The Art of Manliness - Achieve Peak Performance by Learning to Shift the Gears of Your Mind

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.420 The Industrial Revolution changed the nature of work so that many people labored in factories

00:00:16.000 continuously performing the same task at the same pace for the duration of their shift.

00:00:21.220 Two centuries on, even though most folks have moved from working with their hands to working

00:00:25.140 with their heads and from manufacturing set outputs to solving complex problems, generating

00:00:30.140 creative ideas, and processing information, we still tend to work as if we're manning

00:00:34.540 an assembly line.

00:00:35.800 My guest says that being stuck in this factory framework is to our detriment and that there's

00:00:39.980 a much better way to do knowledge work, one that's less like manning an assembly line and

00:00:44.140 more like driving a car.

00:00:46.060 Me Too Cerrone is a Cambridge-trained physician, a neuroscience researcher, and the author of

00:00:50.780 Hyper Efficient, Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work.

00:00:55.140 Today on the show, Me Too offers a modern approach to achieving peak performance and explains

00:00:59.360 why it's better to impose the natural rhythms of our brains on our work than to impose the

00:01:03.420 rhythms of our work on our brains.

00:01:05.200 She shares why you should treat your brain like an engine with three different gears, how

00:01:08.740 people have different gear personalities, and how to use environmental cues, specially structured

00:01:13.080 90-minute cycles of work, and even caffeine to shift your brain to the optimal gear for different

00:01:17.840 mental challenges.

00:01:19.220 After the show is over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash hyper-efficient.

00:01:25.140 All right, Me Too Cerrone, welcome back to the show.

00:01:37.960 Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:39.360 So we had you on back in 2019 to talk about your book, Stress Proof.

00:01:43.580 That's episode number 525.

00:01:45.700 You got a new book out called Hyper Efficient, Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work.

00:01:51.060 How is this book a continuation of your thinking and writing that you did in Stress Proof?

00:01:57.460 So when I wrote Stress Proof, the main focus was on the neuroscience of stress.

00:02:02.320 And following the book, I've been working with various organizations in different fields

00:02:07.140 to really dig deeper into the world of work and how stress manifests and really how the

00:02:13.440 world of work functions.

00:02:14.560 And while doing that, I realized that one of the biggest questions we ought to be asking

00:02:23.400 right now is, is it really that stress arises on its own from the world of work as it is

00:02:32.360 now?

00:02:33.180 Or are we doing something fundamentally wrong in the way we work?

00:02:37.680 And this set me down a rabbit hole and I started looking at why we work the way we do and why

00:02:44.900 we in industrial urbanized societies have quantity of work, which is actually very comparably almost

00:02:55.420 lighter than the work that many non-urban, non-industrialized societies do.

00:03:01.580 And yet we still have this higher burden of a lack of fulfillment, of mental illness, of

00:03:07.540 stress, of burnout.

00:03:08.540 So all of these questions sort of led me to dig deeper into asking why we work the way

00:03:13.780 we do and could there be something fundamentally wrong with the way we work?

00:03:19.100 And that led to going down lots of rabbit holes and discovering that there is indeed something

00:03:25.480 very wrong and very peculiar about the way we work.

00:03:29.520 And that led to the book, Hyper Efficient.

00:03:32.440 Well, so yeah, let's get to that.

00:03:33.560 The big overarching argument in this book is that the way most white collar workers, knowledge

00:03:39.260 workers work today goes counter to the natural way our minds and bodies want to work.

00:03:47.320 What is that natural way?

00:03:50.140 So first we have to look at what is not the natural way.

00:03:53.020 So we have, from the era of Fordian assembly lines and Taylorism, when mass production was

00:04:01.640 in productivity, we started adopting this model of assembly line style working, which revolved

00:04:10.620 around manual work, assembling things with your hands, so working with muscle.

00:04:16.120 And in that sort of framework, the faster you worked, the longer the hours you put in, the

00:04:23.260 more continuously you worked.

00:04:24.980 So the shorter your breaks or the absence of breaks, even all of these led to more products

00:04:30.820 along the line and hence improved productivity and equated with success.

00:04:37.100 Now, after the Second World War, when the kind of work we did started to change and a lot

00:04:44.360 of work went from the hands to the head, where people locked into offices, manual work, the

00:04:50.380 share of manual work went down, the share of knowledge work went up.

00:04:55.040 We started doing different kinds of work, but we never really changed the way in which

00:05:00.240 we worked.

00:05:00.900 And that should really strike alarm bells, you know, looking back with the benefit of

00:05:05.840 hindsight, because when we started working with the mind, we assumed that the mind works

00:05:11.880 in exactly the same way as muscle, but it doesn't.

00:05:15.700 With muscle, you work when you work and your muscle rests as soon as you stop.

00:05:21.740 The faster you work, the faster your products that are assembled get assembled.

00:05:26.360 When you think about the mind at work, however, it's very different.

00:05:31.540 Putting the mind into this box of continuous, constant-paced working during an entire day,

00:05:39.520 clocking in in the morning, clocking off late in the evening with an hour for lunch, putting

00:05:45.480 that sort of assembly line framework on the mind is a very unnatural way to force the mind

00:05:51.220 to work.

00:05:51.920 We know that when it comes to the mind at work, the mind suffers from fatigue, just

00:05:58.580 like muscle does.

