The Art of Manliness - The Mental Skills for Becoming an Everyday Genius

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00:00:50.580 shopify.com slash manliness. That's shopify.com slash manliness, shopify.com slash manliness

00:00:57.380 for $1 per month trial today. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast,

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00:01:29.860 strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show. We tend to think of genius as something you're born with,

00:01:42.980 a rare trait possessed by the Einsteins and Teslas of the world. But what if many of the

00:01:47.020 abilities we associate with genius, a great memory, quick problem solving, mental math,

00:01:51.320 creative insight, or actually trainable skills. My guest today says that's exactly the case.

00:01:56.860 His name is Nelson Dulles, and he's a six-time USA memory champion and the author of the book,

00:02:01.220 Everyday Genius. In our conversation, Nelson explains why memory is the foundation of thinking

00:02:05.700 well and why having information stored in your head still matters in the age of chat GPT.

00:02:10.220 He shares a practical technique for improving your memory, how to read with greater focus and

00:02:14.240 retention, and how to study to actually make information stick. We then talk about the

00:02:18.580 importance of developing number sense and how to convert imperial measurements to metric in your

00:02:22.240 head, strategies for solving problems more effectively, and even how to gain an edge in

00:02:26.340 the games of Monopoly and Connect 4. At the end of our conversation, we get into more esoteric

00:02:31.000 territory, including intuition, dreams, and the idea of remote viewing. After the show's over,

00:02:36.260 check out our show notes at awim.is slash genius.

00:02:44.240 All right, Nelson Dulles, welcome back to the show.

00:02:54.360 Thank you for having me. How you been?

00:02:56.100 I've been great. Thank you for asking. It has been a while.

00:02:58.440 We had you on the podcast way back in 2019 to talk about memory sport because you are a USA memory champion.

00:03:06.740 We talked about what that involves and how we can improve our memories.

00:03:10.600 for those who aren't familiar with memory competitions and they haven't listened to

00:03:14.900 that episode we did what do they typically look like what sorts of events do you encounter as a

00:03:20.400 memory athlete yeah it's a super fascinating competition you know when i first saw it i

00:03:26.160 couldn't believe what i was seeing people do and it definitely wasn't something i thought hey

00:03:30.600 i could do that i i had to learn how to do it and practice it a lot but they test you on all sorts

00:03:36.920 of kind of random information so nobody has an advantage in terms of knowing stuff in their

00:03:43.160 memory beforehand but they give you a shuffle deck of cards you got to memorize it as fast as

00:03:47.740 possible they give you a 500 digit number and five minutes to study it you got to memorize as much of

00:03:53.800 it in order as you can they give you a whole sheet of a packet really of headshots with names and

00:04:00.880 faces and you got to remember the first and last name of everybody in there they give you a poem

00:04:05.120 all sorts of things it's basically information you got to memorize in a certain amount of time

00:04:09.580 and memorize the most of it as accurately as possible under pressure against other competitors

00:04:14.440 how did you get involved with this you saw this and you're like that's crazy and how did you go

00:04:19.180 from like that's crazy to like i want to do that yeah well i saw it and i thought yeah it would be

00:04:24.700 cool if i could do that it'd be amazing but i'm definitely not capable but then i read a couple

00:04:29.700 books by some former memory champions and started to kind of see this pattern that people who

00:04:35.160 competed in these things, nobody was really claiming to have an amazing natural memory or

00:04:40.860 photographic memory, anything like that. They all kind of have a similar story where they heard

00:04:45.100 about memory techniques, these ancient memory techniques, and then they practiced and then

00:04:49.940 they got better. And to me, practicing memory sounded bizarre. I'd never heard of anything like

00:04:54.580 that, that you could even do that to get better. And that kind of hooked me and I started applying

00:04:59.420 the techniques and realize, Hey, it actually does work. And my memory is not as bad as I thought.

00:05:03.800 And I was hooked. And then you also talked about, there's sort of a personal angle to this as well.

00:05:08.440 Was it your grandmother who got Alzheimer's? Exactly. Yeah. Tell us about that.

00:05:12.960 That started it all because I never really had memory on my radar. You know, I had my own memory

00:05:19.020 abilities. They were mediocre at best. And otherwise I would have just accepted that for

00:05:23.680 the rest of my life. But I saw my grandmother and her memory deteriorate right before my eyes.

00:05:28.880 she had Alzheimer's and eventually it took her in 2009. And it was that moment when I lost her

00:05:35.740 that I realized, man, I need to do something about my own memory right now. So that when I get to her

00:05:41.400 age, this hopefully won't happen to me. It was terrible to witness. And so I went down a rabbit

00:05:46.980 hole of studying memory. And that's when I discovered about these memory techniques and

00:05:51.500 memory competitions. Well, you got a new book out called everyday genius hacks to boost your memory

00:05:56.580 focus, problem solving, and much more. And what do you do in this book is you make the case that

00:06:02.400 genius isn't necessarily something you're born with. It's a skill, just like memory is a skill

00:06:08.000 that you can develop. In this book, how are you defining genius? Yeah, great question. It's an

00:06:15.420 interesting topic. I'll preface it a little bit by saying some people would look at me and just

00:06:20.520 say, hey, oh man, Nelson, he's a genius, because they'd see me do these memory things. And I'd be

00:06:25.220 like, dude, I'm not, I'm not a genius. I am not, I do not want that title. I don't deserve it. I

00:06:29.720 don't think I am anything close to that. The thing that I do that makes you think that I'm a genius,

00:06:34.240 I just learned it and practiced it. And it made me realize, especially for the purpose of this book,

00:06:39.520 that genius is subjective, you know, and, and we can all kind of agree on certain geniuses out

00:06:46.240 there, Albert Einstein, maybe even Tesla, you know, people who just kind of socially have been

00:06:51.540 accepted as genius. If you were to push them further and ask like, well, why? Well, you'd be

00:06:56.800 like, oh, because they were smart. And Albert Einstein came up with relativity, right? I don't

00:07:03.220 know if people could really explain why, but they kind of just hold these people that are publicly

00:07:08.560 acclaimed geniuses as that just because it's socially accepted. But that doesn't really answer

00:07:13.160 what is a genius. So I think, and I claim in the book that I think genius is something that we can

00:07:18.400 all tap into, that we can all train. And I think if I were to define it, I don't think it's a gift.

