The Tim Ferriss Show - #93: Jane McGonigal on Getting More Done with Less Stress and The Health Benefits of Gaming

Episode Date: July 28, 2015

Jane McGonigal (@avantgame), PhD, is a senior researcher at the Institute for the Future and the author of The New York Times bestseller Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Her work has been featured in The Economist, Wired, and The New York Times. She has been called one of the "top ten innovators to watch" by BusinessWeek and one of the "100 most creative people in business” by Fast Company. Her TED talks on games have been viewed more than ten million times. In this conversation, we dig into everything from recovering from head trauma to how you can use Candy Crush Saga to lose weight. Not enough? How about using Tetris to prevent PTSD, or using Call of Duty to increase empathy? Her latest book is SuperBetter, which offers a revolutionary (science-based) approach for getting stronger, happier, and more resilient. I’ve been testing it, and it works. Not only am I feeling better, but I’m having more fun. As adults, we often lose track of play. My hope is that this episode will help you to reclaim it. It’s not frivolous; it can help you get a lot more done with less stress. In this episode we discuss: Examples of real world problems that are solved with games or by gamers How Jane climbed herself out of the hole of suicidal thoughts Action steps for using gaming lessons and applying them to real life How to build a quest into your life The health effects of Candy Crush Saga On the use of psychedelics to simulate traumatic experiences And much more... Links, resources, and show notes from this episode can be found at http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast This episode is sponsored by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so. Get 50% off your order at Athletic Greens.com/Tim This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results. Click this link and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run... Enjoy!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. And I'd like to ask you, why are you so serious? We're going to get back to that. But this is another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where my job is to try to deconstruct world-class performers, to try to identify the things that make them as good as they are at what they do. That is a mouthful of a sentence, whether that is their morning routines, their favorite books, et cetera, et cetera. And this episode is a fun one because we are going to focus on how to use games to get more done with less stress among many other things. And my guest is none other than Jane McGonigal, PhD,

one of my favorite peeps. Jane is a senior researcher at the Institute for the Future and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Reality is Broken. Subtitle, Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Her work has been featured in The Economist, Wired, The New York Times, on and on. She has been called one of the top 10 innovators to watch by Businessweek and one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company. Her TED Talks on games have been viewed more than 10 million times. She knows of what she speaks. And in this conversation, we dig into everything from recovering from head trauma to how you can use Candy Crush Saga to lose weight. And if that's not enough, we talk about how to use Tetris to prevent PTSD or perhaps Call of Duty to increase empathy.

And there are many other options. It's a very, very cool discussion with a lot of science underlying all of it. Her latest book is super better. And I would like to ask you guys a favor. I got an advanced copy. I've really been enjoying it and testing it. And I want to ask you to go buy a copy of this book. So super better. It's on Amazon. Check it out. But what is the premise? Super better offers a revolutionary and science based approach for getting stronger, happier, and more resilient. Like I said, I've been testing it myself and it works. Not only am I feeling better, and that's typically a sort of a morning issue or a late at night issue, but I'm having more fun in the process. And as adults, I think we often lose track of play. My hope is that this

episode will help you to reclaim it. It's not frivolous. It can help you get a lot more done with less stress. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Jane McGonigal. watched your growth and propagation of all these ideas that I hope we'll have a chance to explore in this conversation, but I missed quite a lot. And we'll get to, for instance, just the head trauma I didn't know anything about. But before we get to the serious stuff, tell me about your dogs and the names of your dogs. Well, I have two Shetland sheepdogs and their names actually reflect a pretty good evolution of my sort of work and interest in game design. So my oldest dog, Meche, a girl, is named after my favorite video game character from Grim Fandango. And my new puppy, Sanga, who's only two, is named after my favorite tennis player.

And I think people ask me about games I'm playing, and I'm actually playing more tennis than video games these days. So when somebody asks you, for those people listening who are not familiar with your work, what do you do? How do you answer that? I usually lie, actually, because... Like George Costanza style? Oh, yeah. I mean, I've told I've been in like on an airplane. Someone asked me what I do. And I tell them I'm a

cab driver. And they're like, Why are you flying to China and business class? I'll say, Oh, I'm getting an award for being a really innovative cab driver. I mean, I yeah, it's hard to because it's hard to explain to people. Well, I research games and I design games and I try to design games to help people be happier and healthier and save the world. And then you spend the whole eight-hour flight answering questions about it. And, well, instead of an eight-hour flight, we're going to have a long podcast about all of this. So I'm afraid you can't dodge me with the taxi driver gambit this time around. But am I correct in saying that you were the first person to earn a PhD studying the psychological strengths of gamers? And how they can apply them to real life. So I was the first person to really take seriously the idea that people who, you know, spend an hour a day or more playing particularly video games might have some unique with this because I'm a fan of your writing and

was also an early reader of your first book. But could you give some examples of what types of real world problems can be either addressed partially or solved potentially by gamers? Sure. Well, I've been working with the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto for, oh gosh, eight, nine years now. And one of my favorite kinds of games to create is future forecasting games. So to invite ordinary people to try to predict their own futures. And then when you get enough people predicting their own futures, you can learn some really interesting trends. It's sort of like a collective intelligence project where you might not can very accurately predict what you would do,

how you would get to work, how you would get your kids to school, what you would cook. And we take all that information and aggregate it to understand how the world might react to different future scenarios. That's my kind of game. So now this is very interesting. I mean, I know that for instance, and you could probably elaborate on this, but whether you're looking at, say, protein folding, right? You could use excess processing power from gaming units to sort of collectively handle a lot of very gnarly computation, right? But in this particular case, are you getting pinged by hedge fund managers and people like that who want to try to develop investment theses around those types of scenarios? Oh, sure. Yeah. I was the first game designer to be invited to give a keynote at Davos, right? So there are definitely powerful people interested in these, although I'm happy to say that my work at the Institute for the Future, it's a nonprofit organization.

And we're mostly trying to help the world survive environmental catastrophe and pandemics and things like that. So I have been used more for global good than individual profits so far. Well, I, and I suppose though, there, there could be an interesting conversation about how you can utilize both, right. Uh, or make them in some, in some, in some respect, a virtuous cycle. So if you have people who are incentivized, right, to help develop games that drive their, perhaps, their own benefit, but at the same time, they're too far off topic immediately. Could you please describe to folks, and this is as much to satisfy my curiosity as anything else, but the concussion. So I am ashamed to say I knew nothing about this, but could you describe for people what happened and sort of what what happened after that incident sure well you know while it was happening not a lot of people knew i actually tried to hide it for a long time because i was so impacted by the concussion that i was afraid i would never be able to work again you know i was afraid i'd never be able to speak publicly because I couldn't remember things long enough to, to put together a talk. I was in the middle

of writing my first book and I thought, my God, I'm never going to finish my book. My publisher is never going to get, I mean, I was, you know, I was not, um, screaming from the rooftops that, uh, that I was having so many problems, but, uh, it was, it was the summer of 2009, and it was just an ordinary day, rushing around my apartment and wound up hitting my head on an open cabinet door. Did you step up? Did you stand up quickly, hinge at the hip and whack your head? Or how did you hit your head? I did. And sometimes people ask me if this was a sports injury. And I say yes, kind of, because I am a runner, a marathon runner. And so I have very strong quads. And I was in such a hurry. I just used the full force of my quads to power up.

And it was crazy. I mean, literally, it was out of a movie. My husband was joking around, oh, who's the president? And the only thing I could remember was that it out of a movie. My husband was like joking around. Oh, you know, who's the president? And the only thing I could remember was that it wasn't George Bush. I'm like, I know it's not George Bush, but I couldn't I couldn't even remember who the president was. That's when I knew, OK, this is this is bad. And it was really bad. So a lot of concussions heal within a week. But after the first month, I was still completely concussed. I mean, all day, every day, nauseous, vertigo, couldn't remember people's names, lost everything. I would put something down and never find it again. And I couldn't even really get out of bed.

I couldn't talk to people. It was a disaster. And my current work, my new book, my new game, the clinical trial I'm running, all of that comes out of my attempt to use game design to fix my brain. And you did a great job of hiding it for those people who were not interacting with you on a daily basis, because we had quite a bit of interaction for Reality is Broken. Uh, and while you were finishing that, so this was happening at the same time that we were interacting.

