Something You Should Know - How You Can Make Yourself Smarter & When Efficiency Actually Slows You Down

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Starting point is 00:00:50 And I know all kinds of people, I'm sure you do as well, that say they get by just fine on five or six hours sleep. That's what they're doing. They're getting by. They are not performing at their cognitive best. Plus, the surprising answer to the question, what makes a woman beautiful? And are we too obsessed with efficiency today? Probably so. The shortest way to say it is trying to be too efficient in the short run will make us less efficient in the long run. Sometimes the pursuit of efficiency ignores some elements of quality that are hard to measure. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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Starting point is 00:01:55 Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carothers hi welcome you know almost every day i get an email from at least one person asking for information about something they heard in the podcast, either a book written by one of my guests or something else they heard. They want to know what the source of that information is. And while I'm happy to oblige, all of that information is in the show notes that accompany this episode, wherever it is posted.

Starting point is 00:02:41 And even if you can't find it for some reason where it's posted, it's always on the website. The website has every episode in reverse chronological order, the newest episode on top, and all of the information is listed right there with the audio. And the website address is somethingyoushouldknow.net. First up today, if you take antioxidants, that must be a good thing, right? Not necessarily. Some nutrition experts say that we're totally overdoing it in the antioxidant department. Antioxidants are friendly molecules that go to work on evil free radicals, and that's all good. But as with anything, too much of a good thing

Starting point is 00:03:25 can leave your body working too hard to process it all. Flooding your body with antioxidants, especially in supplement form, could do you more harm than good. Now, antioxidants have been credited with helping to prevent all sorts of problems from aging, vision loss, cancer, heart disease, and stroke. But how much they actually help is still up for debate.

Starting point is 00:03:49 Consumers gobble up products containing the buzzword antioxidant. And the nutritional supplement industry really loves that. But just remember that there is no evidence that they actually cure anything. And the best way to get them is naturally in the food you eat. And that is something you should know. Who wouldn't want to be smarter? Imagine if you could think better, make decisions better, and just get through life with more brain power to navigate all you have to do in a smarter, more thoughtful way. Well, meet David Bardsley.

Starting point is 00:04:32 David became a dentist and oral surgeon after overcoming some serious learning disabilities when he was younger. When he retired from surgery, he began researching and lecturing on the topic of cognitive performance, and he is the author of a book called Smarter Next Year, the Revolutionary Science for a Smarter, Happier You. Hey, David, welcome to Something You Should Know. It's my pleasure, Mike. So before we begin about making people better cognitively speaking, if I do all the things you're about to tell me, how much smart, I mean, how much is it worth the effort?

Starting point is 00:05:05 Are we just going to move the needle in the laboratory or am I going to go, gee, I feel like my brain is really functioning better? Well, that depends on where you are now. If you're already doing these things, then, you know, doing them with a little more gusto will move the needle a little bit. But if you're not already doing any of these things, you can have a very, very significant increase in that cognitive ability. And most people that I find that I know of are not doing these things or they're not doing them to the degree that's necessary if you want that cognitive improvement.

Starting point is 00:05:40 When people hear conversations about cognitive ability and brain function, I think there's a tendency to think, well, this 50% of the population start to show some signs of what's called mild cognitive impairment. And mild cognitive impairment is, that's, they're the first steps toward more severe cognitive impairment and ultimately, you know, with dementia and Alzheimer's. Now, not everyone, not everyone who has mild cognitive impairment by any means will progress into more serious forms of dementia and Alzheimer's. But what we do know is that 100% of the people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia started way back here with mild cognitive impairment. And that's why it's so important to either prevent

Starting point is 00:06:45 it or deal with it at that very early stage. So, but what does that mean, mild cognitive impairment? Does that mean I forgot where I put my keys? Or does that mean I can't do math? Or what is my, give me an example of mild cognitive impairment. You know, if you notice a song comes on and, oh yeah, this is, oh, I recognize the song. This is, oh, don't tell me I know who it is. It's on the tip of my tongue. And you find you just can't make that connection to that information. It's a sign of cognitive impairment. Or you might feel overwhelmed. You know, perhaps someone is pressing you to make a decision on something, and you're not quite sure. And, you know, it just seems like there are so many facts and information to try to make that decision, and it just seems overwhelming, and you procrastinate.

