Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPSnacks: 4 Hacks for Better Brain Health

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

Is your brain’s health at the forefront of your daily routine? Today on YAP Snacks, Hala will talk about the importance of brain health while sharing tips and tricks from professionals that we’ve spoken to in previous episodes. Our brain is the control center of our body. Every thought, sight, and sound is processed by the brain and is the crux of our daily lives. Many assume that their brains are self-sufficient, but if not taken care of properly the brain can start to deteriorate as early as their mid-20s. If you now find yourself worried about your brain health, don’t worry! We put together 4 brain health hacks that you can implement right away! These hacks will not only give you a better understanding of your brain’s health but also the tools to improve it and make it better than before! If you want to learn how to improve your brain health today, give this YAP Snack a listen! Sponsored by - Indeed. Get a seventy-five dollar credit at indeed.com/YAP Jordan Harbinger. Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations   Social Media:   Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on ClubHouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. Hey everyone, you're listening to YAPSnax, a series of bite-sized content hosted by me, Halataha. Today we're going to be talking about brain health and why it is the keystone of our entire well-being. Did you know the American Heart Association says that the brain begins to show cognitive decline as a person enters their 20s? Yes, as young as your

20s, you can show cognitive decline. And failing brain health is actually considered a public health epidemic. So what is brain health exactly? Brain health can easily be described as how well someone is able to perform their daily activities. This in cases every aspect of our days, including problem solving, decision making, comprehension and learning, and even our social interactions. Our brain health is what allows us to balance all of these tasks with ease. You might have noticed that the older that you get, the more difficult these tasks become.

Most of the time, these changes are small and incremental, but over time, these changes begin to add up into large functional declines. If our brain health is such a vital part of our everyday life, how do we keep it running at 100%. The wonderful team at YAP has found four hacks to better your brain health, and we are excited to share them with you. So let's get into it.

Hack number one is daily maintenance. Brain health is directly correlated to the overall health of your body. The first things doctors recommend to their patients who are struggling with brain health is diet and exercise, but I tend to categorize those two under what I call daily maintenance. Let's start off with exercise for your body and your mind. Blood flow is a key takeaway when it comes to learning about a healthy brain. Blood transports oxygen and crucial nutrients to every cell in your body, along with flushing toxins from those cells. Your brain uses 20% of all oxygen in your blood. Yep, 20% of all the oxygen in your blood is used by your brain.

And a large part of that is directed to the hippocampus, the region of our brain that is used for memory. A study in 2017 found that individuals with higher fitness levels and a stronger hippocampus scored better tests involving memory. Now, I know that we all have heard about the benefits of exercise, but did you know there's an optimal way to exercise for brain health specifically. The best kind of exercise is when you're able to work your brain and body at the same time. Activities that involve coordination like ping pong and dancing.

In episode number 132, I talked with Dr. Daniel A. Men, one of America's leading psychiatrists and brain health experts about brain boosting habits and how participating in coordination heavy activities can actually work out our brains. It really quick I do want to talk about coordination and how coordination and dancing and doing things like playing ping pong can actually improve your brain and any other tips that you can give us in terms of things that I would have never known if I wasn't studying you that like dancing would be good for my brain.

What are some little things that we can pick up and start doing that can help improve ourselves that aren't so obvious? So, table tennis is the world's best brain game because you got to get your eyes hands and feet all working together while you think about the spin on the ball. Now, not beer pong. It's like dancing is amazing because it's a coordination exercise, but not if you're drinking while you're dancing. So the cerebellum in the back bottom part of the brain has half the brain's neurons. Sarah Bellam is Latin for a little brain. It's involved in coordination, but so much more

when we activate that with coordination exercises, people think better, they actually make better decisions. So being involved with coordination exercises on a regular basis is great for you. Yeah, I totally, I think just any physical activity. I can correlate from when I started becoming successful was when I started going to the gym like literally I feel like it changed my mind, it changed the way that I thought. Dr. Daniel Aiman and I also covered how diet plays a part in your brain health.