00:07:24.600 It's really like a trained relationship with your mind. It's having agency over your mind combined

00:07:30.620 with broad working knowledge of the world. So having all this information that you've trained

00:07:36.040 with your mind and can do with your mind, but being able to broadly use it across many different

00:07:42.320 pockets of the world and the world knowledge. Do you make a distinction between intelligence

00:07:47.080 and genius? Because I think oftentimes we use those words synonymously.

00:07:52.360 Yeah, exactly. I'd probably say that intelligence is more like your capacity

00:07:56.260 for the things that you know or hold in your brain, which I think with the right techniques,

00:08:01.900 even with memory techniques, you can always increase your intelligence, I think. But I

00:08:06.200 think genius is more the application of your intelligence. I think if you can do that in

00:08:10.920 a very flexible, malleable way. I think you fall more into this, you are a genius category.

00:08:18.880 All right. So you lay out some foundational skills. So if this idea that genius is a skill

00:08:23.700 you can develop, there are foundational skills you have to develop to become a genius. The first

00:08:28.880 one is naturally memory. Why is memory the foundational skill of becoming a genius? And

00:08:36.080 And I think the other question we can explore, too, is like, why memorize stuff if you can just use ChatGPT or Google?

00:08:44.280 Yeah.

00:08:44.920 I mean, first of all, I'm biased.

00:08:46.240 Obviously, as a memory champ, I'm going to say memory is the most important thing.

00:08:49.380 But I truly do believe that.

00:08:51.120 And I think the reason why I started down this road watching my grandmother lose her memory, it just showed me how important memory is to being human.

00:09:02.600 Think about without it.

00:09:04.320 Like who are you and who are you to this place, this world?

00:09:08.800 It's largely what makes us human.

00:09:10.440 I'd argue it is the thing that makes us human is having a memory.

00:09:14.520 So I think it's the place to start.

00:09:15.820 And if you can hold information in your mind easier and pull from those stores that you

00:09:21.500 have of information, that you can then apply all that knowledge, as I said before, across

00:09:26.940 a variety of domains.

00:09:28.600 And that is the application of genius.

00:09:31.480 It's something I've noticed in the past 20 years with pedagogy, how we teach people,

00:09:38.480 teach kids, particularly in elementary, middle school, high school.

00:09:41.360 There's been this shift away from rote memorizations like, oh, you know, just knowing the dates

00:09:46.860 of battles, we don't care about that.

00:09:48.600 We want to teach students how to think like we want critical thinking, which I agree,

00:09:53.260 like knowing how to think is important.

00:09:55.240 But I always come back to it's like you can't learn how to think without having stuff to

00:10:00.540 think about. It's like telling a kid, hey, we want you to learn how to build, but not giving

00:10:08.840 them blocks to actually build. Yeah. No, I'm glad you said that. It's totally the experience that

00:10:15.520 I've had as I've tried to teach this stuff to as many people as possible. I've naturally been

00:10:21.080 brought to schools to see how we can infuse memory techniques into the curriculum. And it's been such

00:10:27.880 an uphill battle because I get faced with that fight where we don't memorize. Memorizing is bad.

00:10:34.260 And the reason I think that's the case is because nobody ever taught how to memorize.

00:10:38.320 So they're doing it wrong. They're doing repetition, which is tedious and boring and

00:10:42.660 doesn't offer good results. Imagine if you could just, in a fun way, memorize something quickly.

00:10:48.540 And that's just not an important part about the whole process of learning anymore. It's just the

00:10:52.160 easy first thing you do. And now you have the information in your mind. Now you can truly

00:10:56.900 start to learn because the information is all in your head. You did it very quickly and it's

00:11:00.660 in a format that can be easily recalled in an enjoyable way. I argue that get the information

00:11:06.700 in your brain quicker. That's the easy step if you have the right techniques. And then we can

00:11:11.240 talk about learning and understanding and thinking because that information is in there and you can

00:11:15.240 act on it. Right. Yeah. You can start remixing the stuff in your head and using it in different

00:11:19.840 ways. But if it's not there, you can't do that. I mean, we're going to talk about some, you know,

00:11:23.220 doing mental math in your head. But in order to do that mental math, there are some things you have

00:11:27.540 to have memorized. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, going back to the question you said about AI and

00:11:34.960 Google searching, like why bother memorizing? Well, I mean, sure. There's obviously a possibility

00:11:41.180 that one day, pull the plug, nothing works. What are you left with? Just your mind. And if you know

00:11:46.200 nothing, then you're in a terrible spot. But that's probably unlikely. So then why memorize

00:11:52.600 anything if it's always just a click or a search away well i argue that i think going back to what

00:11:58.420 i said before that to be human is to use your memory and i think in this day and age where ai

00:12:03.960 is threatening to kind of take away our agency over our own brains our cognitive skills like

00:12:10.240 even more so reason to use our memories and and flex our muscles and kind of feel what it's like

00:12:17.200 to own that agency over our brain. The thought of losing that seems devastating to me. I don't

00:12:23.620 know how other people feel about it, but I don't want to lose that capacity. So I work on it and

00:12:28.580 I make the effort and I feel good about it. I feel like there's this confidence that comes from

00:12:32.820 being able to do things with your own mind. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. So in our last conversation,

00:12:38.600 that was episode number 546. For those who want to check it out, we go into detail about how you

00:12:44.780 can improve your memory. We'll kind of do a summary here. One of the things I remember from

00:12:48.660 that conversation that stuck out with me was this framework for memorization that you called

00:12:53.180 C, like S-E-E, C-Link Go. Can you walk us through an example of how you can use that to memorize

00:13:01.500 just about anything? Yeah. So when I wrote that book, I wanted to distill down the steps I took

00:13:08.980 when I memorize anything in competition or in life into simple steps. So see link go. And that's

00:13:14.560 really what I apply and what I teach for anybody who wants to memorize anything. This each step

00:13:20.260 has its own little nuances. But in general, the first thing you got to do is see the information

00:13:25.300 in a way that our brain likes to see things. And that is in the form of pictures, associations,

00:13:30.940 things that are meaningful. You know, oftentimes in the day to day, we're faced with information

00:13:37.180 that's super abstract, complicated, not that interesting. And our brain just tunes it out,

00:13:43.820 even though it has the best intentions to memorize it, it just doesn't like it, it just doesn't

00:13:48.800 stick. So if you can see the information or turn it into a picture, a mental picture,

00:13:53.280 that's the first step to memorizing anything. The next step is the link. So what do you do

00:13:59.140 with those pictures? And this is really, I think, the crux of the problem for most people,

00:14:03.500 that when they memorize and then they try to remember something and they can't, it's not that

00:14:09.320 they really forgot. In some cases, yes, they did. But most of the time, it's that they just couldn't

00:14:14.440 retrieve the information. They know they know it. And maybe if somebody had told them what they're

00:14:19.500 trying to think of or they saw the answer, they'd be like, ah, yes, now I remember, right? They

00:14:25.040 recognize it. And if you can recognize it, that means it was in there. You just couldn't get it.

