Speaker 1: There is a lot of hidden stress that we choose
Speaker 1: to pay attention to simply because of the fact that
Speaker 1: stress becomes familiar.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Chris Bailey,
Speaker 2: author and host of the Time and Attention podcast, which
Speaker 2: explores the science of living a deeper, more intentional life.
Speaker 2: Along with having the best first name ever, Chris is
Speaker 2: also one of the self proclaimed laziest people you will
Speaker 2: ever meet, famously knocking Eric and I into second third place.
Speaker 2: This drive to free up time for relaxation has led
Speaker 2: Chris to intensibly research and experiment with the subject of productivity.
Speaker 2: For over the last decade, He's written hundreds of articles
Speaker 2: on the subject and has garnered coverage and media as
Speaker 2: diverse as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ,
Speaker 2: Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review, and others. Chris's books have
Speaker 2: also been published in twenty six languages, and his newest
Speaker 2: book is How to Calm Your Mind, Finding Presence and
Speaker 2: product Activity and Anxious Times.
Speaker 3: Hi, Chris, welcome back.
Speaker 1: Hey, how have you been.
Speaker 3: I have been good. It's exciting to talk with you again.
Speaker 3: I knew you were on for a full interview, and
Speaker 3: I think you may have come on for like a
Speaker 3: short interview at one point, so this might be time three.
Speaker 3: But I've always enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed your
Speaker 3: latest book, which is called How to Calm Your Mind,
Speaker 3: Finding Presence in Productivity in Anxious Times. And I was
Speaker 3: saying to you before we started, I got it, and
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't just I wasn't feeling enthused
Speaker 3: about it. I was like, calm and presence, I mean,
Speaker 3: like that's kind of my bread and Butter. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm his Practicings and Buddhists. I just thought, all right,
Speaker 3: I'm going to read the same sort of stuff again.
Speaker 3: And I knew you meditated, but I was very pleasantly
Speaker 3: surprised by the book and it went in directions that
Speaker 3: I absolutely didn't see and I learned a lot from it.
Speaker 3: So really, nice job.
Speaker 1: Well thank you. That is nice to hear, because I
Speaker 1: found the same with a lot of the books on
Speaker 1: the topic. I've been a meditator for well over a
Speaker 1: decade at this point. I want to say two decades,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's bad. Probably a decade and
Speaker 1: a half or so. And so when I had this burnout,
Speaker 1: the say anxiety, these periods of burnout and anxiety I
Speaker 1: was going through, I was turning to a lot of
Speaker 1: the traditional advice out there. I was turning to the books,
Speaker 1: to the articles, to psychology today, to all these different places.
Speaker 1: How do I get over this? How do I get
Speaker 1: through this? And I found that what was out there
Speaker 1: wasn't really helping me, and I thought there was something
Speaker 1: kind of wrong with me. But that kind of led
Speaker 1: me to get curious about this research and look at
Speaker 1: the actual science instead. Of the wishful thinking on topics
Speaker 1: like these, and I found a lot of lessons I
Speaker 1: didn't expect to, So, yeah, thank you. That means a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we'll get into what all that is in
Speaker 3: a moment, but we do need to start, like we
Speaker 3: always do, with the parable. There's a grandparent talking with
Speaker 3: their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
Speaker 3: wolves that battle inside of us. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 3: the others bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think
Speaker 3: about it for a second, and they look up at
Speaker 3: their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 3: the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 3: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 3: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 3: you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, what comes to the mind for the journey
Speaker 1: that I'm on right now is there are wolves that
Speaker 1: we feed without even realizing that we're feeding them. And
Speaker 1: for the journey that I embarked on that became this book,
Speaker 1: that is what comes to mind. I didn't realize the
Speaker 1: ways I was feeding my own anxiety, my own burnout
Speaker 1: of many of which were hidden from my view. And
Speaker 1: of course we all have blind spots, right, and recognizing
Speaker 1: our blind spots is one of the reasons what makes
Speaker 1: podcasts like yours and others so fantastic. We can realize
Speaker 1: the areas we need to invest in that didn't even
Speaker 1: occur to us to invest in the first place, and
Speaker 1: that I think was the case for me. That's what
Speaker 1: comes to mind right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a couple things that came to mind for
Speaker 3: me when you were talking about this, and I was
Speaker 3: thinking about your book and the parable. You know. The
Speaker 3: other is you talk very much about how calm is
Speaker 3: the polar opposite of anxiety, and so we are very often,
Speaker 3: by the actions we're taking, feeding one or the other
Speaker 3: of those things, and by nature of our modern world,
Speaker 3: most of us are feeding the anxiety. And to your point,
Speaker 3: we may not know it. And we're going to get
Speaker 3: into what a lot of those hidden things are, or
Speaker 3: things that we may vaguely know aren't good for us
Speaker 3: but not really be able to put a finger on why. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that kind of came to mind, that calm versus anxiety.
Speaker 3: But let's start just a little bit because I'd love
Speaker 3: to talk about why this book for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny that story. I love that parable and
Speaker 1: the calm versus anxiety. This is one of the misconceptions
Speaker 1: I had going into this journey because I was anxious,
Speaker 1: burnt out, and I didn't really understand what those things were.
Speaker 1: But what I found looking at the research on this
Speaker 1: subject of calm, First of all, there isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of it. There is a scant amount of research that
Speaker 1: does exist on calm that we can draw from. And
Speaker 1: I define calm as a subjectively positive state with a
Speaker 1: low level of mental arousal, with an accompanying absence of anxiety.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the research that does exist, though,
Speaker 1: I love how you started with that spectrum idea. We
Speaker 1: think anxiety is a spectrum that goes from not anxious
Speaker 1: to super anxious, can't really function, But their latest research
Speaker 1: shows that anxiety is more of a spectrum that ranges
Speaker 1: from high anxiety on one end to high calmness on
Speaker 1: the other end. And so the more we invest in
Speaker 1: overcoming this level of anxiety in our lives, the more
Speaker 1: calm we can find. We can go past the point
Speaker 1: of no anxiety towards the point of calm and feel
Speaker 1: even better and have more of a capacity to absorb
Speaker 1: stress that comes our way. And you know you asked
Speaker 1: about the why for the book. This all came to
Speaker 1: the head for me when I was on stage in
Speaker 1: front of a group of one hundred people. I was
Speaker 1: giving a presentation on productivity on some of the work
Speaker 1: I'd put out in the past, and I noticed in
Speaker 1: the moment this sinking feeling coming over me. And in
Speaker 1: the moment, I just remember thinking, Oh, what is happening
Speaker 1: right now? I can't remember what I was supposed to say.
Speaker 1: I feel like I have a couple of dozen marbles
Speaker 1: in my mouth that are dancing around my tongue. And
Speaker 1: I realized in the moment like I was having an
Speaker 1: anxiety attack, you know. Shortly after that decreased cognitive function,
Speaker 1: I felt as if somebody had shot my brain full
Speaker 1: with a vial of liquid adrenaline. You know, I felt
Speaker 1: as if I was instantly in that fight or flight mode.
Speaker 1: I almost left the stage, but luckily I stayed and
Speaker 1: had rehearsed that talk many many times over and powered
Speaker 1: through it to a lukewarm reception. But I remember after
Speaker 1: that point just lying down in the hotel room that
Speaker 1: I was staying at that was attached to the conference center,
Speaker 1: just kind of reliving it while thinking that something needed
Speaker 1: to really really change. I wasn't sure why I had
Speaker 1: felt exhausted. I had felt, you know, a bit cynical,
Speaker 1: a bit unproductive, even I felt a bit burnt out, anxious.
