Rahaf Harfoush is a Strategist, Digital Anthropologist, and New York Times Best-Selling Author who focuses on the intersections between emerging technology, leadership, and digital culture. She is the Executive Director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture, a Visiting Policy Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, and teaches at Sciences Politique’s School of Management and Innovation in Paris. Rahaf was named to France’s National Digital Council in 2021 and was a member of President Macron’s commission on the impact of technology on democracy. Formerly, Rahaf was the Associate Director of the Technology Pioneer Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva. Rahaf’s accomplishments have been recognized by Thinkers50, the Canadian Arab Institute, the G20 Global Think Tank Summit, the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society, and the Hay Literary Festival among others.
Rahaf is an accomplished author. Her first book, Yes We Did: An Insider’s Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand, chronicled her experiences as a member of Barack Obama’s digital media team during the 2008 Presidential elections and explored how social networking revolutionized political campaign strategy. Rahaf co-authored The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know your Customers alongside Leerom Segal, Aaron Goldstein, and Jay Goldman. Her most recent book is Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity and Thrive in a World Obsessed with Work. She is currently working on her next book, Humane Productivity, which is due out in 2023. In her spare time, Rahaf writes fiction under the alias Hanna Noble. Her second novel, entitled The Reckoning, will be released in August 2022.
Transcript:
Bryan Wish:
Rahaf, welcome to the One Away Show.
Rahaf Harfoush:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Bryan Wish:
Excited to have you here, coming in all the way from Paris. So let’s dive in. Rahaf, what is the one away moment that you want to share with us today?
Rahaf Harfoush:
The one away moment was probably a couple of years ago, maybe, God, five, six years ago now, I was at the hair salon. I was sitting in a hairdresser in the chair, and my hairdresser said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think you’re losing your hair.” And it was like a very traumatic moment for me. It was the latest physical symptom in what turned out to be like a massive episode of burnout. And so that was really the breaking point where I thought, “I really have to take this seriously.”
Rahaf Harfoush:
And I just remember so clearly being like, “Okay, thanks for that information. Excuse me for a moment.” And then going into the bathroom and FaceTiming a friend of mine, and just like bawling in the bathroom being like, “My hair’s falling out,” and it was like a whole thing. But that moment, as awful as it was, ended up completely changing, I mean, every aspect of my life. So that was really my one away moment.
Bryan Wish:
Well, surely traumatic and scary. I’m glad the gift in a way. She probably told you that but then it was probably, “What the heck is next?” So for the audience who doesn’t know you, I would love for you to maybe bring us on a journey, and maybe share kind of what maybe had led the events up to that moment at the hairdresser that were driving burnout, what your lifestyle was like. Let’s start there.
Rahaf Harfoush:
Just that hon, just my life story. Okay. I have a very meandering life story. So I’ll give you the highlights of it.
Bryan Wish:
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Rahaf Harfoush:
No, no. What were you going to say?
Bryan Wish:
I was just going to say like more of your lifestyle at that moment in time, that maybe had led up to the burnout.
Rahaf Harfoush:
Got it. So my lifestyle at the time leading up to this moment, was a person that absolutely identified herself with her work all the time, that loved the validation of being busy, that loved the validation of having a jam-packed calendar. I was teaching. I still teach. I’m a university professor here in France. I was consulting. I was doing public speaking and I had just released my second book, which was called The Decoded Company and was just on a whirlwind tour promoting all of my work.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And so I was somebody who believed absolutely in hustle culture, who believed that [inaudible 00:03:27] bad enough, you could sleep when you’re dead. That type of absolute in hindsight, toxic garbage that people fall into that trap. But I lived it so much and it’s from my background. My parents are Syrian. I was born in Syria. I immigrated to Canada, that immigrant’s survive or die work ethic, the whole idea of just needing to make opportunities that no one was going to give you anything.
Rahaf Harfoush:
So all of this narrative had led me to running my own business, and essentially being responsible for bringing in revenues every month. And so all of that combined created a pretty intense pace of work where, for example, in a given week, no joke, this is not an exaggeration, this actually happened. I would teach a course, I would go from the course to the airport, I would get on a flight from Paris to like Lima. I would spend 12 hours in Lima. I would do workshops. I would do speaking engagement. I would fly back to Paris. I would do a consulting gig the next day, then I would fly back to the airport.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I would go to Thailand for another conference. I’d be there for two days. I would come back. I would do consulting projects and deliverables, and then I would go back and I would teach. And I’m not saying this as like, “Oh, look at me, look how cool I was. Look how busy I was.” This was how deranged I was in thinking that this was okay.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Well, when you grow up in a kind of survival environment or that immigrant mentality, you don’t even realize. You’re so unconscious to what you’re doing, until a trigger moment happens. It seemed like you were just doing what you knew and what you saw, and so that was your way. So on one end, it’s like you can blame yourself. On the other end, it’s like it’s hard to because that just was your upbringing. If you don’t mind me going here, how long have you been married to your husband?
