Finding Calm in Anxious Times: A Conversation with Author Chris Bailey | MindHack Ep. 045

In this episode of MindHack, join host Cody Mclain as we delve into the world of productivity and mindfulness with acclaimed author and speaker, Chris Bailey. Discover the power of finding presence and enhancing productivity, even in the midst of anxious times. Chris shares practical tips and actionable strategies from his bestselling books, including 'How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times.' Uncover the secrets to managing time, attention, and energy effectively, while navigating the challenges of anxiety and stress. Gain valuable insights from a thought leader who bridges the gap between theory and real-world application. Prepare for a transformative conversation that will equip you with practical tools to unlock your full potential for greater peace, focus, and accomplishment. Tune in to this episode of MindHack and learn how to find presence and unleash your productivity in today's demanding world.

More on Chris Bailey:
Website
Twitter
Instagram
How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times
Other books here

Books and other interesting mentions:
Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind by Judson Brewer
Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation by Gabriele Oettingen
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule by Paul Graham
Tim Ferris with Kevin Rose
Space Dreams
The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life by Philip Zimbardo
Philip Zimbardo Books
Stanford Prison Experiment
Christina Maslach Books
When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Transcript

Chris: 0:00

Productivity needs a place. It can't be practiced in every single, single facet of our life and become this generalized driving. It needs to be about intention and it needs to be about making a difference.

Cody: 0:17

Welcome to Mind Hack the podcast dedicated to optimizing our minds and unleashing our full potential. Joining us today is Chris Bailey, an accomplished author and speaker and productivity and mindfulness. Chris's book, how to Calm Your Mind. Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times has garnered a claim for its practical advice on cultivating a composed mindset amidst the challenges of modern life. His expertise stems from his immersive project, A Year of Productivity, which led to the bestselling book The Productivity Project, accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, attention, and Energy. For exactly one year. He followed his passion and learned everything he could about productivity by the end of the year. His work was read over a million times, and he was offered a publishing deal by Penguin Random House recognized as a thought leader. Kris's Insights have been featured in renowned publications such as The New York Times and Harvard Business Review. Through actionable strategies, he empowers individuals to unlock their full potential and lead more purposeful lives. In today's episode, Chris will share his story on how he went from being very productive to feeling burned out and overstressed. And his latest book, how To Calm Your Mind. He takes a deep dive that asks questions such as, what is the accomplishment mindset? What leads to burnout? How are we overstimulating ourselves? And most importantly, how to pair calmness and wellbeing with productivity. So without further ado, please welcome Chris Bailey. So, Chris, I, I read your book and as somebody who also has this accomplishment mindset, as you say, and I've been obsessed with productivity for a long time. The struggles you gave really resonated with me, so I'd love for you to start and share what was going on in your life. That was the impetus for writing your latest book.

Chris: 2:18

Yeah, I thought basically nothing was happening. I felt totally fine, or at least I, I thought I did. But it, it's interesting, you know, anxiety is one of those things that a lot of us have, to some extent, that we don't necessarily realize. And so, uh, essentially the whole journey started. I was on stage giving a talk about productivity, which is a subject that I've been fascinated by for, about a well over a decade now. Now, as you were saying in the intro and. This is a part of the job that I've been doing for about 10 years. After you write a book and you publish things about a topic one, one of the things that happens is you get invited to give speeches about it. And it's something that I enjoy doing and I enjoyed doing. but at, at this particular speech, I noticed that when I got on stage, something felt a bit off. my thoughts were racing. They were, uncontrolled. I felt restless. I felt on edge. Um, I had difficulty. Concentrating on the talk that I was doing and went basically into fight, flight, or freeze mode there on the stage, having an anxiety attack, a panic attack on stage in front of about a hundred people. And luckily, I, I like to rehearse when I give a talk, so I gave the rest of it mostly on autopilot mode. But afterward, it was very much a process of saying, wait a second, you know, I thought I wasn't anxious. I was going to the spa with my wife. I was reading a lot of books. I was relaxing, I was meditating, I was doing all these things that people told me I should do, do to counterbalance the, the stress that often comes with the pursuit of accomplishment and productivity. But yet that. Anxiety still had a, a space, uh, an oxygen to boil over on stage. And it, it was at this point when I started to kind of look back at how, uh, anxious I really was and, and how that was compromising my productivity. You know, these random feelings of dizziness or lightheadedness or a rapid heartbeat or that difficulty concentrating or not being able to sleep and staying awake and feeling like, there's doom. There's ah, where, what's this doom coming from? Um, you know, the, the symptoms are manyfold. But it was that, that talk, and I'm kind of grateful for it today and I think I'm a better speaker because of it. Cause it's a, you know, you're able to bring more of a calmness with you instead of an anxiety. but that was the original impetus that set me on this journey of. Thinking, okay, wait. I'm investing in this self-care stuff. It's not working. It's compromising my productivity and how much I can get done every day. It's compromising my mental clarity, my focus, my everything. So I need to get to the bottom of it. And the book is the result, uh, of

Cody: 5:09

Hmm.

Chris: 5:10

Yeah.

Cody: 5:11

And so you had hidden anxieties and it came out when you were on stage in front of all these people, and so what was, how did you backpedal from that? How did you figure out what were these anxieties that you were previously unaware of?

Chris: 5:28

Mm, well that was the really tricky part. And so in the book I presented as kind of a linear narrative, but it took, a lot of digging and, uh, un unwinding these interrelated. Ideas. So burnout being one of them. feeling exhausted, cynical, unproductive. That was a big one. Uh, unwinding the, the chronic stress that I was experiencing, which, is a, the source of the burnout that we face, as well as a lot of the anxiety that we face, too. Chronic stress, so, To give kind of a lay of the land, though I'm sure a lot of folks have heard this before, that there's essentially two kinds of stress. There's acute stress, which is once off, it's temporary. We, it's kind of like a tunnel that we must navigate through in order to get to the light. On the other side, we can always see the light, we can always see the endpoint, but chronic stress is stress that never seems to let up. And we face it repeatedly, in other words, chronically. And so instead of the once off traffic jam on your way to the airport to catch a, a flight to the Dominican, for an example, it's the traffic jam that we face every damn day on our way, to work in, in our long ass commute. and so we face it repeatedly, chronically. And that's kind of the dangerous kind, uh, of stress that we face leads to burnout, leads to anxiety, uh, when we're not careful. And so it, it was very much so the way that I. Work is when I'm interested in, in a topic, I'll buy all the books about it and, and experiment with it and find what works and leave the rest and then hopefully write about what I learned in order to help other people. but I found the books on anxiety were not necessarily helping me in the way that I expected them to. You know, I still felt, uh, a bit anxious after all of them. I still felt restless. I still had this, uh, hidden anxiety as you call it, this chronic stress that didn't seem to let up. So I looked, then turned my head to the research, you know, the academic literature about this topic to see what makes our brain tick and, and how, um, how that affects us and how we can deconstruct that in order to, to understand it better. But chronic stress, big, big part of it.

Cody: 7:51

One of the books that I read is called Unwinding Anxiety, by Dr. Jed Brewer and and I found that a lot of the techniques that they prescribed in that book seem to be very helpful, at least for being able to recognize the anxiety in the first place. What were some studies or books or resources that helped you discover how to deal with your anxieties?

