The Art of Manliness - Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind

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

00:00:11.400 There are tons of books, blog posts, and podcasts about how to get more focused.

00:00:16.400 Focus is seen as the key to greater productivity and success. While focus is important, my guest

00:00:22.240 says there are also amazing powers to be found in something that gets a lot less attention,

00:00:26.520 the unfocused mind. Dr. Srini Pillay is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a brain imaging

00:00:32.520 researcher, and the author of Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try, Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind.

00:00:39.620 Today on the show, Srini explains the downsides of excessive focus, the importance of tapping

00:00:43.540 into the unfocused mind, especially in the age of AI, and the benefits of doing so, including how

00:00:49.040 mind-wandering can help you be more productive and creative, allow you to see greater possibilities

00:00:53.340 for your life, and offer important insights that will get you unstuck from problems.

00:00:57.480 He shares strategies to incorporate unfocused time into your lifestyle, including how to

00:01:01.300 make daydreaming more beneficial, and why you should let yourself doodle without guilt.

00:01:05.460 Srini also makes the case for multitasking, and the sense of switching back and forth between

00:01:09.460 different tasks. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash unfocus.

00:01:23.340 All right. Dr. Srini Pillay, welcome to the show.

00:01:30.400 Thanks so much for having me, Brett.

00:01:31.800 So you are a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. You've also taught at the Harvard Medical School and the

00:01:37.360 Harvard Business School. You're CEO of a consultant group. It's called Neuro Business Group. It's

00:01:42.560 executive coaching where you implement some of the things from your academic background and your

00:01:46.940 medical practice as a psychiatrist. I want to bring on the show because you wrote a really great book

00:01:51.160 called Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try, Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind. And that unfocused mind

00:01:57.940 thing really caught my attention because I think a lot of books, podcasts, blog posts, articles are all

00:02:03.980 about how to get more focused. We all want to be more focused. We feel distracted with our

00:02:09.020 smartphones and the internet. But one of the things you start off with your book is you argue that

00:02:13.840 focus can be good, but being too focused comes with some downsides. What happens when we focus

00:02:21.100 too much? Yeah. So I do think that focus is good. I think we all need to focus to be able to make it

00:02:26.720 to appointments on time and to be able to get tasks done. But when we focus too much, there are several

00:02:32.360 things that can happen in the brain that could be problematic. The first is that when you focus,

00:02:37.340 you can create what we call prefrontal cortex depletion. And really what that is, is the thinking

00:02:42.620 part of the brain loses energy. And one experiment, for example, showed that if you just, they took two

00:02:48.980 groups of people, one group was focusing on the video really intensely. The other group was just

00:02:53.300 looking at it normally. And then they gave them a problem to solve at the end of that. And what they

00:02:58.760 found was that in cases where they could have saved people's lives, the people who focused too much

00:03:04.520 couldn't care less until they were fed glucose. And what this tells us is that when you deplete the

00:03:10.300 thinking brain, it also depletes your capacity to care, which is why sometimes, you know, you come home

00:03:15.940 really exhausted from work and someone tells you something that sounds like you should react to it,

00:03:21.680 but you just don't have the energy to react to it. So the first piece is about energy depletion.

00:03:27.820 Also, if you are too focused, you're not really paying attention to what's going on around you.

00:03:32.600 And as a result, if you're someone who has a business and there are new, there are other

00:03:36.120 competitors who are working in a particular way, you may not be aware of them. If you are focused with

00:03:41.420 your nose to the grindstone, it's really difficult to know about upcoming trends. You know, if you

00:03:45.980 were just looking at what you were looking at, you would not know about what's going on with AI and

00:03:50.980 how this could change your business. Also, when you focus, you're looking at one point. And when you

00:03:57.760 look at just one point, it's difficult to innovate because innovation and creativity often require

00:04:03.160 making connections across two or more points. And finally, what we know about the unfocused circuit in

00:04:10.500 the brain, and there actually is a circuit like that. What we know about the unfocused circuit

00:04:14.780 is that when you unfocus, you actually activate the part of your brain that codes for self,

00:04:21.400 the part that is involved in self-awareness, self-regulation. And so it's really only when

00:04:27.080 you go off of focus that you can more deeply connect with yourself. I like to say to people that

00:04:31.700 when you focus, it's a little bit like your brain operates with a version of you that's more like

00:04:37.720 your LinkedIn profile. You know, and everybody knows your LinkedIn profile doesn't really describe

00:04:42.120 what is particular about you. Whereas when you turn on the unfocused circuit, this actually

00:04:48.580 metaphorically invites other utensils to the table. You know, the focus circuit is more like just having

00:04:54.960 a fork that picks up sort of big elements about who you are. But the unfocused circuit will invite

00:05:00.720 things like a spoon to express the delicious melange of flavors of your actual identity. It will also

00:05:07.300 invite chopsticks to the table so that you can make connections across your brain. And it will invite

00:05:12.540 sort of anything that can dig into nooks and crannies to be able to reveal details that your

00:05:18.580 focused brain cannot reveal. So all in all, the problems with excessive focus are that it depletes

00:05:26.080 your thinking brain of energy and makes you careless. It also prevents you from seeing what's going on

00:05:31.760 around you. It prevents you from seeing what's coming up ahead. It prevents you from being creative. And it

00:05:39.960 prevents you from expressing the fullness of who you are. And as a result of that, being able to not

00:05:45.440 just live through the day with focus, focus, focus, fatigue, but to build in periods of unfocus can be

00:05:51.780 particularly helpful.

