Focused - 169: How to Calm Your Mind, with Chris Bailey

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Chris Bailey is back to talk about dopamine, burnout, and finding calm in these anxious times.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing great. I am very excited to talk to our guest today, the one and only Mr. Chris Bailey. Hey, Chris. Good day to you, sirs. How are you? Good day to you, sirs. How are you? Very good. You've been on the show a couple of times in relation to a bunch of different topics,

primarily around a couple of books that you have written. So for people who don't know who you are, you have written The Productivity Project, also Hyperfocus, the Audible original How to Train Your Mind. And today we're going to be talking about your newest book, How to Train Your Mind. And today we're going to be talking about your newest book, How to Calm Your Mind. Anything I'm missing from your bio other than maybe that I hear you're a pretty good cribbage player? Oh, yes. My wife and I have a spreadsheet that dates back to our first date of every single cribbage game we've ever played. And I am statistically significantly better than her at cribbage, though she has a PhD in economics. So I think over time, as she's kind of sharpened things, she's gotten better than me. So that's about it. Yeah, enjoy your lead while you have it. That's all I would say. Yeah, it's only here for so much longer.

here for so much longer. Yeah. But this new book, Chris, How to Calm Your Mind, I was so interested in this when I heard you were working on this book because you've really been kind of on a journey for us. And for people listening who haven't read one of Chris's books, I really would recommend them. In addition to being a swell guy, Chris has this great writing style that makes you feel like you're kind of going along with him. And it started with the productivity project where Chris got out of school and decided to start experimenting on himself with productivity techniques and shared all that. I think you really started on the internet, but that turned into this great book. And then the next level was hyper-focused. Well, this last book, I think, is kind of a logical next step in the journey you've been on. It's honestly one that I didn't really expect to write at the same time. So I've been nerding out about this topic of productivity.

I was counting the months earlier this year, and I realized that this May will be my 10th year doing this stuff. So May 1st, 2013, almost 10 years ago, I declined a few full-time job offers to experiment with productivity for a living. And for a year, that's how much financial runway I had. And declined the job, started a blog, which was a terrible, you know, it's a really difficult decision to explain to your parents, your grandparents, your family. My wife supported me at the time, and she's still here beating me at cribbage to this day. And I just feel like the luckiest person in the world to really nerd out about these topics,

look at all the prevailing academic literature on them, summarize those in practical, tactical ways so we can act more in accordance with the science each and every day. I think that's what this is all about. There's a lot of self-help books out there, but I try to do the science help books, because I think that's where the rubber meets the road. It accommodates who we are, and this

next project, How to Calm Your Mind, is hopefully an extension of that. Yeah, but you do such a good job of bringing the science to the practical that it's just really well done. And I think this book really serves a need. I think there's a lot of us out there dealing with modern struggles and anxiety and trying to make it work. And calm is something not enough people are talking about. It's not really something we seek by default. And so what led me to this topic was I was on stage giving a talk in front of about 100 people. And I started to do the talk. And a bit into it, I noticed that the back of my neck, the back of my head was a bit sweaty. And I thought, okay, this is interesting. I'll just

keep going. And then I started kind of stumbling and stammering on my words and had this fight or flight or freeze response on the stage. And I realized partway in, I was having an anxiety attack and kind of picking up the pieces after. I remember going up to the hotel room, lying on one of those queen beds where it's one of those rooms with two beds inside of it. I remember lying down on one of those beds that didn't have my luggage on it and thinking, something about this situation is off. And I was investing in a lot of self-care strategies up to that point. I was meditating every day. I was going to the spa with my wife. We were playing lots of cribbage and all that stuff. And still, that anxiety in my life,

and as well as the burnout, which we can chat about too, it had the space, the freedom to metastasize into this full-blown anxiety attack on stage. And so that's how bad things had to get in my own life until I started seeking out calm. And researching this topic, though, of anxiety and realizing how anxiety affects cognitive performance, how burnout influences cognitive performance and productivity, how burnout is connected to engagement. I felt like one of these characters in the show that has a big wall in his office where he's attaching yarn to different topics and different people and trying to piece together a picture of a topic. That was like me with calm and anxiety and productivity and burnout.

And so it's this fascinating journey that I honestly didn't expect to go down. But when I started learning these ideas that people weren't really writing about other places that weren't prevalent in the traditional self-help, let alone science help literature, I thought, okay, I have to get these ideas into one place and basically wrote this book for myself because I'll probably need it again at some point. And this, it's a container of everything I learned. I'll stop promoting the book. I'll stop plugging the book at this point. I feel two plugs, I've already overdone it. Well, I don't think you can overdo it. i mentioned on twitter earlier today that i think this is the

best book that you have written and i feel like it is the book everyone needs to read right now yeah i think the the story that you shared i know you mentioned that you like to do the science help stuff and i appreciate that you do the research and you have all the basis behind this is why this can help you but really what stood out to me at the beginning of this book was your personal story and how you went, you suffered that panic attack. Had you ever experienced anything like that prior to the situation that you describe in the book? No, no, never. And that was why it was so shocking at the time, you know, kind of observing myself in hindsight is that it was shocking that these feelings had the space to metastasize into this anxiety attack. everybody quotes Steve Jobs, but he has this great quote that we can only connect the dots looking backwards, not forwards. And it was very much a situation similar to that, where looking back previous to this point, I realized just how much anxiety wound its way through my days, where

my thoughts were racing at times, of course, when I wasn't on the meditation cushion. Sometimes I had nausea and an upset stomach, which can be a symptom of anxiety. I often felt dizzy and lightheadedness and had these feelings of impending doom sometimes. And I thought, okay, this is just what it feels like to be human, not realizing that this was kind of the to a lot of development and a lot of lessons. Well, I really do think that there is a potential hazard with this productivity culture we live in. And all three of us read the books and try the things, and we talk about it publicly. We kind of go out and tell people this is something can be helpful with you but there is an unhealthy version of what we talk

about and mike and i try very much not to do that and try to explain to people but i do think that in this modern world with everything racing so fast there is a way to pull yourself into that. And let's talk about some of the science and the underlying anxieties and things that people are experiencing right now that they may not be aware of. Yeah, for sure. So I love how you mentioned that point of productivity and accomplishment as well. You mentioned that point of productivity and accomplishment as well. This is kind of a trap, I think, that honestly, just optimize for. So we have a bit of money, we want more money. We have a few followers, we want way more followers. We have a bit of