So that would be fun to dig up the emails and see, see if they read like haikus. Right. Uh, wow. You know, I, um,

I had a very similar experience last year with Lyme disease where I tried to keep it under wraps, but with, with respect to the concussion, can you describe then what followed? I mean, because you, you had some very dark periods and I just love to hear how this work that you're doing now, at least some of it, evolved out of that concussion. Sure. So, by the way, I'm like the world's expert on concussions now because I've learned every bit of research that has ever been done. So one of the things I learned is that there is a 30-day window for recovering from concussion. Most people recover within 30 days. And if you miss that window, then they tell you that the next window is three months. And then if you miss that window,

if you're still having all these symptoms, then it's likely to be a year. And if you're still totally symptomatic in a year, then you may have the symptoms forever. Now, that was something I learned on day 34 of my concussion when my doctor told me, oh, you know, you sort of missed the first window of recovery of 30 days. So this could drag out for three months. And at that point, you know, you have to imagine I couldn't do anything. I mean, you're basically on bed rest, but you can't I couldn't watch TV unless know, TV, unless it was episodes I'd seen before, because I would get really confused by the plot. Like I remember watching an episode of TV and just like, who are these characters? I can't keep it straight. So you can't do anything. You can't

go running. You're not you can't drink coffee because it aggravates the symptoms. So I was more depressed than I'd ever been in my life. I was super anxious that I would never work again. And you know, my husband had just been laid off from his job. So the only upside of that was that he was able to stay at home and care for me. But the downside being neither one of us was working. And so I was just, I mean, it's a total mess. And sometime in that first, you know, 30 days, I also, to make things even more dramatic and awful, started to have suicidal ideation, which, you know, just meant that I was sort of hearing these voices in my head. You want to, you should kill yourself. You're never going to get better. You're going to be

a burden to your family. This, you know, every day is going to be this awful for the rest of your life. Just get out now. And I did not know at the time, but I found out later, that this is actually really common with traumatic brain injuries, that it happens to one in three people who, even just from a mild concussion, one in three people will have suicidal thoughts. Which, first of all, we should tell everybody. Because when it starts to happen to you, it's, it's such a relief to know that it's not your brain actually wanting to die. Right. That it's just, it's just the neurochemistry of the brain. Your dopamine levels are, I mean, zero out. You literally, your brain cannot imagine any positive outcomes in the future. You have no access to dopamine. And so literally it is impossible to imagine anything good ever happening again while the brain's trying to heal. So this is where I

went. And I was basically worried that I was going to kill myself. And then my doctor was like, oh yeah, and you've missed the window of recovery here. So, you know, good luck for another three months. And if, you know, and maybe you'll be like this forever. So that, that was, that was where things went. That was, that was rock bottom. And how did you dig yourself out of that? I mean, what were the conversations or interactions that allowed you to get out of that hole? Because there are people who don't get out of it, right? And like you said, it's important to have these conversations so that people can view it as a collective symptom and not a personal, singular, individualized flaw. Exactly.

But how did you start turning the corner? What was it? Well, there were two key things going on that summer that really helped me. So the first was I had been writing my book, the first book book reality's broken uh which was all about how games make us happy and there's happiness engines and i thought well shit this is this i should really really really test these series out you know take this really seriously because if anything could jump start my brain into being happy even though dopamine was zeroed jumpstart my brain into being happy, even though dopamine was zeroed out and my brain was telling me I wanted to die. Well, games should be able to do it. Um, the other thing that was going on that summer was

I was watching, uh, rewatching the entire Buffy the vampire slayer series. You just earned so much dork cred. But, uh, cause because I knew all the the episodes so well so it wasn't taxing to my brain so um so i was watching buffy and i just decided you know i'm gonna try to turn this recovery process into more of a game because i know games make us more optimistic and motivated and and it's you know it's easier to ask people for help when we're playing a game uh and so i decided to just invent this game called Jane the Concussion Slayer. And I was going to be like Buffy the Vampire Slayer who did not choose to be the slayer.

Right. Fate just thrusted upon her and she had to just step up to the heroic occasion. And I was going to step up to my own heroic occasion and treat all of these symptoms like demons and vampires and just be a badass. That, that was a, that, and that was the start of a game that I played for the rest of the year. And, uh, that now half a million people have played and that we just ran a big clinical trial on. So, um, it's been, and that was, it's been what, almost six years that, that kind of crazy idea has been developing into something, you know, much, much, much bigger now. And I feel like Rip Van Winkle, I'm so embarrassed that we haven't talked about this before I got an early copy of the new book, which by the way, I should just say that's super

better that I get sent a lot of books and my assistant sees all of these books. And this is the first time that she said to me, uh, when you're finished with that book, I'd like you to give it to me. So, uh, very,

very, very fascinating. And I'm, I'm already, uh, into the book, which is saying a lot because it's, uh, it's one, uh, you know, I get 20, 30 books a week and this is the one that I'm already into the book, which is saying a lot because it's one, I get 20, 30 books a week, and this is the one that I'm focusing on right now.

And it's partially because I want to fix my own problems, right? And in reading the introduction, you talk about being gameful. And I'd love for you to talk about that. And then also just talk about the first incarnation of the game as you played it for yourself. Sure. Well, I am excited you want to talk about what it means to be gameful because I feel like this is a really good opportunity to kind of set the record straight about something that makes me crazy, which is the topic of gamification. Ah, yes.

Uh, you know, the idea that you can just give people points for doing stuff and that's going to motivate them and give them achievement badges and that's going to make them feel proud. And it's like a very simplistic notion of motivation and reward. And I don't do it. Um,

even though like if you look up gamification on Wikipedia, it's like Jane McGonigal patron. No, I've never. Did you see that word in my book? No, I don't do it. I like to think that I like when I get motivational speaker, and I'm like, Oh, my God, I've got to live with that one forever. So this book is really about something totally different, which is the gameful mindset, which is a way of approaching obstacles and stress that most of us naturally adopt when we play games, when we play sports or we're doing puzzles or board games, card games, video games. Almost every single person on this planet and throughout history has been able to adopt a very powerful mindset that makes us better able to learn from our mistakes, more determined in the face of obstacles, better

able to amass resources from other people, build allies and all these really wonderful things that help us solve problems. But few of us use that same mindset in everyday life. We only use it in games. And so that's what I've been researching since my brain healed, took about a year. That's been the new research topic that I've been obsessed with, which is how do we help people take all the benefits of a gameful mindset, which mean you're more creative, you're less likely to give up, you've got better social support, you know, more curiosity, more optimism, all these wonderful things. How do we bring that into the real world? And it doesn't necessarily mean gamifying anything. As it turns out, it's the most important thing you can do to really access your gameful

mindset is to play games, any games that you like, and then remember to call on those same strengths in real life. So how did you do that then initially when digging yourself out of this hole? And I think it's also important. I think's also important. Um, I think a lot of people listening are like, well, like they're imagining sitting in front of a screen playing Zelda or a first person shooter game or something like that. But what did, what did you do concretely for yourself in, in, in the beginning? And then how has that evolved? Right. I mean, it really wasn't even a game so much as it was a process for being gameful in everyday life. So, you know, the first thing I did was adopt this secret identity, right?

Jane the Concussion Slayer. And the idea behind that is it was just like an avatar for real life. You know, when we have avatars in video games, we're really focused on, you know, what are they good at? What are their strengths? How can I level up those strengths? What are their special secret weapons? How do they use them? We're very focused on strengths and the skill sets. And so I wanted to start focusing on, you know, what are my strengths and skill sets, even though I feel completely hopeless and helpless and like I can't do a single thing right to adopt that that kind of

avatar for everyday life. And it was not a digital avatar on a screen. It was literally me just telling people, I'm Jane the Concussion Slayer. And as it turns out, now that I've done all this research, literally just talking about yourself in the third person with a focus on your strengths is this incredible kind of brain hack that, I mean, it changes so much in terms of anxiety and

depression. So that was the first thing that I did. So this sort of avatar. So when you would go like get a cup of tea at Starbucks, and they're like, what's your name, miss? No, but but but is this something that who would you use that name with? You know, I first started just with my closest inner circle. You know, I called my sister, my twin sister, Kelly, who is a psychology professor at Stanford University, by the way. So I got a lot of good tips from her. And, you know, I'm like, oh, I'm playing this game to heal my brain. I want you to play it with me.