00:14:28.940 So it's a structure organizational problem there. And the link step is taking advantage of what our brains are really good at. And that is remembering spatial information. And so we're good at remembering things around us, distances between things, where we are in space.

00:14:44.500 And so if I can attach my images to places I can think about, like my house, I know my house, my office, my school, whatever, you'd have a better way of memorizing the information because it's attached or linked to a location.

00:14:58.740 And you don't have to attach it to an actual location, but that is one of the best methods that memory athletes use in memory competitions.

00:15:05.120 That's the thing that lets us memorize hundreds of cards and thousands of digits, all with this, what's called a memory palace.

00:15:12.780 and then the last step the go step is really you know what you do with that information so if you

00:15:18.860 want the information you know just for five minutes and then you can lose it cool if you want to keep

00:15:24.020 it forever also cool it's how you treat basically the information that you use in those first two

00:15:29.880 steps if you organize your information with the link step and you saw or see the information in

00:15:34.500 the right way in a memorable way that go step is how long you can interact with that information

00:15:40.440 And you have control over that.

00:15:42.520 You know, people ask me all the time, how long can you memorize this for?

00:15:45.320 How long until you forget it?

00:15:46.680 And it's like, well, as long as I want, I can choose.

00:15:50.280 It's what I do with the information once it's stored in my mind.

00:15:52.920 And because it's organized in a way that I can remember, it's really easy for me to store information and keep it there for the long term.

00:16:01.900 Can you give us an example of, you know, maybe something really easy about how you can use this framework to memorize like an everyday thing that someone would maybe want to remember?

00:16:10.440 Yeah, sure. So, you know, let's say grocery list. Okay, so let's say you have a few items on your list. I'll keep it super short. But let's say we have three items on our list. You could probably memorize three things. But imagine extrapolating this out to a list of say 10 to 20 things. But let's say that you have to get milk, some broccoli and some bread.

00:16:29.080 So first thing is to visualize or see those things individually, right? So for milk, right, I would picture actual milk, like a glass of cold milk. Maybe there's a cow spraying milk out of its udders. So part of the C process is to make it as visually tintillating as possible using all of the senses. And the more emotion you can add to these images that you see, the better.

00:16:53.980 So a glass of cold milk there, that's okay.

00:16:57.640 I'd give that like a five out of 10 on the memorable scale.

00:17:01.300 But a cow spraying milk everywhere out of its udders and mooing and you're covered in milk now.

00:17:07.620 And it's kind of like filthy milk because it's straight from the barn.

00:17:11.460 That's closer to a 10 in the shock value and emotional side of things.

00:17:16.120 So you'll remember that better.

00:17:17.460 All right.

00:17:18.100 What about the next one, broccoli?

00:17:19.860 Okay, so maybe I can just imagine a huge forest of giant broccoli stalks and I'm walking through

00:17:26.280 this broccoli forest. Okay. And then for bread, you know, maybe I'll go the route of something

00:17:31.040 disgusting so that the bread is just like covered in mold and it's kind of fuzzy and green and

00:17:37.080 rank smelling and withering away. That kind of evokes a disgusting kind of response, but memorable.

00:17:43.080 That's the C part. Now the link part is how do I attach that to something so that I

00:17:47.980 can retrieve it easier. If you use a memory palace, you could imagine attaching those

00:17:52.560 three images to places in your house. So maybe on the front door is where I imagine this cow

00:17:58.440 spraying all the milk. So I'm covered in milk, but so is now my front door. All right. Then I

00:18:02.760 walk in the front door and there's my broccoli forest. I'm walking through it. There's broccoli

00:18:06.740 everywhere, these tall broccoli trees. And then maybe to the left, if I turn to the left in my

00:18:12.180 house after entering the door is the TV room. And that's where there's like piles and piles of

00:18:17.080 moldy bread. Just like my couch is made of moldy bread. My TV is made of moldy bread and so on.

00:18:22.280 And you can navigate around your whole house doing this whole process with more things. And so now

00:18:27.800 when I'm at the grocery store, if I want to remember this, I'm going to say, oh, it was in

00:18:31.540 my house. What was at the front door? Oh yeah, that was the thing covered in milk. The cow was

00:18:35.920 spraying it to high heaven, right? So milk. Then I walk in the door, broccoli. Then I go to the TV

00:18:42.080 room moldy bread bread right so that's just a little taste of how the process works yeah that's

00:18:48.500 really cool i've actually used this system for whenever i park my car at the airport in the

00:18:53.320 parking garage because you know you get back from the airport and you don't remember you parked and

00:18:58.000 so you spend 20 minutes trying to remember where you parked the car so now whenever i park my car

00:19:02.940 i look at which section i'm in and say if i'm in you know let's say section b i think okay b for

00:19:09.020 bread. And then I just imagine my car filled with just a ton of loaves of bread. Or if the parking

00:19:16.480 garage uses colors for their system, and let's say you park in the red section, you could think

00:19:22.280 about your car being filled with red blood. And when you open the car door, all the blood pours

00:19:28.080 out. So yeah, that's going to sear in your head. So yeah, I've used this tactic that you shared in

00:19:32.840 our last conversation. And I think the key with all the memory techniques is that memory is a

00:19:39.760 skill. So you have to practice it all the time. So just look for opportunities throughout the day

00:19:45.160 to practice your memory. So whether you can memorize your grocery list, memorize dates,

00:19:50.780 memorizing the names of people, just do it all the time and you're going to get better and better at

00:19:55.840 it. So another foundational skill you have for becoming a genius is speed reading. Why is this

00:20:01.600 a foundational skill. Yeah. And I'd like to slightly alter the word choice there. So I do

00:20:07.740 title my chapter there a speed reading, but I quickly change it to focused reading because

00:20:13.300 I think speed reading can often get labeled as kind of a hack or a scam. And there's definitely

00:20:18.740 programs out there that promise, you know, tens of thousands of words per minute, which

00:20:23.760 I don't know if I fully believe that. Sure. Anybody can read at X thousand words per minute,

00:20:30.200 but do they remember anything that they read? But what I talk about in this chapter are real

00:20:35.440 practical ways to actually improve your reading speed. I think we can all do that and increase

00:20:41.340 our reading comprehension. There's definitely room there to do that. And, you know, we do measure how

00:20:47.220 fast we read by words per minute, how many words you get through in a minute. And this is a fixed

00:20:52.840 number, but you can increase that. And I think it does vary depending on what you're reading,

00:20:56.640 If you're reading something to your five-year-old, that level of reading probably you could zip through at an extraordinary rate.

