How to be less useful (w/ Priyanka Mattoo)

What does the pressure to be more efficient, more productive, and more useful do to us? Priyanka Mattoo https://www.primattoo.com/ is an author whose new book, How to Be Less Useful https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/763243/how-to-be-less-useful-by-priyanka-mattoo/, addresses the joys of being inefficient and giving up control. Priyanka and Chris also discuss how traditional gender roles show up in marriage and why it’s important to give your partner space to lead in their own way. Connect with the team Follow Chris on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en and at chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/Buy Chris’ book, Humor Me https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcLWatch How to Be a Better Human videos on YouTube at TEDPods https://www.youtube.com/@TEDPodsFollow TED on X https://x.com/TEDTalks, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ted, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TED, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences/, and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoksFor the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human and your gift will be matched five times.

• 0:49Chris Duffy?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover things like the smartest way to book flights without planning your trip around the cheapest days to fly, or the quick math for knowing when to pay with points or just swipe your card. It's like having a travel savvy tour guide right in your pocket to let you in on all the little known tips and tricks to avoid all the hassle and extra costs that make travel so much harder than it has to be. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:36Chris Duffy?

  This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Now, if you're the kind of person who is checking out a podcast called How to Be a Better Human, I have a strong suspicion that you, like me, can sometimes make your own life more difficult by trying to take care of everything or by trying to fulfill all of your duties and responsibilities, even the little, not so important ones at the very highest level. And what you and I think of as just functional, it might actually be something closer to over-functioning. And look, even if you aren't like this, if that does not ring true, you probably know someone who is. And this episode is going to give you a peek behind the curtain and reveal how a lot of this is much more challenging than it looks. Because today's guest, Priyanka Madhu, she is one of those types of people.

• 2:21Chris Duffy?

  And she has an excellent new book that is out now called How to Be Less Useful. Priyanka is here to talk to us today about how to find things that you enjoy and allowing yourself to have pleasure and time that isn't for things, that's just for enjoying your life. To get us started, here is Priyanka reading an excerpt from her book.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  At my 40th birthday party many years ago now, I bathed in the attention like a cat in a lake. On the outside, I was this serene and gracious host, leading people over to the drinks and tacos. I was just hosting a party, I thought, no big deal. The problem, as it turned out, was that the party was about me. And people kept trying to say things that indicated as such. There were a few toasts. There was much misty eye contact, a lot of warm, too-long hugs. I felt like I was being addressed in my own wake. My brain kept vacating the proceedings, going elsewhere in a yowl instead of having to deal with the intensity of everyone's feelings. I don't think anybody noticed that I was being slightly insane, but I went to bed

• 3:25Speaker 01

  in my clothes, worn out by half past eight, and woke up mad at myself. Why couldn't I just let nice things happen? Why couldn't I absorb and enjoy the kind words of my loved ones? Why did I have to be so weird about it all? The birthday party had held the possibility of joy, the kind of thing I supposedly was desperately seeking, but I had experienced it like a howling soaked cat. I knew true joy came from within. Years of therapy and meditation hadn't been for naught, but I seemed to have a specific resistance to it being handed to me. I had somehow become a person who body blocked infusions of joy for my loved ones. And I wanted to become the sort of person who could picture celebrating with them.

• 4:09Chris Duffy?

  We're going to talk more about how to be less useful and other crucial life skills in just a moment, right after these ads.

• 4:19Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.

• 5:03Chris Duffy?

  In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 5:13Chris Duffy?

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• 5:57Chris Duffy?

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• 6:51Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. Today, we're talking about the new book, How to Be Less Useful, with author Priyanka Madhu.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm Priyanka Madhu. I'm a former talent agent and producer, and a current author, screenwriter, and parent. I'm the author of the memoir, Birdmilk and Mosquito Bones. And my new book is called How to Be Less Useful: The Joy of Inefficiency.

• 7:12Chris Duffy?

  One of the things I loved about How to Be Useful, and I really did love the book. I think it's so well-written. I just finished it. I loved how it is both about trying to be less useful, trying to buy less into the idea that everything has to be perfectly put together and as efficient as possible. But it's also really about finding what you enjoy and allowing yourself to have pleasure and time that isn't for things, that is just for enjoying your life.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. That was a realization I came to rather late. I think some people are born with that or learn it along the way, but I was well into my 40s. Once I realized that a lot of my grumpiness, my resentment wasn't actually aimed at anybody, it wasn't caused by other people. I had really been a co-creator of the situation by assigning purpose to every second of every day. And once I started making the space for things that actually made me happy instead of were purely utilitarian, it's interesting how all of my relationships changed for the better.