Speaker 1: I had tried a lot up to that point, but
Speaker 1: it was at that point in time when I thought,
Speaker 1: I am getting to the bottom of this. I don't
Speaker 1: care what it takes. I don't care if I have
Speaker 1: to clear out the next several months, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I am getting to the bottom of this from my
Speaker 1: own mental health. And that was the impetus for what
Speaker 1: became this book, you know, realizing that the stuff I
Speaker 1: had explored up to that point was not working. I
Speaker 1: needed to find something that fixed it. I didn't intend
Speaker 1: to write this book. I really really didn't. But at
Speaker 1: the end, I thought, Okay, this is stuff that isn't
Speaker 1: really out there. It's my own weird approach as somebody
Speaker 1: who thinks a lot about productivity and presence and just
Speaker 1: bringing my full self to whatever it is that I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Let's get this out there. But there's an interesting journey
Speaker 1: that started off on a note of discomfort that led
Speaker 1: me from that anxious part of the column spectrum towards
Speaker 1: the column side. Fortunately, hello from the column side.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And one of the things that you said, and
Speaker 3: you said that it mystified you, and it sort of
Speaker 3: mystified me too early on in the book, is that
Speaker 3: you were doing so many of the things that we
Speaker 3: recommend that we do in life in order to be
Speaker 3: calm or at peace. Yeah, you were meditating thirty minutes today,
Speaker 3: you were getting massages, you were exercising, You were taking
Speaker 3: generally pretty good care of yourself. If I were to
Speaker 3: look at a list of like things that are com
Speaker 3: recommended to help us be less anxious or more calm,
Speaker 3: you kind of had checked off the top five on
Speaker 3: that list, and we're doing them pretty well, and yet
Speaker 3: you were still dealing with high anxiety and burnout. And
Speaker 3: kind of what I took from that and then reading
Speaker 3: the rest of the book was that that self care
Speaker 3: stuff is important and it's valuable. However, there's really something
Speaker 3: about the way we are orienting our minds and our time.
Speaker 3: It's almost as if we're doing all these good things
Speaker 3: for us self care wise, but then we're doing all
Speaker 3: these other things habit of mind wise that are fighting
Speaker 3: against each other, and the self care stuff is just
Speaker 3: sort of getting overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a band aid on top of
Speaker 1: something that is structurally broken. Where for example, this wasn't
Speaker 1: my case. But if you have the most stressful job
Speaker 1: in the world, and you wake up and you go
Speaker 1: to work, and you come home and you have like
Speaker 1: two hours to spare and you just spend like all
Speaker 1: that time doing yoga and meditating in the morning, you
Speaker 1: still have to go to this job that you hate.
Speaker 1: That is the biggest source of stress in the world.
Speaker 1: And that's not you know, work is definitely one aspect
Speaker 1: of it. But there are deep seated causes of modern
Speaker 1: day anxiety that we didn't always have. You know. One
Speaker 1: example of this is stress that comes to mind where
Speaker 1: we have a lot of stress in our lives. That's
Speaker 1: so obvious. I don't even need to say it. But
Speaker 1: the more I uncovered the stress in my life, the
Speaker 1: more I realize that there is actually a lot of
Speaker 1: stress that is hidden from our view in our own lives.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of stress we don't have control
Speaker 1: over there's financial concerns, economic concerns, there's the stress of
Speaker 1: raising a family. There's the stress of just going to
Speaker 1: work and having a very big workload every day, and
Speaker 1: you know, dreading that feeling on Sunday. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stress we don't have control over, but there is
Speaker 1: a lot of hidden stress that we choose to pay
Speaker 1: attention to simply because of the fact that stress be
Speaker 1: comes familiar. The news is a really good example of
Speaker 1: this for me, where I was investing in a lot
Speaker 1: of these self care strategies while I was checking the
Speaker 1: news every five or ten minutes, and this led to
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting research. You know, there's one study
Speaker 1: that was conducted around the Boston marathon bombings, and what
Speaker 1: the team of researchers did is they looked at two
Speaker 1: groups of people. The first group of people watched six
Speaker 1: or more hours of news coverage about the Boston marathon bombings.
Speaker 1: The second group of people were runners in the actual marathon.
Speaker 1: And what they found was that the people who watched
Speaker 1: the news coverage who didn't have a personal connection to
Speaker 1: the marathon were more likely to develop post traumatic stress
Speaker 1: disorder and were significantly more stressed than somebody who was
Speaker 1: in the marathon and personally affected by it. Right. The
Speaker 1: stress we choose to pay attention to sometimes outnumbers the
Speaker 1: stress that we don't have control over, right, and constantly
Speaker 1: exposing our mind and to threatening scenarios and situations. That
Speaker 1: causes anxiety because of course we're giving our mind raw
Speaker 1: material to be anxious about. Chronic stress is. Research shows
Speaker 1: the singular cause of burnout. Burnout is caused by that
Speaker 1: one thing and one thing only, right, burnout, which is
Speaker 1: not exhaustion by the way. Burnout is exhaustion combined with
Speaker 1: cynicism and feeling unproductive. Right, we need all three to
Speaker 1: be fully burnt out. But it doesn't really stop there. Right,
Speaker 1: there's this modern day picture to untangle. Another ingredient of
Speaker 1: which is dopamine. It's a neurotransmitter we have all heard of.
Speaker 1: You know, you could probably take a shot every time
Speaker 1: somebody mentions dopamine on the podcast.
Speaker 3: But I've never created the one you feed drinking game.
Speaker 1: Oh do you have a Bengo card?
Speaker 3: At least we should because I don't drink. I'm sober,
Speaker 3: But we should have a one you feed Bango card.
Speaker 3: You want to know what the number one would be
Speaker 3: actually wouldn't get it because I almost try to never
Speaker 3: talk about it again. But the number one thing in
Speaker 3: every book about psychology, spirituality, any of that anymore is neuroplasticity.
Speaker 3: Oh as if that is some new concept that we
Speaker 3: need to keep rehashing. I mean, I just every single book,
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, I'm flipping the next three pages.
Speaker 3: I don't need to read these same studies about how
Speaker 3: you know, scientists used to believe that we couldn't change
Speaker 3: our brains, but now, fascinating newsflash.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it's like a text expander snippet and every author's dictionary.
Speaker 3: You know, you may have been the person who got
Speaker 3: me to start using text expands. Oh it's possible, and
Speaker 3: oh my god, oh oh my game changing so good.
Speaker 1: The one I might use the most often is I
Speaker 1: type in me Holly C. And it expands to the
Speaker 1: full name of me high chick sent me high Yes,
Speaker 1: And oh I actually used that one twice today. Hey,
Speaker 1: the flow researcher guy.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. The fact that you can say his
Speaker 3: name is impressive. I think my most common one is
Speaker 3: the one you feed. I mean how many times of
Speaker 3: course in the last eight years. If I had to
Speaker 3: type that, yeah, and now I just like, you know,
Speaker 3: semi cal and toyf done, but like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 3: love text expander.
Speaker 1: Where does dopamine rank on this list of most commonly
Speaker 1: mentioned topics?
Speaker 3: Would you say it's surging? Yeah, it's definitely having its moment. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's coming way up.
