A Life of Productivity: Recent Episodes
Chris Bailey
On this episode, we chat about how to be productive when you just don’t feel like it. Topics covered include:
- Why our energy and attention fluctuate so much each day;
- Figuring out why you feel “off”;
- How we can tactically accommodate our fluctuating energy;
- Our different “levels” of energy;
- “Billion dollar walks”;
- Drinking caffeine strategically (and not habitually).
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Laura Vanderkam’s article: 40 lessons learned on the way to 40
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcase below!
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On this episode we chat about Chris’s new course and the four webinars that come with it! Signups close September 24. (You can also use the discount code POD30 for another $30 off.)
We also give a brief review of the AirPods Pro 3, which we’re both loving.
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My new course, Overcoming Procrastination*, is now live!After a yearlong deep dive into the research surrounding procrastination—and experimenting with practical, tactical ways for putting it all into practice—I’m thrilled to launch Overcoming Procrastination*!
The course is now live! Just click the button below to get the launch discount (the price will increase in just a few days, once the live webinars begin). As soon as you register, I’ll give you access to the 60 videos that make up the course, a comprehensive values test, the four-part webinar series, and the PDF worksheets!
Sign up for Overcoming Procrastination
I made Overcoming Procrastination for you for a reason. First, I want to help you get unstuck and accomplish more—so you have more time for what’s meaningful. But second, I want to connect more deeply with readers like you. I think of this course as a “video book” of sorts. There are some things that you just can’t express through a book. That’s where the video format of the course comes in—along with all the tactical extras, including the live webinars.
A topic like procrastination is big and mushy. Reading about it in a book can be helpful. But actually putting procrastination tactics into practice is a whole different animal. That’s where the video course format is perfect. I get to share procrastination tactics with you in a far more personal way, while the two of us hang out in my office in Ottawa 🇨🇦. For a sense of the vibe of the course, here’s a sample video on setting mini goals.
I can’t wait to give you the tools you need to overcome procrastination—so you can get ugly stuff done, feel less overwhelmed, and accomplish more.
Click here to buy a copy of the course now.
There are more details on the site for the course. There’s a lot you’ll master as you’ll take the course. Some tangible benefits you’ll get include that you will:
- Become aware of why you procrastinate—and just how common the phenomenon is;
- Overcome the resistance you have to getting started on ugly tasks;
- Feel less bored while doing repetitive work;
- Capture everything you’re putting off, so you can deal with procrastination in a surgical way;
- Become less frustrated as you start new projects;
- Develop a calmer, more deliberately focused mind;
- Consider the future impacts of your decisions and projects more often;
- Structure large goals so that you actually complete them
…and so much more.
I can’t wait to see you inside.
Click here to buy a copy of the course now.
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On this episode, we chat about how to root your goals into what you value. Topics covered include:
- A recap on our twelve values;
- How to connect our goals with what we value;
- The interplay of our values and procrastination;
- How values affect our level of goal attainment;
- How our values influence our relationship with our goals;
- Editing our goals to be aligned with our values;
- Dropping more goals, more often.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- The sample values test!
- Shalom Schwartz’s page on Google Scholar
- Study: Personal values in human life
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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Takeaway: Engaging in a lot of busywork can be a sign that you can take on more than you currently are. Estimated Reading Time: 1 minutes, 59s.“Parkinson’s law” is a common idea mentioned in productivity circles. The basic idea behind it is that our work tends to expand to fit the time available for its completion. For example, let’s say that today you have three one-hour meetings and that, if you focused on your work with intensity, the other stuff on your plate for today would take two hours.
That’s a total of five hours of work. But, you’re working eight.
This is where Parkinson’s Law comes into play. Without you realizing it, those two hours of work may expand to consume the five-hour container of time that they can occupy. Instead of taking on more work or breaks, you take on more busywork—work that feels productive that is really just shuffling things around.
Busywork is always tempting to work on in the moment. It’s usually more tempting than actual work. Instead of writing a response to a lengthy email, picking up your phone is easier. Instead of writing the 3,000-word report due by the end of the month, it’s easier to recheck email. Instead of generating ideas for a marketing campaign, it’s easier to scroll through the news again.
Doing busywork signals to our minds that we’re making progress on something (anything), even when we have little to do.
It’s natural to engage in it. But at the end of the day, it’s also (of course) unproductive.
Here’s a helpful trick when it comes to busywork: use the fact that you’re filling your time with busywork as a sign that you should step back to reflect on your workload. Often, we get stressed out because there’s too much on our plate. However, not having enough on our plate can be stressful, too, albeit in a different way. Instead of stressing that we won’t be able to get everything done, we stress that we need to fill our time with something—anything—and in the process, doubt and uncertainty arise that lead us to question if we’re working on the best possible thing.
If you’re engaged in busywork, you may have extra capacity.
What can you take on? What can you learn? What projects can you get unstuck on?
If you’re average, you may have too much on your plate and not too little. But if you engage in a lot of busywork, the opposite could be true.
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On this episode, we chat about busyness—including how feeling busy is different from actually being busy. Some topics covered include:
- How we often wear busyness as a badge of honor;
- How we can’t be busy and focused at the same time;
- Busyness and busywork;
- “Parkinson’s Law”;
- How we tend to overestimate how long we work for;
- How busyness can be a sign we have the capacity to become more productive.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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Takeaway: We often try to live in accordance with “common sense” without considering how making changes will affect our daily lives. To make a change more likely to stick, anticipate the daily impact—not just the general impact. Estimated Reading Time: 1 minutes, 49s.A lot of the best advice out there is common sense. For example:
- “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
- Spend less time looking at screens and more time with people
- Make sure to get seven or eight hours of sleep every night
- Get more exercise and sit for less time every day
Yet so often, despite how much sense changes like these make, we don’t follow through with what we know we should. Common sense falls apart.
Why? It’s complicated, of course. Some of the reasons are neurological, like that exercising self-control requires deploying self-regulation, which at a certain point gets exhausting. Others are psychological, like that a change conflicts with our values or our identity.
The solution to all this might even be considered common sense in itself: we must consider the daily reality of change. In other words, we must consider the point at which the rubber actually meets the road, the exact ways in which our days will be different once we’ve made a change.
Change is easy to romanticize. As a result, we often build a sepia-toned fantasy of what it will be like after we’ve made a change, like losing 20 pounds or saving enough for retirement to afford unlimited vacations.
Yet, change gets complicated when the changes we romanticize collide with the reality of our everyday lives.
As you try to integrate a new habit or routine into your days, think about the exact ways your days will be different. Remember: your days will need to be different for your life to be different.
It’s good that, by default, we strive to become an idealized version of our current self. This motivation leads us to more significant progress in work and life. But while making a change, we must think about how a change will react with the lives we already lead—and how our days are already structured. Anticipating this interaction point can go a long way to making change stick.
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On this episode, we chat about what the research shows about news consumption—and what to do about it. Some topics covered include:
- Our “surface area of concern”;
- Tactics for deliberate news consumption;
- How the news affects our mind;
- What our own consumption patters (currently!) look like.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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On this episode, I chat with author and writer Scott Young about his new book, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery.
I hope you enjoy the conversation—about learning, mastery, and how to get better at pretty much anything.
Listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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Takeaway: If time blocking hasn’t stuck for you, become less rigid with it. Trying jotting down how many hours you’ll want to have worked on tasks by day’s end to take a looser approach to time blocking. Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 39s.I’ve never been a big fan of time blocking—defining ahead of time what I’ll do for every hour of the workday.
The technique has always felt robotic to me. But my biggest issue with it (which likely holds only for me) is that I always feel an odd urge to rebel against my previous self and work on almost anything other than my time block. Screw this guy, I always think, what does he know about what I have to do in this moment? Each time, I only compromise my productivity by getting fewer important things done.
Then, I tried making a dead-simple change. Instead of blocking every hour of my day in advance, I started writing how long I’d like to block for various tasks on the bottom of a dot-grid notepad I keep on my desk. Then, as the day goes on, I slot those areas of activity into the hours of the day. This lets me spend my time in an intentional and productive way—yet not so rigidly structured that I feel I have no autonomy in the moment. For each block of time, I only work on what I pre-specified.
For example, here are my target hours for today. Today was a more straightforward day (only one meeting):
And here are the time blocks I defined as the day went on. (I re-wrote these out—my handwriting is never this neat.)
Since starting this little ritual, it has stuck. If you want to try it out, here are the steps to take.
1) First, define your areas of activity. These are the high-level activities that comprise your work. Mine are, in alphabetical order:
- Book writing (or strategy);
- Communications and admin (I aim to keep this to one hour a day);
- Content creation (or strategy);
- Meditation;
- Mini course creation (more on this in the coming months!);
- Reading;
- Research;
- Speaking (planning, creating, and performing talks).
I have these hours stuck to the front of my notepad. It looks like this:
2) Second, each day, write down the hours you will be working. (In my Calm book, I call these our “productivity hours”—page 34.) This step also helps you set boundaries around your work and creates an endpoint for when you’ll stop working. I find it helpful to write out these hours of the day using every second line, to divide your day into half-hour blocks.
3) Third, at the start of the day, look through your areas of activity and estimate how long you’ll need to spend in each of them that day. Look especially to the important and not urgent areas of focus—this is where your most significant opportunities for productivity reside. Remember that you likely only have around four highly productive hours each day—schedule things accordingly. And, if you set them, reference your daily and weekly intentions.
Then, keep your time blocking page by your side as you work. Continually look ahead to slot in what you’ll be working on—I like to look ahead two or three hours. Try to get your most aversive tasks done first.
———
Things won’t always go according to plan. Today, I spent more time on content creation than intended. I also crossed out the time for my mini course, and upped my meditation time by half an hour, to help with the helpfulness and clarity of a talk I was creating. (I find meditation also helps me switch between my areas of focus more seamlessly and helps me focus deeper and longer each day.)
If time blocking hasn’t worked for you, play around with it a bit to find ways to make it looser. If you value self-direction as I do, you probably won’t want to have every day fleshed out for you by some previous version of yourself. But at the same time, you likely want to stay deliberate throughout the day.
This method of planning your day as it goes on is far looser than time blocking—while leaving room for some serendipity. Through it, I can stay nimble and adjust as my energy and focus wax and wane over the day.
If time blocking hasn’t worked for you in the past, try this rolling time blocking method.
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On this episode, we chat about the science behind meetings—and how to get more value out of them. Topics covered include:
- The four helpful roles meetings have;
- Questioning your recurring meetings;
- Considering relationship dynamics in meetings;
- Becoming a good steward of other peoples time;
- Designating a meeting leader;
- Not attending meetings without an agenda;
- “Modalities” for meetings;
- Making meetings more interesting (and actually enjoyable);
- Whether asynchronous “meetings” are worthwhile;
- Ending zoom fatigue through oddly-timed meetings.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Research paper: The key features of workplace meetings: Conceptualizing the why, how, and what of meetings at work
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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On this episode, we chat about the science behind meetings—along with the value and annoyances they bring. Topics covered include:
- Chris’s review of the Staples coworking space;
- What makes meetings so draining;
- The four main purposes of meetings;
- How many meetings we have a week;
- Collaborative versus focused work;
- The incremental cost of meetings;
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Paper: Do We Really Need Another Meeting? The Science of Workplace Meetings (Mroz; Allen; Verhoeven; Shuffler)
- Paper: Virtual Work Meetings During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Good, Bad, and Ugly (Karll; Peluchette; Aghakhani)
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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Takeaway: Material purchases that scream “look at me” are usually a waste of money and don’t make you any happier.Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 12s.
