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If you let people have their phones out, the IQ of your employees is lower. Because there was a study done when the phone was visible to you. Scores were significantly decreased.
Dr. Sahar Yousef explains how to train your brain, improve focus, and avoid burnout by following biological laws of cognition and energy management.
Key Takeaways
- Phones visible during work reduce cognitive performance and perceived trustworthiness.
- Multitasking is inefficient due to the brain’s biological cost of switching attention.
- Training the brain through cognitive exercises can improve focus, memory, and intelligence.
- Aligning work habits with biological laws prevents burnout and enhances productivity.
- Creating mental downtime is essential for creativity and idea generation.
What the video covers
- Visible phones reduce employee IQ and attention, impacting productivity and trustworthiness.
- Switching attention frequently incurs a biological cost in time and energy, reducing efficiency.
- Ultra successful people achieve more by choosing to focus and follow biological laws of brain function.
- The brain is plastic and can be trained to improve intelligence, focus, and memory like a muscle.
- Understanding and leveraging biological laws of motivation, energy, and distraction management is key to goal achievement.
- Modern work habits often go against our biology, causing burnout, brain fog, and inefficiency.
- Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Yousef studies how to optimize brain function and create 'superhumans'.
- Creating mental space by being bored can foster creativity and idea generation.
- Proper nutrition impacts brain function, focus, and energy levels.
- Following your brain’s natural rhythms and biological laws increases productivity and goal success.
Chapters
- 00:00Impact of Phones on IQ and Attention
- 07:53Following Biological Laws for Success
- 15:36Science of Motivation and Goal Achievement
- 24:04Sleep, Health, and Brain Function
- 32:19Neural Networks and Brain Patterns
- 40:13Habits and Emotional Regulation
- 54:53Managing Distractions and Phone Use
- 62:36Understanding Brain Fog and Internal Narration
- 71:16Focus, Dedication, and Building an Empire
- 80:02Neurotransmitters and Emotional States
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Like my attention decreased. Yes, Raj. It was also general fluid intelligence. That means you're dumber.
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This is the scary reality of how attention works in the brain. People who hold their phone or put their phone out on the table when they're talking to people and they first meet you, you seem less trustworthy, less capable, less
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intelligent, all of these different things. I'm a cognitive neuroscientist. I study how we can train the brain to be better.
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Every single time you switch your attention, you pay for it in time and you pay for it in energy. And if you don't believe me, we can test it out.
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Grab a piece of paper. You have some paper and a pen. Now, on the top line, I want you to write, "I am a great multitasker." And then on the bottom line, I want you to write the numbers 1
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through 20. I want you to go as fast as you can. Okay? Go. 17.72. Now, turn this paper around. Draw two more lines. You're going to do this one more time, but the way in which you will arrive will be very different.
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Okay? You're going to alternate. You're going to go back and forth until you finish both lines.
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Okay? Go. Done. So you went from 17.72 to 41.35, more than double. Every single time you switch your attention, there's a payment, a biological payment. This is what makes the people that are ultra successful different from everybody else. They just
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choose differently. A lot of people think that ultra successful people have better ideas. They have more ideas.
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So what should I do? How can someone become a person who gets incredible ideas all the time?
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Be bored and do nothing and you get ideas. You have to let those ideas come to you by cultivating the space for them.
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I'm going to show you a city map. Explain to me how my brain works as if it was a city.
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We're here to learn about getting done and being productive. Yeah. How do I become this person who ends up achieving all the goals? Yes.
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Yes. Okay. I have a small favor to ask you. I need you to subscribe to our channel. The more subscribers we have, the better and bigger guests we can bring and provide you more value through these conversations. And the full audio
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experience of this show is also available on Spotify where you can follow us and listen to the new episodes as well. We usually think about how food affects our body, but we rarely think about how it affects our brain. What you
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in the description below. If, yeah, someone's watching you for the first time. Yes. They have no clue who you are.
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Then how would you explain what you do and why they should watch it?
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So I'm a cognitive neuroscientist and my research is focused on cognitive neuroplasticity and also cognitive training. So I, in particular, study how we can train the brain to be better, better, faster, stronger.
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Okay? Which is why my lab colloquially is kind of called the Becoming Superhuman Lab because that's what I study. I study how to make superhumans. And I'm obsessed with this topic. I have been for a very, very long time. When I learned early on
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in my career that the brain is capable of change, that it's dynamic, that we can—we're not born with a certain brain or it doesn't crystallize, that based on training, based on what you think, what you feel, what you do, the habits that
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you have, your brain can completely change and become different. Then my question became, that means that people can become smarter. That means that your ability to focus can increase. That means your memory can get better. Like you can get better at that just like any
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other muscle, right? Like with fitness. And then, of course, now a huge part of what I do is really focused on minds and machines, okay?
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And how they interact together. If you ignore the fact that we are human and by that, by the way, I mean the biological laws that dictate how our brains and our bodies actually work. Like the laws of physics, right? Like if I, like I always
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say gravity. Yeah, there it is. Laws of physics. Nobody's questioning the laws of gravity. Like, oh, today, never mind. It's not for me.
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I don't want to do that. Right? This is how our universe works. Well, there are also biological laws that dictate how our brains work best, how our bodies work best. And my goal is for people to learn these biological laws so that they
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can work more in line with their biology instead of against it. Right now, I feel, and I say this all of the time, that the way in which we as a society, human global society, are living and working
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goes against our biology. It goes against the laws of biology and we can feel it. People have brain fog. They're exhausted. They're burning out. They're not reaching their goals. Everybody I always talk to says, "Oh, I'm busy all
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of the time. I'm working non-stop. I'm busy, busy, busy, busy." And it's like, "Do you actually meet your goals consistently?" Oh, no.
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I'm busy all of the time. I'm like, how could that be possible? But then do you see the difference between people who are achieving their goals all the time versus people who are not?
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Yes. And is it the all the difference is in the brain and the biological laws they're following.
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The most important word you just said was following. We all have very similar brains.
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The laws are the same. Physics is physics no matter where you go. The difference between me and, let's say, like an Elon Musk is for the laws of physics is I'm not sending rockets into space, right?
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It's about am I learning the laws and am I leveraging the laws and my big push to every person in the world is you have to learn the laws of your brain and your body so that you can follow them and
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leverage them, meaning actually get more done. That's the concept of becoming superhuman: if you can learn those laws, then you can do amazing things with this brain and body that other people oftentimes they ignore those laws.
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They're exhausted again, they're burned out. They're working all of the time but they're working inefficiently.
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These are the issues. You know, they say they have these dreams and they have these goals but they find it difficult to actually do those things. But the, so the difference is between the people who consistently meet their goals is if
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they're following the actual laws of, like, it's almost like a cheat sheet. It's like a blueprint for how to live well.
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So you're telling me if I follow my biological laws,
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which is how, like, let's say if my brain is supposed to function in a certain way and I follow those laws, then my likelihood of achieving my goals
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increases than normal people like other people do not follow. But also I will say you're like, I don't buy it. Okay. Yeah, well, you have to remember a lot of biological laws, the laws I'm hopefully we're going to talk about,
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that I'm obsessed with are also laws around what's the science behind motivation, what's the science behind goal achievement, what's the science behind focus, what's the science behind distraction management, energy management. You realize you can have all these amazing
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goals in life, but if you mess up on those things, you're not going to meet those goals. Imagine like an Olympic athlete, right? Somebody wants to go to the Olympics, but they say, "I'm not focused on my training."
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Okay? I am not doing a good job managing my energy. Okay. Um, I'm not motivated.
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Yeah. I'm motivated for 3 wee...
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You know, you could have any goals in the whole world. But yeah, that's these are what I mean by the laws of biology.
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I don't mean like take a blood test necessarily. I mean learn how does the brain motivate like what is dopamine really for example, right? How does it really work? Because the people that say like oh I want to whatever I don't know
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get fit. I want to raise a certain amount of money. I want to start a company. I want to do these things.
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That's great. But what's the first step? And do you lose hope after 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years?
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True. with we'll come to biological loss but for for simple average human being okay super human could mean a billionaire who looks like he's killing it in life right so you have also trained a lot of people from lot of these large companies
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you've worked with people from Nvidia Google you teach a lot of people you research about ultra achievers all of these things you do right so you have you've You've dealt with a lot of people who look like superhumans from the
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outside. What is one fundamental difference between a brain of, let's say, a billionaire and a broke person?
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I've worked with some pretty amazing people that have achieved amazing things. Truly superhuman things. And I'm always the most curious about people that achieve great things that come from nothing.
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If you started at zero and you achieved something close to 100, that's interesting. That's worth studying, right?
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Yeah, absolutely. And I've been very lucky, you know, being especially in Silicon, I've had access to a lot of some of these amazing people because of the work that I do.
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Um, it also helps that the lab is called Becoming Superhum, and everybody wants to be superhuman. So, it's it's a it's it's it's popular for for a few different reasons, but some of these amazing people that I've met, I'll tell
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you something that is wildly different from a lot of folks that I see who struggle. And that is belief.
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Belief about how the world works. Belief about who it is that they are. These people, these the the billionaire's brain, they don't think there are limits.
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They really don't. These people don't think there are any obstacles in their way. When something looks like a brick wall to the average person, that person sees a door.
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They know that they can open and create doors anywhere. They believe it. Truly, they believe it. And this is the fascinating thing again going back to those biological laws.
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The power of belief is so strong in the human brain when you believe something.
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And these are again the stories that we tell ourselves. Who am I? How powerful am I? What am I capable of? It's like imagine you're a character in a movie.
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These people like really I don't know. Have you heard of the phrase main character energy?
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Yeah. They have main character energy for real. Truly. And but everybody can have main character energy. You should be the main character of your life.
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Everybody should be. And I say that not just be to be like romantic cuz it's fun because this is how you can train the brain. If you convince yourself, I'm going to make it. This is going to be my
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life. This is going to be the door that I'm going to open. This is going to happen for me. And I know it's going to happen because it's possible because people like me have done. You know it.
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It's it's not you don't have the victim mindset. You don't have the oh these are these obstacles in my way that oh I have nothing blah blah blah. All these other people they have this help they have that's going to keep you stuck. So many
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amazing examples of people again Olympic athletes people that have just crushed it physically that didn't start out fit at all but they make it happen through training. I think it's the same thing with mindset. All you have to do is So,
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here's here's my recommendation because I I do this for a living. This is what I do. I I help people train their brains.
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Every single time inside of your mind, your brain starts telling you that story. I'm a victim. I come from nothing. Look at my background. I'm not going to make it. You have to tell your brain to shut up. Zip it. Be like, "Uh-uh. Don't do
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that." And then you have I call that by the way that's called redirection redirection. It's attentional redirection in the brain. So if your attention is somewhere like oh I'm a victim. Oh I'm the oh it's not going to
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work out. Oh what if I fail? Oh redirect. You say uh I'm not going to move my attention. I'm moving my attention. I'm redirecting it back to what's the story you want.
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And you then you repeat it. And you got to get obsessive about this. Like every day you repeat the story, who am I?
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What's possible? One of my favorite quotes is anything is possible because nothing is real. All of this is man-made. All of this is made up. We can make anything happen.
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But then if someone was never believed in themselves ever, they've never thought that they can ever become better, achieve their goals, have a dreamy life, become financially free, billionaire millionaire whatever etc., etc., right? If someone never believed, how can someone build a main
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character energy? Write the story down. Take a piece of paper and you don't have to believe it in the beginning.
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Just trust me. Get a piece of paper and a pen and write out. Even if in the beginning you have to say this is this would be believed and this would be written by a version of me that doesn't
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exist that does believe in themselves and they are successful and they're amazing. Write from that person's perspective.
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What do you write? Like you take a piece of paper and what do you write?
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You can write well it depends on the your goals. It depends on your vision.
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So for example I might say I can I can come up with any scientific question related to the things that I am obsessed with and I will find the resources. I will find the people. I will find the
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funding. I will find the doors. I will make the doors open so that I can figure out what those answers are because I'm obsessed with finding out those answers.
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And I'm going to keep telling myself that. And when you do that, by the way, let me tell you the science of how this works. What's going to happen if you write that down, whatever story, but because it depends on the person, right?
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Your story is going to be different than mine. There's a network in the brain, okay? It's a neural network, okay?
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Which is a pattern of electrical activation. So a neural network is a collection of different brain areas that in unison like an orchestra activate together. So they're they're they're connected electrically and they activate together. Okay, we have many different
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neural networks in the brain, but an important one is called the DMN or the default mode network.
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Okay, now the DMN is the brain's storyteller. Interesting. M this is the brain's narrator autobiographical narration who am I what's my identity what am I what are the stories and you know when people talk about trauma when people talk about
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bag all this it's stories and I you collect these stories like in a bag and you're carrying it around like baggage so you got to ask yourself which stories am I still carrying and are they serving me and when I say serving me like are
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they actually helping you achieve your goals are they making you happier? Are they making you healthier? Are they giving you an opportunity to live the life that you want? Because if they're not, get rid of that story. Rip that
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story up. And you have to write your own story. Make up a new story. And then that DMN every single time, every day, you review the story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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You're going to get every guest you want, you know, whatever it may be. You're going to review the story over and over and over again. And guess what's going to happen? that DMN, the default mode network, the pattern of
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electrical activation that it has, it will influence other brain areas that are related to your attention.
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Now, we're talking about exciting executive function because that your beliefs, your stories. You asked me about the billionaire's brain and I told you the number one trait they have that's different is they have crazy beliefs.
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Crazy beliefs. They don't see limits. anything is possible and anything they they're capable of anything and if you believe that that DMN and those beliefs will impact different brain areas that are related to what you see what you pay attention
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to and what you notice have you heard of like priming yeah it's explain me let's say explain everybody okay what priming is it this is the science behind priming that if you can have information teed up so that you review that story. That's
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why I said like it's not enough just to write it down one time and put it in your journal and put it away. No, no, no, no. You're working on this is training. You got to hit the gym every
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single day. Be like, "Uh-uh. This is what's going to happen. This is what I'm going to do. This is my goals. This is how I'm going to get there. This is the plan. This is the plan." You keep
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writing every day. You keep reviewing and keep writing. What's going to end up happening is you're going to notice opportunities.
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The opportunities are everywhere. The possibilities are all right in front of us, but people don't see them. You will only see what the brain is primed to see. You will see what it is that you truly your beliefs and the data behind
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your beliefs are priming you to attend to in the world. So when you do that, all of a sudden so many success stories, I know you've heard these two. People will say, "Oh, and then I met this person randomly." magic right
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they opened the door I had oh one conversation it just idea came to me I then all random things they start talking about it's it's not that random you can make you can increase the likelihood the statistical likelihood of these things
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that feel random if you reset your DMN if you reset your DMN that's a beautiful way to put it re literally design use your DMN to design your beliefs about yourself design your DMN so that you can choose what are the stories I'm telling
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myself about myself what's possible and what I'm going to accomplish and who I am and that is going to influence your behavior because the brain is going to it's designed this way this is what I mean by biological laws
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this is everybody's brain yours mine everybody's our brains are designed they're designed to look for data that confirms your beliefs.
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Yeah, true. It happens with all the negative things as well. Bingo. Bingo. Which is why I'm like, if it's not helping you, get it out of there. Throw it away. Get it out. Like, you don't need it.
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Because people are like, "Oh, I'm a victim. Everybody blah blah blah. Everybody hates me. I don't get what I want." And guess what? They always see they're always complaining, right?
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Yeah. this happened, then this other thing happened. No, no, no. What's happening is your beliefs because that's how the brain works. That's a biological law.
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The brain is going to find and look for data to confirm its own beliefs. So, choose your beliefs, design your beliefs.
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Yeah, this this is so fascinating. It happens with me all the time, right? I I have an irrational belief when it comes to my work. And even if I'm sitting on a random afternoon, I start spotting opportunities out of thin air and they
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end up becoming opportunities worth millions of dollars and I end up just getting them. And I'm like this like 5 days ago this was not even the real thing. And at the same time I always play a victim card that because of my
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life, because of my schedule, because of work, I'm I never I I'm never able to sleep properly, you know, I'm not this guy who'll ever be able to get sleep, etc., etc. Every little thing just confirms that belief and I always just
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find out new reasons why I can't sleep. And like just two different aspects, same person business, work-wise, opportunities just keep getting them.
