106: Brain Wash by David & Austin Perlmutter

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1. 00:00:00 We have a first mic that the first being I convinced you to buy another fountain pin when i'm the one that the moon's you for buying fountain.
2. 00:00:08 More like shame me to it you mean not convinced there was no.
3. 00:00:13 Say you should do this just how come you haven't.
4. 00:00:16 Let you have failed as a fountain pin nerd if you do not own well i don't even know what it was a lot me safari is that what it was.
5. 00:00:26 Yeah it was a lot me safari which i've had my own a lot me safari for a long time is just never really found one that i really like they always come in these crazy colors well as we record this it is found pending.
6. 00:00:37 So i put together a little article on my website with a bunch of links and things because people have been asking me lately about how do you get into this where do you recommend i start that sort of thing.
7. 00:00:48 So it's kind of like a hundred words of a bunch of links on like everything that i know phone pin wise condensed into a short little thing.
8. 00:00:56 So i tweeted that out and that started a conversation on twitter about from panda and someone posted picture of.
9. 00:01:06 A lot me safari that they have gotten you mentioned that how it was a staple pen basically i said that i don't have that one yet you like what you call yourself a fountain pin nerd.
10. 00:01:18 Paraphrasing something like that at which point since it's found pen day i immediately went over to pen shelly because i know everybody's having sales today and they did indeed have a sale on the lami safaris and i got the charcoal one which i think looks pretty cool it's like a matte black it's not a shiny black.
11. 00:01:36 With the black nib to get so i think you bought my pen i did what nib what size.
12. 00:01:42 Fine because the German nibs are a little bit broader yeah minds a mind's an extra fine so we're close okay yeah i i prefer like my ideal nib is a Japanese like the sale of the museum today the 19 11 this has a medium fine that is perfect for me.
13. 00:02:00 And that is my experience with like the coicos and stuff that's a german nib to like the fine basically is the Japanese medium fine.
14. 00:02:10 Roughly i know that every single one is going to be a little bit different but.
15. 00:02:13 So yeah i prefer a little bit little bit finer but not super fine and they have that one which also like when i saw that i had to get it because typically the stuff that's on sale and potentially.
16. 00:02:25 You normally got like the extra extra fine and then like the broad in the stuff yeah yeah so you feel a lot of times i can get great deals on pretty decent pens but you got a compromise in terms of the nib that you want unless you want to collect a whole bunch of.
17. 00:02:40 Different sizes which i really like to do yeah i got my one place that i write it with these and that's in my notebook.
18. 00:02:47 Well just just to prove my point that this is a staple pin if you pay attention to the chat.
19. 00:02:54 Here there are people referring to having to likely just bought a third people have three like that's why i say like these are the pins that you know a lot of people start with you just kind of skip the whole beginner tier seems like.
20. 00:03:11 I did and then there's another tier which i may or may not have a pen coming from that tier okay of course you do like between five hundred and five grand.
21. 00:03:20 All right well since we're talking and.
22. 00:03:23 Let me pull this up right here we go a while back there's a there's a guy named Jonathan Brooks Carolina company who makes these.
23. 00:03:33 Pen resin bodies which are absolutely amazing and he partnered with.
24. 00:03:40 I think it was Leonardo and they made a.
25. 00:03:44 What do they call primary manipulation pen for the.
26. 00:03:49 Momento zero grande okay right and they made fifty of them and they sold out right away and they can decided to do another.
27. 00:04:03 Run at the same time that i finished common box and was looking for a trophy pen nice.
28. 00:04:09 So this one is on the way i got the the suvio which is the red and bluish one not greenish one that's the strong bully these are slick looking pins you're.
29. 00:04:21 So here's here's the slippery slope i think you just stepped on yes i know i know.
30. 00:04:28 In that when you start going down this acrylics path and starting to get into the the designed bodies versus like the solid colors and the details and you start looking at these pens that have the entire body as the design itself like what you're showing me here.
31. 00:04:45 I'm dollar amounts go up very quickly yep and they're usually hand made and custom made.
32. 00:04:56 And a wonder to use i've had these things in my hands a couple times.
33. 00:05:00 Thing like pen similar to this not these exact ones and i need to stay away from them.
34. 00:05:08 I'll say that i like being able to make my mortgage payment.
35. 00:05:12 Well this was a very special.
36. 00:05:19 A occasion i guess like common box was a really big deal for me and so i mentioned before how i and i've stuck with this i know a lot of people.
37. 00:05:31 Think like well you start buying pens is like celebrations of something but then you just start buying pens because you find one on sale whatever.
38. 00:05:38 This one just happened to align with me looking for a.
39. 00:05:43 Celebration pen for a course that is by far the biggest thing we've ever done right it was kind of a tipping point for the the sweet setup in the business in general so sure i wanted something that kind of reflected that so i was prepared to spend a little bit more than i normally would have this was a little bit more than i was looking.
40. 00:06:03 Spend any ways but i have heard so many people rave about the first batch of the primary manipulation and that is the first pen.
41. 00:06:12 That because i listen to the pen addict every week i follow all the stuff that Brad might talk about that was the first pen where i was like oh man i feel like i missed out on that one sure.
42. 00:06:21 And so when i saw come around again cuz i actually email the company in leon is that website i sent you i even know how to pronounce it like it's an Italian.
43. 00:06:30 Is the logaritha yeah i'm like hey so is there any chance you're going to get these in stock again and then like actually they're coming up soon and if you want to preorder one you can click here to be notified as soon as they're available will let you know.
44. 00:06:45 They sold out in like 20 minutes last time yeah yeah so i'm like okay yes let me know when they are available i'm like a week later like okay they're good.
45. 00:06:54 Well to fun well you know you and i do have done a lot with fountain pens i of course run an entire membership community around analog tools.
46. 00:07:03 Mm-hmm so we do a lot of that i even ended up doing an entire fountain pen tour on the twitch stream this past monday so that ended up being that we didn't intend to do that we were talking about like the different grinds that nib grinder can do.
47. 00:07:19 Mark bakas so yes you can go deep into this stuff chat's telling me to run away from the pens that you're sharing with me.
48. 00:07:28 I was actually invited on mac voices right with jeff gamet kelly gammant.
49. 00:07:35 David Ginsburg frank petri.
50. 00:07:38 I'm forgetting people and i apologize britney smith.
51. 00:07:44 But there were a bunch of us and he started off by asking me a question about productivity during the pandemic and what had changed for me sure and obviously i talked about.
52. 00:07:57 My pen and notebook habit being born out of that not a habit then let's call it an addiction call it is sure it's my my hybrid productivity system i put a link to the.
53. 00:08:08 The article i wrote on the sweet set up back in may and i looked at that yesterday as because i was going to link to it with this thing that i published today.
54. 00:08:16 And every single word of that is still true like it's all exactly the same.
55. 00:08:21 And it's really sticking for me and like i look forward to using it every day so this is not going away anytime soon.
56. 00:08:29 But anyways i started talking about that system and then kelly is like what kind of paper are you using and then it digress from there.
57. 00:08:39 We did not get to anything technology related i think until about forty five minutes in.
58. 00:08:46 Sorry check but it was fun to turn the mac community into you know pen and paper nerds.
59. 00:08:55 Yeah fun times well i feel like we should set this one.
60. 00:08:59 The side we can do this i think ever we need to do just do an extra buckworm stream not a recording just a.
61. 00:09:07 Spitball the stuff at some point but we do have.
62. 00:09:12 And episode record.
63. 00:09:15 So we should look at our follow up here i've got a couple of these one of which i.
64. 00:09:22 Have done and in in the middle of an experiment with and that is to talk to my boss about shortening my work day.
65. 00:09:30 So these come from the book shorter by alex sue young campaign if i.
66. 00:09:38 Capture that name correctly and the premise there is that i'm trying to shorten my work day up.
67. 00:09:46 In the interest of seeing if i can still accomplish the same amount of work in less time there's all sorts of reasons and background to that if that's of interest you go check out last.
68. 00:09:57 Last round and find more details on that in the last episode so.
69. 00:10:03 My boss was cool with this.
70. 00:10:06 So i am doing this experiment not a hundred percent all the way for what alex recommends in the book but darn close.
71. 00:10:15 So i have shortened up three of my days in the week and cutting back.
72. 00:10:22 Some nights and potential weekend hours that i've been putting in because working nonprofit you know hours are flexible and all over the place which usually means.
73. 00:10:33 Always on.
74. 00:10:36 But i think we found a pretty good schedule with that and i'm in the middle of well i'm wrapping up my first.
75. 00:10:44 Week experiment on that it seems to have gone well so that piece i would say has been a success so far the hope is that it would continue to go that way so that it can continue to operate that way as long as i don't you know.
76. 00:10:57 Start slacking up let's hope that doesn't happen so that was step one step to i was trying to put together like the shorter segments.
77. 00:11:06 And trying to like force myself to jump from thing to thing a little bit and i attempted to do that week one.
78. 00:11:15 And that did not go well at all because i think i've been trying to figure out why i think it was too fast and too far apart.
79. 00:11:27 Slick turn a jump from one project to another from writing to development and back to a different third project and do say social media of some sort.
80. 00:11:37 It didn't work at all i was totally distracted and jumped way too far never never got to work out.
81. 00:11:44 So what i have since done is this past week this didn't work either though i tried to.
82. 00:11:53 Theme the days based on project so like on day one i'm gonna work on.
83. 00:11:58 The grythics project on day two i'm gonna work on analog joe stuff so i tried to do some of that that didn't work out either so.
84. 00:12:09 Either this is a failure due to jose a d d.
85. 00:12:14 Or this just doesn't work for me.
86. 00:12:19 So both it could be both yeah it could be a number of things so the experiment that i have left that i have not started yet and will attempt next week is using that extra time that i'm saving.
87. 00:12:32 And doing themes based on type of work and letting it flow projects as opposed to sticking to a project i don't know if this is a good idea or not but.
88. 00:12:42 The theory would be do writing work on say monday do development work on tuesday etcetera now granted i've got three to four different projects i'm putting that towards.
89. 00:12:52 So i don't know if that'll work out but we'll see that's that's the next.
90. 00:12:57 A spare mint that i'm gonna attempt you know this book that we're about to get into i wonder.
91. 00:13:05 What effect this might have in overcoming because you kind of mentioned and it sounded like i don't put words in your mouth but sound like you were sort of quasi blaming like the a d d.
92. 00:13:17 Switching shiny new object thing yes maybe you can train your brain to overcome part of that maybe not possibly i have a tendency to.
93. 00:13:27 The people who have a d d in their lives tend to say it one of two ways they either have a d d or they are a d d i'm one that tends to say i have.
94. 00:13:38 Add because i feel like it can be controlled and increased and decreased to my opinion.
95. 00:13:44 Not everyone holds that opinion so i i'm curious as we go through today's book will be interesting but i think there is some of that i think there's a little bit of what you're saying that's absolutely true i don't know.
96. 00:13:57 I don't know where the lines are though mine seems yeah i'm not i'm not trying to fix you or anything interesting that these lot these tie together and it might be cool to do some long term follow up with this action item after you've gone through.
