Time and Attention is a podcast that will help you become more intentional and productive. Hosted by Chris Bailey, the author of two productivity books, and Ardyn Nordstrom, a nerdy economist, the show covers topics as diverse as productivity, focus, procrastination, time management, money, happiness, gratitude, and disconnecting. We occasionally also welcome a bestselling author onto the show to talk about a book they wrote.
On this episode, we chat about our favorite strategies for traveling with greater ease. Some topics covered include those to help you transverse time zones, pack more quickly (and without thinking), and enjoy getting to your destination more!
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
On this episode, Cal Newport hops back on the show to talk about his great new book, Slow Productivity. It’s a great, fascinating new book (and interview!), both full of actionable insights on how to slow down in order to become more productive.
Topics covered include:
How “slow productivity” came into being;
The three ingredients of slow productivity;
“Engineering simplicity” at work;
The idea of “administrative overhead”;
Narrowing the “missions” you have in your work;
Avoiding “task engines”;
Why the pace of knowledge work has become so frenetic;
Cal’s unique spin on “quiet quitting”;
Studying related fields to yours for boosting creativity.
On this episode, we chat about how we use and think about social media. We cover what the problem is with social media (if there even is one), how the “novelty bias” hijacks our attention as we use it, and tactics to use to keep social media contained.
Topics covered include:
The books we’re reading (and loving);
Impulsiveness and procrastination;
How social media algorithms come down to “bodies and comparing lifestyles”;
On this episode, we chat about whether or not you should wake up early—and how our biology and daily constraints dictate when we should rise. Topics covered include:
Calculating your natural wakeup time;
How our wakeup time drifts;
The “sepia toned” idea we have to wake up early;
Carving out time in the morning to be deliberate;
How biology affects our wakeup time;
How the constraints of our day affect wakeup time;
Having an anchor in your morning routine;
Whether waking up early makes a difference in our daily productivity.
126: All or Something Thinking (Replay)
Apr 16, 2024
On this episode, we chat about how to avoid “all or nothing” thinking—also known as the “eff it” effect, or the abstinence violation effect, if you want to get technical about it. Topics covered include:
Not being satisfied by partial success
How the effect plays out across different time scales
The idea of “sunk costs”
How awareness is key to behavioral change
The downfalls of black and white thinking
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
On this episode, we chat about our phone home screens, debate about whose is better, and talk about whether “focus modes” should drive what’s on our home screen.
On this episode, we chat about how the nature of productivity is changing, and how AI is making us more productive by making our work tasks higher-leverage. Topics covered include:
The most important tasks in your work;
How our “productivity leverage” increases with time;
How AI makes us more productive by moving us up the “layers of abstraction” in our work;
On this episode, we chat about how the book publishing industry works—and how you can publish a book of your own, either the traditional or nontraditional way.
118: The Fourth Annual Holiday Spectacular (w. gift recs!)
Dec 19, 2023
On this episode, we chat about our favorite productivity-related gifts that will either save time or make things more efficient. The things we mention on this episode—part two of two—include:
All affiliate link proceeds will be donated to Camp Quality Eastern Ontario, an organization that helps kids and teens with cancer. Non-affiliate links are also provided if you’d prefer.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
On this episode, we chat about our favorite productivity-related gifts that will either save time or make things more efficient. The things we mention on this episode—part one of two—include:
On this episode, we chat about how “SMART” goals might not be all they’re cracked up to me—and a few ways to set smarter goals. Topics covered include:
Characteristics of “SMART” goals;
The research on how effective SMART goals really are;
Performance vs. process vs. learning goals;
The different time frames we set intentions over;
The differences between goals, intentions, and priorities;
This week’s podcast episode is a replay—a Golden Oldie from the vaults. Hope you enjoy! The original show notes are below.
This week I interview Oliver Burkeman for the podcast. Oliver is the author of the fantastic new book, Four Thousand Weeks. In the episode, we have a fun, wide-ranging conversation about a bunch of topics, including:
The idea of “finitude,” and why it matters;
Our “future-chasing mindset,” which prevents us from enjoying things;
How trying to achieve a perfect mastery over our time can make us miserable;
Where impatience comes from;
The usefulness of productivity advice;
The costs of hoarding our time;
..and more.
Four Thousand Weeks is an incredible read. It covers not just how we should manage our time, but also the place time management should have in our life in the first place. I highly recommend it.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
103: How to Think About Email (Rewind)
May 23, 2023
In this episode, I chat with Cal Newport, the author of A World Without Email, about his book—and how we can manage email during such a distracting time.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
On this episode, we chat about Chris’s latest experiment, to switch to a flip phone from a smartphone for a period of a month (to start). Topics covered include:
How great the flip phone era was;
How Ardyn feels about this experiment;
The 6 reasons Chris is giving up his smartphone;
The downsides to large screen phones;
Whether smartphones are a net good in our lives;
How personal the technology in our life has become;
On this episode, we chat about why we take certain habits for granted, including the ones that actively provide us with dividends. Topics covered include:
A brief recap on “focus modes” and “focus filters” on iOS;
Why habits become invisible;
Habits that are actively providing us with dividends;
The great habits we each have that we regularly check up on;
Why some habits can work too well;
How to reflect on habits you want to sustain in the long run.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
On this episode, we chat about work breaks—including how long they should be, how often to take them, and what to do during them! Topics covered include:
The two “levels” of work breaks
How our energy fluctuates in 90-minute rhythms
How our productivity and creativity fluctuate all day long
How alcohol and sleepiness affect creativity
How long we should break for to optimize our energy levels
On this episode, we review a couple of pieces of productivity tech that we’ve recently been trying out: the Timeular time tracker and the reMarkable 2 paper tablet.
I’ll also have a review of the reMarkable up on the website in the coming weeks!
Hope you enjoy the conversation—we loved both of the devices in different ways, even if they’re not for everyone.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
On this episode, we chat about how to define productivity—and how what productivity means has changed over time, especially with the advent of knowledge work. Topics covered include:
The misconceptions we have about productivity;
How time management is less important than it used to be;
How the productivity landscape has shifted;
How most productivity advice falls into three categories: time, attention, and energy;
The power of intention;
Asymmetries of importance in our work and life;
A new definition of productivity;
Aligning productivity with your values;
Guilt, doubt, worry, and productivity
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
If you subscribe my podcast, today you’ll notice a new show name (and artwork!) land in your podcast player:
(If you’re not subscribed yet, here are links to do so! Of course, if podcasts aren’t your thing, zero pressure.)
Since the launch of the previous show, Becoming Better, we’ve kind of outgrown the name. The old title felt a tad self-helpy—and the new one feels right at home.
Hope you enjoy the fresh coat of paint! If you’re looking to dabble, the back-catalog of episodes is a great place to dive into. Around half of the episodes feature an interview; the other half feature my co-host (and wife!) and I chatting about productivity, how we structure our lives, and the science of betterment.
This week I interview Oliver Burkeman for the podcast. Oliver is the author of the fantastic new book,Four Thousand Weeks. In the episode, we have a fun, wide-ranging conversation about a bunch of topics, including:
The idea of “finitude,” and why it matters;
Our “future-chasing mindset,” which prevents us from enjoying things;
How trying to achieve a perfect mastery over our time can make us miserable;
Where impatience comes from;
The usefulness of productivity advice;
The costs of hoarding our time;
..and more.
Four Thousand Weeksis an incredible read. It covers not just how we should manage our time, but also the place time management should have in our life in the first place. I highly recommend it.
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
On this episode, we chat about how slowing down can help us in work and life, without compromising our performance (if that’s something you care about). Topics covered include:
How busy times make slowing down more important—but also lead to more guilt
A new definition of the word “productivity”
How slowing down helps us savor, experience more meaning, and also creates more opportunity for reflection
How to fit slowing down into a busy scheduling, especially by minding the gaps in your day
On this episode, we chat about stress relief strategies that have been proven to lower the level of stress hormones in our body. Topics covered include:
How to think about the stress in your life from 10,000 feet
The differences between chronic and acute stress
Our body’s stress response
How more stress is preventable than we think
How stress can provide us with meaning
The neurochemicals that underlie stress
How stress relief is often an active process
A bunch of stress-relief strategies that actually work
On this episode, we chat about how to more deliberately deal with email, to both think about it less, and make it a less stressful element of your day. Topics covered include:
How much we should think about email in the first place
How to conduct “email sprints”
The two types of work that we all do
How to better organize your email messages
Creating different “email environments”
The “Five-Sentence Rule” for answering email
The intention-interpretation gap with communication
How to take an email vacation
How to shrink time on email through disconnected hours and pre-defined boundaries
On this episode, we chat about obstacles that get in the way of our habits—including the habits we’re in the middle of forming, and the ones we already have. Topics covered include:
The payoff of anticipating obstacles ahead of time
Some common obstacles that get in our way
How to identify the obstacles that’ll get in the way of our specific habits
The types of obstacles we face: Environmental, time-based, temptations, and situational
On this episode, we chat about how to organize all of the projects you’re in the middle of, to feel more in control and less overwhelmed by them all. Topics covered include:
What a “project” even is
The importance of seeing all of what you have going on in one place
How to feel in control of your projects
Projects lists—and how to sort them
Managing shared projects with a team
Capturing next steps, “waiting for” items, and reference items
On this episode of the podcast, we chat about how to crowd out bad food habits—as well as how food habits of abundance are far more helpful than habits of deprivation. Topics covered include:
Which food habits to eliminate and double down on
How to approach deciding what to eat with an attitude of abundance—not deprivation
The “all or nothing” effect with food
Introducing dependencies to combat negative habits
Takeaway:The processed food industry has become incredibly sophisticated in the way it gets us to eat more of what it makes. Estimated Reading Time:1 minute, 37s.
For this week’s podcast episode I sat down with Michael Moss, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Salt Sugar Fat and now, Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions. Hooked is an incredible book: a deep dive into the processed food industry and a look at how highly-processed food can be even more addictive than hard drugs.
My main takeaway from the book is how we shouldn’t see processed food as food: it’s more of a Frankenstein-esque lab creation. Michael illustrates this with the example of pumpkin spice—one of the coziest-feeling flavors I can think of:
“In our kitchen cabinets, pumpkin spice is made of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and maybe ginger. Not so in processed food. Its pumpkin spice is simulated through the deployment of as many as eighty elements.”
Companies have learned to isolate flavor compounds and add them to our food—without our knowledge or permission—to make what we eat taste like something it’s not. Our latte may taste like pumpkin, but in reality, it’s a cocktail of other ingredients concocted in chemical laboratories.
Flavor is the main lever processed food companies use to hook us on their products. According to Michael, the others are:
Calories. We have a natural drive to maximize our calorie intake. If two foods taste identical, but one has more calories, that’s the one we’ll choose.
Cost. The cheaper something is, the more likely we are to buy it.
Variety. We crave variety—and the novelty that comes along with it. That’s why there are so many flavors of Oreos and sparkling water!
Convenience. We gravitate towards what saves us time—hence the appeal of ready-to-heat or ready-to-eat meals.
In our conversation, linked below, Michael and I dig deeper into the levers processed food companies use to get us to eat more of what they sell.
He’s a fascinating interview—and I highly recommend the book as well.
On this episode, we chat about the power of novelty—and how this one ingredient influences our perception of time and how meaningful our life feels. Topics covered include:
How novelty has affected our perception of time during the pandemic
The ways that novel moments serve as markers in time
Our brain’s “novelty bias”
How novelty, surprise, and dopamine work together
How novelty can help us build habits and memories
How to make your days more novel
“Memory sinkholes”
Who is the “Chuck Norris” of the podcast
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
On this episode, we chat about five productivity experiments you can try out while stuck at home—including how to wake up early, reset your caffeine tolerance, and replace TV time with books. Topics covered include:
How our wakeup time doesn’t affect our income or success level
The downfalls of caffeine
How to optimize your caffeine consumption
The ways we borrow energy from tomorrow
How many years of our lives we spend watching TV
How mental stimulation has become the enemy of focus
Identifying your keystone habits
Creating a cycle of positive change
Mini productivity experiments to try out in quarantine:
On this episode, we chat about how to avoid “all or nothing” thinking—also known as the “eff it” effect, or the abstinence violation effect, if you want to get technical about it. Topics covered include:
⁃ Not being satisfied by partial success ⁃ How the effect plays out across different time scales ⁃ The idea of “sunk costs” ⁃ How awareness is key to behavioral change ⁃ The downfalls of black and white thinking
You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!
Takeaway:Some problems are best solved by continuously chipping away at them. For others, there’s a real benefit in letting your mind wander. This allows us to connect the future, past, and present and come up with new ideas and be intentional about our goals. Capture mode, problem crunching mode, and habitual mode are two ways to strategically mind wander. Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 17s. Podcast Length: 23 minutes, 06s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
A couple weeks back on the podcast we chatted all about the productivity benefits of capturing ideas and served up a buffet of techniques on how to do just that. This week’s episode looks at how you can generate ideas in the first place.
Some problems require us to hunker down and apply reason and logic until a way forward becomes clear. Others require larger leaps in thinking and a spoonful of creativity. They demand that we puzzle piece together disparate pieces of knowledge, experiences, and conversations to come up with a new way to overcome the impasse.
Problems like this are best solved with a wandering mind. It may seem counterintuitive, but setting your focused work aside to let your mind rest and wander is scientifically-proven to be one of the best things you can do for your productivity.
When it comes to generating ideas, research shows that a wandering mind elevates our creative thinking to a league of its own. When we give our mind time to wander, it visits many destinations: 48% of the time it thinks about the future, 28% of the time it’s in the present, and 12% is spent reflecting on the past (in the remaining moments, your mind is typically blank or not mulling over anything in particular).
This pondering of the future is when you become more intentional about future goals. In fact, research says we’re 14 times more likely to think about our goals when our mind is wandering versus when it’s focused.
By keeping your goals or the problem you need to solve in mind, and then bouncing between the future, present, and past, your mind connects ideas from all three mental destinations. At the same time, it’s given the time to rest and plan—something that’s even more valuable in the time of a global pandemic. (If you’re interested in reading more about this, my second book, Hyperfocus, does a deep dive into the science behind this wandering mental mode called scatterfocus. I also dig into this mode in this talk!)
So how exactly do you get your mind to wander? There are three modes you can use: capture mode, problem crunching mode, and habitual mode.
Capture mode is the best at capturing what’s on your mind—all the things you’re waiting on, the stuff you’ve got to do, what you’re making for dinner… Let your mind wander and log the ideas that pop to mind as you stroll through those mental corridors. Sitting somewhere with a notepad works well for this.
Problem crunching mode is great for digesting specific problems where you’ve reached some sort of impasse. Like a sculpture at an art gallery, think of that problem as something worth roaming around. Examine it from different angles, maybe check out another exhibition, and return to it later. Ideas are much more likely to come to you this way versus if you were to focus intently for hours on end. Episode 35 of the podcast explored how sleeping on an idea can have the same effect as allowing your mind to wander.
Then, there’s habitual mode, my all-time favorite way to generate new ideas. Just as it sounds, this mental mode involves going about a habit that doesn’t fill your attention to the brim. Bake cookies, make coffee, take a shower, go for a phone-free stroll—anything that will give you a bit of a mental breather.
It’s in habitual mode where we generate the greatest number of ideas and creative insights (remember to capture them!). Plus it’s more fun because you get a mental vacation from focusing on an all-consuming task.
The next time you’re stuck on a problem, let your mind wander. You’re more likely to break through the impasse and come out the other side feeling well-rested and full of ideas for the future.
Takeaway:Capturing ideas helps us log what’s on our mind and think more clearly throughout the day. What you capture can be super broad, from tasks, to follow-up reminders, to actual insights. The ways of logging those ideas are equally diverse, and include digital and physical notepads, task managers, and messaging tools. Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 40s. Podcast Length: 25 minutes, 56s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
A couple of years ago, I chatted with productivity author David Allen on the podcast. One of the nuggets of wisdom he shared during our conversation was that our heads are for having ideas, not holding them.
David was talking about our limited mental bandwidth. The more it’s cluttered with reminders and things to follow-up on, the less attentional space we have to focus on our most meaningful work. It takes a surprising amount of time and energy to remember all these disparate thoughts, and it’s never worthwhile forgetting them only to remember them again later.
The more ideas you can get out of your head, capture, and organize, the better.
There are all sorts of ideas to keep tabs on. Some involve strokes of brilliance, others are the laundry list of tasks you need to get done or a reminder that may tug on your attention throughout the day.
There are countless things you might want to get out of your head:
Stuff you’re waiting on. These are items you’re waiting for from other people—things you need to check up on later. I’ve scheduled a recurring weekly task in my calendar so I remember to check this list a few times a week and follow up with people accordingly.
Ideas you want to look into more deeply. You encounter so much information in a day, and chances are you’ll want to explore more on these topics—just not when you’re in the middle of some other task. Log them and leave them for later.
Distractions and reminders. If you’re anything like me, your mind is an ongoing to-do list of reminders and distractions. Capturing and organizing these mental tidbits helps set them aside in the moment.
Actual ideas and insights. If you don’t capture an idea, you can’t act on it. With so many of us doing knowledge work for a living, the insights we generate are worth their weight in gold. If your job involves a lot of juggling tasks, connecting with people, and generating new ideas, capturing what’s on your mind becomes a way to do better work.
There’s no shortage of tools you can use to capture these ideas. And like most productivity tactics, there’s no one right answer for everyone. But what is typically consistent is that whether it’s in the shower, out for a long walk, or jolted awake from a night’s sleep, we’re rarely in a convenient place when an idea pops into mind.
Some idea-capturing tools:
AquaNotes. Research has found that ideas commonly come to us when our mind wanders or we’re doing something routine. AquaNotes are water-proof notepads you can hang in the shower. They’re one of my favorite productivity products, period.
Notes app on your device. Most devices come with a notepad app. I personally use Simplenote, so my ideas sync across every device I own. These apps are a great way to make sure you’re tracking all your ideas and have them at your fingertips when it’s time to action them.
Physical notepad. Kick it old school! I always keep a physical notepad on my desk so I can scribble down thoughts and distractions, and get back to work.
Task manager. Task managers are basically repositories to keep your thoughts organized. My favorite task manager is Things, though it’s only available for Apple devices.
Voice recorder app. Sometimes ideas flow more freely when we speak them versus writing them down. Most devices come with a built-in voice recorder tool.
Email or message an idea to yourself. This is another option if you’re close to your device. If you prefer not having your primary email account on your phone, try creating a dedicated inbox for sending these messages.
I’ve found it’s helpful to ritualize the act of both capturing and organizing my ideas. I do this all at once every Sunday night when I’m planning out my week—but what works for you might be different. This one’s a real choose your own adventure, and it’s all about experimenting until you find what’s right for you. Happy idea capturing!
P.S. – there are also lots of productivity benefits to meditation. That’s the topic of my latest project: an Audible Original book called How to Train Your Mind. It’s free with an Audible subscription in the US. Check it out!
Takeaway:: Make a list of everything you’re worrying about, and divide it into what you do and don’t have control over. Then, deal with the items on your list accordingly. Estimated Reading Time:: 1 minutes, 35s. Podcast Length: 22 minutes, 42s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
Believe it or not, it’s possible to worry more productively. On this week’s podcast, Ardyn and I dig into one of my favorite productivity tactics for crazy times like these: the worry list.
The name pretty much says it all: a worry list is just a list of what you’re worrying about; problems in your life or the world that are causing you anxiety.
