Leyla Kazim Is Choosing A Slower Life

Why (and how) the BBC co-host and author finally said no to the London rat race

When I was cleaning out my drafts, I somehow deleted the original of this interview (oof!). I’m reposting it here, but I’m so sad that I lost all the great engagement that we had here—there were hundreds of likes and so many interesting comments! This interview really resonated. I will be more careful in my drafts folder moving forward. 🤦‍♀️

This week, I got to talk with Leyla Kazim , who co-hosts BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme and writes A Day Well Spent, a newsletter seeking pathways to more purposeful living, here on Substack.

Many of the best people to read on Substack are from the UK, and Leyla Kazim is one of them.

I could write a whole essay about why I love Substack so much. At the top of the list is the exposure I’ve had to people from other countries—writers and readers—that I otherwise would not have encountered.

When I published my essay, The Way We Live In America Is Not Normal, I was surprised by how many people from the UK weighed in to say, "Hey! We are experiencing some of this, too!" I heard the same from some Canadians, as well.

While there are some qualitative differences between what Canadians and Brits are experiencing compared to the US—they don't have the skyrocketing educational or health care costs that put many Americans in staggering levels of debt—it seems that hustle and burnout culture is ruining their lives too.

To be clear, even if they aren't forced into debt to meet their basic needs, that doesn't make the suffering from overwork any less problematic. I wrote a whole essay about what the chronic stress of overwork does to your health.

As Leyla discusses, there is also pressure in the UK to decrease the support Brits receive through their social safety net, which creates a sense of economic precarity that many Americans, especially younger ones, can relate to. This creates even more chronic stress.

Leyla and I are both passionate about shedding consumerist (and other) social conditioning and paring down our lives to live more slowly, intentionally and joyfully. In our conversation she shares how she has done this in her life and the impact it has had.

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

Kirsten Powers:

Okay, well, I'm really excited first of all because we're getting to meet here on Zoom after becoming Substack friends, which is a thing. I'm here with Layla Ka, I say correctly Kam. She is a food and travel journalist, and she also has a very popular substack that I love called A Day Well Spent. And I will link to all of that below. And what I wanted to talk to you today about Layla is I wrote this piece about America, it's was called America is Not Normal. It went viral and it was a lot about what's happening. Some people call it late stage capitalism, uber capitalism, whatever you want to call it, but it's basically hustle culture 24 7, nothing ever stops. And I heard from a lot of people from the UK saying, Hey, this is actually happening over here, which was really surprising to me. So I do know there's a lot of similarities between the two countries. Obviously we have a connection, but I have always thought of as being more humane and it probably is more humane than the United States. But I want to hear from you, what has your experience with this been? Do you feel that the UK has a hustle culture?

Leyla Kazim:

And firstly, so excited to be here. So excited to meet you, massive fan of your work. And I mean, it was this article that introduced me to you and this article, I dunno how many people I read it to. I read it out to my husband twice. I sent it to my brother, I sent it to my parents and resonated with so much that you were saying because I think in a similar way in the UK we have a hustle culture and it's not good for us. My general opinion is that we, and when I say we, I mean the uk, and whenever I say the UK, I kind of also also mean North America because I think we're quite similar. We work too much. This is what I think. And when I say work, I mean the time we spend on the things that make us money.

Leyla Kazim:

And I think the reason we work too much is because we are following what you call social conditioning, which you describe your newsletter as we're following this social conditioning, which is telling us that we are supposed to want and follow a certain course in life. And this course is based around consumerism and capitalism and therefore it costs quite a lot. And so to maintain this life, you need to earn a lot of money because things cost a lot. And that course for a lot of people, including myself in my pre-life, which I can tell you about after for a lot of people, looks like something like the following, you leave school, you go into higher education, you apply for some kind of corporate job in an office for a corporation in the city. You work hard, you find a partner, you get married, you buy a property, you have a family, and you continue. And then as you progress through adulthood, you your wants and needs increase. And so you are constantly trying to progress up the ladder to earn more, get promoted in order to be able to sustain this life. And it is crazy to me. It feels like it's not sustainable.