97. 00:14:12 The next book right.
98. 00:14:14 Yeah no it's totally fair i got a couple action items here redesigning my work day.
99. 00:14:21 Add that was actually one that was sort of in progress and i had made a lot of strides in.
100. 00:14:26 I feel like that was going really well and that is because of my consistent time blocking habit.
101. 00:14:34 Which is sticking because of the fancy fountain pens and i think nice so there's my justification for spending all this money on the tools.
102. 00:14:43 But the next one was to build life admin into my work week i am trying to do this and it is a work in progress i made some strides here i talked to rachel about this.
103. 00:14:55 And she's very much in support of it she's actually kind of applied a version of this to cuz she teaches her classical conversations.
104. 00:15:03 And so she has to put together lesson plans and she's trying to do that during the normal school day as opposed to waiting till like thursday evening and doing it then.
105. 00:15:14 Basically we don't want to be working on anything work related.
106. 00:15:18 Already we don't want anything to steal our attention from each other in the evening.
107. 00:15:24 Or kids before they go to bed but after they go to bed in the twenty minutes that we have before we fall over exhausted.
108. 00:15:32 We want to be able to be with each other and not have something that we need to do dominate that sure and for the most part it's working but there is stuff still that's that's creeping up in there.
109. 00:15:44 Before we jump into the book i do have a couple things i love to share if you would allow me to do so sure i've used a new year calendar for several years last year we worked with the new year company to create a focused version.
110. 00:16:00 And the new version the twenty twenty one version is now available and it is dry race nice which is the thing people ask for the most last year the tldr here is that david and i'm not sure how many calendars we'd sell.
111. 00:16:12 And it is significantly more expensive to set up the machine to print print the dry race ones and it is the paper ones.
112. 00:16:19 So we were on the hook for like twenty percent of the number of calendars if we decided to go paper yeah it went really well last year though so this year we've got dry race calendars twenty four bucks you can get a new year and you.
113. 00:16:34 Why are dot net slash products slash focused and i've got a couple of them here i've ordered one for myself and then a bunch to give away as gifts.
114. 00:16:45 Nice nice work you use the new year calendar before no i've seen them.
115. 00:16:51 My wife and i do so much stuff digitally on that because it flexes so much it's so common for us to have stuff change.
116. 00:17:01 Midweek or even midday and then i don't know about it until i see her at night and we go through it again and i've scheduled something over that stuff happens quite frequently for us.
117. 00:17:12 So we've just built up a whole system of doing that stuff digitally so we just don't have a good.
118. 00:17:17 This is for me to say we don't have a good analog use for a tit for the calendar system so we just don't do that alright thank you maybe should remedy that.
119. 00:17:29 We'll see we'll see whenever i start changing the systems on becky she's not always excited about it.
120. 00:17:37 Yeah it works why change it i am with you i understand.
121. 00:17:43 The other thing i have to announce is that david sparks and i have done a thing with the focus podcast a lot of the relays shows.
122. 00:17:56 Have started producing these members only shows where they include some additional content at the end.
123. 00:18:03 And so we've done the same thing we call it deep focus and basically it's the normal focused episode with an additional extra deep rabbit hole at the end.
124. 00:18:13 Nice so it started a couple of episodes ago we had air fish around he actually hung out for another twenty minutes and we talked about how you actually plan your your weeks and the tools that you use and all that kind of stuff the nitty gritty.
125. 00:18:25 And then the last one that we did we've been talking a lot about like these personal retreats and sabbaticals and stuff for a long time.
126. 00:18:32 To the point where people in the forum are actually getting a little bit annoyed by it.
127. 00:18:36 David just got back from a personal retreat the first one that he did and rather than talk about on the episode i interviewed him afterwards and just grilled them basically like what was the biggest surprise what did you learn.
128. 00:18:49 What are you gonna do next time that's different you know all that kind of stuff.
129. 00:18:54 So it's a it's fun and it creates a space where like we don't have to apologize for being extra nerdy about sure these productivity and focus topics so if that sounds interesting to you you can go to really that i'm so focused.
130. 00:19:06 And you just sign up to support that particular podcast and then.
131. 00:19:10 It starts at five bucks a month or i think there's a yearly option to just like the bookworm you know you have the ability to support the show and then you get some extra stuff are extra stuff just happens to be.
132. 00:19:19 A separate feed with a little bit longer episodes.
133. 00:19:23 Sure cool cool.
134. 00:19:25 Should we step into a today's book let's do it this will be fun so today's book is brainwash.
135. 00:19:33 By david and Austin Perlmutter.
136. 00:19:36 And i am.
137. 00:19:38 I'll say that whenever i first saw this in my head i was thinking okay.
138. 00:19:44 There are so i've done a lot of research have a lot of background with health and pieces of.
139. 00:19:51 Eliminating toxins from your body okay so i've done a ton of that because of my health history.
140. 00:19:57 And when i saw this i thought yes i want to go through this because i want to understand.
141. 00:20:03 Their opinion on how you do that same process not necessarily from your whole body but with your brain that was my initial reaction to it.
142. 00:20:12 I'm curious because i'm gonna kind of read like flip this into you know some of the last.
143. 00:20:17 You know few days when i finish this up i'm curious what was your initial reaction when you saw this being on the list and that was going to be something we're gonna go through.
144. 00:20:25 I was cautiously optimistic.
145. 00:20:29 Okay i looked up the book and i had never heard of this before.
146. 00:20:35 So i'm judging it by its cover but it looked interesting i also remember a couple specific books where joe you done me wrong yep.
147. 00:20:47 Hope it's not one of those i don't think it's one of those but we'll see.
148. 00:20:56 Well it turns out because i i did a little research on this not a ton.
149. 00:21:02 I tend to not dive deep when i'm trying to decide what the next book is sometimes i have like snap reactions like yes that's like the one i'm choosing for.
150. 00:21:13 The next time is that it was a snap decision sometimes it takes me a while of working through what it is that next one is going to be.
151. 00:21:22 This one it took me a little while but i didn't spend a ton of time trying to make sure it was a solid choice but having gone through it.
152. 00:21:31 There are parts of it i like there are parts of it i don't but i think we'll get into those details but i think there's potentially a lot of interesting points to pull out here.
153. 00:21:45 I will say i've been comparing this to a very large body of research that i have spent.
154. 00:21:53 Significant amount of time probably well over a thousand hours worth of time researching and trying to understand pieces right alongside with what they're.
155. 00:22:03 Talking about here because of the background i have been fighting Lyme disease and now coming towards the end of a mold infection.
156. 00:22:13 Fight what he's talking about is like right up that alley between those two so.
157. 00:22:20 I feel like i have a lot of you know background on what they're saying and can say your name on something so hopefully that's helpful in this conversation hopefully i don't go down rabbit holes too much today.
158. 00:22:33 So with with that i have to ask you because i was talking to Chris Bailey and his wife art in text message he tells me he's like i couldn't stand that book yeah.
159. 00:22:48 And i said basically what was it you know that caused her not to like it yeah he said that the main gripe was that you found the book derivative of a lot of other books in that.
160. 00:23:00 Genre yep and so obviously she's got some experience with this subject matter just like you have some experience with the subject matter so what was your.
161. 00:23:11 Reaction to this book and the whole city yeah so like where you like i know this already is really basic stuff.
162. 00:23:20 Where you like the cherry picking a couple things here but they're not getting the whole picture or you like yeah these guys are picking the right things and saying the right things so.
163. 00:23:28 The trouble here is that they are trying to put together.
164. 00:23:34 A bank of what is it one two three four five main areas.
165. 00:23:41 That cause us to have issues i guess i don't know what i would what term i would use for that but that caused us to not be operating at our full capacity so they're they're taking these five areas.
166. 00:23:56 And trying to give you a scientific overview of that area and then what to do about it.
167. 00:24:03 And because they are doing that in these five areas it kind of has to be derivative because.
168. 00:24:12 I'm guessing you know in this case what are in saying is each of these areas is kind of a subset of what an entire book would be.
169. 00:24:24 Later which is true i would say that's absolutely true i don't know.
170. 00:24:30 What does he want to get through this but i'm not sure that this is one i'm going to say.
171. 00:24:37 Does a great job of putting all of those pieces together and that but that's partially because i've been through so many.
172. 00:24:46 Books and so i got an entire book on the research behind lime disease behind me like there's just tons and tons of information and that from a health stance but they cover more than just.
173. 00:24:59 You know food and exercise yep so they're covering a lot more than that now interestingly i asked Chris i'm like hey you should ask garden like what she would recommend instead yeah and.
174. 00:25:14 She recommends the shallows by Nicholas car which we have covered yep the upside of stress by Kelly McConaugall so we haven't read that book but we read a Kelly McConaugall book yep off the clock by Laura Vandercam i can't remember if we did that one specifically Laura Vandercam it was a hundred sixty eight hours yes right.
175. 00:25:35 Altered traits by Daniel Goldman and alone together by Sherry turkel so she recommended a bunch of books by authors that we've already yet but not the books that we have already read but here's here's here's the catch though to cover.
176. 00:25:48 Like.
177. 00:25:49 In order to catch all of the areas that they're talking about in brain wash today you have to read multiple books to do it yeah.
178. 00:25:58 True which is very common for the books that we cover that try to cover a lot of different a lot of territory it's like okay that point that you're talking about there we've got an entire book on that.
179. 00:26:10 You're telling me to back off on technology fine go read digital minimalism.
180. 00:26:14 I bet that yeah sure but they're talking about it in one chapter so it depends on.
181. 00:26:20 What you're trying to do when you're saying recommend another book i'm not saying she's wrong.
182. 00:26:25 I think that it's difficult for me to i haven't found a single book that i would compare this to gotcha that that's what i've been trying to think about that last few days like okay.
183. 00:26:38 What are my thoughts on this and what would i recommend people do that's tricky because i don't think i have a solid.
184. 00:26:47 Book versus this i don't know how we got all of this all already but well you know why this is a compilation.
185. 00:26:55 Right it's because this is a systems book yeah yeah this is kind they are going to teach you a system to fix your brain yep.
186. 00:27:05 So it's it's an interesting book i'm not used to seeing this many different areas in one place which i think is what they're trying to do.
187. 00:27:14 I have a lot of qualms with parts of this but will see as we go through here so let's let's dive into this because i think we can.
188. 00:27:23 Do our nitpicking as we go through it but the first so it's broken up into three parts but the last one doesn't really count.
189. 00:27:30 It's so small it like it's not technically another part by the way because there's no like new section that it goes into is just the chapters just keep going and then it's like yeah what why yeah wait here let me throw on the so i guess you could say it's two parts then yeah the first of which is living under the influence.
190. 00:27:52 And i don't want to spend too much time on these five chapters here.
191. 00:27:56 Mike because i think some of them overlap with each other and i may skip one or two here but i think that.
192. 00:28:04 What they're trying to do here is just explain the problem which you know is good practice when you're doing something like this is just here's what the issue is.