Making the list is straightforward:
1. Capture all of the things that worry you over the span of a day. Just get it all of your head and onto a sheet of paper (or into some digital document, if that’s your preference).
2. Categorize all of your worries into two groups: what you have control over, and what you don’t.
After you’ve captured it all, make a plan to deal with what you have control over. If you can, you can also delegate items on the list—this instantly frees up mental bandwidth for more important things. You can also eliminate worries, by eliminating the underlying commitments or habits that cause them. (One example: if a lot of your worries are fed by constantly checking the news, subscribe to a physical newspaper instead, to get a daily update, instead of an hourly one.) However you can, just make a plan to deal with every worry that’s controllable.
With what’s outside of your control, keep in mind that your mind is predisposed to pay attention to, and worry about anything you perceive to be a threat—throughout the day, recognize when you’re worrying about something, while understanding that some worrying happens subconsciously. Schedule time to worry about these things if you feel the need to, so that they don’t bleed into the rest of your day.
Right now, there’s a lot on our minds to worry about. If you’re anything like me, creating a worry list will help. Especially in overanxious times like these, thought patterns of worry only ever obscure what’s important.
Takeaway: In her book Time Smart, behavioral scientist and Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans digs into the fascinating relationship between time, money, and happiness. While making more money is an easier goal to chase, Ashley’s research shows that making time-first choices ultimately leads to greater happiness. Time Smart outlines strategies to do just that, including tactics to save us time and ones we can use to buy time back.
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 55s.
Podcast Length: 26 minutes, 41s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
It’s one of life’s classic quandaries: what ultimately makes us happier, more time or more money?
Ashley Whillans’ research points firmly at time. Ashley is a behavior scientist and Harvard Business School professor who is fascinated by how time, money, and happiness influence each other. Her book, Time Smart, is a fantastic and concise read on this very topic. She’s also my guest on the podcast this week.
A central theme of the book looks at how we’re more likely to chase money with greater drive than we pursue having more time. This is for three simple reasons:
Money is generally a necessity in our society.
The prevailing narrative is that money and success are synonymous with one another.
Psychologically, it’s easier for us to track money and feel satisfied when we have it. Having $500 in your bank account is objective and tangible—gaining three hours of time on a Saturday? Not so much.
This is why we give up our time more readily than we give up our money. But this loss of time comes at a cost, and Ashley argues that it’s critical for us to value our time to the same extent that we value our money. According to her research, people who even just say that they put time first report being happier, less stressed, and more satisfied with their social relationships. People who value time over money also tend to be more productive and creative because they take the time to build new relationships and recharge. These are concrete, positive outcomes that come with making time-first decisions.
Time Smart outlines a handful of valuable strategies for how we can start prioritizing time over money. I love that many of these tactics don’t cost anything, because it debunks the myth that only the wealthy can afford to put time first. These strategies fall into two categories: tactics to save us time, and tactics to buy our time back.
Tactics to save time are about tackling time traps head-on. Imagine pinging phone alerts and how they disrupt our moments of leisure. That technology pitfall shreds our valuable time into a thousand distracted fragments, which Ashley calls “time confetti.”
Time traps are also caused by the mere urgency effect, the phenomena that makes us prioritize things that are urgent but not important—checking your email non-stop rather than spending time with your family, for example.
To save yourself time, try:
Scheduling Proactive Time. This is a chunk of time when you can focus on your most meaningful but not necessarily most urgent work. Spend 30 minutes at the start of each week scheduling in a pair of two-hour proactive time blocks. Take these blocks to completely unplug and hyperfocus on your important tasks.
Focusing on small, everyday time-first decisions. Living your day more mindfully is one tactic to save time. Whenever we make the decision to clock out of work early, create a boundary between home and work (even in today’s day and age), or treat an upcoming weekend like a holiday, we are choosing whether to prioritize time or money. Reflect on your everyday decisions and pushback against the urge to check your email after hours versus spending time with family or friends.
Tactics to buy back time reframe the value we associate with time and happiness. Because money is a metric we all understand, Ashley conceptualized “Happiness Dollars” which attaches a concrete value to the happiness benefits that come from making time-first decisions. She calculated these values through various surveys where people reflected on their happiness level related to different activities.
Consider that:
People who say they value time over money is equivalent to making $4,400 more each year.
Outsourcing our most disliked task is equivalent to making $10,000 more each year.
Socializing more than usual is shown to make us happier, which is equivalent to making $20-30,000 more each year.
Interestingly, one way to encourage people to spend money in order to save themselves time (i.e. hiring a virtual assistant) is to reframe it as a decision that benefits others. By delegating your work, you’re left with more time to spend with family or to volunteer in your community. Focusing on time is not a selfish act.
Like so much we talk about on the podcast and this blog, choosing to prioritize time over money boils down to mindfulness. As Ashley says, living a time-first life can lead to greater happiness and shape the overall quality of our lives—but we need to consciously decide to pursue that path.
Takeaway:This year, try giving yourself a non-material gift. Three ways to do this: think about something in your life that’s missing; look at the habits you want to pick up again; and take your vacation days or use up your benefits. Estimated Reading Time:1 minutes, 57s. Podcast Length: 15 minutes, 17s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
Happy holidays, everybody! We’re nearing the end of a weird year, and the thing we might be celebrating the most is the fact that 2020 is almost over. If you’re anything like us, this December looks a little different.
Normally we’d be bouncing around between parties with inlaws and friends. While that’s not happening this year, there are still ways to treat yourself over the holidays. I’m not talking about physical gifts—I’m thinking about all the intangible gifts you can give yourself in order to get the most out of the days to come.
For example, I’m giving myself the gift of disconnection. For a week over Christmas, I’m deliberately disengaging from all things online—turning on my email autoresponder, changing my social media passwords, and putting my phone in Grayscale mode to make it less appealing.
I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit this year refreshing Twitter and watching YouTube videos. With this gift, I’m giving myself permission to be bored. If you can’t think of the last time you were in this state, then this might be a good gift for you, too.
Here are a few ways to approach finding what gift to give yourself:
Think about something in your life that’s missing or has fallen to the wayside. Maybe you really enjoyed taking a brisk morning stroll at the start of the pandemic. The holidays are a great time to re-examine and reset.
Look at habits you want to double down on. You don’t have to wait until the new year to change your habits and routines. Try spending some time reflecting on what these habits are and then start them up again.
Take vacation days or use up your benefits. Don’t let these go to waste! The end of the year is when the clock chimes midnight on many benefits packages and vacation days. If you’re able, take some days off over the holiday and relax.
Whatever gift you end up giving yourself, we hope you have a safe holiday season and can start off the new year feeling refreshed and re-energized. You deserve it! See you after the holiday!
P.S. – if you listened to the podcast and want the sweet potato mash recipe Ardyn mentioned, here it is :-)
Takeaway:Before switching between tasks, take three deep breaths. It’s a super simple way to reset your focus and set a quick intention for what comes next. Three techniques you can try: box breathing, the 4-7-8 technique, and the 5-5-5 breathing technique. Estimated Reading Time:2 minutes, 28s. Podcast Length: 14 minutes, 21s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
Breathing is something we all do but rarely think about. And yet it dictates whether we feel anxious or calm, tense or relaxed (and not to mention keeps us alive). Harnessing the power of your breath is one of the most simple and powerful things you can do for your mental and physical well-being.
That leads to one of my favorite new productivity tactics: the next time you switch between projects, meetings, or return to work after answering email, take three big, deep breaths.
That’s it.
This simple half a minute is a great way to transition from one task to another, and it helps your mind reset and focus for the next thing on your plate. This tactic also helps you clear your mind of some “attention residue,” a phenomena I write about in Hyperfocus.
Coined by Dr. Sophie Leroy, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Washington, attention residue is the term that describes the fragments of a previous task that remain in your memory after you shift to another activity. If you jump immediately from task A to task B, your mind will still be thinking about that previous work, preventing you from fully engaging in whatever is going on at hand. This phenomena is just one of the reasons why multitasking makes us less efficient.
Taking three deep breaths between tasks will serve to dust out some of this attention residue. Consider it a bit of mental housekeeping—clearing the table before eating your next meal.
While three deep breaths of any length will do, you can also try your hand at a few different techniques.
Box breathing is an inhale hold, exhale hold technique. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, and then start again on the inhale. Think of it as constructing a box with your breath, where the “walls” of the box are four seconds in length.
Another is the 4-7-8 breathing technique where you inhale for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, and exhale for eight seconds. While everyone is different, this pattern has been used to reduce anxiety and help you sleep.
The last pattern you can try is the 5-5-5 breathing technique. Studies suggest that a pattern of 5.5 second inhales and exhales is the optimal breathing rate to achieve higher heart rate variability—which has been associated with improved physical and mental well-being.
Taking three deep breaths is an easy, powerful, and completely free tactic that should take no more than a minute, even if you’re taking really long, intentional breaths. Give it a shot the next time you feel yourself frantically hopping from one thing to another.
If you want to dig deeper into the fascinating art and science of breathing, I highly recommend the book Breath, by James Nestor. We chat about it a bit on this week’s podcast.
Takeaway:A pre-mortem is a ritual that helps you account for all that could go wrong with a project—in advance of those mishaps actually occurring in real life. Three steps to do a pre-mortem: identify the projects you want to go well, imagine the worst case scenarios, and create a plan to make your project more resilient using the knowledge you collected. Estimated Reading Time:2 minutes, 39s. Podcast Length: 18 minutes, 29s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
You’re probably familiar with the idea of a post-mortem—the debrief session that happens after you wrap up a project. For projects that haven’t gone as planned, a post-mortem is a chance to figure out what went wrong and how to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen the next time around.
A pre-mortem is similar, but instead of picking up the pieces after a project finishes up, you think about what could go wrong before a project starts, so you can anticipate problems before they occur.
A pre-mortem ritual is great for any project, and takes just a few steps.
1. Identify the projects you want to go really well
This can be anything in your life, big or small, individual or team projects, stuff going on in your home life or at the office. You can do a pre-mortem on projects you haven’t started yet, or ones you’re in the middle of completing.
2. Imagine all of the ways those projects might fail
The second step is to imagine that the projects you identified in the first step have failed catastrophically. Ask yourself: what went wrong that led these projects to go so poorly?
While this may seem like a depressing exercise, this step will help you anticipate all that could go wrong—and then strategize ways to avoid such mishaps.
There’s never just a single worst case scenario, and these disastrous situations may come to you over time. Keep a “what went wrong” sticky note on your desk or a running list on your phone for a few days, to capture ideas. This will help when it comes to step three.
Be sure to ask people close to the project for their worst case scenarios, too.
3. Draw up a plan to make your projects more resilient
Now that you’ve conjured up the ways in which your projects can go wrong, do all you can to avoid having those visualizations become a reality. Look at the lists that you’ve made and consider the things you could have done differently. Use these ideas to make changes to your work plan or timeline to make it more likely to succeed.
The result will be a game plan that’s more resilient to change—because you’ve already imagined and accounted for those pitfalls.
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As a personal example, I did a pretty extensive pre-mortem back in 2018 when I was preparing to launch my second book, Hyperfocus. I wrote out a bunch of scenarios that eventually informed the publicity plan for the book—as well as how I wrote the book itself.
Sample worst case scenarios for me included things like:
Not doing enough podcast outreach;
The book getting a lukewarm reception;
Terrible reviews;
No big media outlets wanting to cover the book.
These points and others became a catalyst to plan more, do more, and ultimately, to write a better book. While this is just one example, try the pre-mortem exercise out—it’s a gateway to better, more thoughtful planning, and can lead to a cascade of positive effects for your project.
Takeaway: Last week I challenged you to go as many days as possible without charging your phone. Some practical tips to help you do that (especially during this anxious time): rethink which jobs you hire your phone for, rearrange your home screen, take advantage of your phone’s many modes, and opt to get news alerts from a single source.
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes, 48s.
Podcast Length: 30 minutes, 1s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
It’s been a uniquely crazy and anxious few weeks (in an already stressful year), and if you’re anything like me, you’ve been glued to coverage of the U.S. election, awaiting all the results that came in over the weekend. Maybe you’re spending more time than ever bouncing between news apps, or texting friends out of excitement and nerves.
With our phones keeping us tethered to a world of worry, there’s no better time to try out the challenge we talked about last week: to see how many days you can go without charging your phone.
My iPhone 11 Pro usually lasts for a day on a single charge, so this was an experiment to see if I could make the battery last for two days, or even three. In the end, I got to 2.5 days before running out of juice.
For those who are interested in disconnecting for a bit during this crazy time, here are some practical tips for how to check your phone less and make your battery last longer. While it can be a fun competition with yourself, the real goal is to use your phone more mindfully—and hopefully less overall!
1. Rethink the “jobs” you hire your phone for
The late Clayton Christensen was known for a bunch of interesting nuggets of business wisdom, one of which was the jobs to be done theory. The premise is that every product we buy should do a job for us—whether it’s “hiring” Kleenex for blowing our nose or using Uber Eats to order another round of election night chicken wings.
Today, our phone does so many jobs. It’s our alarm clock, GPS, newspaper, video game console, calendar… the list goes on. It’s no surprise we spend so much time on our devices when it’s our one-stop-shop for just about everything. To spend less time on your phone and make your battery last longer, consider switching some of these tasks to analogue devices—i.e. a nightside table alarm clock, physical newspaper, or agenda. Or, even better, cull the ones that don’t serve you (think: social media, video games, Netflix binges).
2. Rearrange your home screen
We’ve all opened our phone to text a friend only to 30 minutes later find ourselves scrolling on Twitter. Changing the layout of your phone’s home screen is one way to make your device less appealing.
Consider the apps that make you feel anxious or unhappy, and either delete them or store them on the second or third screen, buried in a folder. I have social media apps stored in a “Social” folder (which I relabel as “Distractions” when I really want to deter myself from using them!). It’s a small extra tap to open them, but I find it’s enough of a reminder to use my phone with a bit more awareness.
Reclaim your home screen with apps that are meaningful to you—maybe it’s a meditation timer, an audiobook app, or your workout tracker. The less you’re tempted to use your phone, the longer your battery will last.
3. Take advantage of your phone’s many modes
This one’s more of a hack, but it works. Modes like Do Not Disturb, Airplane mode, Low Battery mode, and Grayscale disable various features of your phone that will preserve its battery and make it less appealing overall.
The power of Grayscale mode is especially worth highlighting. It simply turns your screen black and white, which may seem like no big deal until we realize that a lot of apps use color psychology to boost usage. News websites crank the saturation on photos so our screens appear more vibrant and exciting. Grayscale mode is great for your battery life and will make your phone less stimulating.
4. Get news alerts from a single source
This is a turbulent time, and it’s not helpful to be bouncing back and forth between a half dozen news apps. Choose your favorite news app and enable notifications—shutting off the alerts for all others. Being mindful and selective with your alerts will help you stay better focused and less stressed at a time when calmness is key.
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The two-day phone challenge isn’t really about how long you can make your battery last—it’s about how to be more mindful and intentional about what you’re consuming. Remember that the path to better productivity runs straight through calm, and checking your phone less routinely is one stop along the way to get there.
Takeaway:A few tactics to help you inbox with intention: track your email usage, adopt email sprints, take an email vacation, suggest phone calls for longer discussions, and send less email. Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 38s. Podcast Length: 26 minutes, 8s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
While the idea of Inbox Zero is sexy, the reality is that most of us don’t get there. Even if you do manage to tend to every message in your inbox, it’s only a matter of time before a new one comes in. Inbox Zero is a slippery, competitive slope, and can lead us to think about our email at all hours of the day, obsessively checking and replying to maintain an empty inbox.
I personally like to look at Inbox Zero as a state of mind—getting to the point where you are dedicating zero mental space towards thinking about email. This requires a mindset shift where you bring more awareness into how you interact with your inbox.
While your email behavior will look differently depending on whether your work is more collaborative or autonomous, here are a few tactics you can use to change the relationship you have with your inbox.
1. Track your email usage
Keep a post-it note tally for a day or afternoon to track how many times you checked for new messages. Then, reflect on why it was that you checked. Was it because you were expecting an urgent reply from a colleague, or did you need an excuse to procrastinate?
The latter may be a sign that you’ve reached an impasse in your work. If that’s the case, consider taking a short break so you can return to your most important work with the energy and focus is deserves.
2. Try an email sprint
I love this tactic and use it all the time. At the top of the hour or whenever you have the chance, set a timer for 10 minutes. Take that time to blow through as many emails as you possibly can. When your ringer goes, take the remainder of the hour to disconnect entirely and focus on other work.
3. Take an email vacation
This can be for an entire day or just a few hours when you’re working on a deadline or have a task that demands a lot of focus. Most of us can go for this length of time without having our work fall apart—and it’s likely what you’d be doing anyways if you had an important client meeting or an all-day seminar.
I had an old coworker who would shut down his email, set an auto-responder, and take that time to hunker down on a big project. Not only does an email vacation give you the chance to really hyperfocus, but it can actually give the illusion of greater productivity. Sometimes being truly productive means taking a few days to reply, and that’s okay.
4. Suggest phone calls for longer conversations
This is a simple rule: if you want to write an email that’s longer than three sentences, pick up the phone and call someone. Some things are just easier to discuss verbally, and a phone call is often more efficient and nuanced than an email novella.
5. Send less email
The more email you send, the more you receive—cut your inbox in half by sending less email yourself. Before sending a message, consider its purpose and the people who need to be included. Pausing for this moment will help you be a good email Samaritan and will also avoid the dreaded second email when you realize you forgot a point during your frenzied first reply.
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Attention researcher Gloria Mark found that the more time we spend on email each day, the lower we perceive our productivity to be and the more stressed we feel. Checking your inbox is easy—what’s more difficult is having the time, attention, and energy to read through and respond in a thoughtful way.
Email was created for our convenience and it’s an important way of sharing information with people, especially during these strange times. But we shouldn’t feel beholden to our inboxes, and I hope you can use these tactics to free yourself from the idea that you should be immediately available and responsive.
Chances are your boss isn’t paying you to respond to emails—it’s the focused, specialized work that happens in between those inbox checking sessions that really matters. Reclaim these moments and you will find you’re able to work with greater time, attention, and energy.
Takeaway:Cait Flanders’ new book, Adventures in Opting Out: A Field Guide to Leading an Intentional Life, explores how we can step away from the default and choose a life guided by intention and purpose. A number of ideas to think about: how our culture and the stories we’re told shape our values and goals; using intuition to identify what we really value; signs that we should opt out; and how to respond to critical judgement around your choices. Estimated Reading Time:4 minutes, 1s. Podcast Length: 34 minutes, 54s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
Many of us are familiar with the default script: go to school, get good grades, find a job, meet a partner, settle down, and kick the bucket at the very end. These are age-old stories that are handed down from our culture, the media, and the people in our lives. But what if you scrapped the script and instead made the choices you really want?
That’s how Cait Flanders lives her life, and it’s an idea she explores in her new book, Adventures in Opting Out. Long time podcast listeners may remember Cait from episode 13, where we chatted about whether or not to take advice from experts. This week I was thrilled to have her back on the show to talk about her second book (her first release, The Year of Less, is also a great read!).
Adventures in Opting Out digs into an idea we all need to hear right now: the power of living in a way that’s true to who we are instead of what the world expects of us. That includes opting out: making the decision to work for yourself, to not have kids, to pursue a new lifestyle—the opt outs are endless. The book presents a wonderful and fun opportunity to reflect on this theme so that we can make the choices that will help us lead a more intentional and meaningful life.