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Healthwise, I just keep falling, falling falling. And I just keep confirming the even if I have like 10 hours to sleep, I end up confirming some belief and be like, "Oh, why didn't I sleep that day?" Because, you know, this happened and that
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happened and just it happens. There's excuses in my head. Yeah. But but I love this. Okay. You said main character energy. Okay. If someone's watching this and we have to make this make main character energy exercise sort of stuff.
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Okay. Okay. Okay. So what would you want me to write in this story? So let's say I today I decide that from right now I'm going to have the main character energy in my life.
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Yeah. Okay. And I am going to write take a piece of paper and write my story.
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Yeah. What should I have in this story? Identity, goal, what all did you you just threw a bunch of words. Let's make it simplest. Let's make it simpler for people to have like a template to start doing it right now.
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Beautiful. First begin with what we call identity based beliefs. Okay. Okay. Identity based beliefs.
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Now, I actually think we should totally do this on you related to your sleep.
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Wow. Okay. Cuz you brought it up yourself, right? You said, "Okay, you've got some beliefs in there that sleep is hard for you." Yeah.
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Is not easy, but it's totally not helping you. I'm sure. Not at all. Okay. So, let's get rid of it. Let's make a new belief. You write a new one.
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So, what you're going to want to do, so the identity based beliefs, the the way that they work is that you need to write a belief that you have that Raj has about sleep that's based on your values.
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So, I'll give you a few examples just to like get you inspired. You might write, "I prioritize my health because I know how important it is for my performance and my business." You might just write that sentence down. Do you believe that?
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Yeah. Totally right. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. So, you might write something like that down. Then you're going to stack the next one.
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You're going to say, "I know the data on sleep and health." Do you feel like that's true?
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Yeah. Yeah. Have you had some sleep experts on the pod? Still, it has not helped me. A lot of people have benefited from it, not me.
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Okay. We can bond about this. I'm not an easy sleeper either. We should talk about your sleep. Seriously. Um, so first is identity. Second is data.
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Second is well I should say identity and then you're you're still mixing your identity with facts that you know. Yeah, pretty much your data because we're going to try to bridge all of these together, right?
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What else do you believe about sleep? What is it that you know for sure about sleep?
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It's going to make me better. It's going to make you even better. So would you maybe could I even push this a little further and say I could be a smarter, better looking and happier version of self if I slept a little bit more.
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Yeah, I'll ask better questions if I'm I'll be more focused. Yeah, there are so many things that I'll I'll achieve by just sleeping better.
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Yeah. So you might you'd write all of these things down and then you would start writing bringing it all together into an identity based belief and even though it's not true yet you would say something like I make sure that I wind
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down for bed that's at an early enough time to make sure I at least get 6 to 7 hours a night.
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You write what the you essentially you're designing the habit like this is the part I don't believe I know you don't believe it now but you have to write it down and this is the process of fake it till you make it
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right got it yeah you got to like you got to be like yep I do that okay because why because you prioritize your health and your performance you know so it's like first was identity second was data third is what better will
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happen after this and fourth is new habit. Yeah. And this is where you bring in I would say still even one full sentence all together. I'll give you an example actually from one of my um MBA students, one of my business students.
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I'm the type of person Oh, now we're talking about what kind of person are you versus what kind of person is someone else, your competitor. M m I'm the type of person who makes sure that I sleep at least 6 to 7 hours a
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night because I know what an edge it's going to give me in my business.
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You're just going to write that down and you're like, "Oh, I don't do that every night." That's okay. You're But do you believe you can get there?
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Yeah. And do you believe it's true all the other things you've written? Yeah. Okay. Once you've done this work and you've written down that identity, I'm the type of person who does this, then we start going into something that
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we call implementation intentions. And this is from research from Peter Gwitzer. Now, implementation intentions are essentially situation action plans.
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For those who do computer science, it's like an old school if then statement. Yeah. Okay.
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If this then that. If then, when is probably a more apt way to describe it.
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Okay. So, a situation action plan would be like this. When my alarm goes off every night at 11 p.m., I begin my designed routine. I start my windown music playlist, you know, then I make my herbal tea. I do this. I start
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doing my physical therapy, you know, whatever it may be. You you go through your routine.
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The difference between I'm going to try to go to bed earlier or I have this new routine, I'm just going to do it before bed.
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The difference here is an implementation intention describes in crazy detail what does it look like when you do the thing you describe like a movie. I want to see you in your house, Raj. Like at and it's like 11:00
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p.m. the alarm goes off and you're like, uh, where are you? What is it? What does it look like? What are you wearing?
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Where in the house are you? What are you doing? Phone's in your hand. It's truly describe it in detail. I'll give you another example of the difference between having an implementation intention versus having a goal. Because a goal is
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wake random. Yeah. It's it's like a prayer, you know. It's like that's cute. It's nice, but there's no plan, right? There's no way to make it to execute the thing, right?
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We got to have a plan. So, uh, let's say I've heard a lot of people say, "I'm going to try to go to sleep earlier. I want to try to get more sleep." Adorable. How are you going to do that?
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Right. We actually have to get serious about what this looks like. Yeah. So usually for people unless your body is waking you up super you know usually we have what we have to do is go to bed earlier not uh keep sleeping
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the other way. Yeah. So the question becomes what kind of implementation intention can you design that's going to get you to do that. So you don't say I'm going to try to get to bed earlier. It's not going to work. So
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you describe the situation when this happens then I will do this when then okay so when 11 let's say when whenever my alarm goes around 11 p.m. this is what I'm going to do. That's exactly what you you want me to design.
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Yes. And like I'm on the right side of the bed. I have my laptop on. and I'm doing this like all of this and like I'll shut this down. I'll be doing like stuff like that like that minute detail.
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Yes. Okay. And then once you visualize it and you've written it down, then you begin the habit, you attempt to actually do the habit and you tr and here are some other tips here.
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Make it as easy and small as possible. As easy and small as possible. For example, a lot of people benefit from going to bed earlier just by brushing their teeth earlier.
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Interesting. That's it. You could just say, "Listen, I'm I don't know when I'm going to go to sleep, but I told myself I have to brush my teeth at 11:00." Once you brush your teeth, that means you're probably not going to eat or
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drink anything anymore. Now you have at least the kitchen is cut off. You just start cutting everything off. You're like, "And then I'm going to get in my pajamas." Okay, now we're even one step closer. You just have to figure
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out what behaviors that you want to design out. Commit to it. Make it as small as possible, but really make the when part, the if part, the beginning, the situation should be as clear as humanly possible. Truly clear. People really
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skip this step. They say things like, um, I'll give you an example of when people want to stop doing something because it's possible your viewers want to cut a habit.
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Yeah. Stop smoking. stop eating sweets, whatever it may be. Start binging on their reels overnight.
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Tricky one, but yeah, totally. Totally. You could say, "When I have a craving for another piece of chocolate, when I have a craving for a cigarette, then I will do this instead." And I'll tell you, this is a version of
Speaker A
an implementation intention for a negative behavior, meaning a behavior you want to cut. Okay?
Speaker A
Not a positive behavior. and a behavior you want to add. Say add like positive and negative or add a behavior or remove a behavior.
Speaker A
Removing a behavior is insanely difficult. Super super difficult. Way more than adding. Yes. Why? Why cutting off an habit is more difficult than making a new habit?
Speaker A
Do you have a whiteboard? Yeah. All right. All right. Okay. So we were talking about neural networks before, right? So neural networks again are patterns of electrical activation.
Speaker A
So let's say for example, you have some pattern of electrical activation here in the brain. And let's say this represents your craving for something you don't want to crave anymore.
Speaker A
Yeah. Watching reals, let's like binge watching random stuff. Yeah. Oh wow. Binge watching. Okay. So mindless scrolling, whatever you want to call Yeah, great. I'll even draw a little phone, you know. Okay, there you go. All right.
Speaker A
So, this is this is the craving for it, though. Okay. This is not the behavior. This is the craving. So if this dot here represents the the actual craving for it, what that let's say ends up getting connected to
Speaker A
is a set of patterns of electrical activation here that represents the complex behavior that ends up being you grab the phone and you start scrolling.
Speaker A
Okay. Okay. So it starts with a craving. The craving is not by the way usually to binge watch. Usually the craving is something else. Usually, and this is where we can get a little more emotional here, it's a feeling.
Speaker A
Okay. What do you mean by that? Well, let's let's The craving is not for binge watching.
Speaker A
Well, that ends up becoming the behavior for you to satisfy a craving. The craving you think is actually for binge watching, but it's it's a craving to binge watch in order to satisfy some feeling. That's usually what's happening. like something I'm missing.
Speaker A
Something you're missing or something that you want to disassociate from, numb from usually. Usually the feeling that people have is overwhelm, stress, let's say.
Speaker A
Okay, if you're overwhelmed, you're stressed out, you're tired, you lack motivation, right? M you're looking to solve for these feelings and your brain has decided a nice thing to do if you have these feelings. You're like, I don't nobody wants to feel this
Speaker A
by the way, right? These are bad feelings. So if you have these feelings, your brain goes, let's get out of this. How do I solve this?
Speaker A
There's a few different things you can do. But let's say you accidentally develop this addiction, this habit.
Speaker A
Because by the way, the word habit is a common one. We're all interested in habits.
Speaker A
Yeah. It's pretty much the same thing as addiction. It's the same thing. People hear the word addiction and they think it's like scary, like it's some moral, you know.
Speaker A
Yeah. It's a bad thing. It's a bad thing. What about when people are addicted to exercise or addicted to feeling healthy or addicted to being kind, right? Cuz you can you've I've met people who definitely are addicted to
Speaker A
those things and I know you probably have met lots of these kinds of people because these are the people you collect. People addicted to their own success.
Speaker A
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's not a bad thing. Addiction just means habit. That's it.
Speaker A
Okay. So, we can demystify, dethrone, you know, uh uh these words really. They're coupled together. They're the same thing. They're the same thing.
Speaker A
So, what is a habit? What is also an addiction? It's also the same thing as just a behavior that you do over and over.
Speaker A
I would just say that you do a lot, right? So what ends up happening is you have a feeling there is some brain state, some cognitive or emotional brain state and then what ends up happening is you want to move away from that feeling.
Speaker A
If it's a if it's a bad feeling like this, right? You want to move away from it. Your your brain wants to help you solve it. It doesn't want to let you sit in that in that bad feeling.
Speaker A
So whatever it is that you did, let's say you did binge watching one time when you felt that way. You're like, "Let me distract myself, you know, go somewhere else. We don't need to think that. We don't need to feel that."
Speaker A
So then you start binge watching and what's going to happen in the beginning? In the beginning you're distracted, right? So it feels good.
Speaker A
Yeah. Okay. So what you ended up doing is you ended up doing the actual binge watching. So you scrolled and then what happens uh uh at the at the very end.
Speaker A
Let's say now you're done scrolling and you put the phone away. This is a bit of a trick question because let's say you were overwhelmed about a work deadline and then you started binge watching for 45 minutes in the evening instead of working on the
Speaker A
thing that's overwhelming you. So then you did the binge watching and then afterwards you put the phone down. Did you deal with the thing that you were actually stressed about?
Speaker A
No, I get guilty. Yeah. So now you have this, you have the overwhelm and you have shame.
Speaker A
Yeah. So the person is super sad now. We're we're just super sad. So now that you have overwhelm and shame, you know that's even worse than before. No.
Speaker A
Yeah. So guess what I want to do again? Watch again. Go around the circle again. So okay, let's say you've done this one night.
Speaker A
But come on, let's be honest. I've done this even like at least 100 times. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker A
Here's the answer to your your original question. Every single time you do this, you go through this path. Every time you traverse this road and you do it again and again and again, do you see what's happening here? We're making it darker.
Speaker A
No, we're making it maybe even bigger, stronger, deeper. This neural network starts to become like a tree trunk, like the roots of a tree.
Speaker A
That is how a behavior. If you do it one time, that's fine. You do it 100 times, 1,000 times, a million times, that's a behavior that you do a lot, that's the same thing as addiction. It's the same thing as a habit. It's all the
Speaker A
same. So habits, addictions, and behaviors that you do a lot are just really entrenched and strong associations between a feeling, a craving, and a behavior.
Speaker A
So how do we break this? One, tip number one, don't wait for it to get so strong. You know, ideally, what if it's so strong already?
Speaker A
Okay, let's assume it's strong because there I'm sure there must be hundreds of bad behaviors which are strong in my head. Obviously hundreds of good behaviors as well.
Speaker A
Yes. But the bad behaviors, let's talk about them. Let's get rid of them first.
Speaker A
Okay. Step one, awareness. You have to understand and see the loop for yourself. You cannot change something that you do not understand that you don't have data on.
Speaker A
Right? You have to understand a system if you want to change the system. So you need knowledge.
Speaker A
Okay? Self-nowledge in this case. So you need to be aware. You need to be able to see your own behavior as it's happening.
Speaker A
That means you actually have to answer the question, what's the feeling? So step one is you got to identify the emotions and the feelings that cause you to go down the loop in the first place.
Speaker A
How do I identify this? Because I don't know if I'm if I'm falling into this trap of feeling like I I want to crave something. That craving can be dessert at midnight. It can be binge watching. It can be
Speaker A
just doing all sorts of bad habits. Some for some people it can be alcohol, smoking weed, uh smoking, you know, like a cigarette.
Speaker A
Mhm. For some a lot of young people it can be porn like all of these behaviors are stem from feeling, right?
Speaker A
Yes. But we don't know why are they occurring. Yeah. Like it it can be overwhelm, it can be stress, it can be anxiety, it can be tired, it can be all it can be just pure shame or maybe lack of ability to
Speaker A
turn around my life or the feeling like a victim. How do I find out which one is it?
Speaker A
You have to have what's called a cognitive pause. So that means when you before you go grab the chocolate at midnight, before you grab the phone and maybe you've already grabbed it, by the way, you just you've grabbed the phone,
Speaker A
you've opened up Instagram, whatever it is that your app of choice, you know, you grabbed it, you opened it, and you just were about to start scrolling and you go, you have to start to build the awareness. You go, hold on, hold on,
Speaker A
hold on. I'm not saying you can't have it. By the way, in the beginning, we just want to know why.
Speaker A
So you go, okay, hold on. What am I feeling right now? What is it that Why do I want to go and binge watch right now?
Speaker A
I'm just exhausted. Like just Okay, so you're you're tired. I would still ask you go deeper.
Speaker A
Why are you exhausted? And then I'd force you I if I were in the room with you, I would say, well, Raj, if you're exhausted, shouldn't you go do something else like rest?
Speaker A
Right. Or gain more energy. Do something that gives you energy. Like, right. If you're tired, if it depends. If it's right before bed, then if you're tired, yeah, that's right. Go to bed.
Speaker A
Sleep. So then you go to sleep, right? We go, we help you with the sleep thing.
Speaker A
But if you're tired in the middle of the day, you're like halfway in the middle of the day and you're like, I'm just exhausted and I need a break.
Speaker A
Yeah. This is not a break. There was, by the way, a paper published in Nature.
Speaker A
What is it? the world's like premier science journal 2024 that actually measured the effectiveness of different kinds of breaks.
Speaker A
Okay. One option was no break at all. You do no break. Raj, keep working. Tired. So what?
Speaker A
Keep going. Hustle. Come on. You're young. You got it. Let's go. The next option was you take a break uh and you look outside or you go take a walk outside in nature.
Speaker A
Okay. So you're exposed to something natural. Okay. The next break was scrolling. Yeah. Can you imagine what the results were?
Speaker A
It showed that scrolling is pretty much the same as not taking a break. So instead of actually letting this brain rest and make energy for you, because again this is all chemistry up in here.
Speaker A
This is like again biological laws. You need to learn that if this system is tired in and listen I'm a high performance like I'm all about productivity and performance. So if let's say for example treat yourself like an Olympic athlete.
Speaker A
If an athlete is telling you I'm exhausted right then you say okay okay get off the field go sit and rest drink some water get a snack you know we tell them to like stretch you know get ready.
