Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Strategies for Productivity & Personal Development, with Dr. Amantha Imber

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Strategies for Productivity & Personal Development, with Dr. Amantha Imber · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm saying Burgh, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me, Paul.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: It is great to have you on. We've got so
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: much shit to talk about. Whenever I looked into your
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: bio and the stuff that you've done, you know, the
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: first thing that struck me is that I think that
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: you're a fellow p academic.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: I made it up to describe myself, right, But I
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: looked at you and.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I'm like, there's a fellow pracademic right there.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'd like to think so, And.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: When did you When did you kind of I know
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: it wasn't no vert, but when.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Did you think this is what I want to do.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: I want to be not just doing working within an organization.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: I want to actually be bringing lots of research and
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: knowledge to wider communities.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Was there a point?
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: I think probably pretty early on in my career, so
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: in my twenties, after I finished what was like a
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: life sentence in organizational psychology, that is, at university. No,
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: it was just seven years. You don't get that for murder,
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: I don't think. But anyway, it was a long time
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: at university, and I just I was struck by the
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: fact that when I got into like the real world
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: and my first proper job was in advertising, working as
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: a consumer psychologist, I just couldn't believe how much great
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: stuff there was in all the academic papers that i'd
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: literally been immersed in for seven years at UNI, that
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: I'd learned so much from, and then no.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: One was using them in real life.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: But I just thought, this is so strange because even
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: just in the field of consumer psychology, and you know,
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: my field.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: So much broader than that. Now, I'm like, there's so much.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: That we can learn from this and that I can
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: help brands utilize to you know, improve their brand image
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: and improved by a behavior.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: So it was I.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: Guess it was a mission from pretty early on in
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: my career to go, let's actually bring all this great
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: science and make it super practical. And obviously, you know,
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: for the last couple of decades I've been applying that
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: more in the workplace and helping people be more productive,
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: helping them feel better and you know, do better work.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: For consumer psychologists, so that's interesting, right, And how brands
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: can influence us to.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Buy their products.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: What's the sneakiest little trick that you have come across
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: in consumer psychology. Can you think of one in terms
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: of priming people's brillands as you're thinking about it. I
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: once saw a presentation by guy and he was asking
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: us whether we preferred watermelon or banana, right, and like
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: ninety percent of the audience said watermelon, which is highly unusual.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: But then he chilled us a few slides back where
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: he had done a microflash of a watermelon on the
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: screen that was too quick for you to consciously recognize it,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: but your subconscious pretty and actually picked it up, like
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: holy shit.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And there's a whole heap of priming out there in psychology.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: Is there anything that jumps to mind about how brands
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: can influence us in ways that we're not consciously aware of.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, look, it reminds me of a study I read.
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: So I used to be really into the psychology of
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: just people's in store retail behavior, and there was quite
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: a well known study that was done looking at how
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: could you influence people's behavior in a bottle shop selling alcohol?
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: And they played different kinds of music on different days,
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: and I remember, you know, when they played French music,
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: the bottle shop sold more French wine, you know, whereas
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: when this all you know, played other types of music
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: that would influence behavior in another direction. So you know,
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: I do think the priming research is very interesting, and
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: in that case, you know, being primed with music.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: I also remember when I studied neuroscience then telling us
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: about oxytocin and hi a light touch and particularly across
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: the back of the shoulders actually built trust and could
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: influence behavior. And about three days before I had been
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: in a close shop that was quite fancy that had
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: a seal on and I normally wouldn't have bought any stuff,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: and I remember that the shop assistance she put this
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: jacket on me and she went, oh, that's a really
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: nice fit, and just lightly rubbed her fingers across my
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: back and I ended up buying the jacket.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Right. But then I've noticed that when you go into
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: story they do that sort of shit.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: Right, That's funny because like if a man did that
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: to me in the shop, I would think pre cram.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Maybe it works the other way.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I think, yeah, probably, I think it
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: would be creepy the other way. But let's look, let's
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: talk about I want to talk about three of your books,
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: right because they piqued my interest, and the first one
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: is your book, The Health Habit.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I think a cheerlidest one, isn't it?
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Yes? It is yes?
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And so you you.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: Talk all about there about about little hacks and habits
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: and things that we can do around our health.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And and I often talk about the knowing doing.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: Gap that exists in people, like most of our listeners
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: thinking said it's sitting here know what they need to
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: do right around their health. For some it will be
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: I know I need to exercise more, and some will
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: be I know I need to drink less, I know
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: to give up smoking, I know I need to eat better.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And what has there been.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: A gap in your life that kind of stimulated you
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: to dig in to this research where you've been for
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: a while going I know I need to do this shit,
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: but I just haven't been doing it, and that you've
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: used a little technique that you talk about in the book.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: Hmmm, that is a That is a good question, because
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: I think what I've done, and I've been doing this
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: for years, is that I've I've simply because I'm so
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: familiar with the psychology of habit change that I just
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: kind of naturally apply that in my life when I'm
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: trying to change your behavior. So there's there's at any
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: given point in time, there's probably not too many behaviors
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: that I'm like, oh, that is very problematic. I really
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: want to change that, because I'm just constantly hacking my
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: way through, Like you know, an example of that is,
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: you know, I've had a very regular exercise routine for
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: many years. Like we're like probably in terms of like
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: resistance training, which is all the rage with certainly, you know,
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: we're like I'm in my late forties, so certainly in
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: that bracket. I think a lot of women are just
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: starting to learn about the importance of strength training.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: But I have been doing.
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: That pretty consistently, about four times a week for about
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: six years now, and simply because like I'm able to
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: just create these you know, psychological hacks in my life
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: that just make it fairly automatic. And likewise with cardio training,
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: I actually hate cardio training. But I've got a really
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: expensive exercise bike and I know I should use it,
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: but I really don't enjoy it. And so a few
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: years ago I thought, well, how can I hack this?
