Focused - 119: Productivity & Meditation, with Chris Bailey

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Author Chris Bailey joins us to talk about the productivity benefits of meditation, conquering resistance, and the path of least regret.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hello, David. Hello, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing great. It was fun to be on a panel with you for the Big Ready, which our buddy Mike Vardy put on. We talked about personal retreats. Actually, I guess it was just retreats. We kind of hijacked it, though, and made it personal retreats. We did, didn't we?

That was a lot of fun, and we did, yep. We've got a couple guests coming up, though. One of them was from that retreat panel, so a teaser, I guess, for Jake Kahana, who's going to be joining us soon. But today we have a very special guest, Mr. Chris Bailey. Hey, I got the very before special. Thank you for that. Very, very special. You are very special. You are the most productive man you'd ever hope to meet, according to Ted, is what I read in your bio. I thought it was the New York Times that said that.

I don't know. It could be. Don't tell them I didn't do anything all morning. Your secret's safe with us. You've been on the show before. It's been over a year and you've got a new project that we want to talk about here today. But for people who aren't familiar with you, didn't listen to the previous episode, want to just give us a quick introduction, Chris, who you are, what you do? Yeah, for sure. I guess I'm just a big nerd about productivity, probably like a lot of people that are listening to the podcast right now. And I've been fortunate to have been given

the opportunity to write a couple books about the topic that I'm pretty proud of how they turned out. And I go around speaking about this idea of productivity and just try to count my blessings every day because I'm so grateful I get to do this. I guess my whole journey started a bunch of years back when I declined a few full-time jobs to devote a year of my life to devouring as much as I could about this topic of productivity. And I wrote about what I learned on a website at the time, which was called A Year of Productivity. It's a tough decision to explain to a grandparent or even a parent or a friend why you're declining some jobs to devote a year to this weird curiosity. But fortunately, I've been able to turn it into a career and a calling. And so we're chatting today. I've never really talked to you about that. But

the whole idea of your family and dealing with telling them that you're not going to take a job and said you're going to write for the Internet. How do you like walk into that? I just did it. And this is something that I've done several times, I guess, is just, you know, make a decision, do something when it feels instinctually right, and then ask for permission and tell people later on. Honestly, if I can tell you the truth, because we're family here, the three of us and folks listening, not many people in my life understood that decision. You know, when you tell a parent, oh, yeah, I thank you for giving me, I think they gave me five or 10 grand as a gift when I started my business degree. Thanks for that. But I'm also

just going to decline those jobs that I got from these internships that I've worked throughout this time to devote this weird interest. You know, if I was a parent, I'd think, oh, this guy seems a bit lost, even when they know that they're confident that they have a path that they can take forward to make a go of it. So it was a tough decision. But I will say, full credit where credit is due, there is one person in my life that did support me, at least at the beginning of the project. And that was my girlfriend at the time. Her name was Arden, and she's since become my wife. And we've had each other's backs through the decisions that we've made since that point. She's now getting her PhD in economics, so I try to push her as well. But yeah, it's a tough decision to explain, even when you know that it's what you need to do. I kind of saw it as the path of least regret, even though it's the path of maximal risk. It was the path that I would regret the least. One of the biggest risks in my mind after I graduated was accepting one of those good high-paying jobs and always wondering in the back of my mind,

wait a sec, what if I'd actually done that project? Would it have turned into something? Would it have flopped? Even if it did flop, I did have a plan to get out. But luckily, you know, people are kind of on board now that it's turned into a thing. But at the beginning, it wasn't that same way. Did you communicate that plan if things didn't work out when you said, thanks, but no thanks? Because as you're talking and you explained just now what you were going to do about spending a year exploring the topic of productivity, through one lens, what you're describing, especially to a parent or a concerned relative, that might sound like one of the most unproductive things that you could have chosen. It's kind of like, I don't know, it's like making money about money or like studying productivity, being productive, studying about productivity.

Honestly, I just kind of did it. And I asked for permission later, if that makes sense. Yeah, when I left the law firm, I had been there 22 years. And some of my friends at work came in like, Dave, what the hell are you doing? You have a family. You can't just quit your job. And what I told them was, if I don't do this, I will never forgive myself. And I just had to try it. And that's what shut them up ultimately and left me alone. And I think we were both kind of in a similar thing where we had constraints, you know, you had

a family to feed and provide for. I forget how much money in the bank account. I think I had about 10 grand that I'd saved up through internships. And luckily in Canada, we can defer our student loans. But essentially, giving myself a year to pass or fail at this experiment kind of trapped myself within that boundary and gave myself no choice but to succeed. But it's nice to have that escape hatch at the end. And ultimately, I think you're the same way. You're still a lawyer, even if you leave the firm. I'm sure you could find a different path elsewhere. But it is nice to kind of trap yourself in a way. It's kind of like a creative constraint where you burn the bridge. Not the bridge.

What's that analogy? Burn the... Burn the boats? Burn the boats. You burn the boats. Yep, don't offer yourself a way back. That was Cortez, right? I believe he came to the new world.

He burned his ships so his men knew they couldn't go back. Yeah, but it sounds like you sort of had an escape hatch. And I like the term you use, the path of least regret. If someone's listening to this and that term resonates with them, how would you advise them to go about something like this? And I know you don't want to tell somebody to quit their job and do what they love, yada, yada, yada. But I think there's a lot of value in that term, the path of least regret. You don't want to get to the end of your life and wonder what if. So any advice for people who are in that position? Maybe they've got responsibilities, maybe they got a family,

maybe they got a nine to five, you know, where do they go from here? family? Maybe they got a nine to five, you know, where do they go from here? Well, I think there's a certain part of us that over focuses on risk because of this threat bias in our brain, right? Where we're predisposed to pay attention to any threat in our environment, which has actually served us pretty well in our evolution, because instead of focusing on crafting a fire for our village and not noticing a saber-toothed tiger encroaching in on the side, we noticed that novel threat. We dealt with it and we survived to live another day and build another fire. But at the same time, I think a lot of people don't account for the fact that regret is a type of long-term risk. And so not only do we not label regret as a risk, which it's probably the biggest risk in the long arc of a life, in my opinion.

If you look at the top 10 regrets of the dying, not to make things too morbid, but if I recall correctly, the number one risk and regret of these folks was living a life that wasn't true to who they were. And I think that's something to take to heart. We got one life, right? We got so many years, and we shouldn't wait for a heart attack or some event like that or retirement to live in vantage point that's more accommodative of these different types of risk that aren't necessarily obvious on the surface. And then in the process, you get to get ahead of your biases a little bit. I like that a lot. I think you hit the nail on the head there that regret is a form of risk. And so therefore, there is no truly safe option. As you were talking about, we've got one life to live.

I was reminded of a book that I read a while back, 30 Lessons for Living, where the author basically went into these nursing homes and interviewed thousands of people. Because whenever you go into a nursing home, there's usually a bunch of people who don't want to be there. And they're mad that they're there. And they don't have family that come visit them. And my heart breaks for those people. But there are always like one or two who are just loving life. And so he went and interviewed all those people and basically said, what was it that you did throughout your

life that allowed you to get to this point where you're able to be happy even at this late stage of life. And I think that a lack of regret is one of the things that the common themes they would talk about. But also, I think that's a worthwhile perspective to adopt right now is that there's always going to be some risk. And you may choose wrong, but that doesn't have to completely derail your entire course. You're going to have an opportunity to make another decision and get back on track if you choose wrong. I can tell you as I got towards middle age, something that occurred to me that I didn't think about in my 20s is that none of us

are getting out of this alive you know and suddenly you start to think about well i've got so much time what am i going to do with it the uh the roman generals you ever hear the story about the roman generals when they would parade through the city they'd have a a slave walking next to them whispering in their ear memento mori. Have you ever heard the story? Yeah, no. Even when they're like celebrating their greatness, they're reminded that they're going to die too.

