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Erin, welcome to unlearning work, where we empower you to redesign your job by rethinking work habits, behaviors and strategies. I'm your host. Erin Merideth, a work behavior enthusiast and leadership strategist, join me as I explore various work related topics and provide practical insights and real life examples. We'll examine the nature of work from the ground up and deliver bite size episodes with actionable advice twice a month.
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Welcome to unlearning work, the podcast where we trade hustle culture for human centered habits and help high performers build systems that actually work for how they think, plan and lead. I'm Erin Merideth, behavioral researcher, certified coach and founder of unlearning work. Today's episode is one I think a lot of us need to hear, especially if you're the kind of person who starts Monday morning with a color coded to do list and still ends a week feeling like you've done everything except what actually matters. We're talking about a trap. Many high performers fall into doing more instead of doing what actually matters. Here's the truth, burnout doesn't usually come from doing too little. It comes from pouring your energy into the wrong things, the low impact tasks, the constant urgency, the never ending hustle that looks productive but leaves you feeling stuck.
1:27
Let's start by naming the mistake we keep making, and that is confusing activity with impact, or as I call it, the false progress loop. You know what it looks like. Your calendar is packed, your inbox is never empty. You're jumping between meetings, Slack messages and five half finished Google Docs. You are technically doing a lot, but deep down, you know something is off. You're exhausted, but not energized. You're productive, but not progressing. You're checking boxes, not changing outcomes, the behavioral insight behind this is our brains are wired to seek closure. We like to finish things. Psychologists call this the Zeigarnik Effect. Unfinished tasks tend to stick in our minds and cause mental tension, while completed tasks give us relief. That relief feels good, because when we finish something, our brains release dopamine, a chemical associated with reward and motivation. And here's where it gets tricky, that dopa dopamine boost doesn't discriminate between meaningful and meaningless tasks, so checking off, reply to email, organize my desktop or reformat this document gives you the same satisfying feeling as making real progress towards launching a course, pitching a client, or setting boundaries on your calendar. The result you chase the quick wins. It feels like progress, but it often is in the form of productive procrastination, staying busy so you can avoid the more complex, uncertain or emotionally demanding work. And this creates a loop. You feel overwhelmed, so you do something easy, just to feel in control. You get that dopamine hit, but you avoid the important thing a little bit longer. So an example would be, you need to outline a presentation that matters to your business. Instead, you clean out your inbox. You did something, but you didn't do the thing that matters over time, this creates a pattern of shallow progress over deep work, distraction disguised as diligence, avoidance dressed up as accomplishment, and that's what keeps us stuck. The key is learning to spot this pattern and retrain your brain to associate progress with purposeful tasks, not just completed one.
3:52
Let's talk about why, because this isn't a time management issue. It's a meaning management issue. Most of us were trained by hustle culture, whether we realize it or not, we learn that busy equals value, that output equals worth. That if you're not constantly working, you're falling behind. But here's the trap. Hustle culture rewards visibility, not value. It makes it easier to justify low impact work that looks impressive than to pause, reflect and pursue the high impact work that feels risky. So why do we avoid what matters? Because meaningful work comes with friction. We avoid it because it's ambiguous. It forces us to confront our fear of failure, and it doesn't always offer immediate rewards.
4:41
Let's look at two examples of avoiding what matters. First, let's start with someone launching a course. You've got a meaningful goal, share your expertise, grow your income and make a bigger impact. You tell yourself you're committed, you even block off time in your calendar. But when it comes.
5:00
Down to it, you spend that time researching platforms again. You test new slide designs. You rewrite your intro module for the third time. Why? Because the real work, putting yourself out there, selling, recording your voice, asking people to buy, is emotionally risky. So your brain finds an escape hatch. It keeps you in motion, but away from vulnerability, you're doing more but avoiding what matters the avoidance is emotional self protection.
5:32
Now let's shift to a more traditional set in someone working in a corporate office, you've been meaning to pitch a bold idea to leadership, a process overhaul that could save your team time and stress. You've seen the inefficiencies for months. You know the solution. You've drafted notes you care. But instead of setting the meeting or finalizing your pitch, you attend three back to back status meetings with no clear agenda. Spend an hour color coding your Project Tracker. Catch up on email to clear your inbox. And again, this is productivity on the surface, but that meaningful move, the one that could drive change or elevate your visibility, stays stuck in the someday column because stepping up feels risky. You could be wrong. You could be challenged. You could stand out. So your brain says, Let's do the things that feel certain, even if they're not impactful.
