Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain | Science Writer, Annie Murphy Paul

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

This week’s conversation is with Annie Murphy Paul, an acclaimed science writer.A graduate of Yale University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is currently a Learning Sciences Exchange Fellow at New America.She is a recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship, and the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellowship at New America. Annie’s TED Talk titled “What We Learn Before We’re Born” has been viewed more than 2.6 million times and her latest book, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, offers a new view on how our minds work and how we can think better. In this conversation, we dive into her key findings and insights on, “The Extended Mind.” _________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm Michael Gervais. And by trade and training, I am a sport and performance psychologist, fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. And the whole idea behind this podcast, behind these conversations is to learn from people, to pull back the curtain, to explore how the extraordinaries commit to both mastering their craft and their minds. Now, our minds are our greatest asset, but you have to work with your mind. It is not something that is a born right.

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And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay. This week's conversation is with Annie Murphy Paul. She's an acclaimed science writer. She's a graduate of Yale

University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. And she's currently a Learning Science Exchange Fellow at New America. So Annie's TED Talk, which was titled, What We Learned Before We Were Born, first grabbed my attention. And there's millions of downloads on that. But then when she came out with her book called The Extended Mind, The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. I was like, what is the extended mind? And when I was going through her work, it's really cool, the idea of how we can extend the power of our mind through our environmental conditions. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Annie Murphy-Paul.

Annie, how are you? I'm good, Michael. How are you? Yeah, I believe you when you say that. It sounds like and it feels like life is good for you. So congratulations on your book that you've introduced to the world. And I'm excited to dive into it with you. But why do I feel that exuberance and that authenticity when you say I'm good? Where's that come from? Well, I live in Connecticut, and it's a really beautiful fall day here, crisp

weather, the leaves are turning. I think that weather has a big impact on my mood as it does for many people. And did you grow up there? Did you grow up on the East coast of the United States? I did outside Philadelphia. So this is, yeah, this is kind of my most favorite time of year. Okay, cool. And then what was it like growing up? Just a quick pass. Give us a sense of, you know, what was the family like? What was the socioeconomic status about?

What was the main conversations that you had around the dinner table? Oh, such an interesting question. Well, I grew up in a middle class family. I was the kind of bookish nerd of the family. And I always had my nose in a book. My father, actually, he was a social worker. But before that, he was a member of a religious order, the Christian Brothers. And so at some early point, I decided that religion was not for me. And so, but he and I had many spirited debates about theology and religion, you know, much to his credit, he didn't impose his views on me. We just, it just became actually a way for us to connect. So I've always thought

of those conversations as one of the foundations of my career as a writer and a thinker. I love this. What is Christian Brotherhood? What is that about? They're a teaching order, kind of like the Jesuits. So they take vows of chastity and poverty and all that stuff, but they're out in the world teaching. And my father was joined when he was 19 and then left when he was 35 because he wanted to have a family. So my sister and I always said that we really needed to be good because dad left God for us. Oh my, is that a joke? Is that for real? No, that's for real, isn't it? There was a little feeling of that. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. And then you have a spirit, you like to find ways to push back. Is that like the essence of the challenge relationship with your father? To ask questions. And I am grateful to my dad. He died about eight years ago, but I'm grateful to him that my questions were not quashed. They were invited and, you know, welcomed. And, and I do think of myself as having a very, as I said, bookish kind of living in my head kind of childhood and young, young adulthood. And so the book that I wrote,

The Extended Mind is actually about coming out of your head and living in your body and being aware of the space you're in and your connections with other people. So I kind of think it was the book that I needed to write. It was like the book, the things that I needed to teach myself. Isn't that always the case? Yeah, I think it is. We write what we need to learn. Yeah, for sure. When I first started 20 some years ago in being a psychologist, one of my mentors says

to me, Mike, you realize that everything that you're going to need to work on is going to show up in the chair next to you or across from you. And so like, yeah, and his, it was a nod to the idea that in all of your relationships, professional or otherwise, you will see and experience triggers and those triggers are yours. You know, it's not, they might have brought them into the room, but that's your stuff now. And so don't be confused. You know, you're a

mess and you need to keep working. And so, you know, yeah. So it sounds like this is one of your processes to take the early childhood bookworm experience, the questioning of big ideas, and to say, you know, I kind of feel stuck in my head. And, you know, what's this other part of this link between the mind and the body? Does that sound close to being right? That does. And I think, you know, often we're drawn to the things that don't come naturally to us. And so that can create a challenge. It would be easier to stay with what feels comfortable. But I kept finding myself drawn as a science writer to these bodies of research that were about, no, we don't just

think with our brains, we think with our bodies. No, it matters where you are, that affects how you think. And no, we don't just think with our own minds. And I've, you know, I've been a freelance writer for 25 years, which is a very solitary kind of occupation. And here I am writing about the joys of working in groups, you know, so I think it's almost like a magnetic attraction to, to all the things that make you a little bit uncomfortable. And you can either resist that, or you can go with that and find out more. So let's do something. Let's, I want to do a fly over really quickly about what we want to make sure we touch on. And I, I want to start with a differentiation first. And then I also want to, um, in between those two, the fly over and the,

and the differentiator, I want to understand like what does a successful life mean to you? And so there's like this next little segment is it will be those three parts. So on the first part here, what is the difference between the mind and the brain? And how have you come? That's a loaded question. I think about this a lot. And so this is not like to get into a debate about anything, but I want to know