Starting point is 00:07:37 So you don't make decisions as quickly, and you're not nearly as confident in those decisions. Again, a lot of what you just described, we tend to associate with decline in brain function as you get older. So if it's happening in younger and younger people, what's causing it? Well, sleep deprivation is huge. Absolutely huge. We are a sleep-deprived nation. And adults, with rare exception, need seven to nine hours sleep a night. And I know all kinds of people, I'm sure you do as well, that say they get by just fine on five or six hours sleep.

Starting point is 00:08:13 And they're absolutely correct. That's what they're doing. They're getting by. They are not performing at their cognitive best. One of the simplest things there is to do in psychology is to test that cognitive decrease that occurs with sleep deprivation. If you have just one night of disturbed sleep, you will have a measurable decrease in your cognitive ability the next day.

Starting point is 00:08:37 And the military have done the best studies I've ever seen. The military studies are fantastic. And they show that if you take a group of military personnel of mixed ages and you deprive them of sleep for, first of all, you give them a cognitive test and then you deprive them of sleep for 24 hours and then you retest them, they will have a decrease of 30% in those test scores. Now, most of us are never deprived of sleep for 24 hours straight, but those same military studies show if you take that same group of personnel of mixed ages, you administer the cognitive test, and now you deprive them of sleep so that they get six or less hours sleep for five consecutive nights, and then you retest them, now they have a decrease of 60% in those test scores. It's one of the simplest things that we can do to make sure that we're

Starting point is 00:09:28 functioning at 100% of our cognitive ability is to get that seven to nine hours sleep every night. Well, I think everybody can relate to that. I know I can relate to that. If I don't get a good night's sleep, I know, I just know I don't perform as well the next day. So what else? What else besides getting more and better sleep? One of the big factors is side effects of medication. And not just over-the-counter medication, but prescription medications as well. So many prescription medications have cognitive slowing as a side effect. And some of the, you know, extremely, extremely common ones like statins, you know, drugs that are used to lower blood cholesterol. And one out of four adult Americans, 25% of the adult population in the United States takes a statin on a daily basis.

Starting point is 00:10:20 A lot of anticoagulants, antidepressants have a negative cognitive side effect to them. So, you know, our goal, everybody's goal should be to be medication free. And that's, look, it's not possible for everybody, but for the majority of people, it is possible. And if you can't be medication free, you want to at least be able to reduce that medication, you know, to a minimal level to get the desired effect. And that's so many of the medications are due to our poor lifestyle choices. That's why we're on them to begin with. Okay. What else? Well, you're not going to want to hear this. Most people don't. Alcohol is not a friend of

Starting point is 00:11:00 your brain and your cognitive ability. We can grow human brain cells, human neurons in a petri dish in a lab and add just one little drop of alcohol and instantaneously 100% of those brain cells will shrivel up and die. Now, we can't say that that happens in the living brain because we have no means yet of putting a miniature imaging device into a living brain so we can actually watch that interaction take place. But you can drink a certain amount of alcohol and it will never get into your brain. All the alcohol that you consume will first go to your liver and your liver has an enzyme which breaks down the alcohol into two substrates, A and B, that get excreted in your urine. If you present too much alcohol to your liver, then the alcohol, the liver doesn't have the capacity to break down that

Starting point is 00:11:52 volume of alcohol. Some of it will be broken down. Some of it will pass through unchanged. It gets into your bloodstream, and in 30 seconds, it's crossed that blood-brain barrier, and it's in your brain, and you will feel the buzz. So if you feel the buzz, you know that you've exceeded your liver's capacity to detoxify that alcohol, and that alcohol has gotten into your brain. And it's not doing you any favor, believe me. And let's face it, you know, people will often say, oh, they they love Gagasa wine because it tastes so good. Most people drink because they want the buzz. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose. I suppose they do. David Bardsley is my guest. He is author of a book called Smarter Next Year.

