Chris Bailey on Focus, Productivity and Meditation

hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Chris Bailey, who ran a year long productivity project where he conducted intensive research as well as dozens of productivity experiments on himself to discover how to become as productive as possible. To date, he has written hundreds of articles on the subject and has garnered coverage and media as diverse as The New York Times, The Huffington's Post, New York Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Ted, Fast Company, and Life Hacker.

On this episode, Eric and Chris discuss his new book hyper Focus, How to Become More Productive in a world of Distraction. I wanted to mention too that if you follow the link in the show notes or go to One you Feed dot Net slash Amazon, you can get the new book there. Of course, that helps the One you Feed podcast out just a little bit, and Chris would be ecstatic. Hi, friends, I wanted to remind you of a couple different ways that you can connect with

us or get more of One you Feed goodness. The first is our Facebook group. It's a discussion group where people post things that are inspiring to them. They talk about problems or challenges that they're having and get lots of great feedback from the group. It's a great place to be and you can get there by going to One you Feed dot Net slash group. Another great resource

is our email list. If you sign up on our website One you Feed dot Net today, you get a free guide top four hacks that make habits stick, and you get a monthly newsletter. And the newsletter, I think is one of the best things we put out. It talks about all of the episodes that happened that month. It has a tip from a listener about how they feed their good wolf. It has my book recommendation for the month. And it's not a guest I've had on

it's something completely different. And there's a section a meditation corner that talks about meditation from a different angle every month. So highly recommend you get that. That's one you feed dot net and just subscribe in the right hand column. And finally, I did a ted x talk not quite a year ago that talks about how to create good habits, and I think it's one of the better things I've done. And so you can go to one you feed dot

net slash tad to see that. So those are just a couple different ways that you can engage with us. As always, thank you so much for listening and being involved. We're so happy you're here. And here's the interview with Chris Bailey. Hi, Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me man, it's good to be here. I am

happy to have you on. Your book is called hyper Focus, How to be More Productive in a world of distraction, or I should say your most recent book is called hyper Focus because you've written on productivity topics before, and we will get into all those details, but let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandfather and she says, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's

funny because I'm at my desk right now. I'm standing up, but to my right, right next to my desk is my meditation cushion, which i'd go to on breaks and in order to focus more deeply and and get more done the rest of the day. And it's funny you mentioned greed, hatred and fear, because greed, hatred and delusion are kind of the more toxic things in our life.

According to Buddhism. Maybe that's where you pulled it from, whereas things like kindness, bravery and law of And what it reminds me of is what we notice, because I'm a big believer in the idea that what we notice is what we become. If we notice all the things that we have to be grateful for in our lives, that's what we see, and then we live this life

of abundance. If we notice all of the things that we don't have and the things that we want, and all the things that are different from the way we expected them to be, then we're going to leave a life of suffering behind us in our tracks. And so

that that's what it reminds me of. Um, where you know what, what we notice we become if that makes sense absolutely, And it reminds me of a line in your book that says, directing our attention towards the most important object of your choosing and then sustaining that attention is the most consequential decision we will make throughout the day. We are what we pay attention to. And and I think we can expand that beyond I mean, that's a great productivity tip, right, But that's life, right, is is

where are we putting our attention and focus up? And if I've realized one thing in writing that book and looking over all the research about attention, it's that the state of our attention is what determines the state of our lives. If we go through each moment in a state of distraction, we're trying to pay attention to five or six different things, and we notice our attention is

tugged in the moment. Those moment by moment experiences of distraction or what accumulate to create a life that is distracted. On the converse side, if we pay attention to things that are productive and that move our work forward and also meaningful, you know, conversations like the one with you right now, like when we're at dinner with somebody, a good meal, we're eating, a good cup of coffee we're drinking. Then our our lives become more productive and meaningful because

those moments accumulate to make a life. And so it's such a powerful idea and simply noticing the things in the first place, but then you can kind of direct your attention where it's best for you. Yeah, I often talk about one of the major reasons I are did this show was because I noticed what happens to my brain if I just sort of let it go wherever it wants, and it tends towards the you know, greed, hatred, delusion, insecurity, pick your poison right and culturally right. You and I

talked about this a little bit before the show. What how this culture might be different than than other cultures that you've been to where there's this level of um insecurity or hyper sexualization, or to me, it's what it is is it's so much a focus on everything that

is outside of us. If I had to boil, what I feel like the cultural messaging is down for me is that it's always pointing me towards something external, whether it's the outside of how I look or the outside of how you look, or what my car looks like or where I live. And so I started this show really because I just was like, I need a consistent reminder to put my attention on things that that matter. And so I thought, well, if I do this show, I'll talk to somebody each week about it. I'll have

