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you play, you play next level. And when

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it's time to sleep, Sleep Number Smart Beds

0:06

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soundly. Sleep Next Level. Why

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choose a sleep number smart bed so you

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support. And now, during Sleep Number's Black Friday

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Edition Smart Bed for a limited time, only

0:31

at SleepNumberStores or sleepnumber.com. I

0:34

wonder if you would mind, Casey, taking me

0:36

back to April of 2020 and

0:39

telling me a little bit of your story. Casey Zander

0:44

So I actually gave

0:46

birth to my second baby in February

0:48

of 2020. Wow. And

0:51

I had like a really great plan on

0:53

how I was going to support myself. You know, I

0:55

was going to get meals dropped off and I was

0:58

going to get a housekeeper, and my two-year-old was going

1:00

to go to daycare. I mean, it was going to

1:02

be, it was airtight. Sleep Number Smart Bed That's

1:04

Casey Davis. She's a

1:06

mom. She's also a licensed therapist.

1:09

But sadly, these well-laid plans that

1:11

she's describing, they didn't happen. Casey Zander

1:14

Unfortunately, three weeks after I gave birth,

1:16

I got a phone call from the

1:18

daycare saying, hey, lockdown has started and

1:20

we're not going to be having kids

1:22

anymore. And that sort of dominoed

1:24

effect quickly, basically cutting

1:27

off my access to all of that plan.

1:29

The Day

1:40

of the Day As

1:48

the days and weeks went by, Casey's

1:50

mental health started to suffer. The

1:53

depression was subtle. We

1:56

think of depression as being sad, but I didn't

1:58

get sad. I just got really numb. And

2:01

as I got numb, as I

2:03

struggled really hard to take care of both

2:06

babies' needs at once, all of a sudden

2:08

the dishes start piling up, the laundry starts

2:10

piling up. You know, I've always

2:12

been a messy person, but it's always been functional.

2:16

And for the first time in my life, like it really

2:18

wasn't functional. Life

2:22

was starting to pile up for Casey,

2:24

quite literally. So she was stuck

2:26

in a house with nothing else to do. And

2:29

she decided, why don't I just

2:31

post about my chaos on TikTok? I'm

2:34

having a friend over today. She's a good friend, but she's never been

2:36

to my house. And I'm not

2:38

cleaning it. I'm not cleaning it. I'm

2:40

just, I'm just, stop. Let's all just agree to stop.

2:44

If we all stop together, we can end this

2:46

nonsense. Now what happened

2:48

next would ultimately change Casey's life.

2:51

She says, first of all, she had an overwhelming response

2:53

to her video. There were tons

2:55

of comments and messages from strangers saying

2:57

they related to feeling stressed and overwhelmed

2:59

by their daily chore list. So

3:02

Casey started posting more and more videos

3:04

and also sharing tips for how to

3:07

feel less overwhelmed. Dishes are

3:09

like the Mount Everest of care

3:11

tasks. There actually are very real

3:13

and valid reasons why some people

3:15

cannot clean as they go. At

3:18

night, I really didn't want to do my cleaning duties.

3:20

So I decided I was going to set a 15

3:22

minute timer and race the clock.

3:26

What Casey did was combine her real

3:28

life experience as a mom with her

3:31

training as a therapist to come up

3:33

with a new approach to tackling what

3:35

she calls critical care tasks. You

3:37

know what they are, the never ending list of

3:39

chores we all have to complete in order to

3:41

live. Take the garbage

3:44

out, do the laundry, grocery shop, feed yourself

3:46

or your kids. The simple things

3:48

you need to do to stay

3:50

organized, to stay sane, but can

3:52

also feel impossible for your brain

3:54

to complete. And

3:57

these tasks can also start what

3:59

feels like an endless cycle of falling

4:01

behind on life. You just never feel

4:03

like you can catch up. Now

4:05

as you listen to this, maybe it sounds familiar.

4:08

And I think the question often is, does

4:11

a disorganized life also

4:13

imply a disorganized brain? Casey

4:16

says, not necessarily. In fact, years

4:18

after posting that first TikTok, Casey

4:20

wrote a book. It's called How

4:23

to Keep House While Drowning. So

4:25

I decided on today's show, I wanted to sit

4:27

down with Casey for a conversation about

4:30

the inner workings of the organized

4:32

brain, what it really means and

4:34

how we might all get there.