Speaker 1: And it's such a misunderstood neurotransmitter too. In looking at
Speaker 1: the research on dopamine, it was amazing to discover just
Speaker 1: how little we understand about dopamine. Of course, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of experts, quote unquote experts who will pretend to
Speaker 1: understand dopamine through and through, but the forefront of the
Speaker 1: research doesn't even understand it. Yeah, and we paint dopamine
Speaker 1: out to be a bad thing, but first of all,
Speaker 1: it's an incredibly complex thing. But second of all, it's
Speaker 1: not entirely a bad thing. We use dopamine to think
Speaker 1: logically and critically. You know, if you're hunkering down on
Speaker 1: writing a book and using every corner of your mind,
Speaker 1: you're going to be using dopamine. That is going to
Speaker 1: be a dopamine fueled activity, along with other neurotransmitters. Of course,
Speaker 1: But what we find with the modern situation that we're
Speaker 1: in is that there's certain activities that we can engage
Speaker 1: in that predominantly release dopamine. One good example of these
Speaker 1: are super stimuli, which is the name scientists use for
Speaker 1: a stimulus, an object of attention, something we can pay
Speaker 1: attention to that just surges there a surge in dopamine
Speaker 1: in our brain that is kind of a highly processed
Speaker 1: version of something we're wired to enjoy, and so we
Speaker 1: love making love and internet porn. It just release surges
Speaker 1: dopamine in our brain in a way that physical presence
Speaker 1: with another human being doesn't takeout food, which is a
Speaker 1: favorite escape of my own. Some nice butter chicken or
Speaker 1: a lovely burrito bowl, brown rice soushi. I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of great options here in Ottawa, which might just
Speaker 1: arrive at our doorstep at six pm this evening because
Speaker 1: I'm getting inspiration in this current present moment. That is
Speaker 1: for a super stimuli because it's a highly processed version,
Speaker 1: but it's dopamine. It's the chronic stress, but it's also
Speaker 1: a constant craving for more, which was another fascinating topic
Speaker 1: to untangle, where we have this natural tendency to strive
Speaker 1: for more of whatever we have at all costs more accomplishment,
Speaker 1: more fame, more everything, which makes us less present and
Speaker 1: less engaged. So I feel I've gone forever with this answer.
Speaker 1: But it's this fascinating constellation of topics where there is
Speaker 1: no singular cause of modern day anxiety, you know, this
Speaker 1: non clinical anxiety and burnout on that so many of
Speaker 1: us are going through right now. But it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: to make sense of the picture that is causing this
Speaker 1: situation and untangle it a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a couple things in there that I want
Speaker 3: to hit on and draw out. The first was I
Speaker 3: loved the part that you referenced about what constitutes burnout, right,
Speaker 3: those three factors, right, exhaustion, cynicism, lack of productivity, Right,
Speaker 3: All three of those things kind of need to be there,
Speaker 3: And I think that's a very helpful lens. And then
Speaker 3: the second is I do think you did a really
Speaker 3: nice job of sort of boiling the main causes of
Speaker 3: modern anxiety, at least the ones that we can control
Speaker 3: down to really these two key ideas. One is the
Speaker 3: mindset of more, and then the other is this sort
Speaker 3: of superstimuli that we're always exposing ourselves to. So let's
Speaker 3: maybe start with the mindset of more a little bit
Speaker 3: and then we'll move into superstimuli. So tell me a
Speaker 3: little bit about what the mindset of more means means
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a fascinating thing to disentangle because we
Speaker 1: have this tendency to strive for more of whatever we have,
Speaker 1: often at any cost, right, and we often want things
Speaker 1: that conflict with one another in the moment. We want
Speaker 1: more food, but we also want more fitness. We want
Speaker 1: more likes on Instagram, but we also want more time
Speaker 1: for living the actual life that we're posting about. So
Speaker 1: we are always striving for more, and we strive for
Speaker 1: more because so much of what we do, it's very
Speaker 1: much a dopaminergic it's based on dopamine mindset that we have.
Speaker 1: Some scientists call dopamine the molecule of more because it
Speaker 1: is what propels us to drive for more. And this
Speaker 1: moves to our pursuit of accomplishment as well, where when
Speaker 1: we strive to accomplish more, we're kind of fueling that mindset.
Speaker 1: But here's a fascinating thing. The networks in our brain
Speaker 1: that support us in acquiring more. Our acquisition networks are
Speaker 1: anti correlated with our brain networks that support us when
Speaker 1: we're present and engaged and with whatever it is and
Speaker 1: whomever it is that we're with. And so the more
Speaker 1: we strive for more, the less present we become with
Speaker 1: our lives because of this dichotomy, this striving versus savoring,
Speaker 1: and this was a fascinating, fascinating topic to explore, is
Speaker 1: there is an actual science to savoring our lives. Savoring
Speaker 1: is the name for the process where we convert positive experiences,
Speaker 1: enjoyable experiences, into enjoyable emotions, and so we all have
Speaker 1: positive things that we encounter every single day. I am
Speaker 1: casually sipping on this cup of tea for folks watching
Speaker 1: the video that I'm drinking out of my CBC mug,
Speaker 1: very colorful mug, great merch for the CBC, in fact,
Speaker 1: and I'm savoring the SIPs of this tea. But I
Speaker 1: could just as easily been enjoying this tea and not
Speaker 1: really savoring it, you know, just kind of mindlessly taking
Speaker 1: a sip of a cup of tea or a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, or eating a delicious meal and just scarfing
Speaker 1: it down and not really noticing it or enjoying it,
Speaker 1: and so savoring really is this process of converting those
Speaker 1: positive experiences into positive emotions, and it's fat. There's different
Speaker 1: types of saving too. There's luxuriating, there's thanksgiving, there's marveling
Speaker 1: that we can practice. But here's the fascinating thing. The
Speaker 1: more we strive for more, the less likely we are
Speaker 1: to savor our lives. The wealthier we are, the less
Speaker 1: likely we are to savor our lives. Men have a
Speaker 1: more challenging time of savoring their lives than women do.
Speaker 1: If you put some in this acquisition mentality in a study,
Speaker 1: they are far more likely to enjoy pieces of chocolate,
Speaker 1: for example. And so this dichotomy where we're always seeking
Speaker 1: more is something that kind of unbalances our mind from
Speaker 1: calm because the networks that support us in being present
Speaker 1: are the networks that support us in being calm, and
Speaker 1: so this striving for more is anti correlated with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the saving is very interesting and it's one of
Speaker 3: those things that I've been thinking more about lately. And
Speaker 3: there was something that you said in the book that
Speaker 3: I thought was really useful, which was that savoring is
Speaker 3: a skill that grows with practice. Yeah. Right, And Furthermore,
Speaker 3: you say, the lowerer stimulation height, the easier savoring everyday
Speaker 3: life becomes. We've not gotten to stimulation height. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: basically what that means is the calmer our life is,
Speaker 3: the easier it is to savor. I know this experientially, right.
Speaker 3: I know that the more I practice being present, really
Speaker 3: taking in what's around me, the better I get at it,
Speaker 3: and the more keyed up I am, the harder it
Speaker 3: is for me to do that. Yeah. It's almost like
Speaker 3: on Thursday night when I'm trying to wrap up my
Speaker 3: work week and I am just moving one hundred miles
Speaker 3: an hour, almost impossible. By the time it's Saturday night
Speaker 3: and I'm about to go back to work, but I've
Speaker 3: taken two days off, I'm actually better even in that
Speaker 3: little bit of time, a little bit better able to
Speaker 3: savor the things in my life. And we'll get to
Speaker 3: why that is about these levels of dopamine. But savoring
Speaker 3: is a really powerful thing, and that mindset of more
Speaker 3: is so pernicious.
Speaker 1: Where do you see it come up? Oh jeez, everywhere
Speaker 1: besides everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, specifically, I was a homeless heroin addict at twenty four,
Speaker 3: so clearly I'm familiar with the phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, dopamine ruled my life, right, the craving ruled
Speaker 3: my life. But I have always seen it in primarily
Speaker 3: professional and financial terms. I know that I have to
Speaker 3: really pause and appreciate where we are. So, for example,
Speaker 3: we'll likely in twenty twenty three hit a number of
Speaker 3: downloads per month that we used to do in say
Speaker 3: a year. That's awesome, Yeah, it's going to be great.
Speaker 3: So I was sharing this with my partner, and so
Speaker 3: I gave that really interesting and great information and then
Speaker 3: immediately I said, but they're not exactly tim Ferriss numbers. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: and so I really have to watch for that. It's
Speaker 3: always like, well, that's good, but to your point, there
Speaker 3: could be more. And it's like we all know this phenomenon.
