Motley Fool Money - Spring Cleaning 2019

Episode Date: April 19, 2019

What’s one stock that sparks joy? What’s one stock that should be thrown out? What’s a highflier that investors should consider trimming? On this week’s Motley Fool Money Spring Cleaning Special, analysts Andy Cross, Ron Gross, and Jason Moser tackle those questions and share some of their favorite cleaning tips. Plus, best-selling author Daniel Levitin shares some thoughts from his book, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload.  Get $50 off your first job post at www.LinkedIn.com/Fool.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Post a job today at LinkedIn.com slash Fool and get $50 off your first job post. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Full Money Radio Show. I'm Chris Hill joining me in studio this week. Senior analyst, Jason Moser, Andy Cross, and Ron Gross. Good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Hey, hey. Hi, Chris. It's spring break. We're coming to you from Cancun, Mexico.

Woo! No, no, not really. But we are taking advantage of spring break to bring you our spring cleaning special. So before we get into individual stocks, Ron Gross, let's go broad for a minute. 2019 so far, what's been the biggest surprise for you? For me, it is the S&P 500 performance after a disastrous, and I mean disaster. Astor is December. First quarter, S&P 500, total return index, which includes dividends, up almost 14%. The best quarterly performance since the second quarter of 2009, and the biggest gain in the first quarter since 1998. I didn't expect it, but I'm happy to say it. Jason? Yeah, I guess I'm going to go, actually, individual stock here. To me, I really was surprised

at the reaction to Stamps.com, the shares, when they announced that they were going to be ending their exclusive relationship with the United States Postal Service. And I think the reason why, maybe I'm not as surprised about the reaction, but really when you dig into it, I'm really surprised at how badly management repurchase shares over the past couple of years, because they spent in 2017, about $135 million in share repurchases, and a little bit more than that in 2018, when the share price was $200, $250. And now you're looking at a share price of around $78, $79 after that news was announced. I mean, I think we thought that maybe there would be some litigation that would come of that.

It does look like there's at least one class action lawsuit out there. Who knows, maybe in five years this looks like the right move for them, given the nature of e-commerce and shipping in general. But wow, man, what a start to the year. Andy Cross. Chris, I wanted to say the Kraft-Hine's announcement, that Triple Whammy, but you know what I'm going to go with is Ellie Mae. acquisition in February, LMA, that does a mortgage software company, announced that they are selling out the company for $99 a share to a private equity firm.

And actually, that price to me seems low. That's below the 52-week high of 16. And most investors like to see the stock when they make an acquisition be higher than the 52-week high. But it's also selling out, I think, at a kind of bad time. The U.S. housing market has gone through a little bit of a slump when mortgage rates increase, but now that might be starting to reverse. Inventory's tight. I just look out the next couple of years, and I think L.A. may could do a little better independently, but for some reason,

they decided they wanted to sell the company. You know, that was on my list as one to consider, and I think the thing that really surprises me was the acquirer. Like it was a private equity acquisition versus, I mean, I could see where a big bank might take a lot of interest in that or something of that nature, but to see, yeah, taking out, I think, a little bit early, definitely a little cheap. They got that thing for a steal, I think. You know, old Jed's a millionaire. Some people were made millionaires after this. Jason, Ron mentioned the drop that we saw in December.

And looking back on that, it's clear there were a lot of investors who just got spooked at what happened with the market. We saw a big sell-off. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised by it, given the run of the bull market up to that. But let's face it, there were some investors who were opportunistic in the month of December. looked at it as a chance to do some bargain hunting. So for anyone listening who was in the former camp and now looks back at December and says, gosh, I really should have been looking to buy instead of just selling stuff off. What tips do you have for people who are looking

to be opportunistic the next time there's a market drop? Yeah, I mean, that is a lot easier said than done. I think once you go through it a couple of times, it does get a little bit easier. I mean, why not use an episode like this? Follow our lead. Do a little spring cleaning. Go through your portfolio and maybe call the underperformers. perhaps trim a high flyer and raise a little cash. Also, I do think it's worth noting that if you have a 401k with your employer, sometimes, and I know in our case here, we have this option. You'll have a self-directed option where you can actually take that money that goes into the 401k.

