24. You Can’t Optimize Your Way to Peace
What’s new: Productivity isn’t just about getting organized. It’s about the beliefs underneath how we work.
Why it matters: If you’ve tried every planner, app, or productivity method and still feel overwhelmed, the problem may not be your system. It may be the assumptions driving it.
In this episode, Michelle explores why most productivity advice focuses on behaviors while ignoring the mental models that shape them. Drawing on systems thinking, leadership, psychology, and coaching, she offers a different question to ask—not “How do I get more done?” but “What kind of life am I actually trying to build?”
In this episode
Why optimization culture can lead us away from the very things we’re seeking
The “iceberg model” of change—and why most productivity advice only addresses what’s above the surface
The difference between workplace structures and the beliefs we attach to them
How industrial-age thinking taught us to treat ourselves like machines
Why productivity struggles are often emotional struggles wearing an efficiency costume
The deeper needs underneath our desire to “get organized”: agency, freedom, presence, and meaning
A practical framework for aligning your calendar with the life you’re trying to build
What leaders can learn about creating lasting change by working below the waterline
Mentioned in this episode
The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
Brené Brown, Adam Grant & Simon Sinek on The Curiosity Shop, The Highest Performance Strategy is Caring About People
The Sensualist by Gary Shteyngart is being published in November ‘26. Podcast discussion with Ezra Klein here.
Ange Simson’s Rich Woman Rituals, I Studied Wealthy Women and Found Myself on the Floor
A question to take with you:
What is the life I’m actually trying to build? And is the way I’m spending my time building it—or just proving I deserve to have it someday?
If this episode resonated with you, subscribe to Upleveling Work and come back next week. We’ll move from mindset to practice with a practical, human-centered approach to productivity that works with your brain instead of against it.
Have a favorite podcast player? Here are links to: Apple | Spotify
Transcript
There is a difference between optimizing your morning and protecting it.
Optimizing looks like a five-step routine you found in a podcast — and if you execute all five steps in exactly the right sequence, you will have extracted maximum efficiency from the first ninety minutes of your day. It's still the same mental model we talked about last episode: time as resource, you as machine, the goal is maximum output.
Protecting looks different. Protecting means you decide, before the world gets access to you, what this morning is for. For your body. For the version of yourself that has to show up for what the day actually requires. Not because you're disciplined in some punishing way — but because you understand something the optimization mindset misses: you cannot pour from a container that's been running on empty since 6 AM.
If you listened to Episode 24, you know we went below the waterline — into the mental models underneath productivity culture, the emotional reality underneath the calendar anxiety, the question of what time is actually for. I hope it gave you something to think about.
This episode is different. This episode is for the part of you that has thought about it — and still has fourteen things due this week.
Because you actually do need to get things done. And there are ways to do that that don't require you to sacrifice your nervous system, your body, your relationships, or your sense of self in the process.
Let's talk about what those look like.
INTRO
Welcome to Upleveling Work. I'm Michelle Kay Anderson.
This is part two of a two-part series on productivity. Part one was the cultural critique and the deeper questions. This is the part where we actually do something.
And I want to be honest with you upfront: there is no single system that works for everyone. The people who tell you otherwise are selling something. What I can give you are frameworks, principles, and practices that have worked for people I coach — real people with real demands, real complexity, and real competing obligations. You get to figure out which of these fit your brain, your life, your season.
Speaking of which — I'm going to spend some time on neurodivergent brains specifically, because I think a significant portion of the people struggling most with standard productivity advice have brains that are wired differently. If you've tried every system and felt like the failure was yours, I want to say something about that.
PART ONE: THE REAL DEMANDS ARE REAL
Last episode, I offered a philosophical reframe. This one starts by honoring reality.
Some of you are not dealing with a philosophical question about what time is for. You are dealing with a genuine increase in what is being asked of you. More projects. More stakeholders with opinions. More complexity. A colleague out on leave whose work landed on your desk. A new initiative with a tight deadline and unclear parameters. A world that is moving faster and requiring more nuanced judgment than ever before, while the guardrails of "how we do things here" keep shifting underneath you.
I work with a client I'll call Kim who is navigating exactly this. Her workload hasn't just gotten busier — it's gotten harder. More complex, less predictable, more people with opinions about how things should be done. And she's someone who is naturally conscientious and detail-oriented — qualities that serve her well, and also, under pressure, can make her hold every single item on the list to the same impossibly high standard. Which means the load isn't just heavier. It's three times heavier than it needs to be.
