Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How To Master Your Brain’s 3 Gears, Improve Your Focus & Break Free from Stress with Dr Mithu Storoni #487

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Today’s workplaces are rapidly evolving, and today’s guest believes we’re still clinging to outdated notions of productivity. Despite the shift from physical to knowledge-based work, many workplaces still prioritise quantity over quality and this is leading to stress and burnout for many employees.    Dr Mithu Storoni is a University of Cambridge-trained physician, neuroscience researcher and ophthalmic surgeon who advises many multinational companies on mental performance and stress management. Her latest book, ‘Hyperefficient: Simple Methods to Optimise Your Brain and Transform the Way You Work’, lays out the tools we need to retune our brains to their best settings for complex thinking, creativity, concentration, and decision-making.    In our conversation, Mithu explains her novel idea that our brain has 3 different gears and that if we can learn how to use them, we can dramatically improve our productivity and our mental wellbeing. She also explains the critical importance of aligning our work patterns with our natural bodily rhythms, the science of taking regular breaks, the specific benefits that naps can offer and the role of exercise, particularly walking, in enhancing creativity and problem-solving.   We also discuss the impact of modern technology on our ability to focus and relax, and Mithu contrasts our modern lives, with the lives of long living communities around the world.   This episode is brimming with actionable advice on how to work more effectively, protect your brain health, and find a more harmonious balance between productivity and wellbeing. Whether you're battling burnout, struggling with focus, or simply looking to optimise the way you live, Mithu's approach offers a roadmap to a more fulfilling and sustainable approach to life.   Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com.   Thanks to our sponsors: http://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://thriva.co https://airbnb.co.uk/host https://drinkag1.com/livemore   Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/487   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

In a standard, intense office job, what we're all doing is we are running marathons at the speed of a sprint. We're now entering an era where it's not just what you're doing, it's the quality of your thoughts, it's the quality of your decisions. And for that, we need to work in a different way. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. Do you generally feel calm or do you feel constantly on the go with a background level of stress? Of course, the pressures in our life can come from a variety of

different places, but they often come from our work, not just what we have to do, but how we tend to do it as well. This week, my returning guest is Dr. Mithu Storoni. Mithu is a University of Cambridge trained physician, neuroscience researcher and ophthalmic surgeon who advises many multinational companies on mental performance and stress management. Her latest book, Hyper-Efficient, Simple Methods to Optimise Your Brain and Transform the Way You Work, lays out the tools we need to retune our brains to their best settings for complex thinking, creativity, concentration, and decision making. Now, Mitsu believes that the way we work today has to urgently change. She explains how society's approach to work has remained the same

for many years now, despite our shift from physical work to knowledge-based tasks with serious negative consequences. In our conversation, Mitu explains her novel idea that our brain has three different gears and that if we can learn how to use them, we can dramatically improve our productivity and our mental well-being. She also explains the critical importance of aligning our work patterns with our natural bodily rhythms, the science of taking regular breaks, the specific benefits that naps can offer, and the role of exercise, particularly walking, in enhancing creativity and solving problems. We also discuss the impact of modern technology on our ability to focus and relax, and contrast our modern lives with the lives of

long-living communities around the world. And Mitty shares what she thinks we can learn. This episode is brimming with actionable advice on how to work more effectively, protect your brain health, and find a more harmonious balance between productivity and well-being. Whether you're battling burnout, struggling with focus, or simply looking to optimise the way you live, Mitty's approach offers a roadmap to a more fulfilling and sustainable approach to life. In the new book, you write about a concept I've never heard of before, this idea that our brain has three different gears. So I'd love you to explain, if you will, what are those three gears

and why is it so important that we know about them? Right, so to do this we have to take a little step back. So what got me writing the book was, in the immediate context, the idea that we are constantly trying to prevent going down from zero. So we're trying to prevent burnout, we're trying to prevent stress in day-to-day life, in the way we work. And I first thought about, well, how about rather than looking at it from preventing people from going from zero to minus 10, why not look at it in terms of how do you go from zero to 100? So that got me thinking about what is it that we're actually doing and how are we actually doing it. So about 100 years ago, we had a very big change in the world of work, where after the Industrial Revolution, we saw the introduction of assembly lines, and a very

really explosive era of mass production, which really focused on productivity and on the number of items, on quantity rather than quality of production. And then when we discovered just how powerful assembly lines were, the concept of assembly line started filtering down into every aspect of life. This sort of routine, continuous, segmented way of working. After the Second World War, when knowledge work became a much bigger sector in work than manual work, we simply carried on the tradition of working like an assembly line, when in fact we were working with our minds and not with our hands. So we changed factories into offices, but we never really changed the concept of work and what would make work more productive when you're working with the mind. And then over the last, ever since then, so over the last

100 years, 50 years, knowledge work has really been a form of quantitative work in the majority of cases. You know, it used to be largely clerical. So it was about, you know, how many letters are you getting written per day? How many reports are you getting typed? And we're now entering an era where what happened to manual work when assembly lines and mass production stepped in is now happening to mental work. So mental work, the lower level cognitive work, is now going away to the sector of machines, automation and AI. And we are left doing the high level complex work. So human minds are now the main workers, where the work is high level cognitive work that machines can't do. So starting with this approach, I realized that how does the brain work? How does the mind work when it's working?

And then I became very interested a while ago in a little circuit in the brain called, well, a little dot place in the brain called the locus coeruleus because it looks blue. And as an aside, it was first identified by Marie Antoinette's physician. And this blue area is blue because it's the brain's main hub of norepinephrine or noradrenaline. And this locus coeruleus and the network that it sort of feeds into is a very interesting network because you can sort of gauge, not exactly follow, but sort of gauge what it's doing by following the movements of the eyes, of the pupils in the eyes. So the way your pupil dilates and its baseline reflects the activity in this small area of the brain. Why is that relevant to all of this? link a person's ability to solve puzzles, well, basically their intelligence, to the size of their pupils. And the link was really that you could gauge just how much

cognitive effort a human being puts in by looking at the's dynamics, because the pupil's dynamics tell you how this nerve network in the brain is acting. In other words, this nerve network is absolutely central to cognitive work. Wow. And so how do we bring all these things together? So about in the 1950s or 60s, there was quite a lot of interest in the idea of a concept called physiological arousal, which we still use now. But there was a lot of research into it then where they found that how sort of how wired you are and how alert you are can actually filter down into different aspects of your behavior. It can filter down into the way your muscles react. It can filter down into the way you focus, into the way you concentrate. We all know about the Yerkes-Dodson curve, the upside-down U-curve,

where there's a sweet spot of tension where we perform the best. And there were other studies alongside that, that looked at how there is a sweet spot of this physiological wiredness, where we feel happy. And if you now look into research of this particular area in the brain, you find that it actually has a very interesting pattern of firing. And here we come into the three gears. So this is a very long-winded approach.

So if you look at this network in the brain, which we can say is absolutely central to mental work, it has a very interesting way of firing that we, for the sake of your audience, specifically in the context of mental work, we can use a metaphor to try to understand, okay, to try to imagine. And in this metaphor that I use in the book, we can imagine that the mind and the brain is working at three different gears while it does mental work. I call it one, two, and three. I came up with the concept of the three gears because I very loosely relate it to the way this very special network fires. It fires in three,

very broadly, three ways. So we can say it fires in a very low constant way, which is low tonic. We can say it fires in a very high constant way. And then it fires in a middle way where it fires in bursts. And so in NeuroSpeak, we can say low tonic activity, phasic activity, and high tonic activity. But if you're not doing NeuroSpeak, it's really three different ways in which this network fires. And this middle zone of firing, which I call gear two, when it fires in this way, you get a perfect level of norepinephrine in the brain that brings your prefrontal cortex alive, that makes your prefrontal cortex fully engaged, which means this is the sweet spot for mental work.

Now, why is this really important? It's important because at the moment, we are still all living and working as if we are still following an assembly line of Fordian times. We live and work continuously. We work nine to seven or whatever, 10 to eight work days, which are pretty continuous, even with a lunch break. We work in the same way. We sit in front of a computer. mental work for a very short length of time. So as soon as your brain gets tired, it falls out of this sweet spot of gear two. In other words, the way we are working is putting us in a state of gear one or gear three all the time, when in fact, in this era of the knowledge age, we should all be in this middle zone of working. And in my book, I try to explore how to get there. Yeah, thank you for that really thorough explanation of the backstory and how you came up with those three gears. I must say,

I read a lot of books, Smitu, each week for this podcast, but your new one, Hyper-Efficient, Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work. It's very, very original. I've never heard of this three gear concept before. And I think it's really, really useful. So let me summarize some of the things I've heard from you so far. Okay. There's this idea that actually early on in the 20th century, or maybe even before that, early on in the 20th century, or maybe even before that, we essentially worked like machines, right? Things were made to be most efficient to create the most amount of cars in a factory. The way most of humanity, much of humanity works today is different. It's not physical labour, it's mental labour. But we're still, in many companies, in most companies,

we're still working in a way that is suitable for machines, but not for humans. So I would add in there, so far, we have worked to produce many tangible things. So many hair dryers, many refrigerators. Then when we started knowledge work in the post Second World War time, we were also doing quantitative work largely. Even when we were doing mental work, sitting down in offices, what we were doing emphasized quantity. Quantity decided the bottom line. So the number of reports we were able to type out, number of letters, all of that was a measure of productivity. In this new phase, work is all about quality. Because machines are doing all the hard work that are low level, that are quantitative, so the machines can now write emails, they can now

write basic articles, they can now formulate, even make basic judgments. The human mind now in the workplace has to do the hard things that machines can't do. And doing these tough cognitive work sectors or doing these cognitive, this kind of really tough mental work subtypes like creative idea generation like intense problem solving that is now fallen on human minds to do and that is going to be the differentiating factor between one organization and the next where everyone will be using machines to do all the low-level cognitive work now that we are working in this way, quality becomes the bottom line. So rather than having a hundred great ideas by doing, having 10 brainstorm sessions, 10 meetings that where

you brainstorm, it's much more important to have one incredible idea. Having one idea, one software solution that is truly authentic, truly original, can completely change your company, change the whole landscape. Whereas having a thousand less good or mediocre ideas will do nothing. So we're now entering an era where it's not just what you're doing, it's the quality of your thoughts, it's the quality of your decisions. And for that, we need to work in a different way. Yeah, there's a very optimistic tone throughout your book, actually, which is quite interesting because as AI permeates into more and more areas of our life, work life, home life, there's a lot of negativity, there's a lot of