193. 00:28:14 And then we'll talk about how to solve it and the first of those is to set the foundation behind what they call disconnection.
194. 00:28:23 Syndrome and disconnection syndrome is one that i can't say they spend a ton of time on this this is actually a fairly short chapter compared to some of the others.
195. 00:28:36 But some of the things that come along with disconnection syndrome wait let me let me say this both david and austin are in these yep and love love love love their science.
196. 00:28:50 So if you are not a science fan when it comes to like all the chemicals and neurons side of it.
197. 00:28:57 This is gonna be a hard book for you.
198. 00:29:00 I'm a fan of that sort of thing and i struggled with it well i'm not a fan of that sort of thing but i did find the brain stuff interesting which is kind of the next chapter so we are going to quite yet but i do want to just list the eight characteristics of the disconnection syndrome yeah sure go for it because i feel like this might resonate with some people who are like i think maybe i deal with that okay yeah i deal with that.
199. 00:29:23 We all do to some degree.
200. 00:29:25 Mindless activity loneliness chronic inflammation instant gratification narcissism poor relationships chronic stress and impulsivity.
201. 00:29:33 And i think if you're honest with yourself all of us can identify at least one of those that we deal with to some degree maybe some worse than others maybe it's not that big a deal for you.
202. 00:29:45 They have a whole system at the back of this book where they walk you through much of the stuff and is there going to them like yep i already do that already that so i'm probably not the ideal customer for this book so to speak just because.
203. 00:29:58 Some areas i've been doing the stuff for a while and it's not going to produce the dramatic difference that maybe it would if you're coming to this fresh but.
204. 00:30:09 Yeah this is all just agitating the problem at the beginning to get you on board for the rest of the book yeah for sure and i think that.
205. 00:30:16 You know there's.
206. 00:30:18 Just calling it disconnection syndrome tells us quite a bit i should i should also know this was written.
207. 00:30:26 And released in january twenty twenty i noticed that the referencing some really recent science articles yep really yeah so it's the stats and the research and science that's in this.
208. 00:30:39 Is extremely current and most of it yeah so it came out in january twenty twenty.
209. 00:30:46 And it's it was fascinating to me to look at this book with the covid background going on yeah because.
210. 00:30:54 You know that wasn't that recent yeah so for it to be released in january of this year.
211. 00:31:00 They would they would have written it in twenty nineteen yep and covid wasn't a thing of course.
212. 00:31:08 And it's kind of terrible timing because they're like hey go build relationships in person yeah i do that yeah which is like this disconnection syndrome okay well.
213. 00:31:17 Disconnecting from other people is essentially what they're getting at with that but.
214. 00:31:23 We can't really do some of the stuff they're telling us yep to do as part of the brain wash.
215. 00:31:29 Program chat saying that the forward has conversations about covid in it that's cool in the kindle version mind does not have that.
216. 00:31:38 Yeah i don't think minded either i'm looking right now no they didn't mention covid in the introduction of mine yeah i'm either so i assume that was something was added for the digital.
217. 00:31:48 Version because they could.
218. 00:31:50 But the print version of course doesn't have that but disconnection syndrome let me come back to that.
219. 00:31:57 I would say it's a spectrum thing if they were to talk about it in that way that you can have it worse or less than.
220. 00:32:05 Other people so just know that but they refer to disconnection syndrome frequently through.
221. 00:32:12 The book and that's the thing that we're fighting against that we need to wash our brain from yep okay so that's that's that piece.
222. 00:32:19 Real quick they also in the first chapter start to lay the foundation for some of the brain stuff and this is the part that i found really fascinating you know i'm not really a science person i took copious notes during this section.
223. 00:32:32 So my mind not file for this one almost reads like a science textbook but i'm going to try summarize this real quickly for people like me who aren't excited about the science but kind of you need to know like how this stuff all works true so you've got the pre frontal cortex in your brain.
224. 00:32:51 Which is responsible for your executive function.
225. 00:32:55 And then you've got the amygdala which is the emotional center and we talked about this emotional intelligence with emotional hijacking how that can get.
226. 00:33:02 Reactive fight verses flight and just skip the pre frontal cortex and so you're responding emotionally instead of rationally.
227. 00:33:09 And the point that they're making here is that basically everything in our environment from the food that we eat to the devices that we use social media networks everything.
228. 00:33:20 Is designed to trigger that emotional response and so they're gonna at the end of this give you a system to help you kind of reset things and help you develop a more rational response to any sort of.
229. 00:33:36 Input impulse i want to make one clarification from.
230. 00:33:41 What you said but how you said it in that they don't say that you were designed that way.
231. 00:33:48 They're very particular on like they are way down deep in the evolution side of things.
232. 00:33:54 So they frequently talk about and that's what a lot of the next chapters about like how we evolved into things i got you obviously from our belief system that's very i i when i read that stuff i'm like.
233. 00:34:08 That's not how that happened your natural biological wiring it is not equipped to handle.
234. 00:34:15 The way we most of us live our lives if we just default to.
235. 00:34:20 The normal society and culture it's not healthy for us yeah so they're trying to give you things to fight back against that and allow your body to work the way that it's supposed to yes.
236. 00:34:36 Good job i yes.
237. 00:34:39 Do you have more on that you want to say.
238. 00:34:42 Before i move on now i'm going to the mind blowing part now with like the three brains and stuff like that yeah so.
239. 00:34:49 In mind blowing it's a science lesson explaining how you have different you know what they call different brains but just different.
240. 00:35:01 Modes of action and different parts of the brain that do different activities and they talk about the original brain.
241. 00:35:11 Which is the the piece that goes way back in time to like the almost like this is what we refer to as like your reptilian brain.
242. 00:35:20 Automated bodily functions heartbeat breathing blood pressure stuff like that you don't think about these at all yep there there yes.
243. 00:35:29 The limerick brain is like your sensory input that drives towards your emotions.
244. 00:35:35 That's that's pretty much the basis of that there's more to it of course so this is this is the one that says hey if you are really really cold you go find a fire and warm yourself yes.
245. 00:35:47 You're better at this what's the third brain.
246. 00:35:51 The third brain is the rational stuff so the way that they talk about this in terms of the biology and i wish they had pictures for this but they don't which kind of boggles my mind because a picture would be perfect yep they talk about the original brain like that's kind of like the brain stem and like the very lowest part of it.
247. 00:36:08 And then on top of that develop this limerick brain which includes the mid law the hippocampus the thalamus the hypothalamus in the singulate gyrus they call it.
248. 00:36:18 This feels with hunger pain sleeping is anger fear pleasure again things that influence your behavior but don't necessarily.
249. 00:36:26 Automatically trigger it and then the third brain this is the cerebral cortex form the top of the limbic system it gives you high reasoning abilities you think analytically and logically problem solve plan for the future think abstractly.
250. 00:36:38 And this provides counterbalance to the limbic brain.
251. 00:36:42 When you hear them describe it that way you kind of understand.
252. 00:36:49 How humans are different than like animals for example and they also mentioned by the way in this book sapiens.
253. 00:36:59 Which i don't know the thorn in your side may have to read that one at some point because i feel like that would speak to to this point that they're trying to make a lot better than than they did.
254. 00:37:12 But basically like this is got to the point where as humans you can think about things differently as opposed to animal instinct where you just see what you want and you go get it and they tell story about finniest gauge.
255. 00:37:25 Where he got this like railroad spike like blasted through his skull and it took out essentially the third brain and his personality like completely changed.
256. 00:37:38 And like somehow he live for another another six years after having this like giant metal spike go through his head.
257. 00:37:46 But was interesting that you know it affected not his physical ability to function but all of like the ability to control the motions is a lot more angry and stuff like that.
258. 00:37:56 And then this is also where they talk about neuroplasticity and how over time like it started to heal and he started to regain parts of his personality back.
259. 00:38:05 Which there could be a whole book on that top that would be really interesting basically it's a science lesson.
260. 00:38:13 You know there's there's a lot of stuff here of course you know we've heard the story of finniest gauge and a lot of other books.
261. 00:38:18 It's not a new one and i think maybe that's where like this is a synthesis of other material but.
262. 00:38:28 I think it's still good to have that foundation again if you want the science by it is it.
263. 00:38:33 So it does do that really well but that actually sets itself up quite well for the following chapter which is the brains highs and lows it kind of continues that conversation behind the science of it.
264. 00:38:47 But goes down into the path of basically how addictions are created in your dopamine structures so your pleasure chemical how does that.
265. 00:38:59 Increase and decrease in your body based on the stimulus that you're giving it if you give yourself drugs.
266. 00:39:10 You can boost that up really high but you're going to have that crash when you come back down so you then need a higher dose in order to get to the level because your body adjust and becomes used to it.
267. 00:39:19 But he does go they go through the process of explaining how that.
268. 00:39:24 That can happen.
269. 00:39:27 Well they don't get into the tech side of it until the next chapter but they kind of set the stage for how.
270. 00:39:33 This can be applied to things like your diet to technology to screens in general to.
271. 00:39:42 Sleep like there show kind of setting up the framework for that as you can see as we'll get into some things here in a little bit.
272. 00:39:50 On how to break some of this that is one section in here specifically on news which I thought was fascinating even before the election when I read this part.
273. 00:40:02 Yeah this section has some interesting research behind it.
274. 00:40:07 They mentioned that ninety four ninety five percent of Americans check the news eighty five percent check it at least once per day.
275. 00:40:15 And then they talk about how the nature of news the way it is built breeds anxiety and chronic stress.
276. 00:40:25 The net result is that we see things in an unnecessarily negative way.
277. 00:40:30 And you only need about fifteen minutes of news exposure to increase that stress levels based on the research that they did in college students.
278. 00:40:41 That one blew my mind that fifteen minutes is all it took.
279. 00:40:45 What and then you think about how long with all the election stuff how long of all of us been keeping our eyes on exactly so.
280. 00:40:53 I'll tell myself Tuesday evening I voided everything all day Tuesday but at the end of the day I turned on the news just to see where things were at.
281. 00:41:04 And ended up watching the news for three and a half hours.
282. 00:41:08 And we still don't know as we record this what the results are and I realize the next morning I'm like I just spent three and a half hours yesterday watching this and it did absolutely nothing I turned it on because I wanted to be informed I'm still not informed I don't know what's going to happen what was the point.
283. 00:41:30 So at that point you know I resolved I'm like okay that just does it that is the that highlights for me that nothing good is going to come from this so just cut it out completely it's not worth it.
284. 00:41:45 Yep I told well I told twitter like watching the news won't change the news.
285. 00:41:50 Yep and given how divisive our country has come and how little empathy we seem to have for each other I told people on Monday I don't think we're going to have a result for two weeks.
286. 00:42:06 That was my opinion on Monday this is before the election happened is like okay well as we're recording this we're what four days into this and we still don't know.
287. 00:42:16 So I think okay here's here's my thought the election results.
288. 00:42:21 My opinion like I have opinions on where I feel I want things to go but it's not something that rules my life I don't want it to be that so exactly Tuesday night.
