Something You Should Know - The Science of Achieving Your Goals & The Truth Behind Double Dipping and the 5-Second Rule

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

When you look at old holiday photos, you will notice something is definitely missing – and it is something you really wish was there. I begin this episode of the podcast with that missing ingredient and advice on how to put it back in to your photos for this Christmas and in the future. (Cheryl Lightle author of “The Creative Memories Way ) How often have you started something but never finished? How often have you said you wanted to accomplish something but never actually got around to starting it? It turns out these are very common experiences. Jon Acuff, author of the book Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done (https://amzn.to/2EgKYmi) researched the science of setting and achieving goals. He joins me to explain where people go wrong and how to set and reach goals that are truly important to you. Is the 5-Second Rule true? Is double dipping really so bad? How gross is it to eat birthday cake after someone blows out the candles? I explore all of these questions about food and germs and illness with scientist and Clemson University professor Paul Dawson, author of the book Did You Just Eat That? (https://amzn.to/2PqKLOw) You probably don’t use punctuation when you write a text to someone. But maybe you should – sometimes. Listen as I explain why certain punctuation can make you sound more sincere and other punctuation makes you sound less sincere. And what’s interesting is it only applies to texts, not to any other type of written communication. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215302181 This Week's Sponsors –BetterHelp For 10% off your first month of counseling go to www.BetterHelp.com/something, promo code SOMETHING –Stitch Fix For an additional 25% off when you keep all the items in your box go to www.StitchFix.com/something -Calming Comfort Blanket. For 15% off the posted price of this incredible blanket to help you sleep better, go to www.CalmingComfortBlanket.com and use the promo code SOMETHING. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, when you look at your holiday photos, you'll likely find something's missing. I'll tell you what it is and what to do about it. Then, the science of setting and achieving the important goals in your life. Equally powerful is helping somebody eliminate a fake goal. According to the New York Times, 81% of Americans want to write a book. Less than 1% do every year. And you have to say, well, if you haven't in ten years, maybe you need to release yourself from the tyranny of that goal.

Also, punctuation in text messages. It has a strange effect on the reader. And separating food myth from food fact. Like the five-second rule. Is it real? And what about double dipping? If you're at a party and you have multiple people double dipping, there is transfer. There's no way really to know how many people have gotten sick from double dipping, but I would say that it's not zero because you do in fact transfer your bacteria to the dip. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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 was 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 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. 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. We start today with some advice I wish I'd heard a long time ago. This is so true. If you look back at holiday family photos in your house, you will probably notice something missing in those photographs.

Grown-ups. Adults. We tend to focus most of our photo efforts around the holidays on the kids. And while that is perfectly natural, you really should take a lot of pictures of mom and dad and aunts and uncles and grandma and grandpa. Because in the years to come when the kids are grown up and all those adults are not around anymore, your kids will wish you had taken more photos of those grown-ups. Here are a few more holiday photo suggestions. Photos will deteriorate in a shoebox. They should be put in an album to protect them.

Plus, they're a lot easier to look at that way. And it's really a good idea to put a few words on the page next to each picture that identifies the people and places and feelings relating to that picture. This will help jog your memory long after you've forgotten just how special the event was and who those people are in that picture. And that is something you should know. Think for a moment of all the goals, projects and tasks that you have started but never finished. Think also of all the goals you say you're going to start but never actually get around to starting.

This is a pretty universal experience. We have great intentions, but we often fail to follow through or follow all the way through. New Year's resolutions are a great example. Now, there's a lot of advice available on how to achieve your goals, but most of that advice is really one person's opinion. It's based on one person's experience. John Acuff decided to look at the science of achieving goals. What really works to get you to the finish line? He's author of a book called Finish, Give Yourself the Gift of Done. Hi, John. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me. So why is this such a universal problem, do you think? Yeah, well, I think the problem is that a lot of us have a lot of ideas about things we want to do, goals we want to have, things we're excited about, And we come out of the gate fast and often furious, and we don't actually end up finishing the majority of the things we start. I kind of like to say starting is fun, but the future belongs to finishers. And I believe that because statistically, 92% of all New Year's resolutions fail. And you see that with health goals. You see that with writing goals. You certainly see it with corporate goals. And so that's the main problem is that we're really

good culturally at starting and we tend to be really bad at actually finishing. Why is that? Sometimes it's we pick the wrong goal. Sometimes we aggressively believed things like your goal should be so large it terrifies you or you should go big or go home. And we try to do things that we never had a shot at actually finishing. Sometimes it's because we have secret rules about success, things we believe about success, and we sabotage ourselves on the way there. Sometimes it's we pick goals that are miserable, that we'd never want to finish anyway. Health goals is an example of that. People tell me all the time,

