Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Focus in an Overstimulated World - With guest Chris Bailey - Episode 107

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This podcast covers topics that expand human consciousness and performance. On the Make Sense podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works, and that perception is a subjective and acquired taste. When you change the way that you look at things, the things that you look at begin to change. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored and primarily funded by the Make Sense Academy, our private community where open and curious seekers of growth and expansion apply the make sense principles and systems to move from simply going through life to growing through life. So check out the Make Sense Academy risk-free for less than you'll spend today on shit that you don't need. Welcome, my friends, to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Make Sense with

Starting point is 00:00:53 Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast. Our guest today, our guest today, is not someone that just writes about productivity. He lives and experiments with it. Chris Bailey is the best-selling author behind the productivity project, hyperfocus, and most recently, his new book, Calm Your Mind. You may have seen Chris's TED Talk because it had like 18 million views called How to Get Your Brain to Focus. Through immersive self-experiments, research synthesis, and effective insights, Chris has helped millions of people rethink how to use their time, attention, and energy. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, TED Talks, and far beyond. Chris has a way of making abstract concepts of focus and attention tangible, achievable, and relatable. And to be honest with you, he's a super

Starting point is 00:01:53 cool guy. I really enjoyed our conversation. So today, we're going to dive into what it means to make sense of focus in a overstimulated world. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, Chris Bailey. Hey, man. Hey, man. Mm. Did you ever think that you would maybe have a friend that calls himself a dragon? Oh.

Starting point is 00:02:15 Did you not even know that? My podcast before this was called Rise Up with Dragon. Oh. So a lot of people don't even know my name. They call me the dragon. Good to meet you, Matt. You can tell people you have a friend named Dragon. I guess that's what I'm saying.

Starting point is 00:02:28 Yeah. I like that. I like that. Thanks so much for being here. I don't know what your current reality is, but I kind of found you probably the way most people don't. Like, I didn't know about your TED talk until I had read some of your stuff. I didn't think to look you up. And I'm like, oh, wow, look at that. Love your topic. It's extremely relevant to the work that I do. I've created a whole system of helping people get back on track when they're distracted and things like that. So welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, the amazing, amazing, Krisp. Bailey. When I choose people to be on the show, I always choose somebody that's had a big impact on me, and your work has. I'm sure that you've heard that before. It's very, very relevant to what we talk about. So my following is going to eat this episode up like a nice piece of pizza, or maybe because you're from Canada, we'll say, Poutine. Oh, yes, yes. Extra cheese curds, please. And maybe after we'll have a beaver tail. So I know a couple things. Oh, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. Now you're speaking my language, bud.

Starting point is 00:03:28 I kind of found you a little bit different than most. For those of you that haven't watched TED talks at all, Chris has a very, very popular TED talk, which he probably didn't know was going to be so popular at the beginning, but the topic was so relevant. It's just an honor and a privilege to have you on the show, and I'm excited for what we're going to create for the people. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully we can help some folks out.

Starting point is 00:03:51 Yeah. Chris has written several books, and I'm very excited to find out what's going on on Planet Chris these days, but we'll let that be at the end. What's interesting about your work, I always kind of want to know, not just the background, but I just want to know,

Starting point is 00:04:04 it seems like your work is not necessarily just in research. It's kind of been experimental. You know, you're one of these unusual people that don't just learn stuff. It appears that you put your ass on the line, too, and you kind of try stuff.

Starting point is 00:04:18 So I have a lot of respect for you. So like voluntary discomfort, like a stoic principle. But I'd love you to share with our listeners a little bit of what inspired you to, do that. And when I meet somebody like you, my thought is, why is this guy dedicating so much time to helping other people become aware of something that like this problem with attention?

Starting point is 00:04:39 I'd love to know a little bit of the background story how you all of a said, I'm going to do this for my life. Yeah, it is kind of interesting. And I think a lot of that comes from noticing where I fall down. And, you know, I don't, I'm not one of these, you know, quote unquote experts that preaches things from on high. I have my soapbox and I get up on there and I say, hey, everybody and this is how everybody should live their life, how everybody should be living, you know, being, bestowing my wisdom. I don't really like that side of productivity advice or I would call it kind of pragmatic nonfiction, which is the field that my books occupy. I'm very much, you know, where do I fall down? Where do I stumble?

