How To Stop Feeling So Burned Out - Chris Bailey

Chris Bailey is a productivity consultant, researcher and best selling author. Being productive is great. Everyone wants to get more done in less time and achieve their goals. But overshooting your tolerance for work can result in misery, fatigue, loss of creativity and days in bed. Finding a balance between the grind and being calm is vital. Expect to learn the scientific theory explaining why burnout exists, why calmness and productivity are intrinsically linked, how being dopamine-driven is a dangerous motivator, how to slow down without feeling idle and lazy, the science of savouring life, why people who watch the news get more PTSD than people who experienced a bombing attack and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get 10% discount & free shipping on the best Ketone Drink at https://ketone-iq.com/ (use code MW10) Get 20% discount on House Of Macadamias’ nuts at https://houseofmacadamias.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Check out Chris' website - https://alifeofproductivity.com/ Buy How To Calm Your Mind - https://amzn.to/3I6NSK6 Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #productivity #burnout #mindset - 00:00 Intro 02:56 Pressure of Being a Productivity Expert 06:01 What Chris Has Learned About Burnout 10:01 How to Recognise Burnout 15:06 Danger of Repetitive Burnouts 20:04 Evolutionary Benefit of Burnout 24:00 Strategies to Overcome Chronic Stress 32:16 Relationship of Calm & Anxiety 42:35 Can You Be Calm & Driven? 54:34 Self-Care Myths 59:12 How to Down-Regulate Dopamine Craves 1:09:13 Where To Find Chris - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Bailey?

  There was one study that was conducted around the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. The team of researchers looked at two groups of people. The first group of people were those who watched six or more hours of news coverage about the bombings. And the second group of people were runners in the actual marathon. And what the team of researchers found was those who watched six or more hours of news coverage about the bombings were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder. And they experienced a higher level of chronic stress than those who were in the marathon and personally affected by it.

• 0:36Chris Williamson?

  You have written two books, two bestselling books on productivity.

• 0:40Chris Bailey?

  Yeah.

• 0:40Chris Williamson?

  And now you're writing a book about calmness and how to calm your mind. What gets you interested in working out how to calm your mind?

• 0:49Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, this book was honestly a lot tougher to write than the other two. You know, we were chatting before, there are no productivity emergencies out there. Maybe there's a couple that I haven't heard of. But if you're a doctor, there are medical emergencies, but there aren't productivity emergencies. And it was really kind of an urgency, though, in my own life that led me to write this book called How to Calm Your Mind. I was not in a good place a few years ago. I was anxious, I was burnt out. And this all culminated, a lot of this was happening beneath the depths of my awareness at the time. And this all crescendoed on stage for me.

• 1:31Chris Bailey?

  I was on stage in front of about 100 people, giving a talk on productivity, of course. And I noticed when I got up on the stage that beads of sweat started to form on the back of my neck. I felt as though I was struggling to get my words out, like my tongue had to dance around a bunch of marbles inside my mouth. And I started just stammering and stumbling on my every word. And I realized up there, you know, right when I wanted to kind of flee the stage, I was having an anxiety attack. In front of this audience and I had taken on too much stress. I had taken on just too many commitments in my work and in my life. I had too much chronic stress

• 2:16Chris Bailey?

  and found myself kind of picking up the pieces after this episode. Where I realized I was burnt out. I was anxious and I had been investing in self-care quite a bit up to that point and that's kind of what baffled me at the time and got me to look at the research out there and talk to experts to try to honestly desperately try to solve this in my own life. I hadn't really thought about a book at the time because you know, when you're in kind of an emergency like that, that's the last thing on your mind. You're just trying to oh, you're just trying to get through. But yeah, that's, that's kind of how this journey began.

• 2:56Chris Williamson?

  Was there any shame associated with being the productivity guy who also kind of doesn't seem to be holding it together whilst supposedly talking about his mastermind topic?

• 3:09Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, I thought, you know, I think a big part of that was we tend to buy into these narratives that other people tell us about ourselves. And that was a big part of my own story is buying into this story that people had shared in intros and bios and blurbs leading up to that point. Where honestly, and this sounds kind of ridiculous looking back on it, but I think a big part of me thought that I was unstoppable productive, that there were really no limits to how much I could get done, as if the endorsements were, were true, you know, that, that I was kind of unstoppable or this superhuman.

• 3:50Chris Bailey?

  I don't know, I don't even want to regurgitate the, the different words that people use to, to describe my work. But of course, you know, we all have these normal human boundaries. And I think that was kind of an internal reckoning that I had to go through. That there was this story that I had told myself about myself, that I'd constructed my identity out of this superhumanly productive kind of narrative. And it just wasn't true because Of course, it's not true. It's the most obvious thing in the world. We all have normal limits. So yeah, I love the question. Yeah, there definitely was shame.

• 4:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think reflecting on Jordan Peterson over the last couple of years is a good example. A psychiatrist that was telling everybody to carry a burden and be honest and truthful and so on and so forth.

• 4:41Chris Bailey?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Chris Williamson?

  People, his detractors online took a great amount of joy in pointing out the fact that he was the person that was addicted to benzodiazepines for a good one. He was the guy that was on antidepressants. He was the psychiatrist that couldn't get stuff to work. You think, yeah, it is, the expectation adds another layer of guilt and shame and perspective that isn't helpful on top of already your own expectations of yourself.

• 5:12Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, and we already construct our self identities on shaky ground. You know, we construct them on top of our success at work, for example. But when that success goes away, we feel like we're kind of losing a part of who we are. And you're so right, there is that expectation. I think it comes with expertise. And I see a lot of happiness experts out there who go through periods of depression. I see a lot of experts on meditation who fall off the way. I see a lot of lazy productivity experts out there too, myself included, which is what drives me to explore these subjects of productivity.

• 5:48Chris Bailey?

  And I think we kind of need that contrast in a way to realize how well the best strategies work, not only for us, but for other people.

• 5:59Chris Williamson?

  What have you come to learn about burnout then? It seems like this was a period of extreme burnout for you. What did you not know before that now seems completely obvious?

