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Sarah Richardson: welcome to Flourish, the podcast where we explore career journeys growth, and finding balance in an ever evolving world. I'm your host, Sarah Richardson, and today I'm joined by Tovia Marinstein.

As a young professional, navigating the complexities of modern life, Tovia brings a fresh perspective on balancing career aspirations with personal fulfillment. We'll dive into the unique challenges her generation faces, like information overload, mindfulness, and creating a holistic identity beyond just a career.

Toya, welcome to the show.

Tovia Marinstein: Sarah. Thank you so much for having me. It is really an honor to get to be here.

Sarah Richardson: Well, I love this 'cause we were introduced by Don Whitney almost a year ago and just had this organic conversation that kept on going. And at some point I'm like, you need to be on flourish. And you're like, okay.

And so finally here we are. I love that we get to bring several months of conversations into really thoughtful perspective for our listeners.

And I'm excited to get to be here and share some of those tidbits with your listeners here today.

Sarah Richardson: Well, good. Let's jump in because you have talked about how your generation feels hyper anxious due to the constant influx of information. How do you manage this information overload in your day-to-day life?

Tovia Marinstein: Definitely a sense of all of these things are coming at you all at once, and ultimately we need to get wise about what information we're taking in and choosing to consume, and then limiting the rest of the noise so I no longer consume the news. I know that sounds a bit controversial. I rarely stay abreast of industry trends, and it might sound disengaged when I phrase it like that.

But people who know me and who work with me will tell you, I'm a really engaged and highly curious person. I just have to find a boundary somewhere

How do you find yourself then engaging in a more thoughtful way with people?

Tovia Marinstein: my job is not to be interesting. My job is to be interested. And so being able to take content in that's relevant to who I'm speaking to and what the context is and not have the rest of that noise and chatter in the background in a way I'm trying to fill it in, allows me to be more present in the moment and to get to be there.

Like it's absolutely a mindfulness practice though.

Sarah Richardson: Do you ever feel like growing up with more guidance from parents in general? I think we often hear about this as helicopter parenting. Has that impacted your sense of independence, and if so, how have you seen it shape your life?

[Mic bleed]

Tovia Marinstein: It's a good question.

I'm able to do this because someone else told me what to do. I remember I went to school when I was younger in a more affluent area, and in the district over there were a lot of highly engaged parents that got to where they got to because they took a certain path and they want their children to follow

in that model, and I would see kids crying in the bathroom pretty regularly getting BS on tests or a minuses, and I remember that distinctly different than the experience I was having at home where my parents were glad that I was, taking the tests and doing the basic things. B's were great.

I can do this and it doesn't have to be perfect or it doesn't have to look a particular way. Sometimes we show up and what comes after ends up being that bonus. at the same time, I have. Healthy input and guidance from my parents that I get to have. They had me a little bit later in life. And so I think I get to ride on that wisdom that they bring to a lot of context.

And it could be super helpful to get input from people who have done this before, so to speak. Navigating the world is very overwhelming and there are a lot of little questions that pop up. And having the ability to confer with people is an important way that we make decisions. And I'll say that getting to be this person now for people like my younger sister and cousins and sometimes, people I meet in the community it's really a gift, especially in a context where there are so many choices that we can have around how to advise ourselves on a particular situation.

How do I control what I can control? And sometimes that's kids, right?

Sarah Richardson: Well, and maybe sometimes, especially as we get older, we realize we actually can't really control any of it and it's a how we choose to handle certain scenarios. But you bring up this great point, which is essentially finding your true center when there are so many voices and so many opinions constantly coming your way.

What is one of the ways that you balance yourself and find those moments of really like introspection when there are so many distractions?

Have those pieces that go out and touch the rest of the world. I probably monitor myself closer than most people. Staying in a sense of like homeostasis or stability is really important to me and my ability to be healthy. And so interrupting any sort of downward spiral I'm feeling like a mood drop or energy drop with a walk with.

Food with a phone call to a friend. It's like a million micro touchpoints in a given day. Recognizing, I'm no longer being productive at work right now. Okay. I'm going to have to take a pause and I'm gonna have to go for a walk here or something. As much as I'd like to continue to plug away and to keep going, there's something else that I need right now.

I.

Sarah Richardson: I love that you lean into that because I tell people, sleep, nutrition, hydration, exercise. Just start with those four things and you'll probably have a relatively well balanced day or moments because those are all building blocks of how we function most effectively and they get skipped a lot.

Especially just grab things on the go or reaching for just that easy fix and you're like, Hey, sometimes you have to really be thoughtful about even planning to go. Fill up your water bottle and have it available to you at any given time. But there is so much focus on career success, especially for your generation.

