I always told that if you do 10,000

hours in anything you become a master in

it well that's wrong this idea

undermines this broader toolbox that you

need for long-term development if you're

doing that then you're missing

opportunities David Epstein is a New

York Times best-selling author whose

Infamous work challenges the

conventional wisdom about specialization

productivity and what it takes to become

successful what advice would you give to

a person that's thinking about how to

navigate their way to being really good

at something first of all being a

scientist of your own development and

creating what's called a self-reg

practice what is that so the cycle is

flect what do you need to work on plan

come up with an experiment for how you

can work on that is that getting a job

is it taking a class Monitor and then

evaluate and people who do that

repeatedly they just keep improving two

so for anything you're doing if you're

not 15 20% of the time failing then

you're not in your zone of optimal push

where you're getting as much better as

you possibly can what about Focus I get

distracted easily and I want to be more

productive in the time that I spend

working don't start your day with email

it's been shocking to look at the

research how big of an impairment that

is what about notifications so if you're

getting distracted all the time if you

say well now I really have to hunker

down I'm going to get rid of the

notifications you will start self

interrupting to maintain the

interruptions to which you have become

accustomed really yeah that will go away

but not immediately but there's a lot of

things that you can do for a productive

day for example if you that has enormous

influence in your productivity

interesting the other thing I found

which was pretty shocking was they start

talking about some of the dangers of

specialism yes Harvard Leed studies

found if you're in hospital with certain

cardiac conditions when the most

esteemed Specialists are aware way

you're less likely to die gosh that's

terrifying the conclusion was that's

because this is a sentence I never

thought I'd say in my life um we've just

hit 7 million subscribers on YouTube and

I want to say a huge thank you to all of

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Thursday to watch our conversations um

from the bottom of my heart but also on

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people thank you from the bottom my

heart let's get to the

[Music]