Chris: 8:16

a, a big area that comes to mind is, is the research conducted by Christina Maslach. Christina is probably the world's foremost expert on the subject of burnout. and so, you know, burnout, It has the same cause of a lot of the anxiety that we face in the form of chronic stress. And so if you look at how burnout is defined, it's defined as a workplace phenomenon that is the result of chronic stress that just does not seem to let up. And so we. Accumulate enough chronic stress in our day, in our life, uh, that essentially boils over and causes this phenomenon of burnout as well as anxiety and the research surrounding exactly where, this chronic stress comes from. Cuz if you're dealing with this anxiety, this stress, it's best to pull it up by the roots, um, and, and not kind of have a, a bandaid solution over it. though there are a lot of great kind of coping strategies for anxiety, but really u understanding what the roots of burnout and anxiety are. So, Dr. Maslach, she, uh, looks at. The areas of our work that chronic stress tends to, metastasize inside of. And so there's six of them, in fact. Um, so if you look at where the stress comes from at our work, uh, it comes from these six main places. Number one is workload. And so if you're feeling burnt out, which by the way is not exhaustion, we need to feel cynical and unproductive at the same time. So if, if you're feeling some combination, some combination of exhausted, cynical, unproductive, you are, uh, on your way to burning out, these are kind of stepping stones and workload is. Usually the biggest source of stress that we face at our work. So it's too damn high. We have too much on our plate. We have too much to do, and so we, we burn out, you know, we, we have too much chronic stress from that lack of control is another one. The less control we have over when, where, and how we do our stuff. The more stress we face, the more likely we are to reach a point of burnout. insufficient reward is number three. So this is financial rewards, obviously it's, you know, stock options, it's salary, but it's also just being recognized for the contributions that we make. somebody saying, Hey, you know, you're doing a great job here. That, that's sometimes all the reward we need. in order to feel less stress from the job that we have, um, community. Is the fourth factor. So, uh, whether or not we feel connected with the people that we work alongside work gives us a lot of meaning. You know, I, I don't know if we give it enough credit for the meaning that it gives us, but we need to feel that sense of community. If not, or we find ourselves butting heads with the people that we work alongside, we're gonna have more stress, we're gonna be more likely to burn out. Uh, fairness is the fifth factor. So how fairly we're treated at work and values is number six. And so when we feel as though we can manifest who we are on a deeper fundamental level, which is what we truly value at, at that core of who we are, when we feel we can manifest those values through our actions and then notice ourselves doing so, uh, that's the process through which meaning is made at work and through which we become more engaged. And so, Think of these six factors. So workload, control, reward, community, fairness, values. Think of these six factors as, um, as a sort of gradient, each, as a spectrum for each. So if we have a lot of energy that comes from these six areas, if we have a lot of, um, things that fire us up from these six areas, you know, our workload is challenging, but we love it. We can do it in, in 7, 8, 9 hours a day. Uh, we have a good amount of control. We have, uh, good rewards at work. We feel that strong sense of community things are fair. We can feel connected to it. We feel engaged with the work that we do. And so, you know, I I love how this has become a kinda lovefest for Christina Maslow's research, which is incredible if, if you're into reading research articles. Hers are an incredible place to start when it comes to this phenomenon. So these are the six factors. When we have energy that comes from them, we feel engaged, but we ha when we have stress that comes from them, we feel burnt out. Some combination of exhausted, cynical, and unproductive. So they're kind of the six factors of our work that can sway us in one direction or another. But they all lead to chronic stress. They can all lead to at the same time, burnout and anxiety.

Cody: 13:10

so there's six different factors that can be, that can contribute to that feeling of burnout. But I, I have like a side question for you here is that I'm, I'm introverted. I've always had this high level of anxiety and I overanalyze and overthink everything. And for the longest time, I couldn't even recognize when I was anxious about something. And so I think there's something to be said about having the awareness to recognize that something causes anxiety. Because we typically think of, oh, you have to give a speech and then you, your mind is racing of course. But there are things that I think that occur throughout our day where we're not fully aware of them and they can contribute to feeling, to feeling stress, but we aren't necessarily sure where that stress is coming from. Do you have any advice on how we can be more mindful to notice these stressful events?

Chris: 14:05

Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good question. One of my favorite tactics for just awareness in general, well, step zero is meditation, so that's kind of the default answer. But one tactical thing. If, if you are somebody who resists the idea of meditation, which it is pretty much a surefire way of becoming more aware of your thoughts, your actions, what you're feeling and what you're thinking and what you're sensing, uh, in every single moment in terms of awareness. Meditation is in a league all of its own. Um, but one other tactic that I find works marvelously well. Is an hourly awareness chime of some sort. and so this can be, you know, if you have a, a smartwatch, it can tap you on the wrist at the top of the hour if you have, an app on your phone, or if you do work on a computer or an iPad or whatever, your PC of choices, you can have an app that pings you every hour or so. But essentially the idea is to think of it as an hourly awareness chime. And so when it goes off, What do you wish to reflect on when it does that will make you more aware? And what do you want to become more aware of in the first place? May maybe you're fi you're finding you're quite distracted. And so one of the things that you wanna ask is, okay, am I on task right now? Am I doing something that I intended to do if I'm at work? or if I'm at home, regardless of the context of my, am I living on autopilot or am I living intentionally and acting intentionally? Uh, if anxiety is on your mind because of how that can compromise our cognitive performance and just overall how comfortable we feel in our own body and mind. You might wanna ask, okay, am I having any symptoms of anxiety right now? am I feeling a bit restless? Am I feeling, uh, Unsettled. Am I feeling nausea? Am I feeling the, this feeling of of doom, you know, whatever it might be. And so it, it's a, it's a simple strategy for having one more loop around our behavior. And I think that's kind of the key when it comes to productivity advice is there's a lot of productivity advice out there. There's a lot of self-help advice on how we should live our life. but. The reason I love the question is if you don't bring any awareness to that pursuit of productivity, you're not going to have any reinforcement around the improvements that you're trying to make to determine whether or not they even work. Uh, I, I remember one experiment I conducted cuz I, I like conducting experiments on myself, using myself as a sort of Guinea pig, as you were mentioning in the intro. And one was waking up at five 30 every morning. And I am not, I am the la like I, I am the last to bed out of pretty much anybody I know.

I do my best work after 8: 16:58

00 PM uh, how to Calm Your Mind, the book that you were mentioning. I think I wrote the entire thing after eight or 9:00 PM That's just how I work. That's, that's what I find. Um, uh, I do my best work. But one of the experiments I conducted a while back was, Trying to get myself to wake up at five 30 every single morning. And so eventually got to the point, it took a month or two to integrate this routine into my life, but eventually I had the routine that, that productivity dreams are made of. I woke up at five 30. I meditated, I went to the gym. I read the paper. I did all this stuff before the rest of the world even woke up and then realized somewhere along the line that I absolutely hated this ritual. I, I had to go to bed when I was about to do my best work, when friends wanted to hang out, if I didn't wanna lose sleep. And this led to a lot of. Fascinating research actually on how there's no difference in our socioeconomic standing based on what time we wake up at. It's what we do with the hours of our day after we wake up, and how deliberately and intentionally we act that make the biggest difference in our overall success and productivity. And it, it's this fascinating finding because we so often have this, uh, sepia toned idea of the life we wanna live and what that will look like on a daily basis. But then you look at the research and then you have this layer of hopefully reinforcement around the changes that you're trying to make to realize, wait, I hate this habit. And wait, this isn't true to who I am. Or, wait, this might work for somebody who's a, an extrovert. You know, having all their meetings in one day for an example, versus spread out over the week. If you're an introvert, what, whatever it might be, you know that awareness. I think has to precede behavior change. If it doesn't, we're really just making these changes on autopilot mode without that either loop that prevents us from wasting further effort and time on changes that aren't and won't make a difference with who we are. Or we're leaving motivation on the table because we don't notice that the changes that we're trying to make are incredibly effective, more effective than we give them credit for. taming anxiety was one of those things for me that just brought me more focus and productivity. And without that loop, I don't think I would've been led down the rabbit hole there of the research surrounding, anxiety and, and cognitive performance.

Cody: 19:33

Wow that. I love that there. There's so much there. Just to unpack what you just said, one thing that, that I really connected with is that you had this routine in the morning and I also had a very similar routine. I called, I called up my mind body, soul routine, where I would meditate for 20 minutes. I would read a book for 30 minutes and I would exercise for 60 minutes. And I did it religiously every single day. And then sometimes I had meetings and I would kind of push them off, or it, I would be resentful towards the person because if they disrupted my routine and if I wasn't able to do, do my routine, then it would kind of mess up my whole day. But even after being able to do this and feeling like it's such a, a cornerstone to my day is, I mean, I still had anxiety, I still had productivity issues, and yet I was doing everything that you're supposed to be doing. And so did you give up these routines or how did you, so you, you let

go of the 5: 20:36

30 AM did you keep the meditation and what else helped?

Chris: 20:42

Oh, for, for anxiety? You mean for productivity? Anxiety

Cody: 20:46

Frankly for both. I, I would love to know about the productivity, but also, I mean, obviously I, so I think there's a component of productivity where we need anxiety as a motivator, but not too much anxiety.

