EP #179: How to Create Habits That Reflect Who You Want to Become with Ana Cordera, Content Creator

[MUSIC] >> Hi, Anna. Thank you so much for coming on to Everyday in Dorfins. It is so exciting to have you here because I know a few years ago, the tables were turned and I was a guest on your podcast. So to get to now be the interviewer and have you on the other side of the microphone is such a joy. So thank you for being here today. It's an honor, Stella, obviously, and is a long time listener, friend, and just admire of everything that you're doing. I'm just honored to be here and I'm so excited to chat about things that you and I already talked about on a regular basis. >> I know. I feel like we've talked about this before. If someone was just recording our conversations, there would already be a million podcast episodes that could have been published to either of our platforms. That I feel like people would really gain something out of, because I know for a fact just watching the way that your content has evolved over time has been so inspiring to me and also just seeing what you share online has been really valuable because it's actually strategic, tangible advice that people can take and implement into their life. And I feel like a lot of the stuff that we see online feels really out of reach. People can make these broad statements around you should do this. You should do that for your health, for your wellbeing, for your productivity. And it feels like, oh my God, where do I even begin? But what I love about your content is that you break down these habits, these practices and to really small steps and you use yourself as a case study. And I just, I think it makes your content feel so much more relatable because you're like 28, I think, yes, 29, not 27. >> 20, oh my God. >> Okay, we're getting old. >> Yeah, I know. >> In your 20s. >> In New York doing all the things, working the corporate job, doing the content, but I will hand it over to you to share a little bit more about yourself. Because you can do a much better job of it than I clearly am doing at the moment. >> No, well, I really appreciate you saying all that. And it means so much because the reason, one of the reasons why I create content and why my platform is based on habits. My creator brand, Annabelle Tabits, is all about that. It's habit formation, psychology, productivity and routines. But with a specific lens of design instead of rigidity or even planning. Because when I was younger, planning and perfection and routines and productivity was just something that came to me naturally. But I realized that it was actually survival mechanism. So for context, I was born in Mexico. I moved to France by the time I was three. I moved to the US by the time I was nine. I learned two new languages before I've interned 10. It was a lot of change. And I had to adapt in some way. And for me, the way that I adapted to change was through stability of routines and productivity. Now that served me really well for those changes. But by the time that I got to high school and eating college and even post grad for probably a good 10 years of my life, that was borderline toxic. And what I mean by that is because I was literally planning how I would wear my hair in high school around making sure that if my hair was up, I would have a turtle neck because I didn't like the way that my neck looked. Like I had, and I've had very specific days on when I would only wear a turtle neck. So you can see kind of the underlying tones of planning and rigidity that were starting to come about during that formative period of my life, that then really carried into post grad and into moving to New York for my corporate job that I got after graduation. And it was during the few years before the pandemic hit where I was like, just burned out, chasing perfection. I was also feeling like a failure despite having all this structure around my life because it wasn't serving me. And what really helped me was with the pandemic, I started to one take a pause and reassess all the structure and the systems that had placed in my life that at one point did serve me, that were no longer serving me. But I do now, and the reason why I use myself as a case studies because I see that so many women, especially young women, are just focused on perfection and are focused on structure and systems. And we see a lot of that being promoted online by a lot of gurus, of productivity folks. But what I like to share with others and what I promote is that one, it's about design. It's not about planning. So I talk a lot about designing my life, designing my weeks. And two, it's about really focusing your life on who you are becoming, not on what's on your to-do list. So everything goes back to your identity and your habits just become part of that identity. And when I made that shift to think of my life and my habits and how I designed my days, that's when I started to be a little more flexible and honestly just happier. I have a lot of follow-on questions. What really resonated with me? Well, there were a few things. The first is that I really see a lot of myself in you because I also like tell me your type A without telling me your type A. It's like those tiny little things that you're going to wear the turtle neck. If your hair is up, like I remember when I was in high school, thank God, my dad drove me to high school. What a gem he was to alleviate the stress of having to get on the bus and the whole commute thing helped make my life easier at that time during a lot of change in transition. But