As a total nerd, one of the things I love reading each year is Warren Buffet’s annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. In 2022’s letter (PDF), he offhandedly mentioned a phrase I’ve been thinking about since reading it.
I’ve bolded the bit that got me thinking, and here’s also the rest of the paragraph for context:
The disposition of money unmasks humans. Charlie [Munger] and I watch with pleasure the vast flow of Berkshire-generated funds to public needs and, alongside, the infrequency with which our shareholders opt for look-at-me assets and dynasty-building.
The phrase “look-at-me assets” crystalizes a lot of what bugs me about the consumption-driven habits that drive so many people. I’ve written in the past about avoiding hedonic purchases—material purchases that are “associated with fun, pleasure, and excitement,” like perfume, luxury watches, and nice cars. Research shows that once we get used to the stuff we buy—which doesn’t take much time—we inevitably settle back down into our previous level of happiness.1
Obviously, there is nothing wrong with nice things—there are far too many Apple products in my field of view right now to throw stones. (Plus, imagine all that shattered glass!) But it’s worth remembering, especially as far as our happiness is concerned, that we extract more lasting happiness out of spending money on experiences—not out of consuming things that we will inevitably get used to. We get used to nice things—especially the ones that call out “hey, look at me!” The things, in other words, that we buy for the purpose of status projection.
Once the initial novelty of a new thing wears off—and we settle back down after buying the oversized house, overpriced car, or ridiculous watch—we’re left with whatever tangible difference it makes in our lives.
When money is a finite resource, we’re best off pouring it into experiences with others or things that serve a function or purpose in our lives.
Once you begin to see all the “look at me” purchases people make, it can be hard to unsee it all.
- Source: Consumers Emotional Responses to Functional and Hedonic Products: A Neuroscience Research. ↩
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On this episode, we chat about strategies for time blocking your day—including the ones we use. Topics covered include:
- The benefits of time blocking;
- The “rolling” time blocking method;
- How long our blocks are;
- How autonomy interacts with time blocking;
- Making time blocking sustainable.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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Takeaway: To add “seasonality” to your work, try temporarily adopting “quiet quitting”—defining stronger boundaries around your work—so you can recharge and find time to slow down and become more deliberate. This can lead you to become more productive while improving your work-life balance. Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 12s.Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting author Cal Newport on the podcast to talk about his terrific new book, Slow Productivity.
This is Cal’s third time on the show—the previous two times he joined to talk about his books Digital Minimalism and A World Without Email. If you aren’t yet subscribed to Time & Attention, you can do that here!In the book (and in our conversation), Cal breaks down the three principles of slow productivity, which are:
- Do fewer things;
- Work at a natural pace; and
- Obsess over quality.
As part of working at a natural pace, he talks about a new spin behind the concept of “quiet quitting”—an idea that went viral over the pandemic.
The idea behind quiet quitting is simple enough: you no longer go above and beyond in your responsibilities at work, while doing enough to get by with your workload. For example, you may no longer:
- Work past 5 pm;
- Volunteer to do extra work or take on additional projects;
- Say yes to anything above and beyond your job description; or
- Stay constantly accessible over email and chat after hours—or even while you work.
The ideas behind quiet quitting are simple—and in many cases, reasonable ways to define boundaries around your work.
That said, most of us don’t have the desire to “quiet quit” all of the time. For example, I’m lucky to love what I do for a living and also have the chance to help others out through my work. I’m not planning to quiet quit any time soon. On top of this, some of us value achievement quite highly (though I don’t personally fall into this camp).
For these reasons, quiet quitting has never felt like an optimal way of working for me—and maybe for you. I also care about how productive I am every day and find great joy in working hard to build something great—especially alongside others.
Adding Seasons
This is why I love Cal’s unique spin on quiet quitting in the book. He writes, “at the core of quiet quitting is a pragmatic observation: you have more control than you think over the intensity of your workload.”
He continues: “This got me thinking. What if we stopped positioning quiet quitting as a general response to the ‘meaninglessness of work,’ and instead saw it as a more specific tactic to achieve seasonality? What if, for example, you decided to quiet quit a single season each year; maybe July and August, or that distracted period between Thanksgiving and the New Year?”
When our work is not seasonal—it doesn’t have rhythms of both intensity and rest over time, and stays intense most of the time—we need to define better boundaries around it to practice rest. This technique can be a great way to define boundaries around work so you can benefit from greater rest when needed.
Cal suggests not making a big deal of the decision. Simply adopt tactics like the ones I listed in the section above to simulate an offseason for yourself—a slower period of work that lets you recharge and invest in yourself again. Remember, this is a flexible approach that can be tailored to your needs and circumstances. He also recommends, as an advanced tactic, to “take on a highly visible but low-impact project during this season” so you can both deflect new projects and project outward signs of busyness—signals of productivity.
This strategy is simple, and it may not work in every role. However, I personally find the idea of adopting it as a way of introducing a slower season into an otherwise busy schedule appealing. It’s a great tactic for finding more time for reflection, calm, and deliberate slowness, which can ultimately lead to a better work-life balance and increased productivity.
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On this episode, Cal Newport hops back on the show to talk about his great new book, Slow Productivity. It’s a great, fascinating new book (and interview!), both full of actionable insights on how to slow down in order to become more productive.
Topics covered include:
- How “slow productivity” came into being;
- The three ingredients of slow productivity;
- “Engineering simplicity” at work;
- The idea of “administrative overhead”;
- Narrowing the “missions” you have in your work;
- Avoiding “task engines”;
- Why the pace of knowledge work has become so frenetic;
- Cal’s unique spin on “quiet quitting”;
- Studying related fields to yours for boosting creativity.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Slow Productivity book
- Cal’s New Yorker columns
- Including: Why Do We Work Too Much?
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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Takeaway: Artificial intelligence will let us accomplish significantly more with our time. To best take advantage of these tools, identify the highest-leverage ways you could spend your time and carefully navigate how to “abstract” your work.Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 52s.
For each minute you spend on a task, how much do you accomplish?
One of the fundamental truths about productivity is that not all tasks are created equal. With some, we accomplish hardly anything despite the minutes they drain. Watching YouTube videos during the workday, repeatedly checking email, or scrolling social media are examples of such tasks. (You probably have some examples of your own—some may even be part of your job description!)
On the flip side, there are tasks that lead us to accomplish an extraordinary amount for every minute spent on them. These activities may include planning our day, preparing an update for our most profitable customer, or participating in training that expands our expertise.
Over time, one productivity goal should be to spend an increasing amount of our day on the tasks that lead us to accomplish more with each unit of time. Let’s call these highly productive activities “high-leverage tasks.” Identifying these tasks and spending as much time on them as possible will make you significantly more productive. (Here’s how to calculate them.)
This is where artificial intelligence can come in: over time, AI will “abstract away” much of our day-to-day work so we can accomplish more with each unit of time. In other words, the tasks we used to labor over will become so automatized they disappear into the backdrop of our work.
This idea of abstraction is easiest to explain with an example. Think about the field of software programming. When your code runs, it goes through a bunch of steps to eventually become the 1’s and 0’s that the chips inside your computer use to make calculations. For a program to run in the past, we had to code actual 1’s and 0’s. This was time-consuming, though it was still possible to create something great.
Things got simpler—and software programmers more efficient—when sophisticated programming languages came along. Those languages let us write code in more natural and readable ways, which the computer could then translate into 1’s and 0’s. Essentially, the computer did the hard work for us, and code began to resemble real sentences rather than a jumble of numbers.
Over time, computer programming continued to create even more “layers of abstraction”—and our time became more productively spent in the process. Instead of hours spent coding, we could use application programming interfaces (APIs) to do something simple like turn on a phone’s flashlight. It’s incredible how far things have come.
AI will take this even further. The other day I wanted to prompt my computer to automatically eject an external hard-disk after 60 minutes—giving enough time for a backup but preventing the disk from always being attached to my computer.
For this, I turned to ChatGPT. In 20 seconds, the app generated a bunch of code in AppleScript that accomplished my task—and then walked me through how to install the script on my computer. What was once manual computer programming became abstract.
Similar examples of abstraction and layers of leverage exist beyond the world of programming:
- Project management software and methodologies abstract away the minutiae of asking your team for daily status updates.
- Electronic health records abstract away the paper-based recording and storage of patient information, which saves time updating patient records.
- Automated data cleaning tools (including ChatGPT!) can help data analysts organize data so they can dedicate their expertise to form decisions and insights about what they’re analyzing.
The list goes on, but you probably get the idea. Technology can make us more productive by taking care of much of our work. That lets us “rise up” to accomplish even more with our time.
We’re only getting started with AI advancements, machine learning, and related technologies.
Throughout this evolution, we need to recognize our highest-leverage tasks—especially those that can be aided by AI. The way I see it, this involves two steps:
- Elevate the layers of abstraction in your work by considering the most productive way you could be spending your time. Do the most valuable tasks calculation once or twice a year, while you learn and adopt new technology. Remember that higher-leverage tasks will always be around the corner. Watch for them, learn as much as you can, and experience the joy of accomplishing more with each unit of time.
- Double down on the parts of your work that are less likely to be abstracted away—AKA those tasks that benefit from a human touch. These are areas where greater efficiency or automation won’t add anything. Caring, connecting, and counseling—activities that involve interacting with other people—are great examples.
These tactics and mindsets will help you navigate the AI developments of today—and tomorrow—with greater grace, ease, and productivity.
The post What artificial intelligence will do to our productivity appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about how we use and think about social media. We cover what the problem is with social media (if there even is one), how the “novelty bias” hijacks our attention as we use it, and tactics to use to keep social media contained.
Topics covered include:
- The books we’re reading (and loving);
- Impulsiveness and procrastination;
- How social media algorithms come down to “bodies and comparing lifestyles”;
- Ardyn’s incredibly wholesome Instagram feed;
- “Stimulation loops” and the “novelty bias”;
- Crowding out social media;
- Extracting more meaning out of social media;
- Putting guardrails in place to waste less time;
- Time cues on your phone.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Books:
- Hyperefficient
- Slow Productivity
- A Court of Thorns and Roses Paperback Box Set
- How to Write a Lot
- Naked Economics
- The Future of Geography
- Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity
- These Precious Days
- Values
- After Steve
- Purr
- Outlander
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
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Takeaway: Can’t explain why you act the way you do? Your values may be at play. There are 10 human values that we hold most dear, explained below.Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 22s.
When I was a teenager, I ran a marathon. Well, sort of.
