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

by Chris Bailey

star4.2

Bailey recounts his own burnout onstage and makes the case that chronic busyness is a stimulation addiction, modern work environments flood us with dopamine-hit tasks that raise our stimulation baseline and make calm impossible. He prescribes deliberately lowering stimulation through analog hobbies, savoring, and stimulation fasts, arguing that calm is not the opposite of productivity but its foundation.

Published:: 2022
Pages:: 272

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In the Conversation

In this collection, How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times references 4 other books.

It draws on Digital Minimalism, Deep Work and Stolen Focus.

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What This Book Draws On

The books Bailey references and why each one mattered to the argument.

Draws heavily on Newport's Digital Minimalism thesis that reclaiming attention from digital stimulation requires intentional analog replacement activities, not mere subtraction

References

Digital Minimalism

by Cal Newport

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Accepts Deep Work's attention economy framing while arguing that Newport's deep-work prescription is unsustainable without first addressing the stimulation baseline that makes focus feel impossibly effortful

References

Deep Work

by Cal Newport

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Aligns with Hari's Stolen Focus in diagnosing modern anxiety as a consequence of hijacked attention, but shifts from Hari's systemic critique to individual protocols for resetting stimulation

References

Stolen Focus

by Johann Hari

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Engages Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks finitude argument as the philosophical grounding for slowing down, pairing it with practical calm-building techniques

References

Four Thousand Weeks

by Oliver Burkeman

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The Pragmatic Programmer

The 4-Hour Workweek

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