• 6:09Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, it's what burnout even is. You know, I think you've had folks on the podcast who've chatted about burnout. But in my mind, I thought it was just burnt out, you know, burnout is exhaustion, right? If we're completely wiped, we're completely depleted, we're burnt out. But realizing that exhaustion is just a third of the picture of burnout was one of the most surprising things that I myself discovered. And it explained a lot of how I was feeling at the time. Exhaustion is a core component of burnout, but it's only a third of the burnout equation as defined by researchers like Kristina Maslach and the World Health Organization. We need to be exhausted, right? That feeling of being

• 6:53Chris Bailey?

  just totally depleted. But we also need to feel cynical. We need to feel as though there is this negative attitude just that pervades everything that we do. That's the second attribute of burnout. And the third is unproductive, right? We need to feel as though what we're doing doesn't make a difference and like we have nothing left in the tank to make a difference with who we are. And it's the confluence of those three ingredients, exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy that produces full-blown burnout phenomenon that's caused by one thing and one thing only, and that's chronic stress. Any source of stress

• 7:34Chris Bailey?

  we face repeatedly is something that can cause burnout. And the more sources of chronic stress, some of them are obvious, right? Financial concerns, just marital stress, all these different sources that we can see. But a lot of it's hidden, right? The threatening information that we choose to pay attention to on social media, on the news, simply because it's familiar, can lead us to that point of burnout. But also, the factors of our work that contribute to a full-blown burnout phenomenon. There's six of them, in fact. And so, the more in alignment we are with these six factors, the more engaged we become

• 8:16Chris Bailey?

  and the less burnt out we become. But these six areas of our work are also the petri dishes that the chronic stress of our work can incubate inside of. And so, those are how much work we have on our plate. Whether we're rewarded fairly, and that's, that goes to money, that goes to social rewards, that goes to being recognized for the contributions that we make. Control is a third one. So whether or not we feel we have control over when, where, and how we do our work. Community. So whether we feel connected with people around us, the less community we have, the more likely we are to burn out. Fairness, we need to be treated fairly. And values.

• 9:00Chris Bailey?

  So whether we feel as though we can manifest our values through our actions at work. And when we do that, we feel like there's meaning behind what we're doing because we can observe our behavior and connect those with who we truly are. But when we don't value the work that we do, or we don't have that deeper connection, we're out of alignment and we're more likely to burn out. And so, you know, just in case people don't read the book, no pressure, obviously, but I want to kind of share those six factors, charting how well you're doing in those six areas over time. Workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values.

• 9:40Chris Bailey?

  And noticing that you're on the stepping stones to that full-blown burnout phenomenon. Even if you're cynical and not exhausted, or even if you feel profoundly unproductive, but you have more than enough energy, these three attributes can serve as kind of stepping stones to a full-blown burnout phenomenon.

• 10:00Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting. What are some of the ways that people can better notice what's going on and self-regulate? Because these are emotions, they're going on inside of our head, there is no external scoreboard that's going to tell us where we're at with our cynicism, or energy, or productivity. What are some of the ways people can self-regulate?

• 10:19Chris Bailey?

  One of my favorite ways, and I'd be lying if I said I did this every week, or even every month, but since going through that burnout, I do this every, probably... Three or four months or so, or whenever I'm feeling exhausted or wiped, or I have that kind of dread on Sunday that I have to work again the following morning, that's kind of my cue to pick up where I left off here. And I just have a spreadsheet. So I rate how well I'm doing in each of these six areas out of 10. And it's pretty informal. I haven't seen a ton of evidence behind this particular tactic, but it does feed into the wealth of evidence out there, especially workload is one to pay a particular mind

• 11:02Chris Bailey?

  to, because that's often one of the primary contributors to burnout. And it's, in fact, in clinical settings, it's the first thing that they get you to look at. And they say, okay, can you cut back on workload? Because that really cuts back on how much burnout you have. But just charting how well you're doing in the six areas can really make a profound difference. And you can notice the trend line over time. So if you notice that since COVID, for example, your line has been ticking upwards, and along that upward tick, you're starting to feel more tired and cynical and unproductive, that's probably why.

• 11:40Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned all of the different contributing factors that come from work. There are two broad cohorts of people, right? One are employed and have a boss and have a relatively limited amount of control over the work that they do. And another one would be someone that's self-employed and is their own boss. Is there anything that you've come to believe about the interesting distinction between the two, how they should regulate their burnout and their workload and the social respect that they get from the work that they do? Is there something unique about those two cohorts?

• 12:14Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, the fascinating thing is it really does vary. And so for advice on calm, anxiety, productivity even, one thing I really believe is we have to take the advice that works for us and leave the rest. There is no advice that works universally well for, and even if there are these six universal factors. Control is the fascinating one I find, especially with regard to how much autonomy we have in our work. We may not have control over what we work on, but in ideal circumstances, regardless of whether we work for somebody else or ourselves, we often have control of when we work on

• 12:59Chris Bailey?

  something and how we execute it. God, I hope, I hope that's the case with us because so many of us do knowledge work for a living that takes advantage of our unique mind and perspective and skills and expertise and experience. And so, we should fight for control however we can. And you know, one thing that I found fascinating in looking at the research as well, is often burnout, it's our responsibility to deal with when we go through an episode of burnout, but it's usually not our fault. It's kind of the fault of whoever creates the conditions with where we work.

• 13:42Chris Bailey?

  And so, if you're a manager, that's something I would highlight in addition to this. If you're a manager who has had employees that have burnt out, that should be your tripwire, that should be your alarm bell, that something in the workplace that you're cultivating for people is fundamentally broken and toxic. And the key there, I think, is realizing that burnout is, not being burnt out is not really a luxury. We need to not, we need to be past the point of not burnt out. Burnout exists on a spectrum. One side is burnt out, where we're exhausted, we're cynical, we're unproductive.

• 14:23Chris Bailey?

  And on the other side, we're fired up, we have this energy beneath what we do, we're engaged, we're productive, we're making a contribution. Burnout is on one side, and engagement is on the other side of this spectrum in terms of how much energy we have. And so, it's worth fighting to have those conditions if you don't necessarily have that autonomy, where you can control what, where, how you work on things. And if you're a manager, man. Check the environment you're creating if you find that people have these conditions because they're not just burnt out. Their minds aren't just suffering. Their productivity is as well in terms of engagement.

• 15:06Chris Williamson?

  Why not just push yourself until you burn out, relapse, and then go again? Why is that not an acceptable solution?

• 15:14Chris Bailey?

