Surviving and Excelling in a World Transformed by Covid-19

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0:45Hi, everyone. I'm Adi Ignatius, Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Business Review, and this is episode episode three of HBR Quarantined. We have been working from home on lockdown, in quarantine for, this is the ninth week, and we just thought a lot of you were in the same position. So we created this show to talk about issues, the fallout from COVID-19 on the economy, on business, on what in the world the economy and what work will look like when we all get back to work. So we have a special guest star today, Arianna Huffington, who was co-founder and the force behind Huffington Post, now HuffPo, who is now the founder and CEO of Thrive Global.

1:28So we're going to bring her in in a second. But before that, I want to bring in my co-host, Josh Macht, my longtime friend and colleague. And Josh, I want to check in with you. You know, it's interesting. Somebody asked me the other day, are we always going to check in with people? You know, that every email we send is sort of, how are you doing? I hope you're okay. And I think it's a fair question. Are we going to keep doing that? The argument for is it's nice. The argument against, it's email. We're trying to get through a lot of it. So, Josh, I'm checking in with you. How are you doing? I'm okay, but it's a really good question, Adi.

1:59Yeah, do we keep continuing? Because it is a nice thing to be sort of checked in on and to check in on someone. You sort of feel, and I'm doing okay. This is week nine, but I also wonder how long we're going to keep marking the weeks. This just feels, I'm not sure about that. How about you? Yeah, no, I'm still counting. Now, for people who are watching this, put your comments in the comment field. Let us know who you are, where you're from. But most importantly, put in your own questions for Ariana, because we will interview her, but we want to get to a lot of your questions as well. Josh, the only other thing on my mind is just, you know, we're all starting or many of us are starting to think about getting back to work, getting back in the office and what that will look like.

2:47As I say that, though, I realize that we are kind of a unique subset, the white collar knowledge business, whatever you want to call it. We've seen companies, you know, Capital One won't be back in the office until Labor Day. Amazon is talking about October. Google and Facebook are saying their employees are going to stay home until 2021. They're finding that work at home is effective, that they don't need to be in the offices to do what they do. Now you think of the disparity, you know, and it's a class disparity or a work type disparity or something like that. We think of all the people who are on the front lines, the so-called essentials, and that number is going to grow.

3:27So we're going to have more people out there working. We're going to have more people at risk. We're all going to be at risk. And I I think for a while, at least, we're going to have to accept more risk and just try to mitigate that. So, Josh, I don't know what you're thinking is about that. I think you're right. I think that, you know, it's the disparity part of it. There's the fact that this is, you know, this was a big disruption, obviously, for when we kind of all went in. Now, as we reopen, that's also, you know, this massive readjustment, all these new issues. I mean, some of these things we're going to be diving into with our guests, which is terrific.

4:03but I think we're only starting to really contemplate just how some, some parts of the population are just hit so hard by this. You and I, we really can kind of work at home and be productive. And again, it's, it's going to in some ways be a big adjustment for when we get back, like figuring out how do we work when we get back in the office? Yeah. Well, I have colleagues who are dying to get back and colleagues who would be happy to never, ever go back in the office. So anyway, so let's, let's bring in our guests again. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments.

4:35It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. If you just joined us, this is HBR Quarantined. I'm Adi Ignatius, Editor-in-Chief of HBR. My co-host is Josh Mock. Our special guest today is Arianna Huffington, again, the co-founder and the life force behind the Huffington Post.

5:16Now is the founder, CEO of Thrive Global, which is a media platform set up to help us address the epidemic of stress and burnout. So just before we go to her, we created a TikTok that I think touches on one of Ariana's topics, which is whether or not we are getting enough sleep to do us any good. So, Engineer Dave, hit the TikTok. Day one of not getting enough sleep. Day two of not getting enough sleep. Day four of not getting enough sleep. Week. One week of not sleeping. Wait, am I filming this? All right, Arianna, that was for you. Welcome. I'd love to know, where are you? How have you been managing your life these past couple of months?

6:09Thank you so much, Adi and Josh. And I actually love starting with that question. And let's keep that ritual going. I'm in Los Angeles. I normally live in New York, but I brought up my two daughters here in LA. So my two daughters and my sister moved out here. And this is week nine for us, as it is for you. And Thrive, the work has been busier than ever because for every company now, health and wellness have been moved to the front burner and directly linked to re-entry, to business metrics, to everything a company cares about. And I must say it's been really productive working from home without distractions.

7:02And we are waiting to hear when our offices in New York, in LA and San Francisco will open. No plans yet. Ariane, you know, a lot of people sort of say to me that there's just a low level now of stress or anxiety that's just, it's pervasive, right? It's always, it's always there. And I think, especially for a lot of people, I mean, sometimes for many people, that's, that's always been the case for people. Now they're feeling it more acutely, you know, help us to think about how is it that you stay, you know, that we can stay mentally fit as we continue through this, which is clearly going to be this protracted period of time.