happiness, we want all the happiness in the world. I think that's actually a pretty good currency to optimize. But by default, we come into these currencies of success, like status, like financial success, like fame, like fortune. And when we achieve a little bit of something, we want more of it. And in the book, I refer to this as the mindset of more, where we have this natural tendency to strive for more at all costs. It's a set of attitudes that leads us to strive for more regardless of the context that we're in. And a big problem of this, and take a shot if you've heard this word before, is dopamine. It's this neurochemical that is correlated with the anticipation of pleasure. And so dopamine isn't a pleasure chemical, but it leads us to feel as though

pleasure is right around the corner. And so when we accumulate a little bit of something and we strive for more of it, we are driven by this molecule of more, as it's often called by researchers. And that's the fascinating thing that I've found about productivity and really thinking about what productivity means, what accomplishment means as well, is there is a point where our striving for more achievement becomes this generalized mentality where everything becomes just something we have to do. And it feels like work. And this was a mindset that I bought into just completely, you know, focusing on the success that was intrinsic to me. And of course, when we focus on extrinsic success, the more successful we become, the less successful we feel. And in this way, productivity advice, it really truly needs

boundaries. Because when we don't give productivity advice boundaries, this idea of striving for more daily accomplishment tends to become this generalized striving, which actually leads us away from focus. It leads us away from presence. It leads us away from actually, truly enjoying our life. And it leads us toward the mindset of more. And so productivity is a powerful idea. You know, it leads us to make back time. We can focus more deeply. We have more energy at our disposal to get things done. But at the same time, when we don't give that pursuit of productivity boundaries, that becomes a double-edged sword. defined it previously, but it has more to do with the anticipation than the actual pleasure. You mind diving into that a little bit?

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, dopamine, this is something that I misunderstood as well going into writing this book, is looking at the actual research on this neurochemical, I realized just how misunderstood dopamine is, including by myself at the time. I thought of it as a pleasure chemical and thought, okay, of course we're propelled towards pleasure with dopamine whenever we distract ourselves or something like that. But it is far more complex than that. Dopamine drives a lot of our biological functions. It helps our body continue moving and beating. It helps us think logically.

It helps us think creatively. When we hunker down and focus on something with intensity, dopamine propels that behavior. Other neurochemicals do as well, like oxytocin and serotonin, where we feel connected and proud with what we're doing and endorphins as well when we feel a sense of rush behind what we're doing, like during a workout, for example. But dopamine is this complex chemical that drives so much of the good things in our life as well, this creative, productive work. But it does kind of have a darker side that is more worth illuminating as it relates to two ideas. And those ideas are

stimulation and acquisition, accomplishment. And so, you know, we just covered the first one. The more we're driven to acquire more, the more we're propelled by dopamine because we activate this acquisition network of our brain. And the fascinating thing about this acquisition network is there's kind of two, not to nerd out too much, but I feel focused. No, let's do it because I love the whole neurochemical side of this. That's always been fascinating to me. Yeah, it truly is fascinating because we have these two opposing brain networks. We have one that is associated with being present and focusing on things and, of course, being engaged with what we're doing. Engagement is how productivity actually happens, right? It's where the rubber meets the road. And reversely correlated to that brain network is our acquisition network. So when we're driven to acquire more of something, we actually become less present

and less focused on whatever it is that we're doing, which I find absolutely fascinating. So we have these brain networks that are associated with both acquisition and presence that are anti-correlated with one another. And dopamine, it's the neurochemical underpinning for both acquiring more and stimulating our mind, especially with anything novel. And so it's really misunderstood. And we know people talk about dopamine fasting. They talk about how we need to wean ourselves off of dopamine.

We can't wean ourselves off of dopamine any more than we can wean ourselves off of carbohydrates on a chemical level. We need dopamine to live our lives and to function as human beings. But then again, there is that darker side where we become far less happy and less present and less engaged and less productive when we focus on acquisition and stimulation. And so it's the most ironic thing in the world that caring more about how successful we are leads us to become less focused and less present and maybe even less successful as a result.

But this may be why some of the most successful people are effortless in what they do. They have this not laissez-faire approach. They still do the work. They still work deliberately and hard, but they may not care as much about the result. the attitude I had going into this, my understanding of dopamine is that's the pleasure chemical. And you hear the studies of that's what gets triggered, whether you are taking a hit, taking a drink if you're an addict or eating an Oreo if you are really addicted to sugar. And there's kind of this, when you frame it that way, well, that is unproductive, but I am a master of self-discipline and I get up at 5 a.m. every morning and I do all these things, not me personally, just the general, you know, and if I do these things, then I have mastered dopamine and I can control myself, right? But it's really dopamine that is driving a lot of

that other striving to accomplish that, whatever it is that you want to accomplish. And we kind of generally think like the Oreos and the drugs, those are bad, but all the goals that I'm setting, those are good. Yeah. And this is not to put down goals or ambitions or anything like that. You could say Gandhi was a pretty ambitious person, for example. Especially when our ambitions are connected to our values. I think that's the key. When we're able to manifest our values through our actions, that's where meaning comes from. That's the process through which meaning is made. And that's why I write more about values in this book than in the others because we have these basic human values. There's, in fact, 10 of them as coined by Shalom Schwartz. This is probably the most commonly used and accepted

theory of values out there where we basically have 10 of them. Self-direction is a value. Stimulation is actually a value. So we can value stimulation as a human being. Hedonism, achievement, is also a value. Power is a value, too. But security, conformity, tradition, having respect, this commitment, this acceptance of these customs and ideas that we have. Benevolence is another value that we tend to have, where we want to preserve the welfare of people that we're frequently in contact where we want to preserve the welfare of people

that we're frequently in contact with. Universalism, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful values, probably because I hold it, where it's this understanding, this appreciation, this tolerance, this protection for the welfare of people and for nature, of course, as well. And ideally, the things that we accomplish and the things that we do every single day are connected with these values on a deeper level. Because when we can observe ourselves manifesting these values through our actions, we feel as though we're making a bigger difference than we would otherwise, even if our actions may look largely the same from the outside looking in. And so I think that's the key here. More is not necessarily

bad, just like productivity isn't necessarily bad. When we enter into the pursuit of it deliberately and thoughtfully, considering the currencies and values that we wish to maximize and optimize for. But it's when we do things automatically, in response to the default values of the modern culture and the world that surrounds us, that we lose meaning, that we become a bit less happy. You know, the last place we should be looking for happiness advice from or calm advice from is the modern world, because the modern world is not happy and it is quite anxious and not very calm. And so I think, you know, there is a place for more. And that place is one of deliberate, deliberateness, as it's true with productivity, which is about deliberateness and intentionality