4:36

Plus the fascinating brain science

4:38

behind simply tidying up your

4:41

environment and how we can all do it

4:43

better. So get ready to learn

4:45

how to cut down the clutter in

4:47

your home and in your mind. I'm

4:50

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief

4:52

medical correspondent, and this is

4:55

Chasing Life. Casey

5:01

says the responses to her first

5:03

few posts on TikTok were mostly

5:05

positive. Fellow moms commenting saying her

5:07

messy home, well, that was relatable.

5:10

College students thanking her for sharing helpful

5:12

tips. But there was this

5:14

one comment that Casey says really stung. Someone

5:17

called me lazy, which is just

5:19

like something that's really common, which is like

5:21

if somebody is struggling with anything

5:24

related to like cleaning or getting

5:26

their dishes done or even like

5:28

hygiene, it's never like, oh, you

5:30

must be struggling. It's always, oh, there

5:33

must be a moral problem. And

5:35

it's this instinct Casey says to

5:37

call her messiness, her disorganization, a

5:40

moral failure. She believes

5:42

that reflects outdated beliefs about neatness.

5:44

And she believes when we internalize

5:46

those beliefs, we're actually doing more

5:49

damage than a growing stack of

5:51

dishes ever could. Here's why.

5:54

When we beat ourselves up or

5:56

call ourselves lazy for not getting

5:58

simple tasks done, it's not actually

6:00

motivating. Instead, we're actually wasting

6:02

our precious mental energy on feeling

6:04

ashamed. That takes a lot

6:07

of energy. And in the end, that very

6:09

shame makes it harder for our brains to

6:11

complete the tasks. Now,

6:14

on top of all that, there is data that

6:16

shows living in a cluttered home can

6:18

trigger anxiety, can trigger stress,

6:21

cognitive overload. Your brain is

6:23

struggling to prioritize which mess to clean up

6:25

first. Think of it this way. Your

6:28

brain is sort of placed in a constant

6:30

state of low grade, fight or flight, which

6:33

means heightened cortisol levels. And as you

6:35

probably know by now, that can lead

6:37

to real health effects, including a greater

6:39

risk of type 2 diabetes and heart

6:41

disease, even depression. All of that,

6:44

just from living in a messy environment.

6:47

Now, I have to tell you this, perfectionists,

6:49

they're not off the hook either. The need

6:51

to have everything in order, that

6:53

can lead to anxiety as well

6:55

because nothing stays perfectly clean forever.

6:58

So you can never relax. That

7:00

also becomes a vicious cycle. Now,

7:03

this might feel counterintuitive. But Casey says

7:05

after putting this all together, the first

7:07

step to achieving a cleaner house is

7:10

releasing the shame that comes with feeling

7:12

messy. You get that? The

7:15

first step to achieving a cleaner house

7:17

is releasing the shame that comes with

7:19

feeling messy. That way, your

7:21

brain can actually focus on other things like

7:24

getting the chores done. Think

7:26

of it as the very act of

7:28

quieting your own inner critic.

7:31

But that's not an easy task. And it can

7:33

be a big shift for some people, especially if

7:35

you grew up in a household where cleaning up

7:38

was a chore you needed to finish or else.

7:42

I want people to know that care

7:45

tasks, whether it's cooking, cleaning, dishes,

7:47

feeding yourself, getting into the shower,

7:49

they are morally neutral. Meaning

7:52

if you find them hard to do, that's

7:55

not a reflection on whether you

7:57

are good, bad, right,

7:59

right. wrong, success or

8:02

failure. It's almost never

8:04

this issue of not trying hard

8:06

enough. It's always an issue

8:08

of a legitimate barrier, a struggle

8:12

to get the right coping skills, a

8:15

struggle to get the right guidance, and

8:18

really the struggle to stop

8:20

hating ourselves long enough to

8:23

figure out a way through. You

8:25

know that adage, you know it for sure,

8:27

what is it? A cluttered desk is

8:29

reflective of a genius mind, but I

8:33

guess the question is what is going on

8:35

in the brain during the performance of care

8:37

tasks, do you think? Doing

8:39

tasks like laundry or dishes or picking

8:42

up toys or whatever it is, it

8:45

takes a lot of what's called executive functioning.