how you think about the mind and the brain. Right, right. Well, that's a great question because it gets right at the heart of this idea of the extended mind, which my book is built around, because the conventional understanding is that mind and brain are identical, that they're contiguous, that the mind is the brain, that the mind is contained within the brain. And what the extended mind, the theory of the extended mind says is no, the mind is much bigger than that. The mind extends out from the brain through the body, below the neck and out into the world, our surroundings, our environment, and into the relationships that

we have with other people. And that's where thinking is happening. That's where the magic is happening, not in here, but out here, you know, and that's, it's really, to me, profound and transformative kind of idea that can really change how you see yourself and others in the world. So the brain is the tissue, and it's got chemistry and matter and, you know, electricity and a beautifully complicated interwoven network and more of an ecosystem than a network. And that's the brain. And the mind you're saying is more like the unified field where it is a collective consciousness consciousness where there's an individual aspect to it as well as an invisible networked aspect to it. Do I hear that correctly?

Yes. And I think another important thing to remember- There's a slight pause in there. So of course, correct. I like that stuff about unified field. I mean, those aren't words that I use, it's, those aren't words that I, that I use, but I, I think it's important to remember that the brain is a very limited and quirky and idiosyncratic organ. It's obviously a biological organ with all the limitations that come along with that. And it's an evolved organ that evolved to do things that are very different from what we ask of it today, you know, to deal with all these abstract and conceptual kinds of ideas. So in order to meet the moment, you know, to function in our modern world, the brain needs a lot of help. And that's where these outside the brain

resources come in. And you know what I really appreciate is that you've introduced an idea, which is really important, which is the brain has limits. And, you know, the mental, the mental aspect of our life as well is not boundless with, with, with quote unquote, energy, you know, like as a resource, like both of them have, there's limitations to it. And so I'm really excited to dive into that with you as well. Because I think that that's a really important, I don't want to say footnote, because it's like the main thesis, but it sits underneath how we think about getting better, and how we think about recovery, and how we think about engagement, you know, with things that are important to engage with. So it's foundational to me. And then

quickly, what does success mean to you? Just life success. Yeah. Well, I've always found Freud, Sigmund Freud's formulation useful. He said, love and work. Those are the two things that matter. And to me, meaningful work and really rich, deep, authentic connections with other people. Those, you know, keep it simple. I think, I think those two things are the, they're the foundations of my life and I've been lucky enough to have them be the, the, the core of my life. And to me, that's what, that's what success is. You know, when you're going down the path with Sigmund, I was like, oh boy, where's this going? You know, he was out there and he did some really interesting stuff. Most has been, you know, from a scientific framework has been, it hasn't held up, you know,

id, ego, superego. But But the thinking and the philosophical opining was brilliant and game-changing for the industry. So his place is duly noted. And if he would have known this study, and I've referenced this study all the time, I'm fascinated by it, but Harvard did a 75-year study studying fulfillment. And two of the key factors that you just mentioned came back as purpose is what they found was part of fulfillment. Answering the big questions in life was part of it and meaningful relationships. And so pretty cool finding and he was on it. It sounds like you're on it as well. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's, there's a lot of ways to say or to approach the same kind of core truths. And I would, those three sound pretty good too. I like, I like answering the big questions. I would certainly put that at the heart of my life as well. Yeah. It sounds like it. Okay. And then,

so on the fly over here on this third part of this question on the fly over, what do you want to make sure that we hit? Because there's so many ways I feel like you and I can go in this conversation. So what would be the three big buckets, if you will, that would be important for us to hit? Well, just as an overall thing for your listeners to remember, I would want them to know that they have access right now to so many avenues and resources to think better, and that they may be constrained right now by a misunderstanding of how thinking works, and that there's a way to escape that conventional limitation and to take advantage of all these outside the brain resources that are really

our heritage as, as human beings. Um, they're really, you know, um, it's, it's our own culture and our own society that has placed these limits on us that tell us that, you know, the brain is what does all the work and that, um, the body has nothing to contribute to intelligent thinking or that, um that in our very individualistic culture, that it's all about you, the individual, and not about what you can do with other people, or the idea that where you are, it doesn't really matter that you should be able to function just the same outdoors or indoors, or, you know, in a place where you feel comfortable and empowered or, or in a cubicle that, you know,

is yours today and won't be yours tomorrow, that kind of thing. So mainly, I would love for your listeners to understand that there's this whole world of potential out there that is already ours, we just kind of need to claim it. Okay, cool. Is it so? Okay. So when we double dip under that, or double click under that double dip, I don't know where that came from. So when we double dip under that or double click under that double dip, I don't know where that came from. But when we double click underneath that, we can get into some tactics in some ways, some resources. But maybe let's start with what is the extended mind? It's a cool phrase. It is. It is. And I should say right up front, it is not my idea. I borrowed it from two philosophers. And they wrote, these two philosophers, Andy Clark and David Chalmers, wrote an article in 1998 that was interestingly,

at the time, was widely sort of mocked and derided. It only later became one of the most cited articles in the philosophy literature and the model for all kinds of research and ideas that have sprung from the extended mind. But when they first proposed it, people were like, wow, that's crazy. And what they were saying was just what we've been talking about here, that thinking doesn't just happen in the brain. It happens in our bodies, in our spaces, in our relationships, also with our tools, like our devices and our technologies, and our analog tools that we think with those objects as well. And what's interesting is that when they published that article in 1998, the iPhone had not yet been introduced. So they couldn't use that as an example.