at the core of that idea too. Chris, I love the way you bring science into your books. And one of the things that you explored in the book that really resonated with me was the idea of chronic stress. And I had never heard of it before, but the more I learn about it, I see it all around me. Oh, it's so true. We have kind of two basic kinds of stress. We have acute stress, which is once-off stress that's like you you know, you're late to the airport or you step on a Lego block in the middle of the night or something. And that's fine. You know, it's not fun in the moment to experience acute stress. But at the same time, if you went back through your life and eliminated all the episodes of acute stress, you would probably also eliminate a lot of the meaning that comes along with it. You would eliminate the weddings. You would eliminate

the family gatherings that were a bit stressful at the time if you had to cook, for example. You would also eliminate the funerals, the losses, the events that force you to grow. the losses, the events that force you to grow. But on the other hand, acute stress is this once-off stress. On the other hand, chronic stress is just garbage. It's not fun to experience, and it never feels as though it's going to let up. So instead of the once-off argument with your spouse, it's the constant argument that you happen to be in. Instead of the traffic on the way to the airport for a vacation, for an example, it's the just damn never-ending traffic that you face on your way to and from work. And the fascinating thing about chronic stress is a lot of it is preventable, right? A lot of it is

preventable because it is hidden within the depths of our life. So you can break down the chronic stress that we face even further into the obvious kinds and the hidden kinds. So a lot of it's obvious, right? The relationships in our life that are toxic, for example, the financial concerns we have when we see our bank account, that sort of thing. But then we have the hidden sources of chronic stress that we often choose to pay attention to. so familiar and a comfortable source of stress where we still have a stress response when we tend to watching the news or listening to the news or reading the news online. But because it's so familiar, we don't really notice that we're stressed out in response to an event like that. Digital stuff, social media is another great example of chronic stress that we don't really see as chronic stress. But one quote that I love in kind of a weird way that I use in the book was from Frances Hogan, who is the Facebook whistleblower. And she basically boiled Instagram

down to two things. She said, the Instagram algorithm highlights two things, bodies and comparing lifestyles. And it's hard to think of something more basal than those ideas that lead us to feel envy and in a way, an odd source of a threat. And so chronic stress, it boils up inside of us. It has this pressure. And if we have too much of it in our life, we can even reach a point of burnout, which the research says is caused by only one thing, and that one thing is chronic stress. And so it's this fascinating phenomenon that we can actually break down chronic versus acute and then zeroing into that chronic stress that we face, which is the garbage kind of stress. We have the hidden and the obvious kinds.

And the hidden often pushes us over the edge in a way that we don't realize, maybe even to a point of burnout. Burnout is an interesting idea to me, especially coupled with the story that you told at the beginning, because I feel that the stress that you're talking about, whether it be acute or chronic, tends to be something that we just compartmentalize and push off to the side. And if it doesn't take us out in the moment, we feel like it's not really that big a deal. However, burnout is kind of this, the picture I have of burnout anyways is like, you are just really depressed. You can't get out of bed for months or do anything.

Right. And you definitely don't want to be there. And then you mentioned this burnout inventory, which I asked you for a link to the official one. And I actually took this. And I'm closer to this than I real than I care to admit but I feel like having taken that inventory that was really good because number one that that paints a picture of like hey you know this is you're getting closer to a crash and burn then maybe it you can justify in the moment to moment you feel like oh it's not really that big a deal, right?

David, you mentioned this story all the time, like running downhill where you're barely on the edge of like crashing and burning. That's kind of where I feel like the burnout spectrum is. You don't even notice it until you've crossed that line. But then once you realize how close you are to that, then you can start to identify, well, what are the things that are contributing to that?

You mentioned like the stress inventory. Got an action item for that. I want to go through, just take stock of my life and realize what are the little things which I can dismiss in the moment, but when you add them all up, they end up being a pretty big... They move the needle quite a bit and not in a good direction. needle quite a bit and not in a good direction. Is there any other advice you would give people in terms of combating this now that we've identified what chronic stress really is? How do we notice it in our day-to-day lives other than just jotting down the little things that are annoying to us or what do we do? Mike Schmidt. No, I'm just kidding. One of my favorite ways of taking stock of the stress we face is what you mentioned, is that stress inventory.

And so this exercise is actually quite therapeutic, I found. And it's the best one for recognizing the stress that we all have in our lives. And you just take out a sheet of paper, you know, and if you want to do things the analog way, if you want to do things the digital way, that's cool too, of course. And write down every single thing that is stressing you out. Go through your calendar. Go through your list of contacts on your phone. calendar, go through your list of contacts on your phone, go through your previous week, and list out all of the things that have stressed you out. It could be once-off, could be big,

could be small, could be medium-sized, could be Mike Schmitz, could be anything. And I'm just kidding, Mike Schmitz. And once all that's out of your head, then the therapy part is done, but then the practical pragmatic part begins. And you can divide the items on that list up into things that you face repeatedly, like the traffic jam, like rush hour, like the financial concerns you might have, and the things that are once off that just kind of happened during your week. And before you do this, though, you know, I should rewind a step or two. It's so critical to broaden that definition and that idea of what stress is. Stress is anything

that your mind perceives as a threat in the moment that you're experiencing it. And so this includes a lot of the things that lead your mind to become overstimulated. You know, we talked about how stimulation is driven by dopamine. So too is distraction, right? A lot of the things that we distract ourselves with are sources of chronic stress as well. So be sure to account for all of the sources of stress that are hidden within the depths of your day. Go through the apps on your phone. Which ones stress you out? Which ones do you find that you gravitate to that when you leave them, when you exit out of them into a different app, you don't necessarily feel happier than when you entered that app in the first place. And so because of the damaging effects of chronic stress, it affects our physical health, our mental health.

