Focused - 65: Hyperfocused with Chris Bailey

Episode Date: January 22, 2019

Author and productivity experimenter Chris Bailey joins us to share ideas and strategies for getting your focus on.

Hello and welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Great. And I'm excited to introduce our guest today. Welcome to the show, Chris Bailey. Thank you for having me. Long time listener. Oh, that's great. Great to hear. Chris is an author of several books. The first one, you came on my radar, Chris, when you released the book called The Productivity Project. And I thought this was just a great idea. I don't read as many productivity books as Mike does.

My wife reads even fewer. But when I read your productivity project book i immediately bought a copy for her because it was just such a great overview and ideas and gang what chris did was he turned himself into a science experiment and i don't know how else to put it and uh and he took every uh good and wacky productivity idea and tried it out on himself and reported back. And he had that going on his website for many years. And then that turned into this book called The Productivity Project, which I thought was just an excellent book. And then Chris just released a new book called Hyperfocus. And we named the show Focus. So how could we not have Chris on as our first guest after the rebrand, right? Absolutely.

I agree. Yeah. There's no, I would have been so offended if I hadn't received this invite. So thank you for not offending me. Well, I really think Chris takes a real sane approach to productivity. It's the kind of thing we're looking for and kind of shooting for with this show that, you know, we don't all have all the answers, but we really want to help people on the journey. And thanks for coming on the show, Chris. Thank you. I do take issue with one thing that you mentioned. And that's that note of sanity,

because, you know, you've probably read about a few of the experiments I conducted. So you might have to run that one by my fiance before getting the okay for that, because she had to put up with a lot of stuff. She still does, you know, less than the days in the days of the productivity project. I'm just kind of hunkered down in my office with my loud clicky keyboard all day. Cherry browns over cherry blues. Of course. Of course, you know, as what one should do. But yeah, so she puts up with a bit less, but that notion of sane,

you know, I like to think I'm sane, but maybe that's a sign that I'm not. Well, some of the experiments that you did in that book were pretty crazy. So just as an example, definitely go read the book. I'm not going to give away everything, but there's a lot of advice about how you need to work more, you need to work less. You basically took like all the extremes, tried them and then said, here's my findings. Yeah. So I forget what the numbers were, but it was crazy. You worked like 80 hour weeks and then you worked like 10 hour weeks and you compared like how much you're able to get done in each of those and you found the sweet spot and really just kind of dug in and became the guinea pig for all the stuff that you hear people talk about. But you have like real numbers to share based on your own experience for basically everything that you

might hear. Yes. And I think this is kind of a pitfall is a lot of folks write and talk about productivity and they stand on their soapbox and they say, this is the five step solution with a trademark after the word solution that you need to become more productive. These people always put trademarks after everything for some reason. You know, when I see a trademark, I usually turn the other way, except for getting things done. I feel that's a good framework where maybe he had to trademark it. But, you know, I think this is where often the best advice comes from is where you, instead of saying everybody should work a 35-hour week, and using that as blanket productivity advice, maybe instead say, okay, the hours were not, I worked 90 hours one week,

then 20 hours the next, then 90, then 20, to see the difference that working these insane hours, and then these more luxurious hours had on my productivity. And this is actually one of the most surprising discoveries that I made over the course of the project was that when I looked at the actual logs after this experiment, I felt four and a half times more productive in the 90-hour weeks than I did in the 20-hour weeks. But when I looked beyond how busy I was to how much I actually accomplished, we tend to look at how busy we are as a proxy for our productivity, but with these productivity experts from around the world and the researchers, when I looked at how many words I wrote, so my output and how good it was, I came to the conclusion that this is, you know, one of the most surprising discoveries, but I accomplished only a bit more working 90 hours a week than I did during 20 hours a week. And I thought,

you know, what the hell is going on here? You know, what is true about this situation? And I realized, okay, I'm working with greater intention behind what I'm doing, which I've come to really firmly believe that intention is what lies at the core of productivity. It's not busyness. It's not how much we can automate, even though automation helps us work with intention. It's how much we work with intention behind what we do. That's what lets us accomplish more. And I think that's why I accomplished so much in those 20-hour weeks is, you know, I had no choice but to become A, intentional and B, focused about what I should be working on in the first place.

Yeah, it's funny. This is kind of off topic what we're going to cover today, but just in my life today, we're recording this at noon, and at 3.30, there's a family thing that I have to go to. And I was just looking this morning as I was going through my schedule for the day, and I was like, I'm just going to have to get everything done that I would normally get done and be out of here by 3.30. And you know what? I probably will. Because all the other stuff is going to go away. I think it's totally on topic. When you shrink how long you give yourself for something, you have no choice but to expend more energy and more attention over that shorter

distance of time so you can get that thing actually accomplished. It's like people always say, I don't have time to grab coffee, or I don't have time to cook for myself, I don't have time to meditate. But then the hot water heater breaks, and suddenly you find 10 or 15 hours that week to fix the hot water heater while keeping up with your work demands, with your family demands, and sure, you're a bit more at capacity, but it's this classic Parkinson's law where, you know, and I'm sure a lot of the folks listening are familiar with it. If they're not familiar with the definition of the law, maybe they are with the effects of it, but it's this rule where our work tends to expand to fit how much time we have

available for its completion. And so, you know, I think that was another reason why those 90-hour weeks were so unproductive is, realistically, I probably had 40, 50 hours of work to do, real work. And then beyond that point, that work began to expand. And it's never the important stuff that expands, it's always the novel distractions. It's like, we just check email repeatedly and just refresh Twitter and, you know, see, oh, one new tweet, even though you follow 500 people, you know, you stay on top of these things. And I think that's the problem is the work can be so novel sometimes. You cover this in the hyper focus book the idea like when you finished your productivity project book when

you were in the throes of writing a book and all the work that it entails and then you suddenly you turn in the book and you're done and you find yourself at a period of time where you don't have as much production going on you don don't have that high-end book writing going on. Yet you found yourself just as busy, and it surprised you. Yeah. Well, of course, because we tend to look at how busy we are as a proxy for our productivity. If we're twice as busy, we feel twice as productive. And when we do knowledge work for a living, this is the difficult, the difficult list part, the most difficult part is measuring how productive we are.

You know, how do we measure how productive we are when we do knowledge work for a living? You know, one person can write 400 lines of code over the course of a day and be twice as productive on paper as somebody who wrote 200 lines of code. But if those 400 lines of code had half of the amount of features and twice the amount of bugs, then were they really that productive after all? And I actually wrote an essay for the New York Times about that particular observation that I had after writing the book. And it was a bit controversial. It's called Distracted. You Should Work Harder. And it a lot of people off. Sorry, you might have to get you might have some editing work after I apologize. But it upset a lot of people, especially, especially the people that don't want to confront these truths and do the work.