conversation David

yes how do you summarize the work that

you do and why you do it and who are you

really doing it for I am obsessed with

correcting what I view as

mistranslations of scientific research

about human development and so that is

the core of my work and I think I'm

doing it for everyone who is curious but

either doesn't have a scientific

background or doesn't have that

particular scientific background curious

but interested in self-improvement but

doesn't either have the time or or the

means to to go sifting through this

evidence themselves and what is the sort

of Realms of self-improvement that you

have focused on thus far in your career

well earlier on I was focused in

physical skill acquisition like in in

athletics but increasingly uh I've moved

into career and personal development

generally and looking at that with a

very very kind of long lens right so one

of the most important things to me one

of the most important messages that I've

been working on the last few years is

the fact that sometimes optimizing for

short-term development will undermine

your long-term development so let's say

if we're thinking about sports or music

or something like that the obvious thing

to do is to get a head start and

whatever you're doing pick something

stick with it don't don't switch things

because then you've lost time Focus ver

very narrowly and do as much of it as

you possibly can to the exclusion of

other things that's such an obvious way

right and you will jump out to to a lead

right we see that in sports and music we

see that in school with certain Head

Start programs that give people an

advantage in some academic

skills the problem is that kind of

narrow Focus creates short-term results

but undermines this broader toolbox that

you need for long-term development and

so you'll see what scientists call Fade

Out in these advantages which isn't

isn't necessarily actually anything

going away it's the fact that people

with this broader base will catch up and

surpass so it appears to be a fade out

okay so if you take more time to get a

broader understanding of something

whether it's in sports If you're sort of

a child prodigy um over the long term

that's going to benefit you better and

help sustain your development but in the

short term you might lose out because

there's some kid who is doing you know

really deliberate practice obsessively

and he's going to have a it's kind of

like the tortoise in the hair yeah

analogy where you know the tortoise uh

eventually wins the race yeah I mean

there's a there's a a big body of

research in Psychology that can be

summarized with the phrase breadth of

training predicts breadth of transfer

okay transfer is the

ability of someone to take skills and

knowledge and use it to solve a problem

they haven't seen before right you

transfer to a new situation and what

predicts your ability to do that is the

breadth of problems you've been exposed

to in practice if you're exposed to like

a broader set of problems you're forced

to build these

generalizable flexible models that

you'll be able to apply to new things

going forward across all of your work at

the very heart of what people are trying

to achieve in their lives what is that

at the very very heart of what they're

trying to achieve that you're speaking

to getting better getting better at

things right obviously people want

success but I think there's pretty

significant research showing that people

are often actually reacting to their

trajectory as much as their act actual

absolute performance level that the

feeling of improvement the feeling of

moving on it gives them some sense of

fulfillment right and eventually

obviously will get them to to a higher

level and so I think really this is for

people who are interested in how do I

get off sort of my plateaus going

forward and viewing it as as a lifelong

journey as opposed to trying to Peak

when they're 12 right it turns out that

the way to make the best 20-year-old

30-year old 40-year-old is not the same

as the way to make the best 10-year-old

is is there sort of a tie here with the

subject of just happiness and how to

live a happy life fulfillment for sure

yeah those aren't exactly the same but

they're important so so to think about

this in a career development perspective

right I think probably the most

interesting research on fulfillment in

careers was this project at Harvard

called the Darkhorse project

and this was looking at how do people

find a lot of these people were very

financially successful and all that

stuff but the dependent variable was

fulfillment okay sense fulfillment and

when people would come in for sort of an

orientation in this study they would say

things to the researchers like uh you

know I started off doing this one thing

I was Medical School whatever didn't

really fit me so I went over to this

other thing and I I learned I was good

at something I didn't expect so then I

went this other direction and you know I

came don't tell people to do what I did

because like I came out of nowhere and

the large majority of people that was

their story that's why became named the

Darkhorse project Darkhorse is this

expression that means coming out of

nowhere and that the norm in this day

and age was that people who found

fulfillment would travel this kind of

zigzagging path where they would learn

maybe I'm good at something or bad at

something that I didn't expect maybe I'm

interested in something I didn't expect

and they would keep pivoting and they

would say instead of saying you know

here's this person younger than me who

has more than me they'd say here's who I

am right now here are my skills and

interests here are the opportunities in

front of me uh I'm going to try this one

and maybe I'll change a year from now

because I will have learned something

about myself and they keep doing those

pivots throughout their career

throughout their career until they

achieve what Economist call better match

quality that's the degree of fit between

someone's interests and abilities and

the work that they do turns out to be

extremely important for both your

performance and and sense of fulfillment

uh and your apparent grit if you want to

talk about that so so just on that

before we move on to grip the does what

advice does that then mean you would

give to a young person at the start of

their career that's thinking about how

to navigate their way to being both

really competent really good at

something and successful in any sort of

uh monetary way but also maintaining

fulfillment um throughout their life I

think there are two two main things to

take away from that one is to not over

focus on long-term planning like I think

we we lionize having long-term goals and

that's okay there's nothing wrong with

having long-term goals

but those aren't necessarily always so

useful for you in the moment right when

I think about myself when I was a

competitive 800 meter Runner I could

have a time goal for the end of the race

but that didn't help me actually do

anything that just you see the clock

when you're done and you're either happy

or sad having goals that are let me try

let me try moving with 300 meters to go

that gives you an actionable experiment

so short-term planning I think is is one

of the takeaways uh and and creating

what's called a self-regulatory practice

so self-regulatory learning

is means basically thinking about your

own thinking taking accountability for

your for your own learning and some of

some of the coolest studies in

self-regulatory learning actually came

out of soccer football done in the

Netherlands where this woman named Ry

elfring gemer was following kids from

the age of 12 right up through some of

them went on to teams that um you know

were Runners up in the world

cup and what she'd see in the kids who

got off performance plateaus there were

certain physi measur someone had to have

like if a kid couldn't hit at least 7 me

a second sprinting which isn't that fast

but if they couldn't hit it they weren't

making it to the top that's so there

were physiological parameters but also

the kids who would get off performance

plateaus were the ones where if you look

at them in video when they're they're

younger they're saying going to the

trainer like why are we doing this drill

I think I can do this already like I

think I need to work on this other thing

and and you know sometimes a trainer

might be like oh man just get back in

line you know but these are the kids

that are thinking about what they need

to work on what they're good at they're

making this cycle the the

self-regulatory cycle is reflect what

are you good or bad at what do you need

to work on how do you need to do that

plan come up with an experiment for how

you can work on that monitor a way to

try to measure whether objectively or

subjectively and then evaluate did that

experiment that I ran work and making me

better at this thing or not and people

who do that repeatedly they just keep

improving and I think that's what the

dark horses are doing in their careers

they're saying I'm reflecting on what

I've got I'm planning a way to test

something that'll fit me I monitor it

maybe subjectively maybe objectively and

then I evaluate what that tells me to do

for the next step and you just get

better and better and better over time

so if I'm say I'm in my early 20s in my

career how do I take that and then

Implement Implement that in a within my

life to make sure that I'm going to get

to the World Cup metaphorically speaking

Yeah so and there's something

interesting about the 20s that I think

is worth saying which is there's this

finding in Psychology called the end of

History illusion and this is the finding

that we always underestimate how much we

will change what we think we're good at

what we think we're bad at how we want

to spend our time what we prioritize in

friends

Etc and EV at every step in life people

underestimate how much they'll change in

the future change continues for your

whole life it does slow down so we're

constantly Works in progress claiming to

be finished constantly through life the

fastest time of Personality change is

about 18 to about

28 when you're telling but it never

stops but that's about the fastest time

when we're telling people hey now you

have to have it figured out right