  Well, because it's a recipe for misery, you know, and I think it comes down to what you value too, you know, and there's nothing wrong with valuing accomplishment. You know, accomplishment does lead us to savor our lives less. That was another interesting field of research is the, the subject of savoring, which is just the process of enjoying experiences. Because just because we experience something positive does not mean that we'll enjoy it. You know, I'm drinking this amazing delicious cup of jasmine green. I think, you know, just like last episode, I remember drinking a little green tea with you, Matt. And just because I simp on this amazing green tea does not mean that I will enjoy

• 15:59Chris Bailey?

  the experience. Just because we experience something positive doesn't mean we'll internalize it and generate positive emotions from it. And the more we actually strive to accomplish, the less likely we are to savor and enjoy our lives and luxuriate in the positive experiences that comprise our day. And so if you value accomplishment, you know, there's nothing wrong with having some hustle as long as you have a direction. But I think so much of the advice out there that, you know, we should hustle until we have this empty tank assumes that accomplishment is the only thing that is worth valuing. And really, values

• 16:38Chris Bailey?

  came up a lot in this journey that I embarked on. We need to manifest our values through our daily actions. And I glossed over this, you know, a couple paragraphs ago and when we were chatting, but You know, when we can observe ourselves manifesting our values through our actions, that's the process through which meaning is made, right? If we value kindness and we can express that through volunteering, we're gonna have a more meaningful experience than somebody who doesn't value kindness, because we can observe ourselves going through that process. If we value service, if we value connection and we can observe ourselves manifesting those

• 17:19Chris Bailey?

  things, we're gonna feel like we're making a bigger difference. Maybe even a bigger difference than we actually are a lot of the times. But it really does come down to values and realizing that there is a complexity of values that lies at the core of who we are, that we deserve to express in how we act. Accomplishment being maybe one of them, but by God, hopefully not the only one.

• 17:46Chris Williamson?

  You would hope so. I mean, one of the interesting things I've learned this year is people for, in the modern world, a lot of people are very happy to give up the thing that they want in order to achieve the thing which is supposed to get it. So people will give up happiness in order to achieve success in the hopes that their success will afford them happiness. You think, hang on a second, I'm sure you know about the story of the American businessman and the fisherman that's out on the water. And he says, you know, if you built this up as a business, then you would be able to sell more and maybe you'd be able to employ a bunch of people. And then after a while, you'd be able to own a factory and you'd have all of these fish. And he said, well, why? And he said, well, if you do all of that, then you'd be able to spend all of your day fishing in a boat on your own. You go, well, that's my life already.

• 18:28Chris Williamson?

  And I do wonder how much overcomplication comes from people trying to go the long way round in order to achieve happiness. And I think that success is one of the easy traps that that gets into.

• 18:39Chris Bailey?

  It is so true. Yeah, exactly. And in so much of the modern world, it tells us what we need to do to be happy, like accomplish more, generate more status. But the last place we should be looking for happiness is the modern world.

• 18:55Chris Bailey?

  I mean, look around. The modern world is not happy. People can't savor experiences like they used to. People rush past the most beautiful moments of their life. Right? Time with family, time with these deep experiences, time that they could otherwise connect with what they value, to distract themselves and to pursue greater accomplishment, things that pull us out of whatever it is that we're experiencing and whomever it is that we're with. And it's this, it's this disconnect between what we usually value most deeply on this personal level and what the world around us values on this cultural level.

• 19:41Chris Bailey?

  And every single one of us has a disconnect in that regard. Not one of us, unless we never reflect on what we value or who we are or what our mission is, what our purpose is. Unless we never reflect. If we never reflect, we'll have perfect alignment to our culture and then we'll become even more miserable.

• 20:03Chris Williamson?

  What did you learn about burnout from either a neuroscience or a evolutionary theory perspective? I mean, why would burnout be an adaptive response? And what's going on inside of the brain and body when we hit it?

• 20:20Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, so our body, it turns out, gets used to whatever stress we provide us with. And it gets so used to it sometimes that it gets fed up with having to go through the whole rigmarole of generating that stress response. You know, to that spike of cortisol levels, our pupils dilating, our heart rate elevating to mobilize to face down a threat, which was usually physical. Those, these days, we're just sitting in front of our email clients stewing over one negative message. And so, burnout on this biological level is a refusal of our body to generate a stress response in response to something that...

• 21:05Chris Bailey?

  Our ancient mind usually perceives as a threatening situation. And I use the example of measuring my own cortisol levels in the book. So I had this, it was a saliva cortisol test, so it's not as reliable as a blood cortisol test. But I had my levels measured when I was going through this period of burnout, just for sheer curiosity's sake. And there's kind of the normal range of cortisol response to a threatening situation. Cortisol, of course, being a primary stress hormone. And our cortisol levels usually spike in the morning, which is good, right? Because that's what mobilizes us to do the day, to get out of bed, to take on whatever the day might offer us.

• 21:50Chris Bailey?

  And then they kind of trail off as our energy goes down throughout the day. And I noticed when my own levels came back, that they had basically flatlined. There was no cortisol spike in the morning. There was no kind of rise in the middle of the day, and it just kind of flatlined all day long. And so, in other words, regardless of the stressful situation that we experience when we're burnt out, we can't generate the mental resources to overcome whatever stressful situation is presented to us. And that's where that feeling of exhaustion, cynicism, being unproductive comes from. Some stress is good, right? Stress provides us with meaning.

• 22:34Chris Bailey?

  If you removed all the stressful episodes from your life, you'd also remove all the meaning from your life. You'd remove the weddings, the anniversaries. You'd remove the weird Thanksgiving meals with family. You'd remove the most challenging moments of your life, too. But too much stress does deplete this capacity for a stress response over time.

• 22:58Chris Bailey?

  And that's what the research shows on the subject of burnout is burnout is the refusal of our body and our mind to mobilize to a stressful situation. It's when our stress response flatlines and it is the ultimate manifestation of chronic stress in our work and in our life that usually comes from those six areas.

• 23:21Chris Williamson?

  So it's kind of like your body just giving up and saying, I'm carrying too heavy of a weight. I'm not going to respond to the stress anymore. And my solution for this is to completely kill all motivation to make you feel doubtful about the future and to dial down your ability to be productive.

• 23:42Chris Bailey?

  Exactly. It's not working anyway, so why keep generating it?

• 23:46Chris Williamson?

  Let's say that there's someone listening now, we're coming toward the back end of the year. Lots of people will have worked very, very hard, or maybe we're going into the new year and you just think, God, all of these things that Chris is talking about, it feels like that's me, like just taking off all of the different elements and maladies that you've described. How should somebody that is currently dealing with burnout get out the other side of it?

• 24:10Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, burnout is a fascinating phenomenon for that reason. And there's so much that influences how burnt out we are. But I think keeping kind of an eye on the ball that chronic stress is what causes that phenomenon of burnout. Chronic stress is, you know, we've all heard the term, but really dissecting the sources of chronic stress we face in our life. So we have two kinds of stress that we face all day long, day in, day out, every single day. There's acute stress, which is the once-off moment. It's, you know, the traffic jam on the way to the airport. It's the once-off argument with your spouse that's a huge pain to get through and it's what forces you to grow.

• 24:52Chris Bailey?

  But it's the chronic stress is the no good, very bad kind of stress that we face repeatedly. Instead of the argument with our spouse, it's the reconcilable feelings we have when we see their dumb, stupid face. When we, you know, instead of the traffic jam, it's the, it's the traffic we encounter every day in rush hour on our way to the office. That's like an hour and a half on the other side of town. Really understanding.