Speaker 3: I'll be happy when and we get when, and then
Speaker 3: we just roll right on, you know. And so for me,
Speaker 3: it's really been a matter of trying to stop and
Speaker 3: appreciate where I'm actually at and recognize that the me
Speaker 3: of a year ago would be thrilled to be where
Speaker 3: I'm sitting today, but the me of today is not.
Speaker 3: The me of today is like, well, I need more,
Speaker 3: and so this has always been a big thing in
Speaker 3: my life. It's part of the reason that I hate
Speaker 3: TV commercials. But I don't just hate them because they're annoying.
Speaker 3: I hate them because if I'm not careful, they work
Speaker 3: on me. Right, they may not make me want the
Speaker 3: thing that they're advertising. And so if I see a
Speaker 3: beer commercial, I may not want beer, but I certainly
Speaker 3: want the body of the guy on the beach hanging
Speaker 3: out with the girl with the sun. I mean, so
Speaker 3: the life they portray, I find myself suddenly going that's
Speaker 3: what I want. That's what I want. It's why I
Speaker 3: stay far away from Instagram. Broadly speaking, I just don't
Speaker 3: think it's good for me because I feel like, for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, I am susceptible to the mindset of more
Speaker 3: and I've had to spend a lot of energy on
Speaker 3: really trying to actively counter it. And that's definitely a
Speaker 3: work in progress.
Speaker 1: And Instagram is something I write in the book because
Speaker 1: it's designed to take advantage of this crave for more.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When Francis Hogan, the Facebook whistleblower, testified in front of Congress,
Speaker 1: she basically boiled the Instagram algorithm down into two things.
Speaker 1: Bodies and comparing lifestyles. That's Instagram, right, that's the Instagram
Speaker 1: explore tap. Those are the reels that rise to the
Speaker 1: surface because those produce the most dopamine in our mind
Speaker 1: and keep us coming back for more. Dopamine doesn't provide
Speaker 1: us with pleasure, but it leads us to feel as
Speaker 1: if we're about to experience pleasure. And this feeling that
Speaker 1: we have never quite arrived, so we have to keep
Speaker 1: going is what propels social media like that forward and
Speaker 1: we at the same time the mindset of more manifests
Speaker 1: as currencies that we wish to accumulate in these different applications. Likes, followers, retweets,
Speaker 1: responses from famous verified people, know all these different triggers
Speaker 1: and cues. It's really quite fascinating how these apps take
Speaker 1: advantage of our psychology. But bodies and comparing lifestyles.
Speaker 3: Hey friends, it's Eric. Let's talk about something hard. How
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Speaker 3: the moment of choice came, something pulled you in the
Speaker 3: wrong direction. Those moments, those choice points are where everything happens,
Speaker 3: and when we keep failing at them, it doesn't just
Speaker 3: derail our goals. It chips away at something deeper, our
Speaker 3: trust and ourselves. But it doesn't have to stay that way.
Speaker 3: In my upcoming free workshop, the Six Saboteurs of Self Control,
Speaker 3: we'll explore what happens at these choice points, why they're
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Speaker 3: wrong choices and learning the tools to rebuild your confidence
Speaker 3: one choice at a time. Imagine trusting yourself again, knowing
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Speaker 3: I was really struck by that idea you just mentioned
Speaker 3: of currencies, how all these social platforms have these different currencies,
Speaker 3: and how we are sort of wired up to respond
Speaker 3: to currency. So money is one, but now we've got
Speaker 3: all these other currencies. That we are shooting for. I
Speaker 3: found that part to be really interesting because I hadn't
Speaker 3: thought of it in quite that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And if you ever want to see a great
Speaker 1: example of digital currencies of applications taking advantage of digital currencies,
Speaker 1: download a video game that is designed for a kid,
Speaker 1: like Subway Surfers. If you download Subway Surfers, there are
Speaker 1: three or four different currencies that you can spend in
Speaker 1: the game. There's event tokens, there's coins, there's different keys.
Speaker 1: There's so many different kinds of currencies that you have
Speaker 1: to manage and accumulate. It's like some like foreign exchange
Speaker 1: app almost except you can't convert them with one another.
Speaker 1: It's really quite fascinating. And then pay attention to how
Speaker 1: hooked you become to a game so simple.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, anything else on the mindset of more that
Speaker 3: you feel like would be useful to talk about, hmmm.
Speaker 1: I think the key there, and again I'm going to
Speaker 1: harp on this topic. That is one of the squares
Speaker 1: on the Bengo card, but it really is dopamine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Dopamine is why we keep coming back for more, and
Speaker 1: the brain networks is what I would kind of reiterate there.
Speaker 1: The thing to kind of internalize is that the networks
Speaker 1: that support our craving more are anti correlated with the
Speaker 1: ones that make us present and calm.
Speaker 3: You say in the book Ceaseless Ambition compromises calm, right, Like,
Speaker 3: if we are just always after the next thing, it's
Speaker 3: hard to be calm. So let's now sort of change
Speaker 3: directions just a little bit. Because you are a productivity writer,
Speaker 3: you have been a writer about let's get more done,
Speaker 3: and so talk about how your previous work with productivity
Speaker 3: ties into this work on calm specifically, when we think
Speaker 3: about this mindset of.
Speaker 1: More, Yeah, I think our striving for more productivity needs
Speaker 1: boundaries because if it doesn't have a container that it
Speaker 1: can live inside of, it's going to bleed out into
Speaker 1: pretty much every element of our life. Right, and wanting
Speaker 1: to accomplish more is not a bad thing. I am
Speaker 1: not anti accomplishment. You know, we should have goals and
Speaker 1: we should strive to achieve those goals. Because goals that
Speaker 1: are connected to some tangible outcome and difference that aren't
Speaker 1: based on a metric, that aren't based on you know,
Speaker 1: something that is a nice round number that makes a
Speaker 1: tangible difference in our lives and the lives of other people.
Speaker 1: That's what work is all about, right. Our work should
Speaker 1: make a difference, Our lives should make a difference, right,
Speaker 1: That is what makes it meaningful. But when we don't
Speaker 1: rein in that pursuit of accomplishment or at least give
Speaker 1: it boundaries, focus all of our time on acquisition, and
Speaker 1: we become miserable people. Right in fact, you know, going
Speaker 1: back to that savoring idea, one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: to ask somebody who is very successful, and I usually
Speaker 1: only mention this to very successful people, or at least
Speaker 1: people who would be considered successful by traditional measures, is
Speaker 1: what in life do you enjoy the most? And it
Speaker 1: stumps most of them. They can't think of something that
Speaker 1: they enjoy because they're too busy trying to acquire more.
Speaker 1: And one of my favorite strategies for combating this are
Speaker 1: just defining productivity hours. So what these are our boundaries
Speaker 1: around our pursuit of accomplishment. And this kind of has
Speaker 1: a bunch of effects at the same time. So at
Speaker 1: the start of the day, I might say I want
Speaker 1: seven productivity hours today for work, or I might define
Speaker 1: the hours such that I'm gonna be productive from ten
Speaker 1: am to six pm today with my work. And what
Speaker 1: this does is this compartmentalizes that pursuit for more accomplishment.
Speaker 1: It kind of has the same effect as a deadline
Speaker 1: in a way where you know, if I said to you,
Speaker 1: you know, Eric, you want this all expenses paid trip
Speaker 1: to Australia, but it leaves on Sunday, you would probably
Speaker 1: find a way to get next week's work done this
Speaker 1: week so that you could enjoy and savor that trip.
Speaker 1: Productivity hours kind of have the same benefit where we
Speaker 1: get to compartmentalize this striving for more into those hours
Speaker 1: has the deadline effect. There's always an end in sight.