But I think this is an uncomfortable truth that a lot of us need to confront, is if you have time to check Twitter unnecessarily, if you have time to check email repeatedly, if you find yourself doing a lot of water cooler chit chat, that's your work expanding. And so that means you have the room for your work to expand, assuming that you usually meet your deadlines and ship things on time, as probably most of the people listening to a show about productivity do. You know, somebody who has that drive to become better, it's kind of an ironic thing, but usually we don't reflect on how good we're doing already because we see the problems about our work

situation. We don't really realize how much we're already accomplishing. You're probably accomplishing a good amount, but maybe your work is expanding a little bit because you work so efficiently when you do have a deadline. So it's something that we need to assess. Assess your busy work level. If it's high, maybe you could take on more projects. Maybe you can make your work more challenging. Maybe you have the room to mentor somebody. Maybe you can invest in your training and upping your skills so that, you know, it's a cliche, but you can work a bit smarter instead of just harder because you can approach the projects that you're working on from the proper direction. And I think it's something that we don't consider enough as it relates to our focus, because focus comes easy. Now, of course, when we have a deadline, when we have somebody like sitting over our shoulders saying, Chris, write this damn book. But when we have less structure, when we have more room for that expansion, it becomes a bit more difficult. There's so much stuff in there. I want to just call out one thing specifically you said about not being busy and using that as the gauge for productivity. I know this is something that I've fallen into myself where it's almost like you base how productive you were at the end of

the day by how tired you feel. Because if you're really tired, you must have really put in a lot of effort and you must have really made a dent in the things that you have to do. But that's really not the case. And your feelings can be misleading. And then also you said that focus comes easy when you have a deadline, for example. And I think maybe that varies from person to person. But the principle is definitely true that motivation can be manufactured. And if you find yourself in a life and death situation, all of a sudden you have the motivation to do something and take action and save your life, regardless of how much willpower you have at that moment. The motivation can be on call if you know how to call on it. And it challenges me to think about the situations that I put myself in and how can

I do that without having to flip into panicked fight versus flight response? Yeah. Yeah. I love that first part. How do you measure your productivity? And I think, if I look at the situation that I'm in for some of the time, I would say I don't. I don't measure my productivity. And so I would wager a guess, extrapolating and generalizing across the entire audience of this podcast, that a lot of people would be in the same boat. But the truth is that we do measure our productivity, just not with a level of deliberateness that we should. Exactly. So we measure how tired we are at the end of the day. If we're wiped, we, oh, we were probably productive.

oh, we were probably productive. If we were super busy and have an empty email inbox, we feel productive because, hey, we're on top of everything. But it's not about how much we produce. It's about how much we accomplish. And so I think one of my favorite tactics, and I've done this for years, I just keep it in like Apple's Notes app, is I have a list of all the big accomplishments that I've achieved since, let me scroll through, accomplishments and milestones, since 2012. And so this is a running list. It's the big accomplishments for the year. But I also keep a running list over the course of the month with the smaller, more granular items that I achieved. Because, you know, this is another effect that might be well known in productivity. So, you know, I feel this is kind of a weakness of my work right now, as I'm so ensconced in this productivity world that I forget

what people, you know, where people are coming from. But there's this classic effect called the Zygartnik effect, which leads us to remember the incomplete projects that we're in the middle of significantly more than everything we've already achieved and accomplished. And so we recall that basement closet that we really need to clean and have needed to clean for quite some time. And we forget about all the times we've completed it in the past. We forget about a project the moment that we finish it, the moment we ship a book, the moment we publish a podcast, the moment we transition a show from focused. We forget about the free agent show, what it was before. We're always on to the next thing, the next problem, the next crisis that we need to solve. And I think this combats this idea, keeping this accomplishments list. This is why

we should be investing in our productivity. It's not to be busy, it's to be less busy, but it's to accomplish more because that's what we're left with at the end of the day. And so this is, it's a nice way of, you know, the very idea that we want to become more productive implies that we're not satisfied with how much we're already accomplishing. But we accomplish a crap ton of stuff, but we just forget about it the moment after we do. And so this allows us to kind of, you know, pat ourselves on the back a little bit and say, you know what, Mike, you know what, David, you know what, Chris, you're doing okay. You're accomplishing enough. You just don't remember it because of this stupid Zygarnik effect, which is actually quite handy. It's interesting because, you know, like I keep a list of things I say no to. That's a

whole different thing, you know, just to kind of remind myself as I take on new projects what good things I've already turned down. But, uh, and I do a journal where I kind of journal things that I've accomplished, but I haven't done a list. I think that's a really great idea. That is a great idea. And I haven't done the formal list to hearing you talk about it, Chris. I think that's something that I definitely need to implement, but I did do when I, we've talked about the idea of the personal retreat on free agents previously. And the very first time that I did it, I went away and I started thinking, and I was kind of depressed at the time because I was like, what did I really even accomplish this year? Exactly to what you're talking about.

Like, I forgot everything that I had done. So I just gave myself an hour and made a list of all of the things that I was able to create and publish this year. And by the time I got done, I'm like, whoa, actually, I had a pretty awesome year. That's awesome. Yeah. And that's how we should feel. That's why we should be. It's for that feeling of accomplishing a lot. And what helps me a lot, and it took kind of a little bit to arrive at this point, but it's to look through your calendar and look at all the events you attend. Look at all if you schedule blocks of writing time, look through your blog to see what you published. Look at your email inbox, look at your things. You know, I forget

what it's called kind of the log of Yeah, logbook of everything you've accomplished. And yeah, really pat yourself on the back. We don't do that enough. This episode of Focused is brought to you by our friends at Hover, who are celebrating their 10-year anniversary this January. With Hover, you can find the domain that shows the world who you are and what you're passionate about. In fact, whenever I get an idea for a side project, one of the first things that I do is I go to Hover to make sure that the domain that I want is available. For example, Faith-Based Productivity is a new project of mine, but I've owned faithbasedproductivity.com for years. The great thing about Hover and the reason that I recommend it so often is that they

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code as a measure of productivity. There's a really famous story about Bill Atkinson. He was one of the original Apple programmers. He's the guy who wrote MacPaint. I mean, this goes way back. And Apple was a bunch of, especially the Mac team, was a bunch of pirates when they first started. But at some point, they got, you know, human resources management, and things started getting corporate, you know, quote unquote. And at some point, somebody decided they wanted every Apple programmer to report in every week with the number of lines of code they wrote. Exactly the issue Chris is talking about. And Bill Atkinson was just this wizard of programming.

And he, so like one week, he figured out a way to reduce the code to run, I think, MacWrite or MacPaint by like 10,000 lines. So he turned in his report as negative 10,000. According to the powers that be, that was not a very productive week. But, you know, it actually was. Well, yeah, you know, If Abraham Lincoln came to you and said, oh, I wrote 272 words today, you'd say, oh, good job, Abraham. Very nice. And he'd say, oh, it's called the Gettysburg Address. And it's very short, but I feel you might have the same reaction. Well, you see, I have this adverse reaction to the whole kind of productivity racket, which makes me a very strange person to be making a podcast about it. But, but one of the very first things you wrote in hyper focus was your

definition of productivity. Do you remember that part? Yeah. Accomplishing what we intend to do. Yes, exactly. I mean, and, and for so many people, it's not, you know, I mean the, the subtitle of this show is that it's about more than cranking widgets. And I feel like you are right on it, man. Being productive isn't answering 10,000 emails. It's about making something awesome every day. what do you want to accomplish? There are a lot of days, and I realized at the beginning of this year, like, wow, I was way too busy last year. You know, I was busy making money, busy traveling, doing all this stuff. But it kind of made me uncomfortable because I had less time to reflect than I normally would. And, you know, of course, it's that reflection, that scattering of our attention that gives us so many ideas. And so I thought, okay, my intention this year, my frame for this year is going to be more self-love. I think that's a word that's thrown around a lot, kind of like

productivity, but it's going to be just being kind to myself. I'm going to make a list every day of a few ways to do that because I was way too busy. I checked and I had, I think, 45 flights in the last two months of last year just touring around for the book and doing talks at various places. And it was too much. And so my intention is very much that self-care. The other day, here's a good example. Have you seen the show The Good Place on NBC? I have not.

