Quiet Quitting and the Limits of Language

TOPICS DISCUSSED

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EPISODE RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. 

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers. 

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:26] Hello. Thank you so much for joining us for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're taking a look at the phenomenon of quiet quitting, which touches on stories we've discussed before. The great resignation. Momentum around labor unions. COVID 19, and how it's changed expectations for working life. I really love this conversation with you, Sarah, because I have felt like quiet quitting as a term is pretty frustrating and this enabled me to put some better language around the questions that I have and the issues that I think this phenomenon surfaces.  

Sarah [00:00:58] Agreed. We're asking quiet quitting to do a lot out there in the cultural conversation right now. Before we get to that conversation, we wanted to tell you about a new feature for our premium subscribers, Dear Beth. If you do not follow us on Instagram or are not a member of our premium community, Beth has over time developed quite the skill of advice giving. She gathers questions from the Internet, and she doles out some pretty wise, pretty phenomenal advice to our listeners. So if you would like to submit a question, you can do that by emailing Beth at Pantsuitpoliticsshow.com and you can listen to her answers by subscribing to More to Say on either Apple podcast subscriptions or Patreon.  

Beth [00:01:40] We'll end, as we always do, with what's on our minds outside politics. And today, fittingly, that topic is rest.  

Sarah [00:01:47] Up next, our conversation about quiet quitting.  

Beth [00:02:00] In the waning days of the summer, when lots of people are getting in their final vacations, you start to notice a new trend because not a lot of things are happening at the pace they usually are happening. Some cultural stories get picked up.  

Sarah [00:02:14] We do it, too. We do it too here at Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:02:16] It's nice. It's nice to take a little break and to think a little differently, use a different part of your brain. And we're going to do that today because I have a feeling that as September really gets going, it's going to go. And so we are going to take a moment and think about the quiet quitting conversation, which has benefited, I think, from timing as much as anything. But I think we are in a space where work is being rethought so dramatically by so many people that we're going to see a lot of new phrases around work and new trends around work and a lot of discussion.  

Sarah [00:02:48] So my father called me yesterday and he said, I have a quiet quitting story for you. I said, "Oh, okay." Called him back. I said, "Well, I'm very excited to hear your quiet quitting story." And he said, "So what is quiet quitting?" And I thought, that's it, right? This is that entire trend. Everybody's like, I have thoughts on this. What are we talking about again? Thoughts on this from an employer perspective, an employee perspective, but also, what are we talking about? And his quiet quitting story was like not about quiet quitting. It was that my grandfather worked two jobs when he was growing up. And my father I think he feels like the narrative is like he suffered because his father was working so much. And his story was no my grandfather came home every day, had dinner with him, played basketball with him for an hour, and then went to his second job. And so my dad did not suffer at all from his father working so diligently at two jobs. And we had a good conversation where I said, "Yeah, but maybe he was suffering, maybe he was tired and maybe people don't want to work those many hours." And we had a good conversation about it, but I thought, that's so perfect. What is quiet quitting?  

Beth [00:03:58] Well, I thought it might help to start with the ticktock that went viral about this so that we can just hear, in the words of TickTock user Zaid Leblon what quiet quitting means.  

zaidlepplin [00:04:11] I recently learned about this term called Quiet Quitting, where you're not outright quitting your job, but you're quitting the idea of going above and beyond. You're still performing your duties, but you're no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life. The reality is it's not. And your worth as a person is not defined by your job.  

Sarah [00:04:30] I disagree with not a single word he said.  

Beth [00:04:32] So as it happens with trends, I think the words that he said have kind of become a container for everything from this is just setting healthy boundaries, to give up on your job as much as possible, don't care about it at all or anyone there and and see how long you can get paid. Like, we're talking about a lot of different things under this umbrella now.  

Sarah [00:04:54] Well, it's not even his words. It just became quite quitting. Probably so many people having conversations about quiet quitting don't even know about that TickTock.  

Beth [00:05:01] Do you think it's because everybody loves alliteration? I know you have an affinity for it.  