Speaker 1: So even if we have one or two spare hours
Speaker 1: in the evening, we can enjoy them, we can unwind,
Speaker 1: we can step back from what we're doing, and we
Speaker 1: can find that daily balance with striving and savoring. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's raining in that pursuit of accomplishment. But there are
Speaker 1: great productivity benefits to calm as well. This is something
Speaker 1: I was surprised to find. So I study productivity and
Speaker 1: I realized, after going through this period of burnout, just
Speaker 1: how shot my productivity was. And it's not a surprise,
Speaker 1: right when we're burnt out, we're unproductive. That is one
Speaker 1: of the core attributes of being burnt out. We're exhausted.
Speaker 1: Good luck trying to get work done if you're exhausted.
Speaker 1: And we're cynical, And so when we're cynical, we actually
Speaker 1: look out for fewer opportunities in our environment. Happier people.
Speaker 1: People who are in a positive mental state are thirty
Speaker 1: one percent more productive than people who are in a
Speaker 1: negative or neutral state, as a study by Sean Akor
Speaker 1: out of Harvard, and so burnout is not good for
Speaker 1: our productivity, but calm as we move from that anxious
Speaker 1: side of the calm spectrum to the calmness side of
Speaker 1: the spectrum, is wonderful for our productivity. A good example is,
Speaker 1: you know, say you have to give a big speech
Speaker 1: in front of a group of one thousand people, and
Speaker 1: I gave you some report to read and then make
Speaker 1: a few notes on. You would probably find it difficult
Speaker 1: to make notes on that report in that moment. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you're reading a research paper and you're on an
Speaker 1: airplane and you hit a pocket of heavy turbulence. Good
Speaker 1: luck processing and internalizing that research paper. You're probably going
Speaker 1: to have to go back, or maybe you're watching a
Speaker 1: movie even and you might have to go back for
Speaker 1: that too. Anxiety has the same effect as this, but
Speaker 1: only in a more minor fashion, and all day long. Right,
Speaker 1: if we're working with an anxious mind, it actually shrinks
Speaker 1: our working memory capacity by an average of around seventeen percent.
Speaker 1: And so what this does is our working memory allows
Speaker 1: us to process whatever it is that we're doing in
Speaker 1: the moment, and this allows us less mental capacity to think,
Speaker 1: to connect information, to recall information. Anxiety limits our cognitive
Speaker 1: performance in general. It makes us more distractable. It leads
Speaker 1: our self talk to go through the roof, which makes
Speaker 1: us more likely to procrastinate. It leads us to less
Speaker 1: engagement and less presence with whatever it is that we're doing.
Speaker 1: And in the book, I calculate out how about eight
Speaker 1: hours of work takes us around ten hours to do
Speaker 1: when we're working with a mildly anxious mind. And so,
Speaker 1: if over these last few years you've noticed that you
Speaker 1: need to work longer hours, or that you seem to
Speaker 1: have more way more meetings than usual, you just don't
Speaker 1: have enough time anymore, even though not much has changed.
Speaker 1: Anxiety could be why. And so there is this fascinating,
Speaker 1: fascinating connection with productivity and calm that because calm leads
Speaker 1: us to presence, it makes us more productive because presence
Speaker 1: is ultimately what productivity is all about. It's about being
Speaker 1: engaged with whatever it is that we're doing in the moment.
Speaker 1: We can always be engaged with whatever it is we
Speaker 1: intend to do. We never need productivity advice because we
Speaker 1: can always just do the things that we set out
Speaker 1: to do in the first place. But there is this
Speaker 1: flip side as well, where the pursuit of productivity, when
Speaker 1: it is driven by a generalized mindset to acquire more,
Speaker 1: can harm our pursuit of calm. And so it is
Speaker 1: this double edged sword where when we don't rein in
Speaker 1: that pursuit, we can become less calm. But when we
Speaker 1: compartmentalize our pursuit of productivity in something like productivity hours.
Speaker 1: That's the example I give in the book. By managing
Speaker 1: the chronic stress that leads to burnout, we can have
Speaker 1: our cake and eat it too, provided we maintain that
Speaker 1: delicate dance.
Speaker 3: Yep. I love that idea of boundaries, and I found
Speaker 3: them to be very helpful in my own life. I
Speaker 3: had been on a sort of relentless striving path. For
Speaker 3: a long time, my career had been in software startup companies,
Speaker 3: which are a place that, by their very nature are
Speaker 3: frenetically trying to do more and do more with less.
Speaker 3: Right It's a super charged ambition environment. And then from
Speaker 3: there I had spent five years building my own solar
Speaker 3: energy company, and then I had spent four years doing
Speaker 3: this podcast while I worked in pretty high level jobs
Speaker 3: in the software field, and then I was really focused
Speaker 3: on how do I get out of that to do
Speaker 3: this full time. So there is a period of time
Speaker 3: I don't know how long ago, It's probably been three
Speaker 3: years now, maybe I don't know, two years where this
Speaker 3: sounds silly, but I finally went like, weekends are off.
Speaker 3: I'm going to take two days a week and I'm
Speaker 3: not going to work because up till then I'd be like, well,
Speaker 3: i'll get a little bit done, or i'll take a
Speaker 3: coaching call, or I'll But I never got all the
Speaker 3: way off, and it was hard at first, but once
Speaker 3: I really got it, then all of a sudden there
Speaker 3: was a point where it flipped and I became fiercely
Speaker 3: protective of that time partner Ginny and I work together,
Speaker 3: and so it's like one of my days off and
Speaker 3: she starts bringing up something about work all very oft
Speaker 3: and be like, Nope.
Speaker 2: Not today.
Speaker 3: I can't do it because I won't. I know my
Speaker 3: brain well enough to know if I engage with that question,
Speaker 3: it could just you know, lead me down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: Although I do find I think we all struggle with this.
Speaker 3: The hardest thing for me to turn off, and I
Speaker 3: do it better at certain points than others, is I
Speaker 3: sort of beat it out of my life and then
Speaker 3: it comes back is email. Yeah, you know, so my
Speaker 3: brain will say, well, just just check the email. It's
Speaker 3: you know, it's your day off, but you know, just
Speaker 3: hop in there real quick, partially because it's just habitual
Speaker 3: at this point. But that's one. And then the other
Speaker 3: thing that I noticed was I was fortunate enough in
Speaker 3: June to take a month off, which I couldn't believe
Speaker 3: I could do, and was incredible, and I totally switched
Speaker 3: off and I did all the things that you recommend
Speaker 3: sort of in the book, you know, like work was gone,
Speaker 3: I wasn't doing it, I wasn't checking email, I wasn't
Speaker 3: on screens at all. You know, I was incredibly happy.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: So mindset of more we know to be problematic, and
Speaker 3: it ties into dopamine also, dopamine being the molecule of more.
Speaker 3: We've touched on them a little bit, but let's get
Speaker 3: specific about what we mean by super stimuli and what
Speaker 3: they're doing in our lives. What are some of the
Speaker 3: things that they are and why are they so problematic
Speaker 3: for us?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we find it very difficult to resist super
Speaker 1: stimuli in the moment because they're more amusing to our mind.
Speaker 1: Porn is a far more amusing than the thing than
Speaker 1: answering email or doing whatever it is, I don't know,
Speaker 1: whatever else, whatever else you could be doing in the moment.
Speaker 3: I'm giving the editor, Chris, that cannot be the opening quote.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you cannot use that one. But that was
Speaker 3: the understatement of the of the decade.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else was on my morning schedule this morning. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I've actually stopped watching porn. I used
Speaker 1: to be a user of porn, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'll go back. It's addictive because of how much
Speaker 1: dopamine it releases in our brain. Social media is a
Speaker 1: far more dopamine inducing activity then talking to a friend
Speaker 1: on the phone. It's far more novel. Right, anything that
Speaker 1: is novel releases dopamine in our brain. Right, it's novelty,
Speaker 1: it's genetics, it's direct effect. Those are the three dopamine factors.
