You Might Also Like: Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb

Hoda Kotb (0:10)

All right, so first of all, let me preface this by saying, I was looking, I was doing research, which in quotes means looking on Instagram. And I saw this thing that my friend Maria Schreiber posted, and it was entitled, How We Spend Our Time, okay? And some really smart person did a whole study on how we spend our time.

And some really smart person did a whole study on how we spend our time from the 1920s to today. What did we prioritize then and what do we prioritize now? And when you look back to the very beginning, it was family, household chores and all that stuff was going on. So you could see how everything fell into the pecking order.

As the timeline went on, when TV was introduced, TV was dominant, then it was TV, and it was all of these kind of things. Once the internet came in, then it was the internet, then it was Instagram and TikTok, and it showed how much of our lives we spend on electronics. But what stood out to me was how little of our time we were spending with friends. That was the thing that shrunk down the most. Because we think, because we can see what someone's doing on Insta, oh my God, they had a great vacation. It looked like so much fun that we don't need to speak to them. And when we do, we just ask for a follow-up. So how was that vacation that you already posted about and got tons of likes and so we already know? So it made me think about prioritizing friendships. Like what are we doing? Think about your time pie today. What did you do today?

So you got up, you ate breakfast, maybe you exercised, maybe you went to work or maybe you took care of your kids, which is I think much harder work. And you maybe cleaned up a little, you ran some errands, think about your day and how much did you look on your screen time, which I hate doing, and look to see how much time did I spend there. You know how we always say we're checking our emails? You know how you say that? I say that too, I'm checking my emails. But really in reality, you go down a million stupid rabbit holes that you wish you didn't go down. Okay, so I decided I'm going to prioritize friendships. So that takes effort. You can't just hope they happen. So it happened today for me, in fact. I knew I had this podcast today with Seth Meyers, who I love dearly, by the way. I think he's one of the nicest people I've ever met, and I love when nice people become wildly successful. It's one of my favorite things. But I'd made a friend five years ago, when I went to this place called the Hoffman Institute, which I told you guys about. It's like a week-long retreat where your life changes. I met a guy named Joe there, and Joe happened to be in town. I was thinking, I'm too busy today, I can't squeeze it in. Joe was like, hey, can you meet? I was like, no, no, I can't. And then I was like, yes, I can. Yes, I can. I'm gonna take some time from here and spend time. So he and I sat on a bench in New York City and caught up, and it was beautiful. It was like one of those conversations that filled my soul. And then I was thinking, I wanna be more in the business of that. So think about a friend, maybe a friend who you haven't called and they're on your list. I'm gonna check in with them.

Somebody once said, if you have a thought or a feeling, do it. If you see someone and you wanna pay them a compliment because they're wearing cute shoes, and you're like, oh, they already walked past me. Just say, I love your shoes. Today, after I was with Joe, I walked by The Today Show and I was like, do I have time to pop in and hug Savannah? You know what the answer is always? Yes, you have time. Go in, hug Savannah, hug Roker, hug Carson, hug Jenna. I saw Jenna, hug Craig. I got to see everybody. If you have a good thought, do it. Preserve these friendships, these relationships that can easily go by the wayside. This podcast is called Joy 101 because it's based on this system I have, this app and this ecosystem of just beautiful things. What I'm going to do at the end of these podcasts is we're going to go through a de-stressing like practice. We're going to do it together because we don't need stress. We're over stress. It's over, okay? We're done with it. At the end of this, you and I together are going to spend four minutes and you're going to think about how you feel before and then we're going to think about how you feel after. These are practices available on the Joy 101 app and they're going to be this one that we're going to do together. You're going to be like, oh, I love it. Okay? We're going to do that together.