Starting point is 00:05:27 because if I'm stumbling in certain places and I'm interested in productivity, I'm researching product, I'm steeped in journal articles about productivity. And I still stumble in those places than other people probably do as well. And so that's usually, you know, you mentioned awareness. It's usually these things start from noticing where I would like to get better and then looking at the research on that topic and experimenting with it because, you know, research is, is incredible. I love the science behind, you know, topics like attention and productivity and intentionality and, you know, attention management, time management, how our energy fluctuates throughout the day, all these different things that are in this space. But it's one thing to know the

Starting point is 00:06:12 research, but then if you don't make that bridge between the research and the practical applications of it, what are you really doing? How do you know what's going to work? And on top of that, it's productivity so subjective, right? Because it's personal productivity. We're all wired differently. And so I usually just start looking at, okay, where can I get better? Because if I can get better, then probably there are some generalizable things that I can, you know, share with other people in how I learn when I apply the science and experiment with it for the benefit of other people, hopefully. And so that's my approach. I don't really like advice that only lives in a laboratory because it might sound great in theory, but in practice, sometimes it falls down or sometimes it's not generalizable

Starting point is 00:06:56 across people or sometimes it only works for a certain subset of people. So that's my whole approach. Experimentation, but rooted in that evidence, wherever possible, because it's not always possible. And, you know, sharing what works and leaving what is rest because there's a lot of fluff out there, as you know. Yeah. You'll notice that my hat says, Well, it's actually pronounced. And, you know, it's a practice of cognitive distancing in the same sense that it actually stands for haven't made up my mind. I kind of look at the world the same way, a little bit of, I guess I would say as a scientist, where I'm not really interested in being right. I'm actually open to what is writer.

Starting point is 00:07:42 Just so you know from the outside in, that's what first really caught my attention. Because I've heard people talk about the stuff you talk about. But I loved when you started to say, well, here's what I did, which most people were like, oh my God, I could never do that. We'll get into that. And here's what I found. So I kind of like, if I was going to explain, somebody said, what is Chris Bailey like? I'm like, he's kind of like one of those pay it forward guys.

Starting point is 00:08:05 I don't know if that's a good way of referring to you. But like, it seems like you're paying forward your findings and saying like, hey, I tested this and here's what I found if you're looking for that. So that's cool. That kind of brings me to. the next question of, I've had Nira Yale on the show who wrote, Indistractable, him and I became good buddies. I pulled a quote from him one time that I just love, and this is my warning to everybody that's listening. He says, he said something like this, but I kind of made it my own.

Starting point is 00:08:36 He said, learning and knowing is nothing more than a distraction in the absence of action. What's interesting is we live in a world where people like you and I love research and it could actually be taking us away from attention. So I guess my question would be is what is the real problem, you know, that we should be aware of when it comes to, you know, I've heard you talk about overstimulation and all of that. I mean, God, what a topic right there. But are humans addicted to stimulation? Like, are we addicted to noise? Well, I think, Some of us definitely are. But the thing that I find fascinating about noise and stimulation, you know, you ask somebody

Starting point is 00:09:23 if they're distracted. Most people will say yes. And then you think why. And then you also think, how could we not be? You know, we walk around the world. And, you know, I was walking around my neighborhood here in Ottawa the other day. and I saw somebody walk into a mailbox because they were on their phone. And so like this stuff is, it's so prevalent how distracted we are.

Starting point is 00:09:50 I'm afraid to drive these days a lot of the time because people are, their mind is not in the car with them. It's like, how can we not be distracted? We're surrounded with so many potential things that we can focus on. And that's always been the case, right? We've always, you know, if you go back to old timey times or something, you know, you can focus on the newspaper, you can focus on the radio, you can focus on this, you can focus on that. But these days, the difference is the level of novelty of the distraction. So it's not only that there's a lot of things that we can potentially focus on, is that

Starting point is 00:10:29 each of them is more novel than the last one that came. So I remember a few years ago, maybe five or six years ago as we're recording this, where different social media websites switched over to the algorithmic feed. And that to me was sort of the tipping point where things began to really accelerate with how distracted we are. They were getting worse up to that point, worse in terms of how much control we have over our attention. But then it was at that point where things kind of hockey stick upward to use another

Starting point is 00:11:01 Canadian analogy. Things got novel. And the acceleration of the novelty of things just started taking off. And there's a chemical basis for the distraction that happens when we pay attention to anything that's novel. Researchers call it our brain's novelty bias, whereby for every new and novel thing we direct our attention at, our brain rewards us with a hit of dopamine, right? Many of us know that, which leads us to feel as though pleasures right around the corner. So we keep coming back for more and more, distraction, stimulation, our brain's level of stimulation goes up. But it's not that things are novel now. It's that they're uniquely novel to us. You know, when we go on YouTube or Instagram or X or TikTok, we get a constant steady stream of things that pour into our eyeballs of things that are

Starting point is 00:11:48 uniquely novel to our interest to what keeps us scrolling and keeps us there. You know, addiction is an interesting topic in relation to this. But I think regardless of what whether we're addicted or whether it crosses that threshold, we all have this novelty bias that makes spending our attention in this world right now an uphill battle. It's difficult. It's challenging to intentionally direct our attention towards what's important every day. It is a skill that we can get better at, much like hockey, much like skating on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. Was that another Canadian reference there, hockey in general? No, definitely not, definitely not. You know, I got to tell you, something funny happened.