00:21:04.480 But if you're reading like a dense biology textbook, that might not be as fast, right?

00:21:09.420 So it's – yes, you can measure reading speed, but it's also subjective and depends on what you're reading.

00:21:15.640 So hard to measure, but – and speed reading doesn't always make sense as well.

00:21:20.980 Like, why would you want to speed read through, you know, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit or Harry Potter, right?

00:21:27.720 You probably want to enjoy those and take your time and reread parts.

00:21:30.960 But there's other times where you're just trying to get through, you know, an essay that somebody wrote, you're grading it, and you maybe want to go through it a bit quicker, right?

00:21:39.800 Because you got dozens to grade.

00:21:41.960 So reading faster and being able to remember more, if you have the skills, you can kind of pick and choose when you want to increase your speed, slow it down.

00:21:49.220 always remember as you read through.

00:21:51.520 All right.

00:21:51.680 So what are some quick tips

00:21:52.620 on how you can just read faster

00:21:53.780 that you can start implementing today

00:21:55.160 if you wanted?

00:21:56.820 Yeah, I think some of the things

00:21:58.320 that are holding people back

00:21:59.400 is first off,

00:22:00.520 and this is obvious,

00:22:01.220 is distractions.

00:22:02.160 We live in a world

00:22:02.860 where everything is vying for our attention,

00:22:05.780 especially all the devices around us.

00:22:07.300 So eliminating that

00:22:09.140 or quieting those better

00:22:10.500 and being more intentful

00:22:12.040 with the time that you read.

00:22:13.760 If you want to sit down

00:22:14.580 and get through a book,

00:22:15.720 make that time all about that.

00:22:17.620 Don't sit down to read

00:22:18.700 with your phone open, you know, go into it thinking I want to like be there present with

00:22:23.140 this book. So eliminate distractions, find places that are easier to read in, you know, not with

00:22:29.360 your kids all around you jumping down over you and maybe find like a quiet, peaceful place if

00:22:35.140 you can. I have four kids. That's not always easy. But anyways, distractions is a big part of it.

00:22:40.240 The other thing is backtracking. So when we read, we often find ourselves backtracking,

00:22:45.060 right? Like you might get through a few lines only to realize that you were not there and you

00:22:50.940 maybe have to go back and reread something. So what I find helps, and this feels like you're

00:22:55.440 doing something that kindergartner might do, but I do it and I have no shame. I put my finger on

00:22:59.600 the page or sometimes I have a pen and I will guide my eyes across the page where my fingers

00:23:05.360 are. And it forces me to stay on track and not backtrack because my finger keeps moving and I

00:23:11.420 follow my finger. It's a bit weird to do at first, but you get super comfortable with it after a

00:23:16.900 very short amount of time. The other thing is, I'll quickly say this, is practice. Like anything,

00:23:21.360 if you want to get better at reading, read more. You kind of feel out of practice when you don't

00:23:25.600 read a lot and it's harder. There's more friction to reading when you don't do it for a while,

00:23:30.880 but the more you get into it, you find that you just become a better reader.

00:23:33.900 Yeah, I agree. And another tip that I use when I'm speed reading is, and a lot of people do this,

00:23:38.700 is eliminate sub vocalization. So that's whenever you're reading silently, but you might be moving

00:23:45.000 your lips. Don't do that. I just try to see the word and just move on. Yeah. I also think if you

00:23:52.280 eliminate sub vocalization, it forces you to rely on visualization more because you're not,

00:23:59.140 I mean, you are reading the words, but you're not like saying them to yourself to process them.

00:24:02.700 You're probably coming up naturally with some kind of visual in your mind to represent what

00:24:07.740 you just saw and moving along. And the more you can do that, actually, you're going to make it

00:24:11.740 more memorable as well. Tapping into that C part of memory. All right. So read faster or more

00:24:17.660 focused reading. And that's, this can allow you to learn more. If you can read more, you're going

00:24:22.180 to be able to learn more. Another foundational skill is learning how to study better. How do

00:24:26.860 people typically mess up studying? And this is, I mean, this is going to be useful if you're in

00:24:32.120 college right now, or you're an adult and back in school, but we all have to learn new things,

00:24:36.220 whether it's on the job, you've learned a new skill. So this is important. How do people

00:24:40.400 typically mess this up? Yeah. I mean, I think it starts with similar thing to what I said with

00:24:45.900 reading, you know, is finding the right place to sit down and avoid distractions, eliminate

00:24:51.400 distractions, finding your focus zone and just making it so that when you study, it's all about

00:24:57.720 the information that you're sitting with and nothing else. That's a place to start. I mean,

00:25:02.720 It's not the end all be all, but you can't have a good study session if you're not paying

00:25:07.660 attention.

00:25:08.740 One thing I was going to say, one thing I remember, we had a guy on the podcast, what

00:25:13.400 was his name?

00:25:14.480 Peter Brown.

00:25:15.640 He wrote a book called Make It Stick.

00:25:17.940 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:18.440 And one thing I remember that stuck out for me, yeah, it stuck out, the book's called

00:25:22.360 Make It Stick, from that book, is that learning should feel hard at first.

00:25:29.540 If it feels easy, you're probably not learning.

00:25:31.900 And I think we talked about how some of these apps, these language learning apps like Duolingo, like people like it because it feels easy.

00:25:38.260 You're like, oh, man, I'm racking up points and I'm not breaking my streak.

00:25:41.060 But you're actually probably not learning the language.

