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Every single time you switch your attention, you pay for it.

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So multitasking is a myth.

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Yeah.

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So what we are going to do is get a sense of the amount of time and energy that you essentially waste every single time you switch your attention.

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Okay, let's do this.

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All right.

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Are you ready?

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Yeah.

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Get ready.

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Go.

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Oh my gosh, this is a shit show.

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Done.

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So on a daily basis, theoretically, I'm losing 60% of my productivity just by switching between two different types of tasks at once.

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Yeah.

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And over two hours a day is the average now of how much time is being wasted bouncing between screens and different tasks.

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If we stay this distracted, we will live a life that we don't like living.

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So what is in this book?

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We're going to go through the books.

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I'm going to teach you all the science for productivity and human performance.

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Because I know that the default settings of all of our technology are designed by people like me to maximize engagement.

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For example, the infinite scroll is like going to a buffet and just opening your mouth.

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And there's just an assembling line of food and candy just going straight in.

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There's no backstop.

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But we can use reverse neuroscience to reverse this entire thing.

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Where's the first place to stop?

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First, put your phone in gray.

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Research from my lab shows grayscale makes the phone less neurologically stimulating and we saw on average people spent one hour less on their phones every single day.

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That's seven hours a week.

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Next is choosing long form over short form content.

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If we have too much short form, your attention span is shot, you literally feel shittier and your brain operates at a lower level,

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I can see in your productivity toolkit, there is a clock.

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Yeah, this is a huge, huge game changer in terms of productivity.

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But also there is a focus sprint to help people to do up to two times as much as they would otherwise do.

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And we can talk about biological chronotypes that dictate the ideal time you should be doing your focus sprints.

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But also I have another amazing thing to strengthen your mind and make you better at focusing.

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So I'm going to teach you all this stuff.

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Okay, so let's get into it.

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So the first thing we ought to really focus in on is...

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Guys, I've got a favour to ask before this episode begins.

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The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed.

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So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know.

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And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button.

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But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make the show better.

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And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button.

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Thank you so, so, so much.

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Dr. Saha Youssef, what is the mission that you are on if you had to try and capture it in a couple of sentences?

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And why does it matter to the people that are tuning in and listening right now?

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The mission I am on is to, first and foremost, bring science education to the world in a way that allows people to work more in line with how their brains and their bodies actually work best.

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This is my philosophy, that there are fundamental laws of how the brain and the body actually work.

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And I always liken these things to the laws of physics.

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There are laws of physics.

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We don't question the laws.

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Gravity.

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I don't ever wake up one morning and go, you know what, I want to do away with it.

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And I know that there are fundamental laws of biology, but we blissfully ignore these laws of biology.

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We don't teach kids when they're in school at an early age how their brains work so that they might be able to study a little bit easier, you know, find flow, actually be able to manage things like stress, physiological stress.

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In my area of expertise is productivity.

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We focus so much on what.

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What's the deliverable?

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What's the long-term goal?

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What's the annual goal?

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What's the quarterly goal?

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What, what, what, what, what, what, what?

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But not the how.

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How should we go about getting these things done?

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What is the best way, in fact, that a human being might sit down and have an innovative thought?

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Like, truly, like, what's, like, let's, for example, the neuroscience of innovation?

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We're all obsessed.

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I'm from Silicon Valley.

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We're obsessed with sort of innovation.

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But we're doing that with this.

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With our brains.

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With our brains.

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This is a biological system.

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Isn't it a good idea to take a step back and learn how the system actually works?

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I just feel like there's so much friction with how we're working and living today.

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And I would say the number one thing that seems to be getting in the way of all of this is...

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at the moment, technology, which is such a shame because it's also the most amazing piece of, I would say, modern human invention.

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You said innovation there.

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One of the things that innovators often think about is working backwards from the customer, i.e.

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understanding the customer problem and then reverse engineering a solution from there.

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So I present you with the same challenge with my audience today.

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Having been out there as a public communicator, you've received a lot of feedback from people as it relates to productivity on what they're really struggling with and how they like describe it in their own words.

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How can they relate to everything you've just said?

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Like what are the words that in their head they're using to describe the problem that your work solves?

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I hear a lot about brain fog.

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Okay.

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That's a big one.

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I remember working with this female CEO.

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She said something that's always stuck with me.

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And she's like, I can hear my own thoughts again.

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That's always stayed with me.

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I'm like, where were your thoughts before?

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And that's the heartbreaking truth.

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I think people aren't, we're not listening.

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We don't hear the inside of ourselves anymore.

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I think there's some sort of global discomfort with being with ourselves.

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And we've been distracted completely, 24-7, like every little second and minute in between ourselves.

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All of our tasks and to-dos and meetings and calls and this and that is filled in with technology and scrolling.

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We're just constantly consuming.

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And if you put yourself into that sort of setup and state, when is it that you, your mind is supposed to say, hey, what about this?

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I can't cure cancer.

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That's not my area.

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I can't do some of the amazing things that people right now are working on, the problems that they're working on to make the world a better place.

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But in some small part, if I can help unblock people to go do the amazing things that they want to do in the world, if I can just bring the science to,

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of productivity and performance, of focus, energy management, attention, all of these things back into our lives, then this is my small part that I can help people do all of the amazing things that they want to do and still be happy.

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What is the experience and the reference points that you draw from?

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Where did you study?

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What is it you run now?

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What studies have you done?

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I'm the founder and managing director of the Becoming Superhuman Lab, which is a lab focused and obsessed with productivity and human performance.

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Our goal is to help people get the most done in the least amount of time with the least amount of stress.

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I've done my entire academic career at UC Berkeley.

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My area of expertise is cognitive neuroplasticity, so how the brain actually changes and evolves.

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Keyword there, sort of that root plastic, plasticity.

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So the brain is constantly changing and evolving and adapting, and I'd like to tap into that.

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If the brain is constantly changing, evolving, and adapting, that means it could be getting better, which is why my lab has colloquially been called the Becoming Superhuman Lab, because my area of interest is increasing things like your attention span, your memory, your general fluid intelligence.

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So these cognitive traits that we have and these cognitive skills, I want to increase the volume on all of those things.

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I want to make people better, faster, stronger.

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So that's what I've always been obsessed with.

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Wait, you can make me superhuman?

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I mean, yes.

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Really?

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We have to define it, though.

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Of course, yes.

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Okay.

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I think you're probably already a fair bit there.

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No, no, no, no, no.

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There's room for improvement.

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Always.

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Trust me.

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Always.

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For myself as well, always.

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But I do practice quite a bit of what I preach, but there's, you know, we are human at the end of the day.

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But I would like to be superhuman.

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Okay.

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So hopefully we can do that today.

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You mentioned working with a female CEO there.

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What is the broad spectrum of people that you've worked with?

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I worked with a lot of executives.

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One of the first execs I worked with, and of course I can't say who, but it's a Fortune, it would be a Fortune 10 company.

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And I used to do these observations.

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So I would, let's say if I did this for you, by the way,

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You know, you'd say, OK, for the next couple of days, I'm going to have this weird doctor lady, this neuroscientist, like follow me around and she's just observing me.

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Like I would notice like everything from what you're eating and drinking throughout the course of the day.

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If you take breaks, how you work, I'd follow you to a bunch of your meetings.

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You know, I just like I'm just like with you for a bit, observing, taking notes.

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And then we would do an overhaul.

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And then I would intervene and then be like, all right, we got it.

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This is going to get changed up.

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And I have this very distinct memory because this was a huge point of transition for my work.

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I'm sitting there in his office.

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And it's a modern, as you might have, glass everywhere, you know.

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So he's sitting in a glass box.

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In the middle of a busy floor.

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This is a fortune tech.

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And he's the boss.

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So everybody can, it's like, you know, he can see everyone.

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Everyone can see him.

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So you've now put this human being, this extremely intelligent human being that controls billions of dollars.

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And you've put him in a glass box.

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Now he also has in mind, he's working on a deck for a board meeting.

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Extremely important.

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He's pulling together data that different teams have sent him, and he's looking at things.

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He's making pretty big decisions.

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And he's like, yeah, that's what I'm doing.

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I'm like, that's fine.

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You do you.

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I'll be back here.

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And I see him.

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He's on his computer, but he has a second monitor.

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And the second monitor has his email open.

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And then he has two phones, personal and professional, and they're both face up right next to him.

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And he had an Apple Watch on.

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So as he's sitting down to focus, it's just like bzzz, bing, bing, boop.

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And then all of this is happening.

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And then there's people walking by.

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And then at some point, his chief of staff comes in and he's just like, excuse me, don't forget this.

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And he's like, uh-huh.

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So he's sitting there.

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I swear, Stephen, he probably got 30 seconds.

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You know, the average, there was a study done, 47 seconds is the average amount of time a knowledge worker stays focused on one screen before another one distracts him.

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If I told you I want to give you a billion dollars and I'm here to support you, you know, and advise in any way that I can, but your goal is, in fact, let's say to cure cancer.

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And it's you.

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So hopefully you can galvanize the best minds from all around the world.

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How would you want them to go about trying to solve this global issue of such importance?

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Would you strap them up with an Apple Watch, a bunch of notifications, a Slack, and then litter their day with a bunch of meetings and calls and then hope that in the next few years they cure this thing?

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Ideally, you want them to be in an environment with a setup that is not distracting and, like, doesn't waste their best thinking.

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They don't, like, wake up in the morning and it's like, oh, hey, by the way, instead of thinking about that whole cancer bit, you need to jump onto this call.

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And we need to talk about this thing.

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And it's just constant ping-ponging like this all day.

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What is this?

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Just sit down for 20 minutes and just focus.

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So it's almost, what's hysterical is I studied things.

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Far more complex things than I find myself talking to people about, which is hysterical.

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We just need to focus on cleaning this shit up.

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That's why I call it digital hygiene.

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There are obstacles in the way of productivity and performance and focus.

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Forget becoming superhuman.

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We just need to become human.

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Like, do we all understand collectively here how this human system works and

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so that we can accept again those laws of biology.

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As you see, we come back to this.

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I can relate so much to everything you just said, in part because I'm an executive, but actually it doesn't really matter if you're an executive in this context because we all live in this very, very noisy world.

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I want to now go through all of the solutions.

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You called it getting all this shit out of our way, cleaning up our digital and physical environments.

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There is a box here.

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This is

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You didn't want to make it an app, but there is some of the stuff you talk about is in this box.

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I guess as someone that wants to be able to do the best work of my life, think clearly, interview well, build businesses, innovate, be creative, all of those things that you were pointing at through your explanations.

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I want to know, like, where's the first place to start?

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What's the first domino?

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Like, if I fuck up my sleep, is that the first?

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Do I have to meditate?

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Like, what is the...

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There's one that I have to begin with, the foundational, which you already mentioned yourself as sleep.

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That's true.

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The way that I, by the way, talk about sleep, and I hope this visual stays in your mind and maybe the mind of the listeners here.

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And I've had the interesting and distinct pleasure of having many a CEO and an executive who is haggard, tired, especially the founders that are grinding, come to me and ask, okay, I want to become one person better.

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Okay.

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And I find out that they're averaging five hours of sleep a night.

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Like, okay, can I paint a picture for you of what this feels like?

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00:13:37.681 --> 00:13:40.222
It feels like you've taken your car to the mechanic.

224
00:13:40.402 --> 00:13:42.743
And as a mechanic, I'm looking at it and the thing is on fire.

225
00:13:43.551 --> 00:13:45.172
Like it's literally like it's on fire.

226
00:13:45.212 --> 00:13:48.694
The flames are, and then you're sitting there like unaware of the fact that it's on fire.

227
00:13:48.714 --> 00:13:50.555
And you're like, can we soup up the engine?

228
00:13:50.575 --> 00:13:52.816
I'm like, dude, let's put the fire out first.

229
00:13:52.956 --> 00:13:56.058
I don't even know where to begin to assess your baseline performance.

230
00:13:56.659 --> 00:13:57.419
So that's the thing.

231
00:13:57.719 --> 00:14:01.381
When you don't get enough sleep, and mind you, that's a minimum of seven hours a night.

232
00:14:01.701 --> 00:14:07.345
If you're not getting enough sleep, it's impacting your cognitive performance, your emotional regulation.

233
00:14:07.365 --> 00:14:10.847
So it'll be irascible, you know, in the office and with other people.

234
00:14:12.167 --> 00:14:13.167
The system is messed up.

235
00:14:13.688 --> 00:14:15.548
So sleep is for sure the foundation.

236
00:14:16.108 --> 00:14:17.148
We got to check that box.

237
00:14:17.488 --> 00:14:23.330
I would say next biggest thing that I will tell you right now, this is a global issue.

238
00:14:23.910 --> 00:14:26.991
It is impacting everyone from senior citizens to children.

239
00:14:28.031 --> 00:14:30.672
It's your relationship with technology.

240
00:14:33.932 --> 00:14:34.472
What is that?

241
00:14:35.073 --> 00:14:36.473
This is a phone lockbox.

242
00:14:37.422 --> 00:14:41.685
So we would theoretically put your technology inside and then lock it away from you.

243
00:14:41.785 --> 00:14:42.325
You want to do it?

244
00:14:42.686 --> 00:14:42.906
Yeah.

245
00:14:43.066 --> 00:14:43.266
Yeah.

246
00:14:43.366 --> 00:14:43.706
Go for it.

247
00:14:43.847 --> 00:14:44.087
Okay.

248
00:14:44.107 --> 00:14:45.248
Let me just make sure it's off.

249
00:14:45.488 --> 00:14:47.829
You're like, let me just get rid of some of the things on the screen.

250
00:14:47.889 --> 00:14:48.070
Okay.

251
00:14:48.090 --> 00:14:49.951
Turn that upside down.

252
00:14:50.111 --> 00:14:50.791
There we go.

253
00:14:51.152 --> 00:14:58.197
You don't necessarily need to get a lockbox, but the point of something like this is for you as a human being,

254
00:14:59.397 --> 00:15:08.645
and your brain as a focus machine, as a monotasking machine, to actually be able to focus.

255
00:15:10.627 --> 00:15:17.973
Focus and attention are so fundamental to all things, personal and professional, mind you.

256
00:15:19.074 --> 00:15:26.080
That means any kind of distraction that is diminishing your focus is impacting your memory, and your brain is so important.

257
00:15:27.176 --> 00:15:31.298
Another word for memory is learning, right?

258
00:15:32.619 --> 00:15:38.022
Attention and memory, by the way, it's impossible to divorce those concepts from one another.

259
00:15:38.443 --> 00:15:42.985
They're connected in the most connected way that they can be.

260
00:15:44.106 --> 00:15:49.169
The way that they're connected is you cannot remember anything that you do not attend to.

261
00:15:50.349 --> 00:15:51.010
You think about that.

262
00:15:51.928 --> 00:15:56.990
It is only things that come into your aperture of attention that you're aware of in the first place.

263
00:15:57.350 --> 00:15:58.670
So we cannot learn anything.

264
00:15:58.690 --> 00:16:02.271
We cannot remember anything unless we're paying attention.

265
00:16:03.272 --> 00:16:12.435
And attention spans, our ability to sustain attention, has been linearly decreasing since the advent of this thing.

266
00:16:13.599 --> 00:16:16.220
And I don't want people to think it's just phones necessarily.

267
00:16:16.361 --> 00:16:18.502
It's notifications in general.

268
00:16:19.042 --> 00:16:27.146
And if you're monitoring your inbox all day and it's constantly available to you, what's your plan for having deep thoughts?

269
00:16:27.767 --> 00:16:30.468
The rebuttal that comes to mind, although I don't even believe it.

270
00:16:30.848 --> 00:16:34.070
But this is the rebuttal that I think a lot of me and my listeners will be thinking right now.

271
00:16:35.051 --> 00:16:37.172
Yes, but what if something happens?

272
00:16:38.264 --> 00:16:48.047
I have my email open because maybe a big email comes in, or I have my WhatsApp right there because maybe my fiance is going to tell me I need to let her in the house, or something's going to happen.

273
00:16:48.167 --> 00:16:48.608
Totally.

274
00:16:49.168 --> 00:16:49.568
Fires.

275
00:16:50.288 --> 00:16:50.968
So we call them, right?

276
00:16:51.809 --> 00:16:52.709
Fires, urgencies.

277
00:16:53.029 --> 00:16:53.349
I get it.

278
00:16:53.429 --> 00:16:57.150
I'm a caretaker for both of my, you know, I get it.

279
00:16:57.651 --> 00:16:59.251
I call these, by the way, VIPs.

280
00:16:59.811 --> 00:17:01.992
These are VIP notifications and messages.

281
00:17:02.652 --> 00:17:03.993
Can I paint a picture for you for a second?

282
00:17:04.173 --> 00:17:04.353
Yeah.

283
00:17:04.773 --> 00:17:06.794
We figured this out for mail.

284
00:17:07.214 --> 00:17:12.336
If you have an extremely important package coming to your house, how do we deal with this in the mail system?

285
00:17:14.096 --> 00:17:14.717
Somebody knocks.

286
00:17:15.517 --> 00:17:16.277
It needs a signature.

287
00:17:16.637 --> 00:17:18.058
Like, we're not leaving this outside.

288
00:17:18.558 --> 00:17:19.658
Somebody needs to be home.

289
00:17:19.858 --> 00:17:20.439
Knock, knock, knock.

290
00:17:20.459 --> 00:17:21.619
I'm going to come and get your attention.

291
00:17:21.959 --> 00:17:25.300
To me, that knock, knock, knock, you need to sign for this is a notification.

292
00:17:25.761 --> 00:17:26.801
That's the fire, right?

293
00:17:27.321 --> 00:17:31.563
And everything else, by the way, just gets shoved in the mailbox or left by the door.

294
00:17:31.583 --> 00:17:32.223
Mm-hmm.

295
00:17:32.827 --> 00:17:34.188
This is what I advocate for.

296
00:17:34.388 --> 00:17:37.070
We are all, by the way, smart enough.

297
00:17:37.090 --> 00:17:48.737
We should respect ourselves enough, truly, to demand better than the default settings that our apps, our email, our phones come with.

298
00:17:49.838 --> 00:17:55.702
The default settings of all of our technology are designed, by the way, by people like me

299
00:17:57.854 --> 00:18:04.767
These are cognitive neuroscientists, behavioral neuroscientists that work at these companies to get you hooked.

300
00:18:05.328 --> 00:18:10.718
Because if you think about this, by the way, what's the bottom line for even Microsoft Outlook?

301
00:18:11.316 --> 00:18:13.157
Forget like TikTok and like all of that.

302
00:18:13.177 --> 00:18:14.558
Just leave that aside for a second.

303
00:18:14.799 --> 00:18:16.800
Like the boring stuff that runs the world.

304
00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:19.162
Email, for those of us adults, right?

305
00:18:19.622 --> 00:18:29.490
What do you think the bottom line is when you have a company that has an annual contract with another company that installs things like Slack, things like just communication software?

306
00:18:30.290 --> 00:18:32.332
How do you make sure that you re-up that contract?

307
00:18:32.352 --> 00:18:33.152
You show engagement.

308
00:18:33.533 --> 00:18:36.035
At the end of the year, you go, look, look at these engagement numbers.

309
00:18:36.715 --> 00:18:39.337
Everyone is using, everyone's constantly talking to each other 24-7.

310
00:18:40.718 --> 00:18:42.660
So you can't do what you do without us.

311
00:18:42.920 --> 00:18:50.385
So that means the way that these softwares and products are designed is for them to be as engaging as humanly possible.

312
00:18:50.645 --> 00:19:05.897
So the default setting that your phone comes with, the default setting of every single app that you download on that phone of yours, the default setting of email, of any messaging software that all of our teams use, the default setting is there to maximize engagement, not to make your company more productive.

313
00:19:05.917 --> 00:19:06.097
Right.

314
00:19:06.197 --> 00:19:08.180
These companies don't give a shit about your productivity.

315
00:19:08.200 --> 00:19:09.021
That's not their problem.

316
00:19:09.281 --> 00:19:09.982
That's your problem.

317
00:19:10.563 --> 00:19:11.985
You need to figure that part out.

318
00:19:12.606 --> 00:19:20.877
I'm a big advocate for thinking about this in the sense of default settings because it is in fact, I have a sweet tooth.

319
00:19:21.298 --> 00:19:22.660
So think of a chocolate company.

320
00:19:23.966 --> 00:19:24.747
A candy company.

321
00:19:25.527 --> 00:19:27.609
What's the, what is their bottom line?

322
00:19:28.029 --> 00:19:29.730
What do they want out of me as a customer?

323
00:19:29.970 --> 00:19:34.474
And when you say bottom line, for those that don't know, you mean profit incentive, right?

324
00:19:34.494 --> 00:19:34.614
Yes.

325
00:19:34.974 --> 00:19:35.134
Yeah.

326
00:19:35.154 --> 00:19:35.314
Okay.

327
00:19:35.835 --> 00:19:41.118
Their goal is to sell as much of their product as humanly possible.

328
00:19:41.839 --> 00:19:47.063
Is it their business or responsibility to think about whether or not I get diabetes or if I'm having trouble?

329
00:19:47.083 --> 00:19:47.183
Yeah.

330
00:19:48.125 --> 00:19:49.827
With overconsumption, not really.

331
00:19:49.847 --> 00:19:51.769
Well, the same is true for email.

332
00:19:52.389 --> 00:19:54.391
The same is true for any kind of platform.

333
00:19:54.531 --> 00:19:56.313
Its engagement is the currency.

334
00:19:56.914 --> 00:20:04.481
So everything from the little, the sound that your email client makes when you send an email off, that's been tested.

335
00:20:05.282 --> 00:20:08.804
Test it of what will feel the best and sound the best to the human.

336
00:20:09.684 --> 00:20:20.809
Everything from the vibrate functionality that you feel in your phone has been highly optimized by people like me to keep you obsessed with the thing and addicted to the thing.

337
00:20:21.710 --> 00:20:24.031
To increase your engagement on the platform.

338
00:20:24.871 --> 00:20:28.913
And so my big push is in the goal of, again, productivity.

339
00:20:30.225 --> 00:20:36.611
The first thing we ought to really focus in on is getting rid of the drains of our productivity first.

340
00:20:37.512 --> 00:20:45.119
It sounds obvious, but it's totally not obvious that a productivity tools incentive actually isn't your own productivity.

341
00:20:45.719 --> 00:20:47.881
It is your engagement with the tool.

342
00:20:47.901 --> 00:20:48.001
Yeah.

343
00:20:48.770 --> 00:20:49.611
Because you're totally right.

344
00:20:49.631 --> 00:20:54.815
When these companies report to investors or whatever, they have to show how much engagement, how much you used it.

345
00:20:55.175 --> 00:21:02.540
And it's almost like antithetical to the mission of the tool for them to be removing your distraction in that regard.

346
00:21:02.841 --> 00:21:07.064
Because engagement and distraction are like opposites in the way that you described them.

347
00:21:07.084 --> 00:21:13.689
Slack is distracting me under the premise that it's making me better at my work

348
00:21:14.643 --> 00:21:15.123
Absolutely.

349
00:21:15.624 --> 00:21:22.269
Which is why I sort of scoff when I hear some of these products and tools call themselves productivity software.

350
00:21:22.349 --> 00:21:26.152
Because I'm like, well, and I'm not suggesting, right, we don't need to communicate with each other.

351
00:21:26.172 --> 00:21:29.254
I have team members in different time zones.

352
00:21:29.554 --> 00:21:33.517
We've never, as a human species, been able to communicate and collaborate at this scale.

353
00:21:33.597 --> 00:21:34.618
Technology is amazing.

354
00:21:34.638 --> 00:21:35.619
I'm not a Luddite.

355
00:21:36.099 --> 00:21:37.280
What I advocate for is...

356
00:21:38.906 --> 00:21:44.915
People telling themselves this mantra of, I deserve better than the default settings.

357
00:21:46.076 --> 00:21:48.199
I am better than the default settings.

358
00:21:48.279 --> 00:21:49.882
The default settings are not there to help you.

359
00:21:50.353 --> 00:21:55.915
So what do you suggest then for someone like me who, you know, I probably spend 10 hours a day on my phone, according to my screen time?

360
00:21:56.115 --> 00:21:56.575
What should I do?

361
00:21:56.895 --> 00:21:58.055
Okay.

362
00:21:58.195 --> 00:22:05.297
My number one suggestion is, especially because you yourself brought up the fear around missing important things, right?

363
00:22:05.817 --> 00:22:14.940
Again, I called, you know, the fires, the urgency, so on and so forth, is I would recommend setting up what I call VIP notifications in both your phone, your inbox, every single different communication software.

364
00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:15.560
Okay.

365
00:22:15.740 --> 00:22:18.522
And what that means is you come up with your VIP list.

366
00:22:18.903 --> 00:22:20.244
This is your partner.

367
00:22:20.264 --> 00:22:22.406
If you have a boss, your boss's boss.

368
00:22:22.466 --> 00:22:25.428
If you're client-facing or customer-facing, your top 15 clients.

369
00:22:25.748 --> 00:22:26.589
These are your VIPs.

370
00:22:26.889 --> 00:22:32.314
And it's if, for example, these numbers call me or text me, it pushes through the filter.

371
00:22:32.334 --> 00:22:33.214
There are no defenses.

372
00:22:34.035 --> 00:22:35.115
I need to get that immediately.

373
00:22:35.796 --> 00:22:39.397
I have three keywords, by the way, set up in my email inbox.

374
00:22:39.617 --> 00:22:41.338
My first name, I'm a little lucky.

375
00:22:41.358 --> 00:22:42.658
I have a more rare first name.

376
00:22:42.678 --> 00:22:44.559
So if somebody says Sahar, I'm like, okay, you've got it.

377
00:22:44.599 --> 00:22:44.939
What is it?

378
00:22:45.539 --> 00:22:48.220
Because otherwise, what's our reality, Stephen?

379
00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:52.702
We're CC'd on email chains with seven other people sometimes, and they're just talking to each other.

380
00:22:52.802 --> 00:22:59.044
I do not need to get a ping every single time Stacy and Stephen are chatting with each other about something.

381
00:22:59.084 --> 00:23:00.405
They're solving their own problem.

382
00:23:00.425 --> 00:23:00.685
Right?

383
00:23:00.845 --> 00:23:02.386
Like, I need to focus on leading.

384
00:23:02.546 --> 00:23:04.807
I don't need to be getting, like, you're all figuring this out.

385
00:23:04.827 --> 00:23:07.688
And I'm not saying I do kind of want to be CC'd sometimes.

386
00:23:07.708 --> 00:23:09.189
I need to be kept abreast of what's going on.

387
00:23:09.629 --> 00:23:11.390
But I don't need to be interrupted.

388
00:23:11.690 --> 00:23:15.372
My train of thought doesn't need to be interrupted when I'm finally sitting down to focus.

389
00:23:15.782 --> 00:23:41.761
a lot of people don't want to be rude and there's so much social pressure to respond quickly to say yes to take the meeting to do the thing go to the whatever so i the question i was going to ask you is who is like the most focused person you've ever met in this regard and then my my sort of sub question was like i bet they're i bet they're often seen as rude yeah or like i bet they have to develop a muscle um against people pleasing indeed yeah

390
00:23:42.755 --> 00:23:46.980
I honestly, probably the first person that came to my mind is honestly my husband.