Rahaf Harfoush:
15 years. We’ve been together for 15 years.
Bryan Wish:
Okay. So I’m just curious. So it sounds you were in the relationship when this happened. How did this impact your relationship in a personal level?
Rahaf Harfoush:
So he came with me when we could swing it, when he had some time. We’re both business owners. So he runs his own creative agency, so he did have a little bit of flexibility. But what we found out started happening was I would be on, flick the switch and be the speaker, the teacher, the researcher, and give all of that energy to other people. And then come home and be exhausted, and just lying on the couch needing to recover.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And so there was definitely conversations about prioritizing who gets what part of me, and how much of me people were getting and how much of me clients were getting. And then what was left over. And is it fair to your partner or to the person that you love more than anything in the world to say, “I’m going to go give my best out there. And then when I come back home, I’m dead. So please just like sit on the couch with me and let me recharge,” versus better managing those resources?
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Well, one, I appreciate the transparency and just the vulnerability. We’ve seen firsthand work and families and how that can make an impact. So thank you for sharing. And just kind of the thread I’m picking up on as well is, you were overworked and then you came home, you didn’t have time for some of the most loved ones in your life. But at the root of it all, it doesn’t sound like you were prioritizing you first and foremost. Let’s talk about that a little bit.
Bryan Wish:
Did you have any self-concept then maybe around what it meant to take care of yourself? Or were you just like saying, “Yeah, I just need some sleep, you need to fill the [inaudible 00:07:43]?” Were you on more autopilot? Was there any intentionality around self-care then?
Rahaf Harfoush:
I mean, yeah, it’s not like I didn’t know. It’s like I had a yoga studio, I would try to work out, I would try to eat well whenever I could. The problem was, was that I was just overscheduling myself, that those things were getting squeezed out. So instead of saying, which is what I do now, instead of saying, “I’m going to take 90 minutes and cook healthy food for the entire week, and not think about it anymore.” It was like that 90 minutes is a client call, so I’ll just order in or I’ll just skip the yoga class because I want to do office hours, or I want to do this event.
Rahaf Harfoush:
Or instead of saying, “You know what? I don’t actually need to rush. I’m going to give myself an extra day in Thailand and do a workout, and come back on a later flight.” It was like, “No, no, no, you got to turn that around in 12 hours.” So it wasn’t that I didn’t know, and we can get into the psychology of this, but on a deep level, I associated struggling and sacrificing as the only avenues to be successful.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I wanted to hustle, I wanted to grind. I wanted to build it. I wanted to do all of these things, and I had internalized this idea that this was the only way that you did that. And I think your earlier comment was so apt in terms of, I’m not mad at myself in the past. I feel a lot of compassion, because it’s this OS that runs in all of our backgrounds of messages that we absorb, messages from our parents, messages from our culture, messages from the media, from the movies we watch, from the articles we read. And we never really question any of those messages.
Rahaf Harfoush:
So we get a whole set of, “This is the way things are. If you want to be successful, you have to do this, this, this, and this.” And we never step outside of that and say, “Is that actually true? And is this actually working for me?”
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Well, it’s easy to get caught in that race of societal messaging and scripting, and until like your event happened. I’m so excited to get there. We’re definitely going to spend time there. And I want to bring out one more question. You mentioned validation, you liked the validation of the busy calendar, the success. As you kind of look back on that place that you were in, was there anyone in particular that you were seeking validation from?
Rahaf Harfoush:
Yeah. I mean, my parents, myself, my peers, there were different levels and all of this wasn’t about being busy. It was about saying, “Look mom and dad, you sacrificed so much for me and I’m not letting you down. I’m going forward and I’m trying to build a better life.” It was to tell my peers like, “Hey, I’m working really hard. I have something to contribute. I have something to say.” And to myself, it was that was the biggest one was the one to myself. It was this idea that if I worked hard enough, then I was good enough, then I was worthy.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I don’t know worthy of what, just worthy. That if I wasn’t actively struggling, and fighting, and climbing and battling, that I somehow wasn’t enough. That it was only by doing that, that I could prove that I was enough. And that was like really the fundamental aspect of it. I think for all of us is so many of us struggle and we do all of this because we’re trying to convince ourselves that we’re good enough. And we’ve just built a cultural narrative around the idea where your professional identity tells you whether you’re worthy or not.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And so we’re all constantly posturing through LinkedIn posts and through jampacked calendars. But what we’re really saying is, “Hey, look at me, hear me, see me,” and that’s the real message. And once you learn that, you realize that work can never fill that.