Sarah [00:05:04] I do, because I have an alliterative name, Sarah Stewart, and I find alliteration pleasing. So, yeah, I'm sure that's part of it. Especially a cute alliteration. I mean, come on, what's not to love about that? And I just think it's a tight container for something that we're all talking about. The problem is, when we try to do that, when we try to make a container fit, things spill over the top. And that is definitely what's happening with this conversation.  

Beth [00:05:29] Well, because I think the first issue is that it assumes that you can quiet quit. And that means one thing, because work means one thing and work doesn't come even close to meaning one thing anymore. How do you have a conversation that encompasses the experience of someone who's delivering packages for Amazon, someone who is working in an ICU, someone who is doing therapy with children who have mental health distress? Like, how do you have one conversation about work that touches all of those folks?  

Sarah [00:06:01] Yeah, because I think there's a difference between jobs and careers. I think to a certain extent, some of this is just even personality difference and some of it is your circumstances and what is required of you. But my husband has always sort of had this approach that you just work to live. It's just a job. He doesn't want it to be sort of this purpose driven, all encompassing part of himself. Whereas I, as a child of Oprah, have always desperately needed that feeling that it is serving a bigger purpose. It's making me a better person. That my work is a part of something bigger. But he doesn't need that. And he never really has. And I don't even necessarily think it's appealing to him.  

Beth [00:06:41] And he's a lawyer who has a career. And whether he wants it or not it's a career to be an attorney and to invest that amount of time in education, and to have a job where you are never not working in many respects.  

Sarah [00:06:56] Oh, yeah, absolutely. And to me I think he would separate those things out. That there's a difference between the stress he feels around his job and whether he might want a different job than even if he had a different job, would it become the sort of purpose driven thing for him? I think, again, that's just my one husband. And there's so much tied up in all this, his education, how much he spent on it, what he learned from his parents about work, what he learned from his community about work, what he learned from the culture about work generationally. What were the messages he was receiving as a baby Gen Xer? He's right on the end of Gen X, I'm right on the beginning of Millennial. And so again, we're holding a lot here. We're holding a whole lot of things here.  

Beth [00:07:44] As I was preparing for this episode, I was sitting outside in front of my house and a FedEx truck rolled through the neighborhood very fast. And it caught my attention at first because I was like, the person is going a little fast down the street where lots of tiny children are playing. And then I could hear something blaring from the FedEx truck. And I don't want to say it was Alex Jones because I couldn't tell that precisely, but it sure sounded like Alex Jones. What I caught clearly from a pretty good distance was Joe Biden is giving trillions of dollars away and making you pay for it. And then I heard the transition to a break, a hostred break that was about some kind of survival product. So I'm not trying to be unfair, but it did sound like Alex Jones to me. But I thought, well, no wonder you're kind of hyped up.  Like, you have the[Inaudible] for a little bit, you know what I mean? Like, you're going through that. And I just thought, like, I wonder what his days is like. I tried to sit back and say, what is his day like? What is it like to deliver packages with Alex Jones blaring in your ear? I wonder how long he's been on the road. I wonder if he listens to this all day or if he switches to music at some point. But I was thinking about quiet quitting in connection with a job like that, which is the kind of job I've not had where I'm in this relatively autonomous situation in terms of my coworkers aren't with me, but I'm being monitored for my productivity in a pretty extreme way. What's that like? And so, overall, I have found the quiet quitting conversation frustrating because I do feel like it's so hard to divorce from your own experience to think through what this might mean for somebody else.  

Sarah [00:09:31] Well, I think that the way it's formulated in the TickTock is interesting. It's also doesn't fit the words quiet quitting at all. You're not quitting. All you're doing is setting boundaries at work. And I think there has been an ongoing and increasingly, I would say, productive conversation. I know we're not supposed to use the word productive around work anymore, but I think this conversation about work and what we want from it and how we define our worth inside of our roles has been really helpful. I think it's been headed in a good direction. I don't think quite quitting describes it. That word is not accurate. But I think this idea of I am not going to let work consume every moment of my life is beneficial and positive for our culture. And I think people have voiced concerns. And I think for better or for worse, we all know what happens, which is we didn't have to quiet quit, we just had to quit because of the pandemic. Everybody just basically had to quit. Whatever you did, unless you worked in the medical field, everything stopped. If it didn't stop, it changed dramatically. Everything was such a hard pivot, especially when it comes to our work lives that there was just no way, no way as human beings that we weren't going to have this moment of being like, what are we doing there? Do we like that? Because literally everybody had a hard pivot with the pandemic. And I remember back I was thinking about this recently, I think at the beginning of the pandemic, before the pandemic we'd had a lot of conversations about does America need to go through something hard to push us out of this polarized environment so we feel like we're having to tackle something together. We had a moment, I think, in the pandemic where we had a conversation like, is this actually going to change anything?  