worry about what this might mean for the job market, what it might mean for us as humans. And I'm certainly no expert in AI. But one of the things I really enjoyed reading in your book is this idea that if machines and technology can do the kind of basic admin type work and more, right, that a lot of humans find tedious and boring, right? In some ways, that's a good thing if it means that humans can get back to doing what humans do best, generating ideas, coming up with new concepts, being incredibly creative. It's something I think a lot about as a parent, actually. You know, my kids are currently 14 and 11. And like many parents, I think how much of what they learn at school today is going to be

relevant for them in 10, 20 years in the workplace. So I often think that one thing I need to teach my kids is to be adaptable. How do you solve problems? How do you navigate an overload of information and actually figure out what you think, right? It's how do you be creative? How do you generate special ideas? Because technology is going to do the rest for us, isn't it? So is that fair to say for me that it is an optimistic book, that you actually think this AI revolution is going to get humans back to doing what humans do best. Absolutely right. So a great way of imagining AI or whatever AI evolves into is as really clever assistants. So, you know, one way to imagine it is if in an organization traditionally, you'd have the senior executive making the really important decisions. And you'd have more junior

analysts, junior team members doing all the kind of slightly lower level work, the more mundane routine work, the box ticking work. And now everyone has AI. So everyone has now become a senior executive in a way of speaking in their organisation. But when you have to work in that way, you will not produce the best ideas if you work in the old way. You now have to work in a completely different way that is very, very separate from the assembly line approach. With the assembly line approach, you focus on quantity. So you can produce many ideas, you can type many emails. So hold on, on that then, just to make this really tangible for people,

if you work in an office and you have a boss and they're measuring your output in terms of how many emails did employee A send between 9 and 10 and 10 and 11, 11 and 12. That way of measuring productivity, you're saying is outdated. Exactly. It is completely outdated. If you're measuring productivity by the, so it used to work at a time when it did help to know how many letters were typed, how many reports were written. We went through a long era where that was a valid measure of productivity. But now the machines are doing the emailing and the letter writing. So the time that you're sitting at your desk does not immediately equate to productive work. Once productivity changes, so now we have to measure productivity in terms of quality.

So rather than asking, okay, how many emails, how many hours have you done this week? And let's pay you for overtime. We should ask how many brilliant solutions have you generated this week? How many really valid, actionable, sellable ideas have we come up as a team with this week? That should be the new measure of productivity, because as soon as you start using those metrics for productivity, it no longer matters how long you're sitting on your chair for, how many emails you write. And also it gives it, it's actually a win-win situation because on the one hand, you don't have to pay employees just to sit there and do nothing. Let me give you an example. If you, I was speaking to a writer the other day who, um, who told me that they were

sitting at their computer for 10 hours only to be able to write what they could have written in 10 minutes. All right, so they're getting paid for sitting on their chair for 10 hours. It's also very distressing for them. Once they left that chair, they went for a walk. The idea came to them and they wrote it down in 10 minutes. So they did the equivalent of 10 minutes work in eight hours in the old system. So in the old system, they were incredibly,

they were still productive because they sat at their chair for eight hours. But instead, we should think, okay, how much of those, how many of those eight hours actually brought out qualitative work so work of really good quality so if we now start saying okay well instead of tying this person to the chair for eight hours or if you're you're an independent worker if you're sitting instead of sitting at your chair for eight hours why not introduce elements into your day that put you into the right frame of mind to come up with brilliant ideas. And if you do that, the idea won't come to you eight hours into the day, it could come to you within 10 minutes of sitting there.

Well, let's talk about these rhythms then, because that really is a big part of the book, this idea that there are rhythms in nature, there are rhythms in our body, there are rhythms in our minds. But unfortunately, many of us are being asked to work in ways that are in complete misalignment with those natural rhythms. Correct. So this actually, again, if we go back a little bit into this, actually, we go back a little bit further than a little bit. So our hunter-gatherers are gatherer ancestors, as we know from studies on current hunter-gatherer populations. But by and large, when they sprinted, they didn't daydream. This is why we cannot sprint while we daydream. All right?

So their mind matched their body. When they were sitting down to rest, they also rested with their mind. When the Industrial Revolution happened, we sort of decapitated ourselves in the sense that we forced our heads to sleep while the body worked on conveyor belts, which became assembly lines. We then had the knowledge work revolution post second world war. When we flipped this, we forced the body to sleep while the brain worked. The problem is that the body is connected to the brain,

which is not really a problem, but it's a fact. We've ignored this fact. It's a problem when we divorce the two from each other. It's a real problem. And we have completely forgotten that we exist as a single entity. And this is why now we're discovering with studies that actually, you know, for instance, This is why now we're discovering with studies that actually, you know, for instance, stretching muscles of the body also relaxes your mind. We're also discovering that in order to get into a really peak focus condition, doing a couple of three minute sprints before you sit down to work can help you get there if you're feeling a little bit groggy.

So we're now using the body to get the mind to where we want it to be, because we are relearning a lesson that we have lived with for many, many years before we decided to go against it. So that's the basis of my observation. And now if you take that and you really look largely at the body and the brain and the world as a whole. We know that the circadian, most of your listeners will know from, you know, your great shows in the past that there's something known as a circadian rhythm where your body's physiology, even the dynamics of your gut bacteria, mirror the 24-hour rhythm of day and night. We know that networks in the brain, as well as organs in the

body, change how they behave through these 24-hour rhythms. We also know that the autonomic nervous system connects the body to the brain. And the autonomic nervous system's dynamics, which influence whether you're awake, whether you're asleep, whether you're tense, whether you're relaxed, is also tightly tied to your circadian rhythm. And the way we work right now, if you look into the brain's dynamics, the way norepinephrine, which is released from this blue dot which influences cognitive work also changes in a circadian rhythm and then we can go even deeper and look at the way we do different work and there are studies that show that for instance creative work peaks off peak in other words creative work peaks before most people go to work,

early hours in the morning, and after most people come home from work, so late in the day. We also know that, again, studies show that focused attention work, so the ability to focus, peaks slightly later. So it peaks in the morning and later on in the morning, and also later on in the afternoon. We also know that most of us have what is known as a post-lunch dip in attention. So these are all inherent rhythms. But, you know, if you imagine an average worker going to work, an average manager, you go to work in the morning, you first miss your creative window, which happens shortly after you wake up. You probably take a couple of coffees or teas and they make you really alert. So you again miss this creative window. be doing focused work or you maybe block out your morning with meetings and then you start doing focused work in the afternoon immediately after lunch when your body wants you to sleep now you

can work like that and we have been working like that for the best part of a century or near a century the problem is if you want to come up with quality work working in that way is really crippling. Yeah, you can work like that, but there's a consequence, right? You can drive a car with a flat tire and you can still get somewhere, but there's a consequence. Correct. Right? It's so fascinating. First of all, I love that concept of mind and body alignment. Yes, through the lens of productivity, fine. But if you just take a big picture view as to what do we want as a human being experiencing life, we want our mind and body

to be in harmony, right? It's going to help our health, our happiness, our subjective feelings. Everything's going to be better when that's in alignment. And I think we all know, or many of us have been in jobs in the past, or maybe people are listening now currently where, you know, it's so tedious that your mind can be a million miles away on Facebook, on Instagram or doing whatever, but you're still getting your job done, right? Because sometimes it is that tedious and you can automate it and do it, but your mind be somewhere else. Because I really think a lot about this through the lens of health, happiness, productivity, but also a lot of our addictive behaviours. I honestly feel more and more as I think about why do so many people struggle to cut back on sugar or cut back on scrolling or cut back on drinking alcohol despite knowing

the consequence. I think a lot of the time it's because our mind and bodies are not in alignment. our mind and bodies are not in alignment. So to plug that gap, we take whatever our drug of choice is to try and sew up that gap, basically. Does that make sense to you? Absolutely does. Absolutely does. I'm going to bring in another angle into this, which I think will be interesting to your listeners. Vivo Barefoot are one of the sponsors of today's show. Now I am a huge fan of Vivo Barefoot shoes and have been wearing them for over a decade now, well before they started supporting this podcast. I've also been recommending them to patients for years because I've seen so many benefits. I've also been recommending them to patients for years because I've seen so many benefits I've seen improvements in back pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain and even things like plantar fasciitis and contrary to what you might initially think most people find vivos really really comfortable

but I have to say especially at this time of year, as the temperature is starting to drop, their winter boots are absolutely fantastic. And I myself am really enjoying wearing their brand new Gobi Warm Lined Winter Boots. Now, as well as adults, I think they are a fantastic option for children. And I really hope that in the future, more and more children start wearing barefoot shoes like Vivos, as I think this can prevent many downstream problems in the body later on in life. And remember, whether for your children or yourself, if you've never tried Vivos before, it's completely risk-free to do so, as they offer a 100-day trial for new customers.

So if you're not happy, you just send them back for a full refund. If you go to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more, they are giving 20% off as a one-time code. To all of my podcast listeners, terms and conditions do apply. To all of my podcast listeners, terms and conditions do apply. To get your 20% off code, all you have to do is go to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. This episode is sponsored by Thriver, the app that helps you listen to your blood and get personalized guidance on how to optimize your health and fitness. Now, I think regular blood tests can be a really valuable tool that can help tell us which lifestyle changes are working

and where we might need to make changes. And Thriver is the perfect tool to help us do that because they make it really simple. You just take a blood test at home, which is really easy, You just take a blood test at home, which is really easy, send it off, and then you get all of your results in a matter of days in an easy to understand app. And all of your results come with personalized, actionable lifestyle advice from doctors. You can then test again in a few months time and learn what's working well and where you might need to make some changes. For example, your average blood sugar known as your HbA1c, I think is a really important marker that gives you information on the state of your metabolic health. And I personally like to check it every three to six months

to make sure it's staying in its optimal range. The Thriver app is what I use to help me do this and it offers many different options. You can do general non-specific blood testing or get more focused on things like hormonal health, heart health, sports performance and nutrient levels. For listeners of my show Thriver are offering an exclusive offer of 20% off your first Thriver cycle when you enter the promo code LIVEMORE at checkout. Just visit Thriver.co to get started today. That's T-H-R-I-V-A dot C-O. Thriver, listen to your blood. You mentioned the three gears.