7:42Well, the first thing is we can't minimize the upheaval and the pain for many people. I mean, you know, we are among the lucky ones. Just look at what's happening with the loss of loved ones, the loss of jobs, the financial uncertainty. So the first thing is acknowledging the grief and the loss. But then beyond that, for me, this is an incredible opportunity to fix a lot of the things that were not working in the old world that we left behind. And if you think of it in terms of flattening the curve, I think there are other curves we need to flatten, and this is a time to start working on that.

8:29One of them is on mental health, stress, and burnout. and as you know mental health had already been established as a crisis and before the pandemic and the world health organization identified burnout as a medical syndrome affecting workplaces and of course we also had the increase in chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension which were all very stress-related. So this is an opportunity to...

9:25tackling dishes, and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. Look at what were we doing wrong? And I think one of the things we're doing wrong, and that's why we built Thrive to try and address it, was living our lives in this breathless, frenetic, always-on way where we felt that we could not disconnect because then we would be left behind. And that is fundamentally at the heart of a lot of the problems we are facing. Let me ask, and I don't mean to be disrespectful at all, but you created this company, Thrive Global, to deal with the problems of stress and burnout. What qualified you?

10:09What made you feel like, okay, you have the qualifications to communicate insights on this topic? Well, we have actually built an amazing scientific board. So it's not like I'm coming up with a solution. So we have a great board with the dean of the Stanford School of Medicine, Dr. David Akers, a lot of academics and people who've been working from Harvard, Charles Seisler, who's been working on sleep, Dr. Michelle Williams from the Harvard School of Public Health. So a lot of scientists and everything we're doing is science-based. That is a big redefining of wellness priority for us. To recognize that, in fact, the way we have been living our lives is unscientific.

11:01It's actually not validated by the data. And, in fact, the Harvard Business Review had a great piece on sleep. You mentioned sleep earlier based on work McKinsey had done on sleep and leadership. So everything we put forward is science-based, data-driven. And what we are working to do through our behavior change product that we launched is help people through daily nudges, daily micro steps, change behaviors, which, as we know, is incredibly hard. What about for folks who are managers and leaders, what can we do, especially to help those who are already feeling like they're just, you know, at the end of their rope here?

11:47They're juggling a lot, work, family. There's so many stresses. How do you both sort of spot that, especially when we're all remote? It feels sometimes like it's difficult to really make sure we're aware of everyone on our teams, but then also help people through it as leaders. Well, the first thing is to model it. We are finding in our work with many leadership teams, I was on a webinar, for example, with the 40 people who are in the global management committee that runs Accenture. They have over 500 ,000 employees and they are feeling overwhelmed. So the first step is how can leaders work with themselves so they are not feeling overwhelmed?

12:34because if they're overwhelmed and really stressed, they're going to communicate it to everyone around them. And we recommend micro steps that help them get to the eye of the hurricane. We have a whole new leadership playbook we work with with leaders. And the theme is the eye of the hurricane. We are in a metaphorical hurricane. And if you look at hurricanes, the real ones, you know, there is always an eye. There is a place of calm. And how can leaders get to that place? There are little things they can do every day that help them get there. And also there is a mindset shift required. The mindset shift is to stop believing that they need to be always on.

13:30This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. In order to be successful as leaders, that they need to be able to recharge themselves to come up with their best ideas, their most creative, innovative solutions.

14:12And that requires a different way of managing their days. And we have hundreds of micro steps, but they come down again to the scientific foundational importance of sleep in order to recharge. And also the fact that it takes 60 seconds to course correct from stress during the day. So taking the 60-second breaks to breathe consciously, to walk around, to remember what you are grateful for, make a real direct difference to our levels of stress and to our levels of empathy, which to your point, Josh, is essentially we're going to recognize where our colleagues are. So let's stay on the kind of practical tips, because I think everybody can use them these days.

15:07And I'm actually going to go to a question that came in from one of our viewers. This is from Ellen from the Netherlands, but it's really the topic of sleep, which Arianna, this is a topic that you have really championed, that we're not getting enough sleep. So simple question, do you have any tips for getting to sleep after the workday? Yes. The first tip is to pick a time when you stop consuming coronavirus news. All of us want to be informed, but if we keep consuming news right up until we turn off the light, we are going to be too stressed and too anxious about what's happening. There is rarely any good coronavirus news yet.