• 8:23Chris Duffy?

  Tell me about that. How did they change for the better?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Well, I think I had been stuck in this trap where I thought, well, I do all this stuff for all these people. I am married and I have two kids and I work and, you know, like acts of service are my incoming outgoing love language. And so this is my purpose in life is to serve these people around me in the best way that I can. And I was incredibly efficient. Was I fun? Was I cheerful? Was I the kindest I could be? No, I wasn't. I was getting stuff done. And when you're in getting stuff done mode, which I do get, you know, I click into the sort of all business place, you know, the warmth and the joy and the fun kind of leaches away because everything becomes a checklist.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  So once I pulled back from that, once I pulled back from the sort of like urgency that I had around these duties that I had entirely created on my own, truly, I realized that I all of a sudden had a lot more capacity to be gentle and joyful about it. And I was just much happier. It was so funny to pull back from like doing little things, like every, sort of like everything for my husband and kids, and, and feeling like I was abandoning them in various duties, like not packing lunches all of a sudden, or not like preparing everybody's every meal or every snack, or not reminding my husband of this or that, which I felt like were my duties, but they were mostly self-imposed. Nobody had asked me to do them. Once I pulled back from that, everyone was like, you're so nice.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  You're being so nice to me. She's so cheerful. She's so happy, you know? And my husband too is like, I just love you so much. You're such a wonderful person. And I was like, where is this coming from? I feel like I'm abandoning you. And he's like, you're not. He's like, this is all I want. And he's like, you don't have to cook every meal. That's something you made up. You know, you don't have to do this or that for me. I just want to be around you. It's not about what you do for me.

• 10:18Chris Duffy?

  I mean, this is something I personally relate to so much. And like, not, not to like literally quote from my therapy sessions, but something that I have, I've thought about it and talked about is like, when you are adding more and more balls to the things that you're juggling, and now you're juggling fire and you're juggling chainsaws, like it, it becomes impressive to other people.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:40Chris Duffy?

  Wow, you can do all that. But it also becomes harder and harder for someone else to step in. Because it's like, well, I don't know if I can juggle chainsaws. Chris is juggling the chainsaws. How would I step in there? And I think it's really a challenge to realize like, actually, no one asked you to do this like incredibly complicated circus act.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  No one asked you to do it. And I think that's really hard because you do have to measure like what societal expectations are for parents, for wives, for husbands, you know? So, so there is kind of in the back of my mind like, oh, well, this is what's expected of me and I'm mad at the patriarchy and I'm mad at, yeah, I'm sure I'm mad about the patriarchy, absolutely am. It's the system that like led to this. But currently in my house, I was at least, you know, half responsible for my own oppression.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Not so much in the world, you know, but in my house, yes.

• 11:32Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. I, uh, I'm not gonna say I was to blame, but once I understood the role I was playing in creating the situation, all of, you know, it all started to dissolve.

• 11:44Chris Duffy?

  I think that there are many people out there, especially many people in, uh, you know, heterosexual relationships with kids where it's like, one partner, maybe the, almost always the, the mother, the wife needs to read the book, how to be less useful, but the other partner, the dad, needs to read a book called how to be more useful, how to be more efficient. So I imagine this is something you've thought about, right? Like, where is the line where some people do actually need to like focus more on the being useful versus not being useful?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, that's a really good question. And that, I think there is a lot of agita. Uh, again, we're talking about very conventionally scripted, straight partnerships, right?

• 12:26Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  This is like where we see this is like, I am in the conventional like caretaker role. I am, and my husband works more and he works outside of the house and I work at home and everything I do is flexible by design. I have chosen this, you know, I've chosen to be home more. I've chosen to be with the kids more. It's what I saw my mom do. I'm super close to my mom. It was the motherhood experience that I wanted. So this is what I chose. And yet, right? Uh, I can't do it all on my own because I have work and I have not a village, you know, I live somewhere where I have no family. We have no family on either side. So, so I don't have the support that a lot of, uh, parents of yore have had. And I hear this a lot from other women, which is like, I over-function. How do I get my partner to like pick up the slack? And I was like, what I learned, I mean, I have been

• 13:07Speaker 01

  there too. How do I make my partner X? And I just want to remind you, and the thing that I learned is that like, we're in a dance, like we're in a dance together and we're doing this together. I mean, unless your partner has terrible intentions and hates you, like, that's a whole other story. If your partner is a kind person who wants the best for you and wants the best for the family, then it's likely that this is the story. And the story is, he will not pick anything up until you put it down. And he wants to pick it up. And perhaps it won't be as like grace, graceful at it is, as it is when you do it, but it will not become graceful until you allow them the opportunity to go through the steps, right? So you started with me just saying, I can't do all this. And here's