00:05:52.740 I imagine everyone has experienced the fatigue that comes with just focusing all day. They're at work

00:05:58.580 and they have to focus on a task or maybe multiple tasks. They're shifting their focus

00:06:02.860 from one task to the next. And by the time they get home, they're just exhausted. I just experienced

00:06:07.880 this, the focus fatigue recently. I was driving home on a back road here in Oklahoma and there was a big

00:06:14.560 storm and it was raining and you can't really see. And so I had to pay a lot of attention to get my

00:06:20.420 family home safely because I had to watch the road because visibility was low. And when I got done

00:06:25.320 with that trip, it was only an hour, but I was tired. I was tired. I needed a break for about an

00:06:30.120 hour to recoup myself from just all the hypervigilance I was in in that hour long period. And that idea of

00:06:36.120 when you focus too much, you might miss things in your periphery. I know that fighter pilots have to

00:06:41.260 deal with this. There's this idea with fighter pilots, it's target lock where they get so keyed in

00:06:46.600 on a target that they stop paying attention to their environment and then they might get hit by

00:06:52.440 an enemy that was, you know, behind them that they weren't paying attention to because they're so

00:06:57.280 focused on the target ahead of them. Yeah. In fact, and there are also examples in the business

00:07:02.280 literature, you know, Ann Wang, who invented the word processor, was so intent on inventing version

00:07:08.880 two that he didn't notice that the PC was actually being invented. Had he known that, he might have

00:07:14.460 thought differently. But if you're only focused on what you're doing and you're not paying attention

00:07:18.460 to competitors, you can really lose out in business as well. So it's not just the physical

00:07:23.280 focus, but also in terms of a lifestyle, being able to take time out to unfocus can have huge

00:07:29.580 consequences. So you mentioned when we focus or unfocus, we use two different systems in our brain.

00:07:35.340 What system do we use when we focus? So first of all, I mean, this is an oversimplification,

00:07:39.500 but when you focus, you're mostly using what we call the central executive network or sometimes

00:07:45.060 simplified as the prefrontal cortex, which is really the thinking brain. When you unfocus,

00:07:51.700 you are using a network called the default mode network, which actually requires a lot of energy,

00:07:57.800 which is why a lot of people just avoid using that circuit. You know, for example, if I said to you,

00:08:03.560 what's your next task, that's pretty much using your focus brain and you'll tell me what that is.

00:08:09.620 But if I ask you, what is the greatest possibility for you in your life? Suddenly you're plunged into

00:08:15.340 this kind of unfocused space where you've got to search for answers. Part of the reason I think

00:08:19.720 this is such a timely conversation for us to be having is I believe that in terms of what we can do

00:08:26.260 with our focused brains, AI, artificial intelligence is going to be very, very, very good at that.

00:08:31.300 And what we have is this capability in the DMN or default mode network. And I think the more we

00:08:39.080 can learn how to exercise those capabilities, the more we'll be able to work with the advances in

00:08:44.680 technology as well. Yeah, it was interesting about the default mode network. For a long time in

00:08:49.480 psychology and psychiatry and cognitive science, they didn't really know what that was about. They

00:08:53.780 just thought, well, there's this thing that your brain does when it's not focused, but they didn't

00:08:57.760 really think about, well, it's actually doing something productive and useful. It wasn't until

00:09:01.260 I think the past 20 years where they just finally figured out, wait, this is actually really

00:09:04.720 important. Yeah. In fact, I used to joke that we used to think of the DMN as the do mostly nothing

00:09:10.340 network because we used to think, you know, this thing just sort of active when you're idle. So

00:09:15.680 maybe it's like just idling the way an engine would idle. But then when you take a look at what the

00:09:20.960 default mode network can do, it's really quite a magnificent network. There are three things that

00:09:27.160 perhaps I could highlight about that network. The first is that it turns the brain into a crystal

00:09:32.060 ball, meaning the default mode network is wired for prediction. So if you're trying to predict more

00:09:38.460 effectively, like when I've worked with fund managers, for example, who've built these unfocused

00:09:43.560 times into their lives, they're able to make calls on the proper investments in much more effective ways

00:09:49.660 when they activate this network by changing their lifestyles. Also, the default mode network is

00:09:56.540 really wired to provide a level of detail that the prefrontal cortex cannot. You know, the focus brain

00:10:02.560 can pick up large amounts of information and can pick up large chunks of information. But for the real

00:10:08.120 subtle things, you need to activate the default mode network. The other thing is that the default mode

00:10:14.360 network is super important when it comes to abstract and complex thinking. You know, one of my pet peeves

00:10:20.740 in the way we're communicating medical information these days, we're communicating information as if

00:10:25.400 there's only one size fits all. You know, people will say you should lower your LDL cholesterol.