And I don't mean to sound morbid about it, but it's truth. And, you know, you're only on this planet so long. I just had my birthday and it really, you know, I always stop on my birthday i was journal about my life on my birthday and i also had in the last week a conversation with a law school friend who's much wealthier and you know monetarily more comfortable than i am but it was you know it was striking to me how different our lives are and how i am where I belong, regardless of money or anything like that. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's really the thing that I think that ties this together for you, Chris. You wrote this book, The Productivity Project, and I'm kind of curious with all of this perspective, how does that influence what you consider to be a productive use of your time or what is productivity to you? Oh man, that's such a good question. Well, I personally define productivity as accomplishing what we set out to do, especially when what we set out to accomplish is meaningful to us. Hopefully it's meaningful to us because I hope people were listening to the last 10 minutes of the podcast or so. It should be meaningful to us. Hopefully it's meaningful to us because, you know, I hope people were listening to the last 10 minutes of the podcast or so. It should be meaningful to us. We only have so much time

every day. And that I think has to translate to the definition that we use of productivity, where we're perfectly productive when we accomplish what we set out to do. And so a few things have changed in my mind since writing this book, as I'm sure all ideas continue to evolve. And this is what I think is important to mention about a book, is it's a sort of snapshot in time, kind of like a photograph of ideas that encapsulates somebody's thinking surrounding a given topic. But it's really just about intention. And I know that's a topic that is central to this podcast, but if your intention is to have a lazy, relaxing morning where you read and you read some long-form articles and a few books that you have on the go

and you connect with friends and you slow down and you think about ideas in the long term. From the outside, you don't really look productive because you're not busy. Busyness is the strongest signal that we usually have for productivity, whether it's in the workplace, whether it's at home, whether it's examining our own behavior by the end of the day. The busier we were, the more productive we believe that we were, even though productivity has nothing to do with busyness. It's really about intention and whether those intentions actually accomplish something. But yeah, I forget what the question was. I feel I ventured away from it, as I sometimes do. But I really think that of all the ideas that have stuck through to today, that one is one that

definitely has above any others that we're perfectly productive when we accomplish what we set out to do. Well, I can tell you from the last episode, the thing that really stood out to me, and I quote this to people all the time, so I hope you don't mind this, but you had said something along the lines of, if you want to watch Netflix all day and you watch Netflix all day, that is the most productive thing that you can do because it's in line with your intention. Where we get off is when we don't want, we have something else we want to do and we end up watching Netflix all day. So that's a good reminder. But I also am kind of curious, you know, you mentioned that the productivity project was a snapshot in time. And how has your perspective on that topic changed since then? It sounds like when you wrote that, maybe there was a little bit of an emphasis towards the tactics, the tips and tricks, the life hacks, if you will, to be more efficient, but maybe you've kind of shifted more towards a productivity definition that is more being effective and hitting the mark and not so much about getting the things done. Yeah, it's funny. I actually haven't really looked through this book

in a long time. And so, you know, you mentioned before that we were going to chat a bit about this project during the podcast. I said, oh, I haven't really flipped through those pages in a while. And I'm actually kind of surprised at how much of this I still do. Because sometimes the tactics that we have become so invisible to us that we don't really, they're like water, right? That we don't realize that we're doing them. But one thing that has changed is, I think, when I wrote this book, I cared about productivity a bit too much. And I think that's a very easy trap to fall into because we live in a world of more, more accomplishment. Everybody wants more

of everything they have already. And this is a nice trap that I think the three of us have avoided. David, you mentioned the colleague that you have, and that kind of is driven by money. And we tend to orient ourselves around the incentives of the world. People value money, people value followers, people value accomplishment by traditional measures, they value success, They value scale. But along the way, we don't often stop to reflect on the cost of investing in this productivity and all this accomplishment. And I think that's something I've had the opportunity to do since embarking on this

original project. And I don't have any regrets. Don't get me wrong. I don't regret doing that project or anything like that. I don't regret any of. Don't get me wrong. I don't regret doing that project or anything like that. I don't regret any of the things I've learned. I think they all make me more effective. But without a picture of where productivity fits into our life and why we want to invest in these different tactics, I don't think we should be even investing in our productivity if we're not entirely sure of why. And so often we just accept the default goals that are provided to us, right?

If we have social media accounts, we want more followers instead of deeper connections with people. If we have a high-paying job, we want more money in the bank account instead of more financial freedom. If we're on LinkedIn, we want more connections. I don't know why LinkedIn comes to mind. I was just refreshing my LinkedIn before we hopped on the podcast today. But maybe you want more connections on that instead of just deeper connections in real life in a totally different place. But when we accept the defaults, and productivity, I think, is very much a default goal that the world provides to us because the world values more. And one idea that I'm really digging into these days is how the modern world is sort of centered around the neurochemical dopamine, where we're constantly

seeking accomplishment and stimulation. that very much drives us toward productivity because productivity is how we accumulate accomplishment on a daily basis. It leads to an accomplished life, but we have to have that reason why we're investing in our productivity or else there's no point. There's no point to doing anything if you don't have a purpose behind it. And that goes back to that idea of intentionality. If you don't have a purpose behind it. And that goes back to that idea of intentionality. If you don't have a reason for doing something, why are you doing it? Why are you listening to this podcast? Why are you reading the books you're in the middle of? Why do you have the friends that you have in your life? Why are you married to your spouse? Why did you have kids? We need

to question the intention behind everything that we do. Usually, thankfully, we find that we're living in a way that's conducive to our values and who we are, but often we'll find that we've ventured off a little bit and are living a little bit out of alignment with who we are. And I think that's kind of one way that my thinking on this idea has evolved. It was very much, like you said, a tactical book, which I'm happy about. I still do a lot of this stuff to this day. But you need to know the size, the surface area that productivity should have in your life. Well, as somebody who wrote a book myself that I look back on now and I wish was a little bit different. I get it. My book is called

Thou Shalt Hustle, which just in that title has a little bit different connotation. Now, I have a different definition of it, but everybody who heard me say that just now is, I'm sure, thinking of the Gary Vee picture, working the five to nine as the Dolly Parton song goes. Oh, God. But I've struggled with that. And I've come to grips with the fact that, you know, that was the best I could do at the time. And my thinking on the topic has evolved a little bit. It hasn't changed drastically. It's still largely centered around the topic that you were talking about of finding your why and giving it everything that you've got, but doing it in an intentional way. And I think the other

thing that from what you just said, that kind of resonates with me, and you talk about this in the book too, but it's a good reminder is that the reason for people are always the reason for the productivity and the relationships in your life are really the things that are valuable. So I have definitely been guilty of that in the past of trying to be productive and getting things done and injuring some relationships in the process. Yeah. And this is, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this idea of more lately on how, you know, the world is kind of structured around dopamine and more. And we often tell ourselves stories in order to justify the fact that our life is centered around stimulation and accomplishment. Those are kind of the two of the main dopamine networks in our mind. There's

a third that kind of relates to Parkinson's disease that begins to degrade, but those are kind of the two main ones, craving and accomplishment. And this is a trap that I fell into myself. I was telling myself stories, oh, I need to be on the road most of the time because that's how I can pay for my wife and I's life. And that's how we can kind of set ourself up for the future, not really accounting for the fact that I was really compromising, you know, A, my mental health, my sense of calm, my sense of satisfaction, but B, not really living in a way that was in alignment with what I valued. And so, I think it's so critical, and definitely the meaning of things change over time. But yeah, I think you should be proud of that book personally. It's pretty good.