• 13:48Speaker 01

  what I am shedding. And here's what I am asking you to lean in and do here. Let me present to you a problem that I'm having and I will try a new thing, which is not solving it entirely on my own. Let me talk to my partner who is meant to be my partner. I am not to be doing, I'm not meant to be doing this in isolation. He desperately wants to be a partner, but I had been so, so, uh, independent in a way that was not healthy, that we were working towards interdependence. And sometimes it took a little step, like just saying, hey, here's a problem. We're going on this trip and I don't have the time to figure out blah, blah, blah. What do you think we should do? Whereas before I would

• 14:28Speaker 01

  have like sucked it up, done it, been cranky, been tired, felt bad for myself. When the problem comes up presenting it to him was very new for me because I had always problem solved on my own from the time, from before I can remember problem solving, you know, like I was always that kind of kid. I was that kind of teen. I was that kind of 20 something. I was that kind of 30 something. And here I am, thinking I need to do everything on my own, even though I have a willing partner who's just like, could you just let me in?

• 14:56Chris Duffy?

  Hmm.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Like, could you just let me into what's actually happening? Could you present the problems you're having and then let me solve them? And it just hadn't occurred to me. It just had not occurred to me.

• 15:07Chris Duffy?

  I have a lot of friends from college who are all straight men who have now become husbands and fathers. And a lot of them have read this book, Fair Play with

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:20Chris Duffy?

  Which is all about like, how do you get to do

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Fifty fifty.

• 15:23Chris Duffy?

  The things so that people are actually both doing the same thing. And I think part of it is, you know, understanding what's actually being done.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:30Chris Duffy?

  A lot of my friends have a hard time taking over a role from their wife because it won't be done exactly the way that she wants it to be done. And so there's this concept they have there of like the minimum acceptable product, right? It's like, if the goal is to feed the family dinner, what is the minimum version of dinner that looks like? Um, and it's, it's interesting because a lot of people have the hard time of being like, well, if you want to pick out the recipe and plan it all, and then I cook it, you're still doing all the work. But if you want me to do the work and you're not happy with like chicken and rice and broccoli, then how can I ever do it? Cause I don't know what's in your head. So I think there's this version of like, having to be okay with things that are a little out of exactly how it would be if you were doing it, which doesn't necessarily mean worse or better.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of discomfort that people are not willing to face because they would rather be in like their self-imposed cage, myself included. Um, yeah, but I'll say two things about Fair Play. I love Fair Play because it shows you exactly, you know, lists everything that needs to be done to take care of a house and family. So showing, just being able to look at that for my husband who didn't grow up the way I did, was not encouraged to take on sort of like domestic responsibilities in any way. Um, whereas I from childhood was kind of like my brother's mom, you know, like, I just did, I made his meals and I made sure this and made sure that, like, that is something I was trained to do really early, not even by my mother, just by the, the soup that I grew up in. But

• 16:56Speaker 01

  once I stopped doing certain things and stopped expecting them to be done exactly my way, there is a beautiful, there's a beautiful process that happens. One is, yeah, it's gonna be goofy. It's gonna be goofy sometimes. Maybe the kids will have cold old pizza for dinner, but you know what? They're fine. They're fine. The other beautiful thing is like, is like, once I stopped holding on so tightly to how things were done, I saw how beautifully my husband did them and differently he did them because he really enjoys being a part of the household. Uh, he loves being involved. And yes, his ideas are different than mine because I have a very rigid kind of conventional idea of how these things should be done. But oh my God, they think he's so fun and cool and awesome

• 17:38Speaker 01

  because it's like, oh, how are you spending the day? Oh, wow. That is not how I would spend the day, but these guys love it. Like when my daughter was smaller, you know, I wrote this book a few years ago. So my daughter was like four or five. And he started washing her hair. And I have to tell you, I don't know what his trick is, but her hair was so much, it was like glossy gorgeous mermaid hair. When he was done with it. And I was like, what? And, and he consistently would like wash her hair and she would come out like a, like a frigging shampoo model. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, I don't know. And he told me his little tricks and I was like, you're a genius because I'm just doing the thing that it says on the bottle and you are doing something on