Speaker A
Why? Because I need you to go back out there and keep training. Yeah. If they say I'm tired, like let me open Tik Tok. That's we already know. We science has already shown that that's not a break. It doesn't replenish and
Speaker A
increase your energy. Right? So going back to this, I would you would say, "Oh, I'm tired." I would actually want you to sit down and really dig into the feeling more. You know, are you really is it just tired? What's really
Speaker A
going on? And like I then you need a replacement behavior. So in this previous example, you were doing the scrolling.
Speaker A
It's this is what I meant by negative behavior, right? If you want to cut something off, you cannot just say, "Oh, next time I'm exhausted, I will not binge watch.
Speaker A
This is impossible. Good luck. It won't happen. It won't happen. You're going to do it because look at this. Look at how deep this network was. It's not your choice.
Speaker A
It's going to happen automatically. You don't have a choice. Raj is not driving this car.
Speaker A
It's automatically just driving it on. It's automatically driving it. So, you need to aggressively, that's what I meant, a cognitive pause. You need to aggressively start. Number one, you need to start where it starts, which is the feeling. It starts here.
Speaker A
The feeling, the brain state, the cognitive state, the craving. Why do you do the behavior in the first place? We have to cut it off there and make you pause and then say, "Okay, we're going to do something else." So that ends up
Speaker A
being this feeling, right? That was our first step here. So instead of going towards the the actual binge watching, we're going to do something else.
Speaker A
So let's say instead, what's a healthy behavior that you wish you did more of, too?
Speaker A
Let's say breath work. I mean, yeah, that would be nice. I love it. Yeah, sure. So, you're going to do breath work. Great. Okay.
Speaker A
Like just 1 minute. 1 minute is amazing. 60 seconds. Close your eyes. That's it.
Speaker A
You don't have to do anything else. You just that's it. Okay. Okay. That's going to be the new replacement behavior. Now, here's what I would tell you if you're really addicted. If after 60 seconds of closing your eyes, you
Speaker A
still want to scroll, go for it. Makes it a lot easier. No. Yeah. But what you're doing when you do that, by the way, is let's say the closing your eyes, this is the feeling that started. This is the new behavior. Close
Speaker A
your eyes. Mhm. Right. I draw a little eye for you here. Okay. So, you close your eyes. This is the new behavior. Instead of this going immediately to the original scrolling behavior, it's going to go here first.
Speaker A
Okay? This is you're breaking the cycle. Instead of the energy going this way, it's now going to go this way. Even if it goes this way afterwards, we're helping. Maybe one time you go, "No, I still want to scroll." Okay? The second
Speaker A
time, maybe you're like, "Okay, fine. Really, I'll do something else. This is you just you have to find a way to break this thing.
Speaker A
And if I break this, you're saying that after 1 minute, if I still want to do it, if I do this every time, I'll reduce.
Speaker A
If you do it every time, I promise you're going to start not doing it. If you then you're just going to create a new one. I mean, listen, if you do it every time, then you're just going to
Speaker A
start creating a new habit this way, right? Yeah. So, you're just saying, "Okay, before the route was this way. Now, this is a new route that I'm going to go to scrolling." Like, now you're going to be that guy that before he binge watches,
Speaker A
he closes his 60 seconds. You've just designed a new addiction. But the idea here is you're giving your brain an opportunity. It's just an opportunity to to redirect. And what we call all of this by the way is to do one thing and
Speaker A
that thing is called emotional regulation. Interesting. That's what you're trying to do because every behavior, even people doing hard drugs, porn addiction, it's coming from an emotion. It starts here. If you can understand the emotion, you can control
Speaker A
the behavior because you can choose it. You can design it. But that requires regulating. Regulating is hard. So what you can do is you just can create a cognitive pause and get yourself to do something tiny. Easy, not hard. Easy,
Speaker A
easy, easy. And then you're creating a bit of a pattern interrupt and it's an opportunity for you to choose something different. So then what ends up happening is this p road becomes less traveled. Let's say this is after one month of you
Speaker A
closing your eyes after the feeling instead of going immediately. So now it gets skinnier. After 3 months it's even skinnier. Then this one you've been doing this, right? So this is getting stronger and stronger and this one keeps
Speaker A
getting skinnier and this one keeps getting stronger. That's the idea. This is how you build new habits and kill bad ones that you don't want anymore. And why killing bad ones is more difficult than building a new one?
Speaker A
Starting new ones. It's difficult because you're both pruning. You're both pruning. Meaning you're trying to deactivate and and weaken a neural network or a pattern of electrical activation. And in order to do that, you should be building another one. So
Speaker A
it's like you're doing two things. You know, if you think about it from like a business perspective, it's like um if you're trying to downsize one department and create a whole new department, it's a little easier just to say everyone
Speaker A
else keep going. We're also just going to build a new department, new project. So, you're doing two things. You're pruning is hard because the energy wants to go that way because you let it you let it go that way over and over and
Speaker A
over again. And then it became that muscle became really strong. Going back to your identity, remember those stories? Yeah. It's the same thing.
Speaker A
So, if you let yourself say, "I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm going to stay poor forever." Blah, blah, blah. Because the system is messed up.
Speaker A
Those people who are successful, they they were, you know, uh they they did it through tricks. They got it through luck. I'm unlucky.
Speaker A
My family is not lucky. My We just We don't That doesn't happen for us. It doesn't happen for people from like where I'm from. Whatever it may, whatever story you're telling yourself, any one of these stories, if you let
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yourself say that story again, what you're doing is again you're make you're just saying that's this is what's up. This is real. This is real. This is real. This is real. And what we said before, beliefs look for data and data informs
Speaker A
beliefs and then that cycle becomes even stronger then becomes your whole life. So when you when you get hired by these large companies to upgrade their mindset or upgrade mindset of their CEOs and their billionaires and multi-millionaire executives right?
Speaker A
What actual habit or like a sort of a routine you help them build so that they don't get they upgrade their mind and they don't get exhausted because you must be improving some things in their life. That's why they
Speaker A
keep coming back to you. Yeah, there's a lot of habits and a lot of strategies. It kind of depends on We can go through the list.
Speaker A
Yeah, tell me the list. What what can an average 25year-old or 35year-old who's watching this can follow in their life which you teach the top executives?
Speaker A
Okay. The first and I would say the most pervasive issue that I see in most people's lives right now and in places of work as it relates to productivity is what we call bad digital hygiene.
Speaker A
Okay. What do you mean by that? So hygiene, right? It's like having clean hands and things like this. Yeah.
Speaker A
Bad digital hygiene is having a bad relationship with your digital tools and specifically your notifications.
Speaker A
I'll give you an example. You sit down to work. You sit down to focus on something.
Speaker A
Where is your phone when you're doing this? Usually it's on my desk like right here.
Speaker A
Yeah. Like right now it's not here, but mostly it's Yeah. Yeah. It's right there. Actually, for this I can actually we can do a mini experiment together if you're up for it.
Speaker A
Okay, I'm up for it. Okay, cuz there was a study done in UT Austin that I want to share with you.
Speaker A
Okay, but we're going to pretend like you are doing you're you're in the actual study itself.
Speaker A
You're going to be like one of the participants. Okay. Okay. All right. So, this is your phone.
Speaker A
All right. So, in this study, everybody came into the lab. So let's say you're the in the exact same situation, right?
Speaker A
You've just come into the lab and what we're going to do, Raj, is we're going to test your general fluid intelligence.
Speaker A
Okay. What do you mean by that? It means your mind's ability to hold important information in mind and then get new information and compute with that information without losing the stuff that was already in your mind.
Speaker A
Honestly, you you've been doing it this whole conversation. You're amazing at it, but that's why you're successful. So, it's an important skill. Have you noticed some people, it's hard for them to do that? They like lose track of what
Speaker A
they were trying to remember and they can't compute the stuff. Yeah. New stuff. Okay. So, there's actually a test for this which I bet you would score really high.
Speaker A
Okay. Okay. It's a complex working memory task. And complex working memory is a phenomenal way to test for general fluid intelligence.
Speaker A
Okay. I can give you this test later if you like uh for real. But let's say you come into the lab and I want to test that and I want to test your attention span.
Speaker A
Okay. Okay. Now you come in and I say, "Okay, you have a phone, right?" All right, great.
Speaker A
Go ahead and turn your phone completely off like like airplane or just No, no, no. Full like dead.
Speaker A
Yeah. Not DND, not airplane mode. The side and the button. None. Okay, it's off. Okay, scenario one. Your phone is going to be in another room with me. It's dead. You turned it off. You give it to me. It's
Speaker A
going to be in the waiting room. So, I'm going to hold it. You're going to go into the testing room with a computer.
Speaker A
You're going to sit down and you're going to hammer out all these tests. We're going to test your intelligence and all these things.
Speaker A
Okay. Option two. Scenario two. I you can keep your phone but you have to put it in your pocket.
Speaker A
Okay. Or a bag. Okay. Now imagine now you come and you sit down by yourself in the room.
Speaker A
Remember your phone is dead. Okay. This off. Yeah. You're not taking a text or something in the middle of the test.
Speaker A
You sit down. You do the attention span test. You do all the different tests.
Speaker A
Scenario three. You can take your phone out of your pocket, but this time I let you put your phone face down just like where you said it was when you were working. Okay. Face down on the side.
Speaker A
Then you're sitting in front of the computer and you're doing all of these assessments.
Speaker A
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. In this study, and remember the phone is dead. Yeah. Yeah. Technically, nothing changes in all three scenarios. The phone's dead. You're not using it.
Speaker A
Exactly. M it's like having this eraser nearby, right? It's just an object. In this study, we were able to see, and by the way, this is one of the most shocking studies I think I have seen in the last number of years on this topic.
Speaker A
Okay? When the phone was visible to you in your visual field, dead but face down off to the side, scores were significantly decreased across the board. like my attention decreased.
Speaker A
Yes, it's the same you, right? Same Raj, same brain, different capability. And think about it's attention span.
Speaker A
Raj, it was also general fluid intelligence. That means you're dumber. Literally, if the phone is visible, I'm not even though it's dead.
Speaker A
Even though it's dead. Even though it's dead. This is the scary reality of how attention works in the brain. Remember the stories we tell, right? The brain is all about storytelling and narration.
Speaker A
All the memories you have using that thing, all of the memories you have, binge watching, talking to friends, making plans, good news, bad news, drama, all these things are happening in the phone, right? For me, like I don't
Speaker A
know if you use like Apple Pay, but I'm also like tapping. It's like my payment system. It's like everything.
Speaker A
It's everything. Everything is in the phone. Memories. I have pictures, you know, of my dog. Like all this stuff is on there that I love, right? It's all there.
Speaker A
And you know that. Your brain knows that. So if you can see it, it's always going to be thinking, "Oh, I'm remembering all those amazing things and I want to play." Like right now since the time we've spoken about phone, I've
Speaker A
been anticipating really like a notification will come right but it's dead. It's dead. So here's my recommendation. You should have like a parking lot, a box, something there where you hide your phone. Just put it away so that you don't see it. Bam.
Speaker A
Gone. Out of sight, out of mind. We don't need it. Right? And this is listen, I'm not saying all the time, but when you want when you want 100% of your intelligence for me, right, I run a business, right? I I do research, I do
Speaker A
all these different things. When it's game time, again, remember, treat yourself like an Olympic athlete. If it's game time, it's go time, you're making a big important decision, you're sitting down with your team and you're having a brainstorm, get
Speaker A
the phones out of the room because you're literally lowering the IQ of your whole team. If you let people have their phones out, the IQ of your employees, the IQ of your team is lower.
Speaker A
You're making everybody dumber just by having phone here. Just by having the phone there. And if you care about this, people like you less. There's been lots of really interesting studies that people who hold their phone or put their phone out on
Speaker A
the table when they're talking to people and they first meet you, you seem less trustworthy, um, less capable, less intelligent, all of these different things. Why would that be? It's because I'm really saying, listen, you're not so important that I'm
Speaker A
going to give up the opportunity to put my attention somewhere else. somebody more important than you might call me. So, I'm going to keep it here in my hand, you know, cuz that's wherever it is. Usually, it's pee in
Speaker A
people's hands or like, you know, some I'll like sometimes put it under my arm and carry it that way, you know, whatever. But it's on the table. Two people who have a coffee chat, right?
Speaker A
They put it on the table and they sit down and they have their coffee. But it's literally lowering the quality of the conversation. It's lowering the quality of the connection.
Speaker A
You know, you're not married yet, are you? No. Okay. Hey, so you're going to be dating.
Speaker A
It's also going to lower the quality of your date. No, I don't take that on the rates.
Speaker A
Like, all right, good, good, good. I've learned it on my podcast that days when I have my phone right next to me.
Speaker A
Yeah. My attention during the conversation is much lower versus that's why I just always give it to these guys and just, you know, either out of the room or they have it somewhere I don't even care.
Speaker A
Yeah. And it's like on airplane mode. The moment you like you entering before even you enter like 30 minutes before you enter just off like it's gone. I don't care.
Speaker A
That's such a good habit. I'm so glad you mentioned that. Your listeners need to do that too. It's the same thing.
Speaker A
It's the same exact thing. I would also recommend going back to your sleep because now I care about your sleep.
Speaker A
Remember I used to coach CEOs and I know I'm like so I'm going to start like coaching you. Bring it back to your sleep. I would ask you to respect your sleep enough because it's going to impact your performance that much too
Speaker A
for you to put your phone away 30 minutes before bed. Okay. You said you did it 30 minutes before I arrived.
Speaker A
Yeah, but this was Yeah, I'm not as important as your sleep. Raj, your sleep is more important than me. I promise. I promise. Because if you start doing that, oh, you're going to see such a radical shift in your life
Speaker A
and in your mindset. And do you want to know something? Okay, here's what I this I'm going to dare you to do this.
Speaker A
Okay? And I'm going to follow up with you. Okay? I'm going to dare you to do this. 30 minutes before you go to bed, have a cut off where you have to turn your phone off.
Speaker A
And then don't turn it back on until 30 minutes after you wake up. If 30 minutes is too much, 15 minutes. 15 minutes before you go to bed off and then after you wake up just let your eyes open
Speaker A
because people use the phone as an alarm. It's right next to them. The phone rings. They immediately grab it and then they start. They're still in bed. They're like doing this. They're just like, "Oh, that that's me. Thanks for attacking."
Speaker A
Like that's just got to talk about the truth. Yeah. I didn't know that. But it's this is the reality for so many people though, right? There's no no point in the shame because the shame makes it worse.
Speaker A
Remember, it's adding an extra feeling on top of the other feeling. So that feeling in the morning, you're looking for stimulation and it's FOMO.
Speaker A
You want to figure out what you missed while you've been sleeping. Yeah. But here, okay, here's my this is why I want you to not look at it for 15 minutes.
Speaker A
First thing in the morning, your brain is in a very delicate and powerful state. You have an opportunity to reinforce those new beliefs that we were talking about. You have an opportunity to set your brain up for the right
Speaker A
mindset, for the right goals, for the right priorities first thing in the morning. When you allow the rest of the world to tell you who you are, where you should be putting your attention. So, hey, there's news over here. Look at
Speaker A
this notification. Look at this email. I need this Raj. I need you to send me the Can I see you Tuesday at 3 p.m. Please confirm. Is that when we're me all this noise?
Speaker A
All the noise from the outside is removing an opportunity for your own brain to tell you some amazing idea that's going to unlock something for you because peeps so many people have such amazing clarity and amazing ideas first
Speaker A
thing in the morning. But right now across the world I think it's it's a generation of people are losing that like we're missing out. We're missing out on so many things. So the first mistake you asked me the biggest mistake
Speaker A
that people are making is bad digital hygiene. They leave their notifications on on their computers. So they sit down on the computer and now we let's say we put the phones away at least, right?
Speaker A
Phone is gone cuz we learned about that. Okay. If you want to be fully focused, you want to have the best productivity, the highest level of effectiveness.