I'm going to start jogging to lose weight. And I'll say, well, do you like jogging? And they go, no, I hate it. That's how I know it's good for me. And they're miserable. So of course they give up. So there's a whole host of reasons that people end up not actually finishing. Well, and everybody can relate to at least one of those examples you just gave, because who hasn't started something and gone, oh God, you know, it seemed like such a good idea at the time, and now it's just a burden. Well, there's another, I mean, there's another example of a reason we don't finish. People go to their motivation as the only canary in the coal mine. I meet people all the time that'll say, I gave up because I just wasn't as passionate at the beginning. I was more excited at the beginning. I lost my passion. I ran out of steam. And we think that our passion and our motivation

is going to grow larger every day we work on it, but it's usually the opposite. Usually the first thing to leave your goal is your sense of motivation. And part of that is motivation tends to get flighty when struggles get real because we think, oh, I thought it'd feel differently or I thought I'd always be this excited. We kind of lose that first love feeling with our goal and we think, okay, it must not be the right thing if I don't feel this certain way and our emotions tend to lie to us. So what's the answer? How do you fix this problem? And maybe the best thing to do is to talk about the research you did about achieving goals. I commissioned a research study with a PhD named Mike Peasley from the University of Memphis,

and we studied nearly 900 people for six months. Because in the self-help space, there's a ton of really terrible advice that is founded in antidotes where somebody goes, it worked for my life, so it'll automatically work for yours. And the extent of their research is a singular experience they had in their one life. And so the first step for me was really digging into a lot of different people working on a lot of different goals and figuring out what are some patterns, what are some principles that actually help. So let's talk about those. What are some of the principles that really help? Okay, fun does matter. That was one of the principles that

emerged, that if you enjoy what you're doing, if you make it fun, you're more likely to actually accomplish it. You score higher on two key metrics, your satisfaction level and your performance level. Any great leadership idea or self-help idea or motivation idea, business idea has to raise two principles. It has to raise your satisfaction, how you felt, and it also has to raise your performance, how you actually did. If a principle only raises one, but not both, it's not helpful. If I only raise your satisfaction, but your performance goes down, you're smiling all the way to last place. But not every goal can be fun. No, not at all. Of course not. That's why it's

make it fun, not have fun. There's a lot of things you'll have to do in the pursuit of a goal that aren't inherently fun. And we've done this next generation a great disservice by saying, follow your dream, follow your passion. When it doesn't fulfill your purpose, that aren't inherently fun. And we've done this next generation a great disservice by saying, follow your dream, follow your passion. When it doesn't fulfill your purpose, it must be the wrong thing. No, I would say that half of, so the idea we've discovered was, okay, you have to make it fun. The next part is, okay, here's practical ways to do that. Because there's a lot of parts of my job. Somebody might look at me from the outside and go, well, I get to write books and go speak at companies. You have a dream job. And I do love my job, but there are a lot of parts of my job that aren't inherently fun. So I have to deliberately with principles, make them more

fun to actually stick there. The joke I always do is let's be honest, kale isn't fun. Um, there's, you know, cardio isn't always fun. How do you change that? How do you change that? Well, there's two big things that we, uh, scientists measure when it comes to fun. They measure reward and they measure consequence or fear. And so you have to figure out in this given setting, do I need to add more rewards to this? Am I the kind of person that needs to say, when I finished this terrible part of the project, I get to go to a movie by myself?

Are you the kind of person that says, I'm a consequence-based person. I get more done when I have a deadline and accountability. So I just inherited a project at work. Let's be honest, most projects at work, most goals are inherited. It's not that your company says, you get to dream up whatever you want to do for your sales numbers. You inherit those. So then you have to say, okay, I need more accountability. That's the kind of person I am. I have self-awareness. I'm going to volunteer to send out a weekly update to the entire team because I know I need the motivation of knowing that it's going to be visible to inspire me to go. And so that's the first thing. The second thing is if you're a leader, you figure out what do other people that you're leading need? Okay, is this person more reward?

Okay, I need to tweak their goals. Is this person more consequence? I need to tweak that. Every leader's had an experience where they tried to motivate somebody with the wrong form of motivation and it's miserable. And so that's a big part of it is figuring out, okay, how are you personally motivated and how do you add more of that to whatever you're working on? So in addition to having fun doing it, what else helps? Well, another thing that helps whatever you're working on. So in addition to having fun doing it, what else helps? Well, another thing that helps is getting the size right. We discovered that most people, if they say they want to lose 10 pounds and they only lose eight, they don't feel like they almost got there. They feel like they failed by two and they quit.