15:54So declare a cutoff point. Manage the notifications on your phone so that you don't constantly get breaking news, which coming from the media world, I can assure you, is rarely breaking news. and also take your phone and charge it outside your bedroom when you sleep and that is incredibly important because if you wake up in the middle of the night for whatever reason you are going to be tempted to go to your phone if you can't go right back to sleep I mean we can all identify with that and then the time for your sleep is going to be interrupted it. And another thing, as we're working from home, the truth is that our work never ends.

16:46So we need to kind of relentlessly prioritize what really has to be completed by the end of the day, and then get comfortable with incompletions. This is one of our micro steps that really works for people. Otherwise, they can stay up literally all night. We all can. Getting things done, answering emails, handling things. What about the, so Ariana, you know, everyone talks about the wacky corona dreams that they're having. Friends and family tell me, you know, they wake up in sort of a, in the middle of the night sometimes in a shock or in a panic. And what do you make of of all this? I know I've had some strange corona.

17:33They're not that strange because they're mostly about just sort of being trapped or not being able to move very well, being constricted in some way. I think the key thing is to have a transition to sleep. And those of us who have children know that when they were little, we didn't just drop them in bed. And we had a whole transition where we gave them a bath and we put them in bed. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra.

18:14Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. in their PJs, we sang them a lullaby, we read them Good Night Moon. Well, we need to have a transition for ourselves, especially during times of extreme stress like this. We actually partnered with Audible and launched a series of free sleep solutions that include a parody of Good Night Moon that I did called Good Night Smartphone, a sleep meditation with Didi, Sean Combs, that is kind of amazing.

19:03If you ever have trouble sleeping, please download it. And a lot of other things that will help people for free be able to relax, basically, and surrender to sleep, which is what many people have a hard time sleep doing. And then the dreams are going to be less coronavirus centered. So let me turn to another question from a viewer. This is from Ibrahim from Antalya, Turkey. Question is, how can leaders become more self-aware of themselves and benefit from meditation or sleep, whatever, to lead from within? Great question. The first thing is a mindset shift. And that's really what I'm optimistic about in terms of the next normal.

20:00We need to leave behind the idea of a leader who was always on, who never disconnected and bragged about it. I mean, how many times have we heard leaders brag about how little sleep they got or how they work 24-7, ignoring all the science and the data that shows that if you actually don't take time to sleep, you are less effective, less productive, less creative, less empathetic. And I wrote a book, as you know, called The Sleep Revolution, and I have 50 pages of scientific information on the importance of sleep for the brain. So it's particularly interesting that it affects how we function mentally.

20:53And that's why it's such a key leadership precondition. But we need to change the culture. The culture is still not clear on that. It goes back to the first industrial revolution when we started revering machines and then software. and of course the goal with machines and software is to minimize downtime. But for us, for humans, for the human operating system, downtime is not a bug, it's a feature. When we remember that, then we are going to prioritize it as leaders and recognize that we are much better at dealing, especially in a moment of crisis with all the challenges in front of us. For many folks, you know, we talk about some of the, you know, the upsides of this whole isolation.

21:51And to your point, you know, there's always been these mental health issues and somewhat of a crisis, as you pointed out. But I guess I worry that we're just going to snap right back to the old ways as soon as we, even if reentry is gradual, I sort of feel like at some point we get back to racing to catch that plane, do those things. It may be a long time from now. But, I mean, are you, how are you thinking about how do we create new habits now that we take out of this crisis? Josh, this is the most important question. And actually, I really wish we would all spend much more time discussing that and much less time discussing when are we going to be out of it because we don't really know.

22:36So, yes, I profoundly believe that we can use this time to build new habits. It's exactly how you are describing it. And I'm really excited about the work we are doing with some of the biggest companies in the world to do just that. With Walmart, we're working both with our leadership and with associates on the ground, in the stores. We have produced a special behavior change app for 100 ,000 distribution center associates doing daily journeys on these themes with the leadership. We are working with Accenture. We've launched an entire mental resilience program with Accenture to all their 500 ,000 employees that we developed in partnership with Stanford.

23:32based on the latest brain research around the brain and mental health. And it's kind of amazing how helpful it has been to see unprecedented engagement. People really want to address these issues. And companies are prioritizing it in a way they haven't done before. Well, that's sort of a follow-up to it because I'm curious, with the burnout issue, it feels like, at least in my life, the context shifting was so important, right? That the fact that we could move around in some ways always helps to break up monotony, right? And I'm just like, what are we supposed to do right now in the sense where you just don't have that ability to do that kind of context shifting?