And then one of my friends published a study that said, is your weight goes up. This size of your brain goes down. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no. And that actually gave me the motivation to lose the 20 pounds I've been trying to lose for 30 years. Because I'm not ever doing anything purposefully to have a smaller brain. That's a brand violation for me. And then I looked at my own database,

because I have a group of normal people, healthy people. And I didn't sort of separate out the people who are overweight or obese from the people who are healthy weight. So I looked at that and being overweight significantly was associated with low blood flow to the front part of the brain. Things like focus and forethought and judgment and impulse control. And then I was doing a big NFL study at the time.

I looked at my NFL players who were overweight versus healthy weight, again, low blood flow. And then I coined a term called the dinosaur syndrome big body, little brain, you're going to become extinct. We need to get serious about this. And then last year I published a huge study on 35,000 scans and found there is basically a linear correlation as your weight goes up, the function of your brain goes down everywhere. And we're in trouble with 42% of us over, no, 42% of us obese in the United States, 72% of us overweight. This is the biggest brain drain in the history of the

United States. Plus, I have a mnemonic I like if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. If it's headed for trouble, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And we know what they are. And the pneumonia is called bright minds. Well, if you're overweight, you have six of them. Just be in overweight because the fat on your body, if you're overweight at lowers, blood flow. We just talked about that. It prematurely ages the brain. Bright minds stands for blood flow, retirement and aging, inflammation, genetics, head trauma, toxins, mental health, immunity, and infection issues, neuroharmoned deficiencies, diabetes

and sleep issues. Given that your brain is about 80% water, the first rule of brain nutrition is etiquette water to hydrate your brain. Even slight dehydration can raise stress hormones, which can damage your brain over time. Drink at least 84 ounces of water a day without artificial sweetener, sugar, caffeine, or alcohol. You may also want to restrict your calorie intake. Substantial research in animals and now in humans indicate that a calorie-restricted diet is helpful for brain and life longevity. Eating less helps you live longer. It controls weight, it decreases risk for heart disease, cancer, and stroke from obesity, and it triggers the production of nerve

growth factors which are helpful to the brain. Remember, even if we think we're only feeding our bodies, we are always also feeding our brain. Dr. Daniel Aiman recommends seven superfoods for brain health, including hemp seeds, turmeric, briseln nuts, seaweed, pea protein, sardines, and gluten-free whole oats. A number of studies have shown that dietary intake of antioxidants from fruits and vegetables significantly reduce the risk of developing cognitive impairment. Free radical formation plays a major role in the deterioration of the brain with age, when acyl converts oxygen into energy, tiny molecules called free radicals are made. And when these are produced in normal amounts, free radicals work to rid the body

of harmful toxins, thereby keeping it healthy. But when produced in toxic amounts, free radicals damaged the body's cellular machinery, resulting in cell death and tissue damage. The best antioxidant fruits and vegetables include blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, strawberries, spinach raspberries, Brussels sprouts, plums, broccoli, and avocados. And beware of fat diets like the Actkins diet. The idea of eating protein and fat only and avoiding grains, fruits, and vegetables may be a quick way to lose weight,

but it's not a healthy long-term way to eat for your brain or your body. In my conversation in episode number 25 with Peter Janssen, an expert in biohacking the mind and body, we chatted about gut health and how everything in the body is tied to the brain. There's a difference between nutri-genics and nutri-genomics. Nutri-genomics is basically the nutrients that you give your DNA. Nutri-genics is the nutrients your DNA requires. So it depends what side you're looking at it from.

Now, if you're looking at it in terms of gut health and brain health, yes, the intestine is actually a second brain. There's a lot of neurological connections from our brain to our intestine and to our heart as well. So the way I see it, we have three brains we need to start learning how to think from. And we need to balance these out.

So the gut, we balance through eating the right things and maintaining a really good gut balance in terms of the right probiotics, the right nutrients, the right fibers, sorry, we'll announce our valuable fibers, the right hydration, and so on. And there's people out there who say, and I agree with them, you know, that death begins in the gut.