391
00:23:48.481 --> 00:23:50.203
Who's a faculty, he's here.

392
00:23:50.243 --> 00:23:52.246
No, he's in there, isn't he?

393
00:23:52.646 --> 00:23:53.467
Besides to me.

394
00:23:53.507 --> 00:23:54.508
You'll get him right to reply.

395
00:23:55.810 --> 00:24:00.675
Besides to me, he mostly, like his default is no.

396
00:24:01.055 --> 00:24:02.677
I have a sense everyone has a default.

397
00:24:02.777 --> 00:24:03.898
I'm a default yes person.

398
00:24:04.878 --> 00:24:06.279
You know, and he's a default no person.

399
00:24:06.299 --> 00:24:09.361
We run a company together, which, by the way, two people at the helm that's default, no default.

400
00:24:09.381 --> 00:24:12.404
Yes, I think makes a really good balance because we debate it out.

401
00:24:13.024 --> 00:24:14.105
Everything becomes a discussion.

402
00:24:14.125 --> 00:24:15.486
I'm like, oh, this is what a great opportunity.

403
00:24:15.506 --> 00:24:16.267
We should totally do this.

404
00:24:16.287 --> 00:24:18.448
And he's like, this is not the objective.

405
00:24:18.568 --> 00:24:19.729
Stay on the objective.

406
00:24:19.749 --> 00:24:22.091
I'm like, well, but it's a shiny new object and this thing and blah, blah, blah.

407
00:24:22.632 --> 00:24:24.853
And it's like, oh, impact and all of the things.

408
00:24:25.974 --> 00:24:30.658
He protects his resources and his most precious resource is his time.

409
00:24:31.554 --> 00:24:34.195
his time and his attention, I'll channel him.

410
00:24:34.215 --> 00:24:45.858
He'll say, yeah, maybe it's disappointing to some that I did not make it to that meeting, but I think people will find over time that my unique contribution to that meeting would have not been relevant.

411
00:24:46.138 --> 00:24:47.459
They were just fine without me.

412
00:24:47.979 --> 00:24:57.762
And the fact that I did not attend that meeting allowed me to sit down and finish this and do this thing and come up with this idea, which is helping the entire ecosystem of work.

413
00:24:58.732 --> 00:25:05.919
I sat and interviewed Kevin O'Leary and he said something to me which has stayed with me ever since, but I know it's also stayed with my listeners because they say it back to me out in the world.

414
00:25:06.519 --> 00:25:11.464
He talked about his experience working with Steve Jobs and also Elon Musk.

415
00:25:11.905 --> 00:25:13.786
And he talked about this concept of signal versus noise.

416
00:25:15.067 --> 00:25:19.790
And he said Steve Jobs had the most remarkable ability to focus on the signal versus the noise.

417
00:25:19.810 --> 00:25:21.291
He described it as 80-20.

418
00:25:21.451 --> 00:25:26.133
And for anyone that doesn't understand the analogy, signal is like the most important thing I should be doing today.

419
00:25:26.574 --> 00:25:27.514
Noise is everything else.

420
00:25:27.774 --> 00:25:30.356
He says the thing about Steve Jobs is it was always like...

421
00:25:31.797 --> 00:25:32.919
why are we talking about this?

422
00:25:33.239 --> 00:25:34.541
This is the most important thing.

423
00:25:35.141 --> 00:25:40.467
And then I saw Johnny Ives being interviewed and Johnny Ives was describing Steve Jobs.

424
00:25:41.188 --> 00:25:46.074
And Johnny Ives said, the most remarkable thing about Steve is his focus.

425
00:25:46.554 --> 00:25:48.396
And he said, focus isn't...

426
00:25:49.017 --> 00:25:50.178
doing one thing instead of another.

427
00:25:50.358 --> 00:25:54.721
Focus is waking up in the morning and thinking something is a brilliant idea.

428
00:25:55.041 --> 00:26:01.085
And with every bone in your body, you know that that thing is brilliant and you want to do it, and you say no to it anyway.

429
00:26:01.505 --> 00:26:05.788
He said, Steve was the most remarkably focused person I have ever met.

430
00:26:07.137 --> 00:26:09.918
And he would often go up to Johnny Ives and ask him what he had said no to.

431
00:26:10.438 --> 00:26:14.140
And Johnny said he would have these sacrificial things that he wasn't remotely interested in in any way.

432
00:26:14.500 --> 00:26:16.141
And Steve would know that and push him even harder.

433
00:26:16.161 --> 00:26:24.144
Like, what have you said no to that with every bone in your body you knew was a brilliant idea, but you said no to it because we are focused on this.

434
00:26:24.624 --> 00:26:30.687
And the last part of that story is Kevin O'Leary said that Elon is the only person he's ever encountered that is more focused than Steve Jobs.

435
00:26:30.907 --> 00:26:31.107
Wow.

436
00:26:32.149 --> 00:26:36.994
And this is part of the reason why I'm so excited to speak to you, because I want to be more like that.

437
00:26:37.454 --> 00:26:40.397
I want to get to 80-20.

438
00:26:40.577 --> 00:26:42.579
You're well on your way because you've already given me your thumb.

439
00:26:42.619 --> 00:26:43.019
I know.

440
00:26:43.059 --> 00:26:43.620
I'm not even kidding.

441
00:26:43.640 --> 00:26:44.321
I'm anxious about that.

442
00:26:45.221 --> 00:26:46.082
I'm not even kidding, though.

443
00:26:46.102 --> 00:26:46.943
This is the noise.

444
00:26:47.544 --> 00:26:52.168
You can either increase the signal or you can decrease the noise.

445
00:26:53.169 --> 00:26:54.150
What do you think is easier?

446
00:26:56.492 --> 00:26:57.293
Decreasing the noise.

447
00:26:57.742 --> 00:26:58.182
For sure.

448
00:26:58.262 --> 00:26:59.443
As a first step?

449
00:26:59.563 --> 00:27:00.644
As a first step, of course.

450
00:27:00.904 --> 00:27:02.185
I think that's actually what they do.

451
00:27:02.245 --> 00:27:10.490
And again, I don't know a ton about this, but I actually think that's what they did when they discovered the radio was the job was to reduce the noise.

452
00:27:11.091 --> 00:27:13.132
They never mentioned increasing the signal.

453
00:27:13.312 --> 00:27:14.673
Because it's rather difficult.

454
00:27:14.753 --> 00:27:15.594
It's possible.

455
00:27:16.294 --> 00:27:16.754
It's there.

456
00:27:16.854 --> 00:27:17.295
It's there.

457
00:27:18.756 --> 00:27:20.357
Literally, get the shit out of your life.

458
00:27:20.377 --> 00:27:20.677
Yeah.

459
00:27:21.010 --> 00:27:25.393
We now think that multitasking or context switching is a skill.

460
00:27:26.033 --> 00:27:30.616
And we think, you mentioned a term earlier on, which I've never heard, mono... Monotasking?

461
00:27:30.976 --> 00:27:32.297
You said the brain is a monotasker.

462
00:27:32.497 --> 00:27:34.418
Yeah, it's a monotasking machine.

463
00:27:34.599 --> 00:27:35.419
Prove that to me.

464
00:27:35.759 --> 00:27:38.561
This thing here, this is a monotasking machine.

465
00:27:38.801 --> 00:27:39.442
It is.

466
00:27:39.622 --> 00:27:40.162
Yes, it is.

467
00:27:40.262 --> 00:27:43.464
So this entire system is designed for survival.

468
00:27:44.625 --> 00:27:49.328
Human beings are, I always kind of joke and say, we're not quite competitive in the animal kingdom.

469
00:27:49.348 --> 00:27:49.508
Yeah.

470
00:27:50.659 --> 00:27:54.722
Like, I mean, I work out, but I can't fight off like an actual predator, you know?

471
00:27:55.243 --> 00:27:56.204
Like my nails are on our teeth.

472
00:27:56.224 --> 00:27:57.165
My teeth aren't that sharp.

473
00:27:57.905 --> 00:27:59.987
It's, we are kind of puny.

474
00:28:01.328 --> 00:28:03.330
But where we're not puny is this.

475
00:28:04.408 --> 00:28:12.773
So it is in my ability to strategize, think, and focus where I can outsmart predators.

476
00:28:13.373 --> 00:28:14.894
That's how human beings have survived.

477
00:28:15.054 --> 00:28:16.255
That's how we're running the world.

478
00:28:17.055 --> 00:28:27.781
Do you know about a third of the human brain, and I say the cortical real estate, so real estate across this human cortex, is dedicated just to looking and listening.

479
00:28:29.590 --> 00:28:30.330
That's a lot.

480
00:28:31.030 --> 00:28:35.291
Just eavesdropping, loud sounds, anything that might come into view.

481
00:28:35.732 --> 00:28:42.073
So we're designed to be hypervigilant to anything that might come in our environment, which I mean, think of an open office.

482
00:28:42.133 --> 00:28:44.374
Think of a typical setup where people are working.

483
00:28:45.294 --> 00:28:53.736
Like the example I gave of that executive, literally sitting in a glass box with all the people that he works with walking by constantly and all this noise.

484
00:28:54.116 --> 00:28:57.417
And he's trying to find the signal and he's trying to tap into the signal.

485
00:28:57.437 --> 00:28:57.717
And I'm like,

486
00:28:58.972 --> 00:29:01.154
I want our species to keep advancing.

487
00:29:01.194 --> 00:29:03.536
And I want us to advance as fast as humanly possible.

488
00:29:03.576 --> 00:29:10.101
And I know we can, but all the brilliance of humanity is currently being sucked away by these distractions.

489
00:29:11.182 --> 00:29:14.524
There seems to be, as I was thinking about that, there seems to be two ways that distractions find us.

490
00:29:14.544 --> 00:29:19.028
The first is the notification comes to us or the thing pings or whatever, the Apple Watch vibrates.

491
00:29:19.468 --> 00:29:25.353
The other is we're in the middle of work and we stumble across something which is a little bit difficult or tricky or a little bit uncomfortable.

492
00:29:26.073 --> 00:29:27.695
And we go seeking out the distraction.

493
00:29:28.979 --> 00:29:30.561
So, you know, we might be in the middle of an essay.

494
00:29:30.601 --> 00:29:31.442
It's a little bit tricky.

495
00:29:31.622 --> 00:29:34.965
And so we could reach for our WhatsApp and we're chatting in a group chat about the weekend.

496
00:29:35.346 --> 00:29:36.327
Yeah.

497
00:29:37.047 --> 00:29:41.292
Is that a true sort of accurate reflection of how humans behave?

498
00:29:42.233 --> 00:29:42.713
Yes.

499
00:29:42.773 --> 00:29:43.034
It is.

500
00:29:43.554 --> 00:29:44.835
Because I was just thinking about my own behavior.

501
00:29:44.915 --> 00:29:45.736
Sometimes, yes, ping.

502
00:29:45.836 --> 00:29:46.877
I don't have notifications on.

503
00:29:46.898 --> 00:29:48.880
Well, I don't have most notifications on.

504
00:29:49.320 --> 00:29:52.083
But I still find myself reaching for the phone every minute.

505
00:29:52.604 --> 00:29:55.765
So the human brain is a problem-solving machine.

506
00:29:56.125 --> 00:29:57.606
It's important to keep this in mind.

507
00:29:57.866 --> 00:30:11.752
So I'll stack a few, again, biological laws here that brings us to understanding why we all, all have a tendency towards what I would consider to be avoidance of discomfort.

508
00:30:12.432 --> 00:30:13.953
Now, discomfort.

509
00:30:14.013 --> 00:30:16.334
Let's list out some uncomfortable feelings.

510
00:30:16.354 --> 00:30:16.854
Okay.

511
00:30:17.315 --> 00:30:20.696
overwhelm, stress, anxiety, confusion.

512
00:30:22.136 --> 00:30:22.876
What are some other ones?

513
00:30:23.176 --> 00:30:26.037
You feeling a little depressed, a little FOMO, lonely.

514
00:30:26.617 --> 00:30:27.437
What are some other ones?

515
00:30:27.457 --> 00:30:28.777
I think you nailed it.

516
00:30:28.817 --> 00:30:29.597
Those are all the ones.

517
00:30:29.637 --> 00:30:30.717
Yeah.

518
00:30:31.078 --> 00:30:32.738
Anger, frustration.

519
00:30:33.358 --> 00:30:35.658
Your brain also, by the way, is your friend.

520
00:30:35.798 --> 00:30:38.819
If you don't want to feel them, your brain is you and doesn't want to feel them either.

521
00:30:39.119 --> 00:30:42.200
Your brain is designed to help you and problem solve.

522
00:30:42.220 --> 00:30:44.300
So it goes, well, we're overwhelmed.

523
00:30:45.483 --> 00:30:45.803
this?

524
00:30:46.424 --> 00:30:47.384
How do I avoid this?

525
00:30:47.904 --> 00:30:50.165
So it's going to try to solve the problem.

526
00:30:50.806 --> 00:30:53.767
Now, there's two ways to solve what you're overwhelmed about, right?

527
00:30:54.168 --> 00:30:58.030
You could either deal with it head on, which sounds like a heck of a lot of work, or you could avoid it.

528
00:30:58.170 --> 00:30:58.330
No?

529
00:30:59.110 --> 00:30:59.911
Emotional avoidance.

530
00:31:01.351 --> 00:31:08.235
Now, what's the fastest and easiest way in the modern world we can avoid what's going on inside of us?

531
00:31:09.368 --> 00:31:11.569
TikTok, Shake Shack, pornography.

532
00:31:13.210 --> 00:31:15.112
So we immediately go numb.

533
00:31:15.732 --> 00:31:18.474
And I think normalizing that is the first step.

534
00:31:19.054 --> 00:31:22.717
Because what our phones have done for us is created an exit.

535
00:31:23.817 --> 00:31:27.820
A very fast, cheap exit to reality.

536
00:31:28.842 --> 00:31:33.745
I know you would have heard about those studies where they put people in a room and give them the opportunity to electrocute themselves.

537
00:31:34.125 --> 00:31:42.510
So essentially the study is people get electrocuted before the study starts and then they're put in a room on their own with a button that would electrocute them again.

538
00:31:42.890 --> 00:31:48.253
They describe before the study starts on average being willing to pay to not be electrocuted again.

539
00:31:48.273 --> 00:31:51.195
But once they're put alone with this electrocution button...

540
00:31:51.855 --> 00:31:54.637
Many people continue to shock themselves over and over again.

541
00:31:54.998 --> 00:31:57.199
And in the study, men shock themselves more than women.

542
00:31:57.720 --> 00:32:06.407
One particular guy in the study electrocuted himself hundreds of times when left alone and being asked to sit and do nothing.

543
00:32:06.747 --> 00:32:12.592
And the conclusion from the study is that we'd rather electrocute ourselves than sit alone in silence these days.

544
00:32:13.693 --> 00:32:15.515
And do you know what?

545
00:32:15.735 --> 00:32:19.378
It sounds crazy, but in a way that's kind of what we're doing with our phones.

546
00:32:20.375 --> 00:32:25.838
In a way, when my phone dies, and I'm just going to be honest, because I don't think there's any point in me trying to fucking pretend I'm something I'm not.

547
00:32:26.658 --> 00:32:32.721
When my phone dies, it's like a mild feeling of anxiety when my phone dies.

548
00:32:33.142 --> 00:32:34.502
And I'm most certainly addicted to my phone.

549
00:32:35.043 --> 00:32:37.604
I spend an unbelievable amount of hours with that thing.

550
00:32:37.624 --> 00:32:40.565
I probably pick it up 200 times a day just to check.

551
00:32:41.086 --> 00:32:43.327
So we're going to remove the phone when we're doing deep work.

552
00:32:43.347 --> 00:32:44.788
We're going to turn off notifications.

553
00:32:45.348 --> 00:32:46.929
As it relates to the phone, anything else?

554
00:32:47.489 --> 00:32:47.750
Yes.

555
00:32:47.950 --> 00:32:48.150
Okay.

556
00:32:48.170 --> 00:32:48.691
There's plenty.

557
00:32:49.532 --> 00:33:01.668
I liken what the tech, big tech essentially, what technology has done to really honestly hijack the brain and make it addicted.

558
00:33:01.688 --> 00:33:03.490
I find...

559
00:33:04.820 --> 00:33:11.423
that it is eerily similar to how the food industry got us addicted to sugar and processed food.

560
00:33:12.443 --> 00:33:19.366
My humble belief is that it's the exact same three-part framework, and it's the playbook was copied nearly identically.

561
00:33:19.687 --> 00:33:21.948
We have obviously a fundamental need to eat.

562
00:33:22.448 --> 00:33:28.010
Now, if you look at the food industry, how might we hijack biology and the brain?

563
00:33:28.070 --> 00:33:30.231
Yeah, I know, evil fingers.

564
00:33:30.331 --> 00:33:33.433
How might we hijack the brain?

565
00:33:34.613 --> 00:33:41.156
to actually get it addicted to sugar and to processed food if we know there's a fundamental need there.

566
00:33:41.716 --> 00:33:49.640
Well, how you do that is you increase the stimulation of the food, and you do that by actually just injecting sugar wherever you can.

567
00:33:49.660 --> 00:33:59.584
I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but here in the United States, look on the back label of pretty much any loaf of bread that you want to buy, and there's sugar in it.

568
00:34:01.102 --> 00:34:01.743
I can bake bread.

569
00:34:01.783 --> 00:34:05.846
You don't need sugar necessarily to make a loaf of bread, right?

570
00:34:05.866 --> 00:34:07.207
It doesn't have to be a sweet loaf.

571
00:34:08.368 --> 00:34:09.229
But lo and behold, there it is.

572
00:34:09.249 --> 00:34:13.392
So we're injecting all of this sugar and increasing the stimulation of the food, right?

573
00:34:13.952 --> 00:34:15.293
And that's how you can get somebody hooked.

574
00:34:15.474 --> 00:34:18.936
Now, why would humans be already sort of naturally addicted to sugar?

575
00:34:18.996 --> 00:34:20.277
Because food used to be scarce.

576
00:34:20.318 --> 00:34:21.138
It's hard to find.

577
00:34:21.559 --> 00:34:25.902
So we're naturally going to be inclined to these things that are indicators of jackpots, right?

578
00:34:26.082 --> 00:34:29.003
Salt, fat, sugar, yummy, yummy, yummy.

579
00:34:29.023 --> 00:34:31.244
It's how you make food really delicious, right?

580
00:34:31.284 --> 00:34:35.946
And we're all naturally inclined to desire those things and covet those things and be really, really stimulated by them.

581
00:34:36.346 --> 00:34:38.267
So what you do is you inject those yummy, yummy things.

582
00:34:38.467 --> 00:34:40.668
So you're increasing the stimulation of your food.

583
00:34:40.808 --> 00:34:41.589
Oh, it's so amazing.

584
00:34:41.909 --> 00:34:43.590
Then you decrease the friction.

585
00:34:43.910 --> 00:34:45.670
Let's make it easier for people to get this stuff.

586
00:34:46.131 --> 00:34:54.034
You make everything adorably packaged and portioned out so that, and you make it easy and easy, fast, like fast food, fast, easily accessible, right?

587
00:34:54.214 --> 00:34:55.454
And available all of the time.

588
00:34:55.474 --> 00:34:56.515
So you're decreasing the friction.

589
00:34:56.535 --> 00:34:58.495
You no longer need to make yourself something.

590
00:34:58.515 --> 00:34:59.255
You don't need to make a meal.

591
00:34:59.275 --> 00:34:59.796
We have fast food.

592
00:34:59.816 --> 00:35:00.736
It's right there, right available.

593
00:35:01.276 --> 00:35:01.856
Open up a bar.

594
00:35:02.136 --> 00:35:02.476
Good to go.

595
00:35:03.757 --> 00:35:05.777
Then you decrease the satiation.

596
00:35:06.177 --> 00:35:11.499
You decrease the satiation by removing the parts of food that make food satiating.

597
00:35:11.639 --> 00:35:13.199
Because remember, this is a fundamental need.

598
00:35:13.339 --> 00:35:14.240
I'm hungry.

599
00:35:14.980 --> 00:35:16.760
I want to eat something.

600
00:35:16.880 --> 00:35:18.621
Satiating being full.

601
00:35:18.761 --> 00:35:19.301
Being full.

602
00:35:19.581 --> 00:35:19.761
Yes.

603
00:35:19.821 --> 00:35:21.442
My body needs things that would make me full.

604
00:35:21.462 --> 00:35:22.842
And what makes us full in food?

605
00:35:23.860 --> 00:35:24.341
Protein.

606
00:35:26.384 --> 00:35:26.765
Fiber.

607
00:35:27.386 --> 00:35:27.786
Candy.

608
00:35:29.449 --> 00:35:31.112
Nope, there's no protein, there's no fiber.

609
00:35:31.552 --> 00:35:33.415
So the food industry has figured this out.

610
00:35:35.098 --> 00:35:36.220
Technology's done the same thing.

611
00:35:37.300 --> 00:35:38.461
They've done the exact same thing.

612
00:35:38.481 --> 00:35:39.821
They follow the exact same playbook.

613
00:35:40.161 --> 00:35:46.184
They increase the stimulation by increasing this color saturation of the icons and the light that's emitted from the screen.

614
00:35:46.465 --> 00:35:50.887
So your actual technology looks more visually stimulating.

615
00:35:51.187 --> 00:35:57.150
And that visual stimulation, as we were talking about before, huge part of your cortex is your visual cortex, your occipital lobe.

616
00:35:57.790 --> 00:36:00.632
So it's super, super stimulated by all of that color saturation.

617
00:36:00.652 --> 00:36:02.232
So it's like, oh, my gosh, think of like a casino.

618
00:36:02.653 --> 00:36:05.194
You've never been to a casino and you're like, oh, they went with neutrals.

619
00:36:05.554 --> 00:36:05.814
Yeah.

620
00:36:05.934 --> 00:36:06.475
You know what I mean?

621
00:36:06.795 --> 00:36:08.736
It's all the colors, all the time, all the lights.

622
00:36:09.116 --> 00:36:09.776
It's all the things.

623
00:36:10.417 --> 00:36:12.298
So it's stimulating and you keep looking at it.

624
00:36:12.558 --> 00:36:17.020
The other way that we've increased the stimulation with technology is short form reels.

625
00:36:18.101 --> 00:36:18.881
Short form content.

626
00:36:19.281 --> 00:36:24.884
Super, super fast, TikTok style, so that it's uber stimulating and you can't look away.

627
00:36:25.585 --> 00:36:29.186
And by the way, there's an entire field, intermittent variable rewards.

628
00:36:29.547 --> 00:36:31.588
You get these jackpots once in a while.

629
00:36:32.410 --> 00:36:32.611
Right.

630
00:36:33.212 --> 00:36:37.283
What's fascinating about the algorithm, by the way, and your algorithm, I'm sure, is exactly the same.

631
00:36:38.408 --> 00:36:40.949
Your algorithm knows you really, really well.

632
00:36:41.830 --> 00:36:44.851
And it knows what content you're going to love that day.

633
00:36:44.891 --> 00:36:47.272
So it's got all this like saved up content for you.

634
00:36:47.292 --> 00:36:49.473
So it's got like, ooh, Stephen's going to love this.

635
00:36:49.993 --> 00:36:51.234
He's really going to love this.

636
00:36:51.474 --> 00:36:54.275
Because he even liked this thing like a week ago, like something like this.

637
00:36:54.655 --> 00:36:58.057
Okay, and it's got this treasure trove of stuff that it's holding for you.

638
00:36:58.457 --> 00:37:01.238
You get on to one of these apps and you start scrolling.

639
00:37:01.338 --> 00:37:04.720
It's not going to show you the stuff it knows you're going to love.

640
00:37:04.780 --> 00:37:05.420
Not in the beginning.

641
00:37:05.500 --> 00:37:06.701
That's bad business, don't you think?

642
00:37:07.605 --> 00:37:08.867
You just came into the store.

643
00:37:09.929 --> 00:37:11.331
You have all the energy in the world.

644
00:37:11.351 --> 00:37:12.433
You obviously have nothing better to do.

645
00:37:12.794 --> 00:37:13.835
So you've now sat down.

646
00:37:14.296 --> 00:37:16.600
And in the beginning, I can show you meh content.

647
00:37:16.720 --> 00:37:19.124
I can just show you like, in the beginning.

648
00:37:19.890 --> 00:37:24.633
Because I have your attention and it knows how long it has your attention.

649
00:37:24.673 --> 00:37:25.814
Every person is a little bit different.

650
00:37:26.074 --> 00:37:38.421
So it knows how long it can just serve you up medium to like low entertaining content and interesting content before you say to yourself, I'm done.

651
00:37:38.441 --> 00:37:39.262
This is boring.

652
00:37:39.282 --> 00:37:41.003
I'm going to get off and I'm going to go do something else.

653
00:37:41.303 --> 00:37:43.725
It knows the moment you're about to do that and right before you do that.

654
00:37:44.564 --> 00:37:45.404
hits you with the jackpot.

655
00:37:45.424 --> 00:37:46.845
Boom, die of a CEO clip.

656
00:37:46.865 --> 00:37:47.585
Like that, bang.

657
00:37:47.986 --> 00:37:49.026
Bang, exactly.

658
00:37:49.486 --> 00:37:50.267
It's like, there he is.

659
00:37:50.287 --> 00:37:51.327
It's that Bartlett again.

660
00:37:51.667 --> 00:37:52.588
And I can't look away.

661
00:37:52.848 --> 00:37:54.489
People are watching this reel right now.

662
00:37:54.509 --> 00:37:54.749
Right now.

663
00:37:54.769 --> 00:37:55.829
And they're thinking, this was the one.

664
00:37:55.849 --> 00:37:56.850
I was just about to bounce.

665
00:37:57.430 --> 00:37:58.111
This is the one.

666
00:37:58.311 --> 00:37:59.171
You love this, right?

667
00:37:59.431 --> 00:37:59.951
You love this.

668
00:38:00.052 --> 00:38:01.412
But there's science behind this.

669
00:38:01.452 --> 00:38:06.234
I remember being 16 years old in psychology class and reading about the pigeons and variable rewards.

670
00:38:06.315 --> 00:38:06.735
Totally.

671
00:38:07.395 --> 00:38:11.077
What is this variable rewards phenomenon?

672
00:38:11.097 --> 00:38:11.197
Yeah.

673
00:38:11.837 --> 00:38:13.959
Oh my gosh, it's so, humans are fascinating.

674
00:38:14.400 --> 00:38:17.183
I find humans to be the coolest thing in the known universe.

675
00:38:17.843 --> 00:38:19.245
We're so ridiculous.

676
00:38:21.607 --> 00:38:28.034
Human beings, believe it or not, do not love consistent reward.

677
00:38:29.155 --> 00:38:33.780
We become more addicted when it's in fact intermittent and somewhat variable.

678
00:38:34.713 --> 00:38:37.935
So when we don't know when it's coming, but we know it's coming.

679
00:38:38.035 --> 00:38:38.235
Yeah.

680
00:38:38.295 --> 00:38:41.197
This is, I have a whole theory on like people who are in toxic relationships.

681
00:38:41.778 --> 00:38:43.379
Like seriously, think about like love bombing.

