Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Good News About “Bad” Food & Productivity Made Easy

Episode Date: December 5, 2020

Why do people get angry over the little things? At least one leading expert believes it’s all about control. I begin this episode of the podcast discussing the high cost your pay by getting so upset over nothing and how to let go of life’s little aggravations. (Source: The Anger Trap by Les Carter https://amzn.to/2NYGHpd) A lot of the advice on eating healthy is about what to avoid – meat, dairy, gluten, sugar, oil etc. But pediatrician Dr. Aaron Carroll, professor of Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and author of the book, The Bad Food Bible (https://amzn.to/2uuXeJk) says there isn’t much science to support these kind of restrictive diets in terms of them being healthier. He joins me to explain what it really means to eat healthy and talks about how many of the foods people think are bad – really are not. If your relationship has lost some of the magic or passion – how can you steam things up a bit? I have a couple of very simple techniques that are proven to help you feel the romance and excitement once again. http://www.womansday.com/relationships/sex-tips/g654/spice-up-your-relationship/ Why does it seem some people are incredibly productive and others of us never seem to have enough time to get all the things done we need to? Charles Duhigg has the fascinating answer to that. Charles is one of the leading authorities on productivity and is author of the books, Smarter Faster Better (https://amzn.to/2NYMw5J) and The Power of Habit (https://amzn.to/2NUsadT). Charles joins me with some very practical advice that will help you get everything done and still have time left over, PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! https://monday.com One platform, better teamwork - First 2 weeks free! https://bestfiends.com Download Best Fiends FREE today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! https://www.walgreens.com/topic/promotion/mywalgreens.jsp Shop, Save & Stay Well - Join for free at myWalgreens.com https://deals.dell.com/en-us or 1-800-BUY DELL for the best savings available now! https://www.bluenile.com Use Promo Code: SYSK to get $50 off orders of $500 or more at BlueNile.com! Get great cardio and strength training! Go to JoinFightCamp.com/something for free shipping and a gift worth $109 https://joinfightcamp.com/?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=Radio&utm_campaign=Something_You_Should_Know&utm_term=know&utm_content= Get 12 weeks of The New Yorker magazine for just $6 and a free tote bag at NewYorker.com/something and use Promo Code: SOMETHING https://subscribe.newyorker.com/subscribe/newyorker/133107?source=cm_paid_other_podcast_12f6_SOMETHING&pos_name=SOMETHING Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future.

Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, if you get angry and upset over life's injustices, I'll tell you how to stop and why it's such a great idea to stop. Then, a healthy diet doesn't have to be a restrictive diet where you must give up meat or dairy. For moral or ethical reasons, it is perfectly fine to eat some food or not eat other food, but there's very, very little evidence with respect to health that these kinds of abstinent

diets really make a big difference or make things better, and they certainly make it harder to eat. Also, how to spice up a relationship that's gone a little flat. And being productive, it's not just about getting more things done. There is nothing more wasteful than making more efficient something that never should have been done in the first place. The most productive people figured out what they should be focusing on and what they can ignore.

All this today on Something You Should Know. 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. 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. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Carruthers. Hi, welcome.

Just a quick reminder, if you hear anything mentioned in an episode of this podcast, there's a good chance that there is a link for it in the show notes. So if a guest is the author of a book or they have a website or anything, I put the links to those things in the show notes. And that also includes advertisers. If they have a link to their website or a special promo code, all of that stuff can be found in the show notes for each episode. First up today, the topic is anger. And with all the jerks in the world, it's easy to get angry and upset, like when someone cuts you off on the highway or treats you rudely. But what's really going on here?

Well, according to anger expert Dr. Les Carter, he says it's all about control. We get angry because we want to control a situation that we simply cannot. If someone cuts you off on the highway, there really isn't anything you can do about it. So the better course of action is not to try. When you get all angry and upset, your heart races, your blood pressure goes up, your stress levels skyrocket. So you are really doing yourself harm, and that other guy couldn't care less. So as hard as it may be, just try to let it go. Tomorrow you won't even remember it.

