How to Calm Your Mind

Finding Productivity in Anxious Times

By: Chris Bailey

Narrated by: Chris Bailey

Read by the author, Chris Bailey, the bestselling author of Hyperfocus.

How to Calm Your Mind offers a toolkit of accessible, science-backed strategies that reveal how the path to a less anxious life, and even greater productivity, runs directly through calm.

When productivity expert Chris Bailey 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 not only to do good work, but also to live a good life.

Among the topics How to Calm Your Mind covers are:

- How analogue and digital worlds affect calm and anxiety in different ways
- How our desire for dopamine breeds anxiety
- How hidden sources of stress can be tamed by a ‘stimulation fast’
- 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.

Critic reviews

A clear-eyed, concise method that marries science and self-help

Attention grabbing . . . Chris Bailey offers actionable, data-driven insights (Adam Grant, author of Originals on Hyperfocus)

The best productivity plans call for strategy, not just hacks or tactics – and Hyperfocus gives you strategy in spades. When you read this book, get ready to do your most important work (Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup on Hyperfocus)

Engaging . . . Bailey teaches how to re-examine your tasks, determine your priorities and minimize interruptions (The New York Times on Hyperfocus)

Here’s a book that promises, in the title, to pay for itself. And the truth is, it will, in just a few days (Seth Godin, author of Linchpin on The Productivity Project)