Starting point is 00:12:31 I mean, if I'm being honest, I watched your TED talk this morning, you know, just to kind of like refresh my brain because I've had a bunch of interviews. But something really funny happened. So there was, there's this part of your TED talk where you're talking about that we, on average, have about 40 seconds of attention span. And if you're, you know, I think you said if you have your phone next to you or something else that it goes to it down, I wonder if you're even aware of this. As soon as you said that, a commercial came up on the screen.

Starting point is 00:13:01 May you don't pay for premium? Come on. I don't know if you are aware of this, but like your TED Talk is being used to grab people's attention. Anyway, I just thought that was funny. Yeah. I don't know how that thing got swept up in some algorithm, you know. I can never do a TED talk again because it'll never be that popular. I don't know about that. Maybe not. Who knows? Well, we'll find out what's on the menu for you.

Starting point is 00:13:26 now. My TED Talk is probably going to be in 2006 and it's going to be called that. Hey. Okay. So in your book, the productivity project, I just want to hit on one thing that I thought was fascinating because people always will evaluate doing something that is inconvenient, uncomfortable, and they kind of want to know what the ROI is. So I believe that what you

Starting point is 00:13:49 were talking about is that you just took like one day because you identified that the phone was the most distracted. obviously. I don't have my phone on me right now. It's on silent, but I know exactly where it is. It's right over there. Right. So I'm aware of that. But I believe what you did is you just allowed yourself to do 30 minutes of usage on your phone a day and you had some crazy findings after a while. So could you just share those three findings? I think people would love to hear that. Yeah. Oh man. Productivity Project. That's a deep cut. I was looking the other day, and that book came out almost 10 years ago, which makes me feel very old doing this a while. Yeah, so essentially, the experiment, and the first week of this,

Starting point is 00:14:35 I got to say, was hell. I still remember just the hell that the first week was. You know, I felt phantom vibrations happening in my pocket all day long. I'd be in an elevator and feeling a little bit of social discomfort, and I'd notice how my phone was kind of a valve for a relief for that. But I did notice that a few things started to happen. My attention span grew considerably. So, you know, you mentioned 40 seconds stat. That's an incredible study from Gloria Mark, which is called,

Starting point is 00:15:07 I think it's called Neurotics Can't Focus is the name of this study, because it mentioned, or it studied neuroticism in focus, but also found that across the population. Interesting study. for people who are into it. But the main takeaway 40 seconds is the median amount of time that we focus on something for. So my attention span grew. And I also became more creative while I could recharge, which was yet another benefit of this

Starting point is 00:15:32 experiment. So the recharging, the attention span, but the creativity was honestly kind of a surprise to me. So I started to dig, you know, why would that be? And there's this incredible field of research on our, our brain's default mode network, which is kind of the static background noise of our minds. So if I were to stop talking for a minute or two, which I won't do because that would make for terrible podcast content. But if you were to pause the podcast for a minute or two, you would find that your mind just kind of has this noise that's inside of it, right?

Starting point is 00:16:06 It'll go to, oh, I should pick up cantaloupe on the way home. Oh, you know, I feel this impulse to do this or no, should I pick up my phone? Oh, should I resume the podcast? I feel uncomfortable just wandering. But it's in this wandering that our best ideas come to us, right? If you think back to when your best, most brilliant ideas hit you, you're probably not really focused on anything, right? Focus is how we make progress.

Starting point is 00:16:29 But wandering is, it's like left shoe, right shoe, right? Wandering is how we consider how we wish to be making progress in the first place. And so you're taking a shower and your mind just bubbles up to the surface a lot of these ideas and insights and connections and plans. You plan more for the future. One of my favorite little stats about this mind wandering mode of our brain found, and this is a study where credit is due from Jonathan Smallwood, Jonathan Schuller, they found that our mind thinks about our goals 14 times as often when our mind is wandering versus when

Starting point is 00:17:05 we're focused. And so focus is how we make progress. But also, how do we consider how we wish to be making progress in the first place? focus without intentionality is just wasted energy. We just tend to what's latest and loudest. And so, so it's in this, this cadence of focus, wander, focus, wander, focus wander. It really kind of becomes focus intend, focus intend, focus intend. And we need that intention that precedes our action to become more productive, to consider, as you were saying, the opportunity cost on our time where for every one thing we focus on,

Starting point is 00:17:43 we could be doing a thousand different other things. This is something that stopped me when I was listening to some of your stuff. I mean, it's like one of these things that I knew but I didn't think of is the idea that we're so, we live in a world that says you cannot be successful unless you're focused. So we have this like automatic fight to focus.