I remember being an obnoxious teenage brat and being like dad, get downstairs, we need to be out the door by 647 because it takes five minutes to walk to the car so that we're in the car by 651 and it was just insane. I had to plan every single thing out to the tee and it actually just fatigues you. It makes you really tired because you're running on this anxious brain. I love what you had to just share now around this concept of designing versus planning because I think planning is this mechanism for just control that a lot of people struggle with. I think especially women and high achievers, we want to control things. However, I remember someone once told me and I wrote about this in a sub stack, but the whole concept was that planning gets in the way of living. I remember hearing this and I was like, stop it. You're just trying to push my buttons, you're just being annoying, whatever. Then I really thought about that and I thought about the moments in my life where I really felt the happiest and the most aligned version of myself. I was doing the things and those moments that I knew brought me joy. It was a yoga class or I got a great coffee. I was making sure to put things in my environment that lit me up, but it wasn't scheduled to the tee. There was an effortlessness. There was an ease in which I was able to do these activities. I think when we shift away from this idea of planning and thinking about planning gets in the way of living, it makes me think about what is even living. A lot of it is spontaneity. We need to leave room for spontaneity in life, but that can conflict with a lot of the conversation online around productivity and we need to maximize everything. How do you draw the balance between creating structure in your life, but also relieving room for spontaneity? Such good questions. I have so much to say to everything you just shared. What I'll say first is in regarding something you said earlier about planning your days or planning telling your dad like me to get out at 6.47 a.m., I was also like that. I literally remember in college having my daily schedule of being like 7.07 to 7.12 walked a class and then I remember being in class and someone looked at my schedule and was looked at me like I was crazy. I was like, "Okay, maybe this is a little borderline." But I had good intentions and I have compassion for that self because she was just trying to create structure and give me some direction in order to go. But there is, as you do to your point, there is like that just rigid, just cold aspect that comes with that, that we can break and instead actually turn it into this flexible way of designing a day, a week, to allow for spontaneity. Now the other thing I will say is I think there are a number of ways to think about your days in structure and don't get me wrong, I think that is always helpful to create some structure and some guard rails around how you spend your time, how you spend your weeks. I always say that how you spend your time is a reflection of what your values are and who you are and what your priorities are as well. So when people say I don't have time, that's for me just an excuse that is baseless. You do have the time, it's just a matter of how you spend it. And a very tactical way that I, I'll, I'll respond to Nady, but also give myself some direction of how to spend my days is simply with time blocking. So time blocking for those that, for listeners who may not be familiar with it is just a way to allocate a specific amount of time for a specific task without the pressure of finishing that task. And in fact, at the talk that we, you and I were at earlier this week with Nierie Yalf, who's the best-selling author of indistractable and beyond belief, he talked about this and he talked about actually it's good if you don't finish the task because then you can come back to another of those time blocks and finish the task and or even get further ahead. So time blocking really helps me with my days. I have time blocks on my calendar for everything, including free time, and sometimes including doom scrolling. Like I literally have a block for that because if I don't have that, I will doom scroll while I'm supposed to be doing something else. So that gives me some visibility into how I want to spend my day. And of course things come up, things change, and that's fine. But as long as at the end of the day, I can look back at how I spent my time and confirm that it is a reflection of my priorities and my values, I'm totally fine if the day had to change a little bit. Yeah, I love that. And in that talk that we attended, I remember hearing him talk about this concept of time blocking. And I also do this on my work calendar, I color code, what's like a project related call, what's a extracurricular related call, what's a personal thing on my agenda that I have to take care of. When am I scheduling in my workouts? Like I literally put it on my calendar. When do I have, you know, I don't know, a team happy hour or a dinner with a friend, like it's literally, even on the weekends, I literally put all this when I'm teaching yoga, like my second job, like everything is on one calendar, which helps me keep track in my brain, like what is going on in my life. And there was something that he said, and you also just reference this in this whole time blocking exercise around it being okay that a task isn't complete. Yes. That really, really stuck with me in his talk, because I started to reflect on this. And I've noticed that I have always had this anxiety around not finishing