Kirsten Powers:

It's not. It's not because, yeah. And also you mentioned Canada, and I should say I heard from a lot of Canadians as well. And I'll tell you why I was surprised by, it's because you have more of a safety net, I guess a social safety net in the UK than we have in the United States in terms of having government provided healthcare in the United States. That's one of the leading causes of debt and bankruptcy. And so I'm wondering, is that changing at all or do you feel like you still have a pretty good social safety net around healthcare?

Leyla Kazim:

Well, that's the thing. It's a great question because I think most people would agree that the National Health Service has never been so under pressure and ad hoc feedback. I mean, I'm lucky in that myself and my immediate family, we haven't had to use it really, but from family members who have, and the stories you read, I mean, I know a lot of great, amazing, incredible angelic work goes on in there, but so much bad stuff is happening as well because they're so under pressure. And so I think more and more people are feeling like they can't rely on that anymore and that they need to be able to give themselves a safety net in terms of private healthcare. But who, I mean that's available to a very kind of Small number.

Kirsten Powers:

And when you say under pressure, you mean under budget cuts and things like that? Yes. So it's not as robust as it once was. No. Right. Which I think gets to sort, this is part of this late stage capitalism, which for those who don't know, it's basically capitalism that's become completely untethered to any kind of morality or decency. So when I think about capitalism, when I was growing up, I think you're younger than I am, but I'm 56. So when I was growing up, it was very different. And look perfectly, there's an argument to be made that capitalism is always bad. I know people make that argument, but all I can say is that it wasn't like this when I was growing up and people did have time off and working on the weekends was considered kind of odd behavior. It's not really something people would do. The idea that you would give 110% to your job work extra didn't really, you work for what you were paid to do and your job wasn't your entire identity. So there was a shift. And I'm wondering, did you ever experience it being different in the UK or has it always been this way?

Leyla Kazim:

I think a thing that I personally experience was the idea that so many jobs are kind of, I'm sure the term bullshit jobs. Have you heard of this?

Kirsten Powers:

Not Really, no.

Leyla Kazim:

Gosh, brilliant. It's from a professor, professor called David Greer from the London School of Economics, and he coined this term bullshit jobs a few years ago, which describes the kind of jobs where if they were to disappear tomorrow, no one's going to notice. And he called them morally corrosive and kind of spiritually devoid where you go into an office and you do this work for the sake of doing it and you do it because you need to earn this money to satisfy this lifestyle that you have been led to believe you need. And also a lot of people don't realize there are alternative ways to live, so they carry on this lifestyle. And my own story is that I worked in a software company straight from uni and I loved it. It was great for a few years because there was a senior management who was awesome, the kind of person that he just praised you and want to work well for them. And he was great. Then he got worked out of the company and it was then that I had a dawning realization that I think I'm in, what am I doing here? And I actually put this to the test for, I was like, I don't think this job is of any meaning. Why am I here? And so what I did as an experiment is I didn't do any work for a year.

Leyla Kazim:

When I say I didn't do any work, I had a line manager who I reported into. I had a weekly meeting with half an hour before each weekly meeting. I would spend 15 minutes typing out one page of nonsense. I took it into the meeting said with a very convincing tone. It was like So John or whatever his name was, yeah, I've done this and I think I'm making really good progress with this. And I've spoken to Andy over in accounts, and so they're on board with it. So yeah, I think it's going well. And he just went fabulous. Carry on. So I didn't actually do any work for a year in that time at my desk in the office. What I spent my time doing was planning the eight months of travel that I then went on in spreadsheet form. And this proved to me that I was giving away all of my time in this office with this terrible lighting and the awful carpet

When I could be just outside in the sunshine or just doing something else or just doing anything. And my opinion now is I don't actually need that much money. My outgoings are not that much and the thing I value the most, one of the things I value the most in my life is my free time. And so now my ambitions in life are to work less and cultivate more free time to do the things that don't necessarily earn me money, but that I just love to do.

Kirsten Powers:

And have you been living this way for a little while or is this still aspirational?