I've heard of it. My kids watch it religiously, but I don't watch a lot of TV. Me either. But I thought, okay, one of these things, I'm going to try binge watching a show. And so I formed an intention to binge watch this show and order some food and things like that. And I did. I actually watched 19 episodes of this show in one day. I think that's, you know, I'm very productive at being unproductive. But that was my intention. And so I would argue, I would make the case, and maybe, you know, some therapists might call this like justification or whatever the word is. But I would make the case that that day, I was perfectly productive because I set an intention, I accomplished that intention, and so what more could I want to do than what I wanted to do? And it becomes a kind of a circular loop after that point.

And so when we set these intentions at the beginning of the day, when we choose what we do, that's what we need to measure our productivity against. Our intentions are the ruler stick that we should be measuring our productivity against, not how busy we are and nothing else like that. But on the other hand, if our intention, like my intention today was to write 1500 words, was to learn more about logic for a podcast that I'm creating. And those were the two big intentions that I set for the day, and have fun in a couple interviews today as well. And so far, so good. And it looks like I'm on track to achieve that. And so if I do, I would make the argument to myself and to everybody else that I was perfectly productive

today as well. And so, you know, one day watching 19 episodes, it's a 22 minute show, just FYI. So it's not as bad as it sounds on the surface, but it's still pretty bad. You know, day A, watching 19 episodes of The Good Place, and day B, writing 1500 words and learning a new software program while doing interviews. Both days were busy, but I think both days were productive because it begins and ends with that intention. I love that the very first guest we have on Focus talks about productivity as binge-watching 19 episodes of TV. I would challenge somebody to top that.

Well, I like the example because David and I kind of talked about that in the last episode. I feel like you articulated it way better than I did, which was just that being productive is being intentional with how you are spending your time, your attention, your energy. If you decide that this is the thing I want to do and that thing is watching multiple hours of Netflix, then watching Netflix is not unproductive. But it's the fact that you default to Netflix because you're tired, because you've been living in this state of, I got to do one more thing. I got to crank out one more widget. I got to do, we got to write 100 more words, whatever. And you're focused on the wrong output. And then you get to the end

of the day and you've been busy and you feel like maybe you were productive, but you just are exhausted and you no longer have the mental resources to direct your attention and intention to the place that it should be going. And so that's where you end up, quote unquote, wasting that time. But if you decide this is the thing for me to do right now, then whatever that thing is, it's perfectly okay and it's perfectly productive. Exactly. And I would actually make the wager, and I talk about binge watching Netflix in the book a little bit because it's something that everybody does, but we all feel guilty about it when we shouldn't. Because if we do it with intention, that guilt will evaporate.

When we do anything with intention, that guilt, maybe not like commit a serious crime, but when we do most things with intention, that guilt evaporates. Because guilt is really this doubt about what we're doing and whether we're spending our time, our attention, our energy in the best possible place. And so, when we eliminate that lack of certainty, there's this confidence that follows us regardless of what we happen to be doing. And so, I would make the bet that when you feel bad about binge-watching something about how you spent your time, you know, you're probably not living in accordance with your values, but there's probably also a lack of intention behind what you're doing in the first place. So it's kind of a curious, guilt is, I find it to be such a fascinating

and informative emotion. Because usually when we experience guilt, we're also not doing whatever we're doing with intent. And it's something that I think a lot about because there's this guilt of not working, of just resting and letting our mind wander that I make the argument in the book that it lets us become more productive and intentional overall. But we do have to combat that feeling every once in a while. Yeah, something we haven't mentioned yet is this book is called Hyperfocus. And I started reading the book thinking it was all about hyperfocus, how to get yourself to that space

where you can focus on getting the client presentation or writing the song or doing the book or whatever. But about halfway through, Chris pulls one on us and says, well, guess what? Very tricksy. You also need to be able to let go of hyper focus. He calls it scatter focus. Excuse me, I'm getting over cold.

So, but the, and I've heard, you know, I've, I've, I love the idea of those things being two sides of the same coin that they not only do you have this, this laser focus or hyper focus that you can bring to bear, but you also have the ability to give yourself space and to step back and let your mind, you know, just kind of go free range a bit and let you be creative. And I think both of those things are essential pieces for anyone who wants to get better at this stuff. Yeah, oh, absolutely. You know, there was one of the experiments I conducted in writing this book was purposefully making myself bored for one month. And so for one month, each day I did something for an hour that Ouch. Which are actually shorter. Ouch. Well, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but it's not like legally. So I actually understood and I thought it was kind of interesting.

I actually got through it a couple of times because it's easier to read than you might think, especially when it's printed off on paper. So you can't really stimulate yourself with other distractions. I waited on hold with Air Canada's baggage claims department for an hour. I didn't hear that. Another day, I plucked the seeds from a strawberry. Another day, I counted all the zeros in the first 10,000 digits of pie. I think I made it a third halfway through. That one was tougher. I'd just concentrate on this boring, tedious activity. But I noticed, for some reason, like after about eight days of doing this experiment, after about a week, that a few

curious things began to happen. You know, first of all, I had more ideas coming to me. Second of all, I had more energy to pursue those ideas. And third, I had more plans for the future. And I started doing some digging and doing some research into why this is the case. And over the course of doing this, and this is why I pull a fast one on you when you're reading the book, you know, you think it's a book about focus, but it's actually a book about unfocusing too, and how to do that more in a way that's more conducive to getting more ideas and becoming more planning, planful about the future. So, the research about where our mind wanders to is some of the most fascinating stuff that I encountered over the course of writing this book. There are two researchers, Jonathan Smallwood and Jonathan Schooler, I think both at UC Irvine, that look at where our mind wanders to. So, they do random thought probes with their participants.