But once it was introduced, all of us started downloading many of our mental functions to our phones, right? I mean, who remembers phone numbers anymore because our phones do that for us. And so slowly with the introduction of this technology, the idea that thinking doesn't only happen in the brain became more and more plausible. So such that another philosopher, a colleague of David Chalmers said that the thesis of the extended mind was false when it was written, but later became true. And I think actually the way that we extend our minds with our devices is actually probably the easiest way into understanding this idea because our devices are really designed to extend our minds. You know, although I would point out that often they don't have that effect, they end up sort of contracting our minds because we get

distracted or, you know, they're actually not extending our minds so much as dissipating our mental energy. But I think we all have had that experience of downloading or offloading mental functions onto our devices. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this

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I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Gray glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Gray is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists, they've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest. When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones,

slipping on my Felix Grey's in the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to felixgray.com and use the code findingmastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Very cool. And just as a footnote, David, Dr. Chalmers is foundational in thinking about the hard problem of consciousness. And, you know, when he first

introduced his position paper, it was watershed. It was a watershed position paper. And so I love that you're pulling from, you know, foundational philosophical thinking about consciousness and making it really practical, which is, okay, this thing called the smartphone, it's extended, it's a tool and it's extended your mind. In other words, like a calculator would be a good example in the past, or a sundial might have been, you know, part of the way back in the day, or, you know, it's certainly a smartwatch would be another example. So, so when you think about, or when you say that we think with our body and we think with our tools, what does it mean to think with our body? Well, there's, you know, the body is so intimately and intricately connected with the brain.

And this is, you know, this is a fact that scientists are elaborating and deepening our knowledge of every day. But that goes against a very old and entrenched idea in our culture that mind and body are separate, you know, and mind is elevated above the body and the mind is sort of cerebral and pure and the body is grubby and dirty and irrational and unruly and has nothing to contribute to intelligent thought. But we know that that's incorrect and that there's so many ways in which the body contributes to the thinking process. You know, one might be right now as I'm talking, I'm moving my hands around. Gesture, for example, gesture is not just kind of a tag along to speech. It's actually the case that our gestures anticipate what we're thinking

and what we're going to say by a few milliseconds, such that by the time we've said something, our hand gestures are already conveying that information. And often our most advanced, our newest and most cutting edge ideas, they show up first in our gestures. And then that kind of informs our own thinking. The real leader in this field is a University of Chicago psychologist named Susan Golden Meadow, a beautiful name. Susan Golden Meadow is a leading researcher in gesture. And she has shown that, for example,

when children are wrestling with learning a new concept, often an understanding of the concept will show up first in their hands, even as what they're saying reflects that old, outdated assumption. And when teachers can be aware of that mismatch between what a student's hands are saying and what they're saying verbally, that is a signal to a teacher that that student is ready to make the leap to this new understanding. They're especially receptive to instruction at that moment. And so just paying more attention to what people's gestures are saying and also encouraging people to make gestures, making a lot of gestures ourselves. All these things move our thinking forward

in ways that would not happen if our hands were not moving. It's confusing to me because I know the value of gestures for communication. And what I hear you saying is that we have a thought and once we have a thought, it actually formalizes in a gesture before it does, we find the right language to express it. That's right.

So it is the case, as you mentioned, that gestures are a very potent tool in communication. Like people remember what we say, the points that we make when they're accompanied by gesture more than they remember things that we say when we're not gesturing. So, you know, gesturing is a really powerful way to communicate our ideas to other people. But it's also the case that gesturing is part of our own thinking processes and moves our own thinking processes forward, such that the more we gesture, the more fluent our own speech is, the more easily we understand complex concepts. And that's partly because when we're struggling to put words to an idea, often we can capture

some element of that with our hands before we're really able to put words to it, as you were saying, Michael. And so it's kind of a bootstrapping thing where like our hands give us just a little bit of a leg up to use an embodied metaphor. And we kind of can build on that to build a more formalized verbal understanding. That's very cool. And is it a speed? Is it a speed thing that hand gestures come out before the verbal um yeah there's so many yeah there's so many words that we can choose to describe something even i just stammered finding the word and is it a speed thing and in a rudimentary thing that there's less gestures maybe or smaller range of gestures than a smaller range of, of words.

Yeah. Or like our hands can move faster than our, our minds can create the words. That's a, that's a good question. I know that research has found that interacting with objects, like manipulating objects is actually a faster, often a faster way to solve a problem than doing it all in our head. And we have this bias in our culture that real geniuses, smart, real smart people do it all in their head when really the more you can externalize the thinking process, whether it's gestures or a model that you're actually able to physically manipulate that kind of thing. That's actually what experts do. You know, that's actually what experts do. You know, that's actually the root of experts. Mastery is that they're really good at thinking outside the brain, they're really good at using their bodies, using spaces, using relationships to help their thinking along.