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: And one of my favorite strategies is temptation bundling, where
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: you yeah, where you pair the unpleasurable activity, the thing
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: that you know that you have to do and change
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: it to something you want to do by pairing that
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: thing with something that is desirable, enjoyable, pleasurable. And so
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: for me, one of my guilty pleasures is watching the
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: US Bachelor, and it has to be the US version
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: because like maximum bitchiness.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Extra tuckiness.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: And at the time, like, I was really into that
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: show and I would feel very very guilty sitting on
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: the couch and watching it, like.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: It was just a terrible feeling.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: And I thought, well, why don't I know, pop my
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: iPad on my exercise bike and I will have a
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: rule that I'm only allowed to watch The Bachelor when
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: I'm on the exercise bike. And suddenly I started to
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: really look forward to being on the bike.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Because I'm like, oh, I get to find out what's happening.
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: I get to find out who's getting roses and ooh exciting.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: And it meant that I would get through seasons of
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: The Bachelor very very slowly, and I would read all
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: the spoilers before the end of the season. But it
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: did not detract from my enjoyment, and it turned the
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: bike riding into a very strong habit.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: I actually did a very very similar thing like Zone
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: two cardio.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: I forgat hate it. It just bores me to tears, but.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: I have to do it because I had sort of
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: recent issues with my heart, so I had to do it.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: And I've been doing CrossFit religiously. I love it and
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: I hate Zone two. And I thought I bought myself
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: an exercise bike and I stuck it in the theater room.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: And it's like I'm only allowed to watch the EPL
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: soccer if I'm on the back.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: That is the gig.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: Because it bloody well works right, and it's but you
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: have to have the discipline, though, don't you, Because I mean,
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: this is the easy thing. We are very good at
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: talking ourselves out of intended behaviors and and pulling up
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: all sorts of reasons why we can't.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: Look, I like to think that there are ways to
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: avoid rely on discipline or relying on will power. I mean,
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: like I happen to be very high on conscientiousness if
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: we're looking at, you know, like the Big five personality traits.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: But I don't think that.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: That should be the key when we're trying to change
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: our behavior, because if we're just relying on discipline or
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: will power or just being a really conscientious person, I
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: think we're setting ourselves up for failure because there are
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: going to be days that are just crappy days where
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: you're feeling really stressed or unmotivated or exhausted, and you
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: don't want to have to rely on this thing, you know,
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: willpower or discipline that can be quite fleeting. So I
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: so that's why I think temptation bundling works really well.
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: And you know, there's other strategies that we can talk about.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: I also think it's great for parenting. I've got an
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: eleven year old daughter around I, you know, and and
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: there are many things that she does not enjoy that
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: she just needs to deal with, like having her hair brushed.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: And she issued was that all eleven year old girls
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: hate having their hair brushed, and so she's like, can
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: we temptation bundling that? Can we temptation bundle the hair
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: brushing please, mum? And you know, where she gets to
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: do something enjoyable, like listen to an audio book or
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: you know, watch five minutes of TV while I brush
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: your hair. And so temptation bundling is like a really
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: big thing in our house, and it's very good for parenting.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I agree.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: And in the school holidays when my kids were younger,
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: we had a rule that they had to get sixty
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: activity points before they were allowed to get on a screen, right,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: And so they had to actually go and get it done.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: When I was talking about the discipline, I meant the
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: discipline to keep with the tempt with the bundling and
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: not to unwine the bundling.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Right. So if you've said I'm only allowed to do this,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: then it's got to be a ruler.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of having occasional not too many
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: occasional rules. Right, I'll give you, I'll give you an
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: example of this and then and then you can let
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: me know if there's anything similar that you've done.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: So cold shares, right, very good for you.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: And I don't particularly like the cold particularly having moved
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: from from Northern Ireland, but I read a whole heap
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: of research on cold sharers and I thought I need
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: to do this stuff. And I started initially saying I'm
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: going to do it four days a week. And what
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: I find is that on a Monday morning, I'd be
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: standing in the show and this, and I'd be going, right,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: I got to do my cold shoar, and this little
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: voice would.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Come in my head and go, it's only Monday. You
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: only have to do it four days a week. You
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: don't have to do it today. And it then turned
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: into a willpower fight.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: Right, So I created and if then behavior. If I
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: have a show, then I turn it to cold for
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: thirty seconds and made it a rule. And because if
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: it's a rule, then you just have to do it.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: And I don't like to overuse those rules. But is
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: there anything any sort of strategy that you use like that?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: Look, I I operate really well with rules, definitely, but
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: The conscientiousness coming here.
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, and I can I if something is
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: really black and white, like for example, I, you know,
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: it's completely addicted to sugar and like for most of
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: my twenties and thirties and probably teenage years as well.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: And I realized it was becoming a problem a few
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: months after my daughter was born, and I thought, I
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: just have to I have to quit this behavior. Like
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: I you know, one night, I think when Frankie was
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: three months old, I was craving sugar or chocolate so badly,
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: and I like, you know, looked in the pantry and
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: the fridge, it couldn't find anything. And then I thought, oh, well,
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: there's this tupperware container of raw sugar in the pantry.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: Maybe maybe I'll just have some raw sugar, like how
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: bad my addiction was. And I got it out and
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: I got a taste burn and I started like he's
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: burning sugar into my mouth. And at that point in time,
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: my husband, he's now my ex husband, not for that reason.
