Latest / The You Project / #1584 The Workaholics - David Gillespie

Transcript

#1584 The Workaholics - David Gillespie · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: I get a team, welcome to another installing the U projects.
0:03
Speaker 1: Sadly for David Gillespie, Tiffany and Cook is not here
0:06
Speaker 1: for any reason. He fronts up one's a Fortnite is
0:11
Speaker 1: for her, It's not for me, And.
0:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know. I could hear the disappointment
0:16
Speaker 2: in your voice.
0:18
Speaker 1: People say, why don't you see the disappointment in his face,
0:21
Speaker 1: because he's just a black screen when we chat, which
0:24
Speaker 1: I reckon if it if you turned on your camera
0:27
Speaker 1: after two years of no camera, it would freak me out.
0:30
Speaker 2: I wouldn't know what to do. So keep that off.
0:33
Speaker 2: I find it.
0:34
Speaker 1: I actually was interviewing someone the other day and nearly
0:37
Speaker 1: everyone has their camera on, but this who is an
0:40
Speaker 1: academic from the States, and he wanted to have his
0:43
Speaker 1: camera off.
0:44
Speaker 2: So we're in.
0:46
Speaker 1: We're about forty minutes into what turned out to be
0:48
Speaker 1: a sixty minute conversation, and then without any warning, he
0:51
Speaker 1: turned on his camera. And then it kind of threw
0:55
Speaker 1: me because I was so used to anyway, how have
0:58
Speaker 1: you been, mate?
0:59
Speaker 2: What's news? It's news on Planet.
1:00
Speaker 3: You not a lot.
1:04
Speaker 4: I'm just at the moment too busy to write, which
1:06
Speaker 4: is irritating me. So I've just got a lot on.
1:10
Speaker 4: So I find that frustrating when I, you know, look
1:13
Speaker 4: at a look at something that I'm working on and
1:15
Speaker 4: it's and I look at the date that it's been
1:17
Speaker 4: last edited and it's.
1:18
Speaker 3: Like three or four weeks ago. That really irritates me.
1:22
Speaker 2: So what keeps you?
1:23
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I know this is a dumb question,
1:25
Speaker 1: but from my listeners who go who think that this
1:29
Speaker 1: is your main job, which clearly it is, what keeps
1:35
Speaker 1: you busy?
1:35
Speaker 2: Like, what what do you do?
1:37
Speaker 4: Mostly, you know, it's not my work. My day job
1:41
Speaker 4: as a lawyer is pretty neatly confined to work hours
1:46
Speaker 4: because I work for the government. So it's mostly my
1:52
Speaker 4: time consuming hobby of running a handball of European handball.
1:58
Speaker 3: So I have, that's right, I have.
2:02
Speaker 4: I have four children who play European handball and.
2:06
Speaker 3: We run well.
2:07
Speaker 4: I'm the president of the biggest probably the biggest club
2:11
Speaker 4: in Australia and sometimes when there's a lot on that
2:16
Speaker 4: can that can take up a lot of time. And
2:19
Speaker 4: over the last couple of weeks we've had a couple
2:20
Speaker 4: of teams touring in Italy and that has taken a
2:24
Speaker 4: lot of out of ours time. You know, because they're
2:27
Speaker 4: in the opposite time zones.
2:28
Speaker 2: To us, you are the gift that keeps on giving.
2:31
Speaker 2: Like you are hilarious. I remember, I remember when you
2:35
Speaker 2: one day.
2:35
Speaker 1: After knowing you for a couple of years or a
2:37
Speaker 1: year and a half, you just wheeled out free schools
2:40
Speaker 1: dot org. Yes, if you don't know anything about that,
2:44
Speaker 1: we don't have time everyone, but free schools one word
2:47
Speaker 1: dot org.
2:47
Speaker 2: Go check it out.
2:48
Speaker 1: David and a bunch of other inspirational and amazing people
2:52
Speaker 1: have built this phenomenal thing that's just a gift to
2:55
Speaker 1: the world. But have a look at that. But then,
2:57
Speaker 1: after I don't know how long I've known you, maybe three,
3:00
Speaker 1: is you go. I'm the president of the biggest European
3:03
Speaker 1: hand club in Australia, and we've.
3:05
Speaker 2: Got what this was.
3:08
Speaker 1: We'll probably go where we spoke about going, but fuck
3:11
Speaker 1: who knows? Tell Like I kind of know what it
3:16
Speaker 1: is because of my sporting background, but if I'd probably
3:19
Speaker 1: fuck some of it up, Tell our listeners what it is.
3:23
Speaker 4: So European handball is probably the second biggest sport in
3:26
Speaker 4: Europe after soccer. It's their sort of off season to
3:31
Speaker 4: soccer sport, so it's the one they play indoors. It's
3:34
Speaker 4: played on a futsal sized court, so twenty meters by
3:36
Speaker 4: forty meters.
3:37
Speaker 3: With footsal sized goals.
3:39
Speaker 4: And the difference between it and futsal is that you
3:42
Speaker 4: throw the ball rather than kick it, and so it's
3:45
Speaker 4: a smaller size. It's still a soccer ball, but it's
3:47
Speaker 4: a smaller size so you can hold it in your hand.
3:50
Speaker 4: Very exciting sport, Unlike soccer, lots and lots of goals scored,
3:55
Speaker 4: you know, so in a typical game, each side will
3:59
Speaker 4: score thirty goals, so very very high speed, and they're
4:03
Speaker 4: running like it's like basketball in the sense that it's
4:06
Speaker 4: played at either end of the court, so there's a
4:08
Speaker 4: lot of running forty meters in very very short bursts.