And they found that when our mind is wandering, it wanders to the past about 12% of the time, which it's a good amount, but it's less than we might think. Our mind, though, wanders to the present 28% of the time. So this is when we're working on something and our mind wanders, and it wanders to think about alternative approaches to an email that we're writing, to a problem that we're facing with a colleague. But the fascinating thing about this mode is that our mind wanders to think about the future more than the past and the present combined. It thinks about the future about 48% of the time when our mind is wandering. So most of us just experience this when we're taking a shower. So we're taking a shower and then out of the ether, a few of these insight triggers hit us. And this beautiful

insight that we've been tackling all afternoon for maybe if we're learning logic, maybe we think about the thing that we were learning in the course and then connect that to the problem that we were facing. And then the idea hits us for how we should proceed. You know, we think about the future half of the time. And this is why so many ideas come to us in the shower. This is why so many plans come to us in the shower. Because when we bounce around between the past to the present to the future, to the present to the past to the present, this allows us to connect the constellations of ideas that are swirling around in our mind. And so I call this deliberate mind-wandering mode scatter focus, because it's easier to say than mentioning deliberate mind-wandering every single time. But I make

the argument in the book, and I think this is backed up enough by research to follow through on this argument that the most creative mode of our mind is this mode scatter focus, because it's when we get our ideas, it's when we get our plans, and it's when we rest because we replenish how much mental energy we have when we don't have to force ourselves to focus on anything in particular. And because we bounce around between the past to the present to the future in this mode, whatever it is that gets us into this mode. C.G.B. Gray plays the truck simulation game. Some people like the sauna. Some people, Stephen Hackett might look at some old Macs. Whatever it is, you like the Relay FM reference? I've been like a closeted... I like that.

For some reason, my books have never crossed paths with RelayFM, but looking through my podcast client right now, I got upgrades in here, the talk show, which isn't RelayFM, but Mac Power Users, Connected, Automators, ATP,

Cortex, the list goes on. Well, now those dreams have crossed, man. You're in. Man, it's like my life coming full circle on me and I don't know how to handle myself. But I think that the key is that, you know, whatever it is that you do, I'm a big fan of knitting to let my mind wander. But take an extra long shower. Take a bath instead

of a shower. Go on a walk without your phone because these ideas will come to you. And you'll probably be surprised at how many there are. Yeah, I want to touch on something real quickly here because I think it can get lost maybe in what you just said. Scatter focus is different than the boredom that you were describing earlier. Because scatter focus, coming back to the intentionality and how we're going to spend our time, this is focus creative mode. You mentioned chapter six, basically, your brain's hidden creative mode. So that's really what this is. But when you apply it intentionally, it does a couple of positive things and it alleviates the boredom, which you kind of define as unwanted scatter focus. And that's the thing

that causes you to look for the distractions. And that's the thing that makes us anxious. But when we intentionally switch over into scatter focus mode and we purpose to let our brain noodle on connecting these dots for us, then we don't have to deal with that stuff. But most people never intentionally make that switch. You share some stats in the book. You mentioned that 83% of Americans don't spend any time relaxing or thinking, and that's really what scatter focus is. So if you don't let your brain take a break, eventually your brain says, I'm taking a break. And it looks for those distractions. Yeah, exactly. And then you find yourself in front of Netflix for 12 hours.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. In an unintentional way. I think that is a critical distinction. Boredom is unwanted scatter focus, for sure. I do not condone... Well, if you want to give it a shot and let me know how it goes, I feel that nobody listening will take me up on this offer. But if you want to, you know, read the iTunes terms and conditions and count the digits of pi, you know, feel free to do so, but you don't need to. And in fact, when you look at something fun, when you're scattering your attention, when you do something you find enjoyable, this actually leads to a greater number of creative insights. And it's because more dopamine is coursing through your brain. Your brain is simply more active in what you're doing. And so that allows you to kind of form more deeper connections. And I think that's a critical thing.

Do something fun and habitual that doesn't consume your full attention, because your mind will wander. And because you're doing something fun, that'll anchor you to the present moment until you're finished with a few rows of the knitting pattern, for example. Because you'll actually enjoy that scatter-focused time instead of it being unwanted. I've had some of my best ideas while washing the dinner dishes, you know, and I think that's so true. And I think the two things you point out in this book is how little or how bad we are in a lot of terms at focusing on the hyper focus in and how we've, I feel like we've

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us section. We thank FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. I'm curious, Chris, do you have, how do you balance these two on a day-to-day basis? Do you just kind of do things that you feel like you should be doing at the moment? Do you block off time on your calendar for X number of hours of hyperfocus, X number of hours of scatter focus? Or what's the balance like? Yeah, I feel like kind of carving out time is advice that sounds good, but that once you actually experiment with it, you know, it kind of falls apart. And that's exactly what I found over the course of writing the book. I was writing all this advice, okay, we should schedule one, two hours of scatter focus time every day. And I realized, okay, this isn't something I'm following myself.

Does this actually work in practice? I tried to do it, and it was very hard to keep up with. So I'm really convinced that making just small little tweaks to our day to get little moments of scatter focus. So whenever I travel, I make sure I get a hotel room that has a bathtub inside of it. Because that's one of my favorite ways of relaxing and unwinding. I've got my Bluetooth speaker in there. I put on, usually not a podcast, but some classical music. I'll relax, I'll unwind. Maybe they'll give one of those house coats because it's like a nice hotel. And just let my mind wander over the course of that session. And so, little habits like that. Whenever I walk to get a tea at the Tim Hortons, because I live up here in Canada, whenever I walk to get a tea, I don't have my phone with me. Instead, I just carry a notepad

with me. I make sure I knit every single day because it's a cool habit that I love doing because you get something to hold in your hands after it's done. But it also lets my mind wander a little bit. I don't check email until around 9 or 10 in the morning. Today, I made it to 10.30, which is a new record for this week. And so just simple little habits like these that you could work into your day. How do you enjoy scattering your attention? Do you like taking showers? Do you like taking baths? Do you like washing the dishes? Do you find that to be kind of a soothing, rhythmic thing to do with your hands? And I think that's a good place to start is, you know,

schedule it if you want, but I think that might not work for to start is, you know, schedule it if you want. But I think that might not work for you. What might work a bit better is finding these little moments to create little air pockets in our day that we can just breathe. You know, our attention can wander a bit. We can just rest up and think. We don't think enough. We do too much.

We don't think enough. I love that. Yeah, that's definitely true. Kind of the key tenet of my personal retreat thing that I do is that I take a day once a quarter because I like to follow the 12-week year framework and set my goals for the quarter. And then I either hit them or I don't. If you don't, then it gives you a chance to restart. If you hit them, then you don't have to wait until the end of the year and scramble month 11 to accomplish them, like move on to something else. But a key piece of that is setting aside, in my case, an entire day just to think.

And it's amazing to me how much clarity comes when you ask the right questions of yourself, and then you let your brain untie them. So the three questions, and we've mentioned this on the podcast, three questions I like are, what should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? And my experience, and it's probably the same thing with whatever sort of guiding questions you would choose to use for your thinking time. But at first, you get a whole bunch of things. And then you're like, okay, that's pretty good. I'm going to go implement this. The real trick is pushing past that and just letting your brain think on it because there's a whole nother level that it eventually gets to if you give it enough time to just think. Yeah. And I think a big part of that is becoming less stimulated. And this is something that

was one of the more surprising findings is we're so hard on ourselves whenever we get distracted. But I make the argument that it's not our fault that we're as distracted as we are today. Because there's this mechanism in our mind, I don't understand it completely. I'm a productivity guy, not a neuroscientist, but I talked to a few neuroscientists over the course of writing the book to try to do so. a few neuroscientists over the course of writing the book to try to do so. And there's this mechanism in our brain's prefrontal cortex called the novelty bias, where for each time we focus on something that's new and novel, our brain rewards us with a hit of dopamine, one of the main pleasure chemicals of our body, each time we do so. So we go over to Instagram, we get a hit of dopamine. We check Twitter, we get a hit of dopamine. We go listen to a podcast, we get a hit of dopamine. We go talk

to somebody in person, we get a hit of dopamine. We check Reddit, we get a hit of dopamine. And so we find ourselves bouncing around between a loop of the same apps. We find ourselves in these dopamine-fueled feedback loops. And so it's so easy to fall victim to distraction for this reason. So if you're doing kind of one of these think breaks, as Bill Gates does, one of these thinking retreats just to process ideas, I would give that advice is make sure that what environment you're inside of is less novel than what you're in regularly. Because, you know, it'll take a bit to adjust downward into that state of lower stimulation, about a week, studies show. But, you know, you begin to adjust right away. And once you do, you become more thoughtful,

you become more deliberate, you become less reactive about how you manage your attention. And so you get out in front of that impulse for distraction, which I think is really important. David, do you know, you know, is this something that's expensable if somebody has a business, one of these think breaks? I would hope so. I don't know. Talk to your accountant. Yeah.