and that's when they're changing like

crazy and so I think it's even more

important to have this self-regulatory

practice in a journal I would say I mean

I do it these questions can be basic

what am I trying to do why what do I

need to learn to do it who do I need to

help me learn that how am I going to

make sure that person is there to help

me what experiment can I set up to try

it and then come back and evaluate the

experiment and pick a next one be being

a scientist of your own development I

think is Inc it it's it's

counterintuitive because you would think

that we would just internalize this

stuff just from doing things M but the

science is pretty clear that we we don't

get everything we can out of our

experiences from a learning perspective

unless we're doing it more explicitly so

I would recommend for someone in their

20s to start this self-regulatory

practice what got you into the work that

you do and how did you define your

profession okay so in my past life I was

training to be a scientist environmental

scientist I was like living up in the

Arctic studying the carbon cycle like in

a tent um and I had been a competitive

Runner I had a training partner who was

one of the top ranked guys in the 800

meters in his age group in the country

uh first family of Jamaican immigrants

was going to be the first one to

graduate college Dro dead a few steps

after a

race uh and our sort of Hometown paper

said well he had a heart attack I don't

even know what that means for someone of

that age and health

right and I got curious and eventually I

kind

of worked up the courage or whatever

that sounds silly to say it that way but

um was nervous about it to ask his

family to sign a waiver allowing me to

gather up his medical records did that

turned out he had like a textbook case

of this disease caused by a single

genetic mutation that's almost always

the cause of young athletes dropping

dead and I said we can save some people

from this with more awareness and I

wanted I decided to merge my interests

in sports and science said I want to

write about sudden cardiac death and

athletes for Sports Illustrated which I

grew up with so I got off the science

track I left after my

masters uh kind of weaved my way to

sports illustra I got in there as a temp

pitch this story about sudden cardiac

death and athletes they're like temp sit

down right and then the Olympic Marathon

trials for 2008 US team uh came to

Central Park and the guy ranked fifth in

the country dropped dead like 10 blocks

from our office and then they said don't

you know something about this and so you

know in a week I was able to write a

cover story making it look like we had

done like two years of research in a

week and I became the science writer at

Sports Illustrated it was an

interesting you know I came in there as

a temp six seven years behind people who

were younger than me MH doing sort of

more remedial work for them but I

realized pretty soon that my Oddball

background right I I think I was shaping

up to be like a typical average

scientist but you take those average

science skills and you bring them to

sports magazines like you're like a

Nobel laurate you know um and so I

realized I I could just make my own

ground instead of having to compete with

anybody but the initial impetus for

getting into this merger of sports and

science was was a personal tragedy and

how did you define yourself from a crib

perspective of a writer are you a

scientist how' you I view myself as this

merger between a science writer and

investigative reporter because what

really fires me up is when I view that

there's a really popular misconception

about something really important to

human development and that that's that's

what led to range I mean I was at Sports

Illustrated the 10,000 hours rule work

was the most

famous science in human development

perhaps ever in terms of popular

consumption and I said well I want to

write about it and then I started

reading the research and saying this is

wrong it's the most popular finding in

our field it's maybe the most popular

skill acquisition human development

research ever done and it is not right

and so those you know these things kind

of stick in my brain and I I have to do

something about it 10,000 hours what is

that for someone that's never heard

about it before yeah and what people

think about it probably depends where

they have heard of it if they've heard

of it but it's the idea and scientists

call it the deliberate practice

framework but it's this idea that the

only route to True expertise is through

10,000 hours of so-called deliberate

practice which is this effortful

cognitively engaged like not just

swatting balls at the driving range

you're focusing on correcting errors

kind of practice and that there is no

such thing as Talent differences it's

really just the

manifestation uh of 10,000 hours of you

know of differences in your amount of

hours of delivered practice so you

should start as early as possible and

there's something underlying it this is

a little nerdy but called the monotonic

benefits assumption I know scientists

not going to win any marketing

competitions but that basically means

that the idea that two people at the

same level of performance will progress

the same amount for the same unit of

deliberate practice also false and it's

one of the underlying premises of a

10,000 hour rule yeah because I've

always I've always heard that I mean

it's become a bit of a colloquial phrase

to say you've not put your 10,000 hours

in which means you've not put enough

practice to become a master I I I mean I

mean I was told that if you do 10,000

hours in anything you become a master in

it that's the kind of narrative right

well to take some chess research for

example there's uh people have been

tracked and it takes about 11,053 hours

on average to reach International Master

status in chess so that's one level down

from Grandmas so first of all 10,000

hours in that case would be a little low

but some people made it in 3,000 hours

because they learn a little bit more

quickly other people were continuing to

be tracked past 20,000 hours and they

still hadn't made it so you can have

11,053 hours rule on the average doesn't

actually tell you anything about the

breadth of human skill development so

why why is that so important for me to

understand how does that liberate me

from from wasting my time or aiming at

the wrong thing well fit turns out to be

really important so people learn at

different rates and different things so

finding where you learn better is really

important if you want to maximize your

advantages and I think that goes back to

one of the reasons why people need to

try a bunch of different things CU

you're insight into yourself is really

like limited by your roster of

experiences right um and so you kind of

need to figure out where you have

comparative advantages but for a lot of

people that's so-called skill stacking

where instead of doing the one thing for

10,000 hours you get proficient at a

number of things and overlap them in a

way that makes you very unique and so I

think this idea of just head down doing

the same thing I mean we can should we

go back all the way and talk about the

the research underlying the 10,000 hour

Ru because that's where I first got onto

this I wanted to so I was a walk-on

meaning I wasn't good enough to get

recruited as an 800 meter runner in

college and I ended up being part of a

university record holding relay so I

went from being uh you know a nobody to

being quite good and so I was inclined

to believe this 10,000 hours like yeah

just you know just my hard work and then

when I started reading the research and

I'm looking through the original paper

written in 1993 and the original paper

was done on 30 violinists 30 violinists

at a world-class Music Academy okay so

let's let's start dissecting the the

problems here the first problem was

what's called a restriction of range

these people were already in a

world-class Music Academy already highly

pre-selected pre-selected for something

again for the stat heads here that is

correlated with your dependent variable

which is skill that's a problem if

you're trying to develop a general skill

development framework that would be like

to give an analogy if I did a study of

what causes basketball skill and I used

it as my subject's only centers in the

NBA and I said well height has no effect

on skill in the NBA because they're all

7 feet tall so I've squashed the

variation in that variable so in in my

first book actually did an analytics

project where I took height among

American male adults and height in the

NBA as you might imagine there's a very

high positive correlation between a

height of an American male and their

chance of scoring points in the NBA but

if you restrict the range to only

players already in the

NBA the correlation turns negative

because guards score more points than

other positions mhm so if you didn't

know that if you just did that study

with only NBA players you would tell

parents to have shorter children to have

them score more points in the NBA so

when you don't bring some sense of

what's going on to your research and you

rest strict range that way you can end

up with the wrong message aside from

that Gods score more points or less

points they score more points and

they're shorter ah okay right so if you

if you don't look at the whole

population and you just look at people

who are so highly pre-screened they're

already at the top you can end up with

these sort of backward advice

the other issue that caught my eye when

I first read the study was that there

was they only reported the average

10,000 hours was the average number of

hours of deliberate practice by the the

10 best violinists by the age of 20 and

then there was a second group and a

lower group and they said there was

complete correspondence meaning nobody

who had practiced fewer hours was better

than anyone who had practiced more hours

but they only included the average so I

couldn't tell that so I said oh I would

like to know if that's true can I see

the data to see if that's true and I so

I contacted the you know Andre Ericson a

wonderful guy who was the so father of

the 10,000 hour rule although he hated

that uh moniker actually um and I said

you know can I see the data or the