Thank you. Well, not only that, I mean, it was a step in a process that got you to where you are today. And never forget that. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com slash focused and make your next move. Enter offer code FOCUSED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. With Squarespace, you can make your next move.

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Once again, that's squarespace.com slash FOCUSED and the code FOCUSED to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of the FOCUSED podcast and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Now, before we took the break, you guys were talking about focus and the modern kind of take on focus, which I think can lead people down the wrong path. I feel like the problem today with the word productivity is for too many people people it is synonymous with the word busy and i i just wonder how did we get to that point and if you're sitting out there listening

and to you productivity or productive equals busy how do you how do we get you out of that mindset yeah i think it goes back to dopamine you So dopamine is kind of the neurochemical that's associated with the anticipation of pleasure. And our mind releases a hit of it every time we focus on something new and novel, essentially. Novelty is the biggest driver of dopamine. And when we look at when we're busy, usually we're engaging in a lot of novel behavior in rapid succession. And so because our mind is stimulated, this is a chemical that we've learned to crave over the course of our evolutionary history, we take busyness as a signal that we're doing something important that is almost essential for our survival, in a way, where we're engaging in a lot of usually unimportant things quite rapidly. Sometimes they provide us with ego validation, but they always provide us with a certain level of stimulation. But they also

rarely provide us with a level of accomplishment that we're proud of after. And so I think when you examine and really deconstruct the business, there's always a neurochemical underpinning of everything that we do. This is the whole reason why meditation exists. Nobody wants to meditate, which is why everybody should, because by doing the things that we're resistant to, we're able to overcome those hurdles and change our neurochemistry to some level. But I think we so often live a dopamine-centered life instead of chemicals that actually make us present.

So there's dopamine circuits in our brain, which correspond to accomplishment and stimulation. But there's also a network in our brain that's anti-correlated with the dopamine networks, which is the here and now network. It's what makes us present. It's what allows us to show up. It's what allows us to appreciate the present moment. It makes us calm. It makes us tranquil. And it just lets us be comfortable with what we're doing. And the first dopamine thing that induced a lot of dopamine that we brought into our life after internet pornography for some folks is the smartphone, right? It's basically this device that we keep in our pocket through which we release our mind, kind of squirt our mind with dopamine hits

throughout the day. And so I think that's kind of step zero is to take stock and think, okay, maybe I need to slow down a little bit here. Maybe I need to just breathe. Maybe I need to put a distractions blocker on. Maybe I need to set an intention. Maybe I need to just breathe. Maybe I need to put a distractions blocker on. Maybe I need to set an intention. Maybe I need to slow down. And of course, the irony and anyone that has kind of overcome the epidemic of busyness will probably tell you that they become more productive, a bit more accomplished because they're able to show up and be present with whatever it is that they're putting off. But I think you can kind of draw a trend line with the amount of time that we spend on our phone and correlate that with how busy we are over time and find that they move in tandem with one another. And I think that's it's a big problem that a lot of us have to overcome right now. I completely agree as I sit here taking notes with my fancy fountain pen in my mouth. And I think that's, it's a big problem that a lot of us have to overcome right now. I completely agree as I sit here taking notes with my fancy fountain pen in my notebook.

I'm curious though, with the accomplishment and craving, and you were talking about that dopamine driven approach to productivity. I'm curious how you think that affects the whole topic of goal setting. Because as you were telling that, I couldn't help but recall a time in my life when I set a goal to run a half marathon. I won't tell the whole story here, but I over-trained, hurt myself, finished the half marathon anyways. And I remember crossing the finish line and experiencing this huge letdown because it was like, now what? And I could not just set another goal of signing up for another race because I had physical therapy that I had to do. And that was the moment I realized that this goal setting approach to productivity for me anyways, was not going to

work. I'm curious, how do you see those two tied together and how does that affect your approach to goals, habits, how you move forward and still stay in the moment? Yeah. Yeah. Dopamine falls off of a cliff once we accomplish what we set out to do. And that's exactly the problem. And that's exactly what leads us to seek out And that's exactly what leads us to seek out accomplishing more after that fact. It's the reason why folks who are driven by dopamine just become less and less satisfied with their life over time, where dopamine sort's also a chemical of dissatisfaction because it propels us to want to accomplish things. And we get hits of dopamine that are released in our mind for every new and novel thing that we accomplish because we get to accumulate something and our mind rewards us for that. But then we get to a point where we can't really accomplish anymore. I think it was Buzz Aldrin, who, you know, trained for decades, eventually walked on the moon, and he reached that pinnacle

of accomplishment, right? He had done it. He'd landed on the earth. He'd landed on the moon. He made it back to the earth. He could then talk about it. But after he returned home, he turned to alcohol, which is another chemical that we release a lot of dopamine when we consume. And because he had reached the pinnacle of what he had set out to do, and there was no more dopamine left because he had over-invested in that dopaminergic network in his mind instead of finding ways of being present with where he was. And I think this is a trap that a lot of us fall into where we reach kind of the pinnacle of success. Our book is a bestseller. It's a runaway bestseller. A work project goes viral and takes off online. Maybe we ship something and it goes up to the CEO who heaps

praise on us, and we don't really have anywhere else to go upwards. And we find that there's an odd sort of dissatisfaction associated with the accomplishments that we achieve. And unless we invest in that presence network, we're not going to be able to find that much satisfaction with our accomplishments. So accomplishments can be deceiving in that way where we overvalue the accomplishments of other people but yet undervalue ours because we're always on to the next thing instead of savoring what we've done already. So how do you get over that, Chris? How do you deal with it? You need presence. You need presence, right? And this is the thing. We tell ourselves we're going to enjoy the fruits of our accomplishment after we get something done, after something

becomes a success. But if you look at that across time, the point of success is infinitesimally small, right? It might take us a year to work on and hunker down on a project, and then we ship it, and then we move on to the next thing. We think everything will be great, but looking at that across a timeline, the point of shipping and of appreciating the thing that we've done maybe is 1% of that total timeline, whereas the 99% is hunkering down, it's working on something. And I think that's the key, right? The key is in the 99%, not the 1%. It's being able to savor what we do as we are doing it. It's finding ways of becoming engaged.

It's looking at what behaviors of ours are driven by dopamine so that when we achieve a level of success, we can celebrate, but we can also be present and enjoy the journey that leads to accomplishing those things. And one of the best shortcuts to settling the mind and just being present and being still and activating that here and now network, which actually suppresses activation in the dopamine network, is meditation, right? Which I happen to think is one of the best things that helps us focus. By the way, how do you guys do with this?

Do you find that you're always kind of looking for the next success? Do you find that it's a struggle to appreciate what you're doing? I'm curious where you guys fall. For me, it's changed over years. When I was doing a lot of trial work, I was looking for that golden carrot at the end or whatever the analogy is, you know, the jury coming back and doing justice on behalf of my client. That's what I was working for. I have to admit over the years that has evolved and both in the law practice and the Max Parkey

stuff, I actually really embrace things where the process gives me joy. I was just having this conversation with my daughters, you know, they're at that point in their life where they're starting to think about careers. And I think, you know, look for things where you enjoy the process, where you're fascinated with the process. And then, cause that's what you do every day. You know, it's not, you know, if you can't get wrapped up in the process, it's very hard to get yourself out of bed. And the process is all about how much joy we're able to accumulate over time, right? And so if you're accumulating joy for that 99% of the time you're working towards some goal, instead of just collecting a little bit of joy at the pinnacle of shipping something and then

quickly moving on to the next thing, you're just going to be left with less happiness at the end of the day. You might as well enjoy the journey. Yeah. And if you can enjoy the process, you can also actually be present for the payoff. You can enjoy the payoff more, I think, if you were there present throughout the entire process. And you can appreciate it for what it is. And hey, that's great that, you know, I won the case or the product shipped and people like it. But, you know, now I need to roll up my sleeves and continue the process. In fact, one of my goals, my secret tricks to making field guides is always to have another one in production before I release one.

