The OptimalWork Podcast

#56: Stress is ubiquitous in these times, but it’s hard to know how to deal with it. Worrying is one response, but it can actually increase stress. So, what is stress, what causes it, and what can you do about it?

#55: Flow is something everyone experiences occasionally. Time flies by, you’re totally engaged, with no distractions at all. Is it possible to achieve it at will? Is it even good to aim for that? In this episode, we discuss the most helpful ways to think about flow.

#54: High stakes situations provide a unique challenge to the practice of reframing. How do we reframe failure, if we think that failure is not an option? This challenge gets to the heart of what reframing is, and how to do it.

#53: You might experience email as your worst nightmare — constantly interrupted, overwhelmed, unproductive. We’ll show you how to flip this around completely. We discuss strategies for managing your inbox and, more importantly, for crafting emails to make others’ lives easier. Improving the way you compose emails is a perfect opportunity to bring a spirit of service into your work.

#52: You might think that love and work have nothing to do with one another. In fact, work has a lot to learn from love, and love from work. In this episode, we explore the similarities between good work and love; how love can provide light and purpose to work; and how to “work” love to prevent it from growing cold.

#51: As you’re trying to develop new and better habits, there are some common obstacles you may run into — they might lead you to give up just when you’re on the cusp of great progress. In this episode, we discuss the most common reason people give up on new habits, and how to overcome it.

#50: Do you agonize over what to order at restaurants? Or struggle to make decisions that align with your highest ideals? The key to making a good decision is learning how to put your decision in the right context.

#49: You may think that anxiety is an inherent trait, something that cannot be changed, only managed. In fact, it’s a state of training — of a small region of your brain called the amygdala — and there are definite steps you can take, not just to overcome it, but actually to transform it into your best performance.

#48: What one practice can increase your energy and mental clarity, stop you from snoring, fix bad breath, and much much more? Transforming how you breathe has many surprising benefits. We discuss the best way to breathe, how to make the change, as well as some difficulties you might encounter along the way.

#47: You may think that the challenges in your life are there to stay, and all you can do is manage them or cope. When the challenges get bigger, you may feel overwhelmed by them. This episode covers the essence of OptimalWork, which is to take the challenging situation you are facing, and flip it to make the challenge happen within you. Instead of being challenged, you are then challenging yourse...

#46: Many people dream of being “confident” someday. When that day comes, they would have total certainty that they could attain any outcome they seek, without any anxiety at all. While it’s understandable that people want to work without uncertainty, this episode shows how “confidence” could actually mean that you are living on a plateau. Far better to aim instead for growth and your best perform...

#45: You may think that your intelligence is fixed for your whole life. You may even think that this level is determined by an IQ test you took in the past. Happily, neither is true. There are definite practices you can start that will improve your ability to think — they will raise your IQ.

#44: When it comes to planning your day, there are two extremes: having no schedule at all, or having a rigid and constraining schedule. It is common to fall into one of these extremes, or perhaps go back-and-forth between them. Yet the most sustainable way of scheduling, the one that yields the tranquility of order, involves a personalized balance of non-negotiables and flexible work times. In th...

#43: Our brains naturally strive to maintain a predictable status quo. The upside of this is that we conserve energy and form habits. At the same time, it can lead to plateaus — in our skills, personal growth, and relationships. It can even cause our dealings with others to become rote, and we developed a fixed and superficial perception of those around us. Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif Younes turn...

#42: If you’re aiming to work at your best, constantly operating at 100%, won't you quickly become exhausted? In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif Younes discuss how to make intense workdays sustainable by introducing periods of intense rest. Intense rest not only helps you recover from work, it also helps you consolidate the learning and growth you attain while working.

#41: If someone around you has some defect that annoys you, it can cause a kind of obsession that develops into a critical attitude towards the very person. In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif Younes discuss how this annoyance develops, what it means for the relationship, and what to do about it.

#40: The New Year provides a unique opportunity for a fresh start. To make the most of this opportunity, approach your resolutions with hope and creativity: hope so that you strive for the highest things (ideals, bonds) and creativity so that you can strategize how to achieve them. In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif Younes discuss a broad array of questions related to New Year’s resolut...

#39: The more you find yourself complaining or dreading, the more you’ll benefit from reframing, the skill that is most essential to OptimalWork. In this episode, Dr. Kevin and Sharif take several examples of difficult situations, pointing out possible reframes and, in the process, shedding light on the different ways to find meaning in the challenges you face.

#38: In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif discuss some questions received by email about service. Working with a spirit of service means shaping yourself so that you’re the kind of person who is ready to give cheerfully to all those around you. Although this requires that the actual work you’re doing is helpful, the essence lies instead in the way you do it: with a willingness to form and...

#37: In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif discuss how to approach your repeating tasks in a new and better way. It comes down to three steps. First, identifying a goal to aim for, either in your way of working or what you will accomplish. Second, crafting a strategy to achieve this goal. And, finally, laying out the steps according to the strategy. You can use these steps whenever you are...

#36: In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif discuss the importance of rising early to meet the challenges of the day head-on. They present an email from someone who uses OptimalWork asking for advice: whether she should adjust her schedule to be much earlier to accommodate a morning workout. They apply OptimalWork’s approach to this question and examine the results it yielded.

#35: In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif discuss the question of worrying. Worrying is when you have some bad outcome that you continually think about how to avoid. It is one of the top reasons people get stressed out, experience burnout, and feel fatigue. Dr. Majeres helps clarify the precise nature of worrying, as well as steps to take to overcome it.

#34: In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif discuss the “cloud of unknowing.” Whenever you are on the edge of your understanding, you will experience a kind of cloud, in which the way forward is unclear. This cloud can be daunting, and you may try to leave it for a safer path — but in fact it is a condition for innovation. Dr. Majeres gives advice on how to advance through the cloud toward...

#33: In this episode Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif discuss the differences between applying OptimalWork at home versus a more controlled work environment like an office or library. Certainly, it may be easier to perform an uninterrupted Golden Hour in a more controlled environment. Nevertheless, since OptimalWork is all about learning how to work for the highest motives, namely, for the sake of the...

#32: Perfectionism is a commonly-used label, but it's often not clear what it means. In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres discuss the issue of perfectionism, its causes, signs, and effects. And they show how OptimalWork's approach is the perfect antidote.