[00:11:19] And now it's like, well, yeah, it changed everything. And did it fix our polarized political environment? No. But I think you're just seeing so many ways. We had this conversation with Rick Steves about travel. I think it shows up a lot there. It shows up in divorce rates. It shows up in mental health challenges with kids and teenagers. Like, it's just all these manifestations of that moment where everybody-- it's like the forward momentum of the status quo got halted in a very dramatic way. It's like the emergency brakes just got thrown on. And so there's nothing that wasn't affected. And I think with work, the ways in which it was affected, I think that I've told the story before on the podcast that my husband's barber went on this two week vacation and said, "I realize I could. For so long I just thought I couldn't. I just thought there's no way I could do this." And when his business got shut down and it survived, he thought, oh, I can. And so I think that's the quiet quitting.  We need a different description, but it was like, oh, I can not answer emails in the middle of the night. I can say I'll respond to you when it's convenient for me. It's not the end of the world. We all saw that all these scenarios in our head, especially at work, that felt like the end of the world weren't. And so we're all setting boundaries. We're all thinking not just the way we operate and work, but the careers. Do we want to go do something else? Is this working for us? I mean, again, it is a macro thing that's happening because I think it is happening to almost everybody. But you're right, the ways in which it is happening to every one is very, very, unique and individualized and complex.  

Beth [00:13:05] And a bunch of things are happening at once. You said so many things there that I want to continue thinking through with you. One that hit me, though, is when you said I know work isn't supposed to be all about being productive anymore. And that landed with me because I do think there is a bit of overcorrection going on as we have a tendency to do. And I do think we have a lot of-- especially like influencer kind of self-help posts about boundaries where people are actually talking about ultimatums.  A healthy boundary is constantly negotiated in the course of a relationship and is mutually agreed upon and is addressed together when it's violated, as it will be often.  

Sarah [00:13:54] That's why you need the boundary to begin with, because somebody was bumping up against it.  

Beth [00:13:57] Yes, that's quite different from an ultimatum, which is sort of the if it is not in my job description to the letter, I'm not doing it and you can fire me or I'll quit. That is, I think, going to a place that isn't healthy. And one of the things that enables someone like your husband's barber or like the two of us or like a yoga studio owner locally who I really admire, who has recently posted about dramatically reducing her workload, you can do that when you own the business. If you are hiring people who are in it with you. In a small business to try to capture what someone does with a job description is almost impossible because everybody can have a really good life if everybody's really in it together and you got to have everyone on the same page about that stuff. So we heard from tons of employees who've been mistreated badly in positions for a long time who really resonate with this because they're saying, yeah, we need some better boundaries. In fact, we need some ultimatums and we need some hard rules. And I think they're right. We also heard from people who are doing the entrepreneurial thing or are in a small business or are in a business where the delivery of services to people is just so hard and the need always outstrips the resources that we're saying when you quiet quit, someone has to pick up for you. And let's talk about this.  

Sarah [00:15:27] Well, and I think part of that I think you're right in the ways like individually we're talking about it. There's some overcorrection, but I'm not mad about the overcorrection and the power dynamic between employers and employees. For too long, employees had almost no power. Axios had a thing the other day here as we come off Labor Day that labor unions are as popular as they have ever been, like, growing popularity. And there's some real systemic underpinnings of this. As much as we are naming the individualized baggage and individualized experiences that we all bring to a trend like quiet quitting, it is also reflective of some real systemic trends. And I am not mad about the growing power in the labor market. I am not mad that employees can say I have plenty of other options because employees aren't just sort of-- let me say this again. It's not just boundaries getting violated when employees have no bargaining power, it's a lot more than that. It is the exploitation of people's literal lives, like, real literal days and minutes and hours and moments of your life. And so I'm not mad about that. I'm not mad about the power of growing power of labor. And I'm not mad about people saying, no, I'm not going to do that, that's an unreasonable expectation even if it's written in the job description. But it's never all one thing or the other. Like, there are both of these things going on. I totally understand that frustration of, well, if it's not exploitive when it's like a small team. But also, like you said, it's when people are like, well, it's a family. That's exploitive too. You can get in the small team situation where people are invested in the mission and that is exploited. You see this a lot in nonprofit work. And so I just think like the conversation is beneficial. I just think the words quiet quitting are not describing what's actually happening here.  