Yeah, it makes sense that when you're holding something that you're trying to solve, that you would actually be pulling in more data points, accessing different regions of the brain, if you will, to be super simple. But that totally makes sense to me. And we also know that kids, I think it's boys in general, but strike me if I'm wrong on that, or strike this thought if I'm wrong, is that don't strike me. But boys learn better when they hold something in their hand. And there's a lot of funny jokes that can come from that. But I think that, I don't know if that still holds true, but I remember reading that at one point. And then I'll tell you a funny story is that I was working with a bunch of athletes and it happened to be a media training

day. And the specialist, the expert came in and said, right, okay, let's make sure that you have the right type of eye gaze into the camera. So she was teaching them how to look into the camera and then make sure you sit on your suit. So the back of your suit, so that your collar doesn't ruffle up. And when you do that, I want you to tuck your hands underneath your hips and sit on your hands. And I always thought that was really weird. And I thought, well, my Italian ass is going to have a hard time. I don't know what I'm going to do here. And so- Yeah. And whole interview. Right. And so it was like, like, just make it about the eye contact, the words you choose and have that presence and don't be flailing and distracting, you know,

with hand gestures was like probably the, the note that she had received from, from producers or something. So I don't know how that went for those athletes, but I always thought it stuck with me that that is really odd. That's misguided. Yeah. I tell a story in the book about Frederick Mishkin, who's a professor at Columbia business school, and he's a big hand talker and always has been. And when he was in graduate school, his graduate school advisor made him sit whenever he visited his advisor to consult with him about his studies. The graduate, the advisor forced him to sit on his hands because he found Frederick Mishkin's gestures so distracting or gauche or whatever. And we do have this kind of stigma that we apply to anything that has to do with the body, including gestures, which is so, it's so wrong headed. And, and I think that's true in your example as well, Michael, that gestures are

actually part of the thinking process and integral part of the thinking process. They help us to think better. And so to suppress that is really, it's really a mistake. We'll leave this point, but I'll share one more misguided bit of advice. And this is why advice, quote unquote, is crazy making to me. It's like half cocked, what kind of worked for me, or I heard it from somebody, like, let's get into the science of things and not just this advice giving bit. But it was for a salesperson. I think that this is half true. You know what I'm about to say? So it was athletes, there's this idea that athletes make good salespeople and good business people because they are self-starters. They know how

to work and schedule. They're good teammates. They understand grit and passion and fill in the blanks with lots of ideas of ideas and some athletes are really long and so here's where the coaching came in and again half cocked i think it's totally wrong is that but this athlete was six foot eight that's a very large human and the coaching was to keep your limbs in when you're going to a sales meeting, like become smaller a bit, like tuck your knees under the table in a way that they're not sprawling. And you know, your seven foot wingspan is not intimidating people. And so it was more of an intimidation and like this creature of an expansion with these long arms that was overwhelming for people. And they were spending more time thinking

about how small they were relative to how strong and big this person was. And so the coaching was keep your limbs in. And so I don't know if that really has to do with gestures or not, but, um, interesting, interesting experience. Like people are different, you know, we show up differently. I would say, you know, how much better if that athlete could have been encouraged to own his size and feel empowered, but bring other people into that feeling of empowerment rather than, you know, diminishing himself to make other people feel less small. Yeah. That was,

that was the tactic. Yeah. You're so large that you make others feel small. So play small, which is like, can you imagine telling that to like a child? LeBron James or something? Yeah. Or even like, I don't know if you have kids, but like, would you ever telling that to like a child lebron james or something yeah or even like i don't know if you have kids but like can you would you ever say that to your kid i mean

well unfortunately i think girls get told that a lot you know that they're in what way that um their role is to make other people feel big and strong and and um to diminish themselves to keep their voices low and even to physically, there's all the jokes about manspreading, how men sit on like a subway car and women are kind of- Mansplaining. I've heard mansplaining, but not manspreading. Yeah, no, it's manspreading too, where men just kind of- Is this like when the hips roll forward and the legs are like spread out? Yeah. And they're taking up way more space than they really need to.

Yeah. So I think there is something about gender that comes into play there too. Yeah. And while we're on bodies and the thinking and the relationship people have with their bodies, tall people end up not getting hugged in the same, yet not as often, you know, and not because imagine like, and I'm talking extremely tall people like six, seven, eight, nine, seven footers. It's because when you hug a six foot eight person or seven foot person, you're right at their hip or, you know. It's like, and so they have to come down and it's a whole thing. So it's more handshake, fist bumps. Yeah, so imagine growing up and the warmth that we get from hugs.

The six foot four kid in ninth grade or six foot three kid in ninth grade has just a different relationship with hugging. Anyways, I'm not sure where we're going, but it's interesting. All this embodied stuff is so interesting because our bodies are with us all the time. And, you know, one thing I write about in the book is this capacity for introception, which is the flow of sensations that are always there from within our body. but we're really encouraged, especially in situations where we're supposed to be thinking hard and working hard to push those internal sensations away, which again is a mistake because they carry so much information and so much wisdom if we tune

into them. So can you define interoception for folks that are not familiar with it? Because it is a, it's beautiful. It's not talked about enough. It's part of an intelligence that happens for people. So can you just, can you quickly just pass over that? Yeah. I mean, introception is a term that I, it's a technical term that I had not encountered until I started doing this research. And I think it's the same capacity is much better known under the term gut feelings, you know, and so what it describes is kind of that sensation or feeling you have that is informative, that tells you something, but it doesn't seem to come from your brain or from your conscious

mind. And that is in fact the case that, you know, we take in so much information as we're navigating through our everyday lives that we couldn't possibly process it all on the, on a conscious level, but we are taking in that information. We are noticing patterns and regularities in our experience. And the way we get access to that information is through the body. Like that's, what's happening when your stomach, you know, you have butterflies in your stomach or you feel your heart beating faster. That's your body cueing you in, cluing you in to the fact that here's a situation that you've got to pay attention