8:48

And executive functioning skills happen

8:50

in your prefrontal cortex, so

8:52

it's not the seat of

8:54

your brain doing fight or flight. It's not

8:56

the seat of your brain doing

8:59

those big emotions. It's not the seat of

9:01

your brain dealing with your senses or your

9:03

breathing. It's the part of your brain that

9:06

does time management, that does task initiation,

9:08

that looks at something and breaks it

9:10

down into steps. And if

9:13

those things are all firing on all

9:15

cylinders for you, it feels automatic. You

9:19

just decide to do the dishes and you do them. It's

9:21

automatic. If there's some

9:24

disruption to your executive functions, you

9:27

look at the dishes and go, I got to do the dishes. And

9:30

you can't, what happens

9:35

next? You feel

9:37

frozen, or you feel overwhelmed, or

9:39

you go, okay, I'm going to go do something over here first

9:42

and then I'll get to the dishes and you get distracted

9:44

because focus is a big part of those

9:46

executive functions. There are so, so

9:48

many steps involved in any of

9:50

these tasks. And we

9:52

just don't appreciate it because when your brain's running on

9:55

autopilot, it doesn't feel like so many steps. And

9:57

there are some people that have

10:01

disorders that disrupt those executive functions. So

10:03

if you are depressed, anxious, if you've

10:05

got ADHD. But

10:07

even if you don't have a diagnosis,

10:11

there are lots of things that

10:13

can compromise your executive functioning. Sleep

10:15

deprivation, chronic stress, being burnt

10:17

out, having. We

10:19

also know that you only have so much,

10:22

let's say gas in the tank for those functions.

10:25

If you think about the last time you had a really

10:27

stressful day, have you ever

10:29

had one of those days where whether it was

10:31

emotional or work or whatever, you hit like two

10:33

o'clock and your brain just won't work anymore? Yeah,

10:37

what time is it right now? Yeah, like your brain

10:39

revolts and you just held it like the brain

10:41

fog and you can't think and you can't. You're

10:44

overwhelmed by a simple task or you're kind of like

10:46

staring at something that normally would be easier for you.

10:49

All of those things, that's you

10:52

hitting kind of your capacity of working

10:54

with your executive functioning that day. No

10:58

doubt, any of us can feel tapped out

11:00

when it comes to our executive function. But

11:03

here is where I think my brain probably

11:06

works a little differently from Casey's.

11:08

For me, tidying up can

11:11

be self-soothing. I feel like

11:13

it can lower my anxiety instead of causing it.

11:15

And it's not just me. There is

11:17

plenty of research out there showing that a

11:19

simple act of making your bed every day

11:21

can improve your mental health. It

11:23

is a sense of accomplishment and it helps reduce

11:25

clutter in your life as well. For

11:28

Casey, however, that same feeling is

11:30

near opposite. And to be fair,

11:33

for a lot of people, just

11:35

the idea of thinking about cleaning

11:37

up, the idea of thinking about

11:39

organizing your environment, that can

11:41

cause instant anxiety. So

11:44

what then? I need to

11:46

be able to learn how to organize as a messy

11:48

person. I need to be able to clean as a

11:50

messy person. I need skills that work

11:52

with my brain instead of against my brain. Coming

11:56

up in just a moment, we're going to hear how Casey did

11:58

that. Organize for brain. brain

12:00

and her life. And if you're a

12:03

parent, she also had some tips on helping your

12:05

kids learn those same skills. We'll

12:07

be right back. and

12:32

most importantly, sleeping soundly. Why

12:34

choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed? So you

12:37

can sleep at your ideal firmness, comfort, and

12:39

support. And now during Sleep Number's Black Friday

12:41

sale, save 50% on the Sleep Number Limited

12:43

Edition Smart Bed for a limited time. Only

12:45

at Sleep Number stores or sleepnumber.com. This

12:49

episode is brought to you by the Weather

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you love with the Weather Channel app. As

13:13

I talked to Casey, I couldn't help but

13:15

wonder how her personal approach to cleaning up

13:18

had changed since she opened up about her

13:20

messiness and her chaos a couple years ago.