I love the reflective nature of Cait’s writing, and that introspection is embedded within every page of this book. Here are a few ideas from our conversation and the book to mull over during your next period of reflection.
1. Recognize how the default script can shape your goals and values. The curious thing about following a well-worn path is that you involuntarily find yourself enrolled in the goals and values that go along with it. If the default script says you should own a house by the time you’re 30, your goal might be to find a six-figure job and value compensation above all else. There’s an ease and comfort in chasing this default script in autopilot mode without stopping to listen to what we really want.
Determining what you value is easier said than done. Cait shares that she used to pick values and corresponding goals that were more aspirational—rather than what she really wanted to do. Often these aspirational values were guided by a sense of what she should be doing.
2. To determine what you value, pay attention to your gut reaction. Intuition is a powerful tool. To identify your true values, Cait suggests noting the choices that make you feel unsettled. She gives the example of becoming a vegetarian. Before making this change, Cait remembers ordering meat or saying ‘yes’ to a dish made by her parents. She was unhappy with her decision every time. If you hear yourself resisting something over and over again, take those feelings as a sign that you may be living out of alignment with your values. Boiled down, your values are the flipside of what you don’t like.
3. Take note of other signs that it’s time to opt out. There’s too many signals to list, and Cait goes much deeper into this in her book. A few signs include hearing yourself say the same thing over and over; not being able to sleep because you’re so irked by something needing to change; not being present in conversations; and noticing that you revert to a different or older version of yourself around certain people.
4. Prepare to be judged—and be okay with that. As someone who has opted out of drinking, an unhealthy relationship with shopping, a conventional job, and more, Cait has heard a lot of unsolicited feedback on her choices. These opinions can be difficult to swallow, especially when they come from people we care about. But Cait says that people can only see as far for you as they can for themselves, and that judgements are often a reflection of what people would say to themselves if faced with a similar change. She suggests using these critical moments to engage in conversation and ask questions about why someone feels the way they do.
It takes time and introspection to pinpoint your values and determine the life you want. The ideas above can help you along that journey, though Cait notes that your thoughts will look differently depending on what opt out you’re considering.
It’s not a spoiler to say that Cait believes every adventure in opting out has been worth it. Each time she stepped away from something that wasn’t working for her, she could finally hear her own voice. Chock full of stories and insights, I highly recommend picking up Adventures in Opting Out.
Takeaway: The next time you reach a strong impasse with a problem, sleep on it, by writing down the problem before heading to bed. Incubating unresolved problems overnight lets your mind wander, rest, and unearth insights you might not otherwise have had. Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 13s. Podcast Length: 18 minutes, 34s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
If you’re anything like me, you occasionally find yourself staring down what could be several more hours of work at the end of the day—maybe stumped by a technical problem or grasping for a way to connect seemingly disparate ideas in a presentation. Whatever it is, you’ve reached an impasse and you may not be sure what to do next.
Pulling an all-nighter is one option—but a better option might be to sleep on the problem.
Here’s how the idea works: as you’re disconnecting at the end of the day, write down one open loop or problem that you want to solve and think about until the next morning. Then, go to sleep. As you rest, your brain will continue to churn away on the problem, making it more likely that you’ll experience a eureka moment in the morning. Try to always go to bed with a problem in mind that you want to solve.
Sleeping on a problem works for two curious reasons.
First, it works because of a psychological phenomenon named the “Zeigarnik effect”. Named after psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, this effect suggests that we store unresolved problems at the front of our minds. Our brains are wired to continue connecting new experiences and thoughts to that problem until the loop is closed. That includes the new ideas that come up when our minds wander. By capturing a problem before bed, you’re more likely to store it front-of-mind for the night—when your mind will turn over the problem, in search of a solution to it.
This is where the power of dreaming comes in—the second reason sleeping on a problem works so well. Interestingly, the brain networks we use to dream as we sleep and daydream are eerily similar—on a neurological level, dreaming is basically daydreaming on steroids. And, as I’ve written about in the past, a surefire way of becoming more creative is to daydream more often.
Like daydreaming, dreaming creates the space for us to process problems and unearth new insights. When we wake up we find we’re not only more refreshed and able to focus, but that our subconscious may have pieced together the puzzle from the day before. (I dig into this idea more in Hyperfocus. Everyone from Thomas Edison to Salvador Dali have used sleep as a tool to come up with new insight solutions.)
Going to bed with a problem to sleep on works best for a single specific, complex problem that would benefit from some additional time or thought. Something simple to try the next time you’ve reached an impasse in your work. Sweet, productive dreams!
Takeaway:Many of us want to read more but are unsure of how to do it. A handful of tactics to try: set specific times to read, create a comfortable physical environment, identify less meaningful activities and replace them with reading, read shorter books, have multiple books on-the-go, put down books you’re not enjoying, make reading a social activity, know which reading format you prefer, and schedule a reading day. Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes, 19s. Podcast Length: 31 minutes, 58s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
Whether it’s immersing yourself in a faraway fictional world or digesting the ideas of a nonfiction book, reading is one of the most meaningful ways to spend your day and activate your mind. It’s also one of the best temporary escapes from this anxious time—all while staying within the comfort of your home.
A lot of people want to read more books, but are uncertain of where to start. On this week’s episode of Becoming Better(which you can play at the bottom of the post), we explore this goal and share a buffet of tactics to get you started. Here are a few ideas that have worked for us, pulled from the episode!
1. Set aside specific times to read
Figure out how reading can fit into the structure of your day. Maybe it’s right after you wake up alongside a mug of tea, or sitting on a park bench at lunch. Think about how you’re spending your day and how you could carve out a window of time to sit down with a book. Reading is also a great way to transition from your work day into your personal time—an especially important divide when we lack the physical separation between our home and office.
2. Create a physical environment that’s conducive to reading
This can be extraordinarily helpful when it comes to starting your own reading ritual. I personally put my phone and tablet in another room, lie on the couch, and tune into the “Simply Piano Radio” station on Apple Music. Take this ritual with a grain of salt, though—the “perfect” environment for reading can be elusive, and if you wait for the stars to perfectly align you may never pick up a book.
3. Replace less meaningful tasks with reading
Whether it’s engaging in an endless Twitter scroll or binge watching Netflix, we all have parts of our day that could be categorized as less-than-meaningful. Identify what those things are and take them as a sign that you should pick up a book instead. We all have time for reading if we choose to prioritize it.
4. Read shorter books
This might sound like cheating, but short books actually pair really well with longer reads—right now, for example, I’m reading a bunch of short books while also reading the tome that is Cryptonomicon. It‘s rewarding to make progress in a short book while progressing through a larger one.
5. Read multiple books at once
Think of it like diversifying your portfolio of investments. If you’re reading multiple books you can pretty much guarantee you’re going to enjoy one. I ran a Twitter poll asking how many books people read at once—most (60%) said they read more than one book at a time. I personally have around four or five books on-the-go at once. This is especially true with nonfiction. You can process reading multiple simultaneous nonfiction books better than you might think, since you’re just accumulating facts, and have no storylines to cross.
6. Stop reading books you don’t enjoy
Some books just won’t connect with you, regardless of their reviews or recommendations. Putting down a bad book is naturally motivating. This approach is probably not worth applying to everything, but life’s too short to read books you don’t like.
7. Put more thought into your reading list in order to read better books
This can include the classics—many of which are available for free online or through the library. Look at literary recommendations but also be open to reading something that doesn’t have a five star review. Taste is so personal, and who knows where you’ll find your next favorite book—in general, we should spend more time choosing the books we read than we do. One suggestion: see the description of each book you’re considering reading as a pitch for your time and attention.
8. Make reading more social
You may already be familiar with Goodreads, a social network where users can review, recommend, and save titles. Book clubs are also a great way to make reading a social activity, and are one option for staying connected with friends and family during the pandemic. Both can help you stumble on great books you wouldn’t read otherwise.
9. Know which reading format you prefer
I’m a physical book kind of guy, and always have a pen and highlighter in hand to scribble in the margins. Look at what you’re reading and how consequential the information is—audiobooks can be great for fictional reads, but you may prefer a physical book if you’re digging into something meaty.
10. Have a reading day
This is a single day where you sit down and finish an entire book. Reading days can be a reward for meeting a deadline or finishing a project early. I find that a 300-350 page book is ideal for a reading day.
Like all productivity advice, you need to take what works for you and leave the rest. Happy reading!
Takeaway:Change is inevitable and we need to learn to embrace it. Four tactics to get you started: have an awareness for change and how it interacts with your expectations, see every data point as part of a broader trend, shift your mindset to view change as the default state of the world, and meditate.
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 50s.
Podcast Length: 21 minutes, 8s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
We’re going through a period of rapid change. Maybe your kids are going back to school, your office is considering opening its doors for the first time since the lockdown started, or your investments are making a rollercoaster look like a relaxing ride.
It’s a difficult time for many, and embracing change is one of the ways we can give ourselves a helping hand. This idea is central to Buddhism: happiness is nothing more than coming to terms with how things change.
In this week’s episode of Becoming Better, we discuss four strategies for how you can begin to accept change for what it is: an inevitable part of our lives.
Be aware of how your expectations interact with change. Long-time readers of this blog will know how much I talk about the importance of working with intention and awareness. Typically, this means recognizing how you’re spending your time, attention, and energy. But it’s also important to be aware of your expectations and how they’re affected by change. Let’s say you order a slice of raspberry pie on the patio of your favorite coffee shop, but you’re brought a piece of chocolate cake instead. Even if you love chocolate cake you might be disappointed because your expectation was to be savoring that tangy raspberry taste. We are constantly comparing our experiences (the chocolate cake) to our expectations (the raspberry pie) and this can lead to disappointment. Being aware of how the change between expectation and experience makes you feel allows you to do something about it. Once you identify your emotions you can begin to investigate the expectations that triggered them.
Zoom out to see the larger trend. Our lives are a series of data points measuring everything from our health to our finances to our sleep schedule. It’s not possible to get the whole story by looking at just one. That’s like saying “I didn’t go to the gym this week, and therefore I’m totally unhealthy and unmotivated.” Zooming out adds color and nuance to the black and white of individual data points. Because the reality is probably a lot closer to “I didn’t go to the gym at all this week because my kid was sick with the flu, I needed to prepare that presentation for the district manager, and I’ve been stressed after an argument with my sister. And I’ve actually increased my number of weekly workouts when compared to this time last year.” Zooming out provides context and helps us to see the trend in how things have changed over time. Journaling is one way to track and reflect on these trends.
View change as the default state of life. Everything is always in a state of flux, and the sooner we accept that, the better. Welcome change as an old friend rather than an adversary.
Meditate. Stepping back is a superpower right now, and meditation is one of the best ways to do that. Rather than immediately reverting to a default response to change, meditation helps you slow down, process, and respond in a healthier way. It also helps you see how your reaction might be informed by expectations, and how you can untangle these as a way to become better at dealing with change. If you’re new to the ritual of meditation here’s a guide to get you started.
Change isn’t going anywhere, so the best thing we can do is to accept and grow alongside it.
32: 10 Interview to Make You More Productive
Jun 30, 2020
On this week’s podcast, my cohost Ardyn and I cover the biggest lessons we’ve learned from our experiments for the podcast, as well as our favorite nuggets of wisdom from the guests we’ve had on the show so far.
Just in case you’re curious to dig into them, here are the 10 favorite interviews we’ve conducted to date—I’ve bolded what you’ll get out of each conversation above the link to play each episode. There’s a link to this week’s episode at the bottom of this post, too, where we share a bunch of things we’ve become better at while doing the podcast.
31: Want to Become Happier? Get Moving!
Jun 16, 2020
Takeaway:Kelly McGonigal’s latest book, The Joy of Movement, is an ode to the value that movement can bring to our lives. Kelly shares how exercise of any kind and for any length of time can help us not only feel physically healthier, but also more connected with ourselves and our communities. She says that group movement is almost always better than individual exercise (even if it’s online!)—unless you’re spending time alone in nature.
Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 38s.
Podcast Length: 45 minutes, 28s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
Movement may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about forming a connection with the people around you or attaining a sense of mental calm. Perhaps you envision a raucous dinner party to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Or maybe your mind paints a picture of a stoic figure meditating in silence and stillness. Or, a personal favorite, relaxing on the couch playing Animal Crossing, or sinking into a good book.
Kelly McGonigal is an advocate for anything that gets us moving as a group—among a suite of other exercises. Kelly is a health psychologist and Stanford University lecturer whose TED talk about how to make stress your friend has been viewed more than 30 million times.
In her latest book, The Joy of Movement, Kelly looks at how exercise can make you braver, help you connect with others, and experience mental resilience and joy. I’ve been a long-time fan of Kelly’s writing, and her 2015 book, The Upside of Stress, is one of my personal picks for the best productivity books out there.
I love the way Kelly frames the importance of movement and exercise. Instead of explaining it as a project to make our bodies fit within societal norms or as a means to reduce risk of chronic health concerns down the road, The Joy of Movement argues that exercise is a key piece of the puzzle that will help you live a more engaged, happy life.
The book is highly actionable, and in our chat Kelly shares some interesting tactics and tidbits on how you can use movement as a way to change your mindset around stress and create more connection with the people and things you love. Here’s some of what she had to say.
1. The type of movement doesn’t matter. Embracing movement doesn’t mean you suddenly need to start running marathons (a relief to me). Any dose of movement—be it three minutes or three hours—is one of the easiest things you can do to boost your mood and give you a hit of resilience or hope. So whether it’s flailing your arms to your favorite song or tapping your fingers on the table, Kelly advises us to start where we are, do what we can, and think about using as much of our body as possible.
2. Exercise and movement can help you deal with social anxiety. This is something Kelly found in her own life. She describes her default temperament as shy, sensitive, and anxious—but goes on to explain how exercise makes her better and braver. Movement triggers the release of endocannabinoids, neurotransmitters that not only reduce fear and anxiety but also promote positive social engagement and increase the warm glow you get when you’re around others. It’s like a dose of medicine that makes it easier to connect with other people.
3. Group movement can bring more benefits than individual movement—even when it’s online. Moving together creates a shared experience and sense of community which fosters further bonding and trust. This can be everything from traditional team sports to a zumba class to running ultramarathons. Though the latter typically evokes images of uber-fit athletes charging alone through the mountains, it’s actually the ability to be supported by others and the feeling of being part of a collective activity that allows ultramarathoners to benefit from that same sense of group connection and community.
While it’s admittedly not the best time to be thinking of group activities, we can actually gain the same benefits when joining a group exercise class on Zoom. Research even supports that moving alongside avatars—virtual human beings!—can have the same effect.
4. Head outside for some green exercise. Moving alone in nature could actually be more powerful than moving together while outdoors. I personally start most mornings by making a cup of tea and going for a short hike. Kelly shares that moving in nature can be a shortcut to the calm state of mind attained through meditation. By breathing in gulps of fresh air, feeling the sun on our skin, and listening to the birdsong, nature allows us to take in new sensations and thoughts while letting go of the stressors of the past and future.
5. The movement you choose can help reveal or strengthen parts of your personality. While any movement is better than none, Kelly says you can also strategically focus on a form of movement that will help you experience parts of yourself that you value. She shares a personal example of how learning mixed martial arts and kickboxing have helped her feel more brave, and have proven to her that she can fight for herself and for others. I could go on and on about what Kelly shared during our chat, but you’re better off just listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoy our conversation!
The best productivity books more than pay for themselves: they teach you how to save time, so you more than earn back the time you spend inside them. So which productivity books will help you out the most?
Here are 10 of my absolute favorites—with a mini review of each one, with what you’ll get out of reading each book.
Mini Review: Getting Things Done is bigger than a book—it’s a bona fide movement. If you find it hard to focus because your mind is cluttered—with tasks, commitments, and other obligations—pick this book up.
Mini Review: This book will teach you how to stand out at work—regardless of whether you work for someone or for yourself. Linchpin provides you with a blueprint for becoming indispensable, regardless of what your “art” happens to be.
Mini Review: The concept behind this book is fascinating: Laura Vanderkam pored through the detailed time logs of highly-successful women who have kids at home, who also make over $100,000 a year. In the book, she shares the tips she learned from these women, including the importance of sleep, and what time wasters they didn’t invest in (like watching hardly any TV).
Mini Review: Another fantastic book from Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock makes the case that, regardless of how busy we are, we have more time than we think we do. I walked away with countless strategies for developing deeper relationships and indulging in more intentional relaxation.
Mini Review: Deep Work digs into how we should structure our days in order to be most productive—and makes the compelling case that, when we do knowledge work for a living, the ability to focus on cognitively-demanding tasks is one of the most powerful skills we can develop. This book isn’t just worth reading once—it’s worth reading each time you find yourself surrounded by an increased number of distractions.
I’m not a fan of when authors include their own books in these roundups, so I don’t. If you’re looking for some reading beyond the books on this list, though, here’s a link to my books!
Mini Review: As Kelly McGonigal explores in the book, stress is not always a bad thing—if harnessed correctly, stressful situations can lead us to experience a more meaningful life. The Upside of Stress is an engaging, counterintuitive book that will change how you think about stress—as well as the challenges you face in general.
Mini Review: This book may add years to your life. In How Not to Die, Michael Greger explores the foods we should be eating in order to live the longest—and everything in the book is backed up by scores of academic research. This is what makes Greger’s books unique: he starts with the science, and works backwards to how we should live our lives in order to take advantage of the latest research.
Mini Review: If you’re able to buy just one book about habits, make it Atomic Habits. This book provides you with a comprehensive overview of how habits work, and the latest science behind forming new habits and breaking old ones—Atomic Habits is one of the most comprehensive guides to forming new habits available.
Mini Review: This book, by Winnifred Gallagher, explores how we can manage our attention in order to become happier. Years after reading Rapt, its lessons stick with me. If you’re looking for ways to become more present in your life, this book is a great place to start.
Mini Review: Mindset, by Carol Dweck, is another classic productivity book. It explores how we can develop a “growth mindset”—how we can see ourselves as someone capable of great change. The book not only digs into what a growth mindset is, it also explores how we can develop one in our own lives.
Of course, not all of us have the luxury of being lazy during a pandemic. But regardless of your situation, I hope you check the article out. Even if you have less time than usual, right now we deserve a break more than ever—and we also deserve a bit more kindness from ourselves.
28: Flexibility as a Source of Inner Calm
May 05, 2020
Takeaway:Henry Emmons’ book, The Chemistry of Calm, is a practical and tactical deep dive into what makes us anxious and what helps us find calm. In our interview, Henry talks about how flexibility and acceptance—with ourselves and with the world around us—can help us find calm in these stressful times.
Estimated Reading Time:1 minute, 26s.
Podcast Length 28 minutes, 45s (link to play podcast at the bottom of post).
We’ve spent the last few episodes of the podcast talking about calm—and how it can seem so elusive right now. All it takes is a quick glance at the news or social media to feel the onslaught of panic and anxiety.
There’s not always an obvious way to set aside our restless feelings and attain a sense of calm, especially when many of our normal coping mechanisms are off the table. I wanted to get another take, and was joined on the podcast by an expert on the topic: Henry Emmons, a clinical psychiatrist and the author of The Chemistry of Calm.
I was curious about how Henry views the relationship between calm and anxiety, especially at a time when the world is collectively so far down the “anxiety” end of the spectrum.