So our brains, and this is another central theme in the book, as human beings, we like to get into that kind of middle zone of mental state, which I call gear two. And this is the gear that you think most people want to be in most of the time when they're at work. It is the best gear to be in because it's the gear, it's a state of mind. So just to go back again, gear one, two, and three are three distinct states of mind that I describe in the book. I have based, it's a metaphor,

and I've based the metaphor on what we just discussed earlier. Now, in gear one, I describe having a very kind of mind-wandering, gentle pace of mind, where you cannot focus, you sort of want to daydream. So your DMN, the network in the brain that's associated with daydreaming, with mind wandering, that is more active in this state. You also get more alpha oscillations, which alpha oscillations are correlated to having a sort of a mental windscreen being wiped. So if you have a mind that's really busy, if we're working on a problem, it kind of wipes the slate for you. So this is gear one. Gear two is the mental state you want to be in when you want to

work because it allows you to focus. And gear three is a very sort of distracted, hyper aroused state where you're just reacting, you are doing things fast, but you cannot think and analyze. And one way to imagine this is if you imagine how you feel when you're working during a typical day. So you can kind of feel when your mind feels a little bit slow, when you just cannot bring your focus to what you're doing. That is what I describe as gear one. And it sort of feels like a slow speed. Then you can think of how you feel if you're suddenly told, like, I will have soon, you have a train to catch in the next 15 minutes. Then suddenly you start reacting, your mind starts racing. That is what I call a

gear three. And in between those two states, it's middle zone, which I refer to as gear two. And in this middle zone, you can focus, You can also kind of play with your attention a little bit. So you can focus, you can still be kind of in a state of gentle focus. You can be in a state of sort of slightly highly alert, more kind of aroused focus, where you're trying to brainstorm ideas and so on. But this middle zone where you can focus is actually a very pleasant state for us to be in. And I'll tell you why I'm bringing this up now from what you just described. So because it's such a pleasant state for us to be in,

we like to be there because when we're in there, and this roughly correlates with if there's anyone interested in this, with phasic locus coeruleus firing. When we're in this state, we can focus and it's not too effortful for us to focus. We still need to try, but it comes to us quite easily. So it's optimal for mental work, but it's also an optimal state, mental state to be in. before technology as we have it today we had to try to get into a mental state where we are able to easily hold our focus if you are struggling to get into that state you could feel bored so for instance imagine you're standing at a bus stop 40 years ago where there's no when there's no uh cell phone nothing tells you when the bus is coming yeah you would have forced yourself you you would have had to stand there and somehow get into a mental state where you're sort of happy you find something to focus on

and you're happy you're not agitated you don't need something to entertain you so in one so at that point you are naturally getting into gear two okay because you have nothing to help get you there so when you transitioning into gear two happens or you have to actively try to do it from a gear one state so gear one state is when you're not really focusing you're kind of mind wandering you're kind of in a very slow state of mind if you want to shift yourself from there to a state where you can focus on what you're doing you're not bored you're not drifting away. You're present. Okay. That transition has always needed us to make a little bit of effort. But right now, technology, by arousing you and alerting you with exciting things and interesting things, gets you into that zone two state very easily,

which is why if you are working and what is in front of you on a screen is boring, it's much more comforting to look at your phone, where you don't really have to put the effort to be interested. It interests you. You mentioned dopamine, so the dopaminergic and cholinergic networks are all influenced by the locus coeruleus. So we're kind ofgic and cholinergic networks are all influenced by the locus coeruleus. So we're kind of looking at the whole brain as a sort of package. All right. So in the past, you would have to, we would have had ample training to put ourselves into the right

mental state for focus. But right now, technology is doing it for us all the time. So if you wake up and look at an iPad, look at your phone, that immediately wakes you up, makes your mind work faster and pulls you into this middle zone too. Whereas in the past, you would have had to do it yourself. So what's the problem if someone does wake up and using a smartphone and stimulating and exciting content put themselves right into the middle of zone two you're saying that zone two is a good thing where we get a lot of focused work done why is it a negative then if someone was to wake up and go straight to zone two

because even more important than actually getting into gear two is being able to navigate yourself to be in the right mental state. And you are using a crutch. And this crutch is so effective that we are sort of entering into an existence where people with no attention disorders before now need, now rely on this very powerful crutch to get into a right mental state of feeling alert, of feeling happy, of feeling present.

And they need this mechanism there. And this is why if you are at work doing something not inherently exciting, you feel even more distractible and you feel even, you find the work even more of a struggle. technology sparkling facebook feeds and swipes and and and you know posts to get you there you lose the ability to get into the right state of mind yourself and that is what we are seeing now more and more what's the relationship between these topics that you're talking about and writing about and these three gears and our health and things like burnout so we all feel good so taking a step back um and in in a really powerful study on mice it's a very small study. They managed to stimulate this network that I'm very loosely basing the gears on, the locus coeruleus norepinephrine network. They used optogenetic stimulation to put a bunch of mice into what I define as gear two versus gear three.

And they found that when these mice are in a state of gentle curiosity sort of the optimal state of mind in which you're able to do focused work where you're curious but you can focus that sort of equivalent state of mind in these mice when the mice were put into a state of gentle curiosity their brains were very efficient at clearing away toxic byproducts and at sort of maintaining the homeostasis. And this is especially relevant, especially important, because these mice were engineered to be more susceptible to neurodegenerative disease. So if you take a bunch of mice who are susceptible to neurodegenerative disease. So if you take a bunch of mice who are susceptible to neurodegenerative illness

and you put them into gear two and then you subsequently put them into gear three, a gear three state, they are less likely to develop disease compared to if you only put them into a gear three state for a short period every day so putting so putting your brain or your mind into this middle zone and staying in this middle zone for much longer than staying in this sort of rushed gear three state of mind seems in animal studies to be very protective for the brain and for the mind. And to your point, it's a question we won't know the answer to because it takes a long

time for neurodegenerative diseases to develop. But could it be possible that the way in which we are working in this assembly line state, ignoring circadian rhythms, working with a very heavy mental load, all of this is putting us into a gear three state because our minds are having to work harder and faster to get through the material. And staying in a gear three state for prolonged periods of time without ever entering this sort of gently curious state of mind in these mice clearly amplified their risk of disease in the future so could it be contributing to chronic stress and burnout and really actually it is we know that but also could that be putting us at risk of developing

some kind of disease neurodegenerative illnesses in the future this is all speculative i want to just underscore that but that's what animal research makes you think about it also makes me think about the concepts of being tired and wired, which you write about at length in Hyper-Efficiency. Because it seems to me that this would be quite a, I imagine quite a modern concept to be, you know, this idea that you can be tired, your body can be tired, but your mind still be hyperactive. So you're lying in bed, you can be tired, your body can be tired, but your mind still be hyperactive. So you're lying in bed, you can't sleep even though you want to. I wonder how often that exists in traditional hunter-gatherer communities, where I imagine body and mind are in much more

alignment. So when body is active, mind is active. And at night when body is tired, mind is also kind of relaxed and ready to switch off. Absolutely. And this is why there is data that going on a very long walk, so moving your body at a slow pace for a long period of time, helps you, helps your brain wind down. So you sort of have to bring the two into alignment for the two to relax together. But also to your point, this wide state is a very interesting state to be in because you might think, and just for your listeners, what does this feel like? Well, it feels like if you've had a very long day and you're still at work and you still haven't finished what you're supposed to do, you keep taking coffee. You just force yourself to carry on.

All right. Even though you're really tired, you haven't slept, you're really tired you haven't slept you're really tired but that coffee just makes your eyes wide open so you can just quickly you know type or or write emails or just come up with any idea and so on but what this wide state is actually doing is actually it's creating a sort of dissociation in your cognitive performance so you can perform low level cognitive work faster and or at the same speed as earlier on in the day so firing off a few emails getting back to a few sort of absolutely low grade not too stimulating tasks exactly um stimulating but low grades where you don't have to think so you just have to kind of act all right but if in that state you have you you just have to kind of act, all right. But if in that state you're asked to solve your son's differential equation,

or you have to make a really important difficult decision, you just can't think. You can't play chess in that state. So there's actually a dissociation. And the neural underpinnings of this is to do with norepinephrine, which is fired by which is released by your locus coeruleus, this network that I'm talking about. And what this ultimately results in is many people who suffer from insomnia, actually get into this state late into this into the night. And one of the ways to get into this state late into the night. And one of the ways to get into this state is by pushing

yourself during the day, working despite tiredness, where you've kind of pressed the pedal so hard that your gear is almost stuck in gear three. So your body is tired, but you've really pushed the pedal so hard that your mind is just not clocking back yeah and that's what stops you from falling asleep this idea that our bodies have a rhythm nature has a rhythm but modern life certainly in urbanized settings means that often without even realizing it we're overriding these rhythms we're flattening these rhythms and it has a consequence and i often wonder you know i often like to sort of take a big picture view on society see well what is going

on if i was an alien coming what what would this society look like? And two things come to mind. One is, if you think about so much of our work now is mind work, it's mental work, right? So many of us sitting in front of bright screens, not doing very much. Our fingers are moving, right? But it doesn't look as though we're doing much, right? Our bodies aren't moving that much. It's just the workings of our minds are going and our fingers are tapping. And it's probably very different now to 100 years ago, when if we looked at humans, you'd see a lot of movement. Certainly, if you look at hunter-gatherer communities, of course, you would see that movement. But I also think about this explosion

in coffee shops, right? Now, I love a coffee as much as the next person. I love a coffee as much as the next person. But I do feel that this epidemic of cafes and coffee shops in airports, stations, villages, towns, I think what does that say about the way that we are living? I think it says something very, very powerful that often we don't want to acknowledge. If we're living lives that require us to get powered up by caffeine every day and wound down by alcohol every night, that says something quite worrying about the state of society, I think. It's a legal upper and downer. Yeah. So I talk about coffee in the book and I describe how some accounts suggest that coffee breaks came into being when a tie making factory or business in Denver, Colorado, discovered that employees actually ended up making more products when they were given two coffee breaks during the day. Quantity. Quantity. Quantity, right? Over quality. products when they were given two coffee breaks during the day um now we usually quantity quantity we make ties with our hands not with our minds with our brains so coffee is very intricately

woven into the story of the industrial revolution and that you know some writers some historians suggest coffee is the backbone was the backbone to the massive boom of mass production. When we switched to knowledge work, we, again, we carried on this old rhythm of working continuously and producing continuously. We equated work with quantity. Back then in the 1950s and 60s, it was number of reports, number of letters and so on. But it was just having to keep going against your inner instinct to stop and pause and take a break. Caffeine solved that problem when you were on the assembly line. It continued to solve the problem when you are on the assembly lines of typing desks

or of other offices. And what caffeine was doing is putting everyone into a gear three state. So I point out that if you are sitting there analyzing a problem, you need to be able to focus and think and explore in a very coordinated, controlled manner. But if you, I don't know if your listeners have watched the film Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin, where he's working on an assembly line and it's moving faster and faster, and he's struggling to keep up. If you're working on an assembly line, actually the faster your hands move, the more products you build. If you're typing letters and

you're not thinking, you're just listening to what is taped and putting that out through your fingers, you're not thinking. You can do that much faster. If you have to hang around in the office when you're really tired and pay attention at meetings, You can do that better in gear three than in gear two. So being in gear three was actually advantageous to productivity of the kind that we've needed for the last hundred years. But we continue to use that. We continue to define work like that. And we continue to define work like that and we continue to use coffee to fuel ourselves a larger point which is again super important is that as a society we have grown to ignore the instinct to need to pause and take a break mind is very different from muscle. If you're working hard in the gym, you perspire, your limbs ache, you start not being able to lift as heavy. And it's visibly,

it's obvious to everyone that you're tired. When your mind is tired, you're not perspiring, there is no pain, no one can see it from the outside. So through this attitude of productivity and this way of working, we have grown to ignore the inner signal we have of pausing. And in fact, we do the opposite. You mentioned morning and evening. I know many people who take a coffee every hour to keep themselves going. So we are using... You've got to pay it back later.