It leads to anxiety when we experience too much of it. It leads to anxiety when we experience too much of it. It leads to burnout when we reach our breaking point, the point at which we can't absorb any future chronic stress. This exercise is so critical. And the sources of stress that are hidden in your day that you can tame, they're few and far between often, but these are the low-hanging fruits of chronic stress, where if you find that you're reaching a point of burnout, if you're exhausted, cynical, if you feel unproductive, that's something to mind is any inroads that you can make. Because the world is stressful enough, our lives are stressful enough, we have enough constraints to deal with without distracting ourselves and exposing ourselves to future sources of chronic stress. So whatever inroads you can make from this therapeutic burnout stress inventory, I should say, are worthwhile, I found, as burnout is this devastating phenomenon.

as burnout is this devastating phenomenon. I really resonated with this, thinking about it in a couple of ways. First of all, I feel like the modern world is a chronic stress factory more than it was before. I was comparing my life to my grandfather, who I think from 1910 to 1925, he rode a train around the u.s and he would climb up the pole and fix the electrical lines you know how they had the electrical that was his job so he would climb fix it you get back on the train and then they'd go fix the next one and he didn't have instagram you know to do on the way he didn't have to he didn't have to worry

i mean just a lot of the stuff that we have now generates this buzz in our heads that just didn't exist and you know and a lot of people have written about this cal newport and others how you know like our modern brain is not evolving as fast as society is and technology. And I feel like that the modern world, it just creates this low level chronic stress for almost everybody. And reading this book, really, I just had never really, you did such a good job of explaining it that I'd never really distinguished different types of stress before. And, you know, it really resonated with me. Well, that was the fascinating thing is just unraveling this picture of modern stress, where there are so many pieces, moving pieces, many, where to untangle the situation that we're

in is it almost requires a book where we have chronic stress, but that's connected with burnout, which is connected with how anxious we feel, which is connected with calm, which is the opposite of anxiety, which is connected with productivity because of how a calm mind makes us more focused and present and productive because of the brain networks that we were talking about, which is and productive because of the brain networks that we were talking about, which is, of course, those brain networks are connected with stimulation and acquiring more and craving more. And why do we crave more? And what are the evolutionary reasons for that? And how our brain is mismatched to our modern world, which is primarily digital

because we spend over 13 hours a day looking at screens, which releases more dopamine instead of chemicals like oxytocin. And it's such a fascinating, fascinating picture and really an opportunity to unravel all of these tangled up, all of these tangled up, interconnected pieces that are all in our life, they're all the kind of ground that we stand upon in the modern world, but yet we never really take a step back and think about the neurochemical consequences of the way that the modern world is wired. And we look at mental health concerns, and I come at this from the other side as somebody who experienced a mental health problem which led to this project. And we don't really, we brush that under the rug as if that's okay, as if these phenomenons of anxiety and burnout are just

something that are a part of life. But when you really break it down, there are ways to become even more productive, even more intentional while defending our mind, while calming our mind at the same time and avoiding things like burnout and becoming more engaged instead and avoiding things like anxiety and becoming calm instead. We just need that level of deliberateness with calm and with anxiety and with burnout. And it really is this fascinating picture to unravel and unwrap. And yeah, I'm happy you found that. unravel and unwrap. And yeah, I'm happy you found that. Chris, you had mentioned on page 41 in this section that the art of productivity is knowing when we should care about productivity in the first place. And I feel like that's kind of the balance that you're describing there.

We have all these technology-based tools which can make us more, quote unquote, productive, really just efficient, but also they open the door to a whole bunch of distractions. And it occurred to me as you're talking about the news and the apps and the things like that, that we tend to go to those actually feed that negative cycle that you were talking about. You shared a statistic, which was fascinating to me that watching six hours of news about the Boston Marathon bombing actually caused more stress than being in it. And we have all of the access to all these things on our smartphones, which are always with us. But then later on in a different chapter, there's a related idea here, which I wanted to address real briefly. And that is this idea of super stimuli. I feel like this is what drives a lot of our addiction to these different tools. Do you mind talking a little bit about that, what it is, and maybe what we can do to protect against it?

Yeah, for sure. So super stimuli are highly processed, exaggerated versions of something that were wired, programmed biologically to enjoy. And so a good example of this is food. programmed biologically to enjoy. And so a good example of this is food. Most of us are familiar with how modern food is saltier, sugarier, fattier than food that came before that we evolved alongside, like berries, nuts, seeds, that sort of thing. And this is true for technology as well. Most super stimuli live, they reside in the digital world instead of the analog. So pornography is a far more super stimulating alternative to romantic time with a partner. It obliterates intimacy just as social media obliterates intimacy because it tricks us into trading dopamine hits with one another instead of engaging in activities through which we can actually become present with one another. And it's this fascinating idea where because we're wired to crave something, so whether that is connection, whether that is intimate time with somebody, whether that is salt, sugar, or fat, you name it. Whether it's being informed, of course,

consuming the news in order to be informed of our environment and any potential threats in our environment, which we evolved to pay attention to as well. Our mind is much more attuned to noticing a saber-toothed tiger encroaching in our environment than some threatening negative email encroaching in on our screen as we try to work, but it responds to both of these events just the same. There's a stress response, and then after that, often, often we don't experience one when something is more stimulating, then we can't resist it. Then we can't prevent our mind from thinking about anything other than what could be super stimulating in the moment, because these things are, of course, appealing to those biological basal desires that we have in the depths of our mind, much like the Instagram algorithm is tailoring to that as well. And so super stimuli are these

highly processed, exaggerated versions of something that we're wired to enjoy. And they're also, they also release quite a bit of dopamine alongside them. And so our brain releases dopamine in response to something when something happens to be novel. And novelty is kind of the factor that varies the most depending on what we're paying attention to. There's two other factors, by the way, that lead to an increase in dopamine rush in the moment. One is genetics, which we vary person to person. And the other is salience or direct effects. So how the extent to which something directly affects our life. And so getting a $5,000 a year pay raise will provide a bigger dopamine hit than finding a $5 bill on the street, even though both events might be just as novel to our mind.

But the novelty factor is something that really, really varies, especially online, especially in the digital world when we're trying to pay attention to various things. And that is directly connected with super stimuli because super stimuli are the most novel things to be found in our modern environments, but they lead to an overstimulated mind. They lead us to less presence, less focus, and they lead to the parts of our mind activated that don't necessarily lead us to further our goals and intentions. I love the way you describe this though. And for me, just recognizing that everything that you're going to see online is essentially an exaggerated version. It's not quite the same as saying it's a lie because it's not truly a lie, but it's like

a half truth, right? It's a different way of framing what I've heard before that social media, you tend to compare your current reality against the very best and the highlights of what everybody else is sharing. And that's kind of what you're describing with Instagram. But I don't know, just the definition of super stimuli that you had in chapter five here was really helpful for me just to recognize that this isn't the real picture. was really helpful for me just to recognize that this isn't the real picture. It kind of helps tamper a little bit the desire to compare where you're at with what everybody else is sharing. And to add on to that, I just think in general, the scientific explanation of dopamine and these urges and these things we experience as, you know, barely evolved monkeys, I feel like, you know, forewarned is forearmed.