Speaker 1: Genetics vary depending on the person. Direct effect is just
Speaker 1: how much something directly influences your life. If you find
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars on the street walking by it, it's
Speaker 1: going to release more dopamine than if you found a
Speaker 1: five dollars bill. But novelty seems to be the thing
Speaker 1: that varies the most, especially digitally, especially with the super
Speaker 1: stimuli that we tend to social media, email. Even though
Speaker 1: it's less dopaminergic, it's often quite a bit more stimulating
Speaker 1: than the things that we actually wish to accomplish. Examples
Speaker 1: like these abound video games are highly dopaminergic. They release
Speaker 1: far more dopamine than playing a physical board game, for
Speaker 1: an example, with a few loved ones, even though that
Speaker 1: leads to presence and I love what you said off
Speaker 1: the top where we aren't really drawn to calm. We
Speaker 1: don't really find calm to be a sexy thing, and
Speaker 1: it's because it isn't right calm is the capacity for excitement.
Speaker 1: Calm is the foundation for excitement, right It is not
Speaker 1: excitement in and of itself, but it leads us to
Speaker 1: have a capacity for focus, for presence, for productivity, and
Speaker 1: super stimuli do get in the way of that because
Speaker 1: the brain networks are anti correlated for dopamine and for calm,
Speaker 1: and so the more we invest in the infrastructure in
Speaker 1: our brain, this goes back to the whole idea. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've heard of this called neuroplasticity. Have
Speaker 1: you heard of this an I'm just kidding, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't even think that word shows up in the
Speaker 1: book because.
Speaker 3: It's I don't know that it does. I don't think that,
Speaker 3: so it must not have congratulations.
Speaker 1: But the networks for acquisition and for stimulation right there,
Speaker 1: dopamine driven networks that when they're activated the calm network
Speaker 1: and the present network, the here and now network isn't
Speaker 1: and vice versa. When the here and now network is active,
Speaker 1: we're not going to be striving for more and we're
Speaker 1: not going to strive for dopamine fueled stimulation in that moment.
Speaker 1: But because of this, you know, usually what releases this
Speaker 1: dopamine doesn't lead to lasting satisfaction. This satisfaction is fleeting,
Speaker 1: and it's always in the form of a shallow type
Speaker 1: of anticipation where when we're using our phone, we're always
Speaker 1: feeling as if something good will soon happen, and it
Speaker 1: never quite does. Whether we're trying to acquire something, we're
Speaker 1: feeling like we're getting something done, but we're not necessarily
Speaker 1: sure what. And that's what superstimuli creates. There, this fascinating
Speaker 1: phenomenon that are incredibly challenging to resist in the moment
Speaker 1: because of how our ancient brain loves them and rewards
Speaker 1: us for engaging with them. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: they lead to an emptiness that we can't quite articulate.
Speaker 1: And what that emptiness often is and how it manifests
Speaker 1: chemically is in the form of an absence of other
Speaker 1: neurochemicals that make us feel present and proud and satisfied
Speaker 1: and happy and like we have a good rush to
Speaker 1: accomplish something and connected with other people. Right These are oxytocin, endorphin, serotonin,
Speaker 1: even endo cannabinoids that are released by going for something
Speaker 1: like a run. We don't experience these in the volumes
Speaker 1: that make us feel good because we're overinvested in that
Speaker 1: dopamine that leads to less presence over time and ultimately
Speaker 1: less productivity. We do use dopamine for logical work that
Speaker 1: allows us to make good progress, but when becoming present
Speaker 1: is the thing that allows us to make the most progress,
Speaker 1: more so than almost any other factor in our lives,
Speaker 1: that's something we can't ignore if we care about accomplishment.
Speaker 1: That again, as boundaries, you know, isn't just on a bash,
Speaker 1: you know, ambition, But we need presence now more than any.
Speaker 3: The issue is not dopamine, right, Like in anything in life,
Speaker 3: when the balance gets way out of whack, it's problematic, right.
Speaker 3: And so our lifestyle, this combination of the constant pursuit
Speaker 3: of more, the culture that tells us we should be
Speaker 3: pursuing more, and then these super stimuli that keep our
Speaker 3: dopamine levels really high, all that gets us to be
Speaker 3: where that's where most of our attention is. And you
Speaker 3: make a really good point that I think is an
Speaker 3: important one, which is that when we are sort of
Speaker 3: riding this dopamine fueled life, which is social media and
Speaker 3: you know, wanting more and the super stimuli when we're
Speaker 3: when we're riding that sort of life. If we step
Speaker 3: off that train for a minute, it doesn't feel good. No, right,
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel good. If we step into something that's
Speaker 3: lower dopamine, that's more oxytocin, a we may not even
Speaker 3: get those chemicals because they're not going to show up
Speaker 3: right away. But it doesn't feel good. And this is
Speaker 3: the addicts dilemma, right, This is the addicts dilemma, and
Speaker 3: I know it well and I've talked to so many people,
Speaker 3: which is, let's say you're an alcoholic. It doesn't matter
Speaker 3: and you stop. Some people feel better right away, but
Speaker 3: most people do not. Right, what they feel is much worse.
Speaker 3: They actually feel lousy because their brain has come to
Speaker 3: depend upon and operate in a certain way, and things
Speaker 3: that would bring pleasure don't because the neurochemicals are all
Speaker 3: out of whack. And so there's this process of having
Speaker 3: to say, okay, let me stay with this long enough
Speaker 3: that I can sort of come down to a level
Speaker 3: where these things that we talk about being more nourishing,
Speaker 3: you know, spending time with our families, taking walks in nature,
Speaker 3: playing a board game, where those things feel satisfying, because
Speaker 3: they don't if we've been flying sort of super high.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so true. And you know, I call these
Speaker 1: heights of stimulation in the book because different activities that
Speaker 1: we engage in over the course of the day. You
Speaker 1: can kind of plot every activity you do over the
Speaker 1: course of the day in a chart, where the higher
Speaker 1: it is on this chart, the more dopamine it produces
Speaker 1: in your mind when you do it. And so, like
Speaker 1: you were saying, drug use would be at the very
Speaker 1: top of this. You know, yes, alcohol, caffeine, you know,
Speaker 1: very common drugs that so many of us engage with
Speaker 1: would be near the top. That pulls us into a
Speaker 1: higher height of stimulation. Then you start to work downwards, right,
Speaker 1: maybe get to porn than below that, of course is email,
Speaker 1: as we've already established, and then maybe some we're floating
Speaker 1: in the middle are the projects, maybe a DIY project actually,
Speaker 1: that would probably be a bit lower. But you start
Speaker 1: working lower and lower and lower. At the bottom, you
Speaker 1: have things like bookkeeping and you know, meditation, where these
Speaker 1: things pull you down into a lower level of stimulation.
Speaker 1: But if you look at what allows for that presence,
Speaker 1: for that calm, satisfaction, that enjoyment in what you're doing,
Speaker 1: those activities aren't in the upper bound of this chart.
Speaker 1: You know, the words that I would use to describe
Speaker 1: a lot of the activities in the very top of
Speaker 1: this imaginary chart would be words like shallow and empty
Speaker 1: and hit. You know, a hit of these activities. Instagram
Speaker 1: might be up there, TikTok would definitely be up there too.
Speaker 1: But the activities that that are near the bottom, right,
Speaker 1: it's the quiet campfire watching, you know, if you're going
Speaker 1: camping and you're watching the flames dance and you're just
Speaker 1: mesmerized by the campfire flames that exists near the bottom.