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: He walked in and I saw myself through his eyes
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: and I just thought, ah, I need to stop. And
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: so I just I set a rule for myself. I
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: just said, I don't eat sugar, I don't eat chocolate,
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: I don't do dessert. Like using that kind of self
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: talk with the language I don't do this is incredibly
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: powerful according to research, and it certainly worked for me
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: in terms of really quitting sugar. But what I was
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: going to say for those that don't operate all that
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: well with rules, and I find that people they're either
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: you know, really good with rule based kind of things
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: in their life or they're not is I've read some
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: great research around the power of whole passes and hall
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: passes is the concept I think is traditionally applied to marriages,
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: where like, you know, you talk about your celebrity hall pass, like, oh,
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: you know, if you know, if I could have a
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: night with such and such, that would be fight, and
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: like that is a hall pass. I don't actually think
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: that it works in marriages all that well.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Not that I've tried it, but.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: Hall passes work really well when we're trying to adopt
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: a daily, let's say, healthy behavior for ourselves.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: So there was one.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: Particular study that recruited people that had a walking goal
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: and they looked at them for a period of thirty days,
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: and they tracked how many steps they took, and everyone
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: had a goal I think to do about twenty percent
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: more than their current average. So it was a bit
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: of a stretch for everyone, and one group they had
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: to meet their target every day, and the other group
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: were actually given two hall passes per week, so there
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: were two days that they could pick in each of
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: those four weeks of the study where they didn't have
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: to hit their walking goal. And what the research has
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: found is that those that had that hall pass option
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: actually ended up walking more steps than the everyday group.
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: And when they had a fail when they didn't meet
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: their goal, they actually bounced back more quickly, And so
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: I think it's a really good strategy for people. You know,
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: like you talk about the shower goal. Obviously that was
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: only four times a week, but if that was, say
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: a daily goal, then I would say, okay, Paul, why
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: don't you give yourself two whole passes and Monday just
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: might be a whole past day because it avoids that
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: oh what let psychologists call the what the hell effect?
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, I've you know, binged on chocolate, so ah,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: what the hell? I might as well? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: that's exactly.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: Have your year on a great trend for like four
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: weeks and then you have a weekend of shit and
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: you go it's all over. I'm useless, and yeah, the
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: baby goes open the bath wad. I love that And
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: bodybuilders because I used to interact with a lot of bodybuilders,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: not that I was one, but and they would talk
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: about cheek days a lot and the importance of those
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: chea days. And I think it's that little there's a
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: little psychological thing in the back of your mind in
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: that I don't have to be one hundred percent right.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: I actually use that when I'm talking to people about nutrition.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: I talk about a Lohhi diet as in low human interference,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: but the eighty twenty RUW which we use in our house.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: And I have a nineteen year old boy and I sorry,
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: nineteen year old girl and a fifteen year old boy
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: who self regulate around the eighty twenty round. So about
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: eighty percent of the stuff that goes in your gub
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: should have been alive recently and minimally interfered with by humans,
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: and the other twenty percent is your treat stuff, right,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: because we all need to let loose a little bit,
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: you know. I don't think he can be one hundred
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: percent discipline one hundred percent of the time. That is,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: I think that's a recipe for orthorexia, which is this
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: new kind of diagnosis that's come out about obsessive exercising
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: and eating. I think people can go down that path.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I love that idea of whole passes and
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: what other Oh, actually.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: There was one you mentioned a little bit earlier on.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: We were talking about I do and those sorts of
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: things which kind of links it into identity. So how
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: important is it with you around identity? I've worked with
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: people before and you know, if they if they want
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: to lose weird or they want to stop smoking, I'm like,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: you've got to visualize yourself as a non smoker and
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: beg that part of my identity, why would I have
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: that cigarette because I'm a non smoker? And what's your
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: thoughts on that whole identity thing and trying to create
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: that identity in your head and a bit of mental imagery,
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: whether that plays into it.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, our identity and how we see ourselves is so
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: important because as humans, we're just programmed to not want
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: to act in a way that is inconsistent with our
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: own self identity, how we see ourselves, and we're just
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: going to programmed that way. So it's a useful thing
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: to take advantage of. I know, for me, like I
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: I grew up all through school, I wasn't a very
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: sporty kid.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: I was pretty.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: Uncoordinated and I you know, and my self identity was
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: that I'm well, I'm I'm not fit, I'm not strong,
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: I'm unco and that was my self identity. And you know,
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: in my twenties, I you know, like a lot of women,
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: I thought well that you know, I should go to
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: the gym because that's important, and you know, exercise makes
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: you look better and all those you know, unhelpful things
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: that I think, you know, particularly women are fed, although
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: you know, I think more and more men are getting
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: fed those messages as well.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: And then, you.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: Know, I think it was Yeah, it would have been
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: in my forties. I think that something clicked where, you know,
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: I was doing a lot of the strength training and
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: I was getting you know, really good gains on the
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: lifts that I was working on. Not that I was
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: you know, bodybuild or anything like that, but I started
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: to see myself as really strong and really fit, and
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: particularly for my age group. And I think that that
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: was really really helpful in me very much prioritizing exercise
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: in my life because I do see myself as strong,
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: and I do see myself as fit, and I see
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: myself as someone that really enjoys movement now and that
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: I'm good at it. And therefore, if I, you know,
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: have a week where you know, like unless I'm sick
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: or something, if I have a week where you know,
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: I don't go to the GM or I don't exercise,
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: I feel really uncomfortable about that. And to be honest,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: it just so rarely happens because it's part of my identity.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: You met in your DNA.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: No, right, it really is. It really is.
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: And at first it's a bit of a psychological trick
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: because you know, if you go from no exercise to exercise,
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: then you're kind of going to have to pretend, kind
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: of fake it till you make it if you like.