But you know, it's funny. I guess you're a lawyer, not an accountant. I don't deal with the sevens and the threes. But the something that I do think about, you know, reading this in your book and having looked at this topic before is the problem, and I do want to get to the topic of digital detox here in a minute. I feel like the problem with jumping between these things is very similar to the idea of eating empty calories to me. You know, you guys were talking about earlier how you get to the end of the day and you're exhausted as a measure of productivity. were talking about earlier, how you get to the end of the day and you're exhausted as a measure of productivity. And I think for a lot of people, probably yourselves included, getting to the end of the day and feeling exhausted is probably a sign of eating a lot of empty productivity calories,

not so much getting work done. Because I always feel energized when I have a plan and I stick to it and I get to the end of the day and it's done. But I think, you know, this whole idea on both sides of your coin, Chris, both the hyper focus and scatter focus, being able to disconnect from those distractions is one of the key premises of your book that I took away. Yeah. And we don't spend enough time not bouncing around between distractions. You know, look at, you know, I think a helpful reflection is look at the last block, the last period of time that you were disconnected from the internet, deliberately, maybe a period longer than six hours that wasn't a plane ride somewhere. And most of us don't

fare too well in this. We're constantly connected. We have our devices attached at our hip. We're going from screen to screen to screen to screen. And so our mind is always focusing on something and never really wandering. One of my favorite daily rituals for disconnecting and wandering every single day is to totally disconnect from the internet between 8pm and 8am. And so I get to ease out of the day with my fiance Arden and, you know, we get to have dinner, maybe a glass or two of wine before we unwind for the evening and go to bed. And then when we wake up, the first thing that we pull out isn't our phone. It's, you know, we have a conversation with each other. We talk about what we want to accomplish that day. We start and end

the day on a slow note. And I think this is something that we don't think about enough is so often we equate productivity with speed. But with speed comes a lack of deliberateness and intention. And it often comes exhaustion and feeling burnt out at the end of the day. And so, you know, I think one of the best ways to become more focused and more deliberate about how we manage our attention is slowing down. You know, we don't work slowly enough. I'm a big, I'm a big, maybe not speaking slowly, as you can tell, but writing slowly, I'm a big fan of. Because I find that when I write slower, I end up writing more words by the time the day is done. And the words that I wrote are something that I'm more proud of, as opposed to if I hunkered down

and just wrote nonstop. The way I'm writing the way that I am today is slowly, one word at a time, really thinking about each sentence, because you can't write backwards. You can only write forwards. And by doing so, you're able to think more thoughtfully about what you're doing. But I would make the argument that our work is the exact same way. You know, if we're so immersed in what we're doing that we're exhausted by the end of the day, we're probably not working slowly enough that we notice that we shouldn't be somebody else to do, whether it's somebody on our team, whether it's a virtual assistant, whether it's some shell script that we can program to do that job for us. And so, I think slowing down is one of the answers to this. And this novelty bias means that there's so much dopamine coursing through our brain that we feel restless when we're not surrounded by distraction. But I think that restlessness is a sign that you need to slow down. If you sit on the couch

without your phone and just a notepad, where does your mind go? What is the condition of your attentional space? Is it restless or is it thoughtful? Are you ready to reflect when you have that notepad in your hands? Or is your mind just looking for that next novel thing so that you can stay at that same level of stimulation? Man, there's a really important point that you just kind of hit on regarding the things that you can automate or delegate. But backing up just a little bit, it occurs to me that for a lot of people's situations, there's two pieces to productivity, and they are sometimes inversely related, which is efficiency and effectiveness. And you were talking about slowing down to do your work. I really think that that's a key principle people need to understand is that there are some things where

efficiency is not the right answer because if you can do this thing faster than somebody else and you keep doing it every single day but you could if you put forth a little bit of effort delegate this to somebody else and offload it so you didn't have to think about it anymore how much more effective could you be with the other things that you have to do? Any tips for identifying where that line is for people? Hmm. Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, having a greater understanding of the second and third order consequences

of doing anything is pretty critical there. So, for example, you know, you might answer an email and a first order consequence of that is that that issue gets solved and the effects don't really cascade beyond that point. But you might compare that action of answering an email to mentoring a new employee that just joined your team, where for every five minutes you spend with that employee, you deepen that relationship with the person. They're more connected to the work that they're doing. They're able to work that much more efficiently because you have this bird's eye view of the work that they're doing and where they should be spending their time, attention, and energy. And so I think looking at the effects

that cascade beyond just that first order consequence, you know, first order consequences, maybe they work a bit more efficiently. But a first order consequence. First order consequences, maybe they work a bit more efficiently. But a second order consequence might be that they become more involved with the work that they're doing. They help other folks out on the team. That might become a third order consequence. They might feel more emotionally invested in what they're doing. Their customers might be happy if they're doing client facing work. And so I think looking at the actions on our plate and really thinking about the effects beyond just what needs to get done. And I think this is a major downside of an app like things. I haven't used OmniFocus too much because every time I look at it, I get scared. But for things, I think this is a downside of it is it doesn't tell you what's important.

Everything on that list has the same amount of importance. You might think one project's more important than another, but it doesn't tell you what produces the greater consequences beyond just the immediate term. And so I would look at, you know, here's an activity that I think everybody on the planet should do. And just to determine your focus in general is make, and I've said this in a couple podcasts, so forgive me if you've already heard a podcast interview and have heard this, but I will repeat this activity till the cows come home because I think it's so important. And here it is. Make a list of every single activity you do in your work over the course of a month. And, you know, get it all out onto a piece of paper in front of you. And once those are out of your head, ask yourself, if I could only do one thing on this list, day in, day out, every single day, all day long, which one of these allows me to accomplish the most? Which one of these produces

the most value for the organization? Which one of these allows the team to move their work forward the most? Then ask yourself, okay, if I can only do two things, what second most important activity do I have? Then what third most important activity do I have? And the fascinating thing is, regardless of industry, regardless of the level of work, there are usually about three, sometimes two, sometimes four central tasks that we're responsible for that produce the significant portion of how much we accomplish. It's the classic 80-20 rule in practice where 20% of our tasks are responsible for 80% of what we accomplish. And once you have those three tasks, those are the ones that you should do slowly. Those are the ones that you should approach with deliberateness and disable the distractions around you. Because in the moment, your brain is drawn to what's new and novel, which usually it's those distractions, it's email that's more new and novel than whatever those core tasks for you are. For me, mine are writing, speaking, and researching productivity. And so anything

that isn't one of those things supports your work. It isn't central to your work, and so it should be delegated. It should be eliminated, or it should be cut from your work entirely, or automated. It's another great option. But usually we can't cut these things. It's why we do them in the first place. But there is a different way that we can approach it, usually with greater efficiency as opposed to greater deliberateness. I like that. So if I'm going to summarize that real quickly, I'd say be effective with the things that are most important. Be efficient with everything else. With the exception, I would argue, because you made the point at the end of the productivity project, that people are the reason for productivity. So do not try to be

efficient in your dealings with people. Yeah, you know, don't try to have an efficient conversation with your wife. Be effective, yeah. No, I think you should. And let's do that as an experiment just to see how that goes for you.