00:05:59.980 But unlike muscle, the mind doesn't perspire, doesn't grow red, there are no sore joints

00:06:04.980 in the head. 0.53

00:06:06.060 And we have created a world where the signs of mental fatigue, which tend to be very subtle,

00:06:15.340 are always ignored, especially when they are manifesting at 11 in the morning.

00:06:20.880 So we are forcing the brain, the mind to carry on working, ignoring fatigue.

00:06:28.140 And when we start to do that, what happens is the mind can continue working, but at a

00:06:34.700 very low level.

00:06:36.220 But when it comes to really thinking at sort of at really peak levels, at performing at

00:06:43.240 peak levels, at thinking of innovative ideas, original ideas, solving difficult problems,

00:06:49.160 for all of these things to happen, the mind needs to be in a particular state, a very fresh

00:06:55.980 state.

00:06:57.100 It mustn't be fatigued.

00:06:58.980 It cannot do all these things if it has been working continuously for long hours.

00:07:05.720 So the way we work force the mind to work at a lower level to the level it could be working

00:07:13.040 at. And instead of using this assembly line template, if we get the brain to work or get

00:07:18.140 the mind to work in more of a rhythmic cycle, so cycles of on and off or cycles of high intensity

00:07:25.800 followed by medium and lower intensity, we can keep mental fatigue at bay and we can let

00:07:32.000 mental output continue and continue at a very high level.

00:07:36.600 Okay. So just to recap here, whenever we work with our physical bodies, we naturally

00:07:42.100 want to take breaks because our muscles just can't go on anymore. So we take a break. We

00:07:47.320 might even take a break on the weekend if you work in a manual labor job so your body can

00:07:51.080 recover. With mind work, we don't allow our mind that same sort of rest because you don't

00:07:58.040 notice the fatigue the same way you do muscle fatigue.

00:08:01.820 Correct. So mental fatigue, because it manifests in such a subtle way, I mean, practically the way

00:08:08.900 you would feel it is you're working on something really, really well, you're focused, you're getting

00:08:14.800 these great ideas. And then about 20 minutes, 30 minutes down the line, suddenly you find that your

00:08:20.460 mind is kind of drifting, your thoughts are drifting, your attention is floating away. Now that is actually

00:08:26.740 a sign that your mind is tired. And that's your brain's natural mechanism to lower the load to

00:08:33.940 step off the pedal. But we interpret that as, oh, we are being distracted, we are not working hard

00:08:41.660 enough, it's only been 30 minutes, we should carry on, we're clearly not aspiring, we're not aching

00:08:47.160 anywhere, there's no reason to stop. And if your manager sees you not working, and you're on the

00:08:53.140 seat. Again, there is a perception that that equates to lower success, lower productivity. So we just

00:08:59.760 force ourselves on. But as soon as you start to do that, the brain can indeed continue to work,

00:09:05.820 we can work without having any sleep, but the level of excellence of your work immediately slides down.

00:09:13.260 And adding on to that, even when we're not working for the job we do to make money,

00:09:18.380 a lot of just life requires a significant amount of cognitive work, you know, paying bills,

00:09:25.680 managing insurance, managing schedules for your kids. So even when you're off the clock,

00:09:30.900 your brain never gets a break. This is exactly right. And it's actually a symptom of our time,

00:09:35.980 because in one way, we are making the world easier to handle with technology by simplifying things by

00:09:42.780 making things easier. We no longer need to post letters, we can type them in an instant,

00:09:48.580 we no longer need to kind of have different notebooks and different records, we can put them

00:09:53.520 all into a file in our computer. But what all of this is actually doing unbeknownst to us,

00:10:00.240 because we've evolved and we've trained ourselves to think that fatigue equates to actual physically

00:10:07.480 manifesting fatigue, the kind of feeling your body in your muscles. But what this world

00:10:12.760 is actually doing is it's putting a huge load on our minds. And because the mind's fatigue doesn't

00:10:19.260 manifest in the same way, we are ignoring the fact that it exists. But by piling this onto the mind,

00:10:26.140 the mind is having to struggle with a lot more than it used to have to do before this era of

00:10:33.720 so much technology, when we used to actually process information, process data in more of a

00:10:39.980 distributed way in more of an embodied way. So you're right, we live in this world. And in addition

00:10:46.120 to this, while we are working, the workload itself is increasing. But at the same time, the way we work

00:10:53.180 is not taking account that the mind is needing to take breaks, because the brain is essentially creaking

00:10:59.080 under the strain.

00:10:59.980 So something you do in this book is you introduce readers to a framework to understand how our mind

00:11:06.080 works when we work. And you call it the gear network. I thought it was a really useful mental

00:11:11.620 model. What cognitive and neurological processes does this gear network framework represent?

00:11:18.480 So when you're working at any kind of knowledge work, it really helps to think of your mind in being in

00:11:25.400 different states. And you can intuitively you will you will all know you'll know this because you know

00:11:32.560 that sometimes when you're working on something, you need to be really deeply focused. So you're

00:11:37.880 reading a really important report or email, with lots of nuances within it, you have to focus

00:11:44.360 completely on that. You might be doing a different task on a different day where you're thinking of

00:11:49.740 new ideas, new ideas for innovation, you might be in a software company, you're trying to come up with a

00:11:54.580 new product. In that sort of mental space, you want to be in a sort of slightly mind wandering, kind of

00:12:02.220 gentle, rambling state of mind when you're thinking of new ideas, you want those aha moments of insight

00:12:09.660 to appear. And there could be a third state of mind where you are just on automatic, you are just

00:12:18.080 responding, reacting, you are working to a deadline, you don't have time to think, you just need to react.