• 18:21Speaker 01

  another plane entirely. So the interesting thing about, about sharing responsibilities has been, yeah, they're not done the way that I do them. They're done in different ways and they're often done like way better. And also, Fair Play didn't exactly work for us because we don't have, I, I think if we both had office jobs and we came home to divide up the tasks, then it would be easier to go 50 50. But I'm home, I'm home more, I work less. That is true. Like I work fewer hours. So for us, it's been more of kind of, um, complimentary skills thing, you know? So like any research projects, any major organizing, he's great at, he loves. The little kind of dinky like what's for dinner? Love who wants to go to the front? Like I do that. I do like the meal prep. I do the kind of low touch stuff because I'm walking around the house all day, frankly, you know?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Um, but like bigger projects, oh my God, he's the guy for that. So us figuring out what our specific balance was going to be, what our specific superpowers were, me starting to understand, the question was not like, why isn't he doing exactly what I do? Why do you want that much overlap? You don't want to do, you don't want to do exactly the same thing. You want to be interlocking puzzle pieces. So like, what are his superpowers? What are your superpowers? And how can they complement each other?

• 19:33Chris Duffy?

  Okay. While you ponder those questions, we're going to take a short break and then we will be right back.

• 19:46Chris Duffy?

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• 20:29Chris Duffy?

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• 21:13Chris Duffy?

  run. Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com.

• 21:20Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, And research and initiatives relating to environmental change.

• 22:03Chris Duffy?

  In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:16Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. Here's Priyanka reading another excerpt from How to Be Less Useful.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  I want to be a baby bird, I announced to my husband after your returns from his trip. He's used to me setting vague intentions and then turning them into my whole personality for a time. I'm tired of being capable, I tell him. I don't want to be fine. I don't want to take care of everyone all the time. I want people to take care of me. I want to lean on the people in my life to be soft and squishy, to be less useful. He nods and gives me a hug. He's been waiting for me to get here for 16 years, I think, but it had to be my decision. I don't even know how to begin the journey to this new person, but I'm hoping that identifying a destination is a start. I don't think I will ever stop being a feeder. I take too much selfish joy in it, and it's not an urge I can repress.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  What I can try to do is tune in to how my loved ones are trying to feed me back.

• 23:10Chris Duffy?

  For people who aren't familiar with your work, I haven't read the book yet. Why did you write this book? Like, what was the, what was the reason why you needed to become less useful?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Well, the funny thing is, I was trying to explain to someone the other day that both books I've written started out as like cheerful books of essays, and then they turn into something else. My memoir is going to be a cheerful book of essays about like food and family, and it was going to be called 16 kitchens. And then it was like, became this very complex, like, funny, I think, but like, complex investigation of like intergenerational trauma, like the meaning of home. And, you know, I was like, oh dang it, it got, it got real, it got real fast. And the same with this, this was also supposed to be a book of essays, vaguely food related. And then I started writing, and the thing about writing a personal essay is that you get a few essays in and you're like, oh, no, no, no, no.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  This book is not the book that I thought it was going to be. So credit to my editor and my publisher, who totally get me. It came to me through a process in where I was like, I started to recognize, I was in a state. I was in a state where I was like overwhelmed and overclocked. And I was looking around going like, why am I so unhappy? And I set out to figure it out. And once it came to me that I was in a self-imposed prison, that's when the writing started. And I emailed my editor and I was like, this is the book. And she was like, great.

• 24:38Chris Duffy?

  You talk about this feeling that I so have felt many, many times. And I've never really heard of anyone else articulating, and especially not as well as you do in the book, of wanting to burn your life down, but also liking your life. You know, it's like an easy narrative if you're like, I want to get a divorce and I want to leave the city that I live in and I want to quit my job. But you're like, I like my husband, I like my job, I even like the city I live in. And yet, my life does not feel rewarding and fulfilling and fun.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:09Chris Duffy?

  So how do I do that? How do I break out of this prison, which is actually a prison I still want to, I want to renovate the prison?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Renovate the prison, maybe like, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe make the doors like less creaky. So when I talk about being overly functional in my relationship to my kids and my relationship to my husband, that's a part of the book, yes. But I have always been an overfunctioner. I was an overfunctioner as a worker, I was an overfunctioner as a friend, I was an overfunctioner as a family member. So whether or not you have kids or a husband, you have probably family members and a job and friends. So we are talking about overfunctioning in every area of your life. And so if you can point out your overfunctioning, understand it and pull back, learning to do that is one thing, and learning to do less work in all of my relationships has improved all of my relationships. So we're not talking about just parenting or, or partnership.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  We're talking about just how you move through the world, right? So you were asking about the burning, the burning, everyone, everyone has had that feeling, you know, especially overfunctioners, that you want to burn down, burn down your life, you know? And I think that, I think it is very much about looking around and assessing, the way that I put it is that I had all the ingredients for a delicious cake and it was just coming out wrong, because I know I have everything that I ever wanted. I have everything. I have this wonderful partner, I have these amazing kids, I have an incredible family, I wrote a whole book about my family, I have a roof over my head, I have really good health insurance, I have everything anyone in the world could ever want.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  So what is my problem? And the answer is, I'm my problem, you know? So it's all about changing your relationship with the world, you know? Because it's a, it's too easy to think it's the circumstances. It's not the circumstances, it's the mindset. Unless it is, unless truly, I mean, I'm talking about people whose basic needs are met, right? And there are too many people in this country, too many people in this world whose basic needs are not met. If your basic needs are met and you're miserable, you gotta do some soul, some soul searching.