00:25:43.540 It feels like you're learning, but you're probably not because it's pretty easy.

00:25:47.460 So if it doesn't feel like you're pushing yourself, you're probably not learning.

00:25:51.160 Yeah, exactly.

00:25:52.340 And that gets more into kind of the techniques to, you know, remember things for longer, which is what you want when you're studying and trying to learn.

00:26:00.900 Like the information, yes, you want to memorize it, but you also want it to stay there for longer.

00:26:05.920 And through your study sessions, do things that will give it a higher chance of staying there.

00:26:11.240 And one of the things, as what Brown was saying, is if you can make yourself a little uncomfortable as you try to, say, recall this information and pull it from your memory, at first it's going to feel uncomfortable because it's new information.

00:26:25.360 You don't quite know it well.

00:26:26.920 And you can always just peek at the information.

00:26:28.840 That's the easy thing, right?

00:26:29.880 that's passive review. But if you can do something called active recall, which is where you actively

00:26:35.420 try to pull it from your memory, that's where the magic happens. And even though it's kind of like

00:26:40.340 an uncomfortable part of the process, that's where the actual remembering for the long term,

00:26:46.020 the understanding comes from. And if you compare that with another technique called spaced

00:26:51.880 repetition, where you basically space out your review sessions, that's really the goals standard

00:26:58.560 for for studying well you know we forget things over time that is a fact about the human brain

00:27:04.060 and there are charts that show this thing called a forgetting curve like all humans experience this

00:27:09.840 and we all forget kind of at the same pace but if you review at a certain amount of time passed

00:27:16.900 after the first review you forget less that forgetting curve doesn't dip as much and then

00:27:22.340 if you review again after a certain amount of time that forgetting curve almost starts to level out

00:27:27.680 and things don't get forgotten.

00:27:29.760 You have a higher retention.

00:27:31.540 So being able to space out your study sessions

00:27:34.880 is super important to studying more effectively.

00:27:38.300 And this is why cramming doesn't work

00:27:39.580 because you do it all in one set

00:27:40.940 and you know it for about X amount of hours

00:27:44.980 and then it starts to forget as the curve suggests.

00:27:47.580 And then the next morning when you take the test,

00:27:49.960 oops, it's all gone.

00:27:51.960 We're gonna take a quick break

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00:30:07.540 where AI is always optional and private. And now back to the show. All right. So with those

00:30:13.560 foundational skills established, so we got memorization, reading in a focused manner,

00:30:19.500 studying more effectively. Let's get into the fun stuff. Cause this is like my favorite part

00:30:23.680 of the book. It's just all these little fun, little tricks, hacks that you can do that just

00:30:28.520 make you feel and look like a genius. I'm talking doing mental math, solving complex problems on

00:30:32.760 the fly. One thing I'm always impressed by is people who can do math in their heads beyond

00:30:38.640 basic arithmetic. So I'm talking multiplying three digit numbers, doing square roots in their head,

00:30:45.640 long division in their head. And you argue that people who can do mental math, what they have

00:30:52.480 that most people don't have is number sense.

00:30:56.200 What is number sense and why do you need that for mental math?

00:30:59.760 Yeah, I think it's super important.

00:31:01.200 I think number sense, if I had to define it,

00:31:04.400 is like a comfortable relationship with numbers.

00:31:07.740 And I feel like a lot of number sense is dictated by how you were taught as a kid

00:31:13.520 and how you were exposed to numbers.

00:31:15.960 If you look at numbers objectively, they are just symbols that interact with each other.

00:31:21.660 And as a young student, you learn these relationships, and they can easily be frightening and discouraging, you know, if you don't get those relationships explained to you right. But I don't think it's too late to change your relationship with numbers.

00:31:36.820 I think it's just a matter of, you know, getting better at grasping quantities and magnitude, like getting more playful with numbers and noticing relationships and patterns, and then getting more flexible with how you think about numbers.

00:31:53.280 And, you know, some of the techniques that I show in this book, hopefully open the door to that.

00:31:57.760 And I think you should just be encouraged to explore numbers and try to look at numbers

00:32:03.580 for what they are, because they can be really inviting if you let them.

00:32:06.760 And the more you play around with that, I think you build on that number sense.

00:32:10.920 It's also, I think, largely based on confidence.

00:32:13.900 You know, if you're not confident in your number ability, you probably don't have good

00:32:17.940 number sense.

00:32:18.640 But as you build the number sense, you probably build on that confidence as well.

00:32:22.700 so it can be developed and you walk through how you can do different math operations in your head

00:32:29.060 whether it's multiplying long division but i want to talk about two that i think could be really

00:32:33.300 useful that people can use on the daily and i know i've used this trick in my own daily life

00:32:40.280 i think a lot of americans find it useful it's converting from imperial measurements we're

00:32:45.620 talking like freedom units, pounds, inches, et cetera, to metric and then doing it backwards.

00:32:52.860 I've encountered this with my fitness training. Oftentimes you'll see body weight given in

00:32:59.220 metric. And I'm like, okay, what's 90 kilograms? I don't know what that is. Like, okay.

00:33:04.760 You can do this in your head really fast. So let's talk about this. How can you convert

00:33:08.360 miles to kilometers in your head? Oh yeah. Yeah. We can start with miles.

00:33:12.500 So if you have miles going to kilometers, that's times 1.6, right?

00:33:17.420 So you got to be able to do multiplication by 1.6 in your head, which isn't obvious to most people, okay?

00:33:24.400 Now, the quick way is just to say, you know, roughly, if I can figure out how to multiply by 1.5, I'd be close enough, right?

00:33:31.900 And that's actually pretty easy because if you think if you're multiplying by one, that's just the number itself.

00:33:36.820 And then you got another half.

00:33:38.100 So all you're really doing to translate between miles and kilometers is adding half of the number

00:33:44.240 to itself. That would give you one and a half times. So let's say I had eight miles and I

00:33:49.320 wanted to convert that to kilometers the quick way, half of eight would be four. And then you

00:33:54.360 just add that to eight. So eight plus four is 12. So it's 12 kilometers roughly. If you want to be

00:34:01.120 super accurate at that point, you can just add 10% of the original number and 10% of anything

00:34:07.960 is super easy. You just move the decimal over. So if I had eight miles, 10% of that is just

00:34:12.820 0.8, right? So if I have 12, I add another 0.8, it's 12.8. Bam. What about converting kilometers

00:34:19.800 to miles? Because let's say you're an American in Europe and you see, oh, I've got 35 kilometers

00:34:27.240 to Berlin. And you think, well, how far is that? I don't know how far that is.