Most people judge their goals on a pass fail basis, especially perfectionists. So one of the things we learned is, OK, let's test this. If you try to lose five pounds instead of 10 and you lose the same eight, like but same eight pounds were gone, but you won by three pounds, would you continue? That's the problem with New Year's resolutions. Nobody makes New Year's resolutions. People make January resolutions. And then by February, they've already given up because they didn't see the results. So we found that people in the study that cut their goals in half were 63% more successful in the long term. Now, that's not a strategy, though. The strategy isn't, so dream really crazy

and then cut it in half midway. That's just an indication of how bad we are at the beginning of having the right size goal. So if somebody said to me, John, my goal, I've never run before, but I want to run a marathon. I'd say that's a terrible goal right out of the gate. Run a half marathon. Run a 10K. Run a 5K. Build to that versus saying, OK, I'm going to go for this.

And where you see that manifest in companies is especially new leaders want to show that they're confident and brave and bold. And so they establish this really crazy goal that everyone knows they're not going to be able to hit. And then when they don't hit it, there's this residue of distrust that the next goal people won't listen to and the next goal after that. So you have to have the right size goal from the beginning. I want to talk about motivation because I know everyone's had the experience of having all the motivation in the world at the beginning and then it goes away. And maybe it comes back like during a day. Many people say that their most motivated time of day is in the morning. That's when they have all their willpower and then it dissipates over the course of the day.

So how do you keep the motivation from coming and going? morning. That's when they have all their willpower, and then it dissipates over the course of the day. So, how do you keep the motivation from coming and going? Yeah, I mean, motivation is really temporary. I think that's part of the problem. And I think we overvalue it at times. And so, there are days where the action is going to be the motivation. And you say, I don't feel like doing this. I'm not motivated to do this. The other thing is that it's not going to be perfect. One of the chapters in the book is about the day after perfect, where it's the day after you've missed your goal or you messed up. I meet people all the time that'll say, I did this one thing 11 days in a row. I wrote my book 11

days in a row. I missed the 12th day. I never wrote again. And it's because they had this expectation it was going to be perfect. And so to the days where you don't feel like doing it, I'd say, well, of course those are going to come. Those are definitely going to come. And you know what? There's going to be days when you don't do that. And part of it is how do you react the next day or the day after that? And I think that that's, you know, one of the words we don't talk enough about when it comes to goals or when it comes to performance is forgiveness, forgiving yourself that, yeah, I missed the day and I'm not going to let it turn into 10 days. But I'm also not going to beat myself up that I had a perfect thing going and now the whole thing is ruined. As far as motivation at night versus the morning, there's so many great books that talk about you have more motivation and willpower in the morning than you do at night and that it's a limited resource. So there's times like that where if I'm, you know,

I trained for a half marathon recently and I was traveling a lot, um, speaking and it wasn't fun to run on a treadmill in a Hampton Inn in the quote unquote fitness center, you know, at 7am before I had to catch a flight. But I could tell myself, okay, I don't have time for six miles, but I have time for three and three is more than zero. So I'm going to do them in the morning before the day gets ahead of me, because that's when I have even just the thinnest amount of motivation. It does seem that people sabotage themselves, that on the road to success, they will derail themselves. And I know you talk a lot about how that has to do with our beliefs. Give me an example of that.

There's people that believe success is bad. I talked to somebody in my neighborhood that said, that CEO makes $5 million a year. How do you think he sleeps at night? I wouldn't say, probably on Hungarian down pillows, like probably pretty comfortable. But he had established at some point in his life that a certain amount of money was okay, but more than that was greedy. And so the closer he got to being successful, the more he'd sabotage that. And where we say it in the workplace is, we say things like, it's like she can't get out of her own way. And what we're saying is right at the end, they deliberately make it fall down. I think a great question to ask if you have a friend who has a lot of chaos in their life is to say, what are they getting out of that?

They're getting something out of that. Is it the chaos stirs up stuff so they don't have to think about the stuff they don't want to think of? Is it the constant surprises that catch them off guard that really aren't surprises? What are they getting out of that? Because often that's what self-sabotage is, is we're wrecking something because we're afraid of something else. 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. 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 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 we're talking about the science behind how to start what you finish how to achieve the goals you say you want to achieve and my guest is john acuff he's author of the book finish, Give Yourself the Gift of Done. So, John, you were saying a while ago, we were talking about people who have these huge goals and that there's real value in cutting your goals in half. But I've also heard other people say that, for a lot of folks, our goals are too small, that we need to think bigger. We need bigger goals.