And in the case of a driver who cuts you off, a policeman was once asked if he gets upset when he's off duty and he sees these jerk drivers cutting people off and tailgating and doing stupid things and he said no. He said I don't get upset. Because sooner or later, he knows those people get caught. And when they get caught, they get expensive speeding tickets,

their insurance rates go up, and they waste gas driving the way they drive. So driving like a jerk costs them a fortune. And that is something you should know. We're all supposed to watch what we eat. But what is it we're supposed to watch for? There is so much conflicting information and misinformation and ever-changing information about the different foods we eat that it's hard to know what it means to eat well or eat healthy. One interesting shift I've noticed is that so much of what we eat and what we think of as good to eat is good not because of what it is, but because of what it's not.

It's fat-free, it's sugar-free, it's dairy-free. Somehow foods are healthier when things get taken out of them, or not put into them in the first place. Seems weird. Have we gone too far? Are we missing the boat here? Should eating really be this complicated? Probably not, according to Dr. Aaron Carroll. Dr. Carroll is a contributor to the New York Times. He is a professor of pediatrics and associate dean for research mentoring at Indiana University School of Medicine. And he's the author of several books, including The Bad Food Bible, How and Why to Eat Sinfully. Hi, doctor. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So what do you see as having changed in terms of our relationship with food?

What's different? Because it feels different. So what is it? We've become very much afraid of food. And when I say food, I just mean, you know, ingredients and things that we other would do. You see a lot of the what I call the panic du jour, you know, whether it be gluten, whether it be GMOs, whether it be meat, whether it be coffee, or even alcohol, to some extent, of course, too much alcohol is terrible for you.

But we've got so afraid. And the converse of that is we believe if we eliminate the thing that we're afraid of, that somehow we're all of a sudden going to be super duper healthy. When all the evidence in the world points to the fact that moderation is probably best. And I think that this has real world implications, because, you know, we have trouble sometimes getting people, for instance, to eat vegetables, even though we know vegetables are good for you. But we've we've told people that, oh, by God, you can't use butter to make your vegetable, you can't use salt to make your vegetables. So you can't flavor them, you can't cook them, as if we expect people to eat, you know, wet wilted vegetables. Of course,

they're not going to do that. And with the main dish, people have no trouble saying, oh, it's got to have, you know, 42 ingredients and 18 steps. That's how you make a proper main dish. But with vegetables, it's, oh, we should just steam it and off we should go. This all has, you know, this all has consequences. You know, We shouldn't be as afraid of butter as we are. We should certainly not be as afraid of salt as the vast majority of people are. And these are the kinds of things that would probably go a long way towards helping many people eat a more varied and perhaps overall more healthy diet. And also food is supposed to be enjoyable. And it seems so often we kind of suck the joy out of it by, you know, counting calories,

looking at the sodium content, all that stuff makes it a lot less fun. Yeah, and it's food. This is the other thing, too. It's not medicine. It's food. We have to have food. And people have been eating for forever, for that matter. And a lot of the problems that we're seeing are very recent. And we keep trying to invent these ideas of what we did in the past that we don't do today. But again, I would argue that the biggest thing that has changed is to some extent the industrialization of food and the fact that it is processed and that, you know, it used to be you bought ingredients and then you made them and you ate food. And there are still, of course, restaurants that do that. And that's great, too. But we have changed the way that we buy and

then consume food. And that's probably the biggest change in the past. It's not necessarily the people never used to eat carbs, or people never used to eat fat, or people never used to eat, you know, they drank milk, or they did not drink milk, or they didn't have GMOs. And today we have GMOs. It's more subtle. And I think that, you know, we have to recognize that we are omnivores, and we were meant to be omnivores. And for moral or ethical reasons, it is perfectly fine to decide to, you know, eat some food or not eat other food. But there's very, very little evidence with respect to health that these kinds of abstinent diets really make a big difference or make things better. And they certainly make it harder to eat.