So I never really have a break because I like it. I like that process. I don't want it to end. Yeah. And when you're focused on a goal, you can dread the process because you're just putting up with it in order to achieve the thing. That was my mistake when I ran that first half marathon, and then I was forced to do things a little bit differently and my approach totally changed. And now, for me, the way I overcome it is I base it off of identity. And so identity, I'm a runner. What does a runner do? They run. It doesn't matter how fast. It doesn't matter how long. The goal for me, I use that term loosely, is just go for a run a couple times a week and I enjoy it. I don't dread

having to push myself to meet a certain time or go a certain distance. I look forward to putting my shoes and going out for a run, even though in Wisconsin right now it's negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit. I mean, I'm not running this week, but I have run a couple times every single week throughout the winter even. And that's a big step for me because I used to be so goal-oriented. And once I set a goal, I was very good at doing whatever it took to make that happen. But it wasn't very rewarding. It wasn't bringing me the sort of joy that the identities do. David and I recorded an episode not too long ago about roles

and goals and how they're linked. And for me, I think that's really the key is I identify who I want to be. And once I landed on who that is, then what are the things that that person does consistently? And then I try to track those sorts of things. So I journal every day, but I do it a little bit different. I use Marshall Goldsmith's daily questions. And I rate myself on a scale of one to 10 based on the question, did I do my best to? So it's not outcome based. And it's just things like, did I do my best to love my wife, love my kids, love exercise, love Chris Bailey.

Yep, exactly. Be a good friend, you know, all those sorts of especially the like if there's a major product that we were able to ship for tss or something i usually like buy a fancy fountain pen as like a trophy you know my whole course you do yeah exactly but now when i go to grab my pen that i want to use today i've got a choice of a bunch of pens that i really like and every single one of those is a reminder of something that i did that I'm proud of. And I feel like that gratitude for that thing being shipped and existing is important. It doesn't have to be a product either. Just expressing, finding something to be grateful for and expressing it. That's something that's important to me and to my family. In fact,

my wife and I, we had a date night last night. And every single date night, that's how we end it, is we express gratitude to each other. And it just, it does something inside of me. I could be having a terrible day. Everything is going wrong. In fact, it kind of was yesterday. I lost a whole bunch of writing that I was working on. I had to rewrite something.

But then we get to the end and we express the gratitude and it just completely changes the atmosphere. Yeah, I think you guys hit the nail on the head that if you do enjoy the journey, you really do enjoy the ending as well because you're just in that mindset of enjoyment. You're activating that here and now network. And one idea that comes to mind

or came to mind that when you guys were chatting was the path of least regret, which we were chatting about at the beginning, is usually the path of greatest enjoyment. And we all have so much data at our disposal, don't we? The projects we've been the most engaged with, the people we've been the most engaged with when we've been chatting with them, just things we can enter that flow-like state within an instant of beginning to do something. And this is the thing that I find repeatedly in my own behavior and my own research is that we so often want to look to a podcast or a book or another resource of a different kind and think, okay, how should I be more

productive? How can I be happier? How can I become more engaged when, A, we're all different, but B, we all have just an ungodly amount of data at our disposal in terms of when we've been the most engaged in the past, when we've been the happiest in the past, when we've been the most productive naturally and just loved what we were doing in the past, when we've been the happiest in the past, when we've been the most productive naturally and just loved what we were doing in the past. And in my case, that's writing. I love the feeling that happens in the mind when two ideas have that satisfying click into place, and you know that they're locked together and connected in what you're saying

and that you're in the tracks, you're doing things, you're just in it. You're in the arena and you're delivering work that will hopefully help people out. We all have things, tasks like that in our work, in our home lives. We need to double down on that, especially right now when we're spending more time indoors. Here, we got to stay at home order with COVID. But that's just kind of a reminder that, wait a sec, slow down. What do you love? Do more of that. If you have the flexibility to do so, you'll just be happier and more satisfied with everything. just be happier and more satisfied with everything. This episode of Focused is brought to you by PDF Pen from our friends at Smile. Power through PDFs with the Mac community's favorite PDF editor so you can fall in love with work again. With PDF Pen, you can show PDFs who's boss. Edit any PDF

with the click of a button, fix typos, and add text as easily as you would in Word. Breathe new life into paper documents with the magic of OCR. Turn images of handwritten and printed text into content that you can search, copy, and edit. Protect your content. Ensure your documents are safe to share through password protection, metadata removal, and true redaction so you don't accidentally share some sensitive information. And look like a pro. Impress your boss, your colleagues, and your clients with efficient, secure, and 100% digital workflows and fill out, sign, and copy. Edit like it's 2021. I love PDFPen. I've been using it for years. I recently just used it to make some modifications to my personal retreat course handbook PDF that goes along with the updated course. I wanted to make a few modifications

without having to go back and edit the Adobe Illustrator files because I never use Illustrator. It's a very clunky tool for me. Just a couple of text things that I wanted to change, and with PDF Pen, I could do it very easily. It feels like magic every time you do it, too. You select the tool where you can correct text, and then you select the text in your PDF. And I know that that's an image file, so I feel like that should never work, but it always does. And it lets you make quick corrections very easily, just like you would in any word processor. Now, PDFPen and PDFPen Pro work with PDFPen for iPad and iPhone as well for seamless editing across your devices with cloud services such as iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and more. You can learn

more about PDFPen and PDFPen Pro at smilesoftware.com slash podcast. That's S-M-I-L-E software.com slash podcast. Our thanks to smile for supporting focused and all of relay FM. You've mentioned a few times, I think what you call it, the here and now circuit. What is, yeah. Could you tell me more?

That's a, I've never heard the phrase before, but tell me about that. Yeah. It's basically the, the circuit in their mind, in our mind, um, that corresponds with presence. Yeah, it's basically the circuit in our mind that corresponds with presence. And when we engage with activities that activate this network in our mind, again,

it's anti-correlated with the dopamine network, which leads us to desire things to be different than they are. The here and now circuit is really what leads us to be present and enjoy what we're doing. And I first came across this term, I was actually chatting with him yesterday, interviewing him for a project that I'm working on. His name is Daniel Lieberman, and he wrote a book called The Molecule of More, which is all about how dopamine leads us to seek out just more of everything that we have already. But he also talks about the here and now circuit, which is one that produces more savoring neurochemicals like serotonin, which makes us happier, like oxytocin, which makes us connected with other people, like endocannabinoids,

oxytocin, which makes us connected with other people, like endocannabinoids, which allow us to find happiness and calm in the moment. The same that are produced when we consume cannabis, but we don't have the corresponding laziness that comes with that consumption sometimes. Self-baked. Yeah. Yeah. It's baking at home with endocannabinoids. Welcome. I'll be your chef today, Chef Chris. We also release endorphins in this mode, which, you know, we usually get when we exercise, but exercise is a surefire way of activating this network, connecting with other people, having conversations, seeing other people in the flesh, giving other people hugs, getting a massage, all ways of activating oxytocin production. In terms of serotonin, we often get that from often feeling confident and a feeling of

sometimes superiority, which sounds weird, but it really just means keeping track of what we're able to accomplish, becoming grateful for all that we have in our life. All of these behaviors that I'm mentioning now, except for doing weed, if you want to do that, that's up to you. All of these activate the here and now network and suppress activation in the dopamine network. But it does work the other way. So keep that in mind that when we engage in these dopamine-fueled behaviors, checking Instagram again, refreshing Twitter, checking our email, anything new and novel that releases a hit of dopamine, the dopamine networks in our mind can also suppress activation in the here and now network in our mind, which leads us to savor things a lot less. And that just exacerbates how dopamine can be this chemical of dissatisfaction because

of the fact that it's the chemical of accomplishment. And the more we rely on dopamine-driven behaviors and just live this over-crazed life, the less we're able to savor the fruits of all that we're able to accomplish. And in my mind, this is the most ironic thing about productivity and accomplishment, right? Because the more we accomplish, the more dissatisfied we become. The more we accomplish, the less we're able to savor and enjoy what we're doing, as well as the fruits that our productivity has led to. And so I think it's never been more critical, especially when technology pushes us to that dopamine side of the equation to invest in presence, invest in just what makes us connected with other people. I think it's one of the most critical things that we need to balance right now, because I honestly think we mislabel the problem. We think the problem is that we're busy. We think the problem is that we got too much on our plate. We think the problem is our phone.