to. And it's kind of like the body tapping you on the shoulder or tugging you on the sleeve to give you a message. But we're, our, our culture is so brain centric that we tend to push away those messages and assume that they don't have any, any relevance. That's really good. It's a really important part of quote unquote thriving in life is to have the ability to be attuned to what the body is saying and then having the resources to be able to respond. And so can we paint a picture really quickly of somebody who, this is like a modern day human right now that is working their ass off. They're trying to do their thing, giving their full effort. They're pulled in more directions that they might have wanted, meaning that they're stretched, right? Literally

at their limits. But they want to learn, they want to grow, they want to show up and they want to be right for their family and or, you know, definitely for their career. And they end up feeling depleted at the end of the day or the end of the week, or they're just, you know, there's this deep fatigue that's taking place for people. And so can you talk about if you were to be able to help those people, that person, where would you start? Well, in the book, I write about this technique called the body scan, which those of your listeners who practice mindfulness meditation may have encountered. And it's about bringing open-minded, curious, nonjudgmental attention to whatever is coming up, whatever

is being felt in the body. And usually it is a kind of formal practice that you would do before you proceed to do mindfulness meditation. But what I've found and what researchers have found is that it can also be done on a much more kind of on the go way and in a much briefer kind of way in the sense of just checking in with yourself, you know, and we're so focused on the external world. We're so focused on all this information that's coming at us that we often forget to check in with what's going on inside. Like in addition to this very, very vivid and busy external world, there's an internal world as well. And we often are neglecting, you know, that internal world. And so what you want to do ideally is to be drawing from both of those spaces, you know, drawing on what's happening in the external world,

but also checking in with what's going on in the internal world. And it only has, it only needs to take a moment or two to check in and with yourself and say, how, how am I feeling? What am I feeling? You know, it's a very helpful to label what you're feeling to just put some put literally put a name to what you're feeling. And I find that that's something that even very busy people can incorporate into their everyday lives. Yeah. So it's thin slicing of checking in and there's good evidence that it works. And what I found is that the person who's highly stressed that isn't practicing in a disciplined way, a checking in or a formal meditation process that they're less likely to check in when, you know, their foot is three quarters the way down

on the pedal. And I think it's really important. And there, there are ways that we can maybe add to what you just said, which is schedule it. You know, if it doesn't make people's calendars nowadays, it's actually quite tricky. Post, Use your external environment. Maybe this is part of the freeing up, you know, the bandwidth idea that you have of offloading, but using some post-it notes to check in, check in, check in at different queues throughout their office or home. And you're right, that it's a simple breath and a simple labeling. Both have, have evidence that they dissipate the stress that is experienced or the emotion that is being labeled. So, okay. So great. And now let's get into maybe the four ways that you think about offloading. And we've talked

about the body. That's, I think that's what we just did. Right. And there's also technology, physical space and social interaction. So can you kind of click through ways that you would help offload from a technology standpoint for the busy, caring human that's trying to do really well in life? Yeah. Yeah. So we've talked about how our devices can be very good at offloading our mental functions onto them. But we want to do that really intentionally and skillfully because our own mental capacities can atrophy. If we hand

off too much of that to our devices, just think about maybe you've traveled a particular route a whole bunch of times, but you use GPS every time. And if without that GPS, you'd never be able to find your way there, you know. What we really want to do in terms of offloading our mental functions onto our devices is as much as possible, offload those mundane routine kind of everyday kind of mental tasks onto our, onto our devices. And in fact, they often do a better job of, of handling those things than we do. For example, if we put something in Google calendar, we won't, our computer won't misremember it as being Thursday instead of Wednesday. You know, we actually, computers are better than us. It's

better than our own brains at doing certain things like keeping information, preserving information in that original state. Whereas our own minds are amazing at sort of elaborating and, you know, transforming things and changing them into new ideas, combining ideas to create something new. And so as much as possible, we want to delegate, you know, the routine stuff to our machines, to our technology, bringing up bandwidth for the stuff that only humans can do. You know, having the big ideas, the creative ideas, making that connection.

So that's the most effective way to use our devices. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate

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Yeah. Well, memory in general, you know, this goes back to our earlier conversation about how the biological brain is quite limited. We're not really good at remembering exact information that the brain extracts the gist from a situation. And we kind of remember basically, basically what something was about, but a computer is very good at remembering exactly what the details are and those details don't change. So a lot of those functions that we'd want to download to our devices really do have to do with memory and a very precise and exact kind of memory. Okay, very cool. And, you know, I think we're hitting on a couple of them, right, with the physical space. Like, is that Post-its, like I was talking about?