4:12
Speaker 4: And look, everyone's going to get a chance to see it,
4:16
Speaker 4: you know, as they do in Australia once every four
4:18
Speaker 4: years in the Olympics in the next couple of weeks,
4:21
Speaker 4: and I'd really recommend you seek it out and take
4:23
Speaker 4: a look at at It is a very exciting sport.
4:26
Speaker 4: And as I said, we've currently got two teams competing
4:29
Speaker 4: at a competition in Italy and the girls team just
4:32
Speaker 4: won overnight and the boys team came.
4:34
Speaker 3: In second, so wow, pleased with that. Yeah, So it's.
4:41
Speaker 4: It's a rare, rarefied sport here in Australia, so it
4:45
Speaker 4: makes it pretty easy for kids here to get into
4:46
Speaker 4: the Australian team. But it's an exciting sport. And you know,
4:53
Speaker 4: I've never played it, but I love watching it and
4:55
Speaker 4: I love seeing the kids play it.
4:57
Speaker 2: Wow.
4:57
Speaker 1: What is the the duration of the Is it quarters
5:02
Speaker 1: or just two hards?
5:03
Speaker 4: Two halves, two half hour halves? A team of seven
5:08
Speaker 4: players on court and unlimited constant player rotation often between
5:15
Speaker 4: plays you need. So each team really usually has fourteen
5:18
Speaker 4: to sixteen players in it and they're just constantly going
5:22
Speaker 4: on and off court because that much running you need
5:25
Speaker 4: to be able to take people off courts. So the
5:27
Speaker 4: average average professional player, like a male, will throw the
5:31
Speaker 4: ball at about somewhere between one hundred and twenty one
5:34
Speaker 4: hundred and forty kilometers an hour at a goalie where
5:38
Speaker 4: they as theoretically as close as they can get a
5:41
Speaker 4: six meters away because that's the goal circle. But they're
5:43
Speaker 4: allowed to throw it from anywhere if they're in the
5:45
Speaker 4: air and no.
5:46
Speaker 3: Part of their bodies touching the floor.
5:47
Speaker 4: So obviously a lot of people jump a long way
5:50
Speaker 4: into the air to get those shots.
5:52
Speaker 3: Into the goalie.
5:54
Speaker 4: So it's look like I said, I recommend if you
5:57
Speaker 4: don't know what it is, take a look at it
5:58
Speaker 4: in the Olympics.
6:00
Speaker 3: It's a pretty exciting sport.
6:01
Speaker 4: And if you've got kids who want to play it
6:02
Speaker 4: then you're in Brisbane, then send them along to Brisbane
6:04
Speaker 4: Handball Club, which is the club I run.
6:07
Speaker 1: Have we ever had a team in the Olympics playing handball?
6:11
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we did in the Sydney Olympics, and of
6:13
Speaker 4: course they came dead last. You know, there's thirty million
6:17
Speaker 4: people playing this game in Europe. We've got they've got
6:20
Speaker 4: a bit of a head start on us. But you know,
6:23
Speaker 4: we're doing our best as we can to develop local
6:25
Speaker 4: talent and those kids that we're training today, hopefully by
6:28
Speaker 4: twenty thirty two will be good enough to be competitive
6:32
Speaker 4: in the Olympics. Has an Australian ever gone overseas and
6:35
Speaker 4: not necessarily become a superstar, but just you know, played at.
6:38
Speaker 3: A yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. No.
6:42
Speaker 4: One boy from our club's just returned from doing semi
6:46
Speaker 4: pro in a German club. It happens, happens every few years,
6:51
Speaker 4: you know, a particularly talented individual go over and play
6:54
Speaker 4: in Germany, France somewhere like that.
6:57
Speaker 1: This wasn't where we were going to go. But fuck,
6:59
Speaker 1: and I'm just thinking about it. When when you like,
7:04
Speaker 1: because you work with or you you know, you built
7:07
Speaker 1: this amazing aforementioned resource for kids for students, and you
7:13
Speaker 1: work with athletes, and you work with a lot of
7:15
Speaker 1: different people. When we think about people who and your son,
7:20
Speaker 1: is it James that I spoke with? Yeah, James, yep, James,
7:23
Speaker 1: who's a fucking superstar as well, who's built an amazing
7:27
Speaker 1: resource for people?
7:29
Speaker 2: What what do you think are the variables other than
7:34
Speaker 2: talent and intelligence that make people succeed or that makes
7:39
Speaker 2: people persistence.
7:41
Speaker 4: It's not giving up, you know, the difference between people
7:45
Speaker 4: who succeed and people who don't, you know, the people
7:49
Speaker 4: who don't give up just before they do.
7:51
Speaker 3: You know, that's and it's hard.
7:53
Speaker 4: Look, it's really hard in my experience to be to
7:57
Speaker 4: stand alone and keep going right, And I think you've
8:00
Speaker 4: probably I think we've talked about this before with you.
8:03
Speaker 4: You know that's you you do something like start this
8:06
Speaker 4: podcast and and have three dogs, you know, and their
8:11
Speaker 4: next door neighbor listening to it and everyone telling you
8:14
Speaker 4: you're a bloody idiot. Well that's that's the way it
8:17
Speaker 4: is at the start of everything. And it's persistence that
8:21
Speaker 4: you know, persistence and an eye on quality, no compromise,
8:24
Speaker 4: do it the way you want to do it, you know,
8:28
Speaker 4: and and persist in that way, having the confidence that
8:31
Speaker 4: you you know what you're doing and you're onto something
8:35
Speaker 4: that that'd be my rule of some no guarantees, of course.