• 27:13Chris Duffy?

  The feeling that I think a lot of overfunctioners get is like, the way to feel safe and secure is to solve every other problem that could possibly come up.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:26Chris Duffy?

  And of course, there's never an end to the problems that could possibly come up.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  No, it's an anxiety response. I know who we all were as children, right? We were children who maybe were made a little bit anxious by uncertainty. And if we had the skills or learned the skills, we learned that we could control our surroundings. Not only were we able to control some things about our surroundings, but then also we were praised for it, because competent children are praised. And so that becomes like a core pillar of self, is like, I'm a problem solver, I'm resourceful, I can fix things, I can bend the universe to my will. You've built this beautiful garment for yourself, but once you get to like middle age and there's all kinds of factors, it doesn't serve you anymore to be that way.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Because, yeah, like circumstances really force you to rethink who you are. And also, everyone else is an adult, so they don't want you in their business all the time. They don't want you fixing their problems, they just want you there hanging out, maybe buying them a drink, that's all.

• 28:30Chris Duffy?

  One of the hardest things, and also the biggest lesson that I've learned, is that the way that I can be most helpful to people I love, to my wife, to honestly, even my young kids, but certainly to friends, is not to solve their problems, but is to listen to them when they are having the problem and to say like, wow, that sounds hard.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:48Chris Duffy?

  They're not actually looking for a solution 90% of the time. 10% of the time, they're asking for help. But most of the time, I jump into like, well, what if I did this and this and this? And then they, they are actually much less helped than if I had just said, yeah, that sucks.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  They're mad at you.

• 29:03Chris Duffy?

  No.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  They're mad at you. They're like, I'm trying to talk, why are you talking? But this is like, this is the thing I'm waking up to, you know? It's like, people say, okay, to be less useful, isn't it good? Isn't it good to be useful? Of course it's good to be useful. I'm still extremely useful, you know? This is going to be a lifelong practice. But learning the line, learning the line which I should not cross, because either, either it takes too much out of me, or it pisses people off, or it's not helpful emotionally to the people around me, that's the, that's the line I'm always learning where it is. I mean, the polycule thing, I'm always falling into this nonsense where I'm giving people, people advice, it's not a perfect system, right? I'm still wired this way, it's a practice. Every day I have to be like, step back, listen, this is not your business, you know? Like, I will be practicing this for the rest of my life.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  But being just useful enough, I suppose, is the goal.

• 29:53Chris Duffy?

  Sometimes people who are extremely productive and useful, they don't understand that like 60% or 30% of their max capacity is still very good and still gets you through. One example in my own life is, my wife is extremely like efficient and productive and great at her job. And she started a new job while she was going through some serious health stuff. So she was starting this job and she just like couldn't give 100%. And so their baseline at work was, what she knew was like, her 40%. But then she had her first review and they were like, you're amazing, we can't believe how much you get done. And she was like, what?

• 30:38Chris Duffy?

  Like, this is so much less than I could get done. I am like, not even close to 100%. And I think for her, it was this huge revelation that she didn't have to, you know, burn the candle completely at both ends to have other people think she was doing a good job.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I blame, you know, American work ethics, right? I mean, which are a wonderful thing. We achieve incredible things in some ways, but we're very extreme people. So, you know, it's like how to fill every second of every day with as much like work and nutrition and work product and all that kind of stuff. And what I have learned is that, yeah, the work gets done. The work will always get done, and the work always gets done, and the work always gets done to a standard that I like. It's like a plate of food, right? It's like, I have to make sure that I carve out a third of my plate for things that bring me joy because they make me the kind of person that is additive emotionally to the people in my life, you know? Like the little bits of joy, the things I do, the fact that I can talk to my kids at the end of the day.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Also, like, what example am I setting for the kids, you know? I can't just be like, okay, now we, it's a rise and grind, kids. No, I want them to be whole people who really care about their own family members and friends and have healthy relationships with everyone in their lives and have healthy relationships with work. So what am I doing for the people around me? What am I doing for myself that makes this life sustainable?

