I've been thinking about this a lot this year. What do we need to know about the neuroscience of making habit setting more easy? I imagine that there must be some really interesting Oh man.
Uh, I just had James Clear on the podcast and it's so interesting when you sit down with somebody who's like the habits guy. Um, and you compare it against the neuroscience and and so there there's sort of two ways into this. Um, you know, and James has done a magnificent job of explaining things that people can do to improve their habits and reduce bad habits.
The reason I'm so bullish about people understanding a little bit of mechanism behind the the checklist of things to do is that I do think that when people understand mechanism, it gives them flexibility over the so-called protocols. And I think it also allows them to customize those things for themselves. Let's face it, if you want to go online now and just say, "What are the top 10 things I can do to improve my sleep?
" And you get a list, you put those on your refrigerator, put them next to your bed, why doesn't everyone just do that? Yep. It's because the the way that people go about learning information strongly drives whether or not they apply that information.
>> Okay. So, in fairness to to to James and and the incredible work that he's done, I'm going to just kind of look at this a little bit through the lens of neuroscience. And I'm really glad that we're we're talking about this because um one of the things that he said that I think is so so true is that the thoughts and by extension the emotions, but really the thoughts that you have right now, your ability to focus right now is strongly driven by the inputs you received in the preceding hours and even days.
So one of the things that's really interesting about focus and attention and a lot of habits have to do with I don't want to procrastinate, I want to do this. We can talk about exercise, but let's talk about cognitive stuff. It's very very clear that if you have a hard time getting into a bout of work or even um staying focused, there's a there's a very good chance I believe that your breaks be between work and what you were doing before work was too stimulating.
I'm a big advocator for boring breaks and I'm a big advocator for silence before and after bouts of work for a couple of reasons. Let's think about it on the back end. Let's say you're trying to learn something or read a book or just do something that you you're not reflexively doing.
You want to create this habit. It's very clear that neuroplasticity, yes, requires alertness, requires focus. You need sleep layer that night.
I've been beating that drum for a number of years. It's also clear that reflection on what you were doing at some later time, just kind of like post-arning reflection, walking to your car, sitting on the plane for a second, thinking about a podcast you did earlier or something you heard or a discussion strongly reinforces the memories and the ability to work with the memories of new information. And this is something that we've given up largely because of our smartphones.
You're constantly bringing in new sensory information. all the data. I did an episode on how to best study and learn.
I went to the data to find out because I have my methods, but that doesn't mean they're the best best methods. Reading, rereading, note-taking, highlighting, it's all fine. But it turns out the biggest lever is to self- test at some point away from the material.
So testing is not just something for evaluation of others. It's a way that we should think, you know, yeah, how much can I remember about that conversation? What was tricky?
Okay, I don't remember that piece. I'm going to go back and look it up. All learning is, and this will sound like a giant duh, but all learning is anti-forgetting.
How do we know this? Because if you have people read a passage one, two, three, four, five times versus one time and they self test. One time and self- testing significantly better.
>> You ever had Peter C. Brown on the show? >> No.
>> Author of Make It Stick. >> No, but I like the the title. >> You need to bring Peter on.
Peter was episode I would guess like 30 on Modern Wisdom. You'll be a,030. Um, and the best synopsis that I got from him, learning how to learn was learning is repeated recall, not repeated exposure.
>> Yes. Beautiful. Right.
>> [ __ ] money. >> Exactly. >> And that's that's the >> Exactly.
And and this is >> the Ebing House forgetting curve. >> Guys like him, guys like James Clear, they have a real When I say unconscious genius, I mean clearly they put thought into and structure into what they teach. But the neuroscience supports everything you just said, which is what he just said.
And reflecting on what you were trying to do or learn or solve, even if you don't remember, even if you're still puzzled by it, is so vitally important to the anti-forgetting process. Okay. Now, in terms of actually being able to focus, actually being able to do work, it's so clear that thoughts, and this is the beautiful statements and work of a woman named Jenny Gro, who's spelled G R O H at Duke University, who's a neuroscientist been studying sensor sensory integration for a long time.
You know, I I've long thought about and I think we now understand as a field what sensations are. So sensations are the physical stimula in the environment, photons of light, mechanical pressure, odor, volatile odorants in the environment that lead to, you know, sight, touch, smell, etc. How that gets converted into chemical and electrical signals in the brain, we understand as a field.
We understand sensation. We understand perception. Perception is which of those sensations you happen to be paying attention to.
Okay? We understand emotions now more as a subset of something that we think of more broadly as states that are set by your autonomic nervous system. how alert you are, how not alert you are, and then emotions are kind of layered on top of that, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett has beautiful descriptions of these and so on. And there's some debate about what emotions really are, but we we know what they are neurobiologically and psychologically and behaviors. We know what they are, right?