something, like whether it's a task, I need to check it off the to do list and be like, okay, like because I, you know, did the super simple process, now the task is complete. And what I've actually noticed in the professional context around like this mindset of how I get things done, it's actually hurt me in my job because I've had feedback given to me in the past that if I'm like working on a deliverable, for example, like I'm on a specific project, I am just kind of like rushing to do the thing just so that I can cross it off the list to get to the next thing, like thinking that's being efficient. And my manager at the time, this was a few years ago, she had said to me, Stella, like you have to recognize that the work never really ends, like just because this project finishes, this is a client that is like buying a ton of work from this organization that you work for. And it's a small work stream that you worked on will somehow connect to another thing that may be the client is going to pitch to us or we're going to pitch to them, like this type of work might be relevant as a case study for a different industry or client, like the work never really finishes. There's always kind of something more you can think about and iterate on and spin over. And now as I'm progressing in my career, I am starting to actually understand what that means that it's like okay to leave things kind of unfinished quote unquote. It's not that you're doing a bad job. It's not that it's like an unfinished product, but it's actually recognizing that like we can always iterate and change and improve something. And how I also see the supply to my personal personal life is recognizing that I've always had this discomfort with conflict and relationships, like feeling like I just need to be like on a good foot with someone. Like I need to settle the dust with someone. I don't want to leave things left unsaid or whatever. Like that's always causing me so much anxiety. But what I'm realizing is that relationships actually, if you want longevity in them, they're going to fluctuate in ebb and flow. And sometimes it's okay for things to be a little bit left unsaid or to not feel like things are tied nicely with a bow and you know, all is said and done. Yeah, I mean to your point about spontaneity, if we always are in the pursuit of tying it with a bow and closing that out, when are we allowing for spontaneity to happen? Because often that comes up when things are left unfinished or when things are start, when there's still something more to be said. I worked with someone a few years ago who told me that when she creates content, she always looks to the last sentence of her script or her caption as what she should do for her next video or for her next post. And I thought that was really beautiful also because sure that post is finished, but she looks to that to then continue her content journey with the last thing that she said because there's always something left unsaid. You know, a post is never going to be the one and final story of your life or of how you're talking about that specific topic of your post. And I think that we often strive to just like finish things, but the other side of the coin here, which doesn't go against what we just talked about, but I do think is important to discuss when we think about time and work is Parkinson's law. Have you heard of Parkinson's law? Like yes, but refresh my memory. Yes. So it's a fancy theory term to basically describe that work expands with the time that you give it. So let's say that, which is another reason why I'm a huge advocate of time blocking. Let's say you currently like don't have any time blocking on your calendar and you're constantly checking emails throughout the day and then it's 5 p.m. 6 p.m. and oh my gosh, you have like 40 emails on red. That's because you had an eight hour window to look through your emails and respond to all those. And you said, oh, I have enough time. You were in per two ambitious with the amount of time that you allocated to reviewing your emails. But if you had just allocated maybe 45 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes in the afternoon and she goes through your entire inbox, I guarantee you that by the end of the day, you would have no emails on red. So time is also helpful to work through tasks like that where you actually kind of like constrain the amount of time that you have to review your email inbox and get that task done. So I think time is useful. Time blocking is useful in two ways. One, to like finish admin work or tasks that you don't want to do, but also two to give you some to give you a capsule to work through deep work and then let that be, you know, unfinished and come back to it in a different time block. That's a really good point. I want to ask about distraction and I know that we heard a little bit about this in the talk we attended earlier this week. But when it comes like our health, like let's think about habits that make us healthier and happier, getting in our daily workout, regimen or movement, spending time with our friends, cooking a meal for ourselves, like, you know, I'll use myself as an example. I have not cooked in months. I'm not proud of it. It's not great. I would like to cook more often. And then the longer time goes on and the less I cook, I have a narrative in my brain, like, oh, my God, I'm just never going to do this. And then I start to feel bad about it myself. And I think this is a mental cycle that a lot of people get into when they set a goal for themselves. They do not accomplish