Beth [00:17:27] Because there's a lot to sort out. We overcorrect when we are due for a correction, when we're overdue for a correction. And I agree with you, there have been so many practices that are just unacceptable and that also make everybody miserable. Even the people requiring them get miserable in the course of enforcing things that are unreasonable for other people, it hurts everyone. So I do think that the digging into this is important. I just am not sure that quiet quitting is a super valuable tool, but maybe it is. I mean, nothing goes perfectly right. Like, we don't get the perfect question that leads us down a path that we need to go down. I think Maggie said something really smart as we were talking about all of this, because she's owned a small business with her husband for many years. And she said a lot of people just don't know how to have a job. And that's true. And that gets expressed because often the people who haven't yet learned how to have a job are younger. That gets expressed in these terrible generational caricatures instead of recognizing, oh, here's a person who hasn't had a job yet. That doesn't mean the entire generation is lazy or too informal or doesn't care about anything. It just means this person hasn't had a job yet, and I get the pleasure and privilege of teaching them how to be at work. What does that mean now, I think is part of what we're grappling with in the course of the quiet quitting conversation. What does it mean to be at work if it doesn't mean turn over your intellect, emotions, heart and all of your time? What does it mean to be at work?  

Sarah [00:19:06] Well, let's pick up this conversation after a quick ad break.  

Beth [00:19:25] I'm really curious about your thoughts about what that means, Sarah, given that we both now do work that we created and have relatively complete control over and frequently sort of check in on what do we want it to mean to be at work?  

Sarah [00:19:44] Well, maybe it's because we just had Rick Steves on the podcast, and I did take a trip to Europe. But I think it's always helpful to remember our work culture is not the only work culture. Like, how to other people think about this? How other people think about work? I think one of our listeners in the thread pointed out that so much more is tied up in work in the United States. It's your health care, it's your retirement, it's your social safety net because we don't have a strong one like they do in other countries. And so work takes on this outside role. Although, you have places like Japan where that is not true and I do not envy the work life culture in Japan, nor would I want to participate in it. And so I think that they're looking around and saying, what does that mean? I mean, not only because of what we do now, but because of my experience during my work life. I just have a weird perspective. I worked a 9 to 5 job approximately 18 months of my entire adult life. For a lot of reasons I have some insecurity about that. I definitely had insecurity about that when I was running for office. I'm like, do people think I'm lazy? Do people think I don't like to have a job? I mean, I had jobs. They were just always different. I taught part time or I was a consultant and now we do what we do. And people still don't understand. I'll get questions what are you doing these days? And I'm like, oh, I don't know, just running this business you can't see because it's not a storefront and you're not a podcast listener, which is also weird. And there's like all this insecurity about that because I think the truth is, as much as we all say in this defensive posture, I am not my job and we need better boundaries. I agree with that.  

[00:21:29] I think overall identifying with your roles is dangerous. It is moments in my life where I've over identified with motherhood or other roles in my life that are not great. And also I think a lot about like Jason Condor's book where he talks about the military gave him a purpose and it filled a hole that he had in a really powerful way. And I think, no, we are not our jobs. And also, I do think human beings need work. I think they need work and purpose. And I think all this post capitalism, Twitter conversation, I think it's fun on Twitter, but in real life, people need jobs, they need things to do. And I can look a million different way mine certainly has. But I think especially young people, it's not just that they need to learn how to have a job. It's they need work. I was eaten up in my twenties by this idea that I needed to find my passion and I needed to find work that was always fulfilling. And I probably could have used someone saying, "Hey, you don't have to get this right right now. Just do the job and see if you like it. See if there's some skills you could build. Just take the pressure off yourself because you do need something to do." Sitting around in pursuit of your identity in your twenties is a recipe for anxiety and neuroses. Like, let the identity build itself through experiences, not inside mental chatter. At least for me. That was not a good thing for me. I needed to do things, I needed to do things and that helped me understand who I was, both at work and outside of work.  