• 25:21Chris Bailey?

  The stress that exists in your life is the recipe for overcoming this burnout phenomenon. So first of all, dissect those six areas where the chronic stress, because that's where you should spotlight. Those are the kind of Petri dishes in our work that the stress tends to metastasize and grow and expand to fit a level that we don't really have the capacity to cope with. But then we have all the stress that's hidden in our life, all throughout our days. So anything threatening that you pay attention to over the course of the day is likely a source of hidden chronic stress in your life.

• 26:02Chris Bailey?

  You know, there was one study that was conducted around the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. And the team of researchers looked at two groups of people. The first group of people were those who watched six or more hours of news coverage about the bombings. And the second group of people were runners in the actual marathon. And what the team of researchers found was those who watched six or more hours of news coverage about the bombings were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder. And they experienced a higher level of chronic stress than those who were in the marathon and personally affected by it. And so that's shocking to me.

• 26:46Chris Bailey?

  You know, encountering, studies and statistics are usually not that motivating. They usually don't drive us to action, but that one was kind of a holy shit moment. Is this really how my mind interprets the news? So I compartmentalized the news checking to just one newspaper each and every day. I compartmentalized social media time to one block within the middle of the workday. So I could just get it done and get on with my life. Anything else that I, I eliminated one threatening, not threatening, but one toxic relationship in my life over the course of this project to great success. It kind of freed up a lot of mental and emotional bandwidth.

• 27:31Chris Bailey?

  And so really dissecting the chronic, list it if you want. List every source of stress you face over the course of the day. Divide it into chronic stress and acute stress. And under chronic stress, do mind the stuff that's hidden because all this stuff can lead us away from calm and towards anxiety. As well, not just this burnout.

• 27:53Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so somebody has realized, wow, I'm watching way too much of the news and the CCP's algorithm on TikTok is making me feel like I want to throw myself out a window.

• 28:05Chris Bailey?

  Seriously, yeah.

• 28:06Chris Williamson?

  All the rest of it. But they're still stuck in this particular embodied state. Is there anything that you've found as you're in burnout, this is an ejectus button that you can push, which is going to help to actually really reinvigorate you if you are feeling cynical, unproductive, low in energy, demotivated? What were the quickest ways that you found to get yourself back from that?

• 28:31Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, so one simple way is to define productivity hours every single day. Burnout has traditionally been defined as a workplace phenomenon, and that's not to say that it still is. We have stress that comes in from every direction of our life right now, from our personal lives to our work lives. But defining boundaries around that pursuit of productivity at work is one of the most powerful strategies that I personally like to deploy every single day. So at the start of the day, I'll choose when I start to care about productivity, and I'll define when I'll stop caring about productivity. These days, it's around 10 to

• 29:15Chris Bailey?

  6. And so I have the mornings for just starting things off slow and deliberately, and carving out a bit of time for meditation and reading and just having this slow morning that can lead to this calm, deliberate day. And then having this wind down ritual at the end of the workday, where I can choose to no longer care about accomplishment. And so, you know, that goes back to that accomplishment mindset as well, is when we're in this acquisition mentality. This acquisition mentality leads us away from this presence, this calm in our life. And so the more we focus on acquiring, the less we actually enjoy ourselves.

• 29:57Chris Bailey?

  And so this, these productivity hours can kind of serve that double purpose of limiting your workload, gaining more control over your day, having that reward at the end of the day. So even if these external circumstances aren't put around your, the boundaries of your work by somebody else, you can choose to, to do this yourself. And if you're not paid to be on call, don't be on call. If you're not paid to be connected in the evenings, don't connect in the evenings. And I think that the irony of this is it's often by stepping back that we become more productive. You know, it's by stepping back, we actually recharge.

• 30:38Chris Bailey?

  We can actually spend more time in the analog world and not just stare at screens all day long. The, the most calming, energizing parts of our life are found in the analog, not in the digital. We can actually step back from this big source of chronic stress in our life and turn to the, hopefully more acute sources of chronic stress and meaningful, or not chronic, acute stress in our personal lives. And so defining boundaries around that practice is critical.

• 31:09Chris Williamson?

  That bleed out from a period of productivity into the laptop is still open, I'm still working away, I've got something in the back of my mind that needs to be done. It's just, it permeates everything, right? The entire fabric of your life is ambiently anxious because there is always the option to do work. You could always be doing work. You could always be scouting.

• 31:32Chris Bailey?

  All the time.

• 31:32Chris Williamson?

  Scouting for more clients or networking more effectively, or spending time building up their LinkedIn profile, or whatever it is, right? Researching the next piece of content that they're gonna write. And yes, the, I read a while ago that the ancient Greek word for work was translated as not at play, which was interesting because the set point that we see now is that play is an aberration and work is the set. Previously, it was the other way around, that play is the set point and work was the aberration. Work is the thing you had to get done. And I always like thinking about that in relation, it might be total bollocks, but I always like thinking about it as a concept.

• 32:14Chris Williamson?

  When it comes to this, you've mentioned anxiety a couple of times there. What's the difference in your mind or relationship between burnout, anxiety, calm, productivity? How do all of those things fit together?

• 32:29Chris Bailey?

  Oh, so much comes to mind, man. That's a blank check of a question. It's a, I find the relationship between these things absolutely fascinating. And you know, this was, maybe I'm weird in this way. Like I used to see the therapist I saw, I started seeing her when there's, I didn't perceive anything wrong in my life or in my mind. I was just curious to untangle what was happening up there in my head. And this is, this kind of has a similar vibe to me where just sheer curiosity pulled me forward into this journey. But first of all, between calm and anxiety. So this was one of the more fascinating elements that I uncovered on this journey.

• 33:14Chris Bailey?

  Because I was never really compelled by calm. The only time I've really ever felt the need to find calm in my life is when I've become anxious. When I've wanted just that anxiety to go away. And in my head, anxiety was, speaking of spectrums, anxiety was always the spectrum that went from zero anxiety all the way to this intolerable level of anxiety. But the research shows that anxiety and calm are opposite ends of the same spectrum. Where we relate to our thoughts either in a positive way or a negative way. And our mind is either agitated or it is still.

• 33:57Chris Bailey?

  And so those two variables determine where we are on the spectrum. But what this means is that we can go past the point of no anxiety.

• 34:08Chris Bailey?