13:23

In the span of two years, I've gone from somebody

13:26

with a cat and a husband to

13:28

two kids, bigger

13:30

house, husband working all the time. You

13:32

know, what do I do? How do

13:34

I... I need some... I'd never had

13:36

systems. I always just sort of did whatever. Now I

13:38

need systems for my home, but I need them to

13:40

work for me. No one

13:42

has ever berated themselves into better

13:45

mental health. And

13:47

you deserve practical solutions

13:50

that work with the level of ability you have to

13:52

do. So, if you have

13:54

so many dishes in your sink that you don't have

13:56

clean dishes to eat off of, you can't access the

13:58

clean water. So the

14:01

solution to that can't be, okay, from now on,

14:03

every time you eat, put that dish straight into the

14:05

dishwasher. Okay, well, how do

14:07

you think they got to this place to begin

14:09

with? Because they were struggling to just put it

14:11

in the dishwasher. So

14:14

we need to prescribe a solution or

14:16

offer some advice that actually is something

14:18

that they can do with the current

14:20

level of skill, right?

14:23

So it could be, hey, buddy,

14:26

let's move to some paper plates for a while. You've

14:28

got a lot going on. You've

14:31

got bigger fish to fry in terms of figuring

14:34

out what you're struggling with. And

14:36

in the meantime, you deserve to eat. Like

14:39

you really do. You deserve to eat off of paper

14:41

plates while you figure this depression out. Are

14:43

you bored? Let's get you a podcast

14:45

that you really love and you only listen

14:47

to it when you do dishes. It really

14:49

depends on the different types of barriers that

14:51

people are experiencing. Maybe you

14:54

have ADHD and you're never going to be a person that

14:56

slows down to put every dish into the dishwasher as you

14:58

do them because, of course, in the middle of the day,

15:00

you open it up and there's still clean dishes in there.

15:02

Well, what if you got a dish rack and you put

15:04

it by your sink and it was for dirty dishes? That's

15:07

it. You come by and you put that dirty dish straight into the

15:09

dish rack. Well, what happens at the end of the day, you

15:12

still have a clean sink. So you

15:14

have access to your clean sink all day long.

15:16

You can still make food. You can still get

15:18

the fresh water. And at the end of

15:20

the day, you're looking at your dish rack. And let

15:23

me tell you, a dish rack

15:25

that has plate next to plate, next

15:27

to plate, next to plate standing

15:29

up equal widths apart and then

15:31

three bowls stocked on each other. And

15:33

then all of your silverware and that

15:35

is much less intimidating than

15:38

looking down at a jumbled sink of dishes

15:40

with the dirty water at the bottom, with

15:42

the food crust that you don't want to

15:44

stick your hand into. And so

15:46

just the mental barrier of

15:48

when I go at the end of the day and I see

15:50

the dirty dish rack and it's organized, I don't feel that frozenness.

15:54

I don't feel that, oh, I don't want to do this

15:56

or this is going to take so long. There

15:59

are so many things. we can do, but

16:01

they all start with legitimizing whatever that

16:03

barrier is and realizing that the

16:05

barrier is morally neutral. That's

16:08

really interesting, Casey. I got to admit,

16:10

I hadn't thought about it with that

16:13

degree of granularity before. And

16:16

as you say, coming up with some... Having

16:18

a real conversation about what is the

16:20

inhibitory force here, maybe it's just standing,

16:22

the boredom, whatever it might be. You

16:25

also write that people

16:28

could clean less. And

16:31

that might feel counterintuitive, but

16:33

actually starting in more digestible sort

16:35

of steps could give you

16:38

the spike of dopamine and maybe the ultimate, I

16:40

guess, energy to complete a bigger task. Yeah.