Following the instructions from a great book (my memory is hazy but I’m pretty sure this was the one), I trained for hours on our treadmill at home. By a certain point, I was practically running a full marathon in the basement. The book made it so that, once you got to the point where you could run the distance, the actual marathon was easy—you had already done the hard work in training. (Or at least this was how I felt as a teenager—I might feel differently at 35!)
Reaching this marathon milestone, I did what I usually do in such scenarios: I quit. I stopped running entirely and didn’t sign up for a marathon as I had planned to. Once I had proven to myself that I could run the distance, I had no interest in the follow through. There was nothing left for me to figure out.
Reflecting on this experience, as well as where I fall on the list of 10 fundamental human values (refresher below!), my reaction makes sense.
In the values continuum, I score incredibly high on self-direction and relatively low on achievement. Put differently, I care less about accomplishing things than I do about proving to myself that I can. (While figuring out how to do them in my own way.)
Looking back at my life through this lens explains a lot of my decisions that, at the time, didn’t make sense:
- As a kid I was into magic tricks. But I’d mostly buy them so I could see how they were done—losing interest in performing the trick once I mastered it.
- My favorite TV show growing up was How It’s Made—nothing else came close.
- More recently, I’ve written three books largely because I was curious about productivity, focus, and calm, and wanted to get to the bottom of these topics to help people out (myself included).
- I’ve always thought about achievement as a byproduct of doing something interesting—not as the result itself.)
By default, we make decisions that align with our true nature: our values. There’s always a deeper reason motivating what we do, especially when you find your actions difficult to explain. Values are usually what’s behind this.
When you have the time and space to form your own intentions, you’ll find those intentions typically revolve around what you value. This is a good thing: research shows that our behavior becomes meaningful when our actions are true to what we value. Most of our automatic decisions are the simple result of evaluating our options and considering how they connect with the values we hold.
The next time you can’t explain your actions, reflect on your values. They are probably at play, behind the curtain, pulling the strings of your life.
The post Your values explain basically everything you do appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about whether or not you should wake up early—and how our biology and daily constraints dictate when we should rise. Topics covered include:
- Calculating your natural wakeup time;
- How our wakeup time drifts;
- The “sepia toned” idea we have to wake up early;
- Carving out time in the morning to be deliberate;
- How biology affects our wakeup time;
- How the constraints of our day affect wakeup time;
- Having an anchor in your morning routine;
- Whether waking up early makes a difference in our daily productivity.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Russell Foster’s great TED Talk, Why Do We Sleep?
- Nick Lewis’s video, You’re Organizing Your House Wrong!
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: Should you wake up early? appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about how to avoid “all or nothing” thinking—also known as the “eff it” effect, or the abstinence violation effect, if you want to get technical about it. Topics covered include:
- Not being satisfied by partial success
- How the effect plays out across different time scales
- The idea of “sunk costs”
- How awareness is key to behavioral change
- The downfalls of black and white thinking
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: All or Something Thinking (Replay) appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: If you’re not careful, your to-do list can make your work less enjoyable, while leading you to feel less in control of your time. When finishing tasks, reflect on the next most important project to work on—and treat your to-do list as a series of suggestions, not obligations. Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 26s.One of the highest leverage things you can do to become more productive is simple: continually do what you consider to be the most important thing in each moment. This is way easier said than done, but isn’t as difficult as you may think.
To explain, let me tell you about one kind of list in my life: my travel packing list.
I travel a lot for work, especially to give talks about productivity. Because of this constant travel, I have a pretty great packing list (if you don’t mind me saying so). I programmed the list using a fantastic Mac app called Keyboard Maestro ($36). In simple terms, Keyboard Maestro lets you automate certain tasks on your Mac, which can save you time and streamline your day.
When I type a keyboard combination (⌘+⌃+⇧+⌥+P, if you’re curious), this window pops up:
After I fill out the information about my trip, the Keyboard Maestro script populates a customized packing list with everything I might need. Here’s the list generated for a two-day domestic work trip:
The list is precise, right down to how many pairs of socks and underwear I’ll need based on the time I’ll be away. I rarely need everything on the list—but I just delete the items I don’t and pack the rest. (If you’re looking to get started with Keyboard Maestro, I highly recommend David Sparks’ terrific field guide.)
Lately, I’ve found myself using this packing list less. I’ve started to think of it more as a checklist that I can refer to later, double-checking that I’ve packed everything.
There’s no doubt that this generated packing list makes me more efficient and saves me time. But I find that using it means I get far less enjoyment out of packing. It’s more fun to pack everything I feel I need in the moment and check the list after to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.
This may sound like a meaningless change, but it’s made a surprising difference:
- Packing feels like far less of a chore—and isn’t as draining as a result.
- I no longer enter some robotic autopilot packing mode, as though I’m simply going through the motions to get it done.
- It takes me amount the same amount of time to pack, so the extra enjoyment comes at essentially no cost.
- My trips are better because I think of the novel things I may need in each destination—like my camera if I’m going somewhere scenic, a metro card if I’m heading to New York or another big city, or my preferred time tracking device if I’m going on a writing retreat.
- And because I still check my generated list, I’m reminded if I’ve forgotten to pack a thing or two. In that way, the list serves as a great trip wire.
The observations I’ve made when reconsidering my packing process hold true for to-do lists. I used to live and die by my to-do list. But lately, as I switch from one thing to another, I’ve been asking myself: what’s the most important thing I could be doing in this moment?
I may glance at my to-do list for a dose of inspiration—or better yet, I might have some intuitive sense of what’s most important. As with the packing list, I’ll check my task list after deciding what to do, making sure I haven’t forgotten some better option—and to ensure I’m not only working on what’s latest and loudest.
Interestingly, a lot of the tasks I choose to do aren’t on my list in the first place. They’re more important tasks, I just hadn’t thought of adding them to the task list.
We don’t always use our intuition when choosing what to be productive on. As I write about in my most recent book, our “evaluating mind” is always considering the opportunity cost of our time.
But letting yourself be guided by intuition can stop this questioning and the corresponding guilt in its tracks. Deliberately choosing what important thing to work on makes me feel more in control—even when I’m churning away on something I have to get done or an obligation imposed by someone else.
We shouldn’t let our to-do list crowd out our intuitive sense of what’s important.
The next time you switch from one task to another—like after you read this article—identify your most important task. Cross-reference that intuitive response against your to-do list to make sure you didn’t forget anything more urgent.
This approach takes a few seconds and can quickly become a habit. It’s a great way of aligning yourself with what’s truly important throughout the day.
Treat your to-do list as a series of suggestions rather than obligations. You’ll find you enjoy your time more, while also considering tasks that are important but not obvious. You’ll feel more in control of your work to boot.
Keeping a to-do list often feels more like a psychological game than it does a helpful productivity strategy. To-do lists are really just a list of expectations for our future selves. When we don’t accomplish the things on that pre-determined list, we feel unproductive. When we accomplish more than what’s on the list, we feel proud. (Even though, in both instances, we may accomplish the exact same amount, only with different lists!) Similarly, when we accomplish something that wasn’t on our list, we feel as though it doesn’t count toward our daily productivity—like when we get physical activity without our fitness tracker.The post Your to-do list is not as important as you think appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about how to stay productive when you don’t feel like it. Ideas covered include:
- How to settle into work when you just don’t feel like it;
- Not letting your to-do list turn into a list of expectations for how things will go;
- The idea of making “only progress”;
- Feeling your “pace of productivity”
- Understanding the procrastination triggers;
- Managing expectations downward;
- Connecting with how you feel to analyze how you’re stuck;
- Paying yourself ‘time and a half’;
- Accommodating your mental resistance to doing a task.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Ardyn’s ChatGPT photo
- Timeular
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: How to Get Unstuck appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about our phone home screens, debate about whose is better, and talk about whether “focus modes” should drive what’s on our home screen.
Chris’s home screen:
Ardyn’s home screen:
A few links mentioned on the episode:
- Locket app: iOS; Android;
- Pedometer++ on iOS;
- ChatGPT voice assistant;
- Kijiji wikipedia page;
- Withings Body Scan.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: Our phone home screens appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: My five favorite ways to manage a busy inbox: conduct email sprints, use your email’s auto-responder feature, limit emails to five sentences, delete the email app off of your phone, and tackle email during lower energy periods. Estimated Reading Time: 2 minute, 39s.Email can feel like a weird beast to tame. Equal parts essential, helpful, and downright annoying, it can be a mixed bag for productivity. So how can you take advantage of the good parts of email while leaving the bad?
Here are five of my favorite tactics, each of which can help wrangle your mess of messages:
1. Conduct “email sprints”Instead of checking email throughout the day, dedicate 15 or 20 minutes to undertake an email sprint. Setting a timer, get through as much email as you possibly can. Having a time parameter creates an artificial deadline which will help you plow through more messages—while turning email into a bit of a game. I rely on this tactic every day, and each day work four or five sprints into my schedule.
2. Set auto-responders more frequentlyAuto-responders (or vacation responders) can be as much for you as they are for those emailing you. Take advantage of them. Even when you’re working, enabling an auto-responder can give you immense freedom to not check email, especially when you give those messaging you a way of contacting you with anything urgent.
Whenever I want to hunker down on something important, I switch on an auto-responder explaining that I’m on an email vacation, though I’m around if anything urgent comes up. You may want to use this tactic sparingly if your work is highly-collaborative, but I’ve personally had a lot of success with it.
3. Live by the five-sentence ruleI first mentioned this rule in my book, The Productivity Project. In your email signature, add a note that says something along the lines of, “To respect your time (and spend less time on email), I try to keep every message to five sentences or less.”
I felt rude when I first adopted this tactic. Over time, though, I’ve started to see a similar disclaimer in messages from others. If you need to type something longer than five sentences, it’s a good cue to pick up the phone and call the person.
4. Delete email off your phoneAs with all productivity advice, take what works for you and leave the rest. But this is one rule I live by. If you’re like me and you don’t get paid to be on call, the email app on your phone can be an energy drain. If you have an email app (or two!) installed on your phone, question whether it truly needs to be there. I have much more head space—and get more done throughout my day—with the email app deleted.
5. Tackle email during periods of low energy
Email is probably an essential component of your job, but at the same time it’s probably not anywhere near the most important thing you do. For this reason, I like to schedule my email/communication sprints during the time of day when I have the least amount of energy. (Here’s how to calculate your daily energy rhythms!)
Often the best productivity tactics are simple—even common sense in hindsight. A few of the above ideas fall into this category. Yet, of all the email tactics I’ve tried, these are the ones that have stuck.
Give them a shot—you might be surprised by how well they work.
The post My 5 favorite email tactics appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about how the nature of productivity is changing, and how AI is making us more productive by making our work tasks higher-leverage. Topics covered include:
- The most important tasks in your work;
- How our “productivity leverage” increases with time;
- How AI makes us more productive by moving us up the “layers of abstraction” in our work;
- How we can delegate work to AI;
- How AI can save us time;
- The most popular AI apps right now.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- TinyWow
- Canva
- DeepL
- Github Copilot
- Hugging Face
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: The highest-leverage tasks in your work appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about the perks and benefits of doing a “fake commute” each morning. Topics covered include:
- Chris’s experiment to do a “fake morning commute”;
- The benefits of morning sun;
- Other benefits of a fake morning commute;
- How commuting variables affect our happiness level;
- Pre- and post-work rituals.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Happy City, by Charles Montgomery (great book!)