measures of variance to know how much

variation there was between individuals

and he said well you know people were

inconsistent on their repeated accounts

of their practice so we don't think

that's important I said well everyone

has trouble with getting good data that

doesn't mean they don't report the

measure variance so after I started

criticizing This

research 20 years after the study came

out they did a paper updating it with

some of the actual data and you could

see the original conclusion was wrong

there was not complete correspondence

some people who had practiced less were

better than some people who had practice

more some people had gone way over

10,000 hours some people were way under

and had done better there were all sorts

of other factors that mattered right

like I like to call it the 625,000 hours

of sleep study because the top tier

group got a lot more sleep they were

sleeping like 60 hours a week on average

compared to lower groups and that was a

a huge difference in the study how much

they were sleeping so it could have just

been sleep sleep or but there was just

tremendous individual variation yeah so

this idea of an average completely

obscured the real story which was that

there were actually people who were

practicing less and doing better than

people who practiced more so there were

all one problem after another I just

said you know I'm getting Youth Sports

pitches I'm getting investment pitches

like citing the 10,000 hours rule it's

not right and it's giving the wrong

impression

of how hum devel and this idea that you

need to just Pi something and with it

and that's sampling to try to figure out

where you have your best shot is

worthless and that's wrong and so I

became kind of obsessed with getting

after

that I really want to become successful

in the things that I'm applying myself

to in the season of my life so whether

that's podcasting or starting businesses

my business portfolio is quite varied of

sort of different industries from

everything from sort of psychedelics to

um SpaceX to whatever it might be and so

when I was you know thinking about

sitting down with you today I thought

maybe I'll just tell him where I'm

trying to get to in my life I'm a I'm a

30-year old man so you know I'm I'm not

in the early phases of my career does

that mean for example that I can't make

ground now what phase of your career are

you in I don't know because I had this

18 to 28 thing so I thought maybe I'm a

little bit more rigid and you know there

was research a few years ago from MIT

and Northwestern and the US Census

Bureau that found the average age of a

founder of a fast growing Tech startup

top one in 10,000

guess what the average age was on the

day of founding guess 25 45 and a

50-year-old had a better chance than a

30-year-old but we never hear just like

we never hear the story of these like

Zig zaggers we only hear the Tiger Wood

story we only hear like Mark Zuckerberg

famously said young people are just

smarter when he was 22 do you hear him

saying that anymore no surprise surprise

but we just we never we we like valorize

precocity so I would not say that you're

not in the early stages of your career

you're certainly not by by that metric

and that's not to say that there aren't

tremendous companies or if you know

measured by market cap that some of that

there are these amazing young

Founders but they get outsized attention

compared to what's the norm that that's

another thing that's really important to

me is not to say there aren't acceptions

because there as many different ways to

the top as there are human beings but I

think we're constantly focusing on the

exception when people should at least be

aware of the norm so the average so the

fastest growing did you say Tech

Founders Tech startups but Tech in Tech

in this context also included things in

agriculture right it's not just photos

sharing apps like Tech broadly speaking

which I think is important because it I

think it's fair to say that it's less

likely a 55-year-old would understand

some of the more emerging platforms that

are native to say you know like a Mark

Zuckerberg at 22 who's messing around in

his dorm room with with computers and

the internet yeah I think that's fair

but technology touches a lot of other

areas of the you know it's like

yesterday on the way here there was a I

was learning about a software that I had

never heard of because all of the

computers were down in the airport right

Technologies in all these places that we

that are not as kind of uh don't have

the sort of figure head that's publicly

profiled the same way so if I if I do

want to become okay so I understand that

this season of my life I can do whatever

I want in terms of I can aim at whatever

I want doesn't mean I'm going to be good

at it but if I just want to be more

productive in the goals that I am aiming

at so say you know this podcast means a

lot to me so I want to be more

productive when it comes to figuring out

how to move this podcast forward how to

innovate um how to solve some of the

problems and challenges that we

face what are the first things that

spring to mind when I start speaking

about productivity with a very focused

task I mean I think your a challenge for

you is going to be that this podcast has

gotten so big and you've gotten so

competent at it that you're going to be

in what uh a rut of competence or what

Economist Russ Roberts told me a hammock

of competence you're in an area where

you're so comfortable and so successful

that getting better is going to be

harder because there's disincentive from

changing anything that you're doing

right and you have to take some risks I

mean you know that you're an

entrepreneur if you're going to want to

get better you're going to have to take

some risk I think that's going to be a

difficult thing to do because you know

there are people in this room that

depend on you uh risk for you is risk

for them too and so I think you have to

start thinking about what would be some

smart risks if you want to innovate with

the podcast what might that look like

and finding ways to run small

experiments I'm a huge fan of low stakes

practice right how can you set up some

low stakes practice for what might be a

worthwhile larger experiment and I think

that's the same

for individuals dring in their career

like I love this phras my my favorite my

absolute favorite phrase in range was is

a paraphrase from this woman named

herminia Ibara who's a professor at the

London business school and she studies

how people make work transitions so her

phrase was we learn who we are in

practice not in theory so the thesis of

her work is that there's this idea that

you can just introspect and go forth and

know what you should be doing you know

like like Clark Kent running into a

phone booth and ripping off his and

becoming comes out as Superman but work

is part of identity and it doesn't

change like that from introspect you

actually have to go try something see

how it went what was unexpected what did

you learn that you might be interested

in or or that you're better at that you

didn't what's something that you're good

at that you realize you're not

using and then you make your next step

based on that right and I think when

you're so competent and successful and

getting only you know tons of positive

feedback for something uh it becomes

hard to take risk and so I think that'll

be a challenge for you because if you

take a sufficient amount of risk right

you want to be in your zone of of

optimal push so for anything you're

doing if you're doing practicing

whatever physical skill anything if

you're not at least like 15 20% of the

time failing then you're not in your

zone of optimal push where you're

getting as much better as you possibly

can and I

think when you have something that's

very successful that's hard and so I

would start thinking about what risks

you're willing to take and it doesn't

mean it's a failure if something goes

backward right if the views go down or

whatever metric you're you're measuring

on it's interesting it's supp to see

something it's one of my great

obsessions in life and it's also one of

the things that keeps me up at night

bugs me in the shower is um how to keep

a team conducting experiments and

failing more when they are successful so

when this podcast went to number one in

Europe I hir ahead of failure and her

sole responsibility is to increase the

rate of failure and experimentation in

our team which means just get all of our

different departments we've got

different departments in this particular

business so there's 40 40 odd people in

this company called the D CEO and there

is a production team there is the social

media team there's the commercial team

for example and there's the guest

booking and Logistics team and I I felt

we're actually in La driving down the

road and I was speaking to jamaa who's

the head of the guest booking and

research team and I was saying like one

of the the most important thing now now

that we're number one is that we keep

like disrupting ourselves because

there's going to be some kid like we

were three three years ago that because

of their naivity that they're not

encumbered by all of this sort of like

convention and all this success so hide

a head of failure and experimentation

who's in our team has been working and

now in in the last couple of days we're

running an experiment where every single

one of those departments has essentially

like a failure assistant in it who is

who's because you know what happens with

people they they get busy doing their

job and experimentation and failure is

always secondary to their job so if we

put failure people into the each team

and they drive the experiments they

understand the team they drive the

experiments they measure them and most

importantly they report their failures

and experiments back to the whole team

because there's really transferable

learnings for example there was one the

other day where the social media team

discovered this thing on Tik Tok which

allows us to look at a guest like you

and find your most popular videos ever

on Tik Tok with a click and the social

media team had figured that out which

was really useful for them but then the

research team over here that are booking

guests who are trying to find the best