00:10:31.040 Well, there have been a lot of studies in prominent medical journals that show that it's really important

00:10:36.780 to lower your LDL cholesterol. But studies also show that in certain instances, you might increase your

00:10:43.340 chances of dying if you lower that. You know, similarly, people will say antioxidants are really important

00:10:48.680 in food. But we also know that there's a literature that shows that antioxidants can increase the rate of

00:10:55.140 malignant progression. So how do you put all of this together? Well, you actually can't look at each

00:11:01.460 recommendation separately. Ideally, you want to be able to create a complexity of thinking that applies to you. If you

00:11:08.980 just listen to one set of recommendations with your focus brain, you might go ahead and follow that set

00:11:14.220 of recommendations. But over time, you'll learn about the abstraction of who you are as a subjective

00:11:20.180 human. And you begin to group these variables. Ideally, this will be done by AI for us in the near

00:11:26.260 future. But what AI can do is then represent this kind of complexity. And the reason I'm even talking about

00:11:33.020 artificial intelligence is because I think that we're at a point where we really need to focus on what we

00:11:38.340 want to hone in human intelligence. And I believe that learning strategic ways to unfocus can be super

00:11:44.840 helpful. Well, you talk about, yeah, what we're seeing now is, I think you said earlier, is that

00:11:49.720 artificial intelligence is starting to do, be able to do some of the stuff that our prefrontal cortex,

00:11:54.840 the central executive network is able to do. The thing it can't do very well yet, and maybe could

00:12:00.520 never do very well, is that default mode network stuff. Yes, absolutely. In fact, that's something that

00:12:05.800 I'm actively working on right now, trying to understand, you know, how we can help people

00:12:10.660 hone their intuition, you know, hone empathy, mentalize, understand other people's points of

00:12:17.060 view. You know, we have some amazing capabilities as humans. And we have these networks that are geared

00:12:23.260 to actually operate at levels that it's difficult to make machines operate at. For example, when

00:12:30.760 artificial intelligence is working, it's mostly through associations and speed. Whereas there are

00:12:36.880 phenomena that have yet to be explained in human existence that have to do with things like what

00:12:41.700 Carl Jung called meaningful coincidence, where we seem to have the ability to not just make associations,

00:12:49.660 but to feel our way into the future to be able to make things happen. And so I think our capacity to

00:12:57.980 feel is remarkable, and there are extensive connections between the default mode network

00:13:04.380 and some of the feeling centers in the brain. So I do think that honing our skills in the realm of

00:13:11.280 what we can do, like intuition, imagination, you know, artificial intelligence can imagine something

00:13:19.140 upon instruction. We have a certain freedom to be able to create. And I think that what's exciting

00:13:27.420 about this next phase of life is that we can work on these more human capabilities, allowing us to

00:13:33.220 accentuate our humanity as well. One of the points you make in the book when you're talking about these

00:13:37.400 two systems, the CEN and the DMN, is that they work together naturally. If we just left things alone

00:13:43.780 and try not to manipulate, you know, try to focus more, there would be a rhythm. What does that rhythm

00:13:48.860 look like typically? And then how do we mess it up?

00:13:52.540 So yeah, the central executive network, the focus network, and the unfocused network, the default mode

00:13:58.280 network, do work together well. But we have to figure out how to change our days. I'll give you an

00:14:03.740 example of just from a personal example, and then I'll give you some ideas of strategically how you can

00:14:09.040 accentuate this cognitive rhythm. You know, when I went to Harvard, I was sort of very ambitious. I

00:14:13.700 wanted to really go to, I went to 100% of my didactics. I stayed, you know, in the hospital

00:14:18.180 units till late at night. I read every single thing that was given to me. And at the end of my

00:14:22.540 first quarter, I expected to get, you know, really amazing feedback. And, you know, I thought I'd done

00:14:28.100 really well. And when I spoke with my supervisors, one of the things they said was, you know, you clearly

00:14:33.760 know the most information in the class, but we're really worried about you. We don't see you sitting

00:14:37.880 on park benches during the day. You go to 100% of your didactics, shows no discernment.

00:14:42.940 If you wanted to train like that, this is probably not the place for you. What we want you to do

00:14:48.240 is develop the fullness of your intelligence. And we recognize that off time is as important

00:14:55.040 to your creative ideation as is on time. And that really sort of woke me up in a certain way,

00:15:00.940 because I realized, you know, initially I thought, well, what do you mean? Isn't it just important to

00:15:05.580 just be working all the time and absorbing all that information? But I realized that in the same way

00:15:10.540 that people get their best ideas in the shower, creating these off times gives your brain a time

00:15:17.180 to sort this out. So one of the questions you asked was, how do you then establish this cognitive

00:15:22.740 rhythm? I would say principle number one is build frequent times during your day when you can actually

00:15:30.060 take a break, but take a break strategically. And here are some things that you can do.

