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#306: In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres discuss the importance of learning how to self-regulate your attention. We often try to address distraction and worrying — two common obstacles relating to attention — by re-arranging our external circumstances, changing aspects of our lives. This can be helpful and even necessary at times. But to get the best results, it is also important to focus on the internals, on our own capacity to focus our attention. This capacity is like a muscle that we can strengthen over time with the right exercises.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#305: In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif discuss the importance of attention for working at your best. Understanding how your attention works — especially the dynamic between task attention and default attention — can help you improve how you both rest and work. Some may think that focus is a matter of brute force and self-discipline, or of simply arranging your environment. But the understanding of attention explored here points to deeper strategies that we can use to master our attention and shape ourselves in the process.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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#304: In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres and Sharif discuss OptimalWork's recently launched anxiety course called Overcoming Anxiety. Having the proper attitude toward anxiety is essential. Rather than thinking we must get rid of anxiety or merely cope with it, we need to see how to embrace anxiety and use it to perform at our best and live out our highest ideals. This understanding is key to shaping our actions, and also helping others to engage the challenges they face.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#303: Complaining is very tempting. When experiencing difficulty, it can seem helpful to vent our frustration. But chronic complaining can hinder the development of genuine bonds and can reinforce a negative mindset. Complaining narrows our focus and prevents us from reframing challenges as opportunities for growth. In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Majeres do a deep dive into complaining. Defending oneself or correcting injustices are not considered complaining. Real complaining — which is the futile expression of impatience — has negative effects on our brain and body, weakens our bonds with others, and prevents us from truly solving the problems we face. Instead of complaining, we can accurately assess challenges and find ways that they will bring out our best.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#302: In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres discuss the concept of self-efficacy and its practical application in various examples. Self-efficacy is the brain's prediction of success right before engaging in a task. It affects motivation, resilience, and the ability to overcome challenges. The key is to shape self-efficacy by widening the context of success and identifying concrete steps to improve performance. The examples discussed include dealing with a critical boss, learning a difficult subject, and staying focused on repetitive tasks. All of these situations require reframing challenges, setting goals, and maintaining intensity. These examples should help you see more clearly how to apply these principles in your own case. They also highlight that OptimalWork’s core principles — reframing and forming strategies — are not rules or rote formulas, but require your own flexibility, ingenuity, and creativity.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#301: In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres discuss the concept of self-efficacy and its relationship to mastery and confidence. Albert Bandura, a psychologist at Stanford, initiated the self-efficacy literature. He developed ways to help people overcome their fear of snakes and observed that this process helped them engage challenges in other areas of their lives. They seemed to develop a more general sense of self-efficacy, not only the ability to deal comfortably with snakes. This episode describes the essential elements of self-efficacy and shows how to develop this mindset. Self-efficacy has an interesting relationship to concepts in psychology like self-esteem and growth mindset, as well as OptimalWork’s key pillars of reframing, mindfulness, challenge, developing strategies, and growing in mastery.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#300: In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres discuss Cal Newport's new book, “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.” “Slow Productivity” builds on themes he explores in his previous books: for instance, mastering your craft and focusing on the process of working. Here Newport focuses on three principles for achieving greater long-term productivity: doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, and improving the quality of your work. The conversation highlights the connection between Newport’s principles and the OptimalWork’s ideals of order, intensity, and constancy in work. It also touches on ways that OptimalWork’s approach complements Newport’s. Whereas Newport focuses on how to develop greater mastery, OptimalWork adds the purpose behind mastery: growing according to ideals, and developing bonds with others.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#299: In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres discuss the theory and science behind reframing, which is a foundational skill of OptimalWork. Reframing is essential to personal growth and overcoming challenges. But it goes beyond many of the techniques espoused by “self-help experts.” It is not just about positive thinking or building habits, but about discovering the meaningful opportunities for growth hidden within the challenges you face. This episode summarizes the theory and science of reframing, with practical examples to help you apply this key skill in your life.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#298: In this episode, Sharif and Kevin turn their attention to temperance — the most misunderstood of the cardinal virtues in modern culture. While today's wellness conversations obsess over macros, seed oils, and "locking in" on the perfect diet, Kevin argues that classical temperance was never about health at all. It's about protecting bonds. Drawing on Augustine, Aquinas, and Aristotle, Kevin explains why temperance is fundamentally about keeping our love and attention "whole and incorrupt" for the people in front of us — and why food, drink, and even mindful eating can quietly hijack the very meals meant to nourish our deepest relationships. Along the way, Sharif and Kevin explore orthorexia, the etiquette of small bites, the strange inhumanity of intoxication, and how fortitude becomes the secret shortcut from white-knuckled continence to genuine temperance. A thought-provoking reframe for anyone who has ever confused discipline around food with virtue.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#297: Automaticity, while beneficial in some ways, can also be a danger if it makes everyday actions become rote. Treating each moment of a task as unique allows for growth, meaning, and mastery. One way to do this is frequently setting growth goals to stretch yourself in how you do things. The second half of the episode covers the Reframer tool on OptimalWork.com. The Reframer takes you through a number of steps to set a growth goal that will help you reframe a present challenge from a threat to an opportunity.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#296: In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres review the book “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt. “The Anxious Generation” attributes the skyrocketing levels of anxiety among youth, particularly Gen Z, in large part to the widespread use of smartphones and social media. The negative effects of smartphones include social disconnection, sleep deprivation, attentional problems, and addiction. Haidt recommends dramatically restricting kids’ access to the “virtual world,” while also encouraging them to engage more with the real world. Sharif and Dr. Majeres summarize Haidt’s insights and show how they connect to key OptimalWork concepts like challenge and ideals.