Interestingly, Henry considers calm to be our natural state. At the same time, he acknowledges it’s absolutely normal to be experiencing some level of stress or anxiety right now. At its core, the coronavirus crisis is a survival threat, and being alert and on guard is what we’re biologically programmed to do.
We’ve spoken a lot on this podcast about the tactics you can take to find calm, including active relaxation, stepping away from the digital world and into the analog one, and creating a gratitude list.
As Henry shared, flexibility is another trait he’s seen help people get through these recent lifestyle changes and attain a sense of calm. Flexibility and an openness to adapt can be a secret weapon against fear and anxiety—whether we’re dealing with a global pandemic or a stressful situation in the office. It’s what allows us to accept what is happening in the world around us, internalize and process that reality, and use it to guide life decisions.
This sense of flexibility doesn’t only apply to the external world—it also affects our inner mindset, too.
It offers us the ability to treat ourselves with kindness and be flexible with the expectations we place on ourselves, especially in the context of our current crisis. This self-acceptance and kindness can help us push back against the expectation that we should be working at 100% productivity, capable of balancing homeschooling with team video calls, or baking the perfect loaf of sourdough bread.
Henry sees rigidity as the enemy of joy and calm. Being kind to ourselves doesn’t mean settling for mediocrity and stasis. Instead, it grounds us in a mindset where we accept where we are, what our current limitations may be, and how we can realistically move forward.
The Chemistry of Calm looks at how we can use a whole host of tactics to reduce anxiety. Here are a few of the other topics our conversation touched on:
Meditation as a universal self-care practice. While it takes a bit of work to get started, a meditation ritual can help us respond to stressful situations effectively and with a sense of calm.
See this time as a personal retreat. This pandemic is a break from life as usual and, for those of us who are fortunate to be able to do so, we can view this as a chance to slow down and reconnect with our loved ones and the world around us.
We’ve got a lot to learn from nature. All other plant and animal species take the time to rest, regroup, and rebound—the opposite of our productivity mindset. Slowing down can be a good thing.
A big thanks to Henry for joining me on the show. He shared so many more interesting tidbits, and they’re really useful in changing the way we think about calm and anxiety, especially at a time like this. Enjoy our conversation and take care of yourself!
27: The 7 Triggers of Procrastination
Apr 21, 2020
Takeaway:We procrastinate when a task is boring, frustrating, difficult, ambiguous, unstructured, or lacking in personal meaning or intrinsic rewards. By reversing these triggers—a few suggestions for how to do this are below—we can overpower our urge to procrastinate.
Estimated Reading Time:1 minute, 41s.
Podcast Length 23 minutes, 24s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
Procrastination is a fascinating topic—and just as fascinating is the science behind it. Research suggests that there are seven attributes a task can have that make us more likely to put it off.
We’re far more likely to procrastinate when a task is:
Boring (e.g., doing our taxes);
Frustrating (e.g., learning a complicated new skill);
Difficult (e.g., solving a math proof);
Ambiguous (e.g., training for a marathon);
Unstructured (e.g., undertaking a home renovation project);
Lacking in intrinsic rewards (e.g., not getting feedback while we’re writing a 50-page report);
Not meaningful (e.g., cleaning up the home office).
The more of these attributes a task has, the more likely we are to put it off.
On this week’s podcast, we dig into how to flip these triggers so we can use the science of procrastination to our advantage. There are countless ways to do this, depending on which attributes a task has. For example, we can:
Form a simple plan to make boring tasks more fun (e.g., buying an audiobook for doing mindless chores around the house);
Set a time limit for frustrating tasks (e.g., making a game out of something we don’t want to do, by filing as many papers as we possibly can within 20 minutes);
Work with someone on difficult tasks, so we have more support while doing them (e.g., hiring a virtual piano teacher, instead of learning via an app);
Make a plan for ambiguous and unstructured tasks (e.g., taking 20 minutes to map out next steps for a home renovation project);
Treat ourselves while doing unrewarding tasks (e.g., putting $1 in a frivolous spending account for every five minutes we spend on our taxes);
Journal about tasks we find meaningless in order to connect with them on a deeper level (e.g., journaling about why cleaning our office will make us feel calm as we work).
Procrastination is a human phenomenon—everyone on the planet puts things off. The next time you notice yourself procrastinating on something, bring some awareness to what triggers the task is setting off, and form a simple plan to overcome them. You’ll get a lot more done as a result.
Takeaway:Calm is elusive right now. 5 ways to find it: become engaged with something every day, spend more time in the analog world, meditate (or journal), write down what you’re grateful for, and find something to savor every day.
Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 23s.
Podcast Length19 minutes, 53s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
These days, calm can feel elusive. Anxiety comes and goes in waves, and, as I wrote about a couple of weeks back, it’s hard to be productive right now. It’s calm that we need most, not productivity.
While this is a blog about productivity, this article is about cultivating calm. Whether or not you’re working right now, investing in your calm can help you accomplish the things you want to do. Instead of forcing yourself to get work done, a calm mindset allows you to become kinder to yourself throughout the day. You’ll be able to focus with greater ease when your mind is settled, as your busy mind won’t generate distracting thoughts that derail your attention as you work.
If you’re looking for a few strategies to work more calm into your day, below are a few of the ways that I’m investing in myself (that we chat about on this week’s podcast). I’m confident they’ll work for you, too.
Become engaged with something (anything). We all need something to be engaged with throughout the day, regardless of whether we’re working or not. We rarely feel as unmotivated as when we have nothing to do. Right now, some of us have more time to spare, and others of us have less (especially those of us who have to work with kids at home). If you find yourself with more free time than usual, consider taking on a big, new project. Double down on learning a new programming language, or an instrument. Undertake a new home renovation project, or take an online class. If you’re looking for more calm, look for something to become engaged with. The busyness that comes with engagement crowds out feelings of anxiety.
Step away from the digital world and into the analog one. We all live two lives: an analog life (in the physical world), and a digital life (in, of course, the digital world). We have fewer activities to engage with in the physical world right now. The gym is closed, we don’t have to drive to work, and our favorite coffee shop is temporarily out of commission. This means that many of us are spending more time than we usually do in the digital world. Here’s the problem, though: right now, the digital world can be depressing as hell. If you’re finding yourself stressed out because of the time you’re spending on your devices, disconnect, and find analog activities to connect with instead—like getting physical activity, painting, cooking, or reading a book. Generally-speaking, the more time we spend engaging with the analog world, the calmer we feel.
Recall what you’re grateful for. Each night, with your partner, with a friend, or on your own, recall three things you’re grateful for. Or, after you finish reading this blog post, write down 10 things you appreciate in your life. Expressing gratitude is a shortcut to feeling a sense of abundance, and it allows you to train your brain into looking out for what’s positive around you—both useful skills right now. Here are 100 suggestions, for things to be grateful for, sent in by readers.
Meditate or journal, even if just for a few minutes. Meditation allows you to approach your day with equanimity, rather than a sense of anxiety. It also helps you come to terms with how things change. (If you don’t know where to start, I wrote this guide which has everything you need to get started. It’s easier than you think.) If you’ve tried meditation and it isn’t for you, try journaling, in order to reflect on how you’re feeling. Both practices have different effects, but they both allow you to create some distance between yourself and the current situation.
Find something to savor every day. It’s impossible to both savor something and to feel anxious at the same time. Write a list of things you savor—video chats with loved ones, delicious meals, or your daily workout—and make a deliberate effort each day to savor one thing on your list. Tonight, I’m going to savor me a delicious burrito.
The above strategies take a bit of effort, but they’re all proven ways of introducing more calm into your life.
If you’re feeling a bit anxious right now, pick a few things from this list and give them a shot. I’m confident they’ll help you out.
25: How to Work From Home (During a Difficult Time)
Mar 24, 2020
Takeaway:Working from home isn’t easy during the best of times—let alone during a global crisis. Below are some tips for working from home when you find it difficult to focus. These strategies should help you do two things at once: both focus, and become kinder to yourself.
Podcast Length27 minutes, 45s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
These days, it can be tough to strike a balance between staying informed and staying focused.
Compared to fighting a global pandemic, work doesn’t feel that important. And compared to a pandemic, it probably isn’t. But this doesn’t change the fact that many of us are working from home right now—and that we still have to get things done while focusing on work and keeping up with a steady stream of news updates.
This isn’t “normal” working from home by any means. As you settle into a new routine, though, I’ve included a few of my favorite tips to work from home during difficult times below. These are strategies that have worked for me, as I try to find a balance right now. I think they’ll work for you, too.
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Give yourself time to settle into important tasks, and be patient with yourself. A busy mind makes it difficult to focus. Give yourself a few more minutes than usual to settle into important tasks that require a higher degree of concentration. You’ll probably need that time, so your mind can settle down a bit. Don’t be too hard on yourself during this adjustment—pretty much everyone is experiencing this right now.
Take the time you would usually spend commuting and use it for something slow, or to savor something you enjoy. With the time you’d otherwise spend commuting, take a walk, cook a meal, or even do a yoga video on YouTube (here’s my favorite YouTube yoga channel). During stressful times, we tend to fill the white space on our calendar with distraction, so we can get our mind off of what’s stressing us. Try not to fill your extra time each day with anxiety scrolling through twitter, or repeatedly checking the news. This will give you the time you need to process each day’s events.
Totally power down your phone. Our phones are the most distracting device we own. As Seth Godin has written, “When you bought your first smartphone, did you know you would spend more than 1,000 hours a year looking at it? Months later, can you remember how you spent those hours?” Our phone provides us with validation and feedback—which our work often doesn’t. Especially during a difficult time, this makes our phone more distracting than usual. To not be tempted by it, try powering your phone down completely as you work.
If you’re getting less sunlight these days, consider buying a happy light, or taking a vitamin D supplement. In countries that have instituted lockdowns, people are unable to leave their homes, including for walks. If this is the situation you’re in, and you’re getting less sun exposure than usual, I’d recommend supplementing your diet with vitamin D, or picking up a ”happy light”—especially if you find that your mood and energy dip in the wintertime. Here’s my happy light of choice, which Wirecutter recommends.
Do focused work in the morning, before connecting to the news. One study that exposed participants to just three minutes of negative news in the morning found that participants were 27% less likely to rate themselves as happy at the end of the day. The information you consume each day matters. This is even true when it comes to when you consume information. To prevent the news of the day from dampening your mood for the rest of the day, consider reconnecting with the news of the day after you finish up your most important tasks in the morning.
Schedule news and distraction time. On top of staying away from the news first thing in the morning (if you can), consider scheduling time to catch up. This allows you to tend to distractions intentionally, rather than checking in with news websites when you feel stressed out. This small change also makes you feel more in control of your day.
If you feel anxious, work on tasks that don’t require deep concentration or thinking. Right now is an anxious time for pretty much everyone. Our feelings of anxiety usually aren’t consistent throughout the day, though; they ebb and flow. When you’re feeling especially anxious, consider working on tasks that don’t require deep concentration or thinking—and use these easy tasks to warm up to more challenging ones later on. As the day progresses, be sure to match what you’re working on with how you’re feeling.
If you have kids at home, look after them in split shifts if your partner is at home too. My friend Laura Vanderkam has a great write-up for how her and her husband are taking care of their five kids while they’re both working from home—including taking care of them in split shifts, while trading the occasional hour or two with one another throughout the day. If you’re home alone with kids, also use morning and nighttime hours—while your kids are asleep—to your advantage. Provide your kids with especially rewarding distractions (like screen time) for when you’re on conference calls or in important meetings.
Create an “invisibility mode” with everyone else in the house. If you’re self-isolating with a roommate, partner, or your family, it’s important to have some outward signal that you’re working, so they don’t interrupt you unnecessarily. I have a home office, so I just close the office door. My wife, who only sporadically worked from home before today, either wears headphones or sticks a post-it note on the back of computer that says that she’s focused.
Communicate more richly with your team. The presence of other people is motivating. If you’re going from being face-to-face with colleagues every day to working from home, you’re probably going to feel like you have a bit less energy throughout the day. For this reason, make a deliberate effort to communicate in a richer way with those on your team. If you’d usually send someone a message over Slack, pick up the phone instead. If you’d usually chat with someone over the phone, suggest meeting on Skype or Zoom.
Don’t keep chips in the house. If there are chips—or other unhealthy snacks—in the house while I’m working from home, I’ll devour them all in a day or two. If you’re spending most of your time at home, it’s important to not have unhealthy snacks or other unsavory distractions out of the house. (My wife and I have a running joke that “corona calories” don’t count, but I have the sneaking suspicion that they do.) Unhealthy snacks can also sap your energy later on, making you less energized and productive.
Give yourself a to-do list every day. Writing a to-do list each morning is a great, simple way to introduce more structure into your day. Don’t have too many items on your list, and deploy the Rule of 3 (my favorite productivity ritual, in which you set three intentions each day) as well.
Integrate exercise into every single day. If you’re forced to self-isolate, getting daily exercise is not a suggestion—it’s pretty much a requirement. Exercise supports your mental health by balancing your brain chemistry, gives you energy, and is one of the best stress-relievers in existence. If you’re working from home, you’ll be getting less physical activity each day as a result. You need to compensate for this by exercising more at home. If you can, order a kettlebell or resistance bands online. Blow the dust off your old fitness gear in the basement, and get your heart rate up. Find a local fitness studio that’s now posting classes online or take advantage of the many online workout channels. Take a half-hour walk outside every day, if you can. However possible, get around 30 minutes of daily physical activity.
Have rituals that you depend upon. The world shutting down has a way of upending pretty much all of our daily rituals. Because of this, you’ll need to introduce new daily rituals into your own life, to introduce predictability, consistency, and a feeling of control into your workday. A few suggestions for doing this: have a daily time at which you start and finish up work; set a dinnertime each night with your family; and set up a dedicated workspace for yourself.
Pick your music choices deliberately. The best music for productivity has two characteristics: it’s both simple (so it doesn’t distract us) and familiar (so we don’t think much about it as we’re listening to it). Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of lo-fi hip hop, and loving it—it has no words, so it’s super simple, and it’s pretty familiar (the songs seem to blend into one another). I’m also a big fan of listening to songs on Repeat One as I work. To use music to become more productive, listen to anything that’s both simple and familiar, or try going without any if that’s your preference.
Relegate one device to be your distractions device. This is a distracting time. If you have more than one computer—including an iPad—use the extra device as your distractions device. This way, you can use one device to check up on everything: the news, your social media feeds, and messages from friends. This also allows you focus more easily in front of your main computer, when it’s time to work.
Track your time. To track your time, keep a notepad on your desk as you work, and write down what you’re working on throughout the day in 15-minute blocks of time. There are also lots of apps that you can use to do this on your computer for screen-related work. This simple ritual introduces an extra layer of accountability into your days. When you’re mindful of what you’re working on throughout the day, you spend your time far more intelligently.
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If you’re finding it challenging to focus and be productive right now, you’re certainly not alone. I’ve personally found the above strategies enormously helpful for getting more accomplished. I’m confident that you will, too.
24: A Five-minute Activity to Discover Your Most Important Tasks
Mar 10, 2020
Takeaway:Not all tasks in your work are created equal. To identify your most important tasks, make a list of all the activities you do over a given month, and then pick the most important one; the one through which you accomplish the most. Then, pick your second and third most important activities.
Estimated Reading Time:2 minutes, 35s.
Podcast Length2 minutes, 35s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
Not all tasks in your work are created equal. Here’s how to weed out the tasks on your plate that are the most important:
Make a list of every single activity you do in your job over the course of a given month.
Ask yourself: If you could do just one thing on your list of activities, day in, day out, every single day, which one leads you to accomplish the most? Which is the one task that adds the most value to your team, and makes you the most productive? Which one is the most consequential?
If you could only do one additional activity on your list during the day, which is your second most important activity that adds the most value?
Which is your third most important activity?
These are your most important tasks; the ones through which, for every minute you spend on them, you accomplish significantly much more relative to everything else on your list.
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As you do this activity, keep a few things in mind:
Find a way to cut everything else on your list. When you can, stop doing the activities that remain on your list. If you can’t, plan ways to spend less time on them. If something is a distraction, tame it. If you have a team, delegate as many of the tasks that remain on your list to them as possible. If you don’t have a team, hire an intern or a virtual assistant to help you. If something is a distraction you can’t tame, block off time to tend to it. Sit down at a coffee shop, without your phone, to decide how to deal with everything else on the list. You’ll make back the time you spend doing this one hundred times over.
Keep your three most important activities somewhere visible as you internalize them, such as on a sheet of paper on your desk, or at the very top of your to do list. This lets you consider what’s actually important as you work and plan your day, and you can make them the focus of your three daily intentions.
If something that remains on your list is fun, don’t cut it! The point of investing in your productivity isn’t to turn you into some mindless robot—it’s to let you do more of what you love. My three most important tasks are writing, researching productivity, and doing talks. Outside of this, I also love coaching, even though I make less money doing it, and I’m only able to help out one person at a time. But honestly, I don’t really care. Because it’s fun.
This activity is one that I run many of my coaching clients through, and regardless of how many times I guide people through it, they invariably settle on the fact that they have three most important tasks. A couple of people found two important tasks, but so far, no one has had more than three.
Set aside five minutes to try this activity out for yourself. The activity is simple, but the insights it provides are profound. If you’re like me, you won’t go back to working the same way afterward.
Takeaway:All of the information you consume—what you read, watch, and learn—can be divided into three categories: useful information, balanced information, and entertaining information. To think smarter, more clearly, and more intelligently, consume more valuable information—while throwing in some entertaining information, lest you turn yourself into an information-munching robot.
Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 10s.
Podcast Length28 minutes, 44s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
The quality and content of the information we consume matters. It influences pretty much every part of who we are, including:
what we think about,
how we think,
what we pay attention to in the world around us,
what we notice,
the quality of our decisions,
how intelligently we work,
the richness of our personal lives,
how many ideas we come up with,
how much we consider other people in our actions and decisions.
Generally speaking (as I write about in Hyperfocus), when it comes to what we consume, practicality does not always equal entertainment.
To illustrate this, we can chop the above chart up into a few slices, which have varying levels of usefulness and entertainment value:
Useful information is typically highly-useful, but not very entertaining. A few examples: books, journal articles, online courses, and academic conversations. Information in this category is actionable, accurate, and typically remains relevant for a long time.
Balanced information is slightly less helpful, but more entertaining, so it’s easier to consume. A few examples: documentaries, TED talks, and popular psychology books.
The final third—which contains both entertaining and trashy information—contains entertaining content that’s still a bit useful (and highly-entertaining), and also information that’s trashier, which we often consume in large doses. Some examples of information in these categories: many YouTube videos, some podcasts, romance novels, late night talk show clips, and our social media feeds.
Every single thing you consume falls into one of these categories. Useful information is usually worth taking in when you have the most energy; balanced information is great for when you have a bit less energy (but still want to feel like you’re accomplishing something); entertaining information is fun for when you want to veg out. Trashy information is probably worth consuming less of—and plus, there are far better ways to recharge.
So what can we do with this knowledge?
On this week’s episode of Becoming Better, Ardyn and I dig into the sorts of things we consume each day—as well as the meaning and enjoyment it all brings. Knowing where on this chart you spend most of your time is critical—as is making an effort to take in more valuable information over time.
There are countless ways you can do this. For example, you can:
Get things to bid for your attention. See the descriptions of audiobooks, podcasts, and TV shows as pitches for your time and attention. Are they worth the time you’ll put into them?
