2042: From Burnout to Flow State: How to Achieve More Without Doing More

Farnoosh Torabi (0:00)

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From burnout to flow state. How to achieve more without doing more.

Unni Turrettini (1:04)

I spoke with this man who has a law firm the other day, and he was telling me, Unni, even if I have told myself, and I totally can shut down at 6 p.m. and not respond to e-mails, the fact that not responding makes me more stressed than actually just sitting down a couple of hours responding. And that's when it's like become, the high achiever has become the overachiever, where you just cannot shut it down. You cannot take a break from it.

Farnoosh Torabi (1:35)

Welcome back to So Money, everybody. I'm Farnoosh. So what happens when you've checked off all the boxes, the career, family, financial success, the home, you've done everything you were supposed to do, and something still feels off. Maybe you're just really tired. Maybe you've become so good at achieving that you don't actually know how to stop. Or maybe as you move through midlife, you're starting to wonder, is this really what I want? And who am I when I'm not busy getting things done? My guest today knows this reckoning intimately. Unni Turrettini is an author, speaker, and former Wall Street professional whose latest book, Soulware, explores how we can reconnect with ourselves in a world that increasingly rewards productivity, performance, and external validation. Unni spent years in high-pressure legal and financial roles, pushing herself so hard that she once physically collapsed at a professional event. But even after building what looked like a picture-perfect life, she found herself questioning why she still felt unfulfilled. Today, we're exploring the difference between healthy ambition and what Unni calls fear-driven overachieving. We'll talk about why midlife can trigger a crisis of identity, how to stop operating in constant survival mode, and why giving yourself permission to work less might actually make you more creative, productive, even profitable. And in a very timely twist, we'll explore how Unni uses AI, including ChatGPT, to help reconnect with herself rather than become even more dependent on technology.

Here's Unni Turrettini.

Unni Turrettini, welcome back to So Money and congrats on your latest book, Soulware.

Unni Turrettini (3:18)

Thank you, Farnoosh. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be back here talking with you.

Farnoosh Torabi (3:23)

I've had the privilege of knowing you for a while. And even with this last book, you know, getting a little bit of behind the scenes and the journey as it is, the long journey to coming out with a book. This is not your first time around the rodeo, but this one was a very special and especially challenging book for you. Personally, you kind of went through a metamorphosis. It was around 2025

You were ready to sit down and write the book, but it just wasn't happening even though you had it all in your mind. You knew it, you were living it, but it just wasn't working. Tell us about that moment.

Unni Turrettini (4:02)

Yeah. So this book, it's a very personal book. You know, my two other books, very sort of journalistic approach, research, outline, you know, kind of like coloring within the frame. And this was just not having it. I tried all the things for news with, you know, I hired editors. I was trying to be super strategic. Okay, let's figure out the outline. I knew what the book, I could feel it, I could see it, but it just would not come down on the page. And it was, that was actually a process over a couple of years.

And then in January 2025, I was in this really different place where my husband and I had separated. He had moved out of the country. I'm in Norway with my two, with our two kids. And it was just like one of these times where, first of all, in Norway, January, it's dark. It's like pitch black 24 seven. There's like no light and very like quiet, nothing happening right after the holiday season and everything. So I was kind of like just like home a lot. And having all this time, I was like, this is the perfect time to write this book. And it just wouldn't have it that I was supposed to create an outline and to have the same sort of very intellectual process as I have had with the other former books. So it was really about a lot of letting go, a lot of surrendering to this process, and really allowing myself to journal. It was really about just letting myself write and journal without having a specific chapter in mind, without really knowing what it was going to look like.