You will be paying it. That that's the point isn't it yeah you can keep going but there's a cost you're kicking it down the road you're kicking it till later on in the day you're kicking it till later on the day you may be kicking it till later on in your life but you know you're also kicking it in terms of in terms of business in terms of the work you're doing so by being in that state, in that caffeine-driven gear three state, you are not entering these absolute peak mental states that are necessary. As we're having this conversation, the Olympics have just finished. Okay.

And I think this analogy between physical work in the gym where you then perspire and your muscles are tired and you kind of know you then have to take a break. You couldn't keep pushing weights for eight hours a day, nine to five. We kind of understand that. I guess the point I'm trying to get to is let's take the track and field events of the Olympics, which me and my kids have been, you know, watching obsessively for the last few days. And it's just been phenomenal to watch. But let's say a, I don't know, a 1500 meter runner or a 5,000 meter runner

whose job is to peak once every four years at the Olympics. Sure, other tournaments as well, but building up towards the Olympics. The whole program that is put together for them by their coach will absolutely take into account rest and recovery, right? It will be, yes, you'll do that, but on Mondays, because it's a heavy, intense session, Tuesdays are going to have to be very light, right? People who run regularly and are in tune with their bodies will know that. If they have a heavy session one day, they can't have a heavy session the day after. Or if they keep doing that, they're going to really burn out and hit the wall and get

sick. So I think that analogy is really fantastic. With physical work, we kind of get it, that there are these rhythms. And I do want to talk about power laws, which is a fascinating topic that I read about in your book. The mind's kind of the same, right? If we're having heavy, heavy mental load one day, do we need to think about doing different kinds of work the following day? And I'm conscious as I'm asking these questions, Mitu, that your ability to shape your work day may depend on your job, whether you're a freelancer, whether you're an entrepreneur, or whether you are in an office with loads of senior management above you who tell you how you're meant to work, right? So I'm conscious that not everyone is going to be able to make those changes,

but I wonder if you could comment on some of those points. So I'll address the last one first. So one of the things I would love everyone to do is really rethink the way we measure productivity in terms of quality because as soon as you start looking at quality managers of organizations with very rigid work structures will start seeing just like the denver tie maker started seeing that there were more ties when people had coffee breaks people will eventually start seeing that, okay, if we look at quality of ideas generated, maybe we need to work a different way. Okay.

But yeah, so there are lots of interesting points here. So the mind is very similar in the sense that the brain has finite capacity. Our brains are really small. They can do marvelous things, but they're very small. They also take 20% of, or consume 20% of the body's sugar, despite weighing a fraction of the body, something like two or 3%.

Now, you can have two options here. You can either look at mental work. If we look through the lens of sport, it's much better. So what is completely wrong and what we're all doing is we are running marathons at the speed of a sprint in a standard, intense office job. Most standard, intense office jobs. Most standard intense office jobs. That's a great way of putting it. So if we take that context where you don't have that much independence

over how you're working, if we take that context, well, you have two options. If you're doing intense work, you can't run a slow marathon. So you clearly need the mind to perform intense work. Now, you can do it in two ways. Either you can say you will work mentally as sprints.

So you work really hard and then do nothing. Take a long period off. Now, if you were to do that in an organization, your manager would frown at you. The CEO would probably think, is this going to affect the bottom line? So I looked at how have people been working in the past? Now, hunter-gatherers, from what we know of today's data and also anthropological studies from about 100 years ago, 200 years ago, show that hunter-gatherers actually had what is known as a power, what I'm calling a sort of a power law, fat-tailed way of working, where you do intense work for a really short time. And then you do slower, more moderate work for the next big chunk of time.

And then you spend the majority of the time doing very light work. So you don't just work and sleep. You work, but then you kind of wind down like a power law on a graph. work, but then you kind of wind down like a power law on a graph. So this is how hunter-gatherers, the different communities that I mentioned, seem to work observationally. I then grew very interested in another paper, which I refer to in my book, which looked at how Darwin, Einstein, at how darwin einstein and freud wrote letters now back in darwin's time a lot of work um sort of scientific study was carried out on the writing table not in a laboratory and letter writing actors of acted as a form of peer review right if you and a group group of researchers looked at how do these three individuals write or how did they write their letters? Did they write, did they reply to letters as they came in, in which case there would be no pattern to it or they would be kind of serially?

Or did they write in a certain way? in a certain way. And they found out that these three incredible intellectuals of our time, of human history, seemed to write letters in a pattern that resembled a power law, which suggested they wrote really difficult replies rarely, or they replied to difficult letters infrequently, easier letters more of the time and the easiest for the most period of time. And so putting this together, rather than say sprint, so if you're working in an office, rather than say, okay, manager, I'm going to work from nine to 10 and then go to the beach for the rest of the day, your manager isn't going to be very happy. So what I suggest in the book is to use these two principles and create a power law rhythm of working where you work, if you're doing focused work, you work in 90 minute sessions,

90 to 100 minute sessions, and you structure those sessions. So you do the toughest work, the most mentally intense work for about 20% of the time. If it's super intense, about 5%. And then you keep working, but you lower the intensity of your work down so that you always tackle really intense mental work in the first sort of 10 to 20 minutes of your work session. of 10 to 20 minutes of your work session. And this links in with another thing, which is that there is data to show that doing more than four hours of really intense mental work in a day carries on to the next day. So the effects of it, the fatigue, the kind of deficit in capacity actually carries over to the next day, even if you're sleeping. So doing work, intense mental work or knowledge work in a power law rhythm is the most apt way to work

for a knowledge worker. And just that term power law, where does it come from? This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. With the winter rolling in, some of you, I'm sure, will be thinking about a trip away to escape the cold. And for many of you, you will no doubt be looking at staying in an Airbnb. In fact, whenever my family and I go away, our first choice is always an Airbnb over a hotel. And we have stayed in many fantastic Airbnbs over the years in places like Greece, France, America, and Egypt. For us personally, we love the convenience and the fact that we have our own kitchen to use when we're not at home. Now if you've ever stayed in an Airbnb and thought, I could do this, maybe my place could be an Airbnb, you're probably right. It can be as simple as starting with a spare room or even your whole

place when you're next away. Whether you use the extra money to pay for some bills or for something a little more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.co.uk forward slash host. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system,

something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. All of this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life, no matter how busy you feel. It's also really, really tasty. The scientific team behind AG1 includes experts from a broad range of fields, including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics, and biochemistry. I talk to them regularly and I'm really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order.

But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. So a power law is just a mathematical relationship. So power law is just a mathematical relationship. So if you want an analogy, if you imagine a situation where you are doing something, so let's come back to work actually. So if you think about work, what I mean by power law is you're doing really intense work for the shortest period of time.

So the more intense your work is, the fewer the hours or the minutes you're doing it for. The easier your work is, the longer you are doing it for. And that inverse relationship is what I describe as a power law. It reminds me, when I first read the first couple of chapters of your new book and you outlined this three-gain model that you've come up with, I couldn't help but think of

physical exercise and endurance and this idea of zone one exercise, zone two, zone three, or zone one to zone five, depending on which model you're looking at. And, you know, we've spoken about this on this show a couple of times with Peter Atiyah, also with Professor Stephen Seiler from Norway, this incredible sports scientist on the benefits of being in different zones, right? And if you do lots of zone one on

a three zone model, so zone one being very light, zone two being moderate and zone three being really intense like sprinting, this idea that actually if you do most of your endurance work or training in zone one, it's not quite the same as your three gear model, but I think there are similarities. gear model, but I think there are similarities. That's where you get the bulk of the benefit, and that's where you don't also raise cortisol. So your recovery is a lot easier. And yes, you do a little bit of your training at zone three, where you're sprinting, but you don't do much there. You do a little bit there. Again, the similarity is that there is a rhythmic nature to us as humans. We can't go all out seven days a week or even Monday to Friday, five days a week.

And I kind of feel what you said about how you might want to structure your day. What this really needs, and I think your book will contribute to this, what it really needs is more open conversations between employees and employers, right? It needs to be the employees, okay, these are the things we need you to do, right? And then the employee, hopefully in a very supportive work setting, you need to have a discussion and go, okay, great. So over the next five days, you need these 10 things done. Well, you know what? I kind of know my rhythms. I'm really good at creative work first thing in the morning, but I'm not so good in the afternoon. I can deliver you these things, but let me handle

it over the next five days. Do you know what I mean? It needs some sort of push and pull, which isn't there in a lot of companies. And I tell you on a personal level, it reminds me in one practice I used to work at as a GP many, many years ago, I had real back problems at the time. And so when I got back to work, I was like, yeah, I can get a great chair and a great table that suits me and ergonomic and all that kind of palaver, but it is simply not going to help me to be stuck in a chair between 8am and midday. Right? So I basically insisted with my manager that I was taking a 15 minute break in the middle of morning surgery. That was not done. But I said, no, I need 15 minutes where I can stand up and

walk around the block. But there was a bit of friction initially because it's like, it's just not done. But it's like, I still saw the same amount of patients I still got all my paperwork done right because it was much more rhythmic it was it would essentially have been 90 minutes of seeing patients stop for 10 minutes go for a walk good for my back good for my brain good to maybe take me down from zone two to zone one before we get back into zone two again do you know what I mean but we need to get into zone one for recovery. Exactly. The point I'm trying to make is that whoever's listening to this,

if you're a freelancer, great. You probably have autonomy to structure this the way you want. But if you're an employer, if you're a manager, right, you've got to start paying attention to this stuff and going, people are not machines. They are not robots. Help your staff work in a way that's good for them and that's good for you. Absolutely.