Think of a few valuable things to add to what you consume. What’s a skill you haven’t developed in a while? What’s a topic you’ve always been curious about? Could you learn about it instead of scrolling through your social media feeds?
Notice what you consume on autopilot mode, without thinking. This is usually when we consume the least valuable information.
Consume what you care about, that few other people do. For example, I love reading journal articles about productivity. While this is admittedly a weird fascination, I find that it gives me an edge—few other people find these journal articles entertaining. As a general rule, it’s worth building upon knowledge and skills that you uniquely care about.
Veg out intentionally. You’d become a robot if you only consumed useful information. To enjoy vegging out a bit more—like the next time you sit down to watch a bunch of episodes of your favorite Netflix show—do so intentionally. Plan out how many episodes of the show you’ll watch, what you’ll eat when you do, who you’ll invite over to watch, and so on. You won’t just have a better time, you’ll also feel less guilty about it.
As I write about in Hyperfocus, no two pieces of information are created equal. We perceive the world around us through the information we’ve consumed in the past—this is one of the myriad reasons why the state of our attention determines the state of our lives. The strategies above are all great ways to spend your time and attention better—all while increasing the quality of your attention.
22: What I Learned Taking a Bill Gates-Inspired “Think Week”
Feb 11, 2020
Takeaway:A while back I spent seven days in Jamaica conducting a “think week.” This time in the sun was loosely modeled on Bill Gates’ annual think week ritual. I learned five key things: the more time we spend keeping up the less time we spend getting ahead; that we need to strike a balance between reflecting and doing; that stepping back from our daily grind helps us to be grateful of the lives we lead; that our lives need more solitude; and finally, that we all need to take more think breaks, regardless of their length. Estimated Reading Time:9 minutes, 27s. Podcast Length23 minutes, 34s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
Several months ago, I realized the busyness of work had started to fill my schedule to the brim. With each passing day I was having less and less time to reflect on the state of my work and life.
The negative effects of this period manifested in curious ways. I found it difficult to manage my energy levels, my exercise ritual fell by the wayside, and I began to eat more junk than ever before. At the same time, I started checking my inbox and social media more often so I could keep up with messages—or at least this is what I told myself. Even my meditation and mindfulness rituals began to falter. I felt like I was hunkering down, and yet my productivity was shot and I was working with less intention than ever before.
With so much occupying my days, I had significantly less time to think and reflect. I was working in a reactive way, rather than being thoughtful about how I should spend my time. I knew something needed to change, and that I needed to strike a better balance between thinking and doing.
Lost in a daydream, I thought wistfully of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Twice a year, Bill travels to a cabin in the woods where no one can reach him. Once there, he devours countless papers about the future and plots what to do next in his professional and personal life. He has said this “think week” is when he comes up with his best ideas, and is also how he reflects on the difference he’s making in the world.
This got me thinking: could I pull a Bill Gates? Would a week away from the distractions of everyday life boost my productivity? Would such a ritual allow me to accomplish more overall? Would it let me again work in a way that was less responsive and more intentional?
Last-minute travel deals are made for these precise thoughts, and I soon found myself on a plane to Jamaica to try my very first “think week” ritual.
Though modeled off Bill’s idea, my think week was not nearly as extravagant. Instead of a cabin in the woods with a private chef, I opted for an all-inclusive resort. Instead of reading research papers (which I do most days, anyways), I brought a bunch of books that could help with the problems I was incubating. (If you’re curious, those books were: Thinking in Systems; Joyful; The E-Myth Revisited; and, the odd one out, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.)
My time in Jamaica wasn’t only about consuming and thinking about information. I also made sure to set intentions for the year ahead, and brainstorm and reflect on a few projects that have been brewing, including new book ideas.
At the end of my seven days I made a list of the five greatest lessons I learned from taking this Bill Gates-inspired think week. These have changed the way I see my own work.
1. The more time you spend keeping up, the less time you spend getting ahead
Keeping up with your daily to do list will only get you so far. The more time you spend focusing on the work that’s already on your plate, the less time you have to think about the projects that you could or should be mulling over. I had fallen into this trap of keeping up—letting my incoming work dictate what I should be focusing on each day.
There’s nothing wrong with keeping up with daily work. In fact, if you’re part of a team, keeping up probably means you’re pretty productive, and might even earn a promotion once in a while. But here’s the thing: you reach a point where keeping up no longer feels like enough.
The more autonomous your work, the more valuable reflection time becomes. Reflecting helps you step back from your work so you can think about new opportunities that are out there, process your challenges, and question what you could be doing differently.
Here are a couple examples. If you’re an executive, your current projects will only last so long—at some point you’ll need to step back and identify new opportunities for your company. If you’re a freelance designer, new clients may approach you, but at a point you’ll probably also need to pitch new projects and think about how you should be spending your time.
You can lose sight of your most valuable tasks and projects when you focus too much on keeping up. This was my problem—I was spending every day replying to emails and planning upcoming talks and consulting commitments. These things are important, but they aren’t everything. My think week allowed me to reconnect with my most important work—writing! It also made me realize I need to say “no” more often and give myself the mental space to plan for the future.
2. We need to strike a balance between reflecting and doing
The busier our lives, the less likely we’ll have the time to step back and reflect on them. We delay a lot of stuff when we’re busy at work. We postpone vacations, spend less time mentally recharging, and just generally spend more time doing rather than reflecting. Being busy makes us feel important and wanted. But it also prevents us from stepping back.
Reflection allows us to place the hypothetical rudder with intent, correcting our course so we can travel in a more productive and meaningful direction. The value of reflection applies to all critical areas of our lives. The more you reflect on your work, the more meaning you’ll find in it, and the less you’ll get caught up on unimportant tasks. The more you reflect on your personal life, the more you’ll start noticing and experiencing moments with your loved ones.
Pre-think week, my time to reflect was running on deficit. In Jamaica I had the chance to reflect on the habits and rituals I value, the meaning I find in my work, and the important relationships I’ve gathered throughout my life. I also had the chance to think about the slightly less pleasant elements—like how much time I had been spending on my email! All of this may have gone unnoticed without the time to reflect.
Heading home at the end of my think week, I doubled down on my good habits that had slipped. I began reading more fiction instead of only non-fiction. I implemented email free days where I turn on an auto-responder and take the day to hyperfocus on my most important work. I also started working out in the morning and took that time to think about the day ahead.
My think week made me realize how badly I needed this reflection time—how much we all do.
3. Stepping back can reveal everything you’re underappreciating
I recognized how lucky I was to have this week to myself, and how I had the privilege of time to think about ideas and plan for the future. I reflected on how grateful I was for my lovely wife, who not only puts up with my weird experiments, but is also my greatest source of happiness. I thought about my family and friends who were more than supportive of the fact that I was disconnecting and would be unavailable for the week. And I gained perspective on how fortunate I was to have this job—that somehow I get paid to run experiments and write about how to become a better human being.
Most importantly, my think week reminded me of a lesson I’m constantly re-learning: that when you step back from your life, you reflect on it. This helps you note what’s truly important and what affects your happiness the most. You also get to see how the different elements of your life are interconnected.
There is immense beauty in this gratitude if you take the time to see it.
4. Our lives need more solitude
Solitude can take many forms. For some, it can be a quiet moment away from the kids. For others, a jog in the park, or a the feeling of peace that comes when you listen to your favorite album.
My preferred definition of solitude comes from Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin’s book, Lead Yourself First. They define solitude as a state in which your mind is free from input from other minds.
However you define it, solitude is key to productive reflection. I’m lucky—few of us have the flexibility in our work and home lives to take a full seven-day think week. At the same time, there are ways to bring the values of a think week into your life in general. A trip to Jamaica is not required!
We can do this by finding more solitude in our lives. There are two levels of solitude. The first comes in the form of small blocks of reflection time (waiting in line without your phone, quietly sipping your morning coffee). The second is the extended periods of reflection time where we get to disconnect for the weekend or take a temporary digital detox during a long flight. We need more of both.
Fortunately, there’s often time that can be repurposed for solitude. To pinpoint these moments, ask yourself: when do you mindlessly check through your phone, scroll through social media, or listen to audiobooks and podcasts? When do you do mindless chores like laundry, the dishes, or house cleaning? These are the perfect opportunities to introduce more solitude. Instead of listening to a podcast during your commute, use this time to reflect. Instead of half-watching the TV while doing laundry, try slowing down and letting your thoughts roam free.
Though it was much needed, I sadly didn’t find much solitude at the resort where I did my think week. Turns out a resort is not the best place to free yourself from the inputs of other minds, and lots of folks strike up idle conversation when you’re at a resort by yourself. The few moments of solitude I did have made the entire week worthwhile, though, and they allowed me to deeply reflect.
5. We need think breaks more often
Yes, my think week made me realize I needed more think weeks.
Unless you have an insane amount of flexibility in your schedule, your think breaks probably won’t be a week long. That’s okay! It’s still possible to take one, even if you have a busy life at work and at home. In fact, this is when you’re likely to find the most value in it.
In the next article I’ll be sharing how you can plan a think break of your own. But in the meantime, it’s worth considering how to introduce more thinking and reflection time into your own busy schedule.
When evaluating different strategies for becoming more productive, there’s one yardstick that I always turn to: For every minute I invest into a productivity tactic, how many minutes do I earn back? When you earn your time back—and then some!—a productivity ritual is easily worth the time it takes.
Spending seven days in the sun isn’t the most obvious strategy for becoming more productive. But if you find yourself responding to the daily slog in a reactive way, and that fewer ideas are coming to you as you go about your days, a think break may be exactly what you need.
21: Resetting Your Caffeine Tolerance
Jan 28, 2020
Takeaway:
When you consume caffeine habitually, you’ll need to consume more and more to experience the same energy boost. This makes occasionally resetting your caffeine tolerance worth the effort and the struggle. To do this, slowly lower the amount of caffeine you consume each day, or go “cold turkey” if you don’t consume a lot to begin with. Invest in your energy at the same time to counterbalance withdrawal symptoms.
Estimated Reading Time:
3 minutes, 59s. Podcast Length29 minutes, 49s (link to play podcast at bottom of post). It’s worth resetting your caffeine tolerance every once in a while. The reason for this is simple: as your body becomes accustomed to consuming caffeine, you need to consume more and more of it to experience the same energy boost. When you go from consuming zero coffee a day to drinking a single cup, you feel a big energy boost. But soon, your body adjusts, and you need two cups to experience the same effect. Then three. And then maybe even four. You get the picture.1 This idea of caffeine inflation can be dangerous. Setting aside the fact that it’s never fun to rely on drugs to feel a proper amount of energy, consuming too much caffeine can also lead to anxiety, exhaustion, and can disrupt your sleep, among many other factors. Plus, large energy crashes can obliterate your productivity. I fell into this trap a couple of months ago when, during the holidays, I found myself drinking far more coffee than usual—the equivalent of five cups of coffee each day, in the form of coffee, tea, and espresso. There’s nothing wrong with consuming caffeine for a productivity boost, especially when you drink it strategically—like before working on important tasks—so you can actually make use of the energy boost. But it’s worth performing a caffeine reset whenever you find yourself consuming caffeine habitually, or when you’re consuming more of it to experience the same energy sensation. A caffeine reset can be a struggle, but it’s worth it to get out of a downward spiral. You can reset your caffeine tolerance in one of two ways:
Slowly reducing how much caffeine you consume each day, if you rely on it heavily to experience a passable amount of energy. I’ve done this by drinking the same amount of tea or coffee, but substituting more and more of it with decaf, until I’ve cut out caffeine altogether.
Going cold turkey, and not consuming caffeine until your energy rebalances. I’ve found this method helpful in the past during times when I’ve been drinking a couple cups of tea per day, or a single cup of coffee. I actually prefer this method—I can feel the effects of going without caffeine, and watch the effects diminish over time.
The toughest part of writing about caffeine is that everyone is wired differently. Just as everyone responds to caffeine differently, a caffeine reset may have a different effect on each person. If you consume caffeine habitually, you’ll almost certainly experience symptoms as you reduce your tolerance—in the past, I’ve experienced headaches, mood swings, sadness, an inability to focus, brain fog, and even flu-like symptoms. While this may make resetting your caffeine tolerance seem like more trouble than it’s worth, consider that you’re experiencing these symptoms because you’ve grown reliant on a drug for energy. Thankfully, while you’ll probably experience some withdrawal symptoms, there are many ways to mitigate them:
Starting on the weekend. This will give you an excuse to veg out, and will minimize the impact the reset has on your productivity.
Treating your worst symptoms. If your headaches and other withdrawal symptoms are bad, aspirin or ibuprofen can help relieve them, until they go away in a week or so (depending on how much caffeine you regularly consume).
Investing in your energy levels. Eating clean-burning foods that provide lasting energy, getting exercise (which rebalances your brain chemicals), drinking plenty of water, and getting enough rest can minimize the amount of energy lost as you cut back on caffeine. You may even find that you have more energy than before.
Caffeine is a drug—a popular and usually delicious one, but a drug nonetheless. I’m personally a big fan of caffeine—and consume it most days, especially before working on my most important tasks. But because the costs of caffeine can be so great, it’s worth consuming it strategically, rather than habitually. Resetting your tolerance to caffeine can be a pain—but once you get over your withdrawal symptoms, you’ll be able to consume it a lot more deliberately and productively.
Here’s why: caffeine binds to a chemical in your brain called adenosine, a neurotransmitter that makes you feel tired. Your brain normally reabsorbs this chemical and loses energy by itself—not so after you consume caffeine. Your brain even grows more and more adenosine receptors as you drink greater amounts of caffeine, meaning you need to consume more and more of it to feel the same effect. This also leads to larger energy crashes—once the caffeine in your brain dissipates, your brain absorbs a whole whack of adenosine at once. ↩
What are you grateful for this New Year’s?
Dec 31, 2019
Takeaway:You have a lot in your life to be grateful for. Make sure to recall these things as the year draws to a close.
Estimated Reading Time:1 minutes, 17s.
Podcast Length4 minutes, 58 s.
Each New Year, I look back on the year that went by to recall a few things I’m grateful for.
Today, I look back at 2019 with gratitude for all that happened in my personal life—getting married to an awesome lady, going on some cool trips, and hitting some other personal goals—but I also can’t help but feel grateful for my work life.
More thananysinglemilestone, though, I’m grateful to have you with me, along for the ride.
This is not hyperbole: every day I wake up, feeling like the luckiest guy in the world because I get to write and speak about how we can all become better people (and somehow make a living doing it). I have no idea how long this journey will last, but I’m so happy to have you along for the ride. And, more than that, I hope my work can continue to help you out for some time to come.
So, corny as this may sound, this is just a small note to say that I’m grateful for you.
I hope that, as this year draws to a close, you’re able to recount all that you’re grateful for as well.
We live in a world that doesn’t stop; a world full of constant news updates, stress, and never-ending lists of things to do. But this new year, I hope you can pause for a second or two, take a deep breath, take a look around, and recount how many things you have to be grateful for.
Takeaway:There are countless ways you can lose weight, all backed by science, as Dr. Michael Greger covers in his new book How Not to Diet. A few that I’ve expanded upon below: eat way more fiber, consume foods that contain a lot of water (like vegetables and fruit), and consume most of your calories in the morning. Estimated Reading Time:8 minutes, 27s. Podcast Length24 minutes, 15s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
How Not to Diet
Let me get this out of the way: I am not a fan of weight loss books. I like to align my life with science as much as possible, and when it comes to books about what we should eat, there’s just so much bull$#!† out there. It can feel impossible to wade through it all.
Amidst the fray of bad advice, though, there is one author who writes about food that I trust: Dr. Michael Greger. Greger is the founder of Nutritionfacts.org, a nonprofit organization that pores through all of nutritional research published each year, in order to separate what works from what doesn’t. His previous book, How Not to Die (which I consider to be one of the greatest productivity books), covered what we should eat in order to minimize our odds of dying from the 10 leading causes of death. In his latest book, How Not to Diet, Dr. Greger turns his attention to the science of weight loss.
Here’s what separates Dr. Greger’s work from everything else:
He puts the science of food above all else.
He’s terrific at wading through troves of often-conflicting research to find the most reliable, dependable studies.
He has no agenda: he really, truly lets the science speak for itself, and donates every penny that he earns from his books, talks, and DVDs to charity.
In short, if you are interested in a book about weight loss, you should pick up How Not to Diet. It’s the only diet book you’ll ever need.
10 proven ways to cut body fat
So how can you get rid of the excess fat that’s marbling your organs, muscles, and body? Here are just 10 of my favorite strategies—of the hundreds in the book—that have been shown to accelerate fat loss, which you can start doing right away.
1. Consume more fiber. Greger writes: “telling people to increase their intakes of fiber-rich foods may actually be one of the single most effective pieces of advice for weight loss.” A high-fiber diet leads your body to absorb fewer calories: increasing your daily consumption to the recommended daily minimum actually leads you to absorb 100 fewer calories a day, even when you eat the same amount. Another reliable study found that the eight types of gut bacteria that fight against weight gain all feed on fiber. A high-fiber diet also leads you to eat less in future meals, suppressing your appetite up to 10 hours after you eat it. Our bodies are designed to get 100+ grams of fiber a day, and only 3% of Americans consume the recommended daily minimum. Fiber is only found in plants (fiber supplements derived from these plants don’t work nearly as well).
2. Consume foods that contain the greatest amount of water. Curiously, we eat a fairly consistent weight of food on a daily basis (around 3 pounds), and how much food weighs depends most on how much water food contains. Water, of course, contains zero calories, and so the more water a piece of food contains, the fewer calories it has. Unfortunately, as Greger writes, “we appear to have an inborn drive to maximize calories per mouthful.” You burn fat by minimizing how many calories you consume per mouthful, because your body will stick to eating around 3 pounds of food a day. A couple of my favorite examples from the book of foods that contain a lot of water: “eating 240 calories of carrots could take you more than two and a half hours of constant chewing”, and “you’d have to eat a wheelbarrow full of cabbage before you’d ever need to begin worrying about overindulging.” Most unprocessed, whole plant foods—vegetables and fruits included—contain an unusually high amount of water, and fill us up more as a result. Cucumbers have so few calories you’d need to eat more than 150 cups of them a day to gain weight; kale has so few calories you’d need to eat 250 cups of the stuff. (Our stomach capacity is around 4 cups.) It’s worth noting that drinking water alongside meals doesn’t have the same effect as consuming food with the water trapped inside of it.
3. You can eat an unlimited amount, as long as you eat the right stuff. One study allowed participants to eat an unlimited amount of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans for just 21 days. In those 21 days, participants lost an average of 17 pounds (7.7 kilograms). The reason for this was simple: participants automatically ate foods higher in fiber and water, and we tend to eat the same weight of food each day. For these reasons, how much you eat doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you eat. You can eat as many whole-food, plant-based products as you want each day and still lose weight.
4. Steer clear of artificial, zero-calorie sweeteners, which actually trick your brain into eating more. Artificial sweeteners make certain foods taste sweet—and as a result, your body expects your blood sugar to spike after eating them. When your blood sugar doesn’t spike, your brain feels cheated, and consumes more calories later on in the day in order to compensate. Your body does this without your knowledge or permission. For this reason, artificially-sweetened products are in practice just as fattening as the same product with sugar added.