I'm going to be Jane the Concussion Slayer. And I want you to be my watcher. So I actually adopted the mythology from the Buffy series to give everybody of my life like a particular ally role to play. So, you know, if you remember Buffy, her watcher, Giles, he would oversee her training. So my sister's job was to give me one thing to do every day, like a little quest or mission. And then she would call me the next day to see how I did. And that was actually amazing because i had not really done anything successfully until she started giving me missions stupid things like um okay can you see out the window from the bed that you're not able to get out of yes okay i

want you to look out the window and uh find one interesting thing like try to see one interesting thing and tell me about it tomorrow you know when we talk like spot something kind of crazy outside your window. Um, and then, then I'm able to have a sense of purpose for the day. Like I'm lying in bed with nothing to do, but I have a, I have a goal now I have a mission. Um, and it turns out, I learned from all my research later that having a clear goal and being able to anticipate succeeding in that goal, that's one of the fastest ways to get the dopamine back cycling through your brain, which is, which is key to reversing depression. Um, so, uh, so even just being given a little tiny quest, it's like, you know, it's like a,

it's like a role playing game, like world of Warcraft. Here's, here's somebody who comes up to you and says, I have a quest for you. Do you accept it? And you, and you agree to do it. Um, that's like, that's also like a brain hack where you're just spiking those dopamine levels and learning to anticipate success again. Well, I've been thinking a lot about resource allocation. That's the most boring way I could possibly put it. But I've been thinking about how people allocate different currencies, right? Time, income, and so on. And looking at the difference, for instance, between buying possessions or experiences. And the data very strongly support the psychological superiority of buying experiences, generally speaking, because the value of a purchase decreases very quickly. I mean, it's like driving a new car off the lot and suddenly it's depreciated 30%.

But when you plan, and I experienced this last year for myself, when you plan, let's say, a trip six months from now, you have those six months of anticipation. And I recently took my family on our first real family outing in many, many, many years. And we went to Iceland, but it was something that we planned for Christmas and New Year's. And we had a good five or six months to look forward to it. It just made all of the bumps along the way seem minor and very easily overcome. So putting that, and it just gave us some North Star to look towards when the going got rough, right? So what other aspects or what other features did you build into your life?

So you had your sister. Right. So secret identity, you have allies that you recruit, and then you have these quests that your allies give you. We also collected and activated power-ups. So in this system, power-ups are anything that give you a quick burst of a positive emotion. Any feeling at all. It could be pleasure. It could be, you know, laughter. It could be delight, whatever. And so I started collecting, you know, like cuddling with my dog for 10 minutes. What would be a power-up or listening to a powerful song that made me feel powerful or eating walnuts because that was supposed to be good for brain healing.

And so just trying to identify things you could do in just like a minute or two to create a positive experience, which, you know, having a traumatic brain injury is kind of an extreme example of needing power upsups because you otherwise literally you just lie there in a state of you know abject you know just boredom or frustration but making sure that you have these tiny moments of positive emotions because as i've learned now in all my research happiness and success and a good health can coexist with all kinds of negative emotions. And you don't actually have to get rid of your negative emotions to be really successful and thriving. You just have to balance them out with positive emotions. So the most happy and successful people actually have more negative emotions than people who are depressed or anxious or struggling.

They just manage to balance them out with even more positive emotions. So these power-ups are just a way to kind of game the math. Every time you feel something really bad, you try to do a couple quick things that will make you feel happy. Right. To offset it, to tilt the balance in your favor. And how is that? What is the current game look like when you have people, for instance, seeing measurable improvements within two weeks and even bigger improvements between four to six weeks and you have hundreds of thousands of people who have played? What is the current state of that game or the format? So there's a website and there's an app and it's, again,

it's not a video game. It's like a life management tool where we walk you through the process of, hey, do you think you might have a secret identity? Here are some ways that you can investigate it. We have you think about who your heroes are, your favorite fictional characters are, what your strengths are until you are able to craft one. We ask you to collect power-ups. We find out more about you and we say, oh, you're trying to lose weight. Okay, here are 10 power-ups that we validated to be really helpful for other players. Or here are 10 bad guys that we know that people who are struggling with anxiety that also struggle with and strategies

for for wrestling with them so we have bad guys also and so we just kind of walk you through the process of looking at your life as if it were a game so it's almost like you're the game designer you craft your secret identity you pick your power ups and define your bad guys and you eventually create your own quests and get the help of your own allies who you invite. And we just sort of teach you the process of thinking and living like a game designer by offering you, here's some sample power-ups and bad guys and quests to get started. And let's talk about, I mean, I'm going to come back to the power-ups because I think for those people who haven't played games, it might be easy to dismiss these things as childish,

but I did some personal experimentation today, which was pretty fun with some of your exercises. But let's talk about some games that people might be familiar with. For instance, Candy Crush Saga. Yes. And so I've read you, or I've noticed that Candy Crush Saga has been talked about as being used to lose weight in some cases.

And I wanted to just hear you elaborate on that. So this is amazing. There are so many games now that people are playing every day and have no idea that they're powerful, life-changing tools. So Candy Crush Saga has only half a billion people have played this game. And like 0.0000001% of them know that there have been these clinical studies showing that a game like Candy Crush Saga can reduce cravings for things like food or cigarettes by 25%, which sounds like not a lot, but it's actually been shown to be enough of a reduction of the craving that you can make a better choice. So this sort of gives your willpower a fighting chance.

And the way it works is the game is so visually intensive, right? So a game like Candy Crush Saga or Bejeweled or Tetris, the kind of games where when you walk away, you see these sort of visual flashbacks, you see the blocks falling, or you see the pieces swapping. They occupy the visual processing center of your brain so that you cannot imagine the thing that you're craving. And it turns out that cravings are very visual.

Anyone who's ever had a craving knows you imagine what you want. And the more that you see it in your mind's eye, the more irresistible the craving is. So it turns out that you can just get your brain to stop picturing it and obsess it with some other visual process. You can block cravings, not just while you're playing, but afterwards, because these games have been shown to create this kind of visual flashbacks. Your brain thinks it still needs to keep working on this problem because you were so focused on it. So your brain is going to keep working on this visual process. And even hours after you've walked away from the game, it can last three, four hours. You've played just for 10 minutes, but your brain is no longer obsessing over the thing

that you were craving. It's like, that's fascinating. There are like so many studies like this. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book. And you, Tim, you actually inspired me because when, you know, when I read the four hour body and you're like, people, there's all this amazing science and you should be experimenting with it in your own life. And, you know, that's, that's kind of where game research in your own life. And, you know, that's, that's kind of where game research is now too. It's, you know, people still have a little bit of skepticism and, and rightly so, because, you know, we haven't tested the Candy Crush Saga diet over 10 years with, you know, 10,000 people, but it's so easy to test in your own life.

And with no downside, most of these games are completely free to play. And so I'm just like, wow, people should be experimenting with this in their own lives because studies – there are – I think this book cites a thousand peer-reviewed scientific studies. So there is a lot of research. We just need to help people get their hands on it. So – well, thank you for the far body, uh, uh, kind words. I appreciate that. I mean, the, uh, I, I, I sometimes push it so far that, uh, you know, I hope it serves as a, uh, a cautionary tale to others, but, uh, you know, I'm like, let me be the guy who's sort of getting himself

perfused in any number of ways so that you don't have to be that person. But the Candy Crush Saga diet, let's talk about that. Or let's just, let's say you know you smoke when you go out and drink. And if the effects last like three to four hours, does that mean that a potential prescription would be to play Candy Crush Saga for say 15 minutes before you head out for Friday night? I mean, is that the way that it might be used as an intervention? Yeah, absolutely. And that is a recurring finding in a lot of these studies is that a very short dose of play can provide this kind of, uh, these preventative benefits for hours, or even in one of the studies I write about in the book, two hours of gameplay

change the player's behavior for three months afterwards. Um, yes. I don't know if you've gotten to the chapter yet about the cancer patients who, um, were, were better able to take all their chemotherapy medicine because they played a video game. Have you? I have not gotten to that point. Which video game is this? The game is called Remission. Sounds cancer related.