Well, I mean, I, you know, I think I'd have to see the research on that. I think there's a ton of research that supports the idea that manageable goals you build on have the potential to turn into habits, have the potential to actually be accomplished. I think there's a lot of rhetoric about, you know, you've just got to go for it. You've just, you know, like, and part of it's how we talk about starting. We say things like well begun is half done or the hardest part of any journey is the first step. And that feels like great on a CrossFit wall or a mug with a unicorn on it. But then you unpack it and you go, what does that mean? Like, I would encourage every listener, every motivational person you see on Instagram ask, what does that mean? And

where is their proof? Because what does that mean to well begun is half done? No, it, no, it's not like it's not half done. If a surgeon said to you, after I've made the first incision, I'm halfway done with your surgery. You would say, where did you go to school? Like the hardest part of any journey is the first step. That's ridiculous. The middle is the hardest part. We have launch parties. I've never been to a middle party where a manager said, hey, we're at the worst part of this project. Time for some cake. And so I think that sometimes I question rhetoric that goes, people are dreaming too small. I'd want to say to those people, let me see what they're accomplishing. Are they, they actually wrote a small. I'd want to say to those people, well, let me see what they're accomplishing. They actually wrote a chapter. I think it's completely fair to say

people don't believe in themselves and it's helpful to help them believe in themselves. And sometimes you need a kickstart to that. I think that there's a lot of people that writing a certain amount in a month can be helpful because they're afraid to write a hundred words. So the goal of writing a thousand, which seems huge, actually pulls them into action. But I think for an equal, if not more amount of people, they have this aggressive belief. They buy exercise equipment. They don't ride a bike and then they buy a $3,000 bike and they're like, that's going to do it. And then they never ride because they set this crazy goal. Yeah, but I understand that concept that starting is the hardest part. I mean, I can't tell you how many people, because this podcast is very successful.

So I get a lot of people saying, yeah, you know, I'd like to start a pod... I'm going to start a podcast. And I often say, so why don't you start one? Well, you know, there's a lot of reasons and I've really got to think it through. But really, the only way to start a podcast, like the only way to start anything, is to start. And a lot of people don't start. Equally powerful is helping somebody eliminate a fake goal. To help them get like, according to the New York Times, 81% of Americans want to write a book. Less than 1% do every year.

That means there's a quarter billion people going, oh man, I'm going to write a book someday. And you have to say, well, if you haven't in 10 years, maybe you need to release yourself from the tyranny of that goal. Or maybe, you know, your body receives endorphins when you tell somebody a goal because they pre-congratulate you. Derek Seavers has talked about this a ton that if I'm at a dinner party and I go thinking about starting a podcast, people go, oh, that's awesome. You have

such good ideas. I'd love to listen to your podcast. And your body physically releases enough endorphins and dopamine for you to feel satisfied and never do the thing. So I think from a podcast perspective, it's one of the most enjoyable things to say right now in America is, I think I'm going to start a podcast because you don't have to do any of the work and you get a percent of the accolades for just saying you're going to do a podcast. Well, there's an awful lot of people who say they're going to or they're thinking about it and never and never do uh because one of my one of my rules and why i love being on this podcast is that like i usually don't do new podcasts because somebody will go i want you to be one of the first guests but i know

the chances that you continue it are very slim because it's challenging and there's you know what you do and the other thing is people who are good at it. Like part of the reason people tell you, I want to do a podcast because they love your podcast is because you do it so well, it looks easy and it's not. And to do it with excellence is challenging and you have to figure it out. And so I think that's part of it too. We don't know what it really takes. Um, so it's easier for us to say, I'm going to do it someday. And the other thing is that when we're afraid of something, we complicate it so we don't have to do it. If somebody tells me, I want to lose weight, I'll say, okay, ready?

I got four words. Eat less, move more. And they go, no, no, no, no. It has to involve pure bar and beats. And I'm going to do a cleanse. I'm getting paddleboard. I'm going to get a paddleboard yoga that mixes two difficult things into one even worse thing. And I know they're not going

to do it. Like they, it's just words at that point. It's kind of, you know, counselors call it a verbal reality that with your words, you're creating a reality that's really not true. Well, it's funny, but I think it's so important, this idea that so many people carry around these goals they have that they never get to, like writing, you know, the great American novel. And to be able to release that and feel okay with it, I mean, that is such a burden to carry. It's heavy. I mean, scientifically, you remember the incomplete things more than the complete things. So that stuff has a residue.

