How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times

A toolkit of accessible, science-backed strategies that reveal that the path to a less anxious life, and even greater productivity, runs directly through calm.

When Chris Bailey, productivity expert, discovered that he had become stressed and burnt out because he was pushing himself too hard, he realized that he had no right to be giving advice on productivity without learning when and how to rein things in and take a break. Productivity advice works—and we need it now more than ever—but it’s just as important that we also develop our capacity for calm. By finding calm and overcoming anxiety, we don’t just feel more comfortable in our own skin, we invest in the missing piece that leads our efforts to become sustainable over time. We build a deeper, more expansive reservoir of energy to draw from throughout the day, and have greater mental resources at our disposal to not only do good work, but to also live a good life.

Among the topics How to Calm Your Mind covers are how analog and digital worlds affect calm and anxiety in different ways; how our desire for dopamine, a neurotransmitter in our brain that leads us to feel overstimulated, breeds anxiety, dissatisfaction, and needless stress, but can be countered by other neurochemicals; how hidden sources of stress can be tamed by a “stimulation fast”; and how “busyness” is as much a state of mind as it is an actual state of life. The pursuit of calm ultimately leads us to become more engaged, focused, and deliberate—while making us more productive and satisfied with our lives overall. In an anxious world, achieving calm is the best life hack around.