Yeah. And there's actually a sequel that's out now too, which is awesome. And they're all free to play the Remission game. So if you know anybody, anyone who's listening who has a friend or family member or is battling cancer, this game has been shown in clinical trials to improve the patient's, first of all, optimism and self-efficacy. They don't feel so powerless in the face of cancer, but also to increase the doses of chemotherapy that they're able to take when you're, if certain kinds of cancers like leukemia, you have to take these pills for two years,

three years at home, ongoing basis, with all these kinds of side effects. And almost more than a third of patients miss a significant number of doses because of the side effects or because it's really hard to never miss a pill on schedule over two to three years. But they know that more than 80 percent of cases where the cancer comes back is related to missed doses. So if you can get people to not miss any doses, you have dramatically improved their recovery outcomes. And then so this group called Hope Lab in Palo Alto created a game designed to basically, they didn't know what they were doing, but they basically hacked these patients' brains to change how they viewed themselves and how they viewed chemotherapy so that they started to view it as empowering rather than something that made them sick or

that they hated. And it was able to hack into their hippocampus and the caudate and thalamus, which we know are related to motivation and not giving up. And they know this because they did brain scans of the players and had them in fMRI machines and looking at their brains while they played the game. So they could see what was actually going on to change their behavior over a three month period. But the upshot is that, you know, when they measured their blood, could see what was actually going on to change their behavior over a three-month period. But the upshot is that when they measured their blood three months later, the cancer patients who had played remission for as little as two hours had 41% more chemotherapy medicine

in their bloodstream. And they had missed 18% or 19% fewer doses of antibiotics as well, which they use electronic pill cap monitors to measure. And that was over a three-month period, two hours of playing the video game. This is a big clinical trial they ran with dozens of hospitals around the United States. So it's amazing that these games exist. Um, and that I think, I think something like a quarter of a million cancer patients have, have been given access to these games now, but you kind of want every cancer patient to get access to them. Yeah. What's the downside?

Right. Exactly. That's the thing about games as treatment. There is extremely little risk of negative side effects or, uh or kind of opportunity costs. Because you can do a game alongside traditional therapy for depression or if you feel like you have some kind of pharmaceutical solution that you're pursuing. Games really add no downside and all upside. So let's talk about just a couple of other games. Tetris and Call of Duty. Can those be used in any particular way? Yeah. Tetris. Oh, by the way, it's so exciting because literally yesterday, a new study came out about Tetris that validates the studies that I write about in the book. And I was so excited because people have actually been a little bit skeptical about when I encourage

people to play Tetris to help prevent post-traumatic stress disorder, which I will now explain how that works. People are like, oh, that could be really dangerous to tell people to do that because what if they never see a therapist because they think they've cured themselves with Tetris, right? So of course, you always have to preface this by saying, if you're having problems, you should see a doctor or therapist. But it turns out that if you play Tetris within six hours of witnessing a traumatic event, they've only tested it on witnessing trauma rather than, you know, you yourself were traumatized directly. But if you play Tetris for 10 minutes after witnessing a trauma, it prevents flashbacks

and lowers symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder afterwards. And it's really actually very similar to how the Candy Crush Saka diet works in that- It's overriding your visual visualization. Exactly. Prevents your brain from kind of obsessing over what you saw. And what's amazing is this new study that just came out this week shows that if you miss that six hour window, because one of the reasons why people were skeptical was who's going to remember to play Tetris within six hours of a trauma. Even though I've been doing my best to kind of create public service announcements so people know, kind of like stop, drop, and roll if you catch on fire. You remember that? Stop, drop, and roll. Right. So I'm trying to like drill into people's heads, you know, play Tetris, don't replay the trauma, like play, don't replay. But people are like, nobody's going to remember after trauma to play. So now they have found out that you can actually wait 24 hours.

And if you re-stimulate the memory, you ask somebody to visualize the trauma for just a minute or two. So it's kind of fresh in their brain. Their brain is accessing those memories and dealing with them directly. And then you go play Tetris for 10 minutes. You can kind of, you're not erasing the memory. You're like overriding it. Well, it's interesting. So this is super critical detail.

You can still recall the experience. If you're asked questions, you can remember details of the experience. So it's not like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. You can still remember, but your brain is not forcing you to think about it when you don't want to. So it's voluntary recall only. And so this new study shows you can wait 24 hours, prime yourself by thinking about it, and then play Tetris for 10 minutes right afterwards. And then that reduces the flashbacks and PTSD symptoms as well. And they think, you know, if it can work after 24 hours, that this might be able to work with people who have been suffering for months or years with flashbacks now, too, which is amazing because it is literally the hardest to treat symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. And when people get flashbacks under control, their quality of life improves immeasurably. And Call of Duty? Call of Duty. There are like a million things that Call of Duty does really well. You've already covered some of that on a previous podcast. I know you're

talking about sort of cognitive enhancement benefits. With Adam Ghazali from UCSF. Who's amazing. And I love his work. He's a great guy. So we won't talk about cognitive enhancement. But Call of Duty can, well, the first thing it can do is it can really improve relationships with people if you play in the same room with them. If you can actually be physically in the same space with somebody playing with them. Because it dramatically increases mind-body synchronization. So what that means is if you're playing Call of Duty with someone in the same room,

you start to sync up with them at every possible level. Your breathing rates, you'll start to breathe in and out at the same pace. Your heart rates will synchronize. So your pulses are kind of equalized. Your facial expressions will start to mirror each other. Your body language will mirror each other. And your brains will actually start to show blood flow in the same region and the same tempo as each other. They call that mirror neuron effect.

And it actually happens in basically all video games. But the more intense, sort of high- speed, fast action, intense the game is, the more it happens. Because in order to do well in a game, whether you're competing against someone or collaborating with them on the same team, you have to be able to anticipate what they're going to do next, right? So that you can either cooperate and be effective or so that you can outmaneuver them and beat them. And that forces your brain to try to mirror what their brain is doing. And as soon as your brain starts to mirror each other, everything else starts to mirror each other.

And it turns out this is like the building block for compassion and love. So basically you love people more when you play Call of Duty with them, but only if you're in the same physical space. Yes. So something, which we'd spend. I mean, most gamers are, you know, playing with people remotely and a distance. But if you can get in the same room, that has this really magnificent benefit. So I'm going to I'm going to take a a digression into what might be an urban myth or it's not really an urban myth.

Old wives tale, also not totally appropriate, but you have an identical twin. Is that right? Yes. Do you, have you, the two of you experienced anything that's kind of like spooky action at a distance? And you must be sick of answering this type of question, but I'm really curious. Well, you see, now you're going to like, I have to, you know, I'm really into science. So now I will say something that will sound like, oh, you know, mystical, spiritual. Can I add a caveat just to make it easier? Yeah. I believe a bunch of stuff that seems quackier than the quackiest of quack. I mean,

but it's from an empirical firsthand experience. And just because we can't explain it doesn't mean we won't be able to explain it. Yeah. No, I think there's actually probably some, you know, the,

in physics, they talk about these, uh, like you can have the twin effect, like protons will be separated, but then still be able to communicate at a distance, like, you know, a billion light years away from be able to communicate at a distance, like, you know,

a billion light years away from each other in the galaxy. So maybe the fact that we were once the same egg, we are identical twins, you know, and we maybe, maybe we have some weird spooky twin effect. So, yeah,

I call it twinfection because it only works if, if something really horrible is happening to my sister. So I will, like, I will, it's almost like I'm having a heart attack. I feel like I'm going to throw up. I can't breathe. I feel like I'm being attacked. It just, it happened a couple years ago during a really emotionally traumatic time. This is the most recent.

It doesn't happen all the time. It really only happens when something truly horrible is going on. And i was like i was at a i was at a store in los angeles and i like fell to the floor in the dressing room like what's going on and then literally two minutes later you know my sister called me sobbing like the worst pain i'd ever heard her in. Um, it was, uh, she was dealing with a death in the family and I was like, okay, well that explains what just happened because, uh, you know, we were,

I was having a twin infection. Wow. And you, you're, you have a pretty twin rich life at the moment. I do. I have little twin babies. I have my own little twin girls.