Or are there other ones that you would say using your physical space as a way of offloading? Yeah, well, there is the space of ideas, which is what I mean when I talk about getting stuff out of your head, ideas and information out of your head and onto physical space, whether that's like a giant whiteboard or a bunch of post-it notes that you can actually manipulate as if they're physical objects or navigate through as if it's like a three-dimensional landscape. Those are all things that our brains do really effortlessly and easily. And it draws on these embodied resources that come so naturally to us that we use so effectively, but that don't even get activated if we keep all that information and all those ideas inside our head. But I also mean literally physical space as in spending lots of time outdoors, because

it turns out that being indoors and focusing on very intently on the kind of concepts and, and symbols that make up most of our work is very draining, you know, to the, to our attentional systems, whereas going outside and having that kind of pleasantly diverting experience of just looking here and there and like not having that really intense draw, draw down on your attention that restores your attentional faculty. So then you can go back to your office with, with greater focus and greater attentional ability. And the research is phenomenal about like outside is ideal, wide open spaces, you know, wide, big ideas, if you will,

but wide open spaces is really important and then um not necessary like there would be that for me is this is why i i grew up surfing and i loved uh two aspects of surfing it was like super vast and then also you could find um details and narrowing of details in the rippling of the the top of the water the shimmering of the light like you can go back and forth between the two which was really i think an interesting aspect and plus the magnesium and um the kind of the salt air you know the ions there yeah there's oh you're making it sound so cool it's really an amazing thing and then there's risk and learning and it's complicated because it's always new it's like for a lot of reasons it's amazing yeah okay so so big spaces um and then the research is really interesting is that

if you can't get big spaces like okay be outside in some respects and then if you can't do that be at a near window they can see nature and then then the the least effective but still effective is a picture of nature that's hanging on your wall. Yeah. Yeah. Or bringing in plants and greenery into our, or even natural motifs into our built settings can be helpful. Yeah. How do you explain that? Yeah. Well, I mean, human beings evolved in the outdoors. This life we live where we're indoors, inside buildings or inside our cars, 90% of the time, that is a very recent development. If you look at the whole span of human history. So our perceptual faculties are tuned to what we see in the organic world and then in the natural

world. And a lot of the sharp, you know, edges and, and loud sounds and fast moving objects that we confront, like in an urban setting, those are stressful. You know, they,, and loud sounds and fast moving objects that we confront, like in an urban setting, those are stressful, you know, they put a real stress on our nervous system. And being outside is really, it's kind of the sweet spot for our brain. It's very, it's very easy to process for our brains to process that information and what our brains find easy to process, we generally find pleasant. So that's why when we go outside, most of us feel a kind of lifting of our mood every time we just step out the door, you know? Yeah. So this ancient brain of ours, you know, hasn't quite caught up to some of the modern stressors. And so your tactics are about taking advantage of the true ancient nature and the modern research and inventions that can

work in harmony, which is the extended mind, if I have it correctly. And then the fourth is social interaction. So what do you mean by social interaction? Yeah, well, so I find it interesting that, again, this book is as much a book, a work of cultural criticism as anything else. And I find it really interesting that in our culture, in our society, we tend to separate social life from the life of the mind, you know, the, our, our, our workplace or our professional lives, like they're different and they're even at odds. Like we might think of having a drink after work, but then when we're actually at work,

you know, we need to focus and turn off that social part of our brain. Oh, so we're drinking at drinking at work now. Is that good research? Yeah. No, but I mean, humans are fundamentally social creatures. We're social all the time, not just during happy hour. And so the more we can harness our really powerful social brains in the service of thinking and learning and doing our work, the more effective we can be. So social activities like telling stories or debating other people or teaching other people, those activate cognitive processes that remain dormant when we're just thinking alone by ourselves. So I think we should bring a lot, whether it's

drinking or not, I think we should bring a lot more of our social selves into our work. Okay. So best practice for social interaction, scheduling, trying to be clever and offloading onto whatever calendar that you're using and being in person outside with others. Are we talking about like the trifecta or the quad of offloading and extending them on? Well, and we haven't even talked about the value of physical activity for thinking. But when you can be active, physically active outside with a friend, that's like the ideal. I think you're hitting like every sweet spot there. And then do you have a recommendation for if somebody is working, you know, 12 hour day, eight hour day, whatever it might be, and they're inside for most of it, a best

practice that you found to be important for you on the relationship between inside and outside. Yeah. Well, as we were saying, you know, even looking out the window, research finds that even looking out the window for at a, at a scene of greenery for 40 seconds, as little as 40 seconds can refresh that attentional capacity. And also I suggest to people that instead of, you know, when you have a break in work, not turning to Twitter and not turning to the news, which is really going to, if anything, will bring you down, but watching a nature video instead. And it's actually, I do it myself and it's actually incredibly, it kind of puts you back

in touch with the fact that we live in this big world. We are animals ourselves, you know, and it's very easy to get caught up in the in the day's debate, but to step back and have the bigger view, I think can be really useful. And are you doing that every hour, every 45 minutes, every three hours, once a day, you know, like, how do you do it? And I know that you would probably talk about sunlight in a minute, vitamin D, magnesium, sunlight, for just a moment. But can you talk about sunlight in a minute, vitamin D, magnesium, sunlight for just a moment. But can you talk about like the cadence?

Yeah. I mean, again, the brain bound, which is a word the philosopher Andy Clark uses that I really like, the brain bound notion of how you get work done is that you sit there until you finish. You keep working your brain. And a lot of us have operated that way during the pandemic, because we've, we've been at home, we've, you know, we haven't been commuting, we don't have co workers around to chat with. And so we just sit there and we work. And I think the limitations of that approach have become

apparent over the last 18 months, you know, so it can seem counterintuitive, but to take breaks, and breaks of a particular kind can be can make you more productive and breaks of a particular kind where you're tuning into your body, having an experience with nature and encounter with nature, or connecting with another person, like making sure those things happen. That's what I, that's how I try to structure my workday so that I'm not just using my brain for hours on end, but I'm breaking it up with these specific kinds of experiences. Okay. If leaders, thoughtful leaders, of course, knew what you knew, how would they, how would they set the external conditions and best practices for people to be their very best? Yeah. I love that question because I really think the extended mind proposes a new role for leaders and managers that they're really situation creators. They're creators of settings and

environments where people can do their best thinking. And a situation like that, one that is most amenable to intelligent thinking, I think would make lots of space for physical activity, would allow people to take those moments to check in with their interoceptive selves, would have lots of light and fresh air and access to the outdoors, and would also make space for social activity. People engage, again, we're so fundamentally and naturally social, people engage in activities like storytelling and teaching other people just when they're given space to do so.