  And travel further down on this road to calm and continue to garner a lot of the benefits that a less anxious mind has. And one of those, to hit another key word in the question, is productivity. And this product, this relationship between anxiety, calm, and productivity is fascinating. Because if I asked you, you know, let's say you have to give a presentation to a thousand people in 15 minutes. And, you know, all that is on your mind is this presentation, of course, because it's 15 minutes from now. You want to do a good job. And if I asked you in that same moment, you know, 15 minutes before this talk, "Hey,

• 34:53Chris Bailey?

  you mind reading this article that I wrote and giving me feedback?" Or, "Hey, do you mind, you know, digesting and summarizing this journal article?" Or, "Do you mind, you know, doing any bit of knowledge work?" By God, you'd have a very challenging time doing it. And this is the effect that anxiety has on our cognitive performance. When we work with an anxious mind, it's for this reason that our work takes longer. You know, I break down how about eight hours of real, actual work takes us about 10 hours because anxiety actually reduces our cognitive capacity. This goes back to our last conversation on this idea of our working memory capacity, our attentional space, this mental scratch

• 35:38Chris Bailey?

  that pad that we use to process whatever it is that we're doing in the moment. Anxiety shrinks our working memory capacity by about 20%. So, it might not sound like a lot, but when our work takes 20% longer, eight hours of work takes around 10 hours, especially when you add in the other factors that lead us to even a greater decline in productivity. We become more aware of the threats that are surrounded by us. We become more susceptible to distraction. When we're in an anxious state, our mind is more stimulated.

• 36:12Chris Bailey?

  Again, a higher level of mental activity. And the more stimulated our mind is, the more we wish to keep it at that state. And so we're more susceptible to dopaminergic distraction. Any distraction that releases a hit of dopamine in our mind, which is also considered, when you look at the research, to be an enemy of presence and calm. Not completely. It's more complex than that, I found digging through these ideas. But it's fascinating just how much of a cognitive limiter anxiety is. But you look at people who are calm under pressure, that calmness that we can cultivate in our life.

• 36:55Chris Bailey?

  It is a wellspring that lives at the heart of what makes us productive and what makes life meaningful. It leads us to presence. It leads us to focus. It leads us to be steady and have this attention and this confidence that regardless of what happens around us, we are where we need to be. We're doing what we need to be doing and we can focus on it without our anxious mind tugging at our thoughts. And I actually think eight hours of work takes far, far longer than 10 hours. And when you work with an anxious mind, and if you notice, you know, that you have less

• 37:39Chris Bailey?

  time than before, you have less attention than before. You know, the anxiety is, it's kind of a hidden factor that influences our productivity. It's one we never think about, but it's one that influences us all day long. We might not have that same effect that we do before we're going on stage, but we have a similar effect. That limits our cognitive performance only all day long when we're working with this anxious mind.

• 38:11Chris Williamson?

  Isn't there something funny about the fact that most people who are pushing very hard, who are type A go-getters are creating an environment in which their mind is less productive in service of being more productive?

• 38:26Chris Bailey?

  Yes.

• 38:26Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna push myself, I'm gonna continue to go harder, but what you're actually doing is applying more brake whilst you apply more accelerator at the same time.

• 38:35Chris Bailey?

  Exactly. And even on a neurological level, if you look at the networks of our brain that are activated when we're in this acquisition mentality versus when we're present with something. So presence, you know, it sounds like a hippie dippy term, but presence is just being able to focus on what you're doing. Presence is the process through which we actually become more productive. And if you look at the networks of our brain that are activated when we're in an acquisition mentality versus focused on something in the here and now, they're anti-correlated with one another. So the acquisition mentality is primarily structured on top of the neurochemical dopamine, so much so that a lot of researchers refer to dopamine as the molecule of more,

• 39:20Chris Bailey?

  whether it's more accomplishment or more stimulation. Whereas networks of presence are centered around serotonin, oxytocin, which leads us to feel proud and connected and happy with what we're doing. And it's fascinating how we, you know, I feel the extra drive that a lot of people have compensates for this fact that they have less energy in a lot of cases. Simply because they spend more time, you know, trying to manifest this value of accomplishment all day long. But because of that countervailing force, it's probably a wash, you know, in terms of just how much further you get. You might as well enjoy things while you're doing them, well, you might as well become more present in what you're doing.

• 40:05Chris Bailey?

  And, you know, this is, I think, the, goes back to my philosophy of productivity is productivity advice exists to optimize the benefits and the contributions of our work. You know, we should feel as though our work is making more of a difference, and we do. When we're more present.

• 40:26Chris Williamson?

  I wonder if an element of this is to do with laziness as well, that if you are working more for longer periods of time, you actually can afford to be less focused, you can apply less effort to it, and running twice the distance at half the speed is significantly easier than running half the distance at twice the speed.

• 40:47Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, and this goes back to that whole idea of productivity hours, and it seems like such a simplistic tactic, but I think one of the reasons it works so well is it has sort of a deadline effect. And so if you have a full week's worth of work in front of you, and it's Monday, and somebody says to you, hey, you want this all expenses paid trip to Australia, but it leaves on Wednesday, you'll probably find a way to accomplish all of that week's worth of work between Monday and Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, depending on how this analogy is structured, and you'll probably find a way, because of this deadline effect, to accomplish it all. And it's just the deadline effect. When we have less time

• 41:32Chris Bailey?

  for something, that time limiter forces us to expend more energy over that shorter distance of time, so we can get the thing accomplished. And we should always have a bit of time pressure behind what we're doing. No time pressure is an episode for laziness. It's a sign that our work is expanding to fit how much time we have available for its completion, which is often called Parkinson's Law. You know, our work will expand, you know, it's this, it's this thing we have to compress. So if you don't feel as though you always have a bit of time pressure, not too much, too much creates yet another source

• 42:13Chris Bailey?

  of chronic stress, when our workload eclipses our capacity to get it done in a major way, that's a contributor to burnout, it's a contributor to anxiety as well. But we should always, there is this Goldilocks zone of time pressure, and if you don't have it most of the time, you're probably working too many hours.

• 42:34Chris Williamson?

  Let's say that there's someone listening who is a type A go-getter. They like the idea of accomplishments. They like the idea of achieving and being in acquisition mode.

• 42:43Chris Bailey?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Chris Williamson?

  And they don't like the idea of leaving a lot on the table, but they also don't like the idea of being burned out and this ambient anxiety and the stress and neurosis and all that.

• 42:54Chris Bailey?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Chris Williamson?

  What have you come to believe about the balance between not leaving a lot on the table, about maximizing what you can achieve, about actually going out there and getting it and getting after it whilst having this more holistic view of the self and of work? Is it possible for these two things to exist side by side?

• 43:16Chris Bailey?