And are they identical or fraternal? They're fraternal. So it'll be a totally different experience because I think having someone with the same DNA, it feels like your whole life is an experiment. Whenever she does anything amazing, I'm like, why am I not doing that? We're like the same person. I should be able to do that too. I think fraternal, it's less pressure, I think. Less pressure, but there's still something there. I have relatives who are fraternal twins. There's still some unusual connection there. But I don't want to take us too far off the reservation here, but I am fascinated by this stuff. And partially, I, I was partially, you know, I was reading the, at the beginning of

the book, the new book, the Superveter book, and there were a couple of things that jumped out at me. The first was, in effect, let me just find it here. There's a line that reads, but even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering. And I think this is a really important concept because I'm not sure if this is from the military or elsewhere, but I've heard pain is mandatory, suffering is optional. Right. Or pain is inevitable, suffering is optional, which is a Buddhist saying, actually. Oh, well, there we go. Maybe. The Buddhist military.

From the Buddhist special operations forces. So I think this is really important because like you said, it's not necessarily about eradicating all negative experiences, which is not possible. But about increasing, if you have two bank accounts, one of negative experiences and one of positive, you just want to make sure that the balance in the positive is higher than in the negative. Could you talk a little bit about post-traumatic growth? Sure. Yeah. So the idea of a gameful mindset is that it's exactly that, that you look at pain as inevitable, but suffering is optional. Because if you think about when you play games, you're always trying to suffer when you play games. Games are voluntary suffering. You think about golf. If in real life your goal were to get a small ball in a small hole, you would just walk

up to the hole and you would put the ball in it and you would be happy with the outcome. But you volunteer to suffer by standing really far away from the hole, which is a stupid way to achieve the goal. And then you use like the stick to try to aim the ball, which is also pretty inconvenient. Um, the, every game we play is like Scrabble the same way, you know, you don't get unlimited letters. You only get the seven letters and we're going to, you can't even pick them yourself. So it's like, it's, it's voluntary suffering. Things are harder than they should be. And that's what unleashes the creativity and the curiosity and the optimism and the recruitment of friends and resources. So the gainful mindset is really about how do you look for voluntary obstacles in real life?

How do you look at things that you are currently experiencing as suffering as instead a way to get stronger or happier? And then that's where the idea of post-traumatic growth comes in, which is not all that new field of research now. There's probably a decade's worth of research now showing that many people who undergo a traumatic experience in addition to suffering, and by the way, post-traumatic growth is not the opposite of post-traumatic stress disorder. That's a misconception that many people sort of stumble onto. Most people with post-traumatic growth first experience post-traumatic stress disorder. So just because you have one doesn't mean you can't ultimately wind up with growth. And it's a process where by wrestling with these really

difficult things, you get to know yourself better. So at the end of post-traumatic growth, you feel like you understand your strengths better. You feel like your friends and family understand you better. You feel like you know your priorities in life better and you have more courage to make decisions so that you're putting your time and energy on the things that matter most to you. It's kind of similar in that way to a near-death experience. A lot of people have near-death experience. Suddenly they relish every day. They're not afraid to speak their minds. They really do put more time on their personal dreams or spending time with friends and family. So post-traumatic growth is the same way, but you only get it by really wrestling with this incredible, almost existential

crisis in your own life, which for me was the traumatic brain injury and not knowing whether I would ever work or really be myself again. But it can take the form of setting a goal like running a marathon or fill in the blank, right? Well, yeah. Now this is, so this is, there have been now a couple of books about post-traumatic growth, but I am happy to say that I have the first book on post-ecstatic growth, which is a concept that was originally discovered by this amazing researcher, Anne-Marie Ripkey at University of Pennsylvania.

Not a lot of people are familiar with her research, and I'm hoping this book will shine a spotlight on it. She found that many people seem to be exhibiting characteristics of post-traumatic growth by doing things that they had chosen for themselves and that were not traumatic experiences per se, although there might be trauma involved. So training for a marathon, becoming a parent for the first time, starting your own business, going on a kind of spiritual journey, like a physical Mecca somewhere, things that are really challenging that you will probably fail at at some times, make mistakes, struggle, and that really forced you to cultivate that same understanding of your own strengths, reaching out to friends and family, taking stock of your priorities. Um, it turns out you can have all the benefits of post-traumatic growth without the trauma, which is amazing.

Yes. And so that's, that's why, you know, the super better method is basically a roadmap to post-traumatic growth if you have an illness or injury or if your life is pretty good and you still want to get all these amazing benefits, helping you define for yourself a challenge that will be meaningful and difficult enough but also doable that you can get to these benefits. So I have one observation and then a, then a, then a question, the observation when I was reading this and also just listening to your description and talking about, for instance, the post-traumatic growth following a near death experience, um, which is of course not something that you, uh, it's dangerous to try to engineer near death experiences in the literal sense. Although a lot of people do, right? I mean, people pursue extreme sports and things like that because of that ability to really see so clearly what you want out of life. Well, it magnifies and really exaggerates a lot of the emotions and provides clarity in those

moments in some cases. And I couldn't help but think about a, the wife of a friend who used to work in hospice care and she would palliative care. She would sit with people in the, in the weeks and then moments before they passed on before they died. And she wanted, she, it turned out she was basically a Michael Jordan in that capacity. She was really good at guiding people through that, but, uh, she wanted to have the opportunity to help more people. And she ended up then working with psychedelics

to help people simulate that type of near-death experience. And we don't have to go far down this road, but I've had conversations, for instance, on the podcast with Jim Fadiman, who talks quite a lot about microdosing, but also the use of higher doses for these, what some people would call spiritual or mystical experiences. Yes. Well, this is actually very interesting because when I was at Berkeley doing my PhD, I actually wrote a research paper on the commonality of experience of people who are playing these certain types of games these kind of very collaborative collective intelligence games and these spiritual drug taking you know

like the psychonauts they call themselves right um berkeley's a good place to be yeah i've actually because because so that's something i've actually been interested in for you know a very long time because there is i i do think there is a spiritual element to a lot of gameplay in that sense of really wanting to open yourself up, particularly in games that require to be a part of a massive community and part of these kind of epic narratives like Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, there is definitely a spiritual element to that and a lot of spiritual benefits that come out of gameplay, which is maybe that I might, for my third book, I keep saying I want to write a book called Super Mario was a Buddhist. So maybe,

maybe, maybe we should come back to that for episode 800 of your podcast. Super Mario was in the Buddhist special ops as we've, as we mentioned earlier. Yeah, no, I actually, I actually got to go to a Buddhist conference and give a keynote with like

all of the most important Buddhists in the world were there and actually gave a keynote called Super Mario was a Buddhist, but it had a question mark after the title. That gives you an out. Yeah. If there's a crowd, mutiny in the crowd. Exactly. So games, let me, I'd like to ask a personal question.

And this is because I love playing games. I was a Dungeons and Dragons aficionado slash obsessive growing up. And that was my refuge. I mean, I was, I was a real kind of runt dork growing up and got beat up in elementary school and whatnot. So I used games as a way to escape, but also as a way to, to live this sort of virtual life that enabled me to, I think, in many ways, develop characteristics I wanted later in life. But when people ask me now, like, oh, are you a gamer? I don't know how to answer that because when I look at how slick the games are that have

been developed and how much money has gone into developing games that are as addictive as possible, I choose not to play those games out of fear. And the fear is the same fear I would have if I tried heroin. If someone asked me, like, have you tried heroin? I'm like, no, I haven't. I'm sure I'd love it, and that's the problem. Like, I don't want to become a heroin addict, and I worry about becoming one of these people who, say,

sinks 40 to 60 hours a week into World of Warcraft because I know I have that capacity. I know it's there. So what are ways that people can re promises of a gameful mindset and or a gameplay, but I don't want to go off the deep end and end up becoming completely consumed. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I can really relate to this by the way, you know, I, people ask me what my favorite games of all time are and I always have world of Warcraft in the top, you know ask me what my favorite games of all time are and i always have world of warcraft in the top you know three or four i think the best games of all time but i only played it for a very short time because i saw what my future was going to be like if i didn't get out quickly um and i was my husband and i our plan is you know when we're

retired and old and maybe unless they've invented life extension technology so that like at 150, we're running around like a 20-year-old. Assuming old age is similar to how it is today, I'm going to be totally addicted to these games when I'm like 90 because it'll have all these cognitive enhancing benefits and I'll be socially connected to other people. So I'm waiting to get addicted until it really is better than, you know, trying to live my old life. But there's lots of things you can do. And I should just say also as a sort of public service announcement benefit, one of the things that I write about in the book, there is a chapter, an entire chapter on what makes a difference between somebody who benefits from playing games and brings a gameful mindset to real life and somebody who develops some kind of addictive or pathological or compulsive gaming behavior. And there are two things that predict whether you will benefit and be gameful in real life or whether you will kind of get addicted and the rest of your life starts to suffer. So the two things that are predictive, one is really simple.