Yes, but so does the healing of pretty much every disease. And I mean, I say every single one of them, but pretty much everyone, begins to start healing it from the gut. Now, if you use the genomics for this, you are essentially giving the right nutrients to your genetic code to turn on or off a genetic expression. That's all it is.

It's a binary system. A genetic expression is either on or off. If you, for example, want to rejuvenate, well, then you activate the nerve too. If you want your mitochondria to work better, then you activate the nerve one. And you do this kinds of things. Of course, if you do both, they are sort of balancing it out. It's all about that balance.

It's still quite new. And there are tests that you can have done and before when I started taking them, they were, where I live in Europe. So they were 1,200 euros, which at the time was like $1,500. And now you can get it for like $100 or $200, something like that. I know there's companies in the US and in India who have really great services

and you basically just send a saliva sample and they'll have everything for you. And it'll tell you things like what you can eat, what you can't eat, what you should indeed, what you should eat. And it can tell you also what illnesses you might get because of your genetic makeup. Brain Health hack number two, stress. Stress also plays a huge factor in your brain health. It's common to feel forgetful and unorganized

when we're under a lot of stress. While we might think these are one-off situations, the longer we let our brain remain in a stressful state, the worse it is for our brain's health. A Harvard Medical School study showed that stress activates the survival portion of our brain while it neglects the higher thinking region. Pro-long stress causes that survival portion to grow and develop while our higher thinking, memory, decision-making, and cognitive functions remain underdeveloped. Managing stress, just like stress itself, is unique to everyone, so finding ways to relieve your stress is crucial. I spoke with Dr. Caroline Leif, a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist,

about her five-step neuropsychal to heel burnout and toxic stress. We don't think it's a fate, but it is because those little traumas are basically converging and growing and becoming as traumatic as these and we're not managing those either. So that's also what I'm proposing, not only do we need to detox the traumas of the past. We needed the patterns, we need to look for the patterns. The patterns are less what is big and then we need to spend dedicated 15 to 45 minutes a day working on the patterns. But you've also got to manage your moment to 45 minutes a day working on the patterns. But you've also got to manage your moment by moment, you wake up in the morning, you've

got to go to work, you've got to do this, you've got to do that, you've got to be a parent whatever, whatever it is that you do, how are you doing it? Are you getting mad or you're getting irritated or you're getting crazy and traffic? Are you snapping at everyone? Are you freaking out at every news bulletin? Are you scrolling through social media and getting imp post-acendom every time you look at the comments on or someone else's post? You know, what are you doing?

No one's talking about that. We have to manage that too. We have to self-regulate 24-7. And when I say 24-7 consciously and deliberately when you're awake, you can actually do it every 10 seconds. The neuroscience shows you can stand back and observe your own thinking and monitor yourself and change yourself. So, I can other words, if you're in a conversation, in a business meeting,

and you find yourself getting terribly worked up because of what someone's saying, you're getting really mad and you're getting, want to say something nasty, you can do the neuropsych, on that moment in five seconds and you can get yourself calm and under control. Then it's said you go from, you can benefit from the meeting, then you can go from that meeting, maybe you pick up the kids from school or something and they will fight in the car and you're going crazy because you haven't quite processed the meeting and you upset about that and other kids.

Or you can do a neuropsych and get yourself under control each time. You can have an argument, have to get onto a podcast or someone says, or you get a terrible email, now you've got to interview someone because you're not doing that a lot. Interbing people, you've got to be really focused. now you've got to interview someone because you're not doing that a lot. Interviewing people, you've got to be really focused. It's not easy to interview someone.