16:43

I think whether it's your daily things

16:45

that you do or just in general. I

16:47

know when I went out and got the

16:49

Marie Kondo book, there

16:51

was no part of me that was like, hmm, maybe

16:53

I'll implement one of these ideas. It was like, my

16:55

life changes tomorrow. Everything

16:58

is changing and we tend to do this. We get

17:00

into a place where we're struggling or we don't like

17:02

the way something's functioning and we

17:04

go to some sort of self-help and then

17:06

we just decide like, I'm turning over a

17:08

new leaf, new me and we implement all

17:10

these things. And then of course,

17:12

it only lasts a few days or a few weeks

17:15

or a few months and then as those all fall

17:17

off, then we feel shame, we've messed up, we've failed

17:19

again. And I think if we slow down and go,

17:21

okay, is there one thing we can

17:23

do today? Or if you see a huge mess, okay,

17:26

can I, and you're going, like it

17:28

just, ugh. Well, what if you just

17:30

set a timer for five minutes and did five minutes

17:32

of it? Like you

17:35

may find that after going for five

17:37

minutes, you kind of got

17:39

the ball rolling and that motivation and that

17:41

momentum has built on itself. Or

17:43

you may find at the end of five minutes, no,

17:45

I really, this really does suck and I really am

17:47

tired and I really don't feel good and want to

17:50

lay down or whatever. And that's okay. Go do that.

17:52

We've all got five minutes done. Studies

17:56

show our brains do tend to

17:58

prioritize small but urgent tasks. like

18:00

answering an email or going to the

18:02

store over larger and more consequential projects

18:04

that don't have a deadline. And

18:07

we give preference to immediate

18:09

satisfaction over long-term rewards.

18:12

Think of it this way. We crave

18:14

that rush of dopamine from a quick

18:16

and easy job well done. So

18:19

to capitalize on our natural tendencies, we

18:21

tend to break up our chores into

18:23

small chunks, as Casey suggested, so

18:26

that they are more likely to get done. It's

18:28

part of the way our brain works. And

18:31

hearing all this, I couldn't help but wonder

18:33

about my own family's habits. If

18:37

you are someone who is

18:39

in your household, someone you love, and

18:41

let's say, in my

18:44

case, I have three teenage kids,

18:47

my wife. And I think that I am very

18:49

different in some of the ways that you're describing

18:52

from all of them, at least from a few

18:54

of them. If my kid's room

18:56

is very messy, for example, but she's

18:58

functioning and she's happy and she doesn't

19:01

seem to be burdened by it, should

19:04

I be intervening? Should I

19:06

not? I don't think so. But

19:08

I want to caveat it to say, it doesn't

19:12

mean we stop parenting. But

19:14

maybe the messy room isn't

19:16

an issue. And I think the better approach is

19:18

to say, hey, how do you feel in the mornings? If

19:22

you're observing, for example, that one of your teenagers is

19:24

really stressed in the morning, or always

19:26

forgetting things in the morning, or whatever

19:28

it is, asking them about

19:30

what matters to them. So instead

19:33

of us sort of imposing, well,

19:35

your room needs to be neat and tidy all the

19:37

time, okay, well, if you're feeling stressed in

19:39

the morning, what are those things that are stressing you out?

19:41

Oh, I can't find my papers. I

19:43

don't know what to wear. My

19:45

phone's not charged. And if

19:48

you're going to help them put together like rituals

19:50

and routines, the most important thing is

19:52

to find out what they care about. Even

19:55

if you think, you know, okay, I

19:57

see you every morning, you know, looking for...

20:00

clean socks and you never have your clean socks because over

20:02

here and that needs to be on your list. But

20:04

if you ask, what do you really care about? And your kid

20:06

goes, I don't really care about the socks. I

20:09

care that my phone's not charged. Right?

20:11

Let's we got to get something they're

20:14

already motivated about. Because

20:16

if she can learn the skill, she

20:18

or he can learn the skill of

20:20

plugging their phone in at night because they're

20:23

thinking forward to the morning, and they have

20:25

this attitude of this is a kindness to

20:27

morning me, I'm taking care of

20:29

myself by doing this. That's

20:32

a muscle. And the more that they

20:34

flex that muscle with the phone, the

20:37

more they will be able to transfer

20:39

those skills and those thinking and that

20:41

self compassion and that thinking forward to

20:43

other things when it matters. So, you

20:46

know, she or he might get to be 18, 19, 20.