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: But there will reach a point where you make it.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: I you know what, I like a little tweak on
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: that fake it until you become it.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Hm.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: I love that, Yeah, because there it's part of the identity.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: What other little strategies have you found to be really
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: effective for people, whether it's around food or exercise, or
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: sleep or any of those sort of health habits.
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: Man, I could go into any one of those. I mean,
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: I'm very passionate about sleep, So.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: For me, let's dig into that then, because I think
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of people who have shit are sleep right.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: So I I was someone that in my twenties and
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: also in my thirties, I really struggled with insomnia. So
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: I remember in my twenties I was living in Sydney
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: for a fair chunk of my twenties and in the
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: advertising job that I mentioned earlier. My daily commute to
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: work involved driving from my home is about like twenty
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: thirty minute drive going over to the Sydney Harbor Bridge
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: and to the agency that I worked at in North Sydney.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: And I remember one.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: Morning I was on my normal drive and I was
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: feeling exhausted, as I always did, and you know, it
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: was about eight am, I think, and I remember thinking
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: to myself this random thought. I thought, I wonder if
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: there are some people who right now are not actually
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: feeling exhausted. And it dawned on me that maybe this
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: constant feeling of exhaustion that I just felt all the time,
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: I would never wake up feeling refreshed. I thought, maybe
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: I'm the abnormal one here. And so I got to
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: work and I googled sleep doctor Sydney and I made
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: an appointment to see a sleep doctor and he then
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: ordered a I think they called polysomnographs, where essentially like
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: an overnight sleep test, which is just like there, you're.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: All wild up.
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: It's like you take it insomniac and then you attach
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: about forty wires to them and goes sleep sleep yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: And I remember I was done, I got about five
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: hours sleep, which I thought, oh my god, I can't
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: believe I slept at all. And and I went back
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: to said sleep doctor to get the results, and he said,
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: the good news is that there's nothing physiologically wrong with you,
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: like you don't know sleep happening, You don't have you know,
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: any of the various sort of sleep disorders that one
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: might have that can cause insomnia. And he said, but
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: the bad news is that it's psychological and there's no
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: magic pill that we can give you to fix that.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: So what I then started to do, you know, essentially prescribed,
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: if you like, by this sleep doctor, is sleep reduction therapy,
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: where yeah, where he's okay, I want you to tell me, like,
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: how many hours are you spending in bed a night?
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: And at the time, I was getting into bed at
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: about nine pm and staying in bed till about seven am,
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: so a ten hour shift, and that sounds really long.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: But my rational thought process was, well.
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: The longer I spend in bed, the higher the chance
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: I have of actually catching some sleep.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: So that seemed really sensible to me.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: And then the sleep doctor asked me, well, how many
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: hours of those ten do you think you're actually asleep
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: for and you know, at this point in time, I
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: didn't have an aura ring, so I was just guessing,
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: and I said, I reckon about six hours. And he said, okay,
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: here's what you're going to do for the next few
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: days is you are going to keep your wake time.
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: You'll get out of bedtime the same seven am, but
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: you are only going to be in bed for six hours,
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: given that's how many hours you think you're sleeping, and
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: so you were going to stay up until one in
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: the morning. And my jaw hit the floor. I'm like,
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: I don't I don't even know how to do that.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: That I did it.
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: I did it for a few nights, and by the
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: time I went into bed at one am, I was
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: exhausted and I fell asleep and I slept for those
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: six hours, because what you're training yourself to do is
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: to associate your bed with sleep as opposed to ruminating
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: and catastrophizing and stressing. And then, so how sleep restriction
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: therapy then works is that once you are staying asleep
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: for that period of time that you're in bed, you
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: can then get into bed so half an hour earlier.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: Do that for a few nights, and then you know,
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: keep essentially winding the clock back until you're in bed
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: for however many hours you think you need, you know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: which for most people is between seven to nine hours.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's verty cool that because it builds up
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: the sleep pressure, right, And actually that there was a
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: professor at i'm pretty such Victoria University who devised this ring,
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: which I actually got as part of his study because
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: just because I was interested in it. And basically, you
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: would put the ring on it night this is for insomniacs,
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: and you would get into bed and it would buzz
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: after fifteen minutes, and then you had.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: To get up and get out of the room and.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Go and sit and read a book until you've felt tired,
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: and then you get into bed and then boom. The
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: same thing would happen again. And that would happen four
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: or five or six times until the sleep pressure built
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: up and built up and built up to.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: The point where you're like, oh, why is this frigging
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: ring going off?
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: And then but this sleep pressure was so great that
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: then boom, these insomniacs fell asleep and within a week
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: cured people of insomnia.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Right, So thank god, I love that.
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: I love that and That's such an important strategy because
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: you do not want your bed to be a place
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: that you associate with like rumination and stressing.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: As I always say in workshops, your brain needs to
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: know that your bed is where you go to sleep
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: and if you're lucky, a bit of boofty mcgoofy every night.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: It's not for television, it's not for laptops, not for
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: more both phones, not for ruminating. So get your ass
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: out of bed and go and sit down into the
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: sleep pressure and it's the best of that.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Right for people who struggle with sleep.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about because we talked a little bit about identity,
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: there are what about values. Have you done any digging
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: into the idea of linking behaviors.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Or goals to personal values at all?
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: Hmm?
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I mean it definitely matters.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: I think I've wrote a little bit about this in
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: The Health Habit, and I have written a little bit
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: about it actually in the most recent book that I've
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: been working on. It doesn't come out till mid next year,
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: but it's all about energy and how can we come
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: back from burnout and exhaustion, and certainly if we are
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: thinking about our values, actually just even identifying a couple
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: of values that makes us more likely to act in
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: line with those, which then ultimately gives us more energy
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: and happiness. So certainly there's like there's a strong link there,
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: you know, I do. I am a big believer, you know,
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: as cliche as it sounds in just remembering, just like
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: why am I doing this? Why?