And then you may have something may have upset you. So you could have done a neuropsycho just before to get your mind back. In other words, we should be monitoring our mind and we are designed to do that every two seconds when we awake. And then at night time, our mind is still working and sorting out for people that are in the day. So if we've got a good neuropsycho system, we'll be managing our mind of our mind management in place during the day. That means when we go into the night, we go in with a more peaceful sleep,

because sleep has been so badly affected over the last 40 years as well. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea, but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. The Millionaire University podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs. Hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, it's the ultimate resource for those who want to run a successful business and graduate rich, not broke. Justin and Tara started from Square One, just like you and me.

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that I use every single day and it can take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com-profiting. Again, go to shopify.com-profiting all lowercase to take your business to the next level today. Again, that shopify.com-profiting shop-fly.com-profiting all lowercase. This is Possibility powered by Shopify. You're putting in the work to better yourself. Why not put the same effort into your hiring process at work? It doesn't take much. It just takes indeed.

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our sleep has been badly affected for the past 40 years. Did you know, 35% of all adults in the US say that they sleep less than seven hours a night. As you likely know, eight hours is the recommended amount that all sleep experts stand by for the average adult. We're facing a sleep epidemic. In fact, it's part of our hustle culture to where our lack of sleep like a badge of honor. So what happens when we don't get enough sleep? What happens to our brains and our bodies? In episode number 127, I spoke with Dr. Meta Singh,

a sleep medicine doctor and sleep performance consultant. And she answered all of my questions about sleep and its importance. So when you're asleep, Hala, your brain is disengaged from the environment as well as unresponsive, right? And because your brain is disengaged, it forces both your brain and your body to rest. So unless sleep had some absolutely essential function, it would be a colossal waste of time. So imagine, I mean, you know, while you're asleep, you can't protect yourself.

You cannot procreate. You can't eat food or you can't get nutrition in. So it really, it has to be serving some essential purpose, otherwise it would be evolution's biggest mistake. And in fact, now we know that sleep affects every physiological function. So every physiological function. So every physiological function that you have is affected if you don't get enough sleep.

So we can start with the head, right? We know sleep exists deep in the brain. So you need sleep to pay attention to something. You know, for your reaction time, you need sleep for good judgment. If you don't get enough sleep, if you wake up in the morning, you're that part of the brain that's responsible for good judgment, multitasking, creativity, good decision-making gets impaired

while the emotional part of your brain becomes overactive. And can you imagine like there is no other fear. There's no job that people can do in which that would be a good thing. You know, that has to be something that people want to avoid. For people like you, Hala, creativity is really important and that aspect of creativity in which you take a new information, put it together with previously stored information,

and then come up with new solutions or novel ideas that happens when you're sleeping. It's so important. So any information you take in during the day, memory consolidation happens at night. So that was just a brain. But in fact, and the other thing I would say, mental health, so sleep has this bi-directional relationship with mental health.

So if you don't get enough sleep, you're likely to be grumpy, you're more anxious, more less likely to be able to cope with the stresses of the next day. And you know, if you can't cope with these stresses, then you're going to be more anxious and that's going to be a bad thing. And of course, if you go down the body, you know, your heart, your liver, your kidneys, your every organ you have has to have that nightly reset in which it prepares for functioning the next day. And that's what happens when you're sleeping.

It's so interesting how sleep literally impacts everything. It just, it seems like it impacts everything. And you wouldn't suspect that the way you sleep might impact the way you perform out work, but it drastically does, like drastically does. So, what is the proper amount of sleep that everybody should get? Because there are some people out there that claim they can sleep on two to four hours a night, you know, and is that like BS? Like is there a different amount per person? Does it depend on your profession?

How much sleep should we get? So the simple answer is that according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, adults need seven to nine hours of sleep. There is of course some human variability, right? So somebody may need a little bit more, somebody may need a little less. But if you're getting less than six hours of sleep,

you're likely to be impaired. But here's the funny part. And that might explain why people say that, oh, I can get by with less sleep. So, one of the things that happens when you get less sleep on a chronic basis. So, instead of getting, you know, if you need about eight hours and instead of eight hours, you're getting six and a half hours every day, and so your sleep depri- you know, that sleep deprivation, it sort of accumulates. You get used to it, right? Yes, exactly.

