200: Hyperfocus – Featured Interview with Chris Bailey

2:10 About looking up to Steve Jobs. “He inspired me most with how he speaks.”

3:05 The specialness of the tinkering mindset

3:49 “It was the way that [Jobs] communicated things that I loved so much.”

4:10 “You can’t doubt vision.”

5:20 “Our minds are so complex, we have to understand them because they’re the mechanism by which we run companies, by which we run our lives and make decisions.”

6:06 “It’s very easy to come into this subject of focus with a lot of preconceptions.”

6:37 Common misconceptions about focus and thought processes.

6:42 “Research shows that being interrupted is one of the best things that can happen for us and for our team.”

7:35 Case study of a team of engineers - “Interruption is the process by which collaboration happens.”

9:04 “I think the most important context in regard to focus on a team level is the breakdown of how much of the work that the team does is a) collaborative or b) focused-work.”

10:07 Analysis of news and how it drives focus

12:15 “If you’re doing work that’s focused, find an office where you can focus on that work.”

14:10 “50-60% of my work is focused and 40-50% of it is collaborative.”

14:56 Why it’s important to schedule in focus time for yourself. “It’s how the important stuff gets done.”

15:24 Chris’s focus rituals.

16:39 “You ask a lot of people where they are the most productive and few people say the office.”

17:18 “In any one moment of the day either you’re focused on something or your mind is wandering, you can’t be focused and wandering at the same time.”

17:45 “Most of the time we’re unfocused, we’re unfocused against our will.”

18:45 Why a wandering mind provides the perfect chance for brilliant ideas to form.”

19:13 “When we’re focused, we’re moving our work forward.”

19:44 “Managing our attention is something that we should do because we’re able to achieve a nicer and more deliberate balance of these two modes, once that’s productive, one that’s creative, one that’s about focusing, one that’s about wandering.”

21:47 The peril of focusing all day long.

22:17 “If someone’s connected 100% of the time, they’re going to be focused 100% of the time and no ideas will ever come to them.

23:12 “We’re more focused than we have to be.”

23:44 “We think about our goals 14 times as much when our mind is wandering.”

24:52 “We need to see email differently.”

25:32 “The average office worker checks their email 88 times over the course of a day.”

26:03 Strategies for dealing with email management

27:57 Lightning Round