289. 00:42:34 I I told my wife like if you want to turn on something and watch it that's fine.
290. 00:42:43 I know even on a normal year in years past the result usually isn't out until 10,
291. 00:42:51 30, 11 o'clock midnight somewhere in there yep I'm going to bed in on a clock.
292. 00:42:55 I'll find out tomorrow.
293. 00:42:59 Exactly what else can you possibly do at that point to have any sort of influence in the outcome absolutely nothing you did your part you voted now just wait and let them figure out let them let the machine work.
294. 00:43:13 Yeah so I went to bed Tuesday night woke up Wednesday morning checked my phone we still don't know I went to work.
295. 00:43:21 People want to talk about it of course so it comes up in conversation frequently but I'm doing my best to just stay I check in I don't know every five hours or so just to see.
296. 00:43:34 Have they decided how to count votes yet so like that's what I've been doing but people can tell what did you see this.
297. 00:43:43 Do you see that no because I really don't care that much so.
298. 00:43:47 It'll come around eventually exactly you don't need to get yourself all whipped up into a frenzy because it's not going to impact anything other than you negatively yep yep and generally at.
299. 00:44:00 Some piece of the whole process I'm going to be upset with no matter which what happens so.
300. 00:44:08 There's going to be a side of it that I don't like and I'm okay with that I'm okay with having this conversation with folks who disagree with me the trick is most people who disagree with me don't want to talk to me about it so.
301. 00:44:20 I want to have this conversation just because we don't agree doesn't mean we can't have a cordial conversation about it but it seems like most people are willing to do that.
302. 00:44:30 So well here's the other thing I noticed from all the people losing their minds on Twitter so true so true.
303. 00:44:37 If your guy wins how does that change what you do right if your guy loses how does that change at all what you do yep and I'm seeing all these people who are like.
304. 00:44:50 So depressed and then they're so excited and then they're so mad like all over the place.
305. 00:44:55 It's just.
306. 00:44:57 I'm watching watching all this this emotional roller coaster.
307. 00:45:02 And I never got to the point on Tuesday even when I was watching for three and a half hours just kind of like.
308. 00:45:07 I'm watching this for three and a half hours was a waste of time yep you know it wasn't like I was distraught and borderline depression or anything like that.
309. 00:45:15 But that's what I saw in social media like the world is going to end for me if my person doesn't win right like.
310. 00:45:24 Yep it's going to be fine people it's going to be fine simple answer is put your hope elsewhere.
311. 00:45:31 That's.
312. 00:45:31 Yes.
313. 00:45:33 It's yeah anyway I'll leave that so brains highs and lows let's step to the next chapter high tech high jack and this is exactly what it sounds like and I don't want to spend a lot of time here because we've talked about I don't know how many books about this the shallows being a good one.
314. 00:45:50 To recommend here for sure and it's purely talking about how.
315. 00:45:56 The technology that we use is specifically deemed or designed to keep us on it if you want to see that in action go to netflix watch the social dilemma it will scare you into putting your phone in a box and lock it up.
316. 00:46:18 So that that's really all I want to say about it I mean if you have more on that one go for it but two things one they mentioned Tristan Harris who we have talked about before I think we first heard about this guy in digital minimalism by Cal Newport.
317. 00:46:36 Yep but this is the guy who understood what impact Google was having on shaping the opinions and the thought patterns of the people who are using the tool and said we have a moral responsibility.
318. 00:46:48 Not to make this be negative and they at first loaded him and gave him a new position and then he realized that nothing he was saying was making any bit of difference so he left.
319. 00:46:59 He's got a quote in here which I like and they be quite sick basically to magicians and product developers who both try to exploit weakness in the human mind.
320. 00:47:10 He says quote magicians start by looking for blind spots edges vulnerabilities and limits of people's perception so they can influence people do without them even realizing it.
321. 00:47:22 Once you know how to push people's buttons you can play them like a piano.
322. 00:47:25 And that was interesting to me because I feel like he kind of falls into both of those categories so he's the one person probably that I would listen to when they say something like that yeah but it's interesting and I think it's it's probably true.
323. 00:47:39 Yeah Tristan Harris is the head guy behind center for humane technology and the center for humane technology is the one that backed and put together the social dilemma so.
324. 00:47:54 Yeah there's a lot of connections there for sure well now I definitely want to see the social yeah I don't have Netflix but I may have to sign up.
325. 00:48:03 Well I will tell you that Tristan is one of the folks on that but there are a lot of like the ex CEO of Pinterest and Twitter and Facebook VPs from back in the day the guy who came up with the like button is on there so.
326. 00:48:21 There's a lot of big names and folks from way way high up.
327. 00:48:26 I wouldn't want to be that guy and have that on my conscience the rest of my life on a pretty good job of undoing it so far so.
328. 00:48:34 Yeah yeah there's one other thing they mentioned in this section which I'm not sure if it's going to be relevant to our discussion maybe it is it's definitely relevant to the rest of the book is this time test.
329. 00:48:46 As it pertains to your technology it should be time restricted should be intentional it should be mindful and it should be enriching.
330. 00:48:52 And I like that what do you call it acronym.
331. 00:48:56 Yes the T.I.M.E. that I don't know that I'm going to do anything with this other than I thought it was kind of cool and it kind of codified something that has been in my brain for a while actually started on the sweet setup a while back the mindfulness Monday column.
332. 00:49:12 And I when I did that I was kind of curious like are people going to like this is this going to be relevant or is this going to be something that like I publish three articles and then people like I don't want to see this anymore.
333. 00:49:24 Right but when I read this basically it kind of gave me a shot in the arms like no that really is important that is a message that needs to be promoted so.
334. 00:49:35 Yeah for sure watch for more mindfulness Monday content.
335. 00:49:38 For sure the last chapter in this section is called the gift of empathy and this is where they they shift in the book.
336. 00:49:49 Usually when you see a shift like that it's at the change in parts I thought it was interesting that they did this right before that shift so they move from talking about the problem here and set themselves up for talking about how to break out of this disconnection.
337. 00:50:07 Syndrome by essentially talking about what the opposite is that was the way I took it I'm curious if you took it that way but the way I saw this chapter was that it's.
338. 00:50:18 You know they start the book with talking about disconnection syndrome and all the issues that come with that and they reference the flip side of that here which is empathy.
339. 00:50:27 And being able to see things from other people's.
340. 00:50:30 Perspective as well as feeling people's emotions because they talk about two different types of empathy there and.
341. 00:50:38 I just found that very interesting and something I'm not real sure how I feel about it in saying that the opposite of disconnection syndrome.
342. 00:50:48 Being removed from other people and then saying that the opposite of that is empathy and being able to I guess really connect with the people it seems like a good.
343. 00:50:59 You know good and evil.
344. 00:51:02 Opposite set up but it's obviously I feel like there's some potential.
345. 00:51:08 A failures in that metaphor there but I'm curious what your thoughts are on that.
346. 00:51:13 Well the one of the things that they mentioned for disconnection syndrome.
347. 00:51:17 Is narcissism but in this chapter they define narcissism as a lack of empathy.
348. 00:51:24 So I don't view it as good bad I view it as on a scale from zero to one hundred okay so empathy is the thing that you should have for people.
349. 00:51:37 If your brain is functioning correctly and in this section to talk about all the social media promotes narcissism because the relationships are shallow and they're focused on yourself.
350. 00:51:47 Daily TV watching especially reality and political talk shows.
351. 00:51:52 Promotes narcissism and on page seventy one they they say unfortunately our brains are progressively reinforced to believe that we are the center of the universe and that getting ahead requires others to falter and fail.
352. 00:52:06 We've talked about that a bunch of times on this podcast about how success is not a.
353. 00:52:12 A zero sum game where if I succeed that means Joe has to fail.
354. 00:52:18 But narcissism basically views views it that way even in terms of happiness I would argue where I'm going to be happy then Joe's got to suffer.
355. 00:52:28 And that's so unhealthy and when you read this chapter you realize that that's really the root of a lot of the stuff that's wrong in our society.
356. 00:52:38 Especially as we're going through all the selection stuff like that's the thing that keeps coming back to me is like.
357. 00:52:43 These people do not care one iota about anybody on the other side both of them they just want to trample them to get what they want.
358. 00:52:53 And in four years when the voters get frustrated enough to go the other way they're the ones who are going to be crying because the world is.
359. 00:53:01 The this seems stupid to anybody else like we just keep going back and forth it's like when do we get off this right when we care about other people.
360. 00:53:11 I it would not surprise me if you're on the red side you get upset with the blue side of your on the blue side you're upset with the red side and it seems like whoever has the presidency.
361. 00:53:22 The opposite side gets really upset and they have high voter turnout and then it ends up swinging to one way and then the next time around it has the opposite effects of the it would not surprise me if we go through.
362. 00:53:36 A handful of election presidential election cycles and just flip back and forth that would not surprise me at all that has been the historical model yeah but usually you have a reelection the incumbent has the advantage yeah usually you would see that but.
363. 00:53:51 I don't know that that's necessarily going to hold true moving forward but I don't know who knows yes in those in the middle are upset with both sides as the.
364. 00:54:02 As Blake says in the chat yeah absolutely true well any decent human is upset with both sides that would you.
365. 00:54:10 Your political views can be completely in line with one extreme or the other that's fine but like have some compassion people right right.
366. 00:54:20 That's the gift of empathy so at this point in the book we transition over into the second part.
367. 00:54:26 And it's called breaking the spell this is where they begin discussing the tactics of their brain wash system.
368. 00:54:37 Okay and the first of those that they discuss is what how do they call it it's not man versus nature.
369. 00:54:46 Basically go outside yes.
370. 00:54:49 Okay there next.
371. 00:54:52 Well hold on a second here because as we record this it's cold in the Midwest pretty soon it's going to be negative sixty fair and height yes with with the wind chill what do you do at that point that's what I've been wrestling through with this is like I completely agree and I've actually shared on this podcast I think how at the beginning of all this quarantine stuff.
372. 00:55:14 I decided I'm going to get outside every single day and from the middle of March until the end of September.
373. 00:55:22 I either biked or ran outside every single day yeah did not miss a day even when it reigned I got outside but I can't do that pretty soon so at that point like what am I supposed to do get a house plan.
374. 00:55:37 Yeah I have a cactus somewhere I know what we do what we've decided is that if we're going to live in Minnesota you have to embrace winter.
375. 00:55:51 There is no ignore it and wait until it's over because you're going to have a lot of it so we make regular runs to the sledding hills.
376. 00:56:03 We have a fair amount of you know snow garb and such for the kids and we go hiking through the woods that's actually fascinating to see if your kids can figure out which way is north.
377. 00:56:17 In a leaf deprived and completely white snow covered forest like if your kids can figure out which way to get back to the suburban from that.
378. 00:56:32 You know those are things that we try to do with our kids now having kids helps because it gives you a reason to go out yes no shoes is another one.
379. 00:56:40 So doing things like that is what we do but we are a very outdoorsy type family in that sense you know we're hiking all the time we do the mushroom thing we do all sorts of stuff.