How do you make sure that your personal interests and relationships are also thriving?

work remotely and I live alone and so I need to intentionally socialize myself or else I go a little bit crazy. It is not the same thing as, sitting on Zoom calls all day as it is to look someone in the eye and read their body language and have that passing of inf of all the nonverbal information.

And so I think partly I'm always looking for those connection opportunities and I think that.

It is something that I think about as keeping me healthy, which helps me to prioritize it on my list of basics, if that makes sense.

Sarah Richardson: Absolutely does. Because there's also. Part of our identities that get wrapped up in our career, and you and I have chatted that's just one part of it. And how do you maintain perspective on that?

Tovia Marinstein: It's a really important question and it's one I'm evolving in my answer to.

I think I really struggled with this when I first started working because you feel excited and important and you're making money for the first time in a significant way. Many of us are in their lives. And you wanna keep hitting that button of like, this is okay, this is success. I'm doing a great job.

And it took going through a period of time where I was really unhappy in my work and in my role to come to a place where I realized work is not gonna fill me up. It offers a lot of things for us, right? We need healthy. Interactions socially. That work gives that to us. We get to be playful and creative often in our, I get to be playful and creative in my role.

And now that I am feel on the other side of that challenge, they become an important way that fuel me to be able to show up. And I'll add that I think having a strong like spiritual practice that has continued with me throughout my life gives me a sense of like, there is something greater than this computer I'm sitting in front of and I am made for something greater than sitting in front of this computer.

And it gets to be a means to allow me to do those things, but it's not the end goal. It's not the only thing that I am here to do.

Sarah Richardson: I love hearing you say that because there are so many choices around employment, financial planning, lifestyle, et cetera.

Tovia Marinstein: It's a great question. I think our matrix ends up being, our literal matrix, our DNA, right? It's our gut.

It's our sense of past experiences lived through us and through that personal board of directors that we get to phone and borrow from. My sister talks a lot about analysis paralysis and when there are too many options that are on the table. It's harder to make a decision and we're more likely to actually walk away from that table.

So one of the things that we struggle with, or I struggle with growing up in this time with so much information and so many choices, is that at the end of the day, you need to make the choice. I'm a big Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes fan, and

Sarah Richardson: what I hear you saying though that is so important is you never, there might be like too much information sometimes to make a decision, but at the same time, you're not at a lack of having information available to make a decision.

So long as you start to learn to trust things like your intuition and also some of your own decision making for criteria that's embedded in who you are as an individual.

Tovia Marinstein: Yeah, and arguably it gets harder to make that decision as you add those factors into the mix. And so learning to make that decision and trust yourself is a big piece of it too, and is a learning process in and of itself.

Sarah Richardson: So how do you apply all that when you're considering a job opportunity? Do you look at factors like company mission, personal growth, work-life balance? When you are seeking employment opportunities, what are the things that are important to you?

And I think I gave it a little bit away there. But at the end of the day, it becomes an equation around.

Am I going to be able to be healthy and successful in this role? And people talk a lot about my generation valuing company mission, and I think that's true as an idea and an ideal to a certain extent. We need to be realistic and we're working to pay our bills and make sure that we have healthcare and provide for our families.

And so it becomes rather black and white. Like, can I do this job? Can I be healthy in this job? And I think that the factors around company mission and personal growth and work-life balance come into the equation when you think about things from that lens. If I'm working for an organization that is in some way counter to who I am or to what my values are, that opportunity isn't going to be healthy for me.

Sarah Richardson: When you take those considerations that you've shared with us, your ability to really use, decision making criteria appropriately, how do you also apply that to avoid feeling overwhelmed by some of the expectations maybe internally and externally when it comes to your career path?

Tovia Marinstein: m not always successful at avoiding feeling overwhelmed. Like sometimes we feel overwhelmed and we have to remind ourselves. All we can do is what we can do, and we need to go back to those basics and say, am I getting enough sleep in a regular way? Right? Like eight hours from noon to midnight is not what I would call regular or healthy sleep.

Am I consuming not just food, but media and digital content and food that are healthy and productive and in a timely way. Am I engaging with people in a social manner? Am I staying hydrated? Thank you, Sarah, for adding that one to my list. and that's what I can control.

It's an everyday all day thing. I'll add as well that once. I get down to the bottom of what I'm overwhelmed about. And if I'm able to get that clarity, there's usually a thing or two and tackling the thing head on, writing the emails and paying the bills and tidying up or doing the laundry. It actually, it releases bits of dopamine when we do those things and.

They reinforce our sense of, I got this, and that I think is counter to our overwhelmed feeling of, I don't got this or something else is in control here.

Sarah Richardson: But also being able to have. To a degree we talked about you don't have control over something except that maybe the time of day or, Hey, I am gonna go walk away from my computer.