- Research:
- The Positive Utility of the Commute: Modeling Ideal Commute Time and Relative Desired Commute Amount
- Commuting and Life Satisfaction Revisited: Evidence on a Non-linear Relationship
- Does commuting matter to subjective well-being?
- Highway to health? Commute time and well-being among Canadian adults
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: The perks of a fake morning commute appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: If you want to better transition into work mode while working from home, try a “fake commute.”Estimated Reading Time: 1 minutes, 45s.
I’ve worked from home for the last decade or so. Despite all the benefits of WFH life, I do occasionally miss elements of my long-ago morning commute: the audiobook time as I rode into the office and the quiet moments of transition that bookended my workday.
Luckily, I’ve found a ritual to serve these same functions. As an experiment, I’ve started a “fake active commute” each morning. To my surprise, the ritual has stuck, and gives me everything I used to love about this morning routine—without any of the annoying bits of actually commuting.
Here’s what it looks like. After getting ready in the morning, I dress for the outdoors as though I’m walking to the office; bundling up in a thick coat to steel my way through the Canadian winter in Ottawa. Stepping out of the house, I walk in whatever direction I feel like. I set a 15-minute timer so I know when to turn around and head home—that way, my “commute” is 30 minutes. That’s all there is to it.
I’ve found this ritual offers much more than a healthy bout of morning exercise. It also gives me:
- The chance to mentally transition into “work mode,”
- Time to reflect on what I want to accomplish and get out of the day,
- An opportunity to practice scatterfocus and generate ideas,
- Fresh air before sitting indoors all day,
- A chance to see and say hello to people (who aren’t on the other side of a webcam),
- An opportunity to listen to an audiobook, so I can start the day surrounded by ideas, not email.
In other words, this fake morning commute offers me everything my regular commute used to.
Odd as it may sound, I find I return home with fresh eyes. Walking into my house after the commute, I feel like I’m stepping into a new place—even though it’s the same building I left 30 minutes prior. I’ve gone through the motions and feel as though I’ve arrived. This has become a helpful mental cue that it’s time to get some serious $#!† done.
The fake morning commute is a simple ritual, but you might be surprised by how well it works when you’re working from home.
The post My fake morning commute appeared first on Chris Bailey.
My next productivity book (and a quick question!)
Hi—
I hope you’re having an incredible week!
Over the past decade I’ve been fascinated by the science of following through on our goals. Lately, this obsession has boiled over as I’ve made the science of becoming more intentional the main focus of my next book.
There’s no title yet, and the book won’t be out for a (long) while—I still have a lot of research, interviews, and experiments to weave together. Needless to say, though, I can’t wait to get this one into your hands.
In these early days, I’m hoping you can help me shape this project so it’s as useful a resource for you as possible.
Here are my questions for you (just email me):
- What are you most curious about when it comes to becoming more intentional?
- In what ways do you struggle to achieve your goals?
- What do you want to learn, know, and get better at as it relates to acting deliberately and intentionally?
- What prevents you from starting or completing what you want to get done?
- As it relates to becoming more intentional, in which areas have you grown the most?
I’d love to use your thoughts on goal attainment to help shape the book. I can’t guarantee a response (though I’ll try!). I also promise to read and do my best to internalize what you share.
I hope you’ll forgive my writing of slightly fewer blog posts over the coming months as I hunker down on this project—I can already tell that you’ll find this one helpful.
I hope to hear from you soon!
Have an incredible week!
Chris
The post My next productivity book (and a quick question!) appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about how the book publishing industry works—and how you can publish a book of your own, either the traditional or nontraditional way.
[Here’s the PDF] Lucinda mentioned in the podcast!
Topics covered include:
- What Lucinda learned going from being an agent to being an author;
- The role of literary agents in getting you a book deal;
- The art of the “query letter”;
- How to shape a book so it’s distinct and differentiated;
- Timely and timeless ideas;
- Whether having a platform as a potential author is important;
- Your voice, content, and offering as an author;
- Whether to self-publish or traditionally publish a book.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Get Signed book
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: How to Get a Book Published appeared first on Chris Bailey.
The pomodoro technique, and how (and whether) we use it in our own work.
The post Podcast: The Pomodoro Technique appeared first on Chris Bailey.
What you’ll get out of resetting your mind’s tolerance for novelty.
The post Podcast: How (and why) to do a stimulation fast appeared first on Chris Bailey.
A conversation with the author of Four Thousand Weeks on limits, finitude, and time management.
The post Podcast: My interview with Oliver Burkeman (replay) appeared first on Chris Bailey.
A conversation with the author of Four Thousand Weeks on limits, finitude, and time management.
The post Podcast: My interview with Oliver Burkeman (replay) appeared first on Chris Bailey.
The productivity apps we subscribe to—and what we’re cutting.
The post Podcast: Drowning in subscriptions appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Just because comething stimulates your mind does not mean that it makes you happy.
The post 5 lessons I learned switching to a flip phone for a month appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Lessons from Chris’s experiment to switch to a flip phone for a month.
The post Podcast: Are smartphones a net positive? appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Exploring the science behind napping.
The post 106: Naps! appeared first on Chris Bailey.
We dig into the research surrounding multitasking—including where it does and doesn’t work.
The post Podcast: Digging into multitasking appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Our go-to productivity gadgets that we use every day (and a few thoughts on the Apple headset)!
The post Podcast: The best productivity gadgets appeared first on Chris Bailey.
In this episode, I chat with Cal Newport, the author of A World Without Email, about his book—and how we can manage email during such a distracting time.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: My chat with Cal Newport about email appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: When it comes to how we experience life, two things matter: what happens, and how we think about what happens. Which of the two is more important is debatableEstimated Reading Time: 1 minute, 58s.
I have a theory about the events that make up our lives: what happens doesn’t matter as much as we think. When it comes to our happiness and overall life satisfaction, what is of greater importance is how we relate to what happens.
Take, for example, when expectations skew how we perceive our days and our life. When things go as expected, we feel good and comfortable. When things exceed expectations, we’re unexpectedly delighted (and our brain rewards us on a chemical level, as I write in How to Calm Your Mind). Likewise, when something doesn’t meet our expectations, it can feel like a letdown.
This post riffs on some of the ideas in my latest book, How to Calm Your Mind.
By default, nearly all our expectations are wrong. This should not come as a surprise: it’s impossible to predict the future and how events will unfold.
When you think about it, that means things rarely go “right” or “wrong.” They just go differently than expected. These events still affect our life in positive and negative ways. But so does how we relate to those experiences.
(Expectations are nowhere near the only thing that skew our perception of reality. We each have countless biases, inaccurate mental models, and self-talk that influence how we see the world.)
Here’s an idea I’ve been thinking about lately. The things we experience contribute to our overall happiness and life satisfaction. But how we relate these events is important, too. So how much does each factor matter?
When it comes to happiness and satisfaction, we tend to think that the experiences that comprise our life matter more:
In practice, though, how we perceive our situation can fundamentally shift our happiness and satisfaction. In my opinion, the ratio looks more like this:
I personally think that how we relate to our life matters more than what we experience at face value. Happiness, satisfaction, and even calm come more from how we choose to experience and respond to the events in our lives.
The bottom line is this: when it comes to living a good life, we probably focus too much on how we can change our life for the better. It’s critical that we also change our mindset around how we relate to life, too.
The post What happens doesn’t matter all that much appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode is my conversation with Jennifer Petriglieri, author of the book Couples That Work. On this episode we chat about:
- The three transitions couples tend to go through;
- How couples become interdependent;
- “Couple contracting”;
- How we recalibrate to what we want;
- Having a “secure base” in a relationship;
- Playing with our identities;
- Whether we should account for love in our career decisions.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: Couples That Work
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: The three transitions we go through as a couple appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about Chris’s experiment to use a flip phone for a month. Topics covered include:
- The utility we get from smartphones;
- Big phones versus small phones;
- The “jobs to be done” theory of using our devices;
- How gathering has become digital;
- How communication norms have changed over time;
- Managing norms within social groups;
- Re-evaluating our relationship with our smartphone;
- What to be mindful of with our phone.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- The Alcatel Go Flip 3;
- The Punkt phone;
- Book: Amusing Ourselves to Death
- Journal article: How many hours does it take to make a friend?
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: Using a flip phone for a month appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about a potpourri of fun topics, including:
- What we’ve learned after 100 episodes;
- How to drink a glass of champagne;
- Our go-to productivity apps and accessories;
- Fantastical’s 40% price increase;
- Whether we still enjoy doing the show together;
- Tips for stimulation fasting;
- How we manage our time every day;
- How to account for time pressure in planning your days.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: How to Calm Your Mind
- Wikipedia: Parasocial interaction
The post Podcast: 100 podcast episodes (and counting)! appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: When you’re uncertain about whether to put a great new idea into a project or save it for the next one, my default approach is to always include it. In my experience, this will make your current project more interesting and enjoyable.Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 6s.
I’m not sure who needs this advice, but if you create a lot of original work, this one’s for you.
Lately I’ve been doing a bunch of interviews around my new book. Toward the end of the conversation, a few interviewers inevitably ask: “So, can you give any preview of what your next book will be about?”
I never can. Odd as it might sound, I never have an idea for the next book when I’m writing the current one. I know some authors who have ideas for their next book (or two! or three!) mapped ahead of time. But my honest answer is always that I’m not yet thinking about the next book.
Sometimes there’s a follow up question: “Wait, you don’t stumble onto ideas for new books as you’re writing?”
I do—and this is one of my favorite parts of writing. But I always put those ideas in the book I’m already working on—even if they move the narrative in a new direction. Sometimes especially if they move the book in a new direction.
In a weird way, my latest book is a three-in-one for this very reason. It’s a book on how we can overcome anxiety by investing in our state of mind. But it’s also about two other ideas I encountered during the writing process.
First, it’s about how a calm mind saves us time by making us more productive—and the cognitive toll of anxiety. Second, it’s a deconstruction of burnout and the factors that cause this phenomenon. Each of these topics could probably be a book on its own. And while I’m obviously biased, I think my new book is more helpful and interesting because I made the decision to explore all three topics rather than hold off for some future project.
This post riffs on some of the ideas in my latest book, How to Calm Your Mind.
For me, putting all my ideas into a current project has become a point of leverage—doing so makes what I’m working on more helpful, fun, and interesting. Plus I’ve found there is never a shortage of ideas out there for the next project.
Opting to include fresh ideas in a project also makes the writing process more enjoyable—you get to chase whims and string together existing ideas. (Plus enjoyment is key for writing—and a lack of it is the main reason we put it off.)
If you’re creating a project that you hope will be helpful and interesting, pour everything you have into it. That includes ideas, even if many may be strong enough to stand alone as future projects.
More ideas are always around the corner.