All right. Honey, here's the agenda for this casual conversation. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain name,

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for this show. Once again, that's Squarespace.com slash free agents and the code free agents, all one word to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Another topic in your book that I am, this has always been the third rail of podcasting for me. You talk quite a bit about meditation in your book. And I'll tell you, I started meditating in 1990. I've been doing it a long time. I sit on the cushion every day. I don't talk about it much on the broadcast because when I do, for a long time, I felt like it just got a lot of weird emails from people.

So that's why you're asking me to talk about it. Well, no. So you can get the weird emails. I'm kind of coming out a little bit. I've talked about it a little bit on Mac Power Users, but when I read about people who need to have apps that disable the internet on their computer, and I just find that, for me, focus has always been a lot easier than for a lot of other people that I've encountered.

And I absolutely have believed that's because I spend 30 minutes a day following my breath. And your book gave me a lot of validation on that, so I really appreciated it. Do you think, just kind of a tangential question for, do you think that meditation is what makes you so into automation because you can see what needs to be automated in the first place? Not really. I don't really see too much of a connection. I mean, automation to me is the idea of just cutting out, getting back to those top three things and getting rid of the nonsense.

But what meditation has given me is space. Like, I will see, you know, maybe somebody will write something bad about me. You know, it happens once in a while. Or just I'll deal with some frustration in my life. And then the meditation practice allows you actually to unpack that in your brain to observe from kind of the outside. And, and it also allows you, so that's the first benefit. But the second benefit is I think it allows you to see where you're getting derailed,

not just on an emotional level, but just on a day-to-day level. I don't have the same, as much of a temptation as some people do. And I think it's because of that. And then in your book, you talked about like these apps that help you, you know, think better, you know, and basically your conclusion. Train your mind. Yeah. Your conclusion was that they don't really work, but you said one thing did work, and it was meditation. And I feel like that my life, I have experienced that in my life, and I feel like you're absolutely on the right track there. Yeah, and meditation is fascinating when you look at the research behind it, too. And this is an honest truth.

I don't meditate for spiritual reasons. I meditate because I find it allows me to accomplish more. On days that I meditate, I write, on average, about 40% more words. And the research bears this out a bit too. And I say a bit, I misspoke. It bears this out in a massive, massive way. And there's this idea that I discuss in the book called attentional space, which is essentially just how much focus we have to give to the world around us in the moment. This is our working memory capacity that we use to process the world around us on the fly. And the research shows that hardly anything increases this working memory capacity.

It's kind of like, I love being able to speak to a fellow nerdy audience. It's kind of like the RAM of our mind. Not much can give us more mental RAM. Investing in our happiness can. It actually expands how much attention we have to give to the world around us in the moment because our mind is more active. It's the same reason that more ideas come to us when our mind is wandering and we're doing something that we enjoy. But these brain training apps that say, oh, you know, improve your memory and, you know, look at this maze and try to guide this train over the tracks. And, you know, if this train leaves at 3 p.m. and this one leaves at 8 p.m., and those don't work. Those have been shown in study after study. I read one meta-analysis, because it's much

easier to read a few meta-analyses of these types of topics than looking at all the nitty-gritty studies. But I read one meta-analysis that looked at tens of thousands of participants, and they found that these apps did not work even when they were measuring the things that the apps were designed to increase. So the very specific parts of memory. These effects kind of evaporate after you stop using the app. But they did find that one thing does give us more attentional capacity in the moment, and that thing is meditation. Meditation increases our RAM by about 30%. So when we have an active meditation practice, and this other study compared meditation to rituals like yoga and just taking breaks and doing nothing,

they found that yoga doesn't give us more attention, but meditation and mindfulness do. And I think this is one of the most underrated ways of becoming more focused, is to meditate, because it allows us to check up more often on what our attention is doing. We notice more often when we get distracted. You know, on average, it takes us about 25 minutes to resume working on a task when we get distracted from it. If we have a daily 30-minute meditation ritual, and we notice just once that we're about to get distracted, and we say, no, actually, I'm going to resume focusing on this thing instead. The ritual just paid for itself.

And that's not counting for the amount of attention we have to give to the world around us because of that ritual too. It doesn't account for the way that the problems and challenges that we're going through roll off our back and don't stick to us instead. And it's like that negative email that you mentioned. You know, 10 people can receive that same email, and each one of them will react to it differently. The person that meditates will react the best because, you know, they realize that, you know, happiness is nothing more than coming to terms with how things change. And so they're able to realize, okay, you know, this person's opinion will change, everybody has a different opinion. And so I'm not going to let

this affect me as well. And, you know, over the course of the last many, many years, I don't know if you've attended any meditation retreats, but I find that it's after a retreat that I do my best writing. After spending seven, ten days in total silence, just meditating all day, listening to a few talks about meditation, maybe a few about Buddhism as well, this is when I do my best work, is when I'm so focused because of that. Have you done any retreats? Yeah, I have. And the brain's like a wild horse, and meditation allows you to kind of reign it in a bit. And it really, like I said, the reason I don't talk about it too much is because every time I do, people are like, well, are you enlightened? I'm not trying to get enlightened.

I'm just trying to figure out my own, what's going on in my head. And there's some great solutions. I feel like it's becoming more of something people are willing to do. It doesn't matter if you're Christian or Buddhist or atheist or whatever, this is a practice that can help you. And there's some great apps for it now. I recommended Headspace recently to a friend, and she has reported back she's getting lots and lots of benefit from it. So if you want help, that's awesome. You know, I mean, I went to a meditation center to learn how to meditate, but now you can even start on your own. And I was really glad with the amount of space you gave to

this in the book, because I've always felt like it's been one of my secret weapons over the years, and I'd love to see more people embrace it. Yeah, and the honest truth is that I wouldn't meditate if it didn't make me more productive, because it's half an hour every single day. And I think that's the benchmark that we should be measuring productivity strategies against is, do I make, for every minute I spend on this strategy or that strategy, do I make that time back and then some, right? We have to, or else we're just consuming productivity advice that's entertaining. But, you know, it's like, here's Richard Branson's daily schedule, you know, that doesn't really make us behave differently. We need to earn that time back. And meditation, I would make the statement that for every minute

you spend meditating, you make back three in how much more efficiently you're able to focus, in how much less distracted you become, in how you don't focus too much on certain things like that negative email, like any negative thing. Your mind actually even wanders more often to the future when your mind is wandering and less to the past, especially the distant past where all these sometimes negative experiences and memories lie. And so these effects cascade beyond just that one practice. It's really quite beautiful. And I'm the least hippie person. Actually, that's maybe not true.