to read a book each week about it. And it worked, right, I mean it works for me. It's just this consistent reminder of what is important. And I'm going to jump ahead in the interview here a little bit to where I was going to go because it makes me think of something that you talk about in here, and I think it's so useful because I've got my own version of it. But you call it the hourly awareness chime, which is you set your phone to go off every

hour and you ask yourself a series of questions. Mine have always been, you know, where am I kind of trying to get back to the present moment, like ground myself in the moment? What am I doing? And is it what I want to be doing. You've got a few more and I'll just read them and then i'll let you um comment on them. But they're they're similar, but there's a little bit more diversely. But was my mind wandering? Am I working on autopilot or something I

intentionally chose? Am I immersed into productive task? What's the most consequential thing I could be doing? You know how full is my attentional space? We'll talk about it in attentional space in a minute. And then are their distractions that are preventing me from hyper focus. But I love that. Um, I haven't really seen it anywhere else anybody who mentions, you know, sort of that very regular check in as to what is my mind doing right now? Or what

am I doing with my mind? I guess either way. Yeah, And you know, he rhymed off a few questions. And and the thing I always say when it comes to productivity advice is you have a lot of experts who have these you know, these ten these fifteen steps systems that say, okay, do these things in this order and you'll be maximally, you will be a hundred times more productive. But what if I've realized something in in exploring and

researching this topic. It's that productivity just doesn't work that way. Um, it's personal productivity. And because of that, we have to take the advice that works for us and leave the rest of it on the table. Um. And so I'll use that as a frame for this conversation. Is you know, you might agree with some of the things that you might not agree with with much of it. You might agree with a few things, but take what works for

you and leave the rest. But this hourly awareness chime is something that I've personally found so helpful with regard to the work that I do, because the truth is that we don't check up on what's in our attention. That often we don't notice what's in our mind, what our mind is full of. It's what mindfulness is. It's noticing what your mind is full of. And so this hourly chime is essentially an hourly prompt at which we notice, Okay, where is my mind? How distracted am I? Is? It

wandering away from what I intended to focus on? And our mind wanders an awful lot without our awareness. Um. The latest research that I've seen, it shows that our mind wanders around of the day and we only notice around five times each hour that it has wandered away from whatever it is that we wanted to accomplish. And what this means is that it can wander for a long time without us noticing that it has um and

it can also wander away from our intent mention. So we choose so often what we do before we focus on something, but then our mind goes to a different place. It tends to a distraction. UM, it tends to something you know, our mind tends to gravitate it to anything that's one of three things. Anything that's pleasurable, anything that

is threatening, or anything that is novel. And so you know, so often when our mind wanders, it wanders to something that's one of these three things, like like you were talking off the bat. But if we notice that we've fallen into one of these distractions, we can notice and realign it to what's important too, um, or simply notice that we're working on something productive and give ourselves a well deserved pat on the back. Yeah. So a question

for you hourly awareness challenge. One of the things that I have found is that when I set something an alert or a reminder to go off very very regularly, there becomes a point that I start to ignore it. It starts to you know, so how do you work with that phenomenon? You know, how do you keep that fresh or how do you keep yourself order focused on? Like, okay, you know what I really do need to stop and

do a do a real check in here. Yeah. So, I think the best productivity tactics out there they're self reinforcing and so in that way, when you do them, and the more you invest in them, um, the more you end up accomplishing the deeper you're able to focus, Um, the less your mind wanders for and the more often you work with intention. And these are these are actually the measures that I use to measure the quality of

our attention. So how long we can hold our focus for, how long our mind wanders for before we can catch it, and how much of our time we spend with intention. And so I think if you look at these measures over time, so it's hard to measure them on a precise scientific level, and doing so probably might not even worth be doing. But you know, simply notice how these measures change over time, so as you continue to check

up on your attention. And notice also if you make a habit of checking up on where your mind it is throughout the day, because then it really becomes a habit. Then he can switch over to other cues. So sometimes you know, this hourly chime becomes a bit annoying and so, oh it's that damn chime again, I'm trying to get some work done. Um, Then you can switch it over

to other cues in your environment. So maybe picking up your phone on the third or fourth ring instead of the first and checking up on where your mind is that when it rings, maybe every time your calendar gives you a notification checking checking up on where your mind is. Then, so introducing these other cues that isn't this annoying hourly chimes because it it does kind of wear a bit thin at a certain point and you might not even find you need it past a certain point. But it's

a good way to begin working more mindfully. I think, yeah, let's talk about productivity for a second, because I think that productivity is one of those things that when people hear it, they tend to think, Okay, that's about business. And you know, I know a lot of listeners on this show will hear that and be like, hey, I'm not I'm just not that interested in business, right, Yeah, I'm going to skip this episode. But really, productivity, it certainly has a lot to do with the work that

you do. But I think you could also argue that it's not just a means to an end, but it's an end in itself in that there's something about the way we feel when we use our time well, whatever well means to us, there's a well being inherent in using our time. Well, it's not just what that produces. Yeah, and um, I think everybody has a different definition of this term productivity, And when I first started exploring this area, I had a very different definition that I have now.