Yeah, well, that's certainly for sure. So let's talk about some specifics here, things that people are afraid to eat. And let's start with red meat. I mean, that has been demonized as the cause of all evil in the world. And what does the science say? Even if you buy sort of the most dire warnings about red meat, there's basically, they say, an 18% increased risk of colon cancer from eating processed red meat. But it's important to understand that that is a relative increased risk. And that's not necessarily that you go from 0% to 18% or from 50% to 68%. It's a relative increased risk. So as, you know,

part of an exercise for writing the book, I went to the sort of cancer prediction risk calculator, which you can easily find online. I typed in all my information. And let's say I have a lifetime risk of colon cancer, which is mostly where this where a lot of the concerns from REVME come from, of, you know, a couple percentage points, let's just say it's four for the sake of argument. That means if I have an 18% increased risk, it goes to like 4.8 or something along those lines, it doesn't go up hugely. And that's if I eat an extra serving of red meat, every processed red meat every day for the rest of my life. So that's committing to saying, I, Aaron Carroll, I'm going to eat an extra three pieces of bacon every day for the rest of my life. My colon cancer risk might go from 4% to, you know, 4.7%. That's not nearly as dire as what

a lot of the predictions would say. And again, that's only for processed red meat, not for just red meat. And that's a serving a day every day forever. So that's not nearly as scary as people would say. And a lot of the studies that look at red meat versus not red meat are looking at multiple servings a day or a meal. These are not the difference between I'm having a burger once a week or I have steak twice a week versus not having it. Those the risks of that are really not well proven. And so we get very afraid. But, you know, the fear overweighs overwhelm sort of any kind of benefit that we might get from it, including and it's important to recognize this quality of life benefit, which is not crazy. We make decisions every day where we weigh risks

versus harms, and we very logically accept a small but real risk in order to have some benefit to ourselves. That is perfectly rational. But often when it comes to food, any kind of risk at all becomes utter fear, and we're told we should avoid it altogether and if we don't do that we're not being healthy and your point there circles back to the whole idea that moderation is probably a pretty good prescription moderation in whatever you decide to eat for the most part that's true i mean i'm certain you could find some things which are you know absolutely terrible for you but when it comes to food the evidence against most of these things is pretty weak if it exists at all. I mean, and that was mostly, again, the focus of the book is that it was mostly focused on things that people tell you are bad for you, where really they're either good for you or they're just not as bad as people say.

And that that is true for many, many things. Eating too much of a lot of these things is bad. And it's important not to do that. But, you know, thoughtful, moderate, you know, use of a lot of these things in moderation is part of a healthy diet and certainly part of a happier diet. One of the things that has fascinated me recently is this concern about gluten, that everybody wants to be gluten-free, but if you don't have a particular condition, it's nonsense. It's total nonsense. And, you know, I think it's important to remember that a couple reasons you

might worry about gluten. One is that you have celiac disease, absolute gluten intolerance. It's an immunologic problem. And absolutely, people with celiac disease absolutely positively need to avoid gluten. It's like 1% of the population in America. And, you know, they've done research on people who say they're quote-unquote gluten sensitive. But even when they do those kinds of studies, very few people who think they meet the criteria actually do. And when they do randomized controlled trials of putting those people on diets that are or are not gluten-free and they don't know, there's really not the resolution of symptoms that you would expect if they truly were having a reaction to

gluten. But something like 25% of Americans are actively seeking out foods which don't have gluten. And that means that the vast, vast majority of them are doing it for no reason at all. Gluten-free foods can have fewer vitamins and minerals. They can have more carbs or fat or sugar or things that you don't want. They're certainly often more expensive. I think we spend a couple billion dollars a year on people searching for gluten-free dog food. Again, it's a panic du jour. It's sort of been attributed to all kinds of diseases and symptoms, but the research