00:12:23.680 So these are all different states of mind that any worker, any knowledge worker will come across

00:12:30.020 during a typical day's work. And what we know is that these different states of mind are tightly

00:12:36.360 correlated to the activity of a particular network in the brain. Its official name is the locus

00:12:41.640 ceruleus norepinephrine network. But essentially, you can see it as a sort of gear network, because your

00:12:49.120 brain's entire activity pattern changes when this network changes its pattern of firing. So if it

00:12:58.520 fires very slowly, you're in this very slow mind wandering state of mind. If it fires very fast,

00:13:05.580 then you're in this reactive state of mind without actually dipping into stress. And there is a

00:13:11.680 Goldilocks zone right in the middle, where the norepinephrine levels are just right to engage

00:13:17.940 the part of the brain that sits at the front of your head known as the prefrontal cortex,

00:13:22.160 which is responsible for higher thinking, analytical problem solving. It comes alive when you're playing

00:13:28.740 chess, solving equations, solving difficult things. So in this Goldilocks zone of this middle

00:13:36.040 level of norepinephrine, which I refer to as gear two, this is where you reach the optimal state to do

00:13:44.960 any kind of mental work that requires concentration, attention, and focus.

00:13:50.080 Okay, so yeah, just to recap, there's gear one, it's when norepinephrine is at a low state,

00:13:54.540 not firing off as much. This is when you're daydreaming, this is when you're recharging.

00:13:59.180 Gear two, that's when you're locked in. As my teenage son would say, gear two is when you can do a lot of

00:14:05.020 mental work, you can concentrate, you can problem solve. But you say with gear two, there's two

00:14:09.320 states, there's like a low energy state and a high energy state.

00:14:12.900 Right. So gear one is mind wandering, gear three is reactive. Neither of these two gears,

00:14:18.520 these two extreme gears allow you to sit down and focus. In gear two, you can because this part of the

00:14:25.880 brain is fully engaged because it responds to this specific level of norepinephrine. So in gear two,

00:14:33.320 you're in the right mental zone, just as your son puts it. But even when you are in the right mental

00:14:38.880 zone, when you can focus, you can still find that there are small nuances about that. So you could

00:14:45.400 be in a state of great focus, but you're also able to kind of let your mind go every now and again,

00:14:51.280 just to wander over an idea, just to kind of come away from a problem and look at it through different

00:14:56.800 angles. You could also be in this optimal gear two zone and have really sharp focus and kind of

00:15:04.200 charge ahead along different ideas. So you can feel the pace of your mind being slightly slower

00:15:08.900 or being slightly faster. And this is what I describe as being low energy and high energy gear two.

00:15:15.800 Gotcha. So gear two is the ideal, but you know, gear three, sometimes you need to be in gear three

00:15:20.740 when the pressure's on, right? Right. So, you know, taking a broad picture of this,

00:15:26.820 when you're doing mental work and generally when you're doing anything where you're engaging with

00:15:31.480 the world around you during the day, gear two seems to be the state we all gravitate towards. It's a state

00:15:37.840 we like to be in. We feel good in because that's where we can concentrate the best. But there is a

00:15:43.820 spectrum of norepinephrine across gear one, gear two, gear three, where gear one, it's very low,

00:15:49.420 gear three, it's higher. And all of these gears actually have a role to play. So small bursts of

00:15:56.360 being in gear three is actually very helpful. Not only is it helpful when we are in emergency

00:16:02.800 situations and we need to react very quickly, it speeds up our thinking, it actually increases speed

00:16:09.620 at the cost of accuracy, but there are times when that's a helpful thing. And at this very high level

00:16:15.760 of norepinephrine, you actually have a slight enhancement of certain types of learning and

00:16:21.140 memory. So you remember certain emotionally charged situations really, really well. That's because of

00:16:28.180 this huge spike in norepinephrine you get being in this gear three situation. But the thing with gear

00:16:34.100 three is you mustn't be in it for too long because as soon as you're in it for too long, you have too much

00:16:39.960 norepinephrine in there for you to be able to concentrate and pay attention. This is why you

00:16:45.720 have to quickly come back to being in gear two again. Okay, so we shift gears based on context that

00:16:52.100 we find ourselves in. But you talk about in the book that we all have a gear personality. What do you

00:16:57.160 mean by gear personality? Right. So when you are doing anything at all, and you as a human being have

00:17:06.580 to pay attention to something to engage with it. And this applies to whether you're working, whether

00:17:12.420 you're doing something at home, whether you're cooking, whether you're tidying something, all of

00:17:17.140 these things need you to pay attention. And the ability to pay attention is optimal when you're in

00:17:23.300 gear two. Now, what is really interesting is that we all aspire to get into this gear two state. And when

00:17:29.960 we do, we feel really good. And different people need a different level of stimulation to get there.

00:17:38.780 So again, going back to this analogy of a gearbox of a gear network, if you imagine a set of gears,

00:17:45.960 a gearbox, or it's really hard to push the lever up to push the gear up, stimulation and uncertainty

00:17:53.960 and just excitement has that same effect on your brain. So just again, taking a step back.

00:18:00.700 When we talk about these three different gears and this network in your brain that releases

00:18:04.820 norepinephrine, what we know is that your brain is always trying to adapt to what is asked of it.