00:15:35.240 The first thing is, and there are caveats with each of these, but the first thing is napping.

00:15:40.060 Five to 10 minutes of napping can give you one to three hours of clarity.

00:15:44.620 Now, sometimes in the middle of your afternoon, you might be dragging through the day and you've

00:15:47.960 got five more things in your list. And you just say, I just got to get this finished. Well,

00:15:52.780 if you just took five to 15 minutes to nap, you would be able to then come back to that task

00:15:57.880 with a much clearer brain. Now, you might ask, well, you know, is napping always good? But it

00:16:03.160 actually isn't always good. So if you nap too much so that it disrupts your sleep, this can affect

00:16:08.320 your cardiac function. So you really want to think about what you're napping for and how often you're

00:16:13.680 napping. So I would say once or twice a week when you're exhausted, take those five to 15 minutes

00:16:19.080 if you want greater clarity. For greater creativity, you actually need 90 minutes of napping. And most people

00:16:25.520 don't have 90 minutes to nap during the day. But if you're taking the weekend off and you have a

00:16:29.960 creative problem at hand, try going back to that problem after taking 90 minutes off and then see

00:16:36.620 if that improves your performance. The other thing you can do is take booster breaks of just 15 minutes.

00:16:43.120 15 minutes of physical activity each day can actually completely clear up your mind. It can even improve

00:16:48.880 the relationships with people around you and decrease your stress. So taking booster breaks can be

00:16:54.800 super helpful. Then there's doodling. You know, just scribbling on a piece of paper, Jackie Andrade

00:17:00.740 and her colleagues found that doodling improves memory by 29%. And that's because your brain is less

00:17:06.720 like a stiff sponge and is much more absorbent of information. Now, more recent studies have shown that

00:17:14.000 you actually should be doodling something that's relevant to the conversation. So I would add that to

00:17:18.800 that as well. So there's napping, there's doodling, there's a booster breaks, then there's a concept

00:17:25.040 called psychological Halloweenism. It's a term that I coined, and it refers to a study that showed that

00:17:31.800 if the same person takes on the identity of an eccentric poet, that person is more likely to be

00:17:41.020 creative statistically significantly than if they took on the identity of a rigid librarian. Now, this to me is a

00:17:48.120 pretty profound study, because what it tells us is that when we're not able to solve problems in our

00:17:53.160 lives, whether it's a day-to-day problem, or a relationship problem, or a work-related problem,

00:17:59.520 it tells us the problem is not how we think, it's who we think we are. And if you embody the personality

00:18:06.660 of someone who is different from you, it will change your pattern of thinking to be more like that person.

00:18:12.940 So, you know, napping, doodling, psychological Halloweenism are all really important ways in

00:18:19.680 which you can help your brain to unfocus. The key is to do this regularly throughout the day.

00:18:26.600 Now, most people will say, well, you know, I don't have time to actually do this. And what I would say

00:18:32.960 is I completely understand that. And if you want to start small, then start with maybe two 15 to 20

00:18:38.040 minute breaks. But consider the following. Consider the fact that McKinsey has done a study showing

00:18:44.880 that CEOs who are in a flow state, meaning they're locked into their work, are five times more

00:18:50.740 productive than CEOs who are not in a flow state. That means you can do five days of work if you are

00:18:58.240 locked in, in one day. And so it's not that there's not enough time. It's about the quality of focus that

00:19:05.520 we can help by preparing the brain with unfocus.

00:19:09.560 So help me make sure I'm on the same page. So when we focus, we take an information, we read a text,

00:19:15.980 we're writing things, making lists, maybe even just, you know, thinking about things intentionally,

00:19:20.500 like a problem. When we do that, does our DMN, the default mode network, kind of soak that in? And then

00:19:27.280 when we let the DMN do its thing, it sort of takes the things that we've input into our brain with our

00:19:33.620 executive function and starts going down different roads where we can get these new insights that we

00:19:38.520 otherwise wouldn't have if we just stayed in focus mode.

00:19:43.220 So yeah, the moment you focus, and again, this is a slight oversimplification, but it's a good

00:19:47.480 overall principle. And overall, this is true. The moment you focus, the DMN is turned off.

00:19:53.520 And so it's your central executive network and your prefrontal cortex that is turned on.

00:19:57.860 When you unfocus, this information is handed over to the DMN for processing. And the DMN can then come

00:20:05.060 up with these insights. It can then feed this information and these insights back to your

00:20:10.140 prefrontal cortex or central executive network to then execute on the task logically. You know,

00:20:15.580 a good example of this is Albert Einstein, who said that his discovery was a musical perception.

00:20:21.600 Now, the theory of relativity obviously has a lot of logical steps connected to it. But what he's

00:20:26.780 saying is that to source information, you actually have to be in this unfocused state. So you activate

00:20:32.640 the default mode network. There are other people as well, Cary Banks Mullis, who discovered a way of

00:20:37.580 making synthetic DNA called PCR. Cary Banks Mullis was actually, you know, his lab mates didn't like

00:20:44.840 him at all because he didn't follow a strict protocol. He discovered this while he was driving from Berkeley

00:20:49.620 to Mendocino with his girlfriend in his car. He had a bottle of wine in the car that he was taking home.

