"Yes, AND" with Avish Parashar

In this episode of The Efficiency Advantage, Juli Shulem sits down with keynote speaker, author, and change leadership expert Avish Parashar to explore the powerful concept of "Yes, And" and how it can transform productivity, creativity, leadership, and personal growth.

Drawing from the principles of improvisation, Avish explains why so many people unknowingly hold themselves back with a constant internal dialogue of "Yes, But" and how replacing it with "Yes, And" can unlock new possibilities, faster decision-making, greater creativity, and meaningful progress. Together, they discuss overcoming procrastination, managing overwhelm, staying present, embracing uncertainty, and learning to focus on the next actionable step instead of getting stuck in perfectionism or overthinking.

The conversation also dives into creativity, innovation, mindset, personal development, leadership, productivity, and why boredom, curiosity, and flexibility often create the space for our best ideas to emerge. Through practical examples, personal stories, and actionable strategies, Avish shares how individuals and teams can navigate change more effectively while building confidence, resilience, and momentum.

If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or trapped by the need to control every outcome, this episode offers a refreshing perspective and simple tools to help you embrace possibility, take action, and start saying "Yes, And" to greater success in business and life.

Transcript

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Are you ready to finally break free from overwhelm, procrastination, and burnout? If you're ready to focus on what truly matters and create momentum to reach and exceed your goals in business and in life, then this podcast is for you. Welcome to the Efficiency Advantage, the podcast for clarity, action, and purpose that fuels your progress. So here is world-class productivity expert and your host, Coach Julie. Welcome back to the Efficiency Advantage podcast. I am your host, Julie Shulem, and today's episode, I have an amazing guest for you. This is someone who I have gotten to know through his amazing work. And I would like to introduce Avish Powersher. He is a keynote speaker, an author, an expert on helping leaders and teams navigate change, unlock creativity, and move from apathy to excitement using the yes and mindset. Blending humor, audience interaction, and improv experiences, and highly practical tools, Avish helps organizations stop merely getting through change and using it as a catalyst for brilliance, innovation, and engagement. Avish is also the author of three books, including his newest one that just came out, which I have read and love. Say Yes and to Change. Welcome, Avish. I am so happy that you took time to be on the podcast today. Thank you very much. Julie, I am so happy you took time to invite me on. Well, it's a win-win here then. So I want to dive right in. And so you talk a lot about yes and at or yes but versus yes and. Yes. And most people think that this is kind of an improv concept, but how does it actually affect productivity? That fascinated me. Well, it I mean, there's so many ways it can, but I'll try to focus here. Um, one of the biggest ways is simply our inner dialogue. So in improv, there's this idea of saying yes and instead of yes, but it's how you support your partners, it's how you respond to things on stage. What I think often gets missed though is how much we say yes but in our own heads. So if we're talking just like productivity, oh, you know, I should work on that report. Yeah, but I'm not sure what to write, or yeah, but I'm tired, or yeah, but I gotta fold the laundry first. Like, and all those little yes buts just undercut. And if you and your listeners are like me, you know that most times we spend more time total saying yeah, but and putting things off than when we actually sit down to do it, it takes 10 minutes. And so just by simply switch when we catch ourselves saying yes but to ourselves, if we just switch that to a yes and we just get things done faster. And then, you know, in the book we go much into creativity and productivity and how it really you get better ideas, you get faster ideas, but at the most basic level, if you want to increase productivity, it's simply saying yes and to the things you are currently saying yes but to. I love that. What a wonderful, wonderful mindset shift you're helping people to adopt. This is really great. This is really great. So can I piggyback off that for one second? Oh, please. Sorry, I don't want to derail your conversation here. Uh when you talk about the mindset thing, I don't know if you've if you felt this way when you're working with people on efficiency and productivity, but you know, I ran an improv group for years and we had auditions every year. And in the beginning, what I'd look for was skill and experience. Because I figured, oh, if you're good now, then you'll be even better. Turned out that had nothing to do with how good someone became. With just the mindset and attitude. If you walked in with no experience, but you had the willingness to play and learn and make mistakes, you learned the improv so fast and got good at it. But we had people come in with skill and experience with the wrong mindset, and they really kind of plateaued. They never got much better than they were on day one. So you saying, Oh, it's a mindset, it's like, yeah, to me, mindset is the foundation of everything, whether it's improv or change or productivity. You know what? You just reminded me when I took an improv class to just get myself better at responding to spontaneous questions when I was on stage speaking. And it was so hard for me at the beginning to do the yes and because my whole life is planning ahead and knowing what I'm gonna do next. And so the instructor, who's actually um well-known human in the entertainment industry, he wrote cheers. And so he he finally I went up to him and I said, Should I just drop this class? Because I feel like I'm holding everyone else back. Turned out everyone else in there was an actual actor. I was the only