But the definition that I've settled into over time that I find works regardless of the situation that we're in, is that we're perfectly productive whenever we accomplish what we intend to do. And so if we intend to have a great interview with with somebody and then write a report and then update our Excel sheet, and then we do all those things, um, then we were perfectly productive.

And the same is true if we intend to relax on a beach and put up our feet and read a good book and drink a few corona, and then we do I would argue we're perfectly productive then too. But the key, and I think the yardstick against which we should measure our productivity isn't how busy we are. It's not how much we do, but rather it's uh the intentions that we set, how many of them do we accomplish? Uh? And to what degree do we accomplish them?

I find this word, like he said, brings up these connotations is something that's so cold and corporate and all about this efficiency. Um. But I don't think it's about that really, in practice, it's not about doing more and more and more faster, faster, faster. I think it's about doing the right things and doing those deliberately and with intention. That that's where productivity lies, right, and time management by

its very nature is an interesting discipline. And but if we don't start with like, what is the good use of our time? Then you know, I mean, that's to me, that's where it all starts. How do I want to use my time? What's important to me in life? What's important to me this month, this week, and then aligning you know, our time to that, and then using that

time well. And again, one of the things that has become so apparent to me is how painful using time wastefully is, at least for me, and I think for a lot of people. You know, procrastination is is a

real problem for a lot of people. And it's a problem because a, yes, it stops you from accomplishing what you want to accomplish, which is a cost, but you know, a lot of the people I work with and coaching, the other cost that I would argue is even bigger is what it does to us inside, how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about our ability to impact the world, how we feel out of control. And so again I don't think that productivity or time management our

means to an end. They're also, as you know, as I said, an end to themselves, because it feels good to use our time well and it feels bad to not use it well. Back to the wolf example. So some feelings that a lot of people mentioned coming up when they're not productive are things like guilt and worry

and doubt. But if you deconstruct these feelings a little bit, that you know, I come up with so many uh productivity ideas on the meditation cushion and practicing mindfulness and and ideas like that, and this happens to be one of them, because it's by deconstructing these feelings that we can really get to the bottom of them, I think. But if you look at guilt, for example, it's kind of this tension about the way we spend our time in the past. Um, this worry is attention about the future.

This doubt is really attention about how we're spending our time now. And if you work with intention, these emotions are kind of flood in to to fill the vacuum that intentionality leaves when it's not there, and so when you work with intention there's kind of this purpose is drive behind what you're doing because you chose to do it, and in that choice is a confidence that what you're doing in the moment, whatever that happens to be, that's exactly where you need to be. That's what you're put

on earth to do. And because you don't feel this guilt, that's worried, this doubt, you can become so much more immersed in what you're doing in the present. So I think you hit the nail right on the head. A lot of people focus on, Okay, we need to become two times as productive each day, but I think that feeling is worth chasing even more, the feeling that we get a bit of when we write something on our to do list that we just did and then cross

it off just for the fun of it. Um you know, it's that feeling of accomplishing what we set out to do, and not only that, but connecting what we intend to do with what's meaningful in our lives, what's actually important in our work, that's actually connected to other people and not just connected to ourselves. And this is what makes a difference. It's what gives us that feeling too, and also erases the the other feelings that that aren't so

uh savory. The way I describe it as you know that one of the most important skills in life is being able to make commitments or promises to yourself and then keep them and again, whatever those promises or commitments ares, that's that's yours to figure out. That's entirely individual. But if we can't do that, it eats at us. It erodes us as as people, because we just you know, I often say to people who have tried to change something over and over and over again, it's like we

at a certain point just don't believe ourselves. We're like, well, yeah, I'm gonna start exercising again. But at the same moment, there's this part of us it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, I've said that a thousand times, you know, and and it's just it's an awful feeling. Yeah, it really is. So I think this is why productivity is so important exact. So let's move on to an idea that you shared in one of your earlier books, and you reference it briefly in this book. But I think it's really useful.