Starting point is 00:18:04 I think it was, there was an interview with the two big dogs, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. And basically they were asked, the same question is like what is the most valuable asset in the realm of success and they both said the same thing they said focus what i heard you say that was like a really big aha and you just touched on it is that it's kind of like near i yell says that learning is in the absence of action is a distraction focus in the absence of of the correct intention is a distraction as well so i'd love to hear a little

Starting point is 00:18:33 bit more about that because would you agree that there are people out there like your second book hyperfocus there are people out there that are hyper-focused, but also maybe hyper-focused on the wrong thing. You know, can I be hyper-focused on an unhealthy thought, not unhealthy behavior? Isn't that interesting? Success, I'm hyper-focused. Oh, shit, it's the wrong thing. Yeah. Whoops.

Starting point is 00:18:59 There goes a lot of time. Yeah, so, you know, you can be focused on email all day long. You can be focused on just having meetings all day long. You can be focused on consuming and not create. So the right focus is it's essential. You can't get around that. And I think that is, it really is left foot, right foot, right? Focus intent, focus intent.

Starting point is 00:19:22 The thing that I love about productivity is in any moment of our day, of our life, there are thousands of things that we could be focusing on, spending our time, attention, energy on. Right now we're here. We're hopefully making something that can help people out. But if we weren't here, what would we be doing if we had a spare half an hour? If you're listening to this pod or watching this pod, you could be doing a thousand other things, but yet you're here with us, right? Why?

Starting point is 00:19:54 Why are you here? Are you here because you're on autopilot mode because it's popped up into your feed and it looked interesting to listen to something that would turn you into a better human being and give you the resources that you needed to become better in some way. I think that's all the difference in the world, right? This autopilot mode where we're just responding to what's latest and loudest in front of us. We could be focused on that all day long too, but without that intention, right? And this is, you know, going back to what I love about productivity, in any moment, there's like, you know, when you fire up YouTube or Netflix or whatever, you're presented with that grid of, you know,

Starting point is 00:20:32 the thousands, hundreds, thousands of different little squares of content that are these little wormholes that you can travel down that'll take you forward through time. And change the entire course of your life. Exactly. Yeah. Don't get too close to the black hole. Yeah, but in every single one of these, there's a payoff that we can obtain from that experience. Our work, our life, they're the exact same way, Right. We have in any moment this grid in front of us of potential things that we can be spending time, attention, energy. If we're at home, we can be on the couch scrolling on our phone, or we can get up and we can hug our spouse, tell our kids we love them. There are so many different things. And work is the same way. We could be in email all day long or we could close that window and create something.

Starting point is 00:21:28 And so this is, I think, the infinite potential of productivity, a focus, but focus isn't enough. It's not enough. We need intention, too. Yeah, I love that. So powerful to just understand that because, like, the game is not one just by achieving focus. You know, it's like, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. Any focus will take you there. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:53 I love that. So one other aspect, and I haven't heard you talk too much of this, but one of the things that we recognize in our community, and this is a big part of my system, my system teaches people to think for themselves. That's a power move because you would first have to understand that you're perceiving the world and thinking and responding pretty much how you've been taught to.

Starting point is 00:22:17 And that's your mother, father, your teacher, your preacher, that's society and all the stuff we're talking about, and also the paying forward of evolution. So you're walking around thinking that you are in control of your folks, but you've kind of been wired to focus on something. We talk a lot about that and that prompts me to see, well, what am I up against? It's not just the technology. It's not just the phone and the advent of all this stuff that's, I mean, it's very hard to focus

Starting point is 00:22:46 when you have decision fatigue because of the overstimulation. And I think this is important to bring up. It's not just your phone. It's not just the internet, but it's the people that are using that. interface to grab your attention. So I'd love to talk a little bit about like just acknowledging these multi-billion dollar incredibly intelligent people that are creating that grid and algorithm and you think that you created it or like God created or something. What are we up against with that and attention? Well, it's kind of different, isn't it? Like in a lot of cases,

Starting point is 00:23:25 beautiful intentions that are bestowed upon us by the environments that we occupy. We're born with minds that can be conditioned by people and environments and circumstances to respond in a certain way to things that happen around us, right? We're at the grocery store with our parent and they say, don't touch that cantaloupe. Go back to the cantaloupe. Don't touch that cantaloupe. Put that put that put that puteen down. And so we learn to be reserved and respect the environments of others. You know, we maybe see our parents struggle financially and that leads us to value security. And we have these beautiful intentions that we then enter into the world with, you know, alongside. But then, you know, these same interests, these same values that we have, whether we value security, self-direction, conformity, creativity, benevolence, universalism, you name it.