We think that these aren't the problems, right? The problem is, as they say, closer to the metal. It's related to the chemicals that all of these behaviors release in our mind. Stopamine, we need to counteract that with these different strategies. And one of those strategies that you mentioned earlier is meditation. And you were talking about how productivity is at odds with this dopamine-driven network. I also know that you have a new form of a book. It's an Audible project. Yeah. Specifically devoted to this, can you shine some light on why skeptics like myself should be embracing meditation from a productivity point of view? you yeah so this is yeah this is my newest thing uh it's only on audible it's it's called an audible original so netflix has netflix originals audible has audible originals that if you sign up you get

it for free is audible a sponsor of this episode do you have a code that people can use no wait i don't think audible's ever sponsored the show so Oh, no? Well, first of all, shame on them. I'm a subscriber. No, it's a good site. If you have it, the book is called How to Train Your Mind, and you can get it for free. If you're not a member, I think you have to burn a credit, and it's a three-hour book. So I'm not sure if that's a level of commitment you want. Maybe you want a full book for that credit.

But essentially, I'm actually really proud of it. It's called How to Train Your Mind. And it's all about exploring the productivity benefits of having a meditation practice. And I think this is an angle that it's not, honestly, it's not the most compelling angle with regard to meditation. You can talk about the happiness benefits of meditation. You can talk about the just overall life satisfaction benefits of meditation. But it's the most compelling angle to me with regard to meditation, which is that it lets us make back time. And in the book or the original, I never know what they call the thing, it's essentially a three-hour guide through meditation, what meditation is, why it makes us more productive, why it lets us earn back time, how to meditate it,

how to get over any skepticism that you might have with regard to it. So give us a teaser. You intrigued me with the title that helps you get back time. How does it do that? Yeah, in a lot of different ways, actually. And this is one of the most exciting parts about putting together the original is I got to look at all the research, not just about happiness or satisfaction. This was the exciting part of this project. I kind of brushed aside a lot of the bigger benefits of meditation to look only at productivity and try to deduce whether it was actually worth investing in for productivity reasons. Because by God, there's a lot of strategies out there. But the golden rule that

I like to use to measure the return of productivity advice is how much time you get back. And so on one side of that, it might be planning your day, right? Where when you decide what you spend your time on over the course of the day, you easily get that time back because you decide what your most important tasks are that day. You decide what isn't worth engaging with. You decide what to say no to. You have a North Star for what's important on that particular day. On the other side of the spectrum, maybe something like reading about how Oprah or Richard Branson spend their mornings. It's fun to read about people's routines, but... There's that dopamine again. Yeah, there's that dopamine again, striving for more and looking at people who have billions

of dollars in the bank, frankly, to see how they manage their schedule with a whole bunch of members on their team and stuff like that. And so the question became, where does meditation fall on that spectrum? How much time does it allow us to earn back? And the deeper I looked at the research, the more convinced I became that it's one of the best possible things that we could be doing for our productivity. And a few examples of this research come to mind. The first, especially with regard to mindfulness meditation, it makes us more mindful, right? By God, you'd hope so. But this leads our mind to wander less because we can focus for longer. We notice more quickly that our mind has gone off on a different track, and as it does about 53% of the time, so we get back on track more quickly.

Other research shows that it expands our working memory capacity by about 30%. And I remember chatting about this on the previous episode that we did. Essentially, our working memory capacity is what we can hold in our mind and connect at one time. And so in this way, it makes us able to process information more deeply and connect more ideas concurrently. It makes our mind less stimulated, less involved with that neurochemical dopamine, bringing things in a connected fashion once more. Because it activates the here and now network,

we don't just seek out another hit of distraction. We give our mind a chance to chill, right? So we actually seek out fewer distractions when we meditate more often. And every time we fall down a rabbit hole of distraction, it takes us about 25, 26 minutes to get back on track, depending on whether a distraction was external, so it came from somebody else, or internal, and so we sought it out. And man, okay, so if you meditate for 20 minutes, you just made back 25 if you notice once that your mind was about to get distracted, because you can calm it down a bit. Working memory capacity, if you deal with complex ideas every single day, you can connect 30% more things in your mind at one time. You can process more

things more deeply, coming up with better, more expansive, more interesting, more valuable ideas, more meaningful ideas. Less mind wandering. Our mind wanders 47% of the day. We're focused for 53% of it. And so if you can lower that just 10%, that's a lot of time if you spend eight hours on the clock working, eight to 10 hours. But the research goes beyond that point, right? It's been shown to help us with procrastination. It lowers all the self-talk

that we experience around that phenomenon. It makes us less impulsive. It's one of the few things that makes us less impulsive, right? Giving into dopamine one more time. Hit me, dopamine one more time, your mind won't be saying any more. Impulsiveness is actually, I love sneaking in Britney Spears, hashtag save Britney, but it makes us less impulsive. Impulsiveness is one of the character traits that is most highly correlated with the propensity for procrastination. It makes us more empathetic. We can listen more. We can hear more behind what people are saying instead of just reacting to their words. It makes us happier, right? And that's actually a benefit for our productivity. Research by Sean Acor, the

Harvard-trained psychologist, he found that happier people are 31% more productive than people who are in a negative or neutral state. It lets us think more clearly. We see things as they are rather than through the lens of how we want them to be. I could go on for a little bit longer, but I won't. I'll spare everybody. But I make the calculation in the book that for every minute we spend meditating, up to about half an hour a day, at which we begin to experience diminishing returns, we make back about nine minutes in how much more productive we become. And so if you look at an actual return on meditation,

just minute for minute, it's not like Oprah's morning routine. I'll just put it that way. It's more like planning your day. You can become so much more intentional, focused, and a better thinker, frankly, than if you don't meditate. And I think there's actually risks associated in terms of our performance when we don't actively practice meditation. There's just such a capacity for gain in that regard with

regard to our productivity. Yeah, that's not a thing. That's a fact. I mean, I started meditating in the late 80s and got formal training in the early 90s. So I've been 30 years in this racket. And I find that if I let a couple days go by without meditation, because I usually do a 30-minute sit in the morning and like a 15-minute sit in the evening, my brain turns into a wild horse. I don't know how else to explain it. It's just like, what is this? It's like if you have a child that suddenly just misbehaves unusually and you don't even know how to deal with it. And every time it's because I have not meditated for a few days. Yeah, there's a quote that I reference in the original by a pianist named Ignatius Perdoeski, where he says, if I miss one day's practice, I notice it. If I miss

two days, the critics notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it. And I think a similar thing could be true with meditation where, you know, you notice it at the beginning because your thoughts become a bit more metastasized. Two days, maybe your significant others notice it. Maybe three days, focused listeners will notice it because it's like, where's David's head today? Mike, where are you at on meditation these days? I have given you a hard time about it the whole time you've been on the show. Chris gave you a hard time about it last time he was on the show.