Leyla Kazim:

Yeah, so I mean I left that life. We went traveling for nine months and then I came back and started working for myself and basically somehow got into the food industry, which is where I am now. Yes, I would say I'm on the path. For example, I don't work Fridays. I completely offline on Fridays. Mondays I also don't work. I kind of do admin stuff, life admin stuff. And then, so really Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the days that I properly work and I've got a lot of hobbies and they take up a lot of time. So I need to find time somewhere.

Kirsten Powers:

And how would you compare Layla today to Layla at the software company?

Leyla Kazim:

What's so funny, for some reason, I can't remember why, but I was looking through tweets I wrote from years ago when I first joined Twitter, and I was reading them and I said, who is this person?

Kirsten Powers:

I had the same experience.

Leyla Kazim:

Really?

Kirsten Powers:

Yes, I had the same experience. I was nuts, angry

Leyla Kazim:

And horrible,

Leyla Kazim:

Always Complaining and just really annoyed all the time and just really when you just being horrible and picky at everything. And I was like, wow, I must have been unhappy.

Kirsten Powers:

Exactly. Well, and that's the thing, oftentimes when I go on Twitter, I'm like, oh, there's all the unhappy people they live. I used to be one of them that was addicted to all this conflict and the bad thing that happened that I have to get upset about with everybody else and all this kind of stuff. Now, I don't mean it just doesn't even exist to me. I mean, I just feel so much healthier and grounded. And I think one of the things that I'm really committed to and what I'm trying to do in my newsletter is you brought up the social conditioning. It's getting people to step back and say, wait, how much of this is authentically coming from me? And how much of this is, am I just in the zombie state just moving forward doing the thing that I'm supposed to do and never really having what I want and always feeling unhappy and not really questioning it.

Kirsten Powers:

And I think another problem is with the consumerism is they convince you that, well, the reason you're not happy is you don't have enough things or you haven't gone on the right vacation or you haven't whatever, or you don't have the right body or you don't have whatever it is. And so you're always doing all these self-improvement things and spending money and trying to get more things. And it's like literally none of that is ever going to make you happy. And I think we all know that intellectually, if you said that to somebody, they would be like, and then go right back to doing the stuff, get right back on the hamster wheel and just be like, I got to get that next thing. I got to get that next hit. And then you're like, you don't really actually don't need that much. You need food, you need shelter, you need clean water, clean air and time for friends and family nature.

Kirsten Powers:

I mean that's really what you need. I would add [inaudible] healthcare to have your basic needs met. And so one of the things, and I think we have kind of communicated about this is that when we're, I'm moving to Italy basically, and when you look at how much smaller the houses are and the closets and everything, and it's like, oh, and then you just don't have as much room for stuff and you don't have that much stuff, and actually you don't need that much stuff. And I even look at my closet now after I left tv, I got rid of all my TV clothes, but then I still stood in my closet and I thought, when would I ever have needed all these clothes? It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, yeah. Yes. I just feel like I was in some sort of trance and I don't even have that much compared to your average person. I mean, I'm telling you, if I shouldn't, in my closet, it's not even that much. And I'm just like, but why do I think I need all this when I basically wear three things?

Kirsten Powers:

So do you feel like in the UK people are starting to react to this? It's becoming something. I think in the United States people are starting to say, this can't go on, we can't do this.

Leyla Kazim:

I think the pandemic gave pause for people to realize, I think part of the problem with people not knowing what they want and so they just keep getting pushed along by this wave, directing them to where they're going is that no one has any time to just stop and think what is happening. Pandemic gave that time to people where there was never time before. And I think that has resulted in a lot of big changes. People going, what am I doing with my life? And so I think a lot of big changes happen from that. But the people who haven't changed and they're still stuck into this. I mean, I know people and they've told me their daily life and I'm just like, how is this sustainable? How can you do this? For example, I know someone, she gets up to six, she leaves the house to drop her toddler off to nursery at seven, she commutes for an hour into work, gets there at eight, she works through until four, doesn't take her lunch so that she can leave a bit early at four so that she can get back to the nursery at five to pick up the kid.