6:27
In both cases, the problem isn't a lack of work ethic. It's the tendency to confuse motion with momentum, to choose safe effort over vulnerable action, and that's what keeps us spinning. We feel busy but not fulfilled. We look productive but feel invisible. We check boxes but avoid what would move us forward the unlearning here. Start noticing when more is a mask, and start choosing meaningful even if it's messy. Let's be honest about the cost of this mistake. First, it's burnout. You're running on empty, not from overwork, but from misaligned work. You're drained because you're not working in flow or towards purpose. Two, you have scattered focus. Your energy is fragmented across a dozen tasks. You struggle to finish anything deeply. You start 100 things and finish 12, and even those feel mediocre. Three, the shallow results. You're creating output, but not outcomes. You're moving but in circles. You might grow incrementally, but not exponentially. Four, the neglect of long term goals, the urgent always crowds out the important, strategic thinking, creative breakthroughs, building something sustainable, push to next quarter. So why do we keep falling into this trap, even when we know better? Well, psychologists would call this the urgency effect. We're hardwired to prioritize tasks with looming deadlines, even if they're less important. That's because urgency triggers a faster dopamine reward. It feels good to clear something quickly, but that short term satisfaction comes at the expense of deeper, more valuable progress, and this plays out in real life all the time. For example, maybe you've been meaning to write that thought leadership piece or apply for that dream grant, something that could truly move your career forward, but every time you sit down to do it, your inbox pulls you in. Client emails feel urgent. Calendar invites pile up. You end the day having worked non stop. But the meaningful thing still untouched.
8:47
What happens when you stop chasing more? Well, here is the good news. You can unlearn this. You can stop measuring your productivity by the number of tasks you cross off. You can stop filling your calendar just to feel accomplished, and you can start working in a way that actually fuels your purpose, not your exhaustion. This is where the shift happens from volume to value. It's not about doing everything. It's about doing the right things and doing them with intention. So what does this look like in practice? Well, first, you prioritize by purpose. When you stop reacting to every ping request or urgent distraction, you start making decisions from a deeper place, your goals, your values, your vision, you stop asking, What do I need to get done? And you start asking, what will actually make a difference? A behavioral cue for this is people who set priorities based on internal drivers rather than external triggers, or more, are more likely to follow through with meaningful work because it aligns with their identity, not just their calendar. Instead of letting the loudest thing win, you create space for the most important thing to lead.
10:01
Three, two. You build systems that protect your focus. This isn't just about willpower. It's about structure. You create repeatable systems that make focus easier easier and distractions harder to access. So you shrink overwhelming tasks into smaller, more approachable steps. Build focus containers in your day, for example, 90 minute deep work blocks, and you use visual cues or routines to signal when it's time to go deep. You design your day to reduce decision fatigue and to protect your best brain energy for what matters most and just a reminder. Systems aren't rigid. They're freeing, because when you don't have to constantly decide what to do next, you're able to move with more ease and consistency.
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Three, you access more clarity confidence and capacity. Here's the biggest transformation. When you stop trying to prove your worth through busyness, you finally make room to lead from clarity, not chaos, you redefine success. You recognize what enough actually looks like, and in doing less, you start to achieve more. Because your energy isn't scattered, it's aligned. That clarity builds confidence, that confidence fuels follow through, and that follow through creates capacity for bigger, bolder moves down the line.
11:26
Let me tell you about Michelle, one of my clients. Michelle was doing what so many of us do, juggling dozens of tasks a day, constantly switching context, always feeling behind. She cared deeply about her mission. She was a non profit leader, but her calendar was so crammed with operational chaos, she barely had time to think strategically, let alone lead with vision. So together, we rebuilt her week from the ground up. We added two simple but powerful focus blocks each week that time protected for high impact, no distraction work, and we created one filter she could use every day to guide her decisions, and that was a question, what moves the mission?
12:07
Within a month of her doing this, she was leaving work an hour earlier. She raised more money with fewer campaigns, and most importantly, she felt proud of how she was showing up as a leader, not just a doer. Michelle did it hustle harder? She worked smarter by working on what mattered.