So two points here. The first is that I describe in the book how medical, so you and I both physicians, the way we see patients has changed drastically since assembly lines came into being, okay? Because a very, very long time ago, a doctor could, a GP, would see each patient according to the length of time that patient required, right? So if there was a patient who was very complex, it would be fine for a GP to spend 45 minutes an hour with that patient. And if the next patient were very quick, you could spend five minutes. And then as everything started becoming industrialized and mass production, we started measuring things in the National Health Service, at least, patients were given five minute slots with a gp no matter how complex or how easy their their illness was their symptoms were so this way of working has filtered down and

this is why also within the nhs and beyond we measure work from the service provider in terms of hours but actually we are serving the patient much more if we were to not do that and look at quality. So that's the first point. The second point is, I deal quite a lot with organizations at the moment, with private companies. And there is a way and the thing I hear the most is there is a way for this to be abused by the employee. So a worker can say, oh, you know, I'm just not in my zone. So I'm not going to come in today because I'm just not in the right zone, et cetera, et cetera. So actually it's much better if it comes from the organization. So rather than the employee saying, I work best now and, you know, say early in the morning, late at night, how about if you have a startup, if you run a company,

If you have a startup, if you run a company, you're a CEO, you're managing a team, why not look at it this way? As a manager, say, okay, if you're working on creative idea generation innovation, why not just you guys, you know, individuals of this particular specific team, work to a separate rhythm, trade off your hours in the middle of the day for hours earlier in the morning and do a late night or late evening where you're only doing working creative idea generation. So work that's light, that's kind of you're coming up with ideas. Those are the times where creativity is highest for most people. For most people. And you can, of course, tailor this a little bit so you don't have to stay really late in the evening. Again, very late in the evening, of course, you wind down. So you want to be in that kind of zone two, zone one barrier. So why not do that for innovative people?

So work early in the morning and in the evening, but take your late morning and early afternoon off. Okay, you can nap, you can do what you like, but you are trading off hours. So ultimately, you're working the same number of hours to protect your CEO's requirements, but you're bifurcating your day. But even that last thing about having the same amount of hours, even that is starting to sound a bit prehistoric now for the modern world in the sense that if that person is being employed to generate ideas and be creative, surely the metric where you assess performance is how many

creative ideas did you generate? If that was done in a killer three-hour session on a Tuesday morning, right? You deserve the rest of the day off. Yeah, but it's so different from how companies and structures, maybe HR departments are set up to kind of monitor things, right? Correct. So what I suggest is doing this in the interim, right? So saying, okay, so you're doing a trade-off. So people can't just, it's very difficult for HR, for organizations as a whole to just suddenly switch. Suddenly manage this, yeah. So why not start looking at it in terms of trade-off to begin with? Okay, so start cutting the overall hours a little bit for creative people, for people working only on innovation.

And I also describe how to make an environment more creative. Do all of that. And I also describe how to make an environment more creative. Do all of that. Then when that same sub team rotates to working on putting ideas together, planning, implementation, logistics, change the schedule again. In this case, cancel all meetings for this sub team that are scheduled in the peak focus hours in the morning shift all these meetings to either the post lunch dip or late in the evening outside so by protecting the hours of focused work and give them extra leeway so if they're working very intensely maybe don't let them don't require them to attend meetings at all.

Maybe give them that period of time as a break to, you know, to gain back their cognitive resources, either through napping or through just taking a long break. So it's for the organization and manager to tailor the work specific to the work the team is doing at this moment and be very fluid and flexible. And that removes the problem, which I constantly get asked of, isn't this open to abuse by a worker? How can a manager really monitor, given all we have to go by right now are the old measures of productivity?

given all we have to go by right now are the old measures of productivity. Ultimately, I 100% argue, as I do in the book, for measuring productivity in terms of quality. Once we get there, we will no longer need to have this conversation. But until we do, a good halfway point is to have this compromise. Even this concept of it being open to abuse, if you really start to examine that, well what is one of the most important things that you need in any workplace? It's trust, right? You need mutual trust between boss, employer, manager, employee, right? You kind of need those things and presumably any really fantastic system where there is a high degree of trust is also probably open to abuse but as the ways of measuring that get better as we change

our work structures then presumably that will come out in the wash as well, people who are abusing that. So I think the important thing is here, I think things are open to abuse because we still use an outdated system. If you place the opportunity to excel, if you tell your team that, look, you have one mission and that is to come up with an extraordinary solution to this problem that our software is encountering. Because if you do, we can launch it, and then we will grow as a company, we will have an edge, etc. Then the onus is on the employee to, you know, you carry that energy to want to create that idea. So there will not even be time to think about abusing the system or anything. And the other thing I'd love to bring in here is I like to think about it in terms of a puppeteer. So when a puppeteer controls a puppet, you can only move the arms and legs. You cannot do anything to the mind of the puppet.

And that is one way of looking at managing a team. So when we talk about, when we think about micromanagement, okay, so how much time are you spending at your desk if you're doing an office job? Or how many patients have you actually seen if you're working in healthcare? But that is just the physical aspect. The real bottom line comes out in what is the idea you got while working in your job? What brilliant solution did you come up with? Or how many patients did you really correctly diagnose?

And how many really tough patients did you manage to find? Yeah, not how many patients did you see, which is just a simple measure of quantity. How many patients did you manage really well? Two completely different things know, the truth is when you're in a very pressured, time pressured system like the NHS, and let's say in a GP practice, you know, some people are seeing 40, 50 patients a day sometimes, you are incentivized to just get through them. Not because you don't care, but because that's your only way to manage the workload and that is so inefficient along the line yes people come back you can be kind and you know but if you don't properly try and get to the root cause and manage what's going on that'll be back next week because what you gave them wasn't working and they're still struggling but often managers are going

that doctor saw 40 pay that all okay great we're meeting our numbers exactly and that is where the downfall begins where you have complexity in the system so ai is which is being widely um tried and adopted in different branches of medicine now, can do that sort of five minute triaging, right? But the brain of every human GP is much more sophisticated than that. It is there to solve problems. You cannot solve a problem if you're working like an assembly line. You gave some specific examples of where people are being paid to generate big ideas, right? And whether you spend five days coming up with an idea or one hour, it doesn't really matter. It's the idea that moves the needle. But a lot of people still are in jobs whereby they're not being measured in that way. So let's

say, I don't know, you work in a call centre, right? I haven't worked in a call center, so I don't know what your metric is, but I'm assuming that one of them might be how many people did you speak to in any given day, or how many of the calls you made did you manage to upsell a product of that business? How do you think your ideas and the philosophy you put out on hyper-efficient works in that setting or for someone who, let's say, is working at McDonald's and their job is to serve people, fry the burgers and, you know, keep that assembly line going basically? So call center jobs, unfortunately, are going to be under threat with automation and AI. And service sector jobs of the sort of frontline service end are also under threat.

I guess you're seeing that, like if you go to a service station and it's all the kind of order on a touchscreen, isn't it? Right, exactly, exactly. And it's all the kind of order on a touchscreen, isn't it? Right, exactly, exactly. And it's happening everywhere. So I was in Singapore recently, the robotic waiters carry your plates to and fro and take your orders. So these jobs are no longer going to be there to the same degree as they are now. So with that kind of job, unfortunately,

you can be productive without having to get into the right mental state. And your body and mind can be completely disassociated. Sadly, it's still not good for you, but you do perform better if you are in gear three for those kind of jobs, because you're not thinking. But as you say, and I think that's why your book is so important, you're writing this book, I think, yes, for work the way it is now and how it has been for 10, 20 years, but also saying, look, things are changing very, very rapidly. Your ability to be creative, your ability to generate ideas, to stay focused, to solve problems.

That is going to be one of the highly prized metrics for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. So this is the template of how to get good at that. Exactly true. So around 30% of all work hours in the US will be automated by 2030, current work hours. So, what I'm arguing for in this book is, as you say, not as things are now, but as things are becoming, because we need to be prepared for how they are becoming. And now, very soon, and already we're seeing in different parts of the world, if you have a whole bunch of robotic waiters, say, or robotic call center workers, humans will have a supervisory role. And I've actually touched on that also in the book quite expansively,

where I describe that actually we are seeing sort of a slight double edged sword here, because on the one hand, simple jobs are being taken over by automation. But on the other hand, actually, humans are going to have to become more kind of supervisors. So rather than doers, they have to become the overseers. So if you have a bunch of automated robots assembling things on a factory floor, you will have a human to make sure everything is being done correctly. And those jobs are incredibly boring, incredibly draining, and they require constant sustained attention, which is incredibly hard on mental load. Now, if you have that kind of a job, then I describe some strategies with what to do to stay on your peak.

Let's talk about some of the things that we can all do ourselves, right? To help us up-regulate and down-regulate through these gears as and when we might need to, right? So again, just emphasize, gear two is what you are saying, we're going to do our best work in gear two, right? So an idea that you want to be able to get into gear two without needing super stimulating technology to get you there. Let's talk about napping, right? I've got a very clear view on napping. And I think that a lot of the time,

the conversation around napping becomes quite black or white. I'll share mine in just a moment. But what's your perspective on napping and how that relates to these brain gears? So napping is the most rejuvenating activity you could do during a break to essentially refresh your brain's resources. So let's take a step back. When your brain is doing heavy mental work, the little cells in your brain's resources. So let's take a step back. When your brain is doing heavy mental work, the little cells in your brain are really like little factories. So they are using energy to do the work and they're producing toxic byproducts. These byproducts are accumulating and your brain's normal way of working is slowing down, your brain becomes less efficient in the way it

processes information as time drags on. So it's measured as time on task effects. Now, when you nap, so the moment you wake up in the morning, you start, from that point onwards, you start accumulating a sleep debt. Okay. One of the molecules involved is adenosine, as you know. Now, the sleep debt and generally the sort of the byproducts of work, of mental work, needs active homeostasis, needs active regulatory mechanisms to clear away and to keep the brain functioning at its peak. So if you just, forget about naps, if you just work continuously on something tough for about three hours nonstop, your brain, and if you look inside the brain, you will find it's processing information in a very inefficient way, sort of around, you know, depending on how intense your work is,

from around, say, 60, 90 minutes into your work. All right? Stopping at that moment, stopping the load on your brain, it in itself will help your brain recover its resources. And just taking a break can make your brain more efficient. That's not necessarily napping. That's just taking a break. Just taking a break.