00:18:11.920 So if you give your brain a challenge that's difficult, it will step on the pedal,

00:18:16.400 and it will ramp up its gear to fulfill that challenge. And that challenge can be in the form

00:18:23.580 of stimulation, it can be in the form of uncertainty, it can be in the form of excitement. And different

00:18:30.940 people will respond to the same level of stimulation in a slightly different way. So if we all start in

00:18:37.440 gear one, some people will react very powerfully to a small amount of stimulation, their brain will

00:18:45.640 crank the gear right up, and they will go right up to gear two, or even overshoot to gear three.

00:18:53.140 A different kind of person has a stiffer gearbox. And for this person, the same amount of stimulation

00:19:01.080 will do very little. So for them, their brain will need a bigger sort of stimulus or bigger reason to

00:19:10.380 press on the pedal. So they will react to a bigger volume, a bigger kind of intensity of uncertainty or

00:19:17.820 of stimulation. And they will need that to kind of ramp up from gear one up to gear two. Ultimately,

00:19:27.140 both people want to be in gear two, but the first person needs very little stimulation to get there.

00:19:33.400 The second person needs a lot of stimulation to get there. And practically, you can see this at play

00:19:39.420 in any workplace or just, you know, amongst the people you're around. There will be some people

00:19:45.340 who get very rattled by the smallest uncertainty, by the smallest level of stimulation. And there are

00:19:52.140 other people who need uncertainty, who need competition, who need threats, who need excitement,

00:19:57.640 just to stay in a happy mental space to get into gear two. And this is what I describe as gear

00:20:05.300 personality. Different people thrive in different environments. I talk about work environments,

00:20:12.580 but this is true really of environments that, you know, at large, whether you're talking about a city

00:20:17.720 versus a very slow village, just all environments. And the reason for this is some people's gears

00:20:25.060 go up very slowly. Other people's gears are very sensitive, and they move very easily.

00:20:31.000 And one of the determinants of whether we are happy in what we're doing, we're happy in a particular

00:20:38.080 workplace, doing a particular type of work, this can be influenced by this gear personality. So if

00:20:44.620 you're someone who loves uncertainty, who loves going into the unknown, and who needs that level of

00:20:50.160 stimulation to be in the right mental space, then you would thrive in situations of being an

00:20:57.140 entrepreneur, or doing extreme sports, or doing something really challenging, taking risks.

00:21:04.120 Whereas if you're someone who is easily moved by uncertainty, then you would probably do much

00:21:10.920 better in a different type of job where you are in an environment with lower uncertainty, with

00:21:18.060 lower volatility, where you have more control. Now, this does in no way reflect on your intelligence.

00:21:24.780 So two people can have exactly the same level of intelligence, of ability, but where they thrive

00:21:31.560 is starkly different because of the way their gearbox reacts to the environment.

00:21:39.020 As you were talking, this made me think of my wife and I and our different approaches to

00:21:43.020 what time you should get to the airport. My wife, she loves getting there like the very last minute. 0.80

00:21:48.420 She loves the challenge of being like, okay, how close can we cut it? So she has that,

00:21:52.400 I probably should have that stiff gear personality. Me, on the other hand, I'm like, I want to get

00:21:56.800 there an hour and a half before the flight leaves. I want to have time just to relax. I want to make

00:22:01.340 sure we have time for any contingencies that might show up. So I probably have that more looser gear

00:22:06.320 personality.

00:22:07.920 Right. And very interestingly, procrastination actually comes into it also, because when we're

00:22:13.860 procrastinating, what we're needing is we're needing to create some kind of motivational drive to

00:22:20.280 perform the action if the motivation isn't there already. And for some people, the slightest glimmer

00:22:27.720 of threat provides enough motivation to actually get it done. Whereas for others, you have to wait

00:22:33.820 and wait and wait until not doing the task has got such severe consequences that it's only at that

00:22:41.040 point that your motivation reaches a threshold and you go and tackle it.

00:22:45.740 Is our gear personality, is this primarily genetic?

00:22:50.100 Yes and no. So the gear personality actually, research on that has started about a hundred years

00:22:55.680 ago. And you might have heard of the labeling of type A and type B personalities. And this labeling

00:23:03.620 began in a paper published around about the First World War period, where they found that different

00:23:11.020 people are more susceptible to certain diseases, certain conditions because of the way they react

00:23:18.160 to certain situations. So we know that there is a difference in the way every human being responds

00:23:24.280 and reacts to uncertainty, to pressure. But a large part of it can be modified and can be changed.

00:23:33.180 Your environment is a big factor. So for instance, if you take people coming back from combat zones,

00:23:40.240 take combat veterans coming back after these very, very frightening, threatening, high uncertainty

00:23:46.340 sort of way of living for months and months or weeks and weeks, then following that period,

00:23:54.120 these people are going to have a much higher threshold for uncertainty tolerance. Whereas you can

00:24:01.780 also have the reverse. You can take someone who has a very, what I refer to as a stiff gear,

00:24:07.060 and if they are in an environment of very low uncertainty and they're suddenly put into an

00:24:11.640 environment of high uncertainty or a period, they are going to appear to be hyperreactive to

00:24:18.380 uncertainty until they adjust. So the environment can modify it, but we also have these innate

00:24:25.400 differences. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:24:28.740 And now back to the show. Okay. So we've talked about how it's best to work in a rhythm. Can we use

00:24:37.420 our body's natural rhythm to make our work rhythm even more effective? You know, like our body has a

00:24:42.940 circadian rhythm. So are we able to use that to our advantage that we can work more efficiently with this

00:24:48.160 gear metaphor? Yes, absolutely. So we do have these, as you say, circadian rhythms,

00:24:54.440 rhythms, but actually the brain and the body, we have so many rhythms that the brain follows

00:24:59.740 many, many rhythms and each rhythm is embedded within another rhythm. And we now know that

00:25:05.620 within the brain, information is carried in the form of oscillations or waves, rhythms of waves.