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah? What's my wife?
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: It's such a cliche, But I think where it's important
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: is like when you are just sort of you know,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: bogged down in the minutia, you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed,
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: or you're procrastinating. I know, I find that really useful,
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: and I think that's sort of you know, it's adjacent
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: to your values.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: Really yeah, I like.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: For me personally, values and aligning thos with your behavior.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: It's like, for me, one of mine is authenticity, and
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Maris and ex military are like a tipple, right. And
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: the one thing that really pulled my alcohol back was
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: linking it to being authentic because I'm a corporate speaker
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: and I talk about peak performance all the time, and
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: I thought I'm being inauthentic if I'm on the stage
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: telling people about peak performance and drinking alcohol four nights
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: a week, right if you even if you're and lots
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: of people do, right, it's just a few glasses of wine.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: And I thought, well, actually that's not consistent with those values.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: But one other thing that I think is underappreciated in
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: the area of health behavior change is about personal accountability.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you a little story and then get
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: your view on this.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: This is the nuclear option, right, And I've used this
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: on a couple of people and I found it's almost
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: full proof. And it was through a self experiment tation
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: that I was for all my life I've been between
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: eighty and eighty two killed when out all my life
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: wasn't an eighty kilo baby.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: But you know, since I was an adult eighty to
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: eighty two kilos.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: And on my fortieth birthday, I went back to Ireland
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: and caught up with a whole bunch of meutes, spent
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: ten days in Ireland and reacquainted myself with Guinness.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Came back home and stood on the scales.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Just after Christmas, and I was eighty four kilos, which
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: I'd never been in my life. So what I did
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: is I thought about this and then I went to
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: a maid of mine. About three days later, a guy
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: who I respected.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I took a.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: Thousand dollars out of the bank, right, which was significant
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: money to me then, and I put it in an
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: envelope and I gave it to him, and I said,
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: if I don't send you a photograph by the end
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: of January of me standing on the scales at eighty
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: kilos which was my fighting weight when I boxed right
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: at eighty kilos, you are to take that thousand dollars
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: and you're to put it into the collection box of
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: the nearest Catholic church.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Right. The reason for that is I'm a recovering Catholic.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: I was brought up as a Catholic of Northern Ireland,
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: and I really.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Do not like the institution right now.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: And the reason why I think that's important. And then
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: I find this this thing called Kick.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I think it was. It was about habits to know
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: if you ever come across that.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: Website where you you would set a goal and you
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: would and then ascribe a certain amount of money, and
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: you would have a third party who and who would
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: say and that money would go into an escrower count
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: and if you didn't achieve that goal by a certain date,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: that money got given to a charity of your choice, Right,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: And I thought, what a cop out that is, because
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: you're actually going to feel on a behavior and feel
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: a little bit good about it because you're actually giving
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: it to charity. I thought, no, no, no, no, no, give
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: it to something that you detest.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the whole idea of that is about.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Combining those things around human behavior, which is the desire
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: to achieve the goal and the fear of missing out
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: on something as well.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: And I don't know if you've seen the bisbas stuff
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: about some people are more motivated around the desire to
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: achieve something that some people are more motivated about the fear.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: But the closer we get to the goal, the more
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: we go into the fear of missing out. So I thought,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: that's the nuclear strategy that drives both those things, because
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: you want to achieve the behavior, but it's like, there's
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: no way.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I'm giving my money to that person or that institution.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: Yes, any thoughts on that and any other little nuclear
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: behaviors that you've come across.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Look, I mean that's very effective.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: Psychologists call that a commitment device, and it's a hard
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: commitment device when money is involved.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: And you know.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: I've used them myself. I've got friends and even teammates.
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: I know that I had one teammate that was trying
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: to change her behavior around something.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: She was trying to read more books and she.
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: Is a crazy mad Leads supporter and Manchester United to
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: the devil and she I think she was going to
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: do something if she didn't make this goal. I think
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: she was going to buy herself a Manchester and take
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: a picture. Yeah, take a picture of herself and put
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: it on the socials. Luckily she met her goal. But
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: I think it's I think it's very effective, you know,
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: Like look, one of my one of my favorite ways
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: to try to redesign your behavior when you're trying to
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: do more of something or trying to do less of something,
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: like you know, let's just take like you know, I
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: think a lot of people have the goal to spend
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: less time on their phone and don't scroll before bed,
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: and you know that obviously, you know, does have an
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: impact on our sleep. Is to what I talk about
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: in the health habit as changing the default. So however
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: you set up your environment, if you think about your
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: physical environment like your home environment or your office environment,
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: and your digital environment, like what's happening on the homescreen
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: of your phone, for example, we're programmed to do whatever
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: the default is. So let's take not scrolling before bed.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: If you charge your phone next to your bed, which
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: the vast majority of people do, the default behavior then
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: is to just keep scrolling until you, you know, fall
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: asleep with your phone on your head or whatever. But
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: if we can change the default to make the default
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: choice the one that we're trying to do, like the
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: desirable choice, if you like, then we're much more likely
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: to succeed at behavior change. So just by making the
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: simple change, which I know so many people have, you know,
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: we talk about it a lot. Add inventium to our
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: clients is just charge your phone in a different room.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: And even like if you're trying to say, cut down
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: on mindless scrolling throughout the day, if you have to
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: think about, like how many minutes during the day, and
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: I'd be curious for you, Paul, like how many minutes
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: during your waking hours, let's say sixteen hours during the day.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: Is your phone not within arm's reach?
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: What do you reckon it is?
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: For you?