And instead of plowing it right into an S&P fund, you could actually use that cash to purchase shares on that self-directed option. So, investigate and see if you do have that self-directed option through your employer, if you have a retirement account through your employer. And that can be another source of funds for when a rainy day does come. For me, once things started to get a little bit shaky, I went to my portfolio and I looked at where I potentially was under-allocated. And not surprisingly, for a value guy, I was under-allocated in tech and software services. And so I went to my watchlets, which I keep, try to keep it relatively up to date. And not surprisingly, there was not a lot of tech and

software services there. So I reached out to a colleague, in this case, Tim Byers. And I said, that if things continue to get bad, give me five high-tech stocks that you think I should buy on the weakness. And he did. I ended up actually buying four of them. It's worked out wonderfully so far. But first, I went to my watch list because I always try to keep a list there of stocks I'd either like to initiate a position in or add to. You know, when you're in the middle of those kind of pullbacks, it sometimes gets a little nerve wracking. And each of us see our stocks fall 15, 20 percent, as we saw in December. But if you truly keep your eyes, focus on the long term, and if you aren't, you're

investing for the next five, 10 years. I use that as a reminder. So whether I just keep writing it down to myself when I see this, I'm like, you know what, these stock pullbacks, they happen. And I want to use those as an opportunity to add on that weakness to my favorite companies. But you have to kind of remind yourself of that constantly that I'm in this for the long term. And over the short term, a week, month, or two quarter, those stock prices aren't nearly as important as a long term. And use that as a chance to put capital to work. Yeah, I do get that question every once in a while. When I say business-focused investor, I mean, we say that a lot here. People ask, what exactly do you mean by that?

But I think when you look at it as a business and that you're an owner of that business versus owning the actual shares, you start looking at these companies and think, am I okay with owning a piece of this company? Look at it beyond that as opposed to just the individual shares. And that gives you a better, I think, idea of whether or not you can hang in there for the long run and not really get too worked up about those. short-term movements like eating was saying. Well, and to the point Ron made at the top of the show, you look at the bounceback that we've had in the first quarter of 2019.

And what happened in December seems like a distant memory. But Andy, you and I were talking the other day. I mean, you can be a foolish, capital F foolish, long-term investor and still look at some stocks that are out there and think, boy, that's looking pretty pricey. Some of the valuations, even of companies that we're fans of, are looking a little spicy. Oh, sure. I mean, if you go back to September, when stocks were at their record high back then, and I don't think we've quite come back there yet. So stocks were looking expensive. They got hit very hard. And then we had the best first quarter in 10 years. So it was a really nice bounceback,

very fast, as Ron said, faster than I thought. And you can be a long-term investor and look at stocks and say, you know what, those stocks now, when you see companies, a lot of the software-as-a-service companies, excellent companies, MongoDB and the like, trade desks, which I like very much, but they are selling at, you know, 18, 20, 25 times sales, not earnings, sales when the S&P sales at two times sales, 2.2 times sales. And you can just say, wow, those are looking a little bit pricey, either think about an allocation strategy or, you know what, just, again, commits the long-term focus of it and not be adding to it at those prices. So let's just go around the table real quick. Ron, I'll start with you.

Is there a high flyer out there that you look at similar to keeping with the spring cleaning theme? If we're looking to trim our hedges a little bit and maybe deploy the cash elsewhere, what do you see that looks a little trimable? I think you should keep a sharp eye on Chipotle, actually, up 65% this year, up 120% over the last full year. Relatively new CEO, Brian Nicol, done a great job. Institute of the loyalty program, really turned the business. The stock is back to where.

within 5% of its August 2015 high. So that's a nice turnaround. But now you're sitting at 58 times earnings where the median restaurant company really trades around 25 times. Jason? I promise we didn't compare notes here, but I was actually going with Chipotle as well for all of the reasons that Ron mentioned. But I do have a backup, Chris, so listeners will not be let down here. It's kind of in line with what Andy was talking about. There are a lot of great companies out there still trading at some kind of crazy valuations. I mean, I look at Shopify, I like the business. I like the leadership there. But you still have a business there

that's not profitable. Cash flow, not positive there either. So for everything that they're doing well on the top line and they're growing that top line very nicely, I mean, it is not a space where they don't have a competitor. Square is really upping their game. And they own really their payments infrastructure where Shopify has to basically contract out to stripe for theirs. So, yeah, Shopify looks a little bit, a little bit rich today. Guys, don't laugh at me about this one. And it might not be a definition of a high flyer, but Cisco Systems, gentlemen, is up more than 30% year-to-date and now sells it 20 times earnings. They are making these massive share buybacks that I think is driving a lot of the EPS growth there in the outperformance against analysts' estimates, and they've been bidding the stock up.

