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

Here are the steps I’d recommend to conduct a stimulation fast of your own.

I think of superstimuli as highly processed, exaggerated versions of things we’re naturally wired to enjoy. They’re artificial, more stimulating versions of the real thing—with the most desirable components cranked way up to produce more dopamine, which leads us to come back later for more.

In introducing and removing distraction from my days, I came to relearn one of those lessons: distraction begets distraction. This is because dopamine begets dopamine—the more stimulated we make our mind, the more stimulation we crave, all so we can continue flying at that height. For this reason, if we start the morning on a note of calm—with a bo

a path to savoring is to feel a sense of anticipation before enjoying something.

Generally speaking, if you’re feeling exhausted, focus on your workload. If you’re disengaged, invest in social relationships, and find ways of connecting more deeply with your coworkers if you can. If you’re cynical, identify whether you have the resources you need to do your job, and again whether you can double down on relationships at work.

Here’s the trick to this advice: when we want to do an activity efficiently, we should do it digitally, and when we want our actions to be meaningful, we should do things the analog way.

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.

But it is worth reflecting on the fact that the brain you’re using to read these very words formed during periods when nearly all of the stress we experienced was physical. We were hunted down by prey, ran from enemies, and were far more afraid of saber-toothed tigers than make-believe “electronic mail” arriving on the shiny, rectangular screen in