What's helped Kim most is almost embarrassingly simple: pick one to three things that genuinely need to happen today. Not the twenty things. Three. Write them on a card. Put the card on your desk. Give yourself full permission to call the day successful when those three things are done.
She is now getting more of the right things done, in fewer hours, with more capacity left over for the complexity that keeps being thrown at her. Because when you're not hemorrhaging energy trying to hold twenty spinning plates at once, you can actually be present to what's in front of you.
That's not a retreat from ambition. It's discernment. And discernment — knowing what matters most right now — is the skill that makes everything else more effective.
PART TWO: WHAT THE RESEARCH ACTUALLY SAYS
Let's talk data, because I think it might give you permission to do less than you think you need to do.
Stanford economist John Pencavel studied the relationship between hours worked and productivity output — and his findings are stark. Productivity per hour starts declining sharply after fifty hours of work per week. After fifty-five hours, additional work produces essentially nothing. Someone logging seventy hours a week puts out the same amount as someone logging fifty-five. Those extra fifteen hours are a complete loss — and they're costing you health, recovery, and the cognitive resources you need to do the important work well.
More recent research confirms it. A 2022 study using US individual data found increasing returns below forty hours per week, decreasing returns above forty-eight. You get more per hour when you work a focused, contained week.
And here's the detail that I find both fascinating and maddening: a 2023 study in the Monthly Labor Review found that workers who report working fifty or more hours a week actually average closer to forty-two hours when measured by time diaries. We overestimate how much we work. Which means the story we're telling ourselves — I have to work these hours or everything falls apart — may not even be accurate.
What this is telling us is that overwork is not a moral failing or a sign of commitment. Past a certain threshold, it's mechanically pointless — and it's degrading the very conditions that make good work possible. Every evening you spend grinding through a to-do list instead of resting is a withdrawal from the cognitive and emotional account you need full for tomorrow.
The goalpost keeps moving. You know this. And if you exhaust yourself chasing it, you never get to be the resourced, present, effective person your actual work requires.
PART THREE: A WORD FOR SPICY BRAINS
I want to speak directly to something I see in my coaching practice more than almost anything else right now: a significant portion of people who struggle most with time management and productivity have brains that are wired differently. ADHD, autism, anxiety, trauma history — and often some combination of these.
If that's you, I want to say this as clearly as I can: standard productivity advice was not designed for your brain. The reason you've tried system after system and felt like the failure was yours — it's because you were given a map to a different territory.
Here's one of the most important things to understand about ADHD and time specifically: Dr. Russell Barkley, one of the leading researchers in this area, describes it as a condition where time essentially collapses into two categories. Now and not now. There's no felt gradient, no internal sense of time flowing forward, no bridge between what I'm doing in this moment and the deadline that exists somewhere in the abstract future. This isn't a character flaw. This is neurological. And it means that planning systems built on the assumption that you can feel an hour passing — that you can hold a future deadline as motivationally real — are simply not engaging the right levers.
What tends to work better:
External time structures instead of internal ones. Visual timers — the kind where you can literally see time disappearing — rather than relying on your internal sense of how long something has been. Alarms that announce transitions. A calendar that makes noise, not just sits there.
Body doubling. The phenomenon where a neurodivergent brain can focus when another person is simply present — not supervising, just present. This is why co-working spaces, library sessions, and virtual work-with-me setups can feel almost magical. You are not weird for needing another human in the room to do the thing. It's neurologically appropriate.
Interest-based engagement over deadline-based. ADHD brains are often novelty-driven and urgency-driven. The question isn't just "when does this have to be done?" but "how do I make this interesting enough to engage with now?" Gamification, creative reframing, connecting the task to something you actually care about — these aren't cheating. They're working with your brain's actual wiring.
Shorter planning horizons. For many people with ADHD, planning the entire week in detail on Monday creates anxiety and gets abandoned by Wednesday when reality shifts. A daily check-in — "what are the one or two things that actually need to happen today?" — often serves better than an elaborate weekly architecture.
I also want to name something called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD. Coined by psychiatrist William Dodson, it describes the experience — common in ADHD — of feeling perceived rejection or criticism with an intensity that is genuinely overwhelming. Not mildly uncomfortable. Flooding. Volcanic, in his words.
