How To Stop Feeling So Burned Out - Chris Bailey

There was one study that was conducted around the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. The team of researchers looked at two groups of people. The first group of people were those who watched six or more hours of news coverage about the bombings, and the second group of people were runners in the actual marathon. And what the team of researchers found was those who watched six or more hours of news coverage about the bombings were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, and they experienced a higher level of chronic stress than those who were in the marathon and personally affected by it. (air whooshing)

You have written two books, two best-selling books on productivity.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And now you're writing a book about calmness and how to calm your mind.

Yeah.

What g- What gets you interested in working out how to calm your mind?

Yeah. This book was honestly a, a lot tougher to write than the other two. Uh, you know, we were chatting before, there are no productivity emergencies out there. May- Maybe there's a couple that I haven't heard of. Uh, but if you're a doctor, there are medical emergencies, but there aren't productivity (laughs) emergencies. Uh, and it, it was really kind of an urgency though in my own life that led me to write this, this book called How to Calm Your Mind. Uh, I was not in a good place, uh, a few years ago. Uh, I was anxious, I was burnt out, uh, and this all culminated, a lot of this was happening beneath the, the depths of my awareness at the time. And this all crescendoed on stage for me. I was on stage in front of about 100 people, uh, giving a, a talk on productivity, of course. Uh, and, uh, I noticed when I got up on the stage that beads of sweat started to form on the back of my neck. Uh, I felt a- as though I, I was struggling to get my words out, like my tongue had to dance around a bunch of marbles inside my mouth, and I, uh, I started just stammering and stumbling on my every word. And I realized up there, you know, right when I wanted to kind of flee (laughs) the stage, I was having an anxiety attack, uh, in front of this audience. Um, and I, I had taken on too much stress. I had taken on, uh, just too many commitments i- in my work, uh, and in my life. I had too much chronic stress, and found myself kind of picking up the pieces after this episode, um, where I realized I was burnt out, I was anxious. Uh, and I had been investing in self-care quite a bit up to that point, uh, and that's kinda what baffled me at the time, and got me to look at the research out there and talk to experts to try to honestly desperately try to solve this in my own life. Uh, I hadn't really thought about a book at the time, 'cause, you know, when you're in kind of an emergency like that, th- it's the last thing on your mind. You're just trying to, oh, uh, you're just trying to get through. But, uh, yeah, that's, that's kind of how this journey began.