Starting point is 00:12:40 The revolutionary science for a smarter, happier you. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table,

Starting point is 00:13:10 and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared.

Starting point is 00:13:54 It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for.

Starting point is 00:14:35 Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So David, because people like the buzz, is there an acceptable level of drinking where it doesn't affect your brain? Yes, there is. And that depends on the individual. So generally people who would have one drink a day and a drink is considered, you know, like two ounces of hard liquor or six ounces of wine or or one beer that that doesn't have any negative effect whatsoever in fact there are some studies that show that it actually has

Starting point is 00:15:10 has a positive effect but it's different you can't just take those exact numbers because it's different 105 pound woman can't can't break down the same amount of alcohol as a 250 pound man so that 250 pound man can consume more alcohol without it ever getting to his brain than 105 pound woman can what else i i'm gonna i'm gonna imagine that stress has a lot to do with this huge absolutely huge floods your body with two primary stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline and they have a negative effect on your cognitive ability so anything you can do to reduce the amount of stress is is good anything that you can do and i tell people if they have significant stress or anxiety of depression the best thing to do is to get some professional help okay Okay, what else? Well, one of the very biggest ones is

Starting point is 00:16:06 exercise. And I shouldn't say exercise, it's the lack of exercise that leads to the cognitive impairment, the lack of movement. So physical activity, vigorous physical activity is truly the rifle shot to improving your cognitive ability. There are now thousands of studies, not hundreds, but thousands. I've read over 500 myself, studies that show the improvement in cognition that occurs with vigorous physical activity. And it has to be vigorous. Unfortunately, a walk around the block with your dog

Starting point is 00:16:41 isn't considered vigorous physical activity. And that physical activity does two things. It stimulates the growth of new brain cells, which we only discovered 20 years ago could occur. For 100 years before that, neuroscience taught that when a brain cell dies, that's it. It's gone forever. You don't grow new brain cells. But 20 years ago, they discovered for the first time that, in fact, we can grow new

Starting point is 00:17:04 brain cells and we can stimulate the growth of those new brain cells. And the single best way of doing it is vigorous physical activity. So if I vigorously run to the liquor store and... And you vigorously run back. What else? Does diet matter much in terms of what you eat or don't eat? And is it more what you eat or what you don't eat? You know, 30 years ago, it was fat. Fat was the enemy. So anything you could do to lower the fat content of your diet, we thought was better. And now the science showing that that's not true, that it's really hyperglycemia. It's really high

Starting point is 00:17:43 blood sugar that will have that negative effect because that sets up inflammation the end products of the sugar metabolism will set up inflammation everywhere in your body including your brain and actually now and it produces this insulin resistance and now they're in the science they're referring to referring to Alzheimer's really as type 3 diabetes. Your brain normally uses sugar as its primary sort of fuel. But if you give your body so little sugar that there's not enough, then your body will selectively start to use fats, which are known as ketones or ketone bodies,

Starting point is 00:18:24 and it will start to metabolize those fats. And a lot of people find their brain works much, much better if it uses these ketones or fat as a fuel rather than sugar. So generally, a healthy diet is what we consider, you know, lots of fruits and vegetables, not a lot of sugar, that kind of thing is a good brain diet as well. Half of what you said I would agree with. Lots of vegetables, not lots of fruits. Fruits are very, very high in fructose, which is a simple sugar that raises your blood sugar dramatically. Our grandparents and our great-grandparents

Starting point is 00:19:02 didn't have access to fruit 365 days a year. They only had fruit when it was available in season. Often in these discussions about mental decline and cognitive ability, particularly when it comes to older people, you hear the phrase, use it or lose it, that older people need to exercise their brain by doing crossword puzzles and other mental exercises that that will help. What do you say? What's the science say? Well, there have been a tremendous number of studies done, and they haven't, for the most part. Some have some show positive benefits, but most show that there's no significant increase if you purposely stimulate your brain doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku or, you know, some of the commercially available ones like luminosity and whatnot.