I just look at that kind of business, how large it is, tough to innovate with a lot of competitors. And I was thinking if you were looking for a chance and a price to sell some Cisco systems pullback on, I would use now as that time. Coming up, we're going to channel our inner Marie condo to find a few stocks that spark joy. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. If you've got the money, I got the time. We'll go honky talking and we'll have a time. We'll make all the nights fun. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about in the Motley.

Full may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy yourself stocks based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money, Chris Hill, here in studio with Jason Moser, Andy Cross, and Ron Gross. It is our spring cleaning special. All right, Ron. What is one stock that investors should consider throwing out altogether? I'm going to throw myself under the sword here and go with Amco Pittsburgh, ticker symbol AP. It's an old recommendation of mine from my deep value service days. The stock turned out to be a value trap rather than value investment. I still own it. It's down 80% from my cost basis. Very painful. It's a steel company to make equipment for steel manufacturers. The company just never took off, never rebounded. The growth in China never supported the business. I don't actually

think it ever will. It's probably time for me and others to move on. I'm going to move on to Jason, but I'll be honest. I didn't pay attention to a lot of what you said after. I'm going to I'm going to throw myself under the sword. I'm going to stab you with my bus. We were waiting for Titan International, right? All right, what do you got, Jason? Well, so I am I afraid Ron was actually going to say what I'm getting ready to say? Because I'm sure this would be viewed as straight-up blasphemy.

But I wonder if Berkshire Hathaway really today is worth holding onto at this point. Everybody gasp. Everybody gasp. I mean, at least in relation to the other opportunities out there. And I will stipulate here, you said this doesn't have to be a stock that we hate or anything. It's just maybe it's heyday's past. I can't help but wonder if maybe Berkshire Hathaway's heyday isn't passed. I like the business. I like insurance.

But even Buffett admits he's having a hard time finding meaningful acquisition at this point. And his, in Munger's days are somewhat limited. I'm not going to lie, Chris, recently I sold my Berkshire Hathaway shares. And I plowed that money into Markell because I feel like Markell as a similar business, much smaller. Maybe there is a bit more of a growth prospect there. Jason, have you heard about Amco Pittsburgh? Andy Cross, what about you? I'm sticking with a theme that I've been selling over the last couple years, and that's just Pepsi.

It had been in a large position. And revenue, operating profits, cash flows all flat over the last five years. Very tough space now in the consumer products, goods business. Spends more in share, buybacks and dividends than in CAPX. It's very profitable and has really good returns on equity as they've been levering up the balance. balance sheet, but really as the market in the S&P 500 moves more towards tech, I just see companies like Pepsi having a tough road ahead to keep up with the growth in technology. And so I think Pepsi is one that has probably seen better days.

It might grow, but just not going to grow really all that fast. All right. In the spirit of Marie Kondo, and for those unfamiliar, she has a popular book and a Netflix series about the art and science of tidying up. Ron, what is a stock that sparks joy in you? For me, it's thinking about the future and what CRISPR therapeutics can do. It's a gene therapy company focusing on the CRISPR-Cast9 gene editing technology. May one day allow doctors to actually correct mutations in our DNA and cure diseases that beforehand

were thought to be incurable. Fascinating to watch the developments, which are coming faster and faster and faster. What's the ticker? C-R-S-P. Jason Moser? Well, I know everybody probably would expect me to say something like McCormick or Teledog, but I'm not going to say either one of those names, Mac. You know, listen, I've got three dogs.

I love them. Every time I see them, they make me smile. When I take them to the vet and I get that bill, I'm reminded that I'm an Idex lab shareholder. So I'm going to go at Idex Labs because I do appreciate the fact that this company exists. They help keep those furry friends healthy and happy. They are the market leader in U.S. Pet Diagnostics. Razor and Blade model, very reliable, very popular with the private practice vets out there. I think plenty of room for the business to still keep on chugging along.