Yeah, well, I think you have officially convinced me, Chris. I've always tried it and I've been able to get it to stick for a short period of time, but then I just never really saw the tangible benefits from it that you're talking about, partially because I think I wasn't really sure what I should be looking for. A lot of specific things that you mentioned there really stand out to me, though. You mentioned that we have the ability to focus for 53% of our time. As you mentioned that, I was thinking about another statistic that I heard about the most creative people, they've only got like four good hours in a day. And I'm like, oh, well, that makes sense. That's all of us. Yeah. If I'm able to boost that up even a little bit, then yeah, I could totally see how that provides some benefit

in terms of what I'm able to, the work I'm able to do. You also mentioned Sean Acor. He was the guy who wrote the Happiness Project. He also said that if your happiness is tied to the accomplishment of a goal, you will never be happy. So like all this stuff is kind of lining up in my brain as we're having this conversation here today. Where would you recommend people start if they, like me, are convinced to give this a shot yet again? Where do we go for a little bit of help?

Is it just to download a meditation app off of the app store or what's the process? Yeah, first of all, don't beat yourself up too much about falling off the wagon and getting back on. I actually don't know any experienced meditators who haven't fallen off of the wagon every once in a while and then gotten back on. So including myself, I fall off the wagon repeatedly, but that's usually a sign that I should sign up for a meditation retreat of some kind. So if you fall into that camp and you're listening, hopefully we've all given you the push that will help you out. But I actually really like an app called Insight Timer. And it has, I forget how many, tens of thousands of guided meditations that'll help you

get started. There's onboarding flows that will guide you through learning how to meditate. And plus, and it might sound weird to have a meditation timer on your phone because the phone is such a dopamine-inducing device and it leads to so much distraction. But as long as you don't go to other apps when the timer's on, I think you should be okay. But any app that provides you with guided meditations to get you started, Calm is another app that a lot of people love. Insight Timer, of course. Headspace is another app that a lot of people love. Insight Timer, of course. Headspace is another app that folks love. Really, just look at the three apps on the App Store. Whatever one you like the most, get that. One will talk to you. But the thing I love about Insight Timer is you can see after you meditate, you can turn this feature off if you don't want it, but there's a social

aspect to it as well. You can have friends on the app. And so you can see which of your friends meditated alongside you, which is really nice to feel that connection in that way when basically all of us have gone virtual with COVID times. But you can also see who in your city meditated alongside you. How many people around the world used this one app, meditating alongside you? And you notice different rhythms of the day. More people meditate before bed, probably doing sleep meditations. A lot of people meditate in the morning, probably to center before a busy day. But Insight Timer is personally my favorite kind of app. But I really recommend a guided meditation to start. You don't have to do this. I didn't learn through guided meditations. I picked up a book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I actually highly recommend. It's one of the best primers for meditation that I've found. But now with guided meditations being so accessible, I even found meditations on the Peloton app the other day, which kind of is a weird thing to find in your workout app.

But we invest in boosting our physical performance. Why not our mental performance too? But whatever app speaks to you, I'd highly recommend trying on a meditation for just kind of like using it as a training wheel for your practice at the risk of using a childish analogy and then using the techniques that you find from that to then take with you for when you don't meditate using a guided meditation. One of the things that I experienced when I was trying calm specifically was that I became a little bit uncomfortable because I felt like it was getting a little bit too spiritual for me. Now, I'm a spiritual person, but I don't really like the connotation of meditation being rooted in a spiritual practice, but I don't think it necessarily has to be defined that way. How would you respond to somebody? Because I've heard other people say that too, where they are hesitant to

embrace meditation because of the spiritual aspect, or it seems a little bit too woo-woo for them. What would you say to them? Well, for the woo-woo stuff, I'd get folks to look at the research. But the spiritual stuff, that's a really valid point because the historic roots of meditation are so religious. They're grounded in those spiritual practices, but it really isn't. And there's a lot of people that make it that way where it's about Buddhism and Hinduism and different spiritual practices like that. But I remember the very first meditation retreat I attended, and the folks who ran it said, everybody is welcome here. It doesn't matter your sexual identity. It doesn't matter your race. It doesn't matter your background. Your religion doesn't matter. And they asked folks if they wanted to, you know, who identifies as Christian.

A lot of people raised their hand. Who identifies as Muslim? A couple people raised their hand. Who identifies as Buddhist? A lot of people raised their hand because it's a meditation retreat. But everybody was welcome to that practice with insight meditation. that practice with insight meditation. And I would encourage folks to find what feels good in this regard. I don't mind a bit of the Buddhist stuff because I'm Buddhist. But with the audiobook, I tried to approach that in a really secular way. I don't know if I even mentioned Buddhism at all.

approach that in a really secular way. I don't know if I even mentioned Buddhism at all. And really, meditation doesn't have to be a spiritual practice. You're just noticing your breath, right? What's religious about that? It's just a practice that helps us train our mind because if we can focus on our breath, we can focus on anything. And that's precisely the point of meditation, right? Is the breath is not interesting. The breath is very boring. And because it's so boring, it's kind of like watching a plant grow or watching paint dry or just something more boring than that. The breath is always there doing its thing. It's been that way for many of us for many, many decades. But that's the power, right? Because if we can focus on our breath, because it's so boring, because it's so aversive, because it's such an aversive thing to do that engaged with pretty much anything. If we can notice the beauty in our breath, we can see the beauty all around us. And maybe that's more of a spiritual vantage point to the whole practice. But really, when you break it down in first

principles, it's watching your breath, right? Or whatever your object of meditation happens to be, whether you're eating something mindfully, whether you're doing a walking meditation, regardless of what you're doing, that's all it is. It's just being present with one thing that's hopefully pretty boring so your mind will wander and you can train it in that fashion. So that's what I'd recommend if somebody is put off by the practice because on the surface it's woo-woo, which it honestly is on the surface until you look at what the practice actually is

on a moment-by-moment level, which is just noticing, right? Because you're paying attention, you're grounding yourself, and in that way you train your mind. Yeah, just training your brain, right? I want to pile on a little bit. My first retreat was actually a Zen Buddhist center. And my seat partner, the person next to me, was a Catholic nun. And we were talking about it, because she's very devout, but she feels, you know, mindfulness is a skill.

And it really is. It's a tool that Buddhists use, but it's not Buddhism, I guess, is a way to put it. In fact, if you go to Asia, a lot of Buddhists don't necessarily practice meditation or mindfulness. It's not as big of a deal as it has, as big of a role as it has taken in western uh the western world um so it's kind of interesting uh one other piece of add-on i would say is that there are different apps like i often recommend the headspace app i don't think there's really anything spiritual in their guided meditations but um i always do it with a little bit of hesitation any guided meditation to get started because I think it is good to have someone in your ear when you get started.

I learned the old-fashioned way. I went to meditation centers and had teachers there. But from the very beginning, you need to meditate with nobody in your ear. I mean, I was just telling a friend recently who wanted to get started i said that's fine use the app but when you're done set a timer for five minutes and meditate without someone talking to you and honestly i don't use apps i don't have people talking in my ear i have a timer like chris and i have 30 minutes every morning for my brain to go a little crazy and allow me to observe what's going on and kind of manage things. And it's all just breath based

mindfulness meditation. There's no spiritual element to it in that sense, because I don't have anybody telling me. And I think that's really the goal, at least for me. And I think for you, Mike, too, honestly, if you start doing it again, I would put some portion of time with nobody talking with the hope that within six months that you almost don't use guided meditation at all anymore. Well, I'm committing to trying it again, that's for sure. The Audible book, I spent a credit on it, Chris. Oh! I'm one of the people that helped boost it up that list. Big spender. Which, by the way, you should toot your own horn a little bit. You've had some success with this book. Yeah. Oh, I'd love any opportunity to toot

my horn. So thank you very much for that. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I don't know how it's doing today. I think the latest numbers are announced today, but the last don't find them too rewarding. What I find more rewarding, far, far more than any metric, is hearing from people and hearing them say, I was totally resistant to this practice. I thought meditation was woo-woo. I thought it was a bit stupid. I thought it would lead me to become less motivated. I thought it would be a waste of time,

but you convinced me. And now I feel calmer. Now I feel more present or I'm a busy working mom with two kids at home right now because of COVID. But this book gave me an opportunity to be with myself and invest in myself a little bit. And honestly, that's better feedback than any metric. So that's what I'm thrilled about too. But it's awesome how much it's connecting with people right now. Yeah. Well, I guess I call that out just to say, we're not promoting this book because you're a friend of ours. It is a good book. A lot of other people really like it. And maybe I'm your next testimonial.