It's 21 hours a week. That is the tipping point. I've looked at all kinds of studies from people in the military to young elementary school students. 21 hours a week. When you go over that, we start to see suffering in other aspects of life, such as physical health, mood, your ability to do well at school or at work or other aspects of your life. So three hours a day, three hours a day, but you could, you could, you know, pile up on the weekend.

I mean, it doesn't have to be. Yeah. And so I always say, if you, if you feel like you're addicted or you have a family member who you fear is addicted, do not take the games away because as you learn about reading the book, games are very powerful. They help treat or prevent depression and anxiety. And if you take games away from somebody who's gaming 30, 40, 50, 60 hours a week, you're basically like taking them off in antidepressant without tapering. And we've seen a lot of people who, I mean, there's many

cases of people committing suicide, young people when their parents have taken away the games. And it's not just that they're upset or angry. It's that literally their brain has had this powerful antidepressant ripped away from them. So just go down to 20 hours a week. That is one piece of practical advice for people who are really dealing with addiction or compulsion. Do not give it up. Just get it down to 20 hours a week. And that's actually very manageable for most people, even people who feel like they love to play. They don't want to give up games. You can get it down to three hours a day. And so that is a practical tip. But the other thing that

predicts negative outcomes or you're just not getting the benefits of games in real life, is looking at games as escapists. So I was really interested to hear you say that, you know, you thought about games as escaping, but you also maybe thought about them as a way to build these kind of character strengths. So it turns out the number one predictor of who will suffer from gameplay is people who think that games are an escape from real life or a way to avoid thinking about or dealing with real problems. People who manage to bring the gameful mindset and all the benefits to games to their real lives are the people who identify benefits to gameplay and can talk about them and can identify them and can say, you know,

I'm not just playing Candy Crush or Call of Duty because I just can't deal. Like I just need to just shut everything off. They're the people who say, this is quality time, you know, for me and my brother. And when we play this game together, this is a real benefit to my life. Or, you know, I'm playing this game because I'm having really anxious thoughts and I want to shut them off. And I know if I play this game for 10 minutes, I can shut down. I'm not going to have a panic attack. So if you have a real purpose for how you play, that's when you start to build up the self-efficacy to use the gainful strengths in real life.

Now, that is not. So you're asking a very practical question like, what should I do or what should I play? Literally 10 to 20 minutes a day. If you do 10 minutes every day or 20 minutes three times a week, that's what's been tested in clinical trials and randomized control studies to have powerful impacts, first and foremost, on depression and anxiety, improving your mood for social interactions, 10 minutes a day improves the number of people you have in your life who will help you with a real life problem. So I think of it as just, it's like, you know, I make time to do, you know, 10 pushups during every commercial of all the tennis that I watch on TV. So you should think about it that way. Like, how do you squeeze in a little bit of gameplay into your downtime? That was what I would recommend. doesn't want to get sucked into the vortex. It feels like I should probably stay away

from world building games in that case and maybe go with the more transactional kind of Tetris type of game or something that allows me a closed short session. But what are some of your favorite games? What are kind of on your hits list? And then what might be games that I could use for those 10 to 20 minutes a day? Yeah. And what should my intention be going into them? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, um, I'll just, I'll just, I mean, we'll, we won't do like an all time favorite games. We'll just talk about, because otherwise like I'd be like dance, dance revolution, totally on my top 10 all time, but you nobody plays it anymore um but uh okay so uh tetris is is definitely i mean everybody should have that on their phone because it treats so many different conditions from anxiety to you know post my stress disorder to you know building up your willpower so um tetris everybody should haveris. Games that other people you know are playing is really, really good. And so this changes depending on the time. So a lot of people are playing Clash of Clans right now or Candy Crush Saga or Words with Friends. You should just check

out what people that you know are playing because a lot of the benefits that have been documented for games comes just from having these sort of micro conversations with friends and family about the same game that you're playing or actually playing in game with them. So any of those three games would be good. I think Minecraft is really great, even though it's like the most popular game of all time for kids now. It's actually a really great resilience building game for grownups, you know, because if you're, you know, if you die, if you have your stuff blown up and you have to kind of start over again, it has the qualities of the kind of game that we know builds resilience, builds determination and willpower

that can benefit you in real life. So if you, I mean, by the way, if somebody has not played Minecraft, they've like missed out on one of the biggest cultural gifts, you know, of our generation. So that's me looking down at my feet right now. So I'll get on it.

Okay, so definitely do that. So that, because the next generation, that's like all all that's going to be their number one nostalgia point like all you're going to hear about 20 years from now are like people in their 20s and 30s talking about minecraft so at least expose yourself um and then i think puzzle games uh single player puzzle games uh or single player adventure games are really really good for provoking positive emotions. So Portal is something I always recommend to people. There's Portal and Portal 2. It's an incredibly challenging but hilarious puzzle game that even though the first one is single-player, you can play the second one co-op, which is really cool.

In fact, when I was playing Portal 2 with my husband, and we were also training for a half marathon at that time, we actually used our Portal skills to better navigate all the people that we were trying to run around and pass in the race. We would use the same gestural system that you use in the video game to communicate with each other how we were going to get around all these people and still then come back and run together. So I'll add Portal to that. So, yes, those are some good games to start with.

But really any game that you love, including, I mean, you could be playing Pandemic, the board game. You could be playing poker. I mean, you could be playing you've got some babies, you've got some dogs, you've got a husband, you have at least one or several jobs. What is your sort of weekly, let's just say this past week or next week, what does the workout schedule look like with the gaming? Like what is, where do you, where do you squeeze it in? What time of day? How many days a week? Yeah. Okay. Well, so first of all, uh, with two babies, like I literally cannot play anything on a console now because I only at best have one hand, like one thumb basically. So, uh, we're talking strictly games on my phone.

And so for me, Candy Scratch Saga is the best one to be playing now because both my parents-in-law play and they are helping us take care of our babies. So when they come over, I can give my father-in-law a baby to feed and I can take his phone and try to get him off a level that's, you know, cause I'm like 400 levels ahead of him. So I can, you know, take his phone and help him get off the level. And now he's happy cause he's ahead of level and I'm happy cause he's feeding the baby. Um, so, so can't, uh, for me, that's actually really important. Like using games as a, as a cultural touchstone or, or piece of, you know, a common experience with other people. And my mom's also playing. And so that's really helpful. And then I also, you know, I play tennis with my husband once a week, which is really good for me because if I lose 6-0-6-1, that is an amazing match for me.

Like I won one game. He's, you know, he's's six foot three he's a dude he's like it's i get clobbered so is he just like a hundred mile an hour ring or that i don't know my numbers that might be slow i don't know but i mean that's a good sir no i mean is he just going to like bean you is he going for the kill or is i mean i finally just convinced him like three or four weeks ago to serve such that I could return. Like literally, it was ridiculous. But my only points were like if he double faulted. But that's a really good game for me that I play once a week because like I'm kind of killing it in other areas of my life.

You know, I feel like very successful in other areas of my life. And I think getting clobbered once a week in a game that I'm very bad at. I mean, I'll just think this. This is documented to be true. If you can take the clobbering and stay optimistic and still have positive emotions throughout that experience, it builds a lot of psychological resources that you will be able to draw on when it's on a game, but when it's real life. Yeah. So, okay. So I'm

getting clobbered in tennis once a week. So which, which, which day of the week, what time of day? I love the specifics. Like, so like how, how many times a week, how many days per week are you playing Candy Crush Saga? And then what day of the week on tennis yeah uh candy so candy crush is every day and uh you know uh what i would say i probably look at it you know twice a day um maybe in the morning i make sure to spin the wheel to get my free power up i might not play it but i'm like i don't want to forget to get because every day in candy crush you can get one free power but otherwise they charge you like you know 99 cents for it. So I make sure even like when I'm traveling and giving talks in other countries and have no time for anything, I always log in once a day and spin to get.

