Indian-American author Padma Lakshmi is also a television host and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador.
She said the pandemic has taught her to stop confusing "being busy with being productive."
"You don't have to say yes to every single thing," she told CNN.
"What I learned is that a lot of the stuff that we do is actually not that necessary and we shouldn't confuse being busy with being productive."
She said we need to remember that, as Covid-19 restrictions ease and people go back to "normal" life, we don't need necessarily need to do all the things we were doing before.