What Really Makes Someone Attractive? & When Work Takes Over Your Life

You’ve heard it a thousand times: too much sugar is bad for you. But what does that actually mean? What is sugar really doing inside your body that makes it so harmful—and why is it so hard to cut back once you start? https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates/added-sugar-in-the-diet/ What makes two people feel attracted to each other? Why does chemistry seem to spark instantly with some people but not at all with others? Is love at first sight real—or is something more subtle happening beneath the surface? Dr. Justin Garcia, evolutionary biologist, Executive Director and Senior Scientist at the Kinsey Institute, and author of The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love (https://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Animal-Science-Fidelity-Live/dp/0316594032/) explains the biology and psychology behind attraction, how desire forms, and what science reveals about why we fall for the people we do. Work stress isn’t new—but it does seem to be getting worse. For many people, work no longer stays at work. It follows you home, into your evenings, into your weekends, and even into your thoughts when you’re supposed to be relaxing. Psychologist Guy Winch says this constant mental load is one of the biggest reasons people feel burned out and overwhelmed. With three TED talks viewed more than 35 million times and author of Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life (https://amzn.to/3Nxr9w9), he explains why modern work is so consuming—and what you can actually do to regain control. When you lean in to kiss someone, you instinctively turn your head to one side. It feels automatic—but it’s not random. In fact, the direction you turn may reveal more than you think, depending on who you’re kissing and why. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170717100423.htm PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS DUTCH: If your pet is still scratching and you’ve tried everything at the pet store –it’s time to stop guessing and go prescription. Support us and use code SYSK for $40 off your membership at ⁠⁠⁠https://Dutch.com⁠⁠⁠ RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠ https://Quince.com/sysk ⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: See less carts go abandoned with Shopify and their Shop Pay button! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:02Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, you hear how sugar is bad for you, but just how bad is it? Then, human attraction, chemistry, what are the traits that really matter?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Research has shown that someone's voice is involved in attraction, their body language, their facial symmetry, their social network, who they're friends with. We do know that smell is important and all sorts of other things. We know that dance is involved.

• 0:29Mike Carruthers?

  Also, when you kiss someone, which way do you turn your head? It depends on who you're kissing and why stress in the workplace is getting worse, and it is getting worse.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  And that's actually ironic because the awareness of work-life balance and how damaging stress is and all the efforts that have been made to reduce it have seen the opposite result. It keeps going up. There's something about the current workplace which is very, very pressured.

• 0:56Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. Now, here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping, especially with the holidays coming? Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in Shop Cash, but not to one person. 1,000 people will each win $1,000 in Shop Cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So, instead of bouncing around

• 1:41Mike Carruthers?

  from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for, and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing, but with 1,000 chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today. Something you should know. With Mike Carruthers.

• 2:40Mike Carruthers?

  How many times have you heard someone say that sugar is bad for you? But how is it bad for you? What does it do to you? Well, that's a good question and the one we're going to start with today on this episode. I'm Mike Carruthers. This is Something You Should Know. So yes, sugar is bad for you, but maybe not for the reasons you might think. It's not just empty calories. The real problem is how added sugar, especially in drinks, affects your body. When you consume a lot of sugar, particularly in liquid form like soda or juice, your body processes it very quickly, leading to spikes in blood sugar and insulin.

• 3:21Mike Carruthers?

  And over time, that can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and fatty liver disease. And here's the kicker. Sugar doesn't fill you up, so you can consume hundreds of sugary calories without feeling satisfied, which makes you likely to overeat. Researchers at Harvard say that a large portion of added sugar in the American diet comes from sugary beverages alone, making them one of the biggest contributors to these health risks. So sugar itself isn't poison, but the way we consume it today, that's where the real problem begins. And that is something you should know.

• 4:04Mike Carruthers?

  Human attraction is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. It drives who we notice, who we desire, who we fall in love with, and ultimately who we choose to build a life with. And yet, for something so fundamental, it can feel completely mysterious. Why are you drawn to one person but not another? Why does chemistry spark with some people but not with other people? And is there actually a science behind who we love? Or is it all just chance? If there is a pattern, understanding it could change everything. How you date, how you choose, and even the kind of relationship you end up in. My guest studies exactly that.

• 4:47Mike Carruthers?

  Dr. Justin Garcia is an evolutionary biologist and a leading researcher on sex and relationships. He's executive director and senior scientist at the Kinsey Institute. He's chief scientific advisor to Match. And he's author of "The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love." Hi, Justin, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

• 5:14Mike Carruthers?