and the evidence behind those things just doesn't bear out. Dr. Aaron Carroll is my guest. He is a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, and he is author of the book, The Bad Food Bible. Contained herein are the heresies of red off punt wine erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator join me as i study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving god and we are not its favored children the heresies of Redolf Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. 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. 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. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Dr. Carroll, I want to run down a list of foods that people have strong opinions about, often bad opinions about. I just want to run down this list and get a sentence or two from you

as to what the evidence says, And we'll start with coffee. Coffee is one of those where I thought it was going to be sort of down the middle, some good, some bad. My gosh, the collected research on coffee is shockingly positive. And very little of it is randomized controlled trials, but there's almost no evidence that this is a vice that people need to avoid, almost overwhelmingly positive evidence. Salt.

If you truly have high blood pressure and you are eating too much salt, there's probably a benefit to reduce your levels of salt. But if you don't have high blood pressure, and certainly if you're not eating a ton of salt, there's very, very little evidence for very low salt diets, even though everyone keeps pushing them. And a growing body of evidence that eating such a diet is bad for you, especially if you don't have high blood pressure. Eggs. Yeah, there's nothing, there's no reason to avoid them at all.

We thought for years that eggs and the cholesterol were something going to be bad for us. We all started eating egg-weight omelets, which are like a crime against nature. But there's almost no evidence that we know of now to say that eating cholesterol is what gives us high cholesterol. And even the last set of guidelines from the USDA said cholesterol is no longer a nutrient of concern. There's very little reason to avoid eggs. They're great. Lately, I've heard a lot of talk about how the common kitchen cooking oils, except for olive oil, are just ghastly. So I think there's some evidence that some of the oils, especially if you're frying and it's

getting into your air because they're aerosolized and you breathe them in, that can be really, really bad for you. But the truth of the matter is that we do very, very little head-to-head research between a lot of these cooking oils. I would say that they're all probably reasonably equivalent and you should use them in moderation like you do anything else. You know, trying to get a good sear on your food with a little oil is probably equivalent to using butter, but butter is fine too. But certainly you don't want to overdo it with any of these and certainly none of them should be considered like health food that you should, you know, superfood that you should be going after. But olive oil has certainly risen above the crowd as the perfect oil.

It really has. And I think part of that is because for cooking purposes, it's so good. But there's been a backlash recently with a lot of the Mediterranean diet research. I don't know how much you followed this, but the big, big randomized controlled trial that got a lot of press in the New England Journal of Medicine a couple years ago was just recently retracted because of some serious errors they'd made in the randomization and follow-up. There's still probably a reasonable amount of evidence that a Mediterranean diet, which of course focuses very heavily on things like olive oil, is fine, but the idea that it's the superior diet that has a weight of evidence behind it that other diets lack, unfortunately that's not as true

as it used to be because it turns out that the big study promoting it was not as strong as we thought. Sugar. Yeah. Okay. This is the one thing I have trouble defending. Added sugars are almost universally thought to be bad. There's no reason for it. The fact that we keep adding sugar to stuff, which is just empty carbohydrates, is linked to a number of diseases, and there's no argument for it. It's just empty calories, no nutritional value at all. However, the sugars that cause, that, you know, occur naturally in foods that we otherwise would eat, like fruit or even vegetables, are really fine. And there's no reason to, like, be panicked about them. As many sort of low carb

people would tell you that, you know, that we're not supposed to eat them or that you're better. There's not much evidence that the low carb diet is better than almost any other diet you might eat. And so trying to avoid all sugar is probably not necessary where it occurs naturally in food, but added sugars, I'm not going to defend. There's very little reason to put them in your diet at all. What about the sugar substitutes? I mean, there's often been talk of, well, you know, it's better. Not that it's better. It's not as bad as sugar, but then, well, wait a minute, it causes cancer in rats.