Bryan Wish:
Totally. The enoughness journey is a major healing journey, and trying to drive out get validation from those beyond theirselves. It’s a dangerous path, but there’s a lot of good that can come out of it, and you look back and there’s a lot of gratitude. And I love what you said about compassion. Like you have a lot of compassion for, let’s just say, that old version of yourself that you’ve evolved from.
Bryan Wish:
Something that spoke to me or I wanted to ask you as you were talking, is if I was to meet you 5, 10 years ago, how would you introduce yourself then as Rahaf? And if I was to ask you today, how would you introduce yourself as Rahaf, what would be the difference, if any?
Rahaf Harfoush:
I think 5 to 10 years ago, I was still feeling like I had to prove something to people. So I would’ve probably leaned really hard on the LinkedIn version of myself. So this is what I do and how I’ve been recognized, and here’s my title and all of those things. And what’s really funny now is that I really don’t do that. Like, I’ll tell people, “Oh, I do research or I’m interested in technology.” But I tend to try to focus on the other things, because I’ve learned that people’s jobs are sometimes the least interesting thing about them.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And so to really try to just get to that part. So I’ll say that I’m a big reader or I love watching certain types of television shows, and I think luckily with age, I don’t really need to prove myself as much. But I will say that when I was younger, 5 to 10 years ago, being a woman in tech, I also had a lot of experiences where people unintentionally said things to me that did make me doubt myself. I would be the keynote speaker seated at a table before taking the stage, and somebody would ask me whose assistant I was or whose wife I was, or what’s a person like me doing at an event like this?
Rahaf Harfoush:
And so I also, from an early stage, maybe built up that defensiveness where I felt like I needed to immediately establish my credentials and my reason for being in this room. I wanted to signal to people that I belonged here, because so many of my early work experiences were people questioning why I was in that room to begin with, which is such a challenging place that I’m sure many people can relate to.
Bryan Wish:
Totally. I mean, as men we don’t have that questioning. Unlike for you, being a woman in a position of leadership and more of a powerful position, it had to be I’m sure extremely frustrating to be questioned about your ability. But to be able to share that, and have that form you and strengthen you too is, I mean, incredible the way you’re describing it today. But also I think, like you said, makes a lot of sense to why it made you feel like you had to prove yourself a little bit more, probably perpetuating that work cycle, and that burnout, and all the pieces that come along for the ride.
Bryan Wish:
One, I appreciate all the kind of backstory and context. And one more question before we go to the moment that has changed your life, just for the audience’s perspective, how did you get into technology initially? What’s the story there?
Rahaf Harfoush:
My dad is a big techie and a big Trekkie, and I grew up very close to my father and I grew up sort of at his knee watching him experiment. He was always an early adopter with technology. He works in technology, and then I grew up with him giving me all sorts of science fiction books to read. I was reading Asimov very early on, and then I was watching Star Trek with my dad very early on. And so he instilled in me this love of sci-fi, and sci-fi is really about technology and what’s possible, and what can technology do?
Rahaf Harfoush:
And in hindsight, it’s that curiosity that ended up really forming my career choice. Because as a digital anthropologist, I study the impact of technology on culture. And so he always instilled in me a love of the power of technology, both to do good and to do bad. And so [inaudible 00:16:45] kind of be open to different ways that technology can change us even unexpected ways, ways that we might not see. And so that was a very good part of my life.
Rahaf Harfoush:
Because of him, I ended up reading. I was a very, very early adopter of blogging, social networking. I started writing for technology blogs when they came out on like 2004, 2005. And then from there, it just kind of became a big focus of my life.
Bryan Wish:
Wow. Very formative. It’s cool though you got to grow up with that in a very forward-thinking childhood, and [inaudible 00:17:22].