8:39
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, it's like I
8:42
Speaker 1: could be persistent forever, but I'm never going to run
8:44
Speaker 1: one hundred meters in nine and a half seconds or
8:47
Speaker 1: sing on brod.
8:48
Speaker 4: Yeah.
8:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've got to. You've got to.
8:50
Speaker 4: You've got a temper the persistence with realism. I guess
8:54
Speaker 4: I've been watching over the last few weeks because one
8:58
Speaker 4: of my sons suggested I at a show that completely
9:01
Speaker 4: passed me by in the early naughties called Friday Night Lights.
9:06
Speaker 4: I don't know if you've ever seen it.
9:09
Speaker 2: Is that about the college football kids or.
9:12
Speaker 3: High school football kids.
9:13
Speaker 4: So it was a five series thing that in sort
9:16
Speaker 4: of two thousand and six through twenty eleven, and I
9:19
Speaker 4: find it really interesting for a number of reasons. One
9:23
Speaker 4: of them is just some of the sayings that come
9:26
Speaker 4: out of the coach's mouth, because it sort of focuses
9:28
Speaker 4: on the coach of this football team who's repeatedly successful,
9:32
Speaker 4: and he focuses on, you know, the idea that the
9:35
Speaker 4: team is always greater than the sum of the parts,
9:38
Speaker 4: which is something a theme I pick up in in
9:41
Speaker 4: one of my psychopath books.
9:43
Speaker 3: Because it's an important thing. We can talk about that
9:45
Speaker 3: some other day.
9:46
Speaker 4: But one of the things he said, one of the
9:48
Speaker 4: sayings he said just this really caught my ear was
9:52
Speaker 4: you know, success is not the goal, it's a byproduct.
9:56
Speaker 3: And I think that really captures it.
9:58
Speaker 4: You know, if you set out with the aim of
10:02
Speaker 4: succeeding at whatever it is, and that's where you're driving
10:06
Speaker 4: the whole time, then you probably will fail. If you
10:09
Speaker 4: set out with the aim of doing everything the way
10:12
Speaker 4: you want to do it, in the way you think
10:14
Speaker 4: it should be done, in the way no one else
10:16
Speaker 4: is doing it, then success will be a byproduct. And yeah,
10:23
Speaker 4: that was just one of the things coming out. The
10:25
Speaker 4: other reason I find that showed really interesting is because
10:28
Speaker 4: it's about high schools in America between two thousand and
10:32
Speaker 4: six and twenty eleven, which they wouldn't have known it
10:35
Speaker 4: at the time, but is really really a shocking view
10:41
Speaker 4: for someone from today. A high school student looking at
10:44
Speaker 4: that show today would not recognize it. Not a single
10:48
Speaker 4: person has a mobile phone, and if they do, it
10:52
Speaker 4: is a you know, it's a flip phone where the
10:55
Speaker 4: most sophisticated thing you can do on it is you know,
10:58
Speaker 4: type of text using the nine numbers in the correct order.
11:04
Speaker 4: It's a really interesting insight into the way the social
11:07
Speaker 4: dynamics of that high school work. Where there are no phones,
11:12
Speaker 4: where no one is an addict, where.
11:16
Speaker 3: You know, no one is anxious and depressed.
11:21
Speaker 4: It's for a show that covered lots of social themes
11:25
Speaker 4: at its time, that can cover teen pregnancy and violence
11:31
Speaker 4: and gang warfare and drugs and alcohol and all that
11:36
Speaker 4: stuff all covered in that show. Not a single thing
11:40
Speaker 4: about the vice addiction, not a single thing about anxiety
11:44
Speaker 4: and depression.
11:45
Speaker 3: It's a real insight.
11:47
Speaker 1: It's like a time capsule, isn't it that.
11:49
Speaker 4: Absolutely and at a critical time, like just before the
11:54
Speaker 4: iPad was was released into the market, and towards the
11:59
Speaker 4: end of the show in the fifth series, which was
12:00
Speaker 4: filmed in twenty eleven, a few of the kids are
12:03
Speaker 4: starting to have Apple phones, and you see the effect
12:07
Speaker 4: of them taking photographs of things as starts to become
12:10
Speaker 4: a theme in the show.
12:12
Speaker 3: But it's just the start.
12:13
Speaker 4: And when you compare it to today, one of the things
12:16
Speaker 4: you notice about lots of extraordinary things happening in this
12:19
Speaker 4: show that normally were happening today every kid would have
12:24
Speaker 4: their phone out.
12:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
12:27
Speaker 1: What do you think is the relationship between the idea
12:32
Speaker 1: of success? You know, people, like a lot of people,
12:34
Speaker 1: especially that I've worked with over the years, Like one
12:37
Speaker 1: thing that everybody has in common when they come to
12:39
Speaker 1: a gym, or they come to a trainer, or they
12:41
Speaker 1: come to talk to someone like me, is that they
12:44
Speaker 1: want to create some kind of change, you know, thinking, habits, behaviors, outcomes,
12:49
Speaker 1: and they you know, so we talk about what they
12:51
Speaker 1: want to do be create change, We talk about what
12:54
Speaker 1: their version of success is. And for me, an observation
12:58
Speaker 1: and an experienced hundreds of times is I helped people
13:03
Speaker 1: get where they wanted to go, only for them to
13:06
Speaker 1: discover that that wasn't really where they needed to be.
13:10
Speaker 1: Right In other words, very few people got to their
13:14
Speaker 1: ideal weight or size or shape or bank balance or position.