Beth [00:23:04] I think that's exactly right. I see it in my 11-year-old just doing some mother's helper work. She's more confident. She's more excited. She's got a spring in her step when she's been out doing that. It just gives her a sense of who she is in the world. So I have struggled with this new perspective that we should constantly de-emphasize work. And I think that's right. I think we've been in an unhealthy space. I really credit Tressie McMillan Cotton's work, which has kind of trained me to see all the ways that status is constantly at play. And certainly its status when  I was able to say I'm a lawyer, it carried a different status than I am a podcaster. Even though now lots more people know who I am and care what I have to say than they ever did when I was a lawyer. It was kind of the opposite, you know. It's a really weird dynamic, but that just carried more status. So I've been trying to really look for that and think about how it plays out. And at the same time, I love to work and I love to work in general. Even when I had a job I didn't like, I love to work. It is good for me. It does give me a sense of grounding and contribution and achievement that I need. And so finding a healthy dynamic around that is almost harder now that I love to work and I love my job. How do I now find that healthy, negotiated boundary around it? I hope that the quiet quitting conversation can lead us to more like what's that healthy negotiated boundary? And how do you find that when you're an accountant and it's tax season? And how do you find it when you're a doctor or a nurse or a paramedic and everyone has COVID? How do you find it when you are in the midst of researching something that could be groundbreaking or you got a classroom full of five-year-olds? I don't know. The context matters tremendously to that, but I hope that this change in power that you were emphasizing, Sarah, means that it can be more of a negotiated boundary instead of an ultimatum from the employer end or the employee end.  

Sarah [00:25:10] Yeah, because there's no way to have this conversation without talking about on the employer end. Mistakes have been made and continue to be made. I'm horrified when I read about people getting yelled at at work. I've never been yelled at at work. I can't imagine what that's like and happens all the time, every day. And I'm just in shock that adults would yell at other adults. When someone treats you like that on your job, that just becomes a part of yourself. It becomes a part of how you feel about work. And that is sad and that's heartbreaking. And that's just somebody yelling at you, not sexual harassment or racial discrimination or finding out that you're doing the same damn job and somebody else is getting paid more for it. There's just all these sort of injuries, I think, that happen when it comes to work. And because we both have a cultural message that your job is who you are and I think an intrinsic psychological need to do work that matters, it can become a really toxic stew. And so I think the reason people sort of are like, hell, yeah, quiet quitting, even if it's not the perfect word for what's happening, is in response to that. And I think that COVID moment where everybody took a pause and were like, I don't want to be treated like this anymore, is really important. Because it's classic when we come together as human beings. The bad is awful and the good is life giving. And sometimes it feels like there's not a lot in between.  

Beth [00:26:38] I love that you used the word injuries. It perked my ears up because I'm learning so much from my pastor, Dr. Susan Diamond. She did her sabbatical as a study of moral injury, and she's talking about it a lot and I'm learning so much from it. I think that injury is a perfect word to talk about what happens at work. And this is why we have work included as a chapter in our book on politics, because you can't be injured constantly at work and have that sense of unfairness about pay and value, or that sense of dehumanization that comes from being yelled at, or having someone around you who throws things, or has the kind of tantrums that a lot of adults have on the rag in offices across the country, or be surveilled in your work as so many people are. You can't experience that and then show up as a an equal participant in the American experiment of democracy without carrying all of that. And I think work so shapes our understanding of power. And I don't know what that leads me to feel about quiet quitting because if work so shapes our understanding of power, maybe it's a really powerful thing to take a lot of that back and say I'm not doing more than the bare minimum for you.  

Sarah [00:27:58] Yeah. 

Beth [00:27:59] Or I'm not doing more than just my job for you. That's a good, healthy taking of power. I think it could also lead to some apathy because what we practice in one sphere, we practice in another. So I think it's complicated.  