I always say, you know, goals you don't finish, don't disappear. They become these ghosts that haunt you. And I think there's great freedom. Like part of my job is to give permission to people to pursue a goal, but also permission to not pursue a goal that they don't really want to do. And it always, they always feel a little guilty when they go, actually, you know what I, you know what I think? I don't, I don't want to run a business. Like being an entrepreneur is really hard and it's not for me. And I go, great. And again, you go cultural, kind of social media goes, if you're not an entrepreneur, what are you doing with your life? You got to go crazy. And you go, well, not everybody's supposed to be one and that's okay

that they're not. Imagine what you could actually pursue if you weren't carrying around the shame and guilt associated with a goal you don't even really want to do. So what's the advice here? Because listening to you talk about how people approach their goals and perhaps their New Year's resolutions, we're almost doomed to fail and maybe we shouldn't even start. No, I don't think that at all. I think that you should try the right thing. I think you should forgive yourself for the goals you haven't done before. I think you should get rid of some that don't matter to you. And I think you should really lean into the ones you do care about. I mean, I'm sitting in my home office right now. I'm looking at a shelf of books that people

have written because they read my book, Finish. So they read Finish and mailed me their book and said in different notes, for 10 years I've been sitting on this. For five years I thought about this. I never thought I could be a real author. And they actually did it. And so for me, my sweet spot is for goals you'll actually finish. For goals that sometimes I might get a criticism of like, it's too practical or your goals are too realistic. But I don't care about that. I care that they're done. I care that they're complete. So whether that's somebody saying, I had a messy attic for 35 years and avoided it.

And then I read Finish and I cleaned it out. Or my husband and I lost 75 pounds. No, I think there's a thousand different things you can do. And I think goals are really fun. And I think you can have fun along the way. And I think goals are really fun. And I think you can have fun along the way. And that's why I wrote Finish. I mean, my sweet spot is humor and practical things you can actually do versus, hey, let's find a way for you to get up at 3 a.m. to work out for three hours and eat a lot of beets. Like, we're going to do that tomorrow. And then

you go, oh, I got to do that.. Like I got to drink more water. We're always drinking water. I'm not drinking enough water. And I think there's a lot of guilt and pressure that I'd rather you just actually do the thing in a sustainable, fun way. And that's what finish is about. I know there are people who claim not to really have big goals or don't know really what they want to do or what their goals should be? What's the advice to them? I think one of the best things you can do is ask a friend, what do you think my goals are? Because a friend's going to say, you know, I watch you do these three things over and over, and you think everybody can do them? We can't. They come naturally to you, so you don't think

they're special, but they're really special. I think you care about that. And I think you go, oh, wow, you really pointed something out that I think is interesting. At the same time, I think there's things we've been kicking around for a long time that we're holding on to that we need to go, you know what, it's time for me to lean in. Sometimes those things, we're afraid to try them because what if we're not good at them and we give our all? So instead, it's easier to say someday I'm going to write a book than to try to write a book and realize it's hard and have to push through that challenge. So I think it's a, I think it's a mixture, but I think relationships and community can call us to places we can't call ourselves. So a simple conversation with a friend where you say,

Hey, I heard this podcast. It was challenged me about goals. I feel like I don't have any, what do you think? I think a real friend will be able to say, what are you talking about? You have these four things you always talk about and you are passionate about them. And I think you'll be surprised. Do you think in general that you are more likely to complete a goal when you have a buddy, some support, somebody to spur you on? Oh, 100%. 100%. I don't think we're meant to carry our goals alone. Sometimes we have this me against the world kind of attitude, but I think that having other people that we show up for, that we don They go, hey, during the lunch break, talk to 50 people you've never met before. And you're an introvert in the crowd going, during the lunch break, I was going to go eat in my car

to be alone because this is already too many people. So I'm not saying you need like a mastermind of 10 people tomorrow, but I know that a person or two, and maybe if you're more introverted, a handful of people that can ask you questions. The problem is that you're usually so close to the painting of people that can ask you questions. The problem is that you're usually so close to the painting, you can't tell what it is. I mean, imagine being an inch from a painting and your friends are five feet, 10 feet back. They can see what it looks

like. That's what it's like with your life sometimes. You're so close to it. You're so engaged in it. You can't see the simple truth of it. And you need other people that'll go, hey, wait a second. You know that's a landscape, right? And you'd go, no, I didn't because I'm in the chaos of it. I'm in the moment of it. Oh, thanks for letting me know that's a landscape. I mean, you also need people to tell you the truth. One of my favorite things to say is that leaders who can't be questioned end up doing questionable things. Show me a company that fell. Show me a team that was toxic. I'll show you a leader that can only be told the things they wanted to hear. And you see that all the time in the news. Someone that you can tell is isolated, surrounded by yes people, and then makes terrible decisions.