So I kind of like a stash of power ups for once. I'm on a really hard level. So I do that in the morning. And then later in the evening, I will do it. I find it's actually good for me before I go to sleep because I have one of those minds that will anxiously race about all the things that I have to do tomorrow. And so we know actually there's a, there's a set of quests and power ups and bad guys for insomnia in,

in super better. And so I know one of the tricks for that, one of the ways you battle the bad guy of, um, of the sort of ruminating on things you have to do tomorrow is to totally occupy your brain with something else for 10 minutes. So I find that to be a good kind of nightcap for me. That's a great idea. Maybe that's how I'll get my Tetris because I, I've used fiction for that, but sometimes I just don't have the concentration, uh,

exactly for fiction. Uh, and then the tennis is on tennis on Sunday afternoons. And, uh, yeah, that's when we get, we get our,

uh, his parents babysit for us and we go play. Yeah. So get it on the calendar. People listening, you can't just improvise your way through the entire week. It's very helpful to get on the calendar. Yeah. So get it on the calendar. People listening, you can't just improvise your way through the entire week. It's very helpful to get on the calendar. Yeah. Let me ask a handful of last questions. I know that, uh, I want to be respectful of your time and make sure that your, your kids aren't climbing up out the window sills or something. But, uh, when you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes

to mind and why? Oh my goodness. I've heard you ask that question to someone else too, and they were totally stumped too. I mean, I think, okay, wait, I was going to say Bill Gates, which first of all is very boring. And also it's a man. And I really want to answer a woman. So I'm going to, because that's something I spend a lot of time doing, like making sure that I don't accidentally talk only about successful men. Even in my book, like, you know, a lot of, I make sure I'm citing a lot of women scientists because it's oftentimes the first person we think of as a man because they're so often talked about more. So, OK, I like to say I think of Elizabeth Warren was actually the next name that came to mind, Senator Elizabeth Warren, because I think she is doing an amazing job of pushing back against powerful interests in this country and getting us to talk about making big changes to our financial system and our political system. And it's really hard for anybody to get any traction in this country today.

So that was who I thought of. And maybe that's actually, it might be wishful thinking because I would love to see her run for president. So maybe I'm using my futurist forecasting skills here to think that in 2024, she has just successfully been elected president. And that's why I thought of her as the most successful person I could think of. Cross your fingers, everybody. Nostradamus. In fact, speaking of successful women, there are a number of exercises in the beginning of Super Better. And I did actually go through these exercises, including the quests, I should say. So I actually did both of these. So I was in a coffee shop and one of them was, you know,

stand up and take three steps or make your hands into fists, hold them over your head as high as you can for five seconds. So I did both in this coffee shop. You're totally a gamer. And I pretended to be stretching because it turns out five seconds is pretty long. Yes, it is. But I love these comfort challenges. And there was the, for instance, the snapping of the fingers exactly 50 times. And these very, very small things looking out the window for certain periods of time and so on that I found really fun to do. Even as comfort challenges, I just enjoy anything that allows you to practice being uncomfortable. But how – so, all right.

The line that struck me was I've watched some amazing people complete the same four quests you're about to undertake, including Oprah Winfrey, legendary skateboarder and entrepreneur, Tony Hawk. Uh, and then it goes on. So how did, how did you get Oprah to do these exercises? Right. That was a long story. I actually, um, uh, I was, I was on tour with Oprah on her life class show, not actually doing anything on stage with her, but we created a game together called the Thank You Game, Oprah's Thank You Game. And it was a game designed to spread gratitude to as many people as possible because gratitude is contagious and has all these amazing life and health benefits. Um, and so, so I, I made a game for her, um, and, uh, and I'll somewhere along the way, I mean, I had gotten a phone call from people, uh, from her people who had, they'd stumbled across, um, some scientific research and then they saw my name associated with it.

And I mean, I just got very lucky that, very lucky that her and her team were kind of suddenly interested in games and gameful psychology. And it was the first time I met her. I'd had meetings with her team like a dozen times. And I was like in a conference room and she comes in and gives me a big hug and says, I love you, which was like having, I basically look at her as having like saved my life as a kid. I watched her every day after school and like, she really, I felt like it was going to therapy watching her show. She's amazing. She's really amazing.

Yeah. And I was like, I cannot, like literally her saying, I love you. I felt like I could have died on the spot and like my life would have had a full karmic circle. Like I was totally okay with that. But we just started talking about the power of games and I said, let me show you the game that I'm working on now. And I didn't know she was going to actually do it and play along and she did.

And it was freaking awesome. And that led into making the Oprah's Thank You game where we spread gratitude. I think it was like, how many people did we get to? It was like over 100 million people, which was pretty amazing. The Oprah effect. Yeah.

100 million people. Like, oh yeah, just another 100 million people. What do you want me to do? Incredible. What is the book that you've given most often as a gift? Or any books that you've given a lot as gifts? a professor of religious studies at New York University named James Kars. And it's basically a book about games, but then it turns out it's about the meaning of life. You don't know until the last page. It's like this big shock. It's like sixth sense. You're reading a book about games and then suddenly it's like- The red doorknob.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The last line of the book is is there is but one infinite game. And then you're like, Oh shit, it's life. Life is the infinite game. Um, and, uh, so that's it. And it's like a really easy, it's a tiny, tiny book. It's like practically a pocketbook. So anyone who's interested in philosophy, um, and looking at games as, as like the way of life, that's a really good one. Um, and then, uh, a book, um, uh, well, uh, it's, Suffering is Optional, actually. So it's by my favorite Buddhist teacher, Sherry Huber.

And so that is, I'm very inspired by Buddhist practices. both a way to arrive at a similar approach to life. And so that's another good book. What was her last name? Huber, H-U-B-E-R. Awesome. She has an amazing podcast too, by the way. So if people who love your podcast, they can listen to her podcast too. Just interviewed, I'm not sure if you know the

name, Tara Brock, but she's an amazing teacher and focuses on mindfulness and Buddhist teachings and so on. Just fantastic. And I think that this has been a really interesting week for me because it's tying together a bunch of seemingly disparate activities. So you have the say Buddhist philosophy and teaching, then you have stoic philosophy, of course, which I've read a ton of and I'm just a huge fan of whether it's Seneca or Marcus Aurelius or others.

And then you have the gameplay and they, they seem, they serve very similar. They can help you achieve very similar outcomes. It's very fascinating. Do you have a favorite documentary, any favorite documentaries? Well, I have to plug a documentary called Gamers, which was made in 2003, I think. And it was the first full-length feature documentary about competitive video game players. At the time, it was the Cyber Athlete Professional League, the CPL. Now, of course, you've got League of Legends finals. More people attended, bought a ticket and attended

League of Legends finals than the Stanley Cup finals this year. But this is from 2003, and it's available in its entirety on YouTube. So you can just watch it for free. And that was a fascinating documentary that I think as the years pass and competitive video gaming becomes even more

a part of our mainstream athletic lives, that that early look at it is pretty damn cool. Have you seen King of Kong? Of course. Okay. All right. All right. In the movie theater the day it came out. God, King of Kong. You want to talk about old school, mullet vengeance, retro video game competition. So amazing. So yeah, I will definitely check out Gamers. And for people who haven't seen King of Kong, it seems like a Spinal Tap sort of parody, like a mockumentary. It is such a hilarious, such a well-done documentary.