Sarah [00:28:12] And as with everything, it's just an expectation playground. You definitely see that across the generational response to quiet quitting and the sort of idea of what are you complaining about? How could you not see how hard this is? And again, it's just this we're all in it with our own experiences. We have expectations both in how we should feel at work and how people should respond to how we feel at work. And so when something so cute and compact as quiet quitting shows up, maybe it's not that it's like sort of a terrible container. It's not a bad thing because when it's a terrible container, it leaves a lot of space for people to go, what does it mean to you? What are you thinking about when you talked about that? I mean, that is the wisest thing that my dad, I think could have started the conversation with is saying, "Wait, what is quiet quitting?" So maybe we could all have lots of great conversations about quiet quitting. But let's just start with now what are you talking about? Because here's what I'm talking about.  

Beth [00:29:14] I think the one other thing I want to pull out from the very insightful comments and emails that we received in advance of this conversation, is this seasonality of how we negotiate those boundaries with work? Because a bunch of people said and a former colleague of mine actually, I think summed it up really well, she's like, "Oh, my God, quiet quitting is simply being effective, but not outstanding if you have the capacity to be outstanding." And a lot of people said things like, what if I don't want a promotion? You go work really hard, go above and beyond, and get your promotion. Fine. But isn't it okay for me to be in a job and not constantly want to be growing in that job? And I think that marries up with another set of comments about, like, some seasons in my life, the bare minimum is all I have to give at work because of what is being required of me elsewhere. And some seasons of my life, I'm all in and I love finding a lot of my identity at work. And I hope that employers can start to be more attuned to those dynamics. I think it would make everybody a lot happier instead of doing what my husband suggested, which is that this quiet quitting conversation might lead to more workplace surveillance because the people who hold tightly just hold tighter when they hear about conversations like this. Well, I thought we could wrap this up, Sarah, with with a comment from a pastor who said, "Here's how I see it. Wake me in the middle of the night if someone you love is on their deathbed. Don't wake me in the middle of the night if you have a question about the Bible." That seems like a healthy negotiation of boundaries and a real investment in your work, but not an over investment in it. So I'm going to take that with me. We always end our show with a conversation outside of politics. Now, last week we talked about a New York Times piece about fun, and we took a little fun quiz and learned that I am low key about fun. And Sarah is achievement oriented towards fun.  

Sarah [00:31:11] Did Chad do the quiz? Nicholas is also achievement fun.  

Beth [00:31:15] Chad did not do the quiz.  

Sarah [00:31:16] Make him take the quiz.  

Beth [00:31:17] He doesn't find quizes fun.  

Sarah [00:31:18] Oh, I think quizes are the funnest.  

Beth [00:31:21] Well, so I was so excited when you sent me an article about rest and the types of rest, and it had a quiz. Even though this quiz, as you just pointed out, does get a little dark.  

Sarah [00:31:31] It's very dark. It's like God doesn't care about me. Wow, friends, how did we get here?  

Beth [00:31:35] I still really liked it. I found it fascinating.  

Sarah [00:31:38] So the reason I thought this article was interesting is it talked about the different types of rest. The same reason I like the fun quiz. I like a taxonomy. Clearly, this is what I'm learning about myself. Let's take something that's amorphous and hard to talk about like quiet quitting, and let's develop a taxonomy around it that will help. And so I think we do have a lot of burnout in American culture. And so I thought sorting out the types of rest people need is helpful. So she goes through physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, sensory and creative rests. Those are the type of rests.  

Beth [00:32:09] Sensory called out to me when the article talked about sensory as a category of rest that you need and how especially a lot of parents of young children, for example, or I think about people who work in hospitals, all the things that just beep and flash around you. I loved that she pointed out sometimes you just need a break from sound and touch.  

Sarah [00:32:33] I would just like to take this moment to say I've been trying to get us to the Abbey of Gethsemani for one of those silent retreats, which sounds like heaven. Actual heaven.  

Beth [00:32:41]  I want to go. I'm in. 

Sarah [00:32:43] We have to go. So this is funny. Our scores were not dissimilar, pretty close within a couple points of each other on everyone except for mental. I know exactly why my mental rest is so much higher. Do you?  

Beth [00:32:58] Because you're managing Felix's diabetes?  