20:49

I mean, they may never care about the

20:52

socks, or they might turn 30 and

20:54

decide they really care about their socks. But

20:56

they know what to do about it now. It's

20:58

interesting that the child that I'm talking about

21:00

is 18 and just started college. And what

21:04

has been so interesting is that

21:06

her room is always been a

21:08

mess. She's been consistent in

21:10

this for sure. But she's

21:12

not bothered by it. She's ready on time in

21:14

the morning. She's not a, doesn't have

21:17

a lot of stress, generally knows what she's going to

21:19

wear. My child who is

21:21

super clean and neat, is

21:23

often the one who does not have the

21:25

clothes. You know, she changes her

21:27

mind about clothes, can't find a charger or

21:30

whatever it might be. It's really interesting because

21:32

I would have thought it would have been

21:34

the opposite. But somehow, the

21:36

quote unquote messy, messier child

21:39

makes it work. Yeah, I mean, it

21:41

really goes to show that our preconceived ideas

21:43

about what functions and what's best aren't

21:46

always right. And I think that if you look out

21:48

there, if you are someone who's messy, or you can't

21:50

find your charger or whatever, there's

21:53

this idea that if you look at

21:55

the self help offerings in the

21:57

world of organization, they seem

21:59

to be the best. to be almost exclusively

22:02

offered by people who are already neat. This

22:07

is let's try folder underwear and color code our bookshelves

22:09

and all these sort of things. I

22:11

love to watch and consume that type of

22:14

media because it's interesting and soothing. What

22:16

I had to realize was I'm a messy

22:18

person. I have ADHD. I

22:20

have two kids. I have a dog, a cat. I have

22:23

all these things. I

22:25

can't create or I can't pick solutions

22:27

for my life that depend

22:29

on me waking up a completely different person

22:32

tomorrow. With like a completely different

22:34

personality and skill set and life and energy

22:36

and time needs. Like I

22:38

need to be able to learn how to organize as

22:40

a messy person. I need to be able to clean

22:42

as a messy person. I need skills

22:44

that work with my brain instead of against my

22:46

brain. You do make the

22:48

case in your book that I guess

22:51

there are some universally applicable

22:54

tips. One of

22:56

them you say the five things method. That

22:59

really seems to have caught on.

23:01

People really seem to have resonated

23:03

with this idea of the five

23:05

things method. Can you share

23:07

what the thinking is and what the idea is? Yeah.

23:10

I came up with this method when I was in my

23:12

20s because I was always feeling overwhelmed by kind of being

23:15

messy. I've had so many

23:17

people share with me that it's been the first tip

23:19

that's ever really worked for them. What

23:21

it is is when I look at a messy

23:23

room, I tell myself there's really only five things

23:26

in every room. Even if it looks like there's

23:28

a thousand, there's only five. There's trash, dishes, laundry,

23:31

things that have a place that are not in their

23:33

place. Then things that don't have a place. Meaning

23:36

they don't have a place to go. What

23:39

I found before I used the five things method is

23:41

that I look at a big space and you're

23:43

like okay, you don't know where to start. When you

23:45

do start, you just pick something random up and then

23:48

you have to look at it and go okay, what

23:50

is this? Where does it go? Maybe it

23:52

goes in the other room. You wander off to the other

23:54

room. You get distracted. Maybe you don't know where it goes.

23:56

Now you're having to sit there and think about where

23:58

it goes. Well, I guess I could reorganize this. pantry, you

24:00

put it there, you know, there's just a

24:02

lot of mental load and decision fatigue that

24:04

goes with that. And,

24:06

you know, that's when you find yourself doing something

24:09

for two hours looking up and it makes you

24:11

made no progress and now you're discouraged, right? So

24:14

when we use the five things method, what we do

24:16

is we get a trash bag and we go, you

24:18

know, all I'm doing is picking up

24:20

trash. If there's trash, I can

24:22

ignore everything else. Now we've kind

24:24

of put ourselves on a one track mind, right?