And you go, how did they get there? They got there because a long time ago, they surrounded themselves with people who were on their payroll but weren't their friends. Well, I like that your advice is grounded in the research and the science of what it takes to achieve goals, not just your own personal experience. And in fact, some of it is even contrary to a lot of what we've heard. John Acuff has been my guest. The name of the book is Finish. Give yourself the gift of done. And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, John. Thanks for being here. Thanks. I've had a lot of fun today. So what about the five second rule? Is it really a rule? And is double dipping really so bad? What about eating birthday cake after somebody's blown the candles out? Is that really gross? We're going to talk about all of those things and more right now with Paul Dawson. He is a scientist and professor at Clemson University, and he's author of the book, Did You Just Eat That? Hi, Paul. Welcome.

Hello. Thank you, Mike. Glad to be here. So one of the things I find interesting is how people tend to believe that hand sanitizer is kind of like magic, that if your hands are dirty and you rub some of that on there, that it says it kills 99.99% of the germs, so you're good to go, but it doesn't really work that way, does it? Actually, bacteria is very difficult to kill on any surface once it's attached and your hands included. If you imagine probably seeing pictures of your hand magnified or hands magnified with fingerprints, there's nooks and crannies and valleys and whatever where bacteria can hide and attach. And once they do that,

they are very difficult to kill. And so you're right. I mean, one thing is they're there, but you're probably not killing them, all of them, even with alcohol sanitizer. Yeah, I've heard that, and that really washing your hands is always going to be a better option than hand sanitizer. But let me ask you this, because I've got two boys, and I remember as a kid, you know, when you come to the table to eat dinner, you've got to wash your hands first. And, you know, it seems like it makes common sense, but how important is it? I mean, what's the worst that could happen if you didn't? The surfaces they have touched before they come to dinner is where they're going to pick up cold, flu, anything contagious to get sick. In that way, we actually have to have either a virus or a bacteria in our body some way. And food is a good way for that to happen right into your

digestive system. You know, we can also get it touching our nose or our eye or put our hands in here in our body some way. And food is a good way for that to happen right into your digestive system. We can also get it touching our nose or our eye or put our hands in our mouth, but also touching food and then eating it is a way that can happen. So let's run through some of these. And since it's in the title of your book, what about the five-second rule? Is it a real rule? I mean, I've heard that it really depends, that the answer is always going to be it depends on the food, it depends on where you drop it, it just depends. The first question, as you mentioned, it depends on where you drop it, and more than really the type of food, because really any food is going to pick up bacteria. You could walk around dropping food

and eat it probably your whole life and never get sick. But if you do drop it on a surface that's contaminated, the five-second rule won't work. So five-second rule is really a myth. It's going to pick it up immediately if it's touched. That's pretty much common sense, but we actually went and did a study and kind of put some numbers behind that. And when you say on a contaminated surface, are most household surfaces contaminated? The answer to that would be no. But then there are certain areas that are contaminated. And a real cross-contamination area would be an area food prep for if someone's handling raw meat or food that may have a contamination on a surface. And someone goes behind them and makes a sandwich, then they're in danger of picking up or they just drop food on that surface

and pick it up and try to eat it. It's going to be dirty. It's going to be contaminated. Another really severe, I guess, condition area would be in a hospital. You obviously wouldn't want to eat dropped food in a hospital because you know that area, even though they sanitize a lot, is people are there because they're sick and there's a lot of potential illness. 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 technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson

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New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Something I know you looked at, and I heard about this a long time ago, and it kind of grossed me out and I avoid it, is like the fruit garnishes, like the pineapple or whatever they put on the side of the glass, the lime, the lemon, because they often don't wash them, and the people who handle them often don't have clean hands. And so I avoid them. So what did you find? What's your take? Yeah, we did a study, and I guess one thing, there's kind of two potential concerns there,

is with ice, the water that the ice is made with or made from, created from, is it contaminated? In most cases, it's not, obviously, in the U.S., but there are examples of large-scale infections. And back in the 80s, there was one in the U.S. Thousands of people got sick because water was contaminated, ice was made from it, then it was used in the drinks. But the one, kind of what we looked at was, as you mentioned, really the transfer of bacteria. Again, we talked about the hands, from the hands to the ice or to a lemon, to a pineapple, to a garnish, because someone's handling that. And where we got this idea, I got this idea was really these drink stations that have emerged in the last, I guess, in my lifetime, in the last decade.