Speaker 1: It's the comfortable silence and a conversation with somebody you're
Speaker 1: good friends with. It's a deep meditation session, it's a
Speaker 1: board game night with friends. Right. These activities are what
Speaker 1: make life meaningful.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We don't get meaning from the activities near the top,
Speaker 1: And a big part of that is they don't release
Speaker 1: a balanced concoction of these neurotransmitters that we were chatting
Speaker 1: about that make us feel confident and proud and in
Speaker 1: the tracks and present and engaged and happy. And it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible to come down, but it is kind of
Speaker 1: we have to step downward. If you spent the entire
Speaker 1: day on social media, and then you just lid on
Speaker 1: the cap for ten minutes. Your brain would be restless
Speaker 1: as hell, you know, because you would still be flying
Speaker 1: at this high altitude and there is a natural kind
Speaker 1: of updraft and how high we go?
Speaker 3: Yep. And we'll put a image of your what do
Speaker 3: you call it your dopamine stimulation chart or what's the
Speaker 3: actual term for this thing?
Speaker 1: I think I call it in the book Altitudes of Stimulation.
Speaker 3: A stimulation height chart. So we will put that in
Speaker 3: the book, and if I am ambitious enough, I will
Speaker 3: put mine out there also in the show notes. Oh good, good.
Speaker 3: Of all the things in the book, this was one
Speaker 3: of the things that most sort of flipped on the
Speaker 3: light switch for me, because when I looked at your
Speaker 3: chart and I imagined my own chart, it was easy
Speaker 3: to see that so many of the things that we
Speaker 3: say we want to do more of are down near
Speaker 3: the bottom of this chart, and the things that we
Speaker 3: say we want to do less of are up near
Speaker 3: the top of this chart, just almost across. And I've
Speaker 3: coached hundreds and hundreds of people, and all their charts
Speaker 3: would look exactly the same, some variation on down near
Speaker 3: the bottom of the chart are things like playing piano,
Speaker 3: playing guitar, cooking, spending time with family, doing any sort
Speaker 3: of creative projects. And up at the top are things
Speaker 3: like alcohol and Instagram and processed food and all these things.
Speaker 3: And it's just so interesting to think of the correlation
Speaker 3: between all these things is this sort of dopamine thing,
Speaker 3: and that the basic idea is that the more you
Speaker 3: stimulate dopamine, the more you want more of that thing,
Speaker 3: even if those things aren't exactly the same, right. I
Speaker 3: think it shows really well how a lifestyle of you know, Instagram, YouTube, drinking, alcohol,
Speaker 3: online shopping, how that feeds more of those same things,
Speaker 3: whereas a life that has more writing, you know, playing guitar, meditating,
Speaker 3: you know, cooking, talking with family, that those things also
Speaker 3: cause more. But it's this constant pull upwards. And you
Speaker 3: say that in the book that given our modern world,
Speaker 3: we are always going to be pulled up that chart.
Speaker 3: And I mean, I know for me that so much
Speaker 3: of what I am working on in life is trying
Speaker 3: to stay in the bottom part of that chart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so true. And I think so much of
Speaker 1: this is modifying the environment around us so that we
Speaker 1: can create the external conditions to actually stay there. Yes,
Speaker 1: my favorite way of doing this is what I've come
Speaker 1: to call a stimulation fast. And you know, dopamine fast
Speaker 1: thing is quite a popular phenomenon. But you can't fast
Speaker 1: from dopamine any more than you can just fast for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life or something from carbohydrates. Right,
Speaker 1: you need carbohydrates in the chemical sense of the term
Speaker 1: in order to to continue living your life. What you
Speaker 1: don't need as far as dopamine goes are those empty
Speaker 1: hits of dopamine. I like how you put it, the
Speaker 1: things you really actually want to be doing less of.
Speaker 1: And so a stimulation fast I thought it was actually
Speaker 1: the most gimmicky thing when I did the first one,
Speaker 1: because I thought, well, anything with the word fast in
Speaker 1: it immediately sets off alarm bells if doesn't have the
Speaker 1: word intermittent before it. But for this kind of fast,
Speaker 1: like I thought, what's this going to do? Like this
Speaker 1: is kind of gimmicky. I don't know. I guess I'll
Speaker 1: do it like it'll be something interesting to try. I
Speaker 1: was shocked at how well this worked. So a stimulation fast,
Speaker 1: let's call it that going forward, because it's not a
Speaker 1: dopamine fast, A stimulation fast. You essentially go through your life,
Speaker 1: go through your day and find those things you want
Speaker 1: to be doing less of that are super stimuli, that
Speaker 1: are these highly processed versions of what you're wired to enjoy.
Speaker 1: The social media is of your day, the email app
Speaker 1: on your phone, the different things that just stimulate your mind,
Speaker 1: most of which come from the digital world. Because that's
Speaker 1: another thing I found is anxiety is often found in
Speaker 1: the digital world. Calm is found in the analog, it's
Speaker 1: found in nature, it's found with people, it's found on
Speaker 1: the meditation cushion, which you know, it's funny. Meditation I
Speaker 1: think is only like two or three pages of this book.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure, like you're saying, So, find activities that
Speaker 1: you can sub in for these dopamine fueled activities, because
Speaker 1: there will be a hole in your life where these
Speaker 1: activities used to be. If you pick up your phone
Speaker 1: first thing from your night's dead, put a book there
Speaker 1: so you can pick that up instead. If you have,
Speaker 1: you know, this time between meetings or something, let your
Speaker 1: mind wander, deliberate and just have a notepad to capture
Speaker 1: whatever comes up. Find substitutes for the activities and go
Speaker 1: without them for a month. Definitely consult with somebody you
Speaker 1: know who can guide you through harsher come downs, especially
Speaker 1: with drug use and around those sorts of situations. But
Speaker 1: with technology use, you know, that's a safer come down,
Speaker 1: and the first week will be hell. It was for me,
Speaker 1: But I found that after about a week. The word
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is expanse. You know, where I
Speaker 1: felt I had entered a situation where there was an
Speaker 1: expanse of opportunities for me to engage with different things
Speaker 1: that I hadn't engaged with in a long time. You know,
Speaker 1: I was looking around and I kind of saw my
Speaker 1: life differently because the things that I used to do
Speaker 1: just for fun that were far less engaging and produce
Speaker 1: less dopamine than saying going on Instagram for an example,
Speaker 1: you know, playing the piano was suddenly an option because
Speaker 1: I couldn't do anything super stimulating with that time. So
Speaker 1: I would play the piano, I would do a bit
Speaker 1: of painting. I would go for a walk through the
Speaker 1: trees near where we live here. I would bug my
Speaker 1: wife to play a board game, you know, a game
Speaker 1: of cribbage. And looking around, you know, I realized in
Speaker 1: the dopamine fast that what changed was the fact that
Speaker 1: I was at a lower stimulation level. When I looked
Speaker 1: around before, you know, I would see the objects of
Speaker 1: attention that were at the higher level, you know, the
Speaker 1: instagrams of the world, the Internet, porn of the world,
Speaker 1: those sorts of things. But at the lower level, I
Speaker 1: found enjoyment. I found this genuine connection with whatever I
Speaker 1: was doing. And the first week was hell, But after
Speaker 1: that I felt like this expanse opened up, and so
Speaker 1: did the options for what I could do. Even working,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of checking email and getting to inbox
Speaker 1: zero one more time, I would limit myself to five
Speaker 1: or six checks throughout the course of the day, and
Speaker 1: between those checks, I would just look around and, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of receipts that I haven't filed on
Speaker 1: my desk. I'm going to file those. And I looked
Speaker 1: around at my desk. My office was clean, life had
Speaker 1: an order, And it's not about pushing ourselves to come down.
Speaker 1: We deserve to be at a lower stimulation height. We're
Speaker 1: too good for the Internet most of the time, and
Speaker 1: our free time is more valuable than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the way you just said that we
Speaker 3: are better than this, and none of this in your book.