Chris: 21:02

Yeah. I mean, we don't wanna be dull, right? We don't want to be kind of plain and dull and not really feel anything at all. you know, we, I, I think the purpose of calm in that way is to give us the capacity. To deal with whatever comes up in the moment and the capacity to enjoy things, you know, so we're not just pulled away by the thoughts in our head so that when we're having date night with our spouse, we can be present and enjoy their company, enjoy the delicious food that we're eating. Like that's, that's kind of what it's all about. But in, in terms of, you know, productivity, anxiety, keeping, I, I think one of the, the biggest keys with this advice is to come at it from the point that this is personal productivity. And, you know, anxiety is highly personal. So we really have to take what works for us and leave the rest. one strategy though that I, I found incredibly helpful, uh, for both of these areas is the stimulation fast. And so we, we live in a very stimulating. So these are sometimes called dopamine fast, but I am not a fan of that phrase. It's, you know, we can't really fast from dopamine, on, uh, you know, we need it to breathe. Our body needs it to function. what we can fast from though our, the more empty sources of dopamine that we engage with because of that. Rush itself, uh, social media usage, uh, drug usage, alcohol, cannabis, you know, all these different factors. They lead to a dopamine spike, um, and then often plummet after. And so the idea with a stimulation fasting, I, I should say full disclosure, that I put off doing the idea of a stimulation fast initially. a because I didn't want to really step back and have things be more boring for a period of time. But b, I thought the idea of it was honestly a little bit gimmicky because, uh, you know, dopamine fasts are talked about so much. I thought of it as kind of a, a, a, you know, a, a Silicon Valley bro culture kind of idea. This, this, uh, dopamine fast, but truthfully, It worked surprisingly al, almost shockingly well for regaining focus and productivity and calm. And so the idea is every single thing we do over the course of the day releases a, a different con concoction of chemicals in our mind. Uh, some release oxytocin, which makes us feel, uh, connected with somebody. Some, some of the them give us a rush, of endorphins. Others give us a serotonin boost. We feel this sense of pride and happiness. Others give us, uh, the dopamine, which is like a hell yeah. Feeling as though something incredible is about to happen. And so we engage, you know, dopamine being the thing that affects our mental stimulation level. The most. everything we engage with over the course of the day releases a different level of dopamine and usually the factor that varies the most between these things, there's genetics. So some of us are predisposed to having, um, you know, more or less of a release with certain factors. There's also salience, which is another factor when it comes to dopamine. So whether or not something directly affects and impacts our life, that leads to a higher dopamine release, but novelty. Is the factor that seems to vary the most, especially in an environment like an online environment. So the, we, we even have this novelty bias in our brain by which for every new and novel thing we direct our attention at, our brain rewards us and reinforces that behavior with the hit of dopamine. and it it's recognized as the novelty bias and research. And so the, the idea behind the stimulation fast set a setting aside the gimmicky nature, setting aside the, the boring nature, whatever might be kind of preventing you from wanting to do one. Um, the idea behind it is you pick. The things that you engage with that are the most stimulating, that you wanna cut out for a period of time. I recommend about a month. Um, and then after this point in time, you choose some substitute activities. And so maybe you, you'll, you'll have a, a lot, lot more time without the most stimulating things and the analog and the digital world, right? Without the apps on your phone, uh, that are the most stimulating. Without the news websites, maybe you have a distractions blocker, like freedom enabled for the course of the fast pick, some analog things and some, some more enjoyable and satisfying things that you wanna do with your time. Do you wanna get more into baking or playing an instrument or, um, taking photos around town or running or swimming, whatever it is. Uh, spending time with your family, other people, friends, reconnecting with high school. People who knows, what do you want to substitute in? And so essentially you lower your mind's level of stimulation and you become calmer, you become happier, you become more satisfied. And difficult things, things that used to feel difficult to do, become far easier because we don't have to force ourself to do them. We can do them simply with a calm mind. And we don't, we, we don't resist doing them simply because they release less dopamine than we're, than we're accustomed to. And so the stimulation fast out of all of the different ideas that I've tried, there's dozens of them, of course. but that one is one that really comes to mind as something that I didn't expect that it would work. But now that I've found them, I probably do one every. Three months or so, I'd, I'd be lying if I said I did one all the time. But, you know, I do want, distractions are kind of like weeds where they grow in through the cracks of your day and then you need to tarp over them once again with an another stimulation fast. So I find every three or four months works really well as a cadence for myself, but it's, an unexpected place to find calm and productivity.

Cody: 27:33

Can you describe what is your regimen for a stimulation fast? Like how long is it and what kind of changes do you do in your day-to-day life?

Chris: 27:44

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it, it's, that's become a more difficult question to ask with time because the once once sort of a routine becomes automatic, you stop reflecting on it. But I think at this point, so I, I'll go through the apps on my phone and go through the screen time feature and really reflect on what is the most stimulating and novel and empty to me. I'll, I'll do the same on the computer. So, tracking my time usage on the computer and in the analog world as well. I, I should say. so there are, you know, analog sources of. Uh, of super stimuli as well. These highly processed, exaggerated versions of things that were wired biologically to enjoy. Uh, sugary food is a great example of one alcohol. it is another great ex. Even shopping might be considered super stimuli or, you know, highly reinforcing w with dopamine to, to some people. Again, it depends on the salience, the novelty and, and what we're all interested in ourselves. So I'll pick a period of a month and, delete those apps off my phone. enable freedom on my computer, so I have to restart my computer if I want to get back into them for some reason. I'll compartmentalize what I can't get rid of, and so that includes email. So I'll choose when to do email or time block it on the calendar if that's something that's kind of growing through the, the cracks of my day. And then I'll make a list of the things that. I wish I had more time for. and that's kind of the framing that I like to use myself, is if I had more time, if I had two hours more every single day, what would I do? Because two hours I find is the amount of time I usually get back from taming these distractions that grow through the cracks of the day again. So it, it really is a, a process to, to tame these. And it's one we have to undergo repeatedly. especially because of that novelty bias. We're working against our own wiring in order to achieve our goals over the longer arc of time. But that's what I usually do. You know, pick what to weed out, pick what to substitute in, which I think is a critical step that we can't skip, because we need things that will fill the hole in our schedule of when we used to distract ourselves. And then I'll do the experiment, notice what changes, and have that double loop. Around the, the whole package. Have you done any?

Cody: 30:19

have I done a dopamine fast? Honestly, not really. What I've tried to do, I mean, I have freedom, but I, I don't really use it that much because sometimes if I'm feeling really stressed, I will find a way around it, or it becomes so frustrating because Reddit is blocked and I will wait until it is unblocked so I can then exit the program. because you can enable it so that you can't activate the activity monitor to kill the process. And even if you are able to exit the program, it still has it written or, or blocked in, in the, in the host name file of your computer. but I've tried to become more conscious of when I distract myself as a means of comforting myself from the anxiety that I'm experiencing. And so, I've being able to recognize that sometimes I'll still open up, say Reddit, and then I'm like, wait, what am I doing? And then I, I exit out of that. Now a, a problem that you may not necessarily be able to help me with, but I've, I've become very good at recognizing when I get distracted or when I'm trying to find something to soothe myself. But then I'll try and focus back on the task and I've, I've garnered this kind of avoidance behavior. I'm trying to work through that. And avoidance is really like the number one type of behavior that's form of procrastination is that you, you know, you have to do something and you just don't wanna do it. And I'll look at a task and I think the next step is that we have to just sit with that task. I think it was, not maybe Ernest Hemingway, or or another famous writer, they would sit there for 30 minutes and he didn't have to write, but he couldn't do anything else. And so sometimes I'll try and sit there with that task, but, I still have this feeling of I don't want to do it because there's inevitably gonna be some things that you just don't want to do. So I'm, I'm curious, what advice do you have for, at least for even for me, in terms of how to deal with that, that feeling of this task that you're just so averted to wanting to do.

