How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times

It’s important that we strike a balance between striving and savoring.

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.

The most helpful habits for calm have two things in common: they are not only analog, but also make our primitive brain happy.

Today, most of our stress is mental—it doesn’t exist in our physical world. And we let it build up inside of us, because we don’t give it a place to go. Exercise used to be an outlet for stress—we walked an average of thirteen kilometers a day. Social connection used to be another outlet—we spent nearly all of our time surrounded by other people. W

Activities in the analog world, on the other hand, lead to the release of a more balanced mix of neurochemicals; they actively engage us with the present moment while leading us to greater calm.

(I find that knitting leads me to come up with a ton of new ideas. It’s easily one of the most underrated productivity habits.)

There is a certain tranquil quality to devoting our entire capacity for presence to one thing. It’s a feeling of sinking in, of becoming the very thing you’re engaging with.

We typically feel guilty when we relax, but this feeling of guilt is often just what we label the discomfort we experience when we adjust to a new, lower level of mental stimulation.

It’s when we add too many unnecessary sources of stress—like compulsive checks of online news, social media websites, and apps—that stress begins to accumulate at a greater pace than we release it. Over time, we edge closer to our personal burnout threshold.

We have the time for activities that make us calm. The reality is that we don’t have the patience to adjust to a lower stimulation height.