Time and Attention

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:

Links mentioned in this episode:

You can listen (and subscribe) to the podcast below!

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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!

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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. 

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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: 

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: 

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! 

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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.

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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:  

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:  

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: 

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.  

Hope you enjoy the podcast! 

The post What makes us happier, time or money? appeared first on Chris Bailey.

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: 

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 :-) 

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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. 

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. 

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