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#295: In this episode, Sharif asks Kevin to untangle one of the most common mindsets he encounters when coaching people on work: the urge to "just get things done." Kevin argues that this seemingly reasonable attitude is actually a form of anti-fortitude — an effortful suppression of the cost of a task that quietly taxes performance and squeezes meaning out of what we do. Drawing on the acceptance and commitment literature and the neuroscience of the two striatal systems (the free, flexible dorsomedial system versus the rigid, automated dorsolateral system), Kevin shows how pushing through recruits the wrong circuitry, while willingly bearing the cost for love keeps us available, flexible, and capable of real mastery. Sharif and Kevin explore how to tell which mode you're in, why boring and bureaucratic tasks are precisely where ideals matter most, and how contemplation — being "recollected in love" — transforms even the smallest actions. The conversation closes with a first look at the new Golden Hour tool, redesigned around three questions (Who will benefit? What will be hardest? What does excellence look like?) that light up the meaning, effort, and attention engines before a time of work begins.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#294: In this episode, Sharif and Kevin explore one of the most psychologically subtle traps people fall into after being wronged: resentment. Kevin opens with a bold claim — that a hyperfocus on wounds is actually an inversion of justice, not an expression of it. Drawing on Augustine and Aquinas, they unpack why real justice is fundamentally outward-directed and rooted in love, while resentment collapses attention inward, keeping people locked in a loop of replaying the offense and waiting for the other person to make things right. They also address the fear of becoming a pushover, the difference between tolerating injustice and acting prudently within it, and practical ways to catch yourself when resentment is taking hold — including how the "prudent person test" from their episode on scrupulosity applies here. The episode closes with a compelling case for why the surest path out of resentment is not distance from the offender, but a renewed commitment to the bond itself.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#293: In this episode, Sharif and Kevin explore scrupulosity — a form of OCD that targets the conscience itself, trapping thoughtful, well-intentioned people in endless loops of moral doubt. Kevin explains how scrupulosity hijacks the machinery of prudence, replacing genuine moral reasoning with what he calls "sham prudence" and "sham guilt" — feelings that are indistinguishable from real guilt but point in entirely the wrong direction. The conversation moves from vivid real-world examples of obsession, compulsion, and avoidance to a genuinely surprising insight: the cure isn't better moral reasoning, it's bypassing moral reasoning altogether — through imagination, empathic simulation, and a willingness to embrace the discomfort of sham guilt for the sake of love. Equal parts clinical and philosophical, this episode offers a framework that will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered whether their conscience is helping them or holding them hostage.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#292: In her recent best-seller “Bad Therapy,” Abigail Shrier argues that therapy for children causes more problems than it solves. Shrier critiques the approach many therapists take as based on a flawed understanding of human nature, and she also draws attention to data suggesting that modern therapy is not stopping the increase in rates of anxiety, depression, etc. and may even be increasing them. In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres explore Shrier’s work, arguing that while much of her critique is valid, it only applies to a certain subset of therapy. The solution to bad psychology is good psychology, not no psychology.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#291: Kevin and Sharif pull back the curtain on the major AI overhaul inside OptimalWork, explaining how the platform has evolved into a personalized growth system that helps people set better goals, reflect more effectively, and build momentum day by day. They explore why generic AI advice often falls flat, how a strong governing theory makes AI far more useful, and why the future of human flourishing still depends on something no machine can replicate: the heart of a real mentor. Along the way, they preview the new Grow-Work-Learn vision for the platform—and share why this next chapter could make both personal growth and mentoring dramatically more powerful.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#290: It can be tempting to fit people into our categories: we think things like, “she’s sanguine,” “he’s not good at math,” “she’s shy,” “he’s melancholic.” We may even convince ourselves that these labels help us people as they want to or ought to be treated. But taken too far, labels prevent us from forming meaningful relationships with people. They can limit what we say or do, leading us to avoid certain topics of conversation or shared activities, and sometimes even introduce fear into the relationship. To form true bonds, we need to be radically open to the other person and treat them as a unique individual.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#289: The brain’s models and predictions play a central role in the vicious cycles that drive procrastination, dread, and anxiety. When your brain assess a challenge as a threat, often it’s predicting some pain, or shame and sounds the alarm to get you to avoid it. To reverse these vicious cycles and transform them into virtuous ones, we need to shape our brain’s predictions, de-fusing from our models, opening up to reality, and asking: How can this bring out my best? What would a new and better way of doing this look like?
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#288: In this capstone episode, Sharif and Kevin explore a powerful question: Do you have to fix yourself before you can serve others? As they unpack the virtue of justice, Kevin challenges the common belief that relief from anxiety, depression, or anger must come first. Instead, he argues that vitality begins when attention shifts outward—toward real duties, real people, and real bonds. But they don’t stop there. Drawing from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Kevin makes a bold claim: friendship goes beyond justice. While justice orients us toward the good of others, it’s genuine friendship—shared meaning, shared effort, shared attention—that becomes an inexhaustible source of enthusiasm in work and life. From teachers losing early excitement to professionals searching for lasting motivation, Sharif and Kevin show why projects and pleasures eventually fade—while bonds with people never do.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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#287: Why do we sometimes feel like we're at war with ourselves? In this episode, Sharif and Dr. Kevin Majeres dive into a therapy approach called Internal Family Systems (IFS), exploring how our mind has various parts — protectors and exiles — which are sometimes in conflict. Approaching these parts with curiosity and compassion paves the way to resilience and growth. IFS offers valuable tools for everyday life and self-therapy. This discussion is geared toward empowering you to apply these learnings to your own internal challenges, fostering a path to flourishing.
Find more at https://OptimalWork.com
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