There's a behavior and then there's the don't go behaviors, the suppression of behavior, and then there are memories, right? But for the longest time, it's been unclear what are thoughts like like what are they? Are they just like spontaneous geysering up of of of memories or like what's going on there?
And Jenny Grow I think has the absolute best description of these if and and this is based on experimentation. If we seed some idea, so let's say I say to you, let's not talk about cats cuz I'm a dog person, but I say, "Okay, okay, Chris, um, and this isn't a trick question, I promise, cuz it's always weird when people start doing this. I'm not Oz Pearlman or something.
I'm not going to like tell you your pin pin code. Um, think think about a dog. Okay.
Um, what kind of dog is it? >> Golden Retriever. >> Golden Retriever.
Okay. So, as you think about the Golden Retriever, like what other things come to mind about the Golden Retriever? >> It's got a little necker chief on.
>> Okay. >> Rednecker Chief. >> Great.
Rednecker Chief. Uh, like what else about Golden Retriever? >> Fluffy.
>> Fluffy. Okay. So, there's a a tactile thing.
Okay. Um, anything else about Golden Retrievers? This is very specific to you.
>> Bouncing up and down, rolling on its back, smells a little bit, but I like it. >> Great. Okay.
So, there's a I like it. You like that? This.
Okay. So, Jenny grows and others data point to the fact that thoughts basically start with some seed element, some noun, some pronoun, some thing, some event. And then what the brain does is essentially starts to call on more and more sensations and starts layering those in more and more prior sensory events.
It's red handkerchief. Okay, brain. It's fluffy.
There's a tactile. And that thoughts really are the layering on of more and more sensory memories. And thoughts are really a layering of the senses in in abstract thought space.
Now, this is not meant to, you know, make something from nothing. But it's so important that we understand this because you think what is the ability to think? Well, the ability to think is is constrained by the number of different senses I'm trying to place on a bunch of different things.
And so that's what that's how we navigate through environments, which is what Jenny Gro's main work is about. How you find yourself in space. I can't look at everything in this garage.
I have to focus on certain things. Find the Phillips head screwdriver. Go over there.
And you're discarding all the other information. Now, when you think about sitting down to do work or to learn something, prepare a podcast. It is so important that you limit the number of sensory inputs coming in not just during that event but before because the sensory um stimulus that kind of sets off this cascade of layering in more and more sensory memories and understanding is begun before you sit down to read your book.
This is why you read a portion of a book and then like oh wait I I wasn't even paying attention. You your brain is still working with the sensory inputs from before. It's not thinking about them consciously.
So this is vitally important. If you go back and you look at the history of attention and thinking and I have you can find these incredible pictures that they would give kids who had trouble probably had ADHD or just kind of rambunctious boys in most cases and they literally gave them helmets with two eyeholes so they couldn't look at anything else like hear anyone else right used to be you know kid with the hoodie on and the and the cap and you and you'd write now what have we done the challenge is that we've brought an infinite number of sensory experiences into the thing that you're looking at. Oh wow.
>> So we've cons we brought the we brought all the sensory inputs through the device that you're holding. >> So the narrowing of your perspective hasn't helped you to narrow the distractions. >> That's right.
Cognitive space is still infinite even though your spatial the spatial limitation of where you're placing your attention is very restricted. So the fact that you have so many competing thoughts has everything to do with that. And it also has everything to do with what you were doing in the 10 or 15 minutes before you sat down to try to work.
Now, in China, they're doing some very interesting experiments of having kids stale stare literally at a at a focal point on the wall for a number of minutes before beginning their work. Sounds a little extreme, a little military, but one thing that I've been doing before I prepare to do any writing, any podcasting, any work, is I I try and make myself as bored as possible. I try and remove as much sensory input as possible.
I might think about my breathing because it's hard to not think about anything, but I really have started to limit the amount of sensory information coming into my space. I have an entire floor of where I live now. I live in have an odd structure now, but uh the entire bottom floor is a no phone zone.
Once or twice I've brought my phone down there, but it's a no phone zone. I'm going down the stairs. There are no phones in there.
>> I'm trying to figure out how I can have no internet there. I have this little tent sauna that I use now with with incandescent lights that I love because I couldn't use my my barrel sauna where I was at. It's a I think a sauna space.
Makes these incredible. I like them because they they get hot right away and it's got the red light. I go in there.
It's in a in a it's grounded and there's no Wi-Fi in there. The phone goes dead the moment you go in there. >> So, you're in a mini Faraday case.
>> Yeah. And I don't like bringing the phone into the sauna, too. >> A quick aside.
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Brilliant.