380. 00:56:53 It's just a matter of what do you do to set yourself up to make that a thing we've made that a priority like getting outside is a thing that we have made.
381. 00:57:03 An expectation in our family so it's a.
382. 00:57:09 A fascinating process to force yourself to go outside and go into scenarios so yeah when we go hiking and stuff chat's talking about survival tactics.
383. 00:57:21 It's pretty common for me to talk to our kids and say okay.
384. 00:57:25 What are some things you can eat while you're here.
385. 00:57:28 And there are definitely things you cannot eat and which ones you know we talk about this stuff I have no idea if they'll ever use it but it's fun and entertaining.
386. 00:57:39 So I.
387. 00:57:41 I agree to to a certain degree.
388. 00:57:45 Like a big section in here is how like nature boosts your mood and they talk about a son hits your skin and your body produces vitamin D vitamin D helps manage your serotonin.
389. 00:57:54 There are.
390. 00:57:56 Weeks if not months in Wisconsin where the sun does not shine in the winter it's just great every single day so I want to know like how does that impact.
391. 00:58:11 What they are telling me to do in this chapter I mean you're not far from me probably experience the same thing like you can get outside.
392. 00:58:19 But if the sun's not shining I feel like kind of what's the point.
393. 00:58:23 So here's.
394. 00:58:25 They don't talk about this because they talk about if you're in areas take vitamin D.
395. 00:58:30 Like they talk about doing that my specialist that's helped me through this lime and mold fight has tried to get me to take vitamin D regularly.
396. 00:58:41 And I continue to tell her no and don't because we go outside all the time even when it's cloudy.
397. 00:58:47 You still get the benefits they don't talk about that here and this is one of my issues with it because people don't realize that even though it may be cloudy outside you don't necessarily have to have the actual sun beating on your skin to do that.
398. 00:59:02 Okay so I disagree with that.
399. 00:59:05 I don't know if that's you know if I've maybe gone down a research pocket and just want that to be true.
400. 00:59:12 That could be a thing too.
401. 00:59:14 I'm aware that sometimes you end up in these reinforcement cycles and I don't necessarily want to say I'm 100% on that but that's.
402. 00:59:22 I know that in my personal experience that going out even when it's cloudy.
403. 00:59:28 That I feel like I've reaped the benefits from that but that's possibly just me.
404. 00:59:35 Okay that's completely fair but those are the questions that are in my mind after reading this section is like.
405. 00:59:40 And those are solid.
406. 00:59:41 So I'm supposed to take a relaxed walk through the forest when it's sunny except in January in Wisconsin it's not going to be relaxed because it's going to be negative 60 with a 30 mile an hour wind.
407. 00:59:53 So I'm going to be bundled up from head to toe and am I still getting outside because I'm not going to see any of the green in the forest and the sun's probably not going to shine.
408. 01:00:02 So at that point like how much benefit am I actually getting?
409. 01:00:06 I don't know they don't address it.
410. 01:00:08 Open a window and get a house plant.
411. 01:00:09 Yeah exactly.
412. 01:00:12 Which you know they they talk about a lot of these different you know how having a house plant goes a long ways.
413. 01:00:19 It's not the same as going for a walk under the sun in the forest in the middle of spring.
414. 01:00:25 That's very different.
415. 01:00:27 So it's not a hundred percent the same but they're they do make the point that using small pieces help.
416. 01:00:33 Sure.
417. 01:00:34 Yeah I just wish they would have gone into like how much the small pieces help.
418. 01:00:39 Sure.
419. 01:00:39 And how many small pieces do you need to equate to one big piece.
420. 01:00:43 You know yeah because right now it's easy enough for me to go for a run and there's a trail right by my house that actually goes through the woods.
421. 01:00:51 Yeah.
422. 01:00:51 And it's great.
423. 01:00:52 I love it.
424. 01:00:53 I'm a hundred percent on board with the benefit of doing that but I'm not doing that in four weeks.
425. 01:00:59 Right.
426. 01:00:59 Right.
427. 01:01:00 Because I won't be able to.
428. 01:01:01 Yep.
429. 01:01:02 Fun fun times.
430. 01:01:03 The next section here because nature is a big deal I think you know we've we've heard this before.
431. 01:01:09 But I think you know some of what you're saying this is going to get into the they're trying to distill a very big broad topic down into a chapter.
432. 01:01:18 Yep.
433. 01:01:19 And that's going to continue here.
434. 01:01:22 This next one is one that I have researched for years.
435. 01:01:27 Now clear the table your diet.
436. 01:01:30 You know this is a piece we haven't really talked about yet but they talk a lot about
437. 01:01:34 the issues with the traditional western diet and the extreme sugar intake either through refined carbohydrates or actual sugar additives.
438. 01:01:49 So they talk about a lot of this.
439. 01:01:52 This is a thing where you may have to tell me to stop talking at some point but this is this is a piece of research a ton and the part that's
440. 01:02:02 refreshing to me is I feel like they got this right in the sense of what that science is doing to you.
441. 01:02:11 Now they don't call out some of the things to combat it that I think they should.
442. 01:02:19 So I think they do a great job of explaining the problem but what they talk about as far as how to solve that problem and what you should have as your diet.
443. 01:02:27 I disagree with in a fair number of situations which is unfortunate because towards the end of this book.
444. 01:02:34 They have a large bank of recipes in this book.
445. 01:02:38 I did not know I was buying a partial cookbook.
446. 01:02:40 Yeah you made fun of me every time I bring up leaders eat last like oh that's a cookbook right no brainwashing.
447. 01:02:48 I was shocked. I should look this up.
448. 01:02:50 Well I got it in the outline because I want to talk about it maybe a little bit later maybe we'll cover it now but there's a lot in this for I'm going to look this up now because I want to know how many pages.
449. 01:03:01 All right so it ends on 251.
450. 01:03:03 Where does this start because they cover a ton because when I saw this and thought it's like 260 pages like that's a decent size book but there's 60 pages of that as recipes.
451. 01:03:15 Yeah.
452. 01:03:17 So there's also their previous books.
453. 01:03:20 I haven't read anything else by them but I did have my parents came over and this was out in the living room.
454. 01:03:29 We have this ottoman with like the circular sort of table kind of thing where we typically will put like the books that we're reading and the remotes for the like the Apple TV and stuff.
455. 01:03:39 And my parents came over and my mom saw it and she's like oh that's by the guys who wrote brain grain.
456. 01:03:46 Yeah.
457. 01:03:46 For grain brain.
458. 01:03:47 Brain brain.
459. 01:03:47 Yep.
460. 01:03:48 And my parents are very very adamant about like the evils of bread.
461. 01:03:55 I don't understand everything but like they have gluten-free everything diet.
462. 01:03:58 Yep.
463. 01:03:59 And they have been trying to get me to embrace this for years and I have refused because I just love my bread.
464. 01:04:04 Yep.
465. 01:04:06 And I had the same thought because I knew this was going to be an interesting topic for you and you would have researched all this stuff because of some of the things that you've had to go through.
466. 01:04:13 But I also know that you like to make bread.
467. 01:04:16 Yep.
468. 01:04:16 [laughs]
469. 01:04:18 Totally.
470. 01:04:18 So as part of this just this is what you have done and you really like that process or do you like have counter facts to combat some of the things that they're saying if that makes any sense?
471. 01:04:34 Yeah.
472. 01:04:35 I think their science is half hazard here.
473. 01:04:38 Okay.
474. 01:04:38 And I think that they don't go far enough on this piece because they go just to the point to tell you what not to do and then they do have a lot of recommendations on what you should do but they don't go deep enough into that from a science stance to show you the correct diet which means that they end up coming short of where you should be.
475. 01:05:01 And a lot of people go gluten free. There are a lot of people who should go gluten free.
476. 01:05:08 But at the same time what is happening is and they talk about this to some degree this whole body inflammation process that is the root problem behind Lyme disease which is as we've talked about the thing I fought for almost a year and a half and have since gotten past that.
477. 01:05:29 And in that process a lot of the study that I've done is around whole body inflammation and that is what you're trying to eliminate primarily through diet.
478. 01:05:41 And I will tell you that very likely 80% of my healing process was because of diet.
479. 01:05:47 And it was because I cut out all sugar.
480. 01:05:50 I cut out all the refined flour process.
481. 01:05:53 So the refined carbohydrates that they're talking about I cut all that out.
482. 01:05:56 But the part that confused people for a long time is I make bread.
483. 01:06:01 I eat my bread every day and it wasn't a problem.
484. 01:06:07 But the moment I bread somebody else made it was a problem.
485. 01:06:11 Okay.
486. 01:06:13 So here's the difference and this is why I think they come up short on the science.
487. 01:06:18 There is a huge difference in the way you make bread.
488. 01:06:22 In the outcome of the gluten content and the nutrient
489. 01:06:27 consumability of that bread.
490. 01:06:30 So whether you've made it with say baking soda, baking powder, whatever and made a white bread
491. 01:06:37 that's going to give you this whole body inflammation and give you the issues that he's talking about.
492. 01:06:43 The bread I make is 100% whole wheat sourdough.
493. 01:06:48 And that is taking you back to biblical times in how they made bread.
494. 01:06:53 And when you hear like so if you read in the scriptures, they talk about unleavened bread.
495. 01:06:59 Well, that's just not putting the sourdough starter in it.
496. 01:07:02 That's all that is, which means it's just flour and water.
497. 01:07:06 Well, what I'm doing is I'm using a live bug to make my bread, which is what gives it the
498. 01:07:14 the airiness and such.
499. 01:07:15 So anyway, all I'm saying is the process that I use to make my bread is one that will break down
500. 01:07:23 a lot of the harsh aspects of that flour that make it easier to eat.
501. 01:07:28 Thus, the issues with some of their recommendations, the chats talking about Michael Pollan's series
502. 01:07:35 cooked. There's a book by him called Cooked, which is actually what sparked me to start making sourdough.
503. 01:07:41 That's been years ago.
504. 01:07:43 Well, so I would recommend that one.
505. 01:07:45 Michael Pollan is a very research heavy journalist who likes to write and his books are long.
506. 01:07:54 So he's very good. It's hard to refute him.
507. 01:07:58 But from a diet stance, I think that they have some of it correct.
508. 01:08:03 I would tell you like the alterations I would make to what they say is pay attention to
509. 01:08:10 fermented foods and adding old world grain methods to that diet.
510. 01:08:17 Because as much as people like to say gluten free is the way to go, well,
511. 01:08:21 people have been perfectly healthy for thousands of years eating gluten, gluten,
512. 01:08:27 because of the way that they used to make it.
513. 01:08:31 And we don't generally make it the way that it's healthy anymore.
514. 01:08:37 So, but I will tell you things like donuts and such, Mike, they don't really fit in this diet.
515. 01:08:47 I don't ever eat donuts. I'm good.
516. 01:08:49 All right. Well, I mean, there's some stuff I thought was interesting in here,
517. 01:08:52 but I don't know that I trust any of it anymore.
518. 01:08:55 So maybe we go on to the next chapter.