5. Give healthy foods time to taste good. The longer we eat healthfully—consuming food that’s grown, and not made—the better real food tastes. As Dr. Greger writes, “the food industry has so deadened our palates with hypersalty, hypersweet, hyperfatty foods. The ripest peach in the world may taste sour after a bowl of Froot Loops.” Give your palette a few weeks to adjust, and your waist line will thank you. Eating real food burns more fat, but doesn’t taste as good as ultraprocessed foods at first, while your palate adjusts.
6. Eating plant-based foods leads your body to burn more fat. Our body is built to burn unprocessed plant foods as fuel. According to one study, if you feed people the same number of calories, but “simply switch out meat and butterfat for olive oil, nuts, and avocados, you lose nearly six more pounds of fat in a single month.” Another study found that your “odds of obesity may increase by 18 percent for every 1 percent increase in calories from red meat, poultry, fish, or shellfish.” If you like meat in your diet, according to Greger you should consume wild game, which has less unhealthy animal fat.
7. There are foods that reliably suppress your appetite. Some examples from the book: vinegar (which also burns more fat—balsamic vinegar tastes great drizzled over a salad or with whole-wheat bread); ground flax seeds (throw some in your morning smoothie); cumin (especially black cumin powder); saffron (though it can be expensive); and water (especially when you consume a couple of cups before each meal).
8. There are foods that reliably lead you to burn more fat. Foods that lead us to burn calories are nutritious, yet contain very few (if any) calories. Some examples of fat-burning foods from the book: hot peppers (including red pepper powder and hot sauce); ginger (dried ginger works better than fresh, surprisingly—ginger tea is a great-tasting fat-burner); cinnamon (I love throwing some in the coffee maker, right on top of the ground beans); peppermint; and tea (each cup of tea burns around 25 calories, and contains none, assuming you don’t add milk or sugar! Green tea works best, though black coffee still leads you to burn around 17 extra calories per cup.)
9. Consume most of your calories in the morning. According to research, “morning calories don’t appear to count as much as evening calories.” In my interview with Dr. Greger (linked at the bottom of the post), he mentioned this was one of the most surprising findings he stumbled upon in writing the book. Our bodies metabolize medications differently depending on what time of day we take them—and food is the same way. As one study bluntly put it, “If you want to lose weight, eat more in the morning than in the evening.” We burn 50% more calories digesting a morning meal than we do an evening one—as Greger puts it, “our bodies just aren’t expecting us to be eating when it’s dark outside.” We even burn fewer calories when we sleep during the daytime. Because our body’s rhythms matter so much, Dr. Greger also recommends not eating past 7 p.m. if you wish to optimize fat loss: this has been shown to lead you to lose about one extra pound a week, and the best part is that you don’t have to make any other changes to when and how much you eat the rest of the day.
10. Focus on diet, not exercise—exercise is an ineffective way to burn body fat. One large study, which summarized the findings of 18 other studies that took place over a minimum of six months, found that those who dieted and exercised did not lose more weight than those who just invested in diet alone. Research suggests that we need to exercise at least 300 minutes a week in order to lose a noticeable amount of fat. The reason exercise is so ineffective is interesting: the more we exercise, the less we instinctively move the rest of the day, too. We burn most of our calories moving around throughout the day, and actually move less on days we work out. There is a saving grace to this, though: we burn far more calories when we work out before breakfast, when we haven’t eaten for a little while—around 90% more calories. As one study put it, “If exercise were a pill to burn body fat, it would be effective only when taken before breakfast.”
—
As How Not to Diet makes clear, the solution to fat loss is a simple one. The best, most reliable food research suggests that we should be eating real food that grows out of the ground. This means cutting out processed food, along with meat, eggs, and dairy, while maximizing how much fruit, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and herbs and spices we eat each day. The more plants you eat, the more weight you’ll lose.
Takeaway:There are countless ways to form a new habit, which James Clear covers in Atomic Habits (and in our interview). A few of my favorites: sort your habits by how much they’ll help you out in the long-run; become more thoughtful about your environment; question habits that provide immediate enjoyment; make new habits take less than two minutes of your time; develop “home court” and “away court” habits; and focus on developing your identify, not your goals.
Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 1s.
Podcast Length30 minutes, 45s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
Atomic Habits, by James Clear, is one of the best books about habits I’ve read—I’d put it up there with The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, as being one of the best books on habits available.
This week, James was generous enough to join me on the podcast to dig into how to establish new habits and break negative ones—especially around losing weight, given we’re in the middle of that weight-loss challenge for the show.
There are too many nuggets in the book—and the interview!—to list out in one blog post. But here are just a few of my favorites from the book and the interview, which should get you thinking about your own habits:
Make a list of your habits, and sort them by how much they will help you out in the long-run. This is a great way to identify the habits that bring you real, lasting value over time, and which ones are distractions from your larger goals.
If you want something to be a big part of your life, make it a big part of your environment. This is a simple idea, but is very powerful in practice. Want to eat better? Make sure there’s a plethora of healthy food in your kitchen, so you crowd out any unhealthy options that are available. Want to learn the guitar? Keep your guitar in the living room, so you can just pick it up and play. By introducing—and removing—objects from your environment which aid and detract from your habits, you build stronger habits. As James puts it in the book, “environment is the invisible hand that shapes behavior.”
Question all habits that provide you with immediate enjoyment. James writes: “As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.”
Practice the 2-minute rule. The 2-minute rule is this: when you start a new habit, make sure it takes less than two minutes to do. If your goal is running a marathon, try just tying up your shoes for a couple of minutes. If your habit is to work out at the gym, show up at the gym, and work out for just two minutes. This way, you have a framework that you can actually build upon in developing your habits later on, instead of trying to wish habits into existence.
Pay attention to your “home court” versus “away court” habits. Something else I asked James in our interview is how we can maintain our habits around life disruptions, such as travel. He recommends developing two types of habits: “home court” habits, which we do when our environment is predictable, and “away court” habits, which we invest in after developing solid habits at home.
Focus on your identity, not your goals. According to James, “the most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.” He views habits as “votes” for your identity: by focusing on which behaviors help you become the person you aim to be, instead of which behaviors simply bring you closer to your goals, you connect with your habits on a deeper level. Instead of trying to develop a meditation habit, begin to think of yourself as a meditator. Or, instead of trying to lose weight, begin to think of yourself as someone who deeply cares about maximizing their health and longevity.
There are too many nuggets from the book and the interview to cover here, but these are just a few of the ones I found especially powerful! Enjoy the conversation, and have a great week!
Takeaway:When we have a bit of time to relax, we tend to spend time on activities that provide us with a quick dopamine hit. This is especially the case when we spend our downtime in the digital world. The key to relaxation is to invest in strategies that make your mind less stimulated. Usually this means spending more time in the analog world.
Estimated Reading Time:2 minutes, 53s.
Podcast Length23 minutes, 38s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
How to Relax
For the past few months, I’ve been poring over quite a bit of research on the topic of relaxation. If there’s one thing that has become clear from this deep dive, it’s this: true relaxation is something that few of us achieve. I’d include myself in this group—up until recently, I’d been doing relaxation wrong.
When many of us have some time to relax, we distract ourselves—turning our attention to social media, YouTube, Netflix, and other things in the digital world. In the moment, these things feel like a reprieve from the stressors of daily life. But the truth is that tending to them in our downtime may hurt more than help.
There’s a reason for this: digital activities rarely lead us to relax.
So what should we do to relax? The key is to do things that actually make your mind less stimulated.
Each time we pay attention to something new and novel in our digital world, our brain rewards us with a hit of dopamine, a pleasure and reward chemical. We get a hit each time we refresh YouTube. We get another hit each time we check news websites like CNN and the New York Times. We get yet another hit when we refresh Instagram.
This dopamine release feels good in the moment. But it can also lead our mind to become overstimulated when we turn to our digital devices too often.
If you want to relax and recharge during your breaks, it’s essential that you try to settle your mind, by engaging with activities that don’t lead to a quick dopamine release. Digital distractions feel like a break, because they’re different from our work, but they don’t allow our mind to actually settle. Analog activities, on the other hand, do settle our mind. They stimulate us, without overstimulating us.
This is not to say that your favorite websites and apps shouldn’t have a place in your life. But because they lead you to become overstimulated—especially when you’re already tired—they’re not great activities to engage in if your intention is to relax.
The Two Types of Relaxation
The best relaxation activities are found in the analog world; you should almost always avoid the digital world if your intention is to recharge. Depending on how you’re feeling, and how much energy you have, there are great ways to relax both actively and passively.
Active activities can include things like:
Going for a run;
Attending a yoga class;
Practicing an instrument;
Hitting the gym, or playing a sport;
Playing with your kids;
Spending time on your favorite art—writing, painting, or writing poetry.
Passive tasks include things like:
Doing a guided meditation, or solo meditation;
Reading;
Doing a gentle yoga video (here’s my favorite yoga channel on YouTube);
Listening to an audiobook with a cup of coffee—while putting your phone on airplane mode.
Most of these are analog activities—and as such, they don’t just lead to a quick dopamine release, which can lead you to feel even more stimulated and tired and fatigued. Activities like these are less novel than your work and digital life, and so they settle your mind as a result.
A settled mind is a productive mind. The more relaxed your mind, the more recharged you feel, the greater mental clarity you have, and the more ideas and plans you generate.
The next time you want to relax, be sure to spend time on analog activities that don’t just lead to a quick dopamine release. You won’t just feel better—you’ll actually get a chance to recharge.
Takeaway:There are things you can reflect on each day that will make you more resilient. It’s worth beginning each morning by reflecting on what you’re grateful for, what you intend to focus on, and what you want to let go of.
Estimated Reading Time:1 minute, 37s.
Podcast Length32 minutes, 31s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
I read Neil Pasricha’s latest book, You Are Awesome, in two sittings. I’ll cut right to the chase: this book is one of the best (and most vulnerable and entertaining) books on resiliency out there. If you’re looking to become more resilient, you should pick this one up.
A thought became very clear once I began digging into the book: I absolutely had to interview Neil on the podcast. Luckily, he agreed. (You can listen to our conversation at the bottom of this post.)
There are so many nuggets of insight from our conversation that I think you’ll find enjoyable, but one of my favorite ideas that we chatted about, which you can implement immediately, is about some questions we can ask ourselves each morning to boost how resilient we are. Neil suggests beginning each day with three reflections:
Today, I am grateful for _______.
Today, I will focus on _______.
Today, I will let go of _______.
Daily gratitude reminds us of how lucky we are. Choosing a focus lets us set a purposeful direction for the day. And choosing something to let go of allows us to remind ourselves that not all of our baggage is worth carrying.
In our conversation, we also chat about the stories we tell ourselves, and how we can question whether or not they’re true. When you find that the dialogue in your head has gotten heated, and you’re not sure whether you should believe it, it’s worth asking yourself three questions:
Is this just a story I’m telling myself?
Will this matter on my deathbed?
Can I actually do something about this?
When it is just a story, if it won’t matter, and if you indeed can’t do anything about it, it’s not a story worth buying into.
If I’m honest, resiliency is not something I’d thought a lot about, until I picked up this book. I’m sure that, should you decide to dig into this interview (and the book!) you’ll find the exact same.
Takeaway:Over the next 13 weeks I plan on losing 20 pounds by doing three things: making myself more accountable, tracking my weight and food intake, and anticipating any weekly obstacles that might arise. Want to join me?
Estimated Reading Time:2 minutes, 30s.
Podcast Length25 minutes, 27s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
Between now and January 14th (the next 13 weeks), I plan on losing 20 pounds, going from 190lbs to 170 lbs. Of course, a 13-month weight loss challenge is anything but a long-term solution to eating better and living a healthier life. But I plan on experimenting with that idea, too.
Lately, I’ve been slacking in the healthy eating department. Between work travel, writing deadlines, and personal events—including getting married and going and on a honeymoon—my food habits have slipped, and I’ve become a tad heavier than I’d like. Nothing crazy, just some extra weight that it’s now time to kick. It’s time to bring more awareness back to eating, and develop some healthy eating habits that stick.
In this week’s episode of Becoming Better, my cohost/wife and I dig into this challenge (she’s planning on losing 10 pounds along with me).
My question for you is, want to join us? At the end of the episode, we put a call out, asking if anyone listening to the episode—and now, reading this post—is game to participate in this same challenge with us, to lose a specific amount of weight by January 14th. If you want to join, just shoot us off an email with how much weight you plan on losing by January 14th. Set a calendar reminder to follow up on that message when the 14th comes around, to let us know how it went! We’ll expect your response
If you’re looking for some inspiration for what to do differently—beyond bringing some awareness to what you eat, and reconnecting with what constitutes a healthy diet, perhaps by reading my favorite food book How Not to Die—below are the three main strategies we’ll be using to keep ourselves motivated!
1. Accountability
Accountability can help immensely in the formation of new habits. Here are a few ways we plan on becoming more accountable for the next 13 weeks:
By finding an accountability partner. I’m partnering with my friend David—who wants to shed a few pounds as well. I’ll also, of course, be partnering with Ardyn at the same time.
By tracking each other’s activity (through the Apple Watch Activity app).
By developing joint rituals, like eating and working out together more often.
2. Tracking
In addition to taking before and after pictures, we’ll be tracking our progress through daily weigh-ins on our smart scale, which allows us to see how our weight changes over time. I’ll also chat on a regular basis with my accountability partner (every week or two), so we can chat about how things are going, and whether we’re on track to meet our goals. In addition to recording weight, Ardyn and I (and my accountability partner David) will be recording everything we eat in MyFitnessPal, the popular food-tracking app, to curb overeating.
3. Anticipating Obstacles
When you try to develop a new habit without first anticipating obstacles that might get in the way of the habit, you’re far more likely to fail. For this reason, I’m making it a weekly ritual to anticipate any obstacles to eating healthily every Sunday, when I also plan out my week. Obstacles are infinitely easier to deal with before they arise, rather than after.
—
If you have a few pounds to part ways with, I hope you’ll join us on the challenge!
Can drinking alcohol make you more productive (or creative)?
Oct 08, 2019
Takeaway:
Drinking alcohol can drain your energy the next day and leads to many negative health effects, but it can also lead you to loosen up, have more fun, and generate more creative ideas. It’s worth consuming alcohol strategically and with intent, rather than out of habit.
Estimated Reading Time:
2 minutes, 11s.
Podcast Length26 minutes, 2s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
Obligatory disclaimer: you should consult with your physician before taking any advice from the internet—particularly advice involving how to consume a drug such as alcohol. Alcohol can impact your productivity quite a bit: if you were to go out tonight and have several vodka sodas with a lime twist (my drink of choice), you’d have one hell of a time trying to focus and be productive tomorrow. Since my experiment to drink only water for a month—while cutting out alcoholic, sugary, and caffeinated drinks—I’ve started to view consuming alcohol through a completely different lens: as a way of borrowing both energy (and happiness) from tomorrow. Having a few drinks can be fun, but you usually have to pay the price later on. In this week’s episode of Becoming Better, my cohost Ardyn and I dig into the pros and cons of drinking alcohol. The list of pros is not long. But with that said, occasionally indulging in a drink or two can lead you to become more creative, especially when you don’t overindulge. Alcohol does lead your mind to wander more, but since it makes your mind less inhibited you’re also more likely to generate creative ideas while under the influence. For this reason, whenever I’m stuck on a problem, or want to brainstorm a project, I’ll sit down with a notepad and a glass of wine, to see what ideas arise. Creativity aside, alcohol can of course also lead you to loosen up, and have a bit more fun when you’re out with friends. As you might have guessed, the cons list for drinking alcohol is much more expansive. Alcohol compromises our sleep and energy, and can lead us to gain weight and overeat. On top of this, it impairs our memory, and is harmful to our liver, brain, and cardiovascular system. It can also increase the risk of us developing some types of cancer. And this doesn’t even account for the fact that, when we overindulge, we’re more likely to do stupid things that we regret. For these reasons, much like with caffeine, it’s worth consuming alcohol strategically and deliberately, instead of out of habit. Before having a drink, ask: will you regret borrowing energy from tomorrow? Is the cost of feeling a bit drained worth the enjoyment you’ll get today? Do you plan on doing a bit of creative work to take greater advantage of your wandering mind? Sometimes alcohol is worth consuming—but it just as often isn’t. I’ve started to drink less since beginning to think about alcohol this way—and at the same time, I feel better about having a drink or two when the time is right.
Takeaway:Some experts are worth listening to, and others aren’t. To find the good ones, look for those who have dug deeply into a topic, aren’t afraid to be vulnerable about where they fail, don’t speak from a pedestal, and are further along in exploring a topic than you are.
Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 47s.
Podcast Length28 minutes, 14s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
There are a lot of people out there who call themselves experts—and as someone who writes books, gives speeches, and has a podcast about becoming more productive, I’d include myself in this category.
Here’s the thing about expert advice, though: we live in a world where anyone can call themselves an expert, whether they deserve to be one or not. All anyone needs is an online platform—a blog, social media account, or LinkedIn profile—and boom! They can label themselves an expert, a “thought leader,” or, worst of all, a “guru”. So how do you separate the real experts from everyone else? Enter this week’s guest on my podcast, Cait Flanders (a link to play the episode is at the bottom of the post).
Nine years ago, Cait Flanders started a blog named Blonde on a Budget, to chronicle her journey to pay off $30,000 of debt, and write about her various experiments on personal finance. Her website took off, very quickly becoming one of the most popular personal finance blogs on the internet.
One experiment that she conducted for the website—doing a yearlong shopping ban, where she saved half of her income, and didn’t buy anything she didn’t absolutely need—went viral, which led to her first book, The Year of Less, that, to date, has become one of the bestselling personal finance memoirs of all time.
Then, one night, Cait decided to pack it all in. She published a blog post that I still remember landing in my email inbox, named, Why I’m Retiring from Personal Blogging, and since that date, apart from sharing the occasional nature photo on Instagram, she has posted pretty much nothing online. She packed up her Twitter account, the Facebook page for her blog, her podcast, and everything else. It’s all gone.
In that post, she wrote about blogging:
“It’s just not as fun anymore. I used to open up new browser tabs and visit people’s blogs like I was walking into their dorm rooms and sitting on their beds. Then we’d share life updates, what little bits of advice we had, and both walk away feeling like we’d had a great conversation with a friend. Now, it feels like every platform (blogs, social, etc.) is a place for people to shout and be heard. We have been told we need to build, grow, make money and have all the answers. We need to be experts. I don’t want to be an expert. I just want to be a human.”
This last line struck me, hard—especially as someone who makes his living being a productivity “expert”.
But something else also struck me: that Cait is right! There are so many experts out there, telling us what to do—how much money to save, how to work, and how to live our lives. If any odd person can just call themselves an expert, who should we trust and believe?
That’s when I realized I had to get Cait on the podcast to chat about this idea. At the end of our chat, we settled on a few criteria for figuring out whether an expert is worth listening to.
Great experts:
Have done the work. This is obvious, but easy to forget. Cait loves to follow book authors, rather than bloggers, for this reason. The best experts don’t just have opinions about a given topic, as anyone on the internet can—they’ve been researching a topic, experimenting with it, and exploring it for years.
Aren’t afraid to be vulnerable. Experts are humans, like everybody else on the planet. They should be open about their failures, in addition to sharing their successes. When an “expert” isn’t open about where and when they fail, and pretends to be perfect, they become far less believable. Look for experts still asking questions, who don’t pretend to know everything about a topic.
Shouldn’t speak from a pedestal. There’s nothing worse than reading advice that talks down to you. This characteristic may not discredit an expert as much as the other items on the list. But it does call into question the advice someone gives. Look for someone who isn’t just trying to fix you while pretending to be perfect.