non-actor in the group. So I felt really, you know, like a fish out of water. And he said, No, just stop controlling everything. Like, okay, so he helped me shift my mindset, as you were just speaking about. And as soon as I dropped that need to control and have everything figured out in advance and just just went with the flow, I got actually really good. Like I was getting high fives from the rest of the class. And and I would guess, I wasn't there, I didn't know you then. I would guess you also had a lot more fun doing the improv. Oh, it was hilarious. It was hilarious. I had a blast. I just stopped worrying about what I was gonna say next. I just random stuff, just you know, yes, and um well, and I think that's that's such a principle of improv, but I find that's also a principle of productivity, which is the the worry about the past, the stress, stressing over or the the worry about the future, the regrets or stress about the past, when in fact, not to get too metaphysical, but reality is literally just this moment. This is all we have. And if you think about the people who I've encountered who are productive and focused, they're just focusing on the one thing you can control, which is what is the one next step I can take. Um, and that's true in improv, it's true in productivity, it's true in life, it's true in connecting and communicating with people, just being in the moment. And in this world that's so overstimulated with input at social media, doom scrolling, like we're just losing that ability to just be in the moment. How do you think that affects creativity? Oh, it absolutely shuts it down. Uh I think it it's what I'm working on with my kids, it sounds kind of like a bad parent. Um, I'm just working on letting them be bored more often. Um because I read something once that says that boredom is really the genesis of creativity. And if you are constantly being stimulated and engaged, your mind never has time for that quiet, which is where the creativity develops and ideas come from. So this whole idea of always being able to reach for a phone or TV, or even as parents now, like you know, when I grew up, my parents mostly ignored me as a kid. Like for playing, right? After school I came home, my mom was cooking, my dad was still at work, and I just now it's like you have to have your whole kids' lives planned. All right, what are we doing after school? What's the activity? Oh, now I need to play with you to engage you in a game. It's like we're never giving our kids the chance to just figure out and develop on their own. I agree. I agree. I used to say that to other parents. Like, don't overschedule your children. Yeah. It's and also even not over scheduling, don't also feel like you have to constantly entertain them. Correct. And I feel guilty about it. Like my kids are home, they're looking a little bored. I'm like, well, I guess I could stop doing this and play a board game with them, which I love playing board games. Yeah. But it's like, do I want to play a board game in that moment? No. Do they need it? No. You just feel bad that they're bored. And you gotta remember, like, that boredom is gonna lead to them really exploring and tapping into the stuff. Being more creative. Yeah, exactly. Solving solving the problems. Like, well, I don't want to be bored, what can I do? Figure that out. And even as adults, right, I feel like I have uh I I've self-diagnosed myself as having both ADD issues and dopamine addiction issues. Um and it's the same thing though. I find that my mood and and productivity go down the more I soothe myself with social media or or quick dopamine hits. But the times I'm able to have the discipline, or using I use like the Freedom app blocker to block myself from the internet, um, once I get in that stage where I can't go to those things, if I sit through that discomfort for like five or ten minutes, then I get into work and then my productivity increases because I'm not distracting myself with quick hits of dopamine. Oh, yeah, 100%. Thanks for sharing all that. All right, I have another question for you. Yes. So for someone who feels stuck and overwhelmed or they're procrastinating, what's one yes and shift that they could make in the moment? Well, it's funny, I I sort of glossed over it and touched upon it. It's that what's the one next step I can take? Um, one of the biggest mistakes improv comedians, new improvisers make, and kind of like you were talking about this in your initial experience, is you start planning too far ahead. You're doing a scene with partners, and you start thinking, oh, well, here's where I want this story to go. And the minute you've planned that far ahead, all the creativity goes out the window, it doesn't become fun. And I got a whole story in the book about this disaster of a show we did when all of us did that. But when when the improv gets really powerful is when you just focus on the one next step I can take. And I started translating this offstage as if you're feeling overwhelmed or you're procrastinating, you're probably thinking too big, you're probably thinking too too far down the line. So it's just what's the one step I can take right now? And in the book I actually talk about three options, right? The the most productive option is what's the most important next step I could take? But for many people, myself included, that often is too overwhelming. So it's what's the most next doable step? Not what's the most important one, but what's the one thing I would actually do? And if that's too big, just what's the next what's the most fun thing I could do right now? Like in that realm of productivity. Right. Because it's amazing how much I have tamped down my own uh creative direction sometimes. Because I get this idea and I have ADD, right? So I get this idea in my head of like this project to work on, where I got a lot of energy in this one area, but I'm like, oh, but I should really like respond to these emails first. And not to say those emails don't need to be responded to, but if I've got energy in this one area, follow that for a little bit, like let that creativity flow, right? And that's what you do with improv. You