So where are we on that? So there's no evidence that really they cause cancer or anything else. In fact, a lot of the studies that originally pointed to things like saccharin being bad were really, really weak. And it turns out that they were occurring only in certain types of rats that actually are just more likely to get cancer, especially bladder cancer, if you give them a lot of almost anything. And human beings rarely get bladder cancer. So almost all that research has gone away. And then a lot of the follow-up studies that looked at things like aspartame and worried about brain cancer or neurologic disorders, again, there's almost no evidence for that at all. So, again, the panic du jour these days is that these things are somehow causing insulin dysregulation and can lead to have diabetes.

But those are very, very, very preliminary studies, as, again, I talk about in detail in the book, and shouldn't be taken with as much seriousness in human beings as they often are. Given that we have a whole lot of information that added sugars are terrible, and we have very little data that artificial sweeteners are terrible, if I had to choose, and this got me into more trouble than anything else I've ever written, especially at the New York Times, if I have to choose between giving my kids a soda with sugar or a diet soda, I have them drink the diet soda every single time. Now, that doesn't mean you have to have diet soda. You can lead a life, you know, without ever touching an artificial sweetener. Of course, you could lead a life without ever having sort of apple pie and cheese steaks and scotch.

And I like those things very much. And so I choose to have a life where I have those things. But I think that there's a lot of evidence that added sugars are bad. There's very little difference that artificial sweeteners are as bad. And so if I'm choosing between the two, I would lean towards the artificial sweetener every time. One of my observations is the idea of eating in moderation. And you've talked about it, lots of people have talked about the importance of eating everything in moderation. And how can you argue with that? I mean, it's moderation. There's nothing to argue with. But I think that a lot of people are confused by what moderation means. Does it mean eating dessert once a day, once a week, twice a week? What is

moderation? And I think that people can find a way to justify whatever it is they're doing as moderation. This is where I admit humility and I say like, we just don't know. Nutrition tends to be one of those things that is incredibly personal. Some people can probably eat McDonald's a couple times a week and be perfectly healthy. Other people have difficulty, you know, if they eat it at all. Some people can probably eat it every day. But I'd argue that McDonald's falls into the class of food that I would say that is heavily processed food. And so I get into some food recommendations at the end of the book, but the biggest take-home message is try to limit your processed food intake as much as possible.

The more that you can cook for yourself using, you know, ingredients, the better. The more that you can choose foods, even if you're eating out, which were made from ingredients, the better. You know, trying to avoid mildly processed foods, more, you know, less than, you know, moderately processed foods, less than heavily processed foods, the better. But moderation will mean something different to everyone. And so I don't think that we can say with authority, like you should be having X number of McDonald's meals a week. I think it's important to say if you want to eat a healthier life, it's probably trying to limit that more than you do today if you're having difficulty.

And then perhaps in the future, limit it even more. But trying to stick to some of the processing rules as much as you can is going to get you in the right direction. Well, listening to you talk about eating in moderation and eating less processed foods, it's almost too simplistic that people will disregard the advice because it's not complicated enough. But in fact, when the dust settles and you look at the science, that does seem to be, in fact, what you should do. I've been speaking with Dr. Aaron Carroll. He is a professor of pediatrics and associate dean for research mentoring at Indiana University School of Medicine. He's a contributor to the New York Times, and he is author of the book, The Bad Food Bible, How and Why to Eat Sinfully.

And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Doctor. Thank you. Really appreciate it. 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.

Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister 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. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney.

There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. My observation is that we're obsessed with productivity. We want to get more things done in a day.

And the problem with that is that the more things we get done in a day, the more we think we need to get more things done in a day. And the problem with that is that the more things we get done in a day, the more we think we need to get more things done in a day. We need to squeeze even more stuff in, and that the quest to be productive never ends. So let's talk about productivity with one of the leading authorities on the subject, Charles Duhigg. Charles is a reporter for the New York Times, and he's author of a couple of books on this, The Power of Habit, which has been a best-selling book for a long time, and his latest book is Smarter, Faster, Better. Welcome, Charles.

Thank you. So what's your take on this? Do you think that the quest to be productive just never ends, that we just need to find more ways to cram more things in a day, or is it ever enough is enough? Well, that's exactly the question I was trying to answer when I wrote this book, because I felt like I was getting busier and busier and busier, but the faster I was running, the farther behind I always felt.