I mean, one of the nice things I got out of reading this book is saying, oh, I can actually witness in my own life where the, you know, the synapses between my ears are driving things that are not good for me. Yeah. And where we don't have complete control over what we're doing. That's the part that I find fascinating, where if productivity and focus as well, which I know you guys talk about all the time on the podcast, if what should drive focus and productivity is intentionality. Super stimuli steal our intentions away from our grasp, right? Because we find them so difficult to resist in the moment. And it's

exactly, and I feel every single pragmatic nonfiction book that has ever been published harps on the idea that our brain is a couple hundred thousand years old and we have to thrive and survive in the modern world with this ancient organ on top of our skull. But it really is fascinating how that holds us back in the moment because there's this intentional part of us, our prefrontal cortex usually, the logical part of us, that truly cares about the intentions that we set. And then there's the instinctual, usually the limbic system is referred to in this regard, this instinctual part of us that in the moment can't really resist super stimuli and so it falls victim to it. And so it's this fascinating thing that where our evolution that led us to survive

through today actively works against us all day long as we try to achieve these what could be considered more modern goals of productivity, of achievement, of financial and social success. I guess those are pretty ancient ambitions in terms of humanity, but the modern manifestations are fascinating and can actively work against us. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by NomNom. Go to trinom.com slash focus for healthy, fresh food for dogs, formulated by top board-certified veterinary nutritionists, prepared in kitchens with free delivery to your door, and you get 50% off with that link. Hey,

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Once again, spelled T R Y N O M.com slash focus for that 50% off. Give your dog the gift of a great meal at try nom.com slash focused. So help me, Chris Bailey Kenobi. You're my only hope. How are we going to get calm with all this going on between our ears? I feel calm is an underrated ingredient in this modern world that we find ourselves in.

And we can look no further than to the productivity benefits. I know productivity is something that a lot of folks come here for. It's something that I'm fascinated by. And indeed, one thing that I found fascinating in exploring this subject of calm was how the more I invested in this ingredient, the more effortless my daily actions became. I could focus with relative ease and just write more and research more and become more immersed in whatever it is I was doing. And the research bears this out too, where calm actually expands the size of our working memory capacity. It gives us more of a presence with whatever it is that we're doing as a result. It heightens our cognitive performance in general. It leads us to become less distractible because we look out for fewer threats in our environment. It leads us to less negative self-talk. It leads our thoughts to be more related to whatever it is that we're

doing in the moment. It leads us to become more engaged and more productive. And the fascinating thing, though, about a subject like calm and a subject like productivity for that matter, too, a subject like calm, and a subject like productivity for that matter too, is when you zoom out of a topic as complex as that, pretty much everything that you could possibly conceive of affects calm and productivity for that matter. One example that I like to look at when it comes to productivity, because I've encountered this situation so much myself, is if you go out for a lunch buffet and you overeat, you have like four or five plates of Indian food. And of course, a lot of butter chicken is accounted for in this calculation. Good luck being productive that afternoon, working with this full belly that your body is actively trying to digest. And so everything from planning your day to Indian food influences how productive we are every day.

And the same could be said about calm. And this is the tough part about zeroing in on what influences calm and how to become calmer and less anxious and not burnt out. When you zoom out, everything influences how calm we are, from digital distraction to how much accomplishment we crave to even the food that we put into our bodies. You know, cortisol, You know, cortisol, most of the cortisol in our body is found in our gut. You know, it's where, of course, that's the primary stress hormone that we have. And so we can't really zero in on like this one strategy for calm. We need a bunch of strategies, luckily, many of which do not take a lot of time. And so one that I'll highlight, actually, we talked about savoring last time I was on the podcast, I seem to remember,

right? I will skip over that one. And I will go to, let's say, let's talk about these ideas behind burnout a little bit, because that's a fascinating idea as it relates to calm. I mentioned very briefly what burnout even is. It's the ultimate manifestation of chronic stress. And because it's chronic stress that causes burnout, this same source of burnout, the same cause of burnout also causes anxiety because anxiety is a response to a stressful situation. But the fascinating thing about burnout as it relates to our work, you know, first of all, burnout is characterized by three things. We need to be exhausted, but we also need two other factors to be true about how we're feeling in any moment

the second factor is we need to feel cynical like there's this you know just this negativity behind what we're doing and like what's really the point we need to feel you know kind of depressed almost and the third factor for burnout is inefficacy. So we don't feel productive, in other words, when we're burnt out. We feel like as if what we're doing doesn't make any modicum of a difference whatsoever. And so to be fully burnt out, we need all three of these characteristics to be true about how we're currently feeling. But luckily, the same individual, Dr. Christina Maslach, I should say, who created the stress inventory that you took, Mike, also has done an incredible amount of research

for how we can overcome this phenomenon of burnout and tame a lot of the chronic stress that we face as well as a lot of the anxiety that we face at the same time. And she's actually identified six areas of our work where chronic stress tends to grow inside of. You can think of these as kind of petri dishes for chronic stress. The first is workload. So the more work we have on our plate, especially when that level of work eclipses our capacity to get it all done, the more stress we face, the more anxious, and the further we get to burning out. The second is lack of control. So the less control we have over

what we do, how we do it, when we do it, how autonomous we are, the more likely we are to burn out. The third factor is insufficient reward. And so the less fairly we're rewarded monetarily, socially, and also intrinsically, so whether we find our work meaningful, the more insufficiently rewarded we are, the more likely we are to burn out. Community is another factor, something that we all need. Nothing will make us more engaged than having close connections with people we work alongside. But nothing will make us more stressed than having negative relationships with the people we work alongside. The fifth factor is fairness. So how fairly work is assigned, how fairly we're treated relative to others on our team. And the final sixth factor is values. So we chatted briefly about the 10 values that underlie who we are as human beings that we all kind of have to various levels. We all have a different score on each of those 10 dimensions.

to various levels. We all have a different score on each of those 10 dimensions. But the more aligned what we do is to what we truly value and who we are as a human being, the more engaged we are. And the less aligned it is, the more likely we are to be burnt out. And so a great place to start with calm, and that's connected with the science, of course, is looking at these six areas of what we do. Basically, just scoring them. We can score it mentally. You can pause the podcast to do so or chart it in a spreadsheet as I do. I do this every few months or so. Just roughly how you're doing in each of these six areas out of 10. So again, their workload, lack of control, Again, their workload, lack of control, insufficient reward, community, fairness, and values. And the more these are in check, the better we're doing in these ways, the more engaged we become with our work as well. Engagement is actually the opposite of burnout.