And the ticker? IDXX. Andy Cross, what about you? I tell you, one of the best, I think, run companies out there that I follow is MasterCard. Symbol MA, 50% operating margins, 40% returns on capital. Revenue growth for a very large business at 16 to 20%. per year, $8 billion of cash on the balance sheet, $6 billion a debt. They earned $5.60 last year.

That was up from $2.50 in 2013, playing in the space of currency that is moving more and more to electronic, less cash, a very large market opportunity in lots of different spots. So I just think the leadership there to be able to invest that capital in smart ways they generate and buyback stock, I think MasterCard is just a company that, I look at my portfolio, and that's just one of my better performers, and it just sparks joy for me. Let's go to our man behind the glass, Steve Brodo. Steve, you're an experienced investor. What's a stock that sparks joy for you? Well, I can tell you, the ticker SPY is one that I do enjoy watching.

It's just the index fund, and that's one that never fails to impress me. So not United Airlines. Definitely not United Airlines. I do like MasterCard, though. Before we wrap up, guys, let's just go around the table. real quick with actual cleaning tips. Yes, we're helping people with their portfolios. But let's also see if we can do a little bit better than the average business show out there. Shall we, Ron? We shall. As some folks may know, I like to cook as to Jason. And I think it's very important

to know how to clean your high-end cooking knives, sometimes called chef's knives. You do not want to put them in the dishwasher. They will dull them. They will ruin them. Just some nice warm water and some mild soap, a little elbow grease. You got yourself a clean knife. I've been doing it wrong for a while. That's a good one. I'm right there with you. People ask, why don't you put them in the dishwasher? I need help sharpening my knives. I have a sharpener. Come on over. Jason? Okay, three quick things. Invest in just some simple latex gloves to do the dishes. I mean, it just makes all the difference in the world. Make sure that you err on the side of replacing that sink sponge more often than not, because they get

pretty grody pretty quickly, and always keep a box of magic erasers nearby, because those things magic. Pretty much anything. It's unbelievable. Andy? Jason, I'm three for three on your list. I like that. Here's one that I follow, and I think it's good and working kind of for me, but you've got to

be careful, and it's ask for forgiveness, not for permission when you throw away things from your kids' bedrooms. So when you find lots of stuff that they just no longer use or use. can't use, I just kind of tend to put that into the trash can and see what happens. It's backfired for me a couple times, but I think in Marie Kondo language and style of trying to get rid of things that just don't really meet that joy hurdle, kid stuff is just, has a short shelf life. Steve, what about you?

I'm a big fan of alcohol wipes. I feel like wiping things off. Back to Cancun. That too. But alcohol wipes, wipe off that computer key. board and mouse, kill those germs. That's good. I'm going to go out of the kitchen. I'm just going to go straight to the closet. And I don't know who told me this years ago, but the idea that if you look into your closet

and you see any clothing that you haven't worn for at least a year, I like that. That is a guts-to-go situation. What if they still have the tags on them? And you'd never have. Yeah, that's always a little embarrassing. All right, Ron Gross, Jason Moser, Andy Cross. Guys, thanks for being here. Thanks, Chris. All right, now that our closets and portfolios have been taken care of, we're going to revisit a conversation with Dan Levitin,

author of The New York Times Bestseller, The Organized Mind. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money. Hey, all are happiness in the world can't buy you money. But if I had plenty, I could keep us aflo. Yeah, then in the end if my chef don't come in, I just buy a big boat. Hey, don't fast forward. Don't fast forward because there's a chance.

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Post a job today at LinkedIn.com slash fool and get $50 off your first job post. That's a LinkedIn.com slash fool. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Dan Leviton is a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at McGill University. He's also a New York Times bestselling author. And his newest book is The Organized Mind, Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. Dan, thanks so much for being here. No, it's my pleasure, Chris. There are a lot of books out there about how we can all get better organized, but your book really gets into the science behind how our brains work. How does, I guess my first question is, how does understanding neuroscience help us get better organized? Well, as you say, there are a lot of books out there that purport to tell us how to get better organized, how to be more focused, how to be more productive.

but the vast majority of them aren't based on scientific principles at all. They're just somebody's own idea. And many of those ideas aren't even tested before they write about them. Where I'm coming from, as a cognitive neuroscientist, my occupation is studying thinking for a living, how the brain works and in some cases how it doesn't work. And people in my field have learned a lot about why the brain pays attention to some things and forgets others.