13:20
Speaker 1: And when I'm content, very few people. What do you
13:24
Speaker 1: think that's about?
13:25
Speaker 2: That success?
13:26
Speaker 1: Idea of success and the experience of contentment or satisfaction.
13:33
Speaker 4: Because you can never be the top of the tree
13:35
Speaker 4: no matter what in this world. If I were to
13:39
Speaker 4: say to you, Craig, I'm just going to drop a
13:41
Speaker 4: billion dollars into your account, you know, as I would,
13:44
Speaker 4: because I like you. Do you think that would make
13:47
Speaker 4: you happy? I think what it would do is make
13:51
Speaker 4: you start, make you start comparing yourself to people who
13:56
Speaker 4: have two billion dollars in their bank account. And if
13:59
Speaker 4: you had two billion dollars, as you might start comparing
14:01
Speaker 4: yourself to people who have three billion dollars. It's a
14:04
Speaker 4: natural human thing, and this is not a bad thing.
14:08
Speaker 4: But humans have ambition. Humans always want to be better
14:11
Speaker 4: than they are, And even when they get to the
14:14
Speaker 4: place where they think they are better, there's always someone
14:18
Speaker 4: better than them. There's always someone richer than them, there's
14:21
Speaker 4: always someone better built than them, there's always someone younger
14:23
Speaker 4: than them. You know, there's always someone better looking than them.
14:27
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter what you do. If you're on that
14:30
Speaker 4: treadmill of the only thing motivating you is to be
14:34
Speaker 4: better than the guy next to you. There'll always be
14:37
Speaker 4: a better guy than the guy next to you that
14:39
Speaker 4: you've got to aim for. And it's a self defeating
14:43
Speaker 4: way of approaching life, you know. It's I don't know
14:49
Speaker 4: how to do it. I know I have done it,
14:51
Speaker 4: I know, and I don't know that I could give
14:53
Speaker 4: a guidebook on how to achieve it. But I know
14:56
Speaker 4: that I'm very zin about stuff like that. I don't
15:01
Speaker 4: look at other people's cars, phones, bank balances, you know,
15:06
Speaker 4: whatever it is, and I find it a very peaceful
15:10
Speaker 4: way to live, if you like.
15:12
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, well, comparison is the thief of joy or
15:15
Speaker 1: whatever they say.
15:16
Speaker 2: But I remember, I don't want to bore my listeners,
15:19
Speaker 2: but just quickly.
15:19
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever told you this, but I
15:22
Speaker 1: kind of woke up metaphorically when I was in my
15:24
Speaker 1: mid thirties and I had all these businesses and one
15:26
Speaker 1: hundred staff, and things were going great, and all my
15:30
Speaker 1: businesses were making money, and I was writing for the
15:33
Speaker 1: Herald Son in Melbourne, I was working on radio, and
15:35
Speaker 1: it was maybe the most miserable time in my life.
15:38
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that all of those things caused
15:41
Speaker 1: the misery, but it was such an interesting place for
15:45
Speaker 1: me to be, and I remember having an epiphany thinking, essentially,
15:50
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me?
15:52
Speaker 2: You know?
15:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, look, I wish I wish I could explain, you know,
15:57
Speaker 4: maybe I'd have to study some psychology or something. It's
16:00
Speaker 4: a bit, but there's definitely some power in the I
16:05
Speaker 4: guess the Zen notion of not comparing yourself to others.
16:10
Speaker 4: Compare yourself to yourself by all means. I would say,
16:13
Speaker 4: always compare yourself to yourself. Always be better but in
16:17
Speaker 4: everything than you were yesterday. But but that'd be the
16:23
Speaker 4: limit of comparison in my view.
16:25
Speaker 2: Are you ambitious?
16:27
Speaker 1: Not necessarily in a money grabbing, fucking megla maniacal kind
16:31
Speaker 1: of way. There's a word I don't use that often,
16:34
Speaker 1: but are you ambitious?
16:36
Speaker 3: I like growing things. I like.
16:40
Speaker 4: If I look back over my life, when I've always
16:43
Speaker 4: been happiest is when I'm starting at the bottom of
16:45
Speaker 4: something and making it bigger than it was the day before.
16:49
Speaker 4: So with the handball club, the thing I like about
16:52
Speaker 4: that is growing it, growing it from nothing and making
16:56
Speaker 4: it bigger. With free schools, it's growing that, you know,
17:01
Speaker 4: with the books and the message is there. It's about
17:05
Speaker 4: spreading that word and getting as many people on board
17:08
Speaker 4: with it as I possibly can. So I guess my
17:11
Speaker 4: motivation is growing things. Yeah, I guess so in that way. Yeah,
17:15
Speaker 4: I am ambitious.
17:17
Speaker 1: What's your Sorry to interrupt, but as you're talking about
17:20
Speaker 1: all these awesome things that you've built, it occurs to
17:23
Speaker 1: me that none of those, other than maybe the books,
17:27
Speaker 1: made you any dough. Although I know you're not going
17:30
Speaker 1: broke anytime soon. But this is a weird question. But
17:34
Speaker 1: what is I was going to say, what's your relationship
17:37
Speaker 1: with money? Or how do you you not not as
17:39
Speaker 1: a construct for everyone, but how do you view money?
17:44
Speaker 4: As long as I am making enough to not have
17:49
Speaker 4: it limit what I want to do, yeah, then that's enough.