Chris: 32:31

Yeah. Well, task aversion is an interesting topic because like much as there are these six contributors to this feeling of burnout, which compromises our productivity and our mental health, there are actual triggers for procrastination. So certain attributes that a task can have that make us more likely to put something off, and I'll, I'll try to remember them here. Um, there whether a task is boring, whether a task is frustrating, whether something is difficult, whether a task is ambiguous. So we're not sure how to do it, whether it is unstructured, and so we need to map out the path to do it and whether it's lacking in meaning. And so we. Don't have that manifestation of our values and whether it's lacking in intrinsic rewards, pat myself on the back for remembering them all. Um, so the process of doing something isn't rewarding in and of itself. So these are the triggers of task aversiveness and the more of these attributes that a task has, the more likely we are to put off doing something. So, a good example of this is our taxes. where if you go down the list, doing your taxes is boring, it's frustrating. It's usually a bit difficult. It's ambiguous, it's unstructured, it's not. Necessarily meaningful for most of us. Um, my wife's an economist. Maybe she finds it meaningful, but even her, I, I doubt it. and it's the process, the intrinsic rewards might be a bit neutral. Sometimes you can see your refund, uh, tick up as you go through the process, but this is the reason that the half trillion dollar tax preparation industry exists, because doing our taxes sets off these triggers. But what we can do, you know, it's that awareness step that, that we've been chatting about is you can kind of go through that list and compare something that you're trying to get done that you're procrastinating on against those attributes. And so, if you're putting off writing some report or some article, I don't know, uh, I don't know what you're, what's something you do every day that you're putting off?

Cody: 34:45

Uh, trying to write my next book.

Chris: 34:48

That's a good one. Yeah, it's boring, it's frustrating, it's difficult. It's most definitely ambiguous. It's most definitely unstructured. It's pretty meaningful and the process can be rewarding, so it might be neutral on those, but it most definitely sets off the other triggers and so we put off doing it. but there are, Creative ways that we can kind of mold these attributes, uh, of the, the work that we're putting off, so that we add structure, we make things more, engaging, less boring, less frustrating, less difficult. one of these is just to, to shrink how much resistance you have to doing something until you find that level of resistance. So, meditation is something that everybody on the planet puts off, including seasoned meditators. writing, uh, a book is something everybody puts off, including seasoned authors. Uh, so with a task like that, you might think, okay, do I feel like meditating writing, fill in the blank for an hour? No. What about 45 minutes? No. What about 30? I. No. 20. Yeah, I could do 20. And so you meditate for 20, you write for 20, whatever the task is for 20. And then you notice, you know how much resistance you have. And usually the resistance that we have to getting certain things done is stacked at the very beginning of us doing something. And so it's like jumping in a cold pool where we'll resist jumping into the pool for 20 minutes and then we jump in and we, uh, climatize to it in about 10 or 20 seconds. Um, and work is much the same way where. You know, the average amount of time we focus on something before we switch to doing something else is about 40 seconds. And so we're in this, this, uh, routine of fluidly moving from one thing to another. And it's not necessarily a recipe for deep work for really focusing on what we're trying to get done. But minding the triggers, minding your resistance level is a way to kind of add a bit more structure. I wrote down one other idea. Uh, yeah, I, I, I actually do really like that, tactic for overcoming this resistance where you kind of trap yourself into doing one of two things. You know, some people do. you know, I'll either write or do nothing, but my favorite is I'll either write or meditate. And so I usually put off meditation more than I put off writing. And so it's a surefire way of getting myself to write. Um, I don't know why after studying productivity for 10 years, I still have to play these games with myself, but such is, such is it. and I find that a really, really powerful one to give yourself a choice of two options, the thing you want to be doing, or some other thing that you have to do but don't want to. it's a really powerful one that again, makes a little game out of it. So sometimes the biggest reason we procrastinate is things just aren't fun enough. And so looking at those triggers, really helps us deconstruct why we're putting something off and overcome it.

Cody: 38:00

And so there is a, a future guest that I believe we're, we're about to have scheduled, uh, Gabriele Oettingen, sorry for butchering her name. She is the author of Rethinking Positive Thinking, and it's about the new science of motivation. And in the book she talks about a technique that she has tested in university settings with students and it's, it has multiple studies and it's called the WOOP Technique. And that stands for wish, outcome, obstacle, and Plan. And so she describes more or less what is a visualization. And I know in your book, and especially in calm, you are a huge fan of visualization exercises and thinking. And so one technique that has really helped me, especially when I'm procrastinating on certain tasks that I just don't want to do, it has no purpose. It doesn't feel meaningful. It's boring, or it's just too difficult or it's ambiguous, right? Is that I will end up looking at that one task and then I'll ask, I'll kind of close my eyes and I'll ask myself, what's the wish? What, why do I wanna do this task? And then I'll think the outcome, what, what will it feel? And now there's an important part here is the mental contrasting part. Because if we just imagine what it's like to, to graduate from a university, then our brains can't distinguish between that, that mental fantasy and actually accomplishing the task. But one way to avoid that and to create intrinsic motivation is to actually think about the negative consequence of not achieving that goal and feel what that feels like. And you compare that and con contrast that to actually accomplishing it. And then you can come up with say, an obstacle, say low motivation or it's boring. And then you can come up with a plan if then planning if, if you are go, if you feel bored, you will take a. Five minute break or you're just gonna commit to, to 10 minutes of working and then you're gonna go do something fun. And so having this technique, it has really been helpful in allowing me to get past that avoidance behavior that I've kind of garnered over the years.

Chris: 40:19

Yeah. I love it.

Cody: 40:20

and so I know that meditation and you still meditate like 30 minutes a day. Right. And do you do that at a specific time or are you more fluid in terms of when you do it?

Chris: 40:32

I'm pretty fluid. Yeah. Uh, you know, some days I'll want to integrate it into my work schedule. especially with writing, I, I find meditation really helps me file away thoughts. So on days that I'm writing, I'll meditate throughout the day as little, uh, fragmented chunks. And on the weekend, for example, on other days when maybe I have a lot of meetings, it, I'll, I'll definitely schedule it. So there's, there's this idea, and you might be familiar with it, you know, the maker's schedule versus manager's

Cody: 41:05

Yep. Paul Graham.

Chris: 41:06

Yeah, Paul Graham, you'll have to link to it in the show notes cuz it's one of my favorite essays. and the idea is if you have a creator and you know somebody who just creates things, whether they're a coder or writer or what have you, and you put a meeting on their calendar and it's, it's their only meeting in a week, which I'm not sure how many people have one meeting in a week. I, I, I envy. I envy them. but if you have one meeting in your day that divides your day into two parts, you have before the meeting and you have after the meeting and leading up to the meeting, you're thinking about the meeting. After the meeting. You're thinking about the meeting, it really interrupts the flow of your day. But there are other people who have manager schedules who one more meeting. Let's one more meeting. You know, we have meetings all day long, it's nothing. and so, um, that, that's how I kind of run my days as somebody who cr needs to create things. Like I need it on a fundamental level, but it also is, is the fuel for my business and helps kind of keep things going. and so I have Maker's days and manager's days, and so on Maker's days, I will usually integrate it into the work flow because I find it actually saves me an inordinate amount of time and how much I'm able to focus and bring more awareness to what I do. and on manager's days, I'll usually have to schedule it, unfortunately. And that includes travel days?

Cody: 42:32

And so is this a practice that you instill where you have days with no meetings, or is it kind of segmented into not having meetings in the afternoon, but sometimes inevitably this is the only time you can meet somebody? How, what are your, your rules and stipulations for having this maker versus manager schedule?

Chris: 42:52

Oh, I like that. Um, it's funny cuz I, this is another thing I haven't really thought about, so it's fun to talk about. I, I will really, I will be incredibly defensive of my time. I say no to pretty much, Everybody that wants to, you know, grab a virtual coffee and you know, just kind of, uh, hang out and talk shop. I'd rather talk shop. I, I'd rather create, you know, that's how I make my biggest contribution. And so I think step zero to this is how defensive are you able to be with your time, given the amount of autonomy you currently have with your work? I'm very incredibly fortunate to be self-employed, to have more latitude of, of control over my schedule. And so most weeks, travel weeks aside, I would say, um, travel is kind of a. You know, uh, yeah. It's, it's a write off. It's a bull in a China shop of your calendar. It's a grenade that you throw into your calendar. Use the analogy you want, kind of disrupts everything. but I will usually keep my interviews, my meetings, my, uh, check-ins, uh, to one or two days every week so that I have, uh, three, you know, three days or so, um, to really truly create and hunker down on projects. And so that's how I'll do it. I'll, I'll, I'll essentially make, the theme of a day be meetings or interviews if, if it's possible to clump them up in that way. But it, it's, um, yeah, that, that's how I do it. It's simple, I guess.