And so I called up researchers and I asked them, and I said, it seems like there's some people who seem to get more done. And they said, that's exactly right. There are people who are more productive than everyone else. But it's not because they're working harder or making bigger sacrifices. It's because they've trained themselves to think just a little bit more different, a little bit differently. In fact, in particular, they've trained themselves to think, to create ways during their days to think a little bit deeper. But it would seem, and I know exactly the kind of people you're talking about, as you describe them, I can think of several,

that I have no idea how they get all that they get done, done, but they somehow seem to. But still, there's only so much time in a day, so many minutes in an hour, how does this thinking and change in thinking make them more productive? Well, in particular, what it does is it encourages them to focus on the right things, right? To self-motivate more easily, to be able to ignore distractions. One of my favorite examples of this is that if you look at how the most productive people tend to write to-do lists, they often do it a little bit differently from the rest of us.

The way I used to write to-do lists is I would sort of write just a list of tasks, and I'd put at the top of the page some of the easiest things, right, because it feels so good to sit down and kind of cross them off. Sometimes I'd even write down things I had already done so that when I sat down on my desk, I could feel a sense of accomplishment by checking it off. That's not what the most productive people do. The most productive people, they use their to-do list not only to keep track of their tasks, but also to force, encourage themselves to think about priorities. So at the top of their list, they tend to write their big overarching goal for the day and for the week.

What psychologists call this a stretch goal, some big ambition that we really want to get done. Because by doing that, they're encouraging themselves to think about their priorities. Each task underneath that big stretch goal is a way of asking ourselves, does this get me closer to the thing that's most important to me? Or is this just busy work? Is this just responding to life's demands? Because productive people, they don't just react. Instead, they spend time encouraging themselves to think about what really matters.

Why am I doing the thing that I'm doing? That really makes a big difference. But you just said it. Does this really get me closer to my goal, or is this just one of life's demands? If it's life's demands, it demands that it get done, and it may not get you towards that goal. My life is full of those things that don't get me towards those goals, but the kids get sick at school, I got to go pick them up. I can't say, no, sorry, that's not helping me reach my goal. So you just keep the kid there. That's exactly right. So when your kid gets sick,

and my guess is that a goal for you would be being a good parent, right? So it probably does align with your deepest goals to go pick up your kid. But think about email. How frequently do we sit down and we say, oh, I'm going to reply to all these emails without asking ourselves, do I really need to reply? Should I just be hitting delete more frequently? It's so easy to react. It's so easy to get in that mindset where we just push forward. We make some sacrifice. We get something done without taking a second to think, should I actually be doing this thing in the first place? Now, the people who are really good at asking themselves that question, they tend to be in a habit of building what's known as mental models,

or essentially kind of telling themselves stories about themselves as the day goes on. So it's kind of like visualization, right? We know that CEOs and professional athletes, they tend to visualize a race before they compete in it or visualize a meeting. But it's actually more than that. Those people, they tend to visualize their entire day. They tend to, on their way to work, think to themselves, okay, what's my big goal before 10 o'clock? What do I want to get done between 10 and 12? When I go to lunch, what am I hoping will happen at lunch? And as a result, what we know is our brain has this almost amazing ability to automatically filter through information and pay attention to the important things and ignore distractions

if we have a mental model that helps shape, gives us kind of a script of what's important and what's secondary. But most of us, we don't take the time to kind of think about our day that way. Instead, we check our smartphone when we're standing on line or when we're on the subway, or we listen to radio or talk to our friends when we're in the car. But taking those couple of minutes and pushing ourselves to do something like visualize our day or to ask ourselves why we're doing certain things. We know from studies that that's incredibly powerful at shaping how much our brain can filter through distractions and focus on the right things and avoid getting our attention

diverted by things that don't matter. So maybe part of it is that we're pretty lousy at figuring out what's important because it's not like I think people sit around and think, checking my phone's a really stupid idea. They must think it's a good idea. That's why they do it. We're actually really good at figuring out what's important. What we're a little bit worse at is creating mechanisms during our day that give us the time to think about what's important.