  So as somebody who studies love and sex and relationships, here's something I've always wondered about, and you're the perfect person to ask this. What is it that makes us attracted to one person but not another? Is there a way to figure that out? Or it just, it just is what it is, it's chance, and nobody really knows?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  This is such a great question, and it's a pretty complicated one. And, and I say that because there's a bunch of different things going on. So when we think about the evolution of human courtship or attraction, it wasn't just one thing. So sometimes I want to take us a step back and think about what we see in the animal world. And when we look at courtship, sometimes we know there's a particular trait. How bright your tail feathers are, how big your plumage is, how strong you are. And there are things like that involved in human attraction. But we know that there's an awful lot. And what happens is the brain then tries to pull, and I'll go through some of them. And the brain tries to pull that all together.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  And then, kind of does its own algorithm of trying to figure out how you weigh all of those different things. So research has shown, for instance, that someone's voice is involved in attraction. Their body language, their facial symmetry, their social network, who they're friends with, who they socialize with. We do know that smell is important. It's not entirely clear if it's picking up pheromones, which are a particular kind of hormone, or if it's other indicators of health and hygiene. And all sorts of other things. We know that dance is involved and, and behavioral synchrony. Okay, so the list can go on and on. That is really telling because it tells us that in the human animal, there's a lot of different points of data input.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  And sometimes one of those can make things go sideways. Sometimes you say, well, this person looks attractive to me. They smell attractive to me, but oh, my gosh, on the dance floor, I lost the chemistry. The number one thing we found in our studies that singles look for in a potential romantic partner that they're most attracted to is someone they can trust and confide in. So there's personality, there's psychology. There's also all these physical traits. So there's a lot happening.

• 7:27Mike Carruthers?

  So you mentioned a whole bunch of things that play into the equation of whether we're attracted to someone. But they can't all have equal weight. And well, yeah, let's start with that. They don't all have equal weight. And what determines what weight they have? Is it me and what's important to me? Or is it just objectively looks is more important than smell? Or how does that work?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  We do know that there is a set of things that seem quite important. And in attraction and being attracted to a partner, some of them really kind of innate biological, like invoking the senses smell, sight, sound. But how they rate or maybe the hierarchy of how we think of them can depend a lot on where you are. And one way to think about that is if you're in a place that's nutrient rich or resource available. This is true of humans and it's true of a lot of sexually reproducing organisms. You then don't have the same pressures. You kind of have more luxury to choose, to be choosier. If you're in an environment that you're really concerned about resources,

• 8:34Speaker 01

  well, then your courtship decisions are much more about survival. You're much more focused on are we going to get enough food? Can we build a safe nest? Can you raise offspring immediately? So we really try to think about how we're balancing costs and benefit, how we're balancing different moments. Now, there's another piece to that. I'm talking about in different environments. This is why we see variation around the world. But it can also vary throughout our life course. So one of the things we found in our research is what you're looking for in a partner, what you're most attracted to when you're 18 versus 35 versus 85, looks different. In our studies, we know that physical attraction is important, but 18 year olds put much more focus on that

• 9:18Speaker 01

  than people who are over 65. Whereas when we're older, we tend to focus even more on the issues of trust, of being able to be around someone for a whole host of reasons. We have more experience, we're outside the reproductive window. So all of that to say, I know this isn't really a helpful answer in some ways, because what the literature tells us is that there are all these different factors, and they can be prioritized differently depending on where we are in the world, our cultural context, but also where we are in our own individual life course and what's important to us. That said, there are a handful that we know are pretty important. Yes, physical attraction, but someone you can trust and confide in.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Intelligence and humor are also often high up there in the scale. Nice, someone who's nice. And I think that that's such an important one, because all of these big studies that have been done on attraction, looking at different countries, different ages, niceness always pops up at the top. And I think people are sometimes surprised. They say, no, are you sure it's not someone's hair or their eyes or their facial symmetry? And the reason I think niceness is so important, and the reason it's important for both men and women, there's no sex difference in the studies, is that it's such a critical factor to really thinking of, okay, am I just attracted to this person? Or could I imagine being with this person? Do I want to stick around? Do I want to spend the night? Do I want to see you again later? So if we're looking at relationships,

• 10:44Speaker 01

  we're focused a lot on could this person not just be someone who I have a flame of chemistry for them, but that I want to be around them in a week, a month, a year, a decade.

• 10:55Mike Carruthers?