17:55
Speaker 4: That's my view of it. So you know, it's not
17:59
Speaker 4: about having a giant pile of money. It's about making
18:04
Speaker 4: sure that if my kids, I don't know, I want
18:07
Speaker 4: to do X, Y or Z. You know, we're getting
18:09
Speaker 4: beyond the point that of that with these kids. Now
18:12
Speaker 4: they're all, you know, adults and can look after themselves.
18:14
Speaker 4: But when they were kids, if they wanted to do something,
18:19
Speaker 4: I never wanted to be the answer. I can't let
18:22
Speaker 4: you do that because I don't have the money for it.
18:24
Speaker 4: So I always worked to have enough money that that
18:27
Speaker 4: was never the case, and that if that men having
18:31
Speaker 4: three jobs at meant having three jobs, you know, which
18:34
Speaker 4: I've done.
18:35
Speaker 3: So it's you know, but that's the motivator.
18:41
Speaker 2: Are you work aholic?
18:43
Speaker 4: I don't like not working. I find I find I
18:48
Speaker 4: get bored really really really quickly if I'm not got
18:51
Speaker 4: something to do. So if that's a workaholic, then yeah,
18:54
Speaker 4: I guess I am.
18:56
Speaker 1: But I think also you and I probably similar in
18:59
Speaker 1: that I'm well, very different obviously in many ways, but
19:02
Speaker 1: similar in that, like I don't, I don't know about you,
19:08
Speaker 1: but for me, nearly everything that I do that that is,
19:13
Speaker 1: you know, falls under the banner of work or career
19:16
Speaker 1: or income or whatever.
19:18
Speaker 2: It doesn't. And I know this is cheesy, but it's
19:20
Speaker 2: just true. For me. It doesn't feel like work.
19:24
Speaker 1: Like I've had jobs when I was young, like real
19:27
Speaker 1: jobs that were just like the whole purpose was too.
19:30
Speaker 3: Oh. Yeah, I agree with you. Look, I absolutely agree
19:33
Speaker 3: with you.
19:34
Speaker 4: I've definitely had many jobs, particularly when I was young.
19:37
Speaker 4: You know, when I was doing two or three jobs.
19:38
Speaker 4: One of them was working in a night out, and
19:40
Speaker 4: you know that felt like work. Its entire purpose was
19:45
Speaker 4: to earn money, you know, and nothing I.
19:49
Speaker 3: Do today feels like work. You know.
19:53
Speaker 4: The things I'm doing today are things that I don't
19:56
Speaker 4: mind doing.
19:57
Speaker 3: Some of them I.
19:58
Speaker 4: Prefer to others, And if I have a choice, I'd
20:00
Speaker 4: do some things more than others.
20:02
Speaker 1: Well, you and I were chatting before we went live,
20:05
Speaker 1: and I'm a sixty three baby, I'm still sixty I'm
20:08
Speaker 1: sixty one later in the year, and you're a sixty
20:10
Speaker 1: six baby.
20:14
Speaker 2: As you get older, how.
20:18
Speaker 1: How do you manage your Maybe you don't think about this,
20:22
Speaker 1: but I don't mean mental health in I really mean
20:26
Speaker 1: more mind health and cognitive function. Like do you consciously
20:30
Speaker 1: do things to keep your mind and your brain high performance?
20:35
Speaker 1: Or is that just a byproduct of constantly creating, you know, working, learning, evolving?
20:42
Speaker 2: Is that just an outcome or is that something that
20:45
Speaker 2: you think about.
20:46
Speaker 4: I don't think about it until you just asked me.
20:49
Speaker 4: But now that you have asked me, I am thinking
20:50
Speaker 4: about it, don't I don't intentionally do anything other than sleep.
20:57
Speaker 4: Sleep is vitally important to brain function, right, absolutely vitally
21:04
Speaker 4: important to cognitive function. By the end, of the day,
21:07
Speaker 4: you're basically drunk in terms of your capacity of your
21:09
Speaker 4: brain to function.
21:11
Speaker 3: And that's the way.
21:14
Speaker 4: That's just a byproduct of the way our brain works,
21:16
Speaker 4: which is it burns poly unsaturated fats to work. You know,
21:22
Speaker 4: that's why it takes twenty five percent of our energy.
21:26
Speaker 4: You know. It's like also, I don't know if you
21:28
Speaker 4: know this, but how our eyes work is the first
21:30
Speaker 4: time I discovered the way our eyes work, I was
21:33
Speaker 4: amazed at the system which is essentially to burn poly
21:38
Speaker 4: unsaturated fats for them to work at all. And we
21:43
Speaker 4: have all these complex systems in our eyes to sweep
21:46
Speaker 4: away the garbage. And interesting thing, by the way, is
21:50
Speaker 4: because we've significantly increased the amount of Amiga six fat
21:53
Speaker 4: in our diet and evolution designed our eyes to work
21:56
Speaker 4: on a balance between Amga three and a Mega six fats.
22:01
Speaker 4: The systems designed to sweep away the garbage don't work
22:04
Speaker 4: on the garbage from Amiga six fats, which means that
22:07
Speaker 4: that garbage builds up in our eyes, which is why
22:09
Speaker 4: macular degeneration is such a major problem in Australian society
22:13
Speaker 4: today because the outcome of consuming too much Amiga six fat,
22:18
Speaker 4: which is in seed oils, which we've talked about ad
22:20
Speaker 4: nauseum is that your eyes don't work because they can't
22:25
Speaker 4: be cleared of the garbage. A similar thing occurs in
22:29
Speaker 4: your brain, by the way.
22:30
Speaker 3: So.