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it wouldn't be a SHETLLD. My phone is
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: often around, but I do make a conscious effort to
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: keep it away on weekends, right, But it has to
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: be it has to be conscious.
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: And yeah, because it's like I mean, it's like our
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: phones are like an extension of ourselves. And so I
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: heard this tip from a guest I had on the
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: How I Work podcast and his guy professor Adam Alter,
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: and he said, the more you can design your environment
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: to have your phone not within arms reach, yeah, I
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: love it, the easier it is to stop unhelpful scrolling behavior. So,
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: you know, I try to think about that in my
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: own life. I'll often, you know, I reckon, I've probably
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: got a good few hours a day where my phone
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: is not within arms reach, Like I'll deliberately leave it
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: in another room to where I know I'm going to
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: be for the next few hours.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: And that just dramatically changed my relationship with my phone.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: I think it's hugely important today because people just get
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: sucked into the vortex stimting.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, I've read a frightening statistic the other day
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: that in America, the average amount of time that.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Teenagers spend on their phones is six hours a day.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I've started talking about this in corporate workshops, right,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: six hours a day. If you extrapolate that over your
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: life and assume that that's a consistent behavior throughout your life,
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: if you live to the age of eighty, which most
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: of us will surpass, that is a total of twenty
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: years on your phone, every second of every minute of
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: every day for twenty years, Like, is that the life
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: that you want? And then you can just you can
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: do the low Well, if it's two hours a day,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: if it's three hours a day that I'm on my phone,
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: that's a decade of your life looking at frigging other
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: people's lives, living very curiously through them.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: It's just preposterous, isn't it.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: But what you talked about, that whole environmental setup, I
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: actually I really like that setting up your environment for
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: what you want. And I like little behaviors that are
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: enabling behaviors. And I'll tell a little stories, see if
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: you've get anything similar. So years and years ago I
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: decided because at a corporate workshop, I remember talking about
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: two people and it was like, you know, what do
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: you do when you get home?
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: It was about that, and.
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: So many people said I change into my pajamas. I
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: was gobsmacked about how many people said they changed into
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: their pajamas or their TACKI decks or whatever. And I thought,
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: what Jesus, The whole priming effect of that right is
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: sit down on your arse for the evening, have a
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: glass of wine in front of the TV. So I
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: then I instigated the behavior that I have to this
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: day that even if I'm traveling, I come home at
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: eleven o'clock at night, I get changed into my exercise gear.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Right, I'll get changed.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Into my exercise gear even if I then take it
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: off to go to bed, because the whole prime and
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: I think you have to make it.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: It's one of those things.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: I make a rule and I find that you get
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: changed into your exercise gear. That little priming is about
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: your active right have more emotion. And then I started
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: changing my exercise gear and do thirty squads and it
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: just changes your energy instantly. Is the little texts or
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: techniques that you've used or find in the research that
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: are similar to that that what I call enabling behaviors
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: that then eneable another behavior.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll take that a step further.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: So, so my consultancy Inventium so where we're Behavior changed
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: training company. So we work with corporates help them change
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: behavior for the better. And about five years ago now,
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: we decided to become a remote first organization, so we
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: got rid of our office leases in Melbourne and Sydney
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: around the time that COVID hit. We're already hybrid, so
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: we're used to working from home and we just thought
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: we're just going to completely remove officers from the equation
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: and we just work from wherever, which is for most
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: of us, are home. And so I'm you know, I'm
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: speaking to you now from my home office, which is
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: also where I do the How I Work podcast and
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: you know, anything Inventium related. And you know, generally, because
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: I spend my days, you know, unless I'm out doing
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: keynote speaking or you know, in the Melbourne studio doing
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: podcast interviews, I'm generally just at home, so I can
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: only be seen from the waist up. So I will
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: almost always have like leggings or trackies and my sneakers
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: on underneath. I generally, I'm you know, I'm a pretty
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: casual dresser, so I've often just got like a T
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: shirt or a sweater or a jumper, so it's essentially
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: active wear. And I do that because I know, if
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: I'm wearing my sneakers, I'm much more likely to just
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: go for random walks during the day as opposed to going, oh, well,
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: I need to get changed out of you know, my
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: jeans or my heels. Not that I own high heels,
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: but you know, theoretically, it's like I always just want
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: to be ready for movement. So that's that's kind of
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: how I've tried to change my default behavior. And it's
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: been really deliberate and it's been really really effective.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: To let me show you something funny.
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so for those who are just lessening, I'm wearing
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: a polo shirt on top, and I've got shorts and
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: trainers on and all the time, and I do my
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: podcast here, I do zoom.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Meetings here, and I'm always the butt.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Just two minutes before I call, I run in and
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: put on a decent looking top and take off my exercise.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: So we are completely aligned on that one.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: That's funny, Okay, So let's let's let's shift over and
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: talk about another area of expertise of yours and your
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: book time Wise And I love this And one of
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: the reviewers said it is the Oscars for management thinking
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: cool is that ship when you heard that.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, look that that was an award I want.
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: Actually the think is fifty Award for innovation, So that
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: was that was also very unexpected, that award.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: But yes, like lovely lovely, Yeah no, that.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: So so you in there, you know, there's the whole thing.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Work smarter, not harder, right, So give us some little tips,
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: just random ones that you can think of from the book,
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: Like what what are some of the most effective strategies
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: or techniques that you have found, whether it's about increasing productivity,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: whether it's about reducing procrastination, staying focused, getting into.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Flow, you know, choose your choose your adventure.
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, look that the ones that that are just completely
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: ingrained for me.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Let me go through a few.
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: Because I've literally on the How I Work podcast, I've
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: probably heard thousands of different strategies at this point in time. Look,
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: working to your chronotype is a big one, and it's
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: something I've done for years, so I think that you know,
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: more people are kind of a bit familiar with chronotypes.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: But essentially it's like are you a morning person, are
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: you a night person?