  What about the attraction to the bad boy? That whole concept? Because the bad boy by definition isn't nice, but he seems attractive seemingly.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So research sometimes looks at, it used to be called Cads and Dads in the evolutionary literature. And that's that sometimes we have interest in short-term partners and long-term partners. And you're exactly right. So for the long-term partners, we focus on trust and niceness and someone we can be around, build a life with. But sometimes we're also attracted to these shorter terms. And that's where we focus a lot more on physical attraction. On short term, we focus more on people who are physically attractive, who engage in risk-taking behavior, what are called CADs for men. There's also other terms that are used. The idea is that it's what we call a mixed mating strategy,

• 11:49Speaker 01

  that for long-term partners, we invest in the relationship. And then, short-term partners, that we're really focused on, you know, what are their genetic traits? And it's more of a high-risk, high-reward game. And studies have argued that humans employ this mixed mating strategy, that we know that we tend to form these socially monogamous pair bonds. Most sex and reproduction occurs in long-term bonds. But that we're also interested in short-term relationships, and sometimes even at the same time. But what we look for in those partners are different. Now, I think this also allows us to stumble on one of the great challenges many people face. I talk to people all the time who say, well, I'm looking for a long-term partner. But what they're looking for are all the traits

• 12:34Speaker 01

  that are characteristic of short-term partners. And how do we get ourselves out of that mindset? And I think that's a part where when we understand who we are, and we understand our tendencies, then we can start to control them. So you say, oh, I'm looking for someone I could build a life with. I could have kids with. I could build a home, have a home with. But you're looking, you're just focusing on these traits of short-term partners. Well, they maybe don't engage, they're low in commitment. They're high in risk-taking. But it's not the right thing necessarily to hone in on when, if we're looking for a long-term bond. But maybe you're not. Maybe you're looking for a short-term bond. So that's part of this whole process of courtship, of mating, of attraction is, one, what do we, it feels instinctually, what are we just attracted to?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  But then, at the same time, what do we want? What do we hope for the outcome of that attraction to be? That's where we have to grab our own biology by the horns.

• 13:26Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I imagine most people don't stop and think about, well, I'm gonna go out with this person. And let me stop and think about, do I want a long-term relationship? Or is this just a short-term? I mean, I don't think people go through that process.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it depends. So in some of our studies, we do a big study every year called Singles in America. We've done it for 15 years now. We surveyed about 5,000 US singles. It's sponsored by Match, the dating company. And what we tend to find is that people are often aware of what they're looking for. So if they want more of a casual relationship, a serious relationship, but exactly to your point, then they stumble on someone. There's so many examples of people saying, "Well, I wasn't looking for love. I wasn't looking for a relationship, and here I am." Or vice versa. People say, "Well, I'm looking for something serious, and I found myself in this casual situationship that I wasn't expecting." So I think a part of when we're thinking, when we're searching, when we're in the search process,

• 14:29Speaker 01

  there's a difference of what we need, what we want. But then when we're in that search mode, really thinking about what is it, what is it and who is it that we want in this particular moment? And maybe it's all, maybe we say, "I'm interested in everything." But I think it would serve all of us to focus more on that question, particularly when dating and mating, because we can look for very different traits, and the outcomes of those relationships can be very different.

• 14:55Mike Carruthers?

  I want to ask you about this perception that men are more focused on a woman's looks and that, for women, that that's less important. I'm speaking with Justin Garcia, an evolutionary biologist, executive director and senior scientist at the Kinsey Institute, and author of the book "The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love." And Justin, this idea that men are more or less attracted to a woman because of her physical appearance and that, for a woman, men's looks are not as high up on the list of importance. However, you also hear, you know, women talk, "Well, he's too short,"

• 15:39Mike Carruthers?

  or "He's bald, and I don't like bald men." So what's the truth here? Are looks more important to men or not?

• 15:48Speaker 01

  In our single study, we ask people every year to rate, to hierarchically rate what are the things they're most looking for. So these are in single, a nationally demographically representative sample of single Americans.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  And what we've noticed over the last few years is that again and again, these traits of someone you can trust and confide in, someone who can make you laugh, someone who is comfortable in their sexuality, all these traits are boiling up to the top five. Now, 10 years ago, physical attraction was pretty high up, often two or three. What we've found is that it's dropped from the top five. So it's still in the top 10. Physical attraction is still quite important, but it seems less so. And that's true for both men and women. It's true of different demographics, different ages, races, religions, parts of the country. So I think that's also telling about how people are prioritizing what they're looking for. And I actually think, one thing we saw in the data is after the pandemic, people were

• 16:47Speaker 01

  changing what they were honing in on. So it's not to say that attraction isn't still important. And we have to remember this is self-rating. So it could be that you actually are making a lot of decisions based on attraction, particularly if you're on an app and you're looking at just pictures. But when you really hone in on what you, when you're asked what you're thinking about, it doesn't seem as important.