22:32
Speaker 4: Having a diet relatively low in a Mega six fat,
22:37
Speaker 4: which means keeping seed oil out of your diet, improves
22:39
Speaker 4: cognitive function because the systems designed to clear your brain
22:46
Speaker 4: built by evolution on the assumption that you're going to
22:50
Speaker 4: have about the same amount of Amiga six and am
22:53
Speaker 4: a Mega iie fats in your diet. And so when
22:56
Speaker 4: a modern Australian with about twenty five times as much
22:59
Speaker 4: amigas as they have a Mega three tries to operate
23:03
Speaker 4: a brain on that fuel mixture, bad things happen. And
23:07
Speaker 4: the bad things I'm talking about are Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Yeah, so,
23:14
Speaker 4: and that's why we're seeing those things accelerate at epidemic proportions.
23:18
Speaker 4: So I guess the shorter answer to your thing is,
23:22
Speaker 4: if you're looking at day to day cognitive function, sleep
23:25
Speaker 4: is vitally important because it's the only time your brain
23:28
Speaker 4: gets to clean out all the garbage. If you're looking
23:31
Speaker 4: at longer term cognitive function, get a mega six out
23:35
Speaker 4: of your diet.
23:38
Speaker 1: And also we know, I mean, your brain's whatever it is,
23:41
Speaker 1: eighty percent or ninety percent water, So being dehydrated fucks
23:45
Speaker 1: up cognitive function. Booze as you alluded to sleep of course.
23:49
Speaker 4: Well, it's not so much the dehydration from booze as
23:52
Speaker 4: the aldehyde. So alcohol is very effectively turned into a
23:57
Speaker 4: really dangerous aldehyde in our bloodstream, and we've got systems
24:03
Speaker 4: designed by evolution to deal with that in relatively low quantities,
24:07
Speaker 4: the kind of quantities you might get from showering down
24:10
Speaker 4: on fermented fruit. But at the kind of quantities you're
24:15
Speaker 4: consuming when you binge drink, you're really overloading that system
24:19
Speaker 4: to the point where you really are doing serious aldehyde damage. Now,
24:23
Speaker 4: the interesting thing is that aldehydes are bad for us
24:26
Speaker 4: wherever they come from. So we get them from smoking
24:29
Speaker 4: or inhaling any kind of anything that's burned, so that's acroline,
24:32
Speaker 4: which is an aldehyde. We get a settle aldehyde from alcohol,
24:36
Speaker 4: and we get four hne the deadliest of them, all
24:39
Speaker 4: from consuming seed oils, and all of them screw up
24:41
Speaker 4: our brain. So it's not people when they talk about
24:48
Speaker 4: it alcohol and say why it's bad for you?
24:51
Speaker 3: The dehydration often comes up, but that's not really the point.
24:55
Speaker 3: It's the aldehyde really screwing up our brain and killing
24:58
Speaker 3: off brain cells at really stupendous volumes.
25:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know what else is bad for our brain,
25:05
Speaker 2: Stress and anxiety, isn't it?
25:08
Speaker 3: Yeah?
25:08
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Yeah, not as bad as aldehydes, but yeah, you
25:14
Speaker 4: put yourself in a high dopamine state, which is what
25:18
Speaker 4: stress and anxiety is. And yeah, that's not a good
25:21
Speaker 4: thing for your brain either.
25:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and what about an addiction.
25:25
Speaker 1: By the way, Yeah, I feel like in it. I
25:31
Speaker 1: use this term before we went live, and I use
25:34
Speaker 1: it with some trepidation around you.
25:35
Speaker 2: But it's essentially the psychology of aging. And by that
25:39
Speaker 2: all I mean is, you know.
25:43
Speaker 1: How people think about aging and how people talk about
25:49
Speaker 1: their possibilities and potential at a given age, which is
25:52
Speaker 1: almost like this cultural programming of oh, well, you know,
25:55
Speaker 1: he's in the golden years now, or like I take
25:59
Speaker 1: my dad to the months a week, he trains with
26:01
Speaker 1: the next those physiologist another time, and he goes once
26:04
Speaker 1: by himself and he's eighty five and you know his
26:09
Speaker 1: you know, he's not running one hundred meters in ten
26:11
Speaker 1: seconds or a marathon in three hours, but his level
26:15
Speaker 1: of physiological function and strength and balance and coordination, and
26:19
Speaker 1: I would think all of that is similar to someone
26:22
Speaker 1: who's maybe sixty five to seventy what we would loosely
26:25
Speaker 1: call biological age. And I don't know, I just feel
26:31
Speaker 1: like there's a mentality that people get, or a point
26:36
Speaker 1: at time, point of time where people get where they
26:39
Speaker 1: essentially go, Well, you know, father time or mother time
26:43
Speaker 1: or whatever has caught up with me.
26:46
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
26:48
Speaker 4: Well, they're probably right. I mean, your sort of muscle
26:51
Speaker 4: mass is declining after thirty as a consequence of normal.
26:55
Speaker 2: Aging with it without an intervention.
26:58
Speaker 3: Without an intervention.
26:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, and bone mass, you know, is you know, on
27:04
Speaker 4: a similar trajectory, and there's probably not a lot you
27:09
Speaker 4: can do about bone mass.
27:11
Speaker 3: But the.
27:14
Speaker 4: I guess there's a reality there that people have to accept,
27:18
Speaker 4: which is that there are two ways of doing life.
27:23
Speaker 4: The dominant form of it on this planet is what
27:27
Speaker 4: I would call it. You know, I think we've talked
27:29
Speaker 4: about this before, the big Vira approach, which is, if
27:33
Speaker 4: you were the you know, the ultimate I guess pen
27:36
Speaker 4: maker in the sky and you had to decide how
27:39
Speaker 4: you're going to invest your resources. If you wanted to
27:42
Speaker 4: ensure that there were pens around on your planet.