The post When in doubt, put the ideas in appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, I chat with Gloria Mark, the author of the new book Attention Span. Topics covered include:
- The benefits of managing our attention deliberately;
- Why (and whether) we lose control of our behavior using our devices;
- What makes email so damn stressful;
- The “attention traps” we fall into;
- How rote tasks are actually good for us and replenish our energy;
- The countless factors that influence our attention;
- How we all have different preferences when it comes to multitasking.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: Attention Span
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: How to build your attention span appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: To gain greater enjoyment from your experiences, try practicing anticipation and reminiscence. Both are forms of savoring—ways to convert positive experiences into positive emotions.Estimated Reading Time: 1 minute, 2s.
In my most recent book, I write about the science of savoring—the process of converting positive experiences into positive emotions. The more we savor an experience, the more enjoyment we derive from it.
There are countless ways to savor something—including by luxuriating in it, marveling at it, and feeling grateful for it. But we can also savor an experience before and after it happens. The more we do this, the greater the enjoyment and happiness we get from the experience overall.
To savor an experience in advance is to practice the savoring style of anticipation. We practice anticipation by doing things like counting down the days to a vacation, journaling about an exciting weekend we have planned, or looking at the menu of the restaurant we’re heading to later in the week.
We can also savor an experience after it happens—a savoring style called reminiscence. We reminisce by reliving an experience in our mind, looking back through photos of an experience, or talking about it with a friend or a loved one.
Anticipation and reminiscence are two simple practices, but they significantly add to how much you enjoy and savor any experience. Be sure to give them a shot.
The post How to double your enjoyment from an experience appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: The digital world adds value in three ways: by saving us time, by adding features to our lives, and by connecting us with others.Estimated Reading Time: 1 minute, 50s.
My latest experiment to switch from a smartphone to a flip phone for a month has made me think a lot about the time I spend in the digital world.
In my newest book, I break down the vastly different ways in which analog and digital worlds affect our productivity and state of mind. While the digital world is full of distraction, it’s also full of utility. To make the most of it, I have a simple heuristic that I’ve internalized: the digital world is valuable only so far as it supports us in what we intend to accomplish. There is nothing inherently wrong with spending time in the digital world—but digital distractions can lead to the loss of much meaning and productivity if we’re not careful.
There are three ways the digital world can support us to accomplish what we set out to do:
- When it saves us time. For example, when we get directions, message someone we’re about to meet, or book travel plans.
- When it adds features to our analog lives. For example, when we call an Uber (or order Uber Eats) or learn about our cardiovascular health through a fitness wearable.
- When it connects us with others. For example, dating and meetup websites.
This post riffs on some of the ideas in my latest book, How to Calm Your Mind.
My flip phone experiment has had a weird influence on these three factors. I experience fewer drawbacks associated with the digital world—a shortened attention span and greater distraction, for example—but also have fewer features in my analog life (the lack of Uber is an especially large annoyance). I also feel less connected to others throughout the day (especially with no iMessage group chats). Overall, it has been interesting to dissect all the ways not having a smartphone has added and removed value from my life.
I’m still thinking through the experiment, but there’s no doubt about it: the digital world is full of a ridiculous amount of utility.
But when it comes to extracting the most out of the digital and analog worlds we occupy, the greatest value tends to come from the three ways above.
In the best case scenario, the digital world serves to make our lives more efficient, while the analog world makes our lives more meaningful.
The post The 3 ways the digital world adds value to your life appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about how to get into a state of flow, where we’re totally immersed in what we’re doing. Topics covered include:
- What a “flow state” is;
- The characteristics of a flow state;
- Shortcuts to help us get into a state of flow;
- How flow helps us perform better with creative tasks;
- When a flow state isn’t helpful;
- The “flow channel”;
- Why we shouldn’t always evaluate how we’re doing as we work;
- The steps for focusing on something, and how these can help us enter a flow state.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
- Book: How to Calm Your Mind
- Book: Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity
- Book: On Writing
- Article: The flow channel
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: How to get into a flow state appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: The nicer the smartphone, the more time I want to spend on it—and this isn’t something I want. Any device we consider “great” should make us feel better, not worse, about the time we spend on it. Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 45s.
When I started my most recent experiment to use only a flip phone for a month, my wife almost immediately said something I didn’t expect: “I don’t think you dislike smartphones, I just think you don’t like your newest iPhone.” (She echoed this same sentiment on our podcast the other week.)
As usual, she’s right. I can’t stand my newest phone, Apple’s “greatest phone ever,” the iPhone 14 Pro.
Here’s the problem: it’s too nice.
When I bought the phone last year, I went all out. I got the 1 terabyte model (a ridiculous amount of storage space, in hindsight), because I expected to have the thing for a while. But I’ve come to resent this phone. The camera is the only day-to-day improvement from my iPhone 11 Pro. (This camera and group texts are the only features I missed during my flip phone experiment. For the latter, I used iMessage on my iPad/laptop and am switching to a different feature phone so I can join text-based group chats again. The phone is called the Punkt, which I’m genuinely excited for.)
Other features of my new iPhone feel boring. It’s no surprise that phone updates today are less interesting than in the past: it’s been more than 15 years since the original iPhone, and the improvement between models is leveling off.
But in a weird way, the device also feels somewhat icky. The “dynamic island” feature that displays notifications and alerts in the pill at the top of my screen is neat, but you get used to it in a day or two. The stainless steel edges make the phone feel more like an oversized piece of jewelry than a functional everyday device. The huge screen makes information on the device feel more important and urgent than it truly is.
Plus, for reasons I mentioned in the original article for this experiment, I don’t want my phone to be a big part of my life, because:
- When I look back, most of what I do on my smartphone doesn’t matter.
- I’m already connected to the digital world for 8+ hours a day on my laptop.
- I rarely feel elated, or even happy, while using my smartphone.
- I often lose control of my behavior while on the device.
- I enjoy life more when I do things the analog way.
Overall, I have come to realize that much of the time on my smartphone is, as writer David Cain put it recently, a loss of time and a “loss of life.”
Increasingly, I want my phone to get out of the way and let me live my life—hopefully (and preferably) in the analog world. When I think back, this is the source of my most meaningful experiences and memories.
The nicer your phone, the more time you want to spend on it—and this isn’t something I want. I’m generally a fan of the stuff Apple makes—even though their products are pricey.
My iPhone 14 Pro is the opposite. The device hijacks my attention, overstimulates my mind, and leads me to waste time—urging me to pick it up and fill the gaps between tasks that comprise my day. Features like “focus modes” help, but they don’t go far enough.
Smartphones that are this “nice” should make us feel a hell of a lot better about the time we spend on them.
The post Smartphones should not be this nice appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about Chris’s latest experiment, to switch to a flip phone from a smartphone for a period of a month (to start). Topics covered include:
- How great the flip phone era was;
- How Ardyn feels about this experiment;
- The 6 reasons Chris is giving up his smartphone;
- The downsides to large screen phones;
- Whether smartphones are a net good in our lives;
- How personal the technology in our life has become;
- The “jobs” we “hire” our devices to do for us.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Article: Here’s why I’m trading in my smartphone for a flip phone this month
- Article: Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: Chatting about the flip phone experiment appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: A calm state of mind makes you more focused, engaged, and deliberate. Here’s why. Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 10s.In my most recent book, I contend that the calmer our mind, the more productive we become. Let me explain.
When it comes to knowledge work—tasks we do with our minds and not with our hands—speed and efficiency matter. So does working hard. As lazy as I am, I still think we need to hunker down to make the largest possible contribution. But what increasingly matters more than how fast or how hard we work is how deliberately we work.
The more complex our work, the more important our approach to that work becomes. Anyone can write a briefing, but what’s the best possible angle for it? Of the 100 things you could be doing right now, which one lets you have the greatest impact? How can you write a research paper in a way that makes it more likely to get published and cited?
Thinking through complex problems and tasks takes more time and thoughtfulness than it does brute force.
This often means working more thoughtfully, and maybe even more slowly. Slow work is not unproductive work. What we lose in speed we more than make up for in deliberateness—as well as in undistracted attention, a critical factor of productivity.
Not all tasks are complex knowledge tasks, of course. But the higher the proportion that are, the more you likely need this advice. (Being deliberate and thoughtful are also inherently human skills that will likely only become more valuable as we integrate artificial intelligence into our workflows to eliminate much of our daily drudgery.)
A calm mind makes working deliberately effortless. As I write in the book, a calm mind is a deliberate mind, and a deliberate mind is a productive mind. Calmness may sound like an odd ingredient to become more productive, but in practice, the connection between productivity and calm is profound.
This post riffs on some of the ideas in my latest book, How to Calm Your Mind.
For starters, as I mentioned a few weeks back, research suggests that anxiety—the opposite of calm—takes a huge cognitive toll. The more anxious our mind, the less mental capacity we have to get things done. Anxiety even decreases the size of our working memory—the mental scratchpad we use to think and process the world—so much so that a standard eight-hour workday takes nearly 10 hours to complete.
As an illustration of this effect, imagine trying to do complex, cognitive work during a bout of airplane turbulence or immediately before giving a big speech. This is the same effect anxiety has on our attention—only instead of having sweaty palms and weak knees before a speech, we need to work longer hours to not continue falling behind. An anxious state of mind means we have less focus to work on what truly matters.
It is in this way that investing in calm helps us earn back time. With a calm mind, we have a greater amount of focus and mental capacity to engage in our work and life. We focus deeper, become more engaged, and have greater energy at our disposal. Outside of our work, experiences become more meaningful because we can focus more on them. Life becomes richer.
It is essential that we more deeply enjoy the time spent in our own mind. This inner calm makes us less emotionally reactive and helps us see things with greater equanimity. We focus more on the positive parts of our work and life because we’re not constantly scanning our environment for threats (like negative emails and news stories). And with greater focus, we sink more deeply into the experiences that make life good—and that make us more productive throughout the day.
Calm may seem like an odd place to turn when wanting to become more productive. But as you invest in calm, I think you’ll find what I did: that the benefits are so profound that you never want to give them up.
The post The productivity payoffs of a calm mind appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: My latest experiment for the month: trading out my brand new iPhone for a flip phone. Follow along here (and join me, if you want!). Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 46s.Today I stowed away my shiny new iPhone 14 Pro and transferred its SIM card into a flip feature phone.
I’ve grown a bit tired of the smartphone as both a product category and as a general concept. The reason is manyfold:
- When I look back, most of what I do on my smartphone doesn’t matter. In particular, the device doesn’t bring much productivity or meaning to my life—two important currencies to me. I got by just fine before I had one.
- I’m connected 8+ hours a day anyway. Most of my work is done on my laptop. This should be enough time to keep up with my digital life.
- I rarely feel elated, or even happy, while using my smartphone. The opposite is true: my phone is probably the most stressful and negative thing that I pay attention to on a regular basis.
- This post riffs on some of the ideas in my latest book, How to Calm Your Mind.