682
00:38:44.019 --> 00:38:45.160
This is the science of love bombing.

683
00:38:45.180 --> 00:38:47.021
Like I'm an asshole, I'm an asshole, I'm like ghosting you.

684
00:38:47.041 --> 00:38:49.403
And then bam, oh, I hit you with a bunch of love.

685
00:38:49.423 --> 00:38:52.565
And people are like, oh my, and then they become addicted to these toxic fucking relationships.

686
00:38:53.305 --> 00:38:54.045
Similar concept.

687
00:38:54.665 --> 00:38:56.126
So the algorithm works exactly the same way.

688
00:38:56.466 --> 00:39:00.887
If it showed you every single thing that you wanted to see, by the way, only diary of a CEO clips.

689
00:39:00.907 --> 00:39:01.188
That's it.

690
00:39:01.348 --> 00:39:01.848
The whole feed.

691
00:39:02.828 --> 00:39:03.948
For like five hours straight.

692
00:39:04.889 --> 00:39:06.409
It's just like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

693
00:39:07.129 --> 00:39:09.270
Believe it or not, you'd be less likely to get addicted.

694
00:39:09.350 --> 00:39:13.251
We're addicted to like the, you know, just mess with me.

695
00:39:13.651 --> 00:39:15.072
I don't know when the good stuff's coming.

696
00:39:15.112 --> 00:39:15.892
I don't know when it's coming.

697
00:39:15.912 --> 00:39:16.832
This is how casinos work.

698
00:39:16.853 --> 00:39:17.933
This is how slot machines work.

699
00:39:18.538 --> 00:39:19.279
You lose.

700
00:39:19.899 --> 00:39:22.742
Dude, you know that slot machines are programmed.

701
00:39:22.762 --> 00:39:23.763
It's a computer program.

702
00:39:24.363 --> 00:39:25.204
It's all math.

703
00:39:25.604 --> 00:39:31.170
They want you to lose a bunch of money, be in the red, and then have you make up $1.50 and then be like, oh, I'm back in.

704
00:39:31.650 --> 00:39:33.752
And this is the game.

705
00:39:33.872 --> 00:39:34.893
This is the human game.

706
00:39:35.213 --> 00:39:35.393
So...

707
00:39:36.154 --> 00:39:37.775
The algorithm works exactly the same.

708
00:39:37.815 --> 00:39:39.696
That's how they increased the stimulation.

709
00:39:40.517 --> 00:39:43.638
So then they also decreased the friction just like food.

710
00:39:44.339 --> 00:39:47.120
Here you have the infinite scroll.

711
00:39:47.521 --> 00:39:49.041
We've literally removed the backstops.

712
00:39:49.302 --> 00:39:53.204
Do you remember the early days of, like, YouTube and Instagram?

713
00:39:54.004 --> 00:39:57.226
You only, by the way, saw the things that you followed, that you subscribed to.

714
00:39:57.666 --> 00:39:58.347
By the way, subscribe.

715
00:39:59.287 --> 00:40:07.373
But like this is the point is actually the subscription model allows you to curate your feed a little bit more and say this is what I want to see, not the rest of this bullshit, right?

716
00:40:08.153 --> 00:40:08.934
When people don't.

717
00:40:08.954 --> 00:40:11.315
And so the algorithm will just be like this, this.

718
00:40:11.415 --> 00:40:11.816
How about this?

719
00:40:11.856 --> 00:40:12.496
How about this other thing?

720
00:40:12.516 --> 00:40:13.177
How about this other thing?

721
00:40:13.437 --> 00:40:14.818
It's just getting you to shop around.

722
00:40:15.318 --> 00:40:18.100
But most importantly, it's we've removed the backstop.

723
00:40:18.180 --> 00:40:20.642
Now we have something called the infinite scroll.

724
00:40:21.342 --> 00:40:25.387
And the infinite scroll is like going to a buffet and just opening your mouth.

725
00:40:25.467 --> 00:40:28.931
And there's just an assembly line of food and candy just going straight in.

726
00:40:29.612 --> 00:40:29.752
Right.

727
00:40:29.772 --> 00:40:30.633
There's no backstop.

728
00:40:30.653 --> 00:40:31.775
It just keeps going.

729
00:40:32.062 --> 00:40:33.063
It used to be pagination.

730
00:40:33.083 --> 00:40:35.184
It used to be like page one, page two, page three.

731
00:40:35.284 --> 00:40:35.625
Totally.

732
00:40:35.845 --> 00:40:36.605
In the early internet.

733
00:40:36.665 --> 00:40:37.766
Now it's just infinite.

734
00:40:37.826 --> 00:40:38.547
There's no end.

735
00:40:38.567 --> 00:40:40.088
You're not going to reach the end of TikTok.

736
00:40:40.108 --> 00:40:40.728
It's not going to happen.

737
00:40:41.108 --> 00:40:42.930
I don't know if you remember this or if people remember this.

738
00:40:42.950 --> 00:40:43.610
There was an end.

739
00:40:44.371 --> 00:40:48.113
I remember when Instagram first came out, you would literally like run out of things to see and then you'd be like, that's it.

740
00:40:49.134 --> 00:40:50.035
That's all for today.

741
00:40:50.295 --> 00:40:54.018
Come back tomorrow for maybe, maybe your friend posted another picture of their sandwich.

742
00:40:54.298 --> 00:40:55.479
Like you'd reach the end.

743
00:40:55.519 --> 00:40:56.339
There's no longer an end.

744
00:40:56.359 --> 00:40:58.581
So that's decreasing the friction.

745
00:40:58.861 --> 00:40:59.642
There's no friction anymore.

746
00:40:59.682 --> 00:40:59.762
It's

747
00:41:02.304 --> 00:41:04.945
Then they also decrease the satiation.

748
00:41:05.646 --> 00:41:11.470
This is extremely important, Stephen, going back to that fundamental need for human connection.

749
00:41:12.811 --> 00:41:19.876
We have a fundamental need, like the same need we have for food, to be connected to one another, to be social, to feel a sense of belonging.

750
00:41:20.578 --> 00:41:26.541
What a social media has done is it's created the illusion of social connection.

751
00:41:27.181 --> 00:41:33.164
Because we have the data to support the longer you spend on these apps and on these platforms, the lonelier you are.

752
00:41:33.744 --> 00:41:34.504
So you're lonely.

753
00:41:35.064 --> 00:41:36.005
I'm disconnected.

754
00:41:36.225 --> 00:41:36.965
I'm at home.

755
00:41:37.586 --> 00:41:39.386
I have a sense of loneliness and FOMO.

756
00:41:39.727 --> 00:41:41.247
And I'm seeking connection.

757
00:41:41.287 --> 00:41:42.868
I want to go meet this need.

758
00:41:42.928 --> 00:41:45.149
I have this fundamental need for connection and belonging.

759
00:41:45.469 --> 00:41:47.150
And I want to then go meet this need.

760
00:41:47.170 --> 00:41:47.470
Right.

761
00:41:47.490 --> 00:41:48.191
So what do I do?

762
00:41:48.491 --> 00:41:52.597
Well, the fastest, cheapest, and easiest way to do that is grab my phone.

763
00:41:52.978 --> 00:41:55.301
You get on and you think that you're meeting that need.

764
00:41:55.341 --> 00:41:56.042
It's like candy.

765
00:41:57.598 --> 00:41:59.559
So let's say you're hungry for dinner.

766
00:42:00.079 --> 00:42:03.702
Your body is craving things that actually make you full, nutrients that you need.

767
00:42:04.282 --> 00:42:09.165
But the thing is, if I gave you a bag of Skittles or something, then you might be thinking, well, Sahara, it's calories.

768
00:42:09.185 --> 00:42:10.145
Aren't calories calories?

769
00:42:10.606 --> 00:42:11.306
It's food, right?

770
00:42:11.866 --> 00:42:12.667
It tastes good.

771
00:42:12.707 --> 00:42:13.367
It's calories.

772
00:42:13.407 --> 00:42:14.468
And it's going to meet that need.

773
00:42:14.508 --> 00:42:14.948
I'm hungry.

774
00:42:14.988 --> 00:42:15.829
It's going to meet that need.

775
00:42:16.329 --> 00:42:18.891
Well, darling, what's going to happen when you eat candy when you're hungry?

776
00:42:19.571 --> 00:42:20.552
I'm sure you've done this before.

777
00:42:20.592 --> 00:42:21.112
At least I've done it.

778
00:42:21.132 --> 00:42:23.513
And if you say no, then you're the healthiest human and I must study you.

779
00:42:23.533 --> 00:42:23.914
Of course I have.

780
00:42:23.934 --> 00:42:24.034
Okay.

781
00:42:24.956 --> 00:42:26.497
But I want to eat more Skittles later.

782
00:42:26.777 --> 00:42:27.678
Okay, there we go.

783
00:42:27.918 --> 00:42:28.498
That's the problem.

784
00:42:28.558 --> 00:42:33.041
If I have these junk calories, then in six hours time, I'm back looking for more junk calories.

785
00:42:33.141 --> 00:42:33.522
Exactly.

786
00:42:33.842 --> 00:42:36.624
Shoots up, then everything crashes down.

787
00:42:36.924 --> 00:42:38.405
Another law of biology.

788
00:42:38.445 --> 00:42:39.586
What goes up must come down.

789
00:42:40.306 --> 00:42:41.767
So what does this look like when we're scrolling?

790
00:42:42.067 --> 00:42:43.668
I seek a sense of belonging.

791
00:42:44.049 --> 00:42:45.670
I'm seeking also, by the way, stimulation.

792
00:42:45.710 --> 00:42:51.093
We have a fundamental need for novelty and learning, which, by the way, I think is it podcasts do this.

793
00:42:51.213 --> 00:42:53.355
Think about the difference between some.

794
00:42:54.383 --> 00:43:04.785
30-second reel that someone has made, and then they inject like two quick facts versus sitting down and actually sinking into a multi-hour show.

795
00:43:06.205 --> 00:43:07.526
You're attracted to both.

796
00:43:08.986 --> 00:43:10.766
One is a lot harder to sit through than the other.

797
00:43:11.527 --> 00:43:14.087
But what I'm telling you is this is what's actually going to satiate you.

798
00:43:14.667 --> 00:43:20.388
You have, we all do, have a natural fundamental need for learning and novelty.

799
00:43:20.909 --> 00:43:22.509
Because again, survival.

800
00:43:23.428 --> 00:43:27.812
Because this new piece of information might be a huge unlock for me to thrive even more in this world.

801
00:43:28.073 --> 00:43:31.916
This is the hijack of social media and short-form content.

802
00:43:32.317 --> 00:43:40.585
Is you think you're getting that, but I promise you, just like with the Skittles, you end up getting off and you don't remember anything that you, by the way, you just watched.

803
00:43:41.565 --> 00:43:41.985
Test it.

804
00:43:42.445 --> 00:43:43.306
Seriously, I'm not kidding.

805
00:43:44.066 --> 00:43:46.507
Do this quick short form for a while.

806
00:43:46.867 --> 00:43:49.628
And in the moment, you're like, oh, my gosh, I just learned a fun fact about this.

807
00:43:49.668 --> 00:43:51.048
And this is you think you're learning.

808
00:43:51.789 --> 00:43:52.429
It's an illusion.

809
00:43:52.789 --> 00:43:59.311
What I believe we're, by the way, Stephen, up for right now is I think the world is waking up to this now.

810
00:43:59.411 --> 00:44:01.172
And this is going to be the new big thing.

811
00:44:03.012 --> 00:44:04.453
reverse uno, as I call it.

812
00:44:04.933 --> 00:44:06.855
They use neuroscience to get us hooked.

813
00:44:07.395 --> 00:44:11.198
And I think we can use reverse neuroscience to reverse this entire thing.

814
00:44:11.778 --> 00:44:15.601
If they increase the stimulation, as we talked about before, you reduce it.

815
00:44:15.921 --> 00:44:17.943
And the ways in which you reduce the stimulation...

816
00:44:19.120 --> 00:44:21.162
One, if you keep your phone in gray.

817
00:44:21.402 --> 00:44:29.449
So literally going into something like grayscale makes the phone less neurologically stimulating, so it's a heck of a lot easier for you to actually get off your phone.

818
00:44:29.549 --> 00:44:30.690
You do this in settings.

819
00:44:31.251 --> 00:44:36.475
And again, this is, by the way, a beautiful example of the default settings are not here to help you.

820
00:44:36.855 --> 00:44:41.519
The default settings are here to help them make money off of your attention and your time.

821
00:44:42.100 --> 00:44:43.882
So you are better than the default settings, Stephen.

822
00:44:44.562 --> 00:44:45.803
I am better than the default settings.

823
00:44:45.904 --> 00:44:48.466
Everyone who's listening, you are better than the default settings.

824
00:44:48.807 --> 00:44:51.890
Push back against the default settings and put your phone in gray.

825
00:44:52.270 --> 00:44:54.713
When you do that, your phone is immediately, it looks dead to you.

826
00:44:54.973 --> 00:44:57.796
It's way easier to not go from app to app to app to app.

827
00:44:58.117 --> 00:45:02.581
And then do that thing where we mindlessly scroll, especially late at night when our willpower is low.

828
00:45:02.601 --> 00:45:05.625
And then you're like, I'm just going to check for a second, just for a second.

829
00:45:06.105 --> 00:45:10.689
And then you find yourself just gorging essentially on this and binging on content.

830
00:45:10.849 --> 00:45:17.315
Have they ever tested that engagement with devices when they are in grayscale or in a different color saturation?

831
00:45:17.435 --> 00:45:19.036
Or is it just generally what the neuroscience points to?

832
00:45:19.456 --> 00:45:20.117
I've tested it.

833
00:45:20.577 --> 00:45:25.121
So in my lab, we took a large sample of healthy working professionals.

834
00:45:25.501 --> 00:45:29.625
And all I did was turn their phones into gray and ask them to stay in gray for three weeks.

835
00:45:29.965 --> 00:45:30.265
That's it.

836
00:45:30.486 --> 00:45:30.706
Mm-hmm.

837
00:45:31.086 --> 00:45:35.770
And we saw, on average, people spent one hour less on their phones every single day.

838
00:45:36.010 --> 00:45:36.210
Wow.

839
00:45:36.490 --> 00:45:37.511
That's seven hours a week.

840
00:45:38.352 --> 00:45:41.895
The way I always talk about, that's the difference between you getting that workout in.

841
00:45:42.355 --> 00:45:43.016
Yeah, that's crazy.

842
00:45:43.036 --> 00:45:43.616
Do you know what I mean?

843
00:45:43.636 --> 00:45:44.277
It's crazy.

844
00:45:44.337 --> 00:45:47.779
When you go around and you talk to these busy people, they're like, oh, yeah, I'm trying to do this.

845
00:45:47.819 --> 00:45:48.600
I want to read that book.

846
00:45:48.640 --> 00:45:52.483
I want to listen to your podcast even, but I just don't have the time.

847
00:45:52.923 --> 00:45:55.806
Well, darling, just making this one tiny change will give you an hour back a day.

848
00:45:55.826 --> 00:45:56.666
That's seven hours a week.

849
00:45:56.686 --> 00:45:57.987
Think about what you could do with that time.

850
00:45:58.928 --> 00:46:01.070
Next is choosing long form over short form.

851
00:46:01.610 --> 00:46:01.970
Thank you.

852
00:46:03.211 --> 00:46:04.032
Did you hear that?

853
00:46:04.572 --> 00:46:05.193
She's from Berkeley.

854
00:46:05.213 --> 00:46:06.354
That's an amazing university.

855
00:46:06.834 --> 00:46:07.455
She's a doctor.

856
00:46:08.996 --> 00:46:10.177
Long, no, it's true though.

857
00:46:10.277 --> 00:46:12.478
She also said subscribe if you didn't catch that.

858
00:46:12.499 --> 00:46:13.299
If you didn't catch that.

859
00:46:14.500 --> 00:46:15.741
No, but honestly, it's true.

860
00:46:15.801 --> 00:46:17.062
It's really, it's not like made up.

861
00:46:17.602 --> 00:46:23.367
Short form content has even been shown, by the way, in some cases to increase attention spans.

862
00:46:24.581 --> 00:46:25.121
Completely agree.

863
00:46:25.582 --> 00:46:26.142
Of course you do.

864
00:46:26.182 --> 00:46:26.463
Yeah, yeah.

865
00:46:26.663 --> 00:46:28.364
It's like no one's paying me to say this.

866
00:46:28.905 --> 00:46:34.829
But no, long-form content, like a film, like a good film, has been shown to increase empathy in young people.

867
00:46:35.090 --> 00:46:35.810
Just think about that.

868
00:46:36.351 --> 00:46:39.974
So, like, again, the message is not, oh, my God, technology is bad.

869
00:46:40.054 --> 00:46:41.215
All screen time is evil.

870
00:46:41.255 --> 00:46:42.015
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

871
00:46:42.115 --> 00:46:42.796
No, no, no, no, no.

872
00:46:43.397 --> 00:46:45.518
I'm a huge fan of your content diet.

873
00:46:45.578 --> 00:46:48.321
Like, make sure, like, whatever – if you want to sit down and watch a movie –

874
00:46:49.061 --> 00:46:50.802
Sit down and watch a movie.

875
00:46:50.882 --> 00:46:52.444
Like, get into your pajamas.

876
00:46:52.524 --> 00:46:54.265
Make a bowl of popcorn.

877
00:46:54.305 --> 00:46:55.226
Like, romanticize it.

878
00:46:55.246 --> 00:46:56.146
Turn the lights down.

879
00:46:56.947 --> 00:46:58.248
You'll put Netflix on.

880
00:46:59.549 --> 00:47:00.870
Everyone's also got the phone out.

881
00:47:01.850 --> 00:47:03.191
So they're doing two things at once.

882
00:47:03.552 --> 00:47:08.515
This has just become, like, we've accepted this apparently, that you no longer have people's undivided attention.

883
00:47:08.896 --> 00:47:14.880
So the way in which we're making content now is assuming that someone is looking at something else as well.

884
00:47:16.337 --> 00:47:17.478
This is so sad.

885
00:47:18.098 --> 00:47:25.303
And please tell me how, if this is how bad our attention spans have gotten, how are, first of all, kids supposed to learn in school?

886
00:47:25.763 --> 00:47:31.907
You told me that you have this interest in becoming superhuman to experiencing the full potential of your own mind.

887
00:47:32.768 --> 00:47:36.330
How are you supposed to do that if you can't even pay attention to a fucking movie anymore?

888
00:47:36.350 --> 00:47:37.391
Do you know what's funny?

889
00:47:37.451 --> 00:47:38.432
I was watching, um...

890
00:47:39.489 --> 00:47:43.392
I was watching a complicated old movie last night.

891
00:47:43.812 --> 00:47:44.492
Complicated?

892
00:47:44.712 --> 00:47:48.395
It's one of those ones where if you miss a word, the next three hours is, you're lost.

893
00:47:48.455 --> 00:47:48.615
Oh yeah.

894
00:47:48.755 --> 00:47:57.821
Because they've named a planet Kololubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubulubul

895
00:47:58.101 --> 00:48:01.024
I was having to pay so much attention to this movie.

896
00:48:01.624 --> 00:48:02.905
And I remember this from my childhood.

897
00:48:02.945 --> 00:48:05.708
I used to just sit there on the sofa with my family and just look at the screen.

898
00:48:06.288 --> 00:48:14.675
But it was like I was resisting an urge now in 2026 when watching this very complicated old movie, as if there's now a mismatch between the media

899
00:48:15.436 --> 00:48:19.279
that I'm used to versus the way that I, and many of us live our lives.

900
00:48:19.339 --> 00:48:21.500
And it's just, it was just super front of mind.

901
00:48:21.520 --> 00:48:27.104
Cause I just remember it's trying to like the, the effort I was putting into, to stay focused on this movie last night.

902
00:48:27.785 --> 00:48:31.448
I'm in trying to make sure I understood every single word, but I never, I never did that when I was younger.

903
00:48:31.808 --> 00:48:32.869
You would just sit there and watch.

904
00:48:33.209 --> 00:48:34.089
You just sit there and watch.

905
00:48:34.350 --> 00:48:38.453
There might be some people at some level thinking, yeah, but I love short form.

906
00:48:39.393 --> 00:48:39.834
I love it.

907
00:48:40.794 --> 00:48:41.635
I love candy too.

908
00:48:43.637 --> 00:48:45.838
If we have too much short form, we already know this.

909
00:48:46.118 --> 00:48:46.879
You're more depressed.

910
00:48:47.319 --> 00:48:48.099
You're more anxious.

911
00:48:48.419 --> 00:48:49.760
Your attention span is shot.

912
00:48:50.541 --> 00:48:51.701
Like, why would you want that?

913
00:48:52.181 --> 00:49:00.045
You literally feel shittier, and your brain operates at a lower level, cognitively speaking, if you overconsume this stuff.

914
00:49:00.085 --> 00:49:01.166
And it's your choice, by the way.

915
00:49:01.206 --> 00:49:06.829
I'm not here to tell people how to live their lives, but I want people to wake up to realize, one, the fundamental needs are there.

916
00:49:07.069 --> 00:49:08.610
So my goal is for you to meet those needs.

917
00:49:09.290 --> 00:49:13.713
And the way that you do that to increase the satiation is you actually go learn something new.

918
00:49:14.193 --> 00:49:18.076
You actually spend time IRL in real life with real human beings.

919
00:49:19.196 --> 00:49:25.100
Hold people, touch people, talk to people, have dinner parties, have conversations, hang out with your friends, your family.

920
00:49:25.480 --> 00:49:28.902
Actually meet that fundamental need for social connection.

921
00:49:29.383 --> 00:49:35.907
And if you do that, you will notice that you're full and you will magically actually like short form less.

922
00:49:36.507 --> 00:49:43.650
You are far less likely to lose yourself scrolling until two o'clock in the morning and then feeling like shit the next day because you didn't get enough sleep.

923
00:49:43.930 --> 00:49:56.895
I think that feeling like shit the next day is a good way to navigate life, which I heard Jack Dorsey back in a couple of years ago when he was still at Twitter talk about one of them new metrics was reducing regrettable minutes.

924
00:49:58.036 --> 00:50:05.666
And this idea of like regrettable minutes, I think is, because with Skittles, honestly, they would feel good in a moment, but I'd probably regret if I had a massive bag of Skittles.

925
00:50:05.826 --> 00:50:10.512
Probably regret it in a couple of hours, probably the next day, because, you know, send you on a bit of a roller coaster.

926
00:50:11.173 --> 00:50:12.134
And with Skittles,

927
00:50:12.610 --> 00:50:25.259
platforms like TikTok, when you look at the data, they found that 60% of active TikTok users experience negative welfare and would rather live in a world where it didn't exist, where the platform didn't exist.

928
00:50:25.619 --> 00:50:34.105
It ranks as number one in terms of regret in this regard, because people report that their time was distorted.

929
00:50:34.165 --> 00:50:39.609
They opened the app and lost an hour or two hours, and they walk away from it without clarity on what they gained.

930
00:50:40.690 --> 00:50:44.651
So, um, this idea of regret, like, okay, Skittles tastes nicer.

931
00:50:44.671 --> 00:50:51.714
It was, it was cool to scroll for a second, but how did I feel thereafter is something that I, um, I guess in the food analogy is pertinent.

932
00:50:51.994 --> 00:50:52.154
Yeah.

933
00:50:53.114 --> 00:50:54.534
I'm telling you, we're waking up.

934
00:50:55.095 --> 00:50:55.835
People are waking up.

935
00:50:55.915 --> 00:50:57.095
Young people are waking up.

936
00:50:57.175 --> 00:50:58.716
That's the, that's the coolest thing.

937
00:50:58.896 --> 00:51:05.358
I saw the graphs from the Financial Times, which showed time spent online had started to plateau since 2022 for young people first.

938
00:51:05.478 --> 00:51:05.678
Yeah.

939
00:51:06.140 --> 00:51:06.560
Thank God.

940
00:51:07.141 --> 00:51:10.364
I mean, but listen, it's still a push.

941
00:51:10.584 --> 00:51:10.804
Yeah.

942
00:51:11.284 --> 00:51:23.295
So the stats are less than half of graduating high school seniors have ever been on a date compared to what was, I believe, something like 80 or 90 percent.

943
00:51:24.810 --> 00:51:26.151
And I would say our generation.

944
00:51:26.171 --> 00:51:28.052
That's crazy.

945
00:51:28.092 --> 00:51:29.173
That's crazy.

946
00:51:29.193 --> 00:51:37.218
I think something like, what is it, a third of UK nightclubs are also now, like engagement in the nightclub scene has gone down to a third.

947
00:51:38.099 --> 00:51:42.542
Dinner parties, there's this recent piece in The Atlantic that just came out about this sort of the death of dinner parties.

948
00:51:42.582 --> 00:51:45.764
So people are spending increasingly more time alone.

949
00:51:45.784 --> 00:51:45.884
Yeah.

950
00:51:47.183 --> 00:51:48.083
And not with others.

951
00:51:48.383 --> 00:51:49.044
So they're hungry.

952
00:51:49.504 --> 00:51:58.806
Unfortunately, these platforms are taking advantage of that perpetual hunger and keeping us locked into the cycle of distraction.

953
00:51:59.307 --> 00:52:02.547
And now, by the way, it's socially appropriate for us to always hold our phones.

954
00:52:02.567 --> 00:52:03.688
It's always in our pocket.

955
00:52:03.988 --> 00:52:14.591
So one of the best things that you can do is actually to aim it is to introduce portion control back into how you are consuming content.

956
00:52:15.111 --> 00:52:15.892
portion control.

957
00:52:16.232 --> 00:52:17.453
So you increase the friction.

958
00:52:17.474 --> 00:52:21.277
You do things like that phone parking lot bit, like put your phone out of sight, out of mind.

959
00:52:21.677 --> 00:52:23.019
Turn the notifications off.

960
00:52:23.039 --> 00:52:25.381
Turning the notifications off would be decreasing the stimulation.

961
00:52:25.841 --> 00:52:31.847
But increasing the friction is, listen, if I'm telling you this stuff is addictive and you want,

962
00:52:32.760 --> 00:52:35.642
to do less of it, don't have it right there.

963
00:52:36.383 --> 00:52:44.769
It's like sitting down with someone who is freshly trying to become sober as an alcoholic and just be like, you don't mind if I just put this beer down in front of you, do I?

964
00:52:45.534 --> 00:52:45.854
Or do you?

965
00:52:45.874 --> 00:52:48.096
Just as you're working and going about your day?

966
00:52:48.116 --> 00:52:49.817
No, I think the Skittles analogy is pretty good.

967
00:52:49.857 --> 00:52:55.201
Like, I wouldn't walk around with Skittles in my pocket, because if I did, I'd eat them every time I was stressed or bored.

968
00:52:55.502 --> 00:52:55.882
Totally.

969
00:52:56.002 --> 00:52:56.222
So.

970
00:52:56.763 --> 00:52:59.785
This process is what I advocate.

971
00:53:00.005 --> 00:53:04.068
I think every young person in the entire world should learn this and know this.

972
00:53:04.569 --> 00:53:05.690
I speak mostly to...

973
00:53:06.850 --> 00:53:10.196
older adults, so parents, and they're tired of being bad cop at home.