• 17:07Mike Carruthers?

  So I get that there are a lot of factors at play that we're juggling, that, you know, there's looks and there's trustworthiness and all the things that you've talked about. But I also know that for many people, there are deal breakers. There are just absolute deal breakers. You could have everything else, but if you're a guy, maybe you're bald and that's a deal breaker for some women, right? I mean, do most of us have deal breakers?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that you bring this up. So we did a study almost a decade ago now, laughing, thinking that it was that long ago, on exactly this, on relationship deal breakers and traits that people avoid in potential mates. And what was interesting about that is that we found, and I did this study with this group of psychologists and anthropologists, and we Found that people, although we know that there are traits that we hone in on, the so-called deal makers, these are the things you really want in a partner. We also found that there were these deal breakers, these traits that people were actively avoiding. And it seemed like there's somewhat separate psychological mechanisms at play.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  So, one, you're chasing the things you desire, but then you have the things you avoid. And how we calibrate that psychology is there are certain things that quickly turn us off. And in fact, in some recent studies, sometimes we'll hear people talk about they got the ick on a dating, for instance, if they're dating someone, or even in a long-term relationship. That is telling us something about avoidance psychology. It's something that evokes disgust, that evokes an avoidance response. So, to your question, part of when we think of these hierarchies, these two things going on, one, are what are all the things you want, but then are there things that are turning you off? And then, the big issue with the studies is, okay, can we have a list of hierarchy?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  What are the top five or 10 things that people want? Once you put it in the real world, then you're mixing in this dynamic response. So you're saying, okay, I want someone who's really tall, let's say. But you also are avoiding someone who maybe is unhygienic. And those two things come into conflict at times. So you could say, okay, here are 10 available partners, the tallest person in the room I'm attracted to, but they're also evoking my ideal breaker response because they're not as hygienic as the nine other people. The challenge in thinking about these hierarchy lists, or giving us our list of the things we're attracting to, is yes, there's dozens and dozens of academic studies where we look

• 19:41Speaker 01

  at it, but as soon as we put it into practice, in real-world scenarios, then courtship becomes dynamic. And we're weighing all of those things. And we're also weighing who's in our available pool. So, you might remember there was that meme on social media about looking for a guy in finance, 6'5", blue eyes. And one demographer ran those numbers. I think they found there were two men in the country that met the criteria that was in that song. And it's a reminder that, yes, we can have these lists, but then we go out into the real world.

• 20:14Mike Carruthers?

  You know those times that that glance across the room when you see somebody that just blows your socks off, just wow.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:25Mike Carruthers?

  What is that?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  I'm glad we're talking about this, and in fact, we have some new data on this idea of love at first sight, or, but there is, there's something almost magical that you can, you can be in a crowded room of people and there's someone that you feel really attracted to, you feel drawn across the room. Now, researchers have, have argued about what it is that that, what that is, I mean, can you really smell them from that far? Is it something about their physical traits? It's probably a mix of things. It could be their style, how they're dressed, it could be how they move their hair and their body, could be their facial features, could be who they're with. We also engage in what we call mate copying behavior. So, guppies do this, for instance. Female guppies will look at older females, sometimes even their mothers, and see who,

• 21:11Speaker 01

  what males they're mating with, and then the younger females will go mate with those same males. Well, humans do something a little bit different, but, and similar, we do look at who you are surrounded by. If you're with attractive others, we tend to view you more attractively. So, there's all this, that going on too. So, you might think you're just looking at that one person across the room and you feel that chemistry, but in fact, the brain is taking in information about who is that person? What do they look like? Who are they surrounded by? What are they eating or drinking? What is their voice like, if you can hear it? So, there's a lot of sensory information that's happening when we make those, when we, when we have those gut responses. And you're right, there's something deeply biological about that.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  There's, it's just this energy, you feel drawn to someone. So, it's all those things. We don't necessarily know which one is which. So, I say that to say, you can feel, see that person across the room and feel drawn to them, and it could be a lot of things that are going on that draws you to them, and one is not necessarily better than other. I think that's one of the big takeaways when we go through the studies on, on attraction, is what