24:26

We're looking for one specific thing. We see the

24:28

one specific thing. We throw the thing away. We're

24:31

looking for one specific thing. We see the ones

24:33

that see how repetitive that is. So

24:35

it doesn't require a lot of executive functioning to do

24:37

that repetitive thing over and over and over. And once

24:40

that's done, I move on to the dishes and I'm

24:42

just putting them into the sink, not doing them. I'm

24:45

just because that's easy. Look for a dish, find

24:47

a dish, put it missing, look for a dish, find a dish, put

24:49

it missing. Then I did the same thing with my

24:51

laundry in the baskets. And then, you know,

24:53

I might pick a space in the room and go

24:55

clockwise or counterclockwise and put everything away that

24:57

I know already has a space. So if I

24:59

pick up my hairbrush, well, I know my hairbrush

25:01

goes in the top drawer of my vanity. I

25:04

can put it back. If I pick up, you

25:06

know, my dog's leash and I go,

25:08

wow, I don't, there's not like really a space that

25:10

I always put this. Well, I can just put it

25:12

in a pile. You know, we're

25:15

not going to get slowed down with those things. And I do

25:17

that until everything that has a space is up. And then I

25:19

have my pile of things that don't have a place. Now

25:22

that's really the hard stuff. And

25:24

now maybe I can put on a Netflix show or,

25:26

you know, let's do a podcast. Or I

25:28

can sit down and go, okay, are there some things in

25:31

here? Where can I put them? How can I organize them?

25:33

Or the best part, if I'm really rushed,

25:36

I can go, I'm just going to put

25:38

them in a basket for today. And your

25:40

space is much more livable, much quicker.

25:43

And you have these

25:45

like multiple finish lines that

25:47

feel really good and keep you motivated to

25:49

keep going because you have that sense of

25:52

accomplishment. You

25:55

know something, I couldn't have probably had

25:57

this conversation with Casey without acknowledging something

26:00

pretty crucial. In a

26:02

lot of households, completing quote unquote

26:04

care tasks is a job that

26:06

often falls to women. In

26:09

fact, there was a Pew study released just this year,

26:11

which found that women spend about two and

26:13

a half hours more time per week on

26:15

housework as compared to men. And

26:18

that was even while making similar

26:20

earnings. Casey talks about

26:22

this in her book and has tips for

26:25

hacking what she calls

26:27

fair rest. Now listen

26:29

closely here. I've already started applying

26:31

this in our own house. It's

26:34

a different way of thinking. It's not fair

26:36

work, but it's fair rest.

26:39

How do you make rest fair? So

26:42

when you talk about division of labor, particularly

26:45

in relationships between men and women, it

26:47

can be really complex.

26:50

And you have lots of arguments around, well, you know, who

26:52

should be doing dishes and who does this? And I do

26:54

more. I know you do more. And while I work harder,

26:56

will you work longer? Will you write? And

26:59

when we come to this conversation, from

27:02

the perspective of who's

27:05

working harder, we

27:07

automatically put ourselves in competition with each other.

27:10

We put ourselves in the defense. I have to

27:13

prove, you know, how hard I'm

27:15

working, whether it's at work or at

27:17

home or whatever it is, and we're

27:19

comparing. And so this idea that, well,

27:21

we'll see who's working harder and then, you

27:24

know, divvy up all the domestic care on top of

27:26

that, according to who's working harder, who's working not as

27:28

hard. There's always a loser, right? Instead,

27:31

I wanted to look at, you know,

27:33

the work doesn't have to be equal,

27:36

but the rest needs to be fair.

27:39

This is particularly important for relationships

27:41

where you have children,

27:45

because you often have someone that kind

27:48

of falls into that default parenting role.

27:51

And, you know, you have someone that's usually

27:53

the one who is getting the kids after school or

27:55

the one that's always up in the middle of the

27:57

night, or the one that maybe is even staying home.