I start my day off a lot of days with yoga. But I'm not really... Oh, yes. I sent Mike the picture of my avocado toast. Maybe we could put it in the show notes. This is like a... If you're ever feeling bummed out about stuff, this is something to reflect on.

When was the last time I had a piece of avocado toast? Because it's probably been a while. If you eat avocado toast on a regular basis, you know, this, even more so than meditation, I read a study, it is correlated with life satisfaction. I'm just making stuff up at this point, but it tastes very good. Put guacamole instead of avocado on top of the toast. I'm from California, guys. Guacamole is our national food here. It's the official food of California.

Yeah. When I was a kid, we used to have wars with avocado trees. Those were our hand grenades we threw at each other when I was five years old. Oh, that's amazing they're one of those extra ripe ones yeah they hurt man they hurt and they're they get soft really quick they'll like explode on a person then you get that that hard shell as like a an aftershock yeah the pit yeah that's no fun that's no yeah the pit yeah yeah but but no i really do think this is something worth pursuing.

I would say in addition to all the other benefits Chris has said, the fact is that you're carrying around this liar in your head all day that's giving you all this negative self-talk. And I will admit to being a hippie in that the meditation doesn't actually allow you to address that person straight on. And that's a nice benefit too. I think you get way more than three

minutes for every one out of it. So I'll get off the soapbox. But there's some great stuff out there. And I was really glad to read that not only did you mention your book, you brought science in. And I think this is something that people are going to start adopting more often. I hope so. Yeah. Insight Timer is another great app that I love that has guided meditations. Headspace is another one. I'm trying to think of other apps, but those are the two ones that I've used that I highly, highly recommend.

Calm, yeah, that's another. Do you meditate, Mike? I forget. I am not a very consistent meditator, but I will add, going back to the discussion, because you made an important point that it's not a very consistent meditator, but I will add, going back to the discussion, because you made an important point that it's not a religious practice and that's a stigma that a lot of people have associated with it. I find that the definition that Headspace uses of mindfulness meditation maybe is a little bit more approachable for a lot of people who have some qualms about the idea of

meditation because they have this spiritual view of it. Really, all it does is it helps you to focus your attention on the thing that you want to focus it on. So it's not being pulled in a million different directions. And Headspace is the one that I use, although I have to admit publicly here that I do not do it every day. I don't have the practice like you guys do. That's all good. If you're out there and you try it the first time, have the practice like you guys do. That's all good. If you're out there and you try it the first time, you're going to go, Chris and Sparky are crazy.

This is madness to sit here and try and not think about anything. But just hang in there. Just hang in there. You will see benefits. And another thing that would have helped me when I started meditating is for the first few years, I thought I was doing it wrong. Because you think, okay, I only have to focus on my breath. Okay, I'm doing that. My mind's wandering, but I'm bringing it back. Is this

really all meditation is? But then you notice where your mind wanders to and you begin to, you know, what makes meditations one of the most enjoyable parts of my day is approaching each meditation session with a genuine curiosity of where my mind is going to wander to that day. Because this is how I observe what's on my mind. This is how I observe what's stressing me out, what I'm really worrying about, what I'm excited about, what's tiring me out, what's giving me energy, what people in my life I want to reflect a bit on, and just the state of my mind. We don't really look at the state of our mind, even though

our mind is what we use to make it through every moment of the day. Yeah, it's like, what is that rebellious organ between your ears going to do to you today? That's what you start to feel after a while. Another good resource, which is more spiritual, but I think still a very good resource, is the Audio Dharma podcast. I would particularly recommend there's some introductory sessions in there by Gil Fronstall, who is a very kind man and just really walks you through it, too. So that's another. And now it's a free one. So if you just want to try that. So there's a lot of resources out there.

And I didn't want to turn this into the mindfulness meditation podcast, but you gave me such a great toehold, Chris, with the book. I think this honestly is something that you should be talking about because the name of the show is focused. And I've actually looked at the research. I feel a lot of authors say, oh, I looked at all the research around this topic. And they read like two articles on Huffington Post. But I actually like my fiance, she's doing her PhD here in Kingston, Ontario,

Canada. So she's immersed in that academic world. And so I can look at any study that she has access to and download it for free instead of paying $20 or $30. Now that's probably going to get shut down now that I have come out to doing so on the pod. But I've looked at the research. I don't know if you've ever watched one of those crime shows where somebody's solving a murder and they've got string attached to pictures, attached to a map, attached to newspaper articles. That was like the state of my office in writing this book. And after looking at everything, two of the main things that came out over the course of that process was, A, our attention is very, very limited. We can only hold around, we used to think the number was seven or eight, but now researchers

are coming to the conclusion that we can only hold around three or four unique pieces of information in our mind at one time, whether we're writing, whether we're having a conversation, whatever it is that we're doing. And very, very few things expand that number. Very few things allow us to process more in the moment, but meditation is one of them. And I will say this till my dying day, it's one of the best productivity practices that you can have. And so I think if anything, maybe people are already sick of hearing about meditation, but try it. Really do try it. Give it an honest shot for 14 days. Do it for 15 minutes for each of those. You have time to watch an episode of

Friends for 14 days in a row. You probably have time for meditation too. And just observe. Just notice how much you're able to accomplish, how frequently you get distracted, how easy focus comes to you. And I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And my last word on it is it starts slow, but it quickly accelerates the benefits. So I think that's the reason so many people can't get a regular practice because it's very hard at the beginning. Somewhat related, you talked in your book about staying focused. You had a great idea that I'd like to share with the audience, and you called it the hourly awareness chime. You talk about that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So the hourly awareness chime, I don't have it set over the right right now because I'm doing a podcast, but it's one of the best ways to increase your metacognition. So

metacognition is just thinking about thinking. It's checking up on where your mind is at. And so it's just the tactic is this, to set an hourly chime on your phone. And when it goes off, ask, am I distracted? Is my focus derailed? Am I focusing on something with intention behind what I'm doing? And maybe if you want to take it up a notch or two, set a couple cues in your environment just that let you notice what's in your attentional space. You know, when your phone rings at your office cubicle, when it rings, pick it up on the fourth ring after reflecting on, was I distracted?