00:34:32.300 Yeah. Well, yeah. So if you want 35 kilometers, you're going the other way around.

00:34:36.680 it's it's really just half it and that'll actually get you pretty close and then you can add another

00:34:42.960 10 right so if you have 35 kilometers if you half that again you don't have to be super accurate but

00:34:49.340 you can just say okay that's 17 but if you know it's 17 and a half which is half then awesome

00:34:54.760 all right and then you add 10 what was 10 of 35 that's just the 3.5 so if you have 17 17 and a

00:35:03.640 half plus three and a half, right? You have 21, right? Depending how accurate you want to be. So

00:35:09.340 that's 21 miles. Wow. Okay. All right. So the quick way is if you're going to kilometers from

00:35:15.540 miles, just add half of the number to itself. If you're going the other way, just half it to keep

00:35:21.980 it simple. And you can always play around with that extra 10% if you want to be super accurate.

00:35:27.000 What about pounds to kilograms? Oh yeah. Pounds to kilograms is super easy. There's 2.2 pounds

00:35:33.280 in a kilogram so you can pretty much just double your pounds and then add 10 or just double and

00:35:40.860 that's close enough it depends how accurate you want to be but let's say that you're 200 pounds

00:35:46.040 so you could half that and then take 10 off so if i'm 200 pounds half of that is 100 and then

00:35:54.720 10 of that is just 10 so take 10 pounds off and that's 90 90 kilograms yeah and then the other

00:36:01.600 way, you would double it. You know, if you have kilograms, you double it and then add 10%. So

00:36:06.980 let's say you're 40 kilograms. So if you double that, that's 80. And then you can add another

00:36:14.500 10%. That's eight. So it's 88 pounds. Okay. What about Celsius to Fahrenheit? I've encountered

00:36:22.180 this when I've had guests that live in Europe and they tell me, oh, it's been so hot here.

00:36:27.480 It's been 30 degrees Celsius. And I'm like, what is 30 degrees Celsius? And then I have to like,

00:36:31.520 like, oh my gosh, that's only 86 degrees Fahrenheit. That's not hot. So how can you

00:36:36.540 make those conversions? Yeah. So there's a whole formula, but I think to get close enough,

00:36:41.700 the real easy way, if you're going from Fahrenheit to Celsius, take away 30 and then half that

00:36:47.720 number. So if you have, I don't know, let's say it's a hundred Fahrenheit. What is that in Celsius?

00:36:53.460 You take away 30. So that's 70. And then if you half it, that's just 35 Celsius.

00:36:58.160 okay all right and then the other way around if you have celsius let's say you have 35

00:37:02.440 you would double it first and then just add 30 so 35 double the 70 add another 30 you'd get back

00:37:09.200 the 100 okay 100 so 35 that's hot 35 degrees celsius so when someone says it's 35 i'm like

00:37:15.260 that's hot if someone says 30 i'm like man yeah that's a nice spring day in oklahoma

00:37:19.000 another thing you talk about is solving complex problems on the fly is something you've seen a

00:37:26.080 lot of geniuses do. Einstein, Tesla, for example. Did you uncover a framework that they typically

00:37:32.760 use for that? Yeah. Across all these people we label as genius, one of the things that they all

00:37:39.880 share is that they can solve problems well. I think the number one thing to understand about

00:37:45.760 being good at solving problems is that a lot of these people are always trying to solve problems.

00:37:50.800 One of my friends, and there's a whole section on this about solving puzzles and difficult

00:37:55.860 riddles and stuff. And one of my friends is just so good at them. But that's all he does. He knows

00:38:01.200 them all. He knows all their tricks. He knows all the kinds of answers that you typically get from

00:38:06.380 these riddles. And so I asked him once, I was like, Wes, how are you just naturally good at

00:38:11.040 these? He's just like, honestly, I just do a lot of them. You know, as you encounter a lot of

00:38:16.660 problems, you start to, I guess, in his case, he picks up on these kinds of patterns that typically

00:38:21.480 solve these riddles. And that's a big part of being good at problem solving is recognizing

00:38:26.480 patterns and making analogies to those patterns. Now, aside from that, that's not just is,

00:38:33.120 there's more to it than that. I think being able to define a problem as basic as possible,

00:38:38.320 there's this idea of first principles thinking, where you look at the problem at hand, and you

00:38:44.240 try to just, at least to start, strip it down to its most basic truths, and then you build from

00:38:50.580 there. So it's like looking at a problem and say like, what do I know for sure? What is here?

00:38:55.420 And that's a crucial part to solving any problem. And some people don't even think about that. They

00:38:59.440 look at a problem and they feel overwhelmed. They just don't know where to start, but always start

00:39:03.740 with those first principles and then look for patterns and then experiment, iterate. So, you

00:39:10.600 know, a lot of these geniuses who were good at problem solving, weren't figuring it out on the

00:39:14.600 first try. They were just trying things over and over again. You know, when Einstein came up with

00:39:20.080 a lot of the things that he did. He wasn't just coming up with it right off the bat with nothing

00:39:25.220 before that. He was building off of other people who had problem solved step-by-step to get to the

00:39:31.200 next discovery. And he built off of that, but he also tried a million different things and

00:39:35.180 some failed and some came through. All right. So again, the key is practice. These things you

00:39:41.280 just talked about practice, you know, finding first principles, finding patterns, and then

00:39:45.040 experimenting. Yeah. One way you recommend practicing is just doing riddles and puzzles

00:39:49.260 all the time. And that just helps you learn the practice of skills on the fly. Is there a puzzle

00:39:54.520 that you really like when someone asks you like, Oh, what's a puzzle I could do that can really

00:39:58.300 help me with my problem solving skills? Do you have one you like to go to? Yeah. There's one

00:40:02.600 that I include in the start of that chapter is because this is asked. I don't know if it's asked

00:40:07.500 this much anymore, but it is a famous interview question. And there is a right answer, like an

00:40:12.660 actual physical correct answer but there are so many creative answers as well and i think it's

00:40:19.600 just a fun exercise to think about and see what you come up with because i think any answer not

00:40:25.280 any answer but a lot of answers can be valid so the question goes like this so you're shrunk to