Speaker 3: Even though it may sound like it here is a
Speaker 3: rail against the uses of digital technology, or that all
Speaker 3: these things are all bad. It's a relationship too, and
Speaker 3: a moderation of where possible. We tend to be pretty
Speaker 3: out of whack with these things. Like I've managed to
Speaker 3: wrestle Twitter into a little box and I broadly speaking,
Speaker 3: it gets ten fifteen minutes a day of my time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, that's fine, that's like, it actually seems
Speaker 3: fine for that. And I think with almost all these
Speaker 3: things I've noticed, I can find a point if you're
Speaker 3: really monitoring your interior state, there's a point where it
Speaker 3: crosses over. I can feel it now where it crosses
Speaker 3: over for it being like this was useful, this was
Speaker 3: interesting into now I'm scrolling for more. Now I'm hooked
Speaker 3: into the thing in a different way, and it feels different.
Speaker 3: You know, you made me think of a quote that
Speaker 3: I've heard a couple times lately, and I really love it.
Speaker 3: It is that it's hard to get enough of something
Speaker 3: that almost works. And that's the problem with all these
Speaker 3: things is they almost make us happy, or they very
Speaker 3: temporarily do. But since we're fooled, we keep going back
Speaker 3: for more, but you can't get enough of something that
Speaker 3: doesn't really satisfy. And so yeah, I just really have
Speaker 3: found your framing of all this really opened up something
Speaker 3: for me, or clear for me ideas that I didn't
Speaker 3: quite see the overarching themes in In the same.
Speaker 1: Way, that's a great quote. I love that. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I love the digital world. I'm a big tech nerd.
Speaker 1: I love following the industry, I love collecting gadgets, I
Speaker 1: love all that stuff. But I think ultimately, you know
Speaker 1: where my thinking settled in this journey is technology exists
Speaker 1: to make our lives more efficient, where the analog exists
Speaker 1: so that things can become more meaningful. Right, So if
Speaker 1: we want an experience to be meaningful, we do it
Speaker 1: the analog way. That's a conversation, that's a board game night,
Speaker 1: that's a letter we're writing to somebody. But if something
Speaker 1: needs to be efficient, it's best to do it digitally,
Speaker 1: you know, whether that's texting somebody, writing an email, calling
Speaker 1: an uber, ordering some whole grain sushi, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: But chicken, Yeah, before we know we're going to be
Speaker 1: having a nice filet mignon. No, it's probably gonna be sushi.
Speaker 1: We can extract utility out of the digital world without
Speaker 1: succumbing to it, I think yeah.
Speaker 3: And that idea of digital being good for efficiency and
Speaker 3: analog being better for meaningfulness has just had me rethink
Speaker 3: how I use texting in that there are certain cases
Speaker 3: where texting is absolutely the thing that I want, that
Speaker 3: I need, it's the right thing to do. But since
Speaker 3: reading your book over the last week, I've been like,
Speaker 3: all right, can I just make a phone call? And
Speaker 3: even if I just say at the beginning, look, I
Speaker 3: only have five minutes, but I wanted to least just
Speaker 3: say hi instead of text.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now I usually don't because I only have five minutes,
Speaker 3: and so I send a text and it's efficient. But
Speaker 3: I realized, like, what if I just you know, very clearly,
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, I don't have much time, but we
Speaker 3: could still talk for two minutes. I can hear your
Speaker 3: voice for two minutes. I can I can connect a
Speaker 3: little more meaningfully. And so already this week have had
Speaker 3: more conversations with family members than I've had in a while.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: Your work's doing great things, Chris.
Speaker 1: Oh, this makes me very happy. And one thing that
Speaker 1: I think we can all do for the analog and
Speaker 1: the digital things we have in our lives is to
Speaker 1: make a little ven diagram of sorts in our thinking
Speaker 1: on these worlds. So we have the activities we can
Speaker 1: only do digitally. So typing an email is something we
Speaker 1: can only do digitally. There's the circle of activities we
Speaker 1: can only do the analog way, you know, going for
Speaker 1: a run through nature. And then we have the activities
Speaker 1: that we can do in both worlds where these two
Speaker 1: circles meet in the middle, and those are the activities
Speaker 1: where I think the preponderance of our activities fit in
Speaker 1: that small circle where we can divide those up into
Speaker 1: ones we want to do efficiently. We're probably already doing
Speaker 1: the ones we want to do efficiently in the digital world.
Speaker 1: This is something I've found in myself, but we all
Speaker 1: I also have a lot of opportunities for more meaning,
Speaker 1: you know, in writing a letter, in calling somebody and
Speaker 1: knocking on the door of their house like the olden days,
Speaker 1: in consuming even the daily newspaper or magazine, right, we
Speaker 1: can do that the analog way. That was one of
Speaker 1: the best trades I made in my own journey for
Speaker 1: calm is trading in digital news. I don't consume any
Speaker 1: digital news anymore, and instead an old timey collection of
Speaker 1: pieces of paper shows up on my morning door step
Speaker 1: and it refreshes once a day. It has my daily briefing,
Speaker 1: it has everything I need to know for the day.
Speaker 1: It's called a newspaper, and I love it. I think
Speaker 1: I'm one of the only people left in my town
Speaker 1: that subscribes to it. But I'm very happy, especially in
Speaker 1: my age demographic, but I'm very happy doing that. I
Speaker 1: think realizing that calm is found in the analog, whereas
Speaker 1: efficiency is found in the digital, is so critical meanings
Speaker 1: there too?
Speaker 3: Meaning is there too?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: You know, maybe we'll just close here with something that
Speaker 3: you say, which is that we need to balance between
Speaker 3: striving and savoring. So maybe we'll just end with that
Speaker 3: idea of balance, because a lot of what we've talked
Speaker 3: about has been about how do we balance these different things.
Speaker 3: Say a little bit more about that as we close.
Speaker 1: I think it comes down to intentionality. If I've learned
Speaker 1: one thing about productivity too, it's that it comes down
Speaker 1: to intention. You know, the most productive people are not
Speaker 1: the ones who do more and more and more faster
Speaker 1: and faster faster. They're the ones who live deliberately and intentionally,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what it comes down to, and
Speaker 1: with striking the balance between striving and savoring. It's all
Speaker 1: about the balance that we want. You know, we so
Speaker 1: often have this default tendency to adopt the same values
Speaker 1: that the people around us have, and I think this
Speaker 1: is a reason why we take on so much hidden
Speaker 1: chronic stress. It's the reason we crave more of everything
Speaker 1: that we have. Is that we look around and everybody
Speaker 1: else is doing the same, and we think that in
Speaker 1: order to be happy, that's what we need to do too.
Speaker 1: But the last place we should be looking for happiness
Speaker 1: advice is the modern world. People are miserable, people are anxious,
Speaker 1: burnt out, at least a lot of the people that
Speaker 1: I know. You know, Luckily, there is that path, and
Speaker 1: fortunately it's almost a gift that the path to presence
Speaker 1: and productivity right now it runs directly through calm. Because
Speaker 1: calm is what gives us presence, it's what gives us engagement,
Speaker 1: It's what affords us a capacity to deal with whatever
Speaker 1: it is that comes our way. And more than any
Speaker 1: of that, it affords us a capacity and ability and
Speaker 1: awareness to manifest our values through our actions and when
Speaker 1: we live our values, you know, that is what creates
Speaker 1: meaning and I think that's what this is ultimately all about.
Speaker 1: You know, a book like this, it can provide you
Speaker 1: with that capacity and that's up to you what you
Speaker 1: do with it, but hopefully reflecting on values along the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, living by our values is always such an important thing. Chris,
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for coming on. It's been a
Speaker 3: pleasure to talk to you. As always, we'll have links
Speaker 3: in the show notes to where people can get the
Speaker 3: book and to your website, and we're going to put
Speaker 3: your stimulation height chart out there too, and again I'll
Speaker 3: put mine out there too. All right, it's a commitment, there,
Speaker 3: it is. I'll do it.
Speaker 1: Oh, love it, all right. Thank you for having me
Speaker 1: such a pleasure.
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