28:00

full-time with children and

28:02

you just can't compare who's working harder and so

28:04

who should have to do what. The

28:06

truth is, regardless, even if

28:08

you could compare them, even

28:12

if one of you quote-unquote isn't working as

28:14

hard as the other, they still

28:17

deserve rest. It

28:20

doesn't mean that they should have to work 24-7. And

28:23

when you have children, when you have pets, when you have

28:25

a home, like a lot of that work is 24-7. Doing

28:29

the dishes after every meal, making every meal, thinking

28:31

of every meal, grocery shopping for every meal, picking

28:34

things up after people, making sure there's laundry,

28:36

making sure there's all those things. Care

28:39

tasks are cycles that never end and

28:41

they go 24-7, 365. There

28:45

are no weekends, there's no clocking out,

28:47

there are no holidays. And

28:49

so you have to divide your

28:51

domestic labor in such a way that

28:53

both partners are looking out to make

28:55

sure the other one is getting rest,

28:58

relaxation, and time autonomy. And

29:01

so now you're on the same team, right? It

29:03

doesn't matter if I do 80%

29:05

of the housework and my husband does

29:07

20%, if that's what allows us to

29:09

have equal rest. And

29:12

so we decide that, hey, it's 7.30 after

29:14

the kids go to bed, both of us are off the

29:16

clock, we're hanging out, we're spending time, we're

29:18

watching TV, nobody is going to continue to work, work,

29:20

work, work, work. And so that means that what needs

29:22

to get done before then and who has the time

29:25

to do it. It

29:27

means that if you

29:29

have a hobby that you like to

29:31

go do on the weekends, what

29:34

we're going to avoid here is that one

29:36

partner gets to come and go as they

29:38

please, make their schedule however

29:41

they want, and sit down

29:43

and relax when they want because they have a

29:45

little finite list and it gets done. And

29:47

the other partner is like

29:49

basically has to file HR

29:52

paperwork with their spouse to go out

29:54

and see a friend, right? Or to

29:56

go shopping or to go do a hobby or

29:58

whatever the case may be. We

30:00

need to find a way, and the

30:03

way that I always laugh about it

30:05

with my friends, it's like my

30:07

husband doesn't do any domestic

30:09

labor on Saturdays. This is one day

30:11

off, and

30:13

I do. So if you just

30:15

looked into our home on a Saturday and

30:17

you saw the husband laying on the couch

30:19

watching football and the wife cleaning, I mean,

30:22

you might be like, this is so unfair.

30:24

It's not what you don't see

30:26

is like I take a nap Monday through Friday. My

30:29

kids are in school, I work

30:31

part of the day, and then I

30:33

purposely save hours of my day to

30:36

do what I want, to relax, and

30:39

I clock out at 7.30, I don't do anything after

30:41

that. So we can look at that as a couple

30:43

and go, well, if

30:46

he's working six days a week and he works from the

30:48

time he gets up and he gets home late, and then

30:50

we're taking that time to hang out together, this

30:53

is fair rest. It doesn't

30:55

have to be necessarily equal in the

30:57

way who's doing dishes, but

31:00

it has to be split up in a

31:02

way that both of us, neither

31:05

one of us feel burdened or

31:07

trapped or taken advantage of. As

31:11

I said, some of these tips have already been

31:13

super helpful for me, both as a

31:15

husband and a dad. Fair

31:18

rest. Well, that's a new way

31:20

of approaching self-care that I think my family and

31:22

any family could use going forward. And

31:25

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, your

31:27

biggest takeaway from this episode, or if there's something

31:29

you do to help your brain tackle the mess

31:31

or the clutter in your life. Leave

31:33

me a voicemail, 470-396-0832. Your

31:38

message might be featured on a future

31:40

episode of the podcast. And speaking of

31:42

future episodes next week, we're

31:44

going to finish up the season with an episode

31:46

that almost all of us can use at some

31:48

point. I think everybody

31:51

is just as capable of forgiveness

31:53

as they are for being fair

31:55

to others, but we all forgive

31:58

with different levels of enthusiasm. Your

32:01

brain on forgiveness. That's

32:04

next time on Chasing Life. Thanks

32:06

for listening. Chasing

32:14

Life is a production of CNN

32:17

Audio. Our podcast is produced by

32:19

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32:21

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32:23

senior producer and showrunner is Felicia Patinkin.

32:26

Andrea Cain is our medical writer and

32:29

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32:31

D'Azula is our technical director and the

32:33

executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve

32:36

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32:38

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32:41

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32:44

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32:46

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32:49

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32:51

to Ben Tinker, Amanda Seeley, and

32:53

Nadia Kunang of CNN Health, and

32:56

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