519. 01:08:57 So to wrap up about that, the thing that I would tell you is like, if you read this book,
520. 01:09:05 if you do everything they recommend, you'll be way healthier than 95% of folks in eating a
521. 01:09:13 Western diet. I will tell you that. I just don't think they I don't think they go far enough.
522. 01:09:19 So anyway, that's clear the table. Then the next chapter is sweet dreams.
523. 01:09:24 How many times have we talked about sleep, Mike?
524. 01:09:27 I don't know, but it's N plus one now.
525. 01:09:29 Yes. And they continue that trend of talking about sleep. One of the things that I think
526. 01:09:37 was interesting in this piece, curious your thoughts on it, is they talk about the
527. 01:09:41 basically the scrubbing process of actually cleaning the neurons while you sleep and how
528. 01:09:48 that is an important aspect of sleep. I feel like I've read about that before.
529. 01:09:54 I can't place if we've read it in a book on bookworm or if I did it in my own research.
530. 01:09:59 Do you recall this particular thing from something?
531. 01:10:03 I do not. I mean, I know because I have studied this subject a lot myself that a lot of restorative
532. 01:10:10 stuff happens, but I had not heard it described that specific way of scrubbing the neurons.
533. 01:10:16 That kind of makes sense though.
534. 01:10:17 Yeah. And it makes they do talk about how like some of the toxins, I guess, in your brain that
535. 01:10:23 are being scrubbed and removed are some of the same ones that lead to Alzheimer's and dementia.
536. 01:10:31 So if you don't want dementia, you should sleep more. That's what I got out of this.
537. 01:10:38 I thought it was interesting that they mentioned as you get older, your brain has a diminished
538. 01:10:44 ability to clean that stuff out, which to me kind of highlights the importance of
539. 01:10:51 doing it right as soon as you can, because if this stuff is just going to continue to build up
540. 01:10:58 over time, which it kind of seems to me it naturally would as your brain gets worse at
541. 01:11:02 flushing it out or less efficient at flushing it out, then you're going to prolong your
542. 01:11:08 longevity if you can take care of it at the beginning.
543. 01:11:14 Yes. So I don't want to spend too much time here, mostly just get good sleep.
544. 01:11:21 That's a lot of what they're saying because it does help with the toxin elimination process
545. 01:11:27 there. Avoid blue light. They talked a little bit about that. I felt like this topic specifically,
546. 01:11:34 this was the one where I had the same reaction maybe that you did in some areas where it's like,
547. 01:11:39 well, they talk about this, but there's so much more here. This was really the only area that I
548. 01:11:47 felt that way, probably just because this is the one area that I have really studied of all the
549. 01:11:52 areas that they addressed in this book. Yeah, for sure. This I think is where the concept of
550. 01:11:58 this being a distillation of other books may come in, because this next section here too,
551. 01:12:04 happy body, happy brain, go out and exercise. This is where it starts to get like, okay,
552. 01:12:10 this is fairly straightforward advice. They've got a lot of the research to back it, but I feel
553. 01:12:16 like we don't need that anymore. So many of the books and general research online tells you
554. 01:12:24 you need to do some exercise. You need to eat right. You need to sleep well. This is very basic
555. 01:12:33 advice. This is the point in the book where I was glad I took the notes at the beginning about what
556. 01:12:37 was going on in the brain, because this is where they say, oh, well, this reduces inflammation,
557. 01:12:42 or this helps keep cortisol in check. And it definitely was slow going at the beginning of the book,
558. 01:12:48 as I was trying to wrap my head around what all of these things are. But then when I got to the end
559. 01:12:53 of the book, it just kind of clicked as they're talking about these things. Oh, yeah, I know what
560. 01:12:56 that what effect that is that is having. Yeah. So yeah, this specific section, though, I feel like
561. 01:13:05 there's not a whole lot of new stuff here other than go exercise. Yeah. And the next one's the same,
562. 01:13:11 quiet time. Yep. We're talking meditation again. We are talking about meditation again.
563. 01:13:18 Meditation Monday, or is it mindfulness Monday? Mindfulness Monday, although they would argue
564. 01:13:23 it's the same thing. It's true, which it's not. But yeah. Anyway, that was a complaint. You guys
565. 01:13:30 are switching these terms back and forth, but you should not be. But that could also be.
566. 01:13:35 That could be one of those if you go deep into this, like those of us who are into productivity
567. 01:13:41 tend to get upset when people refer to productivity as efficiency. When people outside of it are
568. 01:13:47 perfectly comfortable with that, switching of terms back and forth. So maybe it's one of those
569. 01:13:53 scenarios. I don't know. Yeah. There's not a whole lot of new stuff in here, but I will say that
570. 01:14:01 having gone through this particular section, they did sell me on the benefits of mindfulness,
571. 01:14:08 they would call it. I would say mindfulness meditation. And I understand that mindfulness
572. 01:14:14 really can be practiced via meditation using an app like Headspace or Calm is another one that
573. 01:14:21 they mentioned. I've used that in the past too. Calm was on the election results. I forget what the
574. 01:14:27 MSNBC. Did you see this? I did see that. Yeah. I saw that and thought, whoever that marketing
575. 01:14:33 team is, you guys need a raise. And I went and I looked up the, it's one of the Google deals to see
576. 01:14:42 how many times the search term of Calm app was searched for and it was spiking. So they nailed that.
577. 01:14:49 There you go. So I actually have a Headspace subscription and reading this again, reminding
578. 01:14:57 me like, Oh, hey, you got that subscription. You need to try this out again. Yeah, I have
579. 01:15:02 kind of rethought my iPhone home screen. I've been playing around with some
580. 01:15:10 some widgets. And so my home screen is just a couple, just a couple of apps that I use every
581. 01:15:16 single day, which are intentional. And I would argue promote mindfulness. Then the next page,
582. 01:15:22 and this is the only other page I have, it's all time re widgets. Nice. So I'm getting into
583. 01:15:27 time tracking using toggle. That's it for the apps that are on my my phone, everything else is in
584. 01:15:32 the app library. But the, what do you call this, the today's screen? Yeah, I've got a couple of
585. 01:15:38 widgets in here. One of them is for today's meditation inside of Headspace. One of them is for
586. 01:15:45 mood notes. And so I swipe back and forth between these three screens, basically, the home screen
587. 01:15:51 with the icons in the widgets, that's kind of home base. That's where it opens up. And then I can
588. 01:15:54 swipe to the left to get to the today view, or I can swipe to the right to get to my time re stuff.
589. 01:16:00 And when I was reading this, obviously I am and I'm inspired to reestablish that, that habit. So
590. 01:16:10 kind of all this stuff is happening at the same time. I'm rethinking the widgets that can go on
591. 01:16:15 here. I realize that Headspace has a pretty decent widget. I read this chapter, they're like, Hey,
592. 01:16:19 this really has a lot of benefits and doesn't take very long in order for you to start realizing
593. 01:16:23 those. So this is an action item for me to start meditating again, using Headspace. And I hate that
594. 01:16:29 word meditating because there's a whole nother aspect of meditation, which I totally don't agree
595. 01:16:33 with getting into like the transcendental stuff, which they kind of talked about here. But I don't
596. 01:16:39 want to touch that stuff with a 10 foot pole. I do believe there is value in practicing mindfulness
597. 01:16:44 though. And that's one of the things I love about Headspace is that it kind of removes all of the
598. 01:16:49 other religious stuff from it. It's just centering your brain. Calm gets a little woo woo for me,
599. 01:16:56 which is why I walked away from that one. Right. Well, I'll throw another one in the ring because
600. 01:17:02 it's what I use 10% happier. Yep. And people balk at that because it's expensive, but I think
601. 01:17:09 it's not as expensive than Headspace. But you know, you look at it as 25% more. So maybe that's
602. 01:17:15 pretty decent. But I like that in 10% happier. So that's the Dan Harris app. I like that they
603. 01:17:24 don't really go to the whole spiritual transcendental side at all. They focus on just being mindful of
604. 01:17:32 now. Yep. That is like their one and only focus for that entire bank of app or of their teachings
605. 01:17:41 that come with it. So like that is one that I'm a big fan of. But I don't know that it's for
606. 01:17:47 everyone. They do the same thing. They've got the widget that tells you what's next and you just
607. 01:17:50 tap on it and it goes. So it's kind of nice for that. But I don't know. So I'm curious because as I
608. 01:17:56 was reading through this, I knew that at one point you were using 10% happier. And so my question was
609. 01:18:01 going to be has that stuck for you? It comes and goes. You know, I have periods. I've kind of jumped
610. 01:18:09 back into that in the last few days, I think, but I've had a period where I was away from that.
611. 01:18:13 I know that when I'm on that, I generally don't have as many 80D issues.
612. 01:18:22 Even though it's only maybe 15 minutes a day and it makes a big difference. Not day one.
613. 01:18:30 But like day six or seven and beyond. So it takes a few days for it to have that effect,
614. 01:18:36 but it does seem to have an effect after that period.
615. 01:18:39 Do you is that one of the things you track in your bullet journal?
616. 01:18:42 It is. Okay. Yep. You know, we're all great people track things in a notebook.
617. 01:18:47 Okay, that's it.
618. 01:18:53 We're just going to leave that one there.
619. 01:18:57 All right. So that's quiet time. And then we get to the system. And I mentioned earlier that
620. 01:19:07 the book that I have was actually a used book. I bought it on. I want to say it was thriftbooks.com.
621. 01:19:13 And this book had zero writing in it until this point. And at this point, there is a 10 day,
622. 01:19:26 what do they call it? The 10 day brainwash. Yep. And there is a period of day one through eight.
623. 01:19:33 And the person who had this before me writes down the amount of time or the chapter that's
624. 01:19:40 associated with each of these. And it was weird to me that they did that because after this,
625. 01:19:45 they do that exact thing. They spell out each of those individual pieces. So let me,
626. 01:19:50 let me give you what this 10 day brainwash is. And then we'll talk about it.
627. 01:19:57 So the way that it works is you do a different step each day. Okay. And on day one,
628. 01:20:04 you are using that time acronym to keep an eye on your digital interactions.
629. 01:20:11 The digital detox. Yep. So it's a digital detox if you want to use the digital minimalism
630. 01:20:17 terminology. So that's day one. You're going to do that on day one day two.
631. 01:20:21 You're going to focus on empathy. And they focus on three to five minutes a day to practice
632. 01:20:30 empathy. So that's day two. And remember, you're just doing one of these each day. You're not,
633. 01:20:36 this isn't cumulative. You do one. And then the next day you do a different one. Day three is
634. 01:20:41 nature exposure. So they want you to go outside on day three day four. You're going to focus on
635. 01:20:46 your diet and have good food going into you day five. You're focusing on sleep,
636. 01:20:53 day six. You're focusing on exercise, day seven. You're focusing on meditation,
637. 01:20:58 which they deviate from mindfulness there. And then day eight, you're focusing on relationships.
638. 01:21:05 Day nine, you evaluate your progress. I think, day 10, you make a plan for moving forward.
