Chris Bailey

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• Intentional: How to Finish What You Start

  Setting goals is easy. Following through on them is a whole different story. The gap between the two has nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with something most people have never been taught to see — the hidden values that drive every decision you make.

  In this interactive keynote, Chris Bailey walks audiences through a “would you rather” exercise based on motivation research across 80+ countries to discover their own personal core values in real time. From there, he shares three practical tools from his new book, Intentional, which has received acclaim in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Globe and Mail, Oprah Magazine, and others. These tactics help people protect what matters most from the noise of daily work to achieve their goals. Part science, part storytelling, part genuine self-discovery

  Key takeaways include how to:

  • Discover core values through a real-time thought experiment audiences will reference long after the event.
  • Use the Rule of Three to set daily intentions that keep priorities visible when distractions pile up.
  • Reframe productivity from getting more done to making room for the work and people that actually matter.
  • Recognize when values are misaligned with daily work, and what to do about it.
  • Lower the odds of procrastinating on the projects that matter most.

  This presentation runs 45–75 minutes, including audience interaction and Q&A, with content customized to be most helpful to your audience.

• Focus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction

  Our attention has never been as overwhelmed as it is today. And the research is clear — the state of our attention determines the state of our lives. In other words, if our attention is constantly overwhelmed, so are we. By transforming how you manage your attention, the better you’ll be able to manage every aspect of your life.

  In this story-driven, science backed keynote presentation, Chris Bailey shares profound insights into how to take charge of your attention to achieve a greater sense of purpose and productivity throughout the day. He draws from his bestselling book, Hyperfocus, and the latest neuroscientific research to equip audiences with practical, immediately implementable strategies that will help them become more productive in a world of distraction.

  Key takeaways include, how to:

  • Manage attention to work with greater intention.
  • Tame distractions ahead of time to focus more deeply.
  • Train their mind to become resilient to distraction.
  • Take advantage of the dot-connecting powers of their brain to work with greater creativity.
  • Use mind wandering to generate more ideas.
  • Think more strategically, automatically.

  This presentation runs 60 minutes, including Q&A, with strategies customized to be most helpful to your audience.

• The Art of Productivity and High Performance

  Over the last decade, Chris Bailey has researched and experimented with pretty much every productivity tactic under the sun to separate what works from what doesn’t. Drawing from this research and his collection of peculiar productivity experiments — like working 90-hour weeks, using his smartphone for only an hour a day, and meditating for 35 hours a week — Bailey will transform how you and your audience think about productivity and high performance.

  In his quest to optimize his performance, Bailey has honed-in on a couple dozen productivity strategies that actually work. In this custom talk, he works directly with clients to identify which of these research-backed tactics would best help their teams to enhance their productivity and performance and delivers a tailored keynote to guarantee results.

  Key takeaways could include, how to:

  • Prioritize what’s important every day, week, month, and year — including when things go wrong.
  • Calculate your peak productivity periods to automatically become more productive and creative.
  • Overcome procrastination, one of our largest time-wasters.
  • Modify our external environment to be more conducive to focus.
  • Train your brain to become more resilient against distraction in the first place.

  This presentation runs 60 minutes, including Q&A, with strategies customized to be most helpful to your audience.

• Half-Day Productivity Workshop: Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy

  This interactive, half-day productivity workshop will help your team manage their time, attention, and energy — the three core ingredients of productivity.

  The workshop weaves powerful personal and team productivity tactics with helpful exercises to get more done and includes the occasional fun anecdote from Chris Bailey’s books, Hyperfocus and The Productivity Project. This workshop is perfect for busy teams who have little time to think about productivity.

  The workshop runs four hours and is designed to accommodate as many or as few people as you like — the sessions work equally well for groups of executives, managers, and individual contributors. Bailey will customize the workshop for your audience.

  In addition to helping your team identify the tasks they should prioritize in their work (so they can work smarter), this intensive will help attendees eliminate distractions, simplify their work, and develop their ability to hyperfocus — all while becoming less busy, tired, and stressed out.

  Workshop attendees will receive a booklet to guide them through the exercises, as well as a printable PDF take-away, so their newly learned productivity tactics actually stick.

  To become as productive as possible, it’s critical that we not only effectively manage our time, but our attention and energy, too. This workshop will help you — and your team — accomplish just that.

  This workshop is also available as a 3-part webinar.