videos that a David has ever made they

also benefited from just the discovery

of that button because instead of having

to scroll through the entire Tik Tok

they can press one button and see your

most popular videos so it's all there's

this real 1 plus 1 equal 3 getting the

teams to share their fails failures and

experiments so they don't have to fail

in the same ways so what did you just

write down this this brings up so much

stuff because the fundamental problem

you're getting at here is the one called

the explore exploit tradeoff right um

and so explore is what it sounds like

looking for new knowledge or new things

that you can do that'll add value

exploit is taking stuff you're already

good at that you already know and

drilling down on it and this is like the

fundamental challenge for people in

organizations that did good is once

they've find something they're really

good at and they drill down in it

they tend to ditch explore modee yeah

right and balancing that explore exploit

and there's all these of course you know

these like famous business cases like

Kodak invents the digital camera and

scuttles it because they're like why

would we disrupt our own business but

there was this fascinating work led by a

guy named dashen Wong in Northwestern uh

who does like people will do Career

Development studies looking at 20 people

and he'll look at 20,000 people you know

so his work's just fascinating and he

what he saw in this work with his

colleagues was that people tend to have

hot streaks in their careers their best

work tends to come in

clusters most people will only have one

some people will have more than one if

they're lucky and reliably what precedes

a hot Ste he was looking at I think it

was like 26,000 like film directors

artists

scientists reliably what precedes a hot

streak is a period of exploration where

they're trying these different styles

they're going broad they're they're

keeping a smaller team so they can be

nimble they're moving between teams and

then they find something and they they

drill into it and if going to have

another hot streak they do it again they

Zoom back out and they go to this

explore explore explore and then exploit

so they toggle between these modes

instead of staying just in one but the

clear message of his work is that

exploration precedes a hot streak and if

you don't do the exploration you just

settle into exploit at sort of a

middling level then you're you're kind

of sacrificing your your hot streak so

that that was one of the things that

came up for me the other thing was this

you got to something this idea of people

not only doing things that might fit

fail and I think that's great that they

have the title failure right cuz you'll

have

the uh you know Adam Grant who I think

we both know is he he he mentioned me

some once something called the hippo

effect where it's like the opinion of

the highest paid person in the room I

think the is the acronym where their

their signaling is really important for

everyone else so if you're not just

giving lip service like yeah failure is

good but actually giving people that

title I think that's a great signal for

you're underwriting risk you're

underwriting risk for people

psychologically and you're creating what

what scientists who study sort of

networks like groups of teams call an

import export business of ideas and this

is one of the

Hallmarks of organizations and and

ecosystems that learn and adapt to to a

changing world and the import export

business of ideas means you need to have

information flowing through an

organization you have people doing

different things maybe people even

moving teams here and there so I always

think of the engineer uh Bill Gore who

created the company or founded the

company that created gortex and he

fashioned the company based in his

observation that organizations often do

their most impactful work in times of

Crisis because the disciplinary

boundaries go out the window and people

start what can I learn from my neighbor

you know and working together or do he

like to say real communication happens

in the carpool which I think is a funny

saying but I worry about that with more

hybrid and remote work where you can't

necessarily just rely on Serendipity for

people to be sharing these ideas in this

informal way and so I actually think we

have to be a lot more thoughtful about

setting up our own import export

business of ideas internally and it

sounds to me like that's what you're

doing okay so what about then on in an

individual level how do I as an

individual I've got you know lots of

things I'm doing I'm writing some books

at the moment I do the podcast lots of

other things how do I become more

productive within an organization

because there's my to-do lists I've got

10 to-do lists from all of my different

team members who can put things on there

um I get distracted easily I think

because I end up watching a video about

AI on YouTube or about Rockets or

something and I want to I want to get

more done really I want to be more

productive in the time that I spend

working so this is when you know what

you should be doing when I know and you

know there's nothing wrong with

sometimes like watching YouTube and

Rocket like that's you get ideas from

doing kind of stuff myself but T Todo

lists is a lot of to-do lists yeah do

you get most of the stuff done on those

to-do lists it's more so each team from

my chief of staff to my assistant to my

manager has a to-do list on Monday that

they send things to me on and then I go

through there and it's either a task or

it's an approve or it's just letting me

know something and that's kind of how it

works so I at one point had when I was

getting overwhelmed with some stuff I

had a virtual assistant for a little

while and we would categorize like

emails into list a priority b c d all

this stuff and eventually I realized

that was empowering me to do a lot of

low value things I became efficient at

doing things that I shouldn't be doing

so I was seeing this public email

address of mine that when I was

oblivious to it I wasn't answering and

that was fine and but once I knew it was

there I'm like oh I have to answer this

I have to answer this I have to answer

this and so one important step for me

was realizing that only the A-list is

the stuff that's going to get done

because I'm a limited person with a

limited life so one I think it's maybe

you do need to do all that stuff or you

just need to be aware of it but some of

it is just I think there can be a danger

in someone who has a lot of support

resources uh where they can lose some of

the aspect of prioritization where you

just need to say this is the list that's

important other things I might not get

to but for someone like you I would I

would suggest something like not

starting your day with email or

messaging

because you know we were talking a

little bit before about this thing

called the zarnik effect which is this

idea that an unfinished task leaves like

a residue in your brain basically and

makes you it makes it harder for you to

fully transition to doing something

else and because I expect your various

inboxes will always be an unfinished

task right yeah if you start the day

with that no matter what you do the

residue is going to be there for what

you try to switch to next so I'm not

saying don't address your email but I

wouldn't start with I would the day

before what is the thing that if I get

done tomorrow it's going to be a good

day and start with that before you do

the things that might leave residue on

your brain and start multitasking how do

they know that's true have they done

studies on this aonic effect yeah yeah

absolutely I mean you can see you can

give people one you can do it in a

workplace environment where researchers

like Gloria Mark for example will be

tracking everything from someone's

Vision to what they're doing on their

computer to their heart rate variability

and seeing how long it takes them to get

back to a task um increased switching

when there's like like a residue in

their brain so their rate of switching

will go up uh you know some of their

indicators of stress response will go up

or in a cognitive task they'll perform

more poorly if there's something still

stuck in their brain so there's also

sort of laboratory experiments where you

give somebody something don't let them

finish it give them a cognitive task and

you see does it impair their performance

if they weren't allowed to finish the

thing that started

before I want to close off on that point

of just team culture then how to get a

team of people to do really exceptional

Innovative work and to fail faster is

there anything else that's sort of

pertinent to you and I'm saying this

purely selfishly because it's one of the

things I think a lot about even with

this podcast is how to get our teams

failing more often if that's even the

right thing to be aiming at the type of

experiments we should be running how we

should be running them anything else at

all yeah I mean I don't think I don't I

don't lionize failure for its own sake

right it's just I think it's inevitable

if you're experimenting enough that

you'll have some failure but I think one

useful thing to do like a guy I love

who's made a big impression on me named

ed Hoffman was used to be the chief

knowledge officer at Nasa that's like

after NASA had some disasters most every

they did was very successful but

obviously they had some high-profile

disasters he was brought in because they

were deemed not a learning organization

they weren't learning from lessons of

the past and he was brought in to help

create a knowledge system so that people

would learn from the lessons of the past

and one of the things he does in

organizations when he goes in because

now he consults is he goes around he

asks people what are you good at that

we're not

using right and people always have an

answer for that and that leads to well

what's some what's an experiment that we

can run to try to use that thing that

you're good at that we're not using so I

think that can be kind of a foundational

question to help people set up some of

those experiments but also a big impact

would be and this is a tough one you

going ahead and failing in an experiment

because that's going to set the agenda

right but you would actually have to