Speaker A
You also need to make sure all your other forms of digital hygiene are locked in, dialed in. That means, and let me be clear, most of the CEOs I work with, when I sat down and I would observe them
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working, you know, I would show up with my clipboard and all of my, you know, observational tools and stuff and I'd be like, "Go ahead. Just I'll be over here watching." They have they immediately open a document, right? Let's say they're
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getting ready for the board meeting or something. They open up a document, they're looking at a deck, and then bing, what was that? Okay. And then they go here. They have two monitors. on the other monitor they have like Slack open.
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Yeah. Constantly pinging like all this stuff and the phone is out and they have an Apple Watch and they're just like doing this thing and it's just like this.
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Yeah. But the brain is literally a focusing machine. Every single time you switch your attention, you pay for it. It's not free.
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What do you pay for it? How do you pay? What's the price? I'm glad you asked. You pay for it in time and you pay for it in energy.
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And if you don't believe me, we can test it out. Go ahead. Yeah. Tell me. Yeah.
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Okay. Grab a piece of paper. You have some paper and a pen. So, on this piece of paper, we're just going to draw two lines. There you go. Okay. Now, on the top line, I want you to write, I am a
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great multitasker, but don't start yet. Okay? And then on the bottom line, I want you to write the numbers 1 through 20.
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1 through 20. 1 through 20. I want you to go as fast as you can. Okay. And then I'm going to time you. I'll hide the phone so that you're smart as possible. No excuses.
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Okay. Right. I'm a great multitasker. And 1 to 20. Exactly. And I want you to go as fast as you can.
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I'll read the times out out loud and then and then you can go for it. Okay.
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And then actually, how about this? I won't read them out loud. I'll you just focus.
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Okay. Okay. Cuz we'll have the timer going up there. I'll watch you and I'll stop the time when you finish. Okay. Get ready.
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Get set. Go. 17.72. Super fast. Cool. Now, turn this paper around. Awesome. Draw two more lines.
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You're going to do this one more time. Okay. You're going to end with the same outcome. So the output at the end is going to be I'm a great multitasker 1 through 20. But the way in which you
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will arrive will be very different. Okay? You're going to alternate. You're going to start at one at the at the top line. You're going to write you're going to write the letter I.
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You're going to drop down to the bottom line. Write the number one. Back up to the top line.
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Letter A. And then down to the bottom line number two. Back up to the top line after every letter.
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Mhm. Okay. You're going to go back and forth until you finish both lines. Okay.
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Okay. Now listen. If you think, hold on, I'm going to lose time, right? Going back and forth like meaning just my hand moving right?
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You can, if you want, you can draw one extra long line, but you have to still alternate.
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So that means you still have to write in in between I one 2 A. Okay. All right.
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But I just want to give you options. Get ready. Get set. Yeah. Go. You got this.
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This is where you guys need to overlay some fun music. Done. 40 seconds. So, you went from 17.72 to 41.35.
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More than double. More than double. So, and I have a question. We all saw, but did you ever make any mistakes?
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Oh, yeah. A lot. Okay. So, this goes because this time I was focused on like just Yeah. Like my brain was not able to comprehend like two things at the same time.
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Yeah. Well, really, your brain can't. This is the point I want to make. So, you're saying nobody can be a good multitasker?
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No. No. Listen, what you're there's let me and let me let's be clear. Let's define what we're talking about here.
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When people talk about multitasking, the way they talk about it is as if they're doing two different things with full fidelity at the same time.
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That's how they talk about it. Yeah. When they talk about multitasking, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm doing this and I'm doing this." Yeah.
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Okay. How many brains do you have? One. Yeah. Okay, that how many attention systems do you have? Like you have one of everything.
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Yeah. Okay. So you don't have two brains. You cannot say with my full Raj brain 100% performance I am 100% doing this and at the same time I am 100% doing this. You don't have two 100s. You have one 100.
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So if you want you can take your 100% like a pie chart. You can dice it up.
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You could say 50/50. 50% of my attention is on this, 50% on this, 8020, 7030, 6040. No matter what your split is, you're splitting your attention. It's split. So, when we talk about multitasking, the way people talk about
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it, they Yeah. Yeah. I have my phone here, but I'm not looking. I have my email open, but I'm focused here. When the notif comes up, no, you I see you go. You look. Even when you're on calls
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with people, you're like on a Zoom call with somebody and you're look, they're looking at you and then all of a sudden you see their eyes go down and up again.
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Yeah. Come, we can all see you, right? Nobody's that slick. The people think like nobody's going to notice. You know, you said, "Yeah, because you've seen other people do it.
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I've seen other people do it. Everyone's doing it." And they think that I can see when other people are doing it, but nobody can tell when I do it cuz I'm fast. No, we can all see. My point here
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is that it's not your choice. It's not your choice to pay attention or not pay attention to distractions when they come up. The way that the brain works is it's a monotasking machine, not a multitasking machine. It is designed to focus on one
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thing. Now, does that mean you can never do two things at once? No, of course not. Listen, in my car, um, I listen to podcasts. I sometimes make calls. I call my mother. You know, I call my mom on on
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the on the my way somewhere. I have her on speaker, you know, and I'm driving.
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But listen, in that moment, I'm going to be honest with you because this is just as a neuroscientist, I can just tell you this is how the brain works. I am not 100% focused on the road.
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Yeah. Otherwise, it's imp I'm not going to hear my mom. I don't I'm not going to listen to anything she's saying. Which, listen, that's a whole another conversation about mom's. She's like complaining on my knee, my back, my
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this, my that. You didn't you need to come home, blah, blah, blah, all these things. Okay, that's a different story cuz it's always the same stories. But the point here is that for sure it's not possible for me to 100% focus on the
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conversation and 100% focus on the road because I know where I'm going in my hometown. Honestly, it's like, yeah, it's like an autopilot. They're just going there.
Speaker A
Bingo. So my point is listen, it's nuance. I'm not saying Raj you can never do two. Yeah. Yeah. Sure you can. But you just have to know the math. You have to understand the biological laws. You have to know what you're doing. Be
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strategic about it. Be strategic about it. Now you know that if you And by the way, what you did just now Oh, yeah.
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What you did here, this is not multitasking because that's impossible. Again, remember multitasking the way it's defined, I you did 100% one thing and 100% another thing. That's not possible here. What you're doing and what is possible, what happens in
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everybody's brains, yours, mine, everyone's, is something called task switching, context switching essentially. Yeah, this we do all the time. But every single time you switch your attention from A to B, B to C, C to D, all of the
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different one thing to another, to the Apple Watch to the phone to the back to the document and back to the thing, and then what? Oh, somebody came in my office. What did you want? But every single time you switch your attention,
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there's a payment, a biological payment. So the brain pays for it in time. As you noticed, more than double. It's not for free. Takes more time. And time is limited. Time is money. And the second thing that it takes is energy. You're
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going to exhaust yourself more. And every single time, and listen, this was easy. Whose job is this easy? You want to build an empire? You want to build a company? you want to cure cancer.
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Nothing is this easy. So when you're doing something hard and you really want to do good, you have to respect yourself enough to put the distractions out of sight, out of mind, notifications off, no email open, no phone next to you, no
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notifs available, and actually focus on the thing in front of you. And in the beginning, if you're not used to it, it's going to be difficult. It's going to be painful. Your mind's going to be all over the place, but you just need to
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get your muscles hard again. You need to get your muscles strong. But what about people who are good at multitasking?
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Is there someone like that or is it just a myth? Do you want to know something really funny?
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Mhm. There was a study done at Stanford that I'll send you. So there they're smart smart kids. Young healthy brains. Do you know what I mean? Sharp.
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Okay. No excuses. You can't be like they're just they're dumb. No, no. We we got we got good ones.
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This study on multitasking asked people upfront, "Are you a good multitasker?" The people who said yes confidently, "Oh yeah, I'm great at it." They were actually worse when they tested them.
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That's crazy. It's like a joke. It's like science jokes, right? It's absolutely mind-boggling, but it's so fascinating.
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Why? Well, unknown to be, you know, this random belief they've built about themselves. It could be because if you multitask so much, by the way, you try because again, we talked about it. You're just context switching all the time. Your brain is
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just foggy. I don't think you see straight. I think this is the problem with most companies right now.
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Most people are just bouncing back and forth and they think this is normal and they just go like, "Oh, it's hard for me to focus. Maybe I have ADHD. Come on.
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Every 80% of the population all of a sudden has ADHD. Why everybody has started saying this?
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Every like it's just like 50 things because of the scrolling. That's why because our attention spans are shot.
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This is actually some of the re recent research I've started doing. Truly attention spans have just gotten worse and worse and worse. And the more you scroll, and it's by the way, it's not all scrolling. And I'm not just giving
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like, you know, your podcast a a pat on the back here. This is actually the the research supports this. There is a massive difference between long form and short form media. The short form media is truly like garbage and candy
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for the brain. It is it's like junk food. That's what I mean. So the how would your body feel if you fill it with junk food? Not so good. Listen, am I saying sometimes we don't have some junk
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food? Oh, for sure. No problem. You know, you got to live a balanced life.
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You know what I mean? Life is short. Enjoy it a little bit. You know, do it's okay. But if your whole diet is junk food, if you eat junk food every day, what's going to happen in one year? Not
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so good. Bad things. Yeah. So, this is this this relationship that we have with our phones, our devices, our email.
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This is it's not I don't want people to think I'm just talking about just Tik Tok either. People are addicted to email. They're addicted to WhatsApp.
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They're addicted to messaging and communicating constantly all the time 24/7. And that never allows them to come up with ideas.
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Hear what's going on inside of them. All of the stuff we talked about before, the self-awareness. You want to train your brain. That takes effort. That takes awareness. That takes focus. You want to build an empire. you want to build a
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business, you want to do all these things, that takes focus. And when we've removed the ability to focus, this is why everybody thinks they have ADHD because they're not listening to their biology. Again, it's like the laws like
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the brain works. We just tested you. Everybody who's listening, you believe that Raj is super smart. Obviously, that's why you're listening. That's why he's so successful. Even you couldn't do it. You more than doubled your time and you made mistakes. So think about how
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you work now. When you take this to your life, when you take this to your business, everybody who's listening, right? When you think about how you work, if you work d constantly, I'm sitting down f and then I check this and
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I check that. If you're doing it that way, you're going to make more mistakes and it's going to take you double the amount of time to get to your goals. You choose. I'm going to choose the way that's going to be fast for me. But this
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is what makes the people that are ultra successful different from everybody else. They just choose differently.
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They think about it. They're aware about it. Like, hold on a second. What you said, you said beautifully, I notice the days when I'm on my phone, it's harder for me to focus. So, when we're shooting, when the guest is right, I
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tell the guys, I turn it off and I tell the guys, get it out of here. You are in a beautiful example of a CEO that has figured it out. Everybody else can do the same for themselves. So, you're
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telling me that a lot of people think that ultra successful people have better ideas, but you're telling that they don't have better ideas. They just know how to protect their attention so that they can get ideas. Is that what you're
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saying? They have more ideas. It's like fishing. I can tell you this. This is the science of innovation and creativity. Every, by the way, inventor will tell you this.
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inventors artists engineers people who build, people who come up with like crazy ideas, they'll tell you for every one good idea, they had 1 million ideas. This it's a numbers game.
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You have to become like an idea machine. It's it's a muscle. If you're exercising your idea muscle every single day, you allow your mind to explore and wander and you give it time and space to do it.
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Listen, you're going to come up with a lot of stupid ideas. That's okay. You have to. It's a process, right? One day after another and then finally you're going to hit.
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So, what should I do? How how can someone become a person who gets incredible ideas all the time?
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Okay, you ready? This is my number one recommendation. You might not like it or you might be surprised.
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Okay. Be bored. be bored and do nothing and you get ideas like that. And you get ideas. Let me explain.
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Ideas, new ideas often come when we are mind wandering. That goes back to the neural network that I talked about earlier, the DMN, the default mode network. That's what that when that is active your brain is creating. Remember
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in the beginning I said it's the storyteller in the brain. It's the storytelling machine. It's the area of the brain and the a areas of the brain that are all about narration and ideas.
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So that's your idea machine. You need to allow the DMN to actually become active.
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Now the opposite of the DMN is the central executive network, the CEN. Okay. And it I mean listen to the sound of it.
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The central executive network. What do you think? It's like the CEO. Yeah. What's the goal?
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Operator. It's the operator. Beautifully said. It's the project manager. What are we doing? What's the goal? And then anytime it's also in charge of inhibition.
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So inhibition is uh suppressing the things that seem distracting. Listen, I'm on my target. I got to focus on this. So if you're telling me, hey, hey, sire, what about this idea? Shh, I don't want to hear about ideas. I got to I'm
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doing this focus. That's your central executive network and you need it. And it's mostly frontal areas, right?
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Because this is where a lot of your executive functioning is is happening in the first place. So you've got all these different this neural network that's again responsible for get done, right? Focus and do stuff. The opposite of that is the DMN. And the DMN is again
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all about stories, daydreaming, being bored, let your mind wander. When you daydream, that's when a bunch of ideas can finally come and float to the surface.
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So the first step is you have to find time and space to be bored, to be bored, to daydream, to let your mind wander. Because again, remember, it's easy to remember and understand why. What's the opposite of that? Get
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stuff done. What idea are you gonna have when you're like on a deadline to get done if you're busy all of the time? And then what what do people do when they're not working?
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What when are you what how is your brain going to shove an idea into your into your in front of you, right? How you have to let those ideas come to you by cultivating the space for them. You have
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to make the space for them. So the most creative people, the most amazing innovators, by the way, they force themselves to sit down. Some people call it think time. Some one of the guests you had on the show, I think Bill Gates,
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um, uh, he was really famous by having a think week, I believe it was, you know, whole week he takes off. No busy work, just to think, see what ideas come. It was actually during his one of his think
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weeks that he decided that the internet is not a fad. Can you imagine if Bill Gates didn't realize that decades ago?
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So these ideas come, we have to give them the space to come and that requires discipline because right now distraction is making money for these tech companies like crazy. Welcome to the distraction economy. So, it's keeping everybody stuck.
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It's keeping everybody stuck in their old loops. Because also, this is how the algorithm works.
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The algorithms that you're doom scrolling on, that you're binge watching on, the way they work is they're going to show you stuff that you like.
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They're going to show you more of the same. If you want to become a different version of you, you need to change your content. Your content is actually a great example of this. a lot of other awesome podcasts that are educational,
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right, about like how do I become better? How do I level myself up? If you all you're do when you're binge watching, if you're all it's just bad news, this that just like whatever, you will become more of that because what
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you're doing is you're just true the same stories over and over again. You want to start to become a different version of you, a better version of you, you should also change your algorithm.
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We call this by the way in the classes I teach changing your content diet.
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Yeah. And that's very important. I call it bloom scrolling. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So, it's like how you have doom scrolling.
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You curate your feed in a way which is bloom scrolling so that it makes you better, not actually messes up you messes up your entire system.
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Yeah, it's a beautiful way to put it. So, you got to give yourself think time.
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Even if it's bloom or doom, you got to put it away a little bit and then just give your mind and space to breathe. The next thing that's going to be important, and this is kind of fun. Have you ever
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have you heard of um that anecdote that people have awesome ideas in the shower?
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Yeah. You've heard of Have you ever had? Of course. Really? Yeah. So many times.
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Okay. Hey, do you know the science behind it? No. You want to learn? Yeah, of course. I want to learn all the science in the world. Tell me.
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Okay. So this is the science behind shower thoughts, shower ideas that so many people have. I've had the same thing as well.
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So the way that the brain works is you're loading up, let's say, remember the neural networks I talked about before, right? So let's say you've got this pattern of electrical activation happening in the brain, right? These neural networks that are on different
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brain areas, all of this stuff. So you have this pattern of electrical activation. Let's say it looks like this, okay? Some gridlock. Let's say this is your brain thinking about a problem.
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So you're there and you're thinking about this problem in your head right now. What's in my brain?
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The problem. The problem stuck. Yeah. Where's the solution? If I want a solution to the problem, I actually have to move these networks around. I have to get different electrical activity.
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Yeah. To happen because my brain's occupied with this. Mhm. It's focused on the problem. So this is how you do it. This is the best way I teach all of the business leaders I work with this. You load up all of the
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data and the information that you need that's about the problem. You think about the problem. You understand the problem. You look at all the data related to the problem. Load it all up.
