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Book Notes: “How to Calm Your Mind” by Chris Bailey

Savor the here and now

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

“Neuroscientists like Lieberman refer to the calm network inside our brain as the “here-and-now” network: it’s what lets us enjoy ourselves and allows us to feel a satisfying presence with what we’re doing. It’s the mode you enter into as you savor your morning cup of coffee at the cottage, the mode that’s activated as you become mesmerized by the campfire at night. If the dopamine network is all about maximizing our future, the here-and-now network reminds us that our work is done; that it’s time to slow down, rest, and savor what the present has to offer.”

Bailey gives some of his own savoring examples: reading novels, splurging on a macadamia latte, and taking a walk in the forest he lives near.

I’m listening to “How to Calm Your Mind” while walking Booster next to a forest. This probably means I’m not savoring the book or time with my dog or the forest.

It does still feel like a better use of time than some alternatives in my day to day. Which all are some version of looking at a screen.

I need to savor a few more things in my life or add more things in that are worth savoring.

This book and podcast interviews with Chris Bailey are combining to convince me to start doing more analog things. Especially when there’s a choice between analog and physical (journaling comes to mind immediately), I’ll sacrifice speed of writing and increased word count in favor of… well just spending less time looking at a screen.

But I’ll also practice savoring the slower thinking and review. I tend to review pages in analog notebooks more than I do with digital notebooks.

As for physical books, I buy a bunch but need to start actually reading them.

I bought a tiered book holder to build out an analog corner. (Pictured in the header image.) It’s been useful so far even if it’s been a place to put my digital tablets away.

I don’t want to be an internet person. Which is in direct opposition to that I love being an internet person. (Or at least defaulted to being an internet person through most of my life.)

It’s true though, the best moments in life rarely happen staring at glass.

Even then, it was better to do that together at a LAN party.

Giant cup of coffee

Maybe I don’t need 600mg of caffeine?

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

Finding calm at the end of the reset, my mind didn’t put up a fight to finish small tasks. I felt less guilty about taking breaks from work, because my mind was more settled. And I craved distraction less, too.
Caffeine stimulates the release of dopamine, which can lead us to engage in additional dopaminergic behavior. (If you’re curious to test this out, try consuming more caffeine than usual, and see if you crave more distraction at the higher stimulation height.)

When I say “you” of course I mean me. I was regularly buying those Starbucks jugs from the grocery store and it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to finish one throughout a day. Mix in some Coke Zero and Celsius here and there and there and there and there…

I was having 400-600mg of caffeine every day. I haven’t gone cold turkey but am trying to limit things to 200mg.

I’m also trying to wait until at least 90 minutes after waking to have my first cup of coffee. (Shout out to Andrew Huberman for that tip.)

I miss the coffee, but also am seeing that a lot of the time I’m just bored and a decaf coffee does the trick just the same.

I also actually think it’s been better for my focus in the morning in trying to stay one one task.

Readwise Ramblings: just trying to build momentum

Right now I’m just trying to get some thoughts down to try and build a daily publishing practice. I’ve been writing every day but it’s still ended up being mostly just private writing. I want to build up the muscle of writing daily. I’ve built up a habit of reviewing highlights in Readwise so I thought I could use that as a cue to add to.

Recently I’ve felt like I need to be taking more action on all the information I’m consuming, even if that means just writing up some notes for things.

So here goes nothing.

“Where there is work to do, turn your hand to it first; the men will follow. Some of you, I see, have erected tents. Strike them at once. We will all sleep as I do, in the open. Keep your men busy. If there is no work, make it up, for when soldiers have time to talk, their talk turns to fear. Action, on the other hand, produces the appetite for more action.”

— Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield

That’s sort of what I’m trying to do here. My tent, my hiding place, is often in all of that private writing. In all the different notes and docs that I have where I’m procrastinating by planning.

Jon Acuff ttalks about hiding places:

“If you ever have to do a complicated, multistep explanation to say why what you’re doing is valuable, it probably isn’t. You’re probably actually camping out in the kind of hiding place that masquerades as productivity.”

— Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff

I’m not a perfectionist but I still have that fear of sharing things a little too early. (Not on this blog, though, clearly.)

I often want to share some idea that I heard in a podcast and then the noble obstacle that gets in the way is trying to find the verbatim quote instead of just paraphrasing. I don’t want to misrepresent the person’s idea.

Hunting down a specific quote from a podcast becomes 10-100x more difficult if you don’t excerpt it immediately.

And I sort of can’t stop sometimes. I remember a few nights where I just got plastered to the couch for 2-3 hours going through old podcast episodes on my phone trying to find some idea and not exactly remembering who said it or what podcast it was on.

A specific example: this idea from Nick Santora about 5 weekends a year:

“I’ve had a conversation with my oldest daughter multiple times where I’ve said the difference between winners and losers is five weekends a year.

And it’s 5 weekends… it’s 10 days. And it’s not working all day, every day. It’s 12 hours each day. So it’s 120 hours a year… Is the difference between a winner and a loser.

I write many weekends a year. I do it early in the morning before my kids are awake. And that’s the difference between having one job and having one job and getting a book out.”

— Nick Santora

A couple years ago I took forever trying to hunt this quote down.

Anyway, the “difference between having one job and having one job and getting a book out” reminded me of Matthew Dicks talking about finding time for yourself.

He talks about a woman who was more interested in finding excuses not to write than to find time to write:

“I’d like to tell her that she doesn’t actually want to write. She wants to “have written.” She’s fond of what she imagines the writing life to be — midmorning visits to the coffee shop to splash a few hundred words on the page before enjoying a late lunch with friends — but she’s not prepared to do the actual work required to produce something worthy of people’s time and money, nor is she passionate enough to engage in the craft in those less-than-ideal moments. Writers can’t help but write, I want to tell her. They don’t wait to write. They are compelled to write.”
— Someday is Today by Matthew Dicks

Okay so that’s that. A little bit of action.

A little bit of time outside of my weather-proof, comfortable tent of “planning”.

“Physical: 100” group suffering (and what you can do for 10 years)

From “Can You Go” by Dan John:

That’s why group training has such a big impact on long-term success: People do things they might not do otherwise, even with the best intentions. And we humans have this odd ability to handle more suffering if we do it as a group.

We finished watching “Physical: 100” a couple days ago so it’s still top of mind for things when I’m trying to connect some creativity lesson to some other thing.

(Similar to generative art making some people question whether they should be learning certain skills if they can just achieve an end result with a text prompt… I’m definitely questioning some time spent practicing making connections between things when a text prompt makes it possible to make a dozen of those connections in a couple seconds. But that’s for another post.)

I’ll add some better version of this post to my post about it eventually, but I wanted to capture this thought. Most of the competitors wouldn’t have lasted as long in any individual challenge if they didn’t have other people around to suffer with.

It’s not the same as distributing the suffering: Sam asks Frodo to share the load. That kind of suffering is finite and can be rationed out.

In this group suffering, the suffering is infinite. The larger the group the more total suffering there is. And with more people, each person can handle more.

The other people in the group don’t even have to be teammates.

In one challenge, the competitors have to hold a fake (but heavy) boulder above their heads for as long as possible. Muscular endurance and all that.

(I’ve thought of simulating this by loading a 135-pound barbell and just standing as long as possible. Then I remember that that’s a dumb idea.)

The last two go for over two hours standing right next to each other. They push each other. They definitely wouldn’t go that long if they were in separate rooms with no idea how long the other person was going.

So sometimes I do question my effort when working out in my home gym. I know I’d push more in a group class. But I’ll work out in the home gym far more frequently.

Is the tradeoff worth it?

We’ll see, I guess.

AND HERE’S HOW IT RELATES TO CREATIVITY…

Just kidding. Sort of.

Okay actually a relation to creativity did come to mind.

I recorded an episode of the podcast with Wally today. (About “Physical: 100”.) It was way way more fun to record that than to record it on my own. It’s probably more fun to listen to as well.

David Senra (of the “Founders” podcast) has a question worth asking yourself when you’re trying to figure out what you want to work on.