00:20:54.880 He stopped. He scribbled on a cave face, then went to their little place. And then suddenly,

00:21:00.300 things started coming to him. You know, Sarah Blakely, who founded Spanx, she founded Spanx while

00:21:05.440 she was preparing for a party. So there are a lot of different examples of how unfocused can truly help.

00:21:12.460 And I think Steve Jobs really captured this well in his quote in his Stanford commencement speech when

00:21:19.340 he said, in life, you cannot join the dots moving forward. You can join them looking backwards, but

00:21:25.160 to move forward, you have to have something. And he called it gut, karma, life, destiny, whatever. And I'm

00:21:31.640 calling it the default mode network. And I'm saying that in order to move forward into the black box that

00:21:37.580 life often is, because things change so much, building unfocus into our lives will help us to join those

00:21:45.220 dots. Another person or group of people that comes to mind where they use the power of unfocused to

00:21:50.340 make an important insider discovery, Watson and Crick with the double helix DNA, they spent so much

00:21:56.260 time focused on the problem, trying to figure out what does DNA look like. And it wasn't until they

00:22:00.840 just took a break that the insight finally came to them. I think it might have, one of them might

00:22:04.640 have been like a dream or it was like, it was sleep or a nap where they finally got the insight.

00:22:09.560 Charles Darwin, he spent maybe just like a few hours a day focused, you know, thinking and writing.

00:22:14.960 But then he'd spend the rest of the day just walking. And that's where he got the insights

00:22:19.320 for natural selection. Yeah, I'm so glad you pointed out those different examples. Because,

00:22:25.100 you know, I think that part of it is that particular sort of element of taking time out to unfocus.

00:22:31.720 And part of it is also thinking about the way you construct your life. Because people who have more

00:22:37.320 hobbies, for example, often do better than people with fewer hobbies. So the unfocus pertains to that as

00:22:43.700 well. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:22:50.680 And now back to the show. Okay, so there's different ways we can wander into this default

00:22:55.040 mode network. You mentioned a few taking naps, taking breaks, moving your body. You also talk

00:23:00.480 about just letting your mind wander. I think we've all had those moments where you zone out,

00:23:04.880 where you're just staring at a wall. And you think, oh, my gosh, why did I zone out? What's wrong

00:23:09.060 with me? But I've actually, it feels good. So you've probably taken a break from all that focus

00:23:13.880 that you've been engaging in. But you also start thinking weird things that maybe, not all the time,

00:23:20.200 but maybe might provide an insight. So don't be afraid of mind wandering as well.

00:23:24.120 Yeah, you know, when it comes to mind wandering, studies have shown that mind wandering can be

00:23:28.260 associated with depression. Because a lot of times, and also with anxiety, because your mind starts

00:23:33.060 wandering to all those bad things, the stuff that's worrying you. So part of what you want to do when

00:23:37.800 you're thinking about mind wandering is say to yourself, how can I actually do this in a way

00:23:43.360 that's strategically positive? You know, one type of mind wandering is called positive constructive

00:23:47.900 daydreaming. And this was studied by Jerome Singer in the 1950s. And what Singer said was that daydreaming

00:23:54.700 at your desk and looking out the window is not that helpful. Daydreaming, when you're thinking about

00:24:00.240 just the prior night's indiscretions, you know, what did I say at the party? That's not that helpful.

00:24:05.740 But positive constructive daydreaming is helpful. And this is the way you do this. You set aside 20

00:24:12.820 minutes, you do something low key, like knitting, gardening, or walking. Obviously, it needs to be

00:24:19.140 something that is truly low key for you. And then you just let your mind go to something that is

00:24:24.580 positive or wishful, like running through the woods with your dog or lying on a yacht. And by doing this,

00:24:31.440 your perception becomes decoupled from the environment. And like a torch that swings

00:24:38.200 inwards, your mind starts paying attention to what's inside you. And so mind wandering can result

00:24:44.660 in feelings of distress. But if you want to counter this, use this technique of positive constructive

00:24:49.940 daydreaming, because that then immediately sets the tone that what you're going to be thinking about

00:24:55.260 is positive. Can journaling or just sort of just kind of free write journaling, could that help as

00:25:01.340 well? Absolutely. There's lots of examples in history. I think Eleanor Roosevelt might have been

00:25:06.920 one of those people who actually used free writing to decrease and write their anxieties away. And I

00:25:12.220 wrote about this in Harvard Health once that the fact that any kind of free form writing lets your mind

00:25:18.820 go and lets your mind go into very special places. You know, but as another personal example, you know,

00:25:26.380 another thing that I do is I'm a musician. And I decided that I wanted to write, I wanted to just write

00:25:32.220 something, but I didn't know what it was. And one day in the middle of a pianolist, and I just said to my piano

00:25:36.700 teacher, I don't feel like playing the piano, I just want to sing. And so he was a pretty, you know, regimented