• 31:57Chris Duffy?

  It is funny that you've several times in this conversation been like, you know, I have like less of a serious work, I have like less, it's like more flexible. And from the outside, you have like a wildly successful career where you have written two books of essays, you have a newsletter with an essay every week almost. And then on top of that, you also are writing and selling TV shows and movies. And so like, you are so far from a person who's just, and no judgment against this, this is a big thing on its own too. It's not like you're just at home, you know? And even if you were just at home, that's its own very big job as well. So you're doing a ton.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  I think the work fills the time you give it. So I put work chunks into my calendar, and I'm like, this week, we're going to write a chapter. And when I'm done, I'm done. I don't go, okay, now we're writing chapter two. The way I work when I'm writing taught me a lot about how long the work actually takes. So like, I work really hard on my books and I'm very intense about my books. But, but once I started blocking off work blocks, I realized that I could spend

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Three weeks on a chapter, but why giving myself a deadline and understanding that I need to fit the work into the deadline. I have to go to yoga and I have to see my children and I have to, because these are all like parts of the recipe for like my mental health. And then looking back and being like, oh, the work really did get done and a lot of work got done, even when, even when I was taking care of myself and hanging out with my family and traveling and having good boundaries and, you know, nurturing my friendships. And it feels like a lot less work than I used to, because it's all balanced out.

• 33:42Chris Duffy?

  You were a very, you know, high powered Hollywood agent. You found a lot of amazing people at the beginning of their careers and they went on to, you know, be A-list celebrities.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:50Chris Duffy?

  The reason why I want to talk about that for a second is you got to see fame up close.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:55Chris Duffy?

  And I think there's a really interesting parallel between usefulness and fame, right? Like, we are chasing this thing. And when you actually catch it, it turns out that it is a lot less desirable than you thought it was going to be.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:14Chris Duffy?

  Like, the most efficient, most useful life is actually not a very satisfying full life. The most famous career is actually not nearly as professionally and personally satisfying as you thought it might have been when you get there.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:26Chris Duffy?

  Can you talk a little bit about whether you agree with that, disagree with that, but just the parallels you see between those?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  I do. I think sort of like pure frictionless, pure efficiency is something aspirational to a lot of Americans, maybe people in other countries. I can only speak for what I experience here in this country. This sort of like productivity hacks and like getting fitting as much as you can into a day. These people who want to live for 250 years. I'm like, for what? So you can like drink soy meal or whatever? Like, okay.

• 34:58Chris Duffy?

  Read a lot. A lot of books treat that as a curse that in fact the character is trying desperately to escape.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  I know. I'm like, there are books about this. They don't read. They don't have time to read. They're like, listening to like AI summaries of books on like three times the speed, right? It's so bizarre. I have a lot of empathy for famous people because I have been around it and it is a prison. Most of the actors I know were just theater kids, you know, they were just theater kids and they feel compelled to be on a set and be around other actors and express themselves through acting. And of course, they want financial stability, but then it comes at like this insane price where you just kind of have to build yourself into a compound and you can't leave the house because everybody wants to touch you all the time. And it is not a way I could live.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  I think a lot of them do the math and they're like, okay, well, again, I've been given everything in the world. I have any, everything I ever wanted. And this is the calculus now is that I have to maintain a certain kind of relationship with the public. And, and of course, they know, you know, like they have healthy relationships with, for pride, like they know, they know it's part of the job. But at the same time, it's not, it's not something I could see myself doing. But yeah, it is just sort of, again, this like extreme position of like, my actor friends who are character actors, or I was like so grateful. Working character actors are the happiest actors I know because they're like, I get to do what I love. I work all the time and I can walk down the street without anybody recognizing me, or maybe in a day or two, one or two people will be like, I

• 36:31Speaker 01

  love your work, you know? Like, I started to understand, I'm like as lefty as they come. I started to understand private jets when I was an agent, because I was just like, well, you can't walk through the airport as a famous person. It's insanity. Like, walking even from the lounge or whatever to the gate is like 100 people stopping to touch you and take pictures and yell at you and scream at you and post you online. And it is madness.

• 36:58Chris Duffy?

  My wife Molly works in a much more, has, has our entire relationship worked in much more like traditional corporate environments. And so like, I was a teacher and then I was a comedian and writer and podcast, like, none of those have ever been like, you go into an office and you have like a classic thing. So she, she is often my way of understanding what like a regular job is, because she's worked in a lot of these places. And something that we were talking about the other day is, like, what burnout is, what exactly that means? Because it's something I hear people talk about a lot and I wasn't quite exactly sure what it meant. And something Molly said that I have, has stuck with me is the idea that one way that people know that they are either in burnout or approaching burnout is the idea that it would be like so nice to get sick.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:44Chris Duffy?