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Then walk away. You're going to sit there be like, "Okay." And then what do we do? What's the solution? What's the solution? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Get up and do something else.
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When you do something else, you're at least introducing a new variable. You're at least saying, "Hey, drink some water." At least, seriously, something as small as this. Because anything you do, anything you touch, smell, drink, listen, listen to a different playlist,
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different music, get up and move to another room. If you're sitting at your desk and you're always working at your desk and you're like, "This is my focus.
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This is where I'm at." And you're just like, "This is the problem." The problem is also here. It's in your all of the associations that you've built up with that problem. Change the environment.
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So when people finally go on a walk or they go take a shower, they've loaded all the data there. So the the neural networks related to the problem are still active or they're recently at least active. So then you
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get in the shower and you introduce new variables. Now you're not scrolling either because again the scrolling is a distraction. If you distract yourself with I got to text these people back. I got to get on WhatsApp. I gota all these
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things. Yeah. You're not going to solve any problems because now you're just doing more stuff.
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True. You're doing more stuff. You have to not do stuff to give your brain space to say, "Wait a minute, light bulb." Because the problem was still there and active. And then you're introducing new variables, whatever they may be. Have a
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little sip of water. put some water on your face. Whatever it is, you got to do something different. And then your brain goes at some point, oh, I got it.
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And that's why you because you're mindlessly just standing in sh all of a sudden you get that because you're not focused on problem anymore.
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Yeah. You loosened a little bit and you introduced new data. You introduced new variables and new data. It could be on a walk. You could start cooking dinner.
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You know, you could go exercise, go on a run, you know, whatever, whatever you want to do, but not something so immersive that you can't keep thinking about the other thing. This is so don't like go sit down and watch a movie. Do you see
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what I'm saying? Unless you want to watch a movie you've seen 1,000 times. Do you know how like you can still think? Well, you now you get it. This explain See, there's neuroscience to explain all of these human experiences we have. If
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you're watching a rerun of an old, you know, sitcom you've seen like a million times, it's kind of soothing because you can kind of, you're not really just focused and paying attention. You're letting your mind wander a little bit.
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Yeah. But when you're scrolling, it's all novel. So, it's designed by people like me, by the way, cognitive neuroscientists, people like me who are hired by these companies. We use everything we know about how to capture your attention and
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keep your attention to make money off of you. It's all embedded in how all of these things work.
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Explain me what's happening to a person when they're consuming long- form content versus what's happening when they're consuming only short form content. Like what what's going on in the brain? Like if you have to draw parallels to long form brain and short
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form brain. Yeah. Well, it also depends on the content. Could I'll say that we've we've seen like negative content like the news honestly. Like I'll say something about the news briefly.
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News media also knows what sells and what captures attention. Yeah. That's why they do the negative stuff.
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Yeah. Cuz bad news, rage bait, it works. And listen, if one company starts using it, one news channel starts using it, and the other one goes, "Oh, that's well, that's not fair. They're going to hurt. The ratings are going to hurt if
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they don't also adapt." So now everybody's doing it. Yeah. Like since the time of like evolution, the most primitive feeling that human beings have is threat. Threat for survival. So the more you induce threat more people find it
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like more people get anxious and more they get anxious they want to keep consuming that content and that's why a lot of news media all around the world is just tapping on that one primitive emotion that is I'm going to make you
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sure that you feel keep feeling anxious and anxious and anxious and the way you feel anxious is when I tell you everything is wrong.
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Yeah. like no matter what you're doing is wrong. And I find out new ways to make you feel that everyone's against you. Everything's against you. Tomorrow morning you're going to get up and things going to go down. So we just tap
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on this emotion since the time of evolution. And that's why there's just negative stuff all around.
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Yeah. See, it's hard for us to make positive content and grow. It is. It is. It is hard. It would be easier to do it the other way. Oh, absolutely.
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Absolutely. If I start today, like you and I. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like this could we can make this go 10x more viral if we start just making it about threats and anxieties.
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Totally. About the world. And it's so sad. Yeah. But it is how the world it's how the brain works. It's not you know this is another biological law. You can ignore it but other companies know it and they're using it against you. So you we
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should learn the loss. But that's so sad, man. Shouldn't we change it? I mean, we're trying to change it from how what what we do.
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We're trying to teach people how to get better. Yeah. But I mean, to each their own.
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Yeah. But I will say we can't change our biology in that way. Like we keep thinking for survival and threat.
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We have to cuz this is an evolution. I mean, this has been like thousands of years.
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Yeah. What you're we're up that's going to be too hard. What you can do, though, is you can cut yourself off from things.
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Mhm. You know, I've met many really um high-powered executives that have had to do some pretty serious cleansing of their content because, you know, and some of them, if they're really in a dark place and their minds are just so foggy and so busy, we have
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to cut them off completely from the news for a little while. And you know what I tell them?
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the world's gonna go to whether you're looking at it or not. You're not that important. Like you're not involved in global news. I know you're, you know, fancy CEO running a company, but like Yeah.
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You're not like deciding on what's happening with the war. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So instead of you every single day, 15 times a day checking all of the different updates that are coming in and it's completely
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fogging up your mind, it's now you can't anymore. At least until you re it's like rehabilitation until you rehab yourself back to you can hear yourself again.
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This is another big issue that I've seen. You know, people complain. They they say like they can't hear their own thoughts anymore. There's no internal narration. That's where all those ideas are going to come from too. It's coming
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from the inside. It's not coming from the outside. Of course, you can use the outside stuff to trigger some ideas, but ideas are still coming from inside.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. People have lost their ability to actually have internal thoughts. That's so true. It's like we don't have internal thinking anymore.
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Very few people I meet these days who have their original way of thinking and some thoughts which there which are their own.
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Okay. Coming back to long form content, long form brain versus short form brain. So people who are watching long form content have a sense of story and narration because long form think movies think a journey a long form podcast that you sink into
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there's highs there's lows you're learn you know there's there's uh turns that you didn't anticipate right like we didn't plan to talk about long form and short form but we arrived here you know it's it there's a whole journey that
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we're on so there's a sense of story and narration this is going to be critical again for that creativity and for something that we call autobiographical planning. This is all again DMN. So you're able to actually activate that
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more and do a lot more of your own internal planning. Right. Okay. What is autobiographical planning?
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Uh autobiographical planning is essentially you talking about the story of you and planning your future. M and the one where we have to change our future by thinking positive and optimism and having a belief where I am the main
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character and everything nice happens with me that narration is going to come through the story and narrative.
Speaker A
Yeah. And that's autobiographical planning. Okay. That is literally the what we talked about in the very beginning. That is the definition of autobiographical planning is you sit down and you think you make the story and you say the story
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of who you are going to be. But think about kids these days. They almost never do that cuz they're scrolling most of the time.
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So they're letting the outside I know so many old people way old 10 years older than me. They don't know about their autobiographical planning. They have no idea about their story.
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So sad. But it's the autobiographical planning, by the way, is something that happens when we're bored.
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That's why boredom is so important. We have to find ways to force it. Force it if you need to be bored. And by the way, I'm not saying be bored for 5 hours a day. No, no, no, no.
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Yeah. We got to we got to get done. But but a little bit Sundays are for boredom. Sundays every morning. I my personal opinion just a little bit in the morning and a little bit before bed. Pretty nice if you can
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manage it sometimes in the afternoon because sometimes the afternoons people have crazy ideas because they're tired.
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They have a little bit of a slump and when you are a little bit slumping in your energy often times your inhibition is lower so you come up with crazy ideas. You just go let's do this. You just like it's like being a little
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drunk. You're just like why not? Let's do it. Let's go after it. So, okay, long form, you got story and narrative because long- form content typically also does a lot of work around like character building, right? Like for
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example, think of the difference between your podcasts that are many hours long where you actually really get to know the guest really like there's a sense of personalization in in here like people will learn about the person. Then you
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actually develop empathy. Yeah. And by the way, there's a study for this that we can link here where uh long form media like films have actually been shown to increase empathy in people.
Speaker A
Wow. So the power of long- form media, the power of movies, long- form podcasts that are educational, you can actually increase different things and memory.
Speaker A
You will remember long form media. True. Now we go to this side here. By the way, in case in case someone right now is watching this in a short, okay, that's fine. I dare you for just the next second, try to remember three
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reels ago. If you're scrolling right now, if you're scrolling right now, I What was the three reels ago? What did you see? If you can't remember, I don't want you to feel shame. You're not alone. I can't remember either. And it's because short
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form scrolling is designed for you to just it's just like crack. You're just going to move from one thing to the other. It's just full novelty. So, there's no memory. So, you have less memory, which by the way, what's another
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word for memory? learning. Mhm. People think they're like exposing themselves to like new ideas and you can't freaking remember it. What's your It's not You're not absorbing any of it.
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There's no me. If there's no memory, there's no learning. Here, you have an opportunity to learn.
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By the way, not very many people know this, but um when I was growing up, um a lot of people think because I do so much research on like screen time and scrolling and technology and stuff that I like never watch.
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When I was little, I watched hours of TV every day, like unlimited television, no limits at all from my family.
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So, didn't your brain become this mush? Yeah. Well, we didn't have short form reals.
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I'm a little old, you know. We didn't have there were no cell phones, man.
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This was before that time. We had old school uh you know, I even the the first TV I had to go and change the buttons on the on the actual television.
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But no, my um my mom my mom and my dad uh requested that I watch television so I learn English.
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I was born in the United States, but my family didn't speak that much English because we had immigrated. They had immigrated. I was born here. Um, but they wanted me to learn English. So, and they couldn't teach me. So, then they
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said, "You have to sit. You have to sit down. TV time." I had to sit there and I had to watch. But everything is long form. And listen, go look at an old TV show or an old movie from 20 years ago, 30 years ago,
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and I want you to count how many times the scene changes. cuts. And now compare it to something that came out recently.
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Wildly different. Our attention spans have gotten so bad. And producers know this, directors know this, editors know this, that the more you cut things up, the more it's going to capture attention.
Speaker A
Yeah. This is even in shows for little kids. Little kids shows are total to totally different than what they used to be.
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Yeah. Like I know this there's now Netflix in all of their meetings they they ask this one question to the person who's selling them the show is like is it second screen viewing or no because Netflix wants to make all their
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shows based on second screen not the first screen because they know they're already watching like phone. So is it is it like when someone's on their phone can they still watch it and be engaged?
Speaker A
Can you actually make them stop their phone and watch and then come back or no? Like you don't have to make like one long scene where somebody if they go to their phone they forget what was happening. So they have to make it like
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super Yeah. super quick. You know how depressing that is when we think about how many billions of people right now on this planet want to become successful?
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Listen, you've started your own empire. Do you talk about how hard you've had to work to make that happen? How much focus it requires? Dedication.
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Nobody's taking that many off days. I can tell you this. I have a business. I tell people this all the time. If you want off days, go get a job.
Speaker A
Yeah. Because they give you time off. True. I run a lab. It's my heart and my soul is in it. I don't I'm always thinking about it. It's like my baby. Your business is your baby. There's no off.
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You don't become not a mother just there's no off day. It's a It's true.
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So if we know that's what it takes to succeed. And we right now are letting these companies train our brains in such a way that it's making it impossible even to watch a movie and focus.
Speaker A
Think about how boring it is sometimes. Sometimes, not all the time, but to run a business and start a business, sometimes you got to do some boring It's hard, but you got to get through it. Listen, I do science. Like,
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you got to It's a slog. You got to analyze data. You got to be looking at stuff. You have to sit there. You have to work late at night sometimes. You're working hard. And it's not fun. It's not
Speaker A
always like a movie. If we are training the next generation of brains in the world to be so distracted and so unfocused that they need two script I mean this is crazy. It to me it feels like mass manipulation.
Speaker A
The world doesn't want people thinking. It's easier to control people if they're dumb and not thinking at all.
Speaker A
They're distracted. Depressing thought. But we go back to this. Okay. So you've got short form, there's story or in long form there's story and narrative. Here there's no memory. There's no learning. Short form scrolling has also this is there's data
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to support this increase in depressive symptoms. We know people are more sad. We see an increase in anxiety. The more you scroll short form reals, short form media, the more anxious you get. Really?
Speaker A
Yes. But what if I'm I'm just laughing and I'm watching funny reels? It's about the cuts. It's about how short it is. Don't If you want to laugh, watch a 20 minute video on YouTube.
Speaker A
That's funny. It's literally We're just talking about long and short. We're not even talking about the content. But that jumpy back and forth, the the cuts create more, it seems, more anxiety. Now you get depressive symptoms, an increase
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in anxiety and an increase in loneliness. Whereas here in long form we see empathy. And empathy by the way allows you to connect more.
Speaker A
So you'd have an increase in connection versus an increase in loneliness. So they're like opposites of each other.
Speaker A
But what's happening in my brain which is making me lonier if I consume short form? What's the correlation?
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You know, I will say this. We're not 100% sure, but I will give you my hypothesis as somebody who is studying this right now. What I believe is happening in the brain when like why is it that we are
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experiencing the loneliness epidemic right now? It's not just in the United States. We're seeing it pretty much across any part of the world that has embraced technology.
Speaker A
We see this increase in loneliness. Why does it make any sense? Because think about it. You and I and your team, we were all able to connect when we were halfway across the world from each other. It's pretty cool. Yeah,
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technology is pretty amazing like that, you know. So, I'm not saying, oh, I'm not like anti-tech like, oh, it's terrible. It's pretty cool. It allows people to connect from all over. It's amazing.
Speaker A
But that means we're more connected. So, how could it be possible that we're more lonely? Well, again, let's think about the craving and then the behavior and that whole response loop we talked about before.
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when I am let's say for example I'm seeking connection and let me begin by saying one other important biological law there's a biological law that's very important for us to accept it's not your choice human beings are pack animals
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we're designed for a collective we're not designed to live like lone wolves in silos that means human connection is in need like food or like water. You need it. You'll get sick if you don't get it.
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And that's been proven. Yeah. Longhaul truck drivers who don't get a lot of socializing. They have nobody to talk to for days and weeks sometimes, literally their brains start to degrade.
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They start to atrophy like they're experiencing almost like accelerated aging or dementia. It's so sad cuz a lot of them are young guys most of the time.
Speaker A
Okay, going back to this uh when you are craving social connection, which is a natural need, we all do it. We all need it. So, we all have the craving. You have two options. Let's say you can either reach
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out to a friend, somebody you're living with, your family, you know, talk to somebody, whoever is nearby, pick up the phone and call somebody, text some at least. You know, there's like a whole from the best is like in real life, real
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connection. Yeah. Live. Okay. Next best is maybe the phone or something or FaceTime or something like that.
Speaker A
Maybe a text. But if you say, "Oh, I want to know what other people are doing." If you get on social media, listen, let's be honest, social media is not social anymore, right?
Speaker A
When you open up Instagram, it used to be when they first started, you would see the pictures and videos that your friends would post.
Speaker A
Yeah. It's not like that anymore. True. It's other people you don't know. It's other people you don't know. So, you are seeking social connection and then you get you go on to short form media and then you start scrolling.
Speaker A
So, you're distracted. Sure, you're distracted, but it feels kind of good in the moment, doesn't it?
Speaker A
Yeah. Distraction feels good. So, it's like eating candy when you're hungry. So, you're hungry. You're hungry for something real. Really? Food, but you eat candy instead. What happens when you eat candy when you're hungry?
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In 1 hour, you feel more hungry. Yeah. You're you're hungry again because then you never filled yourself with nutrition, with the food your body needs. So you were, let's say, you were seeking social connection. It's like hunger. So, but
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instead of really seeking true connection, you instead went to short form media and you're scrolling. It's like candy. So, you're just going to be even hungrier in another hour. So, you're even So, then you were maybe a little lonely before. Now, you're even
Speaker A
more lonely because it's never satisfying that need. It never satisfies that need. My hypothesis is that what's happening in the brain is there's first dopamine.
Speaker A
Dopamine is the brain's primary motivation molecule. So dopamine is all about motivation. You have dopamine and you have you have a desire for social connection.