• 22:19Speaker 01

  You know, what's the most important one? Is there some tests, you know, and I put tests in air quotes, that we should be paying attention to? Is it smell, or voice, or feel? Not necessarily. I think there's a lot of different things that we are attracted to in a partner. But the other part of that is this idea, I think, of love at first sight. And what I like about that is in our singles study that we do, we ask about love at first sight fairly often. And this last year in our study, we found that singles, the belief in love at first sight was up to about 60%. So about 60% of singles said they believe in this concept of love at first sight. That's up from about a decade ago. Only about a third, I think it was 34%, said that they believed in love at first sight 10 years earlier.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  So why has that number increased so much? Now, we don't know why it's increased. But I think that, on the one hand, that 60% of singles today believe in love at first sight, on the one hand, I think it's romantic and it's cute. On the other hand, I actually think it can also be concerning. I'm a bit cautious about it because it also means that a lot of people are expecting that. They're expecting that for me to find love, for me to really be attracted to someone, I need to walk in the room and have this sense, this feeling that I've been knocked off my feet by someone across the room. And that's not how most relationships start. It's not, although we feel that feeling, having that feeling doesn't mean that you're gonna have a healthy relationship with that person.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  It doesn't mean you're gonna have a satisfying sexual experience with that person. It just means you feel drawn to someone. And I think too often, people infer what that would mean for love and connection. But in fact, our studies show over 70% of people have become attracted to someone they weren't initially attracted to. Over a third have fallen in love with someone they weren't initially attracted to. So I think it's a reminder that, yes, we have these mechanisms for attraction, but we also want to be cautious about how much we let them guide us through the currents of intimacy and connection.

• 24:21Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is one of those topics you could talk about all day and everybody has their opinions about it and everybody has their own preferences in what attracts them to another person, but it's interesting to hear some of the science. Justin Garcia has been my guest. He's an evolutionary biologist and a leading researcher on sex and relationships. He's executive director and senior scientist at the Kinsey Institute and he's author of a book called "The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love." And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Justin, thank you. Thanks so much.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike. It's been such a pleasure being on. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about all this together.

• 25:08Mike Carruthers?

  The world of work has changed and for a lot of people, not for the better. What used to feel like a job now often feels like it takes over your life. The lines between work and personal time have blurred. Stress is constant. Burnout is common. So what happened? How did work go from something we do to something that seems to consume everything else? And more importantly, is there a better way to think about work so it doesn't hijack your life? My guest says there is. Guy Winch is a psychologist whose TED Talks have been viewed more than 35 million times. He's the author of several books and his latest is called "Mind Over Grind: How to

• 25:52Mike Carruthers?

  Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life." Guy, welcome to Something You Should Know. It is a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for having me. Sure. So people have been talking about burnout, work stress, work-life balance for a long time. What is the state of affairs? Are things getting better, things getting worse? Where are we with this?

• 26:15Speaker 02

  It is absolutely getting worse and very, very much so. Seventy percent of workers report that work stress is impacting their physical health. Sixty percent, sixty seven percent of workers report symptoms of burnout. Stress and burnout have been peaking over the past few years. And that's actually ironic because the awareness of work-life balance and how damaging stress is and all the efforts that have been made by companies to reduce it have seen the opposite result. It keeps going up. There's something about the current workplace which is very, very pressured. It's the hustle culture, it's the grind culture, and it's just making us mismanage the stress and we make it worse inadvertently, in ways that we're not aware, but we're making it

• 26:59Speaker 02

  worse for ourselves.

• 27:01Mike Carruthers?

  My sense would be that because since COVID, people have been working at home and now a lot of people work at least part-time at home, that the stress would be less because you're at home and the need to be in the office all the time is less, that things would be a little easier.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  You might think, but first of all, what that did is it erased the boundaries between how we think about home. We used to think about home as our sanctuary, that's where we go after work, but because that's where we have worked or do work, that boundary gets really fuzzy. We get a lot of emails after work. Some of the statistics are that some people in managerial and higher positions do eight hours of emails, that's unpaid work, per week, that's an extra day of work. But the bigger problem is that we keep thinking about work when we're home. And when I ask people, when does your workday end? And they say to me, oh, I leave the office at seven, or I, you know, I shut the laptop at, you know, at six thirty. That is not when your workday ends.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Your workday only ends when you stop thinking about work. And we are thinking about work at home, and that is extending our workday because we're thinking about it in ways that are stressful and difficult. So, yeah, those boundaries end. Sometimes our workday doesn't end at all. We like thinking about work when we're home all the way till we go to sleep.

• 28:27Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that seems problematic, doesn't it? I mean, that seems like that would cause some trouble. But, but I think about work when I'm not working, but I don't feel stressed about it usually. I mean, I mean, maybe sometimes, but, but oftentimes I

• 28:43Mike Carruthers?