00:25:13.340 So rhythms essentially are fundamental to the way the brain exists. Circadian rhythms is something

00:25:21.180 most of your listeners will be very familiar with. We all know about dark and light and that we all

00:25:27.220 have this 24 hour body clock. What is very interesting is it seems that we also have some

00:25:34.960 kind of a circadian rhythm in terms of the way the brain likes to work. So it seems that the first part

00:25:42.420 of every day, so the hours immediately after waking up and the last part of every day, so late in the

00:25:49.460 evening or early at night, just before you're falling asleep, those are two windows where creative

00:25:56.960 thinking seems to happen best. We also have a rhythm in terms of focused attention. So focusing,

00:26:05.680 the ability to focus, to pay attention seems to peak from around the mid-morning to lunchtime

00:26:13.100 and again from around mid-afternoon to early evening. So these are two rhythms embedded within this circadian

00:26:20.960 rhythm and doing these kinds of work at these kinds of times can help you ride these rhythms and do them

00:26:30.460 in a much better way than you would if you did them at different times. And another rhythm to just bear in

00:26:37.120 mind here is immediately after lunchtime, we all have something called a post-lunch dip, which is a

00:26:44.380 slight slump in the way we pay attention. And if you're from the Mediterranean or from different parts

00:26:50.420 of the world that have a tradition of a siesta, this is almost innately known to people who are in the

00:26:56.800 habit of taking a short post-lunch nap. But really, this dip in attention seems to be there in

00:27:05.880 everyone. You can override it with caffeine and it doesn't manifest quite as powerfully if you've had

00:27:12.780 a good night of sleep before. But the reason why it's significant is if you're trying to do focused work

00:27:18.700 during this period in the day, you're going to do it badly. And you're actually going to work

00:27:24.040 against your body's physiology to force yourself to do focused work. So rather than working as per

00:27:31.920 a schedule or routine that everyone follows at the same pace, if instead you tailor the work,

00:27:39.120 the tasks that you have to do, and you divide them into the kind of work that they involve,

00:27:44.060 and you time them to these peaks in the day, you're much more likely to be able to do them with less

00:27:49.840 effort and with much better quality of output.

00:27:52.460 And this is all about being hyper-efficient.

00:27:55.200 It's all about being hyper-efficient, correct.

00:27:57.160 So just to recap there, so wake up to 9 a.m., our brain is in that gear one mode. So that's great for

00:28:03.020 creativity. And then about 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., that's when it's easier to shift into that gear two mode

00:28:09.220 naturally for focused work. Then we're going to have that post-lunch dip. So maybe don't do any,

00:28:14.720 don't have a working lunch because your brain's just not going to be great for that. And then about 4 p.m.

00:28:20.240 to 9 p.m., we have that second peak of focused attention where it's easy to be into gear two.

00:28:24.800 And then from 9 p.m. to when we go to bed, our brain, our mind naturally wants to go to gear one.

00:28:30.580 So again, maybe do some creative work. Don't do any of that focused work. And again, these numbers we

00:28:35.320 just gave were approximations. This is going to change depending on your personal circadian rhythm.

00:28:39.680 You know, some people are early birds and some people are night owls. That's going to shift depending

00:28:44.060 on that. Exactly. Exactly. It shifts according to your own personal rhythm. Some people are shifted

00:28:49.320 towards the morning. Some people are shifted towards the night. And so you have to shift these

00:28:54.100 rhythms with that. It will also shift a little bit depending on your latitude. So where in the world

00:28:59.200 you are. And also within these periods, of course, you can tailor how you work depending on the kind of

00:29:05.940 work you're doing. So if you're doing work that involves focused attention, working in 90-minute rhythms

00:29:11.880 is extremely helpful because what you're trying to do is you want to be in that gear two state for as

00:29:17.580 long as possible. But in order to be in that gear two state, you need to kind of come up for air.

00:29:23.580 You need to wind down to gear one very regularly in the form of breaks. And that lets you keep going.

00:29:30.500 So working in these 90-minute cycles, if you're doing focused work, also helps within this sort of

00:29:37.220 schema. Okay. So when you're in that focused work period, you know, gear two, you don't want to

00:29:41.800 stay in it indefinitely. So maybe you could do something like the Pomodoro method where you

00:29:46.240 work like 25 minutes and then take a five-minute break and then repeat.