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Or are you somewhere in between?
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: Like at its most simple and what I can do,
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: I'll send you a link to put in the show
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: notes so people can self assess what they might be.
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: And you know, the important thing is is that you know,
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: so many of us when we think about our work days,
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: is that we're playing defense. You know, we're responding to
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: whatever meetings have been put in our diary, whatever phone
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: calls are incoming, emails that are incoming, and it's like,
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: you know, we're we're you know, it's like we're playing
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: whack a mole. I kind of think, but to con
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: you do the sporting analogy where we can be most
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: effective rather than playing defense and.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Just being like, oh okay, we've got to deal with that.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: I've got to deal with that is actually.
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: Playing offense and thinking how can I proactively design my
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: day so it's going to actually be in line with
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: when I am most alert and when I am focused.
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: And so I'm what it's called a lark. I'm like
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: a morning person. I you know, without an alarm, I
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: naturally wake at about six am, sometimes six point thirty.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: And so for me, I know that when I'm thinking
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: about my most important work or my deep work, like
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: call Newport writes about, I am at my peak. You know,
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: between about sort of eight to eleven AM, and so
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: I typically won't schedule meetings for that time, and my
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: assistant knows not to put meetings in my diary at
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: that time unless they're like mission critical, because.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: That's my deep work time.
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: Like that's when I'm doing my most important work where
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: I really need to focus. So that's one thing, and
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: that is just completely ingrained into how I work. I
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: could not imagine working in a different way now something else.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: And you know, look a lot of productivity people will
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: speak about. This is just the power of timeboxing. So
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: when I am thinking about my deep work, it doesn't
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: just say deep work for three hours in my diary.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: I've actually booked meetings with myself to work on the
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: things that I know are the most important things I
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: need to be working on right now. So like, I'm
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: looking at my diary at the moment, and you know,
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: I need to, you know, work on a particular web
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: page and marketing strategy for a new product that we're
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: launching in a couple of weeks, and so I have
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: got a two hour meeting booked with myself tomorrow to
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: do that. And so what impact that has is that
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: when I sit down at my computer tomorrow to start
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: my deep work session.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Is I'm not procrastinating. I'm not going, Oh, what should
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: I work on?
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: What's it right now?
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: Instead I'm like, oh, it's in my diary. It's a meeting.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: You wouldn't like see a meeting with someone else in
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: your diary and going I don't know if i'll attend
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: or not, like, of course you're going to attend. So
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: I find that that really works the same for me
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: in terms of just keeping me accountable, keeping me focused,
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: and trying to reduce procrastination.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: Do you know the other benefit I find of time boxing,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: because I'm a fan of that as well, where you
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: actually you know, I'm a big fan of lests, and
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: I'd have these lists and stuff, but then I started
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: just putting them in in times in my diary, and
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: I realized that my realgious optimism bias was manifesting itself
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: because I'd be going, Oh, get this done and this
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: done and this done, and then just consistently behind the
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: ball and realize that just I'm overly optimistic about how
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: much stuff that I could get done, so so that
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: I think I totally agree on both of those things.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I am like you. I'm a lok.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: I do my best work early in the morning, but
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: that time boxing was really really helpful.
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: And I want to say, just on that poll, I
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: remember I've had cal Newport on how I work a
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: couple of time Oh cool, I have, And I remember
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: I asked him about, you know, just how do you
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: get accurate with time boxing? And I know from his
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: experience he said, the more you do it, the more.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: Accurate you get.
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: And what I actually do for myself, and I've certainly
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: found that to be true. But I will always err
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: on the side of overestimating, like by at least half
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: an hour, because that way I can really feel like
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: I'm winning because typically it won't take me as long
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: as what I've got in my diary. And it's kind of,
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: you know, it's like it's rigging the game so that
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: you win. But you know, from a motivation point of view,
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: that feels really good. Absolutely Like the people that don't
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: time box, I would say, overestimate how much time you
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: think something is going to take, rather than setting yourself
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: up for failure.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: And the other thing I would add to that is
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: scheduling regular breaks.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm a big fan of of.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: The whole idea of cognitive gears that that when you're
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: fresh and your your mind is fresh, your energy is good.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: That's when you do the difficult stuff right, the deep work,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: the strategic stuff, the creative stuff, and then you just
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: do you're running the mill stuff and whenever you're you're
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: you're less cognitively fresh. And the thing that brought that
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: home to me was the study of judges and it
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: was a huge So I don't know if you you've
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: come across this.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Judge people people.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: Coming up for parole, right and what they find, just
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: for the listeners is that there you were way more
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: likely to get parole if you got to the judge
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: first thing in the morning or just after they've had
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: a break. And the worst time to go in front
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: of a judge for parole was just before lunch, at
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: the end of the day, when we're cognitively drein because
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: the brian becomes more negative.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: I also do like to, you know, think about making
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: the big decisions in the morning for that reason. You know,
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: when we are typically fresher and.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: A lot of people the first thing they do in
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: the morning is they check their email and they're doing
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: low quality work, they're doing gear for work whenever they're breeding.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Is actually primed. And I actually think, and I say this.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: More and more that if your eyes hit your phone
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: before your feet hit the ground, your life is screwed.
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: Like how many people then you'll have seen it. We'll
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: just wake up in the morning and they'll and and again,
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: this is the whole idea of your phones besides your bed.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: And they'll wake up.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: In the morning, they'll roll over and they grab their phone,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: and they're getting inputs, inputs, inputs before they even think
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: about their day, before they think about how they want
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: to show up, Like all of that's gone, and and jesu,
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: it's just the amount of people who do that shit.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: It's just unbelievable, isn't it.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: Sure it's great for productivity, is it?