You call it the rule of three. This is a great segue because we're just talking about intention and so you know, how do you make that practical on a daily basis? The hourly Awareness Chime is a good way to do that. So is setting these cues in your environment. So you're walking down the hallway and that reminds you to check up on what's on your attention, what were you just doing. But probably my favorite productivity ritual of all time is one of the simpler ones as well,

and it's called the rule of three. And it goes like this. At the start of the day, you fast forward to the end of the day in your head and you ask yourself that, by the time this day is done, what three main things will I want to have accomplished? And three is such a it's such a great number because it's a number that fits comfortably within

our attentional space. Our attentional space being just what we're able to focus on in the moment, and we can hold around three or four pieces chunks of information in our mind at once. And you know, phone numbers are

one of my favorite examples of this. We don't say our phone number is you know, one billion, six million, eight hundred thousand, whatever we say, our phone is phone numbers one six, one, three, eight, night eight h two nine six four, And so you know, we chunk it into these groups of three and and four, and we chunked the world into groups of three. Especially, we have sayings like good things coming threes, and celebrities die in threes,

and the third times the charm. We award three Olympic medals. We divide a story, even which is a sequence of dozens of events, into three parts, the beginning, the middle, and the end. We grow up immersed in stories like Man, the Three Little Bears, the Three Blind Mice, the Three Little Pigs. Then we go to the Three Musketeers, and

the list go is on. And so the idea is that this number three, we can hold it in our attention at once, so we can actually recall these things throughout the day when we uh day dream on what we should do next. But it fits with the way we think, and so I'm a big advocate for doing

this every day. I also like to set three weekly intentions, three monthly intentions, three intentions for the year, so that I can see my daily goals feeding into these longer term goals that actually matter to me, so I can you know there's that deeper connection on a daily basis to what's meaningful for me. And so it's a simple rule, but it's a it's a pretty powerful rule. And again it's one of those rules where you know, take it

and see how it works for you. Try it on for size for a week, uh, whenever you have to be listening to this, maybe it's a Monday, Uh, set three intentions every day this week, and just see how much more you're able to accomplish and and how much deeper you're able to focus and uh, and how much of your time you spend with intention behind what you're doing. I think you'll notice some good things. I like the rule of three because it feels to me like a

middle ground, you know, the middle way. Obviously you're you're you're familiar with a lot of Buddhism, right. That's one of my favorite teachings from Buddhism is the middle way. There's a lot of stuff out there about just one thing, pick the one thing for the day, and I'm like, well, that doesn't feel like enough, you know, But if I look at my task list, I'm like, well, that's too much.

I like three because it feels, like you said, it's easily held in attentional space, but it just feels like the middle way between, like all right, I'm focused on this one thing and I'm focused on everything. Um. I really like it, and I've started using it since I read your book, and it is for me. It's very useful because about three really major things seem to be the right number to get done in a day, or at least to spend my time on. Yeah, and some

days I'll pick two. Some days I'll you know, have four important meetings, so I'll make four things. But even looking at the natural rhythm of my work as well, it's usually around three things that are important. Anything more than that you're trying to prioritize everything, and anything less than that you're just kind of focusing on too little because you have more time than you're accounting for. So

now let's move into focus. Your latest book is called hyper Focus, so tell me what he is hyper focus. Hyper Focus is the word that I use to define a state of deliberate attention where we bring our full focus to one thing, and so we allow one task to consume our full attention and so this is an attentional state that leads to what cal Newport defines as deep work, what me Hi Chick sent me Hi refers to as a flow state where we look up at the clock and two hours have gone by and we

think it's been fifteen or twenty minutes. But the main thing is that it's this level of deliberate attention, so we choose what we're focusing on ahead of time. I model it after a d h D literature where, um, you know, there's a state in a d h D where it's called hyper focus, and it's when we bring our full attention. But I use that definition but a couple with this deliberate attention, which I think is so critical.

It's so critical we choose what we focus on. You get bonus points for attempting to and actually pronouncing the author of flows name right. I never even attempted, which you can if you remember back to our beginning conversation. I tried to pronounce a name to you that I butchered utterly, which was an easy name. You can imagine what I would do, what I would do with that name. Um, I'm always impressed by it, though, so so kudo we uh.