I often lose control of my behavior while using the device. As I write in How to Calm Your Mind, some apps hijack our attention by taking advantage of our brain’s built-in desire for novelty. It’s through this mechanism that our smartphone weakens our attention over time, shrinking our working memory while slashing our attention span. Research shows that “the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity.” * I enjoy life more when I do things the analog way. I don’t want to spend any more time than necessary in the digital world. Life is simply more enjoyable to me in the analog world, and I want to work to spend more time in it. It’s where I find more meaning—and even productivity. * I’m already a lousy texting correspondent. Giving up your smartphone in 2023 feels like the social equivalent of moving to a commune. But when you’re already lousy at staying in touch over text, becoming less connected isn’t as much of a change for the people around you.
I chose the Alcatel Go Flip 3 for this experiment. Its feature list is short (like the amount of time I want to spend on the thing)but it still has some “smart” features that’ll come in handy. For example, the phone has Google Assistant, and you can use it as a personal internet hotspot, a feature I use all the time when traveling. For a flip phone, the screen looks clear and big. My calendar and contacts will sync on the device. And on standby mode the battery life is 17.8 days.
I once loved my smartphone. But these days it makes me depressed, is a significant source of chronic stress, and shrinks my mental capacity. For now, I’m done.
Over the last few months, and especially while writing How to Calm Your Mind, I’ve been thinking more about the role the smartphone has in my life. Better yet, the role that my smartphone deserves to have in my life.
I can’t wait to see how this experiment goes—and share updates with you. I’m going to miss the camera on my iPhone 14 Pro—but I’m also excited to give my mirrorless camera a try.
Want to join me?If you’d like to do this experiment alongside (I’m not expecting a lot of takers), I’d be curious to hear what you discover! Shoot me a message and let me know if you want to go smartphone-free for the month!
The post Here’s why I’m trading in my smartphone for a flip phone this month appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we welcome Laura Vanderkam back on the podcast to chat about her new book, Tranquility by Tuesday. Topics covered include:
- The three categories to use to plan your days and your life;
- Why we should plan our weeks on Friday afternoon;
- Laura’s daily planner of choice;
- How doing something three times a week makes it a habit;
- How carving out more white space can make us more productive;
- How to get more out of our leisure time;
- How to introduce more novelty into our days to slow down the passage of time.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: Tranquility by Tuesday
- The planner that Laura uses
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: 5 tactics for more tranquility in your life appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: There are two kinds of productivity advice: advice that helps you work smarter, and that which helps build your capacity for getting things done in the first place. Both are critical.Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 13s.
In exploring the research about calm and productivity while writing How to Calm Your Mind, I realized there are two kinds of productivity advice. To start, there’s the traditional productivity advice that focuses on how we can get more done every day. This guidance is critical (and sexy!) so it’s no wonder so many articles and books focus on the topic.
But there’s a second type of productivity advice that’s just as essential yet isn’t talked about as much: the ways we can develop our capacity for getting things done in the first place.
This post riffs on some of the ideas in my latest book, How to Calm Your Mind.
Put another way: there are countless variables that limit our performance without our even realizing.
This includes something as simple as what you eat. Let’s say that tomorrow afternoon you indulge in four plates of food at the Indian buffet down the street, while also sipping a glass of wine or two. Good luck being productive that afternoon! Your energy and focus will wane throughout the afternoon—and you’ll have less mental capacity to get stuff done as a result. (Not that I’m speaking from experience…)
In How to Calm Your Mind, I break down the countless reasons our productivity may be limited. Anxiety is one of them, and it significantly impacts our cognitive performance. If you’ll permit me a quote from my own book:
If you doubt the extent to which an anxious mental state can impair cognitive performance, you don’t even need to take my word for it: you likely have many examples from your own life that illuminate this phenomenon. For example, think back to when you last had to give a speech in front of a group of people (if that sort of thing makes you nervous). You probably dreaded the event: public speaking is up there with death as one of our most common fears.
Recall what the state of your mind was like immediately before the talk. Could you focus easily, or did your mind barrage you with negative self‑talk that hijacked your attention? Were you able to mentally process a lot at once—calmly carrying on conversations with whoever was around you—or were you busy fretting over what you were going to say? If, theoretically, before going onstage, someone had asked you to proofread something that required deep concentration, would you have been able to give it your full attention?
After your talk started, did you process it fully? Do you remember what you said?
Maybe you’re lucky, and you haven’t given a speech in front of a large group of people, or perhaps you’ve spoken in front of enough groups that you’ve stepped back from these anxious thought patterns. If that’s the case, think of the last time you flew on an airplane and hit a pocket of turbulence. If you were reading a book, did you have to re‑read the same passage a few times? If you were listening to a podcast or watching a movie, did you need to rewind or mentally try to fill in the gaps of what you missed?
Burnout puts another significant limitation on our daily productivity. The closer we get to burning out, the less productive we become—feeling unproductive is even one of the three core attributes of burnout.
If you’re looking to maximize your productivity at work, you’re not alone. But you need to focus on the two kinds of productivity advice: ways to work smarter, and also ways of building your capacity to get things done in the first place. I explore this topic more deeply in the book, and dive into some science-backed tactics on how to set aside anxiety and avoid burnout so you can be more calm and, as an outcome, more productive in the long run.
The post The two kinds of productivity advice appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about how we like to go “novelty hunting,” especially in the digital world. Topics covered include:
- What “novelty hunting” is;
- The connection between novelty and dopamine;
- The three dopamine factors;
- The “novelty bias”;
- How novelty hunting is more stressful than we give it credit for;
- Superstimuli;
- How novelty changes our perception of time;
- Awareness of our novelty hunting;
- How novelty hunting used to look a lot different before the internet;
- What to do about it!
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: How to Calm Your Mind
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: What to know about “novelty hunting.” appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: As a simple experiment, try alternating between waking up with and without your phone. Observe the difference. You may be surprised by how much more calmly and deliberately you act when you don’t begin your day in the digital world.Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 20s.
Here’s a simple experiment:
- Tomorrow morning, wake up with your phone. Use it as your alarm clock, and then lie in bed for a while hunting for digital novelty, bouncing between apps, and stimulating your mind. Wake up in the digital worldrather than the analog one.
- The following morning, wake up without your phone. Use some other alarm clock and banish your phone to another room. Go as long as possible without checking your devices. Spend your morning in the analog world rather than the digital one.
Then, notice the difference between the two days.
This post riffs on some of the ideas in my latest book, How to Calm Your Mind.
On the first day, you may observe how much more you distract yourself once the morning is through—how your distracting morning turns into a distracted day. On the second day, you may notice a feeling of calm, lower anxiety levels, and how much you intentionally get done as a result.
Tally all the differences you can between the two days. If you feel like it, conduct the experiment a few more times, alternating between digital and analog mornings to notice any further changes in your mind.
This experiment is simple. But you may be surprised by what you notice.
—
In exploring the research on anxiety and calm while writing How to Calm Your Mind, one lesson that stood out is how mental stimulation begets mental stimulation. The more we stimulate our mind—including through digital distraction—the more stimulation our mind then craves. Stimulating our mind releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter we crave once we get a hit of it. Research suggests that an over-reliance on distracting sources of dopamine can make us less present and more anxious.
Though we may feel productive when we distract and stimulate our mind, this stimulation is often a form of mental busyness: we move more things around than we do forward. We become less focused, productive, and calm—while also unwittingly leading ourselves to greater heights of anxiety.
Not turning to your phone first thing in the morning is a simple shift—one that may or may not make a sizable difference. This experiment has motivated me to not only use my phone less in the morning, but also in general. Stimulation begets stimulation, dopamine begets dopamine, and anxiety begets anxiety.
For me, not using it first thing in the morning breaks this cycle of anxiety.
These days my mornings are defined by what they don’t contain as much as what they do. Instead of reaching for my phone, I pick up a book if I have a few minutes to spare. I’m also more likely to meditate, read the paper, and practice piano. My mornings are slower and more meaningful as a result.
The more dopamine hits you turn to first thing in the morning, the more you’ll want to keep them coming. Remember the rule: calm mornings lead to deliberate days. Give it a try!
The post Slow mornings lead to deliberate days appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: “Novelty hunting” is my name for when we go searching for dopamine, usually in the digital world. Three factors determine the amount of dopamine this hunt releases: novelty, direct effect, and genetics. Finding novelty used to take more effort and therefore meant we had to be more creative. But the digital world has introduced a new “era of novelty,” meaning stimulation is pretty much everywhere.Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 26s.
There’s a term I use to describe a common activity many of us do without even realizing: novelty hunting. Novelty hunting is when we seek ways to stimulate our mind, especially in the digital world.
I’ve written previously about our brain’s “novelty bias,” where we’re rewarded with a hit of dopamine each time we pay attention to anything novel. (Dopamine is a neurochemical that makes us feel as though pleasure is right around the corner but doesn’t lead to pleasure itself.)
As I explore in How to Calm Your Mind (page 108, for those following at home), three factors of an experience determine the size of a dopamine hit:
- Novelty: How surprising an experience is;
- Direct effect: The extent to which an experience directly affects our life (this is sometimes called “salience”);
- Genetics: Some of us are predisposed to release more or less dopamine from experiences.
Novelty hunting most often takes place online and on our devices, versus in the analog world. With endless refreshing and scrolling, there is always more of the above factors to trigger a dopamine release. Take, for example:
- When we pick up our phone first thing in the morning, tapping and swiping between apps while lying in bed;
- When we instinctually refresh our email instead of working on the Word document in the other window;
- When we work with our phone by our desk so we can scan social media and other apps to keep our mind at the same height of stimulation (page 117) throughout the day.
You get the idea.
Novelty hunting is instinctual—and we’re rewarded for doing it on a chemical level. The more novel and surprising an experience, the bigger the dopamine hit, and the more our mind is stimulated. This leads us to becoming less productive and calm—two qualities that move in tandem in an anxious world.
If you can, try to imagine life before the digital world. Novelty hunting looked pretty different—it wasn’t fed to us; we had to go out and find it, or better yet, construct novel experiences out of thin air. As bored kids, we’d make a fort out of living room chairs instead of staring at an iPad. As an adult on vacation in a rented cottage, we grabbed a pack of cards to beat the boredom—instead of tapping on our phones to get more dopamine hits.
We live in an era of novelty. Novel experiences are all around us and we don’t even need to work for them.
Novelty can make life exciting—while slowing down our perception of time (which we chatted about on this podcast episode)—but novel experiences also need depth for them to be meaningful.
Novelty that is merely stimulating leads to anxiety and stress. This detracts from how productive and present we are, while making us less satisfied with how we’ve spent our time overall. Be mindful of the novelty hunting you do in the digital world—it may be taking more of a toll than you think.
The post How often do you go “novelty hunting”? appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about the science of “savoring”—the process through which we enjoy our lives. Topics covered include:
- How “savoring” is the process of converting positive experiences into positive emotions;
- The productivity benefits of savoring;
- How savoring helps us become less anxious;
- The psychological and neurological benefits of savoring;
- The balance between striving and savoring;
- How scarcity leads us to enjoy something more;
- The five ways we can savor everyday life;
- The “savor list.”
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: How to Calm Your Mind
The post Podcast: The science of savoring your life appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Takeaway: There is a science behind enjoying life. The fascinating research field of “savoring” explores the tactical ways we can better enjoy everyday experiences—which can make us more calm, focused, and productive.Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 30s.