Starting point is 00:19:59 And so those things are absolutely not detrimental. And I would never discourage people from doing those, but you don't want to hang your hat on that as being the salvation for your mental acuity for the rest of your life, because the studies show that they just don't make a significant difference overall. to do with attention and intention. In other words, if I put my keys down and go back and look for them later and I can't find them, I don't know that that's necessarily a cognitive problem as much as it was an attention problem. When I put the keys down, I probably wasn't paying attention to where I put them. I wasn't real intentional about it. So when I go look for my keys, I can't find them. But the next time, when I'm careful where I put my keys, the next time I know exactly where they are and I find them easily. So I wonder if in this discussion about cognitive function, that a lot of cognitive function has to do with what you pay attention to. Oh, that's a big part of it. We tend to remember

Starting point is 00:21:08 things that are important to us, and we tend not to remember things that aren't important. So if you just walked in the house and you flipped your keys on the nearest table and you start talking to someone, you may not remember where you left those keys. It wasn't important. You just flipped them somewhere. But if you walked in and said, okay, I've got to be out of here in exactly 15 minutes, you know, I'm going to put my keys right over here so you know and and you make a conscious effort i'm going to put them right here you'll probably remember where those keys are we remember things that are important to us so because little you know because you misplace something you know i i tell people don't you know don't don't get all bent out of shape

Starting point is 00:21:42 over that that's not critical at all and people will often say to me well you know, don't get all bent out of shape over that. That's not critical at all. And people will often say to me, well, you know, I have a terrible, I can't remember names. It's so embarrassing, you know, and I'm worried about it. And I asked them, well, could you ever remember names? Could you remember names 20 years ago or 30 years ago? And they say, no, I've been terrible all my life at remembering names. Well, there's no change. So what we're looking for, it is a change. If you were good at something and now you're not, you know, that's the change that becomes worrisome. If you were never good at it in the first place and you're still no good at it, then don't worry about it. There's been no significant decrease. That's good to hear. I've never been good at math. I'm still not good at math, but I've never been good at math, so I'm not going to worry about

Starting point is 00:22:24 that. I'm in the same boat as you, Mike. It's never been my forte. So what's the big thing? And I think I know what you're going to say, but so what's the big thing? If you want your brain to work better, what's the one thing you should do right now today to make it better? If I had to say one single thing, it's physical movement, vigorous physical activity, and it has to be vigorous. It's the only known thing that stimulates the growth of new brain cells. It stimulates the interconnection between existing brain cells, and it increases and balances the what are called neurotransmitters, which are the chemicals that let the electrical impulse travel from one brain cell to another. It does seem that so much of the conversation about brain function and your this stuff earlier in life and in midlife, that it would go a long way to help prevent some of the problems rather than trying to fix problems that show up later in life.

Starting point is 00:23:35 David Bardsley has been my guest. The name of his book is Smarter Next Year, the Revolutionary Science for a Smarter, Happier You. And you'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thank you, David. Thanks for being here. My pleasure indeed, Mike. Thank you so much. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

Starting point is 00:24:26 She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Starting point is 00:24:55 There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice.

Starting point is 00:25:21 Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. and then when we become more efficient, it seems that the goal is to then become even more efficient. It's never enough. And there seems to be this belief that efficiency equals better, that getting more done in less time is always a good thing.

Starting point is 00:26:17 Well, maybe, but really, efficiency just means quicker. And maybe quicker isn't always better. Edward Tenor certainly believes that. Edward is a distinguished scholar at the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, and he has a long career as a teacher and a writer. His latest book is called The Efficiency Paradox. Welcome, Dr. Tenner. Hi, Mike. So, in a few words, what is the efficiency paradox? The shortest way to say it is that trying to be too efficient in the short run will make us less efficient in the long run. And why is that? It's because real efficiency in the long run depends on all kinds of accidents and mistakes and learning from them in the short run.