They don't even really need to be instructed to do that. They just need space and time and the understanding that those things will actually make everybody more productive and more effective. It's not at all a waste of time, quite the opposite. I love it. What are you still searching for? You've written a book that is hopefully going to change folks. You said you wrote it because you needed it. And so now that you've put it down and you're sharing it with us, what are you still searching for? Yeah. I, one thing I became very aware of while writing this book was how much the richness of our, of the raw materials that we have to think with, how much that informs how well we're able to think. And that's not something we take into account in our current system where we judge people and we rank people based on supposedly what they're doing up here with their heads, when really so much of their performance has to do with their access to rich

materials with which to think. So to me, this is the new kind of frontier of equality and inequality to say, well, really, what materials do people have to think with? And isn't it the case that there's huge disparities in our culture and in the raw materials with which people have to think with? So I've been very fortunate to have the freedom to think well, the mentors and peers to think well with, you know, all those things have, you know, space and time to think with. And all those things have informed my own thinking so much. And so I want to explore that question of equality and inequality in terms of our mental extensions. Very cool. Yeah, the great digital divide is certainly one that is easy to think about. Outdoors, if you're kind of city-bound or indoor-bound, I guess parks are good. They don't feel the same to me as being in the mountains or the ocean you know yeah a landscape that is expansive but

maybe you know there's interesting research it's um i'm hesitant to even bring up research around grounding or earthing you know because it's um at least i haven't seen the robustness of it but i as an n of one as a person i feel it um I notice that I'm different when my feet are in the sand or my feet are in the grass. I feel differently. But the research, I haven't seen it where it's like a dramatic like, hey, make sure this happens on a daily basis. But maybe somebody in the community will point me to better research than I've looked at there. Okay. So all that being said is if we could be really concrete, what's one thing that you want to pass to the next generation?

If your work is to live on and they were to hold it up and to say, and there was just one thing for the next generation, what do you hope? And maybe it's not in the book. It doesn't have to be in the book. I think the theme of all of my work has been, you're not, you are not who your society or your culture tells you you are, that there are lots of pressures and forces and incentives to tell you who you are so that you'll be a better consumer or a better worker, you know, or fit into society's idea of what a human should be. But it's your job in the biggest, broadest sense to figure out who you really are. And, you know, to go back, Michael, to your question of what am I still searching for? I'm still searching at bottom for what is true self? You know, what is truly your authentic self? And what

is all the stuff that gets put on you? And I'm always kind of looking to discover what that is. This is where mindfulness is really important as a practice. This is where journaling is important. And the third component is conversations with people of wisdom that are not looking at the surface, but looking at the depths of the human experience and potentially you individually, the depths of you. And true self, it's not a word that it gets thrown around a lot. And it's not a word that is easily defined. And

I think that best self, authentic self, true self, they sound like they're the same, but they're actually quite different. And so, yeah, this is a recent conversation that I had on the podcast where we're talking about true self being what's actually more interesting about that phrase is S with a capital S, like the true self of what it means to be fully human. And that's the unifying field bit, like the common thread that we all have. What are those common threads? And then best self is like, wherever you are today, there's a first principle that we're all working to be our very best with the best that we have available in each moment that we are, you know, engaged in, but we don't have necessarily the internal resources to be our very best. And it's because we, to your point in this, in your research here that our brains and our minds are limited and we need to offload and recover properly and strain in a healthy way and not

overextend, you know, on the extended mind, but to do it in a healthy way. So I think those are really important ways for people to wrestle. What is authentic self? What is true self? And what is best self, you know? And I think the question too is so interesting. What is universal? What is shared? What is human nature? And then what is unique and, you know, really characteristic of yourself and no one else? That's a really interesting place to vein to work, you know? Yeah, that's really good. And it sounds like, you know, you are highly attuned to consciousness and the value of it and, you know, the mind, if you will, in general. And I'm wondering if you're familiar with Hoffman's work. We've had Hoffman on the podcast.

Have you been exposed? Okay. He's phenomenal. And then Dr. Tony Nader. Tony Nader might be somebody that I think you might be interested in as well as deep, rich thinker. And yeah, so there might be some fun places to go. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for pointing me in that direction. Both wrestling with the heart problems of consciousness.