24:22It feels like we're even more vulnerable to burnout? I don't think the problem with burnout has been primarily context shifting. I think the problem has been being completely disconnected from ourselves. I think we've all been living our lives in such a distracted way. And, of course, social media and our phones have not helped. And so the priority and the opportunity now is to help us connect with ourselves, with our own center, and from that place deal with all the challenges in front of us. It's actually a time to connect with ancient wisdom also. Whether you read the Stoics or the Bhagavad Gita or the Tao or any spiritual and philosophical tradition, it comes down to the same truth, which is that we all have that place of strength, resilience, wisdom, and peace in us.

25:31But most of the time we don't live there. This is an opportunity to tap into that place, to get glimpses of that place. Nobody lives there all the time. So that we know that we have it, we have access to it, and we can reconnect with that in frenetic times, as I'm sure they're going to return, as you said, rushing to get a plane or meet a deadline. But to know that we have that place that we can return to, to recharge and reconnect with what matters. Do you, oh, you're back, Adi. Hey, I'm back. Yeah, I disappeared for a while. I just, if you just joined us, this is HBR Quarantine. If you have questions for Arianna Huffington about stress, about burnout, about dealing with anxiety in this particular moment, put them in the comment box and we will try to get to them.

26:24actually I do have a question here this is from Cindy from Detroit who's asking is there anything we can do to help reduce the anxiety of our colleagues that our colleagues feel about returning to work like I said some of us are eager to get back in there many aren't how do we ease the anxiety of those who aren't so thrilled about the prospect so first of all recognize that that anxiety is based on on the fact that we still don't have adequate testing, that we still don't know fully who has been infected and who has antibodies. So it's not like a crazy anxiety. Nevertheless, to reduce that anxiety, the key is to be as much as we can in the present moment.

27:18Anxiety is always about the future. And I have a saying on my desk here by the French philosopher Montaigne, who said, there were many terrible things in my life, but most of them never happened. So we need to remember that a lot of the things we're anxious for and about actually don't happen. There are negative fantasies. And in that Thriving Mind course that we've developed at Stanford, Professor Leanne Williams, who developed it with us, has identified eight different stress types, anxiety types, depression types, that she calls biotypes. And we all are predisposed to one or the other. When we understand what is our dominant biotype, it's easier to have tools and techniques to deal with it.

28:17Like one of them, for example, is negative bias, and that's somebody who tends to look at the negative always in terms of what they predict about the future. Another is threat response, when somebody's mind is in a perpetual alarm mode. And that, of course, can be incredibly exhausting. But identifying these different biotypes, and we have a lot of information on that also available on thriveglobal.com, can help people become more self-aware and kind of recognize the signs when they come up. My wife's mother had a great saying that we often refer to, which sort of echoes the Montagne quote, which is there's no use in worrying twice.

29:07It's, you know, if something bad happens, worry about it. But the anticipation, there's no use worrying twice. Anticipation is the worst. It's often worse because there's nothing you can do about it. At least when something bad happens, we can take action. Yeah. Right now, I feel like we just have a lot of time with our thoughts, so it's really hard to hold off. I mean, in a sense, what, Josh, I think what you're saying is we sort of miss the commute. I never thought I'd say that. But there's something about the commute or some of those, I don't know, rituals about office. I don't know how you move in and out of offices that give you that downtime or give you that sort of scene change where it's not just day after day after day that we're efficient, but it's monotonous.

29:53We kind of miss those commutes. Yeah, a little bit. But, you know, after all, you are both tremendous readers. So this is also an amazing opportunity to read things that actually strengthen us at this time. I mean, I've always had on my nightstand Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, which I think is the best book on leadership. But now I literally read at least a few pages every day because there he was. He was the emperor of Rome for 19 years. And for 14 of those, he dealt with a horrific plague, as well as invasions, betrayals, everything that could go wrong. And yet he managed to find that place that he called the inner citadel and go there and regularly kind of refuel himself.

30:49and I feel we have so many incredible examples from history of people who got through times of tremendous trial stronger than before and this is what we can go to at this time to also strengthen ourselves. Yeah, no, it's true, Arianna. At first when we kind of entered this, the reading for me was a little difficult actually. I was distracted. Now going into someone's world like that or reading a novel is amazing because it's the closest thing to travel to get out of where we are. Yeah. Sariana, those are good book tips. I don't have all of those books you mentioned on my night table. I do have Goodnight Moon, but that's because my granddaughter was just here for the weekend.

31:41So we have a segment that we do each episode called here today or here to stay. And Josh, do you want to tee that up? Sure. So the thing that I find right now is I am probably walking more than ever. So it's probably been one of the things that I take advantage of right now, a couple times a day at least. And it's great because you can have meetings with people, you can walk, and it feels, at least as the weather gets nicer, it feels amazing. And it's something that was really difficult to squeeze in in our old life, in the old world. So I'm hopeful this is something we carry forward. Yes, the walks.