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: It's terrible. It's terrible.
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: Like you're you're basically starting your day to let other
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: people set your priorities, which is not a good thing.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: No, it's not a good thing.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: So so let what about distractions and any little techniques
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: about managing distractions, so particularly for people who work from home,
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: right and and and I'll put my hand up and
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: confess to this before my wife gets on the tail.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: So it's I get distracted by by two things. I
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: get distracted by the news, and I get distracted by sport,
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: whether it's soccer, EPL or boxing.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: There am I distractions? So what what advice would you
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: give to me?
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: And I'm kind of going to sit like this because
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: I think and it's going to be uncomfortable.
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: Well, look, like, firstly, don't rely on willpower when it
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: comes to distractions. So I think like one of the
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: more effective strategies that I've found, and certainly you know
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: something that we have worked with many many of our
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: clients on is getting website or application blocking software on
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: your computer and say that so, I mean, look, it's
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: it's like it's a brute Corse technique and it's really
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: really effective, like you can't override it, but it's a
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: bit of a pain in the ass too. So the
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: most popular ones freedom Freedom Dot two I think is
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: the website. I think that's still the most popular one.
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: My favorite on the phone, I mean, you know, look,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: you can change your settings now, you know on iPhone
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: and Android devices to lock yourself out of things. But
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: I do really like the app Forest, which is forest
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: is in like trees forest, where you program it to basically.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: How it works.
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: Let's just say you want to do sixty minutes of
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: deep work. You set the tim around forest for sixty minutes,
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: and during that time it grows a digital tree. Oh
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: and if you check your phone during that time, you
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: kill the tree. And yes, it's just a digital tree.
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: Although I think they're donating real trees.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: I think somewhere real trees.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: I think they are.
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's like you kill the tree,
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: and no one wants to kill any kind of a tree,
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: even if it's digital. So I found that, like when
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: I was trying to train myself many years ago, I
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: found those two things really really helpful. Probably though the
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: thing with my phone is that just keep it out
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: of arms reach. That's that's really the thing that works
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: best for me.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually charged mine on the other side of
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: the room. I started doing it because I was charging
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: it there, and it's just I don't know if you
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: saw the research on called it's called Briandry in the paper.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: If your mobile phone is currently sitting on your desk
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: upside down on silent, it reduces your working memory capacity
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: and your fluid intelligence aby at least ten percent, because
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: they're just attention thieves, aren't they texting?
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: They could be like on Instagram post you should check. Yeah, exactly,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: Sorry I cut you off there. You were about to
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: say something else.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: I also really like advice that I got from near El,
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: who is quite a well known author. Yeah.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I've had him on the podcast.
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've spoken to him a couple of times,
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: and he talks about like just writing the wave of
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: discomfort because you can feel it coming on when you
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: know the thing that you're working on feels hard and
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: I want to just relieve myself with a quick scroll
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: on the socials or checking the news. And he says,
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: just like set the time up for ten minutes and
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: just be aware of those uncomfortable feelings and say to yourself, look,
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: if I'm still feeling this way in ten minutes.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: I will let myself scroll on the socials. And typically
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: ten minutes is about.
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: Long enough for that discomfort to pass and then you
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: just get back into flow and you can keep on going.
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: So I find that that's quite a helpful simple strategy
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: to use.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's very good.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: And then flipping that towards the end of the day,
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: whenever you walk into your house and the little voice
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: in your head goes.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: You've had a hard day. You need a glass of wine.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: You go ten minutes. I'm just going to weit ten minutes.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: I'm going to do twenty squats and I'm going to
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: we it ten minutes. And it's not food proof, but
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: there's actually very very useful for people who have that,
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: and a lot of people have that automatic. You know,
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: it's six o'clock, it's wine, a clark. It's just getting
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: through that that I think is really useful. Now we
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: are almost out of time. I did want to ask
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: you one thing, because you have another great book about
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: the creativity formula. Can we switch on creativity? Can we
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: warm our bar brallins for creativity? Just one question on this?
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent.
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: Like when it comes to creativity, it's gosh, it's about
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: thirty percent genetically predetermined, but the rest is up to us.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: A certainly, my favorite hack for thinking creatively is just
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: going on a phone free walk where I've got a
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: problem that I'm trying to solve and I just walk
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: in silence and I ponder and I see what thoughts
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: come to me, and almost every time I will return
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: to my office with a fresh set of ideas.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: M Yeah, interesting.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: I remember reading about the neuroscience of the Aha moment,
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: and it's about gamma activity in the Brian. But just
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: before that gamma and that Aha moment, the Brian had
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: to be an alpha state. And what you're doing in
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: going for a walk is you're reducing your stress. You're
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: taking your brain out of beaten, You're putting it into
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: alpha state. So I love that, Yeah, because it's just
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: it's the way the brain works, right, Very cool, I
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: might say this is this has been awesome. We can
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: talk about this for ours because there's a whole heap
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: of stuff that you've got. I can't believe you've got
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: another book on the way. That's that's pretty cool.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: So where can people go to.
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: Find out more about you, about your books, about your workshops,
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: about INVENTINGUM in general.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Where do we send them?
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: Well, if you're into kind of you know, self development
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: improvement stuff, check out the How I Work podcast. And
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: for me, I am very easy to find on the socials.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: LinkedIn is probably where I spend most time. So Amantha
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: imbat like Samantha with out the s and like Timber
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: without the tea, and my LinkedIn generally leads to all
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: sorts of places like the Inventing website and Theamantha dot
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: com website.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: So that's the easiest awesome.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: We will put that in socials.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge and keep
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: being an awesome procademic.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Paul, thank you