Starting point is 00:27:11 And if we try to systematize everything, we get the feeling that everything is running smoothly, but actually sometimes it's those uneven moments that eventually help us make a breakthrough. So maybe some examples would help to explain the problem and also the solution here. Yes. Well, I think everybody's had the experience of taking a wrong turn somewhere or taking another route and really discovering something in a city or in the countryside that they didn't really realize that was there. And very often, those have led to some of the best opportunities. I remember one occasion I got a call from John Kennedy Jr., who edited a magazine called George,

Starting point is 00:27:59 a political magazine that I would never have thought of contributing to. And he had been in a bookstore in New York looking for another book, and he saw my book, Why Things Bite Back, and he really liked it, and he wanted me to write for the magazine, which I did. Now it turns out that there are fewer and fewer bookstores in New York, and maybe that one is not there now. So you could say that it's more efficient to buy your books online, to see proposals for other books that would interest you because you had been interested in a certain book. But a site like that, while it's efficient in giving you more of what you've been interested in, is a little too efficient because it doesn't really give you that kind of peripheral vision that says,

Starting point is 00:28:47 hey, wait a minute, this is something kind of intriguing. I want to look into that. And so how are we pushed into being too efficient? What are the things that are going on in the world that keep pushing us to do more in less time and get it done and not look in our peripheral vision, but to stay focused straight ahead? One of the big reasons is that efficiency is a movement. By that, I mean that people pursue efficiency on the assumption that pursuing efficiency is really going to make us more efficient.

Starting point is 00:29:20 Now, that seems to be very reasonable. You want to do something. You want to set goals. But there is a paradox there, and that is that we don't really have a lot of big data on big data. That is, we don't necessarily know for sure how very efficient some of these things are. I'll give you one example. Electronic medical records were supposed to be something that would relieve doctors of routine work, would give them more time with patients, would eliminate errors, and some of these things they may have done. But what people didn't foresee is that in order to pursue this efficiency, physicians and their staffs had to spend more and more time meticulously

Starting point is 00:30:07 entering records into a format that would be suitable for this electronic medical records. And now the medical journals have articles about doctor burnout and how the cost of paperwork has really increased as a result of this. So it's not so clear whether electronic medical records as implemented so far have made us more efficient. Now, does that mean that I'm against electronic medical records? No. But what I'm saying is that if we're not very careful, programs that are designed to improve efficiency may really undermine it. And we can't assume that just because something promises efficiency that in practice it's going to deliver it.

Starting point is 00:30:50 So how do you know? How do you know if you're pushing the limits of efficiency or whether you're just being smart and efficient? I think it's more a matter of balance. I think it's a matter of using our intuition to counterbalance algorithms and vice versa, that we shouldn't necessarily depend on our intuition. There are books that show how intuition has been very, very wrong. But as I say in the book, there are other books that have warned against too much criticism of intuition, because very often intuition results from something that we really know but can't articulate very well, and we have to learn how to listen to that. So I understand, and I agree with you, and I'm all on board that maybe we need to use our intuition a little more, maybe slow

Starting point is 00:31:45 down, stop and smell the roses, that kind of thing. But I also like the fact that I have all these things, mainly on my phone, that make me more efficient. Yes, I do too. And I use them. But to give you one example, I use a GPS program called Waze, W-A-Z-E, which is now owned by Google. And I started out as a critic of Waze. I pointed out, for example, how Waze sometimes leads to cars taking routes through residential neighborhoods and disturbing people and causing all kinds of complications. And I also pointed out that sometimes people using GPS are led down almost literally the garden path. They can go onto boardwalks. They can go onto railroad tracks. In one case in England, there was a picture of a van that went down a narrow street,

Starting point is 00:32:46 and the street was so narrow that the van got wedged in toward the end. So that problem has been happening. But I discovered something else that ways, if you're not really conscious of where you are, if you're just depending on this as a kind of autopilot, will occasionally send you in the wrong direction. So once I was going south on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, and Waze told me to go north. And I had to ask myself, well, does Waze know of some kind of big traffic emergency and is redirecting me, or is it more likely that Waze is wrong?

