My guest this week is Dr. Alice Boyes, author of the forthcoming book Stress-Free Productivity (affiliate link; available March 2022). Alice was a guest on the podcast all the way back in episode 11, and as always she shares some great ways to improve your life. As you’ll hear, Alice has a powerful way of bringing together things that we might think of as opposites—especially self-care and productivity. She shares a lot of the practices that she finds most helpful herself, and she also explains why self-compassion is so important for motivation and self-improvement.

Topics we explored together included:

• Effective self-care and how Alice came to take it seriously
• Self-care for doing better vs. feeling better
• The connection between self-compassion and productivity
• Self-compassion and motivation for self-improvement
• Dispelling the myth that self-compassion is self-indulgent
• Mindfulness as the basis for effective action
• Self-care as true care, not buying products marketed as “self-care”
• My guest’s experiences with fertility treatment
• Scheduling your day as an expression of self-care
• Taking care of at least one home admin task each day
• Behavioral activation for mood health and depression treatment
• Increasing our micronutrient intake during periods of high stress (see this previous episode with Dr. Julia Rucklidge)
• Making self-care easier and simpler
• Varying our routine for creativity
• The definition of “deep work”
• Allowing your unconscious/unfocused mind to work for you
• When to give ourselves flexibility around our habits and habit streaks
• The importance of self-trust
• The integration of self-care and productivity
• Using a cooling vest to regulate our body temperature
• Getting support from loose connections rather than close connections
• Doing self-care with our children
• The Thank-You-to-My-Parts self-care exercise that Alice does with her daughter

Here are the links to Alice’s blogs on Psychology Today and Harvard Business Review.

Alice has two previous books (affiliate links):

• The Healthy Mind Toolkit
• The Anxiety Toolkit

Alice Boyes, PhD, was a clinical psychologist before making a career switch to writing.

She is the author of the bestselling book, The Anxiety Toolkit, The Healthy Mind Toolkit, and the new, Stress-Free Productivity: A Personalized Toolkit to Become Your Most Efficient and Creative Self.

She blogs for Psychology Today where her articles have over 23 million views, and also writes for Harvard Business Review.

Find Alice online at her website and follow her on Twitter for more great tips for stress-free productivity.