fail like this can't be you go out for a

jog and you trip on the curve or

something like you have to fail

something of

consequence uh and and then your

reaction to that can set a

tone um so that's on the the team level

so I just I want to really think about

how on an individual level I can become

a better

learner because one of the things I do

obviously for a living is I do this

podcast and I meet all these incredible

people and they say things to me that in

the moment change my life but I feel

like I forget them five minutes later

often some of them stick some of them

don't so I've always wondered how can I

become a better learner people come up

to me in the street and say you might

you must know so many things about so

many things and also my audience they

they tune in every week they listen to

these incredible people how can we

become better Learners what is it we can

do to ret retain information better and

then also bring it into practice in our

lives oh to retain inform okay for

retaining

information one repetition and

familiarity is important right so if

there's something that's really

important to you you should reread it

because the first time you go through if

you're hearing new things new terms

you're using your working memory just to

keep up basically so so to put this in

kind of a simple way like there's

research where you look at school kids

and if they're given um like an essay

about baseball say the kids that are

deemed really good readers and there are

kids who are deemed poor readers and the

the kids who will do the worst on

comprehension are the poor readers who

don't know anything about baseball but

the kids who know about baseball but are

not as good readers will still have

better comprehension than the kids who

are good readers but don't know anything

about baseball if they only get to go

through once because having some

knowledge helps you fit it into what's

called your semantic Network the

spiderweb of all the ideas in your brain

so one going back over things that can

be taking notes whatever it is but when

you learn something new try to fit it

into your semantic Network when you

learn something connect it back to

something you already know so like when

you have these conversations you

probably have a better tendency to

remember things where you say you know

that reminds me of some other guest that

either agrees or disagrees with

something that some other guest said and

you've attached it if you think of your

brain as like the spiderweb things are

attached by threads and if you vibrate

one thread it's more likely to shake

these other ideas into your brain so

when you're learning something new stop

and try to fit it into your existing

base of knowledge if you want to return

better can can I use that to sort of fit

it into an example so I'm thinking of

you you said something about um what is

something I don't use but I'm good at

would the listener that's listening to

this now in order to embed that think of

something that they are not using that

they're good at because then it kind of

brings it into their absolutely okay

absolutely use it as quickly as you can

again repetition but fit it into your

network of ideas like stop if you have

to because you know you can read a ton

but if you're not kind of and and I

think I think reading even things that

you don't retain still change your

sensibility at some level even if you

can't consciously pull up all of the

ideas and statistics and so on but for

things that you really want to be able

to

access connect it to other things that

you already know and someone's called

space repetition like if you can have a

way where you come back to it at

intervals that'll be much better so I

use

this um like readwise as a programming

I'm not like affiliated with them in any

way it's just a thing that I use where

if I have highlights in Kindle books or

ebooks it will feed me back my

highlights at intervals things that I

thought were important

regularly and that's taking advantage of

what's called spaced spaced repetition

where if you you want to actually leave

a space almost to the point of

forgetting something and then if it's

brought up again you're embedding it

better in long-term memory so this is

for for learning anything spaced

repetition language learning all this

kinds of stuff so you would think that

you just repeat a thing a million times

as soon as you have it and that's the

best way to Grapple on to it that's not

the most efficient use of time it's

actually to to space it out and quizzing

yourself is a great way to retain so

there's something called The Generation

effect which is if like if you have to

do highlighting versus uh flash cards

flash card quizzing is much better the

generation effect is being forced to

come up with an

answer primes even if it's wrong in fact

sometimes especially if it's wrong

primes your brain to then retain the

right answer it's actually something

called the hyper correction effect where

if you're really wrong about an answer

you're much more likely to remember the

right answer once it's given to you so

if you're looking up a piece of

information I suggest you guess what

it's going to be before you get the

answer it doesn't matter if you're right

or wrong might feel bad to be wrong but

it doesn't matter you'll better retain

it when you see the right answer but if

I'm wrong then I'm I guess I'm more

shocked so there's even more retention

of that new answer it's Salient I mean

this is this is what this is so this is

one of this kind of quizzing where it

feels hard because you should do it

before you know the answer is something

I wrote about in range called desirable

difficulties these are things that make

learning feel less fluent they are

unpleasant they may slow you down much

better for long-term retention

interesting so the more difficult the

learning the more you learn often I mean

but I guess there can be a case where

something so over your head that you're

not learning anything right but these

desirable difficulties are like one of

the most famous ones is called

interleaving or mixed

practice and this is if you're training

at something you you want to vary the

types of pro so let's give an example

DJing I'm I'm DJing at the moment okay

so I don't know all the skills that go

into DJing but if there's a way to do it

you should try to instead of doing the

same skill over and over and over again

well let me give you let me give you a

research example and then you can Port

it into DJing so in a recent study there

were dozens of uh middle school math

classrooms Middle School of sixth grade

that were assigned to different types of

math learning some of them randomly

assigned some of them got what's called

blocked practice that's you give like

problem type a AAA bbbb

Etc kids make progress fast they're

happy rate their teachers highly Etc

other other classrooms got what's called

interleaved or mixed practice where

instead of doing a followed by B it's

like you took all the problem types

threw them in a hat and Drew them out at

random progress is slower they might be

less happy because they don't feel like

they're getting it but instead of having

to just execute a procedure they're

having to match a strategy to a type of

problem and when the test came along

where everyone has to transfer to new

problems the inter Le group blew the

block Practice Group away it was like

the effect size was like taking a kid

from the 50th percentile and moving them

to the 80th just by arranging the

practice in a way that made it more

difficult what's going on there I think

I mean it seems to be and this this work

for physical learning as well I think

this is one of the reasons why this if

you want why fotsa is like why like 90%

of the best footballers grow up on fotsa

instead of like playing on full-size

pitch um is that it forces you to

instead of doing using procedures

knowledge which is you learn how to

execute this procedure over and over

you're doing making connections

knowledge which is identifying the

structure of a problem and foring out

how to match a strategy to it and so

you're building this like mental

template instead of just an ability to

execute this like flexible template that

can be applied going forward so you're

getting like a broader context of the

challenge versus a very narrow solution

perspective to how the challenge is

solved you're kind of understanding it

from a deeper level right from different

sides and and you're building this

generalizable model in your head of how

to approach it I mean my my favorite and

I'd be the only person to say this but

my favorite study that went into range

was this one the one that surprised me

the most I guess was this one that was

done at the United States Air Force

Academy which is this amazing place for

experiments because they get a thousand

new students every year those students

are randomized to math classes that all

have the same test and same grading and

everything then they are randomized the

next year and randomized again so you

can get these huge experiments

randomizing people to math classes and

they looked at 10,000 students and found

that the teachers who are the best at

getting students to do well on the test

in their own class in their own intro

class right teacher year one has

students who score highly on their test

those students go on to underperform in

the subwing classes and teachers whose

students sometimes rated them lowly

poorly because they thought it was hard

don't do as well on the test the first

year overperform in subsequent classes

and the difference is the way to get

someone to do really well in the test is

to teach this very narrow body of

knowledge that they'll have to execute

at the test the best way to prepare them

for math learning is to give them this

much broader connection of ideas that

will serve them later on so again this

is like to me the theme on every page of

range that would have made a crappy

subtitle is is sometimes what seems the

best in the short term will undermine

long-term

development the tricky thing with that

as you say is I I think about all the

areas and industries that I'm playing in

now so I go do I have the time to go

broad like if I'm learning to DJ at the

moment and at at the moment I'm just

trying to figure out what these [ __ ]