part of that goal or the entire goal. And then it's like this negative spiral that we go down and we actually perpetuate what we don't want to do. So how would you advise someone who was going through a similar issue? Like we have this intention to achieve this goal. Then we're distracted by life. And then we say we want to do it again. And then we just never, like every time we attempt to do the goal, we just like stop ourselves. How do we reconcile that? First, you're not alone. You know, this happens to me and I know happens to many, many, many people. It's just part of the human journey of how we think about goals and how we think about attaining those goals. The first thing I say everyone should do when they are in that specific scenario is get clear on why you want that goal in the first place because that will connect to the identity that you need to embody then to get to that goal. So stop thinking about the goal, stop thinking of like, oh, I need to cook like, you know, five meals per week. And said like, what is the identity of someone who does that? Connect to that. And when you're in a moment, specifically when you are wanting to cook, but you don't have the recipe. So you think about just opening Uber Eats and clicking the first thing that you see there. Take a step back and think about who is the type of person that embodies the identity of someone who makes five meals a week and step into that identity, close the Uber Eats app, and the behavior comes after it. But it really comes first and foremost to the identity. And once you have clarity on that, then the habits, the behavior, all come after because it's so much easier said than done and to think about the goals that you want. If you have zero connection to that goal, a really like deep level of your identity, it's going to be really, really hard to get to that. And one one study that I always, you know, mentioned for this is the, the I am a voter case study that happened in 2018 for the midterm elections. So this was a marketing campaign that people wanted, people created to get voter turnout for the midterm elections in 2018. And instead of encouraging people to like go out and vote and do your civic duty, they change the tagline to I am a voter because identity carries way more weight than just the pure action or the goal, which is, which was for in this case to get people out into the voting booths and vote. So it comes back to the identity. There's another study as well that was done at Stanford that put two groups of people into like a, like a lab, like a study and one group of people, they were, they were told, you Here's a test. Don't cheat. The other group of people was told, "Here's a test. Don't be a cheater." Which group do you think had the least amount of cheating? The group of people that was told don't be a cheater, because identity carries way more weight than just action. These are great studies to share and great reminders to around the power of our identity. I think about this a lot because I agree with everything you just shared. And at the same time, I also believe that when we identify with things outside of us, rather, maybe it's when we attach onto those identities that are external to us, that can actually breed on happiness within us. Because attachment, I mean, this is like a very Buddhist principle, but attachment is the root of suffering and that self-perpetit-patchuated suffering. What is the balance between stepping into an identity as a mechanism to change our behavior, but also not getting attached to things outside of us? It's hard, actually. There might not be a right answer to this, but it's a hard question, but I'm curious what your thoughts are here. What comes to mind when you say that is what the conversation that you and I had with Nier Al at his talk earlier this week. And then I shared with him a goal that I had and he said, "Okay, I want you to totally detach yourself from the goal. Like, you can't control whether you're going to get there or not. What you can control is the steps that you personally take to get to that goal, but I need you to detach from the outcome." And instead, focus on the actions. And I think that maybe is a way to answer the question you have of how do you detach yourself from the identity by taking it a step further and saying maybe actually only look at the actions that you have to take. And then that way, you're focused purely on execution and action instead of identity and instead of the goal and the outcome because at the end of the day, you can only control the inputs. You can't control the outputs. That's such a powerful reminder. And it resonates so deeply with everything that I talk about on this podcast and what I've learned through my guests and through my own research is that the path towards happiness in life is not about getting obsessed with this idea of being happy all the time because that is attaching to the outcome or any sort of thing we want in life. Like, if we're so hell-bent on like need this to be happy, we attach our happiness onto something else and we place weight on something outside of ourselves that we cannot control to give us happiness. But really, the key, the secret sauce, all the things to becoming happier is to not even focus on that outcome to de-identify with it. To do all the things you're talking about to create that identity within yourself that helps you get really in love with the process of the doing, of the day to day to build to the final output that you want to achieve. Exactly. I've noticed this in my personal life. I'm