How to Calm Your Mind and Find Productivity and Presence with Chris Bailey

Topic: How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times (Random House of Canada)

Chris Bailey, Productivity expert; author

A toolkit of accessible, science-backed strategies that reveal that the path to a less anxious life, and even greater productivity, runs directly through calm.

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

Among the topics How to Calm Your Mind covers are how analog and digital worlds affect calm and anxiety in different ways; how our desire for dopamine, a neurotransmitter in our brain that leads us to feel overstimulated, breeds anxiety, dissatisfaction, and needless stress, but can be countered by other neurochemicals; how hidden sources of stress can be tamed by a “stimulation fast”; and 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.

Chris Bailey has been intensively researching and experimenting with productivity since he was a young teenager, in an effort to discover how to become as productive as humanly possible. To date, he has written hundreds of articles on the subject, and has garnered coverage in media as diverse as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GQ, Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Harvard Business Review, TED, Fast Company, and Lifehacker. The author of The Productivity Project and Hyperfocus, Bailey lives in Ottawa, Ontario. His blog is ALifeofProductivity.com.

This event is available to attend in-person or virtually via livestream.

Rotman Events is committed to accessibility for all people. If you have any access needs or if there are any ways we can support your full participation in this session, please email Mandi Gosling [[email protected]] no later than 2 weeks in advance of the event and we will be glad to work with you to make the appropriate arrangements.

• The event will be hosted in Desautels Hall at the Rotman School of Management (105 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3E6). Your registration fee includes a seat at the session, access to a video replay of the session for 30 days and you will receive a hardcover copy of the book when you arrive.

• Rotman Events will email registrants a link to the livestream. Your registration fee includes access to the livestream, video replay for 30 days, a hardcover copy of the book and shipping fees. The book will be shipped to registrants after the event. Please allow 3 - 4 weeks for delivery.

• Unable to attend the event due to scheduling conflicts? Not to worry. All registrants (in-person or livestream) can access the full recording on-demand for one month after the live event.

• Refunds will only be issued for cancellations received in writing NO LATER than 24 hours prior to the event. Please email [email protected] for processing.

• In-person registrants who do not pick up their book at the event will have 5 business days to request postal delivery by emailing us at [email protected]. All unclaimed books will be returned to the publisher after that time.

Questions: [email protected], Mandi Gosling

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Rotman School of Management + Livestream, 105 St. George Street, Toronto, Canada