  I'll be thinking about, well, I'm going to interview Guy Winch tomorrow. I haven't talked to him in a long time and it'd be good to talk to him again. There's no stress involved in that.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  In that specific thought, no, and if everyone can think about interviewing me, that would be terrific. But what actually happens is that we also see really big rises in bullying in the workplace. In small things like incivility, incivility, you know, those small little insults and rudenesses. We see a lot of office politics and maneuvering and all kinds of, you know, really harassment and bias. And those are the things that we tend to take home with us when we have big workloads. Most people are saying like, I have too much work to do. I'm in meetings all day. I never have time to get my work done. So what a lot of people are ruminating about after hours is, oh, my God, I have so much work to get done.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness, that coworker was so unpleasant to me in the meeting and that boss, you know, dismissed me and was rude. And why didn't I get that promotion? And those kinds of slights make us ruminate about work and we can do it for hours. How many people listening have had a fantasy argument with their boss or with a coworker in which they're really, you know, giving them a piece of their mind in their head and imagining, I could have said this, I should have said that. In discussions they'll never actually have, but we can lose hours for that. When we see this rise of, of incivility, of bullying, of harassment, of unpleasantness in the workplace. And it's, and it's really rising.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  And the other thing that's rising is job insecurity with AI, with mergers, with, with layoffs, with, with cuts. So there is a lot of stresses and we don't have time to process them during the workday. And we tend to do that at home and we tend to do it in ways that make us chew over the day and activate all the stress and, and, and in ways that really are damaging to us. And that can happen for hours after work.

• 30:40Mike Carruthers?

  Do you think that the people you just described know that this is going on? That this is like, oh, yeah, he's talking to me. Or does it happen under the radar a lot and you don't really know what's going on? But you just have, you feel the effects?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  It is happening mostly under the radar because when we ruminate, which is considered a very unproductive form of self-reflection because you're really just playing out the same scenarios over and over and over in your mind. You're not actually problem solving. You're not actually doing something useful or figuring something out. You're just replaying the insult. You're replaying the worry, those kinds of things. It feels very compelling and it feels like you're actually thinking about something you need to be thinking about, but you're doing it in very unuseful ways. And so we're not aware of it. Here's another thing that we're not aware of. When we are under stress all day at work and we are in meetings and it's tense and all of those things are going on,

• 31:40Speaker 02

  we absolutely need to recover from those stresses in the after hours. And what a lot of people do is they come home after a very difficult day at work and they feel, I am wiped out. I'm gonna plop down here on the couch and spend the next several hours binging screens or doom scrolling, vegging out. And what happens is that when we do that, we are likely to wake up feeling tired the next morning, even if we relaxed for several hours that night. Because recovering, what the research tells us and what common sense will tell you, is that to recover from the workday, resting and relaxing is only half the equation. That will not recharge your batteries. It won't deplete them, but it won't recharge them.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  To recharge your batteries, to feel revitalized, you actually have to do something that makes you feel that way. If you're athletic, you have to, you know, work out. If you're an extrovert, you have to socialize. If you're creative, you have to go and work on a project. If you're a maker, you know, you have to create stuff. If you're an organizer, you have to organize. Those are the things that feel like an investment of energy, but when we do them, we come back with a second wind. We actually come back feeling more energetic than before we left. The problem is, we don't distinguish well between physical exhaustion and mental exhaustion. So we believe we're physically tired, even though we sat all day. We're not physically tired. We're mentally drained. We're mentally quote unquote wiped out.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  And if we listen to that and indulge the urge to just veg, then we will keep, you know, just sitting down and we will keep tired and we'll keep being tired because we're not actually giving oxygen to these vital aspects of our lives, our identities, our personalities, the things that nourish us. We're just, you know, like numbing out.

• 33:27Mike Carruthers?

  It does seem to be, or there must be some element of personality in this because I can imagine two people going through the same stress and one person doing what you just described, vegging out, and another person doing the other things, socializing, going, working out, running in the park. Some people seem to handle it pretty well and some people don't.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Yes, there's always this constitutional difference between, you know, some people do tend to be able to manage stress in a constitutional way, more effectively than others, and some people are able to hold on to these, these aspects of their lives. But for anyone, you know, even somebody who's doing that and who's doing that well, if the next day they go into work and someone says to them, oh, you know, we just, the company just got bought, and there might be layoffs and you might be losing your job, they're going to have a hard time going home and getting to the gym because they're going to be highly worried and preoccupied. And that might go on for a while, you know, like you have a great show and it's a very, very successful show and congratulations on it. If tomorrow, and I don't think this is happening and hopefully not, but if tomorrow somebody

• 34:35Speaker 02

  comes and says, we found a great new host for the show, it's an AI, you know, like you're not going to have the most restful evening that evening, right? No one would. And, and those are the pressures that so many people are dealing with, these uncertainties, these insecurities, these toxic workplaces, these difficult coworkers, the demands of the job that keep growing and growing and growing. Like, most people feel like I have more and more work to do and less and less time to get it done. We have to process that at some point and we tend to be able to do that when we get home. And that interferes with our ability to live our lives. And so, yes, some people can get through it unscathed, but no one can get through it unscathed always. And at some point of pressure, everyone will

• 35:19Speaker 02

  start to revert to these less effective ways of thinking and coping.