And that became the foundation for writing a book about how we could use the science of attention and memory to help us all in our daily lives. You mentioned attention and memory, and one of the things your book gets into is new research into those areas. So let's start with attention. What do we know now about attention that we did in a few years ago? Well, one of the big things is that we all experience decision fatigue. And this is a biological constraint in the brain.

Every time you make a decision, you use up a little bit of the brain's fuel, which is glucose. And unfortunately, the biology of the brain doesn't distinguish between unimportant decisions and important ones. So if you make a bunch of unimportant decisions, like whether you use a green pen or a red pen, or whether to eat honeynut Cheerios or multi-grain Cheerios, after a sequence of, of such trivial decisions, we find that people exhibit poor impulse control and exercise poorer judgments in really important decisions, such as whether to put your retirement money into stocks or bonds. Well, I mean, that's a no-brainer.

I mean, who would choose multi-grained Cheerios over Honeynut Cheerios? I thought you were going to go off about the stocks and the bonds. No, I think people have heard me do that before. You know, is that why, I mean, there's the story about Albert Einstein. where he had seven different copies of the exact same wardrobe. Is that why he did that? Was Einstein sort of early to the table on this one? That he didn't want to waste one second thinking about what clothes he was going to wear?

I'm guessing that that was it, although he didn't have the neuroscience behind it. You know, my colleague Oliver Sacks adopts a kind of similar rubric, which is that he has the same thing for lunch every day. If you don't have to make these trivial decisions, it lightens the neural burden so that you can really focus on the important ones. Now, I wouldn't advocate necessarily that you wear the same kinds of clothes all the time or eat the same thing every day. That's a very personal choice.

But what the science does suggest is that if you have important decisions to make, make them early in the day. What do we know now about memory that we did in a few years ago? Well, we know that memory is more limited than we previously thought. that is the short-term working memory, the number of objects you can consciously deal with at any one time. And this is where memory and attention intersect. It turns out that we can't multitask. We can't really do a bunch of different things all at the same time.

We can keep track of three or four things, and beyond that, something starts to fall out. So a number of experiments in the workplace show that people who are multitasking actually get less done at the end of the day. than people who use a dedicated focus to one task, finish it, and then go on to the next. Multitasking, though, seems like one of those things that, I don't know, it seems like people have a hard time not doing it. I'm just wondering why that is. If it, you know, if it is something where we're really not being more productive and, in fact, we're being less productive, why do you think it is that we keep doing multitasking? Two reasons, Chris.

One is that we're under the illusion that it's working. And so if your brain is telling you I'm good at something, you keep on doing it. But as a neuroscientist, I can tell you that one thing the brain's very good at is self-delusion. Just because we think that it's so doesn't make it so, and the experiments bear that out, both from brain scans and from workplace experiments. The second reason we do it is that it makes us feel productive and it feels good to us to be doing all these things. There's a neurochemistry behind this. Every time we can tick off a little task on our internal to-do list, we get a little shot of dopamine.

And every time we pay attention to something new, we get another shot of dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical in the brain that makes us feel good. It's what mediates pleasure. And we set up what is a physiological dopamine addiction loop, where we crave more dopamine, even though the dopamine is being produced for things that aren't productive. You're listening to Motley Fool Money talking with Dan Levitin.

His new book is The Organized Mind, Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. One of the things your book gets into is sort of how we can be better at organizing, not necessarily learning new mental tricks. And I wanted to get into some of the tips from your book. And the first, this seems to, in some ways, go against the rise of the information age. one of your tips is use a paper to-do list. Yeah, so I do want to point out that in the book, I'm not prescribing or suggesting or recommending a bunch of high-tech solutions

to increase productivity. You don't have to go out and buy a new computer or go to the stationary store and get a new filing cabinet and a bunch of color-coded folders and tabs. I'm not talking about that. In general, I'm talking about very low-tech things. that any of us can put together in an afternoon. And index cards or notepads is one such suggestion

because we now understand that the neuroscience of writing things down by hand allows for deeper encoding because it requires a lot more, well, what we call deep processing, a lot more neural circuitry to write something by hand than to type it. And so you're apt to remember it better. and the other thing about writing it on paper is it's easier if you use index cards to resort them, put them in different piles, and put them in different stacks, and to have them in front of you when you're working at your computer.