Rahaf Harfoush:
I will say that I have this really funny, I post it every Father’s Day because to this day, I think it is like the funniest thing. I have this story that I found that I wrote in like 1994 and it is a draft story, a science fiction story. And it’s about this woman named Elizabeth who works at a intergalactic science agency. I think that’s what I called it. And she was a part of the board. And at that level, I did not know what it meant for somebody to be a part of the board. Just my dad was a businessman.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And what was so funny to me is that I wrote a story about a scientist, a woman, a person who was leading research. I think she was leading research on like alien diseases or something. It’s the funniest thing. Maybe I’ll send you a picture and you can share with the audience afterwards. But I have always taken that as such an incredible gift that I wasn’t writing about like being rescued or I wasn’t writing… I was writing about women who were in technology taking leadership roles, and that’s a direct influence of my dad.
Rahaf Harfoush:
It’s just so funny to me to read the story that as like, I don’t know, an 11-year-old I must have written, because I had no idea what half the words meant. So I was like, “She has to present to the board.” It’s like, “What am I talking about?” But it makes me laugh every year when I post it.
Bryan Wish:
Oh, my God. Well, I wasn’t following you last Father’s Day, but I’ll be sure to look at it [inaudible 00:18:48].
Rahaf Harfoush:
I’ll send it to you. It’s really funny. It’s a funny thing to [inaudible 00:18:53].
Bryan Wish:
I would love to see it. I’m so visual so it seems something I could really ingrain and figure out how to use within the promotion of all this [inaudible 00:19:01]. Cool. Well, I appreciate the childhood story. Those are the good ones. All right. So we started this off. Let’s go back to where we started. You said that burnout has been the most transformational, this moment at the hairdresser, the way your life looks today sounds far different than what it looked like then.
Bryan Wish:
When the hairdresser said, “Hey, your hair’s falling out,” what was your first reaction? What were some of the first steps that you started to take once you uncovered it was burnout to say… What were the shifts that you took to completely change your lifestyle?
Rahaf Harfoush:
Well, unfortunately I was not that smart. So I had gotten this warning sign, I got really scared. I went to the doctor because I thought I had some horrible disease. And then when he was like, “No, you’re exhausted and you need to rest,” I was like, “I’m fine.” And then I continued on as before, because that’s how deep the work ethic thing goes. But what ended up happening was like a couple of… I mean, the timing’s a bit hazy, but it was like very shortly thereafter, I remember waking up and hitting what I would now call rock bottom, where it was like my brain just didn’t work anymore.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I woke up one morning and there was just like no ideas, no energy, no thinking, no thoughts, no working, no words. And that was a really big shock. And I had to stop. I was actually forced to stop. And there’s a researcher named Gabor Maté, he wrote a book called When the Body Says No. And in this book he says, “If you don’t listen to the warning signs, your body will just start screaming louder, and louder, and louder until you listen.”
Rahaf Harfoush:
And so my hair fell out and I didn’t listen. I was exhausted, I didn’t listen. I stopped being able to sleep well, I didn’t listen. So my body was like, “Okay, we’ve tried everything. It’s time to completely shut everything down in the brain.” And that was the only thing that could get me to stop, because for weeks I did not have the energy to even watch TV. The most I could do was take my dog for a walk, and I would come back and kind of sit on the couch and just nothing.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And that was really, really scary. I had to heal from that. The tank wasn’t just empty. I had like damaged the tank. So it felt like I couldn’t fill it back up again because there was a crack in my energy tank. So I felt like there was something that was fundamentally broken with like the system as a whole.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, you weren’t just physically broken. You were internally kind of some wounds that needed some healing. So inside out experience, it sounds like manifested itself through the body and the physical elements.
Rahaf Harfoush:
It was just like, imagine you’re reaching for an idea, but it’s just like a blank space. There’s nothing there. And I’m the type of person, as a writer, I always have a little voice kind of chattering in my head with ideas, like a character, a plot point, a research, a book idea. I literally have notebooks and notebooks filled with ideas, and story ideas, and research ideas, and project ideas and business ideas. And for the first time all of that went away, and it was really traumatizing and sad for me to not have that anymore.
Rahaf Harfoush:
No more ideas, no more stories, no more writing, no more words, no more anything. And it shook me because five years ago, I would’ve said, or 10 years ago, I would’ve been very proud to say, “I am a writer.” And what do you do in terms of shaking the foundation of yourself if you’ve become a writer that can’t write? Who are you? What are you? What do you have to contribute? What value are you to society if you cannot produce? And so that was the night of the… What do they call it? The dark night of the soul that I kind of had to go through as I grappled with those questions.