So that self-perception of knowing how sleep you are, you lose that big. So your judgment gets impaired. So it's very much like, when you're drinking alcohol, the person who's drinking is the last person you should be asking whether they're fit to drive. Similarly, if you're getting less sleep on a chronic basis, your perception of how much sleep you need is really off and your judgment is off. So I'm not surprised I say that they can get by

with less sleep. So of course, there's some variability, but yeah, that's the answer. That's really interesting because I know what you mean. I for a long time, I worked in corporate and I had this podcast. And so I had a very busy life where I would get like five hours of sleep, honestly, every night max. Sometimes four hours, I was really unhealthy at that time because I was just trying to make things happen, you know? And to your point, once I like quit my full-time job

and became an entrepreneur and started getting more sleep, I'm like, wow, I feel so much better now that I'm getting all this sleep. I felt like a new person, just so much more energetic and so much quicker. So it is true. You just get used to not getting enough sleep. So be careful. Don't just become a chronic non-sleeper, right? I gotta say one thing.

So an entrepreneur, one of the things they do is they look at ideas and see whether those ideas are valid ideas, are they ideas that are going to be useful? Well, you need judgment for that, right? And if you don't get enough sleep, your judgment is impaired. And there's been studies that show that the ability

to tell whether an idea or a business idea is viable or not is affected by how much sleep you're getting. And the other thing I'd say is that things like, and especially amongst the people that I work with, when it comes to like top athletes or, you know, CEOs, their emotional intelligence makes a big difference to how they're going to operate, right? Whether they have empathy, whether they have the ability to connect with people, whether they have the ability to motivate and inspire other people.

You know, all of that, all those functions, Hala, are a function of a well-rested brain. You can't really get there if you don't get enough sleep. And the other thing is that because most of the athletes I work with are elite athletes, these elite athletes, one thing that to be an elite athlete, you need to be able to recognize your emotions and you need to be able to regulate those emotions while you're playing. Everybody can play really well what you're practicing. But when you're out on the field or when you're on that court and you're, you know, it's the NBA game 5 going on, you have all that pressure of your coach, your family members, the

fans, etc. to be able to keep your cool then, that is what differentiates you from another elite athlete. And that gives you that competitive edge. And guess what? That emotion, every step of that emotional regulation, that is what sleep is important for. So if you don't get enough sleep, that gets dysregulated. And I want to tell people, I'm working with them, I remind them of that, you're very young, you may not tell people, when I'm working with them, I remind them of that, you're very young, you may not even remember. I don't know if you remember that story of Mike Tyson, he was gonna fight.

I only met the air. Yeah. So when he met the air, first of all, he immediately, he got fine $3 million. And he couldn't play, or he couldn't fight for another year, right? So that decision in which somebody said something,

he got angry and decided to pay attention to the situation. And then that decision making of whether he should respond or walk away, that split second decision, that's what gets impaired if you don't get enough sleep. So interesting. I'd love to understand kind of like the science behind it. There's a couple things that really piqued my interest. The fact that you said that creativity is really impacted by how much sleep you get. And then also the judgment decision making.

What's like the science behind all of that, like why does it get impacted if you get less sleep? So what we know right now is we can tell because when you get in sleep deprivation studies, the part of the brain that are responsible for good decision-making, judgment, et cetera, they get impaired, like they're not lighting up as much as while the amygdala, which is the emotional brain,

is overactive. So that's the first step in these research studies. In the second research studies, then these experiments are designed in which people are either they're sleep deprived or, you know, at another time they have, get enough sleep and then their, actually, their judgment is measured. And in fact, there's this really interesting story from Harvard and what they found is that when sleep deprived individuals are given stimulants like caffeine or medicinal, you know, there are drugs out there that can

increase your reaction time. Well, they get less sleepy, their reaction time improves, they become faster and more accurate, but the one thing that doesn't get affected is their judgment. So they just continue to make bad decisions faster. So sleep occurs deep in the brain and typically what happens while you're sleeping is that there is memories are played and they may be played at faster rates. There is pruning of unnecessary information.