sure you've also went on a similar journey. I think being entrepreneurial content creation, it's like one of the most humbling things to do and it's, I think, a very healing practice of self-acceptance and of understanding your worth and not placing it on something that you can't control. But knowing that the process of creating in it of itself is something you should be proud of and that you are worthy to attract the things in life that you want. And it's hard because we put in so much effort day in and day out, but we're not always seeing the immediate results. So what keeps the motivation to be persistent is that is the hard thing when we get tied to the outcome and needing that validation. But it's like how do we recycle that energy within ourselves and replenish ourselves to feel whole and worthy of the things that we want to create in our lives? Yes. And a few frameworks I go back to to feel centered and grounded when I'm in the middle of maybe like a moment of anxiety and being like, oh my gosh, is this going to actually happen? The idea, the framework of B to have, you know, B, the emotion or B, the feeling that you want to receive from eventually like, wait, the goal is take the action, do, and then you'll get there. And then maybe if you don't get there, or at least you'll be in the journey to get there, which is way better than if you had just like, soaked and thought, oh, I just need to have this. The other thing that also helps me is something that I learned at a class at Northwestern where I went to undergrad. It stuck with me forever. It was a design your life class actually. And it's all about that the quote goes something like this. Have a compass, don't have a map. Know where you want to go, but be open to not knowing how to get there. And that goes back to that can mean many things, including what are your values and how are you living your life in a way that gets you aligned to your values? What do you want out of this world, including career, personal hobbies, etc. And how can you create a life that designs that is designed for that to be happening in your life? So I really like that because it removes a lot of pressure for people to think about, I need to get here. Here's one, two, three, four, five things I need to do to get there. And instead says, I would love to get to this point, but I'm not, you know, specific only to that I think will only get me there. Like maybe there are different paths that I can take. Maybe there are different people that I can meet. And that just opens up more opportunities for you. I love that. And I'm sure you're familiar with Susie Welch who is the author of "Becoming You." She has that course at NYU called "Becoming You," which I took. Incredible course. Highly recommend for anyone who's listening to go research Susie Welch and take her course. Wish that was a sponsored say it. Like it's not sponsored. I just love her. But I've had her on the podcast. Not yet. You need to. Not yet. I definitely need Susie if you're listening. This is my formal invitation to have you on the podcast. Anyways, I digress. But what I was trying to share is that her whole framework is around, it's like a refreshed idea around Iki-Gai, which is the Japanese concept for finding your purpose, the, you know, circles that intersect in the middle. But for her, your purpose lies at the intersection of your values, your skill sets, and your economically viable interest, which is like what can you get paid for? So it's values, aptitudes, economically viable interests. The values piece is really interesting. She developed a whole methodology that helps you understand your values and which ones are in conflict versus in harmony. And I think that when you have a blueprint for just understanding what you care about and also noticing that you can care about two conflicting things, that is a compass to your point that helps you just have more awareness around like the choices that you make. And everything that we're talking about, I think rolls up into this idea of living with intention. Because when we live with intention, we can justify the choices that we make. Even if someone doesn't understand it, we know it's right for us and that's what matters at the end of the day. And if you're living with intention, every moment has to agree, like, gravity to it because there's a meaning behind what you're doing. It's all in pursuit of your higher self. And I think that actually comes back to an amazing quote that you've shared with me during an event that you hosted earlier this month, this beautiful talk that you did about habit formation. And you had referenced a quote from atomic habits. And it was something along the lines of every action that I take is a vote for the person that I wish to become. And that that has stuck with me and like will stay with me because it's intentionality. Everything you do is in service of this future self that you have to allow to evolve and change and grow and adapt in all the things. But I find that when we live without intention, but are super rigid, we are unhappy. But if we live with intention and we allow for flexibility and spontaneity and maybe plans don't happen as we expect them to, we are happier. And we actually accelerate the timing that it takes to get to from where we are to where we want to go, which is ironic and feels counterintuitive. But somehow I find that to be true. Yes. And you know, I think this is all so helpful, hopefully, for people to listen and to think about their own values. But for anyone listening that has no idea