Now, if you go into a deeper level, then you bring in a nap. So napping is in many ways a little bit like scuba diving. If you dive only a few meters below the surface, you can surface, you can come up again very quickly without feeling groggy. But if you dive too deep, then you need to come up really slowly or you get the bends, right? In terms of sleeping, you get grogginess. Now, when you're sleeping, as your listeners will know by now, you go through different sleep phases. You have slow wave sleep is one of them.

During slow wave sleep, your brain, at least during the night, goes through a process of sort of self brainwashing, where glymphatic circulation is enhanced during slow wave deep sleep. And your glymphatic circulation in the brain, your glymphatic pathways, they seem to clear your brain away of the byproducts of metabolism that have accumulated during the day. So when you're sleeping, when you're napping, if you can get into slow wave sleep, it's more restorative for your brain, but you will have trouble waking up again and switching on and getting focused. But sleeping in itself, even a micro sleep will temporarily absolve your brain of the need to feel sleepy. Sleeping in between these two margins sort of ticks all the boxes. It doesn't rejuvenate your brain quite as much, but it does give you the ability to sustain a little more cognitive stamina later into the day. Now, what must be remembered with napping

is if you nap, you have to clock up enough sleep debt by the time you sleep from the moment you wake up after your nap, or you won't be able to fall asleep again. So if you imagine not being active at all in the evening, not doing any any work then napping can interfere with your ability to sleep but if you're doing intense mental work or physical work then a nap to break that work session can bring nothing but benefits yeah so basically let's just rewind a second you've said a couple of times during this conversation that, you know, on average, we can keep focus attention for around 90 minutes or so. And, you know, there's a lot on it in your book in terms of where that research has come from,

and et cetera, et cetera, right? So a good practice is every 90 minutes or so, we should take some kind of break. Now, before we get to napping, let's just go to that break. Does it matter what you do in that break? So for example, you've been on your computer, you're trying to solve a problem or write a proposal, whatever it might be. And then 90 minutes in, your alarm goes off, you go, oh yeah, you know, I read Hyper Efficient from Mrs. Daronian. I remember I must take a break now. If you then go and have hyper stimulating content on Instagram, what does that do to our brains and our minds compared to five minutes where you just walk to the coffee shop,

or you just walk around a green space near your office or in your garden, right? Is there a different impact in terms of how much rest you're getting? Yes. So if you have been doing intense work, focused work, difficult work, then when you reach your 90 to 100 minute endpoint, you need to go back into gear one, because in gear one, your brain rejuvenates itself. Okay, so you're in gear two when you're working. Gear two when you're working. In order to rest, you've got to get back into gear one. Correct.

Okay. And you can go back into gear one if you are not focusing on something intensely. And by definition, if you're scrolling on Instagram or you're really riled by something you read on X, then you are not in gear one. So you're not giving your mind the opportunity to refresh itself. giving your mind the opportunity to refresh itself. So you're taking a break from your work, but it's not necessarily rejuvenating you,

whereby you can get back to that same level after 5, 10, 50 minutes, whatever it might be. Correct. So you can feel it. If you don't have technology and you're working really hard, it actually feels mentally kind of soothing to just have quiet nature around you where you sort of feel, you can feel it in your body as well. You can feel rejuvenated. Now there's an important caveat. And the caveat is if the work you were doing is mentally or emotionally distressing or emotionally involving, then the moment you leave your work, you might not be able to switch off. So you have left your office, but your mind hasn't left the office.

All right? So your body might be resting, but your mind isn't. This is a very common scenario. Very common scenario. See, if that happens, you have to add a little something into your break. You still need to get into that relaxed gear one state. But the first thing you need to do is to unplug your focus, your attention, which is glued really tightly into what you were just doing. Now in that context, actually looking at something on Instagram or Facebook, as long as it's not emotionally distressing, whether through happiness or sadness, it doesn't matter whether it's positive or negative, it shouldn't be too distressing.

As long as you do something engaging to distract yourself and momentarily forget about what you are working on, but do that for a really short period of time enough to forget what you are working on and then go into an environment where you do where your mind does no work yeah i love that i also love there's a few charts throughout the book and how you can up regulate and down regulate so for example how might a breath work practice help you in this sort of setting yes so um one of my favorite researchers on this is mara martha from california and her team has shown and i've referenced her work in the book her team has shown how you can actually, so measurably increase vagal activity by breathing at a frequency of at around five breaths per minute. To be really specific, it's good to use HRV biofeedback.

But approximately, it sort of approximates to around five breaths per minute. breaths per minute, which means that if you are in a sort of wired state after a bout of intense work and you want to relax, doing a short 5, 10, 15 minute, however, you know, depends on how much time you have breathing exercise, breathing at that frequency will autonomically shift you to a state of relaxation. So if your mind refuses to relax, you can use your breath work to help you get there. Yeah. Again, breath work is free.

It doesn't require you to look at a device necessarily unless you're using something to guide you. I guess the point I'm trying to make is this idea that we can shift ourselves from gear one to gear two and back down from gear two to gear one without being overly reliant on devices, on technology. I think it's a good thing. I think there's real resilience in ourselves if we know how to up-regulate regulate ourselves and i think breathwork is just a fantastic tool you mentioned hrv biofeedback many people won't know what that means could you sort of give us a brief overview of what what that is so to um really emphasize

this you don't need to do this but um you mean you don't need the hrv biofeedback to do a good breathwork to do a good breathwork practice? To do a good breathwork practice. Breathing roughly at around five breaths per minute where your exhalations are longer than the inhalations will get you there. I mention HRV biofeedback because that's a way many people have Apple phones which measure HRV or they have the aura ring and so on. But if you have a way of measuring your heart rate variability, you can watch your heart rate variability change

or the metrics within your heart rate variability change as you breathe. And there is a certain frequency of breathing, which is referred to as the resonance frequency, where if you breathe at this particular frequency, you really watch the needle move the most. And you can tell that, but if you are able to measure your HRV in real time. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And then back to napping. So napping is another form of rest. Of course, many cultures around the world nap every day. But you're essentially saying, I think,

But you're essentially saying, I think, napping can be very, very helpful if it doesn't disrupt your ability to sleep that night. So short naps, easy to come out of, you know, even a 10, 15 minute, very light nap is still doing something quite profound. Yes, if you have a longer 90 minute nap, you're probably going to go into those sleep stages. It's going to be very, very restorative, but you're going to feel groggy when you come out. But it is probably going to mean that you have more impetus and

cognitive ability later on into the evening. You just got to be careful. If you're doing it regularly, you got to pay attention. Is this affecting my ability to sleep at night? But I think you're saying that if you do have that long nap, as long as you're burning up that energy by doing something, whether it be physical activity or whether it be intense cognitive work where you're trying to solve problems or whatever it might be. So you're making yourself tired. You're making yourself tired. Correct. Then you could be okay. Correct. One of my frustrations with, I think, a lot of the way health advice is given these days is often we say this is good or this is bad. And the question needs to be for who and in what context, right? Napping is probably really unhelpful if it's causing you insomnia every night. Correct. But if you have structured your

day and you're able to where you have a brief nap, let's say 20 minutes after lunch each day, and it doesn't affect your ability to sleep at night, you're able to do it in your workday, which many people can't, and you're functioning well, well, it could be the best thing in the world, right? So I think that individualized approach to saying whether something is good or bad, I don't know, what's your perspective on this? Because I kind of feel very much these days that things are moving into this kind of sugar's either good or bad, you know, napping is either good or bad. It's like intermittent fasting is either good or bad. Well, no, for some people, intermittent fasting is fantastic. For other people, it's not that helpful, right? I don't

know. What's your perspective on that? My perspective is there is now so much information floating around that you have to reduce everything into a binary value for people to take it away. And people like binary values. Healthcare, the brain, the body, the brain specifically is a complex system. A complex system does not involve individual single pathways that influence the entire being, the entire organism. So nuance is everything. And this is why I wrote a book for five years, because I find it very difficult to give people prescriptive takeaways, because what applies to person A will not apply to person B. Exactly. And I make that very clear.

I talk about something called gear personality as well in the book, where people have different sort of a way of seeing it as gear sort of reactivity. So what works for one person will work very differently for another. The nuance and individual consideration has to be absolutely central. And prescriptive binary rules just do not work and they should not be adopted. How does exercise influence our ability to shift through these gears? So let's take a very simplistic view of this. What does exercise do it makes your body more active than your baseline currently is so if you're sitting on a sofa and you're you're

quite relaxed if you move your body your body feels more vigorous more alert more physiologically aroused so it will do the same to your mind so if you exercise you will raise your mental gear now if you're beginning from a baseline of gear one then that exercise will put you into gear two but if you're beginning from an from a baseline of gear three you can have one of two effects if you do very very intense exercise, so not sprints, but prolonged high-intensity exercise, then your body is going to need your norepinephrine to keep you going.

And that will keep you further in gear three. But if you exercise in zone one, so you do a long walk for a long period of time, then that exercise will bring you back down from gear three into gear two. So it depends on what kind of exercise you're doing, but most importantly, what state of mind are you in before? And this brings me to walking. So walking is the most underappreciated cognitive tool that we have for creative idea generation, for problem solving, for a variety of things.

And the reason is the following. When you're walking, you have to be alert to be able to move, to be able to be physically active. So you're forced to be in at least a sort of a low gear two state, gear two, gear one margin, but in gear two. Now, walking keeps you there because while you're walking, you're having to pay attention to things around you. You can't just drift off. Even if you're daydreaming whilst you're walking, you're still more alert than you would have been had you been on the sofa. Right. So if you're sitting down and you're still more alert than you would have been if you had been on the sofa. Right. So if you're sitting down and you're feeling relaxed and you're daydreaming,

you'll be very near the point where you can drift off to sleep. All right. But if you're walking, your mind can wander, but you're still alert. So it's a very peculiar state of mind where you actually achieve the daydreaming state but there's a nuance to it which i'll describe but the bottom line is when you're walking it helps you keep it helps keep you in or near gear two all right now the second thing is that when you're walking the world is moving around you assuming you're walking not on a treadmill but on on the you know in in real uh in a real situation the park on a road whatever in the real world not the virtual world not the virtual world so if you're doing that then you are forced your attention is forced

to not stick to anything because everything is constantly moving past. You can't, you know, you have to turn your head to keep looking at that blade of grass. But more importantly, if you're working in a natural space, nothing really grabs your attention. You still have to pay attention, but not keep your attention attached. So nothing is grabbing your attention.