Bryan Wish:
Totally. I mean, a tunnel you went into or an abyss, you don’t always know what you’re going to come out with on the other side. But I mean, just being so on for so long and realizing, “Hey, I can’t. I can’t have the same output, energy, effort.” Like you said, it must have been extremely scary. If you can or if you remember, to take us to those moment, like that moment or that period, were there any experiences where maybe someone walked in and you had a insight or a revelation, or you had a moment where you realized, “Hey, it’s all going to be okay.”
Bryan Wish:
And certain things happened on this journey where… I’m just more curious about some of these tangible aspects of going into the dark night of the soul, some of the experiences that are more vivid as you look back upon and are really grateful for today.
Rahaf Harfoush:
Sure. I mean, one of the most healing moments was because I was unable to work, my husband and I decided that we would go take… So I live in France. So we would go take the month of August off, which is something that many French people take their long vacations in August, and there’s this big exodus from the city. It’s called [French 00:24:38], which is like the big departure. And then [French 00:24:41] is when everyone comes back, the reentry.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And it’s like you know, so if you go to Paris in August, most things are closed, cafes, restaurants, everyone’s just kind of out. And I always thought it was the most ridiculous thing coming from North America. Like, “What do you mean you’re going to shut down your coffee shop for three weeks or whatever?” But we said, “You know what? We don’t have any work. We’re going to go.” So we rented a house out in the countryside in Brittany, and that was the first time that I had taken that much uninterrupted time, A. I think it was like three and a half weeks.
Rahaf Harfoush:
But two, it was the first time that I took three and a half weeks and I wasn’t on like a… You know when you go on vacation, but you’re visiting like 10 countries and you’re on the move all the time? So it was the first time that I actually had three weeks in one place. And we rented a little house and there was nothing to do, and we just sat in the garden, and took long walks, and cooked food and listened to the church bells. And on day, I’m going to say like day 16, it felt as though that battery that had been dead for so long in my brain was actually starting to power up.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And I got so excited because for the first time, I had an inkling of a story I wanted to write. I had like a scene pop into my head, and I remember being so excited and jumping off of the bed, and running downstairs and finding my husband, and being like, “Where’s my notebook? Where’s my notebook?” Because I actually have something to write down in it. And that was such an important moment to me, because despite the fact that it might sound so dramatic when I say this, in the moment when that voice had gone away, a part of me was very afraid that I had broken it forever and it was never going to come back. I just might have pushed it too hard and lost that voice forever.
Rahaf Harfoush:
So when that idea started coming up, it felt so good. And then I started noticing that I felt so rested that I’d never taken long vacations before. And I was like, “Wow, I did not realize how depleted I was.” And that was incredible to come back and feel so rested. And then after we came back in September, that was the first time that I started having the energy to actually start doing things again. And then I ended up starting to research what would be my third book, which was Hustle and Float. But that was the first time that I felt like, okay, I might not have lost all the things that I thought I had lost.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, totally. What a beautiful feeling. It’s like a rush of a river that just comes, and it sounds like it was dead for so long. But also it seems like what you did with your husband was just a very grounding experience that forced you to be super present, and just be and not do. And over time, some beautiful thoughts started kind of coming in from the ether.
Rahaf Harfoush:
Yeah. And it was so funny that you say like a rushing sort of… It wasn’t like a rushing river. It was like there was a drought and it was like suddenly you felt like two or three drops of rain. And it was just enough that you were like, “Oh, my gosh, this might be the beginning of something.” But I think a drought is probably the best way to describe how I had been feeling, like there was just no life, no inspiration, no creativity. There was just nothing.
Bryan Wish:
Totally. Yeah. That’s more host-infused bias that I was wrong upon. I apologize.
Rahaf Harfoush:
No, no, you’re fine.
Bryan Wish:
Well, I’m really glad that, one, you guys took that period. And then you started to maybe feel that sense of excitement again, and with the small drops, as you said. Okay. So you started getting these small drops that led to your next book. What were you starting to write about, think about then, that was started to become different? Did you know then that it was going to turn into your next book? I mean, I’m just curious kind of where you were with your mind and body at the time, and how momentum started to be built for this course of change that you created for yourself.
Rahaf Harfoush:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a really good question. I don’t think I knew it was going to be what it ended up being, because I write about technology. My first two books were about technology and culture, and that is still very much my domain. But what I started writing and thinking about was trying to process and understand why I had gotten burned out in the first place, because I was no stranger to wellness. I was no stranger to yoga. I was no stranger to the benefit of rest and recovery.