Speaker A
That's what you want. So you're motivated towards it. So in order to get this need met, what do you do? Let's say you do the there's two options. Option A, option B. We'll go two options here.
Speaker A
One option is you go short form, you scroll. Okay, so you grab the phone versus you grab a person. We they're friends. There we go.
Speaker A
Yay. Okay, so there's two other two other uh brain chemicals that I want to bring into the mix here. Okay, there's something called oxytocin and there's something called serotonin.
Speaker A
Okay, so you've got oxytocin and serotonin. Oxytocin, if you've ever heard of this, this is a hormone that's the known as the bonding hormone. So this is what bonds humans together. So if your dopamine levels are high, so
Speaker A
meaning you're motivated for what? Social connection, that means what you want is oxytocin. you're you're seeking it.
Speaker A
Okay, this is might might be what we could say this is what's satisfying it. This would satisfy it. And also serotonin is another neurom modulator that would that makes you feel good and content.
Speaker A
Okay, makes you feel content and good. So bonding satisfaction. Very good. Yes. Okay. So this is really like the science of what it is that we're looking for here.
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I'm looking for this but really like I need these things in order to check this box.
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Okay. If you go to short form, do you think what are we bonding with? I don't know. Like if I get on and I see one of your reels or I see one of my own, right? Where we both have short
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form media. I'm not bonding with this person. I don't even know them. True. So, I'm not getting any oxytocin contentment. I'm not getting because I already told you it increases anxiety, right? And depressive symptoms. So, it's leaving the person more sad. So, while
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they're doing it, they don't notice because while you're eating the candy, come on, man. It tastes good.
Speaker A
Yeah, we all think it tastes good. It's delicious. But afterwards is when you feel bad. It's afterwards where you're like, "Oh my god, I ate too much and I now I feel like crap. It is It wasn't nutritious."
Speaker A
Now, if you actually seek real social connection, then you get the oxytocin. You get the serotonin. So, you actually get to check the box. So, you had the dopamine, you were motivated, you sought social connection, you got social
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connection. Good. But that doesn't happen. Not if you go this way. If you're if let's say for example dopamine goes high cuz you're hungry or you're thirsty. Like right now you and I have water. I go I I am thirsty. So I
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have this need. Dopamine goes up. That's motivation. Motivation so I can recruit my motor cortex and everything else to go and grab the water to drink from it.
Speaker A
If I drink from it, then I satisfy the need. I got a little bit of hydration, so I feel better. Now, if I had the same loop, but I never get the water. I I don't know, go eat a cracker or something like this,
Speaker A
then I might feel even worse than when I started. Yeah. The need's never satisfied.
Speaker A
Well, this is how we look when we Oh, yeah. I did. I told you before. I've I've always had a sweet tooth. So listen, I no shame in the game. I've always loved sweets.
Speaker A
Yeah. So this is this is how we look when we are going for this candy. So this is what's happening.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. I hope that you know I I I tell my students this all the time that um I'm passionate about a lot of this stuff because I'm not better than anybody else. I struggle with it
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myself. I've been addicted to scroll. I've struggled with addiction to many different things in my life.
Speaker A
Mhm. Many things in my life. I've had to break addictions. I'm not above this. I studied this stuff. All of this stuff. I even studied addiction and I still became addicted.
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Like nothing can prevent this. Like you just need the awareness, the discipline, the desire for better. You have to just do the hard work, right? It's and listen, maybe it's like the the question you asked before about the billionaire's
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brain. It's like, are they just born different? Maybe some some people are probably lucky enough where they don't have a lot of this addiction stuff, you know? I was not one of those people. I love chocolate. I love sweets. I would
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eat dessert all day if I could. So, I have to create systems in my life in order to create balance. It doesn't come naturally.
Speaker A
You have to be systems minded, aware, systems minded. You got to have the discipline. Um, I think that's the only way around it.
Speaker A
So, we're going to do, what are we going to do? I'm going to show you a city map.
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Okay. Okay. Explain me how my brain works as if it was a city. So nice looking, huh?
Speaker A
Okay. All right. Where shall I begin for you? So, not that this is what the brain actually looks like, right? It's not perfectly accurate in terms of locations, but I what I think is really beautiful about this particular setup you have here is
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you have so many of the different brain areas and the neural networks that I think are the most important for performance. They're the most relevant.
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You know what I mean? We don't nobody not every single person needs to go get a PhD in neuroscience. You know what I mean? This is like tell me the stuff I need to know.
Speaker A
Yeah. The meaty stuff. The meaty stuff. Yeah. Okay. So, let's use actually an example because we're here to learn about getting done and being productive. I have a goal. I want to meet my goals, right? How do I
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do that? Yeah. How do I become this person who ends up achieving all the goals?
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Yes. Yes. Okay. Let's say what does that look like for you by the way? But you want to achieve your goals. A lot of it is like stuff on the computer. Yeah. Right. You sit down and you're reading, you're writing,
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researching, coming up with questions, thinking a lot. Yeah. Beautiful. And it's on the computer, right? In your office or wherever somewhere. Okay.
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So, in order for that to happen, a few things. One, the default mode network that we talked about before here called beautifully story studios, right? It's where all the stories are made. This is the story making machine.
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So, the story about myself that hey, I want to be this podcaster and this and that. It's here.
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Beautiful. Yes. and how you're going to get there too. Like it's going to happen. I need to do research blah blah blah. So this story network is sending information and that information is going into city hall.
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This is your CEN, your central executive network, the CEO, the very front section of the brain. And this is going, okay, Raj wants to be the number one podcast in the world. Okay, you want to build that. That's what we're that's the goal.
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That's what we're going towards. Then your CEN, this sort of frontal parietal area that's going to be focused on how you do that goal achievement, goal directed attention, it's going to try to quiet everything else down and just stay
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focused on whatever it is you're doing. So let's say you're doing research. So you're on your computer and you're doing research on it on the next thing, right?
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You have meaning. This is where the meaning is coming from. Why? Why am I doing it? It's coming from the story.
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Then you have city hall that the CEO that's actually going towards the thing making it happen. Okay. Then you have a really important place here. It's another neural network. It's not just a place. It's a network. The dorsal
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attention network. The DN. The DN is like the watchtowwer looking. I don't know if you've seen Lord of the Rings.
Speaker A
No. No. It's the Eye of Sauron. Okay. For those that have seen it, this is the Watchtower. The DN is looking look and it's pointing a spotlight, you know. So, it's like a like a flashlight or a spotlight of your
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attention on whatever it is that it needs to focus on. Whatever it is that and this is the tricky part. It says it needs to focus on. Who's telling it where to shine the light?
Speaker A
The city hall. Sure. The city hall can do that. You know who else might in the middle? Not this one necessarily. the alarm tower.
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If there's an emergency and this one says, "Hey, oh my god, panic," then the DN will say, "Raj, stop focusing on your Google doc. We have there's emergencies happening. Go look at this." Or, for example, the dispatch center
Speaker A
salance network. This is like emergency calls, your satellite system. Something's happening. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not an emergency.
Speaker A
Maybe it's not an alarm. That's your amydala. It's a walnut- sized area deep inside of the center of the brain. And that brain area is the brain's alarm system every time there's some sort of emergency. Okay, so that's the alarm
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tower. You've got this amazing team. Okay, that is either going to help you meet your goals or it's going to make it potentially more difficult. But it depends on how you set yourself up for success. So going back to the example,
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you sit down and you have a goal. H you have that's your meaning. Okay, your CEO, your CEN, but it's your CEO.
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Let's say that's going to start focusing. Okay. Okay. Your DN says, "Got it. No problem.
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Let's focus on the computer. Let's focus on the research." So your DA, the watchtowwer goes, it's focusing on the work.
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As long as you keep focusing and as long as nothing distracts you or interrupts you, then maybe as long as you can, you will keep focusing.
Speaker A
This is my tension. Yeah. But what's the usual setup? Remember when we talked about your phone and where you keep it?
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It's like here there's one notification, another there are five tabs opening, two people talking, and then I have to be everywhere and then I have to message probably scroll a little in between.
Speaker A
That's what always happens. So now you've got every time the notification comes in, salance network goes, "Hey, look over here. What's over there? Oh, what's that?" And then when 911, this dispatch center, the salance network says, "Look over here." The watchtowwer
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goes, "What do you want me to look at?" So it looks at something else. So this area, the salance network is what is the external essentially distraction. It is it is telling you where to orient your attention.
Speaker A
So that's why you need to keep your digital hygiene clean. You need to have good digital hygiene when you're sitting down to work. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for failure instead of success.
Speaker A
So to shut this down, you have to shut that down. Well, it's not shut it down. You can't shut it down. It's there to keep you alive. You have to clean your environment and control your environment so that you set this whole system up for
Speaker A
success. This is you can't shut this down. The brain is going to do its thing.
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These are the biological laws. Remember like gravity, you can't fight this thing. This is the brain.
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Okay. But then I want to clean my environment in a way so that it it doesn't get triggered.
Speaker A
Yeah. Okay. Think about, you know, um a lot of people have young kids, right? Imagine if you have a kid and they get go to school and then they come back with a bad grade and they really studied hard,
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you know, and then they're like so sad about it. You find out that the teacher let them all be on their phones talk.
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There was like a party. They're playing music. Like all these things were happening. People were chitchatting with each other. People were coming in and out while they were sitting down and taking their exam.
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All the parents would go crazy. They would be like, "This is not fair. this is not how you run a classroom. This is not how you give an exam. And then they would pretty much, you know, say like we demand a redo. You have to
Speaker A
redo it. But how do you sit down and work? You're a leader like I am. I run a team, right? When our teams sit down to actually get work done, how what's their environment like? Is it built for focus
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or is it built for distraction? So this is this is all of these amazing different brain areas are there to keep you alive. They're there for a purpose for sure.
Speaker A
But what are these two? Oh, hippocampus. It's library and archive. This is just your memories. And your memories by the way are very very close typically to the amydala. So your hippocampus and the amydala are rather close. This is an important
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I would say maybe an important note. Your amygdala is the seat of a lot of fear, right? Fear and anxiety, negative affect.
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Your hippocampus is the seat of a great deal of memory. Things that are negative and scary are more memorable.
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So, and this is actually true technically for all emotion. If you can heighten your emotions, you will remember the situation better. If you can increase, for example, even your anxiety about whether you'll forget it or not. If you're afraid of forgetting
Speaker A
something, you're less likely to forget. So, how do I improve my memory then of the positive things? M in general improving your memory and this is actually a a I think kind of a fun fact that's a little bit um counterintuitive.
Speaker A
If you want to strengthen your memory, open the aperture of your attention if you you can only remember what you're attending to, right? You can't remember something that you weren't paying attention to.
Speaker A
Yeah. So if you can heighten and sharpen your focus and your attention, then your memory will get better.
Speaker A
It's like the funnel, right? The attention is what you're paying attention to. All the stuff that's getting in. So if you want more stuff to get in, focus on your attention if you want to remember more stuff, right?
Speaker A
Things h you have to come in in order to go down into memory. Yeah. But that's pretty much the end of the brain city map. One thing that I keep failing at is waking up super early. And I've
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tried so many times. Some like I I've somehow what do you say? Somehow trained myself to get up at like 7:30 8:00 a.m. But I'm still not able to do the 5:00 a.m. club.
Speaker A
Like I've tried really hard. Why do you want to do the 5 a.m. club?
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Is it like you become better, your energy gets better, you focus better, all of a sudden your life turns around.
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This whole hype around 5:00 a.m. club, early to rise, early to bed, all that.
Speaker A
Isn't it like that? It's For some people, yeah, for some people, but not for everybody.
Speaker A
The most important is the foundation, the principle, the biological law and the principle is that you need to be getting enough high quality sleep.
Speaker A
Shoot for 7 hours minimum. That should be the goal. So if you're getting enough sleep, that's the most important. This is the foundation.
Speaker A
Doesn't really matter what time you wake up, right? this myth uh this is truly like people get off on this idea that um you know we have the saying the early bird gets the worm right we have all of these sayings because
Speaker A
waking up late and staying up late has been historically associated with being lazy with sloth doesn't have to be that way I'm actually really proud of so many I would say modern-day leaders that are actually coming out of the closet
Speaker A
of being night owls of being PM shifted Um, Sundar, the CEO of Google, has come out and and admitted that he does some of his best thinking at like 10:00 p.m.
Speaker A
I didn't know what did he say that he does his best thinking at like late at night and some days he like, you know, after like dinner, blah blah blah, he like likes to really like that's his sometimes his really high quality focus
Speaker A
time. That's like that's some of the because he's PM shifted. Mhm. Now, I know that we gave you to do it, a biological chronotype assessment as well, but I want to first talk about chronotypes in general. So, this whole
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idea of being in the 5 a.m. club and all of this stuff, this comes from society and it's honestly BS. We don't need it.
Speaker A
Why do you call it 5 a.m. club porn? Like 5 a.m. pawn? What is it's okay? There's this there's this whole I don't even know what to call it.
Speaker A
There's like it's like a club of people, okay, that believe that and they they love doing this as a habit. And you know what? Listen, if it works for you, do it. I think it's great. I know lots of
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people that wake up at 5:00 in the morning. And listen, I'm not getting up super late either. I think it's great, but the most important thing is to listen to your body. I call it 5 a.m.
Speaker A
club porn because there's so many blogs and books and other podcasts, tweets. Uh you see all of these different like just articles and all of this content about people. It's like if you want to be the most successful version of yourself, you
Speaker A
need to wake up at 4:30 in the morning and then you need to do 25 push-ups and then you need to drink a tall glass of lemon water with cayenne in it and then you need to do a cold plunge and then
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you need to do this and then you need to what a sauna then this and that and it's like oh my god what are we doing? Like if listen, if you are not getting at least 7 hours of high quality sleep,
Speaker A
what's the point of you waking up at 5, right? Because of this like idea that we're all like addicted to that like see it's like I call it porn because it seems like such a great idea, but it's
Speaker A
not. It's only a good idea like if you've got all the other things like lined up truly like it's this thing that people are obsessed with. So, they're talking about it and writing about it, and it's like, look, this one CEO woke
Speaker A
up at 5:00 and he does all this before 7:00 a.m. and that's why he's successful. And it's just not true.
Speaker A
That's not why he's successful. It's one of his strategies. But some other CEOs do some of their best work from 8:00 p.m. to midnight. It doesn't matter which time it is. It matters which time it is for you. And each person is a
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little bit different. In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to three researchers who discovered that human beings do not share one circadian rhythm.
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So, circadian rhythms are the biological sort of clock that we have that that that tells us when that we have high energy, low energy, so on and so forth.
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Peaks and troughs of energy throughout the course of the day. We thought that all humans generally speaking, we wake up with the sun, right?
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Yeah. And creatures of light, we wake up with the sun and we go to bed at night.
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Yeah. Story is a little more complicated. Welcome science to science, right? It's like a little more complicated than we thought. In 2017, the Nobel Prize in medicine went to these three researchers who discovered we don't share one circadian rhythm. We at least have three
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genetic what are called chronotypes. Now your chronotype is the your genetic optimum of when you feel the most energized when you feel the most uh motivated. It's even for physical f fitness it makes a big difference. Ideal times you should wake
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up go to sleep so on and so forth. Okay. Now the three major chronotypes are am shifted which are the folks that wake up naturally hormonally pretty early in the morning.
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bifphasic which is in the middle it stands for the Latin two phases or two peaks okay and the third PM shifted the AM shifted people they linearly decrease in energy over the course of the day now these individuals usually by even
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early evening are struggling a little bit right and their bodies will naturally wake them up how do you know your AM shifted versus the second type by phasic if you wake up super early in the morning. No matter what, even if you go
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to bed late, your body will wake you up. Can you imagine? Like, you go to bed at like 2 3:00 in the morning. For some people, it doesn't matter. Their body's going to wake them up at 5:00.
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I know. You're like, "Not me." No, I can sleep at 10:00 and still not wake up at 5.
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Good for you. Wow. Really? You're a good You can You can do that. Yeah. Yeah, I can sleep very long. As long as Alam doesn't hit it, I I don't get up. Rarely, I get up. That's a blessing. Congratulate. Seriously.