I don't know. I've got it. I'm going to go through it and we'll see if it sticks this time. Hopefully it does. I honestly think it's really helpful. So hopefully it sticks for you. One more piece of advice from someone who's been doing it a while is you will feel like an idiot the first time you sit down and set a timer and count your breath. There's just no way to avoid it.

And you're like, what is wrong with me? I have an inbox full of email. I have whatever I'm supposed to be working on right now. Why am I doing this? Just hang in there. That's all. Commit for a month or two. And notice the part of you that's saying that story, right? And notice the talk and think,

okay, where is that coming from? Is that a reaction to the way I've trained my mind in the past? Is that a form of conditioning that I'm a bit uncomfortable with because I don't necessarily value that part of me that always wants to get something done and try to make things the way that they're not. Meditation feels absolutely ridiculous because it's an opportunity for that voice inside of us to say, man, not only do you feel like an idiot doing this looking at your breath thing, you also look like an idiot. You should actually be doing something instead of sitting on your cushion. But then you realize that that voice is coming from inside of you. And then you think, wait a second,

do I really have control over my thoughts? Are many of my thoughts just a reaction, an observance of a certain behavior that I'm doing and being able to get to know yourself a little bit? And one other thing, if somebody is encouraged to practice that after this, approach meditation with a curiosity. This is the biggest piece of advice. People think, oh, it's so boring to watch the breath. No, it's exciting. Where is your mind going to go to today? What problems is it going to bring up? What memory from high school of some stupid thing you said is it going to bring forward today and why? You can often draw these thoughts back to some internal or external trigger, whether it's a sound or a thought or anything like that. It's a way of understanding the mind too. And I'm always just, maybe I'm just

easily amused, but I don't think so. I'm just fascinated by where is my mind going to go today? What's it going to bring up? What ideas is it going to arrive at? What thoughts is it going to bring forward? How am I doing? How am I feeling? What am I thinking? So many of these things just run below the surface, but it's such a chance to connect with how we're doing. You know, it's funny you say that because what I like to bring to meditation is a sense of humor. Yeah. Because when you meditate, after you get over saying, I feel like an idiot doing this, when you start out, you're just counting your breath and you're trying to stay focused on your breath. And you start at 10 and you get to 7 and suddenly you're thinking about what you're going to watch on TV that night. Yeah. And then you catch yourself

and what you want to do when you start, you say, oh, I'm bad meditator. I'm terrible at this. Look at me. You know, you know, that voice is coming out again, telling you everything that's wrong with you, but instead choose the humorous voice that says, wow, look at that silly guy, you know, choose the humorous voice that says, wow, look at that silly guy. You know, counted to sevens, thought about TV. Okay, let's start over again. And don't punish yourself. You know, be forgiving and just start again and just see if you can, you know, work on that muscle. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Indeed. Indeed is the number one job site in the world with more total visits than any other job site according to Comscore. Now, hiring is one of those things that you do not want to mess up. It

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and terms and conditions apply. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. So we've been avoiding talking tactics all day, Chris, but you told me something you were doing recently that is very tactical. And I just wanted to share with the audience because I thought it was very clever.

Tell us about your resistance list. Oh, yes. So the resistance list, this is something new I've been trying, but I have an app called Streaks on my phone. And I know, Mike, I don't know if you've chatted about it on the podcast yet. Oh, yes, good choice.

Okay. You know, you did this great rundown of all the best habit trackers and streaks is my favorite of the bunch. And I've got a bunch of daily habits, right? Feel hungry once a day. One of my favorite habits, if you feel hungry once a day, you probably never have to worry about your weight. Vitamin D every day because I live in Canada. Meditate every day. It's another one that I've got a streak going for. But one that I've added to my list recently over the last couple of months or so is to spend one hour on something I'm resisting doing. And so I've got this list in front of me.

I pulled it out because it's on my desk usually. It's a list of everything that I'm resisting. So on this list that I've divvied it up by work and personal. So work things include writing this book, developing, speaking topics, reading research articles for this book, which I always put off at the very beginning until I can settle back into those. A lot of them are on dopamine, as maybe you can tell. I was just reading them before we hopped on the call today. One is making a video, which I've never done before for my site, but there's personal ones too, like learn the piano,

learn to drive again. I have my license, but I should not have my license because I haven't driven in about a decade, and so that's on the list that I'm really putting off. And the idea is every day I only do this for an hour. I often only have to do the things on this list for an hour. But I look at this list and I think, what am I most resisting doing today? Then I set a timer for one hour and I do that thing and I watch it tick down. I have two choices. I can either watch the timer gradually go from 60 minutes down to zero or I can do the thing. And sometimes I watch the timer for a few minutes and kind of ease my way into one of

these tasks, but usually just get it over with and start working on it. And my rule actually is I've adapted this a bit over time, I now force myself to do one and a half hours of resistance training, whatever you want to call it, every day. And I allow meditation to count toward that total. And because there's very few things that we resist doing more than meditation, which is what makes it so powerful. But it usually means a half an hour of meditation and one hour doing something on this list. Because if you start, it's kind of like eating that frog, Brian Tracy's whole thing.

If you start the day doing something that you're putting off and resisting doing, everything on your plate after that fact is a piece of cake. It's just easy. It's just effortless relative to that resistance thing. So if you want to take a habit away from this episode, take away meditation. But if for some reason you're doing it already or the thought of that puts you off, the resistance list is one of my new favorite habits. It's interesting to me that you linked those two together because my brain was already going there as you started talking about it. I'm like, if there was one thing on my resistance list, it's going to be meditation. Glad to hear it's on yours too. Well, when you shared this with me, Chris, we were on a video call together and you held up a yellow pad that you had written down a list of

things. And just, I mean, as soon as I saw the yellow pad, it clicked for me how therapeutic something like this is because we're all carrying this baggage inside of us. We all have our own resistance list. You know, I mean, everybody listening has got some things they know they should be doing, but they just can't get themselves to do. And I love that you quantified it and like kind of getting it off your chest and putting it there. And then now you have a designated daily time to work on that list. It's got to feel really good, right? Oh, it's amazing. And one thing that helps folks at the beginning, and I've chatted with a couple people about this idea, not a lot of people, because it's just a simple little habit. But one thing that works well at

the beginning is really feeling out how resistant you are to doing something. Maybe you might need to do this before settling into doing something for an hour a day. Maybe you don't. Maybe you've got the strength of mind to just kind of jump in. But at the beginning, if you're resisting doing stuff, and I would include this tactic for meditation as well, ask yourself, okay, do I feel like doing this thing that I'm resistant to for an hour today? It's like, no, the thought of it puts me off. Okay, what about 45 minutes? No, I don't want to write for 45 minutes. What about 30 minutes? No. What about 20? Yeah, I could do 20. Then you work on something for 20 minutes and you can keep going past that point until you make this into a habit. And finding, and I forget if you said it, David, or if you said it, Mike, finding ways of being kind to yourself during meditation, but also during work, I think is so critical right now. we're not entirely satisfied with where we're at already. That maybe we're over-investing in the dopamine circuits in our mind