Leyla Kazim:

She bathes and feeds it until six. Then she will prepare the dinner for her and her husband by the time that's all cleaned up and whatever. It's nine o'clock and she's getting up at six, so she needs to go to bed soon. So you've just got no time to think, to plan, to dream, to do anything for yourself. And I'm like, how is this? I mean, people give so much of their lives to these corporations and often work on weekends as well, then their health goes out the window. My friend said to me, don't even ask me about exercise. I can't, there's no space for that in my brain whatsoever.

For What? Because they've got mortgages that are too big because they're upgrading their car every three years. And all These huge costs that I feel like a lot of it is done probably it's kind of a status thing, but also just because they're swept through it and everyone else is doing it, and it's kind of like, well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's just you're so much influenced by what's happening around you, which again is why I want to be in Italy because I want to be around people who aren't doing this. You know what I mean? They don't feel like they need, that's not something that they need. And so I'm not saying there's no at Italian that are like that, but for the most part it's just not what they're doing. And I think there's the keeping up in the us, keeping up with the Joneses or whatever. Do you think that the US has had an influence on the consumerism, or do you think that's something that happened organically over there? I just feel like we export so much of our dysfunction to the world.

Leyla Kazim:

Yeah, it's a good question. And I think, I think a lot of media things like TV shows and stuff, we consume a lot of that stuff over here. So it must come through. It must come that. I think one of the reasons, I mean I just, I'm very bad at spending money and I hate shopping. And I've written a piece about how much I hate shopping because whenever I go into basically any store, I'm just amazed at the amount of shit For sale. What is all this stuff that's just made of plastic, some form of plastic that no one needs? And what was my point about that? I can't remember whether

Kirsten Powers:

The US is influencing exporting, its kind of mentality, hyper capitalist, hyper consumerist mentality.

Leyla Kazim:

I lost my train, but through media and stuff, I think that's, it's definitely a big influence and it just, that's the thing to do. It's very rare you get presented with an alternative way of living through mainstream media. You are Meant to have the big car in the house and the posh kitchen and the Big TV and the stuff.

Kirsten Powers:

Do you feel like people who are older, maybe your parents feel like it didn't used to be like this, that it was easier or that it was you weren't expected to work on weekends or you weren't expected to work through lunch or these kinds of things?

Leyla Kazim:

Well, my parents are both immigrants, so they had a different way into adulthood and they worked very hard. Their own businesses, they always worked for themselves. They didn't work for other people in catering, actually, cafes and stuff. But what I know from my childhood, which I don't see much these days, so when I was a kid, we didn't have loads of money. We weren't poor, but we weren't, my parents had a calf and whatever, and my dad was a driving instructor for years. I never got any branded stuff, never Nike shoes, never. I dunno whatever brands you would have. So in our kitchen, we never bought the branded foods. We always bought the supermarket own brands, and that was, I never problem with any of that. It was fine, but it's amazing to me. I've got family members with kids, she's got hunter boots and she's two mind blowing,

Kirsten Powers:

Very different. Very different.

Leyla Kazim:

That is what I mostly see around me is that people being kind of pressurized, especially parents. And I think just probably school playgrounds are quite difficult places when one kid has the latest whatever goes home and says, Johnny's got this, can I have these trainers? And it's like, so to answer

Kirsten Powers:

Your question, yeah, I see that, and actually I want to do a little more research into this, but in the United States, at least for when I was growing up, I think a lot of that was because people didn't have as much access to credit as they do now. And so for example, most people were paying cash for everything or writing a check. That was very common to be at the grocery store and your mom's writing the checkout. And so it prevented people from doing it just was like, we just have this much money and we can't really do anything else. It doesn't matter how jealous you are that this person has this versus people have gotten so accustomed to like, well, we'll just put it on the credit card. And then they just start to get comfortable with this idea of paying interest and all this other stuff and can kind of get themselves in over their heads.