Cody: 44:29

and so I'm, I'm curious, going back to the meditation. So often an issue when people meditate is that they'll still have thoughts and ideas come up. And I know I, I believe Kevin Rose talked about on the Tim Ferriss podcast how he would have a little sticky note, and so he would, he would kind of break away from the meditation to write down the thought because it was really important. And I know I've had that, that same thing too, is, is that something you have? And also what is the form of meditation that you practice if there

Chris: 44:59

I, yeah, I practice vipasana. So, uh, general, uh, awareness, mindfulness, uh, of, typically the breath is the anchor of, of attention, but also more of a generalized awareness. I have, I have to be. I've really, I've really struggled with the idea of whether or not to capture an idea as it arises during a meditation session. as somebody who's meditated for quite a while. And, you know, the challenge with this is the most ideas come up on a meditation retreat. And this is what, you know, the meditation retreats I've been on, the, the instructors will say, yeah, I, I, I have written my best poetry on retreat. I have written my best ideas down on retreat, but now that I'm deeper into my practice, I don't write down anything at all. Uh, and I think ultimately, Capturing an idea that forums in your mind during a meditation session, is the productive thing to do, but maybe not the fruitful thing to do. because over the longer arc of time, you will extract more benefits, greater benefits from a meditation practice, uh, when you recenter around your breath rather than, capturing a diversion. But at the same time, then we have the times when we just wanna capture something because it's so valuable. Um, what I'll do now, uh, is I will use. The idea that arises is sort of a, a, a reverse polarity magnet for my attention. So, redirecting from that to the intended object of attention, which is typically the breath. And then after the meditation session, if, a few ideas came up, I find that they never really go away. they arose once and they arise again. It, it's just a process. if they arise during one mind wandering session, they'll, they'll arise in another, typically. And so I'll just journal after for, uh, for the sessions that a lot of ideas seem to come up in. Then you get the, uh, pure meditation benefits and you also get the benefits of having reflected on these thoughts. And you can go deep without worrying or without feeling guilty about, uh, about the diversion.

Cody: 47:18

Very interesting. So do you or do you not capture your ideas right now?

Chris: 47:26

Right now outside of

Cody: 47:28

it, no, in, in your meditation sessions.

Chris: 47:30

meditation, so on days when I do the interstitial meditation, I will typically have a notepad right by the meditation cushion. on days when I want to do 30 minutes of pure meditation, I will not have a notepad and I'll journal after. Yeah.

Cody: 47:50

Hmm.

Chris: 47:50

mixed. Yeah.

Cody: 47:51

So I have a form of meditation that's the opposite, and I'm, I'm currently making a YouTube video to, to go on YouTube that talks about this, and it's called Rev. I call it reverse meditation. Right. And so it's something where I, I have a massage chair. I get in the massage chair before going into bed because, you know, we often have this monkey mind, and there all the science says you should only, uh, have sex and sleep in your bed. And if you're going in your bed and your mind is wandering about everything going on tomorrow, then you're creating an association with thinking. And so having this massage chair is a separate place. I get in, I have a heated blanket, I have an aromatherapy machine. I put on this specific music called Space Dreams, which is a channel on di fm, and it's very soothing, calming music. And so then I will let this massage chair do everything, you know, it, it has all the airbags and the compression. And what I like about it is that it is something that allows you to get into a more calm state. But the act of all of these cushions means that it's very difficult to actually fall asleep while it's on. And so it's perfect for getting you in that brain space that's right before you actually fall asleep. And I think that is a method in which you can extract subconscious ideas and have that connection with yourself. Because as, as you said earlier, we're always distracting ourselves. And when you're in a grocery line and you pull up your phone, you're trying to appease this, this, getting rid of this, this feeling of being bored. And so that's an opportunity that could have allowed you to have this thought that came up about something you've been thinking about. But instead, we're just distracting ourselves all the time. And so this is a dedicated practice. It's about 20 minutes and I'll do it in the evening. And I'll think about what, what happened during the day, what were the emotional events? And I'm able to kind of follow these mental paths. And sometimes I'm thinking about the future or a future goal and I will feel amazing sometimes, or I will be able to embellish the, the good feeling of having accomplished something or having a great interview. And so that's an alternative that you might want to try, which is actually intentionally letting your mind wander. You don't, you don't have to have a meditation chair, but seeing where your mind takes you.

Chris: 50:19

Yeah. And it's, it's fascinating the places it, it, it does. So, by the way, I, I have, uh, um, an rmt, a massage therapist here in Ottawa that lets me bring a notepad and a pen in, or I guess who I've just asked if I could bring in a notepad or a pen because so many thoughts arise when, when we're in that wandering mode. Um, there, there's actually been research into this, into where our mind tends to go when it wanders because we think, oh, you know, when my mind wanders, I just recall these cringe worthy things that I said that I wanna take back. But the research shows that our mind wanders to think about the past only around 12% of the time. And a lot of this time we're thinking about and recalling ideas that we've encountered before, which is a. Pretty damn productive thing to be thinking about. but the rest of the time, you know, you, you mentioned the future. we wander when, when our mind is wandering, we wander to think about the future so often that researchers call this our mind's prospective bias. So 48% of the time when our mind is wandering, we're thinking about the future. We're planning, we're thinking about the weekend, we're thinking about what we wanna get out of a meeting. And this is something that, you know, in terms of the, the stimulation level that we're really missing right now. You know, let, let's imagine that we're back at the office. We have to walk across. The office for, for attending a meeting. You know, on one there, there's kind of two options, maybe. One is we're tapping around on our phone the entire way there, keeping up with some things. Then we arrive at the meeting room and we think, okay, who's here again? You know, what's happening? And the other option is this, this, uh, scatter focused mode, this, uh, mind wandering mode that you're, taking advantage of, where maybe on the way to the meeting room, you just reflect and automatically because of this perspective bias, you'll think, okay, who will be there? what do we want to accomplish? How can, how can I look good in front of my boss's boss that's there? what do I wanna get across? What do I want to get out of this? Who am I excited to reconnect with? you know, there's a level of depth. That we can bring to the things that we do when we have a chance to reflect on the things that we do. Cuz reflection gives us distance from the things that we're currently thinking about and incubating in that distance gives us perspective, which gives us, uh, a vantage point of how the interrelated parts of the systems that comprise our life work together and, connect with one another. So we wander to think about the future so, so much because of this perspective bias and the ideas that arise, you know? So 28% of the time we wander to think about the present. So the conditions of the here and now, this is like when you're typing up an email, you can't find a way to phrase it. So you walk over to the other side of the house to make a cup of coffee. But on the way there, you think. Oh my God. That's it. Then you run back, you type the email, you hit send, you forget about the cup of coffee. but it's, when we bounce between all three of these mental temporal destinations, we, think about a meeting that we have coming up in the future and recall, a lesson that we heard about in a podcast in the. Pa past. And then we connect that to a problem that we're currently incubating in the present. Bouncing around between all three mental, temporal destinations and unearthing ideas that we would never have arrived at otherwise if we weren't, practicing this, this scattering of our attention. And so wandering to the past, to the present, to the future, um, and sometimes to no place at all when our mind, kind of zones out or thinks about something that isn't rooted in time. yeah, it's a fascinating process that we all need more of. And by the way, we get the greatest number of creative insights when our mind is wandering, when we're doing something habitual at the same time rather than nothing at all. Like, uh, a massage chair sounds pretty nice.

Cody: 54:33

heard, have you read the book called The Time Paradox by Philip Zimbardo?

Chris: 54:37

No. Oh, it, he, he is the, um, uh, husband though of Christina Maslach.

Cody: 54:44

Oh,

Chris: 54:45

Philip Philip Zimbardo. Yeah.

Cody: 54:48

Yeah, I remember reading his book and it was really profound as he studied the various mindsets that we all have and that we can either be future focused, we can be present focused or past focused. And then there's even variations of that. Like you can be past positive or past negative and having these, these mindsets that you're kind of unaware of impact how you think and your day-to-day life.