00:25:43.060 guy. I said, well, what would you like to sing about? And I said, I don't know. And he said, well, you know, what

00:25:47.840 key do you want to sing in? I said, I don't know. I just would like you to sit at the piano. And I want

00:25:52.660 to see what's going to come up. And let's see what happens. And by using this technique, like in just

00:25:59.020 over a month, I had composed 42 songs with zero planning, zero decision. I didn't even really know

00:26:05.440 what story I was putting together. It was on a long trip back from the east somewhere where I once said,

00:26:11.100 okay, I'm going to listen to all of this, see what it is I've been wanting to say, and then backtrack,

00:26:17.200 and then fill in the gaps where those gaps need to be filled. And I think what that really taught me

00:26:22.220 was that, you know, initially, he was quite alarmed and was like, you know, why don't you just plan

00:26:25.900 this out and sketch it out? And I said, no, I do that the rest of my time, just one hour a week.

00:26:31.540 Why don't I just meet myself in the moment and see what's going to come out? And I would recommend

00:26:37.360 to people that this is not some special talent. Everybody has this default mode network. Everybody has a

00:26:43.000 central executive network. Why not see what's waiting for you in your brain by waiting on yourself?

00:26:49.780 When you talk about, yeah, be intentional about it. Set aside time in your schedule,

00:26:53.000 your day for those periods. So you have, you call it a tinker table, right? Instead of a timetable,

00:26:58.380 you set up a tinker table where it's like, I'm going to schedule the times where I'm just going

00:27:01.660 to let myself run free. Whether that means I'm going to use a music lesson just to improvise and come up

00:27:07.260 with stuff. Or it could be, I'm just going to use an hour where I'm just going to draw and just see

00:27:11.940 where it goes. You have to be intentional about it. Because if you're not, there's so many other

00:27:16.180 things out there that can control your attention, that wants your attention, your focused attention.

00:27:20.500 So if you want to create that default mode network time, you have to create it for yourself.

00:27:26.860 I really think so. And the reason I call it a tinker table is that in the same way

00:27:31.560 that you schedule in actual appointments during the day. Schedule this tinkering time into your day.

00:27:38.340 I can't tell you how many organizations I speak to about burnout and about what the different causes

00:27:43.000 of burnout are and about how they can approach this. And everybody understands what that is.

00:27:47.580 But when push comes to shove and I say, who's going to implement this? Most people say,

00:27:52.320 I don't have the time to implement this. I don't have the time to take time off. I don't have the time

00:27:57.680 to do this for myself. And essentially what I've said to them is that what we all need from time

00:28:04.060 to time is some kind of re-skilling for self-care. We need to realize that we're taking care of

00:28:09.300 ourselves in a way that makes life more enriching if we build these tinker tables. You're not just

00:28:16.300 rushing through your day and trying to get everything checked off and not really caring about

00:28:21.260 taking these times off. It's doing a disservice to yourself.

00:28:24.940 I think when sometimes when people, I know I do this, when I have a break, when I want to take

00:28:28.900 a break, I'll immediately go to the internet, right? So I'm taking a break from my focused work

00:28:34.240 work. And then I'll just, well, I'm just going to browse the internet, see what's on Instagram or see

00:28:40.200 what's on the news site. Is that detrimental or should people, is that okay to let your mind wander

00:28:47.360 the internet like that?

00:28:49.500 So I think studies in general show both sides of it, that sometimes if your mind's wandering,

00:28:53.560 you might be wandering only into negative information. So it depends on how much negative

00:28:59.100 information versus positive information you're allowing your mind to wander into. So in general,

00:29:04.480 I think that that's okay. But there is a void in your mind that's an important place to reach

00:29:10.000 so that you can become a creator of your new future. Wandering through the internet, I think,

00:29:15.980 is a great way to take yourself off of super focused tasks. But what if you use this time

00:29:21.300 to use what I call possibility thinking? You know, a lot of people don't realize that possibility,

00:29:27.940 just the hope, the possibility of something actually changes your brain chemistry. It can

00:29:33.060 increase your opioids, helping you to de-stress. And it can also, it can really sort of help you calm

00:29:38.960 down and it can help you control your brain much more effectively. And one of the things that I like

00:29:46.120 to remind people of is that possibility thinking involves asking the question, what if? You know,

00:29:51.820 some of the greatest things in the world that have been created have been created in what if time.

00:29:57.320 And again, most people will say, I don't have what if time. But if you think about some people who I

00:30:02.520 think are just great examples of possibility thinkers, Martine Rothblatt, for example, who's the CEO of a

00:30:07.840 pharmaceutical company now, had no background in medicine, but two of her kids had lung diseases and

00:30:14.220 there was pulmonary hypertension, I believe. And there were no drugs out at all for this. So she did

00:30:19.120 what any loving mother would probably wish they'd done. She decided to start a pharmaceutical company. 1.00

00:30:24.040 She gathered the expertise that she needed and she now has five drugs that have been approved so that

00:30:29.100 her kids can breathe and other kids with the same disease can breathe. But she didn't stop there. 0.93

00:30:33.360 She then said, but what if I could actually make lungs? And so she's now started to make lungs.