You know, you know, kind of a backstory of of the book hyper Focus is U me Hi and I me Hi and I. This sounds like like a Rome Colm, but we have the same a Hungarian romantic comedy with me Hi Chicks set me Hi Um. We we have the same editor at Penguin Random House. And when we were pitching hyper Focus to UH to various publishers, I noticed that my current editor, Rick, he had a book of He had the original book Flow, the hardcover on

his shelf in his office. Since I sai, oh, you have me Hi Chicks at me Highest book, and he was kind of taken aback, like you are. UM. But it's you know, it's his name. You come up UH two again and again and again if you're into productivity, and so you figure, okay, I should probably learn to pronounce this um. It's also one of those names where you type it into Google every time. Google always says

did you mean me Hi Chicks sent me High? Or did you mean Schwarzenegger or whatever the name happens to be. It's thank you, Google, I really appreciate it. Well, you know what's amazing to me is, you know, I read a lot of books, you know at least one a week, as we talked about on well being, UM, mental health, productivity, meditation. And I think his book is perhaps the most cited book. I mean it's everywhere. I I mean, if I feel like every book I opened, I'm like that there it

is again. Unlike you, I have not bothered to learn the pronunciation, so maybe even one day. Have you heard of the app text Expander on the Mac? Oh, it's my favorite. Oh, I have a snippet for me, Hi chicks Set me that's it's me holly see and then it it expands that text, so it says me, Hi chicks, set me high. And I use it. Uh. I only mentioned his name once, I think in in hyper focus because I didn't want to overdo it, but use it often. Yeah,

well it's pretty seminal work. And I love text Expander. So listeners, if you're on a Mac and you don't know what text expander is and you spend a lot of time typing, that's worth this entire conversation on its own, just to go investigate and get that. I love that thing. I can't even imagine life before it, particularly as poor typer as I am. Yeah, typing in things like an animal oh man those uh no, thank you yeah, and things like I use it so much for things like

my home address. So as somebody who gets emails all day long, all the time, I can I send you a book? Can I send you a book? You know, just for me to be able to have a a shortcut key to put my home address in. I mean, it's just so many of those different things. I love it even for like book titles because I, you know, the name of this book is hyper focused, but the subtitle is longer hyper focus. How to be more productive

in the world of distraction? And I always forget whether to capitalize words I know of you don't capitalize, but um how to be more pretty? You know what about B? And so I just type an HF title and then it expands to be perfect every time. And so it's less embarrassing for you too. If these things you know, you just have to decide once. This is totally off topic, but I have to mention it. Text expander pro tip you can insert fields and numbers into the into the document.

So um, so, so you type in a number and then it it prepopulates the form. So I have a pack list uh text expander snippets. So I type in all one word pack list, and it expands to fill all of the possible things that I could possibly pack on any trip, whether I'm doing a keynote somewhere, whether I'm traveling for leisure, whether I'm going to the cottage for the weekend. And what it does before it expands is maybe we could cut this out of show. Maybe

it'll be valuable, but it asks me. It sends up a little window saying how many days will we be gone, and all types something like seven, and that will prepopulate all the fields. So it'll say, pack seven pairs of socks, seven pairs of underwear, seven the seven that seven tooth pick things since because I don't like tooth um flush, it's like different things like that, And so it saves

me a ton of time. I just go through and delete all the things that I won't be packing, because maybe I'm just going to the cottage and I don't need to pack my passport, for an example. But because of this, I never forget anything, and whenever I'm able to travel somewhere, I'm able to pack in thirty minutes.

Tops Well, you are a power user that's heavy stuff. Yeah. Yeah, Um, I just pulled up the text expander statistics and I've only been on this new computer for a month, but it has saved me hyping twelve thousand characters in that timeframe. That's a lot of tweets. Yeah, it is all right. Back on to hyper focus. So back to focus, yea, let's focus here, yes, um yeah, jeez man, what are

the four stages of hyper focus? I have to preface this by saying that I'm averse to any four step thing, because three, yeah, you know, I'm I'm quite three is a nice, round, sexy number. Um. But any system, you know, anything where you should uh you know, follow things a certain ways. So I have to preface this by saying that these ideas are modeled after the natural rhythm of our attention. So the natural rhythm our of our attention works like this. We're focused on something, then our attention

gets distracted, either by something internal inside our mind. We seek out something that's pleasurable or threatening her novel or external to us, and then we bring it back. So this happens again and again and again. It's a it's a pattern that repeat. We focus on something, our attention gets distracted, we bring it back. We're having a conversation, we start talking about texts expander, then we bring it

back to focus. And so what we can do is model, on top of this essential framework with how our attention works, a few steps by which we're able to focus more deeply on what's important throughout the day. So we start by focusing on something, Well, if intention matters so much with regard to our productivity, maybe we can choose something productive or meaningful on which we can direct our attention.