  Yeah. And so much of this journey for me was finding that balance. You know, I want to make a big contribution through the work that I do. And I also don't want to be miserable. And I also don't want to be anxious. And I want to enjoy the things that I create. And a big discovery over this journey for me was realizing that, you know, this connection between dopamine, which leads to mental stimulation and anxiety and accomplishment. And how I've come to see things, and this is a way that I like to find balance in my own days, is every single thing we tend to over the course of the day exists at a different

• 44:00Chris Bailey?

  height of stimulation. And so a different height of mental stimulation, depending on how much dopamine something releases. And so the size of the dopamine hit we get, it fluctuates based on genetics. It fluctuates based on how much something directly affects our life. But you can kind of divide by, you know, the same amount for things online because most things online don't directly affect our life that we see. What really differs in the things we encounter online is the relative novelty of the information. Novelty, if something is surprising, it releases a far greater dopamine hit than something that isn't. And so, you know, online, we can kind of sort things by novelty. But every single thing we tend to over the course of the day.

• 44:46Chris Bailey?

  Releases a varying level of dopamine. And so it exists at a different height of stimulation, a different altitude. So hard drug use would be at the very top, which leads to a huge dopamine surge and then a plummet afterward. Beneath that, it might be social media. It might be the super stimuli we tend to online. These, you know, highly exaggerated versions of things that were, by default, our mind is wired to crave and enjoy. So pornography is a great example of this, too. This highly artificial thing that our brain is wired to crave. These exist in the analog world, too. So takeout, anything on, most things on Uber Eats.

• 45:30Chris Bailey?

  This is my escape of choice. It is, you know, that stuff is, it's a super stimuli. It's highly dopaminergic. So that exists at a higher height of stimulation. But then you start working downwards in these heights of stimulation. And in the middle band are these activities that you were just describing. This middle band is where we usually make our contribution. It's things that are less, they release less dopamine than other things in our life. But here lies writing. Here lies playing an instrument. Here lies having coffee with a friend and resisting the urge to rise to a new height of mental stimulation by checking your phone, staying in that band.

• 46:15Chris Bailey?

  Beneath that are the most calming activities that we can tend to throughout the day. You know, towards the bottom are, you know, lying on the couch and letting your mind wander. Might be at the very bottom. Watching a campfire, you know, just watching the flames dance and kind of letting the conversation that's happening fade in and out at the same time. Nature, hiking through nature might be towards the bottom. But Different bands on this chart of mental stimulation. We can actually draw a chart of our own and I highly recommend doing so. Charting the activities that you tend to throughout the day to get a feel of what your average stimulation

• 46:58Chris Bailey?

  height is and get a feel for the ways that the different activities you tend to throughout the day make you feel. Generally speaking, we want to lower our mental stimulation height because that is what leads us to make a bigger contribution. That is what leads us to also find that balance of productivity, but also calm and also enjoyment and also accomplishment and also optimizing the contributions of our work, but also how our work makes us feel. That is the ideal band and it's the most productive. It happens to be the most productive band as well.

• 47:41Chris Bailey?

  Instead of rising to these heights of stimulation that are difficult to come down from, we find this enjoyment and this presence and this deep connection with whatever it is that we're doing. That's the place we want to be. So thinking, you know, maybe not necessarily in terms of laziness, even though it's kind of a lazy way to spend time to be at a high altitude. It's kind of leaning on distraction and technology to do our thinking for us and presenting the most dopaminergic morsels of content to us. It takes a bit of work to be further down in that imaginary chart, but that's where the benefits are.

• 48:23Chris Williamson?

  What if someone feels guilty when they're relaxing?

• 48:26Chris Bailey?

  Oh, who doesn't? I think, you know, such a, such a big part of that relaxation guilt comes from the fact that we are terrible at measuring our productivity. And so we feel guilty when we're not making progress towards something. You know, because we value progress so much and maybe more so because the world around us values progress to such an extreme level. We feel a disconnect with our behavior and those cultural values. But I would make the argument that there is immense productivity to be found in relaxation. So, you know, one simple example, we talked about scatter focus last time, that that mental

• 49:11Chris Bailey?

  mind wandering mode of our mind. But if you're a leader, or if you're a creator, or if you're in a position where your thoughts can lead to you making a difference, or you generating an idea can lead to you making a difference, there is pride to be found in this relaxation and letting our mind come down to a new lower level of mental stimulation. So going on a walk is a simple example of this. If you're a CEO of a Fortune 500 company and, you know, you have a meeting and you blow it off to take a walk in the in the park around your campus, that walk might lead

• 49:53Chris Bailey?

  you to an insight that turns your company from a $100 billion company into a $1 trillion company. One walk, right? That's the power, that's the value of an idea. You look at, you know, say Bob Iger or somebody walking around, Steve Jobs walking around, and Tim Cook, who I probably actually did this, turned Apple into a trillion dollar company. You know, if you look at Tim Cook taking a walk, a stroll around the Apple campus, you think, oh, man, why is he slacking off? He's not even listening to anything on his phone, you know? He's not listening to a podcast, he's not using that time to get ahead. And this goes back to how we often are terrible at measuring our productivity.

• 50:36Chris Bailey?

  We often look to busyness as a proxy measure for how productive we are, even though busyness is really no different from an active form of laziness when we don't lead, when it doesn't lead us to accomplish anything of importance, like when we're at that high altitude of stimulation. But When we look to how much we actually accomplish, when we look to the results that we generate for how we spend our time, it can be profound. So the ironic thing about investing in calm and overcoming anxiety is a big part of me feels less productive now than I used to. But when I look at my accomplishments list at the end of the week,

• 51:19Chris Bailey?

  which I keep every week and, you know, to kind of maintain the measurements of the contributions I make each and every week, I contribute far more right now with a calm mind and with a mind that wanders and generates ideas than I did in, you know, a whole month of directionless hustle a lot of the time. And this goes to that acquisition mentality, that idea of this mindset of more. Goals without endpoints are useless. Right? We so often have this striving that we just settle into by default that doesn't lead us to contribute anything. But when we measure our actual contributions,

• 52:03Chris Bailey?

  that's when we realize just how productive we are. Sorry, I feel like I went off for like 10 minutes there. But I got worked up talking about this.

• 52:10Chris Williamson?

  Not at all. I feel it feels a little bit to me like what people are optimizing for is a sense of hustle. It's like they're actually chasing the hustle itself as opposed to the outcomes that the hustle is supposed to achieve. And this is what would appear to be one of the fundamental differences that you have discovered. I'm not supposed to be pursuing the degree of difficulty or pain or sacrifice or effort that I go through. I'm bothered about the outcomes on the other side of it. That's what I'm optimizing for.

• 52:43Chris Bailey?

  Exactly. And we so often look to the measures that you just mentioned. You know, we look at how exhausted we are at the end of the day and think, oh, I'm so exhausted, I must be productive.