In writing my most recent book, How to Calm Your Mind, I had the chance to explore the research behind a bunch of fascinating topics related to productivity, anxiety, burnout, and calm. One of those topics was the science of “savoring.” Savoring is defined as the process of converting positive experiences into positive emotions.
Surprisingly, there’s a good amount of science behind how we can better enjoy our lives. (The more we enjoy everyday experiences, the calmer and more focused we become.)
Here’s a key to remember: just because you experience something enjoyable doesn’t mean you derive enjoyment from it. Think about the delicious meals you distractedly scarf down in front of the TV. Or the family gatherings you can’t fully immerse yourself in because your mind is still anxious about work. There are countless daily experiences we rush past because we don’t savor them—everything from our morning coffee to time with people we love. Experiences, in other words, that make life good.
Luckily, there are a treasure trove of research-backed strategies that can help us appreciate these experiences more. Savoring is one of these strategies.
As I break down in the book, there are countless styles of savoring—techniques we can practice for enjoying our lives more. A few of them are:
- Luxuriating: Basking in the pleasure of a positive experience. (This is where our mind often goes when we think about savoring.)
- Marveling: Experiencing awe, like when we look out at the ocean or up at the night sky.
- Giving thanks: Expressing gratitude for something (my favorite way to do this is recalling three things I’m grateful for every night with my wife.)
We can also practice savoring across different time frames. For example, we can savor the past, reflecting on positive memories and experiences. This is called reminiscence. We can practice anticipation and savor the future by thinking about upcoming experiences that excite us. (These still count as savoring because they happen in the present.)
The list of techniques goes on, but these are a few to get you started.
One simple daily habit you can use to practice savoring is to keep a Savor List. The definition is in the name: on this list is everything you like to regularly savor—from fancy take-out lattes, to time with your kids, to wine-fueled board game nights with your spouse.
This is a simple strategy, but I turn to these savoring activities at least once every single day. Interestingly, the more ambitious and driven you are, the more you need this advice. The networks in our brain that help us enjoy life and those that are active when we strive for more are anticorrelated: when one is active, the other isn’t. Wealthier people report a decreased ability to savor everyday experiences—and so do men.
Fortunately, there’s hard science behind how we can enjoy our lives. Even better yet, savoring is a skill you can improve on over time. I explore all these topics much more in my new book—here’s a link if you’d like to check it out!
The post The science (and skill) of actually enjoying your life appeared first on Chris Bailey.
I’m so thrilled to let you know that my next book, How to Calm Your Mind, is now available wherever books are sold!
Here are links to order a copy of your own!
- US: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Audible
- Canada: Indigo/Chapters, Amazon, Audible
- UK/International: Waterstones, Amazon, Audible
- The book will also be available at your local bookstore of choice!
In How to Calm Your Mind, I share my story of overcoming burnout and anxiety, and what I learned from this journey. Along the way, I also came to view productivity differently. In an anxious world, the path to productivity runs straight through calm. I can’t wait to show you why, and how you can calm your mind to take advantage of these profound benefits. I really believe this book is the most helpful thing I’ve created to date.
I think you’re going to enjoy this one :-)
Cheers to a healthy, productive, and fruitful 2023!
Chris
P.s., While you may use social media a bit less after reading the book, I’d also love to hear what you think of it! Feel free to tag me on social media: @chrisbaileyauth on Instagram and @Chris_Bailey on Twitter.
The post How to Calm Your Mind is out NOW! appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about ideas from Chris’s new book, How to Calm Your Mind!
Topics covered include:
- How a calm mind can make us significantly more productive;
- How anxiety shrinks our cognitive performance;
- What calm actually is;
- How anxiety is a spectrum;
- How presence is the key to productivity, and how to find it;
- The “accomplishment mindset”;
- The various drafts of How to Calm Your Mind;
- How we need dopamine, and also how it can lead us astray;
- Our brain’s “acquisition mentality”;
- The three factors that influence the size of the dopamine hit we get from something;
- What “superstimuli” are and how they highjack our attention on a chemical level;
- How to balance time between the digital and analog worlds;
- The various types of chronic stress;
- The power science of “savoring” our lives.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: How to Calm Your Mind
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: The Year of Calm appeared first on Chris Bailey.
On this episode, we chat about our favorite rituals to ring in the new year. Topics covered include:
- Whether we make New Year’s resolutions;
- The importance of reflection at New Year’s;
- How to think back to past accomplishments;
- Simple rituals to set goals for the year ahead;
- The productivity benefits of gratitude.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Article: Give these 3 new year’s rituals a try
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: Our New Year’s Rituals appeared first on Chris Bailey.
This episode was originally published on May 7, 2019.
In this episode, I chat with David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, about his book—and how we can carve out more space for having ideas.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: My interview with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Breaking down burnout—and how to overcome it.
The post Podcast: Understanding burnout appeared first on Chris Bailey.
How to stick with valuable habits in the long run.
The post Some habits work too well appeared first on Chris Bailey.
The things we review every week to become more productive.
The post Podcast: The Weekly Review appeared first on Chris Bailey.
If you use iOS, be sure to check out Focus modes! Here are the ones I’ve set up.
The post Check out the updated Focus modes feature on iOS appeared first on Chris Bailey.
A few of my favorite writing tips—and the ones I use every day.
The post Podcast: My go-to writing tips appeared first on Chris Bailey.
The best habits often become invisible over time. That includes the helpful ones you’ve formed in the past.
The post What habits do you take for granted? appeared first on Chris Bailey.
We briefly chat about Chris’s next book, and then explore the science of self-talk.
The post Podcast: Taming Negative Self-Talk appeared first on Chris Bailey.
My next book, How to Calm Your Mind.
The post Here’s the cover of my next book! 🎉 appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Reflecting on your dividend-paying habits can help you sustain them in the long run.
The post Podcast: The Habits You Take for Granted appeared first on Chris Bailey.
James and I chat about his fantastic book, Atomic Habits.
The post Podcast: My interview with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits appeared first on Chris Bailey.
This site looks and works way better now!
The post My website just got a whole lot better appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Becoming more productive in a college/university setting.
The post Podcast: How to be a more productive student appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
A few practical, tactical ways to measure daily productivity
The post Podcast: How to measure your productivity appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
The costs of task switching—and how to get better at switching between things.
The post Podcast: Task Switching appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
The ideal amount of time to break throughout the workday.
The post For optimal productivity, be on break for 20-25% of the workday appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
A few rituals for planning your week—along with a few favorite books we’ve read recently.
The post Podcast: Ways to plan your week appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Productivity doesn’t have to only be about the blind pursuit of accomplishment.
The post Podcast: Thoughtful Productivity appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Checking out the latest in “paper” tablet technology
The post reMarkable 2 review: A great digital tablet that feels analog appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
The best sources of caffeine—for lasting energy.
The post Podcast: The best caffeine vehicles appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Operating without a roadmap and coming out the other side.
The post You’re not as lost as you think you are appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Work breaks: How long they should be and how to take them.
The post Podcast: How to take an intentional work break appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Your values are central to who you are, and who you want to be as a person. It’sworthreflecting on what you value most before investing in productivity.
The post Before investing in productivity, know what you value appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Tapping into your sources of motivation.
The post Podcast: Where motivation comes from appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
The fundamental values from which all others stem
The post There are just 10 basic values appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Reviewing the Timeular and the reMarkable 2 on the podcast.
The post Podcast: Reviewing a couple pieces of productivity tech appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Busyness gets a bad rap, but the truth is more nuanced.
The post There are 2 types of busyness appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
We chat about the power of chunking your day into blocks of time on this week’s podcast
The post Podcast: Exploring time blocking appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
We’ve all been there—here’s how to get unstuck.
The post How to stop procrastinating by making your work more fun appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Working with greater intention, in general, every week, and every day.
The post Podcast: A few ways to work with intention appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Triage your tasks to make back time.
The post 6 immediate strategies to feel less overwhelmed at work appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
How to define (and think about) productivity
The post Podcast: How to define productivity appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Ideas for dealing with change—the main constant in our
lives
The post Podcast: Strategies for dealing with change appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
How to think like an economist to become more productive.
The post Podcast: Thinking using economics to become more productive appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
One of the best prioritization strategies out there.
The post Podcast: My favorite prioritization strategy appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
On this episode, I chat with John List about his new book, The Voltage Effect. Topics we talk about include:
- What “scale” and “voltage” are;
- How he discovered the “silver bullets” of scaling up an idea;
- The five hurdles we need to overcome when scaling something;
- How scale is a “weakest link” problem;
- How to discover which of our ideas have a chance;
- The three reasons we don’t quit soon enough (and often enough);
- How to become a “marginal thinker”;
- How he stays so productive.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Book: The Voltage Effect
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: How to scale up your work appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
On this episode, we chat about our daily habits—especially the ones we’re actively tracking and moving toward implementing. Topics covered include:
- The habit tracker we use (and recommend)
- The daily habits we track
- The cues that trigger our habits—and how to implement more of them
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Article: The Best Habit Tracking App for iOS
- Article: The 11 Best Habit Tracking Apps in 2022
- Article: The Best Light Therapy Light
- Book: The Why Axis
- Two videos on how healthy barberries are
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: Our favorite daily habits appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Takeaway: Instagram and Facebook fuel a dangerous “inadequacy loop” that can hijack our attention and sabotage our mental well-being. Awareness is key to breaking this cycle. Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 51s.
I recently sat down to watch Frances Haugen’s three-hour testimony on Facebook in front of Congress. The event was surprisingly gripping—she very obviously knows her stuff and, as a data engineer, algorithmic scientist, and former product manager at the company, was not afraid to dig deep into the addictive algorithms that run Facebook and Instagram (which are, of course, both operated by the same company).
One line stuck out to me: In talking about the addictive nature of the photo-sharing platform, Haugen mentioned offhandly that “Instagram is about bodies and comparing lifestyles.”
I’ve kept this in mind in the weeks since, including when I’m on Instagram. Now when using the app, I’m struck by the number of updates I see about the two topics. Scanning my personalized Explore tab, there are images of people far fitter than I am, pictures and clips of strangers living it up around the world (half of which seem to take place next to a waterfall?), and fancy products I might want to buy someday. But when I really think about it, my life is just fine and yours probably is too. We don’t need some personalized Google Images-on-steroids to tell us differently. There are almost 8 billion people in the world. Someone is always going to be living it up somewhere.
What strikes me most about Haugen’s comment about bodies and lifestyles is how it gets to the core of human instinct and insecurity. We all want to look good for others and feel as though we’re living a happy, fulfilling life. Apps programmed to show content from people who look attractive or better off makes us feel inadequate—even though our lives have not changed in the slightest. We’re doing just fine.
It could be said that apps like Instagram are addictive in large part because they breed these feelings of inadequacy. They create what I’ve started to think of as an “inadequacy loop.” When we continually look at pictures and videos of people who are richer and fitter than we are, we feel compelled to post updates about our own life and seek the validation of others. We also modify our behavior to feel better about ourselves after. According to Haugen, this sadly affects teenage girls the most: in a recent interview, she described how Instagram’s algorithm shamelessly targets this group with eating disorder content because it leads them to spend more time in the app.1 It’s all about engagement.