Um if we then get distracted, usually maybe we can eliminate as many of these external and internal distractions as we possibly can, then focus on something naturally and then bring our mind back to it. Whenever our mind wanders or gets distracted and we notice that it's been wandering away to something else, and so choosing something to focus on, eliminating the things that will get in the way of that focus, uh, then focusing then drawing attention back gently.

And I think that you know, that's that's just something to mention quickly. Is we're so hard on our minds when we notice they're distracted or that they've wandered to something that isn't really important. Um, that isn't what we've intended to accomplish. But it's so critical that we be kind to our mind. Our our minds are built to wander. They wander for half of the day. They're wired to to pay attention to anything that's more pleasurable and more threatening,

more novel than what's important in front of us. And so it's so critical that we be kind to our mind as we do, because that's just the way our mind is wired to work. And there is your number one meditation tip for the day. Also, listeners, kindness when your mind wanders. Yeah, And you know what helps me in meditation too, is approach it with the genuine curiosity.

Because our mind wanders just such fascinating places, and where it wanders to UM can can inform us on the state and the patterns that we've trained our mind in mind in. So, if it keeps wandering to a problem, that a difficult conversation we had a week ago, maybe it's trying to tell us something that we should we should act upon that conversation, maybe a bit differently, maybe

we should follow up on it. If it keeps wandering to what we have to do after work today, maybe we have to do some errands, maybe we should schedule that in our calendar and make a predecision for how we're going to spend our time there. So it's you know, I think a lot of people, um, you know, they they're not kind of their mind first of all. So you know, be kind to your mind treated a little bit.

Maybe ask okay, where do you want to wander today? Mind, and then let it roam free for a few minutes, let it get it out of its system. Then have a great meditation for the rest of your time on the cushion. Um. You know. I think it's that that that idea is so critical you could read a whole book about that idea alone. Yeah, And it makes me think of something, which is you mentioned one of the things to do when you are in hyper focus mode, and this is uh, something that I do also when

I'm trying to like focus on one thing. Is you know, you have a little piece of paper there, and when something distracting comes up, just write it down and then

back onto what you're doing. Because what happens to me is and I'm sure it happens to all of us to some degree, is happens a lot when I'm reading a book for an interview, because you or any other author will mention someone else or some idea, and I'll go, huh, that's interesting, and so then I'll hop over to that person's website, which forty minutes later, And not that that stuff isn't interesting or useful, but it's a lot better for me just to write down that person's name on

a list that i've got next time, and then I can go back to it later. But I'll let you expand on that, And I also want to pose a different question related to it, which is, do you do that during meditation? And if you heard of people who do that during meditation, because as we're talking, it occurs to me that's exactly what happens in meditation all the time.

And on one hand, it seems like it would be counterproductive to stop and write something down, and yet we know that what that does is in a sense, allow our minds to relax and refocus easier. That's such a good question, and and I've grappled with that question for years, and I've looked at the research about that idea for years, and I've i think I've finally settled on an answer for it. But that's you know, in terms of a distractions list, this is a great example of distractions that

are internal. And so there are a lot of external ones, and those ones are usually obvious. A lot of people talk about those. I think enough books have been written about external distractions. Of course, we should leave our phone in another room. That it's kind of, you know, an essential part of focus. But the internal distractions that we have. We're reading a book and then our mind throws some cringe worthy memory that happened a few weeks ago. Where

does that memory come from? Why does it present us with that memory in that moment when we're trying to focus on something. And so the idea of keeping a distractions list whenever an idea is um externalized in this way where we get it out of our mind and into some external system, that frees up more attentional space for whatever we want to give um that our attention to in the moment. And so that this is where the power of that idea lies, is that we externalize

these things, we can get back on track. And I think in the book, I forget what I called the chapter because because it's you know, chapter names don't really mean much to me, I forget what I called it, but it's like seven or ten things that you should do before reading hyper focus, And I think number one is keep a distractions list anything that comes up as you read, you know, maybe write it down in the

back of the book and cross things off there. If you're not one of those people who's protective of books, maybe keep a separate list, um And so this way you're able to focus more quickly, you know, refocus more quickly, but on capturing things during meditation. I've had a um at least a thirty minute meditation practice every day for years. And I say at least because my zapu and zabutana

right here next to my desk in my office. And whenever i find my attention waning a bit, I'll often sit on and see, okay, what's uh, you know, where's my mind at today? And I think sometimes if I'm going through a lot and i find that I'm juggling a lot of ideas and some things are slipping through the cracks, I'll often keep a note pad in front of me with a little pen, just to jot down, much like a distractions list, these ideas so I can realign myself to focus on my breath. Have you done