Starting point is 00:24:21 these same conditions encounter different environments that aren't supporting us, like our parents at the grocery store when we were growing up, they're ones where the incentives are just completely misaligned to what everybody wants to get out of the situation. So, of course, it's nothing new that companies want to make profit. And I don't know if there's anything really fundamentally wrong with that. Like a lot of us have retirement accounts. It's good that the companies that were investing in are making money so that

Starting point is 00:24:51 our own finances can grow. But then we encounter situations that these same companies are providing us with, like when we encounter an algorithm. And I think we kind of forget because when an interface and when, you know, a grid of options on a social media website or a feed, it's interesting the word feed. Isn't that like, isn't that what we give cattle? See, that's when I would just say, yeah. Or user. Isn't user an interesting word too when you think about it? Yeah, it's what we are. So we encounter these environments where the incentives are totally misaligned. And of course, we're in this AI revolution. And who knows, it's probably both overblown and underblown at the same time. It's not as though these companies that are providing us content that switch to the algorithmic feeds don't have access to the same technology and that they can't crunch. You know, what fundamental values we have and cross-reference those with our interest graph and provide us. content that kind of we use as feed. And so that is the part that I find interesting is I'm not some conspiracy theorist. You're not either. But it's just when you look at the incentives behind the

Starting point is 00:26:02 situation, companies aren't incentivized to make us into better people. They're incentivized to, you know, increase ad spend for the companies that, you know, are targeting people in my TEDx talk, for example. They're incentivized to increase the amount of time that people spend on apps. So they have more time to target people with them. So it's just complete incentive misalignment because they feel so familiar, they feel friendly to us, even though we're really just interacting with algorithms that are catering to what is uniquely novel to us. As we have this discussion, if I'm being fully transparent, I have to somehow, even though I think that I'm like some sort of angel servant from heaven, I mean, I'm vying for attention right now, you know, from my audience. You know, I'm hoping

Starting point is 00:26:48 they like this episode or downloads will increase and everything. So that's why I protect the sanctity of this podcast and don't have an opinion. Like I haven't made up my mind up about anything. But I also want to give people some practical tools. So that being said, there's something in stoicism called the dichotomy of control, right? So what that refers to is it's another power move for a human being. We talk about this concept of running everything that comes into your field of perception through what we call a sorting filter. And you can program your sorting filter.

Starting point is 00:27:24 It says, is this important? Is this not important? Does this matter? Does this support my goals and dreams or not? So we're very big on teaching people. And you use the word interface. We call it the interface response system for that reason. We're very big on teaching people to recognize they have a choice in the interface.

Starting point is 00:27:41 So the dichotomy and control means, is this in my? control and is it not? So when we look at this topic of attention and we've brought all these things into the mix, we're making this beautiful soup of mess that we're dealing with, are you a soup guy? Do you like soup? I'm down for a good soup. A good soup. Have you ever come over to Greenwich, Connecticut, I'm going to make you a nice soup, okay? I'm down. You don't have too many friends named Dragon that make you soup. So just you're having an extremely rare situation here. You have the market cornered. That's right. That's right. As far as dragons that makes suit, I'm number one. Talk about a niche. So in this sense, I'd like to acknowledge, even though people say,

Starting point is 00:28:28 oh, but it's so hard, we actually do have a say. If we consciously look to, we do have a say in what gets our attention, but it's going to come at the expense of some work. and some effort. So what are some baby moves? You know, I have this desire, even though it would be completely stupid considering my whole business model runs off of the internet and social media, but I still have this desire to experience having none of it and like getting rid of my social media platform stuff. But that's pretty radical for people and I don't want to give anybody an anxiety attack. In the realm of control versus not, we do control. We do control. what gets our attention if we try.

Starting point is 00:29:16 So what are some baby steps that, I mean, you talked about like, you know, a social media fast and all of that stuff. But then you also talk about the value of being scatterbrained in boredom because there's creativity involved in it. What are some baby steps that somebody that wants to kind of claim more control, be the shock call or the little bit more of the dominant force of their decisions? What are some baby steps that they could take? One that comes to mind for me for this is notice one time today, or maybe somebody's

Starting point is 00:29:48 falling asleep to the dulcet sounds of our voices. So maybe to do it tomorrow, if that's the case. But notice just one time today, tomorrow, try today, where you hand off your attention to someone else. And I think bringing awareness to this one thing. And by the way, there is nothing wrong with handing our attention to someone else. When we're sitting down to watch a movie, we hand our attention to Stephen Spielberg for an hour, an hour and a half these days like two hours, two and a half hours, so that we can be brought through a journey, this experience. But we do this same handoff for different apps, different websites now, where, again, the incentives are a bit misaligned.