People take games seriously, which is one of the great paradoxes of play, right? It's only play if it's not serious, except then we take it incredibly seriously, which is good because that unlocks all of our gainful strengths. Just a few more questions. What purchase of less than $100 has most positively impacted your life in the last, say, six to 12 months? Oh my gosh. I would say, well, this is not going to be surprising at all, but I would say, well, this is so, I mean, this is not going to be surprising at all, but I would say a Bjorn carrier for the babies. So we live on a hill and every day we take the babies out for an hour long walk, half an hour, you know, trudging up this really steep hill and coming back down and being

able to leave the house and get some fresh air. And also a great workout because the babies are getting fatter every day. So it's like, just when you're getting really fit walking up the hill, the baby weighs another pound and you're, you know, so I would say my Bjorn carrier. And now is that like a strap that attaches said fat babies to you? Or is that? Yeah, it's like a harness that you it goes around your back and then the baby like kind of hugs your chest ah cool b y b j b j b j o r n yeah bjorn yeah it's it's uh you know the babies this is this is progressive resistance for moms it's kind of like the story of i think it's milo or Milo of Crotona, who every day had to pick up a baby bull calf and lift it over a fence. And then of course,

the story goes, as it became a larger and larger bull, he became the strongest man in the world. Yes. And this is such a great way to tie back to video games because one of the reasons why video games tend to be even better for your gameful mindset than other games is that they always get harder, right? There's progressive resistance adaptive, right? So you're,

it's like not like chess where it's very hard to find somebody who's just slightly better than you every single time you play. Um, this is video games are designed to be that kind of progressive resistance. So you're always playing at the edge of your ability, therefore always getting better. Oh, that's such an important point. I'm really glad you brought that up.

What morning rituals are important to you? I'm a terrible person, so I will confess. Okay, so there's a terrible person, so I will confess. Uh, like I, okay. So there's a neuroscience hack in here. So when I wake up, I basically like put on tennis, like, like today's, whatever the latest, like last 24 hour tennis matches are on TV. Like I'm constantly recording on the tennis channel or ESPN, the live tennis. Um, and, uh, and then I, I do email while I'm watching tennis and, um, I spend an inordinate amount of time watching tennis. Like when I started my

startup company for super better, I would like disappear for eight hours to go watch, you know, the French open live. Like that was just, you know, part of my, uh, that's, that's working with Jane is she will go disappear and watch tennis for, you know, eight hours a day for two to three week stretches. But but it's a good neuroscience hack because all is true for all professional sports. Every time you make a prediction about something, your brain increases the amount of dopamine that it has access to because it anticipates either success. You successfully predicted what would happen. So that's great. Or you'll learn from your mistakes. So you'll learn information that will make you have a better prediction next time. And every time you get a little boost of dopamine,

it's like taking amphetamines, right? So I like to start my day with watching attendance match because I will have a prediction about who I think will win. And then I will either be right or wrong. And I will either feel super awesome that I was right, or I will learn something about how somebody is playing right now and what their game is like right now. And, and I'll make a better prediction next time. And so it's like, it's like basically, you know, it's like a really strong cup of coffee or taking an amphetamine, um, giving my brain that kind of a boost, uh, every morning, but you can any, you know, any, if you have a sports team that you like, that's why people who are really into professional sports

are happier during the sports season than off-season. It's not just that they miss their favorite game. It's that their brain is constantly anticipating success for their favorite team, which is increasing dopamine. So I like tennis because they only have one month off all year. They play for 11 months. The season is incredibly long. You can get your fix more regularly. Now, I wasn't expecting to ask this question,

but now that you mentioned watching tennis, I love watching tennis, mesmerized by it. It's true for a handful of individual sports like gymnastics also, same story. Is there any, have any studies been conducted looking at the carryover benefits of observing gameplay as opposed to being involved in it yourself? Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. So because, but it only works if you know how to play the game yourself. And if you know how to play the game, you activate mirror neurons. So I have found if it's during Wimbledon or the French Open, it's a US Open. I've been watching literally eight hours a day for two weeks. I will go on the court that Sunday and play better because I know how to play tennis and my brain can physically embody. Like if I see somebody going for a point, my body, my brain understands what that feels like. And so it creates a mirror neuron effect. So it's practicing. So if you have never played the game or sport yourself, like watching gymnastics is not going to do a lot for you unless you have physically been on the mat or on the rings or the bars and you know what it feels

like. But if you know what it feels like, then your brain practices while you play and it actually is beneficial and that has been documented. So if you want to get the benefits of watching a sport, you should make sure you've played it enough times that your brain can follow along in that mirror neuron way. So that brings up all sorts of interesting ideas, such as, for instance, if you knew that, if I knew I was going to have a surgery that was going to take me out of commission from a sports standpoint for three to six months, I'm just making that up. If I didn't know how to play tennis, I could do like a three-day intensive or two-day intensive immersion course for tennis and then use watching tennis therapeutically when I'm laid out for the subsequent period of time. You are so good at this. I love the way your brain works.

Like that is such an awesome and extreme idea. And I really think you and I should write a book together sometime. We should take like all of that would be, that would be something new and interesting is you could take all of this research to that extreme, really life maximizing level in ways that I would never think about. So that is genius. Well, we need to hang out more. We need to hang out. I agree. The, just, I keep on saying a few more questions. I feel like five more minutes Turkish like that guy in Snatch.

But anyway, if you had a billboard you could put anywhere, it could say anything, what would it say and where would you put it? Oh, my God. Well, I would get a billboard that says, I mean, I really want to do a public service announcement about Tetris. You know, about how Tetris can prevent post-traumatic stress disorder. And I would put it, you know, I don't know where I would, you should put it in games, really. I should, because, you know, you can like buy advertising in video games so i i should have a i should have a billboard in in video games uh so that people who are open to this idea of games uh and playing them and benefiting from them because i i it really makes me agitated that there is so much good research that would have such profound i mean the difference between getting ptsd and not getting not getting PTSD and what that would have on your life is so freaking profound that I really feel like I would like to, I'd like

to get in people's faces about that. So, you know, 10 minutes of Tetris after a trauma, done. That's my billboard. I love it. And I mean, I want to play with Tetris. I grew up playing Tetris on the Game Boy, so it doesn't take a lot to twist my arm to get back into it. But I heard a phrase recently, which was a take on PTSD, but it was related to worrying about things. So having anxiety about what might happen. And it was called pre-traumatic stress disorder. And I wonder, I'll do some experimentation and report back to you, but I wonder if Tetris could have an inoculating effect

against experiencing trauma or even foreseeing trauma. Because you would imagine since that worrying is often a visualization, it might have the same type of kind of decoupling or coupling effect that minimizes the negative. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Well, as you get further in the book, you'll see.

Actually, it's Super Mario that's been tested for basically exactly that thing, to sort of prevent the predictive anxiety. Better than anti-anxiety medications. I need to play more games. That is clear. And it's such a nice day. I think I need to play more games. That is clear. And it's such a nice day. I think I want to go whack a tennis ball around. So if you could make one ask of the people listening or a recommendation, aside from,

of course, the book, and I will put everything in the show notes, but what ask or recommendation would you make of the people listening? I would encourage people to ask one person in their life, what is their favorite game? And it could be any kind of game, doesn't have to be a video game. And what it is that they think that game makes them good at, because one of the things that I found in my research is the best way to ensure that somebody starts to use their gameful strengths in real life is to talk about what games they play and what those games make them good at. So if we could have everybody ask one person that question, not only will you learn something really interesting about someone you care

about, but they will also benefit from now starting to think about their gameful strengths and then maybe how they might apply them in real life. Well, Jane, dear, you and I should get together and scheme like pinky in the brain to come up with some type of massive experiment that we can do. I love it. I love it. We should definitely make that happen. This is really fun. Jane, where can people find out everything about you and learn more about Super Better and also say hi to you on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever you might be active? Yeah, I'm super active on Twitter.

I'm AvantGame, A-V-A-N-T Game, but you just search for my name. My website's JaneMcGonigal.com, but I have another site that I think everybody who listens to you will like, which is showmethescience.com, where I word for it. Everything that I've said in the book, I have, I've literally a thousand studies online that you can click through to and read yourself so that you can be a geek like me. So show me the science, like show me the money. Show me the money. You just brought up all sorts of visuals for me. I'm seeing Cuba Gooding Jr. dance around with his shirt off. Play Tetris to block the imagery. Well, Jane, it's always so much fun to hang out virtually or in person. We need to hang out more. Everybody listening, check out Super Better, a revolutionary approach to getting stronger, happier, braver, and more resilient. I am stoked to go play some more yams. I'm going to do that

today and make it happen. And, uh, everybody who's listening show notes, links, everything will be at four hour work week.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out. So you'll be able to find links to everything. And Jane, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you. You're awesome. You're one of my heroes. So this is really amazing to get to do. Well, I feel the same about you. So we will, we will, we will go hatch some plans and everybody, thank you so much for listening. And until next time, game on. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic design related. I've used 99designs for everything from banner ads to book covers,

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