Chris: 55:15

Hmm. I love that. Yeah. Small world. Philip Zimbardo, Christina Maslow's house. Interestingly, you know, he was the, um, originator, the starter of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the only person that questioned the morality of the experiment that said it needed to stop was Christina. So, it's a small world, these characters. I, I'm pretty sure there's a movie that has been, uh, done about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Now I don't know if Christina's in it.

Cody: 55:52

And another thing that you, you brought up are how we have these experiences that impact our lives. And so I'm thinking of the book When the Body Says No By, by Gabriel Mate, if I, I always butcher his name, but he's, he wrote this book on addiction and how so often the things we're addicted to are tied. To some traumatic event or series of events of our past, and yet we're uncon, we're, we're not consciously aware of that. It's like the, the person who say that say the coffee is a little bit wrong or it's, it's too hot, and then the, then the guy just yells at the barista and little does he know that he has some hidden trauma that caused him to react with that amount of anger so quickly, and then he has to apologize because he doesn't know why. I think there's also the book called The Body Keeps Score, which is the one I think he's most known for.

Chris: 56:50

yeah. All Fanta and that, that's one of my favorite things about meditation is so many of our behaviors, if not. Most of them, and so many of our thoughts, if, if not most of them, are a conditioned response to something that came before it. And so I, I remember, you know, one simple moment on a meditation retreat and you know, it's so simple, but. My mind, I noticed that it was wandering to think about a trip that I had coming up two weeks after this particular retreat. and then, you know, with a meditation retreat, there's usually a cleanness to your thoughts where because you have fewer of them, you're able to more, uh, accurately pull on the, the string that's hanging off the shirt and untangle them and, and realize the, uh, o other thoughts and actions that led you to do something. Um, and, you know, noticing that I, I kind of drew the, the thread back. Why was I thinking about a trip that's coming up in, in a couple of weeks? Um, Thought back to Okay that before that I was thinking about some airline loyalty program. Why was I thinking about that? Oh, there's a suitcase open in front of me with the Travel Pro logo exposed. and that was in my field of view and so, There was a chain of thoughts that went from noticing some logo to thinking about and then stressing about some trip that was right around the corner. And it, it's, it's so fascinating when we, untangle these, chains of connection in our mind, and we realize how, uh, tangled up our thoughts can often be, in a situation like that. And how many of our thoughts and actions are simply the endpoint in a chain of some stimulus that originally set it off, including often anxiety. You know what, what a simple, kind of moment of stressing out because I saw a logo. And so it, it's, um, to me like. The motivating emotion behind meditation. you know, I, I like the productivity benefits. I like the mental health benefits, but it's really this deep fundamental curiosity that drives, me forward personally and my own meditation practice. Because you notice things like these, you, you notice things and the, the idea that we shouldn't take our thoughts as seriously as we do because we might be in a moment of stress, but that mo moment of stress might be caused simply from seeing a logo. and so, uh, being able to untangle those is, it's quite a fa you can discover some fascinating conditioning and bring that awareness to a whole, uh, new level. It's really, really interesting.

Cody: 1:00:00

And, and speaking of unconscious associations, can you tell me what is the mindset of more.

Chris: 1:00:12

So the mindset of more is the name that I give to this idea that we are never truly, um, satisfied with what we have, that we never truly feel as though we have enough. you know, there's nothing wrong with ambition in my view, uh, or the pursuit of accomplishment. I think, you know, look around to the modern world. It has a lot of, negatives, you know, look at smartphone addiction, that sort of thing. But we also have a, a level of comfort that. Is unparalleled. If you look back through, through our collective history, there's always things, to be concerned about, but there's a whole lot that has created the modern world right now. So, you know, this is not to put down this idea of the pursuit of accomplishment or you know, more of. A specific goal. You know, the idea is goals have an end point at which once we achieve something, a tangible difference is made in our life, our work, the lives of, those we love and, and it's great. Then we can stop our striving because we hit that point and we accomplished our objective. But the idea, you know, we talk about reinforcement, the idea of more is self-reinforcing because it goes back to that idea of, um, of dopamine where when we acquire more of some currency that we're trying to optimize for in our life, whether that is followers, whether that is money, whether that is, you know, pick your currency, whether that's fame, success, fortune, whatever. We get another hit when we accomplish and, and obtain more of these various currencies. But there comes a point because of this reinforcing nature of this pursuit of more, that the pursuit of more goes from being something we just pursue at work, for example, in our pursuit of productivity, something that we pursue because we have goals that we wish to achieve, to a generalized striving. And this is a generalized striving is typically a recipe for misery because you never have an end point to the goals that you have. Uh, you keep running on that proverbial, he hedonic treadmill where you stay at the same level of happiness. But, to the outside looking in, it looks like a whole lot of activity. And the, the fascinating thing is it even. This pursuit of more, it even changes the way that we relate to the situation that we're in. So this striving mindset, when we're always striving for more, it pulls us out of actually experiencing and enjoying a moment and being productive in that moment, as well. Because what networks support this, uh, idea are anti-correlated with the ones that make us present in the moment, that make us actually enjoy what we're spending on our time on and who we're with. so it's this fascinating phenomenon where striving and savoring are diametrically opposed neurologically speaking. And I feel, I've just felt fallen into a nerd hole talking about this stuff, but

Cody: 1:03:28

I absolutely love how, how nerdy you are about all this productivity stuff. Like if you were in Austin, uh, we would be best friends.

Chris: 1:03:35

We would vibe

Cody: 1:03:37

I love it. Like you, you are, you are my idol. you, What you kind of reminded me about is also how, so, so in the book called Attached, which is about various attachment styles, uh, they have this one story that they talk about John Krakow's bestselling book Into the Wild. And you have this student that, that he heads to Alaska and he's by himself and he says no to everybody trying to help him because he wants to go and survive in the wilderness by himself. And then he goes, he goes across the river. And then the problem though is that he's unable to get back, uh, because of the, of the rain and the melting snow. And so he ends up dying. And in his last journal entry, he noted that he said, happiness only real when shared and when we're trying to be productive. I think in some ways we're, we're trying to serve this superiority bias where we're trying to accomplish something and we're trying to be better, and we're trying to get validation from others. But at the end of the day, why are we being productive? What makes us happy? And I think the, the conclusion that I've kind of come to, and I've been trying to transition to is that it's the people and the social connections and the tribe, that's where we can derive a sense of happiness from. And our desire to be productive should be as a, a service, you know, for the people in our lives.

Chris: 1:05:06

yeah, yeah. I, I, I love that. You know, and yeah. People are the reason for productivity. In my opinion, you know, and, and you can come at productivity from whatever angle you want, if you wanna accomplish more, if you wanna, uh, live in a way that's true to what you value, or if you wanna kind of set aside those, individualistic pursuits usually for, for a more, uh, for, for a pursuit that makes you feel more whole, in a way where you feel like there's depth behind what you're pursuing. Cuz you

Cody: 1:05:43

Hmm.

Chris: 1:05:44

there, it, it, it needs roots, you know, it needs to make a difference for, to matter. this, this tangible difference. And so yeah, this, um, this, this, it's when this pursuit becomes generalized that, that we can run into problems. Yeah.

Cody: 1:06:01

And then you also talk about how we get this serotonin boost whenever we feel happy and we're able to compare ourselves to others, or you become more successful. And, and the thing is that there's so many examples of people in this world who have become rich, you know, and they're, they're multi-millionaires or they become a billionaire, and yet they still have this obsession of, I need to make more money. And it's not something that, it, it, you know. Sure. It's, it's nice to not have to think about money, but there's also a suffering involved of feeling like, I, I need more money. Even when you don't need more money or when you, you're, you wanna become famous or so many other things. And these are kind of the societal pressures that kind of change that we desire for, but simultaneously is the antithesis of happiness itself.