974
00:53:10.918 --> 00:53:14.404
They're constantly like, oh, get off your phone, get off this, get off that.

975
00:53:14.705 --> 00:53:16.568
So I think this ought to be taught in schools.

976
00:53:17.914 --> 00:53:22.256
This has had probably the single biggest impact on my office.

977
00:53:22.516 --> 00:53:34.921
Of all the products that I've tried that have given me productivity gains or cognitive boosts, I would say that exogenous ketones are in the top three most pivotal things that have given me a massive productivity gain.

978
00:53:35.041 --> 00:53:43.445
It's some Stanford graduates that have been able to basically bottle up the effect you get from being in a ketogenic diet in a small shot.

979
00:53:44.025 --> 00:53:48.666
that you can take that makes you feel incredibly focused and gives your brain an incredible source of energy.

980
00:53:48.746 --> 00:53:52.467
And the clinical studies that have been done on exogenous ketones have absolutely blown my mind.

981
00:53:52.827 --> 00:53:56.947
I reached out to them, I became a co-owner in the company, I became an investor in the company.

982
00:53:57.147 --> 00:53:59.368
And so it's with great pride that I can tell you that this exists.

983
00:53:59.428 --> 00:54:05.549
If you haven't tried these shots, go to ketone.com slash Stephen for 30% off your subscription order.

984
00:54:05.769 --> 00:54:08.589
And you'll also get a free gift with your second shipment.

985
00:54:08.910 --> 00:54:11.210
I still buy my ketone shots predominantly online,

986
00:54:11.590 --> 00:54:19.335
But thankfully, I can now grab them at Target whenever I drive past them here in the United States as well, because we're now stocked in Target, where your first shot is completely free.

987
00:54:20.176 --> 00:54:25.560
Ever talk to new founders, they all carry the same belief that the biggest threat to their small business is having a bad product.

988
00:54:25.980 --> 00:54:26.320
It's not.

989
00:54:26.520 --> 00:54:35.046
The biggest threat they face is hiring the wrong person for their small team, because bad hires put the handbrake on growth and rapidly infect company culture.

990
00:54:35.186 --> 00:54:35.687
And I get it.

991
00:54:35.947 --> 00:54:41.692
When you're starting out, you need A players to grow your company, but you don't have 40 spare hours to spend sifting through interviews.

992
00:54:41.913 --> 00:54:45.876
So you hire fast to fill the seat, but this ends up costing you even more in the long term.

993
00:54:46.077 --> 00:54:50.941
What any small business actually needs is a reliable and efficient way to find the right talent without stalling momentum.

994
00:54:51.061 --> 00:54:54.825
That's where our long-term sponsor LinkedIn and LinkedIn Hiring Pro can help you.

995
00:54:55.025 --> 00:55:02.568
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996
00:55:02.748 --> 00:55:07.830
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997
00:55:08.011 --> 00:55:14.553
Hire right the first time around and get started by posting your first job for free at linkedin.com slash doac.

998
00:55:14.673 --> 00:55:16.914
That's linkedin.com slash doac.

999
00:55:16.994 --> 00:55:18.095
In terms and conditions apply.

1000
00:55:19.380 --> 00:55:24.324
What I really want, quite selfishly, is advice on how to do deep work better.

1001
00:55:25.604 --> 00:55:28.747
Because deep work is something that, I mean, all of my team have to do deep work.

1002
00:55:28.767 --> 00:55:30.788
They have to edit code, could be right.

1003
00:55:30.948 --> 00:55:33.530
We're doing a lot more writing than ever before, in part because of AI.

1004
00:55:33.550 --> 00:55:35.892
So we're trying to push against that.

1005
00:55:35.932 --> 00:55:43.017
But in a world that is so distracted, where my phone is there, what advice would you give me for doing deep work predictably well?

1006
00:55:43.898 --> 00:55:48.040
What we call in our lab and in our work, deep work, is a focus sprint.

1007
00:55:48.780 --> 00:55:51.181
Now, a focus sprint is a method of working.

1008
00:55:51.822 --> 00:56:02.427
It's a method of working that, according to research, our research, has allowed people to do up to two times as much as they would otherwise do, while also reducing the number of mistakes.

1009
00:56:03.116 --> 00:56:06.239
And you feel better because, again, you're working in line with your brain and your body.

1010
00:56:06.799 --> 00:56:09.842
You don't have that sense of friction where it's like, oh, my gosh, I'm exhausted.

1011
00:56:10.263 --> 00:56:11.864
You know, after doing one of these sprints, right?

1012
00:56:11.964 --> 00:56:13.906
It feels good to do that kind of deep work.

1013
00:56:14.266 --> 00:56:15.367
So a focus sprint is the method.

1014
00:56:15.808 --> 00:56:16.308
First step.

1015
00:56:16.488 --> 00:56:18.210
How many steps are there in a focus sprint?

1016
00:56:19.925 --> 00:56:20.506
There are five steps.

1017
00:56:20.526 --> 00:56:21.547
There are five steps.

1018
00:56:21.727 --> 00:56:24.571
So these five steps will make me 200% more productive.

1019
00:56:25.612 --> 00:56:29.597
First, set aside time in your calendar in advance to block the time off.

1020
00:56:30.519 --> 00:56:33.963
You benefit from essentially anticipatory networks in the brain and body.

1021
00:56:34.023 --> 00:56:36.606
So if you know, for example, that you have...

1022
00:56:37.737 --> 00:56:38.857
A speech that you need to give.

1023
00:56:39.318 --> 00:56:40.038
A presentation.

1024
00:56:40.618 --> 00:56:45.500
What's the feeling that you get before, like, some big event or a big speech that you need to give, like, some butterflies?

1025
00:56:45.800 --> 00:56:45.900
Yeah.

1026
00:56:45.920 --> 00:56:48.501
You get this, like, increase in cortisol and adrenaline, right?

1027
00:56:48.601 --> 00:56:52.322
I mean, think about how interesting, amazing our biology is.

1028
00:56:52.682 --> 00:56:53.763
I am sitting at rest.

1029
00:56:55.878 --> 00:57:14.733
And even though I am sitting at rest, because I am anticipating that I'm about to get up and maybe do some public speaking, my brain is going to help me by giving me an extra boost in cortisol and adrenaline and all these amazing things so that I'm a little bit more focused and high energy and I can deal with the thing.

1030
00:57:15.233 --> 00:57:15.914
It's a bit of a stressor.

1031
00:57:16.254 --> 00:57:19.417
So, you know, especially if someone has a fear of public speaking, they might be sitting there and they're like,

1032
00:57:20.257 --> 00:57:22.960
You know, heart rate goes up, their hands start to get clammy.

1033
00:57:22.980 --> 00:57:26.304
Those are all the markers of physiological arousal, as we know them to be.

1034
00:57:26.665 --> 00:57:31.090
So we know that if you know a focus sprint is coming, you're going to get a little boost.

1035
00:57:31.611 --> 00:57:33.513
So I'm a huge fan of set it up, know it's coming.

1036
00:57:33.533 --> 00:57:36.296
Like, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to do a one-hour focus sprint, okay?

1037
00:57:36.316 --> 00:57:36.456
Mm-hmm.

1038
00:57:37.077 --> 00:57:44.320
The other beautiful thing about this from a team perspective is if your team can see your calendar, they can all see that you're sitting down to do a focus sprint because your calendar is public.

1039
00:57:44.800 --> 00:57:49.842
So it also deals a little bit with that social guilt people feel and that feeling that they need to stay.

1040
00:57:50.542 --> 00:57:52.202
I need to be responsive to all the things.

1041
00:57:52.763 --> 00:57:58.705
And now that you've done that, you go to step two, which is you've got to identify what the heck you're going to do and you need to define it.

1042
00:57:59.595 --> 00:58:02.476
You need to break it down in clear, simple terms.

1043
00:58:02.956 --> 00:58:09.339
So instead of saying, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to work on X, unless you're going to finish X, that's not going to feel good.

1044
00:58:09.359 --> 00:58:11.120
This has everything to do with dopamine, by the way.

1045
00:58:12.240 --> 00:58:16.102
Dopamine is the brain's primary, consider it a motivation molecule.

1046
00:58:16.622 --> 00:58:25.706
So it's going to get us not only excited and motivated to do a task, but it's also going to reward us a bit if we really do more than we even expected, especially.

1047
00:58:26.747 --> 00:58:28.208
Which brings me to a few pieces of advice.

1048
00:58:28.448 --> 00:58:30.370
One, you've got your massive to-do list, yes?

1049
00:58:31.050 --> 00:58:32.712
You're going to shop from that to-do list.

1050
00:58:33.152 --> 00:58:36.895
And you're going to say, in this focus sprint, I'm going to take out this one piece, this one.

1051
00:58:36.915 --> 00:58:40.637
So you have your massive to-do list and you're like, that's the one thing I'm going to focus on, right?

1052
00:58:40.958 --> 00:58:41.498
Just this one.

1053
00:58:41.958 --> 00:58:46.362
And then you're going to take that one and then you're going to break it down into small manageable pieces.

1054
00:58:46.382 --> 00:58:47.723
You're going to break it down.

1055
00:58:48.630 --> 00:58:49.971
And you're going to time block every piece.

1056
00:58:50.351 --> 00:58:52.733
You're going to say, instead of saying, oh, I'm going to work on this deck.

1057
00:58:52.914 --> 00:58:54.315
I'm not going to finish it, but I'm going to work on it.

1058
00:58:54.335 --> 00:58:59.299
You're going to say, I'm going to work on slide three for about, I think it'll take me about seven minutes to finish that slide.

1059
00:58:59.819 --> 00:59:04.243
Then I actually need to probably send a follow-up email to John for the data that I need for slide 17.

1060
00:59:04.723 --> 00:59:07.766
Then I'm going to work on this table that I want to put here and then blah, blah, blah.

1061
00:59:08.427 --> 00:59:12.552
I want to see in granular detail what the execution list is.

1062
00:59:13.113 --> 00:59:18.240
And this, by the way, increases your dopamine for getting this work done.

1063
00:59:18.440 --> 00:59:20.223
If you're not going to finish it, how is that motivating?

1064
00:59:21.577 --> 00:59:23.857
So the goal becomes an output, not the input.

1065
00:59:24.658 --> 00:59:25.338
A hundred percent.

1066
00:59:25.398 --> 00:59:25.598
Okay.

1067
00:59:25.618 --> 00:59:26.258
That's an interesting one.

1068
00:59:26.278 --> 00:59:29.498
Because I think a lot of us do create a goal, which is an input.

1069
00:59:29.519 --> 00:59:35.840
Like I'm going to do, I'm going to work on this thing, or I'm going to, I'm going to think about this, or I'm going to strategize this.

1070
00:59:36.260 --> 00:59:40.821
Not like the output, which is the thing that's going to be measurable and come out of this work.

1071
00:59:41.021 --> 00:59:41.621
Yeah.

1072
00:59:41.641 --> 00:59:41.781
Okay.

1073
00:59:41.801 --> 00:59:42.741
That's, that's really interesting.

1074
00:59:42.761 --> 00:59:44.341
It's the outcome with a breakdown.

1075
00:59:44.621 --> 00:59:46.222
Like I want to see an execution list.

1076
00:59:46.742 --> 00:59:47.882
That feels like a lot of work.

1077
00:59:48.810 --> 00:59:49.451
I'm not kidding.

1078
00:59:50.251 --> 00:59:51.993
Give me a minute and a half.

1079
00:59:52.033 --> 00:59:52.794
Here's the problem.

1080
00:59:53.314 --> 00:59:56.037
People start something, and I'm sure you've experienced this too.

1081
00:59:56.717 --> 01:00:13.153
Then the moment they get done with, let's say, step 1B, and they don't immediately know what step 1C is or what step 2 is, and it's not clearly outlined, and it's not just, hey, execution mode like a machine, they go, what's the next step?

1082
01:00:13.193 --> 01:00:13.934
What should I do next?

1083
01:00:15.580 --> 01:00:17.121
People, that's when you lose people.

1084
01:00:17.181 --> 01:00:19.021
That's when you lose your focus.

1085
01:00:19.202 --> 01:00:21.643
In deciding what the next step is, this is a sprint.

1086
01:00:22.323 --> 01:00:25.704
I don't want you to figure out how to play the game when you're in the middle of the game.

1087
01:00:26.024 --> 01:00:28.045
We need to outline what the heck the game is.

1088
01:00:28.445 --> 01:00:30.326
And then you're going to go into it and be like, let's go.

1089
01:00:30.666 --> 01:00:31.007
Sprint.

1090
01:00:31.407 --> 01:00:32.427
And we go, go, go, go, go.

1091
01:00:32.727 --> 01:00:33.788
So you block the time.

1092
01:00:33.828 --> 01:00:35.729
You've communicated to the people on your team.

1093
01:00:35.749 --> 01:00:36.589
They know what's happening.

1094
01:00:36.609 --> 01:00:39.830
You're benefiting from all those amazing hormones and those anticipatory networks.

1095
01:00:40.210 --> 01:00:43.692
Then step two, step two, you set the goal.

1096
01:00:43.712 --> 01:00:43.812
Yeah.

1097
01:00:44.315 --> 01:00:47.417
And the goal is an output and it's specific and it's broken down into sub goals.

1098
01:00:47.657 --> 01:00:47.897
Yes.

1099
01:00:48.137 --> 01:00:52.399
And by the way, you've got in here a diary.

1100
01:00:54.080 --> 01:01:02.324
So if you've got a daily planner of sorts, something like this, I want you to treat your to-do list, your massive task list.

1101
01:01:02.384 --> 01:01:03.124
I know you got one.

1102
01:01:03.144 --> 01:01:06.046
We all have one like your refrigerator.

1103
01:01:07.323 --> 01:01:08.924
Do you have urgent items on your to-do list?

1104
01:01:08.944 --> 01:01:09.685
Like, what is the thing?

1105
01:01:09.705 --> 01:01:10.645
Did you defrost chicken?

1106
01:01:11.046 --> 01:01:12.407
Because that's a ticking time bomb.

1107
01:01:12.427 --> 01:01:13.247
That needs to get used.

1108
01:01:13.547 --> 01:01:22.354
So every single day, you wake up in the morning and you're about to choose what are my, I call these, by the way, in our lab, MITs, your most important tasks.

1109
01:01:23.134 --> 01:01:32.481
Your MITs or your most important tasks are the one, two, maximum three things on any given day that you would want to accomplish if you want your day to be a success.

1110
01:01:33.306 --> 01:01:35.608
So we've got a little chart there, I think, of the MITs, right?

1111
01:01:36.028 --> 01:01:36.469
Yeah, we do.

1112
01:01:36.929 --> 01:01:44.475
Every single day, I want you to, in a way, open up the refrigerator, open up the pantry, open up the freezer.

1113
01:01:44.535 --> 01:01:49.539
And I want you to ask yourself, first, first, how much time do I have available today?

1114
01:01:49.759 --> 01:01:50.300
Three hours.

1115
01:01:51.341 --> 01:01:52.381
That's a good day.

1116
01:01:53.162 --> 01:01:53.923
That's a good day.

1117
01:01:53.963 --> 01:01:55.284
Like uninterrupted focus time.

1118
01:01:55.885 --> 01:01:58.246
Not uninterrupted, but I can make it uninterrupted.

1119
01:01:58.286 --> 01:01:58.646
Beautiful.

1120
01:01:58.666 --> 01:01:59.586
We'll take it.

1121
01:01:59.606 --> 01:02:00.466
Three hours is beautiful.

1122
01:02:00.667 --> 01:02:00.827
Yeah.

1123
01:02:01.367 --> 01:02:08.729
Now you open up the fridge, the pantry, and the freezer, and you ask yourself, with this three hours, what are my MITs?

1124
01:02:08.809 --> 01:02:13.010
What are the most important tasks that if I were to do them today would make my day a success?

1125
01:02:13.971 --> 01:02:20.713
Another phrasing for this that we've done research on is, what will your future self thank you for?

1126
01:02:21.596 --> 01:02:21.856
Mm.

1127
01:02:23.337 --> 01:02:25.817
It's an interesting question because we often reach for the easiest things.

1128
01:02:26.458 --> 01:02:30.459
And there's the thing that we're not quite ready to do yet because we don't have the information.

1129
01:02:30.479 --> 01:02:33.060
And, you know, maybe it's a little bit out of our era of competence.

1130
01:02:33.080 --> 01:02:34.080
We don't like finance.

1131
01:02:34.100 --> 01:02:35.421
We don't like investment.

1132
01:02:35.441 --> 01:02:36.481
We don't like operations.

1133
01:02:36.521 --> 01:02:39.742
So we avoid that and we kind of, you know, it's like opening the fridge, as you say.

1134
01:02:40.162 --> 01:02:43.583
And we reach for the thing that we know we love, like, and we do that.

1135
01:02:43.983 --> 01:02:45.924
Those are LITs.

1136
01:02:45.944 --> 01:02:47.785
LITs, like an email email.

1137
01:02:48.771 --> 01:02:50.632
a DocuSign, right?

1138
01:02:50.932 --> 01:02:54.815
I always say like toilet paper from Amazon or something, whatever.

1139
01:02:55.155 --> 01:03:01.959
Like the little tiny things that will take five minutes, a couple minutes, but it makes me feel like I can cross something off.

1140
01:03:02.039 --> 01:03:03.000
And it's like, I've done the thing.

1141
01:03:03.040 --> 01:03:03.600
I've done the thing.

1142
01:03:03.640 --> 01:03:04.141
I've done the thing.

1143
01:03:04.341 --> 01:03:08.864
These are the easy things to do that make me feel a sense of progress.

1144
01:03:09.444 --> 01:03:14.027
We consider these, by the way, these LITs, fast dopamine.

1145
01:03:15.467 --> 01:03:24.971
And my humble opinion is most of the things that push our businesses forward, the things that push our lives forward are typically here to the right.

1146
01:03:25.051 --> 01:03:26.292
They're the slow dopamine bits.

1147
01:03:27.473 --> 01:03:30.215
And I'm not suggesting, by the way, that you don't do LITs.

1148
01:03:30.736 --> 01:03:42.305
My suggestion is you identify one, two, or a maximum of three MITs that are actually going to push you towards your goals, your long-term goals of things that actually matter.

1149
01:03:42.845 --> 01:03:46.548
And I assure you the LITs will fill in all of the other nooks and crannies for your day.

1150
01:03:46.588 --> 01:03:50.952
Like if you've got an uninterrupted hour, that's when you attack one of these MITs.

1151
01:03:51.272 --> 01:03:54.755
And then if you've got 15 minutes between some meetings and calls, you shove the LITs in there.

1152
01:03:54.955 --> 01:03:56.696
So MIT's are most important goals.

1153
01:03:56.836 --> 01:03:58.157
MIT's are least important goals.

1154
01:03:58.277 --> 01:03:58.757
Mm-hmm.

1155
01:03:59.137 --> 01:03:59.377
Okay.

1156
01:03:59.797 --> 01:04:07.521
So going back to the focus sprint, when we said step two is set the goal, what you would ideally do, and this is, by the way, you could do one of two different kinds of sprints.

1157
01:04:07.902 --> 01:04:09.322
You could do a sprint on one MIT.

1158
01:04:10.783 --> 01:04:15.189
And what you would do is you take that MIT and then you would actually break it down into small manageable chunks.

1159
01:04:15.609 --> 01:04:16.150
Okay, okay.

1160
01:04:16.170 --> 01:04:23.479
In order for me to do that big MIT today in this one hour of time, I'm going to spend 20 minutes on this, 15 minutes on this, five minutes on this, three minutes on this.

1161
01:04:24.220 --> 01:04:25.421
So you make an execution list.

1162
01:04:25.441 --> 01:04:27.183
Or you could do an LIT sprint.

1163
01:04:27.524 --> 01:04:28.285
You could do like 15 LITs.

1164
01:04:29.424 --> 01:04:32.208
Are we assuming that people will know what the MIT is?

1165
01:04:33.390 --> 01:04:37.316
Like, I look at this list of 69 things on my to-do list.

1166
01:04:38.037 --> 01:04:41.422
How do I, is there a way for me to know which one is the most important?

1167
01:04:42.238 --> 01:04:53.263
If you don't know, then I would urge us to take an even further step back and sort of do a bit of awareness training on what your long-term goals are.

1168
01:04:54.084 --> 01:04:58.686
Where do you want to be, both personally and professionally, let's say, in five years?

1169
01:04:59.066 --> 01:04:59.806
What is your Everest?

1170
01:05:00.326 --> 01:05:01.147
What is your Everest?

1171
01:05:02.438 --> 01:05:07.283
If you have a sense of what your Everest is, you then ought to have a sense of what your next step is.

1172
01:05:07.563 --> 01:05:09.825
If Everest is that way, you're not going to go this way.

1173
01:05:10.366 --> 01:05:11.887
That way is also quite dangerous.

1174
01:05:12.668 --> 01:05:13.489
And I will say this.

1175
01:05:13.549 --> 01:05:19.534
This is, I'm a huge fan of talking about death because I find that it puts everything into perspective.

1176
01:05:20.095 --> 01:05:24.339
My humble opinion is that the best framing is to really think about yourself on your deathbed.

1177
01:05:25.557 --> 01:05:33.018
is if you take yourself onto your deathbed and you think to yourself, and truly, by the way, you can visualize this right now, even with me.

1178
01:05:33.778 --> 01:05:39.680
Let's say you're the tender age of 110 with all of the modern technology and longevity medicine that's going to come out.

1179
01:05:40.760 --> 01:05:53.522
What, looking back on your life, do you need to have experienced, accomplished, done, in order for you to leave with a smile on your face?

1180
01:05:55.195 --> 01:05:58.036
To just say, it's been real.

1181
01:06:00.257 --> 01:06:00.837
I did good.

1182
01:06:00.857 --> 01:06:02.558
I had an amazing life.

1183
01:06:03.058 --> 01:06:04.919
I did what I wanted to do here, and I'm ready to go.

1184
01:06:06.580 --> 01:06:07.220
See what's next.

1185
01:06:09.621 --> 01:06:12.042
What's your answer to that?

1186
01:06:15.824 --> 01:06:16.784
I want to have loved.

1187
01:06:18.125 --> 01:06:18.505
Deeply.

1188
01:06:21.683 --> 01:06:25.866
I want to, and this is my own, and I don't know where this comes from.

1189
01:06:25.886 --> 01:06:29.149
We probably need a therapist on with us to unpack this one.

1190
01:06:29.189 --> 01:06:31.911
But I'm a firm believer in servant leadership.

1191
01:06:32.131 --> 01:06:36.054
I think I've been put on the planet to help in whatever ways that I can.

1192
01:06:36.675 --> 01:06:41.979
So my job is to serve and to make this world a better place with what I do and what I can bring to the table.

1193
01:06:42.960 --> 01:06:43.801
And that's my obsession.

1194
01:06:44.579 --> 01:06:54.022
And it's come at a great cost of not doing a lot of other things and not having a lot of what maybe other people see as fun or personal sacrifices.

1195
01:06:54.182 --> 01:07:04.445
But it seems to be the flavor of my mind is that I'm squarely focused on building better systems for humanity.

1196
01:07:07.745 --> 01:07:14.954
It was very clarifying when you asked me to do that as well, because when I closed my eyes and started thinking about my deathbed, I was in a room.

1197
01:07:15.655 --> 01:07:18.098
And what I noticed was, first and foremost, who was there.

1198
01:07:18.839 --> 01:07:19.760
That was like the first thing.

1199
01:07:20.220 --> 01:07:22.003
And then my second thing was, what do they think of me?

1200
01:07:23.304 --> 01:07:33.472
So I imagined my romantic interest being here, and then I imagined all of my kids being around the bed, and I imagined what they thought of their dying father.

1201
01:07:34.252 --> 01:07:36.514
And there was really like three things that I wanted them to think.

1202
01:07:36.534 --> 01:07:41.378
I wanted them to think that I achieved things that they can too, and to be evidence of that.

1203
01:07:41.838 --> 01:07:45.281
The second one was around that I'd made the world a better place.

1204
01:07:45.541 --> 01:07:49.744
So they were clear on the philanthropic impact that their father had had.

1205
01:07:49.764 --> 01:07:50.425
Yeah.

1206
01:07:50.745 --> 01:07:58.871
So that was really clarifying because it basically gave me three clear priorities, which are like family and having a big family, being a good role model to them.

1207
01:07:59.051 --> 01:08:02.814
And then them having evidence that me being here was net positive to planet.

1208
01:08:03.595 --> 01:08:06.557
You know, but it was really clarifying because there's really three things that matter.

1209
01:08:07.197 --> 01:08:08.458
So that gives you your direction.

1210
01:08:08.478 --> 01:08:09.319
Yeah, it does.

1211
01:08:09.499 --> 01:08:13.582
So if you wake up every single morning, now with that level of clarity.

1212
01:08:14.163 --> 01:08:17.045
I can go, the Skittles are not going to bring me closer.

1213
01:08:17.863 --> 01:08:18.763
Fuck the Skittles.

1214
01:08:19.043 --> 01:08:19.703
Yeah, fuck Skittles.

1215
01:08:19.723 --> 01:08:20.403
Like, what is that?

1216
01:08:20.623 --> 01:08:21.924
Like, in what way?

1217
01:08:21.964 --> 01:08:29.405
Like, who on their deathbed is sitting around and going, damn, I wished I watched more Netflix?

1218
01:08:29.605 --> 01:08:30.645
Netflix, please don't come after me.

1219
01:08:30.905 --> 01:08:41.107
Who's sitting around going, damn, I wish I spent more time scrolling and less time with my kids or less time on my mission, on my obsessive mission?

1220
01:08:41.367 --> 01:08:42.347
Like, nobody.

1221
01:08:48.360 --> 01:08:51.461
And she sat with many, many dying individuals.

1222
01:08:51.542 --> 01:08:54.463
What an honor to do such a thing.

1223
01:08:54.503 --> 01:09:04.488
Something that I hope to do in my lifetime is to sort of be, you know, exercise my death doula skills and to be with folks who are passing on.

1224
01:09:05.428 --> 01:09:10.730
And what an honor it is to sit with them because, oh boy, you get some clarity.

1225
01:09:11.611 --> 01:09:16.033
So she asked these people, what are your regrets?

1226
01:09:17.697 --> 01:09:20.541
And she would keep a log of the answers they gave.

1227
01:09:22.003 --> 01:09:32.618
And the number one regret across all of the people that she asked this question to who were dying was, I wish I lived a life more true to myself.

1228
01:09:34.220 --> 01:09:35.781
cared less about what others thought.

1229
01:09:36.641 --> 01:09:44.786
So for you, Stephen, it sounds like all that matters to you at the end of the day is what your family thought of your accomplishments and how you spent your time.

1230
01:09:45.246 --> 01:09:46.187
It's how you think.

1231
01:09:46.407 --> 01:09:49.929
And it's, by the way, it's not even them because you'll never really know what the other person thinks.

1232
01:09:50.889 --> 01:09:54.952
We come into this world alone and we do die alone, no matter how much we love each other.

1233
01:09:54.972 --> 01:09:56.693
This is a...

1234
01:09:57.916 --> 01:10:07.640
One of the paradoxes I find of love and human connection is that from that first cry that a newborn screams out when they're born, they're crying out for connection.

