The Anxiety Podcast

Summary: In this episode I discuss how being flexible can help us be less anxious. When we optimize and set up routines this keeps us confined and doesn’t allow us to change plans and adapt. This episode was inspired in part by this article from zenhabits.net "If your life is optimized, it’s easy to break. To give you another example … let’s say you have an optimized sleep routine. It’s amazing, and you get great sleep this way! But then you have to fumigate your house, so you have to sleep at a relative’s house. Your entire optimized routine is thrown off, so you get horrible sleep for a few days. Then you try to optimize your sleep for travel, getting a great setup for sleeping on the plane and trains. Then your favorite sleep mask, ear plugs (or noise-canceling headphones) and travel pillow get stolen. No sleep! The most optimized thing to do, then, is to not optimize — get good at dealing with everything, from sleeping on trains without any kind of setup to sleeping on the ground. Unoptimize your life by