So when it's not grabbing your attention, your attention can float and it floats around you and it floats into your head and it explores you know problems you are working on fragments of ideas that are floating inside your head but you can't go down a rabbit hole in your head either because at some point your attention has to come back out and because you need to know where you're walking. So it keeps your mind in a very intriguing place or state where your attention is forced to wander and visit different things without becoming too involved and without getting stuck. becoming too involved and without getting stuck if you were to do that try to do that while you are sitting down you would start drifting off and falling asleep but if you're doing that while walking you're alert enough to be able to actually be able to focus on an idea should something suddenly come up from the depths of your mind and at same time, you're able to let your attention wander

and look at that idea from different angles because your attention is not sticking. And this is why walking has anecdotally been credited with generating so many ideas. And I know a couple of managing directors who just take a walk, just leave their desks and take a walk when their team runs into a problem. And after the walk, whatever the walk did, it will have moved the needle towards a solution by a certain amount.

Yeah. How many writers will credit some of their breakthrough ideas to having come to them whilst on a walk. You know, so many famous writers will say, we walk for two hours every day. It's what they do. It's part of their work in some ways. And I guess it speaks to one of those earlier points, which is if you're a manager, you know, yes, encouraging your team in the middle of a working day to go for a 20 minute walk, right? Yes, they're not at their desk reading emails, but we almost need to get to a point where we see that as part of their work. That's helping them. You know, you can actually measure this. I did this once. I made this ITV show on stress a few years ago, and you could actually measure how much more productive people were having taken a 20-minute lunch break where they walked in nature. They actually got so much more done than how they just stayed at their

desk and pushed through, which completely speaks to this 90-minute idea and many of the ideas you put forward in this book. but it's getting out of that mentality whereby if you're not at your desk, you're not working, which is, as you say, assembly line thinking and not modern brain-based idea generation type thinking. You said something interesting right at the start about when you're sprinting, You said something interesting right at the start about when you're sprinting, you can't really be daydreaming. And you also mentioned how these gears, these three gears, very closely match with what your eyes are doing. And of course, you're an eye surgeon, as well as a doctor and a neuroscientist. What your eyes are doing in these gears is

incredibly fascinating for me. I have become really quite aware of the importance of what our eyes are doing over the past few years from a variety of sources. But a huge part of that has been my work with my incredible movement coach, Helen Hall, who has basically shown me with data, as well as with her imparting a knowledge with me, that if you're running and you have a soft gaze peripheral vision, the way your body moves, the amount your chest rotates in contrast to your pelvis the length of your stride these things are all different than if you've got concentric focus vision and one thing I've been focusing on in my running especially when I'm doing relaxed running and not fast running is trying to keep that soft peripheral gaze. So I have experienced and seen the benefits for movement, but it's quite interesting that you're saying that actually our eyes in many ways reflect what gear our brain is in. It's fascinating.

So that's very interesting. So the way I entered this avenue the headlines around the world where the headline was, the diameter of your pupils can be a measure of your intelligence, which is a completely ridiculous headline. But where it came from is that if you look at the way your pupils behave, so there are two angles to it. Okay, so let's start with the pupils. So if you look at the way your pupils behave, your pupils have a baseline diameter, which is influenced by lots of things. Time of day, ambient light around you, but it's a kind of, it's baseline. And you're resting sort of alertness, you're resting kind of alertness, your resting kind of wiredness. And then your pupils also react

to situations. So they grow wider with surprise, which we all know. And the extent to which they do that reflect what's going on to a degree, not entirely, in this blue dot, which is the basis roughly of my gear one, two and three metaphor. So when you're in gear two, your pupils behave in a very distinct way. And one of the ways that you can kind of tie it together is the more effort you're applying when you're doing something, so the harder your math problem is, for instance, the more your pupils will dilate. And that's a way of measuring cognitive effort in a laboratory. Now, in this way, you see your pupils directly reflecting what is going on inside your brain. But you can take this to a kind of a wider level, look at the eyes in general. So I describe a phenomenon in the book called, referred to as quiet eye.

Yeah. Which is something that, again, it sort of makes intuitive sense. If you imagine your hunter-gatherer ancestors, again, it makes intuitive sense. If you imagine your hunter-gatherer ancestors, okay. If you were roaming, rambling, foraging for food, you would be casually sauntering around something, and then you'd be just casually glancing at it not focused but just kind of wandering over it your eyes would be gradually wandering over it think of a different scenario now think that your hunter ancestor is running after a prey which is going to be your dinner

this evening you see the prey the hunter sees prey, the hunter keeps the prey in their focused gaze, and they run with focus, all right? And then they sprint when the prey gets lost, they sprint because they start looking everywhere because the prey starts running away, because the prey starts running away, right? So that enters into gear three. So you see how the way you gaze at things can influence the dynamics in the body or rather have a correlation with the dynamics in the body. And the quiet eye technique,

research on the quiet eye technique suggests that you can use this to change your eye behavior to get yourself into certain mental states now meditators and yogis will know that focused attention meditation puts you into a state of calm focus when you focus on a candle flame or you focus on something in your mind with your eyes closed, a picture in your mind. That is one way of stilling your eyes to still your mind. And the quiet eye technique is an application of that where in sport,

if you are performing a sport that requires you to be very precise, then looking at the spot where you're aiming or looking at any spot so even in tennis looking at sort of the the small details of a tennis ball forcing yourself to keep your gaze there can calm your mind and draw you back into gear two if you were in gear three. Yeah. Another angle to it is attention. Okay, so when you're looking at something, you're either paying attention to what is right in front of you

or your attention is sort of expansive enough for you to notice details, nuance in the edges of your vision. And there's another very interesting study carried out in Germany that has shown that if you can train yourself to look at a scene and not just look at what's in the middle of the scene, but sort of not defocusing as such, but sort of loosening your attention. So you're actually seeing the details in the peripheries of the scene.

You're more likely to come up with creative, innovative ideas and ways forward. So these are two examples that have been shown to be effective in nudging your mind into different states. What's truly fascinating for me, and I'd love your perspective on this, is that we're saying there's a correlation between our eyes and the state of our brain. between our eyes and the state of our brain, right? So one could make the case or the hypothesis that, okay, the hunter has got the prey in mind and is sprinting after it.

So the eye position, the eye gaze, the pupil diameter is a consequence of what the hunter needs to do. But I kind of see a parallel between breath and eyes, right? Because we often say that the autonomic nervous system, yes, we can't really influence it consciously except through your breath, right? So you can slow your breathing down. You can prolong your exhale compared to the inhale to promote more parasympathetic and relaxation essentially rather than stress or sympathetic branch of the nervous system. But I think you can also do it with your eyes, can't you? It's not just the breath. But I think you can also do it with your eyes, can't you?

It's not just the breath. So I guess my question is, are the eyes a consequence of what is going on in your brain or can you change what your eyes are doing to influence your brain? So the answer is, there is definitely a two-way conversation taking place. Like with the breath. Like with the breath. And the quiet eye takes...

So, the eyes are far more complex because many other pathways and factors come into it. So, for instance, one of the reasons why we may have evolved to dilate our pupils at times of stress when we're under duress is to actually get more light in and take in more data. Okay. And hence, when we're relaxed, our pupils constrict. So we have very small pupils because, again, one theory is because we take in less data. So the eyes are the scanners of the world.

And the state your mind is in when you're scanning the world is reflected in the way your eyes behave, primarily through your pupils, but also generally in terms of eye behavior. So you know that when you're distracted and anxious, your eyes will dart everywhere. Whereas if you are focused, your eyes will be more still. And there is, I mean, you'll always have circadic movements, but there's a great paper that suggests that there is a kind of competition whenever you're trying to focus between two states, where one is the state of distraction where your eyes your circades are more frequent and the other is a state of focus where you have big circades less frequently so

all these dynamics are taking place okay do you think that there is merit in things like you know we're living in a in a very screen-based society these days. So many people are working at screens, on screens, right? So their focus is convergent and it's tightly focused on something which isn't very far from their eyes. Every hour, every 90 minutes, whenever you can take a break, every hour, every 90 minutes, whenever you can take a break, what is the benefit of nipping outside your office or your workspace and trying to look into the distance and focusing on a tree or something? Do you know what I mean? So muscle workout right just the and you're an eye surgeon so I think it's a reasonable question that you may you may have some insight on

what is it doing to us to be on these screens all the time in terms of that tight concentric focus on the screen is there merit of each day making sure you have some distant vision? So there are two sides to this. So from the point of ophthalmology, of course, you're changing the dynamics of your lens. So it's interesting you just said through the lens of. I was going to add through the lens of your lens. So of course, there, it's very, very, it's helpful because you're not constantly in near gaze, you're also looking, going, switching into distance gaze. And you know, there are certain exercises that optometrists can recommend, like pen push ups, which try to achieve a similar sort of idea. But I think it's also very relevant for work, right? Because when you're looking at a screen in front of you and you're focusing on something that's bright, that's engaging your attention or trapping your attention,

your attention is fixed. So you're not letting it wander. So if you're doing something that's simply reading and using low-level cognitive skills, fine. But if you're not letting it wander. So if you're doing something that's simply reading and using low-level cognitive skills, fine. But if you're solving a problem, if you're writing something really exciting, you're not going to be able to come up with that without removing, unplugging your focus and letting your attention wander.

And the best environment to be able to do that is in nature. Yeah. It's fascinating. We as a family went to Kenya this summer and we did something I've never done before, which is go on safari. And the guide we had was from the Maasai tribe. And his vision was utterly incredible. There were times when we'd stop and he would spot things like so far away. Say, oh, there's a giraffe head in those trees there. Can you see it?