27:45
Speaker 3: You could.
27:46
Speaker 4: You could take the approach of saying, you know what
27:47
Speaker 4: I'm going to do. I'm going to spend thousands of
27:50
Speaker 4: dollars per pen. I'm going to make a mont Blanc
27:52
Speaker 4: pen that never wears out. It's going to be absolutely fabulous, this.
27:57
Speaker 3: Thing it is.
27:57
Speaker 4: You know, it'll last one thousand years, there's no trouble whatsoever.
28:02
Speaker 4: Or I'm going to take the same amount of money
28:04
Speaker 4: and I'm going to and I'm going to churn out
28:06
Speaker 4: ten thousand big biros. Well, for most forms of life
28:12
Speaker 4: on this planet, evolution chose the big Biro approach, which
28:16
Speaker 4: is shit happens. You're going to lose some big biros,
28:21
Speaker 4: but it doesn't matter because we're producing ten thousand a minute, right,
28:25
Speaker 4: So yeah, exactly.
28:29
Speaker 3: And they all get there in the end.
28:31
Speaker 4: You know, either way, stuff gets written and so it's
28:36
Speaker 4: perfectly viable. By the way, and I've read books about this.
28:39
Speaker 4: The mathematics is viable, and in fact, I think I
28:42
Speaker 4: can't name them off the top of my head, but
28:43
Speaker 4: there are life forms that pursue this approach where you
28:48
Speaker 4: do go the mont Blanc pen approach, which is this
28:51
Speaker 4: thing it never dies, right, it just continuously regenerates. It's
28:55
Speaker 4: enormously resource intensive, it has to be fed the entire time,
28:59
Speaker 4: takes a lot of endge, but it lasts forever. Trouble is,
29:02
Speaker 4: if a truck runs over it, it's just as dead
29:06
Speaker 4: as the as the big biro is or you know. So,
29:10
Speaker 4: evolution has taken the approach that numbers win every time.
29:14
Speaker 4: So if you're going to produce a ten thousand things
29:17
Speaker 4: a minute, that means, unfortunately, that we go the less
29:20
Speaker 4: intended energy intense route of these things age. So once
29:25
Speaker 4: you hit reproductive the end of reproductive usefulness, which is
29:29
Speaker 4: about forty, which by the way is a significant extension
29:33
Speaker 4: on what evolution programmed into us anyway, which is about thirty,
29:38
Speaker 4: there's really no point keeping you alive as far as
29:41
Speaker 4: evolution is concerned, as long as you're capable of producing
29:44
Speaker 4: the next generation. So everything after that is a bonus,
29:48
Speaker 4: and your body is in system decline at that point
29:52
Speaker 4: where you know there's no real need from an evolutionary
29:57
Speaker 4: perspective for you to stay alive, but you know you can't.
30:04
Speaker 1: Oh god, if you're feeling flat, everybody right, But you're not.
30:08
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if you're my age, you're definitely
30:11
Speaker 1: not needed.
30:11
Speaker 2: Same with absolutely you just dead. Wait, No, we're just kidden.
30:18
Speaker 2: We're just kidding.
30:20
Speaker 1: So, I mean, we talk a lot. We'll just we'll
30:23
Speaker 1: wrap up in a few minutes. But we talk a
30:24
Speaker 1: lot about, for want a better term or a more
30:28
Speaker 1: specific term, the relationship that we have with technology and
30:32
Speaker 1: the potential impact of the way that we individually use technology.
30:36
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about young people. You're kind of
30:41
Speaker 1: you're intertwined with tech. What's your relationship with technology? Do
30:46
Speaker 1: you ever get Do you ever do like doom scrolling
30:49
Speaker 1: where you wake up and you've been looking at bullshit
30:52
Speaker 1: for an hour?
30:53
Speaker 3: Oh?
30:53
Speaker 4: No, I used to do it with Twitter, and I
30:58
Speaker 4: was doing it when I started writing I think teen
31:00
Speaker 4: brain and when I understood what was going on there.
31:04
Speaker 2: But you were trying to get a teen brain so
31:07
Speaker 2: that you could understand it.
31:08
Speaker 4: No, No, I was using I'd been using Twitter since
31:11
Speaker 4: it started, and I'd always found it a fairly interesting
31:16
Speaker 4: and real time access to news makers, and that's what
31:22
Speaker 4: it was at the start, and and so I'd used
31:25
Speaker 4: it a fair bit and I had definitely noticed when
31:28
Speaker 4: I was starting to write in tim Brain about the
31:30
Speaker 4: tools the programs were using to addict us to things
31:33
Speaker 4: like that, and the way the doom scroll worked, and
31:36
Speaker 4: the psychology that it was based on, and the experiments
31:39
Speaker 4: it was based on, which is the uncertainty principle, which
31:42
Speaker 4: essentially doubles the dopamine hit, where you don't always get
31:45
Speaker 4: the thing you want to see, You get a bunch
31:48
Speaker 4: of things you don't want to see, then something you
31:49
Speaker 4: do want to see, then some things that you don't
31:51
Speaker 4: want to see, And that uncertainty is how a doom
31:54
Speaker 4: scroll works and makes the app addictive. When I sort
31:59
Speaker 4: of was standing back and looking at myself and saying,
32:01
Speaker 4: you know what, this is working on you. This is
32:04
Speaker 4: actually working on you.
