules. Right? And, like, who is present? Who is actually physically and embodied present with your child? If you're constantly running around trying to get from one thing to the other, do you have time for your partner anymore if you're both so resentful at the damn drop off schedule. Right? And so these type of things take us away from what really matters.

Erica: Yeah. They do. And I can tell you that. As a woman who did two different school drop offs this morning and then came home and cleaned the kitchen, had a shit show meltdown with my husband about school and this, that, and the other all before 9AM.

Israa: He's real. But, you know, it's so common and it's not even like we want to do it. It's just like how we end up. And there's some pieces that are structural. There's some pieces that are other person's accountability, and there's some pieces that are our accountability. And those are the pieces I like to kind of call in people to, not call them out, but call them in. Like, what is your contribution to this dynamic? And where can we shift some habits, perspectives, emotional regulation so that it can cause positive change?

Erica: Yes. Oh my gosh. One thing I wanna take a left turn and talk about is rest because this is something I struggle with. I know so many other ambitious women struggle with it, and it's something that we feel like we have to earn it. Right? If I do all of these things, then I'll let myself take a breath. And you say, like, no, no, no. Rest is not the antidote to burnout, but it's a fundamental piece of your healthy life. And I think we know this in our conscious mind, but I want to hear from you, like, what does rest look like? And what are some of those steps that we can start to take so that we can integrate more rest into our lives without feeling that guilt?

Israa: Yeah. Rest is an integral part of healthy productivity. What's happened in our society is we have kinda made them like opposites or oppositional forces. Right? Like, the rest is on this side, productivity is on the other side, and those two things cannot blend. Now the reason so many people feel uncomfortable with rest can be can be many different ways. Right? It could be the way you were raised. Like, I struggle with rest for most of my life because I just it was not modeled in my home, right? It was just not a part of the family culture. Sometimes it can be the career you pursue, right? In order to become a doctor, you have to work eighteen hours as a resident and like you're not allowed to rest, right? And then you become, like, a parent and there's so many things happening in your life so that rest seems inaccessible. And over time, it becomes this mythical thing that you have to become deserving of. So rest is a requirement of productivity. It's a requirement of healthy living. And the way we can integrate it into our day to day life is to get out of this black and white mindset that rest looks like x, and because all of these circumstances don't align, I cannot rest. So we have this very black and white mindset about what constitutes as the perfect environment for rest. You can rest for three minutes. You can have you can do, like, a ninety second meditation, and that has the same impact on your physiology as a sixty minute meditation in terms of bringing it down. The reason people do longer meditations is it keeps you in the plateau of rest for longer. But you achieve the state of rest very early on in that, like, sixty minute meditation. So you can access that in ninety seconds. You can do a three minute meditation. You can take a ten minute unstimulated moment in your day. So what does that mean? No phone, no reading, no podcast, no music, no watching TV. Just sit quietly for ten minutes. See what happens. Yesterday, I sat for, like, literally six minutes and ate, like, corn on the cob, and that was it. But that was a very restful moment. Right? It was not cute. It was not aesthetic. Right? I was just sitting there.

Erica: Corn on the cob ain't nothing cute or aesthetic about that. That

Israa: is Right?

Erica: Wild snack of choice, but I'm here for it.

Israa: Yeah. It's like, you know, it's seasonal. Like, it's delicious.

Erica: Like, it's Oh, this sounds Instagram worthy to me. What you talking about? Right? So that's the way.

Israa: Like, you just have to integrate it into pockets of your life. Like, it's very hard to change your life and do, like, a sixty minute rest thing. It's very hard to find sixty minutes on a weekend. It is. Like, it sounds ludicrous, but it is. Right? So you have to shift that mind into creating pockets of micro rest throughout the day, throughout the week. Over a span of three weeks, you will stop needing that big chunk of rest because you're constantly refueling yourself. Right? And research shows that there's seven different types of rest. So there's, like, spiritual, financial, community, physical, emotional, and a couple of others. I'm forgetting the researcher's name, but you can link it in the show notes. But there's seven different types of rest that we can access. And I break it into active and passive rest. Sometimes your body needs active rest, which is working out or going for a walk, talking to a friend. Sometimes your body needs passive rest. That's sleeping. That's, you know, doing a very low energy activity like puzzles, things like that. And knowing that is also really important. Like, if you have had, like, a week, right, and you are just exhausted, maybe going to, like, a Pilates class is not actually gonna be restful for you. So really being in touch with your body is important.