And so that's a great place to start. Just like one tactic that everybody can do right away. If you're feeling some combination of exhaustion, cynicism, and feeling deeply, profoundly unproductive, or even just one of those things can serve as a stepping stone to a full-blown burnout phenomenon, look at those six areas because that's where stress tends to be found in what we do. Sorry, that was like a 10-minute answer, but because that's where stress tends to be found in what we do sorry that was like a 10 minute answer but hopefully that's helpful well it was a lot of good information and and one of the things you talk about is how you know burnout is not i mean there is this weird thing where people are like oh just it just comes with the territory you know

burnout is just it just happens and it's okay. And you address the issue of burnout as an environmentally created situation. And a lot of times burnout means that if one person in an office is burned out, there may be several. And you should address, you know, the fundamental cause of that there. But I would go deeper to say that

it's not about an individual office, but I just think kind of modern technology in the world the way it is is a burnout machine. And like you said earlier, this is all connected, but it's a real good wake-up call to understand the fundamentals of it. So many people just think of burnout as a conclusion without understanding the elements like you outline in the book. as a conclusion without understanding the elements like you outlined in the book. But that's the fascinating thing is when you understand the elements of what contribute to some phenomenon, you can deconstruct it. You can understand your situation. And it isn't always possible to do so because like you said, burnout is so embedded in our culture, especially a workplace culture where we're expected to be able to take it

or there's the saying, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. And it's almost at a place where burnout is accepted as a part of what it means to be a modern worker. But in chatting with Christina Maslach, who created the Maslach Burnout Inventory, as you can imagine, she described it as anything but something that should be socially acceptable. She described it as, you know, as kind of a canary in a coal mine, where if somebody, like you said, if somebody is experiencing burnout, other people likely are too. And if you're experiencing burnout, other people likely are too. And if you're experiencing burnout, other people likely are too. So finding a mentor at your office that can help coach you through those ideas, finding just somebody to talk to who you feel may be experiencing something similar can counteract that idea a little bit and help you see kind of the broader perspective

of what burnout is and how chronic it can be in a workplace. And because community is one of those factors that contribute to burnout, or lack thereof, I should say, finding a connection with somebody that you work alongside can be extraordinarily helpful. Unfortunately, though, with burnout, it's sometimes indicative of a systematic thing that is off about a workplace, where if everybody has too much work and nobody has control over what they do, and there's no sense of community, people can't stand each other, there's no fairness, there's no connection to what you no, you don't feel like you're fairly rewarded. Those are structural problems that you may not be able to face yourself in what you do. And we can't always have complete autonomy over how we deal with factors like this. And sometimes the solution to being burnt out is stark, that we should leave and go somewhere else

that actually respects us and our mental health and our abilities. But I think the key there to remember is because engagement is the polar opposite of burnout. Another fascinating research contribution by Dr. Maslach. Because engagement is the opposite of burnout, the less burnt out we become, the more engaged we become. So as we get our workload under control, as our workload roughly equals how much of a capacity we have to get things done, as we gain more autonomy, more control, as we're fairly rewarded, as we develop more relationships and a greater sense of community, fairly rewarded, as we develop more relationships and a greater sense of community,

as things get fairer, as we can connect with our work on a deeper level, work becomes an important element of our life that contributes a lot of meaning. And we can become naturally more productive when the stars are aligned in that way too. Nobody's perfect, of course. I'm never scoring a complete 10 on all of these dimensions, even though I have a lot of control over what I work on and the projects that are on my plate and that sort of thing. But we can always get a bit closer and more engaged and productive in this way too. One of the things that you mentioned about dealing with burnout is that there are two ways to combat it. You can decrease the chronic stress, which is kind of what you're talking about. And chronic stress, I mean, the way we defined it, obviously that's bad. We want to limit that as much as we can. But also, it may not be possible for you to just leave your work situation, even if you identify that as a source of chronic stress. So the other thing that you mentioned in the book is that we can increase our burnout threshold. Yeah. And this is fascinating to me. Like, what are the things that you can do to

increase your burnout threshold? And jumping ahead, chapter seven, you mentioned that using analog or analog activities actually absorb a lot of our extra stress. So I'm kind of curious, are there any other things that you can think of that increase our burnout threshold? Or we could just jump off of there and start talking about some of the ways that you've defined the analog versus digital activities. Yeah, for sure. So that's the fascinating thing about burnout is, in the book I have this illustration that you mentioned where because burnout is the ultimate manifestation of chronic stress, it's typically defined as an occupational phenomenon, but of course stress comes from everywhere. Stress that comes from our home environments as well. But because it's the ultimate manifestation of chronic stress, there is a point, a kind of threshold that we can reach

where that is how much of a capacity we have for chronic stress. And past that point, when we face more chronic stress than that point for a long enough period of time, we will reach a point of burnout. And so the pandemic was a very good example. I don't know if I should say was. The pandemic, depending on when you listen to this, is slash was a really good example of something that pushed a lot of us over the edge, where if you were a teacher that had to navigate the recent pandemic and switch to remote learning and deal with a lot of daily challenges, or

a medical worker who had to navigate the pandemic, you probably had enough chronic stress to begin with. And so you sandwich on the layer of chronic stress that comes from the pandemic, and that might push you over that burnout threshold and get you to a state of burnout where you feel exhausted, cynical, and unproductive. But you're exactly right. We can adjust how close we are to burnout in a couple of different ways. We can reduce the chronic stress, so we lower how high we are on this chart relative to that burnout threshold, or we can raise the threshold itself and invest in activities that actually absorb and soak up a lot of the chronic stress

that we face in our days and in our lives. And so great examples of this are a lot of the chronic stress that we face in our days and in our lives. And so great examples of this are a lot of the activities that we do in the analog world, moving more, getting enough exercise. Exercise absorbs stress. And so if you find that you're burnt out, you need to get enough exercise, you know, 180 minutes at least a week of moderate activity. Meditation is also a sponge for chronic stress as well because it teaches us to not really believe all the thoughts that are flying around in our minds. So physical activity, meditation, also sleep is another fantastic way of absorbing this chronic stress that we face. And spending time, of course, with people. People are, you know, I've said before that people are the reason for productivity. People lead us to calm. They lead us to presence. Our mind has

