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This post is a review of How To Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times. By Chris Bailey. Penguin Life. 288 pp. $28.
These days, Chris Bailey reminds us, human brains, which were fully formed about 200,000 years ago, must navigate the challenges of a world in which the speed of computers doubles every two years: “They face more stress than ever before, and have fewer outlets to shed that stress.”
In How To Calm Your Mind, Bailey, the author of The Productivity Project and Hyperfocus, argues that obsessing about more money, accomplishment, and stimulation produces perpetual dissatisfaction. And Bailey proposes strategies to “eliminate stress, overcome burnout, and resist distraction, while becoming more engaged, present, and productive.”
In explaining the ubiquity of stress and dissatisfaction, and their ability to trump our desire for calm, Bailey rounds up the usual suspects. Personalized algorithms allow social media platforms to generate content we are wired to enjoy and crave. Watching videos is more stimulating than reading books; pornography “is more dopaminergic than sex.”
According to Bailey, the ready and steady supply of digital stimulation — via news reports of terrorist bombings, violent video games, and apps comparing bodies and lifestyle — often exacerbates chronic stress. But not the good and short-term stress that helps us overcome a challenge (in an athletic contest, for example, or a presentation at a conference), and generates memories to look back on with pride.
Many of Bailey’s self-care strategies for calming the mind are also familiar, but nonetheless worth implementing. He recommends 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise every week. He prescribes less alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and takeout foods. Meditation, the “practice of presence,” he indicates, reduces stimulation, provides space to evaluate thoughts, and increases productivity.
Virtually all of Bailey’s recommendations require rebalancing the time we spend in our analog and digital lives. In 2019, he points out, Americans on average spent over 10 hours each day hunched over a computer. During the pandemic, screen time spiked to 13 hours. And that doesn’t include listening to podcasts and audiobooks.
In the analog world, Bailey emphasizes, we build things with our hands, let our minds wander while taking a shower, enjoy nature, and make love. Our bodies and minds depend on the in-person time we spend with others. According to a study, loneliness damages overall health as much as smoking 15 cigarettes.
And so, Bailey exhorts his readers to practice “deliberate enjoyment.” It might start with a list of savored items — and a commitment to savor at least one of them, including a future experience, each day. He advocates a one-month “stimulation fast,” which might include a “distractions blocker” on computers and phones; eliminating digital news sources; drastically reducing time on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit, instant messages, online shopping, and ending all but three email checks a day.
Bailey acknowledges that the rebalancing he recommends “isn’t even always possible.” Nonetheless, his analysis at times seems simplistic. Should all efficient tasks be done digitally, and more meaningful activities the analog way? What about Zoom meetings with old friends living across the country during the pandemic? Are events that don’t touch your life, those you care about, members of your community, or are outside your control, “generally not worth tending to”? Is calm really the wellspring from which “springs productivity, presence, insight, intention, awareness, comfort, good humor, acceptance, creativity and gratitude,” underscoring “everything we do, everything we think, and everything we believe.”
That said, Bailey is surely right that “calm is not all that exciting, and that is precisely the point.” And that cultivating calm replenishes our capacity to “handle and enjoy everything that comes our way.”