  Have a break from work, from doing what they want to do.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 37:48Chris Duffy?

  And I bring that up because in some ways, your journey of reevaluating being useful, it starts with you like being physically incapacitated.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Who knows? You know, we always talk about psychosomatic illnesses and who knows if I was just so stressed out by everything I was doing that my body was just like, stop it. Because out of nowhere, I had an Achilles injury. Like, I mean, I go to yoga and I run, but it's nothing. I like run, I like shuffle. I'm like a very slow jogger. So like, there is no reason that I should have hurt my Achilles tendon. I strained it and I went to the podiatrist and she was just like, sit down, just sit down, just sit down for a while. And I was like, I can't, I have kids. There's so much standing. There's so much standing. You have no idea. And then getting up and she was like, no, you gotta sit down. I was like, well, who's gonna feed them? And she said, throw

• 38:42Speaker 01

  them a rotisserie chicken. And I kind of laughed. Again, this is before I let other people handle meals. I kind of laughed. And then I came home and I was like, well, I gotta stay put. I don't know what I'm gonna do. And my husband was about to go to a conference in France, this animation conference that he goes to every year. And he was like, oh, I, okay, well, I need to cancel my trip. This is crazy. You can't hang out with the kids here by yourself. And I'm in France. And I had a lightbulb moment, because I'm a crazy person. And I was like, I think this has happened for a reason. And the reason is, the reason is, I need to be less useful. And the

• 39:25Speaker 01

  reason is, you need to go to France and I need to figure out what the kids can do and what I'm doing too much of, because I am now physically being withheld from doing the normal things I would do by pain, which I know is demented, but whatever works. And so he went to France and I sat in a boot, mostly on my butt, for a week. And it turns out that they could do every, like, everything. They were packing their bags. They were like locking up at night. They were surprised getting their own water. Amazing how that works. Like, the scales fell from my eyes. I needed that clean break to be like, oh, actually, they can do it. So let them do it.

• 40:09Chris Duffy?

  Yeah. And not only can they do it, but often, it's really rewarding and people get a lot of self-worth and confidence from having done the thing themselves.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think that was the thing that also taught me that in, I'm a very confident person and it's because I think I'm understand now that it was because I was left to do a lot of things on my own. My father was a pediatrician, my mother was an educator. So they were very deliberate about their parenting. And so I understand that they were just like, you, we, you know, you, you're smart. You can figure it out. I had not done nearly enough of that with my kids. So once my kids could like prepare their own snacks, get their own water, pack their own bags, lock up the house, my son was like turning the alarm on every night. They felt just like a real sense of purpose. It was all of a sudden, I was not their robot assistant, which is the thing I kept complaining about. Oh, my God, I'm the robot assistant. Well, I have cast myself in this role and nothing's going to change unless you rewrite the role. So once I was no

• 41:01Speaker 01

  longer the robot assistant and they were doing all their own things, everyone was so much happier and so much, again, so much confidence and asking for more to do.

• 41:08Chris Duffy?

  We talked a lot about this book, but also your first book, Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones, is much more of, you know, your origin story and your family is from Kashmir and then you spend a lot of your childhood in Saudi Arabia and then moved to Michigan and now live in Los Angeles. You know, we've been talking about it as though it is like a phenomenon in the United States. But what do you think, having spent a lot of time, you know, growing up in other places, but also then your adult life, you've been in London, you've been in Italy. How much of this do you think is internal, like the type of person being an eldest daughter, that type of thing, versus external cultural forces?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  External cultural forces. I believe if I had been raised in a more traditional household,

• 41:56Speaker 01

  then I would believe it was external forces.

• 41:59Chris Duffy?

  Oh, interesting.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  My parents were incredibly, there was no like discernment based on gender or anything like that. It just like, it was my nature and they let me run with it. A hundred percent. There was no extra expectation that I, as a girl, should know how to do domestic tasks. In fact, my entire adulthood, and with my children, my mother and father are constantly like, why do you not have any help? It's really weird. Can you hire someone to help you with that? Should we come out? They think it's really strange. And I go, well, you did this to me because my mother was a very hands-on mother and she was always, she worked, but she worked academic hours, which were the

• 42:45Speaker 01

  hours I was at school. So I never really saw her work. It wasn't a big part of her life. I knew I was the center of her existence. And in many ways, it was wonderful. But in some ways, that was the roadmap that I had to rewrite for myself because I talked to her in the book and I go, but you did everything by yourself. She was like, I nearly drove myself insane. Like, I don't want you to do that. Like, even today, when she calls me and I am like cleaning something in the house, she's like, Please, just like, please hire someone. And I'm like, well, again, I, all I know is what I saw.