Rahaf Harfoush:
So this question kept kind of circling around in my head which is, if I knew better, why didn’t I do better? What was that gap between what I know and what I did? And it just kept sort of nagging at me. And so it picked my researcher’s brain and I wanted to figure out why. So I would just start with a notebook that just had some ideas about like, well, where did I get this work ethic from? Where does the word productivity come from? Where did the word hustle come from? Because I’m a writer from a word perspective, I think I was very fascinated by the history and etymology of a lot of the terms. That’s where I started.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And then it was just following all of these different threads. So following the origins of the word productivity led me to industrial revolution historical documents, and trying to figure out where our obsession with work ethic came from, took me back to the Protestant work ethic, the evolution of the American Dream. It was our obsession with billionaire morning routines and it was so big. And so I just kept asking why? Why? Why? And I just kept following all these trails and there was no plan.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And what you should know why this is important is I always wrote with a plan. I always wrote with an outline. I always knew exactly what I wanted to do, and this was kind of a blank page. And so it just became enormous. And then after I had done all of this research, I stepped back and I thought, “Oh, I actually have themes here.” And they ended up being what I call the three forces in my book, where I was talking to neuroscientists to figure out how the brain was wired.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And I was talking to historians about the impact of the Puritan work ethic. And I was talking to entrepreneurs about how they were building their technology. And all of that turned out to be this incredible unpackaging of our very complicated relationship with work, that I understood just how deeply my OS was programmed, and why it was so hard for me to even know that there was a problem.
Bryan Wish:
I can’t believe that the blank page, it took you down all these threads, themes, historical documents. I mean, that’s wild. And what’s the quote? Ask why five times and it’ll take you the-
Rahaf Harfoush:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
It seems like you went on a journey with this work to really get to the root of hustle and understand where it comes from. Like, what’s the historical context of how this was built up, which is fascinating. And I think a journey that I’m sure many entrepreneurial people globally, and yes, in American culture, and I think everyday executives and people who work super hard would appreciate, noxious entrepreneurs.
Bryan Wish:
As you are going through this journey and maybe making these discoveries, and maybe making sense of maybe your own life and this own journey you went down, did you ever talk to your parents about kind of growing up in this environment, and what you saw and what you witnessed? Was there ever any discussion with them about like what you went through or what… not the product of your upbringing, but just kind of what you saw growing up? I’m just curious if there was any conversations in the midst of this book with the people closest to you.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I mean, yeah, it was an ongoing conversation. It was, as I was finding things out, I was sharing them and talking about them. And I would call my parents up and I would say, “Oh, I just learned this new thing. Or I just read this new thing, and what do you think about it?” And it’s so interesting to see how our relationship with work or work ideology is so complexly formed, because there’s some stuff you get from your parents, there’s some stuff you get from your friends. There’s some stuff you get from your community. There’s some stuff you get from society at large. And all of that changes depending where you are in the world.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And so I had never looked at it that way. So suddenly I started looking all around me, and talking to my friends and being like, “What’s your work story? And what’s your work story? What happened? What’s your narrative? How did you get sort of programmed? What is the narrative that’s running behind?” And I learned that while there are so many different stories that we tell ourselves, the root of it is all the same, which is my worth is linked to my productivity, and that is because that is the message that we start to hear over and over again.
Rahaf Harfoush:
So then my focus sort of shifted from, okay, well, we live in a society of knowledge, work, we’re knowledge workers. So what does it mean for our capacity to be creative and ambitious, and to go out and to do big things? What does it mean for our success, if the systems that we’re being forced into personally, societally, from a media perspective are actually hurting us instead of helping us?
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. I mean, the fact that you could have conversations. Actually, your parents sounds like people closest to you as well and hear those… And also walk away with [inaudible 00:35:03] say that, okay, what systems are perpetuating the burnout culture? What structures are we just born into that cause us to be this way? And then, okay, you look at what’s passed down from childhood and parents, and all the different pieces.
Bryan Wish:
It’s like, “Oh, yeah, this makes a lot of sense.” And as you were going through this blank page, as you described it, without a roadmap, did you find it healing kind of voicing your experience, hearing the voices of others and their experience? What happened maybe inside where as you were going through this, and then as you started making sense of things?
Rahaf Harfoush:
So the interesting thing about the work as I was doing it, was that I realized that not everybody was ready to hear the message. And while my parents were sort of very open to the conversation philosophically, I actually had a couple of really tense conversations with close friends who were where I was before I had this awakening, and whose belief system were so entrenched that they got very defensive, when I mentioned things that we’ve talked about. Like, oh, a need for validation, or a need for recognition, or being busy for the sake of busy or bragging about how little sleep you’re getting.