Are much further along in exploring a topic than you are. Of course, it’s helpful if they’re also further along in exploring the idea compared to most other experts.
Naturally, there are more variables to consider than these—but the ones above are a terrific place to start.
Takeaway:For the greatest performance benefits, drink caffeine strategically, instead of habitually.
Estimated Reading Time:2 minutes, 50s.
Podcast Length24 minutes, 35s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
This week on Becoming Better, we dig into the science behind how you can extract as much energy—and productivity—out of caffeine as possible.
I write about caffeine quite a bit on ALOP, and for good reason: it can give us a great boost of productivity and focus, if we consume it deliberately and strategically.
As always, in case you don’t have the time (or inclination) to listen to this week’s episode, here are a few of our favorite strategies that we mention on the show!
Consume caffeine before working on your most important tasks. Be thoughtful about when you consume caffeine; I find that it’s helpful to have a cup of coffee right before working on a task that requires hyperfocus, rather than just at the same time each morning. This way, I can benefit more from the energy boost it provides. Given that caffeine boosts your mental and physical performance in pretty much every measurable way, this boost is worth deploying wisely.
Consider consuming caffeine differently if you’re an introvert. If you’re an introvert, you’re more stimulated by your environment by default, compared to extroverts and ambiverts (those who are somewhere in between). Given that caffeine is a stimulant, if you’re an introvert, it can sometimes lead you to feel overstimulated and anxious. Be especially mindful of this effect when consuming caffeine before social taxing-tasks, such as giving a presentation or attending a party.1
Mind the 8-14 hour rule. The research shows that it takes caffeine 8-14 hours to metabolize out of our system (though everyone is wired differently). Make sure that you don’t consume too much caffeine within the 8-14 hour window before you head to bed.
The best time to drink coffee is between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. This is when our cortisol levels are the lowest, and when our energy levels naturally dip in the morning. Because of this, we get a larger boost from caffeine around this time. I typically hold off until 10 a.m. on days I’ll be drinking coffee, to experience the greatest boost.
Every once in a while, reset your caffeine tolerance. This ensures that caffeine provides you with the biggest boost possible, and also makes you less dependent on the drug. Here’s how to reset your caffeine tolerance. Pro tip: wait until you get sick to reset your tolerance. You’ll likely experience flu-like symptoms while your body adjusts to going without caffeine, but your mind will just ascribe what you feel from caffeine withdrawal to the fact that you’re under the weather.
Try not to consume caffeine two days in a row. This is the golden rule I follow, and it’s what allows me to experience an energy boost from caffeine, without any withdrawal symptoms on days I don’t feel like having any. Once our body adjusts to how much caffeine we consume every day, over time, we need to keep consuming the same amount in order to not experience withdrawal symptoms. Going a day or two between each dose of caffeine can ensure that you get all of the benefits out of caffeine, without any of the withdrawal symptoms.
Watch out for hidden caffeine—especially in decaffeinated coffee and sodas. In just a twelve-ounce can of Diet Coke, for example, there’s 46mg of caffeine—that’s as much as is in many cups of tea. In a Starbucks brewed decaf coffee, there can be as much as 30mg of caffeine. Watch out for hidden caffeine in beverages such as these, and in foods such as chocolate.
Here’s hoping that these tips prove helpful the next time you decide to caffeinate!
Today, a new version of the book hits store shelves, as a paperback published by Penguin Books! Same book, but with nice new packaging (including a little penguin on the front), at a slightly cheaper price.
I know your time is valuable, so I’ll cut right to the chase. If you haven’t checked out the book, it would mean a lot to me if you did. If you dig the posts on my site, I’m confident that you’ll enjoy the book, too.
Here are links to pick up the paperback in the US and Canada!
Audible (same book; linking to this just for fun!)
Have a wonderful week! Chris
P.S.This week’s episode of the podcast is all about how to read a nonfiction book. The episode is more interesting than it sounds, and you can play it below!
Takeaway:Three ways to hold yourself accountable for doing aversive tasks: get a deadline (however you can); fire up Focusmate; and get an accountability partner.
Estimated Reading Time:2 minutes, 2s.
Podcast Length16 minutes, 33s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
Research shows that the more unstructured a task is, the more likely you are to procrastinate on it. One of the best ways to combat this? Get other people to hold you accountable for getting your most aversive tasks and projects done.
In this week’s episode of Becoming Better, Ardyn and I chat about our favorite strategies for doing this. It’s a bite-sized episode this week, but in case you don’t have the time or the inclination to listen, here are three simple accountability strategies we chatted about!
1. Get a deadline. You should be able to feel deadlines approaching. There are a lot of productivity tactics and hacks out there—but hardly anything will make you as focused or productive as a fast-approaching deadline. If you don’t have a deadline for an unstructured project, get one. If a project is so big that you can’t feel the deadline for it approaching, ask for deadlines for major milestones with the project. However you can, however you need to, get a deadline. Tell someone about your deadlines, for added accountability.
2. For instant accountability, fire up Focusmate. Or as an alternative, work alongside someone who’s as focused as you desire to be. I’ve written about Focusmate quite a bit lately, for good reason: it’s a way to instantly hold yourself accountable for working on something you’re stuck on. The website works by teaming you up—via live video—with someone who also wants to focus on work for a 50-minute block of time. It’s one of the best productivity websites out there, and it allows you to instantly enter into hyperfocus mode.
3. Find an accountability partner. At the start of each week, my wife emails me the three main things she wants to accomplish in her research that week. And then, at the end of the week, she follows up on that email to tell me how things went. It’s a simple ritual that takes her just a few minutes, and it’s all the motivation she needs to actually get those things done. Find an accountability partner who you can update on your work each week; send them your intentions and goals, and check in with them when the week is done to tell them how it went.
With so many of us doing knowledge work for a living, our work is highly unstructured. These three simple tactics let you hold yourself accountable, and as a result, make you significantly more likely to get your work done.
9: The Practical Benefits of Meditation
Jul 30, 2019
Takeaway:Meditation saves you time because it allows you to work more efficiently. Five practical benefits of having a meditation ritual: you’ll be happier (which makes you more productive); you’ll have greater clarity of what’s important as you work; you’ll develop deeper relationships; you’ll focus deeper; and you’ll become less dependent on your addictive devices.
Estimated Reading Time:4 minutes, 8s.
Podcast Length34 minutes, 12s (link to play podcast at bottom of post).
For a simple, accessible guide on how to meditate, check out this post I wrote a while back!
Meditation is a topic I often write about on ALOP. Why write about meditation on a productivity blog? Simple: a meditation practice will provide you with some remarkably practical benefits, chief among which is that it actually saves you time.
Most writers focus on the spiritual benefits of meditation. While I find these nice, they’re not why I meditate. I meditate because doing so makes me more productive. For every minute I spend meditating, I get many more back in how much more efficiently I’m able to work. I’m more focused, resilient, and calm. My mind is better organized, I have more energy, and I’m better able to relate to other people.
I’m confident you’ll experience these same things if you decide to adopt a meditation practice.
In this week’s episode of Becoming Better, I’m joined by special guest co-host Jon Krop. In addition to being a good friend with a decent microphone, Jon is a Harvard-trained lawyer who teaches meditation at the largest law firms across the United States. He credits meditation with allowing him to turn his life around when he was studying to become a litigator, and is convinced a practice will help you out immensely, too. Having experienced many of the benefits, I’m inclined to believe him. In this week’s episode, we coverwhat meditation is and how to do it, and take turns sharing our favorite practical, tactical benefits of adopting a practice. In case you don’t have the time or inclination to listen to this one, here are the five practical benefits we dig into!
1. Meditation makes you happier. Once you begin meditating, you’ll notice that your quality of life drastically improves. According to Jon, this is the main reason that we should meditate—other benefits are subsidiary to this one. Negative emotions become less punishing. You experience more joy, and less suffering. You’re able to feel content regardless of your external circumstances. From the outside in, your life doesn’t change much. Meditation doesn’t change the things you experience. But it teaches you to relate to the things you experience differently: the bad things don’t affect you as much, and you’re able to savor the good things more fully.
2. Meditation gives you clarity of what’s important. One of my favorite benefits of meditation is how it helps us step back from the mental chatter in our head. This is a nice benefit in general, but it’s especially powerful during stressful times. When ^$% hits the fan at work, you’re able to focus. When the water tank starts leaking in your house, you’re able to calm down and take care of things more easily. During stressful times, the mental chatter in our head can obscure the way we perceive things. Meditation helps us become one step removed from this mental chatter, so we can maintain clarity of what’s important.
3. Meditation makes you kinder, and a better person. I’ll never forget something that my now-wife said to me during my productivity experiment to meditate for 35 hours in a week (while being as productive as possible). While we were chatting over dinner, she said to me, “You know what, Chris, I’ve never felt more loved as I do right now, with you doing this weird experiment.” As David Augsburger, a Baptist minister and author, has put it: “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” Meditation makes you compassionate, loving, and kind. It also better equips you to be of service to people, because you’re more focused and effective—there’s more room to be there for others. Meditation doesn’t just let you give more of yourself to your work; it lets you give more of yourself to the people in your life.
4. Meditation makes you more focused.Studies show that our mind wanders for 47% of the day. In other words, we’re focused on what’s in front us just 53% of the time. Let’s say you’re awake for 16 hours. That equals 7.5 hours you spend unfocused each day so any amount of improvement in how well you’re able to focus can save you a ton of time. Thankfully, meditation improves the quality of your attention in this way. Let’s say that through practicing meditation, you’re able to improve the number just a bit—to 37% instead of 47%. That increase alone leads you to be focused for 1.6 more hours each and every day.
5. Meditation makes you less dependent on your most addictive devices. Some tactics for dealing with distraction are pretty helpful. Putting your phone screen in “greyscale mode” (which turns your phone’s screen black-and-white), disabling notifications, and setting screen time limits all help. But these solutions are external. The best internal strategy for making your mind less reliant on digital distraction is to make your mind less stimulated (if you’re curious, I chat more about this idea in a recent talk). The best strategy for making your mind less stimulated? Practice meditation.
Takeaway:Keeping a log of how you spend your time, even if just for a few days, makes you aware of whether you’re spending time on what’s actually important to you. Keeping a time log sounds like a hassle, but it takes less time and attention than you might think. Plus, doing so lets you discover how many hours you actually work, step back from the stories you tell yourself, makes time feel richer, and may end up being the push you need to change how you spend your time.
Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 45s.
Podcast Length36 minutes, 50s.
Time tracking is something I often write about on ALOP, and rightfully so: tracking your time helps you gain perspective on your life, so you can determine whether the way you spend your time is true to your priorities and what’s important to you. On this week’s episode of Becoming Better, my special guest Laura Vanderkam and I dig into the intricacies of managing and tracking your time—including how and why you should keep a time log, the stories we tell ourselves around how we manage our time, and what Laura has learned from tracking her time every single day for years.
The episode is well worth a listen—and there’s a link to play the episode at the bottom of this post—but as always, in case you don’t have the time to do so, here are the best nuggets from our conversation, including how to track your time, and why you should do it.
In looking over your time log, Laura recommends asking yourself a few things:
What do you like about your schedule? Make sure you celebrate your wins, and the things you’re doing right already, instead of just picking apart all of the ways that you could do better.
What do you want to do more of?
What do you want to do less of?
Different people will want to track different things. For example, depending on your situation, you may be interested in paying special attention to things such as how much time you spend:
Doing housework and errands;
Watching TV;
Spending leisure time unintentionally;
With people and family;
Working.
You don’t have to make a pie chart and account for everything, but you’ll want to look out for whether you’re spending your time intentionally, in ways that are important to you.
Tracking your time takes less time and attention than you might think. It takes just a few seconds to jot down what you worked on during each half-hour chunk of time, and once you settle into the practice, you can update your time tracking sheet every hour or two, recalling what you just did.
Why You Should Track Your Time
There are countless benefits to tracking your time. Here are just a few of them:
You can see how many hours you actually work. As Laura explains in the episode, we tend to overestimate how many hours we work by a significant margin (sometimes by as much as 20-30 hours). A time log lets you see, at a glance, how many hours you truly spend at work and at home.
You can separate from the stories you tell yourself. We tend to tell ourselves things such as that we have no free time, that we spend very little time with our family, and that we work far too many hours. Tracking your time lets you verify if these stories are actually true.
You discover what your priorities actually are. It’s one thing to believe that something is important to you; it’s another to invest time in what you consider to be important. Keeping a time log lets you see how many hours you’re spending on things you deeply value, and how many hours you spend on tasks that are convenient and easy to do.
Time feels richer. Much like how keeping a food log leads you to eat less, keeping a time log lets you bring greater awareness to how you’re spending your time. In practice, this feels great: meaningful activities like spending time with family feel more meaningful, because you’re able to reflect on their value to you. You feel more productive working on important tasks at work, because you notice how much time you spend on them. Time feels richer when you’re aware of how you spend your time.
A time log can lead to real change. Noticing that you spend 10 hours each week commuting may lead you to work from home more often, or find a job closer to you. Noticing that you spend just a few hours a week with friends may lead you to reach out to them more often. Noticing that you have more leisure time than you think you do may lead you to spend your leisure hours more productively.
There are countless other benefits, but these are a few of my favorites!
7: Discovering Your Biological Prime Time
Jul 02, 2019
Takeaway:You should work around your energy levels; working on more important tasks when you have the most energy, and less productive tasks when your energy dips. Below is how to calculate when your energy peaks (your “biological prime time”), and a few suggestions for working around your energy levels.
Estimated Reading Time:3 minutes, 11s.
Podcast Length22 minutes, 25s.
Our energy-per-hour isn’t consistent, and because of this, neither is our focus nor productivity. Luckily, though, there are a few ways to calculate exactly when you have the most energy throughout the day, so you can work around how much energy you have; doing more productive and meaningful things when you have the most energy, and less important things when your energy naturally dips. (My cohost Ardyn and I dig deep into this idea in this week’s episode of Becoming Better—the link to play the episode and subscribe to the podcast is at the bottom of this post!)
There are three main ways to calculate when your energy peaks. Here are the best methods, inspired largely by Dan Pink’s fantastic book, When, on how to time your life:
Easy enough, and pretty accurate. Think about a free day—the weekend, or a weekday when you don’t have much to do that day or the next. Ask: when do you usually go to sleep on these days? When do you wake up? Finally, what’s the midpoint of those two times? (E.g. I go to sleep at 11 p.m. and wake up at 7 a.m., so my midpoint is 3 a.m.) Find where your midpoint lies on the chart below.1
Easy, but less accurate. Ask yourself what time you wake up on weekends (or free days). If it’s the same as weekdays, you’re likely an early riser. If it’s a little later, you’re probably somewhere in the middle. If it’s much later, especially if it’s 90 minutes or more, you’re probably a night owl.
Difficult, but most accurate. Chart your energy levels. I recommend collecting data every hour, for two or three weeks, so you can find a general pattern. If you really want to get an accurate reading, I suggest cutting caffeine/alcohol/sugar during this time. Here’s an article I wrote a while back on how to calculate your “biological prime time” using this method.
Once you find out when your energy peaks, there are a bunch of ways to work around these hours. You can:
Block off that time in your calendar. I like to block off 10 a.m.-noon in my calendar most days (this is when my energy peaks). When you block off your peak energy time in your calendar, people will just assume you have meetings or other important commitments during that time, and are unlikely to ask for your time then.
Take advantage of energy dips by doing creative work. You’re more creative when you have the least energy, because your brain is less inhibited, and doesn’t hold back on the ideas it generates. Take advantage of this by working on creative tasks when you have less energy.
Work out, take a break, and clear your mind when your energy dips. This way you can further build up how much energy you have in your focus hours.
Mind the prime times of people around you. If you have people that you meet with often—or live with!—pay attention to when they have the most and least energy. If you work with a bunch of morning birds, you may make your team a good deal more productive by scheduling big meetings and projects for the morning, and not deferring important work to later in the day.
Mind your constraints. It’s great to know when your energy peaks, but you should also work around the constraints of your life. If you have lots of energy midmorning, but yet you find that you’re the most productive in the early morning before your spouse and kids wake up, then it’s likely worth doing your most productive activities then.
If you’re looking to work around your energy levels, the three strategies above, as well as Dan’s book, When, will come in handy—they certainly have for me. As Dan puts it: “I used to believe in ignoring the waves of the day. Now I believe in surfing them.”
Source for this chart: Dan’s book. He repurposed it from world-renowned chronobiologist Till Roenneberg‘s research. I’ve lightly modified the chart to fit this article. ↩
Takeaway:The trick to traveling smarter is to prepare ahead of time, and develop strong traveling habits. Some ideas covered below: creating a default packing list; preparing things to consume and work on while you’re offline; leaning into how tired you are while traveling; and making your trip feel more like home.
Estimated Reading Time:5 minutes, 46s.
Podcast Length29 minutes, 22s.
Whether you’re traveling for a business trip, for fun, or something in between, here are some strategies to manage your energy, get more done, and just enjoy traveling more. As someone who travels 50-60% of the time, I couldn’t stay sane without these tactics.
As always, my cohost and I dig deep into these tactics in this week’s episode of Becoming Better—but if you don’t have the time or inclination to listen, here’s a summary of what we talked about!
To Do: Before Traveling
Create a default packing list, that contains everything you could ever want possibly pack. This is one of my favorite strategies for saving a ton of time each time I travel. I have a snippet of text (that I store in TextExpander, though a simple text document would do) that contains every possible thing I could ever want to pack for any trip, ever. On the list is everything from a travel belt, to my Nintendo Switch, to printed information about my flights. When packing for a trip, I just paste this snippet of text into a new document, and delete the items I won’t need. This helps me pack for trips without forgetting anything, in a very small amount of time.
Prepare things to consume and work on while offline. This is key. It’s easy to burn through a lot of time on long plane rides, or while just waiting around. Download a few podcast episodes or audiobooks to treat yourself while traveling—or use a read-it-later app like Instapaper or Pocket in order to read a bunch of articles. Make sure to also download work to do ahead of time. If you want to be productive, avoid downloading things like movies in order to nudge yourself into doing higher-quality tasks. If you’re traveling with someone, be sure to plan for that, too. When we travel together, my partner Ardyn and I never travel without a cribbage board.
Plan ahead for time zone changes. If you’ll be transversing across time zones, shift your wakeup and bedtime an hour or two before you leave, to make time zone shifts less jarring. When you begin traveling, eat and sleep on a schedule consistent with where you’re going. This helps get your mind into where you’re going. It’s important to stress about time zone shifts an appropriate amount—I don’t overthink them if I don’t have to “perform” on a trip (ie. do some work or give a talk), but shift my wakeup times a tad leading up to the trip if I’ll need to hit the ground running.
Find a solid travel rewards card. If you travel often, a good travel rewards card can grant you access to airport lounges, comprehensive travel insurance, trip delay and cancellation insurance, and even hotel room upgrades. Not to mention that it can give you the points you need to go on a free trip every once in a while. My favorite card for this is the American Express Platinum card, but that one has a hefty annual fee. (Here are a few of the best ones if you live in the US.)
Scope out airport lounges ahead of time. I use LoungeBuddy for this. Airport lounges aren’t always worth the cost of admission—they can cost upwards of $50-100 when you don’t have lounge access included with your credit card, or don’t have a fancy first class ticket or elite status with an airline. But if you have a long layover, they can be worth it: while they’re pricey, lounges often include meals, drinks, showers, and a place to hunker down to get some work done and avoid the chaos of the airport.