Chris: 1:06:54

well that's the thing. Like we, we look around to what other people are doing for kind of pointers on how we can become happier ourselves, but, You're exactly right. The very last place we should be looking for happiness advice from is the modern world. The modern world isn't happy. I dunno if you've, you know, walked down the street and kind of looked at, uh, the uh, expressions on people's faces. Like, and there there are these kind of, I don't know what you'd wanna call them, like a cultural headwinds is a topic or a term that comes to mind right now where if we just follow. Things and other people as they go about their lives, will adopt the default values of our, of our modern culture ourselves. And there might be a lot of those that we wish to take with, with us. Uh, maybe we value achievement, maybe we value, self-direction and this, uh, individuality. But there, so one of my favorite, theory of favorite theories of human values comes from the researchers Shalom Schwartz, where it's, and this is probably the most commonly accept accepted and validated theory values where he essentially boils. All of human value down to 10 different values that we all have, to some extent. Um, every single one of us scores somewhere from zero to 10, let's say, on all of these factors. So, uh, and I have them in front of me here, so I'm cheating. I was reading up on them earlier, but the, their self-direction is the first one. Stimulation is indeed, considered a fundamental human value. So if that's something that you value to your core, there's nothing wrong with you, uh, you're, you're doing okay, you're fine. But it's just a matter of acknowledging that to assuage the guilt that might come up. Uh, hedonism is another value. Achievement is considered a core value power. Security, conformity, tradition, benevolence and universalism. So universalism, uh, is understanding, appreciating, tolerating and protecting the welfare of people and of nature. Um, that's one that you don't often see in, in the modern world, but try walking through a forest, you know, how do you feel after, you know, just because an experience is undervalued by the world, doesn't mean that it's, it has less value. You know, the, and I think the real value, the real meaning and real productivity is when our behavior is aligned to these values, where we recognize that, okay, I value achievement, I value universalism. I value self-direction. How can I act in a way that I can notice myself? Expressing these values through my actions, which will make things more meaningful. So it's funny how we just kind of go with the, with with wherever the wind is blowing, and then we end up somewhere where we don't wish to be. and that's a trap a lot of us fall into, and we just kind of go with the flow. And so taking that step back, that awareness step that we've, you know, mentioned enough and recognizing what values we have so, so critical, especially right now.

Cody: 1:10:23

I went to Iceland earlier this year, during the winter, and then there was this amazing light show of of, of the Aurora Borealis and. The problem though is that my gimbal on my dslr it, I dropped it so it was broken and I was planning on relying on that to be the tripod. And then it was super windy. So even if it was working, it wouldn't have worked. And you're trying to do a long exposure to capture this amazing image. And yet I couldn't get the picture right. And I was so frustrated that here you have this amazing thing that not that many people get to experience. And here I am just so frustrated and obsessed and upset about the fact I can't get my camera to work because I had this accomplishment mindset that was, I'm going to, to go to Iceland and I'm gonna capture amazing photographs. And that impaired my ability to be present and appreciate that moment for what it was.

Chris: 1:11:19

Well, that's the thing about this mindset too, is when we have this generalized striving. So, you know, there, there's a point at which this pursuit of productivity for me, turned into that generalized striving. But, uh, an unfortunate side effect of that is pretty much everything becomes work at that point. You know, if you're on vacation, the vacation becomes something that you want to get done.

Cody: 1:11:43

Yeah.

Chris: 1:11:43

Isn't a vacation, what things are for, you know? And so, and that was, I think the thing that really made me step back is I looked at all these experiences, that I was having that, you know, if I were to retire or win the lottery or what have you tomorrow, that I would want to base my life around, you know, time with my family, time with, good books, time with my cat, time with with, with all, you know, people, uh, you know, the vacations, that sort of thing. And I realized that I was rushing past these, these beautiful moments that comprised my life, wanting to get them done instead of actually enjoying them while they were happening. And you have to realize at some point that what's it all for? It's for moments like that. It's for the people. That's what everything is for. Why am I rushing? Past these moments, um, to get to one more thing that I want to accomplish. And that's not to say that productivity doesn't have a place. I think, I think productivity in fact right now is more critical than it's ever been because of all we have to manage because of the, the changing landscape before us right now. but at the same time, productivity needs a place. It can't be practiced in every single, single facet of our life and become this generalized driving. It needs to be about intention and it needs to be about making a difference. I think that's the place productivity should have.

Cody: 1:13:20

Do you separate your activities? I know some people have tasks and they will say, okay, I'm going to work on the tasks that are directly correlated with making money or this, this deeper meaningful work. How do you not let yourself get too wound up or too distracted by all of those easy administrative tasks or emails or things of that nature?

Chris: 1:13:44

I know what's important. And that might sound kind of weird or I don't know, cocky or something. but when, you know, it's important in your work, the, you know, the select activities through which you make the biggest contribution and the biggest difference, prioritization is a piece of cake. at least in, in theory, right? We, we all have things that we have to work on that we, don't get a choice over. And that goes back to calibrating all productivity advice for the level of, uh, autonomy that we have. But, yeah. Uh, So one activity that I'll recommend people that's on the tactical level is make a list of every single thing in your work that you're responsible for over the course of a month. And then ask yourself, if I can only do one thing on this list, day in, day out every single day, which one of them adds the most value, lets me contribute the most. then you get a second one and you get a third one as well. Um, but that's it. You gotta stop there. Um, and, and what you'll find is out of all these activities you do over the course of the month, there are usually around three, sometimes two, sometimes four, activities through which you contribute the most in the role that you have and make the biggest, most significant difference. and hopefully these are aligned to what you value because when you have that value alignment, productivity becomes far, far more easy, far, far easier. So the idea is once you know these activities that are integral to the work that you do, uh, in my case, writing, research, speaking and slash interviews, everything else is admin work. It supports those things that are core to who, uh, who I am and what I do. Uh, and it should be delegated, it should be shrunk, it should be eliminated in some way or another. And so knowing what's important in general in your work, it becomes really easy to recognize what you need to say no to, uh, whether or not you're able to say no to it or delegate it to somebody else. Sometimes you just have to kind of suck it up and, and get something done. Um, we all have a bit of that, but we also have that autonomy and, and knowing where we make the biggest difference really is. The thing that allows for alignment of pretty much, our, our daily life, our daily schedule. Yeah.

Cody: 1:16:14

Yeah. In your book you say there is a great joy to be found in working with a thoughtful deliberateness on what's important. If you value productivity as I do, don't worry what you'll lose in speed. You'll easily earn back in making progress on what's important.

Chris: 1:16:30

yeah. And I think we need to give ourselves permission to slow down, especially with knowledge work. Um, with knowledge work, you don't really lose a lot of productivity when you work slower. Um, especially with the more cognitively complex work that we have on our plate with, with mind numbing, repetitive work. Sure. You know, speed is of the essence. if you're inputting numbers into a spreadsheet and maybe double checking them after or something, go fast, by all means, because there's not a lot of cognitive complexity there. But when it comes to things that we wish to do with depth, um, with intent where the approach matters or where meaning matters, frankly, if, if we're looking at a personal context, that slowness of what we're doing creates more space for intentionality and deliberateness and for these double loop reflection, activities that we can use in terms of the awareness chime in terms of these activities that let us reflect on what we do. I, I don't think there's any time lost when we work slow.

Cody: 1:17:41

How can we strike a balance between having that accomplishment mindset, and cultivating engagement and pursuit of goals?

Chris: 1:17:50

Yeah. Oh, it's, yeah, it's definitely a balance. One, one of my favorite tactics for I, I, like, I, I love how we're getting tactical

Cody: 1:17:59

Hmm.

Chris: 1:17:59

to end the pod here. Um, one of my favorite fact or, tactics for this, I try quite a bit of them. You know, there's a lot on there on, on a work-life, how to strike a work-life balance or whether that's even a thing worth pursuing and, uh, and a lot of opinions and thoughts. But one of the, this is. By the way, so often how it works when it comes to productivity advice is you try these complicated systems and then you end up just doing the thing that's the simplest and lets you like get the productivity stuff outta the way and just focus on the damn work. Um, so sometimes like, and I think this tactic kind of falls into that is productivity hours. And so all, all a productivity hours is, or your productivity hours every day are, are hours that you focus on becoming more productive and achieving stuff and, and working with intention and getting things done and you have that mentality. and for me that's enough to compartmentalize that striving into a specific block of time each and every day. So there's a couple of ways that I find it helpful to do it. you know, there are some periods of time where I'll do a nine to five every day for a week or two, and. That's great. It's simple, it's predictable. and then there are the more kind of creative, maker's schedules. Uh, so on a maker's day I might say, okay, I want seven productivity hours today. And I won't define when they are. I'll just make sure that they happen based on the, constraints that I have on, uh, my time, attention, and energy on a particular day. So, productivity hours simple, but lets you decide how. Balanced you wish to be between these, uh, ideas that are again, uh, diametrically opposed in our mind of striving and savoring. We need both to live a good life, right? We need goals, we need things to pursue, but we also need to enjoy the, the fruits of our accomplishment. And so productivity hours, even if you have one hour in the evening, at the end of the day when everybody's gone to sleep, where you have that time for yourself, at least there's always that end to the work and, to, to the stuff you have to do in sight. you know, again, it turns, you know, that acute stress into more of a chronic, the, the chronic, the, it turns the chronic stress into more, uh, of, uh, an acute stress every day because there's that end insight at the end of the tunnel. So, simple strategy, but one I, I find helpful.