It's like what I was saying before about the to-do list. If you can write a to-do list in a way that makes you think about your biggest goals, then it's forcing you, it's encouraging you to think about your priorities rather than just the next task you want to get done. Or if you're in a habit, let's say, of visualizing your day, or let's say you're in a habit of, at lunchtime, taking a walk around the block and giving yourself 10 minutes to think about what you want to get done during the rest of the day. These are all habits that help us reflect on what's important. It's not that we're bad at figuring out what's important. It's that today's world is so filled

with so many things that we can lose the time, the ability to think about what's important. And the most productive people, they actually insert more space into their lives. They insert more downtime. They insert things like taking an extra three minutes to write a to-do list where you ask yourself at the top of the page, what's my biggest goal today? Because they know that doing so will actually make them more productive and less busy. Well, I think that's really the heart of it. I mean, how many times have you said, I don't have time to plan my day. I'm too busy

doing my day. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and one of my favorite stories in the book is actually from about the making of Frozen, the movie, the Disney movie. And we all know Frozen as this big hit movie, right? That it's super successful. But what most people don't know is that Frozen was actually on the brink of catastrophe until just months before it was in theaters. And what they needed to do in order to help that movie succeed is they took everyone into a room and they said, you all have to take a day off and we want you just to talk about what you want this movie to be, what your biggest goal and your biggest dream is for what this movie could accomplish. What out of your own personal experiences would make Frozen amazing? And when they started that conversation, what they found

is that people kept saying, well, one of the things that we know is we know princesses, because nobody knows princesses like Disney, right? But the other thing that came up is that there were all these, an unusually large number of women working on Frozen. In fact, the co-director was the first female director in Disney's history. And when they started talking, they started saying, you know, the other thing that we really know a lot about is sisters, what it's like to be a sister. And the thing about being a sister is it's not realistic that there's an evil sister and a good sister. That never happens in real life. What happens is that sisters are friends and they grow apart and then they come together again. So let's take that idea. Let's mesh this idea of sisters and princesses together. And that's how you get frozen. Because once you do that, then the sisters can save each other

instead of the prince swooping in and saving the damsel in distress. But it took taking a day off and thinking about why they were making this movie, making creativity into a process that was productive, rather than simply scurrying and saying, we're running out of time, let's get this done as fast as we can. It took taking that space to figure out how the movie worked, and that's when everything fell into place. How much of this idea that those people we're talking about that seem to get more done and are more productive than the rest of us, isn't just that they're doing it, but people like me tend to want to do everything myself,

and people like them tend to delegate and let other people do it. Well, I think that, you know, it's interesting because delegation does not tend to be something that is really important to the most productive people. What is important, though, is priorities, deciding what to focus on, right? Choosing exactly what is meaningful and then automatically delegating because someone else will always pick up the slack. You know, one of the chapters looks at teams, and it looks at a big study that Google did. They spent four years and millions of dollars trying to figure out how to build the perfect team. And what they discovered is that who is on the team matters much, much less than how the team interacts. And in particular, if people on a team all speak up in roughly equal proportion, and if they demonstrate that they're

listening to each other by doing things like repeating what someone just said or picking up on nonverbal cues, that it makes a team much, much more effective. And this gets to that question of delegation. On a good team, you don't actually have to delegate all that much. People know how to fit themselves in to what needs to be done. They take the initiative. But to have that, you have to have a team that doesn't have just one leader, but instead a team where everyone feels like they can speak up, everyone feels like they're listening to each other. And that way, everyone knows when they should step in and what they can do to help make that team most effective. I hear what you're saying, and it makes a lot of sense academically, but in the real world,

to take the time to stop and think about all this stuff is hard for a lot of people because so much is coming at them all the time. It's hard to just hold your hands up and say, stop, I have to go think. There are ways to get our life under control. And in fact, oftentimes feeling, simply proving to ourselves that we are in control, looking for choices we can make, turning chores into decisions, that actually oftentimes taps into our self-motivation. It helps us start on that first step, and that first step is what's important.