follow the thread, you don't try to force it. And I think I answered that question like four different ways, but hopefully that's I would say just focus on your one next step if you're feeling overwhelmed. Yes, and and I say the same. And a lot of times I have people who are struggling with motivation, yeah, and they think, well, I'm just not motivated to do anything. Well, turns out you can't just, you know, manifest motivation most of the time. But if you do something, anything, and as you said, you know, if if the the highest priority isn't gonna get you, you know, out of your seat to do it, then what's fun? What's something you can do so that you can start actually having some progress made on whatever it is you're working on on your project, and that will then actually foster the motivation. It'll come from actually doing something and being productive. Because when we finish something, when we're productive and we complete a task, it actually spurs on the motivation to do more because we get that dopamine hit of wow, I completed something. I feel great, this feels wonderful, let's do it again. It's this concept where I don't know if you've watched the videos about you just make your bed in the morning. Because when you can when you complete that, it's such a simple thing, takes maybe a minute, but when you finish that, you have succeeded in completing something for the day. So I kind of look at that as your yes and yes, I'm going to do this, and then something else will come from it. So it it really does help improve the productivity and motivation and diminishes overwhelm and procrastination simultaneously. So yeah, absolutely. Yes. I I love that. I love that idea. It's like the little thing and little completions. It's like you're what you're saying is to kind of replace what's giving you the dopamine hit. Are you getting a dopamine hit because you're watching a TikTok video, or are you getting a dopamine hit because you accomplish a small task? And the more you can train it to come from small task accomplishment, like the more product, the easier productivity becomes in the long run. Beautiful. Absolutely. So is there anything else that you can just enlighten us about? That something in your book, perhaps, uh, that will just kind of drive that point home of yes and I love it, I love it. It's so easy to remember. Well, um, I think you know, one of the big ones of yes and is when I teach yes and to groups, um, you know, whether it's a keynote or a training workshop, people are into it, but they're like, well, what comes after the and, right? I can say yes, but with and you have to like add new information. And so that's why a whole chapter in the book is about accessing your creative genius, which all people have, and we talked about that a little bit with the boredom, but most of us just lose touch with it, you know, you grow up and you have to become serious and and pay attention to what you're saying, and and so when you re-engage with that creativity, I think both the quality and the speed of your work increases. And we talked a little bit about this kind of offline before this. I and I think you're a fan or you talk about um the morning pages from from Julia Cameron as well. But basically, if you take three sheets of paper and just start writing longhand, um, and just the key here is you should never let the pen stop moving. You might have to write things like I don't know what to write, or this is stupid, or I hate this. But what's interesting is um as you do that, you start tapping into your creative power and new ideas start popping out. So then I I recommend people if you really want to tap into your inner yes and you start doing this, but do this with the reports, with emails, with um you know anything, anything you're procrastinating doing, just set a timer and start writing. And commit to not stopping till the timer goes off. And what you'll find is you'll get a first draft done so much faster than if you open a blank document and just stare at the screen. Um and usually the quality would be better eventually because you might have to edit it, but because you're tapping in your creativity, the quality of the ideas will be better too. So that's kind of the that's the one takeaway I have. I think that's such a powerful tool that a lot of people just don't do. They overthink instead of tapping their creative subconscious. Oh, I love that, and I agree. Yes, I've seen this in my clients. There you go. Avish, thank you. This was wonderful. I'm so glad you were able to share this with us. And would you please tell listeners how can they get in touch with you? How can they find you? How can they uh get your book? Sure. Uh so the best way to get information about me is my website, avishparisher.com. It's got all the info, uh, video clips. Uh, if you're driving and can't write that down, there's not a lot of Avishas in the world, so type A V-I-S-H into Google. I'll be one of the first couple results. Um, and for the book, there's book info on the website, but also you can go directly to uh say yes and to change.com, which is the book title, and that'll take you uh to the information about the book. Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much again. And I want to thank you for all um my listeners for listening and being part of the podcast. If you have any questions or comments that you would like to make, you can always either email me directly at balance at coachjulie.com and Julie is J-U-L-I, or you can also go to askcoachJulie.com and you can send a message to me in any way that you like. And you also can share this podcast with somebody who, you know, just might want to hear some of this today. Please go ahead and hit the subscribe button if you have not done so already. And thank you again for listening and have a very productive day. So that's it for today's episode of the Efficiency Advantage. Head on over to Apple Podcasts iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a private VIP day with Coach Julie herself. Be sure to head on over to the EfficiencyAdvantage.com and pick up a free copy of Coach Julie's gift. And join us on the next episode.