They weren't there when I was growing up where anyone can go to a drink station and make their own drink. And they'll often have lemons there, lemon slices or quarters there, where anybody can will pick up with their own lemon slice, and they'll reach in and touch it. Two things there, everybody, you know, multiple people are touching those lemon slices potentially, and they're also sitting out at room temperature. So those are two things that we kind of looked at and we found if someone's hand obviously is contaminated there's a lot of transfer to lemons and also to ice if you're at a bar or at a home and someone's making a drink for you or you're making your own drink and you pick up the ice with your hand and throw it in a drink well you're again you're carrying that bacteria from your hands to the drink.

So, you know, you're touching things and surfaces in between that if you're kind of in that scenario. Everybody's had the experience of sitting at a table with someone else and they go, oh, that looks good, and they stick their fork that they've eaten from into your food to take a bite and eat it. Is that probably okay? That's okay if the person that did that is healthy and not ill. Yeah, we found that actually sharing food is done in some cultures, even with hands, the large bowls. And even in the U.S. with popcorn, as an example,

we're reaching over their hand or, like you say, sharing with a spoon or fork. And we found that there was a lot of transfer of bacteria from the mouth to the food, whether it be soup, rice, or popcorn, from the oral cavity. And again, that is where this coming year, coming up, the flu virus, common cold, that's where it originates. It has to transfer from person to person, usually from the oral cavity. So that would depend, again, on who you're sharing it with. There's some risk there of a transfer of bacteria or a virus from person to person. When a virus transfers from person to person in the example you just gave, how then likely is someone to get sick from that?

Can the virus transfer and no harm, no foul? Or if the virus transfers and gets into your system, you will get sick? Or is it somewhere in the middle? It's definitely somewhere in the middle. A lot of variables there. Probably one big variable is the immune system of the individual being exposed. And that's

where I would think the real concern with some of these would be with what they call immunocompromised individuals. Could be an elderly person, our immune system gets weaker. A very young person who hasn't had the microflora developed yet, they're more likely to get ill than someone who's healthy and not fighting off something. We learned about double dipping from George Costanza in Seinfeld. How risky is it? Yeah, that was a lot of fun because I felt it would not be risky. I thought when you bite a cracker or chip off, there wouldn't be much surface area there

to transfer that was exposed to your mouth. But we actually found there was significant transfer. And interesting enough, we did salsa, chocolate dip, and cheese dip, and there was more transfer in the salsa than there was in the chocolate and cheese. And while at first we're kind of bewildered by that, it really makes sense because the salsa is much thinner, and we actually measure the viscosity of the salsa. So can you imagine you're dipping your cracker or chip into that salsa, and then when you pull it out, there's more that falls back into the bowl.

I guess the real issue might be if you're at a party and you have multiple people double dipping over a period of several hours, then you're getting some inoculation every dip. So again, there is transfer, and there's no way really to know how many people have gotten sick from double dipping, but I would venture to say that it's not zero, because you do in fact transfer your oral bacteria and flora, some of it being viruses, to the dip. Well, that's just really gross. It's more of a yuck factor probably, but yeah, there is probably some risk.

So what about, and I know people think about this when they go into restaurants and they touch the menu and they touch the salt shakers and they know these things have been touched by a million other people, the ketchup. Is it gross? Is it risky? Is there stuff lingering? Yeah, we didn't do the salt shakers and ketchup and mustard and all, but we probably should do that. But we did the menus and actually did kind of in our studies, we did two things. We go out and randomly sample the restaurants or whatever population. And then we came back in the lab and measured

actual transfer rates but in our random samples we did find uh menus were contaminated i wouldn't say highly contaminated they did have bacteria and in fact we did specifically look for staph because staph staphylococcus is a both a pathogen and some strains, but also common on people's hands and skin. And so that's how it's kind of transferred. So we did find staff and just a general population on menus. You'd expect that people handle the menu. I guess they are clean, but I don't think it's necessarily a regular people think about cleaning menus or a restaurant think about cleaning menus.

