November 26, 2025 • 24 mins
Natalie Nixon, CEO of Figure 8 Thinking, shares how to move, think, and rest throughout the day
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:24):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Natalie Nixon to Before Breakfast. Natalie
is the CEO of Figure eight Thinking and the author
of the new book Move Think Rest. So Natalie, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Thank you, Laura, It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, so glad to have you. Why don't you tell
our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I am a creativity strategist. I made up my job title.
What that means is I advise and help leaders, executive
teams and organizations to connect the dots between creativity and
business results. And I do that through my global keynote, speaking,
through my my courses and my facilitations. And I'm from Philly.
(01:09):
I live in Philly. I lived a lot of different places,
but realize the grass is not greener and I'm off
there as well.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Well. I am in the greater Philly region as well.
So it turns out we're actually having this conversation locally.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
We're very very rainy day. Where are you, Laura in.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
The in the suburbs up in the Cameline area? Yeah,
how about how about you?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I'm in the city in mount Airy.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh, I love it. I love it. Well, we are
not that far from each other. So I'm waving, waving
across the river. So so, Natalie, uh, you write in
this book Move Think Rest about the mt R framework.
Those are being the first initials of those words which
you call the motor framework. So why don't you tell
us a little bit about that? What is the Motor framework?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
The Motor framework is a human centered operating system to
help all of us to flourish in a time of
ubiquitous technology. I'm precedent at burnout and new rules for work,
and the motor human centered operating system is people can
think of it as an on ramp to help them
(02:16):
do as I say, toggle between wonder and rigor, which
is related to my Wonder rigor theory. It's the way
that we can think in a more democratized way about creativity.
So the Move Think Rest operating system is a way
to build creativity as a capacity, to understand that creativity
is a strategic competency that will allow all of us
(02:38):
to innovate more consistently and sustainably. And if you want,
I can, I can kind of thirty thousand foot level
break down what each of those components are.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well, sure, I'd love to hear, you know. I mean,
maybe people understand generally what move means, but maybe not.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, So when I talk about movement, I'm not actually
talking only about exercise. Exercises great, and it's really important.
What I'm referring to is movement hygiene. We have begun
in our knowledge economy to think about the brain as
kind of disembodied, disembodied from the rest of the body,
and we also separate brain from mind. So when I'm
(03:15):
talking about movement, I'm talking about movement hygiene, which means
that we integrate movement throughout the day. We're making sure
we stand up, we take walks, and that's really important
because when we move, our ideas move, and so the
spinal cord, as some of us may or may not
be aware, is actually an extension of the brain, so
that when we are kind of slumped over at our
(03:36):
desk for long periods of time. Actually, anytime longer than
forty minutes at a time is kind of getting into
a danger zone. Then we actually are constricting blood flow
to the brain, which means we are restricting oxygen, which
means we're not going to actually be doing our best thinking.
So movement hygiene is really important. On the thought part,
I'm talking about the value of forecasting and back casting.
(03:58):
So backcasting is about the of memory and reflection. Forecasting
is about the imagination curiosity. And what's significant about both
backcasting and forecasting you need to slow down in order
to do some really effective backcasting and forecasting. The reason
why that sort of thought matters is that while we
(04:20):
tend to focus on, you know, real sharp cognition and
clear thought, you actually will not be doing your clearest
thinking if you don't incorporate backcasting and forecasting and then rest.
I'm not just saying I'm not what. I'm not recognizing
that every office building have a nap room. I mean,
if that makes sense for your company, cool, But I'm
(04:40):
talking about intermittent rest. Intermittent rest that can be scaled.
So rest in terms of micro breaks, I actually calendar
in buffers on my calendar to make sure that I'll
be hard hitted, and I'll sit at the deskerage way
too long, and I'll make sure that I stand up,
step away from the desk, take a walk, I do
day dream breaks, but also scaling out to sabbatical. So
(05:05):
I interviewed almost sixty people for this book, and I
also interview people who have taken sabbatical work at nonprofit organizations,
tech firms, not only you know, people work in higher education.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
So that's I mean, I'm sure a lot of us
are listening to that, Like WHOA forty minutes is the
danger zone and that's a problem because a lot of
work days are definitely set up with longer periods of
sitting than forty minutes. I wonder if you could talk
through what a work day might look like if it
incorporated this framework to optimize our creativity and our results.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, what it would not look like is back to
back zoom or team meetings. It would look like a
day where you are cognizant of when if you're too
the extent that you're able, where you're a cognizant of
where you get your best, sharp focused thinking of. And
that's different for different people. So for me, I can
do really deep focused thinking work in the mornings after
(06:00):
two o'clock, that's not the best time for me to
do that, So I like to do more kind of
responding to emails and those sorts of things in the afternoons.