Rahaf Harfoush:
So that was really interesting because my groups of friends where we almost have to readjust how we spoke to each other, because I was no longer willing to play that game. And that was a really interesting recalibration, but what was the most healing about this work was understanding that we have been taught a very specific story, but that story is only one possibility. I felt very empowered that once I knew that story, I could reject that story and I could write another one.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I could write a new one, which funnily enough, after Hustle and Float was published, what I’ve been working on recently is what does that look like? Which is a concept that I’m calling humane productivity. So what does it look like for you to say, “Okay, I know everything is broken or I know pieces of this productivity culture are broken, but I’m an ambitious person. I’ve got books to write, and courses to teach and things to do, and businesses to grow. So then how can I do that? How can I build a life that I want without sacrificing my mental, or physical or emotional wellbeing?”
Rahaf Harfoush:
And that has really been a fascinating journey because now I’m looking at, I know the why now and I understand why I was the way that I was. So now I’m looking forward and saying, “Okay, well, how do we get out of this? How do we tell a new story about success, about productivity, about being creative, about creating? How do we take pressure off of ourselves from constantly needing to be in this like production mode all the time?”
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, I think that’s fascinating and it takes a lot of self-awareness. I think you mean productivity, I mean, you’re the expert on this, but I think it’s an interesting topic to explore and in all the ways. And also I loved what you said about other people. You said other people weren’t ready to hear it. I’ll have my editor take it out. It’s really bad today. I do this all the time. I’ll tell him where to cut it. Well, I’ll just start over. Sorry.
Rahaf Harfoush:
No, it’s all good. It happens.
Bryan Wish:
I’ll make sure it’s super clean. So I love what you talked about with human productivity, and I think it has a lot to do with self-awareness. I know you’re the expert at this stuff, but I also love what you said about readjusting your perception, or not everyone was ready to hear it, but you had this awakening and you readjusted how you saw things and probably how you saw other people, because now you had this new awareness so you could really speak to all those different elements.
Bryan Wish:
The question I had for you, especially with where you’re going with all this information is, how do you listen to your body? How do know when you’re doing too much, when you need to maybe cut it off at 7:00 PM, opposed to burning that midnight oil so you can be healthy for the next day? What do you do for yourself to go through that journey?
Rahaf Harfoush:
Sure. What do I do for myself is, I think this is why understanding your own work story is so important, because what ends up happening is if you don’t unravel the root cause, all the advice and tips that people give you won’t do because you don’t see any value in it. For example, if you don’t unravel the idea that you should just push through, we always tell people, “Just push through. You’re tired, push through. Be the last one to leave the office. Be the first one, get up at 5:00.”
Rahaf Harfoush:
We constantly tell people to ignore their body signals, and to treat their body signaling fatigue as a sign of weakness and to just keep going. So that is absolutely ridiculous programming. So once you unravel that, you start to restructure your relationship with your body to one of cooperation where you say, “Okay, we’re feeling tired now.” I understand from what I know of my brain chemistry, my physiology, the psychology of creativity, the neuroscience of creativity, I know that the sign says to me that I cannot be creative and exhausted at the same time.
Rahaf Harfoush:
So I am going to give myself a rest, a break, the opportunity to recharge. Because I know that by working with my body and working with my rhythms, and working with my ebbs and flows, I will actually be able to not only have a happier life, but to be able to create in a way that it ends up being much more productive. Because we’ve told ourselves this lie where people think, “If I work 16 hours, I’m working double an eight hour day.” But you and I know that’s not true. Think about your energy at hour 14, 15, 16. Are you really telling me that those hours you are producing your highest caliber of creative thinking?
Rahaf Harfoush:
No, you’re tired. You’re making mistakes. Your focus is short. Your concentration is gone. Your body is physically exhausted. You’re not bringing your A game. So I think the bigger question is recognizing your own work story and your own OS, because only once you deprogram it, can you start putting things into place. And the most frustrating part is all the advice is super easy. Rest when you’re tired, eat nutritious food, move your body, do something good for yourself. None of this is groundbreaking.
Rahaf Harfoush:
What’s groundbreaking is actually recognizing that I’m not doing this because a part of me believes it’s not important. So how do you change your internal narrative to say, “No, as a creative, as somebody who is thinking, and creating ideas and building businesses, my creativity is my most important resource, my most important asset. So I am going to nurture it and protect it, and grow with it, and work with it, instead of forcing it into a system that makes zero sense.”