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Yeah. Either I can't sleep or if I sleep then you're sleeping. It's such a It's a gift by the way. It's such a blessing. It truly I sometimes I'm like I have to I have systems for it but I am PM shifted which means
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naturally I could if left to my own devices I would be up until like 2 3:00 in the morning.
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Mhm. Easily. Same. like by 4 I'm like now I'm ready maybe to go to bed.
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Yeah, but this is not functional. If I'm going to bed at 4, then I probably wouldn't wake up and I have like blackout curtains and an eye mask and all of this stuff to help keep me asleep and then
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I'm not waking up until way late in the morning. And you know, you get this. You run a business. I run a business. Like this is not possible. Okay, so I got to get up. So that means I have to create
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systems. So I go to bed usually around like 11:00 by midnight. I'm asleep. This is my Okay. That's good. That's not bad.
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No. And you can do that. So, I'm telling you genetically, biologically, my body wants to go to bed in the 2 to 4 a.m.
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range. I'm able to shift it back at least 3 hours through behavioral adjustments. Those behavioral adjustments I can outline with you because Do you want to share your results?
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Yeah. So, you gave me this whole uh questionnaire to fill. Mhm. to find out can we do something like so I filled that question and it took me like 3 4 minutes it didn't take me long can we do that for people as
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well can you give me some link so that a lot of people who want to find out what are they what's their natural type of sleeping and waking up and what is the hour where they feel the most energetic
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versus when they feel really sloppy if they want to find out can we have some link of this this test to something yes yeah we our lab has um it's it's www.mmyronotype.com and we can absolutely give give folks
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access to it so they don't have to pay for it but to get the assessment done the same assessment you did.
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Perfect. Done. So we're going to we're going to go through my results. Okay. And then we'll put out a link in the description for anyone who wants to actually go test it.
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Okay. So this is what the report was. Yes. Let's look at it. So here's an outline first of just the three types, right? the three different types we talked about AM shifted bifphasic and PM shifted and anybody else who's watching
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if you also take the assessment you're going to get a report as well a PDF report that's going to go over all of this information so these are the three main chronotypes now as you can see here in the center we have population
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distributions the population distribution here shows that the majority of people in the world are bifphasic even they are not like 5 a.m. type no so that's why I say it's stupid this 5 a.m. club for everybody like, "Oh, if
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you want to be the most successful version of yourself, you got to wake up at 5." No, you don't. No, you don't. This is great for like a quarter of the human population that naturally they prefer to go to bed early and wake
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up early. Amazing. If that's you, enjoy. Brilliant. Yeah. Brilliant. Good for you. Don't force that on me.
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Yeah. Go work in finance. Everybody's waking up at 5. Great. Awesome. Awesome. The majority of the human population is bifphasic. Also research from my lab shows by the way PM shifted is actually closer to 10% of the human population.
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So super minority. So the bifphasic energy curve bifphasic stands for the Latin two phases or two peaks. So that means these individuals have a midm morning peak. So not first thing in the morning. So they need like 45 minutes
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maybe an hour to kind of ramp up. but they're going to peak in their cortisol levels, their epinephrine, all of this amazing hormones that keep you focused and alert and awake and excited. They're going to get there. Give it an hour. So,
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if you wake up in the morning and you're like, "Okay, but then within 45 minutes you're like, I feel amazing, but in an hour you feel amazing, probably you're bifphasic." Okay, now these individuals, that's their first peak in the morning. second and
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then they come down for an super afternoon dip. Super afternoon dip. Like they're crashing. They're these folks crash harder than anybody else. So they could really take a nap, you know, in the middle of the day. But if they
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listen to their body, maybe they take a break, maybe they do a workout, maybe they do some other stuff, they take a little bit of a break. After that, they get a second wind of focus again.
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Yeah. A second peak. So sometimes it's early evening, sometimes it's later evening, sometimes it's late afternoon.
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You know, it really depends when you wake up. But you will have another peak if you're bifphasic, if you play your cards right, you this is what I mean by leverage your biology because these people if they don't take
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a proper break midday and they don't listen to their body, that second peak will be less peaky. They won't take advantage of it.
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Got it? So this whole 9 to5, it doesn't really serve. It's not the way this is designed. You should be you should learn what your chronoype is so you can take advantage of your peak performance hours. 2 to three hours every single day
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your brain is at its best. Is it you know what I know somebody I'm not allowed to take their names but super successful multi-billionaire lives on an island bunch of things right?
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He did some tests with his performance coaches and all over all all those things right and he says that he sleeps 4 hours then functions then sleep 4 hours he doesn't sleep at he doesn't sleep like 8 hours a stretch will he
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come in by phasic no that's that's an old school tactic called like split sleep listen it's hard on the brain and the body that's not how our brains and our bodies are designed Matthew Walker who's also at UC Berkeley
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one of the world's most, you know, renowned sleep psychologists in his book, all of his research. Yeah, exact, you know, it y literally it spells out, all of the sleep research spells out pretty clearly that we need sustained contiguous hours of sleep. You
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even get some higher quality benefits if you go to bed before midnight. Not really sure why. Kind of sucks for the PM shifted people, but it is what it is. So science would definitely disagree with that strategy for sure. Now, if
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it's working for performance, you know, fine, but it's it's not going to work for his health.
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It's going to be a sacrifice. You know, it would be like I've also met people that drink like five cups of coffee a day and they're just like, okay, but you're doing something not so great for yourself long at some point there will
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be consequences. Yeah. Oh, good. So okay you've got bifphasic people as mentioned majority of the human population and then you have the tired the lonely the few now really 10 to 15% of the human population is PM shifted PM shifted people prefer to go
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to bed later and wake up later biologically that's me it is you you are PM shifted it is your chronotype we were able to actually test this and see that your chronoype is PM shifted. Now, every chronoype has a
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peak, a dip, and a recovery period. Okay. Now, for a PM shifted person, and maybe for this so that you can see it too, we do it this way. Okay. So, for a PM shifted person, all right, if we take the hours, let's
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say, of like 9:00 a.m. to to to 1:00 a.m. that you see here on the x-axis, you've got creative work ideally being done in the morning.
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This might be when you have some of your best ideas. Why? Because you're probably a little tired of the mornings, aren't you?
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Yeah, I'm very tired in the morning. Because when you're tired, you're more likely to allow yourself to activate that DMN and be bored. You can just kind of sit back, give yourself a few minutes, let your mind wander, journal a
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little bit, brainstorm, just expose yourself to like really interesting, good content, and see what comes up, see what ideas you might have. When we are a little bit lower in energy levels, you're less inhibited.
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So, you're going to come up with a few more ideas. So, I should do my reading and like just thinking work during this time.
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You could experiment with it. At least try it. It's possible you've already trained yourself enough to like be able to still get a lot of really like to activate that central executive network, that CEN to get stuff done really early in the
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morning. But probably, and you'll tell me if this is true, that you likely hit your peak in the evening for sure.
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Yeah. That means I'm like, "Go, go, go, go during the night." Really? Yeah. That's when you should be doing your focused work. You got to get done.
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You got to be doing that stuff at night. That evening range is when people, and by the way, I'm PM shifted, too. Women who are PM shifted are even more the minority of the human population.
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There's very few of us. So, but PM shifted in general, we're both minorities in the human population. So, this is we need to be taking advantage of this time. And listen, not every day because I don't know about you, but if I
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stay up super late working, it's going to ruin my work day and all of this stuff. I have stuff to do during the day. I have meetings sometimes at 8:00 in the morning. So, like I can't do this
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often, but sometimes I give myself the gift of allowing myself to work in the evenings and then when I have time to sleep in the next day, it works really well. I can take advantage of it and get
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more done. So, that's what I recommend people do is really um and what do I do in the dip?
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Oh, administrative work. Stuff that is less important for you. We all have administrative work. Even if you outsource most of it, we still have some administrative work like less important work like checking emails and Yeah. Take your calls then.
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Send message then. Yeah. Send all the messages, take your calls then and get that stuff done. You have some shopping to do, do it then.
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Get a workout in. If you work out here during your dip, your peak will be even pickier. You're going to feel amazing.
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So many people wait until after work to go work out. Yeah. I do it in the morning. That's great.
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Especially for a PM shifted person. I have recommended to a lot of um CEOs that uh are A.M. shifted for them to not work out in the morning.
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Why? Because they wake up at 5 5:00 a.m. club porn, right? They wake up at 5:00 a.m. and their their brain is already on, man. It's like what your brain is like at night time. They're ready. They're fire.
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So, I should work out in the morning, not at night. For you, I would say for me, too. Yeah.
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because I'm not listen I'm not solving the world's biggest problems in the morning anyway I'm like drinking my coffee I'm like all right I'm like very meditative I'm very relaxed soft you know then later in the day I'm like all
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right let's go let's let's hit it so yeah I would my recommendation is everyone should figure out what their type is and strategically design their day when they can listen we all have meetings and responsibilities but at least know what your type is so that if
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you get an opportunity to protect a few hours in that peak performance window that for you is the evening. For most other people, it's going to be midm morning. That's the majority. Some people it's early morning. Protect that
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time. But I'm going to be anxious till 6:00 p.m. If I don't do like the the minute I wake up and if I'm not like getting all the stuff done.
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Yeah. The whole day I'm going to spend an anxiety of what am I missing out if I'm not doing the work. I won't be able to think and brainstorm and read and like I won't be able to wander.
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How about if you wander tried wandering for you schedule it and you time yourself. You say I'm going to give myself one hour to brainstorm to see if I can come up with how many good ideas for the business and for the podcast.
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Does it does like scheduling wandering works? Mhm. Really? Yeah. We call it shouldn't it be like just it should be what do you call think time?
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Yeah, but then shouldn't think time be just out of nowhere random. Then it's not disciplined.
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Then what what if you never do it? We're busy people. I think if you really care about something, you should schedule it.
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Got it. Interesting. Let me try this and then I'll tell you the results if I'm able to actually fix it or not.
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I love it. Here's one thing very interesting. You talk a lot about burnout, right? How is burnout different than anxiety or stress?
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Is it different? Isn't it like when you're when you're stressed all the time, when you're anxious all the time, you eventually burn out?
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This is such an important question. And the answer is no. They're not the same thing. But yes, if you keep stressing over and over and over again, at some point it is likely you'll burn out. It depends on how you are experiencing that
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stress. So let me let me put it this way. Humans are designed we're designed to experience stress.
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We're we're made for it. I know people like usually these days like hate the word stress. It's like a naughty word.
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They're like everything is about anti-stress and lowering your stress and all this stuff. Listen, stress just means like stress hormones. It just means focus, alertness, motivation. Like it's a lots of good stuff. Like stress is not just a bad thing. You need it. If
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you removed all the cortisol, for example, in your body, you would be in a coma.
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Truly, you'd be in a coma. So, you need cortisol. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. So, what is bad though? And and as I mentioned, the human is designed for experiencing stress cycles.
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What is a stress cycle? Stress cycle is the cycle of that cortisol going up and what goes up must come down.
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So stress goes up, stress comes down. So we're designed for experiencing these stress cycles. Get stressed, get stressed, get stressed, okay? And it's done. Get stressed about something and deal with it. And it's done. It's over.
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You can experience this dozens of times all day. Get stressed, complete the stress cycle.
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What does modern life look like for so many people? They wake up in the morning, the alarm goes off, they grab their phone because that's the alarm.
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Then they start scrolling and looking at an email and messages that have come in, WhatsApp. They're just checking all the different things. Sending them yes, confirmed, thumbs up, heart, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, you all of these things
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already. checking the news immediately before you've even had the opportunity to listen right to that internal voice.
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Where are my priorities? What are my goals? Who am I? What's the story? Where is the mindset? Do any kind of work and training on yourself? You've launched yourself onto this roller coaster ride that you didn't anticipate.
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And now, unfortunately, in my opinion, you've started that stress response. But what happens once you start that way?
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Usually people keep going until they start work and then they start work and then they're in their first meeting and then the next meeting and then more emails and then more calls and then this thing and then when does it ending? It
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just keeps going and going and going. When are you completing the stress cycle? Remember what we said before.
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We're designed for stress cycles. Stress goes up, stress comes down. Stress goes up, stress comes down.
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It's not coming down. It's never coming down. Stress doesn't kill. Never completing the stress cycle kills.
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So if you never complete these stress cycles, it just keeps going up up up and then you just pass out and go to sleep and then you wake up the next morning and you just keep doing this and you're
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on this roller coaster ride with yourself. Eventually, yes, you'll experience burnout. Your adrenals like will finally give out and you'll be like, "Okay, I'm done. I'm done giving you cortisol." Isn't how mostly everybody's living these days?
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Yeah. And that's why, Listen, can you imagine going back and talking to your grandfather and saying, "I'm burned out at your age." Why is it that all of a sudden everybody's burning out?
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I met a a kid, a guy, 22 and a half, just graduated college, just started working. It had been the first quarter. I have a and I don't I met the kid, but my friend is the one who's supervising the kid. He's like,
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"This guy is already saying he's burned out." Like clinically, he's like, "I need to go to the doctor. I'm burned out." And I'm just like, "You just started. You're burn I'm burned out.
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Like, how could you possibly be burned out? How is that even feasible?" But like right now, everyone everyone is saying that they're experiencing this burnout. Well, first of all, I don't think they are. Clinical burnout is super serious. When people are stressed
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and they're anxious, sometimes they call that burnout. That's not the same thing. You can be stressed. It's not going to kill you.
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Chronic stress that never closes out for a very long time can have detrimental effects for your health for sure. So, the goal is close out your stress cycles. And there's a framework that I teach in my classes and in my lab called the 3M
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framework for preventing burnout. What is it? It's three different kinds of breaks. Breaks that everyone should be taking in order to actually prevent burnout from happening even if you work really hard.
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This is again made for super peak performers. We developed this framework and we've tested it and it works. Three different kinds of breaks. Micro breaks.
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This is every single day for a matter of minutes. You need to be taking a break every day for a few minutes. You can do that right?
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Every week, 2 to 4 hours. Focus on the two. If the four is too much, 2 hours.
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And then every month, half day to a full day. You can focus on the half if you like. Half day off. When you put it that way, it doesn't sound that scary, right?
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Like, come on. What are you talking about? Few minutes every day. I do that.
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Yeah. The distinction is, and this is what's critical. In order for all three of these kinds of breaks to actually be effective, biologically effective, for you to actually prevent burnout, you have to employ something that we call complete psychological detachment.
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What do you mean by that? Glad you asked. You need to be the mental equivalent of off the grid.
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Complete psychological detachment means you're not thinking about all of the stuff that's stressing you out. You're not thinking about your deadlines.
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You're not thinking about necessarily if you have kids, your family, whatever the people that is that you're responsible for. You are just mentally off. Your mind is not on all of the things.
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That's really hard, isn't it? So, what do you So, what do you do in the breaks then?
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Well, ideally you're just resting, but that's too hard, I think, for people. When they're resting, they're thinking about stuff.
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Exactly. Yeah. So, my recommendation is to do something. Do something active that is challenging enough. Active enough so that it's impossible for you to do that thing and be thinking about all of your stuff at the same time.
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Like playing something, like hosting a podcast, right? Like you you can't tune out. We have to stay here. Otherwise, we're Yeah. I don't know what to ask then next.
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Exactly. We're just going to be like, "Okay, thank you for saying that. It's going to be super awkward. You're going to host the most awkward podcast in the history of time." Right. You're just going to be like, "Oh, the host keeps
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like daydreaming and forgetting what he's doing and where he is." Right? Or like if I started daydreaming, you're going to ask me a question like, "What was the question?" Right? It's not. We have to. We're engaged right now in
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something that is cognitively challenging and engaging. So right now for me and you, it's impossible for me to be worried about all the other stuff.
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I know you have work later tonight. So do I. Okay. Like this won't consider this won't be a break for me, right? Because it's work, right?
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It's work. Oh, it's work. I'm not I'm not like stressing about anything at all in this particular moment. But before and after, I will.
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Yes. So this is for these 4 hours. I'm just going to be like I don't care about the world at all. Well, then in that case, I would oddly maybe consider this a break for you because you're in flow
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at least. Absolutely. Your da that that right that watchtower it's here. It's we're not letting anything else take us away.
