The Art of Mental State Mastery

I’m far from mastering this skill, but one thing I’ve been playing around with is how important mental states are to our productivity, happiness, focus, health habits, and more.

For example, if you’re tired or feeling down, there’s a good chance you’re not going to focus on your meaningful tasks, and instead will look for distractions and comfort.

If you’re feeling frenetic and in quick-task mode, you’re not likely to focus on deep work but instead will look for easy busy work to do.

Mental states will usually affect whether we do our exercise, eat healthy, binge-watch TV shows, drink alcohol, eat junk food, or are open-hearted (or rude) with the people we love.

So it’s really important to monitor mental states. It’s also an incredible skill to be able to move yourself into the proper mental state to do focused work; to create, to meditate, to exercise, or to do whatever you find meaningful.

In this article, I’ll share some ways to get better at moving into the mental state you need to be in to do that meaningful work. But I’ll also share an advanced skill — being able to do what you need to do, no matter what your mental state. I think of this as an “antifragile” skill (in the terminology of Nassim Nicholas Taleb).

Getting Good at Moving Into a Mental State

Let’s say you want to do some writing (or other focused work) … and to do that, you want to be in a calm, focused, energetic, positive mental state.

But right now, you’re feeling frazzled and distracted. How do you move from one state to the other?

First, you have to recognize that you’re in the wrong mental state. It’s not likely to lead to calm focus. It will lead to you doing busy work or seeking distraction.

Second, you have to experiment to find a set of actions that can help you move into the right mental state. This is going to be different for each person; even for each different mental state that you’re in, or that you want to get to. But with some experimentation, you can discover things that work for you.

For example, some common actions that often help us move into a better mental state:

Your state is a thing you can set on purpose

More on follow-through in the letter, along with work, money, reinvention and the rest of it. Join free and four guides arrive over the next fortnight, one at a time.

Join free

Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup.

Free. Leave in one click.