evolved to feel calm in the presence of other people. And spending time with others actually leads us to more focus and productivity and creativity as well as we bounce ideas around. And so anything that can be found in the analog world that forces us to relax, to look away from a screen, from another source of digital chronic stress, can actually absorb that chronic stress that we face and lead us further away from burnout and further to calm. I love the way that you describe in chapter seven here, the breakdown of like the digital versus analog, because that's something that we've talked a lot about on this podcast and something that people are probably very familiar with and i feel like most of the time when it is framed it's just

the digital activities versus the analog activities and why would you take something in the analog world and and do it digitally or or vice versa and you've kind of got this middle ground here for these activities that we do in both worlds. And you have some real great guiding principles, I think, as to when we have the option, when should we choose to do which where? Do you want to talk about maybe the criteria you use for when you would choose to do something digitally versus when you would choose to do something analog? Yeah. So this is the fascinating thing is as time goes forward, we've spent far, far more time in the digital world than the analog world. One of the most recent statistics that I could find in this regard is found that

we spent over 13 hours a day looking at screens. And this doesn't even account for the time that we spend listening to podcasts, for an example. But it's entirely possible to step back from this phenomenon from sort of 10,000 feet and see all the activities that comprise our life and break them down into which we can do where. And so if you think of a Venn diagram of sorts, there's the analog circle and the digital circle. And where they meet in the middle, those are the activities that we can do in both worlds. And so I actually cracked open the book to the page that you were talking about when you're asking the question. So analog activities are like showering, sleeping, drinking coffee,

spending time in nature. These are things we can only do in the analog world. There are certain things, of course, that we can only do in the digital world as well. Listening to podcasts is a good example of this, unless you have that one hello internet vinyl episode. Social media, playing video games, email are great examples of things that we can only do digitally. But then there are the activities that we can do in both worlds. There's reading, there's managing money, there's playing games. We can navigate a map in both worlds. We can journal. We can talk to friends. I know you love journaling digitally, David. And the heuristic that I love to

use for deciding where to do the different activities that comprise my day is when I want something to be meaningful, I do it in the analog world where I can just be present with that one thing. There isn't something that I can tab over in another window to. And if I want something to be efficient, I'll do it digitally. And so this is anything that I want to be streamlined

in my day. And generally speaking, this is a pretty good heuristic. I think there are a couple of exceptions to this where if you find that you're one of these people who's able to be really intentional in the digital world, that might be an exception to this. Maybe this is why you like journaling digitally, David. But generally speaking, this is the dividing line that I like to use to determine which activities I'm going to do where. And it's a simple idea, but in my opinion, the analog world is where meaning is found. You know, if you look back in your own days, in your own life, to your most meaningful moments, chances are most of them were analog.

to your most meaningful moments, chances are most of them were analog. Some of them, there are bound to be a few digital outliers. There was one time Taylor Swift liked one of my tweets, which was pretty cool. They've gotten emails about the book deals in the digital world, that sort of thing. But looking back at the most meaningful experiences that make up my life, the time with people, the time with friends, the big accomplishments, the things that I'm so proud of, proud of in my life, the milestones, pretty much all of them happen in the analog world. So simple rule, but a great way of thinking about it.

I like that differentiation. And it's really got me thinking not just about digital versus analog, but even the constraints that I would put around the way that I use the digital devices. the framing of if you want it to be efficient, then you should use the computer. If you want it to be meaningful, then you want to limit the amount that the computer is involved. So I actually have in front of me a device which you kind of inspired with this section of the book as I was reading it over Christmas break. It's an e-ink Android tablet, which I'm using for a hybrid version of journaling. But I like this because it's forcing me to use a couple of specific apps. So there's some reading apps that I'll look at on here. But also I'm going to use it for the journaling that I do in Obsidian. But basically nothing

else. It has the power to do the other things, but I intentionally put the constraints around it. Yeah, David and I have talked about this a lot. Yeah, I could use my iPad for this sort of thing, but I never want to do that. I feel the slippery slope the minute that I turn that device on. And so it's like uh just the the looking at it you know it doesn't have the color it doesn't have uh all of the the bells and whistles that the the ipad has it's an e-ink screen it's fast enough for what i want it to do but i'm not going to be watching videos on here it doesn't have the buttery smooth scrolling all that kind of stuff it's kind of 120 hertz yeah not any ink yeah but it's but it helps you know it keeps my mind trained on the the task at hand uh i think email is kind of the same way for

me with with mailmate i only do email on my computer and i use mailmate because it's ugly it uses markdown formatting uh i don't see the pictures i don't i'm not tempted with the fonts and the colors and all that kind of stuff i i crank through the text responses and that's it then i'm on to the the next thing because i don't want to spend a whole bunch of of time there i don't want to savor using that device i want to go do something else uh analog and so i really like this this section of the the book here it's really got me thinking about the activities that I employ my devices to do and how I can constrain them to those jobs without opening up the doors to all the other things that contribute to the chronic stress that we talked about earlier. about the analog world is it sort of guides our behavior, where if you're journaling and you have a pen and a notepad, there's lines for you or there's dots, if that's more your style. And you can flip the page. And when you perceptually couple, when you focus on that notepad,

that's all there is to do, right? There is nothing else that will distract, unless somebody walks up to you, unless some device of yours dings. Once you're focused, once your thoughts are aligned to your actions, the activity takes care of itself, right? We need the original impetus to do something, but then the analog activity guides us through

to the completion of that activity. Whereas in the digital world, it's this fascinating phenomenon that just because we focus on a device doesn't mean that our behavior will be guided through to completion. You know, we start focusing on, you know, if you're anything like me, especially before this project, you would be journaling in an app and then a notification would come in. And then your attention would be guided to focus on that notification. And the device doesn't necessarily support us in what we intend to accomplish. in what we intend to accomplish. We need to kind of mold the devices that we use to access the digital world so that we have a hope of carrying through with our intentions. And some of us are better at this than others. I think the folks who listen to this podcast, for example, are a great

example where we're more tech savvy. I mean, by God, we're on the relay network at the moment. I can't think of a more wholesomely nerdy place to be. But it's fascinating how, I keep saying the word fascinating, but I'm just interested in this stuff. It's really, really curious how the analog world will guide us through completing something, and the digital world won't. And there are exceptions to this. A movie is a very good example of this when we watch a movie digitally, where when we watch a movie, we actually hand our attention over to whoever is making the movie, whoever is directing it, so they can guide our attention through because we're perceptually

coupled with it. They can guide our attention through the end of the movie, hopefully, if the movie is good. But usually that's not the case when we can be interrupted in the moment, either by a different application or by ourselves when we seek novelty. Chris, there's a chapter in here about calm and productivity. And I'll tell you, my reaction to seeing the chapter at first was like, what is this here for? It's like, isn't calm itself enough of a reason to want calm? And I'm like, oh no, Chris is going to now try and tell me how I'm going to be more productive with Calm. But then I started reading it, and it actually makes a lot of sense. I think there's a lot of people who are going to choose productivity over Calm.