1235
01:10:07.720 --> 01:10:11.702
They're scared and they're saying, wait, I feel disconnection in this moment.

1236
01:10:11.742 --> 01:10:13.802
I was connected before and now I feel disconnected.

1237
01:10:13.822 --> 01:10:14.903
And they're seeking connection.

1238
01:10:15.503 --> 01:10:20.125
I think humans, we are seeking this connection and this belonging.

1239
01:10:21.490 --> 01:10:45.843
for the rest of our lives but the paradox of it the mindfuck of it if i may is we'll never get it we die alone like i will never understand your mind this is the fascinating thing about consciousness you have your consciousness i have mine and even moment to moment my consciousness now in this moment is different than it was the last moment i've changed

1240
01:10:47.539 --> 01:10:49.140
Things continue to change and evolve.

1241
01:10:49.200 --> 01:10:53.102
The same moment never repeats itself, which means the same self never repeats itself.

1242
01:10:53.162 --> 01:11:02.127
Every second that's going by, I am in fact Sahar, the 100 million da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and then the next moment it's another, and the next moment it's another.

1243
01:11:02.307 --> 01:11:05.529
We continue to be dynamic, but that's its own little rabbit hole.

1244
01:11:05.749 --> 01:11:15.795
But on that own little rabbit hole, there's moments, I completely agree and accept what you're saying, there are these moments when you just feel like your consciousness has changed

1245
01:11:17.383 --> 01:11:18.964
is doing the tango with someone else's.

1246
01:11:19.064 --> 01:11:19.985
It is intertwined.

1247
01:11:20.105 --> 01:11:29.950
And you can, as I say, everyone can think of those moments when you look at someone and you go, I don't know what it is, but at some deep level, me and this person are with, our consciousness is dancing.

1248
01:11:30.771 --> 01:11:31.391
It's connected.

1249
01:11:32.171 --> 01:11:33.272
And that's a very real thing.

1250
01:11:33.532 --> 01:11:37.675
I experienced it a lot on this podcast because, you know, I sit here with someone for three hours talking about their childhood trauma or whatever.

1251
01:11:38.275 --> 01:11:41.337
You feel a deep, deep sense of connection to this other human being sometimes.

1252
01:11:41.377 --> 01:11:44.979
It's almost, it can be a spiritual experience in a weird but enjoyable way.

1253
01:11:45.379 --> 01:11:46.761
I think you hit the nail on the head there.

1254
01:11:47.081 --> 01:11:48.102
I think it's spiritual.

1255
01:11:48.843 --> 01:11:49.684
I think it's energetic.

1256
01:11:50.825 --> 01:12:00.496
I think when we feel that experience of what, by the way, feels like flow, I don't know if it feels that way to you, but you feel in flow with the other.

1257
01:12:00.796 --> 01:12:04.640
Like if you and I can connect in that plane, and I felt it, by the way, even when.

1258
01:12:05.301 --> 01:12:09.583
when we were just doing that bit about the deathbed and talking about consciousness.

1259
01:12:09.683 --> 01:12:14.045
And I felt your eyes just all of a sudden zoomed in.

1260
01:12:14.645 --> 01:12:19.447
And I even was, I wasn't really focused on you necessarily in that moment.

1261
01:12:19.467 --> 01:12:26.310
There was something about me expressing, I think what is necessary for two humans to have that

1262
01:12:27.562 --> 01:12:35.510
flow together, that energetic dance together, is a loss of the sense of self.

1263
01:12:36.351 --> 01:12:43.899
I think the self must die in those moments, and it does when we completely lose ourselves in this we.

1264
01:12:45.282 --> 01:12:50.463
I think when we are stuck in our own self and identity, then I am aware of another.

1265
01:12:51.084 --> 01:12:52.984
I am aware of your perception of me.

1266
01:12:53.544 --> 01:12:55.625
And you will be aware of my perception of you.

1267
01:12:56.485 --> 01:13:12.250
But I think those moments where it feels just magic and we've completely blended, that I'm no longer thinking about you as an other and I as I. I and you have become this energetic we.

1268
01:13:12.270 --> 01:13:13.610
Mm-hmm.

1269
01:13:15.246 --> 01:13:16.647
But again, that bit more spiritual.

1270
01:13:16.967 --> 01:13:22.712
No, but it perfectly dovetails into work because we can all think of flow states where we dropped into work and three hours passed.

1271
01:13:22.792 --> 01:13:24.373
We had no idea that time was passing.

1272
01:13:24.393 --> 01:13:26.195
We were so in.

1273
01:13:26.895 --> 01:13:30.378
And it, to some degree, feels the same as those moments.

1274
01:13:30.738 --> 01:13:34.822
Like when I'm really into my work, I just, time does stop and I'm so glad it did.

1275
01:13:34.842 --> 01:13:36.183
I didn't even notice time was a thing.

1276
01:13:36.883 --> 01:13:38.485
And that's actually the same as being a podcast.

1277
01:13:38.505 --> 01:13:41.287
When you have really great conversations, you walk out and you go, what, four hours?

1278
01:13:41.307 --> 01:13:42.088
What the fuck happened?

1279
01:13:42.108 --> 01:13:43.489
Like, so...

1280
01:13:44.044 --> 01:13:44.304
Okay.

1281
01:13:44.624 --> 01:13:45.444
So you've set your goal.

1282
01:13:45.464 --> 01:13:46.745
You have your execution list.

1283
01:13:47.105 --> 01:13:48.045
You've taken your MIT.

1284
01:13:48.065 --> 01:13:49.045
You've broken it down.

1285
01:13:49.125 --> 01:13:52.406
You've made it as easy and simple as like a list of LITs.

1286
01:13:53.026 --> 01:13:59.448
Another way, by the way, to describe this is an MIT slow dopamine is like a rat going through a maze.

1287
01:13:59.468 --> 01:14:02.428
And there's a big hunk of cheese at the end of the maze, but that's a lot of work.

1288
01:14:02.488 --> 01:14:05.009
That is a long, arduous journey to get to that hunk of cheese.

1289
01:14:05.369 --> 01:14:10.470
Whereas fast dopamine and LITs are like little bits of cheese that you're like, can you just eat that crumb?

1290
01:14:10.590 --> 01:14:12.331
And it's like, sure, that seems easy enough.

1291
01:14:12.431 --> 01:14:13.151
Eat right there,

1292
01:14:14.111 --> 01:14:18.958
So the goal is to make your MITs as easy as a list of LITs.

1293
01:14:18.998 --> 01:14:23.664
And how you do that is you take that big hunk of cheese and you sprinkle it throughout the maze.

1294
01:14:24.325 --> 01:14:31.355
So you make your big Everest seem like a series of one step to the next step to the next step.

1295
01:14:31.675 --> 01:14:32.716
Lao Tzu said it best.

1296
01:14:33.096 --> 01:14:35.939
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

1297
01:14:36.960 --> 01:14:40.704
My husband just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

1298
01:14:40.964 --> 01:14:41.725
Oh, wow.

1299
01:14:42.265 --> 01:14:44.727
Amazing things that I do not choose to do.

1300
01:14:45.793 --> 01:14:46.573
You said no to that.

1301
01:14:46.893 --> 01:14:47.574
I said no to that.

1302
01:14:47.594 --> 01:14:48.534
That's exactly what there is.

1303
01:14:48.574 --> 01:14:49.614
I don't know how to say no.

1304
01:14:50.294 --> 01:14:52.455
It's typically with really difficult physical feats.

1305
01:14:53.716 --> 01:14:55.796
I have my own, but I prefer the mental ones.

1306
01:14:56.236 --> 01:14:58.157
But yeah, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

1307
01:14:58.777 --> 01:15:13.222
And when he came back, he said that the mantra of these amazing Sherpas that take you up and down, that come with you, by the way, they're superhuman, like literally running up and down this mountain, even with all of the elevation.

1308
01:15:13.242 --> 01:15:13.342
Yeah.

1309
01:15:14.224 --> 01:15:14.905
As if it's nothing.

1310
01:15:14.925 --> 01:15:15.985
It's like drinking water with them.

1311
01:15:16.005 --> 01:15:17.006
It's amazing.

1312
01:15:17.086 --> 01:15:18.627
And carrying a bunch of shit with them.

1313
01:15:18.647 --> 01:15:20.549
It's amazing, magic, magic.

1314
01:15:21.770 --> 01:15:23.771
But he came back and he said what really stuck with him.

1315
01:15:23.791 --> 01:15:25.953
And it's become a thing that we say to each other sometimes.

1316
01:15:27.014 --> 01:15:32.778
And all of these amazing guides would keep telling everybody, hey, pole pole.

1317
01:15:33.559 --> 01:15:34.360
Slowly, slowly.

1318
01:15:35.400 --> 01:15:36.181
Pole pole.

1319
01:15:36.341 --> 01:15:37.162
Pole pole.

1320
01:15:37.811 --> 01:15:38.832
Slowly, slowly.

1321
01:15:39.712 --> 01:15:40.873
It's the only way up to the top.

1322
01:15:41.454 --> 01:15:52.521
If all you focus on is the Everest, you will not get there if you don't focus on taking the step every day a little closer, a little closer, a little closer.

1323
01:15:53.101 --> 01:15:55.443
You speak to Olympic athletes, they do the exact same thing.

1324
01:15:55.743 --> 01:15:56.684
That's what I was thinking of.

1325
01:15:56.704 --> 01:16:04.973
I was thinking of seeing here with Sir David Browsford, who's the guy quoted in the first chapter of Atomic Habits, turning the British cycling team around marginal gains.

1326
01:16:05.033 --> 01:16:06.554
He's a good friend of mine on and off camera.

1327
01:16:06.734 --> 01:16:10.178
And everyone knows about the marginal gains idea, focus on the smallest things.

1328
01:16:10.498 --> 01:16:14.362
He said to me on air, he said he banned his team from thinking about the podium.

1329
01:16:15.143 --> 01:16:17.064
which is very much what you're saying as well.

1330
01:16:17.364 --> 01:16:19.526
And he really got them focused on like today's work.

1331
01:16:19.546 --> 01:16:23.788
So this phrase emerged that I say to my team, I've said it three times this week, pedals over podiums.

1332
01:16:24.329 --> 01:16:27.391
And what that means is like, really focus on the pedals today.

1333
01:16:27.411 --> 01:16:34.815
Because he said that when he had Christopher Hoy, you know, again, he took the British cycling team from being down and out to the greatest of all time.

1334
01:16:35.276 --> 01:16:36.817
When Christopher Hoy was thinking about

1335
01:16:38.138 --> 01:16:41.501
the world record or the podium or whatever, his time would get worse.

1336
01:16:41.581 --> 01:16:53.832
And when he got Christopher Hoy, if he got him to sort of drop into a meditative state and ban him thinking about that, not only would his time get better around the velodrome, but Christopher Hoy would get off the bike and say he couldn't remember the cycle.

1337
01:16:54.113 --> 01:16:54.233
Yes.

1338
01:16:54.776 --> 01:16:56.437
Which I think is this flow state.

1339
01:16:56.617 --> 01:16:57.378
It is.

1340
01:16:57.758 --> 01:17:13.207
Other remarkable thing that he said to me off camera was, he went, Stephen, when we started focusing on the small things and broke goals down into really, really small goals, people stopped leaving at 5pm and started staying till 1am in the morning because we felt like we were going somewhere.

1341
01:17:13.568 --> 01:17:19.711
And this is what I refer to from that conversation as the progress principle, which is like the feeling of progress.

1342
01:17:19.731 --> 01:17:19.811
Yes.

1343
01:17:20.092 --> 01:17:20.372
Yes.

1344
01:17:21.093 --> 01:17:25.478
And there's this incredible Harvard Business Review study where they ask people what their favorite day of work was.

1345
01:17:25.498 --> 01:17:27.120
And it was when they had a small feeling of progress.

1346
01:17:27.480 --> 01:17:31.805
So it really resonated with me when you said, turn the, like, MITs into these LITs.

1347
01:17:31.825 --> 01:17:34.968
Because the reason I like the LITs is because I get the progress principle.

1348
01:17:35.148 --> 01:17:35.388
Yes.

1349
01:17:35.629 --> 01:17:38.752
I get the, like, oh, I feel like I am going somewhere.

1350
01:17:38.792 --> 01:17:38.992
Yes.

1351
01:17:39.012 --> 01:17:39.092
Yes.

1352
01:17:39.633 --> 01:17:45.094
The MITs, it's hard to get that feeling unless you do what you just said, which is breaking them down.

1353
01:17:46.755 --> 01:17:48.795
Which brings us to step three, beautifully.

1354
01:17:48.815 --> 01:17:57.297
The best way to increase the signal or to get to X, whatever it may be, is to remove obstacles as opposed to adding.

1355
01:17:57.917 --> 01:17:58.917
Remove the obstacles.

1356
01:17:58.977 --> 01:18:00.397
Turn down the fucking noise.

1357
01:18:00.938 --> 01:18:04.578
And you turn down the noise by cutting distractions.

1358
01:18:05.959 --> 01:18:07.399
So now you've got your Everest.

1359
01:18:08.500 --> 01:18:10.241
Pole, pole, you know the next step.

1360
01:18:10.521 --> 01:18:11.281
Pole, pole.

1361
01:18:11.321 --> 01:18:11.882
I love that phrase.

1362
01:18:11.902 --> 01:18:13.302
Slowly, slowly, the next step.

1363
01:18:13.362 --> 01:18:14.243
And it's the same thing.

1364
01:18:14.263 --> 01:18:15.623
It's the pedal, not the podium.

1365
01:18:16.464 --> 01:18:17.664
Cut out the distractions.

1366
01:18:18.285 --> 01:18:19.285
Hygiene, hygiene, hygiene.

1367
01:18:19.305 --> 01:18:21.206
So phone out of sight, out of mind, notifications off.

1368
01:18:21.546 --> 01:18:25.989
If you're in a noisy environment or if you benefit from listening to music, then you put on headphones.

1369
01:18:26.289 --> 01:18:29.710
What is your opinion on listening to music to do work and putting headphones on?

1370
01:18:30.011 --> 01:18:30.751
What does the science say?

1371
01:18:31.301 --> 01:18:32.762
People are different, of course.

1372
01:18:33.422 --> 01:18:35.863
So some people seem to be distracted by it and they prefer silence.

1373
01:18:36.143 --> 01:18:39.924
And if you don't, if you cannot be in a silent environment, you may benefit from noise canceling.

1374
01:18:40.424 --> 01:18:40.584
Right?

1375
01:18:41.065 --> 01:18:55.610
I don't recommend listening to noise canceling or having noise canceling headphones on for more than three, four hours a day because you start to become overstimulated by the real sounds of the world around you because it changes your baseline of what the world ought to sound like.

1376
01:18:56.430 --> 01:19:00.552
And your brain starts to adjust and it starts to think, wow, this is the world.

1377
01:19:03.362 --> 01:19:05.682
No, darling, the world is much noisier than that.

1378
01:19:06.083 --> 01:19:08.703
So then the moment you don't have the noise canceling on, you become, you're like, oh, my God.

1379
01:19:08.723 --> 01:19:11.423
And you start getting anxious and you start becoming overstimulated.

1380
01:19:11.444 --> 01:19:15.124
And also your auditory system starts to actually adapt to the noise canceling.

1381
01:19:15.144 --> 01:19:18.145
So noise canceling, I would say use it for focus sprints only.

1382
01:19:18.165 --> 01:19:20.605
So if you told me you got three hours a day, that hits your three hours.

1383
01:19:20.865 --> 01:19:25.146
So you can use the noise canceling only for when maybe you want to do focus sprints, if you benefit from the silence.

1384
01:19:25.926 --> 01:19:30.087
If you're going to listen to music, ideally music with no lyrics at all.

1385
01:19:31.042 --> 01:19:32.844
or lyrics in a language that you don't understand.

1386
01:19:33.124 --> 01:19:44.354
You can also benefit from having one particular playlist that you invest in that your brain will, over time, if you invest in it, slowly associate with focus.

1387
01:19:45.135 --> 01:19:46.977
So you can have, like, a focus mode playlist.

1388
01:19:47.417 --> 01:19:49.719
You can have an email sprint, you know.

1389
01:19:50.680 --> 01:19:56.142
playlist, and then very, very different from what you might listen to to wind down after work or to sleep.

1390
01:19:56.162 --> 01:19:58.183
You should have different playlists for different brain states, okay?

1391
01:19:58.483 --> 01:20:00.864
So you've set yourself up in that way for success.

1392
01:20:03.866 --> 01:20:06.647
Then set a timer.

1393
01:20:07.747 --> 01:20:08.288
Set a timer.

1394
01:20:09.148 --> 01:20:17.092
Human beings, and fun fact, most mammals, are highly influenced by what are called markers of progress, which means if we see

1395
01:20:21.590 --> 01:20:24.632
Do you mean, is it time ticking down or time ticking up?

1396
01:20:25.072 --> 01:20:28.494
So is it going from 60 minutes down or is it going from zero to 60?

1397
01:20:28.634 --> 01:20:31.736
We're keenly interested in any sense of progress or progress bars.

1398
01:20:31.956 --> 01:20:32.196
Okay.

1399
01:20:32.316 --> 01:20:33.257
Yeah.

1400
01:20:33.637 --> 01:20:44.303
Having said that, where I find from a productivity standpoint, you will get a lot of interesting benefits is like just to hustle and to stay focused is seeing the time ticking down.

1401
01:20:44.963 --> 01:20:47.545
Using a very childlike example of cleanup songs.

1402
01:20:48.085 --> 01:20:50.707
Little kids are highly distractible creatures.

1403
01:20:51.207 --> 01:21:04.217
Now, if you ask them to, they've like strewn about all of their toys, let's say in a classroom, and you ask them to put their toys away, like put all the toys in the bins and da-da-da and clean up, they're going to, by the third thing they pick up, I guess best of luck, right?

1404
01:21:04.237 --> 01:21:07.139
They're off, they're looking at something else and they're distracted and playing.

1405
01:21:09.271 --> 01:21:11.412
Here comes the science of cleanup songs.

1406
01:21:11.912 --> 01:21:18.876
You teach all these kids, and this is true, by the way, across the world when they're little, teachers will teach them to have a cleanup song in class.

1407
01:21:19.697 --> 01:21:24.700
Now there is a clear beginning and a clear end to what they're trying to do.

1408
01:21:25.200 --> 01:21:26.380
And it keeps them focused.

1409
01:21:26.440 --> 01:21:27.441
It keeps them on task.

1410
01:21:27.821 --> 01:21:29.682
And they know the song is going to end.

1411
01:21:30.143 --> 01:21:38.047
And because the time is ticking by and the song is going to end, they all of a sudden start getting very goal-oriented and focused and they start putting the toys away, especially near the end of the song.

1412
01:21:38.506 --> 01:21:39.387
They're Parkinson's law.

1413
01:21:39.888 --> 01:21:44.673
Parkinson's law states that work will expand to fit the time that you give it.

1414
01:21:45.654 --> 01:21:50.260
So if you give yourself an hour to get the damn deck done, it'll probably take an hour.

1415
01:21:50.480 --> 01:21:52.663
If you give yourself five, it'll take five.

1416
01:21:53.427 --> 01:21:53.547
Yeah.

1417
01:21:54.148 --> 01:21:56.069
So time yourself.

1418
01:21:56.289 --> 01:21:58.071
By the way, time yourself with everything.

1419
01:21:58.351 --> 01:21:59.692
You need to clean your house.

1420
01:21:59.712 --> 01:22:00.553
You have some errands to run.

1421
01:22:01.234 --> 01:22:01.794
Time yourself.

1422
01:22:01.834 --> 01:22:02.995
You will just work faster.

1423
01:22:03.315 --> 01:22:06.478
This idea got stuck in my head about five years ago, so I'd like to stick it in some other people's heads.

1424
01:22:07.118 --> 01:22:11.722
I read this thing and it said the center point of your influence on this planet is the allocation of your time.

1425
01:22:12.703 --> 01:22:14.125
And I really tried to interrogate that.

1426
01:22:14.145 --> 01:22:14.966
I was like, is that really it?

1427
01:22:15.066 --> 01:22:20.031
Is the game of my life really, first and foremost, how I allocate my time?

1428
01:22:20.351 --> 01:22:24.335
Of course, then it's like, well, I show up or the things I allocate it to.

1429
01:22:24.676 --> 01:22:25.677
But the essence here...

1430
01:22:26.896 --> 01:22:42.692
Everything I described on my deathbed, having great relationships with my fiancé, having great relationships with my family, achievement, the age that I get to the deathbed, my health, all of it really is downstream from the allocation of my time.

1431
01:22:43.593 --> 01:22:44.534
What do I put my time on?

1432
01:22:44.554 --> 01:22:44.994
Going to the gym?

1433
01:22:45.014 --> 01:22:45.635
Yeah.

1434
01:22:47.062 --> 01:22:48.263
or do I put it on something else?

1435
01:22:48.283 --> 01:22:56.206
And I just think that's a really important point, because when we talk about saving time and treating time in such a precious way, one of the rebuttals is, oh, this is stressful.

1436
01:22:57.286 --> 01:22:58.706
This is a lot.

1437
01:22:58.986 --> 01:23:00.907
It feels like a lot of pressure to set a timer.

1438
01:23:01.707 --> 01:23:06.209
But, you know, time really is the currency for me.

1439
01:23:06.289 --> 01:23:07.429
I think it is for all of us.

1440
01:23:08.710 --> 01:23:12.151
And I think as well...

1441
01:23:14.378 --> 01:23:19.800
what I hear from your work is it's not about there being a good and bad way to live one's life.

1442
01:23:19.860 --> 01:23:23.041
It's just about being intentional with the time.

1443
01:23:23.061 --> 01:23:23.881
Yeah.

1444
01:23:24.241 --> 01:23:32.644
I think about how unintentional the average day is these days because you're just pulled around like a plastic bag in the wind by fucking LITs.

1445
01:23:33.565 --> 01:23:34.065
Anyway, sorry.

1446
01:23:34.893 --> 01:23:38.196
I think you were very close, dangerously close to quitting Katy Perry there.

1447
01:23:38.356 --> 01:23:40.078
That really was very much clear.

1448
01:23:40.098 --> 01:23:40.779
I think so, isn't it?

1449
01:23:41.139 --> 01:23:43.161
It's like I'm a plastic bag floating in the wind.

1450
01:23:43.321 --> 01:23:44.822
That's how I can feel in the modern world.

1451
01:23:45.143 --> 01:23:45.643
It is true.

1452
01:23:45.743 --> 01:23:46.664
No, it's true, though.

1453
01:23:47.365 --> 01:23:50.488
And all of this, by the way, is in pursuit of just...

1454
01:23:52.638 --> 01:23:55.820
Giving people more of their own time back.

1455
01:23:56.460 --> 01:24:04.344
By the way, the way in which we're working with all of these distractions around us, one, according to the progress principle, makes people feel like shit.

1456
01:24:04.525 --> 01:24:04.805
Like, right?

1457
01:24:04.825 --> 01:24:05.505
They're not happy.

1458
01:24:05.525 --> 01:24:06.666
They're not happy.

1459
01:24:06.866 --> 01:24:08.907
People want to get good, high-quality work done.

1460
01:24:08.967 --> 01:24:10.668
People want to make an impact.

1461
01:24:10.688 --> 01:24:13.449
They want those things because you're hiring amazing people.

1462
01:24:13.509 --> 01:24:16.271
And from when we were all little, we were told, good job.

1463
01:24:16.311 --> 01:24:16.851
You got in it.

1464
01:24:16.871 --> 01:24:18.452
Like, we love that progress.

1465
01:24:18.492 --> 01:24:19.853
We want to get the gold star.

1466
01:24:20.333 --> 01:24:29.737
So if we've trained an entire generation of human beings to want to get the gold star and now you're surrounded by all these people and you're like, hey, by the way, I know you have this massive to-do list, but you're not going to get anything done.

1467
01:24:30.157 --> 01:24:37.760
Instead, you just have to like answer all these messages and go to all these meetings and calls and then feel like shit at the end of the day because your to-do list is still there and you didn't make progress on anything.

1468
01:24:38.260 --> 01:24:38.941
Doesn't feel good.

1469
01:24:39.361 --> 01:24:40.742
So people don't feel good about it.

1470
01:24:41.022 --> 01:24:42.444
And then all that work is still left.

1471
01:24:42.484 --> 01:24:44.866
And then they end up working evenings and weekends to catch up.

1472
01:24:45.246 --> 01:24:46.947
And that takes time away from your family.

1473
01:24:47.328 --> 01:24:49.990
And then your deathbed self is like, this is terrible.

1474
01:24:51.111 --> 01:24:53.993
So the timer will help you condense the damn work.

1475
01:24:54.294 --> 01:24:55.254
So you gamify it.

1476
01:24:55.274 --> 01:24:56.355
You make use of the dopamine.

1477
01:24:56.375 --> 01:25:00.559
You make use of all those amazing hormones that get you all excited to get the work done so that you can actually do.

1478
01:25:02.126 --> 01:25:03.948
take a break and do other things.

1479
01:25:04.348 --> 01:25:04.769
Oh, okay.

1480
01:25:04.789 --> 01:25:06.490
So on this break, take a break.

1481
01:25:06.670 --> 01:25:06.790
Yeah.

1482
01:25:06.991 --> 01:25:08.973
At the very start, you're talking about innovation and creativity.

1483
01:25:10.154 --> 01:25:16.039
Rick Rubin was sat here a couple of weeks ago and I've done a lot of research around Steve Jobs to figure out how he was able to like see the future.

1484
01:25:16.620 --> 01:25:21.504
Because like look back at his decision making and it was always so unexpected.

1485
01:25:21.585 --> 01:25:22.866
And at the time, like really...

1486
01:25:23.466 --> 01:25:24.227
contrarian.

1487
01:25:24.647 --> 01:25:31.590
There's a great video of him stood at a developer conference and the developer stands up and basically berates him and says like, why are you doing this again?

1488
01:25:31.610 --> 01:25:34.932
You're like removing this particular software that every developer needs.

1489
01:25:36.183 --> 01:25:38.586
This was Steve Jobs, like, removed, I think it was Flash.

1490
01:25:38.906 --> 01:25:41.650
Was it Flash from our devices so that we could stream video better?

1491
01:25:41.750 --> 01:25:44.333
Removed the stylus from phones, the keyboard.

1492
01:25:44.974 --> 01:25:47.036
And he was right in hindsight.

1493
01:25:47.056 --> 01:25:49.879
But my question is, like, how did he see the future so clearly?

1494
01:25:50.540 --> 01:25:56.027
Rick Rubin and him seem to share a practice, which is boredom.

1495
01:25:58.562 --> 01:26:01.205
So, you know, as productivity people, we're always like, work, work, work, work.

1496
01:26:01.626 --> 01:26:09.235
But then I studied these greats, these visionaries, and I go, oh, they had like a boredom practice where they just like stood away from the picture.

1497
01:26:10.176 --> 01:26:14.982
And so when you said brain break, I was thinking, oh, maybe is this what you're talking about or is it something else?

1498
01:26:16.002 --> 01:26:17.043
This is tactical.