I'm looking, I'm like, I can't see a thing. Now that could just be his vision's better than mine. I can't see a thing. Now that could just be his vision's better than mine. But it really made me think about, you know, we're always responding as humans, aren't we, to our environment, right? So if you are spending your life in nature, and he's a member of a Maasai tribe, and so the way he was brought up, you know, a nomadic tribe, sort of cow herders, the way he was brought up, you know, a nomadic tribe, sort of cowherders, you know, you need to have good farsighted vision, right? So you are, you could argue you're adapting to that. That is something you need. Whereas if you're growing up in a Western urbanised environment, and your parents heavily prioritise academia, like many Asian parents do, and your parents heavily prioritise academia like many Asian parents do,

then, you know, you're spending a lot of time in books, on screens, with this kind of near vision. What are your thoughts on that? So it's interesting you mention Asia, because in Asia there is a very high incidence of myopia from childhood, and it seems to be rising. And there is also, various studies have suggested link between urban and rural upbringing as well but then you had lots of confounders there um so it is difficult to say but there is no doubt that adaptation plays a role so if you

are in an environment and for generations you have been where you're looking in the distance and you benefit more from looking in the distance than you do the ophthalmology journals, there are increasing numbers of reports that question what the reason is. I mean, you know, there are lots of theories for it. So in Japan, they're also looking at something called glasses that let in violet light because violet light acts as a stimulant, according to this particular theory, for the eyeball to grow appropriately. It kind of prevents children from developing myopia. So we don't know whether it's exposure to light, to indoor light specifically, whether it's a combination of that and other things. is giving you the abilities, is honing your abilities in the direction that's most convenient, most suited for the environment.

Yeah, I've also read some research which is suggesting that for children, if they can spend two hours plus outside each day, that it dramatically reduces their incidence of myopia and needing glasses again i you know i can't comment on the veracity of that research and what the confounders may have been in that but i've certainly heard and read studies like that which is kind of makes sense it makes it makes intuitive sense as well um again you know coming back to the idea of

assembly lines and the knowledge work where we make the hands work, we let the head fall asleep, then we make the head work, we let the body fall asleep. You know, this has consequences on the way we function and our vision is one element of that. Yeah. There's so much more in that book we could cover. I definitely want to ask you about the Blue Zones. I know that you're friends with Dan Buetner. I know you were invited to go out, I think to Sardinia to help them with their Netflix series. I'm fascinated by Blue Zones. So I'd love to ask you, know what was that experience like and what were some of the things that surprised you so um yes I was involved with the Sardinia segment of the live 200 series on Netflix it was the most fascinating experience of my life because I would, so my part involved a little place called Seulo in Sardinia.

And I've never been, I've never visited anywhere like it before in my life. It's a little town of around about 800 inhabitants. And it really is a living museum because it's very hard to get to. It's up in the mountains. It's not anywhere near where the traditional glamorous resorts of Sardinia are by the beach. It's all the way up in the mountains.

And once you get there, it's the most astonishing feeling because you see all these extremely old human beings who look really happy their wrinkles are not the kind of wrinkles we see in urban places they're not frown lines their wrinkles are smile wrinkles and they are very deep smile wrinkles. And they're all driving, they're all living slowly, and they seem to all have a smile on them. And it's also very clear that age and wisdom are deeply respected there. So I think the biggest lesson that I've learned from Dan Budner's work on the Blue Zones and visiting Seuloh in Sardinia is how, and I suppose it kind of comes into this productivity, quality, quantity equation,

is how we have engineered a world where things that we can pay for are the things that we value. Things that we produce and things that we can sell are the things that we value. And we forget the tremendous value of things like human wisdom, which is intricately tied to human age. So as a little anecdote, I met a young gentleman there,

a young man there who was saying how he goes to the bar to watch football matches with his mates. But if there's an old person there, someone who looks like he's above 80, they would much rather forget the football and listen to stories. So elderly people walk into the bar full of these, you know, young, energetic young men keen to, you know, watch the score. But as soon as an elderly person comes in, that person has far more value than how many goals your team has. And that feeling is infused at every corner.

And I think that's what makes that place so incredibly special because there was nothing of, you know, financial value there, but you could really feel, you know, tangibly feel, perceive the value of age and wisdom and the love they have for that. I just, just makes me light up inside hearing that, you know, it's these unmeasurables that are so valuable, right? Correct. They're qualitative and qualitative things are so much more difficult to measure than quantitative. I think another aspect of it is that one of the really important points about the Blue Zones is that life isn't easy. Life is incredibly hard in all of these Blue Zones. Work is a given. So for instance, in Sardinia, as you would see on the Netflix series, goat herders, they wake up early in the morning and they do their job every day, no matter what.

And their work is grueling. It's tough to go up on the mountains, let alone when you're 100 years old. But there is this sort of undulation to the way they work. So they go up and they work. They wake up at four at dawn. They take their goats up at that early hour when most of us would feel very uncomfortable rising from bed, but this is their life. And then once they come back down, they relax, they downshift, and they have a long period of relaxation. So they work at really high intensity, and then they work at lower intensity.

Yeah, that's one of the things I loved in your book, Mitu, is you mentioned the blue zones. And I've written about blue zones. I've read Dan's books. I've been fascinated by this concept of what is going on in these long-living communities and there's a lot of debate about it for sure. There's many different factors, but you put forward in your latest book this idea that could it be the rhythmicity of their lives, that this ebb and flow, this up and down, this up regulation and down regulation, could that be one of the key components that is leading to their long, happy and healthy lives? It's fascinating, isn't it? It's absolutely fascinating. And this is exactly true. And not just the ebbing and

flowing, but the ebbing and flowing in tune with nature. So, they rise when the sun rises, and they climb the mountain as the sun climbs the sky. And then they come back down, and in the period that I describe as the post-lunch dip, they take a nap. and in the period that I describe as the post-lunch dip, they take a nap, and then it's gentler, easier existence, chatting with the neighbors, gossiping about neighbors, doing that in a very gentle, easy way, but then they also have to make their bread. They have to make cheese from the goat's milk. They have to make cheese from the goat's milk. So they still work, but it's the intensity of work and the winding down.

And by the time it's evening, they wind down too. And they go to bed early because they have a very early start the following morning. So everything, they also have a very controllable world it's incredibly uncertain so we can just pop to the supermarket to get some milk but they use their goat's milk right so they actually have much more uncertainty but in a strange way because their life is simple and not complex they know how everything works around them and they can manage that uncertainty. They have a sense of agency over the things around them. And I guess it's also, yes, mind and body alignment, but also there's a physicality to the work.

Certainly from what you're describing, it's not mind-based work sitting at a screen right at least for these goat herders where there's actually there is physical movements happening correct so they have a silvopastoral way of life which means that they really follow more or less the same sort of hunter-gatherer rhythms because they work with their mind while they work with their bodies. When their bodies stop working, by and large, their minds slow down too. So they work together. It's interesting. I know we've touched on it already,

but it really is fascinating to think about this idea that I know we've touched on it already, but it really is fascinating to think about this idea that because of computers, we can now in the evening be physically exhausted. So the body is exhausted, yet you're still firing off emails or trying to get back to your boss. So your mind is active. And yeah, if we take that big picture view, there's probably been very little occasion in the past where we've actually had that disassociation between mind and body. No wonder so many people are struggling with sleep, with happiness, with their well-being, with burnout. On that very kind of primal level, how can you be well if your mind and body are in different places?

And don't forget blue light. So your mind isn't just in different places and don't forget blue light so your mind isn't just in a different place it's in a different time so your body thinks it's evening but your mind thinks it doesn't really think because you know but there are signals coming in that's telling your mind no no no you have to be very very alert It's now peak afternoon, peak late morning with the blue light intensity. So the light also plays a role. Was there anything else that surprised you in the blue zones? Maybe diet or things that they were eating or drinking, things that you weren't aware of before you went? I mean, every single blue zone has a very unique pattern of diet. Very, very unique pattern of diet very very unique pattern and i think dan buechner's blue zone work summarizes what they have in common so what they have in common is this idea of really making your

own food um not having processed food and by and large growing your own food wherever you can but of course every region has its little nuances. But we can't really factor that into the blue zones or into longevity per se. But, you know, somewhere like Okinawa will be vastly different to somewhere like Sardinia. But then the way they live, the customs, the religion, the society, People in Okinawa sit on the floor, whereas people in Sardinia don't, as an example. There's goat herding and there's a lot of gardening. So there are many, many differences between the two.

And it is very difficult to bring one common thread, but definitely the elements that have been identified like in terms of diet, like not eating processed food and also not eating to excess. So another important factor is that because they work so hard and by and large they eat the food that they produce in various ways they cannot overeat yeah so uh in okinawa they practice this as hara atibu but in places like sardinia it's an inevitable consequence of the way they live yeah absolutely fascinating what a wonderful experience it must have been to go and see this firsthand but so i think you've you've done an incredible job with both of your books uh stress proof a few years ago when you first came on the show i think was a wonderful go and see this firsthand. But I think you've done an incredible job with both of your books. Stress Proof a few years ago, when you first came on the show, I think was a wonderful book on

stress. I still think a lot of the ideas and that, if not all of them still hold true today. I think your new one, Hyper-Efficient is wonderful as well. To finish off this conversation then, you've covered such an important theme in this book, right? You're really basically saying the way we are working has not worked very well for a period of time and it's certainly not going to work very well in the future as AI takes over a lot of these jobs and these low-grade tasks from humans. of these jobs and these low-grade tasks from humans. So for someone who's listening and is getting quite worried by that, going, wow, what my job may not be there in the future. And Mitch is talking about all these great ideas, but I just don't know how to implement them. I'm

struggling to get through my day. What kind of advice would you give that person? So the first advice I'd say is actually the future is very bright. This is the best time to be a human mind worker, because you will have incredible assistance doing all the work that you don't like to do. So the best way to position yourself at this moment is to just take a step back and ask yourself, how flexible are you mentally? How quickly can you learn? How open are you to learning? At the same time, really focus on what are the kind of mental work genres that you're especially good at? Do you have a creative side that has been

buried away somewhere? Or do you have an extraordinary ability to focus and solve problems? Are you a problem solver? Are you the problem solver of your team? So find your strengths, strengths, learn to learn. So find something to learn all the time. Find comfort in the discomfort of learning something that is completely new. And know that the future will actually be if we play it right, and we embrace technology in the right way, will actually bring us many, many more benefits and will actually help us out of this very, very abnormal way of working for the human brain that we've been forced to embrace for the last hundred years. I love it. Very, very optimistic way to finish this conversation. Mitsu, it's a fantastic book. I think it's going to help so many people. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having me. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I'd be consuming,

and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday five. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics, happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change, movement, weight loss, and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, eBooks, and as audio

books, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.