#141: You Built the System That’s Stressing You Out

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In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera explore a simple idea with big implications: your calendar is a mental model.

What you schedule—and what you leave off—reveals something about how you organize your priorities, time, work, and life. Derek and Laura discuss how calendars, to-do lists, meetings, and deadlines can become useful tools, but can also create busyness, unnecessary pressure, and systems that quietly dictate our behavior. 

They also explore the difference between progress and productivity, intrinsic versus external motivation, unrealistic daily expectations, and why constantly judging yourself by what you accomplished can become its own trap. Instead, they argue for examining whether the systems around you actually support the life and outcomes you want. 

From calendars and classrooms to workplace systems and everyday routines, the episode shows how we embed mental models into the structures around us—and how those structures then shape our behavior. If your schedule feels like it is running your life, this episode offers a systems thinking lens for redesigning it.