Kirsten Powers:

And I think that just wasn't an option. The way you see people now, constantly, regular middle class people redoing their kitchen, redoing their bathroom, upgrading the living room, upgrade. It's like this, I grew up middle class. We had the same sofa my entire life, you know what I mean? Nothing ever changed, you know what I mean? But that was okay because that's how everyone was living. You didn't feel like you were getting left behind and you didn't have social media showing you. We didn't know what celebrities were doing. And even if we did, it was like, what does that have to do with us? We're just regular people. Whereas now people are like, oh, I want what the Kardashians have. We didn't think that way. We were like, oh, that person, they're not even humans. They're like aliens. It was so different. And look, I don't want to make it out. It was perfect. There were all sorts of other problems, and there are a lot of things that have gotten better. But I think in terms of the way we live, that kind of like you were talking about, no free time, that's just what you just described is horrifying. That just from the minute you get up until the minute you go to sleep, you're basically working.

Leyla Kazim:

Is people, people realize, and someone tagged me in a Substack article they wrote a while ago about hobbies. I'm going to write a piece about hobby soon, but I think maybe she read my about page and I too many hobbies. And she said, I don't think I have any hobbies.

Kirsten Powers:

Oh, that's very common. Yeah.

Leyla Kazim:

And I think the reason people don't have hobbies is because they have no time to explore what they might be interested in. And So it's just all we are doing is waking up, going to work, coming home, eating something and repeating

Kirsten Powers:

And being too tired even to have a hobby in a way it's easier to numb out on social media or binge watch or whatever. Just too tired and you're like, I just need to get to the next day. So it's like, yeah, it's life is supposed. Work is supposed to be a part of your life, and it should pay for your basic necessities, but it's not what life is, right? And it's not who you are, but it has become who we are. The other thing, and I want to wrap it up, I try to keep these sort of short. Everyone has, we have no attention spans anymore that I think that we Now, I lost my train of thought. What was I saying? That life, what was I saying that life was supposed to be for? I was going to make a really profound point.

Leyla Kazim:

What happened to me. You said, we have no time. Sorry. We're too tired to think about the hobbies that we want so that at the end of the day, we just zone out

Kirsten Powers:

So, oh, I was going to say that also another layer to this is that our identities have become our work. So it's like we're not anything else. And so if we're not working all the time, then who are we? And so I had to let go of that. I had to let go of I, I'm not CNN's Kirsten powers. I'm not USA Today's Kirsten powers. I'm just kirsten powers, and that's got to be enough. But for a long time, it was very hard to imagine who am, I mean now. It seems weird because now I'm like, what was wrong with that person? But I know that that was something that I had to wrestle through. I had to wrestle through being so attached to success or what other people thought was success in a way that I just don't feel right now. But I think that we're so conditioned to think that way. It's very hard to step away from it. And then of course, the secret that nobody knows is then you step away and life is a million times better. Right.

Leyla Kazim:

One comment, want to, before you wrap up? This has reminded me of a BBC colleague of mine. I think also if you come from a background that where maybe you didn't have a lot of money as a kid, there's this sense of guilt if you don't work all the time. So she said to me, I think I was having a similar conversation with her. I was like, oh, I have Fridays off and I just try to work as, and she was like, really? She's like, wow, I work all the time. If I'm not working, I feel guilty because I should just, surely I should just be, if there's the chance to earn money, surely I should be taking that chance. And I was like, really? Do you not ever stop? She's like, no, not really. I was like, wow. I mean,

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah, that's conditioning. I mean, that's conditioning right there. And I'm sure a lot of people listening can relate to that. It's that you don't even, but that's, then you go to a country, Italy and see something like that to an Italian and they're just like, are you daft? You know what I mean? They don't even know what you're talking about. It does not compute.

And it's not that they don't work hard. They do work hard. They work hard when they're working, but they understand the point of life. So I love that. I love with my Italian friends of saying things like, do you know what hustle and grind is? Or whatever. They'll just be like, what? Yeah. So anyway, this was such a wonderful conversation. I'm so glad we got to connect, and thanks for taking time out of your, I guess not very busy day. No.

Kirsten Powers:

Leyla thank you so much for being with us.