639. 01:21:14 I don't know about you, but whenever I evaluate my progress on something, by default, I'm making
640. 01:21:20 a plan for what comes next. Am I the only one that does that? Like, and every time I'm evaluating
641. 01:21:25 what has previously happened, I'm already jumping to how to make it, like how to set it up for the
642. 01:21:31 next one. Maybe that's just me being an oddball. But that was my thinking is like, why am I doing
643. 01:21:37 this on two separate days? Yeah. So a couple of things. Number one, they really like that
644. 01:21:44 alliteration. They do. Almost everyone figuring out food, successful shut eye, embracing exercise.
645. 01:21:52 I was like, okay, this is a little over the top guys. Yeah. The other thing about this, which
646. 01:22:02 I know you said you focus on one and then you go to the next thing. But I kind of think that's not
647. 01:22:09 a very good approach. Like the digital detox, for example, you could summon up all the willpower
648. 01:22:17 you have and you could make it through one day of digital detox. And then you say, okay, there,
649. 01:22:22 I got day one done. I guess next one, I could focus on empathy through gratitude. And you can
650. 01:22:28 instantly slip back into that stuff. So they have some great tactics in here. The digital detox
651. 01:22:34 specifically, they give a lot of specifics. Some of them, I think they take a little bit too far,
652. 01:22:39 like use airplane mode during meals and important conversations. I'm not putting my phone in.
653. 01:22:44 It's on do not disturb. But yeah, like I agree with establishing the boundaries,
654. 01:22:53 which is really what they're saying. But I feel like some of the stuff they suggest,
655. 01:22:58 people like me are going to have that reaction where it's like, really? No. And they do say,
656. 01:23:04 you know, apply this for yourself, pick and choose the things out of here. But that was one thing
657. 01:23:08 that stood out to me is like, they won. Great. We're going to get this thing started on the right
658. 01:23:13 foot. But if you take that approach where you then just focus on the next thing, instead of
659. 01:23:18 viewing it as additive on top of what you're doing, I feel like you're sabotaging yourself,
660. 01:23:23 and you're never going to get to day 10. Yes. That was that's one of my core complaints with this
661. 01:23:28 is jumping from thing to thing just isn't going to, I mean, it'll show you how each of them works.
662. 01:23:37 Maybe maybe that's what they're trying to do. Yeah. But it's not really a system that you can put
663. 01:23:42 in place and then stick to. It's a temporary system. And they do talk about to be fair,
664. 01:23:49 the taking stock part, they have like a scorecard in there where you look back at the areas and you
665. 01:23:54 say, how easy is it to stick with this? Is it easy? Is it average? Is it difficult? I think those
666. 01:23:59 were the three. Sure. So you could say, well, digital detox, that's really difficult for me. And at
667. 01:24:04 that point, maybe you set your plan going forward. But if I were advising somebody on how to do this,
668. 01:24:09 I would say pick one small thing, make that a habit, then stack something on top of it. Maybe
669. 01:24:15 that's just because we read so many books about habits that the pearl mutters have not discovered
670. 01:24:19 yet. I don't know. Although BJ Fogg's a researcher, you would think they would hang out. Yeah,
671. 01:24:26 that's their next one. They'll distill atomic habits into four books and then they'll put it out.
672. 01:24:33 So yes, I have qualms with this 10 day brainwash. It sounds like you do as well.
673. 01:24:39 I don't know what I would say to put in its place. Have you thought through that one?
674. 01:24:44 Because I feel like there's potential for something here, but I don't know what it would be.
675. 01:24:49 I don't. And honestly, I'm not sure I would be qualified to without actually trying this.
676. 01:24:56 Yeah, that's fair. So this book is basically written in such a way that you're one action item.
677. 01:25:03 Should you choose to accept it is to do the 10 day brainwash?
678. 01:25:06 Yes. So I was going to ask you, do you intend on doing this?
679. 01:25:11 No, because I so much of this, like their whole food thing. I live that way. That's normal for me.
680. 01:25:20 So when I got to that day, I would end up just skipping it. There are pieces of the digital detox,
681. 01:25:27 a lot of what he's talking about there. That's for the most part normal for a lot of what I do.
682. 01:25:34 The meditation thing right now is kind of just normal. I don't do the exercise piece,
683. 01:25:42 partially because I'm so active already. There are a lot of parts of that that like,
684. 01:25:47 okay, like for example, yesterday I had 14,000 steps on my phone. So that was just, I wasn't
685. 01:25:56 even trying. That was just an average day. My current average steps per day is 15,200.
686. 01:26:03 That's an average. So I know I've had days where I'm up over 20,000. So that stuff is just,
687. 01:26:10 I don't want to say simple. Sleep has been a priority for a long time. Like these are things
688. 01:26:15 that are just standard. So trying to do a 10 day brainwash that helps, I think doesn't make sense.
689. 01:26:24 You know, trying to figure out how to do something that's a little more geared towards like strength
690. 01:26:28 in exercise would probably make more sense. Trying to be intentional about getting outside
691. 01:26:36 would probably be a good thing. I'm not one that's too afraid of going out when it's negative 20.
692. 01:26:45 I finished building the deck on our house when it was negative 10. So like I'm not averse to that.
693. 01:26:51 That's totally fine with me. Growing up in Missouri, I had extreme temperature changes fairly regularly.
694. 01:26:58 So I don't know. Maybe I just grew up with stuff like that. I don't know. I didn't grow up with
695. 01:27:02 the cold. I grew up with the heat, but sure. I don't know. So no, I'm not doing a 10 day brainwash.
696. 01:27:08 I think if I'm to do anything, I may look at some form of like a strength exercise program of some
697. 01:27:16 form to bring into it. But that's really about it. I don't think I have anything specific
698. 01:27:22 for jumping to action items here. That's not a thing that I'm
699. 01:27:26 planning. I don't have any for this is what I'm saying. Are you going to do this?
700. 01:27:30 Yes. Yeah. I read the letter. No, not by the letter. So this is going to be kind of like what I did
701. 01:27:41 with the bullet journal and I'm going to hack this thing to pieces. Sure. But I do like the idea
702. 01:27:48 of consecutive days. And I feel like 10 days, even if you missed a day or two, this is kind of set
703. 01:27:58 up perfectly for Bookworm where I could start this tomorrow. Yeah. And I could go through this
704. 01:28:03 and report back next time. Sure. And there's stuff in here that I know I'm doing already.
705. 01:28:09 So some of these aren't going to take a whole lot of effort. Some of them are going to force
706. 01:28:14 me to pay attention to areas in my life that I know that I should have been looking at for a
707. 01:28:18 long time, specifically the mindfulness meditation and some of the diet stuff. Now,
708. 01:28:25 I have a wife who's on board with this and wants all of us to eat healthier. So I think for me,
709. 01:28:32 it's like that particular section, it's going to be identifying what sort of dietary modifications
710. 01:28:37 I want to make, communicating that to her and then making sure that we're agreed on the meal plan
711. 01:28:42 going forward on what this is going to look like. But there's stuff in here that, again,
712. 01:28:47 is just kind of like the right thing at the right time. So I know, for example,
713. 01:28:51 a large part of being healthy is drinking enough water. And I know that I typically don't do that.
714. 01:28:58 So you drink your water over coffee grounds. Well, no, not anymore. I've got this is a
715. 01:29:07 hydrate spark steel water bottle. It's a smart Bluetooth water bottle. And I'm going to see
716. 01:29:13 if I can make this thing a smart Bluetooth. Yes. So watch the bottom of this thing as I hit the
717. 01:29:20 the glow button. This basically is going to to flash. There it goes. There it goes.
718. 01:29:24 So it does that when you fall in bought fallen behind on your water intake for the day. That's
719. 01:29:30 one of the widgets on the today's screen is how much water I have drank so far today.
720. 01:29:36 And this thing basically gives me a in your face notification instead of a notification on the
721. 01:29:41 phone like, Hey, idiot, you should be drinking more water. Sure. And I've been doing this the last
722. 01:29:46 four days. And I have consumed at least, well, with my exercise, it always gets bumped up because
723. 01:29:51 it ties into the health app and it gives you a recommendation on how much water you should be
724. 01:29:55 drinking. Sure. So by default, it's like 80 ounces of water a day when I go for a run on bike ride,
725. 01:30:00 which is every single day, you know, pretty much it bumps up like 90 or 100. And I've hit that
726. 01:30:05 four days in a row. And I can notice a difference in my energy. Sure. So I'm still drinking the coffee,
727. 01:30:11 but I am also making sure that I am drinking enough water. And I can see that this has a positive
728. 01:30:16 effect. Sure. One of the things I jotted down was like nothing but water before bed. So they
729. 01:30:21 recognize this, I think, and there's some things that like you said, I'm sure I will disagree with
730. 01:30:27 and I don't want to make all the sweeping changes and just eat everything out of the cookbook that
731. 01:30:31 they provide at the end. But I do want to start moving in that direction. And so my ideal version
732. 01:30:38 of this is like when I get to the day where I'm figuring out food, I'm not keeping everything in
733. 01:30:43 their list and everything else in moderation and cutting out certain things, signing up for the
734. 01:30:48 four supplements that they recommend. But it is making like one change, one positive change
735. 01:30:53 to my diet for that day. Yeah. So I think there's going to be a lot of value in just like focusing
736. 01:30:59 on a different area every day, finding one thing that you want to change. I'm not going to get to
737. 01:31:03 like day nine and then start thinking about all the changes that I want to keep going forward.
738. 01:31:07 Like you were saying, so I'm going to totally blow this up and not do it their way. But I
739. 01:31:13 think I am going to do it. Yeah. The piece of this, I think that they should do is make this an
740. 01:31:18 eight day brainwash. It sounds nice to say it's a 10 day, but those last two days are fluff
741. 01:31:25 in my mind. Because then you're not doing anything out of those eight steps. And my mind is like,
742. 01:31:32 okay, towards the end of day eight, evaluate how it went, make a plan for the next day and start eight
743. 01:31:39 days all over again if you want. So in my mind, that's what you should do. Exactly. So that's
744. 01:31:45 the other thing is like, this is not a you do this once every five years or every year, whatever,
745. 01:31:51 and clear everything out, which is kind of what I expected going into it. I feel like the eight
746. 01:31:58 day thing like you were talking about, that's where the valuable stuff is. And you could do that
747. 01:32:04 and then make instead of all of the changes at once, make like one change, create that as a new
748. 01:32:10 habit and then revisit this next month and then make one additional positive change. And I feel
749. 01:32:16 like if you took that approach, then this stuff could add up pretty quick because the areas that
750. 01:32:20 they're talking about 100% agree with. I may not agree with every single specific in terms of the
751. 01:32:27 tactics, but sure, like day eight specifically strong bonds and they talk about spending at
752. 01:32:32 least 10 minutes connecting with another person each day. I think that's great. And I could totally
753. 01:32:37 see like, if I'm going to track these eight different areas, by the time I get around to this next
754. 01:32:42 month, I could say, Oh, I started to let that one slip. I should refocus on that one. And I'm not
755. 01:32:47 saying I want to sign up for this specific model and follow their eight eight eight slash 10 day
756. 01:32:54 thing on a regular basis, but I do want to give it a shot. Sure. Makes sense. I'm not going to
757. 01:33:01 follow you for that at all. I just know that for me, I'm not, I have a lot of these different,
758. 01:33:06 because I've had to be so specific with my health, just in general. And my wife has been fully on
759. 01:33:13 board with the diet and food consumption side of this for multiple years now and is way beyond me.