Starting point is 00:30:35 And maybe we don't really feel that great after we consume the content that we engage. with on those places. So notice the handoffs. And I would put that as a second one, too. Notice how you feel after you engage with these different things. I don't know if you've ever had that experience I have in the past where you know, you're tapping and you're swiping around on your phone. You accidentally swipe over to the wrong screen and your cameras or your phone's selfie camera fires up. And, you know, you got this. I never have a ear to ear grin on my face when this, the screen fires up. It's always like, I look zoned out and kind of like, meh. And what does that say about the state of our attention as we use our devices? So I would say, you know, maybe just

Starting point is 00:31:25 scroll through the different things on your phone and think about how the different things that you hand your attention off to. How do they make you feel? How do you feel after checking the news? How do you feel after scrolling through TikTok? How do you feel after being on YouTube. Maybe TikTok, you find TikTok makes you miserable, but YouTube actually, even though you hand your attention over to it, maybe it's mostly edutainment, as they say, educating, entertaining things. And you want to keep that. If you find it fires you up, maybe there's a news app where one makes you considerably more miserable than the other. Maybe they both make you miserable. Maybe you want to subscribe to the physical newspaper.

Starting point is 00:32:06 That's something I do. I get the Globe and Mail every morning here. And I love the ritual. I can compartmentalize my news time so that it's less distracting. I would say notice these attentional handoffs. Notice how different apps, target apps, but maybe go to websites too. You know, you know when you open up your web browser and you type one letter and it pre-populates to that website you go to 50 times. So how does that website make you feel? Download freedom, a distractions blocker, if it makes you uncomfortable, if you want to break that impulse and add a little trip wire into it. it. So those are a few kind of baby steps I think people can take. I'm going to go ask my 15 year old daughter if she knows what a physical newspaper is. And I'm going to go ahead and say she doesn't.

Starting point is 00:32:52 But think about it, Matt. Like that's where we're at. This is something I thought. Like if you were to design the perfect news delivery mechanism, it would look like a newspaper. Like for me, I would want something that somebody printed off for me. So I can read in the analog world and actually calm down. It would look more like a briefing than like a steady, updating stream of things. It would contain things like from my geography, but also world issues and things that, you know, so I can compartmentalize it. I can be chill as I do it. I can keep on top of everything.

Starting point is 00:33:27 I can not tend to it throughout the day without bearing my head in the sand. It would look like a newspaper. Just saying. I mean, as you, I can see behind you, I'm pretty sure these are not virtual backgrounds. otherwise we would be losers for choosing them. But I see that there's books behind you, you know. There's also my cat walking around. I saw that.

Starting point is 00:33:46 Well, we have two cats and a 100-pound baby dog. So they're gracing me with not calling me at the door. One of my lifetime best friend is this, I don't know if you ever heard of a guy named Jim Quick. Jim is, you know, a speed reading coach and a memory retention guy. So he's taught me how to speed read. I read a better book a week. You can't speed read an audio book, you know, and the skill sets that I've learned about

Starting point is 00:34:15 memory retention don't apply so much when I'm listening. So it's fascinating. I want to hit on your newest book is called Calm Your Mind, which I think you've been quoted as saying that a calm mind is not a luxury, but it's like almost a necessity and a foundation for everything we've just talked about. So maybe share why are our minds uncomat? Because I guess this is the over-stimulation thing. And if I ask somebody how they feel after they do something mindless,

Starting point is 00:34:48 their answer is most likely going to be one of justifying it and protecting it because of the dopamine hit, like a cigarette. You know, like people know that cigarettes are not good for them, but they will explain why that they do it. So that's a different challenge. But I think everybody, with the rise of anxiety and depression and unfortunately suicide.

Starting point is 00:35:10 By the way, in my research, getting ready for this, I dug up this really interesting bit of research that shows that there was a massive uptick in anxiety, depression, self-esteem disorders, and suicide. Between 2003 and 2005, do you know what technological advance happened during that time? Between 03 and 05? Yeah, it first came out with an Erickson phone.

Starting point is 00:35:39 Oh, really? The Erickson phone. The forward-facing camera. Oh. When we started taking selfies, they have an actual correlation to suicide. Wow. So my question to you is, you know, what can you do? I mean, I practice meditation and I've done all kinds of wild stuff.

Starting point is 00:35:59 What can we do to calm our mind? Because I don't think that we can accomplish any of this stuff that we've been talking about without doing that. Oh, no. Well, my meditation cushion is behind me here. I'm blocking it. You can kind of see it. I don't know where my cat is right now.