Starting point is 00:33:24 And I guess that Waze is wrong? And I guess that Waze was probably wrong. And I actually, later when I was in a safe spot, tried to see whether there was some problem that Waze had anticipated and was rerouting because it sometimes does that. But in this case, it didn't. It was just wrong. So every once in a while, it might be only one-tenth of one percent of the time, a program like that can make a mistake. But the problem is that that little mistake, very occasionally, can turn out to be a huge mistake. So we can take advantage of the program, but we also have to recognize that all of these things have their hidden glitches, and it's our intuition that helps us guard against them. Yeah, well, with Waze, though, you don't know what you don't know.

Starting point is 00:34:13 If Waze tells you to go north when you think you should go south, well, you don't know, unless you went south, what Waze is rooting you around. So I have found that when I disregard Waze, I usually regret it because they were usually right. But there's no way of knowing every time whether it was right or wrong. It does work. That's why I still use it. Most of the time it does work. I'm just giving you a few times when it was wrong. And I actually did disregard it the other day, and I was sorry

Starting point is 00:34:48 that I disregarded it. So the problem can happen in either direction. But there was another time when it told me to go on a certain route and turn left, and a left turn there was both dangerous and illegal. So what about the whole idea of efficiency as a concept? Because I think, as I said at the beginning, that people assume that being efficient is a good thing. But because you're efficient doesn't necessarily mean you're better. It just means you get it done faster, but it doesn't mean that the quality is better, that some things don't lend themselves to being efficient. Some things take more time.

Starting point is 00:35:30 Yes, that's another factor, that sometimes the pursuit of efficiency ignores some elements of quality that are hard to measure, but that contribute a lot to the enjoyment of life. So we can't really think of ourselves as flesh-and-blood robots that are designed to optimize things. We really have to think about the other side of life, the ethical and aesthetic side of life. And so when the dust all settles, what's the advice? What's the trap we're trying to avoid, or what is it we're trying to do that we're not doing? From your vantage point, what's the advice? My advice, basically, is not to outsource

Starting point is 00:36:20 life to algorithms. To be the user of algorithms, yes, I think they're great, and I think that they can really contribute a lot to the enjoyment of life. But there is an obsession in some corners of Silicon Valley with doing everything as seamlessly and quickly as possible. And that, to me, cuts into a lot of the serendipity that has been so important in long-term efficiency. That is that so many of these discoveries come when people might be doing something wasteful. People might be doing something that is not absolutely directly concerned with the future of the enterprise, but that might in turn lead to something that makes the enterprise even more efficient. Well, in fact, there have been many cases of inventions

Starting point is 00:37:12 where the inventor said, you know, the idea came to him when he wasn't working on it. He was doing something else unrelated. That's right. Sticky notes are one of the most famous examples of that. Sticky notes that were developed by a scientist at 3M, it was really a kind of play or an accidental discovery. And it wasn't that 3M had a project to start a new multi-billion dollar business. It was something that kind of came with free exploration. Right, right. And I think that happens a lot. And I like your example when we first started talking about how, you know, sometimes you don't take the most efficient way to get there, and you end up on a route that takes you somewhere that's beautiful and lovely, and you're so glad you did it. But if your goal was to be efficient, you would have completely missed it,

Starting point is 00:38:07 and that seems to apply to so much in life. Yes, in fact, I say for that reason that very often it's more efficient to do something in an old analog way. For example, psychologists have discovered that taking notes as opposed to using a keyboard device when you're listening to a lecture will lead to better retention and understanding of the lecture. And the reason is that the difficulty of summarizing what the lecturer is saying when you're taking the notes, formulating the points, drawing arrows, or whatever you do, that effort in actively dealing with the material is much more efficient in the long run than the supposed efficiency of capturing every word. When you capture every word, it's what they call fluency.