00:29:51.160 Right. That's a very popular way of tackling it. I actually use a slightly different approach. So

00:29:56.640 what I've done is I looked at how we used to work before these assembly line templates of work were

00:30:05.340 imposed on us. So I've looked at pre-industrial societies. I've looked at knowledge workers in

00:30:11.760 the form of great scientists and great thinkers, again, in the pre-industrial 19th century era and

00:30:18.100 looked at how did they work when they actually produced their best kind of work. And so one way

00:30:24.840 to do it is just as you say, is to work intensely for a bit and then give the brain a rest. But if you're

00:30:31.000 doing that in the workplace, your manager is going to not be very happy if they find you vacate your

00:30:36.860 seat every 20 minutes and take a half-hour break. So you can fuse all of these together. And one way

00:30:44.680 of doing it is by working in a very energy efficient way by working to a kind of parallel. So you're doing

00:30:52.520 really intense work right at the start of every 90-minute work cycle. And that intense work is something

00:31:00.880 that, you know, you really, really need to pay attention, concentrate. It's difficult. It's challenging. It takes

00:31:07.040 mental stamina out of you. If you can, limit that to around about 20 minutes, around the time where you would

00:31:15.240 stop, according to your Pomodoro technique. So limit that to around 20 minutes and then move to work

00:31:22.540 that is lighter. You don't have to stop working necessarily, but you move to work that's lighter

00:31:28.060 and do lighter work, sort of medium intensity work or the next 40 minutes or so. And then for the last

00:31:35.280 20 minutes, you do really light work. So what this lets you do is it lets you pace yourself without

00:31:42.440 stopping work completely. And this is a very wise approach to take because there is now data that

00:31:49.940 shows that if you do really, really intense work for more than a total of four hours across the day,

00:31:55.920 when I say four hours across the day, I don't mean you don't do any other work. I mean the intense work

00:32:01.240 specifically continues for more than four hours across the day. Then the fatigue from that spills over

00:32:08.940 into the next day, you don't get rid of it even with a good night's sleep. So if you can just space

00:32:16.180 out your intense work to 20 minute bouts within each cycle and then move to something lighter,

00:32:22.680 you can carry on working. You can still do your full day of work without compromising your mental

00:32:30.000 performance, both from the level of avoiding fatigue, but also from the level of preventing fatigue

00:32:36.900 from in any way disabling the quality of your mental output.

00:32:42.460 So gear two, that's that ideal work state. What do you recommend for people who, if their day is

00:32:49.520 punctuated by gear three moments, how long should they stay in that ideally? And then what should

00:32:54.740 they do for recovery after they're done with it?

00:32:58.580 The very simple way to think of this is again, with this sort of power law approach. So the more

00:33:04.880 intense your work, the longer your break ought to be and the shorter you should do the work for.

00:33:11.700 So if your work is full of gear three moments, first try to keep those moments as short as possible.

00:33:19.860 Follow them with as long a recovery period as possible. And if that means you can't actually

00:33:25.280 leave your desk, then do very, very light work following those bursts of gear three activity.

00:33:31.520 And you just have to buffer it with really long periods of rest and recovery. And, you know,

00:33:40.220 as an analogy, if you look back to, and I've cited these in the book, to pre-industrial societies,

00:33:46.980 hunter-gatherer societies, whenever they had periods of really, really hard physical work,

00:33:52.720 when they had a hunt that would last a whole day, they would follow that with a few days of doing

00:33:58.900 nothing. Similarly, if they hunted every day, every morning, they would spend a burst in the morning

00:34:05.520 working really hard, and they would always follow it by a long period of the day when they're just

00:34:12.280 pottering around, just doing very little physically. So we naturally gravitate to working in this way.

00:34:19.180 And it's unfortunate that we have imposed these templates in the way we work to prevent us from

00:34:24.780 doing so. But if you are in gear three situations, the best thing you can do is just try to include

00:34:33.320 as many breaks as possible and try to limit the periods in gear three, or as much as you possibly

00:34:39.340 can. Are there things we can do to our environment, or to ourselves even, to manipulate the gear shift?

00:34:47.960 Yes. So coming back to the idea of your brain being an engine working in three different gears,

00:34:54.600 your brain is an information processing machine, and it slices information depending on what is

00:35:02.580 demanded of it. So if it perceives that there is danger, that there is uncertainty, that the world is

00:35:09.340 moving very fast, it starts processing information faster. If it perceives that the world is very safe,

00:35:16.640 or time is passing very slowly, it processes information slower. Your gear correlates to the

00:35:25.340 rate or the speed of information processing. So when you're in that sort of very slow,

00:35:30.760 gear one, mind-wandering state, your brain perceives that the world around you is slow,

00:35:37.420 is slowly moving, and there's also no imminent threat, no imminent danger of uncertainty.

00:35:43.920 Similarly, if your mind is, you know, really racing, if you are thinking quickly, reacting fast,

00:35:51.340 you're doing it because the brain, your brain thinks that it's necessary to do so.

00:35:56.500 So we can use this to use really three things to modulate the way your brain is processing

00:36:04.960 information, and hence the gear you're in. One is by playing with your mind's perception of time,

00:36:12.120 and we all intuitively know this, because we know that faster music, speaking quickly,

00:36:18.440 speaking loudly, speaking a language, all of these things makes us more alert. Similarly,

00:36:24.440 slow music, relaxing drum beats, the kind of music you hear in a hotel reception or on a dentist's chair,

00:36:32.800 those types of music and sounds give you the perception that time is slowing down. So you can

00:36:40.700 modulate the apparent pace of your environment by being in an environment that's calmer, that looks

00:36:46.820 like it is slower. This is why nature gets so much praise when you're talking about resilience,

00:36:53.240 when you're talking about relaxation, because in nature, if you're walking through a park, walking

00:36:57.420 through trees, there's nothing there that shouts at you, that warns you of uncertainty or of danger.