And here's what I want to say about this: even if you don't have a formal diagnosis, most people have some version of this response. The fear of being seen as difficult, or selfish, or not a team player — it shows up in how we manage our time in very concrete ways. We say yes to the meeting we don't need to attend because declining requires explanation and the explanation might not land well. We take on additional work because no feels like conflict and conflict feels dangerous. We don't protect our priorities because protecting them means disappointing people.
For people with RSD, this cascade is amplified significantly. For most people, it's present in some form. And the work isn't to white-knuckle through it. It's to develop a relationship with the feeling that allows you to act anyway — which is slower, and more important, and more honest than any calendar system.
PART FOUR: DISCERNMENT BEFORE TACTICS
Before the tools, there's one move that makes all of them more useful. The move from what do I have to do? to what is actually mine to do?
The questions that help:
What work is uniquely mine? What, if I don't do it, doesn't get done — or doesn't get done with the specific thing I bring? This isn't arrogance. It's knowing where your contribution is irreplaceable versus merely convenient.
What can slide? Where am I applying a high standard to something that doesn't require it? Where is "good enough" genuinely good enough, and I'm over-investing out of habit or anxiety?
Whose expectations am I carrying? When I feel guilty about something I'm not doing — whose voice is that? Is it mine? Or did I absorb that standard so long ago it feels like mine?
What is the next right step — not the whole plan? Sometimes overwhelm comes from trying to solve three moves ahead when you don't have the information you'd need. The question isn't "how will I figure out everything after this?" The question is: what is the single next right thing?
I work with a client I'll call Jane — sharp, ambitious, someone who sees what needs improving before anyone else in the room. Her challenge has been learning the difference between work that's genuinely hers to do and work she's creating because the alternative — the open space — is uncomfortable. Jane has been in go-go-go mode for a long time. The urgency is familiar. The stillness is not.
The discernment question for her isn't "how do I get more done?" It's "how do I figure out what I actually want in the space that's available to me?" That's slower. And it's the more important question.
PART FIVE: THE TOOLS THAT ACTUALLY WORK
These are not prescriptions. They're a menu. Take what fits your brain, your season, your life.
Monday Hour One
One hour — on Monday morning or Sunday evening — to plan your week intentionally. The sequence:
Brain dump everything first: look at last week's calendar (what didn't happen?), your task list, open emails, anything sitting in your head unresolved. Get it out.
Identify your life roles. Not just work. Who are you trying to be this week across your whole life — parent, partner, health steward, creative, community member, professional? Which of these needs attention?
Schedule your personal commitments and body-tending first. Before the work blocks, before the meetings. The workout, the rest, the time with people you love. If those go in first, they actually happen. If they go in last, they're the first things bumped when something comes up.
Then schedule the actual work — with specific names for what you're doing, not vague "project time" blocks. And build in overflow time. Things take longer than we expect. Buffer before the week needs it.
The investment is about an hour. The return is a week that doesn't run you.
The 1-3 things
You already know this. Pick three things that genuinely have to happen today. Write them somewhere you can see them — a card on your desk, the top of a notebook page, a Post-it on your monitor. Consider the day successful when they're done.
This isn't lowering your standards. It's finishing one bridge all the way across before starting five others. Partial progress on many things often creates less actual value than full completion of one.
The Eisenhower Matrix when you're overwhelmed
Urgent vs. not urgent on one axis. Important vs. not important on the other. Most of what feels urgent isn't important. Most of what's important doesn't feel urgent — which is why it keeps getting pushed to next week.
When your plate feels impossible, sort everything into those four boxes. Work from the important column. Let the urgent-but-not-important column wait, or get delegated, or simply not happen.
Energy management over time management
You don't have the same cognitive resources at 2 PM that you have at 9 AM — or vice versa. Your brain has a rhythm. Know when yours does its best thinking. Protect that window for the work that requires full presence: complex decisions, creative work, high-stakes communication. Reserve the lower-energy windows for admin, email, anything that doesn't need you at your best.
When you're in a stress response, the part of your brain you need for good prioritization and nuanced judgment — the prefrontal cortex — goes offline. You literally cannot make good decisions about what matters when you're flooded. Nervous system regulation isn't a soft practice. It's physiologically prerequisite to the planning actually working.