any meditation retreats before I have? Yep, I've done. I've done several. Yeah, me too. We we should go on one. We should have like, uh, have you ever done a podcast like meditation retreat You should do that. You know. Funny in when you feed Facebook group recently that idea of doing a retreat together as being thrown around some That's cool. I'm down for that. Assuming the book launched

stuff doesn't get in the way of schedule. Well, believe me, your book will be well launched and you'll probably be halfway through your next one before I before I get this organized. Exactly the the idea, you know, if you're ever on a retreat, at least if if you're do the kind of passion of retreats that I do. Um, they'll always say, you know, your ideas will come to you. Uh. You know, if your poet, your poetry is going to come to you. If you're an accountant, some ideas about

work and things will come to you. And they always say, don't write those down, don't keep a diary. Uh, don't jot down these ideas, don't don't try to capture these things because this is a time that you can become more holy embedded within your practice, which is which is great overall. It's great for the quality of your attention and ultimately, I think for for your productivity, for how much meaning you have in your life because you're able

to focus on stuff to to move things forward. But I often find myself capturing these ideas at the same time, and I think for me, it's about a balance, um. And so you know, sometimes all ideas will be flowing NonStop, and so I'll just capture them because I'm okay with that.

But I think when you capture these ideas in the short term, um, this leads to more short term productivity, but in the long term, your attention will suffer because you're not getting the full benefits out of the meditation practice. And so you know, I think you have to look at things over two time frames. Capturing things will make you more productive in the short term with a meditation practice is but in the long term your practice might suffer a little bit. Does that make sense? I think

that's an idea that's that I've arrived at totally. Yeah. Well, here's what's interesting is I've done some vipasana style insight meditation type retreats where literally all you do is meditate pretty much. You eat, sleep and you meditate just you know, you you sit, you walk, you sit, you walk. And I've done those, But the last two retreats I've been on have been one week retreats, their silent retreats there with a spiritual teacher named Audia Shanti, and there's there's

less meditation. It's more like six hours a day, which is not an insignificant amount of meditation, but is not like an insight meditation or of vi pasta or a zen retreat. What I like about that is one is it feels less like an endurance contest. But secondly is that aren't destroyed at the end where your legs are just craped. But I get lots of time. I still take the instructions very seriously around like don't read books, don't you know, don't distract yourself, right, But what I

find is that I get lots of time. What I do with that free time to a large assent as I walk in the woods. And what I have found is that, boy do I get great ideas when I am meditating five or six hours a day and then the rest of the time. Um, you know, I'm still trying to stay sort of attentionally focused in the in the present moment. But yeah, boy, the idea is coming.

What I what I like about that format a little bit is that I feel like I can write them down without it being a detriment to the meditation practice. The fascinating thing that that idea reminds me of is the greater control we have over our attention. The research shows that when our mind is wandering, it wanders in a more productive way. Yes, um, it wanders to the future more often when we have more control over our attention. Same with when we're happier. When we're happier, our mind

wanders to the future more often at it. If you just let your mind be a little bit, maybe you're would working, maybe you're going for a run, maybe you're uh, you know, just walking around town, maybe you're walking from one room in the office to another. Your mind will wander to the future on average if you're average around

forty percent of the time. But when you're happier and when you have a meditation practice, because you're able to focus that much more deeply in the quality of your attention goes up, it wanders to the future so much more. And it wanders also more to the present while thinking less about the past. And so it wanders to better uh and more fruitful. Fruitful is a better word than productivity.

In a lot of these cases, it wanders to better places, um, so that those sessions become more meaningful and and uh provide us with greater insights. Yeah, I want to do another sort of more the insider of Aposta or Zen meditation retreats where we where it's the you know, the crazy amount of meditation. I want to do that again to compare it. But boy, these these last couple of retreats I've done with Audio Shanti have been way more profound for me than any meditation retreat where I was

meditating for twelve hours a day. There's a lot of variables that could go into that, right, it's the less meditation time and nature. It's because it's with Audio Shanti. It's because I am further in my practice, and you know, whatever they whatever they are, But yeah, I just found that to be an interesting thing. But what I do notice is that you know, when I meditate more regularly, I meditate pretty much every day. You know, i'd say it's you know, I'm not, but I'm I'm well above

you know, probably um, but the time varies. But when I'm really doing you know, longer meditations very consistently, my brain just works better. And it's not the reason I do it, because I actually have things that feel a little bit deeper to me that drive me to do that. But boy, having a brain that works well is certainly a nice benefit. It's kind of important. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So we're nearing the end of time here. You and I will have a post show conversation where we talk about some different things, talking about techniques to increase focus. Will probably um talk a little bit about how to balance focus versus breaks and relaxation. But let's real quick hit on what scatter focuses before we wrap up. There