where to start or has no idea what their values even are, the first thing to do if you're at that point, what I recommend is sit down and look at your past week and write down everything that you did in your past week, whether it was workouts, whether it was going to a bar, whether it was going on a date, whether it was going to work, whatever it is, just write down like the categories of your life that you spent your time on this week. And as you finish that out, sit back and assess whether you're happy with how you spent your time. Because to go back to what we were saying earlier in the conversation, your time and how you spend it is a reflection of your values and who you are. So if you don't know what your values are, look back and look at how you spent that time. And that's going to give you the idea of what your values are right now. And if you're not happy with that, okay, at least now you know what your values are not. And you can think about what you do care about. Because when you know what you don't want, that gives you an observation or a clue to what it is that you do want. And if you look back at your week, And you say, "Yeah, I'm pretty happy." I'm one of my values is health. I consider myself a healthy person and I work out three times a week and it made me feel really good. Good. Good. That means that you are living intentionally to what you just said and your time, the way you spent it reflects your values. I love that. And it's like just doing a little life on it, which I think we need to do periodically because it's so easy to get wrapped up in our day-to-day routines and distractions and just frankly life. So to take the pause, the intentional pause to reflect, to think, to assess, I think is so important because it helps us course-crack. And a lot of what we've been talking about thus far has been very broad, like very philosophical, very mindset, belief system oriented, but I want to get super granular now and actually talk about some of the learnings that you have experienced through studying the habits of super successful people on your platform. So let's think about like the Ariana Huffington's of the worlds, the Serena Williams, like all the things. What are some of the things that you find consistent across all successful people that you've looked at? What are they actually doing? Let's say in their morning routine, you know, non-negotiables that they have, what have you seen to be consistent and perhaps even different across some of the most famous people that you've studied and you've looked at and you've assessed their behaviors and habits? Yes, and for those that may be confused a little bit to what Stella's referring to in as part of my content, I dissect the habits of the most successful people in business, sports, and culture. So I study those high performers and then share out what their top three habits are, whether it's related to how they run their business or how they think about money or how they even think about movement. And we've done, I've done everyone from like Lindsay Vaughn to Coco Gough, Bethany Frankl actually, which was really interesting, Ariana Huffington and all that. There are two similarities I've seen across everyone that I've done. And there are, I think there are other underlying themes, but the two main ones that are very clear-cut is a morning routine and specifically an early morning routine and movement. In some way, shape or form, movement and an early morning routine and specifically having rituals are what Chris Jenner, Ariana Huffington, all these people that we admire and look up to incorporate into their day. The other thing as well that ties back into identity is that, for example, all these people that we admire, the highest performers in their field, they didn't wait until January 1st or Monday morning or April 1st, the start of a new month to begin their journeys of whether it be their business or to be bettering themselves to be better athletes. They began the moment that they chose to begin, meaning that it was in the moment that Ariana Huffington woke up in a pool of her own blood after collapsing from burnout and decided that she was going to be someone who prioritized her health before anything else. And by that choice, she started to rearrange her life right away, not until January 1st, to become that type of person. And actually, it's funny how life works because that was a way for her to also start her new business after Huffington Post, which was Thrive Global, which is all about habits and building healthy daily habits for employees at corporations. So it's funny how life works when you start to rearrange things to align to the identity that you're becoming, how also opportunities open up. Absolutely. And it's also not seeing these things as failures, but just the next step in your life journey that will lead you to a miracle. Like I genuinely believe that. I know this because I struggle with this. Like I am so hard on myself for doing the quote unquote wrong thing. And then I just get stuck in this unhappiness. But the way I've tried to shift my mindset is like, this is just a thing that happened. It is neutral. It's neither good nor bad. I'm not going to allow myself to put a story around it. And whatever amounts from this, whatever reflections I come to or things that I experience, that is like the input to the next output and that next output is just the next step of my life. And so it's learning, I think, to just embrace what comes to you without resisting it, which of course is easier said than done. But it's a