1499
01:26:17.483 --> 01:26:17.683
Okay.

1500
01:26:18.263 --> 01:26:24.047
Brain break is just defined as a short period of time where you're not processing information.

1501
01:26:24.968 --> 01:26:29.791
And this brings me to really attacking how most humans seem to be taking breaks these days.

1502
01:26:31.011 --> 01:26:35.694
People will take a break from work and be like, oh, I was just like doing all these things and I'm going to take a break.

1503
01:26:37.395 --> 01:26:39.196
And what is the most common way to take a break?

1504
01:26:39.216 --> 01:26:39.397
TikTok.

1505
01:26:39.417 --> 01:26:39.617
TikTok.

1506
01:26:40.446 --> 01:26:42.247
Or something, some other distraction.

1507
01:26:42.367 --> 01:26:42.887
Some other thing.

1508
01:26:43.648 --> 01:26:52.393
By the way, there was a 2024 Nature paper that just came out that actually measured everybody's fatigue levels, okay, before they started working.

1509
01:26:52.453 --> 01:26:53.454
Then they would have them work.

1510
01:26:53.554 --> 01:26:55.435
So essentially, let's imagine, like, do a focus sprint.

1511
01:26:55.455 --> 01:26:57.116
So you're focused in doing all this work.

1512
01:26:57.496 --> 01:26:59.277
And then they measure their fatigue levels after they're working.

1513
01:26:59.297 --> 01:27:01.578
And then they're like, okay, now we're going to pause now that you've worked.

1514
01:27:02.219 --> 01:27:03.059
And you're going to take a break.

1515
01:27:03.099 --> 01:27:04.240
They put them into four different groups.

1516
01:27:04.640 --> 01:27:06.081
One of those groups was no break at all.

1517
01:27:07.389 --> 01:27:08.070
So you just keep going.

1518
01:27:08.150 --> 01:27:08.450
Uh-huh.

1519
01:27:08.770 --> 01:27:10.212
And then you measured fatigue levels again.

1520
01:27:10.252 --> 01:27:13.495
And lo and behold, of course, no break is not great, right?

1521
01:27:13.596 --> 01:27:16.539
You're not going to really rebound from being fatigued.

1522
01:27:17.159 --> 01:27:24.267
But the other options were TikTok-style scrolling, looking at nature, or just staring ahead of yourself.

1523
01:27:24.867 --> 01:27:29.572
It turns out the best kind of break is, in fact, no surprise there, being exposed to nature.

1524
01:27:30.781 --> 01:27:31.861
Humans come from nature.

1525
01:27:31.881 --> 01:27:34.022
I have a sense we might have an affinity for it.

1526
01:27:34.842 --> 01:27:42.185
Even if it feels like sometimes we don't and we're city folk, there is a visceral calm that comes when humans spend time in nature.

1527
01:27:42.925 --> 01:27:44.045
So that's the best kind of break.

1528
01:27:44.785 --> 01:27:47.026
But shortly thereafter, it's just doing nothing at all.

1529
01:27:47.926 --> 01:27:51.347
And the worst break was TikTok-style scrolling.

1530
01:27:51.787 --> 01:27:54.068
You are just consuming more information.

1531
01:27:54.088 --> 01:27:55.289
That's not a brain break.

1532
01:27:55.869 --> 01:27:58.249
Your brain is not, in fact, taking a break at all.

1533
01:27:58.970 --> 01:27:59.610
Do you weight lift?

1534
01:28:00.310 --> 01:28:00.750
Sometimes.

1535
01:28:00.770 --> 01:28:01.050
Sometimes.

1536
01:28:01.090 --> 01:28:01.270
Okay.

1537
01:28:01.731 --> 01:28:06.272
So if you're lifting a weight here, I'm going to pick up this, this like block for a second.

1538
01:28:06.612 --> 01:28:09.313
Let's say this is heavy and I'm like picking up this weight.

1539
01:28:09.593 --> 01:28:09.934
Okay.

1540
01:28:10.614 --> 01:28:12.634
And I'm doing this and my muscles are working very hard.

1541
01:28:13.215 --> 01:28:16.856
And then what do we do after we've, we've done like a set of weightlifting rest.

1542
01:28:17.076 --> 01:28:17.496
You rest.

1543
01:28:17.876 --> 01:28:22.038
What would you say if in between, instead of actually resting, I start lifting like low grade weights?

1544
01:28:22.058 --> 01:28:22.578
Yeah.

1545
01:28:22.658 --> 01:28:23.939
I'm still, this is not a rest.

1546
01:28:24.219 --> 01:28:25.499
So that's what scrolling is.

1547
01:28:25.519 --> 01:28:27.380
And it's not even just scrolling, by the way.

1548
01:28:27.420 --> 01:28:30.221
It's any, I don't want people thinking like, oh, I was reading the news.

1549
01:28:30.502 --> 01:28:31.262
You're reading.

1550
01:28:31.742 --> 01:28:33.003
That's not resting this muscle.

1551
01:28:33.503 --> 01:28:34.784
You're still using this thing.

1552
01:28:35.224 --> 01:28:36.784
Reading, writing, arithmetic.

1553
01:28:36.804 --> 01:28:38.645
Like the point is to rest this thing.

1554
01:28:39.106 --> 01:28:39.326
How?

1555
01:28:41.006 --> 01:28:41.847
Do nothing at all.

1556
01:28:41.987 --> 01:28:43.508
I almost don't know how to do nothing.

1557
01:28:43.548 --> 01:28:44.768
I'm like, what does that look like?

1558
01:28:44.788 --> 01:28:45.929
Everything I thought of was a thing.

1559
01:28:46.149 --> 01:28:46.369
Yeah.

1560
01:28:46.389 --> 01:28:46.569
Yeah.

1561
01:28:47.147 --> 01:28:47.967
It's hard in the beginning.

1562
01:28:47.987 --> 01:28:48.668
But I will say this.

1563
01:28:48.968 --> 01:28:50.128
I have an idea for you.

1564
01:28:50.148 --> 01:28:50.708
Okay.

1565
01:28:51.168 --> 01:29:00.412
And that is to do something that is cognitively challenging enough such that you can't think of all of your other worries and things.

1566
01:29:00.612 --> 01:29:03.833
This is my barometer for a good, like a really high quality break.

1567
01:29:04.173 --> 01:29:05.933
My DJing, what about my DJ?

1568
01:29:06.113 --> 01:29:06.933
I'm learning to DJ.

1569
01:29:07.354 --> 01:29:07.914
Are you really?

1570
01:29:08.074 --> 01:29:09.394
That's why all the decks are out there.

1571
01:29:09.414 --> 01:29:10.294
There's like four decks out there.

1572
01:29:10.414 --> 01:29:10.974
I didn't notice.

1573
01:29:10.994 --> 01:29:11.894
I've been learning for four years.

1574
01:29:11.934 --> 01:29:12.574
So it's, yeah.

1575
01:29:12.834 --> 01:29:13.635
But that's my break.

1576
01:29:13.735 --> 01:29:14.315
Awesome skill.

1577
01:29:14.495 --> 01:29:14.995
Awesome skill.

1578
01:29:15.435 --> 01:29:16.515
And you're learning.

1579
01:29:16.615 --> 01:29:17.375
So it's immersive.

1580
01:29:17.835 --> 01:29:20.296
I'm totally focused because the song's about to end and I have to mix it.

1581
01:29:20.316 --> 01:29:23.676
And it's the most locked in I am all day other than this.

1582
01:29:24.116 --> 01:29:24.356
Yeah.

1583
01:29:24.676 --> 01:29:25.597
So that's perfect.

1584
01:29:25.617 --> 01:29:25.817
Great.

1585
01:29:26.077 --> 01:29:33.258
Even for like a simple brain break though, my humble recommendation to get yourself to not like scroll, check the news, get on LinkedIn, like whatever else it may be.

1586
01:29:34.373 --> 01:29:35.297
Do something with your hands.

1587
01:29:35.738 --> 01:29:38.509
So I'm a firm believer in systems.

1588
01:29:39.520 --> 01:29:40.300
We just need systems.

1589
01:29:40.340 --> 01:29:41.260
I don't like willpower.

1590
01:29:41.340 --> 01:29:42.421
Like, oh, I should really do that.

1591
01:29:42.441 --> 01:29:43.121
I ought to do that.

1592
01:29:43.161 --> 01:29:44.041
Like, it's really difficult.

1593
01:29:44.781 --> 01:29:49.503
If you create systems for, and what I mean by that is don't have grab and go snacks anymore.

1594
01:29:49.663 --> 01:29:51.883
Force yourself to make things like.

1595
01:29:51.903 --> 01:29:52.923
Cooking stuff.

1596
01:29:53.224 --> 01:29:53.944
Yeah, exactly.

1597
01:29:53.964 --> 01:29:55.084
And it doesn't even have to be cooking.

1598
01:29:55.104 --> 01:29:56.484
Like, again, you're in the middle of the workday.

1599
01:29:56.744 --> 01:30:06.367
My point is instead of like one of those tiny little cheeses that come prepackaged, like get the big hunk and take it out of the Ziploc and like cut it and like, oh, I've cut myself a piece of cheese.

1600
01:30:06.947 --> 01:30:13.290
Instead of having the pods, you know, like, for example, like, boil some water, put the kettle on, like, then do the thing.

1601
01:30:13.330 --> 01:30:27.136
Like, put yourself in a system where you are forced to use both of your hands in order to get yourself hydrated, caffeinated, or get yourself a snack so that you can't.

1602
01:30:27.696 --> 01:30:29.357
scroll and do the thing at the same time.

1603
01:30:29.437 --> 01:30:29.817
So that's it.

1604
01:30:29.877 --> 01:30:34.379
Like an easy way to take a brain break is just rehydrate, have another snack.

1605
01:30:34.500 --> 01:30:39.002
Ideally, honestly, go expose yourself to some natural light, get some fresh air, move, go on a little walk.

1606
01:30:39.262 --> 01:30:41.443
But I know those are easier said than done often.

1607
01:30:42.063 --> 01:30:47.626
So at the very least, I assume people are maybe even at least 50% as hungry as I am.

1608
01:30:48.046 --> 01:30:49.187
So I love lots of snacks.

1609
01:30:49.787 --> 01:31:03.591
Is there anything else on this point of, you know, when you're thinking about how to have your great, innovative, most creative ideas, if I wanted to solve a very complex problem, come up with my best ideas, is there anything else you'd recommend?

1610
01:31:04.592 --> 01:31:08.713
The science behind innovation and creative insight is...

1611
01:31:10.227 --> 01:31:14.852
is the process of truly understanding and thinking about the problem.

1612
01:31:15.693 --> 01:31:19.036
So loading up all of the data related to the problem that you're trying to solve.

1613
01:31:19.897 --> 01:31:24.462
It should be top of mind, meaning those neural networks that are related to

1614
01:31:26.785 --> 01:31:31.890
The neural networks related to thinking about the problem, okay?

1615
01:31:32.291 --> 01:31:36.996
Whatever problem it is that you're trying to solve, you want those activated and top of mind.

1616
01:31:37.577 --> 01:31:41.521
Now, this is one of my favorite quotes attributed, I think, to Albert Einstein.

1617
01:31:41.701 --> 01:31:42.723
Who knows if he actually said it, though?

1618
01:31:43.323 --> 01:31:44.505
So many quotes are attributed to him.

1619
01:31:45.442 --> 01:31:47.344
Nobody was, who's fact-checking this shit, right?

1620
01:31:48.406 --> 01:31:54.253
But no problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness or the same mindset that created it.

1621
01:31:54.753 --> 01:32:02.002
So when you're sitting there and you're thinking about a problem, I kind of think about this like it's like a traffic gridlock like this, right?

1622
01:32:03.191 --> 01:32:05.233
You're sitting there and you're going, well, okay, this, this, and this.

1623
01:32:05.313 --> 01:32:06.394
And it's like, and you don't know.

1624
01:32:06.474 --> 01:32:09.497
And by that I mean by gridlock, I mean you don't know the solution immediately.

1625
01:32:09.957 --> 01:32:11.499
In fact, you're thinking about the problem.

1626
01:32:11.819 --> 01:32:22.468
There lies the brain state of the problem defined as this, defined as X. X brain state is the brain state where you, Stephen, are thinking about the problem.

1627
01:32:23.109 --> 01:32:25.031
Are you going to, is this the solution state?

1628
01:32:25.051 --> 01:32:25.131
Yes.

1629
01:32:26.661 --> 01:32:28.262
No, by definition, this is the problem state.

1630
01:32:28.763 --> 01:32:31.845
So there you are in a gridlock of certain neural networks where you're thinking about the problem.

1631
01:32:32.665 --> 01:32:34.587
Ah, the next step, walk away.

1632
01:32:36.252 --> 01:32:37.852
Walk away and go do something else.

1633
01:32:38.212 --> 01:32:39.073
Walk the damn dog.

1634
01:32:39.573 --> 01:32:40.293
Go do something else.

1635
01:32:40.353 --> 01:32:41.093
Wash the dishes.

1636
01:32:41.753 --> 01:32:44.614
You're introducing another stimulus here, right?

1637
01:32:45.214 --> 01:32:47.414
Shower, new stimulus, new environment.

1638
01:32:47.935 --> 01:32:49.655
These neural networks begin to loosen.

1639
01:32:50.675 --> 01:32:52.576
New neural networks are becoming activated.

1640
01:32:52.776 --> 01:32:54.416
New electrical, they're all electrical.

1641
01:32:54.916 --> 01:32:56.016
Neural networks are getting activated.

1642
01:32:56.056 --> 01:32:59.437
And all of a sudden, that might allow one idea to all of it.

1643
01:32:59.717 --> 01:33:02.798
Ideas are like two neural networks that are crossing paths and you go, shoo.

1644
01:33:03.819 --> 01:33:06.161
insight, the light bulb that we're all searching for.

1645
01:33:07.242 --> 01:33:13.068
And then you get that magic and you go, wait a minute, that's, there it was right in front of me the whole time, right under my nose.

1646
01:33:13.589 --> 01:33:16.872
So you have those amazing insights typically when you loosen and you walk away.

1647
01:33:17.613 --> 01:33:19.135
Does this apply to negative thinking?

1648
01:33:19.755 --> 01:33:19.996
Yeah.

1649
01:33:20.116 --> 01:33:21.137
And rumination?

1650
01:33:21.919 --> 01:33:23.320
Negative thinking and rumination.

1651
01:33:23.340 --> 01:33:27.283
I have loads and loads of opinions about.

1652
01:33:27.643 --> 01:33:28.604
Why did you roll your eyes then?

1653
01:33:28.904 --> 01:33:30.045
I rolled my eyes because.

1654
01:33:30.225 --> 01:33:30.806
People don't like them.

1655
01:33:31.506 --> 01:33:32.447
No, it's not that.

1656
01:33:32.607 --> 01:33:47.758
It's, I find that in the modern world, we've gotten ourselves into a bit of a pickle where we've made it okay to continue to rehash and exhaustively talk about and think about our traumas.

1657
01:33:49.533 --> 01:33:51.854
When you do that, you're just deepening the damn neural networks.

1658
01:33:52.494 --> 01:33:52.714
Really?

1659
01:33:53.015 --> 01:33:53.235
Yeah.

1660
01:33:54.295 --> 01:33:54.935
I mean, think about it.

1661
01:33:54.955 --> 01:34:01.818
You're like, if I'm sad about something, I'm not saying don't acknowledge your feelings, but feel your feelings.

1662
01:34:02.919 --> 01:34:09.042
But if the goal is, let's say, for example, you've gotten yourself into a rut of rumination about something or worry.

1663
01:34:10.202 --> 01:34:14.524
Rumination is sort of the same thought over and over and over again.

1664
01:34:14.584 --> 01:34:16.505
The only way out is to break the cycle.

1665
01:34:17.995 --> 01:34:30.764
You do not make your feelings and, you know, the thoughts that you end up ruminating on go away by talking about them over and over and over again in the exact same way.

1666
01:34:31.865 --> 01:34:37.990
If you keep doing that, you're just deepening and deepening that neural network so it's even more robust and strong.

1667
01:34:38.857 --> 01:34:41.439
If you repeatedly, I mean, you mentioned atomic habits.

1668
01:34:41.459 --> 01:34:43.460
I mean, think about how habits are formed, right?

1669
01:34:43.480 --> 01:34:45.221
It's that repetition.

1670
01:34:45.462 --> 01:34:49.184
So if you keep telling yourself, oh, this trauma happened for me.

1671
01:34:49.244 --> 01:34:49.885
This occurred.

1672
01:34:49.985 --> 01:34:50.725
And I was a victim.

1673
01:34:50.985 --> 01:34:51.706
And then I was a victim.

1674
01:34:51.826 --> 01:34:52.687
And then I was this trauma.

1675
01:34:52.767 --> 01:34:53.327
This trauma.

1676
01:34:53.367 --> 01:34:55.148
And then that's why I am this way that I am.

1677
01:34:55.208 --> 01:34:56.249
I am this way that I am.

1678
01:34:56.289 --> 01:34:58.351
I am this way that I am.

1679
01:34:58.371 --> 01:34:59.832
Some point it might become your identity.

1680
01:35:00.452 --> 01:35:01.253
Pretty quickly, huh?

1681
01:35:02.353 --> 01:35:04.315
So the only way out is to stop that.

1682
01:35:05.198 --> 01:35:06.799
You have to redirect your attention.

1683
01:35:07.439 --> 01:35:11.842
So my solve for things like rumination is acknowledge why it's happening in the first place.

1684
01:35:12.582 --> 01:35:16.764
And then quite quickly after that, redirect your attention when it's happening.

1685
01:35:17.284 --> 01:35:20.546
It's sort of a anytime you're in that, oh, it's starting again.

1686
01:35:21.447 --> 01:35:23.588
Redirect and then put your attention somewhere else.

1687
01:35:23.968 --> 01:35:24.688
What's your Everest?

1688
01:35:25.709 --> 01:35:27.150
What's a different version of the story?

1689
01:35:27.210 --> 01:35:29.291
What's the narrative that you want to feed?

1690
01:35:29.711 --> 01:35:31.292
Because again, this electrical system...

1691
01:35:32.318 --> 01:35:35.961
is it's think of yourself as the gardener or the architect of this thing.

1692
01:35:36.302 --> 01:35:37.142
You're designing it.

1693
01:35:37.242 --> 01:35:38.584
It's a muscle like anything else.

1694
01:35:38.944 --> 01:35:44.429
It's like someone sitting around and going, well, I don't love the fact that my right bicep is slightly larger than I didn't do something about it.

1695
01:35:45.069 --> 01:35:51.455
You know, you can atrophy this one a little bit and increase the weight that you that you that you hold the load on this one.

1696
01:35:51.735 --> 01:35:54.218
And lo and behold, you'll get a different outcome.

1697
01:35:54.838 --> 01:35:56.119
So if you think of

1698
01:35:57.020 --> 01:36:12.425
the mind and truly the brain from a neural perspective as different neural networks that you're either deepening, strengthening, and feeding, feeding with your thoughts, your time, your attention, be careful which ones you feed.

1699
01:36:13.125 --> 01:36:16.766
Because whichever one you feed will in fact become stronger and louder.

1700
01:36:19.168 --> 01:36:21.289
This is something that I've made for you.

1701
01:36:21.369 --> 01:36:25.530
I've realized that the Diary of a Seer audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health.

1702
01:36:25.770 --> 01:36:27.651
We all have big goals that we want to accomplish.

1703
01:36:27.991 --> 01:36:39.736
And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards.

1704
01:36:40.116 --> 01:36:43.377
The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tasks.

1705
01:36:43.377 --> 01:36:44.939
tiny small steps.

1706
01:36:45.039 --> 01:36:46.901
And we call this in our team, the 1%.

1707
01:36:46.921 --> 01:36:51.146
And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here.

1708
01:36:51.326 --> 01:36:57.774
So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries and

1709
01:36:58.635 --> 01:37:01.056
And we released these last year and they all sold out.

1710
01:37:01.337 --> 01:37:07.440
So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary.

1711
01:37:07.480 --> 01:37:11.883
So now we have a better range for you.

1712
01:37:12.123 --> 01:37:21.688
So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again.

1713
01:37:21.788 --> 01:37:23.970
And you can get yours at thediary.com.

1714
01:37:24.750 --> 01:37:26.651
And if you want the link, the link is in the description below.

1715
01:37:27.491 --> 01:37:31.273
I can see in your productivity toolkit, there is a clock.

1716
01:37:32.293 --> 01:37:34.954
Why is there a clock?

1717
01:37:35.755 --> 01:37:41.337
The clock represents the power and the science of when.

1718
01:37:43.158 --> 01:37:43.638
Let me explain.

1719
01:37:44.598 --> 01:37:50.361
If we said that the MITs and the LITs that we talked about before, that represents the what.

1720
01:37:51.626 --> 01:37:52.627
I have my Everest.

1721
01:37:53.587 --> 01:37:54.828
I have my MITs now.

1722
01:37:54.888 --> 01:37:59.491
What am I doing today to move incrementally closer to meeting my Everest goal?

1723
01:38:00.351 --> 01:38:00.952
That's the what.

1724
01:38:01.312 --> 01:38:05.575
What am I doing today with the three hours of uninterrupted focus time that you said that you had?

1725
01:38:06.035 --> 01:38:06.195
Right?

1726
01:38:06.375 --> 01:38:06.555
What?

1727
01:38:07.016 --> 01:38:08.617
Focus sprints are the how.

1728
01:38:09.517 --> 01:38:14.338
How am I going to then go attack that one MIT or that litter of LITs?

1729
01:38:14.438 --> 01:38:15.539
How am I going to go do it?

1730
01:38:15.679 --> 01:38:20.760
You're going to do it in the methodology of a focus sprint if you want to 2x your time and minimize the number of mistakes made.

1731
01:38:21.260 --> 01:38:21.800
That's the how.

1732
01:38:22.920 --> 01:38:27.202
The science of chronotypes will tell you the science of when.

1733
01:38:28.002 --> 01:38:31.062
When should you go about doing all of these different things?

1734
01:38:31.643 --> 01:38:35.484
Human beings do not share one circadian rhythm.

1735
01:38:36.044 --> 01:38:36.504
What does that mean?

1736
01:38:37.250 --> 01:38:38.792
Well, have you heard of a circadian rhythm before?

1737
01:38:38.812 --> 01:38:39.253
I have.

1738
01:38:39.473 --> 01:38:39.693
Okay.

1739
01:38:39.874 --> 01:38:41.295
So we all, we have circadian rhythms.

1740
01:38:41.916 --> 01:38:42.797
Animals do as well.

1741
01:38:43.218 --> 01:38:46.943
But we don't share one as a human species.

1742
01:38:48.245 --> 01:38:51.409
Meaning we don't all go to sleep around the same time.

1743
01:38:51.429 --> 01:38:52.010
We're not all...

1744
01:38:53.793 --> 01:38:59.294
We are creatures of light, but we don't all share one rhythm of exactly the ideal time that we would go to sleep and wake up.

1745
01:39:00.434 --> 01:39:03.995
These different circadian rhythms are, in fact, called chronotypes.

1746
01:39:04.935 --> 01:39:09.736
So your chronotype is your genetic, biological, ideal time.

1747
01:39:09.776 --> 01:39:15.117
It's essentially a profile of the hormones and your energy levels throughout the course of the day.

1748
01:39:15.697 --> 01:39:18.458
And there are three chronotypes.

1749
01:39:19.500 --> 01:39:21.240
There is AM shifted individuals.

1750
01:39:21.260 --> 01:39:24.001
These are essentially, this is like the science behind morning birds.

1751
01:39:24.821 --> 01:39:25.081
Okay.

1752
01:39:25.101 --> 01:39:26.282
So people that like doing stuff early.

1753
01:39:26.302 --> 01:39:26.402
Yeah.

1754
01:39:26.602 --> 01:39:26.802
Okay.

1755
01:39:27.522 --> 01:39:30.763
And it's, again, it's, it's genetic and it's hormonal.

1756
01:39:31.383 --> 01:39:35.204
These individuals naturally, their cortisol levels spike really, really early in the morning.

1757
01:39:35.224 --> 01:39:37.524
And some people are like the four o'clock in the morning people.

1758
01:39:37.544 --> 01:39:40.265
They're the five o'clock in the morning people, six o'clock in the morning people.

1759
01:39:40.605 --> 01:39:42.106
They are naturally AM shifted.

1760
01:39:42.126 --> 01:39:43.626
Like it's not their fault necessarily.

1761
01:39:44.046 --> 01:39:47.307
It's, and by the way, how do you know that you're truly AM shifted?

1762
01:39:48.227 --> 01:39:54.772
How you know you're truly a.m. shifted is if you go to bed, even if I keep you up at two o'clock in the morning until two o'clock in the morning.

1763
01:39:55.532 --> 01:39:57.454
And let's say I'm controlling.

1764
01:39:57.674 --> 01:40:00.036
You no longer have young children that are going to wake you up.

1765
01:40:00.056 --> 01:40:02.377
You no longer have any meetings, nothing at all.

1766
01:40:02.778 --> 01:40:07.541
I've put you in this the best hotel in the world with the most comfortable bed, fully black out.

1767
01:40:07.621 --> 01:40:09.542
Not you can't you can hear a pin drop.

1768
01:40:10.183 --> 01:40:13.705
There's nothing that would otherwise wake you and you can sleep as long as you want.

1769
01:40:13.745 --> 01:40:15.447
And I kept you up until two o'clock in the morning.

1770
01:40:15.467 --> 01:40:15.747
Yeah.

1771
01:40:17.179 --> 01:40:17.999
Oh, don't you worry.

1772
01:40:18.499 --> 01:40:20.780
That pituitary gland is very strong.

1773
01:40:20.820 --> 01:40:22.981
Your body knows when it's 5 o'clock in the morning.

1774
01:40:23.001 --> 01:40:23.961
It doesn't even need to see light.

1775
01:40:24.021 --> 01:40:25.142
It naturally will wake you up.

1776
01:40:25.182 --> 01:40:26.782
So now you're sleep deprived, but you have no choice.

1777
01:40:27.143 --> 01:40:31.184
So it's those people that naturally wake up at early hours of the day, regardless of when they went to bed the night before.

1778
01:40:31.424 --> 01:40:33.145
Those are AM shifted individuals.

1779
01:40:33.165 --> 01:40:35.205
And it's all about their cortisol levels first thing in the morning.

1780
01:40:36.746 --> 01:40:39.647
That is about, by the way, 25% of the human population.

1781
01:40:41.392 --> 01:40:42.293
It's not the majority.

1782
01:40:42.933 --> 01:40:46.316
My humble opinion is the world seems to be oriented around these people.

1783
01:40:47.617 --> 01:40:47.857
Right?

1784
01:40:48.217 --> 01:40:49.218
Early bird gets the worm.

1785
01:40:49.542 --> 01:40:49.762
Yeah.

1786
01:40:49.782 --> 01:40:50.563
I mean, everything starts.

1787
01:40:50.963 --> 01:40:52.924
School started at 9am, so you had to be up at 7.

1788
01:40:52.984 --> 01:40:57.506
That's why I... Part of the reason, many reasons, but that's part of the reason I hate school so much.

1789
01:40:58.126 --> 01:40:58.646
Oh, totally.