It would look like a day where if it all possible,
if you're able to move Because I also interview people
who live with physical disability, so I was really interested
in what movement, thought, and rest looks like when you're
restricted in movement, or if you live in a socioeconomic
(06:23):
environment where it's not safe to just go for a
walk perhaps or the space isn't even designed for that.
So making sure that you start your morning with some
sort of walk or movement. Making sure that meetings, even
if they are done on zoom or in person, spark
(06:43):
new types of thinking. So something like question storming is
a really great technique to integrate into collaborative team meetings
so that you're not just doing solutions oriented thinking. They're
looking for the answer. We know that you can tell
lot more about people by the quality of the questions
if they're asking even more than their answers. So those
(07:06):
are just a few.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Examples what are your favorite kinds of breaks? I mean,
are those going to be like movement breaks? Often? I
guess you could get both the moving and the resting
together as well, exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So that's a really good point. The move think rest
framework is not siloed. It's not first to move, then
you think, then you rest. So for example, when you
stand up for a day dream break, that's affecting thought
as well as rest. I love to go for short
walks in the woods. The other thing I've learned in
my research A lot of times people aren't going for
(07:38):
a short walk because they think, oh, well, I don't
have thirty minutes. You don't need thirty minutes. I have
a three minute I have a walk that I know
it takes three minutes. I have a walk that I
know takes nine minutes. Sometimes I can take a fifteen
minute long walk and at the end of the day,
if I'm fortunate, I'll be able to take there's a
walk I take the thirty minutes. You and I live
in the Philadelphia area. Philadelphia is an incredible city where
(08:00):
nature is integrated throughout the city. So here in Mount Airy,
I live across the street from the woods, so I'm
really fortunate that I can just kind of dip into
the woods whenever I'm able. So my favorites are going
for a walk doing daydream breaks. My daydream breaks last
sixty to ninety seconds. That's really all it takes for
me to return to work revived and refresh. And I
(08:22):
didn't do it this morning, but I really try to
stretch my body for at least ten minutes on a
yoga matt every single morning before I get to work.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Excellent habits for sure. Well, I'm going to take a
quick ad break and then we'll be back with more
from Natalie Nixon. Well, I am back talking with Natalie Nixon,
who is the author of the new book Move, Think Rest.
We've been talking about some of your favorite breaks, and
(08:51):
I love the idea of a day dreaming break here,
but I think a lot of people hear that, like,
wait a minute, So Natalie is daydreaming for sixty to
ninety seconds, what are you doing in that time?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Like?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
How do you get yourself to the point where you're
I guess how does one set that up to incorporate
a daydream break intentionally into your life?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Well, I mentioned earlier that I actually have like I
call it buffer zones. In my calendar, there are typically
thirty minutes long twenty minutes song. I'm not daydream for
that long. But the cool thing about daydreaming is that
the more you do it, the more you long for
the more, the better you acclimate to it. What's actually
(09:30):
happening when we daydream is that our default mode network
is getting activated. So the default mode network, or the
regions in the brain where they're different neural synapses that
get activated, the default mote network. I call it the
washing machine of the brain. Because the default mote network
gets activated when we tap out of the world. So
(09:51):
for example, when we are resting or in a nice
deep sleep, when we take a shower, when we're reading
a nice immersive book of fiction, when we are an engaging, rollicking,
laughing conversation with a friend. When we tap out of
the world, it's not that our brain stops working. It's
just working differently, and that's essential because that's where the
(10:14):
synchronization of all what I call the juicy bits of
productivity happen. That's why often if you stay rooted to
your chair and your desk and are trying to figure
out the answer to a problem, you're just stuck. It's
not going to come unless, counterintuitively, you step away and
you're actually letting the default mode network take place. You know,
originally I thought about calling this book invisible Work, because
(10:37):
that's really what I'm talking about. Some of our best
work is happening when it can't be tracked, when it
can't be monitored, because rest should not be treated as
a reward. Rest should actually be integrated into the day.