Check out SeatGuru when checking into your flight. SeatGuru lets you type in your flight deals to see which seats on the airplane are good, and which ones suck. Scope it out when checking into your next flight.
Plan around disruptions to your routine. When it comes to how disruptive it can be, travel is infinitely easier to plan around ahead of time. Before heading out, schedule time to exercise, meditate, and maintain your keystone habits. I also like to scope out healthy meal options ahead of time, as well as what restaurants I want to check out, so I don’t resort to ordering in.
To Do: While Traveling
Lean into your tiredness. If you’re traveling across time zones, take advantage of how tired you are on the first day. Do your best to live in the time zone you’ve arrived in: your first day may be crappy, but you’ll adjust more quickly to the change. Pro tip: do creative work during this tired day. Your mind is the most creative when you’re tired, because your brain is less inhibited.
Work on what you’ve prepared! You almost never get as much uninterrupted focus time as when you’re traveling. Don’t waste this time! Read the articles you’ve saved for the trip, watch the TED talks you’ve downloaded, and work on the stuff you’ve prepared.
Make your trip feel more like home. If you’re like me, the more you travel, the more you miss home. This is why I do my best to bring home to me; packing things I enjoy at home, like my favorite kinds of tea and coffee, and calling loved ones more often than I regularly would. If you’re like me, this will give you a pretty good boost of energy!
A few things to buy/pack, which I never travel without:
Good noise-canceling headphones. Or, at the very least, good earplugs. I never travel without my Bose headphones—but there are great noise-cancelling headphones out there at a lot of different price points.
A light-blocking sleep mask. Works great for when you need to sleep on a flight, or sleep in a hotel room or bedroom that doesn’t have blackout blinds.
A portable speaker. I never travel without a portable speaker. When I first picked one up, I didn’t expect to use it much. Now, I never travel without it. It’s great for listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks in a hotel room.
A portable clothing steamer. While most hotels have irons, I hate ironing, so I travel with a portable steamer. There’s very little setup involved in using one, and steaming clothes takes a fraction of the time that ironing does. If you dislike steaming clothes as well, or just want to same some time, hang your clothes up when you’re taking a hot shower or bath. The steam should remove most of the wrinkles in your clothes, and you may not need to steam or iron afterward.
If you’re looking to maintain how much energy you have, get more done, save time, and enjoy travel more, these tips will help! Have a great trip :-)
Takeaway:Apps can be distracting and lead you to waste a ton of time, but the best apps make you more knowledgeable, organized, and productive. The 10 apps below—selected by myself and Ardyn on our podcast—all will help you do this.
Estimated Reading Time:4 minutes, 4s.
Podcast length26 minutes, 45s.
At their worst, apps are distracting and lead you to waste an ungodly amount of time. But at their best, they can make you quite a bit more efficient and productive. So which ones are worth your time and attention?
In this week’s episode of the much-beloved podcast Becoming Better, Ardyn and I dig into our favorite productivity apps, and chat about why we love them so much. In case you don’t have the time or inclination to listen—or just want to check out the apps we chat about this week—here’s a list of our favorite productivity apps, along with a quick blurb on why we dig them.
If you’re looking to become more focused, knowledgeable, and organized, I hope you’ll agree that these apps are in a league all of their own. (A quick note: this list differs slightly from the episode, in order to make the article more accessible.)
1. Focusmate (website; free). Focusmate is one of my all-time favorite productivity apps. When you launch the website, you’re presented with a calendar in which you’re able to book a 50-minute session to focus on something. The site then partners you up with someone from around the world who also wants to get some work done during that time. You then spend 50 minutes working with the person—working with them over video—and share what you got done when your focus session is done. The service is eerily effective at making you more focused and productive. (I’m writing this article during a focus session with a programmer in Boston.)
2. Freedom (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android; $29/year). I write about Freedom quite a bit on this site, and for good reason. Freedom is a distractions-blocking application: once it’s enabled, you’re not able to access your most distracting websites and apps for the amount of time you specified in advance. Pairs well with Focusmate. (A free alternative for the Mac: SelfControl.)
3. Libby (iOS, Android, Windows; free). Libraries are an incredible resource that far too few people take advantage of. Libby is a great, free app that connects to your local library, that lets you browse their selection of ebooks and audiobooks. If you’re a bookworm, this app can easily save you hundreds of dollars a year.
4. Audible (every platform; $15/month for one book a month). I read around twice as many books because of Audible. Audible is an audiobook site that, for $15/month, gives you access to one book a month, along with two Audible Originals (original audiobooks exclusive to Audible). A no-brainer, along with Libby, if you’re a bookworm.
5. Simplenote (every platform; free). A great, simple, and beautiful note-taking app that’s available for pretty much every platform under the sun. The app is so simple that you can’t even bold or italicize text in it. I personally use this app for capturing ideas throughout the day, as well as for capturing my daily intentions when I travel. This app is on all of my devices, and I couldn’t live without it.
6. Toggl (every platform; free, with paid plans). A dead-simple time-tracking app, which can be set up to track your time automatically.
7. Insight Timer (iOS, Android; free). This is my favorite meditation app, and I’ve pretty much tried them all. Insight Timer features guided meditations, sleep meditations, and a simple meditation timer. But the app’s real power lies in how it lets you see, in real time, who else is meditating around the world—including people near you. The app also keeps you accountable with meditation reminders and meditation streaks—and you can have friends in the app, too.
8. Things (iOS, Mac; $10-50). The last three picks on the list are only available for Apple devices, but I’d be remiss to not include them; they’re a few of the best apps available on any platform. Things is a beautiful, powerful, and delightful to-do list app. I’d be far less productive and organized without it.
9. Fantastical (Mac, iOS; $5-$50, depending on device type). In my opinion, Fantastical is the best calendar app out there for any platform. Unfortunately it’s only available for Mac and iOS, but if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, the app is easily worth the purchase. A few of my favorite features: using natural language to enter calendar events, a convenient mini-window that lets you access your calendar no matter what you’re doing on the computer, a beautiful interface, and complex time zone support.
10. Soulver (Mac, iOS; $3-9). Many of the things I calculate each day are too complex for a calculator, but aren’t nearly complex enough for a spreadsheet. That’s where Soulver comes in. Soulver lets you type out problems as you would on paper, and then solves them for you. Plus, it’s super lightweight, easy to use, and fast. Everyone I recommend this app to loves it.
If you’re looking to become more focused, read more books, and organize your life, give these apps a shot.
A few honorable mentions: Overcast (for listening to podcasts); Overleaf (an online LaTeX editor); and Strava (a run/cycling tracker).
Takeaway: Some productivity rituals worth trying out: setting three intentions every day; reviewing and mapping out your week (and day); having an accountability partner that keeps you on track; and maintaining an “accomplishments list” throughout the week.
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 1s.
Podcast length:26 minutes, 0s.
Great productivity rituals allow you to become more productive without much thought; once you make a habit out of them, you become more productive every day, automatically. So which rituals are worth the time and energy investment?
On this week’s episode of Becoming Better, Ardyn and I chat about the rituals we both use to manage our lives. The best rituals let you do things such as externalize the stuff you have to get done (so it’s out of your head), introduce accountability into your daily and weekly schedule—while often being lightweight enough to let you get to work quickly.
As always, in case you don’t have the inclination to listen to this week’s episode, here are a few of our favorite rituals and systems we chatted about! Not all of these will work for you—but they’re all worth experimenting with. If you’re like us, you may be surprised by just how much rituals like these support your work and life.
1. The Rule of 3. This is one of the best productivity rituals out there. At the start of each day, fast-forward to the end of the day in your head and then ask yourself: by the time the day is done, what three main things will you want to have accomplished? This helps you identify what’s actually important and consequential each day.
2. The weekly review. At the beginning of each week, look at the week ahead and set yourself up to get stuff done. Schedule blocks of time where you can hunker down on larger projects, and set reminders for what you will have to accomplish.
3. The daily review. A simple way to start your day. At the start of each day, before settling into work, review the tasks you plan to get done, and review your calendar for the day, too.
4. An accountability ritual. At the start of the week, send an accountability partner what you plan to accomplish by the end of the week—and, when the week is done, follow up with them to let them know how things went.
5. Keep an accomplishments list. We tend to focus quite a bit on what’s on our to-do list, forgetting all of the things we’ve accomplished. To combat this tendency, keep a running accomplishments list as you go about your week—and when the week is done, celebrate what you’ve gotten done!
In the episode, we mention about a dozen of rituals, but these are a few of our favorites! Enjoy!
Takeaway:For this week’s episode of Becoming Better, I interviewed David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. A few of my favorite nuggets from our interview (expanded upon below): our heads are for having ideas (not holding them); mental clarity comes when we store fewer commitments in our head; we should capture every single commitment we have on our plate; that we need mental space as much as we need more time; and that we should be listening to the “still small voice” in our mind throughout the day.
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 32s.
Podcast length:30 minutes, 48s.
In this week’s episode of Becoming Better, I sit down with the one and only David Allen. David is the author of the mega-bestselling book Getting Things Done, which sparked a personal productivity revolution in 2001. Since then, the book has gone on to sell millions of copies around the world, and has been published in nearly 30 languages. David’s also hosting a massive summit on GTD which he calls the “grand finale” of his career (in Amsterdam; June 20-21; tickets are still available).
I think you’ll dig this episode! As always, in case you don’t have the time or inclination to listen, I’ve included a few of my favorite ideas from our chat below, but there are, of course, a lot of ideas that a simple article like this can’t capture.
A few nuggets we talked about:
Your head is for having ideas, not holding them. This is the central tenant of David’s system, and in my opinion, this sticky idea is why his ideas have amassed such a large and loyal following. We have a limited amount of mental bandwidth to give to whatever we’re doing—and we shouldn’t waste any amount of this bandwidth on storing information and unresolved commitments in our head. We need to externalize those into some sort of system.
Mental clarity comes from storing fewer commitments in your mind. There’s a reason why keeping a calendar helps you focus: you no longer have to remember where you have to be, and when you have to be there. That’s stored in your calendar, which you review regularly and get notifications from, and by keeping a calendar you free up mental room for other things. This is why to-do lists are also so powerful: they help clear up even more mental space. The fewer tasks, projects, and unresolved commitments you keep in your mind, the more clearly you’re able to think.
For greater mental clarity, make a list of every single commitment you have on your plate. One great way to clear up mental space is to make a list of all of the tasks and projects you have going on. In our interview, David mentioned that this process may take anywhere from one to six hours, depending on how much you’re juggling. The simple act of capturing these commitments onto a sheet of paper—getting them out of your head—is freeing in and of itself. You’re then able to create a plan for how to follow through on them all, and even create a master list of all of your projects.
You need more mental space as much as you need more time. Our tasks, projects, and commitments will always consume time. But they also consume more mental space than is necessary; we’re constantly recalling what we have to get done when we’re in the middle of something else. As David put it in our conversation: “You don’t need time to have a good idea, or be creative, or innovative, or loving, or present, or strategic—you just need room.”
Listen to the “still small voice” in your head throughout the day. Sometimes when we’re working, there’s a little voice inside our head we ignore, that tells us to take a break—to take a walk around the park when we’ve got 300 emails that have built up, or to have a glass of wine when we haven’t treated ourselves to one in a while. Or to cram for a project, because we have a sudden burst of energy then we can take advantage of. Instead of blindly following your to-do list, or using your email inbox as your to-do list, David recommends listening to what this “still small voice” has to say.
In a couple of weeks, my cohost Ardyn and I will be back, chatting about the systems we both use to manage our lives—including what we’ve found that works, and what we still struggle with.
Enjoy the conversation with David! And have a wonderful week.
2: The Great Digital Declutter Experiment
Apr 23, 2019
Takeaway:Doing a digital declutter helps you step back from your digital life, so you can see what parts of your digital world make your life better, and which parts you waste too much time on and have become addicted to. To conduct one, choose what apps/services/websites to not use for a month, what digital things you want to use less, and what analog things you plan on doing in place of these digital habits. Article Reading Time3 minutes, 5s. Podcast Length29 minutes, 58s.
On this week’s episode of Becoming Better, my cohost Ardyn and I dig into an experiment that we recently conducted: doing a one-month digital declutter. (I introduce Ardyn, my cohost, at the start of this week’s episode!)
A digital declutter—an idea that Cal Newport popularizes in his new book, Digital Minimalism—is an exercise where you step back from most parts of your digital life for one month, to see which things bring you the most value. (Here’s my interview with Cal from a couple weeks back, in case you’d like to hear a bit more about the idea.)
The exercise is a simple one, but as we found, it can help you uncover things such as:
which parts of your life deliver the most value to you;
what digital distractions you waste the most time on;
which apps and websites you’re addicted to (or have become dependent on);
and more.
Ardyn and I chat about how to conduct a digital detox in the episode, but if you’re pressed for time or, heaven forbid, just don’t have the inclination to listen, here are the steps you should take to conduct a digital declutter of your own:
Choose what digital things to abstain from for a month. Cal recommends disconnecting from as many digital services, apps, and devices as you possibly can. For the month of your digital declutter, you should eliminate all nonessential digital things from your life (such as social media and email on your phone).
Choose which digital things you want to modify for that same period of time. When you can’t abstain from something—say, responding to texts or slack messages—make a plan to modify how often you check these services. For example, make a plan to check for new text messages just four times a day, while letting your close friends know you’ll be less available.
Introduce some fun analog activities to replace the digital activities with. We chose to double down on analog activities such as learning the piano and cello, reading books, spending time with friends, and taking an improv class.
Here are a few simple suggestions to make your digital declutter a tad easier:
Know that the first week will be the toughest. It takes our mind around eight days to get accustomed to less stimulation—including from our digital world. The first week might be tough, but stick with it. Disconnecting becomes significantly easier after the first week.
Mind your digital twitches. When you feel a tinge of boredom coming on, what apps do you crave checking first? This may be a sign that you’ve become overly dependent on these apps.
Take advantage of the newfound whitespace in your calendar. Use the blocks of time that you free up when you disconnect from your digital world to let your mind wander, turn over ideas, and become more creative.
Do the declutter with your wife/husband/partner. In doing a digital declutter, you carve out more time for the people in your life. When you do one with your partner, you carve out more time for each other. You also get to hold each other accountable, as we found.
Physically write out what you’re not using for a month. It’s helpful to have a written, physical reminder of what digital habits you’re changing that you see regularly—whether you keep that list in the notepad you use throughout the day, on the fridge, or on the whiteboard in your office.
Leave your phone at home more often. This helps tame the impulse you may have to check it for new messages. It’s helpful to do this for both smaller blocks of time (e.g. when you run to the store to get groceries), and larger blocks of time (for the workday).
Below is a link to play the episode. Enjoy, and have a wonderful week!
1: Should You Become a Digital Minimalist?
Apr 09, 2019
Takeaway:I chatted with Cal Newport, the author of Digital Minimalism, on the latest episode of Becoming Better. A few things you’ll take away from the chat: why digital technologies can be so addictive; that we should question the “constant companion” mode of using our phone; that we need more time for solitude; that distraction will always creep back in; and that we should try out a “digital declutter.” Estimated Reading Time:2 minutes, 43s.
Cal Newport is the author of six books—including Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You—and as a full-time professor who publishes five or six papers a year, he’s remarkably prolific, both in the academic and publishing world. I recently sat down with him for my new podcast, Becoming Better, to chat about his latest book, Digital Minimalism. The book describes a simple philosophy: that we should be spending less time in the digital world, and more time in the physical one. Instead of just blasting out a new blog post with a link to each new episode, I plan on writing up a short article that contains a few practical, tactical takeaways from each episode, in case you don’t have the time to listen (or you’re just not that into podcasts). This should let you peek at what we cover on each episode of the show, and should (hopefully!) sell you on whether each episode of the show is worth your time and attention.
Here are a few practical, tactical things that I hope you take from this one.
1. There are two factors that make some apps and websites so addictive:
Whether an app provides you with social approval, and whether it provides you with intermittent positive reinforcement (every once in a while, at an unpredictable interval, the service provides you with a nugget of stimulation). Pay attention to what apps and websites provide you with these two things. Facebook, Twitter, and Email are a few good examples. These are often the same apps that cause the greatest attentional control issues.
2. Question the “constant companion” model of using your phone.
Over time, our phones have become attached at our hip. Cal argues that this doesn’t have to be the case. You should, too. While our phones add quite a few features to our lives, question whether your phone is a device that you want to distract you constantly as you go about your day.
3. Carve out more time for solitude.
Solitude is when your mind is free from inputs from other minds. This is when our best ideas come to us, because our mind has a chance to think about problems we’ve hit an impasse with, and process the information we’ve been consuming. The more time we spend connected, the less time we have for solitude.
4. Distractions will always creep back in, no matter how good you get at taming them.
When I asked Cal what distractions seep into his life, he very quickly brought up baseball trade rumors. Most productivity experts I know face this same dilemma: despite our best efforts and intentions, distraction creeps back in. Even if you’re able to mostly keep distraction at bay, bring awareness to what distractions creep back in over time.
5. Try a digital declutter.
We chat about this idea in more depth in the episode. A digital declutter is where, for a period of 30 days, you go without all inessential apps and digital distractions. The trick, over this time, is to choose a few activities you’ll replace those distractions with—such as reading more, taking an improv class, or learning an instrument. Doing this can change your relationship with technology for the better.
0: A Pitch for Your Time and Attention
Mar 26, 2019
Note: I’m currently submitting the podcast to various podcasts hosts, including Apple Podcasts. It should be up there in the next day or two.
There are a lot of podcasts out there. So why should you subscribe to this one?
I’m a big fan of podcasts—in my podcast app, I just counted 13 that I listen to on a regular basis. For years I’ve wanted to start one myself, but haven’t, for a simple reason: I wasn’t sure what would make my show different from all the others.
But finally, a few months back, I arrived at an idea. Here’s the basic premise behind my new show, which I’ve named Becoming Better. Each episode of the podcast is devoted to making you a better human being. The show features tactics to help you do things like save money, quit procrastinating, and exercise more—any idea that, in one way or another, will help you become better.
I’ll be interviewing friends of mine who are world-class authors, chatting about experiments I’m in the middle of conducting, and I’ll also try to rope my lovely fiancée into recording a few episodes with me. (Maybe over a glass or two of wine.)
Here’s the format. Each episode:
Will respect your attention. I’ll be editing down each episode myself, in order to boil it down to the most essential nuggets that will help you become better.
Will respect your time. Each episode will be 20-30 minutes long—about the length of a commute or a short workout. I’ll publish new episodes every second Tuesday, while I get the hang of the editing process (between giving talks and working on fun new writing projects). Quality over quantity!
Will contain a unique blend of fun interviews, experiments, and strategies.
Will conclude with a few practical, tactical strategies for becoming a better human being.
There are a lot of great podcasts out there. I hope you find Becoming Better to be worthy of your time and attention.
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The toughest part of writing about caffeine is that everyone is wired differently. Just as everyone responds to caffeine differently, a caffeine reset may have a different effect on each person. If you consume caffeine habitually, you’ll almost certainly experience symptoms as you reduce your tolerance—in the past, I’ve experienced headaches, mood swings, sadness, an inability to focus, brain fog, and even flu-like symptoms. While this may make resetting your caffeine tolerance seem like more trouble than it’s worth, consider that you’re experiencing these symptoms because you’ve grown reliant on a drug for energy.
