Chris Bailey Quotes

Happiness is the rose-colored lens we place atop our attentional space, which allows us to relate to our experiences in a more productive and creative fashion.

meditation and mindfulness both build your attention muscle,

had about $10,000 saved up (Canadian dollars — equal to about $30 US dollars, or $1,500 in Monopoly money).

the internet is basically the world’s largest candy store for your limbic system.

can be. As David Allen told me, “Your head is not for holding ideas — it’s for having ideas.

It’s so easy to commit your future self to things your current self wouldn’t want to do,” he says. “We call this a ‘planning fallacy.

When it comes to productivity and creativity, scatterfocus enables you to do three powerful things at once. First, as I’ll discuss in this chapter, it allows you to set intentions and plan for the future. It’s impossible to set future intentions when you’re immersed in the present. By stepping back and directing your attention inward, you’re able to switch off autopilot and consider what to do next. Your brain automatically plans for the future when you rest — you just need to give it the space and time to do so.

might sit down and make a plan to change those triggers. For example, if the trigger is: Boring: I go to my favorite café for an afternoon on Saturday to do my taxes over a fancy drink while doing some people watching. Frustrating: I bring a book to the same café, and set a timer on my phone to limit myself to working on my taxes for thirty minutes — and only work for longer if I’m on a roll and feel like going on. Difficult: I research the tax process to see what steps I need to follow, and what paperwork I need to gather. And I visit the café during my Biological Prime Time,

Directing your attention toward the most important object of your choosing — and then sustaining that attention — is the most consequential decision we will make throughout the day. We are what we pay attention to.

Nearly all habits that lead us to calm exist in one place: the analog world. The more time we spend in the analog world, as opposed to the digital one, the calmer we become. We best unwind in the analog world, acting in accordance with how our ancient brain is wired.

Make a very detailed plan on how you want to achieve what you want to achieve. What I’m arguing in my research is that goals need plans, ideally plans that include when, where, and which kind of action to move towards the goal.

One study found that when we continually switch between tasks, our work takes 50 percent longer, compared with doing one task from start to completion.

Your Central Executive: This is your thinking and planning brain that lives in your prefrontal cortex.

Constantly trying to do more things — instead of the right things — leads to more stress, poorer quality of work, and lower productivity.

Busyness is no different from laziness when it doesn’t lead you to accomplish anything.