Movement should be integrated with about the day. The different ways
of thought should be integrated throughout the day so that
that synchronization of different neurosyn apsis can happen. And that's
(10:58):
why when you come out of a nice shower, you think, oh,
that's what I was trying to think of. Oh, this
this new sort of of these new massive ideas kind
of lock into place. There's a reason for that if
I can gig out a bit. You know, when you
write a book, you learn a lot. And so one
of the things I learned is that there's something called
(11:19):
the hypnagogic state, and the hypna pompic state, and the
hypnaggic state. Think gogic, groggy, Right when you're about to
drift off to sleep. That's actually when science times is
now know the research those neurosynapses that really relate to
creativity are really superactive. So, for example, Thomas Edison noticed
(11:42):
that when he started to doze off to sleep, he
had the first time it happened, he had an orb
that's what the literature says, in his hand and it
kind of fell fell to the ground. He woke up,
and all of a sudden he was able to connect
the doct between a problem. So that's so. So what
you can do is plant the seat of a question
of what you're wondering about before a very short nap
(12:02):
or even a deep sleep. The hypn a pompic state
is that state of waking up. So when you've had
a good rest and you're just starting to wake up
to the dawn and the stillness of the room, and
then all of a sudden, for me at least a
lot and I for a lot of other people, ideas
begin to synchronize. That's the hitpen a pompic state. Again.
(12:23):
You can see a question or query in your mind
before you rest, and a lot of the time the
answer does reveal itself. It's just incredible how the brain
works and how we can attune our body in different
habits to optimize our productivity and our creativity.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Absolutely, it's fascinating stuff. I mean, where are these ideas
come from? It sounds like, yeah, sitting at our desks
are probably about the least creative places we're going to be.
But you mentioned one of the things with I mean,
sometimes thinking is done with others. Yes, and you had
an interesting thing. You know, the AI is the hot topic,
but you talked about using as a thinking partner.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Are there particular ways that we could use AI to
sort of help us as we're coming up with Yes,
lots of ideas.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yes. So a lot of people say, you know, AI
is your copilot, it's your co creator, and it is.
And I have been pronouncing and a lot of my
keynotes that we are actually in the middle of a
human revolution. We're not in the middle of a technological revolution.
We have this tech crush, this infatuation with the technology,
(13:31):
but in reality, the technology, if we play our cards right,
is there to leverage and optimize what makes us uniquely human.
Because let's face it, the AI is not going anywhere.
It is taking over basic tasks, It is eliminating hundreds
of thousands, not millions of jobs. And what will be
(13:51):
your strategic advantage advantage is your capacity for the imagination,
the way you frame and reframe questions, the way you
think critically, the way you were able to take that
quick result that you get from a prompt and chat
GPTEE and acknowledge that now you have spaciousness, right, you
have spaciousness to think more critically, to collaborate more, to
(14:12):
have eyeball to eyeball conversations. So, for example, I love
the otter app because it's actually helped me and it's
given me a freedom in the way that I write.
I'm very oral and oral, and so I will in
advance just write up like five question prompts around a
chapter or a section I'm working on, and I'll just
take a walk. I actually did this during a writing
(14:34):
sabbatical that I gifted myself last year writing move Think Rest.