and a bit under-investing in the here and now circuits. So whatever opportunity you have for a tactic like this, you know, hey, most people don't do something like this at all. So even if you are shrinking how long you do it for, you're ahead of most people. So, you know, ease up a little bit. You mentioned eating that frog. And I remember that book being very impactful when I read it the first time. And one of the things that they talk about there is that if you eat the live frog

first thing in the morning, then nothing else worse is going to happen to you that day. But also the emphasis seemed to be the in the morning part. To me anyways, that's how I recall it. Do you feel that this resistance list is best acted on at a specific point or is this something that you do whenever the muse strikes you? Yeah, it depends how busy my morning is. If I have a bunch of calls, I'll do it in the afternoon. But if I were to give advice on this, I would look first to how likely you are to procrastinate on stuff like this and also how impulsive you are, which makes you more likely to procrastinate on things. So if you are highly impulsive, if you are a chronic procrastinator, as I know some people are, do it first. It's worth doing first. But if

you think that you'll be able to do it in the afternoon, or if that's just a better time for you, then that's the best time for you. And this is so often the case with personal productivity stuff is it's personal, right? We're all wired differently. And so we really got to take what works for us and leave the rest. But if I were to offer one little bit of guidance with regard to when to do it, it's maybe look at when you have the most energy, maybe schedule it if that's something you want to do. Maybe do it first thing if you are a procrastinator or impulsive, or if you don't like to be told what to do. Maybe do it first thing if you are a procrastinator or impulsive, or if you don't like to be told what to do, including by yourself, do it whenever the heck you want.

Well, I think it's a great tactic. While you were talking, I put together my own habit tracker for resistance. I set it for 30 minutes, though. I think I'm going to start a little lower than you on it. But I do think it's a great idea. And as soon as I saw your list, as soon as we got that call, I made my own list because there is something to that, I think, of just kind of getting that noise out of the back of your head and putting it down. And it's easier to conquer once you quantify it. It's freeing, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

Is this why you always have a timer going on when we're talking? Yeah, exactly. Every time. Actually, you know, it's funny. I have been trying for the last several months using Toggle, the time tracker, and I find I don't look at the results that often. I have a pretty good idea of what I'm spending my time on. But the intentionality required to turn it on before I start doing something actually helps shift the gear in the brain. Yeah. It's weird.

I'm not sure. Intentionality makes you awareness, right? Because kind of two sides of the same coin. Even when you were talking earlier about the idea of the dopamine network versus the here and now network, I made some notes. I want to think about that more after we get off the call today because I do think maybe there's an intentionality level to that too. It's like, um, as you work through your day, do you stop and remind yourself, you know, what circuit is my brain on right now? You know, am I lost in dopamine? And there are times when you will be, you've got to get through the email list and there's

things you have to do. Right. But, you know, are you spending most of your time during the day in the here and now? Yeah. And how easy is it to switch from one to the other? That's often a great probing question with something like this, because if you are relatively balanced, it's pretty easy to savor things. And many of us used to fall into this category probably before we welcomed a smartphone into our life where we could come home and lie on the couch and pick up a book and read for a whole hour or two without checking anything compulsively,

without seeking out another hit of stimulation or without looking for a reminder that we're important, like with work email or like with social media or with any of the texts that we had coming in. We would eventually, you know, look at the razor phone we had in the other room and flip it open and then deal with what few texts we had then. But now that the people that we work with are so often driven by these dopamine hits, it just means we have more messages incoming our way too, in addition to engaging with them to exacerbate that dopamine-centered way of life. And so I think that's such a critical thing. One of my favorite questions when I meet somebody, and this question perfectly kind of tells me what network they invest in is,

I ask somebody, what do you savor the most in life? I love that. And some people don't have an answer. Some people I ask, and they'll look at me with a blank stare and not be able to come up with anything. And I'm always, you know, I hope it's kind of a good probing question in a way and not an accusatory question in that way, but really reflecting on a day-to-day basis, what do you savor? Do you savor the time with your family, with, you know, board games or just presence with other people? Or do you just look for another hit of stimulation? I think it's one of the best reflections we can do. I don't know. I want to make sure I'm framing this correctly, but the topic of dopamine has come up over and over and over again. And I don't know if that's because you said you were studying it before the podcast, so it's fresh. But it sounds

to me, based on everything that we've talked about here today, that at this moment, in terms of rewiring the defaults, which is really what we're going for, is this the number one thing that we can do is to focus on pushing back against that dopamine? I think so. My very first assignment from my very first mindfulness teacher, I mean, in the early 90s, was she called it the telephone practice. Every time the telephone rings, stop and ask yourself, at the moment the telephone rang, was your mind with the rest of your body?

Whatever you were working on, was your mind engaged on that? And I have kept that practice for 30 years, and it's such a great way to kind of combat that problem. Yeah. And dopamine, I find this fascinating, fascinating idea. I think it's the enemy of calm right now because we're seeking so much accomplishment. We're seeking so much productivity and we're seeking so little presence. But the world is an anxious place. I would even call the world over-anxious.

Just tune into the news for a little bit or your social media feeds and you'll see a lot of things that activate dopamine because they're so novel. And not only are they novel, they're also threatening and pleasurable so often of the time. But I think in a world that is overanxious, the path to productivity, the path to all this stuff, all this engagement, it runs straight through calm, right? Because calm being the opposite of anxiety on a lot of different levels, it makes us present. It makes us focused. It settles our mind. It leads to fewer unnecessary thoughts in the moment. It leads us to become more focused. It leads to fewer things clouding how we think throughout the day. And so that's something I'd keep in mind that, A, dopamine on so many different levels, including on that neurological level when you look at the different brain networks, is the enemy of calm. It's kind of,

yeah, it's the opposition of calm, but also that the path to greater productivity in an overanxious world runs straight through calm as well. And so it's something that I'm thinking a lot, a lot, a lot about. And there's a lot of misconceptions around dopamine. It's actually a good thing a lot of the time. It's what leads us to become engaged with what we're doing so often. So we need some dopamine. We need some stress as well, because without that, we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Without that, we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. But we need to make sure we have balance. And balance is not just about mental health, even though that's a big part of things. It's really about being able to sustain ourselves in the long run and continue to be able to deliver on what it is that we want to do, on the intentions that we set. I think that's a great place to wrap it up.

The path to productivity runs through calm. That's a great takeaway from this entire episode, I feel. If people want to find out more about any of the stuff that we talked about today, we've got links in the show notes. But Chris, where would you point people who want to know a little bit more about you? Chris, where would you point people who want to know a little bit more about you? Yeah. So my website is called The Life of Productivity. It's at alifeofproductivity.com. I also have a podcast that I do with my wife.

It's called Becoming Better. And that's at becomingbettershow.com. I need a better website, but I'm pretty happy with the podcast for that. And yeah, the books, Productivity Project and Hyperfocus, which is basically a book about mindfulness, and How to Train Your Mind, which is the Audible thing. Oh, Chris, I'm a big fan. Every time you come on the show, I say this, but I feel like your books are such great entry points for people who want to get a nice overview of the productivity and mindful space. They're written with such a great voice. Your books are the productivity books that I recommend to my wife and folks who don't listen to a show

like Focused but could use some of this great advice. And we all appreciate all the hard work you put into that stuff. Thanks so much, man. It's so fun to be here. I love you guys. All right. We are the Focused Podcast you can find us over at relay.fm slash focused, you can join in the conversation over at talk.macpowerusers.com we have a forum right there for the Focused Podcast

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