There are more connections and circuits being formed of Information that you need. There's also this function during your sleep that while you're asleep blood rushes through your brain like a power wash and it washes out all the toxins that have accumulated during the day. And so it's the simplest way to explain it would be to think of it as a nightly reset button. So it's the same thing that happens to a machine, right? Whenever you have a machine, you have to give it some downtime so that it can recover so they can do the work again the next day. So think of it as like a nightly investment for your for optimal functioning the next day.

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Tune into the Kelly Road Show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if you're already a seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode, Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid, exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today. Tune into the Kelly Road Show available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, Yap fam. As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur

for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate.

And I recently had best-selling author Kim Scott on the show. And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on master class, tackle the hard conversations with Radical Cander to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candor method every day with my team to give in solicit feedback, to cultivate a more inclusive culture,

and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework, and I'm so happy because I really needed this class. With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace. And we all know that profiting in life doesn't just mean thriving in business. With masterclass, you can brush up on your art skills or your cooking skills, or even your modeling skills. With over 180 classes from a range of world class instructors,

that thing you've always wanted to do better is just a few clicks away. On Masterclass you'll find courses from many appauls to our guests like Chris Voss and Daniel Pink. I've been taking their sales and negotiation classes and I've been feeling like a real shark lately. I've totally leveled up my sales skills. How much would it cost you to take a one-on-one class from the world's best. A lot. But with Masterclass annual memberships, it just cost you $10 a month. I have to say the most surprising thing about Masterclass since I started this incredible journey on the platform is the value. For the quality of classes, instructors, the platform itself is beautiful, the videos

are super high quality, You can't beat it. Gain new skills and as little as 10 minutes on your phone, your computer, tablet, smart TV, and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now as the app listener,

you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com slash profiting. That's masterclass.com slash profiting for 15% off when you go to masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com-profiting. Our fourth and last brain hack is continued learning. Challenging our brain by learning new skills is an amazing way to keep it healthy and sharp. Whether you learn a new language, an instrument, or a new skill for your career, learning is the best thing you can do for your brain health. The entire process of learning a new skill encourages brain development. Creating a mental sweat causes your brain to create

new cells and strengthen existing connections. This strengthening causes the white matter of your brain to thicken, which improves cognitive function, memory, and concentration. The creation of new cells and pathways causes electrical impulses to travel faster, which allows all of these new functions to happen quicker. In episode number 107, I spoke with author, researcher, and speaker Josh Kaufman about how easy it is to learn a new skill, and that you can learn any new skill

in just 20 hours. You don't need to get bogged down by that old thought that you need to spend 10,000 hours to learn something new. That's bogus. You don't need to be the best in the world at your new skill. You just need to be pretty good at it to get by. Here's Josh breaking down how you can learn a new skill

in just 20 hours. In a series of studies, the most famous one being of violinists, trying to predict who are going to be the top violinists from a particular school. And they did studies of how much did those violinists practice under the idea that well, you know, probably the folks who practiced more are probably better playing the violin. And some of those studies basically said, yeah, I think that's true. And the rough order of magnitude to get to be the best of the best was around 10,000 hours plus or minus.

There has been some additional research that indicates the variation of that is extreme. So, you know, think of it as, you know, error bars above or below 10,000 hours. It, like, the error bars are like three or $4,000 or three or 4,000 hours a piece. Like, just the range of mastery is extreme. So there was, it's an interesting question, right? Like, if you want to become the best in the world of something or or in the top 0.001% of a particular scale, what does it take to get there? Interesting question. You want to be a professional athlete,

how much are you gonna need to practice? Like, going to our conversation earlier about status, that feels really, really interesting and cool to think about. How much of my life would I have to invest in some thing to be like an Olympic gold medalist or things like that? And so most of the research and most of the conversation around skill was all about that question, like, what does it take to get to mastery? How do you become the best in the world?

