NORTH STAR INTERVIEW: Rebecca Seal, author 'Be Bad, Better. How Not Trying So Hard Will Set You Free.')
While no fan of vending machines, if she had to be one, Rebecca Seal would dispense fruit for the rest of her life; “The one outside the swimming pool where my kids have lessons is a perfect example of the genre: over-priced snacks, all plastic-wrapped and acting like brightly-coloured, sugary-salty-crunchy little fishing lures to the assembled six-year-olds. Can you buy a banana at the swimming pool, or an apple? You cannot.” A sensible observation and a good way of viewing Seal, a smart, sensible, powerhouse chock full of ideas. Journalist (FT, Guardian), podcaster, prolific author of multiple books and a solid foodie (she was assistant editor of Observer Food Monthly after all), Rebecca knows how busy - and nutty - life can get. It should be little surprise then that she wrote a book dedicated to doing less and not feeling guilty about doing so, aptly named ‘Be Bad, Better: How Not Trying so Hard Will Set You Free’. When the world around is telling you to be more dedicated, obsessed, bothered and cutthroat, Rebecca’s book explores saying ‘no, stop’ and juggling less - or even at all. From your brain to your body, the incredibly well-researched book is on the reader's side from page one and doesn’t demand they do anything - except to do bad…better. I asked Rebecca about AI, messiness, balance and pressure in a very candid interview. Enjoy.
Rebecca is speaking at TBD Conference in February, and she’s exploring new topics, not just ones from the book. Speaking of which, grab your copy of ‘Be Bad, Better: How Not Trying so Hard Will Set You Free’ [Bookshop/Amazon] and add her podcast to your diaries! Finally, find out more about Rebecca and book her to speak at your next event here.
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I’ll start out with the boring but necessary one: what inspired the book to be the direction and tone you chose? I like the forthrightness! Also, is the book aimed at any group in particular?
The inspiration was the reaction to an article I wrote for the Guardian, which was published on Jan 1st 2022, in which I got the chance to examine what might happen if we gave up having New Year’s resolutions (which are pointless, and painful), and tried instead to make peace with our so-called worst bits. In looking at all that, I began to realise how much of what we are told is ‘wrong’ with us - physically, mentally, emotionally - is just a construct, often created by the consumerist culture in which we live, which likes us feeling insecure and distracted, ready to soothe ourselves with another little purchase. And then, after the article came out, my inboxes just filled up with positive feedback - which is absolutely not a common experience for most writers, most of the time! It didn’t take me long to realise that I wanted to explore the idea of rejecting what we are told to dislike about ourselves, in a bigger space.
I think the tone might be just how I write - and speak, probably. I’m not sure I tried to construct it, at least not consciously. I always read everything back to myself, multiple times, to (try to) make sure the flow of whatever I’m writing works, so I imagine it’s probably a more coherent version of how I talk.
I think the book will appeal to anyone who shares a few of my most prominent traits - anxiety and perfectionism in particular - and who wants to stop doing battle with who they are. It may be that it appeals to women more than men, in very general terms, but that wasn’t my intention. (Women do, statistically, read more of this kind of book than men, though.)
Your book suggests it's helpful to feel angry. A contrarian view to a lot of advice and books out there, which will probably surprise and delight many people with its frankness. What made you go this route of how anger can be a positive force?
In one of my first interviews for the original article, I was talking about anger with an academic who studies it (Robert Biswas Diener) and I think it was one of the first moments in which the constructive value of anger had been clearly articulated to me, whereas the message I had absorbed over the course of my lifetime was that anger is dangerous, scary, damaging and inappropriate (especially for girls and women). And I gradually began to understand that although all those things can sometimes be true, anger has what Robert calls ‘signal value’, like any emotion - it’s telling me something that I need to hear.
Balance is a brilliant message in the book. You mention that seeking it is counterproductive to being productive. Is balance ever really possible, though? Is it a destination vs journey proposition, or is there more to it thanks to the online world's never-ending come hither allure?
I’m not sure I’m necessarily about seeking balance, but more about seeking a sense of enough. I’ve said this about my previous book (Solo: How To Work Alone - And Not Lose Your Mind), too - in a way, I’m not saying I have any answers as to what your life should look like, for you or any individual. Instead I want us all to ask ourselves the right questions - questions which we are rarely encouraged to ask. What do I really want? How do I want to arrange my life? And often, the answers to those questions are made much less clear because we’ve been taught - by culture, families, school, TV, advertising and social media - to seek happiness in all the wrong places, doing all the wrong things with our time, and putting too much emphasis on money, on thin-ness, on owning stuff, and on very specific kinds of success.
What are your top tips to balance productivity and rest in your work life?
Honestly, I’m very much a work in progress on this one - I still completely suck at rest. As I say in the book, it’s why I love going out for dinner, because it’s the one place where you absolutely must not get up and get involved. I’m better than I used to be because having small kids bookends my day and I can’t overwork as much as I did. But I still quite regularly burn myself out a bit. I’m still learning that I deserve rest and that the jobs will never, ever all be done.
Staying with balance for a bit (it’s a full chapter, after all!), a quote at the end of the book stayed with me “For most of my life I have been in a fight with myself”. It’s something I know a lot of people struggle with because of pressures from advertising, social groups etc. What is some simple advice that may (or may not!) have made it into the book that would help a person be more satisfied with their lives? Or are we destined to always be in the fight of our lives?