Okay, now, just for fun, if you were to sit with a master, a true master, and you had one question, this is like a definitely a reductionist idea or format, but if you were to sit with one master and you had one question, who would it be and what would it be? I think, okay, since I mentioned him before, I'm going to say Sigmund Freud again. I'd love to bring him. You go back to Freud. Yeah. Oh, my God. I find the psychodynamic approach to understanding human beings, as you were saying, it's more of an art than a science, but I think it has so much to contribute to our understanding

of ourselves. And I would want to sit with Sigmund Freud and say, when you look into the human soul, what do you see? You know, I just think he had unparalleled capacities for observing and seeing deeply within people. And I'd want to know, you know, when you, when you, when you listened, when you invented this amazing method of just allowing people to talk and, and so much comes out and there's so much rich material there. Like, what are you looking for? What are you, what are you listening for? Oh, that is cool. That is really cool. I love this conversation. I'm stoked to introduce your work to our community. And, and here's one more reductionist idea, but you can take it

wherever you want. Okay. How do want. How do you finish this thought? It all comes down to? Knowing yourself. And your best practices for that are? Well, for sure, interoceptive attunement, but a lot of introspection. I mean, I'm still pretty brain bound as a person. I have an analytic mind, an analytical mind, and I use it. So I think, you know, the value of self-examination

is, there's not enough of it in this world. And I think there should, you know, I think it can show you things about yourself that you really need to know. And it, if you're, and it takes some courage and some bravery to do that too. I think. Incredible courage. I love where you go with this. And do you do that with somebody or do you do it for meditation and or journaling or some other form? All kind of all of the above. I mean, I'm a huge fan of therapy and I have a wonderful therapist and I love reading books about therapy. But also, you know, it's kind of a life project, you know, it's one continuous conversation with myself and with the books I read and with my friends and with my therapist. So it's all just trying to figure out like, what's it all about?

And are you doing psychodynamic work yourself? Or is it something else? Yes. Yeah, kind of, you know, these days, a lot of therapists have an, an eclectic kind of approach rather than a very dogmatic kind of one. And I would describe that as the kind of work that I'm doing. And so, so your, your form of therapy, you're not transference and counter-transference are part of the equation, meaning that that happens. That's a real thing. Yeah. Your therapist is not sitting behind you. No, no, no. Yeah. Although I was once told by another therapist that I was a good candidate for psychoanalysis. And for years I've wondered, is that a compliment or is that so messed up that you need to be in here five days a week? Or is it like, oh, you're so thoughtful and, you know, introspective, you could really get, you could really go that way.

Yeah, very cool. What, super fun. Is there, is there anything that we didn't hit on that you'd say, you know, I wish we would talk a little bit more about this aspect, or I want to encourage people this way, or, you know, is there something that is meaningful that we didn't get to? Yeah. Can I, maybe I could just say something that might seem like it's from out of left field, which is a lot of, there's such a Buddhist flavor to the extended mind, which, and I'm very interested in Buddhism, but I, and it's not mentioned anywhere in the book, but I think some, some readers have, have felt that and have seen the connections. And I feel like there's been a real undercurrent of Buddhism to this conversation, like our discussion about true self and, of course, meditation and mindfulness.

And so I would just encourage if anybody has ever had any of your listeners have ever had a stirring of interest in Buddhism, to look into that. I think there's, there's, there's such amazing wisdom there that, that we in the West could could really benefit from. And it's, it's certainly changed my own life. So you are practicing Buddhism yourself? I, you know, I'm, I'm so I'm so averse to being part of any kind of a group that I would never say I'm a Buddhist, but I'm very interested in Buddhist thought. And I, I read a lot about it and practice meditation. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a particular form of meditation that you're experiencing now or has been meaningful to you? Um, you know, again, the, the concept of, of awareness and of identifying with awareness rather than with all these things that, again, society tells you you are, allows me to human nature and what is our own, you know, particular and contingent take on it. But awareness is the key, I think. You know,

there's a story about the Buddha that he encountered someone walking on the road and this person was struck by this, the amazing sort of aura around the Buddha and said, who are you? And the Buddha said, I'm awake. And that was his answer. And I just think that's so beautiful to like be awake and to have that be the core of your identity. I think that's something to strive for.

It's really cool. And, you know, it is the practice of working to know all there is to know and to experience it in complete awareness. And the idea that you can be tapped into this unifying field to the collective conscious to like the thing of the mind that is universal is remarkable. And we, we felt it. People have, you know, we just not as an extended experience.

And so it's quite remarkable. And I think all, all 11 world religions have done something pretty special and many of them, something pretty egregious, but pretty special in trying to understand what happens, the best way of living according to insight and some practices, and then a best way of understanding what happens after a physical death. And what I find fascinating is that they keep coming down to at least one of the two words that you mentioned at the top about work and love.

Love is a through line in all of them. And so it feels like whether it's Buddhism or Christianity, and Jesus was a beautiful example of personified love and strength. And I can go down the list. I'm fascinated with all 11 world religions. I think that they're, I don't know, it just feels like it's a source code that is not quite unified. And I think you and I would agree that on this point that I've got problems with the dogma and the rules. And if Christianity, this is going to sound, I'm going to piss people off when I say this. I say this to my mom all the time.

And, you know, like it's, I know it's a sore spot, but if Christianity were an institution in the United States, we'd shut that thing down. Right? You abuse kids, you do that. And I mean, if this was a university, that university would be shut down. I don't know if you can come back from those egregious behaviors.

And I know I just pissed off a bunch of folks in here. But that's not to say that I don't find the principles of the man and the trinity to be amazing. And so, anyways. This has been really fun talking with you, Michael. Yeah, I've appreciated it. And so where can people find you? Where can they, where's the best place to connect people to your work? Yes.

So I have a website that's Annie, sorry, www.anniemurphypaul.com. I'm also really active on Twitter and I love engaging with people there. And my handle there is at Annie Murphy Paul. Okay, awesome. And then I want to encourage people to go check out the book. We will have notes in the show notes and links for everybody and look forward to seeing you on social as well. Great. Thanks, Michael. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you.

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