Except that when I'm not on the road, I am in front of Zoom 10, 12 hours a day. Sometimes that is not the same type of human connection that is important to us. And you have mentioned in the past, in our conversations how hard it can be to unplug. So what are some of the practices or habits that help you disconnect and recharge outside of the five pieces that are important, but when you know it's time to just clock out, as I like to say, what do you do?

Just focus on your family, on your friends. You can plug in a spiritual or religious way if that feels appropriate for you. But the bare minimum to me is like my phone goes off and in a drawer and it doesn't get turned on until 25 hours later. And that sense of a, I know it's coming like reshift my whole week where I'm looking forward to Saturday, not 'cause I'm gonna go to the game or, 'cause I'm going, on a train to New York City.

I only travel in places I can walk to physically. So things need to be set up in advance a little bit for myself. I get my food beforehand. And sometimes I lay in bed all day reading a novel. Some days I go play, basketball with friends some days. I do feel it's important to connect back to my spiritual and religious practices.

I'm back to myself. My energy level is back where I felt like it used to be. I get to have that almost on a weekly basis and it's really special.

[Mic bleed]

Sarah Richardson: have to ask though too, when you know you're gonna spend those 25 hours, to your point, you said, I plan things so I can walk where I need to go.

People know when to expect me, don't have to text somebody like, where are you with this particular moment? There's gotta be a sense of peace that comes with planning, how you're also going to use that time so that you don't need your phone.

Tovia Marinstein: Yes, and it allows me to wander. I think what we lose a lot in all of the technology stimulation is wandering, not just around physically, but also our brain.

It might be at my house, it might be somewhere else, but there's no schedule I need to stick to or thing that's guiding me. I get to do what I need to do. It's so little of what we do today is centered around or is guided by, I'm doing exactly what I wanna do. Like whatever I wanna do in this moment, I'm just gonna go do it.

Sarah Richardson: So many of the great scientists and artists and technologists, entrepreneurs would take time out every day to literally do nothing. And maybe it was 10 or 20 minutes, and people say, I can't take 25 hours off of a given moment. Hey, I try 25 minutes, one of my friends, Kim was on the podcast early in Flourish, and she said, start new habits five minutes a day.

With me on a hike on a Saturday in case something happened. Took a few weeks to get used to, and I'll tell you, I absolutely love it. We work often on the weekends and we host our events. We go to different cities. Those weekends. When I'm home, I don't need my phone, and it's a pretty special thing to your point, to know that basically it's that ability to just allow yourself the freedom to be, and you don't realize how tethered you are.

All the time until you aren't, and I have to ask you then next, how do you create the boundaries to protect your mental wellbeing, especially when work and personal seem to overlap. You can take a timeout, but what about the rest of the week when the lines are pretty blurred?

Tovia Marinstein: Great question. We have entered this new work from anywhere age, and not everyone has that ability.

And it gives us that flexibility to say, you know what? I'm not feeling so great right now and I'm getting nothing done. I'm gonna make a healthier decision for the company I'm working for and for me. And I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna go for a walk, and when I come back, I'm gonna sit back down and I'm gonna do my thing.

I'm not going off to, lay on the beach for four hours. It requires, when we talk about boundary setting, dialing a little bit in or turning up the volume on our integrity and our work ethic, but it gives us that flexibility and freedom to do what we need to do to get to that place where we can do what else we need to do.

I can't be there on Saturday night, or I can't be there on Friday night. I will be there online with the rest of my team on Saturday night. And making sure that's communicated clearly, but we can't sacrifice on the pieces that we know are keeping us sane and in check. Shabbat is a no zone for me.

The phone's not going on.

Sarah Richardson: I love that No zone, like it just needs to be like its own campaign. How much do you believe Tovia of your generation considers how their career is defining them. Do you get a sense that there are more people who had the benefit of an upbringing like you did, where it was what you were gonna be when you grew up, was part of the conversation, not the whole conversation.

Where do you really see maybe some of those discrepancies? And I wanna add, what advice do you give to people who are trying to figure out how to navigate what you have figured out?

So I would say to reinvest that energy and focus and make sure that the transaction that you're getting in return is equivalent to the transaction you're giving. That might not be, it's not an A equals A or a B equals B situation, but it's get getting clear on what you like and what you enjoy and what brings you that sense of fulfillment and making sure you're able to do those things and build those pieces into your life or else you are going to get tired and frustrated really quickly.

Like, or something that feels super nourishing to me. What is that mental relationship I'm building with the amount of time I'm putting in to make that money I need at some point to show myself that there's this reciprocal relationship and I get this benefit and pleasure out of it too. And so the career ends up being the structure by which we can achieve not just that money, but this sense of contributing and doing this thing and it being successful.