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So I would actually imagine for for you and actually for me too, we're both in flow. So, for this few hours, I've allowed myself to stop worrying about everything else and just be here present in this conversation with you. Now, for
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most other people, they're not hosting a podcast or not on a podcast. Okay? So, what can you do? If you're going to do a workout to de-stress, do a workout that is different, hard enough, novel. If a lot of people I know
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go on runs, don't go on the same run every single day because you're going to go on autopilot and just tune out.
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You're going to be like on the run and you know exactly where you're going every single time. So it's going to be too easy if you do the same exact workout every single time. So change it up, mix it up, make it novel so that
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your brain goes, "Oh, hold on a second. Where are we? What are we doing?" And when it does that, you can't think about anything else. You have to be present. I like to cook. I love food, so I like to
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cook. Okay. So, when I'm cooking, if I make the same recipes that I've made hundreds of times, I can be worrying and thinking while I'm chopping my vegetables, doing all the things, right?
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Easy. But if I do something I've never done before, new crazy recipe, totally different, and now I have to focus. I have to put the baggage down. My watchtowwer needs to be right here.
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I can't be anywhere else. That's what I want people to find. The mental equivalent of off the grid. This thing is quieted down and you're focused on something else, immersed. Pick up a hobby. Like force yourself. Seriously, force yourself.
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I'll tell you why hobbies are really important. Like active hobbies that are new and challenging, like you're learning a new skill. Learned how to play the harmonica. I'm learning by that, by the way. Maybe next time I see
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I'll bring a harmonica. Um or for example, whatever. Hacky sack. something silly juggling. You could learn how to juggle. You could pick a hobby for yourself and say, "I'm going to dedicate force myself even." Seriously, you don't actually have to be interested. It could
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be by force for burnout. You could be like, "Listen, I'm just a high performance junkie and but I'm worried about burnout." Okay, then you have to force yourself to have some other hobby cuz that's a part of your peak
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performance. Interesting. You force yourself to have the hobby and then you immerse yourself in it because it's hard. So if I want to learn how to play the guitar, it's going to take all of my energy and mind in that moment. I
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get a YouTube, you know, like video playing and the guy's like teaching me what to do and I'm like doing the things. I'm not thinking about anything else. I have to be right there. So that's those are my recommendations.
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Every day for a few minutes, you have to go mentally. What do you mean by few?
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15 20. Sure. It's it's this is different for every person. So I can't give but I would say at least 10.
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Okay. 10 minutes even. So 10 minutes a day. Yeah. Then 2 hours a week.
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Mhm. Okay. And half day a month. And what do you call them? 3M. Why do you call it 3M framework?
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Micro, messo, and macro breaks. Easy to remember. Micro break, mess break, and a macro break. Three different kinds of breaks. You did a research right recently about people who were stressed anxious lonely depressed and then you did something about them in
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9 weeks. Yes. And then you saw miraculous results. What was it? This is currently unpublished. So, you're like the first to hear about this right now. I was literally looking at this data last night. It's kind of um
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amazing. I don't know how to describe it. I'm very excited. Okay. Yeah. What is it?
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Okay. I started teaching a class at UC Berkeley for undergraduates, so for younger people called mind machine and meaning.
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This class is a living experiment. Meaning instead of just learning about things in the class, I'm asking the students to change their behavior.
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New habits. We're breaking habits and building new ones. So, we're actually going through behavior change and neuroplasticity while the class is happening.
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Fascinating. Hard work. Okay. Class of 450. And you're actually making them go through neuroplasticity.
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Yeah. Each one of them. It'll be different for each one of them. Yeah. Okay. What is it?
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And we're tracking it all. We're doing research on the students. So, we actually asked the students at the beginning of the class, sign up for science. Let's do this.
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come into the lab and we're going to test your attention span. We're going to test your complex working memory. We're going to test your loneliness. We're going to test your meaning and life satisfaction.
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We're going to test your depression, your anxiety, your stress levels. We're going to test all these things. Then we're going to go through a 9week digital detox.
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You're going to change your relationship with scrolling. Oh, the binging, the short form media. I tell them the same thing we talked about today. Long form could be fine. We had, you know, for homework one week everyone had to watch a movie without a second
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screen. That's homework in my class. This week you have to watch a movie minimum 90 minutes.
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They could also watch your podcast. What a privileged class you are in. Well, we're we're but we're doing the hard work. I'm telling you because it's become hard. It's like we were talking about before, right, with Netflix.
Speaker A
You're telling me for younger kids it's harder to watch a movie. Yeah. They can't sit through a 90minute movie.
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No. Even if it's a good movie to to me at least. I'm like this is crazy. I'm like completely like engrossed in the thing. But it's not their fault. It's because this the short form is so it's the candy. Imagine if you're addicted to
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candy and what you're saying is by the way do you have like a delicious favorite meal?
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Yeah. So many. What? Like give me like one example. pick up any like I said mapu tofu I love a lot so good so good okay like a good one like okay so that has a lot of nutrition
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like it's going to fill you up right the tofu is also lots of protein and it's it's good stuff right if you were addicted to candy and it's not your fault right because it's in your p the candy's always in your pocket
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for some reason and it's always in your hand and you get hungry you're supposed to you're eating now you're addicted to candy do you think people who are addicted to junk food and candy like mapu tofu.
Speaker A
Not at all. No, even I will. Oh, no. Exact. There you go. So that's why so the movie is totally hard work for them. So we have them go through this 9 week digital detox.
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We have them change their relationship with scrolling. We have them put limits on how much they can scroll. We have them do it in such a way that if they go over the limit, it's going to send a
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text message to one of their friends. And I find out too. We all find out. So it like keeps them it's social accountability, right? And because remember if you take away your coping mechanism for stress because for most
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people they're scrolling because they're stressed out and it's become a coping mechanism. They're numbing. If you take that away from them, they're going to feel even worse. They're going to have to sit with those negative feelings and it feels really, really bad. So we also
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brought in a therapist to teach them emotional regulation, healthier emotional regulation techniques and strategies. Then we also had other people who have been through serious digital addiction come and tell their stories. That's what was happening in class. They were getting the
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inspiration. What did you call the highquality content? Bloom. Bloom scrolling. Yeah. Bloom scrolling. We were we taught them about the content diet and we said you need to make your doom scrolling into bloom scrolling ch following all of
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these accounts that don't teach you anything. They don't challenge you. They don't expose you to new ideas. Now I want you to actually go in and think about like find new accounts. Talk to each other. Do research which accounts
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are going to actually level you up and and all whatever in in everybody's different you know. Some of the students are really into like art. Some of them are into they want to start a business.
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They're all over the place, right? For you in your niche. Go find the bloom.
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Seek the bloom. Then we're also making sure that they in general have less screen time. And we are replacing the digital connection with real in-person connection. We threw a party, huge party, food, games, the whole thing. Live music. We people went on
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hikes. We set up the students on blind dates. What kind of class is this?
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The best class actually. That was a lot of hard work. The class is a study. It's research.
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I want to see and I know we can do this. But now I have the data to back it up.
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that people, especially young people, do not have to be as isolated and lonely, as depressed and anxious, and their attention spans do not need to be as shot as they are. Neuroplasticity is real. Neuroplasticity is real. That means that whatever we did, we did
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something to make this happen. You can undo it. It's like muscles, right? I can eat and never move and something's going to happen for sure to my body or I can force myself to eat good food and exercise and then other things are going
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to happen to my body. But what were the results like what what happened then? Like you at the beginning of the class you got their attention and like you tested bunch of things then you did all of this made it fun.
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Yes. What happened then? It was also hard. They a lot of tears by the way had a lot of students crying. It was really difficult because it's it's an addiction. Everyone is going through withdrawal together. If I have 450
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people, we are all experiencing withdrawal together at the same time. We're just trying to make it better by injecting connection and play. We I forced everybody for the final project.
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You have to pick up a hobby and work on it throughout the semester, you know.
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So, this was this was what we did. And for 9 weeks, they were not allowed to touch their phones.
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No, no, no, no. They all had their phones. M they just scrolled a little bit less.
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Specifically, also short form media. That was what I said. Social media and the scrolling. We're going to doom scroll a little less. Watch a movie.
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Watch long YouTube videos. Watch other stuff, you know. And and by the way, they still scrolled.
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They just scrolled a little less. So if someone was doing for 2 hours, they did it for like 30 minutes.
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Exactly. Some of them were doing it for 6 hours and then they brought it down to like two.
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Okay. Awesome. Okay. Then what happened after 9 weeks? Scores showed significantly less lonely, significantly less depressed, significantly less anxious. Their attention spans went up significantly. Their complex working memory, which is a proxy for general fluid intelligence, significantly increased.
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It's it's almost unbelievable when I look at the results myself. I didn't think it was going to be this good. To be honest with you, I knew I knew my intuition told me as a scientist who's been working with people about this
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topic for a long time that we were going to see some benefits. I didn't realize we were going to see this many benefits so fast.
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And by the way, they came in at the beginning of the semester when everybody was just came back from break and they were all feeling good. And when I had them do the after test after, you know, 9 weeks, they were in the middle of
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midterms. So they were all super stressed out. Seriously. And even though they were during midterms, the results were still that uplifting and inspiring.
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But wouldn't their results be some somewhat biased as well? Because like because I've gone through such thing 9 weeks, I'm just going to take all the good things in a survey, right?
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Well, you can't really gify your attention span. That's a digital assessment. Those those cognitive assessments you can't really game. Sure, I guess you could like lie for some reason.
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Yeah, let's say I can say I'm less lonely whatever. Sure, it is possible to lie, but this is this is But why would you? It's all anonymous.
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There's no benefit. If anything, the the the thing that I was worried students would do, especially during midterms, is just answer so fast that they're not even paying attention to the answers.
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They're just like, cuz it's anonymous. I you know I don't want to make them feel like you know they have to answer a certain way because you're right then as a professor they're gonna be like oh I need to say these things.
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Yeah. But then attention span like through the device you found out like it just improved.
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We have a test of attention that we do. It's a cognitive assessment. Um these are things I can test you on too. If you ever want you come to my lab at Berkeley and we'll get you fully tested.
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Okay. Complex working memory, visual memory, attention span, the whole thing. Okay. But you sit down and these are digital assessments that you do. So there's no I'm not asking you anything. I'm actually testing it. Can you focus on
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this boring thing? And how long can you go before you make a mistake and miss something?
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And their scores improved in 9 weeks even though they were more stressed because it's now exam time.
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So just you're really making short form level. I'm making it candy and I have a sweet tooth like you do. I still eat candy, but eat them up with tofu first, you know? Like, don't fill up on the candy. I I I scroll. Be the
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first to admit on your show. I'm going to tell the world, the anti-crolling lady, I scroll, but I have limits on it.
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You know, like and I ask yourself the question, how much time is it worth it for you to give of your life, your precious life to scrolling every day. I'm not saying don't do it. 10 minutes is good. Maybe
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10 minutes of scrolling. And I'm not even saying that's all of your media. If you want to sit down and watch good quality YouTube videos for like, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes, like learn something, right? You could do, okay, I
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I want to do at least half an hour of that. I want to like I have these accounts I'm following. Bloom, you know, I want to bloom scroll a little bit on these and then but like long form
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content that's actually challenging your mind that you remember you're learning something. You can pause the video and go look something up. These kinds of things as opposed to the doom.
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Interesting. I I heard the moment you were saying how much of the time you're going to do this. I'm I'm hearing how much of the time you're going to invest in becoming dumb, in becoming lonier, in becoming less
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empathetic, in becoming in ma in in making your memory worse. All of these things at the same time.
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Here's the last thing I ask everybody is when were you the most powerless or anxious in your life.
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I would say for me when I was struggling with addiction I felt powerless. And man, it felt like um a cruel joke from the universe. I study addiction. I study neuroplasticity. I study this stuff. And somehow I got tricked. You
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know, it's not really a trick. It's biology. It's science. But it's humbling. Um, and I think it's an important message because people need to know that everybody, we're all human, everybody's susceptible. It's about the choices we make. It's about awareness
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and being intentional about how you spend your time, and also what you do with your life, what you choose to ingest, what you choose to think.
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Be careful about what you expose your mind to. What were you addicted to? I've been addicted to a great number of things in my life. I have been addicted to uh I've I've smoked, I've drank, I've done uh scrolling, uh sugar, you name
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it. Um it it has been my life's most You know what's interesting? I love the word you used, powerless.
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From what felt like the most powerless moment in my life, it gave rise to the most powerful feelings I've ever had in my entire life. I feel unstoppable and so powerful because of overcoming addiction.
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So it was an opportunity. So now when you feel powerless again, what's your personal framework to become powerful?
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Well, this one is going to maybe sound even a little bit spiritual. I have a few beliefs.
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One of my beliefs is that the universe and the world is not how it seems.
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that a great amount of my reality is a construct of my own mind, which means I can influence the world and my life through what's happening in here. So, I protect this thing.
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I protect it by not letting bad stuff in. I audit what it's doing and what it's thinking. And if I'm ever feeling powerless, I remind myself that I am God.
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I am all powerful. I create everything in my life because you can. You truly can. You can create your own reality, your consciousness. Like literally truly my conscious experience. If I close my eyes right now, and so do you. You can dream
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a reality inside of your mind. Now you might say, "But but that's not real.
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It's in your mind." But when something is truly real in your mind, it's real for you.
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So much research has also shown us that when you rehearse something and you visualize it, you daydream, you daydream about it, that the brain can barely tell the difference between daydreaming about X and actually doing X.
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True. So if you're ever feeling powerless, you go into a daydream where you are the most powerful person in the world. Go into that daydream because then all of a sudden you're going to start to feel more powerful again.
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Nice. Here is the last question which is we always ask people about cost of ambition right? So what's the cost?
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What's the cost you have personally paid to become the person who you are today? What's the cost of becoming this top level scientist researcher businesswoman running 50 things at the same time and researching and probably telling the world about something that they don't
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believe in? What's the cost of all of this? My family and friends know the cost because they see it.
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There is always a cost. So, I'm so glad you asked people this question. I have been relentless and very focused in my life on building what I want to build and doing what I want to do.
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It doesn't allow for a lot of space for distraction. But the thing is, I've also sacrificed a lot of fun.
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I've sacrificed personal travel, vacations leisure um, scrolling. I avoided getting social media, by the way, just until recently.
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Completely avoided it. I have um given up friendships. I've lost friendships. I've lost a lot of very important relationships in my life because of my hyperfocus on prioritizing work. Um addictions, as I've mentioned before, that all comes out of this relentless
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ambition and relentless drive towards performance. And um yeah, I've I've nearly lost my life and given my life. I will say that in the pursuit of my goals and that amount of sacrifice, I can't say I regret it because even though regretful
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things have happened because of it, I'm happy with where I'm at today. Not just from a success metric perspective, but I learned and now I can teach and I've corrected and now I prioritize the people in my life, the most
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important people. I'm like extremely community oriented and there's people around my loved ones are around me all the time and I'm around them and it's completely shifted what I sacrificed and the the negative side effects I would say
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what I lost um I've learned from it which is all we can do right thank you for sharing that thank you so much for spending time with us and teaching us about brain and productivity and cognitive things. We have missed one
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very important topic. We need to do that next time which are the 10 laws. We will do that. How can a human being become a superhuman? We will go through it and we will do that next podcast. So thank you
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so much. Thank you and to many more podcasts together to many more podcast together.
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Cheers. Done. Cheers. How are you? Pleasure. Nice to meet you. No, we're here just for purely for work. Don't care about fun at least for next two, three years.
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Really? Oh, yes. Are you sure? Oh, how absolutely. Just whatever makes more sense in terms of impact maximization, you know. Thank you for watching this episode till the end.
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We would love to know what you liked or disliked about this episode and which guests you would like to see on the show. Let us know in the comments. Your feedback help us improve and make every episode a little better. I'll see you
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next time. Until then, keep figuring out.
Topics:brain trainingfocus improvementburnout preventioncognitive neuroscienceattention managementbiological lawsproductivityneuroplasticitymotivation sciencemental health