buttons do you know what I mean like

there's all these buttons I'm trying to

press them in the right order but you're

telling me that the thing that's better

for my long-term development might be

just to spend some time understanding

music and how it's made and how and

understanding like the the Beats of

music and make maybe spend some time

making music myself cuz right now I'm

just trying to smash two songs together

at the right time I think this gets at a

fundamental issue that that that maybe I

should have brought up earlier actually

so and it has to do with how you

characterize the different tasks that

you're trying to learn so there was a

period where I was really confused about

the research I was reading in in

building expertise because there were

two camps of

researchers both led by

eminent scientists one that would study

people doing sort of more 10,000 houry

kind of approach same thing over and

over and they would get better and this

other camp that would find if people did

that approach Not only would they not

get better they would often get more

confident but not better which was a bad

combination and sometimes it would get

even worse with really narrow

focus and I could not figure out how to

reconcile these things why are they

finding such different results again I'm

looking through for all these signs of

you know bad data not not finding it

and fortunately um I I gave a talk uh

where I was doing some of the critiquing

of the science underlying the 10,000

hours Rule and the Nobel La Daniel Conan

who wrote Thinking Fast and Slow was

there and someone asked he asked someone

for my email address and like months

later he followed up and invited me to

lunch and we go and have lunch and I'm

like I'm and he was he was interested in

my critique of some of the research and

I was saying I'm really confused you

know what are you working on now I'm

working through my confusion about this

why do people sometimes get better with

narrowly focused practice and why

sometimes don't they he said oh I've

done I've got the paper for you and

basically he referred me to this body of

research about kind versus wicked

learning environments these are terms

coined by a psychologist named Robin

Hogarth kind is like next steps and

goals are clear rules repeat uh it's

based on patterns repetitive patterns

rules never change give me an example

chess golf uh in chess the grandmaster's

advantage is largely based on knowledge

of recurring patterns so you better have

started studying those by age 12 or your

chance of reaching Grandmaster drops

from about one in4 to about 1 and

155 also why it's relatively so easy to

automate uh feedback is quick and

accurate uh not a lot of human behavior

involved work next year will look like

work last year on the other end of the

spectrum are wicked learning

environments where patterns don't just

repeat they might fool you rules may

change if there are any feedback could

be delayed or inaccurate um work next

year may not look like work last year

and so whether or not people get better

with this very Nar in a predictable way

with this very narrow practice depends a

lot on where on that kind to Wicked

Spectrum the the task happens to be

what's an example of a wicked lining

environment so let's say one one of the

examples uh that I loved that he turned

me to was uh in medicine because there's

a lot of areas in medicine where

something is done and the person making

the decision actually never learns of

the consequence of the decision um or

I'd say I would say like judges some

cases in like the criminal justice

system are set up to have maybe the

worst judgment they could have in some

ways because they almost never get

feedback they have like very little they

can do whatever they want and they

almost never get any any feedback but so

in in medicine there was this one

example in one of the studies that I

thought was just interesting and

illustrative where um this this

physician became famous for being able

to diagnose typhoid it's a New York

physician by feeling around palpating

people's tongues feeling around their

tongues with his hand and he could tell

you know we or two before they would

even get it this person's going to get

typhoid and as one of his colleagues

later observed he was a more prolific

spreader of typhoid than even Typhoid

Mary he was spreading it with his hands

by touching their tongue making the

prediction they would get typhoid which

would turn out to be correct so would

reinforce the lesson that he was really

good at prediction that's a really

wicked learning environment where the

feedback he's getting is reinforcing the

exact wrong lesson right but I would say

most of the things that most of us are

doing have feedback that tends to be

delayed

sometimes it's accurate and sometimes

it's not it's never as accurate as like

I hit that golf shot and I see if it

hooks or slices and then I changed the

the club face and and try it again and

so most of what most of us are involved

in increasingly right like work doesn't

next year doesn't look like work last

year for most of us anymore and in fact

Andre Ericson again the guy who did the

research underlying the 10,000 hour rule

when he eventually wrote a book he he he

made this caveat the book that said the

10,000 hours framework uh it applies to

things where we know exactly how to be

good and a coach can watch you do it and

correct everything that you do wrong so

it doesn't apply to most these other

things that most of us do like computer

programming and managing and

Entrepreneurship and all these other

pretty big loophole right in those areas

you want this much broader

toolbox I am I was really compelled by

something I saw you talking about which

was the story of Nintendo and why they

were so successful in the early days

because they have a a very Broad they

take wrote down the quote um a lateral

thinking with withered technology yeah

that started with a guy named gune yokoi

who

was scored poorly on electronics exams

in University and so he had to settle

for a low tier job as a machine

maintenance worker uh at a at a company

in Kyoto that made playing cards with

flowers on them whereas like his more

prestigious peers went to big companies

in Tokyo and the company was in huge

trouble uh it had to diversify if it was

going to survive survive and he knew

that he wasn't equipped to work on The

Cutting Edge but that there was all this

information available that maybe he

could just look for technology that's

already well understood and combine it

in ways that his more specialized peers

couldn't see and so he went and he took

some well-known technology from the

calculator industry some well-known

technology from the credit card industry

and combined them and made handheld

games and those were those were a hit

right that's what made Nintendo which

was a found in a wooden storefront in

19th century that's what turned it into

a to a toy and game Operation so he

moved from machine maintenance to

developing toys and games and his

magnopus was the Game Boy right where um

it was a technological joke in every way

it's like the processor was a decade old

the screen looks like you know rotting

alala or something it's like and it came

out at the same time as color

competitors and it blew them out of the

water because he knew what customers

cared about wasn't color as much as it

was durability affordability portability

battery life game selection by using

well-known technology people could make

games quickly and so he kind of set this

philosophy this lateral thinking with

withered technology that was his phrase

which means taking things that are

already well understood and moving them

somewhere where they're seen as

invention and that actually turns out to

be more the norm than the exception in

terms of technological innovation

particularly sort of later in the 20th

century forward before that it wasn't

necessarily the case much of the 20th

century actually the most impactful

patents if you look at patent research

were authored by teams and individuals

that Dove deeper and deeper into one

area of Technology as classified by the

US patent office but starting in this

sort of Information Age period um you

know particularly 80s and accelerating

forward suddenly it becomes a lot easier

to access information more broadly and

the most impactful patents started to be

authored by teams that include

individuals who've worked in a whole

number of different classes and they're

often merging things from different

areas uh for invention so how important

is focus in this this equation focusing

on one thing because you're talking for

much of this conversation about being

Broad and people will associate that

with being

unfocused yeah it's it's a right I think

the differen is between doing a bunch of

things sort of over your career over

your life or a span and doing attempting

to do a bunch of things at once we can't

technically do a bunch of things at once

like we we don't really multitask we

don't have the capacity to do it we're

actually just toggling between things

really quickly um and it's it's been

shocking to me to look at the research

how how big of an impairment that is for

people's performance particularly

because it takes time to switch and so

you're not again it it's it the the

scientist Gloria Mark who who I think

has been at the Forefront of study of

attention describes your brain as like a

whiteboard where you're doing something

and to do something else you have to

erase and that residue is left and it's

still going to be there when you move to

the new thing for a while and so you you

can't totally get into the next thing if

you're

interrupted um and and it impairs your

performance and it's stressful that's

been the most surprising part to me is

that when people are heart rate

variability is measured and some immune