• 35:24Mike Carruthers?

  And so the answer is what? Just be aware of it, I guess, would be step one.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Well, the answer is yes. First of all, be aware of it. The answer is true, that you actually have to be much more intentional and deliberate. The way we manage stress is usually on autopilot. We just kind of do what we do. But the thing we know about stress is that when it reaches a certain point, that's true about any kind of stress or performance pressure, then we start to mismanage it. Then we start to go on autopilot and make all the wrong decisions because our unconscious mind, our automatic decisions are not going to be constructive. They're going to be there to give us immediate relief, not to actually set us up for success. They're going to make us procrastinate. They're going to make us veg out on the couch. You know, and people can do that for months. Truly, they'll just stop seeing people.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  They'll stop doing the things they like to do because, nah, I'm just too tired. Work is too much of a bear these days. And I hear that from people all the time. So you have to actually be aware of what's going on and then you have to take control and not do what your mind is telling you to do. Another example is that when you have very difficult days at work, you are likely to come home and bring that stress with you and take it out on your partner and make it play out in the home. There's a lot of research that shows that when someone is very stressed at work, their partner is likely to develop symptoms of burnout. Their partner, because that's how much that stress will transfer. You might not be aware, but when you come home and you think you're fine

• 36:56Speaker 02

  and you're actually really tense and preoccupied and your kids are running in to give you a hug, that can feel like an intrusion. I just walked in. I don't have a minute. Don't they realize what I've been through today? And then you stiffen up. And then you're supposed to do the dishes, but man, it's been such a difficult day that you, I'll just do them later. So your partner does them and then your kids run to your partner and say, hey, can I have the cookie? And the partner says, no, because I shouldn't be having the cookie. And they run to you and you're like, you're too drained to deal with it. So you go, yeah, sure, whatever. And you undermine your partner's efforts. There's so much research that shows how our stress and strain at work plays out at home to the detriment of our partners, to the detriment of our relationship, all of which in ways that we're unaware

• 37:40Speaker 02

  because none of us wants to do that to our partners. But it plays out because we are just not aware and we're not making the intentional effort required to, you know, to avoid it, to correct it.

• 37:53Mike Carruthers?

  So I've been in situations in my life much like you're describing of feeling exactly like you're describing and knowing very well that sitting around vegging out is like the worst thing I could possibly do. But at the time, I was so exhausted, I couldn't think to do anything else. I knew what I had to do. I just said, I can't, I'm just, no, I don't have it today.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Yes, and here's the thing. You were not exhausted. You were telling yourself, I am so exhausted. What you need to say to yourself is, I am mentally tired, I'm not physically tired. So yes, it requires a leap of faith to get yourself off the couch. But if you remind yourself, I know, I'm going to feel so much better when I come back from doing whatever the thing is that I need to do. But you don't need to run a marathon. Fifteen minutes of doing the thing, thirty minutes, even, truly even fifteen, of doing the other activity is enough to kind of refresh, is enough to recharge, is enough to remind you that there's more to life than just working and vegging. Do it and you'll be so glad you did.

• 39:04Mike Carruthers?

  But the things you mentioned, like if you're worried about getting laid off, of your job going to AI, you can't get rid of that. I mean, if you're worried, you're worried and you may have really good reason to be worried.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  You can get rid of it. And here's the thing, if you're worried about that, or if you're ruminating about, you know, the upsetting things that happened with your coworker, or about how unfair it is that you didn't get the promotion, it's going to eat up hours of your time. What you do need to do to stop ruminating about it is think about it in productive ways. Then you problem solve. You're worried about AI? Sit down, say, okay, what is the threshold for action for me? What needs to happen? For me to start truly looking for another job. When can I actually update my LinkedIn page or my resume right now? So that I can be more attractive to recruiters if they're looking for me. Who can I speak to to try and figure out that if something happens to my job? Where's the next place for me to pivot? What kind of work experience and skill sets do I need to cultivate?