• 52:53Chris Williamson?

  We wear it as a badge of honor as well, right?

• 52:55Chris Bailey?

  Exactly, yeah. We have this pride that comes from busyness. I know a lot of busy people who don't accomplish a single damn thing every day. I know a lot of lazy people who make... More of a contribution than neither of us do, right? It comes back to deliberateness, I think, at the end of the day. The most productive people, they don't work more frantically and faster and with this direction, you know, a goal without an endpoint is just a fantasy. They work with a calm deliberateness on what is truly important.

• 53:33Chris Bailey?

  And what they lack in speed, they make up for in intentionality. And ultimately, I think that's what it comes down to. At the end of the day, our intent, our level of deliberateness and intentionality is the factor, and speaking of optimization, that's the factor we need to optimize for. We need to optimize for intention because the more we do so, the more we accomplish what we set out to do. That should be the ultimate measure of productivity. Did you do what you set out to do? Whether you were taking in a beach, putting your feet up, drinking a couple of pina coladas,

• 54:14Chris Bailey?

  or whether you were clearing out the thousand emails that were building up in your inbox and, you know, bringing somebody new onto your team and finishing a book that you've had on the go for quite some time. You know, it comes back to our intentions. That's where productivity begins and ends, in my opinion.

• 54:33Chris Williamson?

  When it comes down to the strategies that you did in order to be able to find how to become more calm in life, were there anything that is common-held calm wisdom, but that you tried and found that it was rubbish, didn't work for you, and/or there was no evidence in the literature to suggest that it's even beneficial?

• 54:55Chris Bailey?

  Oh, that's a fascinating question. I would say a lot of the self-care strategies out there, the whole idea of self-care was one area that it surprised me just how much there was to wade through in that area. And there are definite benefits to yoga and I've been meditating for half an hour a day for well over a decade at this point, but yet somehow I still burnt out and still fell into this pit of anxiety. And it just goes to show that a lot of the self-care strategies out there, meditation most definitely works better than others.

• 55:37Chris Bailey?

  Most of the, so many self-care strategies are just a Band-Aid solution. You know, if you fundamentally hate your job, meditation is not going to help you. You know, it might help you, you know, cope, but it won't fix that underlying issue. If you're in a, in an abusive relationship, for an example, that there, or you have one of those in your life with somebody who's close or distant to you, you need to pull these problems out by the root in order for them to stop providing you with chronic stress that might lead you to a point of burnout or anxiety. And I think that, you know, it, more than anything else,

• 56:19Chris Bailey?

  when I look at what allowed me to actually welcome more calm into my life and move from that point of high anxiety down to that state of high calmness, it wasn't these like simple tactics. It was really deconstructing my days. And I think that's what we have to do. We don't have to deconstruct our lives. You don't have to go as deep as your values, though that most definitely helps to have kind of a, a reflection in that direction because our mind, we tend to optimize any currency we come into contact with, whether that be money, status, follower count, whatever. And that definitely includes a lot of the currencies we come into contact with in our, in our, in our modern culture that by default, we want more of, without really thinking of why.

• 57:03Chris Bailey?

  And so having that values connection is immensely helpful. But we need to go deeper. You know, how much dopamine do you get throughout the day? How much of your behavior is structured on top of dopamine? Whether that be in the pursuit of acquiring more or in the pursuit of finding more mental stimulation so you can continue to fly at such a height? That was an uncomfortable truth that I had to face in my own life. Is so much of my day was structured around dopamine. And because of that, I never felt satisfied or present in what I was doing.

• 57:39Chris Williamson?

  So what were you doing? What like, what were the things you were doing that was chasing dopamine?

• 57:43Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, it was just tending to distraction throughout the day. Well, you know, I was pretty good at resisting distraction when I was on the clock and working. But when I was off the clock, the easiest way to entertain my mind, I would just turn on YouTube and receive all these dopamine hits. You know, it was alcohol use, it was takeout use. It was tending to a lot of super stimuli in the form of social media and checking on things that fed my ego a lot of the time. Just checking how many books were selling on a given week. And I say week, but I would check it multiple times a day. How are the books ranked today? Just to get that that validation boost. And we need to go beyond the quick fixes to ask these these questions

• 58:28Chris Bailey?

  and uproot a lot of this this chronic stress in our life. And so I think one shift that occurred with how I think about anxiety is the surface level advice that doesn't go deep enough. I don't know if that makes sense, but I think we need to go deep in order to find calm.

• 58:48Chris Williamson?

  I like the analogy of you not being able to meditate your way out of a bad job.

• 58:54Chris Bailey?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Chris Williamson?

  There is a fundamental issue and some of the symptoms of that problem can be dealt with. You're going to give yourself more mindfulness. Maybe it'll help you be at peace with your dick of a boss or whoever it is you're dealing with.

• 59:07Chris Bailey?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Chris Williamson?

  But you're still in a shit job. You know, you're still in a job that you don't enjoy. Okay, so I think a lot of people are probably in a position very similar to the one that you just described, which is very dopaminergically driven, permanently chasing distraction, probably when they're on the clock as well as off the clock.

• 59:27Chris Williamson?

  What have you done? Dopamine is one hell of a drug. What have you done to be able to down-regulate how much you're chasing for it? Why are you not looking at the books sold or the news articles or the Instagram likes? Why are you no longer looking at that? Or what were the strategies that allowed you to down-regulate that?

• 59:46Chris Bailey?

  Well, stimulation fasting, you know, I found it is something I resisted doing for the longest time, often called a dopamine fast. And I had heard dopamine fast, you know, mentioned again and again, and I never really applied it to my own life. But I thought, okay, I'm on this, this experiment for calm. Let me try this. And so for a month, I cut out social media, I cut out email on my phone, cut out all the, all the stuff that exists at a high height of stimulation. And I found that the first week or so, it was quite restless. It does take our mind time to adjust downward into a new, lower level of mental stimulation.

• 1:00:25Chris Bailey?

  But the benefits of doing so are absolutely profound. And I noticed this in the most simple ways. So for an example, I would often tend to just a quick social media check or a quick scroll around on my phone between things. So if a meeting ended at 2:55 and the next meeting was at three, instead of thinking about the meeting, I would scroll for five minutes. You know, these distractions kind of filling the gaps of our day like water.

• 1:00:54Chris Williamson?

  One of my friends calls that a holding pattern activity.

• 1:00:58Chris Bailey?

  I like that.

• 1:00:59Chris Williamson?