The ways in which Facebook’s algorithms fuel this inadequacy loop are deeply disturbing and alarming. The company has pursued profit over connection; user engagement over mental health; growth over safety. But despite these practices, we remain hooked because the content we’re shown caters to our base impulses.
With some awareness, we can break this cycle. When (or if!) you spend time on Instagram, remember that the app is programmed to show you content that your instinctual mind craves.
This content might keep you scrolling but it’s junk food for your brain and detrimental to your overall mental well-being. Once you understand the psychology behind it—that the company is hijacking your attention to make more money—the whole charade feels kind of… weird. Not to mention gross. Facebook is trying to take advantage of the way your mind is programmed for the purpose of optimizing their company around engagement and profit.
Luckily, we have a choice.
- Source. ↩
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On this episode, we dig into New Year’s resolutions. Topics covered include:
- The resolutions we’ve set;
- How often New Year’s resolutions fail—and why they do;
- The difference between resolutions and goals;
- How to account for constraints in goal setting;
- The power of “course correcting” to get closer to your goals;
- How to course correct on a regular basis.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- A free New Year’s Resolutions Guidebook I wrote a while back.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: Should you set New Year’s resolutions? appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
On this episode, we chat about how to step back from work over the holidays, yet still get things done when you need to. Topics covered include:
- Whether or not we should even try to be productive over the holidays;
- The “opportunity cost” of how we spend our time;
- How the “productivity mindset” can creep into every part of our life;
- Defining “Productivity Hours” every day—at work and at home;
- Avoiding guilt, doubt, and worry about how you spend your time.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: The Second Annual Holiday Spectacular appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Takeaway: You probably have guiding principles, whether you realize it or not. Capturing them can help you make better decisions. If you’re curious, mine are listed below! Estimated Reading Time: 1 minute, 52s.
A work strategy group I’m part of recently had a curious meeting topic: what core principles guide our actions? On first reflection, I honestly didn’t think I had any. I don’t live by some creed or code, I mostly just try to make decisions that feel like the right ones. But when I sat down with a notepad, to my surprise, six principles almost immediately came to mind—ideas that guide my decisions and actions in work and in life. The whole activity took just a couple of minutes.
I’d wager a guess that you’re the same way. We rarely take the time to capture these guiding principles—even though recognizing them can help steer our actions, lead us to better decisions, and let us live more in alignment with who we are.
If you’re curious, here are my six:
- Don’t do anything unless I’m going to do it right.
- Only associate with nice people—and be kind to others in turn. (As a rule, I refuse to work with people who are unkind, even if doing so costs me money or work. Life’s too short to work with toxic people, particularly when given the choice.)
- Try to uncover my weaknesses—especially ones that exist in my blind spots—then either fix or compensate for them.
- Trust in karma. (People talk and actions matter.)
- Surround myself with people who talk about ideas—not events or people.
- Remember that happiness is nothing more than coming to terms with how things change. Remind myself of this every day through meditation.
Writing out these core principles—most of which have been deep in my mind for quite some time—got me reflecting on how helpful these principles are in practice. They’re true to who I am and each lead me to feel good about how I’m spending my time. I’m sure there’s more I haven’t realized yet.
If you had the time to read this article, you probably also have a few minutes to capture your own list of principles. Grab a pen and a sheet of paper and write down what comes to mind, paying special attention to ideas that have helped guide you in the past.
You may be surprised by how quickly they come to mind.
(If you do end up creating a guiding principles list, I’d love to read them! Shoot me a quick email—I might even steal one or two for myself.) The post My 6 guiding principles appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
On this episode, we chat about getting help from others. Topics covered include:
- The difference between collaboration and asking for help;
- When we should ask for help at work and at home;
- Getting help through asking for feedback;
- How to get good feedback from others;
- How exactly to ask for help;
- The power of anticipating obstacles ahead of time;
- Outsourcing getting help;
- The importance of respecting the time of others; and
- How great it feels to help others.
Link mentioned in this episode:
- Honey, I Swept the Floor! via The New York Times
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: How to lean on others appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Takeaway: Our “surface area of concern”—the number of events we pay attention to on a regular basis—has expanded alongside technology. This is not an inherently negative thing, but becomes one when it adds chronic stress, leads us to burnout, and affects our mental health.
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes, 30s.
Before radio, TV, and the internet came along, you probably subscribed to a newspaper to learn what was happening outside the boundaries of your life. No newspaper subscription? That was fine. Actually, life was probably simpler, calmer, and more enjoyable. Maybe you woke up, hit snooze on your alarm a couple of times, wiped the sleep from your eyes, said good morning to your family, made breakfast, traveled to work, came home, and enjoyed your evening—all with no interrupting rectangles in sight. You could switch between tasks with greater ease and a calm mind, and it’s possible that a certain peaceful productivity wound its way through your days. You had the energy to get stuff done. Life was obviously not without stress—but there were fewer things to worry about and you paid less mind to events that didn’t directly influence your life.
As time marches on, our “surface area of concern” has expanded. This is what I call the scope of the events and concerns we pay attention to on a regular basis.
Over time, this surface area of concern has been influenced by technological progression. Long after the newspaper came along, radio became the mainstream way to turn the dial and engage our mind. After radio came broadcast television—oh, sweet wonderful broadcast television!—which introduced the nightly news and paved the way for 24-hour cable news channels.
These new mediums were entertaining and informative. And, crucial to this article, they allowed us in any moment to discover events happening outside our life. Most stories didn’t directly affect us, but that didn’t matter: the news let us hold the whole world in our hand and understand how we fit into the bigger picture. We also learned about the lives of other people, and what they were going through.
You already know what happens next: after the advent of radio and TV came the internet, which expanded our surface area of concern yet again. It’s easier than ever to consume news online, and more interestingly, it’s far more immediate. We’re no longer beholden to the predefined, scripted pace of radio and TV news—we can skim countless stories at once and soak in knowledge as if there’s no tomorrow. Through darting eyes and fragmented attention, we take in the world.
Our surface area of concern has grown with each new medium. This is not inherently good or bad, but there are a few factors that make our ballooning area of concern a bit worrisome.
The first relates to negativity. If you consume a lot of news, you’ll quickly realize, as researchers have, that the news is biased to be more negative than positive. Negative stories—each which provide a corresponding microdose of stress—rise to the surface of the news because they grab our attention. Negative news naturally comes across as more concerning and urgent—and that can be anxiety-inducing. There’s more to track and worry about.
Importantly, the internet expands our surface area of concern in another key way: it informs us of about the lives of the people we know (and those we sort of know). We human beings are empathetic, social creatures, and this bears out in how much content we consume online. We don’t need to run into old college friends at a restaurant to catch up—we get updates about every promotion and job change on LinkedIn, witness their life milestones on Instagram, and scan their random thoughts on Twitter. We not only have the wonderful opportunity to listen to our kooky cousin talk about flat earth conspiracy theories at family reunions—we get to see the dumb memes he shares on Facebook. We no longer have to wait until a community gathering to hear the latest pandemic update—we can quickly check the daily case count via online monitoring sites the moment it’s announced.
Thanks to the progression and proliferation of technology, there’s more to pay attention to, process, and potentially be concerned about.
Our area of concern has never been bigger.
—
Like I said, a larger surface area of concern is not, by itself, a bad thing, especially if what you pay attention to has a direct or indirect impact on your life.
The greater your responsibilities, the larger your overall area of concern, and that’s fine. A Fortune 500 CEO or a politician will probably have more to be concerned about than a retiree relaxing at home (at least professionally). A busy parent will likely have a larger area of concern than a bachelor (at least personally).
Surface area of concern size aside, remember: when we pay attention to information that doesn’t directly impact our lives, that information still affects us, even in a small way. It can make us cynical and exhausted—two key attributes of burnout. Or it can add needless chronic stress and distract us to the point of forgetting all we have to be grateful for. This is a serious risk right now, when our daily level of screen time has never been higher.
Events that directly and indirectly influence our lives and those we love are important. But those that don’t touch us, the people we care about, and our community at-large—especially events that are outside our control—are more trouble than they’re worth.
Mind your surface area of concern. It may be worth shrinking.
The post Your surface area of concern appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
On this episode, Annie Murphy Paul and I chat about her fantastic new book, The Extended Mind. Topics covered include:
- The “brainbound” way of thinking—and why it’s broken;
- How our body can be more rational than our brain;
- How to practice “interoception”;
- How physical activity, of varying intensities, can support thought;
- The power of nature in supporting thought;
- How to externalize information to think more clearly;
- How open offices affect how we think;
- The importance of people and thought.
Link mentioned in this episode:
- Andy Clark and David Chalmers’s extended mind theory
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
The post Podcast: How to extend your mind appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
Takeaway : Productivity hacks are fun, but they don’t always produce the greatest returns on your time. If you care about productivity, be sure to invest in your energy levels. Estimated Reading Time : 2 minutes, 21s.
As I write these words, I’m in the middle of a caffeine reset—going without the substance for a couple of weeks to reset my tolerance. In addition to being a helpful strategy to get more energy out of caffeine in the long run, the exercise has served as a nice reminder of the important role energy plays in productivity.
I view energy as the fuel we burn to be productive. When our energy is toast, our productivity takes a nosedive alongside it—especially for those of us who do knowledge work for a living. My energy levels are low right now and I’m feeling the effects on my personal productivity. (It’s taking me forever to write this article.)
If you don’t believe energy matters, try writing a 2,500-word report after overeating at a lunch buffet, giving an important presentation on two hours of fragmented sleep, or doing your taxes before you’ve had your morning coffee. Other factors affect our energy levels, too: the amount of time spent with and around other people, our exposure to nature (the average person spends just 7% of their day outside), and exercise habits, just to name a few.
Checking in on these factors is common sense, eat-your-vegetables kind of advice. But, as the saying goes, common sense is not common action—and if you’re looking to become more productive, investing in your energy is a great place to start. It’s easy to focus on quick tips and hacks. But tactics like bullet journaling, turning off notifications, and prioritizing three daily tasks won’t work if you’re running on empty.
As I wrote the other week, it’s normal to have less energy these days—it’s a weird time. But do check up on the energy-related factors I’ve mentioned in this article and see them as habits to invest in.
Other simple elements can really contribute to your energy, including:
- Time spent in nature;
- Exercising on a regular basis;
- Caffeine consumption, especially if it makes you jittery, anxious, or fatigued;
- The amount of mind wandering time you set aside to process thoughts;
- The healthiness of the food you eat;
- Hours of nightly sleep;
- How much water you drink throughout the day; and
- Face-to-face people time.
Plenty of other factors also contribute to how much energy you have. For example, I consider meditation one of the best ways to bring more of yourself to each moment. If you’re dragging your feet, this list above is a great place to start. Give it a scan and pick one or two pieces of low hanging fruit you’ve been missing out on.
Investing in your energy requires energy. But in the long run you’ll make this energy back and then some. And better yet, these tactics will probably save you time, too.
The post Don’t forget the basics of productivity appeared first on A Life of Productivity.