00:37:04.860 Time appears to pass very slowly. So time is one factor. Another factor is uncertainty. So as soon

00:37:12.940 as you think that there is an imminent deadline, as soon as you perceive competition, as soon as you

00:37:19.200 perceive time moving so quickly that danger can appear at any moment, all of these things, again,

00:37:25.280 puts you into a higher gear, which is why some people perform really well under pressure and others

00:37:31.720 don't because they need that pressure to raise their gear from gear one to gear two. You can reduce that

00:37:39.440 by creating a perception of security, of controllability, of transparency, by reducing the

00:37:48.800 frequency of deadlines. So by having one big deadline at the end, but not having lots of small ones that

00:37:54.320 constantly make you feel like you have to reach a certain point. And the third thing you can use

00:38:00.980 is your cognitive load. So it sounds a little bit counterintuitive, given the information we're

00:38:07.640 always told about multitasking. But if you are doing something and it feels really boring and

00:38:14.760 understimulating, doing something else on the side. So adding to that workload by multitasking can

00:38:21.340 actually put you into the right gear. So if you're in gear one, it can put you up into the optimal gear

00:38:27.040 two. Similarly, if you are in gear three from having to multitask furiously, removing a few of those

00:38:34.380 tasks and lightening your mental load can bring you back into gear two. So these are the three things

00:38:40.060 physically. And a fourth thing, of course, is your body's physiology. So you can tap into your

00:38:46.700 autonomic nerve network to slow down or to speed up.

00:38:53.280 Yeah, some things you can do to speed up your nervous system. Cold can do that or hot being in

00:38:59.920 a sauna can help with that. Another, I think one thing that office workers use to shift gears,

00:39:04.900 they might not know that they're shifting gears in their mind, but caffeine, you know,

00:39:08.380 having that cup of coffee can help you shift up to that higher gear.

00:39:11.440 Exactly. So caffeine or coffee is the oldest gear shifter. We all know, we all use it. We've been

00:39:20.320 using it for a long time. And in fact, some researchers believe that coffee and the industrial

00:39:26.120 revolution went hand in hand. And I've read some people even go so far as to say that it's because

00:39:34.280 of coffee that we managed these assembly lines and the era of the industrial revolution. So yes,

00:39:40.440 coffee and caffeine raises your gear. If you're in gear one, it'll put you into gear two. But if you

00:39:46.160 take too much, you could overshoot into gear three. And that's when your thinking becomes too reactive.

00:39:51.640 You miss nuances, you can use biases, you don't see the whole picture. You mentioned physiology. Yes.

00:39:58.320 So cold exposure, heat exposure, anything that shocks your system raises your body's sort of fight or

00:40:04.340 flight activity, that sort of response, an alerting response. Anything that does that will

00:40:10.100 raise your gear? And doing the opposite. So calming your body down. And we know again of techniques

00:40:16.380 like breathing exercises, stretching, relaxing muscle after contraction, all of these things

00:40:22.260 lower your gear by creating a sensation of relaxation and calm.

00:40:27.300 How can we use this gear, our gear network to have some control over our motivation to work?

00:40:33.520 Because I know that's a big issue a lot of people have. There's like, I just don't feel like

00:40:36.180 working. I got to motivate myself. How can this gear network help us do that better?

00:40:41.280 So in really in two ways. Now, motivation is a really big and important conversation we have to

00:40:46.240 have today because our traditional markers of motivation are changing because of AI and automation

00:40:52.700 and the way the work landscape is changing. The traditional guarantees of motivation, you know,

00:40:58.820 a job, job security, career progression, all of these are changing. Now, motivation is very interesting

00:41:05.980 because what you want to do when you're working is you want to be in gear two. And the optimal state

00:41:11.660 to be in within gear two is this sort of high energy gear two state because in that state, you are

00:41:18.800 optimized for learning, for making progress and all of these things. What is very interesting is that

00:41:26.120 your motivation pathways in the brain are in direct conversation with this network that I call the

00:41:33.820 gear network. And if you can tap into a special kind of motivation known as intrinsic motivation, it's

00:41:41.700 basically being motivated by the pleasure, by the sensation of what you're doing, not its eventual results.

00:41:49.020 So for instance, if you feel intrinsically motivated while learning, it's the feeling of learning of

00:41:56.420 accumulating knowledge of having those aha sparks of that's why this this happens or that's so

00:42:02.640 interesting, that sort of feeling you get, that is what we call intrinsic motivation, as opposed to

00:42:10.240 learning for an exam. So you're learning because you want to pass the test. So if you can create

00:42:16.880 the sensation of really feeling pleasure in the process and the feeling of what you're doing,

00:42:22.940 you immediately push yourself into gear two, specifically into this high energy gear two state.

00:42:31.200 And that keeps you that sort of locks you into into gear two, and you can carry on doing what you're

00:42:36.520 doing for long periods of time, without feeling tired and without losing motivation. On the flip side,

00:42:43.720 if you can use tools such as, you know, what we've just discussed, your physiology, your

00:42:49.620 environment to put you into gear two, you're more likely to inspire motivation, because you're in that

00:42:57.000 frame of mind, where what you're doing is most likely to bring you pleasure. So it interacts in both of

00:43:03.520 these ways. And I'm going to introduce a third thing into it, which is how do we get this kind of

00:43:10.180 motivation when you start enjoying what you're doing for its own sake? Now, this has really

00:43:16.740 puzzled people for a long time, because you can always tempt people with a carrot or a stick,

00:43:21.320 and we always have done. But how do you make someone get that motivation, that kind of inner fire

00:43:27.940 from the inside? And one way to do it, which also links into the gear system is by something known as

00:43:35.240 learning progress. It's a mechanism coined by two researchers in Paris, Pierre-Yves Oudet and

00:43:42.120 Frederick Kaplan. And what they've done is they've taken intelligent machines, and they've tried to see

00:43:49.820 what can we do to make these machines learn in environments that they have not been programmed for.