  When you're currently just waiting, you're circling the airport, something's about to happen. And one of his, this is three years ago on a LifeX episode, and he said, everyone's got a holding pattern activity. And what you want to do is try and make the activity that you use in your holding pattern, something that you would want you to do. So what he did was he bought a Kindle and he put that on his desk and he kept his phone outside of his desk. So if he was in between calls, if he was going to do something, he would pick up his Kindle, or he would, maybe he had some other stuff that he was playing about with on his desk. My point being that there's two levels to this, I suppose. One would be substitute what you're doing for something which is better. But another layer

• 1:01:40Chris Williamson?

  deeper than that would be substitute the chasing of wanting a something for realizing that you don't need to chase anything and just allow yourself to be.

• 1:01:49Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, yeah. And with the constraints of the experiment, I noticed that happening automatically. So when I couldn't tend to something, I noticed that I was just managing the receipts on my desk, which had been sitting there for months. This stuff happens automatically. In an evening, without going on YouTube, because I wasn't allowed. I deleted the app off the Apple TV. I would just scroll around photos and reminisce about old memories. And I think you hit the nail right on the head. We need to substitute activities in for these old activities. So there isn't some hole in our life that just we have to awkwardly try to fill with things in the moment.

• 1:02:32Chris Bailey?

  So ones that allow us to feel connected with others and this sense of pride. I took up piano lessons at the time. My piano is just on the left here, you can see in the video.

• 1:02:41Chris Williamson?

  Very nice.

• 1:02:42Chris Bailey?

  And so now I have something to do when the call ends a bit early, you know, at this lower level of mental stimulation. And, you know, a dopamine fast for about a month, it's a pain, but it works incredibly, incredibly well.

• 1:02:57Chris Williamson?

  What's the effect?

• 1:02:59Chris Bailey?

  The effect is we no longer crave novelty nearly as much. You know, novelty doesn't drive what we do. And because of that, our mind settles down finally. You know, we finally settle down into a new, lower level of mental stimulation where the calm things are. We allow intentions to inform in our mind, to inform our actions. And so instead of just kind of, you know, frantically moving between objects of attention, choosing whatever option in the moment happens to be the most novel,

• 1:03:41Chris Bailey?

  because we crave dopamine in the moment more than almost anything else, we have that pause before we act. And we allow an intention to form in our mind that, okay, maybe I should just organize these receipts. Or maybe, oh, I have 10 minutes, not five, because they're going to be late. Maybe I should just practice this piece on the piano. And we take control of our behavior significantly more when we're at that lower level. Another example activity that I found remarkably well, I mentioned how the networks for presence and for acquisition are anti-correlated with one another, is that science of savoring that I mentioned.

• 1:04:24Chris Bailey?

  So having a saver list, which is just a list of everything you love to enjoy. Here's the fascinating thing. One of my favorite questions, and everybody should try this, to ask somebody who is really driven in this acquisition mentality, one of my favorite things to ask them is, what do you savor the most in your life? And this stumps pretty much all of the most driven people that I've asked this to. And the research shows that this idea of savoring, wherein we convert positive experiences into positive emotions, men find it more challenging to do than women.

• 1:05:04Chris Bailey?

  And wealthier people find it more challenging to do than people who are not wealthy because of that acquisition mentality. But having this list of things that we savor is a beautiful way of practicing presence each and every day. It can be as simple as a cup of tea, it can be time with your partner, it can be a good book, it can be a fireplace that you happen to have in the house, it can be an instrument you left, something you love, an album that you love to listen to. Whatever it is you love to savor, make a list and deliberately practice this skill of savoring. Indeed, it is a skill.

• 1:05:45Chris Bailey?

  But what you're really practicing is not only optimizing the enjoyment you get out of everyday experiences, but you're actually optimizing and practicing this skill of switching over this acquisition network to this here and now network. And the more nimble, nimbly you can switch between these two modes. The easier you will find it to be focused and present on whatever it is that you intend to be doing. And so this mental nimbleness that comes from the skill of savoring, indeed, it is a skill. We can even savor the past and the future. We can savor the past by practicing, it's called reminiscence, we've all heard the word, but we just relive in

• 1:06:29Chris Bailey?

  a positive experience that happened in our past in our mind and visualize it just for a few minutes. Savoring, we can also savor the future. And this counts as savoring because we do it in the present. We savor the future, it's called anticipation. And we can do this by counting down the days to an event. We can do this by, you know, just talking about something, some experience that's coming up. But the research shows that counting down, even just counting down the days to an event, creates effective memory traces in our mind, kind of a path through a forest that we walk over again, which leads us to enjoy the experience even more when it actually does happen, which lets us extract more meaning and enjoyment

• 1:07:13Chris Bailey?

  out of our time. So dopamine fasting, savoring, just a couple strategies to different effects, right? Lowering the stimulation level and being able to switch between the acquisition mentality and the present, here and now mentality.

• 1:07:29Chris Williamson?

  Are there some components of savoring, individual skills that contribute to being effective at the overall job of savoring?

• 1:07:38Chris Bailey?

  Yeah, well, there are kind of subcomponents to savoring. So luxuriating is one of these. So think of a cat, you know, so I just got a cat's around my mind. We just got a kitten a few weeks ago. Her name is Eleanor. Think of, think of a cat soaking in the sun, luxuriating in the sun. That's one way we can savor an experience. Gratitude. Counts as savoring as well. So the practice of Thanksgiving, recalling three things that we're grateful for each and every day. This is a ritual my wife and I have developed. Every night when we're going to sleep, before we kind of fall asleep, we

• 1:08:20Chris Bailey?

  recall three things that we're grateful for. And people ask like, do you run out of things? And it's like, hell, no, no. We could probably list 10 each and every day. Marvelling is yet another thing. So when we feel a sense of awe by something, whether that's kind of even just looking at the window and marveling at the snow, it could be, and that actually, by the way, when we see through our whole eyes, including our peripheral vision, that has a bonus calming effect when we feel a sense of awe with something that's visual.

• 1:08:58Chris Bailey?

  But yeah, just, you know, whether it's luxuriating, Thanksgiving, marveling, anticipation, reminiscence, or just mindfully enjoying something in the moment, these all, these all count, thankfully.

• 1:09:12Chris Williamson?

  All right, Kristoff, I appreciate you very much. Thank you for coming on. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with all the stuff that you do?

• 1:09:18Chris Bailey?

  Yes, sir. Thank you for having me on again. The book is called How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times. I think it's the best thing I have ever written, and I hope you find the same. It's wherever books are sold. I am at chrisbailey.com. And my podcast that I do with my wife is called Time of Detention. Bonus plug there. But yeah, the book, the main thing. Thank you so much, man.

• 1:09:42Chris Williamson?

  All right, Chris. Thank you.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company formed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze in there, that's what.

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  With great power comes great deniability.

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  I'm not the first daddy.

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  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 and under 18 without parent.