1790
01:40:58.906 --> 01:41:00.067
I liked staying up really late.

1791
01:41:00.747 --> 01:41:01.047
Same.

1792
01:41:01.348 --> 01:41:01.588
Yeah.

1793
01:41:01.988 --> 01:41:05.530
Then you are likely the minority of the human population, like me.

1794
01:41:05.950 --> 01:41:06.690
PM shifted.

1795
01:41:07.571 --> 01:41:08.691
PM shifted people.

1796
01:41:08.971 --> 01:41:16.615
Anthropologically, by the way, the only reason we imagine why people like you and me exist, because otherwise, by the way, it's somewhat dysfunctional, no?

1797
01:41:16.635 --> 01:41:16.735
Yeah.

1798
01:41:17.811 --> 01:41:22.753
Otherwise, yeah, it would be strange to have different sleep schedules and stuff like that.

1799
01:41:23.093 --> 01:41:26.315
Like we're not, I'm like, I'm not a, I can't like see in the dark.

1800
01:41:26.575 --> 01:41:28.996
Like it's somewhat dysfunctional that we're awake all night.

1801
01:41:29.496 --> 01:41:30.457
But think about it this way.

1802
01:41:30.757 --> 01:41:36.339
If you and I were in the same tribe along with my team and your team, and we're all like, okay, we're, we're a village now together.

1803
01:41:37.040 --> 01:41:39.661
And everybody went to bed at 10 PM and woke up at 6 AM.

1804
01:41:41.001 --> 01:41:44.283
What would happen in the middle of the night when a competing tribe comes to slaughter all of us?

1805
01:41:44.940 --> 01:41:48.123
Yeah, the night is like the most dangerous time, isn't it, for anybody?

1806
01:41:48.143 --> 01:41:49.685
So you need some people that are awake.

1807
01:41:50.326 --> 01:41:52.127
And then even in the morning, you need some people that are.

1808
01:41:53.128 --> 01:41:59.455
So you do need to stagger in a tribe, stagger the time in which people are highly functional, which makes evolutionary sense.

1809
01:41:59.705 --> 01:42:01.146
You need a 24-7 team.

1810
01:42:01.726 --> 01:42:02.967
You need to make sure someone's always awake.

1811
01:42:03.367 --> 01:42:08.229
So you and I belong to a tiny subset of the human population.

1812
01:42:08.789 --> 01:42:15.673
According to research from my lab, we're at 16% from what we've gathered around the world.

1813
01:42:15.693 --> 01:42:15.973
Right.

1814
01:42:16.353 --> 01:42:25.356
So 16% of the human population is PM shifted, meaning genetically we tend to be able to stay up quite late and we can sleep in.

1815
01:42:25.916 --> 01:42:32.559
And our energy levels rise as opposed to shoot up early in the morning and then linearly decrease as the day progresses.

1816
01:42:32.639 --> 01:42:33.999
AM shifted people usually are the best.

1817
01:42:34.019 --> 01:42:38.221
They do their best focus, their best thinking straight away early in the day.

1818
01:42:38.581 --> 01:42:41.482
And they just seem to lose steam as the day progresses.

1819
01:42:41.522 --> 01:42:44.023
Like there's no like second wind for them really.

1820
01:42:44.043 --> 01:42:44.283
Interesting.

1821
01:42:44.663 --> 01:42:49.125
I mean, there's a little bit of a bump, but their ideal time, like when would you take a standardized test?

1822
01:42:49.165 --> 01:42:52.866
If I wanted to test your intelligence, I said, come to my lab, the Becoming Superhuman Lab.

1823
01:42:52.886 --> 01:42:56.368
Like, let's test your intelligence, your attention span, memory, all of it.

1824
01:42:56.848 --> 01:42:58.048
When would you schedule that test?

1825
01:42:58.848 --> 01:43:01.610
For AM shifted people, they're like, are you free at seven?

1826
01:43:02.150 --> 01:43:02.450
Right?

1827
01:43:02.530 --> 01:43:04.010
Because they're the best in the morning.

1828
01:43:04.411 --> 01:43:07.512
For PM shifted people, like you and I, honestly, the afternoon.

1829
01:43:07.532 --> 01:43:07.892
Yeah.

1830
01:43:07.912 --> 01:43:08.072
Yeah.

1831
01:43:09.200 --> 01:43:13.742
In my younger years, oh, my gosh, the evening, I do my best work like 9 p.m. on.

1832
01:43:14.382 --> 01:43:19.424
It's my clearest thinking, the most energized, the most clear-headed, you know, up until the wee hours in the morning.

1833
01:43:19.744 --> 01:43:20.884
But it's not super functional.

1834
01:43:20.924 --> 01:43:23.585
But it's genetic, and you can make use of it.

1835
01:43:24.905 --> 01:43:29.247
PM-shifted people also have a tendency to be the most artistic and creative.

1836
01:43:29.407 --> 01:43:29.507
Yeah.

1837
01:43:29.527 --> 01:43:29.627
Yeah.

1838
01:43:29.827 --> 01:43:30.167
There you go.

1839
01:43:31.427 --> 01:43:32.087
Can you say that again?

1840
01:43:32.107 --> 01:43:33.068
Look at the camera and say that again.

1841
01:43:33.968 --> 01:43:35.428
Most artistic and creative.

1842
01:43:35.728 --> 01:43:36.008
I didn't.

1843
01:43:36.028 --> 01:43:36.908
I seem to get those genes.

1844
01:43:36.928 --> 01:43:37.869
Whatever.

1845
01:43:38.329 --> 01:43:43.910
Then you have the vast majority of the human population, and those are people who are biphasic.

1846
01:43:44.470 --> 01:43:47.471
Biphasic stands for the Latin two phases or two peaks.

1847
01:43:47.931 --> 01:43:53.532
And these individuals wake up a little groggy, but within about 45 minutes to an hour,

1848
01:43:54.955 --> 01:43:55.436
They're ramped.

1849
01:43:56.317 --> 01:43:56.958
Off to the races.

1850
01:43:57.158 --> 01:43:57.698
They're feeling great.

1851
01:43:58.139 --> 01:43:59.941
Biphasic, two phases or two peaks.

1852
01:43:59.961 --> 01:44:01.223
So they peak once in the morning.

1853
01:44:01.543 --> 01:44:05.028
They come down for the biggest afternoon dip comparatively to all those three types.

1854
01:44:05.428 --> 01:44:09.133
And then they will then come back up for a second wind if they play their cards right.

1855
01:44:10.588 --> 01:44:12.070
So those are the three coronotypes.

1856
01:44:12.471 --> 01:44:20.803
My humble opinion is you should know which one you are because it will dictate the ideal time you should be doing your focus sprints.

1857
01:44:21.524 --> 01:44:21.844
When?

1858
01:44:22.425 --> 01:44:23.767
When is the ideal time?

1859
01:44:23.787 --> 01:44:25.930
I am a big bag of blood, guts, and chemicals.

1860
01:44:25.950 --> 01:44:26.651
I'm not a machine.

1861
01:44:28.205 --> 01:44:28.465
Right?

1862
01:44:29.405 --> 01:44:30.746
There are biological laws.

1863
01:44:30.766 --> 01:44:34.987
Like, I'm not the same at 8 a.m. versus 2 p.m. versus 8 p.m.

1864
01:44:35.147 --> 01:44:39.269
I am a different version of self with different abilities and skills.

1865
01:44:39.289 --> 01:44:41.249
And my attention span is not a constant.

1866
01:44:42.370 --> 01:44:47.571
That's another law that I would love people to know a bit more and accept, I should say.

1867
01:44:47.891 --> 01:44:49.192
To know and accept.

1868
01:44:51.232 --> 01:44:55.574
Our cognitive abilities are different throughout the course of the day.

1869
01:44:55.594 --> 01:44:55.814
Right?

1870
01:44:56.907 --> 01:45:02.931
which means when we do certain things does matter, at least in some small part.

1871
01:45:03.291 --> 01:45:07.734
And I'm not suggesting we can architect our days because, I mean, you and I are actually prime examples of this.

1872
01:45:08.114 --> 01:45:11.757
As PM shifted people, you know the world doesn't give a shit about us.

1873
01:45:12.715 --> 01:45:13.635
the world doesn't care.

1874
01:45:13.895 --> 01:45:15.616
Like, as in the world is more AM shifted.

1875
01:45:15.656 --> 01:45:17.377
We have to do a great deal of adjustment.

1876
01:45:17.457 --> 01:45:21.778
It's not like I can schedule meetings with people like brazenly, like, hey, what are you doing at 10 tonight?

1877
01:45:21.798 --> 01:45:22.459
Right?

1878
01:45:22.879 --> 01:45:23.599
It's so true.

1879
01:45:23.619 --> 01:45:32.683
I woke up this morning and did a 7 a.m. meeting because it was very important and obviously I'm in LA so, you know, I'm working to other people's schedules and I was

1880
01:45:33.823 --> 01:45:34.103
shit.

1881
01:45:34.604 --> 01:45:35.405
I don't know how else to say it.

1882
01:45:35.605 --> 01:45:38.428
I was like, gosh, that's a terrible version of me that I've just portrayed.

1883
01:45:38.628 --> 01:45:39.449
Such an important meeting.

1884
01:45:39.469 --> 01:45:41.411
So I bent my schedule to do it.

1885
01:45:41.811 --> 01:45:46.576
But actually, because it was important, I should have pushed it as late as I possibly could have in hindsight.

1886
01:45:47.377 --> 01:45:50.500
Because I really, I look back on my performance at that meeting, I go, that was terrible.

1887
01:45:51.141 --> 01:45:55.966
You know, even with the podcast, one of the things we set as a rule where I never ever do podcasts before 11am.

1888
01:45:57.487 --> 01:45:59.188
So this is why this starts at 11 a.m. today.

1889
01:45:59.608 --> 01:45:59.808
Yeah.

1890
01:46:00.048 --> 01:46:02.649
Because I tried it and the brain wasn't on.

1891
01:46:03.389 --> 01:46:03.849
It's important.

1892
01:46:03.869 --> 01:46:06.370
I think, you know, people are looking for big steps forward in life.

1893
01:46:06.390 --> 01:46:10.872
But some of these things that seem to be small and marginal can have such a profound compounding impact over the long term.

1894
01:46:11.632 --> 01:46:14.193
What is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about?

1895
01:46:14.433 --> 01:46:19.635
For the people that are at home and they're struggling with all the, they've got the customer problems we've described.

1896
01:46:19.655 --> 01:46:20.816
They're brain fogged.

1897
01:46:20.856 --> 01:46:21.816
They've got these priorities.

1898
01:46:21.836 --> 01:46:26.398
They're distracted all the time and they feel the sense of guilt around that distraction.

1899
01:46:26.778 --> 01:46:32.720
They know they could be doing more, but the noisy, external, tempting world is constantly winning.

1900
01:46:34.041 --> 01:46:37.342
What else can we give them as a tool?

1901
01:46:38.782 --> 01:46:41.963
It's about the way the world is going.

1902
01:46:41.983 --> 01:46:54.928
I'm at risk of sounding a bit doom and gloom for a second, but I do hope that there's a light at the end of this tunnel that I hope will give people more agency.

1903
01:46:55.814 --> 01:46:56.774
and will inspire them.

1904
01:47:00.856 --> 01:47:19.703
Because of my job and because of where I live, I have access to sitting and being invited into meetings and rooms with a lot of amazing human beings that are creating the future.

1905
01:47:20.665 --> 01:47:24.988
I mean, there is an email there, isn't there, that we didn't touch on, but maybe this is a good time to reference that.

1906
01:47:25.769 --> 01:47:27.610
You don't like referencing it.

1907
01:47:28.131 --> 01:47:29.152
It's a bit depressing.

1908
01:47:29.832 --> 01:47:41.441
But I think it's important because you live in San Francisco and you did make the case that those big companies are coming to people like you to figure out how to hijack attention.

1909
01:47:41.901 --> 01:47:42.002
Yeah.

1910
01:47:42.902 --> 01:47:47.446
My area of expertise is how the brain changes and evolves, how you train it.

1911
01:47:48.990 --> 01:47:59.713
An area of this that I know quite well, because it's extremely important in the pursuit of actual cognitive training, is something that we call strategic automaticity.

1912
01:48:00.813 --> 01:48:05.774
Strategic automaticity is just getting people to do stuff without meaning to do stuff.

1913
01:48:06.274 --> 01:48:14.856
So when a habit, right, this is also James Clear's Atomic Habits, phenomenal book, obviously, on habit formation, touches on these kinds of concepts.

1914
01:48:14.876 --> 01:48:17.497
You want, ideally, you want to do stuff.

1915
01:48:17.717 --> 01:48:21.760
You have a behavior or habit happen without thinking, right?

1916
01:48:21.980 --> 01:48:22.380
Automatic.

1917
01:48:23.001 --> 01:48:25.382
Think about something that you do without a great deal of thought.

1918
01:48:26.083 --> 01:48:28.084
Or deliberation is a beautiful word for this.

1919
01:48:28.204 --> 01:48:28.805
No deliberation.

1920
01:48:28.845 --> 01:48:30.205
For me, it's like brushing my teeth at night.

1921
01:48:31.106 --> 01:48:31.686
I could be passed out.

1922
01:48:31.706 --> 01:48:34.849
I could literally fall asleep somewhere on the couch while I'm doing something.

1923
01:48:35.349 --> 01:48:39.011
And lo and behold, at some point, I will stir awake and be like, oh, no.

1924
01:48:39.091 --> 01:48:41.933
And then still, before I get to bed, I will brush my teeth.

1925
01:48:42.374 --> 01:48:44.175
Children don't do this, naturally.

1926
01:48:44.195 --> 01:48:44.475
Right?

1927
01:48:45.837 --> 01:48:50.498
They're forced into brushing our teeth at an early age, but it becomes a habit over time.

1928
01:48:50.558 --> 01:48:52.859
And it becomes a habit that I do without deliberation.

1929
01:48:53.519 --> 01:48:56.400
I don't deliberate whether I'm going to make my coffee typically in the morning.

1930
01:48:56.740 --> 01:48:58.501
It's just quite automatic, right?

1931
01:48:58.861 --> 01:49:02.202
So that habit has achieved strategic automaticity.

1932
01:49:02.542 --> 01:49:05.923
We have removed the deliberation out of it, and now it happens quite automatically.

1933
01:49:06.523 --> 01:49:07.783
That's the goal for any habit.

1934
01:49:08.283 --> 01:49:09.764
Again, I have studied addiction.

1935
01:49:09.864 --> 01:49:10.984
I study habit formation.

1936
01:49:11.104 --> 01:49:13.965
And I do cognitive training regularly.

1937
01:49:14.165 --> 01:49:17.826
research, which means I'm trying to get people to do stuff automatically.

1938
01:49:17.866 --> 01:49:18.287
That's my goal.

1939
01:49:18.307 --> 01:49:21.988
I don't want to have to send them a text message and ping them every time I want them to do the thing, right?

1940
01:49:23.709 --> 01:49:28.751
People like me have been hired hand over foot by tech companies around the world, and this is historical.

1941
01:49:28.771 --> 01:49:30.031
This isn't even a now thing.

1942
01:49:30.852 --> 01:49:34.593
This was 2010, 11, 12, 13, 14.

1943
01:49:34.673 --> 01:49:39.155
I myself have been attempted to be recruited more times than I can count.

1944
01:49:40.177 --> 01:49:48.511
To bring everything that I know and I've studied and I've done research on into certain tech companies that I've been legally told I'm not allowed to name by name.

1945
01:49:49.012 --> 01:49:50.394
Just slide me this little thing here.

1946
01:49:52.678 --> 01:49:52.958
Go ahead.

1947
01:49:54.622 --> 01:50:03.286
Any email you received, just, you know, to paraphrase, just says, Hi, Sahar, we came across your work on strategic automaticity at UC Berkeley, and we'd love to connect.

1948
01:50:03.666 --> 01:50:06.088
We're looking to increase engagement and make our product more sticky.

1949
01:50:06.688 --> 01:50:08.109
Would you be open to a quick call?

1950
01:50:09.649 --> 01:50:11.090
Research collaboration opportunity.

1951
01:50:12.751 --> 01:50:20.415
Lots of people, I guess, in your field get these invitations, because if they can retain people on their platforms more, it's billion-dollar outcomes.

1952
01:50:20.655 --> 01:50:20.975
Mm-hmm.

1953
01:50:23.714 --> 01:50:29.019
What I will say is that, first of all, I don't think anyone is inherently evil or bad.

1954
01:50:29.059 --> 01:50:30.880
This is not—it's just opportunities.

1955
01:50:30.900 --> 01:50:32.282
These are work opportunities, right?

1956
01:50:32.922 --> 01:50:37.366
And the promise, by the way, for scientists like myself is you can keep doing what you're doing.

1957
01:50:37.406 --> 01:50:38.927
We love what you're doing, in fact.

1958
01:50:39.328 --> 01:50:39.688
Love it.

1959
01:50:39.948 --> 01:50:40.649
We love what you're doing.

1960
01:50:40.669 --> 01:50:44.812
We just want you to do it in-house so that we can also implement a lot of these things.

1961
01:50:44.832 --> 01:50:45.473
Yeah.

1962
01:50:45.813 --> 01:50:48.834
So, mind you, I am allowed to say this.

1963
01:50:48.994 --> 01:50:59.917
I'm not allowed to name the companies, but I am allowed to say that that particular email came with an attachment of what the job was, the description, and, of course, the compensation.

1964
01:51:00.517 --> 01:51:07.478
The compensation for that particular role was four times my annual salary doing public research at that time.

1965
01:51:09.239 --> 01:51:09.879
It's tempting.

1966
01:51:10.370 --> 01:51:13.512
Game-changing for somebody, for their life, for their life trajectory, right?

1967
01:51:14.873 --> 01:51:16.914
So these were tempting offers.

1968
01:51:16.954 --> 01:51:19.875
These are tempting offers, modern day.

1969
01:51:21.416 --> 01:51:30.741
I would say that digital dependence is going to be the Everest for our species.

1970
01:51:31.582 --> 01:51:32.562
And I really mean that.

1971
01:51:34.323 --> 01:51:35.624
It has the potential to...

1972
01:51:39.064 --> 01:51:47.990
If leveraged properly to give us amazing advances in everything from medicine to economics, it's game-changing.

1973
01:51:48.250 --> 01:51:50.772
Technology is amazing, especially artificial intelligence.

1974
01:51:51.272 --> 01:51:56.195
However, it comes with a great number of downsides if used improperly.

1975
01:51:57.156 --> 01:52:05.261
Our relationship with technology is fundamentally critical for us.

1976
01:52:06.498 --> 01:52:12.500
for, in my humble opinion, whether or not our species continues to thrive on this planet.

1977
01:52:13.321 --> 01:52:13.901
What's your fear?

1978
01:52:14.821 --> 01:52:21.424
My fear is actually, in fact, something that I have maybe somewhat disturbingly heard about.

1979
01:52:22.004 --> 01:52:30.187
This is a real story from real meetings that I have sat in with leaders in the AI space.

1980
01:52:30.607 --> 01:52:30.747
Mm-hmm.

1981
01:52:35.845 --> 01:52:46.235
What we are currently up against is what is likely to happen at this point unless we truly honestly, unless we turn the wheels and try to do something differently.

1982
01:52:47.035 --> 01:52:51.900
What we are creating is a future where there will be a thinking class.

1983
01:52:53.352 --> 01:53:07.919
there will be a very small subset of the human population that is educated, that has the attention span, and the ability to focus such that they can think critically on their own.

1984
01:53:08.360 --> 01:53:09.580
They can question things.

1985
01:53:10.321 --> 01:53:11.621
They can come up with ideas.

1986
01:53:12.162 --> 01:53:22.527
And this small subset of the human population, in a creepy way, again, I've heard it called the thinking class, they will run the world.

1987
01:53:23.844 --> 01:53:27.165
And the rest of the world will not be expected to think.

1988
01:53:29.685 --> 01:53:34.307
Instead, their job will be to just do as they're told.

1989
01:53:37.527 --> 01:53:42.889
And it is far easier to control a populace when they are distracted and not thinking.

1990
01:53:44.049 --> 01:53:44.669
They're not awake.

1991
01:53:46.790 --> 01:53:47.750
And this is my fear.

1992
01:53:49.049 --> 01:53:53.533
And this is in fact what has, what is motivating me on a daily basis.

1993
01:53:53.553 --> 01:54:10.667
This is my Everest at this point, is to illuminate what is a healthy relationship, an intentional relationship between minds and machines such that we don't lose our meaning.

1994
01:54:13.389 --> 01:54:35.748
And this is what I'm obsessed with on a daily basis at the moment, is giving agency back to people and trying to wake them up and get them to realize that if we stay this distracted, we will live a life unintentionally that we don't like living.

1995
01:54:36.268 --> 01:54:40.612
You will end up on your deathbed with more regrets than you can count.

1996
01:54:42.597 --> 01:54:52.159
And at a social and global level, we are going to have a drastic change from this last century.

1997
01:54:52.639 --> 01:54:57.860
This last century, by the way, has been absolutely amazing as it relates to education for people.

1998
01:54:59.721 --> 01:55:02.001
We have been educating more human beings.

1999
01:55:02.041 --> 01:55:09.723
Think of girls and how much progress we've made in the pursuit of equity and equality for women.

2000
01:55:10.835 --> 01:55:18.220
How many women are now extremely highly educated and doing amazing things where we would not have had that luxury a few generations ago?

2001
01:55:18.580 --> 01:55:19.861
One generation ago, in fact.

2002
01:55:21.441 --> 01:55:25.504
We've made such amazing strides, in fact, to expand the thinking class.

2003
01:55:25.704 --> 01:55:27.225
The thinking class used to be small.

2004
01:55:28.086 --> 01:55:31.508
And I'm telling you now that it is shrinking again.

2005
01:55:32.168 --> 01:55:34.529
Because of algorithms and... And AI.

2006
01:55:34.690 --> 01:55:35.010
And AI.

2007
01:55:35.030 --> 01:55:35.230
Yeah.

2008
01:55:36.195 --> 01:55:38.599
AI is taking a lot of the thinking away from us.

2009
01:55:39.781 --> 01:55:41.824
And I'm using my words quite carefully there.

2010
01:55:41.885 --> 01:55:44.829
It's taking it away from us because we're also, we're letting it.

2011
01:55:45.310 --> 01:55:46.732
Earlier on, I said we're writing more than ever.

2012
01:55:47.313 --> 01:55:48.716
And the reason I said that was because

2013
01:55:49.668 --> 01:55:53.813
I'm actively trying to resist the temptation of allowing AI to think for me.

2014
01:55:53.833 --> 01:56:00.761
I had a conversation actually yesterday with one of my colleagues who reports to me and the feedback was, I no longer can hear your thinking.

2015
01:56:01.262 --> 01:56:08.851
I can't hear your voice, but actually I said to this person, in real life, your reasoning is so much stronger than when you send me things.

2016
01:56:09.672 --> 01:56:10.172
that are written.

2017
01:56:10.353 --> 01:56:11.974
And that is because that's not you.

2018
01:56:12.414 --> 01:56:14.876
You're actually better than me AI because you have more context.

2019
01:56:14.896 --> 01:56:16.177
You have more real world context.

2020
01:56:16.978 --> 01:56:23.462
And I think it's a really interesting moment for people to resist the temptation to let ChatGPT or an LLM think for them.

2021
01:56:24.763 --> 01:56:26.505
But gosh, it's going to be so bloody tempting.

2022
01:56:27.323 --> 01:56:27.984
It's tempting.

2023
01:56:28.264 --> 01:56:29.104
Oh, Stephen.

2024
01:56:29.144 --> 01:56:29.505
What's wrong?

2025
01:56:29.525 --> 01:56:30.666
It goes back.

2026
01:56:30.686 --> 01:56:31.186
What's wrong?

2027
01:56:31.766 --> 01:56:35.809
What's wrong and what's right at the same time, it's another paradox.

2028
01:56:36.090 --> 01:56:39.932
It's another paradox, is those damn biological laws.

2029
01:56:43.355 --> 01:56:45.877
The human brain is wired for shortcuts.

2030
01:56:47.838 --> 01:56:53.703
Meaning, if there is a shortcut to food and calories...

2031
01:56:54.958 --> 01:56:55.819
We're going to take it.

2032
01:56:56.039 --> 01:56:56.259
Yeah.

2033
01:56:56.419 --> 01:56:58.401
We're supposed to because food used to be scarce.

2034
01:56:58.821 --> 01:56:59.842
We'd be idiotic not to.

2035
01:56:59.882 --> 01:57:00.663
Remember, survival.

2036
01:57:01.023 --> 01:57:03.345
This whole system is there for survival.

2037
01:57:03.865 --> 01:57:05.146
We are designed to take shortcuts.

2038
01:57:05.186 --> 01:57:10.230
Now, I will give some props to Daniel Kahneman.

2039
01:57:11.812 --> 01:57:14.974
Danny Kahneman, go Bears, UC Berkeley professor.

2040
01:57:15.294 --> 01:57:16.115
May he rest in peace.

2041
01:57:16.856 --> 01:57:23.321
Also, the first psychologist, first and only, if I'm not mistaken, psychologist to win the Nobel Prize in economics.

2042
01:57:24.850 --> 01:57:33.961
Now, Dan Kahneman is quite famous for not only writing the world famous book, Thinking Fast and Slow, but as a researcher, my humble opinion,

2043
01:57:35.650 --> 01:57:40.055
more famous in my world of illuminating cognitive biases.

2044
01:57:40.975 --> 01:57:43.898
And these are not necessarily, I don't want people to think like, oh no, they're bad.

2045
01:57:43.918 --> 01:57:45.180
It's not like a disease model here.

2046
01:57:45.780 --> 01:57:47.502
These are the shortcuts we're talking about.

2047
01:57:48.143 --> 01:57:51.526
The human brain is trying to figure out very, very quickly, can I trust you?

2048
01:57:51.586 --> 01:57:52.187
Do I like you?

2049
01:57:52.227 --> 01:57:53.228
Do I like what's happening?

2050
01:57:53.488 --> 01:57:54.269
What do I want to do?

2051
01:57:55.090 --> 01:57:56.291
What am I attracted to?

2052
01:57:56.371 --> 01:57:58.813
What am I motivated to actually go get?

2053
01:57:59.534 --> 01:58:06.037
It's just trying to decrease the amount of energy that it takes to make all of the decisions.

2054
01:58:06.117 --> 01:58:10.839
Otherwise, the world is far too stimulating and full of way too much data and information.

2055
01:58:10.859 --> 01:58:11.599
It would overwhelm us.

2056
01:58:12.040 --> 01:58:16.802
So the brain is designed to make all of these, parses all this information, and it's designed for shortcuts.

2057
01:58:18.443 --> 01:58:20.383
Daniel Kahneman is famous.

2058
01:58:21.704 --> 01:58:23.085
One of my favorite quotes of his.

2059
01:58:24.085 --> 01:58:28.287
Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats.

2060
01:58:30.400 --> 01:58:33.181
They can do it, but they would prefer not to.

2061
01:58:33.201 --> 01:58:35.662
Okay, cats can swim.

2062
01:58:37.683 --> 01:58:38.523
They don't like it.