760. 01:33:22 You know, you want to get into the details of what different types of food do to different types
761. 01:33:28 of people. She is your person. All right. She has done a ton of that. So I don't handle food at all.
762. 01:33:35 My wife does that. So anyway, what I'm telling you is actually not as detailed as what she could
763. 01:33:41 give you. Sure. Sure. So they, you know, we've got the 10 day brainwash. They wrap this up with
764. 01:33:49 the brainwash recipes, which as we mentioned earlier is what did I say 50 60 pages of the book.
765. 01:33:55 And then there's a we need you chapter at the end, which is just a conclusion, as you would
766. 01:34:00 expect, which I didn't really see much in there other than join us in this mission of brainwashing.
767. 01:34:08 That was the weakest end to a book I have ever read. Yes. Yes. I mean, yeah. So we were talking
768. 01:34:16 about your action item of doing the eight day brainwash versus the 10 day brainwash. And I don't
769. 01:34:23 have point blank action items from this. All right. Then it's going to be all me for follow up next
770. 01:34:29 time. Totally. It's all you. So style and rating. You know, I struggled to read this at times.
771. 01:34:37 You know, there being someone who's interested in the science, I got bored with it. I mean,
772. 01:34:41 I get some of that might be having come from a place where I've studied a lot of it already.
773. 01:34:48 So it it can be boring to me when I feel like I've been there already. So that I'm aware of.
774. 01:34:54 I think that each of their individual parts are good. It's good information. I think that it's
775. 01:35:06 difficult for me to say that this is a book to recommend because there are so many others that
776. 01:35:14 cover each of these topics a lot better. And yes, I'm kind of joining, you know, the Chris Bailey
777. 01:35:23 team and saying that we should look at other multiple books as opposed to this one distillation
778. 01:35:31 here. But I think you're going to be better off doing that. I think it's better that way in in
779. 01:35:39 general in this particular case. I, of course, don't think they went as far as they should have
780. 01:35:45 with the food side of it. I think they did a good job with the sleep and the exercise side of it,
781. 01:35:51 covering things very briefly. But that's the issue, I think, is they covered a lot of things very
782. 01:35:57 briefly and tried to cover too much in one book, which is weird to say because I feel like we
783. 01:36:04 usually have the opposite of that in that we normally have a book that it feels like they
784. 01:36:10 lengthened it out in order to get it to their 200 page mark, 250 page mark. This one seems like
785. 01:36:16 they had to shorten it up. And then they threw this 50 some page thing of recipes on there.
786. 01:36:24 Why you don't just put that on a web link and drop it in. I have no idea. I don't know why they
787. 01:36:31 did that. That I just embeffled by. Because it would be 160 pages if they took that out.
788. 01:36:39 That's fair. It would look a lot less impressive on your bookshelf.
789. 01:36:41 I maybe, I don't know, is weird to me. So the format of the book is just strange, I think,
790. 01:36:49 because of that. As far as how to rate this, gosh, this is a weird one. There are pieces of this
791. 01:36:57 that are good. There are a lot of pieces of this that are good. There are pieces of it I don't like.
792. 01:37:02 I think it's not a book I'm going to tell people to go pick up and read just because it's kind of
793. 01:37:07 heady because of the research and science that's deep on it. But if that's what you want,
794. 01:37:11 this is definitely up your alley. I'm going to put it at 3.5 just because I'm so torn
795. 01:37:19 on it because I think there are some good points on it, thus not going further down.
796. 01:37:24 But I think it's not that easy to get the actions out of it when we've covered so much
797. 01:37:33 already that covers those specific topics. Well, you stole my rating. I'm going to put it at 3.5.
798. 01:37:41 But I also am a little bit surprised that you rated it that high without any
799. 01:37:47 desire to do the actual brainwash at the end. That's fair. So for me, I think I have to put it at
800. 01:37:54 3.5 because I feel like there's probably some benefit that will come from doing what they
801. 01:38:01 tell me to do. And I feel like I have to just give it a shot. I really don't want to do the 10-day
802. 01:38:06 brainwash. I feel like most of it maybe is going to be a waste of my time because I've considered
803. 01:38:15 it already. But that's the case. That's where I give myself permission to just do it my way and
804. 01:38:22 say, "Oh, I'm done with that. Check the box. Move on." And I don't have a lot of experience in a lot
805. 01:38:29 of these areas. Sleep is the one area that they talked about where I felt like, "Oh, I know this
806. 01:38:34 already." But a lot of this stuff, maybe the digital detox stuff too, I think there's a lot of
807. 01:38:39 things from that that I have implemented already. But it's definitely an area worth looking at again.
808. 01:38:45 And so I feel like 3.5 at this moment after I've gone through the 10-day brainwash, that could go
809. 01:38:52 up or that could go down. If we were to revisit the ratings, I think if I were more solid on,
810. 01:39:01 I don't think this is really going to benefit me that much, I would rate it lower. If I was really
811. 01:39:06 solid on, yeah, this stuff is really going to make a difference. I would rate it higher. So it
812. 01:39:11 either be 3.0 or 4.0. Just basing it off of the content of the book itself. I feel like for a
813. 01:39:18 sciencey book, it is pretty approachable. I don't know if it's just me as I found a lot of the
814. 01:39:24 brain stuff pretty fascinating. So maybe I was just interested enough in it that it clicked for me,
815. 01:39:31 but most science type books, they really don't. I think there's a possibility that if you're not
816. 01:39:38 interested in that, that maybe you have a different reaction than I did. But I also think it's possible
817. 01:39:42 that maybe they just did a good job writing it and they piqued my interest as a non-science person.
818. 01:39:47 Sure. And that would be somebody else's experience too. I feel like this is a pretty easy read for
819. 01:39:53 a book written by two doctors, for whatever that's worth. That is fair.
820. 01:39:58 Yeah. And I don't think, like you said, there's definitely areas where we probably would
821. 01:40:06 disagree if we dug into some of the stuff. I feel like some areas, I wish they would have gone a
822. 01:40:09 little bit deeper. I shared my frustrations with the It's Not Man vs Nature chapter. And what do I
823. 01:40:15 do as a Wisconsinite in the winter? But I mainly agree with a lot of what they said.
824. 01:40:21 And I feel like they do a pretty good job of combining this all together under the framing of
825. 01:40:27 if you look at all these areas and you make some of these changes, what it's going to do
826. 01:40:30 is going to allow your brain to function better. And that is going to have these specific benefits
827. 01:40:36 for your life. Sure. If that's interesting to you, I would recommend it. If it's not, then stay away.
828. 01:40:44 Yeah. I think there's definitely a portion of the bookworm audience that would just be like,
829. 01:40:50 yeah, I'm good. I don't really need to understand how all the stuff is affecting my brain. Because
830. 01:40:56 even if I did, I'm not even sure which lovers I'd be able to pull to make the changes anyways.
831. 01:41:01 Right. I work in a corporate environment and distractions are part of the deal.
832. 01:41:06 I connect with my family on Facebook, so I can't leave. If you're going into it, open-minded,
833. 01:41:15 and you're willing to look at these areas in your life for yourself, not just try to apply
834. 01:41:20 their approach, I think there's a lot of value to be had in here. Yes. I'm with you. All right.
835. 01:41:28 I'm good to put it on the shelf. What's next, Mike? Next is the motivation code by Todd Henry,
836. 01:41:34 which I have. I have not started it yet. I am familiar with Todd Henry because I have read his
837. 01:41:40 previous book Die Empty, which I really enjoyed. I also am very fascinated by the topic of motivation
838. 01:41:48 and feel that it is much more important than willpower. I'm expecting that Todd Henry is going
839. 01:41:55 to tell me why that is the case. But we will see. I have very high hopes for this book.
840. 01:42:00 Me too. This could be great. This could be a disaster. I have not cracked it open yet,
841. 01:42:06 so I'm very, very curious about it because motivation is the thing that sucks as an 80-D person.
842. 01:42:12 Yes, I'm excited about that one. The one after that is the practice shipping creative work
843. 01:42:23 by Seth Godin. This was released three days ago as we're recording this. Mike texted me the link
844. 01:42:29 to this. I did not know it had come out. I saw it. I'm a big, big fan of Seth Godin. He even did
845. 01:42:35 some work for him on one of his sites as a contractor. I'm a fan of Godin. When I saw this,
846. 01:42:41 yes, that. I want to read that. Mike was like, "Maybe this would be good for work." Yes, that,
847. 01:42:49 that, I want it. I shared it with you, and I thought maybe you would pick it, but I was ready to pick
848. 01:42:55 it if you didn't for the next day. Yes, that's what's next. The question is,
849. 01:43:03 have you put one in between these? I have, but I think I'm going to put this one on pause and read
850. 01:43:10 the motivation code first. I have started Who Not How by Dan Sullivan, the formula to achieve
851. 01:43:19 bigger goals through accelerating teamwork. Dan Sullivan is the guy behind Genius Network.
852. 01:43:25 What was that assessment that I took? Unique ability. The thing that I had sent you, he was the
853. 01:43:33 creator of that. Sure. I do not have a gap book. We're not to that point yet. Maybe over the holiday
854. 01:43:41 season. I don't know. We'll see. That said, for those of you who have chosen to be a part of our
855. 01:43:50 Bookworm Membership Program, thank you. That actually goes a very long way. I don't know if people
856. 01:43:56 realize that or not, but that helps us significantly with covering costs to run the websites and all
857. 01:44:05 the feeds and the community, which is club.bookworm.fm. It does help pay for those. Thank you to those
858. 01:44:14 of you who are currently members. If you are not on that list, if you're not a part of that club,
859. 01:44:20 go to bookworm.fm/membership. It'll step you through the process to be a part of that. It's five bucks
860. 01:44:29 a month and you get some extra perks with it. You get a special Bookworm wallpaper. There's some
861. 01:44:35 archived Bookworm gap episodes that I've recorded in the past. There's some cool stuff in there.
862. 01:44:42 All of Mike's Mind Node files are in there. There's a lot of extras out there. If you're not a part
863. 01:44:49 of that team, join us. We'd love to have you. Awesome. Regarding the Mind Node files, this week,
864. 01:44:55 I got caught up with them again. It literally is all the Mind Node files. I added five or six
865. 01:45:01 new ones, got us all the way up through the last book that we read, which I'm blanking on now for
866. 01:45:08 some reason. Shorter. Shorter. Shorter. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you for the
867. 01:45:15 Bookworm called Premium Members specifically. If you are reading along with us, then pick up
868. 01:45:21 the motivation code by Todd Henry and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.