Sarah [00:33:00] Absolutely.  

Beth [00:33:03] Yeah, 100%   

Sarah [00:33:05] Diabetes is a constant never ending mental task in a truly exhausting way. So it is not surprising to me that my mental rest score-- and the brutal thing is I'm not going to get a-- or is it just diabetes is not going anywhere. That's what makes it so such a mental mind fuck.  

Beth [00:33:22] Yeah. And it's hard because I think that these numbers are sort of helpful. It gives you a range. Here's where you are in an unhealthy space. Here's where you're doing fine, but you could feel better. Here's where you're you're doing well. And it was just helpful to kind of break that apart and see these different areas. My kids go to a seven habit school and one of the seven habits is sharpen the saw. And there's a storybook that goes along with the seven habits that we bought when Jane was in kindergarten maybe. We'll link it in the notes. It's been a really delightful part of their growing up. And sharpen the saw, the story breaks down that you need to nourish your heart and your mind and your soul and your spirit and your body. And it has been really useful to be able to say to them, "What did you do to sharpen the saw for your heart today?" I haven't turned that inward as sometimes we don't. And this really helped me turn that inward to think, okay, where am I getting that sensory rest? Where am I getting that creative rest?  

Sarah [00:34:23] But our creative scores and our spiritual scores were very low. I feel good about that.   

Beth [00:34:29] Yes. What was good? You went low on this.  

Sarah [00:34:30] You want low numbers. I think spiritual would be one of the hardest ones to work on. I mean, if you thought God didn't care about you, I feel some concern. That was the darkest part of the quiz.  

Beth [00:34:41] You know what I think would be hard about that? Is if you aren't part of a faith community or you aren't practicing a faith. She makes clear that spiritual isn't just for people of faith. That spirituality ultimately is about feeling seen and a sense that your life matters. And if you don't have any kind of framework around that, I think that would be a really tough place to focus on. I don't know, I say that maybe it's easier if you don't have a framework because the framework can create pressure too. But it struck me, like, how would I be getting this if I didn't have a faith community.  

Sarah [00:35:12] Yeah. And all the rest of them are like mid range, physical rest, emotional rest. Like, we're high but not concerningly high. The only one that is in the you need to make a change is my mental rest score. And what exactly am I going to do about that? That's the hard one. It's like the ones where you're like, yeah, I know. What do you recommend? I know I'm tired.  

Beth [00:35:36] I'm definitely not trying to give you advice about this. I wonder if the suggestion that was in the article about mental arrest would be one way to like compartmentalize some of this. So the article suggested and the writer said, "I usually don't do things and continue them after I've written the article. Usually, I ditch whatever I started to write the article. But what I have continued is setting timers on my phone. 25 minutes of focus. 5 minutes of distraction. And she put email and social media in the distraction category." 25 minutes of focus. 5 minutes of distraction. That sounded extremely pragmatic. Lots of the focus suggestions do not sound realistic to me, especially if you have young kids who are with someone else and you need to be checking your phone all the time. But I liked that suggestion a lot. I just wonder if because you know you're always going to have that load of watching his numbers and making sure he's safe, if there are places elsewhere that you really have to dial up the care. You know, like you've talked about with stress.  

Sarah [00:36:38] Yeah, I've done that.  I mean, it's pretty similar to the Pomodoro method, which is kind of like timed. I've always tried that with limited success with the timing of my my focus. One, because I like information. Like, that's one of my strength finders.  I just like a lot of input. But I've had mental health professionals in the past telling me like, yes, I hear you say that. And also it seems to not be serving your mental health. So maybe dial down the input at certain times of day. And I try to do that. I try to meditate and I think that's why Peloton has been so successful and helpful to me, is because I just have to be in it. You cannot task switch when you're on a peloton ride. Like, that's just what you're doing for 30 minutes, which I think is helpful for me. Because those days when I am doing a lot of that, the back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, it just feels like my brain is completely fried.  