Starting point is 00:36:17 Yeah, it's wild, you know, that you alluded to it, the extent to which an anxious mind affects our focus. And I find it, you know, quite interesting in a way. And you can look to kind of the extreme examples to see examples of this, where, you know, if you're reading a study or a book or you're listening to an audio book or a podcast on an airplane and you hit a pocket of heavy turbulence, good luck focusing on that paper. You know, your working memory capacity, which is how you process the world, is going to be compromised by that experience, by the fact that there is a threat.

Starting point is 00:36:57 You know, another example, let's say you're going to give a huge speech in five minutes to 5,000 people. and I asked you, hey, you know, do you have a second to just look at this briefing? You probably won't have a lot of attention to give to that briefing, right? You're just not. You're going to be in that kind of threat mode. And so it's really this state in which our brain is overstimulated, whether by threats, whether by technology, you name it, that is the antithesis, not only to calm, but also to focus on a lot of dimensions.

Starting point is 00:37:30 And it's interesting, the obsession with productivity. I love productivity, probably more than pretty much anybody. But even the obsession with productivity and accomplishment and more, you know, getting more, obtaining more of something, activates the same networks of stimulation that distraction does, that are actually reverse correlated, anti-correlated with the networks that lead us to feel calm in the moment, right? We try to seek out dopamine instead of things that make us feel connected and, proud. I find it absolutely fascinating. So anything you could do to lower that stimulation level, like the ideas we've talked about, incredible area where focus and calm overlap. And I don't think

Starting point is 00:38:16 calm is something that we seek by default. It's kind of like a counterintuitive avenue for greater focus and productivity. But I think it's one we need to go down. I would love to get just your take before we kind of move to the end, which might be the beginning. You know, maybe one day having some putteen together or something like that. That's got to be the greatest unhealthy thing in the world, by the way. You know, like if I'm going to choose something unhealthy, it's going to be like putteen. There is zero nutrition in putine. Just macro nutrients.

Starting point is 00:38:53 We could work something out to say that there's kind of like wine, you know. People say it's got respiratory on it. Yeah. People desperately try to do studies to find some redeeming. health benefit. I would assume that you've put some time and effort into what's transpiring. I mean, technology is moving faster than us. You know, we've got AI, we've got virtual reality.

Starting point is 00:39:17 You know, we're in this place where, you know, I've had this guy, Rizwan Verk, who wrote the simulation hypothesis, you know, and Donald Hoffman. These are the guys that basically say, you know, there's like a zero percent chance that this is real. It's a simulation. If you're not ready to entertain that, you just want to believe in whatever you want to believe. But the truth is that, you know, a lot of people have their focus and attention, not just on, you know, the doom and gloom what's going on in the world,

Starting point is 00:39:49 but this panic of being behind because there's no way you can keep up with technology. So what do you see as somebody that is extremely entrenched in productivity, borderline obsessed, I might say after listening. Some might say. Are we on a trajectory because of the advances of technology? Because I just read an article that said that it's out now. I think it was through MIT that people that are relying heavily on chat GPT are actually showing decreased cognition compared to people that are doing the work on their own.

Starting point is 00:40:25 So what does the future hold for productivity and attention? Are we doomed? or do you think that there's a potential outcome where we're not? It's interesting, the simulator. I thought you were going to ask me a question of whether we're in a simulation. You feel free to go on that. That's my jam. Okay, I'll try to tie the things together, if that's even possible.

Starting point is 00:40:49 Are we in a simulator? So I think, you know, the fascinating thing about the world that we live in is that there are fundamental limits to the human mind. And this is something that I find actually quite frustrating. So you look at attention, right? We only have so much attention to give to things. We can only focus on one thing at one time, for example. What a limit.

Starting point is 00:41:09 We can't even process multiple streams of things at one time like AI can. You look at time. You know, one of my great frustrations is limited time. I would love to just spend 125 hours everyday reading in addition to the other things that I have to do. But alas, we get 24 over 80, 90, 100 years or so. So there are fundamental limits of the human mind that prevent us from understanding the way things truly are. And this is always the case, right? And so I think, you know, if you look at the surface area of the limits of the human mind,

Starting point is 00:41:42 there are some things that can exist mostly within the boundaries of us being able to understand it. Like look at cosmology, for example. We struggle to reach for the stars to understand what they truly are and where they truly came from. And so you can look at the field of cosmology, space, and see that the field straddles that line of human understanding where we can understand elements of it, but we can't understand what things are truly like because of the fundamental capacities of the human mind. And so I think there needs to be a humility on some levels to being human, because we have these limits. They are what they are. Then there are the times when these same limits interact with ideas, with experiences,

Starting point is 00:42:30 like trying to interact with artificial intelligence, which is quickly eclipsing our own surface area of intelligence on a lot of different dimensions. And so it's fascinating the areas in which our limited human capacities and capabilities interact with ideas and environments, whether that's, you know, do we live in a simulation, What is space? What are atoms? So we see these ideas that straddle these boundaries. But I think the more we accept these limits of being human, the more that not only can we protect our attention and our mind on some level with the things that we focus on like algorithmic timelines, but we can accommodate these different limits by looking for things we can hand off to a. to do, for example. So I think there needs to be a fundamental humility when it comes to being human, whether that's interacting with ideas or environments or just the world around us. I love that. And another irony there, humility, you know, it's got to, they got to be correlated.