Analog anchors — and why they work
I'm a fan of the Japanese paper planner for weekly mapping and the card on the desk with three things. And I want to explain why these work, because I think it's more than preference.
Betty Edwards, who wrote Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, makes the point that our entire education system was built around one mode of thinking: verbal, sequential, analytical, output-focused. Measuring, categorizing, naming, organizing into linear steps. This is what she calls L-mode — left hemisphere dominant.
We have another mode. One that's holistic, intuitive, spatial, present-moment. That can take in a whole picture without breaking it into parts. That can sit with ambiguity without immediately needing to resolve it into an action item. R-mode. And most of us, after years of schooling and knowledge work, have significantly atrophied our access to it.
Here's why this matters: the optimization drive IS L-mode. The calendar system, the second brain, the project management software — these are all L-mode tools. They're not wrong. But if you're spending your entire life in L-mode, you're cutting off access to the kind of thinking that generates insight, creativity, and genuine rest.
The analog card on your desk works partly because it engages a different way of knowing. Writing by hand, seeing the constraint of a small physical space, choosing three things because there's no room for twenty — these are small R-mode invitations. Same with the morning walk without a podcast. The paper planner. The eleven minutes on the floor doing nothing. These aren't just wellness practices. They're practicing the other way of knowing. The one we were trained out of.
The spaciousness you're craving? That lives in R-mode. You can't optimize your way into it. You have to practice your way there.
PART SIX: THE BODY IS NOT A VEHICLE
Let me say something specifically about scheduling in your body tending, because it keeps getting treated as optional and it is not.
Sleep, movement, food, actual rest — not as wellness performance, but as the physical conditions that make everything else possible. Your brain runs on them. Every decision you make, every prioritization you attempt, is made by a brain that is either resourced or depleted. The difference shows up in what you notice, what you can tolerate, and what solutions you can actually see.
A client I work with — Holly — restructured her calendar to include rest. And then found she couldn't take it even when it was scheduled. She'd lie down and immediately feel like she should be doing something. Her brain wouldn't cooperate.
That's completely normal. It's how brains work. A nervous system that has been in production mode doesn't switch to recovery mode just because the calendar says it should. It takes practice. Deliberate, repeated practice. And the first few times you stop, what shows up is often the anxiety the stopping reveals — which is exactly what the stopping was protecting you from feeling.
This isn't a reason not to build in rest. It's a reason to set realistic expectations about what it feels like at first, and to keep showing up for it anyway.
For neurodivergent and high-sensitivity bodies especially: transitions are genuinely hard. Moving from "on" to "off" doesn't happen automatically. A deliberate transition ritual — something short, physical, sensory, and consistent — can help signal to your nervous system that a shift is happening. A short walk. Making tea. Five minutes outside. Something that isn't the next task.
PART SEVEN: THE PERMISSION
Here's what nobody puts in the productivity book.
If you are going to protect your time and energy — if you are going to say yes to what matters and no to what's loud but doesn't — you are going to disappoint people. This is not a risk. This is a certainty. It is the cost of living an intentional life.
You cannot make everyone happy. There will never be enough of you to go around. That is not a failure of your character or your capacity. That is what it means to be a finite human in a world of infinite demands.
The disappointment you avoid by overcommitting is real. And so is the disappointment of a life half-lived — another week where the thing that actually mattered to you got crowded out by the urgency of everyone else's priorities.
What success looks like is yours to define. Not the cultural default. Not your boss's metrics. Not the imagined audience watching your choices. Yours. And the most productive thing you can do — the thing that makes everything else more sustainable and more real — is to get clear on what that looks like. And then choose it. Again and again, even when it's uncomfortable, even when someone is disappointed, even when it feels selfish in a world that has told you selflessness is virtue.
Protecting your energy isn't selfish. It's how you stay in the game long enough to do the thing you're actually here to do.
CLOSING
Your practice for this week. Before you open anything on Monday morning — before email, before the to-do app, before the news:
What are the one, two, or three things that would make this a successful week? Not the full list. Three.
What is one thing I'm going to protect — for my body, for my energy, for my life outside of work — and when does it go on the calendar? Name it. Schedule it. Now, before everything else fills in.
Two questions. Three things. One act of protection.
That's where we start.
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