Erica: I think that's huge because I am somebody that I will go go go go go go go.

Israa: Mhmm.

Erica: And then I will go some more. And then I will be like, okay. I've gotta clear my calendar for the whole next week. We've done too much. I have to recover. So this concept of just, like, three minutes here, three minutes there, three minutes here, another two minutes there is I don't know. It's a little hopeful for me as someone who struggles to fit that in because I think we can always find those gaps. Do you have any other, like, tangible tools for sneaking those bits in?

Israa: Yeah. So I I I talk about this in the book, which is like a time energy audit. And essentially, sometimes we have a lot of time leaks in our calendar that we are just unaware of. Like, if you and I picked up our phone right now and we looked at the screen time, like, it would be at least for me, I'll speak for myself. It will be embarrassingly high.

Erica: Right? Yeah. Did you saw the face I made? I was like, yeah. I hope she's not gonna actually make me do that.

Israa: No. I I don't wanna do it right now either, but it's like, you know and but if you were to say sometimes it's, like, five hours, let's say. Right? But if you were to be like, hey, sir. Do you have five hours to volunteer a week? I'll be like, no. I don't have five hours. I'm so busy. Blah blah blah. But then you look at my screen time and it's like five hours a day. That's like twenty hours a week. That is a lot. That's a part time job. Right? And so time energy audit allows you to understand your time leakage. And sometimes we're committed to things that we don't really need to be committed to. If you're in the workplace, do a meeting audit. Do you actually have to be in the meetings you're in every day? Like, if you don't have to be there, maybe consider rolling it up and saying, hey. These are async updates I can give or whatever. Right? So really do this audit, and then I practice something called the Chanel rule, which I made up. So it's not like Chanel has said, well, Coco Chanel said that, you know, you take off one piece of accessory before leaving the house. Right? So let's take that to our calendar. Let's take something off the calendar because we have over committed. Right? And so thinking about that will open up pockets of time where you can actually rest. And this comes from my own experience. Like, I used to be someone who would go out, like, seven nights a week, actually. And it was the most wildly unhealthy thing. And I had to consider, like, am I saying yes to the right things? Like, do I actually feel better after leaving this party that I go to every other week with this group of people? Like and the answer was no. And so I had to cut that out. But I never would have thought about it if I hadn't actually done this audit and looking at my calendar holistically. Right? I'm sure this happens to you. Friend texts you, hey. Are you free on Tuesday? And you're like, yeah. Somebody else partner messages you. Oh, we have, like, drinks with my coworker on Wednesday. You're like, cool. Child's parent messages you, like, a play date on Thursday. And you just said yes to everything without realizing that now Tuesday to Friday, you're stacked. So we don't have this, like, holistic perspective. And so doing the audit and then taking The Chanel Rule perspective allows you to kind of take a holistic look at your commitments.

Erica: Oh, I love that. And I heard one time that one woman who I interviewed, she had gone through break or breakout. She had gone through burnout and was really struggling. And she was very intentional that when she came back, she actually set the boundary of, like, I will do no more than three meetings a day. Yeah. Like, hard stop. It doesn't matter if I have the time or if I don't have the time. Like, I'm not doing it. I already have three meetings scheduled. And if someone came in and needed something, she would have to evaluate. Like, do I need to move one of these meetings or not? Yeah. And I loved looking at it through that lens as well because it was almost like like, this is what I have time for, because everything else, you know, fits into those buckets. And I thought that that was more powerful of a of a method than being like, I have to tell everybody no. You don't have to figure out what is not important. And it's not that, but it's it's more so prioritizing the important things.

Israa: Yeah. It's called the Eisenhower matrix. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's like what's urgent, what's important, what can be delegated, and what can be removed. And that's also a really good way of identifying, like, urgent versus important.

Erica: Okay. I have a love hate relationship with, I should say, past Erica. Right? Past Erica, which also is today Erica, loves to put things on the calendar for future Erica. And then future Erica gets to that day, that Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, I'm like, what the hell? Why did I say yes to all these things? And then I wanna start pulling on the Chanel rule. Do you have any of those tips that I can give to that Erica who is super eager at scheduling things to like take a beat and not overschedule? Like, what is the secret to not over scheduling myself?

