The productivity advice that will actually improve your life | Chris Bailey: Full Interview

Productivity is not about doing more, but about being more intentional with how one spends time, attention, and energy. These three elements are the fundamental ingredients of productivity, and intentionality is the primary factor determining goal attainment.

Bailey states, 'being more productive is a process of becoming more intentional about how we spend our time, our attention, and our energy, which I see as the three ingredients of productivity.' He adds, 'intention matters more than any other factor in determining whether we'll attain our goals.'

A goal is a prediction of where current and planned actions will lead. Humans are inherently bad at predicting the future, often overestimating resources and time. Therefore, goals should be treated as dynamic predictions that require constant revision and adaptation based on new data and feedback, rather than rigid expectations leading to disappointment.

Bailey explains, 'A goal is a prediction of where we believe our current and our planned actions will take us.' He notes, 'We don't know what's around the corner in the world, or even in our own lives sometimes. We overestimate how many resources we'll have for a goal, how much time we'll have for a goal.' He advises, 'we need to revise our predictions as we get more data.'

Procrastination is a universal human experience, often triggered by specific characteristics of a task that make it feel 'aversive': boring, frustrating, unpleasant, unstructured, distant in the future, or meaningless. Understanding these triggers allows for strategic interventions rather than relying on willpower, which fades.

Bailey cites research showing '15 to 20% of adults chronically procrastinate and about a third of students admit to procrastinating chronically.' He adds, '99% of them openly admitted to procrastinating on their goals. And in my opinion, that 1% is lying through their teeth.' He identifies six characteristics of aversion that lead to procrastination.

What appears to be multitasking is actually rapid task-switching. This constant switching creates 'attention residue,' where remnants of the previous task linger in the mind, making attention less efficient and causing tasks to take longer. True multitasking is only possible with habitual, non-conscious activities.

Bailey states, 'What we see as doing more than one thing at one time is really just as rapidly switching between things which creates the illusion that we are doing more than one thing at one time.' He explains 'attention residue' where 'we're always remembering a little bit of what we were just doing. And this makes our attention less efficient.'

Deliberately allowing the mind to wander, particularly during habitual, effortless activities, is crucial for creativity, problem-solving, and future planning. This 'scatterfocus' mode enables the brain to process and connect disparate information, leading to new ideas and a clearer strategic direction.

Bailey notes that 'we think about our future goals 14 times as often when our mind is wandering versus when we're focused on something.' He describes it as connecting 'constellations of ideas' and 'unearth[ing] ideas we would never have arrived at otherwise.'