good reminder to keep you grounded in the present, to be grateful for what you have right now because God willing, you never know what's going to happen. So might as well be grateful for what's right in front of you. But I love this finding that you have around the morning routine and the movement because it's something that is so simple and you can customize it to you. Whatever early morning routine looks like for you, fantastic, whatever movement looks like for you, fantastic. As long as you're just getting that in in some way, I do feel like your life will transform because I do this and it feels amazing. And the days that I don't do it, I'm like, oh my god, like my days flipped upside down. Yeah. So the more we can get into that routine, I think the better. And I'm going to guess, you know, your audience is into the will a little bit. So this is why I'm going to say what I'm about to say. But a, you know, one of the thought leaders, I looked to sometimes for information and inspiration and just a better understanding of the human nature is Joe Dispensa. And he says, basically, there are only two moments in the day when you can connect to your subconscious, which is, by the way, where we operate 95% of the time from. So if you want to build better habits, if you want to think about your values and think about your behavior and live a life intentionally around that, you first have to know what is driving that, which is your subconscious and connect to it. And the two times, when you can connect to it, are in the very early mornings, right after waking up and right as you're falling asleep. So the most important time in the day is the morning and the evening. And if we treat those as sacred with rituals and routines that can help us live a life designed around our values, what better way to live? Because then you're taking the time that's most connected to your subconscious, to yourself and using it to design your dream life. I love that. Protect the mornings, protect the evenings. Those are like the divine times. I'm going to think about this because I could probably change my evening routine. I think I got the mornings pretty worked out more or less, but the evenings, you know, sometimes they're not as I plan. So that's a good reminder. Progress over perfection, though, you know? Yes. And that is another great reminder. I would be remiss to not talk about how we're living in an AI heavy world right now, which is meant to maximize our productivity, maximize our efficiency. I've got some thoughts, but you know, they're a little half baked and I'm still trying to figure out to what degree is all of this going to actually advance us. When we say advance, what does that even really mean as far as how this will change the way that we work in our jobs and the way that we relate to other people in our personal lives, there's like a whole rabbit hole we could go down. But I know that you're about to launch a really exciting series exploring how you infuse AI into your own routine and your habits. So I'd love to hear a little bit more from you. Some of your advice, best practices. How do you think about AI? Creating efficiency in the way that you set up your routines and feel like you've kind of got that self-efficacy, taking that control over your routine. Yes, well, as someone who thinks all the time about productivity and efficiency and time, especially AI really excites me because if anything, when we learn how to use it for productivity and for efficiency, what that means is that many of the tasks that we're currently doing that are sucking the life out of us. We can learn how to automate with AI or how to delegate to AI so that we have then more time to do things that we love and enjoy and bring us light. And so when AI sure has, you know, a lot of there are a lot of thoughts around AI, but for me, I'm really excited by what that means in terms of the time that I will gain back to do things that I love, whether it's going on walks, whether it's reading, whether it's being crafty, whatever it is. And right now there are two ways that I'm learning and also applying to for my life, for my personal life and also for my content creation journey, which is how can I essentially reinvest the 30 minutes to 45 minutes that I spend on designing my week on Sundays? How can I change that to maybe have it be 15 minutes with the use of AI? How can I look to Claude because I love to use Claude. Claude is my main, you know, AI soft part. How can I use Claude? By the way, I give her name, her name is Aria. And she, how can I use her in work with her to make sure that those 30 minutes become 15 minutes? And then how can I use the 15 minutes that I gained back for spending time with my fiancee or for going on a walk? So I'm learning how that process goes with designing my week, but also with content creation. And I'm really excited. There is a series that I'm launching, something along the lines of, you know, AI designs my life to help people inspire them to use it and see it as a thought partner to not only content creation, but also to designing your life. I love that. I think that's such a great use case for AI is like how can we use these technologies to make us feel more connected to ourselves. like I think that's a really great use case and I am so excited to see what you put together and you share on your platform. I've actually never used cloud, but I've heard really good things. So maybe this is a sign that I have to pivot and hop on over to cloud and give her a name as well. - Yeah, I actually think she named