2063
01:58:40.243 --> 01:58:41.844
So thinking is the same way.

2064
01:58:42.964 --> 01:58:51.927
It's against our survival instincts of energy conservation, relaxing, preserving, you know, especially in a world you talked about earlier about where the calories weren't abundant.

2065
01:58:52.568 --> 01:58:54.568
Like even doing this conversation now requires a lot of thinking.

2066
01:58:54.628 --> 01:58:55.649
It's burning a lot of calories.

2067
01:58:56.648 --> 01:58:57.470
We need Skittles.

2068
01:58:57.831 --> 01:58:58.151
Exactly.

2069
01:58:58.191 --> 01:59:00.616
The more calories I burn, my days are numbered, right?

2070
01:59:00.636 --> 01:59:02.179
Like from an evolutionary perspective.

2071
01:59:02.199 --> 01:59:05.125
So that's an interesting thing that we don't actually want to think.

2072
01:59:06.548 --> 01:59:08.391
It's important not to have shame around it.

2073
01:59:09.475 --> 01:59:12.836
This is also connected, by the way, to the scrolling and our relationship with our technology.

2074
01:59:13.117 --> 01:59:20.099
There's no shame if you find yourself dependent on scrolling addicted somewhat and you're not happy with your relationship with technology.

2075
01:59:20.560 --> 01:59:21.300
It's okay.

2076
01:59:21.360 --> 01:59:23.401
Please don't feel shame or guilt around it.

2077
01:59:23.781 --> 01:59:24.481
It's natural.

2078
01:59:25.202 --> 01:59:25.922
Congratulations.

2079
01:59:25.942 --> 01:59:30.604
You have literally hundreds of experts that have designed these tools to be as addictive as they are.

2080
01:59:30.964 --> 01:59:35.446
Lo and behold, you have a brain that we understand, and your brain became addicted.

2081
01:59:35.686 --> 01:59:36.446
So there's no shame in it.

2082
01:59:36.466 --> 01:59:37.547
It's just what do we do next?

2083
01:59:37.567 --> 01:59:37.887
Okay.

2084
01:59:38.307 --> 01:59:49.381
And my humble opinion is first assess, get like a blood test, essentially, like get data on how bad the situation is, where are the bleeds and where is it worse and where is it okay?

2085
01:59:49.481 --> 01:59:52.145
And then go implement some of the tactics that we talked about.

2086
01:59:52.570 --> 01:59:59.874
One of the things I am terrible at is, I think I mentioned this earlier, is I think multitasking is, I've always believed it is a thing.

2087
02:00:00.094 --> 02:00:01.475
It is a more productive solution.

2088
02:00:01.535 --> 02:00:03.936
And I consider myself to be a very proud context switcher.

2089
02:00:04.336 --> 02:00:09.699
But then I heard about this exercise that you do to prove to people that multitasking is a myth.

2090
02:00:10.660 --> 02:00:12.461
I have my iPad here and it's recording the screen.

2091
02:00:12.921 --> 02:00:13.121
Okay.

2092
02:00:13.241 --> 02:00:15.162
So I can show the audience my iPad.

2093
02:00:15.542 --> 02:00:19.885
What is this thought experiment or task that highlights the myth?

2094
02:00:19.905 --> 02:00:20.125
Okay.

2095
02:00:20.583 --> 02:00:22.266
It's so simple too, by the way.

2096
02:00:22.787 --> 02:00:26.052
So what you're going to do for me, Stephen, and draw two lines on that piece of paper.

2097
02:00:26.292 --> 02:00:28.816
And what is this going to prove from a high level?

2098
02:00:29.518 --> 02:00:33.624
What we are going to attempt to do is using the most...

2099
02:00:36.702 --> 02:00:40.284
I would say ridiculously oversimplified, quote unquote, task.

2100
02:00:40.444 --> 02:00:42.224
This is insanely easy for you.

2101
02:00:42.725 --> 02:00:46.867
But what we're attempting to do is get a sense of what we call your switch cost.

2102
02:00:47.827 --> 02:00:55.270
Your switch cost is the amount of time and energy that you essentially waste every single time you switch your attention from A to B, B to C, so on and so forth.

2103
02:00:56.031 --> 02:00:57.351
Biological law, another one.

2104
02:00:57.591 --> 02:00:58.452
There's no free lunch.

2105
02:00:59.072 --> 02:01:03.294
Every single time you do something with your biological being, you pay for it.

2106
02:01:04.350 --> 02:01:04.890
We shall see.

2107
02:01:04.910 --> 02:01:06.311
Okay, let's do this.

2108
02:01:06.331 --> 02:01:06.691
We shall see.

2109
02:01:06.751 --> 02:01:06.971
Okay.

2110
02:01:07.791 --> 02:01:09.812
Whenever you're ready, you're going to go ahead and draw two lines for me.

2111
02:01:10.452 --> 02:01:12.313
And I'm going to time you, so don't start yet.

2112
02:01:12.353 --> 02:01:15.634
But what you're going to write on the top line is you're going to write, I'm a great multitasker.

2113
02:01:15.714 --> 02:01:17.515
And on the bottom line, because you are, right?

2114
02:01:17.575 --> 02:01:18.375
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

2115
02:01:19.315 --> 02:01:20.215
I'm a great multitasker.

2116
02:01:20.235 --> 02:01:20.576
Okay.

2117
02:01:20.916 --> 02:01:23.517
And then at the bottom line, you're going to write the numbers one through 20.

2118
02:01:23.817 --> 02:01:25.897
And you will do this as fast as you possibly can.

2119
02:01:26.017 --> 02:01:27.098
And I will time you.

2120
02:01:27.278 --> 02:01:27.518
Okay.

2121
02:01:27.538 --> 02:01:29.879
And I will read out the times out loud.

2122
02:01:30.099 --> 02:01:30.299
All right.

2123
02:01:30.359 --> 02:01:30.899
Are you ready?

2124
02:01:31.119 --> 02:01:31.299
Yeah.

2125
02:01:31.479 --> 02:01:31.799
Get ready.

2126
02:01:32.260 --> 02:01:32.600
Get set.

2127
02:01:33.300 --> 02:01:33.440
Go.

2128
02:01:46.952 --> 02:01:47.673
from zero to 20?

2129
02:01:48.053 --> 02:01:48.293
Uh-huh.

2130
02:02:00.165 --> 02:02:02.067
Expletives are natural.

2131
02:02:02.848 --> 02:02:04.089
Okay.

2132
02:02:04.149 --> 02:02:04.509
Okay.

2133
02:02:04.529 --> 02:02:04.689
Done.

2134
02:02:05.070 --> 02:02:05.230
Done?

2135
02:02:05.250 --> 02:02:05.430
Yeah.

2136
02:02:05.470 --> 02:02:05.911
31 seconds.

2137
02:02:06.191 --> 02:02:06.411
Okay.

2138
02:02:06.551 --> 02:02:06.892
Beautiful.

2139
02:02:07.632 --> 02:02:08.773
I want you to do this one more time.

2140
02:02:08.793 --> 02:02:09.154
Okay.

2141
02:02:09.174 --> 02:02:09.334
Okay.

2142
02:02:10.510 --> 02:02:14.992
This time, the way in which you will arrive will be a little different.

2143
02:02:15.312 --> 02:02:15.492
Okay.

2144
02:02:15.712 --> 02:02:16.472
You're going to alternate.

2145
02:02:17.113 --> 02:02:19.193
So you're going to start at the top line and you're going to write the letter I.

2146
02:02:19.213 --> 02:02:20.214
You're going to drop down to the bottom.

2147
02:02:20.234 --> 02:02:20.694
Don't start yet.

2148
02:02:20.714 --> 02:02:21.294
I'm going to time you.

2149
02:02:21.314 --> 02:02:21.474
Yeah.

2150
02:02:21.494 --> 02:02:22.075
Down to the bottom line.

2151
02:02:22.095 --> 02:02:23.275
Number one, back up to the top line.

2152
02:02:23.715 --> 02:02:24.936
Letter A, down to the bottom line.

2153
02:02:25.136 --> 02:02:26.176
Number two, back up to the top line.

2154
02:02:26.196 --> 02:02:27.017
Letter M, down to the bottom line.

2155
02:02:27.037 --> 02:02:28.937
Number three, so on and so forth until you finish both lines.

2156
02:02:29.217 --> 02:02:29.338
Okay.

2157
02:02:29.718 --> 02:02:32.479
I'm going to give you one other option because if you're thinking Sahar,

2158
02:02:33.335 --> 02:02:34.436
This hand is a NASCAR.

2159
02:02:34.636 --> 02:02:37.198
Like, I'm going to lose time going back and forth between these two lines.

2160
02:02:37.238 --> 02:02:37.458
Fine.

2161
02:02:37.798 --> 02:02:40.700
You can do it all on one line, but you still have to alternate.

2162
02:02:41.221 --> 02:02:44.663
So it still needs to be I, one, you know, two A, so on and so forth.

2163
02:02:44.683 --> 02:02:46.324
So it needs to like alternate all in one line.

2164
02:02:46.344 --> 02:02:47.645
So it's going to look like a garbled mess.

2165
02:02:48.306 --> 02:02:51.168
So it's a little harder to track in my opinion, but some people prefer it.

2166
02:02:51.188 --> 02:02:52.549
Do you know what?

2167
02:02:52.609 --> 02:02:55.171
If I get to 31 seconds, just tell me and I'll stop.

2168
02:02:55.711 --> 02:02:55.951
Okay.

2169
02:02:56.072 --> 02:02:58.834
Because it's that you're already anticipating it's going to be that painful.

2170
02:02:59.014 --> 02:02:59.214
Yeah.

2171
02:02:59.434 --> 02:02:59.594
Okay.

2172
02:02:59.614 --> 02:03:00.315
All right.

2173
02:03:00.335 --> 02:03:00.755
Get ready.

2174
02:03:00.955 --> 02:03:01.155
Yeah.

2175
02:03:01.415 --> 02:03:01.836
Get set.

2176
02:03:02.116 --> 02:03:02.216
Go.

2177
02:03:12.949 --> 02:03:13.770
I forgot how to count.

2178
02:03:13.810 --> 02:03:14.250
That's weird.

2179
02:03:17.993 --> 02:03:21.196
Oh my gosh, this is a shit show.

2180
02:03:21.236 --> 02:03:21.757
Where was I?

2181
02:03:22.137 --> 02:03:22.357
There.

2182
02:03:27.221 --> 02:03:27.942
I think I cheated.

2183
02:03:27.962 --> 02:03:30.124
I just feel like I've cheated.

2184
02:03:32.766 --> 02:03:33.266
I'm sorry.

2185
02:03:33.907 --> 02:03:34.227
We're at 30.

2186
02:03:35.300 --> 02:03:36.121
How far did you get?

2187
02:03:36.141 --> 02:03:37.242
I got to number eight.

2188
02:03:38.062 --> 02:03:38.322
Okay.

2189
02:03:38.563 --> 02:03:46.689
So that was, my math isn't great, but that is 40% of the speed as when I just focused.

2190
02:03:46.889 --> 02:03:53.555
I said differently, 60% slower when I was multitasking between numbers and letters.

2191
02:03:55.036 --> 02:04:03.203
So on a daily basis, theoretically, I'm losing potentially 60% of my productivity, theoretically, just by switching between two different types of tasks at once.

2192
02:04:03.223 --> 02:04:03.383
Yeah.

2193
02:04:04.106 --> 02:04:10.168
So you're not only getting less done, energetically, one is more expensive than the other.

2194
02:04:10.188 --> 02:04:12.688
Do you know what?

2195
02:04:12.908 --> 02:04:14.849
It was way less enjoyable.

2196
02:04:15.149 --> 02:04:15.789
It was painful.

2197
02:04:15.809 --> 02:04:16.789
Do you know the other thing?

2198
02:04:16.809 --> 02:04:17.229
Yeah.

2199
02:04:17.409 --> 02:04:30.713
It really did remind me of how I've been working because every time I went from one line to the other, I went from the letters to the number, I had to remind myself again of where I was with the numbers.

2200
02:04:30.733 --> 02:04:31.353
Yeah.

2201
02:04:31.629 --> 02:04:31.749
Yes.

2202
02:04:31.769 --> 02:04:32.289
Does that make sense?

2203
02:04:32.409 --> 02:04:35.310
And then when I went back to the letters, I was like, where are we again with the letters?

2204
02:04:35.370 --> 02:04:35.850
Totally.

2205
02:04:36.230 --> 02:04:42.092
So there was a little bit of a gap there in me like trying to figure out what came after the letter I, for example.

2206
02:04:42.252 --> 02:04:45.153
It's really fascinating because it, yeah, so illuminating.

2207
02:04:45.993 --> 02:04:49.454
By the way, there's a name for that concept that you were just, you were feeling it.

2208
02:04:49.474 --> 02:04:50.074
It's palpable.

2209
02:04:50.214 --> 02:04:50.434
Yeah.

2210
02:04:50.574 --> 02:04:52.455
It's called attentional residue.

2211
02:04:52.875 --> 02:04:53.035
Yeah.

2212
02:04:53.835 --> 02:04:54.815
And it sounds gross, right?

2213
02:04:54.995 --> 02:04:55.575
Yeah.

2214
02:04:55.595 --> 02:04:55.776
Yeah.

2215
02:04:56.076 --> 02:05:00.777
I call it attentional baggage because I find the visual that that creates better.

2216
02:05:01.771 --> 02:05:10.126
Meaning you carry into the next task all the shit, the baggage from the previous task unless you close out.

2217
02:05:10.146 --> 02:05:12.189
I say get cognitive closure.

2218
02:05:13.313 --> 02:05:18.435
Close out the tab, so to speak, on your computer and just be like, all right, this I'm going to do.

2219
02:05:18.915 --> 02:05:19.855
Clean up shop.

2220
02:05:20.296 --> 02:05:21.536
Get cognitive closure.

2221
02:05:22.076 --> 02:05:26.498
Close the box and don't carry one bag into, you know, box or a bag.

2222
02:05:26.518 --> 02:05:28.279
Don't carry it from one thing into the next thing.

2223
02:05:28.679 --> 02:05:31.440
Try to, as much as possible, get cognitive closure.

2224
02:05:32.000 --> 02:05:36.241
When you multitask, one, you're barely onboarding to the next task.

2225
02:05:36.261 --> 02:05:37.662
You're carrying shit from the last one.

2226
02:05:38.162 --> 02:05:40.223
It's taking you longer to actually finish anything.

2227
02:05:42.130 --> 02:05:50.274
By the way, over two hours a day is the estimated average now for the average knowledge worker just bouncing between screens and different tasks.

2228
02:05:50.915 --> 02:05:51.975
I think it's absolutely wild.

2229
02:05:52.536 --> 02:05:56.858
Sahar, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for.

2230
02:05:57.918 --> 02:06:00.960
The question left for you, very good question left for you, very good question.

2231
02:06:00.980 --> 02:06:01.740
I love when this happens.

2232
02:06:02.320 --> 02:06:07.363
Is how can the audience become more lucky?

2233
02:06:08.383 --> 02:06:11.265
Oh, I love this question.

2234
02:06:14.010 --> 02:06:17.691
And I have an answer, which is nice.

2235
02:06:18.011 --> 02:06:18.251
Yes.

2236
02:06:19.191 --> 02:06:20.192
It's nice when that happens.

2237
02:06:22.712 --> 02:06:22.992
Luck.

2238
02:06:26.433 --> 02:06:37.196
The way to become more lucky is to prime the mind, to train it, I would say, to look for luck, your luck.

2239
02:06:37.776 --> 02:06:42.718
Because lucky for you, I'm assuming, is very different than my luck and the next person's luck.

2240
02:06:43.058 --> 02:06:43.198
Right.

2241
02:06:45.112 --> 02:06:47.374
You have to know what your Everest is again.

2242
02:06:47.494 --> 02:06:49.276
You need to go to that deathbed.

2243
02:06:50.036 --> 02:06:51.878
Figure out what a good life for you is.

2244
02:06:52.779 --> 02:06:55.882
Figure out what your intentions are and your goals.

2245
02:06:55.922 --> 02:06:57.223
Like, what is it that you're looking for?

2246
02:06:57.243 --> 02:07:00.986
Because if you don't know, then there's nothing for you to look for.

2247
02:07:01.046 --> 02:07:02.828
We don't even know what you want to get lucky at.

2248
02:07:03.628 --> 02:07:04.229
Right?

2249
02:07:04.649 --> 02:07:07.192
So one, you have to get crystal clear on what it is that you want.

2250
02:07:07.212 --> 02:07:07.632
Right?

2251
02:07:08.680 --> 02:07:14.522
Once you're crystal clear on what you want, you need to ask yourself and remind yourself on a daily basis what that Everest is.

2252
02:07:15.302 --> 02:07:20.703
And then you need to, you said it beautifully, is it pedal versus podium, right?

2253
02:07:21.583 --> 02:07:28.385
What is the one thing I can do today that is going to make me incrementally closer to that long-term goal?

2254
02:07:29.345 --> 02:07:51.721
If you prime the mind with what is your goal, what is your Everest, what are your objectives or what you're looking for, what you're hoping to get lucky about, what you're hoping to get lucky in, then if it's on your mind, instead of all the bullshit that we fill the mind with, this is turning the signal up.

2255
02:07:52.842 --> 02:07:57.566
We talked, all of this conversation has been about turning the noise down.

2256
02:07:58.692 --> 02:08:01.035
And parts, we talk about the signal.

2257
02:08:01.595 --> 02:08:06.380
When we talk about your ultimate why, your Everest, your long-term goals, that deathbed self.

2258
02:08:08.142 --> 02:08:10.544
And then we talk about the MITs, which is the pedal.

2259
02:08:11.345 --> 02:08:12.446
How can I drive my day?

2260
02:08:12.787 --> 02:08:17.291
What can I do today that's going to make me incrementally closer to that long-term goal, right?

2261
02:08:17.672 --> 02:08:19.734
That's the what, so to speak.

2262
02:08:21.557 --> 02:08:33.239
In order to get more lucky, the mind, a bit spooky, it will look for data and evidence to support its beliefs.

2263
02:08:33.959 --> 02:08:34.419
Either way?

2264
02:08:34.840 --> 02:08:35.280
Either way.

2265
02:08:35.740 --> 02:08:44.541
So if you ruminate, if you stay in that victim mindset, if you stay in that, oh, look at my shortcomings, I'm never going to make it, but I'm so far away from that.

2266
02:08:44.561 --> 02:08:45.822
Everest is all the way up.

2267
02:08:46.762 --> 02:08:47.202
Guess what?

2268
02:08:48.233 --> 02:08:48.913
You will notice.

2269
02:08:49.834 --> 02:08:56.338
What you will notice are closed doors, because apparently you're a victim, and they're not for you.

2270
02:08:57.739 --> 02:09:00.401
You will notice all of your shortcomings, and you'll focus on them.

2271
02:09:00.441 --> 02:09:02.102
This is a focus machine, as we said.

2272
02:09:03.843 --> 02:09:11.749
This thing is designed to look for the evidence and find the evidence that confirms its beliefs.

2273
02:09:12.829 --> 02:09:14.210
It's constantly scanning.

2274
02:09:14.831 --> 02:09:17.853
So if you prime this thing, oh,

2275
02:09:20.425 --> 02:09:22.907
You'll find your luck because your luck is right there.

2276
02:09:23.567 --> 02:09:24.928
The opportunities are there.

2277
02:09:26.088 --> 02:09:29.751
The world is not full of brick walls the way that it may seem.

2278
02:09:30.551 --> 02:09:31.832
Those brick walls are doors.

2279
02:09:31.852 --> 02:09:32.652
They have handles.

2280
02:09:33.173 --> 02:09:33.913
I'm a lucky person.

2281
02:09:33.973 --> 02:09:34.634
I'm a lucky person.

2282
02:09:34.654 --> 02:09:35.674
I'm a lucky person.

2283
02:09:35.714 --> 02:09:36.435
I'm a lucky person.

2284
02:09:36.595 --> 02:09:37.656
I'm a lucky person.

2285
02:09:37.676 --> 02:09:39.176
I feel like that's manifestation.

2286
02:09:39.677 --> 02:09:40.697
I want to push you further.

2287
02:09:40.837 --> 02:09:41.078
Okay.

2288
02:09:41.158 --> 02:09:43.899
And if people are into that, I think, great, positive thinking.

2289
02:09:43.919 --> 02:09:44.280
That's all.

2290
02:09:44.340 --> 02:09:45.300
It's all lovely and beautiful.

2291
02:09:46.101 --> 02:09:47.962
I mean, what are you trying to achieve here?

2292
02:09:49.482 --> 02:09:55.044
What are you trying to achieve is, like, do you have a guest that you're trying to bring on that you've not been able to find?

2293
02:09:55.585 --> 02:09:56.065
And you're just upset.

2294
02:09:56.305 --> 02:10:00.687
Like, I want you to be wake up every single day and just, like, be like, I will find my way to you.

2295
02:10:01.247 --> 02:10:02.067
You will find.

2296
02:10:02.107 --> 02:10:03.668
Bracket boomer, bracket boomer, bracket boomer.

2297
02:10:04.972 --> 02:10:06.153
Barack Obama on this podcast.

2298
02:10:06.173 --> 02:10:06.653
Let's do it.

2299
02:10:06.893 --> 02:10:07.093
No, no.

2300
02:10:07.113 --> 02:10:08.294
If you keep saying it will happen.

2301
02:10:08.714 --> 02:10:09.795
But it's not just about saying it.

2302
02:10:10.475 --> 02:10:13.016
You will be thinking about like, that is one of my goals.

2303
02:10:13.697 --> 02:10:16.258
You I promise you, you're going to see opportunities.

2304
02:10:16.618 --> 02:10:19.580
You're going to end up meeting one of his former chiefs of staff at a random.

2305
02:10:19.620 --> 02:10:22.222
It's just going to happen because it's top of mind for you.

2306
02:10:22.602 --> 02:10:28.405
And your brain is designed to look for the evidence and the data to support its beliefs.

2307
02:10:28.725 --> 02:10:31.787
So if you truly believe Barack will be on this podcast.

2308
02:10:34.242 --> 02:10:35.585
He'll find his way to this chair.

2309
02:10:39.775 --> 02:10:41.038
Now he has to, right?

2310
02:10:41.118 --> 02:10:42.501
We've spoken it into the universe.

2311
02:10:42.521 --> 02:10:43.143
He's got to.

2312
02:10:43.183 --> 02:10:43.764
He's got to.

2313
02:10:44.297 --> 02:10:45.717
I mean, I just love your work for so many reasons.

2314
02:10:45.757 --> 02:10:56.121
I think sometimes the complicated can stay complicated until it finds someone like you who has the ability to simplify and have the empathy to understand those that they're simplifying it for.

2315
02:10:56.441 --> 02:10:58.881
And I was super excited to see you've just started a YouTube channel.

2316
02:10:59.202 --> 02:10:59.702
I did.

2317
02:10:59.982 --> 02:11:02.503
And I would highly recommend people go and subscribe to your YouTube channel.

2318
02:11:02.523 --> 02:11:06.324
I'll link it below, but it should be, if we collab, you should be able to see the little icon there.

2319
02:11:06.684 --> 02:11:09.985
Highly recommend you go and subscribe to Dr. Saha because...

2320
02:11:10.645 --> 02:11:33.270
you know she's continuing to do great work she's continuing to learn and share that knowledge with all of us and it saves us having to build these superhuman labs that she's built and we can just go follow her and have the you know you don't want the algorithm to be serving up your content you want the subscription button so go ahead and follow dr saha over on her channel as well is there anywhere else people should go to get your work or to understand more about you to follow you

2321
02:11:35.049 --> 02:11:43.998
I want to help people, one, gain control over their lives and live a life of intention, of their choosing, whatever it is that they want to do.

2322
02:11:45.119 --> 02:11:55.350
So my humble recommendation is to gain some data on you, to actually assess your digital dependence on.

2323
02:11:55.940 --> 02:11:57.101
Assess your attention span.

2324
02:11:57.121 --> 02:11:59.123
Have you ever taken a test of your attention?

2325
02:11:59.143 --> 02:12:00.805
Do you know where it falls?

2326
02:12:01.105 --> 02:12:01.926
Maybe it's not so bad.

2327
02:12:01.966 --> 02:12:03.288
Maybe you're off the charts amazing.

2328
02:12:03.308 --> 02:12:04.969
We don't need to worry about it.

2329
02:12:05.450 --> 02:12:16.801
I'm a firm believer in the way that, and I would love the world to change in this way, and I hope in some small part we can help make this more of a common thing that people do.

2330
02:12:17.602 --> 02:12:23.287
But the same way that we go to the doctor once a year and we have this like annual physical, usually, you know, like, how am I doing?

2331
02:12:23.307 --> 02:12:24.308
I get a blood test.

2332
02:12:24.328 --> 02:12:25.189
You check all the things.

2333
02:12:25.750 --> 02:12:27.171
Why is it that we're not checking our minds?

2334
02:12:28.352 --> 02:12:28.953
We don't do that.

2335
02:12:29.513 --> 02:12:30.815
We just wait for it to go to shit.

2336
02:12:31.495 --> 02:12:32.596
And then we do something about it.

2337
02:12:32.616 --> 02:12:35.459
Like we wait for the car to be on fire and then we're like, oh, oops.

2338
02:12:35.939 --> 02:12:39.182
No, we should have things that we're doing along the way.

2339
02:12:40.163 --> 02:12:41.465
But how do we know what to do?

2340
02:12:42.942 --> 02:12:43.402
the data.

2341
02:12:44.302 --> 02:12:47.343
If we collect data and we actually have assessments available to people.

2342
02:12:47.783 --> 02:12:54.225
So I'm extremely passionate about making scientific assessments available to the general public.

2343
02:12:54.245 --> 02:12:56.225
I think science should be for people, not profits.

2344
02:12:56.245 --> 02:12:57.566
Where do I find the assessment?

2345
02:12:57.706 --> 02:13:01.126
You go to mmminstitute.org.

2346
02:13:01.547 --> 02:13:02.627
M-M-M.

2347
02:13:03.467 --> 02:13:05.028
Mind, machine, and meaning.

2348
02:13:05.328 --> 02:13:06.249
Institute.org.

2349
02:13:06.469 --> 02:13:09.832
Okay, I'll link that below, and I'll put it really big on the screen here.

2350
02:13:11.053 --> 02:13:12.374
MMMinstitute.org.

2351
02:13:12.874 --> 02:13:13.474
Free assessments.

2352
02:13:14.976 --> 02:13:16.096
Thank you so much for being here.

2353
02:13:16.437 --> 02:13:18.558
Such a lot, and please keep doing the work that you're doing.

2354
02:13:18.578 --> 02:13:19.119
You're a star.

2355
02:13:20.059 --> 02:13:22.801
And sometimes, once in a while, I meet stars, and you're suddenly a star.

2356
02:13:22.821 --> 02:13:25.503
So I'm excited to watch your career unfold from here on outwards.

2357
02:13:25.603 --> 02:13:26.604
Thank you, Dr. Sarah.

2358
02:13:26.664 --> 02:13:26.984
We're done.

2359
02:13:27.165 --> 02:13:27.585
Thank you.