MAKE STRESS PAY
Clear the clutter from your mind and harness fresh mental focus with Ferriss’s tips for dialled-in productivity. Let’s get this done >
Nearly every morning, I sit down with a hot cocktail of turmeric, ginger, pu’erh tea and green tea and write three pages in my journal. Morning writing exercises are, as author Julia Cameron puts it, “spiritual windshield wipers”. To quote her further: “Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes.” It’s the process that matters, not the product. But while this simple ritual alone can make each day more productive, there are other, more wholesale ways to organise your mind and make headway.
Japanese author Marie Kondo, whom I follow, created the Konmari Method, which consists of gathering everything you own, one category at a time, and keeping only the things that ‘spark joy’ in you. Her method is also a state of mind. Minimalism is about reduction, but Konmari focuses on value. And it turns out removing physical clutter can have an equally important impact on fostering a productive mindset. To begin, organise and clear-out belongings in the following categories: clothes, then books, paper documents, miscellaneous items and finally sentimental items.
With a clear head, the next stage is to set about maximising your mental output by improving your focus, and also becoming more considered in your approach to new ideas. I do this by practising some form of daily meditation or mindfulness, a habit I’ve learnt from more than 80% of the elite performers I’ve interviewed on my podcast, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Special Ops commanders.
It’s the most consistent pattern I’ve come across among successful people. By practising focus when it doesn’t matter (eg sitting on a sofa for 10 minutes), you improve your ability to focus when it does (a negotiation, conversation with a loved one or max deadlift). Meditation lets me step back and gain a ‘witness perspective’, so that I’m observing my thoughts instead of being tumbled by them. If you’re a beginner, start by using an app such as Headspace for 10-minute, guided meditations. I enjoy mantra-based transcendental meditation, where I sit comfortably and repeat a two-syllable word in my head (for a while I used ‘nature’) for 10 to 20 minutes. Of course, no matter how well you prepare, life still throws obstacles at you and mental output relies on your ability to react. The philosophical school of Stoicism is the perfect operating system for thriving in high-stress environments. The Stoics had an exercise called ‘turning the obstacle upside down’. Suppose you’re trying to help someone and they respond by being surly. Instead of perceiving this person as making your life more difficult, according to the exercise, you should actually view them as directing you toward new virtues, such as patience and understanding. Take an evening to read On the Shortness of Life by Seneca – it will change your outlook entirely. The ability to be spurred on rather than derailed by stress, when combined with mental clarity, is a potent combination to maximise your work capacity. With all that in mind, it’s time to get your head in the game.
“Meditation is a habit I picked up from Arnold Schwarzenegger”