I don’t think we are destined to be in a fight forever. I feel like I’ve put my weapons down, most of the time. The idea of self-acceptance is such a cliche, but I think that it is what a huge amount of the book is about - but I take a different tack from the usual ‘you can love yourself, warts-and-all’ way of thinking about it. I think what I learned, researching and interviewing for it, is that they are absolutely not warts, all these things we’ve learned all our lives to despair about or fear. It’s not bad to feel sad, or angry, or regretful; it’s not bad to be messy or chaotic; it’s not bad to be anxious or fearful; it’s not bad to age, or live in a bigger body, or have an ordinary face. None of these things are failures - they are crucial, inevitable and often beautiful parts of being human, of being whoever you are.
You discuss embracing traits like laziness and messiness. In an age where AI aims for efficiency and perfection, how do you think AI's development and integration into daily life might influence our perception of these human traits? Are we relying on AI too much to solve problems we should be solving?
Yes, I do think this is the case - you only have to look at AI generated imagery and the way in which many people already can’t quite tell the difference between it and a real photo, or the blurring between real images and AI where the two are merged together. The ‘perfect’ bodies it creates are a function of the coders who started it all and what they had been taught about bodily ‘perfection’ in their own lives. AI - like much of the tech world - magnifies the messages that those creating it have absorbed, whether that’s about what constitutes beauty, or how language is used, and even what problems it is designed to solve. (Is AI being used to deal with the lack of nursery places for pre-school children? No.)
I always think back to Keynes ‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren’ essay when I’m asked things like this, in which he said, about 100 years ago, that by now, tech would have developed so far that people will only need to work 15 hours a week. Every time we think technology is about to make life easier, we fill our time with more busy-work. It never actually creates opportunities for more leisure or…joy. If we had AI robots doing the housework, I suspect we’d simply work longer hours, or set ever higher standards elsewhere in life - run more Iron Mans?
With AI becoming increasingly prevalent in providing personalized advice and self-help guidance, how do you see AI tools aligning with or challenging the principles laid out in your book?
I really am no expert on this, but I guess my answer to this would refer back to the above. As I understand it, ChatGPT, for example, is still limited by the information it’s been fed (I am one of the authors whose work has been scraped by OpenAI). Personally, I wouldn’t ask AI for help if I was struggling - though I know that can work for some people, and if it does, great. But I’m wary.
I'm interested in your thoughts on how you think AI might evolve in relation to the concepts in your book. Do you foresee AI enabling a more balanced approach to productivity and well-being in the future?
That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But I can’t really imagine it unless the humans involved get very specific about it. Isn’t AI always going to be interested in the most efficient route to a certain end? And aren’t the humans involved in creating/training AI sort of more likely to be that way inclined too (this could be a gross generalisation, but we do have data on the way in which particular biases have been baked into AI, so I think I might be right…) And humans really aren’t built for maximum efficiency. Efficiency isn’t messy or beautiful or even creative.
You interviewed a stack of people for the book, I think it was over 40. Was there a particular viewpoint or piece of advice that stands out to you as exceptionally counterintuitive or enlightening?"
I loved KC Davis saying that there is no such thing as laziness, that laziness is just rest. As a constant do-er, that was very helpful. I liked Dan Pink explaining that regret is a good thing to feel because it helps us look forwards and not make the same mistakes again. I loved learning from Helen Russell that sadness is only physically bad for you if you believe it will be and that in countries where sadness is both expected and accepted, sad people don’t have worse health outcomes. I loved talking to Oliver Burkeman about how to let go of self-optimisation (he’d been so over-exposed to the idea over 10 years of writing a column about it that he’d realised that there was no such thing as optimal time use).
How have you personally applied the principles of 'Be Bad, Better' in your own life, especially in contexts that traditionally value high achievement and constant self-improvement?
Yes, absolutely - or at least, I try to, in a very gentle and non-judgmental way! I think the over-arching thing which sits with me is a constant state of questioning - if I feel bad about myself in some way, like the size of my body, say, working on the book has made me ask: why do I feel this? Who is telling me to feel it? What do they gain from me feeling bad? Is it real? And almost always, there’s some kind of vested corporate interest at play - overtly or covertly - which wants me to feel bad, either so that I’ll sign up to an online eating plan or so that I’ll go and buy a massive chocolate bar or a new expensive face cream. Either way, I’m spending money.
What’s the biggest tip you have for people when it comes to shunning societal pressures daily?
To keep asking the questions just above. Who is benefitting from me feeling bad about who I am? Do I have to feel bad, or have I just been taught to? I’m not saying we all have to go and live in a cave and never buy new shoes again, just that we can learn to choose to spend our time, money and attention on things we genuinely feel joyful about, rather than on the things that things like social media or advertising tell us we should be buying or doing or changing about ourselves.
Apart from buying the book and listening to the podcast(!), what’s your best recommendation for C_NCENTRATE readers to have a more successful 2024?
You are and always have been fine, just as you are. If success is being able to live comfortably inside your own skin, then getting to a place where you believe that that is true is the holy grail.
Finally, what’s the one question I should have asked you that you’ve never been asked?
One of the things I think about - but haven’t really ever been asked about - is the madness of wanting to write but also simultaneously never wanting anyone to read what you’ve written. It’s such a strange profession - I think many of us within it are quite anxious, quite insecure people and I suspect that those traits are useful in terms of being empathetic but also analytical and cautiously methodical. But it makes it incredibly hard to actually publish stuff. I have the career that I’ve always dreamed of, and I love it, but having people - lots of people, often! - read the things I write can also be really, really frightening.
For more information and to engage Rebecca, head over to rebeccaseal.co.uk