12:27
Let's move to how to shift from more to meaningful. Now that we've unpacked the cost of doing more and explored what changes when you shift to what matters, let's talk about how to actually make that shift, because it doesn't require an overhaul of your entire life. It starts with a few small behavioral pivots that redirect your focus, attention and energy. Let me give you four unlearning moves you can try this week. Those are simple strategies designed to help you move from busy to on purpose. First use the three moves that matter rule most people wake up and look at a long to do list, then they try to do it all and feel scattered by 11am
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well, this shift changes everything. At the start of your day, ask, what are the three moves I can make today that would create the most impact, not the most tasks and not the most effort, the most impact. Write those three things down and let everything else be optional. This work works because research shows that constraints improve focus, so when you reduce your decision making scope, your brain can prioritize better and resist distractions more effectively. An example of this is is that a 14 low priority tasks like responding to every slack or cleaning up a spreadsheet your list might look like draft key points for a client proposal. Record one module for your course. Follow up with a past partner about a collaboration. Three things, clear purpose, forward momentum, to shrink the first step. Sometimes the problem isn't clarity, it's the size. The task feels so big that your brain hits resistance before you even begin. So the move here is simple, shrink the starting point until it feels light enough to begin. So don't launch your course. Just brainstorm three possible titles and don't write the whole proposal. Just outline the sections and don't revamp your entire website just to fix one headline. This works because of behavioral activation. When you take a small action, your motivation catches up. Action, first, motivation second. So quick tip if you're avoiding something, ask, what's the smallest possible version of this task I can complete in five minutes. Then start there.
14:52
Three time box for depth, not just output. This one's a game changer for people who feel constantly pulled in 100 direction.
15:00
Questions, pick one high impact task and give it a dedicated 60 to 90 minute block, no multitasking, no notifications, no checking messages in between. You're not just protecting time, you're protecting cognitive depth, because our brains can't reach flow state when we're toggling between tabs or checking our phones every five minutes. So deep work requires focus and boundaries. An example is, if you're working on a pitch, don't squeeze it in between calls, block 90 minutes, set a timer, go all in afterwards. Reflect how did that feel? What did I get done? That wouldn't have happened otherwise. You'll likely notice that one block of deep work does more than three hours of scattered effort,
15:48
four. Schedule, a do not work hour. Yes, this might sound counterintuitive, but rest is productive. Schedule, one hour each week, or even 15 minutes a day where you don't push anything forward, no goals, no inputs, no just catching up. Use that time to think freely, reflect on the week, go for a walk, sit in silence and breathe. This gives your brain white space, something most of us are starved for, and that research shows that that downtime helps consolidate memory, strengthen creativity and even improve long term decision making.
16:26
I once had a client who scheduled a weekly nothing hour on Fridays, no calls, no inbox, just a walk and a notebook that one hour became her most productive tool, not because she worked during it, but because she reconnected with her vision and recharge for what mattered next. The bottom line, you don't need to overhaul your entire life to unlearn the do more trap. You just need a few smarter science backed moves to retrain your brain for clarity, depth and meaningful momentum, because when your system honors how your brain actually works, consistency becomes easier, and when you focus on what matters, you do less, but you move further.
17:10
Let's pause for a moment. Grab your journal or just reflect mentally. I have three questions to ask. First, what's one task on your list that looks productive but isn't moving you forward. Two, what meaningful action are you avoiding because it feels harder, scarier or riskier? And three, what would change if you choose depth over volume this week? If you're willing, DM me on Instagram, your one thing that matters this week, I'd love to cheer you on.
17:45
I'll leave you with this. A few years ago, I was launching a new program. My calendar was full of busy work, email sequences, website tweaks, formatting, slides, but I kept postponing the one thing that mattered, reaching out directly to people I knew the program could help and why? Because that meant being vulnerable, being seen, risking rejection. The minute I stopped hiding behind more and focused on meaningful action, things shifted fast, not because I worked harder, but because I worked braver.
18:19
Thanks for joining me for this episode of Fun Learning work. If today's conversation hit home, share it with someone you know who's caught in the trap of trying to do more, and if you haven't already take the free work style quiz, it'll help you uncover how your brain works best so you can build systems that match, not fight your natural style. Until next time, remember you don't need to do more. You just need to do what matters, on purpose and with clarity, do less lead better you