Beth [00:37:33] I've been trying to just drastically create more calm, even though I feel like I'm pretty good and pretty calm as people go. I've been trying to drastically do that because I've had some heart issues that I haven't figured out yet. I'm fine. Don't worry about me. I'm figuring them out. I just haven't figured them out yet. But one technique that has worked for me in this process is that I'm rewarding myself with going outside. I can't work outside all day because obviously we have to be in a recording studio a lot of the day, every day. But when I can be outside, I'm going. So I'll tell myself, get through the next hour and then you can sit outside for an hour and do whatever you need to do. But just being outside, I can feel everything like melting away. It's a lovely time of year where I am that's not always available, but right now that is something just that little treat. Feeling the breeze is helping me get through.  

Sarah [00:38:25] Well, I don't think it's even a treat. I think it's just regulating. I'm reading the trauma book from Oprah and they talk a lot about regulation and how we regulate ourselves. And I think that's really regulation is just another word for rest. I think and rest is another word for regulation. That's what we're looking for. We're looking for like either ways to release steam or to build strength, but to bring some balance and which balance is a weighted work too (no pun intended) to bring some of that regulation to ourselves.  

Beth [00:38:50] I have for many years spent a block of time on Friday afternoons looking at my planner for the next week. Now I'm trying to incorporate that moment daily about the next day and take a look not only at what time on my calendar is committed, but also just what else I have to do.  I had to pay a toll bill from my trip to New York and I had to call and make a doctor's appointment. And when I write that list out and I stare at it in my planner at the end of every day, thinking about the next day, it has led me to say that's too much for tomorrow. Bump that out a day, it can wait. And that's been really helpful to me too. Anyway, we would love to hear your rest tips. Resting is as important as fun, if not more. I think the rest has to come first for the fun to be had.  

Sarah [00:39:36] Also shout out to all my friends who messaged me and we're like, "You're fun. What are you talking about? You're so fun." That was super sweet. And I appreciate it.  

Beth [00:39:44] Thanks for saying that because I got zero of this and I'm going to be in my head the rest of the day. We are so appreciative that you spend time with us today. I hope that you have the best week available to you.  

[00:39:57] I have a quick housekeeping note. If you are not on Instagram, you might not know that I, from time to time, create a little program that I call Dear Beth, and people just ask me questions about anything. I'm not fun, but I'm insightful. Maybe that's the situation. And so you can just reach out and say, like, Dear Beth, someone is yelling at me at work. How do I cope with that? Or, Dear Beth, what do you think about Nancy Pelosi's comments at a press conference today? It's a wide range, is what I'm saying. I've had people ask me about the kind of cereal that I like. Whatever is on the table, and then I respond in the form of a short podcast. And this is going to become the Monday More to Say from here on out. So that is one of our Paywalled podcasts, that helps support the work that we do here that shows up free in your feed on Tuesdays and Fridays. Would love for you to join us for that Monday, Dear Beth. More to Say. And if you would like to submit a question for me to answer or a thought for me to consider, we're going to gather all of that in one place. Now you can just email Beth@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. Put Dear Beth in the subject line and that way I will not lose it because when people send them to me via DM to my personal Twitter, it's just gone forever. I need help corralling it. So, Beth@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com  

Sarah [00:41:21] There is no aspect of rest included in Instagram DMs. They have not read this article. They do not care about Tesco chain. It is just a bombardment of stuff with no hope or availability to sort it out. And I would like that to change for anyone listening who is in charge at Instagram.  

Beth [00:41:37] Truly, I enjoy being on Instagram and interacting with people in DMs, but if it is not about pure enjoyment, it's got to go somewhere else. I will never get back to it. [Crosstalk].  

Sarah [00:41:47] You can't get it back. It's gone. It's lost.  

Beth [00:41:48]  It's gone.  

Sarah [00:41:49] There's no sorting, no organizing. It's terrible.   

Beth [00:41:51] It'd be nice to speak with someone about that. Anyway, I would love to hear from you for Dear Beth. Appreciate you being here for all of the things. We'll be back in your ears on Friday. Until then, have the best week available to you.  

[00:42:12] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:42:17] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:42:23] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:42:28] Martha Bronitski. Linda Daniel. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zugenalis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs.  

[00:42:46] The Kriebs. Laurie LaDow. Lilly McClure. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tawni Peterson. Tracy Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katy Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Valleli. Katherine Vollmer. Amy Whited.  

Beth [00:43:04] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Ashley Thompson. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Morgan McHugh Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.  



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