32:07
Speaker 3: You've got to stop doing it. So I did, but
32:12
Speaker 3: it's yeah, it's there.
32:18
Speaker 4: And that's probably the closest I've come to interacting with
32:20
Speaker 4: social media in that way I've but now that I'm
32:25
Speaker 4: very aware of the techniques that are being used to
32:27
Speaker 4: do it. And look, people who've read Team Brain and
32:30
Speaker 4: Brain Reset, my books that focus on this, say the
32:33
Speaker 4: same thing. About two thirds of people who give me
32:35
Speaker 4: feedback about it, I would say say that now that
32:39
Speaker 4: they know what is going on and how they are
32:42
Speaker 4: being manipulated, they're able to stop it. About the other
32:47
Speaker 4: thirds say, don't be ridiculous. I'm not addicted to that,
32:50
Speaker 4: and I could quit any time and then proceed never
32:53
Speaker 4: to quit.
32:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
32:55
Speaker 1: So my last question is around We've spoken a little
32:58
Speaker 1: bit about your job, my job, and your potential addiction
33:03
Speaker 1: to work or workaholicness and mind, but neither of us
33:06
Speaker 1: really experience it as work per se. With all the
33:09
Speaker 1: things that demand your attention, from kids, to family, to projects,
33:14
Speaker 1: to lawyering to hanging out with me once fortnite, how
33:19
Speaker 1: do you decide what to give your attention? Like, there's
33:23
Speaker 1: more things that you have more options of where to
33:27
Speaker 1: invest your time, focus, energy and skill than you have
33:30
Speaker 1: time to actually allocate.
33:31
Speaker 2: Same with me.
33:33
Speaker 1: I say no to about nine things for everyone that
33:36
Speaker 1: I say yes to. What's the deciding factor for you
33:40
Speaker 1: in terms of where you will invest your energy, focus
33:44
Speaker 1: and time.
33:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good question.
33:49
Speaker 4: I sort of do it automatically, so I'm not certain
33:52
Speaker 4: what the answer to that is. I'd have to say curiosity.
33:59
Speaker 1: Is.
33:59
Speaker 4: I mean, one of the reasons I keep doing this
34:01
Speaker 4: with you is because we never talk about the same thing.
34:05
Speaker 4: So you know it's interesting, you know, I believe it
34:08
Speaker 4: or not, Craig, you're an interesting bloke to.
34:09
Speaker 3: Chat to, So cut that bit out.
34:19
Speaker 2: T take that bullshit out.
34:23
Speaker 4: But you know that that's That's one of the things.
34:25
Speaker 4: If it's if it's interesting, I'm more likely to do
34:28
Speaker 4: it than not. If it's something I've done a hundred
34:30
Speaker 4: times before, then it's going to be it's going to
34:34
Speaker 4: be something that I'm going to have to force myself
34:36
Speaker 4: to do, which sometimes I might do depending on why
34:38
Speaker 4: I'm doing it. If it's I like, I like benefiting others.
34:44
Speaker 4: I like if there's something that I can do that
34:48
Speaker 4: I know it's that would help. Especially what's the word
34:53
Speaker 4: for that, It'll be leverage. If there's a simple thing
34:55
Speaker 4: that I can do that I know a lot of
34:57
Speaker 4: people will benefit from, then I'll then I'd be more
35:00
Speaker 4: likely to do that, even if it's something that I'm
35:02
Speaker 4: not really keen on doing.
35:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's very magnanimous as mine.
35:09
Speaker 3: And it makes me sound like some sort of saint.
35:11
Speaker 3: No it isn't.
35:14
Speaker 1: I know, you're a prick, it's all right, but you're
35:17
Speaker 1: a prick that does good things, and it's okay.
35:20
Speaker 4: No, it's I'm not even thinking about it in that way,
35:23
Speaker 4: but it is now that I think about it, because
35:25
Speaker 4: you forced me to.
35:26
Speaker 3: I'd say, that's that's something that does motivate me.
35:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you. I'm of course I'm fucking with him.
35:33
Speaker 2: Everyone don't send me an email.
35:35
Speaker 1: I actually like him, But I like my version of
35:39
Speaker 1: that is having a purpose bigger than me is like
35:43
Speaker 1: doing shit where you know, I like you, I can
35:47
Speaker 1: make someone else's journey or life or a bit better,
35:50
Speaker 1: or I can help them help themselves or open a
35:53
Speaker 1: door that they can't open.
35:55
Speaker 2: And I think the stuff that.
35:57
Speaker 1: Like what I like about you is you or like
36:01
Speaker 1: you are probably more excited about the things which are
36:06
Speaker 1: philanthropics not the right word, but but where you are
36:09
Speaker 1: just giving. You know, it's like the European Handball Club.
36:13
Speaker 1: What's it called that you run the Brisbane.
36:14
Speaker 3: The Brisbane Handball Club.
36:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So you don't get paid anything for that.
36:19
Speaker 2: That's that's costing you definitely time.
36:22
Speaker 3: A lot of time and money.
36:24
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
36:25
Speaker 1: So you know you are single handed, We'll not single handedly,
36:28
Speaker 1: but you're one of the driving forces and it's something
36:33
Speaker 1: that you don't need to do. You know, and I
36:36
Speaker 1: think that's you know, let's not start complimenting too much.
36:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll just make everyone makes it a bit.
36:42
Speaker 1: It makes me a bit queasy, you know, maybe say
36:45
Speaker 1: goodbye affair and we'll go affair and insult each other
36:49
Speaker 1: a bit, so we feel Thanks mate, Thanks for your time, La,