The problem with making computer lists, although that's better than nothing, is that it's a little bit more cumbersome to cut and paste the items if you want to reorder them, and they're often hiding in a window behind the one you're working on. One of your other tips is music to my ears, which is take breaks. Just so I don't get in trouble with my boss, how many breaks are we talking about? Well, this again gets back to the science of attention and the physiology of the brain. The brain didn't really evolve to stay focused for long periods of time like we sometimes ask it to do. We push ourselves these days.

I think all of us feel like if we stop work, for even just five minutes, we're going to fall irretrievably behind. And the fact is, if you stop and take a break of about 15 minutes every two hours, it allows you to hit a kind of neural reset button in your brain so that when you come back to your work, you'll find that you're more creative, you're refreshed, you've replenished some of the depleted neurochemicals, and a number of studies show that at the end of the day, people who took these 15-minute breaks every couple of hours

not only got more done than people who plowed through, but their work was of a higher quality and more creative. This is even more so true with naps. A single 15-minute nap in the afternoon gives you an effective IQ increase at 10 points. I don't know about you, but I would really like to have 10 points extra IQ. I think all of us would like an extra 10 points on the IQ. I mean, in my line of work, that's the difference between getting tenure and not.

You mentioned the end of the day. I think a lot of people have trouble leaving their job at the end of the day when they go home, whether it's to their own place or to their family or friends or whatever. How big a challenge is that right now? Because it really does seem like, particularly with technology, and you can get your email on your smartphone, that we're so connected that it's, may be harder than ever before to leave work at work? You're absolutely right. So we're all being asked to do more than ever before, both at work and at home. And I think a lot of us feel when we are at home that we can't be fully there.

We've got these nagging thoughts in our head about things at work we didn't finish, calls or emails we didn't return, worries that maybe we didn't solve a problem that we could have. And then when we're at work, we're thinking about all the things we didn't get to do at home. And so as a result, you end up being really in neither place fully. And when I'm talking about trying to get better organized, I want to be clear that I'm not talking about creating a bunch of mindless automatons who were rigidly strapped to a schedule all the time. I'm talking about a few simple changes we can make and how we structure and organize our time. so that when we're at work, we're more productive and efficient, which allows us to really close the door on work at the end of the day

and be present with our loved ones, in our hobbies, and in our leisure activities. Paradoxically, I think, you know, be more efficient and productive allows for more time to be spontaneous and creative. I can't believe I'm the only person who struggles with email, and I'm curious how you organize your own email? What's something that we could all do to sort of keep our email better organized? Well, after talking, I interviewed a lot of CEOs and government leaders, military leaders, generals and admirals, some cabinet members in the U.S. government. And these are highly effective, very, very busy people.

and I'm adopting two of the tips that they seem, many of them seem to be using. I've started doing this in the last couple of years. One is, like you, Chris, I think I get a lot of emails that are not really urgent. I mean, things for something that's going to happen a month from now or just something that's informational that I don't really need to interrupt my work to look at. And then a bunch of stuff that's nonsense, like videos of cats playing the piano. Do you get those two? Keyboard Cat. Who doesn't love keyboard cat?

Exactly. So I opened up a separate email account under a private address, and I gave that to only about eight or ten people who I want to be able to reach me urgently. So that includes my loved ones, my boss, co-workers. And I further instructed them, only use this account if you need to reach me right away. Use the old account that you had the address for for everything else. And so that's the first stage. The second is that the other account, the big one, where I get hundreds of emails a day, I turn it off most of the day. And I have a partitioned period of time where I deal with emails,

an hour in the morning and an hour in the late afternoon. And then I just plow through all of those emails and I prioritize them then I either reply or file them. But what it means is that I'm not interrupted every few seconds during the day as I'm trying to work or, for that matter, trying to enjoy some leisure time. Coming up, more with Daniel Leviton. This is Motley Fool Money. You're listening to Motley Fool Money talking with Dan Leviton.