• 40:04Speaker 02

  To make me a better candidate to maybe switch careers? Or to do a slight sideways pivot? So that I can then land somewhere successfully? If that happens. The minute you start to problem solve, the minute you start to make plans, the minute you start to actually think ahead, then you can let the worry go for now. Because you've actually taken care of it. You've figured out a plan B, you've figured out a plan C. It's not going to happen in an evening, but if that's the project, then you're like, okay, these things might happen. But if they do, I know when I'm going to act. And if I see this, I know I'm going to. That's the trigger that's going to make me actually start reaching out to people. Let me schedule some lunches with other people who have been in my shoes and who have had to find alternatives and see what they were doing.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  The minute you start actually taking care of it, you don't need to worry that evening. You can actually have the evening.

• 40:56Mike Carruthers?

  I so agree with that. I just in my own life, I know that if there's a problem and I'm thinking about it, that I get rid of the worry by taking action. If I start to do something, then I feel like I'm working on it rather than worrying about it. And it changes everything.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  It absolutely does. And this is what I mean by we need to take control. Because again, your impulse will be like, I'm worried. It's going to make you feel helpless. It's going to make you feel powerless. It's going to make you feel helpless. And then the best places to do those things are on the couch when you're just looking at screens to pass the time or eating or doing things to kind of numb yourself. And yes, it requires effort, but it's absolutely the thing to do.

• 41:41Mike Carruthers?

  But there is room for a little vegging out once in a while.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Give yourself, and you know what? When people do it, and sometimes they'll do it, and I felt so guilty because I vegged out. I'm like, you know what? Give yourself retrospective, retroactive permission. I do that myself, like, you know, like, I know I should, blah, blah. But I'm like, nope, I'm just going to binge this. And I know I'm going to wake up and feel regret for it. But then I'll give myself retroactive permission. You know what? It's good you did that. You need, you needed a cheat evening. You needed an evening where you just kind of gave in to the, to the other impulses. Now you've gotten that out of your system. Tonight, it's going to be different. So, yes, give yourself the cheat. Give yourself the break once in a while. We can't be like on ourselves all the time. But we have to be a lot of the time, or certainly much more than we tend to be.

• 42:29Mike Carruthers?

  The people who, that you look at, that, that you're talking about, that suffer from this, like, how bad does it get? I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

• 42:40Speaker 02

  How bad it gets is that people get burnt out. And then they're really not very, very functional or productive at all. I've seen people get divorced because they brought so many work conflicts home and weren't aware to the extent to which it's eroding their relationships. We've seen founders of big companies admit to the press that they were overworking to such an extent that they became malnourished and developed scurvy, something a Flintstones vitamin could have prevented. But that's the amount of self neglect we can sometimes assume when we are overworking. And of course, this is a risk when you're passionate about your job. When you love what you do, it can take over your life as well.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  And, and, and this is why it's such a common thing. It's common for people who don't like what they do or whose jobs are very demanding. It's common for people like me. I'm self-employed.

• 43:32Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's pretty interesting. The guy got scurvy. I mean, that's just, that's crazy.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's how work can take over our lives. It becomes this be all and end all. And it just makes us lose sight of everything else, including our health. I can't tell you how many C-suite people I've spoken to, partners in law firms, really successful people. And do you know the question I now ask them in sessions, which is like, it's terrible that I have to, but I have to, like, when is the last time you saw a doctor? And eight times out of 10, I get like blinking and, uh, well, yeah, no, I know, I need to do that now. We're putting off our, all our medical appointments because something more urgent is happening at work. Can't really take the time off.

• 44:20Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I know a lot of what you've said over the last 20 minutes or so resonates with a lot of people listening, that the toll that work can take if you allow it to can, can be devastating. And yet there are things you can do to prevent it. I've been talking with Guy Winch. He is a psychologist. He has three TED Talks that have been watched over 35 million times. And he's the author of a book called Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Guy, thank you for being here.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure as always.

• 44:58Mike Carruthers?

  The next time you kiss someone, notice which way you turn your head. It's probably not random. Research shows that about two thirds of people turn to the right during a romantic kiss, and couples often match each other without even thinking about it. For a long time, scientists thought this had to do with emotions and brain activity. But newer research suggests something much simpler. It's tied to the same left-right bias that influences things like handedness and how we move our bodies. If you're right-handed, you tend to go right. But here's what makes it interesting.

• 45:37Mike Carruthers?

  When parents kiss their children, the pattern often flips, showing a leftward bias, likely because babies are commonly held on the left side. So your kissing direction may have less to do with romance and more to do with how your brain and body have been wired since infancy. And that is something you should know. You know, we're constantly trying to figure out ways to attract new listeners. But the tried and true way is to have current listeners tell their friends. It works better than anything else. So if you would help us out and tell a friend about this podcast. Everybody here would really appreciate it. I'm Micah Rathers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.