There's a lot of interesting studies out of the Marines and out of schools about how you teach kids to self-motivate, how to develop those parts of their brain where self-motivation resides. And all of it has to do with finding choices that make you feel like you're in control of your own life and then getting into the habit of asking yourself why. Why am I doing this thing? Does it matter? Does it really matter? Is it the best use of my time? Sometimes the answer is yes, right? That this really boring chore in front of you, does it really matter? Is it the best use of my time? Sometimes the answer is yes, right? That, that this really boring chore in front of you, that it does matter a lot. And it's easier to get motivated when you, when you remember why it matters. But if you're not in the habit of

asking yourself why, of looking for choices, and you're in the habit of just reacting, then it's really hard to get ahead. Does this become habit at some point? Does this become easier? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that we know is that this becomes an instinct. That for many of the most productive people, they don't spend that much time even thinking about how they're productive anymore. Instead, what they do is they focus on what's important to them. They're in the habit of writing to-do lists a certain way, of self-motivating a certain way. The more that we do this, the more that we practice this, the more we understand how to govern our own brain,

the more it becomes a habit, something that happens automatically. And as a result, we get all that time back. Instead of being busy, instead of rushing and running and trying to just stay ahead, we start doing the things that are really meaningful and important to us. And that might mean picking up your kids because you want to be a good dad. It also might mean responding to fewer emails because you're in the habit of asking yourself, do I really need to hit respond to this? Or can I just assume this person is going to figure it out on their own? So being productive isn't about getting more done. It's just about getting the right things done. There is nothing more wasteful than making more efficient something that never should

have been done in the first place. We all only have 24 hours in each day, right? The most productive people, the people who are most successful, it's not like they magically figured out how to get more time. It's that they figured out what they should be focusing on and what they can ignore. And that's a process of having a conversation with ourselves, of building routines into our life that help us reflect on, here's what's important, here's what I should ignore, and then making that become real. Well, I still think there are people who somehow have more than 24 hours in a day because they get so much done.

But I guess that would defy some of the laws of time and space, so maybe not. Charles Duhigg has been my guest. His books are The Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better. His website is charlesduhigg.com. Duhigg is spelled D-U-H-I-G-G. And there are links to his book and his website in the show notes. Thanks, Charles. Well, thanks for having me on.

Even the steamiest of relationships has to cool off eventually. Sometimes there's no steam left at all. But you can heat things back up again with some clever techniques. First of all, share a 20-second hug. When you embrace your partner, how long do you usually stay embraced? Maybe a few seconds? Well, next time, hold on a bit longer. When you hug for at least 20 seconds, it increases levels of the hormone oxytocin in both men and women and makes you feel closer. Clean your bedroom.

It's the place where you spend time alone with your partner, but there may be some roadblocks to love in there. First of all, get rid of the family pictures on the dresser. Relationship expert Logan Levkoff explains that seeing a picture of your children or your mother-in-law could definitely ruin the moment or prevent you from getting in the mood in the first place. Send a love note. Handwritten love letters may be a thing of the past, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't express your love through some sort of written communication.

Sending a sweet email or a sexy text message or some other little gesture on a weekly basis can really help. Be unpredictable. Long-term relationships are based on trust, dependability, and predictability, which is great when it comes to finances and raising a family. But in the bedroom, eh, not so much. Mystery can create the romance you're missing. And that is something you should know. And now that we've come to the end of the episode, you no doubt have heard several of the messages from our sponsors.

We have some of the best sponsors of any podcast anywhere. And one of the best ways to support this podcast is to do business with our sponsors if what they're selling sounds interesting to you. So check them out. And all the links and promo codes are all in the show notes. I'm Mike Carruthers. 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. 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. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. 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, 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.