Chris Bailey

Bailey's second book, Hyperfocus, was published by Viking Press on August 28, 2018. For the book, he conducted a yearlong research experiment to determine how people can be as productive as possible each day, in a world filled with nonstop technology distractions. The book offers advice on maintaining and controlling focus, determining priorities, and minimizing interruptions in order to increase productivity. It is split into two sections: the first on hyperfocus, or being productive by devoting all your attention to completing a task; and the second on scatterfocus, where you allow your mind to wander, which supports creativity and can help to recharge. Bailey writes that you can increase focus and improve attention span by reducing your time with online access, letting your attention wander, and focusing on building a quality attention span. He recommends methods such as keeping emails brief (five sentences or less; if a response requires more, he makes a phone call), responding to emails in batches, and turning off email notifications. He recommends meditating daily to increase productivity, and setting intentions daily, weekly, and yearly.

Insights and strategies learned from these experiments, as well as from interviews with other experts in the field, were compiled into his 2016 book The Productivity Project, a Canadian nonfiction bestseller and the top-selling nonfiction audio book on Audible.com for the week ending July 15, 2016. The Globe and Mail named The Productivity Project one of the 10 best management and business books of 2016, and Fortune magazine named it one of three best business books of the year. The Mandarin Chinese translation was a bestselling Business Finance book in Taiwan.

At TEDxLiverpool in 2016, he delivered the talk "A More Human Approach to Productivity", encouraging people to set three intentions each day, and focus on achieving those goals.

After college, Chris Bailey took a one-year sabbatical to research and conduct experiments in productivity on himself, documenting his experiences on his blog, A Year of Productivity (later renamed A Life of Productivity). He began the year-long project in May 2013, testing new and old productivity theories through experiments including living in seclusion for 10 days; limiting his smartphone use to an hour a day for 3 months; getting up at 5:30 am each morning; and experimenting with varying-length workweeks, between 20 hours and 90 hours, to find the optimal workweek length. He watched 296 TED talks (roughly 70 hours) in 7 days, and then compiled lists on his blog of 100 things he learned, the 7 characteristics of highly effective TED speakers, and 10 TED talks one can watch in order to be more productive.

Bailey was born in Red Deer, Alberta, and raised in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. He first became interested in productivity in high school, after reading David Allen's 2001 book Getting Things Done. He moved to Ottawa, Ontario, to attend Carleton University, graduating from the Sprott School of Business in 2013. Bailey lives in Kingston, Ontario, with his wife, Ardyn Nordstrom.

Chris Bailey (born 1989) is a Canadian writer and productivity consultant, and the author of The Productivity Project (2016) and Hyperfocus (2018).