00:40:30.420 the height of a nickel or something really small and you're thrown inside a blender and your density

00:40:35.260 is the same as you would be a normal size the blades start moving in a minute what do you do

00:40:42.080 how do you get out you know and so you know you think okay well it's a glass container i probably

00:40:48.580 can't just climb out i'll slip down you know maybe i i can just duck and i'll be so small that the

00:40:55.720 blades will miss me but oh shoot maybe the the air currents that will form will lift me up and

00:41:01.500 move me all around I'll die anyways so what do I do right but anyways I'll encourage your

00:41:05.860 listeners to maybe think about how to do that yeah I don't know if I should give the answer but

00:41:09.740 no well you can look up the answer if you want yeah the answer is it's pretty obvious once you

00:41:13.780 think about it a while so yeah we'll let people figure that out noodle on that you have this fun

00:41:19.100 section about how to win several common games so I'm talking Monopoly Connect Four and a lot of

00:41:27.360 these games they're called solved games once you learn how to like do the thing you can win it

00:41:33.500 pretty much every single time not all of them but i mean for the most part yeah let's just talk about

00:41:37.720 the advantage yeah i i let's talk about i think this is fun because if you're playing your nephew

00:41:41.700 or your niece like you want to be the evil uncle who just destroys them and demoralizes them so 0.71

00:41:46.940 what's the best strategy to always win monopoly oh yeah well yeah so before that i should just say

00:41:52.760 that this whole chapter is about how to beat games in situations that are like game-like

00:41:58.840 because oftentimes if somebody is just always that person that can win at something they tend

00:42:04.700 to be thought of as genius like how do they know how to do it they always win this game every time

00:42:08.480 I play Monopoly I always lose I can't beat this guy he must be a genius but yeah you know there's

00:42:13.360 a lot of components to Monopoly for example in a lot of these games but there are little things

00:42:18.140 that if you knew that might help you kind of have an advantage. If you invest in orange and red

00:42:22.860 properties, for example, those are the best because statistically they get landed on the most

00:42:28.680 more than any other spot. So you'd get people landing on it having to pay you. What else? You

00:42:35.060 could focus on like three house sets. So the houses are like super more cost effective than the

00:42:41.300 hotels. So you can focus on putting up those house sets rather than getting the hotels. Yeah, things

00:42:47.600 like that yeah what about connect four you know if you're playing your kid like what can yeah the

00:42:53.240 main thing with that is just to always start in the middle you know if you play perfectly meaning

00:42:57.540 you're trying to build up your rows of four and you start in the middle it's it's really difficult

00:43:02.460 to lose there and then you know thinking about ways to force your opponent to not have any other

00:43:08.920 options you can stack your pieces in ways that create these double win conditions where it's

00:43:14.320 like you could win if you put a piece here you could win if you put a piece there and then your

00:43:18.340 opponent has no choice but to choose one of them and then you win with the other

00:43:21.560 yeah but the quick tip there is just like put your piece right in the middle as soon as you can

00:43:25.760 and start from there gotcha all right i want to end on this because you have this last section

00:43:29.580 where you get metaphysical you're a pretty rational guy but lately you've been exploring

00:43:34.940 like art bell type stuff extra sensory perception remote viewing experiments the cia did where

00:43:43.820 they'd hire these people who possibly had ESP and they could remote view nuclear secrets in Russia

00:43:50.240 from Virginia. It's really weird stuff. How did that happen? How did you get into this?

00:43:57.480 Yeah. First, there's a reason why I put it at the back of the book. I wanted to make sure that the

00:44:01.800 book was all very practical things that everybody could get on board with. I understand that this

00:44:06.340 chapter is definitely a bit out there and definitely like something five years ago, I would

00:44:11.340 have never thought I'd write a chapter on. You know, I had an interesting experience happened

00:44:16.540 to me in 2021. Because of my memory stuff, I was reached out to by some people who were interested

00:44:23.520 in having me join a remote viewing team. I'd never heard of the term at the time and was extremely

00:44:30.820 skeptical of the whole thing. I was like, are you kidding me? Like, I'm not psychic. I have no

00:44:35.340 ability there whatsoever. I have a good memory that I trained. That's about it. But they were

00:44:40.500 convinced. What is remote viewing for those who aren't familiar with it? Yeah. So remote viewing

00:44:44.820 is the term given to this ability to see things that are not in the realm of things that can be

00:44:53.160 perceived. So it's psychic ability in a fancier term, but it's really a protocol to kind of tap

00:45:00.000 into intuition. I think that's maybe a better way to place it because I think more people can

00:45:04.900 resonate with that. I think we all recognize at times that we can have these kind of eerily

00:45:11.060 accurate intuition come over us. And that's really what remote viewing, I think, takes advantage of

00:45:16.840 if you want to just like label it as something that's tangible and acceptable to most people.

00:45:22.880 But yeah, there were military programs through the 70s, 80s, and the 90s. These are declassified.

00:45:28.420 You can look them up on the CIA website and see actual programs and what they did. And they were

00:45:34.160 using it to gather intel, you know, finding downed military planes in the Sahara Desert or

00:45:41.280 looking into silos in Russia during the Cold War to see what was there. And there were these

00:45:46.580 psychics that were sitting in a room with absolutely no information, getting information

00:45:51.300 that was later verified. Remote viewing is the protocol in which to do this process.

00:45:56.700 So here's one version of a remote viewing protocol that you highlight in the book. So you need two

00:46:01.080 people. One's a tasker and the other is the viewer. The tasker picks a target. So it can

00:46:06.880 be an object, a place, event, whatever. And then he assigns it a random number. And there's no

00:46:12.340 inherent meaning in this number. It's just numbers, a random number. And the viewer, he gets that

00:46:16.940 number and nothing else. So there's no hints about the target. There's no photos, no descriptions of

00:46:22.040 the target, just the number. And then the viewer gets to work. And so what he does is you got to

00:46:26.720 grab a pen and paper and you write down the target number in square brackets at the top of the page

00:46:32.940 and then underneath that you write your name date and time below that you write the sentence

00:46:38.860 this session is about to begin and then after that sentence beneath that you write you rewrite that

00:46:44.280 target number without brackets this time now begins like this weird part so immediately after

00:46:49.440 you write that number again without thinking without hesitating the viewer you put your pen