And the science, fortunately for them, the science shows that you can actually have both. Could you talk about that a little bit? Thankfully. It's great. I value productivity just as much after writing this book as I did before. And I actually think productivity is more essential right now when we're in such an anxious time than it was before. But the connection between calm and productivity is fascinating as well.

Everything's fascinating. I mentioned earlier the different ways that calm can help us become more productive, by expanding our working memory capacity, which allows us to process more in the moment, by expanding our cognitive performance in general, by allowing us to focus more on what we intend to accomplish and have fewer, it's called in research, task-unrelated thoughts in the moment. We don't look out for threats when our mind is calm because we're not in that threat-finding mentality. Our self-talk is more task-related. It's more positive as well we see more opportunities around us as we become engaged because we're not either stimulating our mind or trying to acquire

something one good example that i think illustrates how calm can help us become more productive and also how anxiety leads us to become less productive. And calm and anxiety are opposites of one another, the research shows. They are opposite ends of the same spectrum. But if you had to give a big speech in 15 minutes to a thousand people, you probably wouldn't be able to focus on much else leading up to giving that speech. You might be focusing on the first line of what you have to say. You might be thinking about all the people around you. You might be thinking about anything other than, you know, everything will relate to that thing that you have coming up.

And if I asked you to read some research paper or write a report about some other idea that's not related to that speech that you have coming up, good luck trying to muster the focus and the attention and the presence to be able to move that thing forward. And that's the effect of anxiety on our cognitive performance. That's the effect of anxiety on how it shrinks our working memory and for 8, 10, hopefully not, but maybe even 12 hours each and every day. And airplane turbulence is another great example of this. You know, most of us have probably been on a flight, and if you've been in turbulence, you probably also had to reread the passage that you were just reading or rewind the movie as your body went into that threatening anxiety mode. And it's this fascinating connection between cognitive performance and calm where, you know, I found calm in my own life to be a missing piece of this productivity picture because the less anxious I became, the more productive I became. High calmness makes us more productive, and there's a lot of research to show this because we become unflappable and less emotionally reactive under

pressure that is external to us. And of course, we have fewer internal threats that we surface in our mind as well. And so it's this idea where calm earns us back time. And so we all have this guilt often that comes up when we relax and when we try to settle our mind. And we don't feel busy as we do so. And this may be why this guilt arises, because we tend to look at how busy we are each and every day as a proxy measure for how productive we are. But of course, productivity is not about how busy we are. It's not about doing more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. It's about doing the right things deliberately and intentionally. And fortunately, Calm helps us get there.

One of the best things that happened to me early in my career as a lawyer is I had a lot of cases. So I was going up against a lot of attorneys. Some of them were very good and some of them were not so good. And I made the observation as a young man that the consistent trait between the lawyers that I feared at trial and the ones that I didn't was calm. I didn't call it calm at the time, but I just called it steady. calm. I didn't call it calm at the time, but I just called it steady. Like you go meet the guy and his office is not full of junk and he's not running from one thing to the next. When he talks to you, he looks you in the eye and just seemed to be completely present and not disjointed. And

I don't know what their lives were like. Maybe they were faking it but very early i i saw that and i i tried to emulate it and and it was sometimes a fake for me but um it was something that really served me well throughout my career and reading this book it like finally clicked in for me it's like oh yeah that's what that was there there is an element to that that makes you better at what you do and whether you fake it till you make it or you you just natively understand this um this does make you it does give your life more meaning and it does make what you do more intentional and there's just a lot to this and you know the the thing that you know as i finished the book i was thinking about my life now versus a year ago, you know, when I was doing two careers and like so many of the burnout triggers and things I was, I was looking at,

uh, a year ago that I don't see now. And, um, yeah, I, I don't know, Chris, I, Mike said, this was your best book yet. I have to agree. I think this is something that a lot of people need to know. And, uh, this is a book that I'm going to be giving to people. I think this is something that a lot of people need to know. And this is a book that I'm going to be giving to people because I just think that there is, this is a possibility, this idea of calm, even in this crazy modern world. I mean, one of the things I wrote down in my notebook after I finished your book was calm is a choice. I think too many people think it's not a choice, that you don't have the ability to be calm because of the modern world

and what you've got on your plate. But I think you can choose to be calm, and it can make you better. And I got a lot of insight out of it. So thank you. Thank you. And it was so surprising going through this journey for finding calm. Finding calm was actually the first title of the book before we went with How to Calm Your Mind. Finding it, though, it was surprising just how many things flowed from calm. I honestly didn't expect to

become more productive when I found calm. But looking back, of course, it makes total sense because we don't become reactive to what happens around us. But we find the meaning as well. We notice the meaning around us. We enjoy life more because we can actually be present for it. We can be more intentional because we have more control of our behavior. We don't constantly feel unworthy of what we have because we're not always seeking more. We feel as though we have things handled because we eliminate a lot of hidden chronic stress from our life. And the

list goes on and on and on. And one resounding lesson that I think I take from this journey more than almost any other is how calm is a wellspring that lies at the heart of what it means to have a good life. And out of that spring is productivity, it's creativity, it's meaning, it's presence, it's enjoyment. And calm is not something that I ever sought before going on this journey and trying to move away from that anxiety part of the spectrum towards the calm part of the spectrum. But now that I'm kind of on the calm side, I never want to look back. So yeah, thank you for the kind words. And hopefully you guys think the same. Absolutely do. If people want to find you in addition to Calm, where should they go? Yes, the book is called How to Calm Your Mind. It's wherever books are sold. And I think it's my best one yet. Personally, it's also my most personal and it helped me the

most. So I hope you'll consider picking it up. And chrisbailey.com is my website where all my other stuff is. Including a great podcast that you do with your wife. Yeah, my wife and I, Time and Attention is the name of that. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focus. We have a forum. If you go to talk.macpowerusers.com, there's a forum there for the Focus Podcast. If you're on a journey of calm, need some help, or just want to talk about it,

I think that's a great place to do it. Thank you to our sponsor today, Nom Nom. Great dog food. Boy, I love this sponsor, and so does my dog. Yeah, so does my dog. But but either way we'll see you next time