His new book already in New York Times bestseller is The Organized Mind, thinking straight in the age of information overload. I know what Area 51 is. What is Area 47? We're not supposed to talk about that one either. Oh, we're not? Are aliens involved in that one too? Area 47 is the not very poetic name for a part of the brain

that I've been studying for the last 15 years, just behind your temples. It's a little sliver of tissue that tries to predict what's going to happen next in the world. And you can imagine the evolutionary advantage, of this. It helps you to figure out if that lion running is running towards you and about to attack or running in another direction. And it's looking basically for structure and patterns in the environment. The interesting thing about this is that it helps to modulate dopamine, that so-called

fielgled hormone we were talking about earlier. When we are listening to music or when we're reading a novel, watching a film, that structure is trying to figure out what's going to happen next. If the piece of music, for example, doesn't hold any surprises, Area 47 shuts down because it's bored. If the music is completely surprising and you have no idea what's ever happening, Area 47 shuts down because it's frustrated. It has to hit just the right balance of familiarity and surprise or of predictability. and unpredictability to keep it happy. And this has really big implications for the workplace. What we now know, again, through neuroscience research,

is that the happiest workers in general are those who work in a job that's somewhat predictable, but also has a few well-structured surprises that allows them to exercise some ingenuity and some initiative. workers generally don't like to feel that their work is exactly the same day in and day out. They and their brains savor the opportunity to exhibit some judgment and expertise. Your day job is as a professor. I'm curious, how organized are your students?

And if they're like a lot of college students and maybe not quite as organized as they could be, is that a point of frustration for you? No, not at all. I mean, I recognize if they're in a university program, they're trying to learn things and trying to get better at organizing their lives. So they're eager and they're dedicated to learning. I do recognize that there are different systems and different styles that people have. So broadly speaking, some people are filers. They file everything. And other people are pilers. They put everything in stacks or piles. systems are perfectly fine depending on what you are comfortable with. With one exception, if you're dealing with paperwork or computer files for that matter that are shared in an office or educational setting, piling is usually not a good system because only you know where the piles are. So I try to train the students for that portion of their work that they're going to have to share with others like me. They need to have a perfectly transparent system that anybody can

navigate. Now, you're a neuroscientist, you're a best-selling author, you're also quite an accomplished musician. Do I have this right that, in addition to playing the guitar, the bass, the tenor saxophone, that you've been a session musician with, I don't know, little independent, small struggling groups like the Grateful Dead and Santana and Sting and. and David Byrne? What kind of double life are you leading here? Well, I've always had a passion for music, and I don't want to overstate my qualifications there. I was a sound engineer and consultant for the Grateful Dead and Santana and Steely Dan. It's only in my later life as a neuroscientist that I've had the opportunity to perform live with Sting and with David Byrne.

But it's true. I worked as a session musician in the 80s on a bunch of recordings, maybe one of the more well-known ones was the soundtrack to the film Repo Man. Before we wrap up, give me one music recommendation. It could be an album you're listening to. It could be a song you just learned about and it's in heavy rotation on your iPod. What's one music recommendation you can make? Well, you know, I'm sorry, I can't make just one. There's so many good things out there now.

One of my favorite new bands is called Claire and The Reasons from Brooklyn. I'm loving a new album by Phil Claypool called The Strong One. He's an artist out of Nashville. And Rodney Crowell has put out three stellar albums in the last couple of years, and he has a duet album with Emmylou Harris on the way. And these are all just as good as music gets, as far as I'm concerned. The book is The Organized Mind, Thinking Straight in the way. the age of information overload. It is the latest in New York Times bestseller from Dan Levitin.

So check it out. Dan, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Chris. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy yourself stocks based solely on what you hear. Hey, before we go, have you checked out the Motley Fool podcast shop yet? If you need a new ball cap to get ready for baseball season, we've got you covered. We've got Motley Fool T-shirts. Poodies, travel mugs, and more.

You can find it all at shop.fool.com. And while you're there, check out our number one best-selling item. It's the Motley Fool Money coffee mug. Again, you can find it at shop.fool.com. That's going to do it for this week's edition of Motleyfool Money. We'll be back with our usual show next week. Our engineer is Steve Broido. Our producer is Matt Greer.

I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.