00:46:54.840 on the page and you make this like quick spontaneous scribble next to the number it's like

00:47:00.600 random like whatever comes out comes out and this little scribble is called an ideogram and this is

00:47:05.800 like your first unconscious connection to the target and then what you do after you drew that

00:47:11.480 little ideogram that squibble you hover your finger over it like an antenna and then while

00:47:16.500 you're doing that you're supposed to think about all the broad impressions you're getting so are

00:47:20.460 you seeing a landscape are you seeing structures are you seeing motion energy so this is called

00:47:26.440 your gestalt so it's sort of a vague wide angle signal so you just kind of write down what those

00:47:31.500 general impressions and then after that you draw a horizontal line and then below that horizontal

00:47:36.780 line you start writing descriptor words so like colors you're seeing textures you're seeing your

00:47:41.380 head smells sounds emotion shapes you don't have to like name specific things but just kind of

00:47:46.300 descriptor words. And then just kind of stream of conscious. And then after you do that, and things

00:47:52.100 kind of start slowing down, you kind of sketch what you're sensing. So you're not trying to sketch

00:47:56.380 the target yourself, you're just kind of trying to sketch these things you're seeing in your head

00:47:59.860 shapes, lines that are coming through. And then when the flow stops, you write in at the end big

00:48:06.500 letters at the bottom. And that's your remote viewing session, then you kind of look at this

00:48:09.680 to kind of come up with what you what the target might be. And what's cool about this, you provide

00:48:14.000 some practice remote viewing sessions in the book for people to try. So you give target numbers

00:48:18.000 and they can go through this process to see if they can remote view the object you had in mind

00:48:22.800 when you created those target numbers. Okay. So that's a remote viewing protocol. And you know,

00:48:27.140 maybe there's something to it. Maybe not. And I'm sure a lot of people are going to be skeptical

00:48:31.040 about it. But I think the thing you're trying to hit home here with this section is that there are

00:48:37.160 things you can do to develop your intuition genius. And you provide practices to enhance

00:48:42.680 your intuition. Meditation is one. Paying attention to your dreams is another. And you

00:48:48.360 point out the fact that a lot of geniuses got ideas from their dreams. Salvador Dali,

00:48:54.460 Paul McCartney, he got the tune for Yesterday in a Dream. Yeah, he had it in a dream and he woke up

00:49:00.460 the next day and swore that he had come up with a melody that he had heard somewhere else. And he

00:49:05.300 was frantically asking around if anybody, what song this was, but it was Yesterday that came to

00:49:11.760 them in a dream. Yeah. One of the practices you recommend is keeping a dream journal. So you just

00:49:15.880 get yourself a dedicated notebook for this. And then you write down your dreams every morning

00:49:20.880 immediately after waking up. And you want to do this as soon as possible because everyone knows

00:49:25.160 how quickly dreams evaporate. And even better is if you write things down, if you wake up in the

00:49:32.160 night. And so you just do this as much as you can. The more data you have, the more insights will

00:49:37.860 come. And over time, you'll start recognizing or seeing recurring themes and symbols and patterns.

00:49:44.980 Do you keep a dream journal? Yeah, I go through phases where I feel like I'm looking for an

00:49:50.640 answer to something. And sometimes meditation will help me get there. But I also will maybe

00:49:56.600 then explore my dreams because I find that my dreams often will communicate to me if I'm paying

00:50:01.980 attention. I think the world around us will communicate with us if we pay attention. And

00:50:06.540 building intuition is listening to the signals around us that we might typically ignore.

00:50:11.700 Like not everything has to have meaning, not everything is a sign, but I think it's

00:50:15.920 super powerful to look at things as if they might be a sign and trying to notice patterns

00:50:21.580 and just trying to not filter out that, which we think is just noise.

00:50:28.640 Well, Nelson, this has been a great conversation.

00:50:30.140 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:50:33.240 Yep.

00:50:33.680 If they head to my website, nelsondellis.com, it's all there.

00:50:37.120 You know, I put a bunch of content out on YouTube with fun videos on how to improve memory, how to remote view, how to do all sorts of things that are talked about in the book.

00:50:46.380 And, yeah, the book's called Everyday Genius.

00:50:48.960 It's a passion project of mine.

00:50:50.940 You know, I kept this little journal through high school and college and all the way up to, you know, recent days where I would just always write down really cool things that you could do with your mind that seemed genius.

00:51:02.180 And there's tons of memory stuff in there.

00:51:04.360 There's how to count cards.

00:51:05.540 There's how to solve Rubik's Cubes blindfolded.

00:51:08.280 And that's all kind of what got piled into this book.

00:51:12.140 Yeah, it's a fun read.

00:51:13.040 We just really scratched the surface with this stuff.

00:51:15.560 And there's so much more for you to dig in.

00:51:17.280 So I encourage people to go out and pick up a copy.

00:51:19.420 It's a lot of fun.

00:51:20.400 Well, Nelson, it's been a great conversation.

00:51:22.120 Thanks so much for your time.

00:51:22.820 It's been a pleasure.

00:51:23.880 Yeah, thank you so much, man.

00:51:25.040 Looking forward to hearing the show.

00:51:28.060 My guest name is Nelson Dulles.

00:51:29.440 He's the author of the book, Everyday Genius.

00:51:31.100 It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:51:33.760 Make sure to check out our show notes

00:51:34.740 at awim.is slash genius

00:51:36.320 where you find links to resources

00:51:37.500 when we delve deeper into this topic.

00:51:46.640 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIM podcast.

00:51:49.240 If you haven't done so already,

00:51:50.200 I'd appreciate it if you take one minute

00:51:51.540 to give us a review on the podcast player

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00:52:01.100 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:52:03.200 Until next time, this is Brett McKay,

00:52:04.640 reminding you not only to listen to the A1 Podcast,

00:52:06.360 but put what you've heard into action.

00:52:25.980 Before you go, here's another episode worth adding to the queue.

00:52:28.900 In episode number 821, we explore why routines, especially over rigid ones, can actually make life harder, not easier.

00:52:35.820 We talk discipline without obsession, structure without rigidity, and where real growth comes from.

00:52:40.520 You can find it at aom.is slash routines.

00:52:43.360 That's aom.is slash routines.

00:52:45.380 Go check it out, episode number 821.

The Art of Manliness - March 24, 2026

The Mental Skills for Becoming an Everyday Genius

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