Starting point is 00:39:00 You think you have it all, but you really don't have it all because you can't really necessarily repeat it and summarize it in other words. And that's the real test of whether you learn something, not whether you have all the words down there, but whether if somebody asks you to put it in your own words, whether you understand it well enough to do it that way. And that is much more real efficiency than just having everything down there as a text. So I guess the question still remains though that how do you know which road to take at any given time? Today are we going to do things more efficiently or are today we're going to be a little more analog like slow things down because maybe that would be better. How do you know what to do when?

Starting point is 00:39:48 I'm not opposed at all to doing new things, to experimenting with new technology, to being an early adopter, which I don't happen to be, but I can understand the logic of that, and I think that's fine. But the danger, I think, comes in thinking of these things not as something to experiment with and to understand and to use actively, but as some kind of miracle that will offload your mental effort and will remove you from active engagement with whatever you're doing. I think that's the danger. Not the technology in itself. I think it's great to play around with these things, and I often do, but it's really the

Starting point is 00:40:29 expectation that you bring to it. Well, it almost seems like you really can't slow the train down, that there's this movement of, you know, bigger, faster, better, quicker, efficient gadgets, and it's really hard to jump off the train and say, well, let's go this way instead. You're right that there is a momentum in society that leads to the adoption of some technologies, and it can become very difficult to stay with the old one. There are some writers who remain loyal to the typewriter, who feel they can work best with the typewriter, which is kind of amusing because when the typewriter came in, there were many, many criticisms of the typewriter from people who were

Starting point is 00:41:14 really devoted to writing with pen and ink. So you have a kind of social necessity. For example, in the 1890s already, newspaper and magazine editors were insisting on typewritten versus handwritten copy. And the reason was that they had so many different writers, so many different submissions, that it was getting to be impossible to read people's handwriting. On the other hand, one of the interesting things has been that there is still a very vigorous market in pen and ink notebooks. And you can go into just about any shop that sells stationery and see whole arrays of notebooks just because, as I was saying, there is something about capturing something in an analog form in writing that you can't get with a computer. But some of the people, or most of the people who buy them, may have a variety of devices,

Starting point is 00:42:13 and they can use the devices for what they're good for, but they will use the notebooks for another mode of thinking. So I think of that as a good metaphor for a larger trend. We need to reserve a space where we can exercise analog thinking, where we can exercise our intuition. On the other hand, though, technology does offer, often offers, a better way to do things and to get things done. And sometimes it is the better way. Yes, and my point is not, again, not that we should reject these things, but that we should use them critically and at a distance. We should see them as tools, not as self-contained lifestyles. Well, I like your message. I like the fact that

Starting point is 00:43:01 hearing this might make people stop and think, you know, efficient isn't always better. And maybe there's another way. Edward Tenner has been my guest. He is a distinguished scholar at the Smithsonian Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. And his book is called The Efficiency Paradox. You'll find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Edward. Thank you very much, Mike. What makes a woman beautiful? Well, it turns out simplicity is a big part of it. Simple is beautiful, according to a study from the University of Paris.

Starting point is 00:43:41 Researchers asked 156 men to rate 30 different female faces, and the results clearly showed that men preferred simpler faces. Why? Apparently because the brain has an easier time processing simpler, plainer faces than faces with distinguishing characteristics. These findings do support the concept that first impressions are important, and we do tend to subconsciously decide if someone is attractive or not before we consciously know it. This may also explain why simple brand logos are more popular than complex ones. For example, the Nike swoosh or the word coke are simple images, so they're easier for us to process. The human brain prefers and is attracted to simple.

Starting point is 00:44:32 And that is something you should know. Hey, it's almost the new year, and I would be remiss if I didn't wish you a happy new year and hope that 2022 is a brighter year than the last one. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced.

Starting point is 00:45:07 She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Starting point is 00:45:37 Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone.

Starting point is 00:46:04 So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes.

Starting point is 00:46:35 So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - How You Can Make Yourself Smarter & When Efficiency Actually Slows You Down

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