Bryan Wish:
Totally, which is so linked to your own story, the credibility behind you and what you went through. And now you can speak to it, and bring the research into it, and the stories, and help other people who are either hit that point of burnout or who want to think more intentionally and thoughtfully about the life that they’re leading, so they can be the most creative, optimal self. As you were talking, I was just really thinking about this next work, and I mean, even everything you’ve already done. It’s so linked to emotional awareness.
Bryan Wish:
It seems like from the outside looking in, a lot of emotional skills and awareness, and a toolkit to really flourish. Like you get to nourish the body, you got to have that awareness. How does one go about developing that maybe awareness? You said you had this moment of awakening. How do you know if there’s something about the onset? How do you get in touch with that?
Rahaf Harfoush:
I think so many people go their entire lives without getting to know themselves properly, even on just the most simple level. You go to school and you learn about history, and you learn about strategy and marketing, and you learn about all of these things. But so many people go their whole lives and never get to know themselves properly. And so for me, being a creative person, somebody that creates across genres, because I don’t just write nonfiction and research. I write fiction, I write poetry. I write songs. I do all sorts of like different cross-genre things.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And what I have learned is that I need to really get to know my creative self. And that means, when am I the most creative? What time of day am I most creative? What things replenish me and what things drain me? How do I like to work? How long do I like to work? What really gets me inspired? What activities can I do that just supercharge my ideas? And it’s just asking yourself these questions because you end up getting to know your creativity. So many of us, we look outside of ourselves. We look for that successful person’s morning routine, or that businessman’s, the way he plans his week.
Rahaf Harfoush:
And we think, “Okay, I’m going to fit myself into somebody else’s routine or plan.” Instead, we need to be asking ourselves like, “If I could build a system that was made just for me, what would it look like?” When would you get up in the morning? What would you eat? How would you work? And so in my life, I’ve really started thinking of prioritizing that relationship with self. And that requires emotional awareness, because it requires often that you face things like your need for validation, your fear of rejection, your imposter syndrome, your self doubt. It forces you to face all of these things.
Rahaf Harfoush:
But underneath all of that, if you form a good relationship to yourself and with yourself, it actually gives you the courage to keep taking risks, because what’s different is that I’m confident in what I know. I’m confident in my research. I don’t have anything to prove to anybody anymore and I don’t have anything to convince. If you look at Hustle and Float or Humane Productivity and you go, “Absolutely not,” that’s totally fine.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I have learned that all I can do is sort of release the best work that I can, and it will find people that it resonates with. Some people will love it, some people might hate it, but regardless of whether they love it or hate it, that has nothing to do with me. So I don’t read reviews, either good ones or bad ones. I’ve stopped caring about what people think, and I’m just trying to live my life in a way that prioritizes my need to create, not to be productive, but just to make things.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I want to go back to the joy of just making things. And the funny thing is, the more time I give myself to rest, to play, to hang out, to sleep in, to play video games, the more time I give myself to do that, the more my output increases and the more I get done. So that’s kind of the magic of it all, which is I’m working way less than I have before, but I’m creating so much more stuff. And my in between milestone time, like everyone [inaudible 00:46:42] the end goal. So you’re miserable, miserable, miserable, and then you hit the end goal and you celebrate that. Then you go back to being miserable.
Rahaf Harfoush:
I’m trying to design just like joy, and gratitude, and connection, and community into my day. And if that means that my book that I could have gotten done in, I don’t know, six months takes me nine months, I’m okay with that now.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, no doubt. You’ll pay for it in the long term if you shorten it. But also, I mean, I love what you said. You’re creating moments of joy along the way. You’re designing a lifestyle for you, getting in touch with self, and it prioritizes you to face emotions and things head-on. Such a beautiful journey that you’ve been on. To close out here, I would love to ask you where can people find you, your website, your work, everything that you represent, where can they go?
Rahaf Harfoush:
Well, I have quite a distinctive name, which is Rahaf Harfoush. So rahafharfoush.com is my website, and Rahaf Harfoush on Twitter and Foushy on Instagram. I think I’m Rahaf Harfoush on TikTok. So some variation of that and you’ll find me poking around in different aspects of the web, but I love hearing from people and I love connecting with people. So don’t be shy to reach out and say hi.
Bryan Wish:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for doing this with me. I really appreciate it. I’m inspired by your story and the journey you’ve been on, and thanks for sharing so honestly.
Rahaf Harfoush:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Bryan Wish:
Awesome.