And I realized at a certain point, it's like, that's not the question. That's not the question for most of us. The question is, if we want to learn how to do something that we're not able to do right now, we're not talking about mastery at all. We're talking about competence, we're talking about going from nothing to like doing something.

We're not competing against the world, we're competing against ourselves and our previous lack of ability. And so I wanted to answer the question of what does it take to go from nothing to being pretty good. And that is really, it's a valuable topic to consider and think about, and care about, because particularly for adults, when we begin learning something we've never done before, those early hours of practice are hell. Like it's just, it's frustrating.

Like you think it feels like you should be able to do this thing, and you just can't get yourself to do it for whatever reason. And what I found with adult learners is that people give up way too quickly. So there's an enormous amount of psychological research that says, the most efficient hours of practice that we will ever spend are the early hours. Like, we improve, think of it like per hour of effort invested. The biggest rate of improvement is right at the beginning. It's just the beginning is really difficult

and so most people never make it. And so what I found both through research and then replicating it in my own experiments is the first 20-ish hours of practice are very frustrating, very difficult, but very effective. And so, you know, the level of skill or the level of competence that you're able to achieve after a very small amount of practice in the grand scheme of things is pretty significant. And so, if you have a way of making those early hours of practice more effective and more efficient than the otherwise

could be or would be without having a plan, you can become way, way better at a huge variety of things, you know, whatever personal or professional things that you care about, a very narrow strategic investment of time and energy can produce some very extreme rewards. And you just need to go about doing it in a smart way. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcasts and I hope that you enjoyed this week's YAP snacks.

Those were our top four hacks for a healthy brain. You might think that it's too late to start or that giving up certain foods and taking the time out of your day to exercise and learn a new skill might be way too difficult. So to encourage you to take this journey seriously and to increase the likelihood that you'll go out and take action towards better brain health, I wanted to leave you with some great words from Dr. Daniel Aiman. I think of it purely as an act of love, that it's not deprivation. I'm not depriving myself of something.

It's I love myself, and I love my family, and I love my mission. I need a good brain to actualize those things, because I know you think about business and work a lot with business. Well, what's the organ of success in business? It's your brain. And so, right, it's a series of decisions that you purposefully make over time. That's what grows. Great businesses. So I avoid things that hurt it, bad food, don't hit soccer balls with my head thoughtful when I drive. And then I engage in regular brain healthy habits, relationships, sleep. You want to feel better tomorrow, go to bed early tonight, that sleep is absolutely essential.

Simple supplements, multiple vitamin, fish oil, vitamin D, you know, we talked about COVID-19. People have low levels of vitamin D died more often than people who had healthy levels. I mean, how simple is that? I mean, super simple. Your best defense against COVID-19 is your immune system and your brain, right? It's the decisions that you make day in and day out. How'd you feel about this episode? Tell me your main takeaway by leaving us a five star review on Apple, Castbox, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

You guys can find me on Instagram at Y with hollow or LinkedIn just search for my name. It's halletaha. Big thanks to the app team as always. This is hallet signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast.

My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits.

Every week, we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as, follow the one-minute rule. Choose a one-word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like, know yourself better, where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer?

Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Ruben. Ugh, another pointless video call where nothing gets done. I think you're on mute, David. Uh, sorry. What did I miss? I teach just approved Miro for the whole company.

Miro? That's the... Online whiteboard. For team collaboration, we can make these long video meetings so much shorter with Miro boards. We can share ideas, feedback, and updates on them whenever. Actually, see what we're talking about. It's all online.

Mirror will make our flexible work set up so much easier, with one virtual space for our brainstorms, projects, presentations. Oh, that sounds kind of amazing. So I don't need to wake up for 6am calls with the London Office anymore. Now you're getting it. Don't let time zones get in the way of your team working well together. See why 99% of the Fortune 100 trust Mirro

to get good work done from anywhere. Get your first three boards free at Mirro.com. That's M-I-R-O-D-C-M. you