Israa: The first thing is to ask for time before agreeing to something. If you can pause, take a breath, make a habit, or make a commitment to yourself that I'm not gonna say yes until twenty four hours of the ask. Like, blanket rule. And so you can get comfortable with saying to people, hey. Let me get this sounds great. Thanks for the invite. Let me get back to you. Right? And that will allow you to regulate some of the emotions that are driving the yes that are not very healthy. Guilt, obligation, fear of missing out, you know, comparison. Like, there's so many reasons why we do it. Or just being uncomfortable saying no to someone. Like, the ask comes your way and you immediately already know that you don't wanna do it, but it's awkward. So you're like, okay. Let me just quickly say yes. Right? That's usually how most people operate. And so buying that twenty four hour period allows you to regulate that difficult emotion in your body, allows you to look at the rest of your calendar, allows you to do the urgent versus important analysis, whatever. And it doesn't have to be long. This does not need to take more than fifteen minutes per thing. And that will allow you to say no so that you are not screwing it up for future Erica.

Erica: Oh, I know. I love that. As soon as you said that, I wrote it down. I was like, that is golden. That's all I need to do because it just gives me the space to really ask myself if that's important or not.

Israa: Yeah. And where does

Erica: it fit? Yeah. And where does it fit in the schedule? The calendar's only so many hours long, you know?

Israa: Yeah. Exactly. And you can also take that same meeting rule to your social commitments. Right? Like, that's what I did when when I was shifting away from, like, the seven nights a week going out. I told myself that I would go out a max of three times on during the week.

Erica: Mhmm.

Israa: And that I wouldn't stack, like, back to back stack things on the weekend. So we would do, like, Saturday afternoon with someone, Saturday evening, a whole different plan. Sunday afternoon with brunch with someone, Sunday evening, a whole different plan. So it was, like, stacked. And so I said three times over the weekdays and then, like, have one stack empty on the weekend. Like, I made a commitment that this is where it will fit. And so it's the same mindset that you can also take.

Erica: Amazing. Amazing. What's the core message that you really hope women who are reading your book take away from?

Israa: The core message is that you are not going to get happiness by doing a lot. So let's rethink that. Let's rethink what happiness actually means. What are my values? What is truly the way I wanna live? And then back into a lifestyle that fits that. So the core invitation is for introspection. We are living in autopilot. Everyone is just moving through the motions. Oh, you go to school. You do this. You do that. Blah blah blah blah blah. You work till retirement. And in your retirement, you go on a cruise. Like, our entire life is essentially mapped out for us with these, like, milestones. Right? So we don't actually actively participate in our lives. Then we're in it. And now we're like, I just gotta survive. Next just as soon as this week is over, things are gonna settle. Right? Like, that's how many times have we said this to ourselves. Oh, this month is busy, then it's gonna settle. And so I don't want this, like, settled feeling to be in this faraway future for everybody out of reach. So the invitation is to introspect, to self reflect, and see where you can make changes.

Erica: That's beautiful. And I wanna ask you, like, what's next with WellGuide? Because you're doing so many great things, I want you to have the opportunity to tell everybody about it.

Israa: Yeah. So WellGuide is like a education platform where I share a lot of information about, you know, the psychological concepts around happiness and health, emotional intelligence. I think those are, like, cornerstones of leading a happy life. If you can regulate your emotions well, you will have better relationships. If you know how to, like if you improve your emotional intelligence, you will be better at work. This is like a natural byproduct of the fundamental building blocks of a happy life. So that's what Well Guide is. I do a lot of speaking. I do a lot of corporate speaking, keynote speaking. So my hope is that I'm able to, like, take this messaging to a bigger audience, whether it's through more keynotes and speaking, whether it's through more writing on Substack, and, you know, just spreading that message.

Erica: Oh my gosh. I love it. I think women everywhere I think everyone, not just women, but especially women need to hear this message of toxic productivity. And it sounds like you've got just a book filled with real actionable tools that we can actually do in our normal day to day lives. Just three minutes here, three minutes there, building up that muscle. So, Israa, thank you for joining today. Y'all, if today's conversation lit a fire under you, here's your next move. Don't keep it to yourself. Share this episode with a friend, drop a review, and let's keep the conversation going. Remember that your potential is limitless, and the only thing standing in your way are those sticky floors. But guess what? You have the power to break through them. So get out there, take up space, and let's shatter some ceilings together.