00:30:39.320 But she also didn't stop there. She asked, what if I could invest in helicopters that could 0.90

00:30:44.700 efficiently transport these lungs to people when they needed them? And when I talked to her about

00:30:49.240 this and I said, you know, this is such a remarkable thing. How can anyone live to this level of life?

00:30:55.480 And she said, it's really not that remarkable. I just give myself time to think of what's possible.

00:30:59.980 And then I gathered the resources to make that happen. Now, for most of us, we're always wishing

00:31:05.220 and dreaming and thinking, I wish I had more money. I wish I were less lonely. I wish I could

00:31:10.240 feel happier. But what if we committed to this possibility? What if we set aside time for this

00:31:16.480 possibility? You know, if you think about it, when you're building a building, in most cases,

00:31:21.460 if you're building a house, it doesn't happen without a blueprint. And the blueprint takes time to put

00:31:26.060 together. And then you've got to get builders to build a house. And then you've got to find a way

00:31:30.380 to put all this stuff together. In the same way that you build a house, to build a life without a

00:31:36.020 blueprint, I think is a crime. Because you can change the blueprint, you can build new houses,

00:31:40.640 you can build new possibilities. But why would one live a life without creating time for this blueprint?

00:31:46.440 Okay, so we can go into default mode network on a day to day basis, where we intentionally block in

00:31:51.780 time where we're just going to let our mind wander and explore daydream journal, we could play, we could

00:31:57.780 do music, we could walk, run exercise. Showers have been known for to put people in that default mode

00:32:03.660 network. That's why you get these great insights while you're taking a shower. I want to talk a bit

00:32:07.600 about multitasking, because you have a chapter dedicated in the book about this. And multitasking

00:32:12.560 gets a bad rap. We talk about how, you know, we actually don't multitask, we just instead shift

00:32:17.940 our attention back and forth between tasks. And we shouldn't do that, because it just wears our

00:32:21.660 brains out. But you actually, in this book, you make a case for multitasking. What do you think the

00:32:25.980 benefits of multitasking are? Yeah, so in general, I would say the overwhelming number of studies have

00:32:31.320 shown that multitasking in the way that people usually do it, I had an experience recently where

00:32:35.640 someone was on a zoom call with me off screen, while they were on two other calls at the same time.

00:32:41.280 And I was sort of like wondering, how are they doing this? And can you really absorb information?

00:32:46.380 I don't think you can multitask like that and take in information. However, there are a group

00:32:51.920 of people who are called super taskers, who are like expert jugglers, who can juggle a number of

00:32:57.500 different things in the course of a day. Now, if you have a rigid mindset, you're not going to give in

00:33:02.840 to the freedom of juggling, right? You're going to keep on thinking in a rigid way. It's going to be hard

00:33:07.540 to juggle throughout your day. But what studies show is that for the small percentage of people

00:33:12.280 who do allow themselves this kind of freedom and flexibility, they are able to multitask.

00:33:18.740 Bob Johansson from the Institute of the Future, who talks about what we're going to be seeing in

00:33:23.780 workers of the future, says that the future is really going to be about continuous partial

00:33:28.800 attention. Someone's going to pay attention to what's on their phone. They're going to pay attention to

00:33:33.600 what's in their email. They're going to pay attention to some other tasks that they have

00:33:38.460 to do that suddenly comes in. For each of these phenomena, there's obviously a point at which

00:33:42.720 it's not helpful. But before it's not helpful, if we can grant ourselves that flexibility,

00:33:49.840 if we can train our brains to be flexible, our ability to do those multiple things will probably

00:33:55.960 improve. So while I don't wholeheartedly recommend multitasking, I will say that super tasking is

00:34:01.900 possible by developing the flexibility of your brain and the default mode network can be super

00:34:07.140 helpful with that. What does productive super tasking look like? What would that look like in

00:34:11.640 a practical, concrete example? Well, there are a couple of different ways. I think if I think about

00:34:17.740 what practical super tasking is, when I put videos together for marketing, for example, I will allow

00:34:24.300 myself to acknowledge when I feel bored. So I'll collect images and then when I get bored of that,

00:34:30.680 I'll collect B-roll. And when I get bored of that, I'll think about text. And then I'll put this all

00:34:37.940 into an iMovie file, for example. And then I'll realize that I really had the permission to go back

00:34:45.640 to stuff when I was not bored, rather than just sticking to one thing. But in the end, I had a high

00:34:51.300 quality experience by putting that all together. So productive super tasking is about how in certain

00:34:58.700 situations, you don't have to do everything from start to finish. You can stop midway, take a break,

00:35:05.960 do something else, come back to what you're doing, and then start that again. In that way,

00:35:11.720 boredom does not become a rule in your life. Boredom, I think for a lot of people, boredom is one of those

00:35:18.440 toxic forces that makes them burn out far more easily. Whereas if you could do something until you

00:35:24.860 stop being interested, you can actually allow yourself to feel excited more often than not.