Then we did measure handling that, and there was high levels of transfer from the hands to the menu. And then also, we measured how long the bacteria survived, and it survived several days after it was on the menu. So, I guess it depends, again, it obviously depends on who handled the menu before. How gross is it to eat birthday cake after somebody's blown out the candle? Yeah, we looked at that. And just speaking, you're releasing bioaerosols in the air. Everyone's probably seen the slow motion video with a backdrop of light. When someone sneezes or coughs, how you're releasing bioaerosols or things in the air. And these are carrying bacteria and viruses. So, can you imagine when you're blowing, blowing like birthday candles out,

for instance, you're blowing out those bioaerosols and they are deposited on the top of the cake, which we had measured and documented. So, again, it goes back to who's blowing the candles out and then also who's eating the cake. If someone is ill or an elderly person eating the cake, you may want to hold off on blowing the candles out, at least on their piece. But just because there are germs, just because there's bacteria on things, doesn't mean it's bad, right? I mean, not all bacteria. In fact, a lot of bacteria is harmless.

Not only harmless, but beneficial. Even E. coli, most E. coli are harmless. We see E. coli in the news all the time. By far, most strains of E. coli are harmless. There's a few that aren't, and those are the ones that are dangerous. So you're right. Most are not going to hurt us. Many are positive.

I guess the other 0.1% that aren't, though, still are making people sick. So that's why our other kind of point is to use some common sense and all that. But are we getting too concerned about this? I mean, exposure to things that can make you sick also improves your immune system and helps you prevent getting sick. It does, and there's some extreme cases that you might have heard about, like pox parties. People taking their kids who haven't had chicken pox to a party where they're exposed to a child who does have chicken pox and try to get the immunity. That is really frowned upon by the medical industry because there are, in fact,

some cases that diseases and whatnot can overwhelm the immune system. So it's not a good thing. But certainly a strong immune system is built by exposure to both good and bad bacteria. So you want to build that up. And in one talk we gave afterwards, someone came up and I thought it was very interesting what they were, the research they had been involved in. And that was actually finding the layers of bacteria in our microbiome, in our gut, and even on our skin may be very important. Even though we can't see them in many layers, if we disrupt that layer, that may actually cause things to arise like gluten intolerance, diabetes, and various diseases or conditions we hear about now, which are diseases. So it's really interesting, and that really is probably a new area of exploration. You talked earlier about hand sanitizers, and I wanted to ask you, because pretty much every

hand sanitizer says on the label that it kills 99.9% of the germs, and I don't know why there's that one little tenth of a percent of germs that it can't quite get. But is that impressive? Is that pretty good? Yeah, that's one thing we talk about, is that that number sounds impressive, but in fact, if you have a very highly soiled hand or surface, let's say, and it typically could be a million bacteria, you kill 99%, you're still going to have 10,000 bacteria left. So, if it's a pathogen in there, it's certainly enough to make you sick. So, that 99.9% bacteria are on the surface in what's called the log scale. So there's a million to 10 million to 100 million, in some cases, bacteria. It's a very soiled or contaminated surface.

And killing 99.9% is not going to make that surface sterile or really safe. Your hands are, depending on what you've been doing, may not be that dirty. But on the other hand, if you've been handling very contaminated material or surfaces, then they could be that contaminated. They get down in the nooks and crannies and under your fingernails, and you're not sure the alcohol sanitizer is getting in there. So the 99.9% may not be what we think it is. Well, it's fun to talk about the five-second rule and double-dipping and it's good to get the science behind it. And so much of it from what you say is really

common sense. It's like what your grandmother told you. You know, wash your hands before you eat and keep your germs away from other people. Paul Dawson's been my guest. He's a scientist and a professor at Clemson University and he is author of the book, Did You Just Eat That? And there is a link to his book in the show notes.

Thanks, Paul. Oh, thank you very much, Mike. Have you ever thought about adding punctuation in a text message? Well, as it turns out, when it comes to text messages and punctuation, less is more. Research published in the journal Computers and Human Behavior shows that when you put a period at the end of a text message, people perceive it as less sincere than no punctuation at all. On the other hand, an exclamation point at the end makes it seem super sincere.

So, in response to an invitation to go to dinner, for example, and an exclamation point at the end makes it seem super sincere. So, in response to an invitation to go to dinner, for example, Y-E-S period seems insincere. Y-E-S seems more sincere, and Y-E-S with an exclamation mark seems extremely sincere. But this only applies to texts. Punctuation has little effect on how people perceive the message in a handwritten note. And that is something you should know. If you enjoyed the podcast, I hope you'll share it with a friend.

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. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, 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 Adolf Buntwine, wherever podcasts are available.