parameters um that when people switch a

lot like if you just saw how many times

people switched their task you know

email to this other thing to some

notification over a day you'd have a

pretty good bet at predicting their

stress level and their performance level

over the day really yeah they've done

studies on this she has done that she's

hooked people up you know at Big

organizations too like inside Microsoft

and and places like that um where people

are wearing heart rate variability

monitors everything they're doing is

being tracked in the old days she was

like sitting behind people with a

stopwatch but technology obviously

progressed from then um and I think

that's a surprising aspect of it one of

the reasons that email makes people so

stressed is because it leads them to do

this like con I think in one of her

studies people were checking email

office workers were checking email and

average of 77 times a day that's a lot

of switching when you're switching in

and out of email and that just turns out

to a stressful thing because there

there's switching actually takes place

in two uh kind of phases where you the

first phase is is shutting down what you

are doing and the next phase is

activating the rules for the next task

so even if you kind of think you're

doing the same thing like you're working

on focused writing but you're also in a

slack Channel or something with a friend

or colleague those are both writing but

they're not the same style of writing

and so you're still having to activate

different cognitive rules and that that

comes with a switching cost so if I can

do something about it what should I do

to to make sure that I'm both happy um

more productive and healthier I would

again not start your day with something

that is inherently a multitask so if you

cannot start with email I would not

start with it because I view that at

least for me as something that will

start the day with multitasking and will

always feel unfinished like never feel

like it's finished um blockout times

where you designate on your calendar

that this is the only thing that you're

doing and leave some buffer for it

because there's something called the

planning fallacy we always overestimate

how much we can get done in a given

amount of time so I'd say fewer things

on your to-do list fewer things and on

the top maybe even just one thing that's

if I get this done this this was a good

productive day focus on that thing you

know pay yourself first do the important

thing first and really try to have some

when you're trying to be focused it's

important to mingle with people and

exchange ideas when that's what you want

to do but when you really have to be

focused to try to be in a place that's

as distraction free as possible and un

that includes even you know turning down

or off music even though it's Pleasant

and can help your affect and can

motivate but it also does have an

impairment on cognitive function because

you are paying attention to it to some

degree so don't listen to music while

I'm doing my work I mean that's hard to

say because I do it sometimes too

because it can have an energizing effect

or it can have a calming effect and

those are good but it does take up brain

space so you have to balance those how

do they know it takes up brain space you

can see how people perform on tasks when

the music is on and when the music is

off and it's it's a it's it's not as big

a deal if the music is very familiar

where you're kind of like it's not novel

so you're not attending to it the same

way but you know when I'm trying to be

super focused now I'll I'll turn the

music off but if I feel my sort of

motivation waning then maybe I'll tune

it back on but I want to use it

deliberately instead of just having it

in the background all the time because

it takes up a little space if it's and

if it's real noise like decb is a

logarithmic scale so small differences

are actually a big deal but if you go

from I think it's like maybe 70 to 80 DB

that's like the difference of going from

a like a washing machine to a vacuum

cleaner thereabouts in your background

noise that has a

enormous influence on your cognitive

ability and your productivity like like

a 15% decrement in your because of sound

yeah volume s because because you attend

to it you attend I mean our that's how

our brain

like focus is a challenge because this

is not the situation that we evolved in

right we evolved in a situation we're

paying attention to novel stimuli is a

really good thing and sometimes it's

still a very good

thing but it's at odds with a lot of

these modern things that we're trying to

do that are pretty new tasks for for

people what about instrumental music

because I tend to find that if I'm

listening to music that has lyrics in it

then I find it quite distracting when

I'm trying to do some work specifically

writing work or reading work so when I'm

researching guests for the podcast like

I was today in my hotel room I had a

song playing it was a rap song and um it

was I could I could feel my brain subtly

jumping from the screen that I was

reading to the rap lyrics to the screen

to the rap lyrics almost like just

oscillating between the two yeah and I

thought you got to turn that off cuz you

you're not reading I turned it off and I

really made progress but I but I

sometimes when I write like books and

stuff like that I put instrumentals on

and there's actually some apps in the

App Store now that are called like focus

music and they're lyric free music and

maybe like lot not lots of tonal changes

or not very complex maybe repeating I

mean I think that's going to be better

right the less novelty there is for you

to attend to that's better but think

it's also worth trying it with with

nothing and it depends how much you're

pushing yourself right like a tiny an

improvement of motivation or your affect

or feeling good might be worth it if

you're not all the way at the edge

pushing yourself right I don't know if

you've ever been on a there was there

was a time where I was trying to uh you

know do some foreign language lessons uh

that I was listening to while I would be

running and if I started hitting it hard

while I was running I couldn't even

remember what was said because it's you

switch into being really focused right

and so I think it it depends if you're

pushing yourself all the way you need

everything like there there are times

when I'm writing where I'm trying to

balance a lot of ideas in my head and I

almost feel like I'm overheating a

little bit yeah and if I'm in that phase

I I I want every Advantage I can have um

so push the distractions out but but

like there's also times to be to be

pleasant I think I think part of what's

sensible is working in intervals

planning to work in intervals Focus hard

for a little while do the myangelo then

switch to your your little mind where

you're we're doing something that's sort

of more fun and refreshing and maybe let

you incubate for a few minutes also take

a shower take a walk you know what about

notifications uh because you know I have

a lot of notifications I try to turn

them all off but they're still there in

the background and um you was talking

before we got going about this sort of

internal barometer of distraction that

we all have yeah yeah this

is so this is another aspect of of Dr

Mark's Work where she found that we have

this kind of internal mechanism if

you're getting distracted all the time

by notifications or whatever it is and

switching a lot if you say well now I

really have to hunker down I'm going to

get rid of the notifications or whatever

this stuff

is you will start self- interrupting to

maintain the Cadence of interruptions to

which you have become accustomed right

as if we have some internal like

distract ometer that is saying this is

your normal Cadence of interruption I'm

going to continue it by popping into

your brain oh here's this thing I need

to check oh here's this person I didn't

respond to you know you'll self-

interrupt that will go away but not

immediately so if you want to have a

lower Cadence of

interruption you need to like build by

getting rid of those external

interruptions know that you're going to

be self- interrupting for a while and

that'll go down more slowly so it has to

be more habit formation instead of just

today I shall be you know

uninterruptible okay so just want to

make sure I'm clear on this so say that

I get a notification every M every I get

10 notifications a minute and that's

what I'm used to right and then I decide

to turn my notifications off because I'm

used to 10 notifications per minute

you're saying that I will basically

think of 10 things per minute to

interrupt myself with yeah for a while

because that's what I'm used to so we

get comfortable with a certain level of

interruption at a certain Cadence and

even if you we remove the thing that's

interrupting us we'll just replace it

with something else that interrupts us

that amount at that Cadence yes so you

can see in studies where people are

taking cognitive tests if they have

their phone invisible even if it's off

the people who are more phone dependent

or sort of more used to interruptions

they'll have a a bigger impairment on

the test if the phone is even like

visible or around them because they'll

yeah and so it's you know what thing did

I forget to do and I think something

that can help with this is keep a pad

nearby and when that thing pops into

your head of the of what you forgot to

do or who you forgot to respond to write

it down so at least it's maybe that

helps it not stick in your mind where

you're trying to hold it in working

memory like cognitively Outsource it so

at least it's not sitting in there and I

think that can help the adjustment it

makes me think a lot about people that

struggle with sleep and just sleep

hygiene generally because if we're you