00:43:56.020 And they've taken inspiration from how a child learns, because when a child is learning,

00:44:00.440 or a young infant is experiencing the world, the infant does so without getting any external

00:44:07.300 reward. So you're not giving the child a prize or anything, they're just exploring, they're just

00:44:12.580 finding things out for its own sake, because it's pleasurable to do that. So coming back to this

00:44:18.640 mechanism, what we know is if you are doing something that is resulting in a rapid and progressive

00:44:27.260 accumulation of mastery in some domain, it doesn't matter what that domain is. But it has to be

00:44:34.860 progressive. So it mustn't be okay, I'm learning French, I've learned to so and so level, I'm done.

00:44:41.940 Instead, it should be continued progress, you're never really reaching the end, but you're making

00:44:47.360 rapid progress as you go along. If you can put yourself into that frame of mind, whatever you're doing

00:44:54.020 seems to almost miraculously create a sense of intrinsic motivation, and what you're doing

00:45:00.200 becomes pleasurable. And one of the reasons for this, or one of the factors in this is that

00:45:05.800 every time you are increasing your skills, you're stretching the skill set you already have. So you

00:45:12.920 are just at the edge of comfort, you're just at the edge of your sort of really comfortable gear to

00:45:19.560 zone. And right at the edge of comfort, your norepinephrine levels are just optimal for you to

00:45:26.460 really, really prime the ability to learn to think flexibly, and to gain mastery over whatever you're

00:45:34.060 doing. And this is precisely the mindset that we see in people who experience flow. And flow locks you

00:45:44.300 in to this gear to high energy state. So all of these things come together with a simple principle

00:45:50.900 of finding elements in your environment in your work where you can make rapid, continuous progress.

00:45:59.520 Any advice on how to structure your work so you can create that feeling?

00:46:03.660 So yes, in you can do it in different levels. So if you are a manager, for instance, and you're

00:46:09.780 managing a team, and you have a bunch of tasks that you want to delegate. So one way of doing it is

00:46:16.180 delegating your tasks and checking to see which members of your team are not just doing what needs

00:46:22.120 to be done, but are actually making progress and making rapid progress. So they may not have completed

00:46:26.840 the task, but how fast are they making progress in it? You might find that a bunch of people are making

00:46:33.040 great progress, but another group are really not making any progress at all. They're doing things,

00:46:38.280 but they're not making progress. So shuffling the tasks around to fit to progress and not just

00:46:44.780 output is one way of doing it from a manager's point of view. If you are the team member and you

00:46:52.060 are given a task by your manager to do, then one way to engineer this sense of progress is by using

00:46:59.600 what I term as an 80% rule or an 80% heuristic, which is that whenever you're doing something,

00:47:06.460 try to find a difficulty level where what you're doing is just 20% beyond your skill set. So if

00:47:16.080 you're plunging into a task you know nothing about, first find a little island that you're familiar

00:47:21.600 with. It doesn't matter how small it is. It can be something really periphery and really

00:47:26.320 inconsequential. Jump on that island and then expand into the territory of the unknown by only 20%

00:47:34.840 at a time. Eventually your island will grow and grow and that 20% chunk will be objectively bigger

00:47:41.520 and bigger. But if you can carry on in this way, you will be able to really start enjoying what you're

00:47:48.160 doing and derive pleasure from it. And finally, if you're sitting down to do a task and it just looks

00:47:55.500 so boring and you have to read a report just say in front of you, again, using this strategy can help

00:48:03.020 find one thing that you find really interesting or where you have some kind of a curiosity gap

00:48:09.100 and you make a tiny bit of progress by closing that gap. That creates momentum for you to jump to

00:48:16.720 something else that's interesting. So rather than read the whole report in order or do the whole task

00:48:22.780 in order, jump from one island to another. Find something really interesting, expand that a little

00:48:29.580 bit, use that momentum to jump to a different island. Well, me too. This has been a great

00:48:34.300 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work? So thank you so much

00:48:39.260 again for having me. The book is available in all bookstores. You can get it on Amazon. It's also

00:48:45.920 available on audio and I have a website, me too. Steroni.com. I'm also there on LinkedIn and on X.

00:48:54.380 Fantastic. Well, me too. Steroni. Thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:48:56.780 Thank you so much for having me.

00:48:59.000 My guest today was me too. Steroni. She's the author of the book,

00:49:01.440 Hyper Efficient. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more

00:49:05.140 information about her work at our website, me too. Steroni.com. Also check out our show notes at

00:49:08.920 aom.is slash hyper-efficient where you find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:49:20.740 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:49:24.620 artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:49:28.320 that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't

00:49:31.520 done this already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give you know about podcast or Spotify.

00:49:34.980 Helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a

00:49:38.680 friend or family member who you think there's something out of it. As always, thank you for

00:49:42.040 the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you to listen to the AOM podcast,

00:49:45.620 but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - December 02, 2024

Achieve Peak Performance by Learning to Shift the Gears of Your Mind

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