Cody: 1:20:40

In your book, you mentioned how we should pick one thing from our list and savor it deeply. Can you give me some example? What does it mean to savor something and why should we have that practice?

Chris: 1:20:52

Oh, I, I love this. So savoring was probably, actually, I, I would say it's the most fascinating field of research that I encountered in writing this book. So it turns out there is a science that we go through to convert positive experiences into positive emotions. And so, by the way, you know, embedded in that is the assumption that just because we experience something positive does not mean that we'll derive any joy or any satisfaction from it whatsoever. So I am drinking this delicious cup of, of Jasmine green tea in my, do you know this logo?

Cody: 1:21:38

No, I don't. Is that like a news?

Chris: 1:21:42

That. Yeah. Yeah. C B, C, it's, it's the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation logo. and it's a delicious jasmine tea, even though it's a bit cold right now. But just because you have a tea, That is this delicious. Does not mean that you'll derive any satisfaction from it whatsoever. just because you eat a meal at a Michelin starred restaurant, let's say, does not mean you'll derive any satisfaction from it whatsoever. We need to practice this act of savoring to. Convert these positive experiences into positive emotions where we practice this sort of positive rumination over something that's occurring in the moment. and so whether we luxuriate in an, in an experience, whether we, practice gratitude for something, whether we marvel at an experience and feel a sense of awe for something, we, we can convert positive experiences into positive emotions in that way. And what this does is, you know, say you make a savor list, which has a bunch of things that you find, you love to enjoy every day from your cup of morning coffee to, your Uber Eats at night, whatever. It's, um, You pick a thing every day and you practice this art of savoring, and you'll probably have a, a good amount of resistance to this at the very beginning because when we practice savoring, we practice being in the present moment and we have to set aside striving during this process. Remember, the brain networks were striving, saving, uh, savoring. Are opposed with one another. When one is activated, the other isn't. And so we set aside this, this striving for even just a few minutes to fully enjoy something. And that leads us to be able to cultivate more of a focus and an appreciation, for the positive things that are occurring in our life in our days. and by the way, you know, luxuriating, marveling feeling, this sense of awe are ways of savoring in the present moment, but we can also savor the past and the future. when we savor the past, it's called reminiscence. And so we can do this by looking through old photos. we can do this, you know, looking back on a vacation for an example, journaling about a vacation, how great it was. and we can also practice a sense of anticipation. So, counting down the days to a vacation, for example. So this metaphorical vacation that maybe before you went into with a productivity mindset, okay, when am I gonna get out of Italy and get back home and work some more. You know, the, the delta is to go from that mindset to a mindset where you tame the anxiety, you create the conditions to actually be able to enjoy the good experiences that comprise your day. And then you add. Enjoyment to that experience itself by looking back on the trip after it happens and getting excited, uh, before it does. And so you double the enjoyment of the best experiences of your life. Doesn't take a lot of time, but time's not really the point. Right. the point is having more of a deliberate balance between striving and savory.

Cody: 1:25:02

It's similar to an example I would bring up of say a college student graduates. Graduates from university, they go out with their friends. Drinking. Having a good time is a form of celebration. But this sort of external, like celebrating with friends in some ways you can, you can get drunk and have a good time, but it's not necessarily associated like with the gratitude of actually having graduated in. And I, I would suggest in a separate practice to actually visualize and really think about all the hard work. And when you, when you're able to do that, you can feel chills. You can, you can feel a sense of wellbeing and happiness. And so I think there's definitely something there to this idea of savoring experiences. And it's some, it's been very hard for me as, as, as you say, with this accomplishment mindset. Like I would, if I, if I went out to eat and you asked me how the food was, it would pretty much always be okay because my mind defaults to, well, I'm comparing this meal to the best steak I've ever had. And so it's maybe a four out of a 10. And that's a mindset that I had for every component of my life of like, I would always be comparing something to the best experience that I had. And that was a rare thing to feel something that was, you know, this is actually quite good. Or to be able to appreciate the experience.

Chris: 1:26:28

Yeah. The most beautiful thing of all is you don't rush past the best moments of your life to get to the next moment. You know, you're actually in it, you're, you're with it. You're in the tracks and with, whatever you're doing and whomever you're with, and I, I really believe that love is no different from sharing quality attention with somebody. And the best way to get there is to savor somebody's presence, to really, fully enjoy being with somebody else. You don't have to do this constantly, right? Like we can become immersed in these kinds of kinds of experiences, just with this practice and being able to. Build up this muscle of, being able to savor something mu much in the, and it works much in the same way that meditation works, because we train ourselves to keep coming back to, uh, to the present moment. But with meditation, it's, it's typically a non non-judgmental awareness, whereas savoring it's this positive rumination, but different people will find this more of a challenge. So, people who have, uh, achieved greater levels of success by traditional measures, uh, wealthier people, in fact find it more difficult to savor experiences than people who aren't considered wealthy by traditional measures, which I find fascinating. women. Find it easier to savor experiences than men do, after controlling four factors such as wealth. And it's, uh, so it's this fascinating thing, but the idea that comes up again and again in the research is savoring is not something we're born with. It's a skill that we can develop, we can, uh, we can kind of change our, uh, our, our internal, chains of thought to to, to enjoy experiences more. And what's greater than that, right? Like this is in, in my goal, this is the ultimate goal, which is we wanna be productive, we want to be accomplished, we want to, uh, you know, a lot of us value accomplishment to some extent. It's one of the, the 10 core values that we all share. But at the same time, It's gotta be for something. And the thing that it's for are the people and the experiences that make life feel good and meaningful. And we can have those too. We don't need to rush past them. And, uh, it can be simpler to get there than we think. It's,

Cody: 1:29:02

I love that you, you say, you say in your book, unlike these mindsets, savoring leaves us satisfied the mindset of more, permits us to feel comfortable with ourselves. Only when we suddenly find ourselves with more than what we expected to have more money in the bank, more followers, more friends. But these feelings are fleeting and ephemeral. It's possible to feel a sense of abundance far more often.

Chris: 1:29:27

yeah. Yeah. I

Cody: 1:29:30

So, Chris, you've, you've said so much in this, this episode, and I know that you have to go and I, I am just blown away at the amount of knowledge and, and the nerdiness factor that you have for going into the research. I mean, even your book, I was reading through it and then I felt like I was making no progress because the book actually ends 50% of the way through it. The other 50% are all these studies that you inevitably researched and found to support the arguments and the claims that you're making in the book, which, which is just phenomenal. It's more than what a lot of PhD professors will add in their books. So it was, I was really taken aback at the authenticity of the content. And the experience of, of your personal experience and how you were able to use some of these techniques, whether it's meditation or whether it's savoring and how they've impacted your life. And I love that you were able to write this book so that other people who experienced the same issues and have the same kind of accomplishment mindset can learn how they can find a, how they can create a happier and more fulfilling life for themselves.

Chris: 1:30:45

Oh, thank you very much. Uh, and I'm happy you mentioned the studies at the back, cuz that's my whole process is, you know, I, I think the best lessons come from the best research. And it's feel I have some kind of weird obsession with this research where I'll, uh, I just love laying on the couch and reading a lot of research studies at one time, about obscure topics like, uh, like burnout, like anxiety, like calm, which is actually not a, concept that's studied by researchers. So that was a fun challenge in writing that book. But it's just so fun to dig and because nobody reads these papers, you, you, you end up connecting them in disparate ways and pardon me, and uncovering these, these truths about who we are on a fundamental level that aren't really anywhere else. And so it's the most rewarding process in the world. And yeah, I'm happy. I'm happy you dig it. Thank you. Thank you for

Cody: 1:31:47

Hmm. Yeah, and thank you for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure having this conversation.