  • Can you do this for the next 10 years?

That’s a great question. I have a hunch I could do the podcast alone for the next 10 years.

But I’m sure I’d enjoy it more doing it with Wally.

Good to be back.

Physical:100 lessons (for creators)

(SPOILERS AHEAD.)

Now some creativity lessons from Physical:100 for creators. This is the sort of thing that is going to be basically automated at some point in the future, so there’s probably some meta lesson for myself here.

In any case…

Challenge 0: Strengths can backfire

In the case of the first challenge, or technically challenge zero, it’s strength itself that backfires. Sort of. It’s more just the weight required for that strength. The strongest competitors are also the heaviest. That becomes a major disadvantage when hanging from rafters.

For creativity, it can be useful to be mindful of when your strengths might backfire. In my case, I practiced and became faster at coming up with ideas and connections at a high level.

(aka: whip up an outline for how Physical:100 relates to creativity so that you can justify your guilty pleasure show even though deep down you know it’s actually a way better use of time than the one true alternative: scrolling mindlessly on my phone.)

I’m glad I can do that, but then it leads to a lot of work in progress that is never finished. The bottleneck comes later, all the shiny new ideas become a distraction, and then every few weeks I come to the conclusion that I just can’t finish anything.

Challenge 1: You can choose your environment (and that includes people)

In the first actual challenge, the top 50 competitors get to choose their opponent in a 1-on-1 match. They also get to choose the arena. The open arena favors strength. The playground arena favors speed.

In creative work, you get to choose the environment you’re in. It’s often good to have different environments for different “opponents” or whatever form of resistance comes at different stages of work.

In the beginning stages, it might be good to go somewhere without internet to go distraction free and to avoid diving into research too early. You might have a specific setup when editing work. You might like writing in loud coffee shops (like Malcolm Gladwell).

People become important at different stages as well. Feedback helps you get to great work. But friends and family who have no experience in your craft might not be able to provide the type of feedback that you need.

On the other hand, if you’re just getting started with your creative work, encouragement might actually be all you need to get the ball rolling. In that case friends and family are great. Even better would be to add a few other people at your level to take the journey on together.

Here’s a quote from the great Chael Sonnen (where he’s quoting the great Frank Costello):

There is a memorable line from the movie The Departed, where Frank Costello says, “I don’t want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.” Wonderful line, but for good and bad, we are influenced by where we grew up and even today, your environment continues to influence the person you are.

Challenge 2: Do the basics well (so you set a good foundation)

In the second challenge, the competitors form teams and need to build a bridge and then carry sandbags over the bridge.

They highlight one of the competitors who used to work in stunts and knew the importance of securing things properly for safety. She builds a very secure bridge while the other team constantly has to stop carrying sand to adjust the planks on their bridge.

In creative work, it’s important to understand the basics of your craft and to make sure you know how to do the basics well.

The Physical:100 competitors didn’t exactly have time to understand which parts are the basics since it was a brand new game. In hindsight, securing the planks was really important. During the game, it seemed worth it to sacrifice some security to simply build the bridge as fast as possible.

Luckily, in your work you’ll likely be able to learn from experts, books, interviews, and peers to know what basics you need to nail down.

In “Creative Confidence” by Tom Kelley and David Kelley, they describe someone asking Yo-Yo Ma if he even needs to practice anymore, now that he’s a master:

The question hung in the air for a moment before Yo-Yo Ma delivered the bad news to Erik. Long after ascending to the top of his field, Yo-Yo Ma continues to practice as much as six hours a day.

I’ll do the rest in a future post

but I figured out what my own lesson is as far whether it’s worth it to write this post even if it’ll be automated away in some near future — There’s still beauty in humans doing things. Maybe me writing this post isn’t exactly going to be one of those things in the future. But the best example is Chess. It’s already been decades of humans being unable to beat the best AI. Still, it’s entertaining to play against others humans. And it’s entertaining to watch the best humans against one another.

There’s a difference between watching the Madden simulation of the Super Bowl and the actual Super Bowl.

(At least for now.)