And

it ends up being a framework for how we're able to meet our needs at the end of the day.

Sarah Richardson: And I have to ask, are you still buying yourself flowers once a week?

Tovia Marinstein: Yes. So that was another thing that you know. Buying myself flowers once a week on Fridays is a sensory unplug experience also, right? Like I go into a flower freezer and it's cold and it smells good and there are colors.

I play basketball on Wednesday nights with a group of women in my community, which is again, a super sensory experience. It's loud, it's fun. We play loud music and I paint a bunch, which you might be able to see behind me, which is like, it smells into, I like, I like the smells. It smells and you're moving, your body and colors are coming out.

And so I think that you've asked how do you unplug and where do you create these boundaries? Like once we get off these screens, we need something else to fill that void. We have the sound, we have the sight like, these deeply sensory activities that we're able to build in like taking walks end up.

And they help us move into that next realm, which is maybe your evening or. Whatever that next piece of life is, other than just work. If we just go from the screen to the screen, we go from the medium screen to the small screen while we have the big screen up. I don't know that our brain ever really gets that break and knows that we're doing something different.

Where to implement those things in your life is so, so key. Like you have a roadmap for any generation

Tovia Marinstein: I am a highly sensitive individual that gets a very quick feedback loop in my system when things are not working. And so having to implement these things is not just a, this is fun, but is really come from times of this is super not fun.

And so it comes from wisdom that's been shared with me and passed down. And I'm glad that you feel like it's valuable. cause it, it works for me and I'm gonna keep working the program.

Sarah Richardson: It needs to, and then you keep iterating it. Because honestly, when I was younger, there were things that I wish people had told me about how to spend your time or how to think about things.

What did you experience when you were doing that? So thank you for bringing that perspective. We've covered some heavy territory. I wanna get into some fun speed round with you, if that's okay. It

Tovia Marinstein: is absolutely okay, Sarah.

Sarah Richardson: All right. You've given us a little bit of a view into your weekends, but favorite way to spend a weekend morning

Tovia Marinstein: productively.

I mean, I'm sitting all day on Saturday reading and playing games with friends and family and that's nice. And then I'm excited and ready to get back to it. So I like to do my errands and get outta my house. I work from home, so getting to be out and around new stimuli on the weekends is really nice for me.

It's a really just yummy feeling to get to go out and be in the world.

Sarah Richardson: if you were to master a new skill, anything, what's it gonna be?

Like, I feel like when they invented calculators, people stopped being really good at arithmetic, and there's probably a part of our brain that we're not playing with as much anymore. I wanna make sure that I'm using it mindfully and I'm not losing my ability to do some of the research and other things that I'm passionate about.

And so, I'm wary and I'm excited. So

Sarah Richardson: I have a pretty cool infographic about prompting. Chat, Claude, whomever, for different types of information that you're seeking. I will send that to you because it's fun to play with it just to see what it's producing. We use it all the time here at this week Health to figure out are we capturing the right information in general.

Talked about in your fifties. So just really having a perspective that the always on culture means that it's always going to be found out as well. And so just being really careful about decisions that you make at any point in your life. But I definitely have some fun prompts and I can send you from an infographic perspective.

Okay, last speed round question. One book or even podcast that's had a really big impact on your mindset.

Tovia Marinstein: I feel like the goal of this question is to create an opportunity for others to pick that up and to pass that knowledge torch along. And I really read for pleasure and for escape, and I have books that I impacted my mindset.

And that how information is presented is really important. piece in our ability to ultimately understand that information. And I do data analytics and a lot of visualization now. So I think that, that, that piece of the puzzle sort of clicked for me. And I went on to, to specialize in research methods.

Sarah Richardson: It's why. People like you. When you get really comfortable with the prompting and the research capabilities of agent ai, it is an absolute force multiplier because you know exactly how to ask and think about the things that are already curious to you and how you can use it for good. So as you get more and more comfortable with your prompting, I can't wait to see some of the things that you begin to share.

Thank you for taking time with me today. Most specifically, thank you for a months long journey of conversations of just learning about another person, about learning, about perspective and ideas, and taking the time to craft a conversation that is multi-generational, which was always our point to see that manifested in you and the things that you've been able to share with me, the things that we've been taught, Dawn and others.

[Mic bleed]

Tovia Marinstein: Thank you so much for having me, Sarah.

It's been such a pleasure to get to have this conversation today and the ongoing relationship that we've developed. So I hope everyone's enjoyed listening.

Sarah Richardson: Agree and thanks for tuning into Flourish and my time with Tovia. Hope you enjoyed it. That's all for now.

We hope these stories catalyze inspiration within you, propelling you forward in your own career odyssey. Stay connected, stay curious, and keep flourishing.