herself 'cause I prompted her to be like, this is how I wanna use you. And so she was like, all right, like, Ria is my name. It's an acronym for something I can't remember exactly, but the prompt that I gave her was enough for her to give herself a name. I also think that I don't know about you, but I feel there is an overwhelming amount of information around all the AI tools available and there are so many AI tools. And I wanna make it really specific and help people to just, you know, what are the two platforms that you can use today to help create better content if you're a content creator and to get time back if you design your weeks. And then from there, it's like, you don't have to use like all these different crazy, fancy AI platforms that are popping left and right. You could just use one cloud that we know well and trust well. And then maybe also one that I also love to use now that I just started is Whisper Flow, which is just a voice control AI platform. Or at least it helps just transcribe way better than like what Siri can do on your phone. So interesting. Look out for that. It's gonna be launching mid March. - Amazing. - And hopefully my hope is that it helps people, especially those that like me have often felt overwhelmed with the amount of information and tools and resources available for AI. - Yeah, it can definitely feel overwhelming 'cause there's just an influx of tools now. It's like, where do I even begin? What do I use for which part of my life, you know? So I am really looking forward to what you have to share. I think it'll be super valuable and helpful for people who wanna feel like they have like the fluency around these tools and how they can implement them into their lives 'cause that's usually the hardest part is the implementation like executing against the intention. So I'm really looking forward to this. I'm gonna pivot to questions on happiness as the ethos of everyday endorphins is all about finding the things in life that bring us joy, right? And what I love about the topics that we've already explored today is that feeling on top of your life, like you are productive, like you are contributing to something that you are working towards something, like that is so important for our happiness. That is so important for our wellbeing. And so I'm gonna leave you with two questions. The first question is how do you define happiness? And the second question is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? - Love. So the first word that came to mind when you asked the first question is happiness is a practice. It's the same way that I think about habits, you know, and I think about, for example, we talked about this too, like just because you worked out consistently in the past six months while you were training for the marathon, doesn't mean that you're set for life and will always have that type of endurance for the rest of your life. You have to keep at it. And the same way for happiness in my opinion, maybe you want to a really amazing retreat or you had a really energizing day. And that will cure you for us just, of course, for, you know, however amount of time, the next day, the next week, et cetera, but it really comes down to it being a practice, being something that you work on every day, day in, day out because it's up to you to decide how, you know, how you spend your time and also how you incorporate moments that give you that happiness. And then to answer your question, your second question around endorphins, I mean, as a runner, like that is one of my favorite ways of gaining endorphins. And I know it's traditional with endorphins, connects to exercise, but I truly feel in such flow when I hit the runner's high, when I'm running, it makes me feel so happy and just so alive. And that is one of my favorite ways to get endorphins. - Oh, I love it. And it's simple. Like we don't, you need running sinkers. - That's it. - That's it. - That's it. - You just need running sinkers. And to make this full circle, a lot of people are like, well, I'm not a runner, so I can't run. But now after listening to this episode, they can be like, nope, because I put one foot in front of the other. - Exactly. - At a quicker pace, I am a runner. And what's with that will do to the way that you start to show up in life. - Yes. - I love that. I love that so much. You are such an inspiration to me. All the content that you share is so valuable. And I know whoever's tuning in right now, like really has taken away something so important and hopefully will apply into their lives as well. So I can't thank you enough, Anna. Where can my listeners find you on social media, follow you and stay connected with everything that you're sharing? - I am deeply inspired by you as well, Stella. So the feeling is mutual and thank you so much for having me. Everyone can find me at Anna Build Tobbits on Instagram, on TikTok, or beacons.ai/ Anna Build Tobbits. I have a link in my Instagram bio as well, where you can access all the resources I've created over the years to help people reflect about their values, connect with who they are trying to become and just also think about their own habits. And if they reflect who they are, Instagram and TikTok and a build Tobbits and I'm really excited by this conversation and I'm energized. Now I feel like I can, I wanna go and run now. It's so energizing to talk to you. - The endorphins are on fire and I feel the same way plus my coffee. So we're already off to a great start this morning. Thank you again. This was so wonderful. - Thank you. (upbeat music)