Starting point is 00:43:44 I love the way you just reminded us that we really don't have the capacity to know these things, right? Like when you hear Donald Hoffman just say there's a zero chance that this is not a simulation. If you fight against that, all they have to say is prove that it isn't a simulation. And you can't. So to your point, I love the idea of practicing humility. And that ties in to allowing yourself to be scatterbrained and bored. And accepting that as a cool way to pass some time every now and then. At the end of the day, just like the people will form opinion.

Starting point is 00:44:21 about our show, we get to make it all up. I mean, that's why we make stuff up. If I were going to take advantage of humanity, here's my plan. That was going to completely, like, diabolically take advantage into humanity. I would, in some way, shape, or form start a cult in the sense that whatever I was preaching would be something that taught people the answers to everything. Because people are so hungry to latch on to that and give up their attention for that because of this problem, you know, because deep down inside, we really don't know what the hell is going on.

Starting point is 00:44:55 So fascinating that, you know, you wanted to jump on that question. So I like, my like for Chris Bailey just went up. Oh, it went from the ground floor to about an inch off the floor. That's right. So we were talking about, you had this phenomenal thing happen where you took all of our attention away with your TED talk. Isn't that funny? But what are you doing now, man? Like, because I'm hearing you speak and like this that brain right there is not done yet. As far as creating, because people are going to want to know how to reach out and learn more about you besides just the talk. Catch me up. What's on your plate? What's going on on Chris Bailey's planet right now? So there is a book, another book that I've written that I think is easily, it's the best thing I've ever created. Of course, we can't know the name of it,

Starting point is 00:45:44 I guess. I got to announce it to my own peeps first. Understood. Understand. But I'll give a hint. So attention, I find fascinating. But one thing that has always been in the back of my mind for the last decade and before that, you know, studying Buddhism, meditation, my own mind, the minds of others is intentionality. I find intentionality, frankly, perhaps the most beautiful part of being human. And, you know, the research on intentionality. And I've struggled for the last 10 years. because I've always wanted to write a book about intentionality, but I've struggled to find the pieces to assemble into, I guess I should say I could have written a book about intentional, but I couldn't have written a book that I really wanted out there in the universe until some ideas came together last year about this topic of intention. I'm terrible at promoting stuff because this comes out January,

Starting point is 00:46:46 and I'm not even saying the title of the book yet, But if you want, you can go to chrisbailey.com and follow me along there. I'll let you know when it's ready if you go there. But this subject of intentionality paired with attention, it's the two strides. And the two stride thing isn't in the book. That's not what it's about. But it's the other half. It's the missing half.

Starting point is 00:47:09 And so I'm excited to get that out into the world. People kept asking me, when are you going to do a course? I have a course coming out, probably September, October on overcoming procrastination if that's something you struggle with. That was a little bit of a joke. Like if that's something you struggle with everybody. Yeah, everybody. Are you human?

Starting point is 00:47:27 You might like my course. But yeah, Chris Bailey.com is where you can find all that stuff. Do you have some sort of a newsletter or something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. See, this is how bad I am at promoting myself. Yeah, Chris Bailey.com for my newsletter. I'll send you all the new things I write and create and anything else I think you might find

Starting point is 00:47:45 helpful there. So that's awesome. I'm very excited about. that course because I'm getting to know you and I'm sure it's not just going to be like done with chat GPT you know I mean like it's this is going to be a lot of stuff behind that so very very cool man you know I will say just in closing and this will actually be on the podcast that I was excited to meet you mostly because of your ideas but you know you don't get to know somebody until you get to know somebody but A you're a cool guy.

Starting point is 00:48:18 in case anyone didn't know that about Chris Bailey. But B, you know, I love the way that you look at things. You know, you seem like we're very big on remaining open and curious and not being so like definitive with an exclamation point behind our things. And I think that you are the kind of guy that is allowing yourself to explore frontiers that could really help people make breakthrough. So lots of gratitude for you being on the show. Thanks so much.

Starting point is 00:48:47 Thank you so much. That means a lot. So remember, if you learn something today, give it away. That's how it's going to stay. That's how you take what you learn today and put it into the arena of play and you make it your own. So I love and appreciate you and we'll see you next time. Bye bye now.

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Focus in an Overstimulated World - With guest Chris Bailey - Episode 107

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