are two attentional modes that our mind has. There. There's the focused mode, where we you know, bring our attention to something it fires up the task positive network in our mind. And then there's the the unfocused mode. So in any moment, we're either focus or we're unfocused in this unfocused mode, this day dream mode, the mind wandering mode. UM, activates the default mode of our mind, which, uh, there's

so much fascinating research coming out about now. Um it's it's such a great field of neuroscience to be in. But the words that I use, I like making up words for stuff to make it more accessible. You know, when we bring our complete, deliberate attention to something that's that's hyper focus. But when we deliberately let our mind wander, I like to call that scattered focus. So in other words, you know, we we get into this mode, uh, not

that often. Usually we don't uh let our mind wander deliberately. It's wandering against our will when we're trying to focus on writing a report or an important email, or or or meditating for example. But the research on where our mind wanders too is absolutely fascinating and it totally illuminated the way that I saw this topic. One of the other topics that I'm a big nerd about his traffic flows.

How traffic flows down down a highway. And if you look at what allows cars to continue moving forward, it's not how fast the individual cars are moving, but rather it's how much space exists between the cars that allows them to continue flowing forward. And I think our work is much the same way were distraction and kind of filling it with mindless things. Distractions fill our day like water where they prevent uh this uh, this time this

attention between different tasks. We go to focusing on Instagram or Facebook, or Twitter on our phone or the latest news before we switched to focusing on something else. And because of this um there's really no room between the things that we do. But the research on where our mind wanders too is so fast. I touched on it a bit. Where our mind is wired with this prospective bias, so it wanders to think about the future forty eight

percent of the time. And this is time in which we're planning, we're setting intentions, we're thinking about what we're gonna do next, and so in this way, daydreaming, even though we're doing nothing, allows us to shut off this autopilot mode. We think about the present in this mode percent of the time, so we think of alternative and strategic approaches to what we're doing and conversations we're having in problems we're solving, and we think about the past

around twelve percent of the time. And so you know a lot of us, I think the numbers higher than that. But usually we're planning in this mode. And the reason they don't end up to one d is Uh. It's because the rest of the time our mind is dull or blank. And in this mode, our mind wanders to three main places. The first is it wanders to these three places. But this allows us to do three things. It allows us to rest up because we only expand mental energy when we regulate our attention in one way

or another um. And it allows us to plan because our mind wanders to the future forty percent of the time, and we actually think about ideas UM when our mind is wandering fourteen times as much as when we're focused on something. And so this alone is is a reason to to have some more space between what you're doing. And the third benefit is that it allows us to

come up with ideas. It allows us to connect the information that we consumed last month in a book we were reading to a problem we're facing at work and have this brilliant Eureka insight in the shower or when we're walking to work. Um. And so these three ideas is what what makes the mode so powerful? Yeah, I agree, And so what are ways to get into scatter focused mode? The best way is doing something that's habitual, and so anything that is simple and habitual doesn't consume our full attention.

So this is things like UM, taking a shower in the morning, UH, swimming laps. It's having our morning coffee with just a notepad to capture our thoughts without focusing completely on anything. And when we do something habitual, this has been shown to lead us to the greatest number of creative insights and because it makes it fun and so we want her to the future more often. We're able to rest better because we regulate our attention less often and the idea that we only do one thing.

This anchors our attention in the moment so that we can keep scatter focusing for longer, all while checking up on where our attention is at. UH. We we can use the mode to also chew over problems, so you know, keeping one problem in mind while we go on a nature hike, for example, UH can can allow us to see it from different angles and approach it from different sides. But we can also use it to capture what's on our mind just laying down somewhere with a notepad and

a pen and seeing where our mind wanders off. Too. But it's this habitual mode where we're doing something that doesn't consume our full attention, but yet anchors us into the moment so that that our mind can wander while we do it largely on autopilot mode, that we get our best ideas and that we plan more and rest more too. Wonderful. Well, Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I really

appreciate I've really enjoyed this conversation. Will have links in the show notes to where people can find you find your book, UM, and as I mentioned, you and I will continue this conversation. Listeners, If you want to hear the post show conversation, one you feed dot net slash support and UM you can get ad free episodes there. You can get these post show conversations. You can get many episodes and you can listen to them all right within your podcast player. So when you feed dot net

slash Support Chris again, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you Eric, I love being here all right. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the one you feed podcast head over to one you feed dot net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.