00:35:31.220 I do this sometimes with deadlines. Rather than setting one deadline for one project,

00:35:37.080 then going on to the next project, I'll have three projects and I'll set a deadline that I have to meet,

00:35:43.260 but I won't have a rule about which task I'm going to be working on at a particular point in the day.

00:35:48.120 And what I find is that by giving myself permission to not be bored, by allowing myself to switch tasks

00:35:55.120 when I need to, not only do I develop the ability to switch tasks, which has been shown by research,

00:36:01.700 this capacity is, it is possible to develop this capacity. What I also do is I give myself the

00:36:08.100 opportunity to have a more excited and engaged life. Have you noticed when you do that task switching,

00:36:13.800 so you say you switch from one task to the next, you're in a way, you're giving your brain a chance

00:36:19.140 to unfocus on that previous task. And you're focusing on this different task. Are you able to

00:36:25.560 get the benefits of unfocus on that previous task? You know what I'm saying? So if you're working on

00:36:30.240 project B, do you get insights on project A while you're working on project B?

00:36:36.400 Yes. I think a lot of the time you actually get insights. So task switching can have a price in that

00:36:42.260 if you completely lose connection with something, and then you got to come back to it, and you got

00:36:45.820 to start all over again, that can be problematic. But if you can, if you can switch at a point where

00:36:51.260 you can retain what you've been working on, and then you move on to the next task, you often see,

00:36:56.860 for me, I often see insights across both things. You know, right, people will often ask me,

00:37:02.540 you know, how is it that you work at the intersection of science, art, and technology? Well, I find them all,

00:37:07.440 they're all extremely exciting. You know, I can design the art based on brain science. I can then ask

00:37:15.300 actual digital artists to come work on our technology platform. We can, I can work closely with a computer

00:37:22.140 scientist to set up a machine learning algorithm that will match an experience to someone's anxiety

00:37:28.440 state so that it's individualized for them. That only happens because I'm thinking in a cross-domain

00:37:35.720 way. I'm thinking about the brain. I'm thinking about how might I design this video based on the

00:37:43.600 brain. And then I'm thinking about how can I then create a machine learning algorithm that can deliver

00:37:50.060 an experience that's specific for an individual. That kind of thinking is not possible if you stick to

00:37:55.780 one domain only. Well, you mentioned another way earlier, how we multitask with probably not

00:38:01.460 knowing that we're multitasking. That's doodling, right? Like when we're in a boring meeting and you

00:38:06.520 might start doodling on a piece of paper, we talked about that actually can help you focus more. Like

00:38:10.820 that multitasking is actually good for you. Yes, absolutely. You know, so I think, I think when

00:38:16.780 you're doodling, you're actually giving yourself permission not to hyper attend to something. Like

00:38:22.680 sometimes people will be so concerned about what they're listening to that they don't understand

00:38:27.840 that letting your mind go can actually be extremely important. Yeah, with the doodling, I know when you

00:38:33.620 go back through some of the archives for the presidents, you look at their notes, they keep

00:38:37.520 that stuff. A lot of them in these really big, important meetings where they're discussing battle

00:38:42.420 plans, high-level strategy, there's doodles. Like JFK has got doodles when he's having meetings about

00:38:48.660 nuclear arms negotiations. And you're like, why are you, you should think, well, you should be

00:38:52.680 focused, man. You should just be like, you shouldn't be doodling, but it probably helped him.

00:38:57.160 Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think when, and also when you're doodling, you're also contemplating

00:39:02.200 more deeply, right? You're letting an idea sink into your mind. You're listening, but you're letting

00:39:07.740 it sink into your mind and you're also involving yourself in the listening. And I think that's a pretty

00:39:14.260 effective form of listening in many instances. And as you pointed out, there've been many notable

00:39:18.740 presidents who've doodled as well. Okay, so don't be afraid of doodling. If you're at a meeting and

00:39:22.980 you're starting to feel antsy and bored and you start doodling, that's okay. It could actually be

00:39:27.460 helping you. Well, Srini, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

00:39:30.800 about your work? Well, thanks so much, Brett. Yeah, lovely talking to you. You can find me at

00:39:35.820 drsreenipillai.com. You can also find me at nbgcorporate.com, N as in Nancy, B as in boy,

00:39:43.900 G as in girl. And you can follow me on Instagram at drsreenipillai.

00:39:48.180 Fantastic. Well, Srini Pillai, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:39:50.940 Thanks so much, Brett.

00:39:52.360 My guest here is Dr. Srini Pillai. He's the author of the book,

00:39:55.120 Tinker, Doodle, Dabble, Try. It's available on amazon.com. You can find more information about

00:39:58.980 his work at his website, drsreenipillai.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash unfocus.

00:40:04.320 We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:40:14.400 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:40:18.240 artofmanliness.com. We find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we've written

00:40:22.320 over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of. And if you haven't done so already,

00:40:25.740 I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps

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00:40:32.880 or family member who would think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued

00:40:36.300 support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to listen to the AOM podcast,

00:40:40.020 but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - August 14, 2023

Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind

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