Was I working with intention? Was there deliberateness behind what I'm doing? And over time, this trains your mind into thinking in patterns that are more self-aware, where you begin to notice when you're distracted or when you're interrupted. And because it takes us on average 25 minutes to get back on track, when we do get distracted or interrupted, it can often save us time. That one 5, 10-second interruption that says, okay, where, what am I thinking about? Do I need a break? You know, what am I focusing for too long? Is my attention becoming a bit fatigued? You know, the best time to take a break is before you need one. And I use the example in the book is it's kind of like water where if you're feeling

thirsty, you're already dehydrated. If you're feeling fatigued, you probably should have taken a break a half hour ago. And so it's a great way of checking up on just the state of your mind. Pick a few questions that you enjoy asking. I'm not a fan of giving really prescriptive advice, saying these are the five things you should do to get more done. I'm a big fan of encouraging people to reflect a bit and figuring out what their own kind of pain points with productivity are. But pick a few of those. If you get distracted all the time, reflect on whether you're distracted when that chime goes off. And if you can, tame that distraction so you don't fall victim to it as often. If you find that you're on

autopilot mode so much of the time, ask yourself, am I working with intention behind what I'm doing when that chime goes off? Whatever it is, if you find that you're burnt out quite a bit and you use that to measure your productivity, ask, am I fatigued right now? Are fewer ideas coming to me? Am I thinking less about the future? Because maybe you can use that moment to think, okay, have I rested my attention lately? It's a simple ritual, but it's, it's remarkable in that simplicity. Well, you guys were talking earlier about how you measure, you know, your success at remaining focused. And it's not necessarily that easy.

And, uh, but this actually, when I was reading this in the book, my first meditation teacher, I promised to get off the topic, but... David, you're upsetting a lot of people right now. Back in 1990, one of the first things she taught me was, you know, because it is about, mindfulness is about being mindful, not just when you're sitting on a cushion, but also as you go through your day.

And one of the first things they taught me was when the telephone rings, stop for a minute and said, at the moment, the telephone rang was I focused on what I was doing, you know, was I writing a contract with my mind on the contractor? Was I writing a contract with my mind on a baseball game, you know, Or was I eating a banana thinking about eating a banana? Or was I eating a banana thinking about what I'm going to watch on TV that night? You know, and just taking that moment when the moment, because it's a great trigger, you know,

because it's going to hit you when you least expect it, give you a chance to see, was I truly focused at that time? And that is a habit I've never left. I mean, I've been doing it for many years now, and it was supposed to be like an experiment, but it turned into a lifetime practice for me. The interesting thing for me is that because I don't get many calls, I've managed to get the telephone out of my life to such an extent now that I actually use phone notifications as the trigger. Now, when a notification comes, I'll say, you know, if Mike sends me something on Slack that comes through, I'll say, hey.

What's that sound, David? It's coming from your microphone. But yeah, okay, now I got to do my... Speaking of distractions. Yeah, exactly. But you know, I thought that was great. And I love seeing this stuff come around full circle. And it does give someone that's trying to get better at this stuff a way to grade themselves. Yeah, it's so satisfying to see this increase over time, too, because at least when I started, maybe folks listening might be starting off on a better place. Whenever I checked in, I was distracted. I needed to recharge. I needed to reflect a bit more. I needed to think instead of just do. And over time,

you see that measure increasing. You see your energy going up. And it never goes to 100 because we're human and get derailed by things and emergencies come up. But you see it increasing to a level where it kind of levels off at a higher point. And you think, okay, I am more aware. I am more aware when I'm distracted now. And it's a wonderful, wonderful feeling to come that far. Yeah, I think that self-awareness is really important. And one other thing I want to add, because you make this point in the book, and this was really important to me, for anybody, I think, who works with other people, there's a tendency to project blame onto everybody that's around you as they're the cause of my distractions. My boss came into my office, asked me to do

something, wasn't what I was planning to do today. So it just threw off my entire day. And I think that as you're checking in with yourself and you're asking yourself, am I distracted? It's also worth considering where did this distraction originate? Was it from myself or was it from somebody else? Because a lot of times we can project that this came from somebody else, but we really take ownership of it. And when we do that, you mentioned in the book that we get back to work six minutes sooner when we're interrupted by others compared to ourselves. So a lot of times our own worst enemy and we just entertain these things longer than we should. Yeah, a couple of times are our own worst enemy, and we just entertain these things longer than we should. Yeah, a couple quick stats around that. We're actually interrupted by other people as much

as we interrupt ourselves. And it's about a 50-50 breakdown. And it obviously depends on the kind of work that you do. If you're a manager, you experience more external interruptions. I think it's around 60-40. But yeah, on average, it takes us 25 minutes to get back on track. But 29 minutes if that distraction is internal, and 22 minutes when we're distracted by something external. But of course, as we've been chatting about, there are ways to lower those numbers by practicing meta-awareness, by having that hourly awareness chime. And meditation, again, harping on the meditation drum, but it's harping on it. Can you harp on a drum?

But it's such a wonderful, wonderful strategy for noticing what's on your mind. How often do you notice what's on your mind? Because what's on your mind. How often do you notice what's on your mind? Because what's on your mind so often is distraction. It's random thoughts that are unrelated to what you want to be doing. And so by checking up on that, it's a beautiful way of becoming closer to your attention. And all this stuff is hard, and we all fail at it it often but i think if you're aware of it you can really do a lot better i'm failing at it right now thinking back to that avocado toast so it's difficult it's a process but as soon as we hang up here you know what i'm gonna do right

yeah there better be pictures in the show notes well listen i listen, I think, Chris, you've written a great book here. It's called Hyperfocus. I also recommend The Productivity Project. Chris recorded both these books on Audible, so if you want to hear his dulcet tones, I would recommend it. I purchased them both on Audible,

but with Hyperfocus, I enjoyed it so much I actually bought the Kindle book as well. I wanted to go through and highlight it. And just some great stuff. We just barely scratched the surface here, but I think you're really on to something. And I hope some of the listeners are motivated to go check the book out and pick up a few of Chris's ideas and practices and make them work for themselves and hopefully get a little more focused. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.

Thank you so much. Is there anywhere else, Chris, that you'd like people to go to check out what you're doing and connect with you online, social media? I mean, it sounds weird asking someone who wrote a book on focus to promote a social media channel, but... I'm on Twitter, the most depressing social network right now. I've rarely opened Twitter because one of the things that I've asked myself recently is how do the websites and the apps that I frequent make me feel?

And some of them make me pretty happy. The Shortcuts app. What is it? Alto's Odyssey? It's a great app to listen to podcasts with. But Twitter really made me sad, so I got rid of it. But I tweet very rarely off of my desktop here at Chris underscore Bailey. And the books are called Hyper Focus and The Productivity Project. Oh, my website. And you will be happy to know that I got rid of that annoying newsletter pop-up very recently. So massive improvement to the site. It's called alifeofproductivity.com

if you want to read what I write there. Well, thanks so much, Chris. And we are the Focused Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm. We've got a little room on the side of the Mac Power Users talk community. So go to talk.macpowerusers.com. There's a little room on the side of the Mac power users talk community. So you go to talk.macpowerusers.com. There's a focused room in there and there's lots of great stuff going on there on Twitter. We have a new Twitter handle gang with the new podcast. It is underscore focused FM.

And I'm David Sparks and Mike Schmitz is with me here. Mike, what's your website? Mike Schmitz dot me. And I'm on Twitter as at BobbleheadJoe. And I am at Max Barkey. So we'll see you all in a couple of weeks. Thank you so much for coming on, Chris.

We're so pleased to have you on as our first guest under this new podcast. And everybody go check out his book. Awesome to be here. Thank you.