• 43:20Chris Duffy?

  You know, it's, it's interesting. You, you took that as kind of like, uh, the question as being about like traditional gender norms. And I was actually more thinking about it as like American hustle culture. Like, how much of this is

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 43:30Chris Duffy?

  America saying like, you gotta do everything all the time.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  This book is gonna come out in England. It's gonna come out in India. Everyone needs this book. Like, everyone has been, has been saying they need this book. All the publishers are like, yeah, we need it here. Um, it's everywhere because America has an outsized cultural influence. So the, the rise and grind mindset, which we've created because we're insane, um, has sort of spread out to all these places, non-socialist places, you know, has spread out to all these like, non-socialist places. And so I think that it's a trap that everyone, and not only, and not, it's, it's also because I think more is expected of us as humans, right? It's like, it's like certain, uh, amounts of like work productivity in an area with like all areas of disappearing jobs. So like, the competitiveness is out of control, right? Like, everyone feels the need to like, hold on to whatever they can with whatever competitive

• 44:18Speaker 01

  edge they can, rightfully so. And then when people start working, I mean, that's, that's hard enough, but then when people become parents, it's like, everyone is expected to be more present and put in more hours than we ever have before. So how are you gonna fit that into your day? Everything becomes like a jenga. So I think that is like universal in Western cultures, but India is also very, India is very capitalist. It's a very productive place. It's a very work-oriented culture among a certain, you know, um, among a certain like socioeconomic subset. So, so it is a very similar, similar hustle culture in a, in a lot of those places.

• 44:52Chris Duffy?

  You have a great sense of humor. Your husband is, has a great sense of humor. Your kids seem to have a great sense of humor. I mean, how much of, is the ability to laugh at yourself something that has helped you to reevaluate these, um, lies that you told yourself about how much you needed to do and how it needed to be all you doing it?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  I don't know any other way to be, but like, as a culture, when you have been oppressed and in danger, I think that you understand that you have to laugh about it, or things could get very sad, uh, and heavy and unbearable very quickly. So I come from generations and generations and generations of people who tell, uh, sad, scary, weird stories, um, that will make you cry with laughter, you know? And I think it is. It gives you kind of perspective about everything, especially during hard moments. Um, cause otherwise, I would, yeah, I would be in, I would be in a pit of rage, uh, about the patriarchy, uh, and other things. But instead, I have to, I have to examine it and I have to share

• 45:57Speaker 01

  it with my husband. We have to laugh about it and be like, look at the silly mistakes we've made. Look at how we got ourselves into this mess. Look at what we did. Look at what we've done. How are we gonna do this differently? Oh, well, shrug, moving along, you know? Um, I think you have to have a sense of humor about all of it. It's an important part of, of my voice, I think.

• 46:14Chris Duffy?

  Well, um, Priyanka, thank you so much for making the time to be on the show. Thank you for your book and your writing. Uh, it's such a pleasure to get to talk to you. And I really think that, um, people should read this book.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 46:27Chris Duffy?

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you so much to today's guest, Priyanka Mathu. Her new book is called How to Be Less Useful, and I cannot recommend it enough. I also recommend you check out her memoir, Birdmilk and Mosquito Bones. She's such a fantastic writer. My name is Chris Duffy, and my new book, Humor Me, is out now, too. You can find out about my book and my live show dates and all my other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com. This episode of How to Be a Better Human was unfortunately put together very usefully and very efficiently by a team who all pledged to be less useful in the future. On the TED side, promising to do more unquantifiable and inexplicable actions are Daniela Balarezzo, Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Laney Lot, Tansukasung Manivong,

• 47:11Chris Duffy?

  Antonio Lei, and Joseph DeBryan. Ryan Lash demonstrated his passion for video by assembling this episode. And Mateus Seles believes that useful or not, there's nothing more delightful than a fully fact-checked episode. On the PRX side, our team is a collection of baby birds eagerly collecting audio in their nests. Morgan Flannery, Nora Gill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks to you for listening. Please send this episode to a friend or to a family member, or don't. Tell them that they have to find the link for themselves. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, do at least one thing, just because it is enjoyable and not because it has any other purpose.

• 47:58Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at nrdc.org/human and your gift will be matched five times.

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• 49:16Speaker 03

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

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