How to Calm Your Mind
Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times
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A toolkit of accessible, science-backed strategies that reveal that the path to a less anxious life, and even greater productivity, runs directly through calm.
When Chris Bailey, productivity expert, discovered that he had become stressed and burnt out because he was pushing himself too hard, he realized that he had no right to be giving advice on productivity without learning when and how to rein things in and take a break. Productivity advice works--and we need it now more than ever--but it's just as important that we also develop our capacity for calm. By finding calm and overcoming anxiety, we don't just feel more comfortable in our own skin, we invest in the missing piece that leads our efforts to become sustainable over time. We build a deeper, more expansive reservoir of energy to draw from throughout the day, and have greater mental resources at our disposal to not only do good work, but to also live a good life.
Among the topics How to Calm Your Mind covers are how analog and digital worlds affect calm and anxiety in different ways; how our desire for dopamine, a neurotransmitter in our brain that leads us to feel overstimulated, breeds anxiety, dissatisfaction, and needless stress, but can be countered by other neurochemicals; how hidden sources of stress can be tamed by a "stimulation fast"; and how "busyness" is as much a state of mind as it is an actual state of life. The pursuit of calm ultimately leads us to become more engaged, focused, and deliberate--while making us more productive and satisfied with our lives overall. In an anxious world, achieving calm is the best life hack around.
About this Author
CHRIS BAILEY has been intensively researching and experimenting with productivity since he was a young teenager, in an effort to discover how to become as productive as humanly possible. To date, he has written hundreds of articles on the subject, and has garnered coverage in media as diverse as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GQ, Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Harvard Business Review, TED, Fast Company, and Lifehacker. The author of The Productivity Project and Hyperfocus, Bailey lives in Ottawa, Ontario. His blog is ALifeofProductivity.com.
Reviews
Praise for How to Calm Your Mind
"A leading productivity expert helps us ring in 2023 with an elegant, prescriptive plan for a healthier, tranquil path forward. After rebounding from his own burnout, Bailey devised a clear-eyed, concise method that marries science and self-help; he's equally proficient in probing the roles of serotonin and endorphins while charting concrete steps in chapters titled 'The Mindset of More' and 'Heights of Stimulation.' Slow down, breathe and submerge into these pages." --Oprah Daily
"How To Calm Your Mind is an oasis in a sea of productivity porn. It is the antidote for the chaos of our daily lives and the relentless pursuit of more at the expense of meaning. In this enlightening book, Bailey not only explains why finding calm matters, he provides a step-by-step guide for how to find it and keep it. Reading it will help you find balance between getting things done and doing things that matter."
--Samantha Boardman, author of Everyday Vitality
"People have said that Chris is one of the most productive men you could hope to meet. Personally, I know him as one of the calmest. This book explains how both statements can be true for him, and how they can be true for you too."
--Cait Flanders, author of The Year of Less and Adventures in Opting Out
"How to Calm Your Mind inspires us to do the unimaginable--to remain calm in a world filled with stress and anxiety. Chris Bailey helps us understand why calm seems so hard to achieve, and then gives us the means to achieve it. This is a book that shows how to regain one's inborn resilience and tap into a calm mind to create a thriving life."
--Henry Emmons, MD, author of The Chemistry of Joy and The Chemistry of Calm
"A pragmatic guide to reducing stress. . . . Bailey's discussion of how dopamine and serotonin influence feelings of productivity brings scientific rigor to his observations, which are sensible and occasionally counterintuitive. This practical manual is worth slowing down for."
--Publishers Weekly
Praise for Hyperfocus
"Hyperfocus helped me recognize the limits of my attentional space and make my environment more conducive to focus."
--The New York Times, "Self-Helped" column
"Chris Bailey offers actionable, data-driven insights for sharpening your focus--and finding the right moments to blur it."
--Adam Grant, author of Think Again and Originals
"Let me guess. You're like me. You don't have time to read this book. Or any book! Who has time for books anymore? Well, that's perfect. Because it means you have the disease. And right now you're holding the cure."
--Neil Pasricha, author of The Book of Awesome and The Happiness Equation
"Hyperfocus does a remarkable job of unpacking the realities, obstacles, and best practices of managing the subtle but ever-present world of our conscious attention."
--David Allen, author of Getting Things Done
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