I did it in Miami. A friend gifted me her
Miami beachside condo at a really nice rate, and I
would just take a walk along the beach and do
a brain dump verbally of my thoughts and my ideas
into the otter app, which you know is a wonderful
(14:54):
transcription app and then I got back to the room
and I would sort and stept and make sense of
those ideas. But it gave me the freedom to just
do free association and just talk. And what it removed
was what I call her negative Nancy, who often sits
on my shoulder and criticizes, Oh, that's not important, No
(15:15):
one's going to read that. Who cares about that? That's stupid,
you know, So that went away. So otters are really
great app way. I like to use Quaud and chat
GPT are two. One of my favorite questions is to
ask is to put in something that I have drafted
and ask what am I missing? What have I not
thought about? Oftentimes it will it will remind me to
(15:37):
think about things differently from a geographical perspective, from a
historical perspective, from a cultural perspective. I miss what does
this mean? In healthcare? So it helps me also to
see the holes and the gaps. And that's what we
get when we have real in person collaboration with people
who have different training than we do, different levels of
(15:58):
seniority or junior You just think, look at the same issue,
but see it slightly differently. And that's essential for innovation.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Wow, Well, we're all going to have a great brain
trust that we can bounce things off.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
In the future, it's going to be amazing. Well, we're
going to take one more quick ad break and then
I will be back with more from Natalie Nixon. Well,
I am back talking with Natalie Nixon. She is the
CEO of Figure eight Thinking. She is also the author
of the brand new book Move Think Rest. So, Natalie,
(16:34):
this show is called Before Breakfast. So we have a
lot of people who are really into morning routines. I
wonder if you happen to have any sort of morning routine.
I know you said you do your best thinking in
the morning, so maybe can tell us a little bit
about what your mornings look like.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So I try to start buffer my day in the
mornings with c pushing it with silence and more stillness.
I pray, I do a shirt meditation. I typically do
my meditations while I'm stretching our reference. I'd like to stretch.
I have them in our home. I has something I
call the She's Sweet and it has like a Netflix
TV zone. It has a stretching zone, has a reading
(17:09):
fiction zone. So in that stretching zone, I burn incense,
I light a candle I put on I have a
whole playlist called Mellow Chill, and I play that sort
of music. I tend to be a kinesthetic meditator. I'd
never thought I was good at meditation until I learned
that through the research for Move Big Rest. But there's
something called kinesthetic meditation. So I'm a swimmer and I
(17:33):
and so as when you some lapse, for example, you
get into this kind of meditative state of just repetition
and you get out of your head into your body. Similarly,
stretching helps me to do that, where I just start
to focus on my breathing. I get more tuned to
my balance and where I'm at in my body. So
that's a big part of how I try to start
(17:53):
most mornings. They'll always succeed, but it always makes me
feel incredibly better. But definitely a prayer meditation stretch. I
also have started tricking my brain into calling water brain juice.
I had a facial like a month ago, and I
have naturally oil a skin and the woman who did
the face and say, oh, your skin's dry, it's absorbing
(18:14):
whatever this stuff was. She's put on my face quick
and I thought I think I need to be drinking
more water, so I have a whole picture of water.
I make sure that I start to drink that because
when you think about if you get a good seven
or eight hours of sleep, you haven't been hydrating at all.
So that's one of the first things up in your body.
It helps with the organ tissue. Your brain is a
really important organ that needs a lot of water for
(18:36):
lectrolytes and that sort of thing. And then I get
into the work. I typically have mapped out what I
want to get achieve even get done between nine and twelve.
The other thing I've started doing and I interviewed the
co founder for moveth think Rest. I interviewed the copter
flown from moveth think Rests are wonderful kind of quirky
(18:59):
company called I was really really suspicious about it or
skeptical about it when I first learned of it. But
I've also started using it as a room to enter
when I need to do deep thinking work. Flown as
UK base. It is basically a synchronous synchronicity. You drop
into a room that looks like a zoom room, and
(19:20):
it feel a little weird at first because everyone is
just like thinking. Everyone we all have like the same
expressions when we think and they're working, no one talks.
You can put into the chat era your intention like
I want to send five emails or I need to
write a rough draft outline or whatever or finish shape
or proposal, and people will be thumbs up in your intention.
(19:43):
You can have a set a time limit. So it's
really like just as the principles a moth think rest,
it's really adheres to unique breaks throughout the day. When
you do a break with floone, you can opt into
a screen looking at nature, or you can do a puzzle.
So play is a big part. So Flown has been
a really cool work accessory and I highly recommend it
(20:06):
to your listeners, especially given the topic of your podcast.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, well, it's just it provides accountability and you mirror
other people who are working, and it hopefully brings out
the best in you as well.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It feels like you're walking into a hushed library. Yeah,
this is where we're going to work. We're all serious now, yes, yes,
so not Onalie. I asked all my guests a question.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It's kind of the tagline of the show, but what
is something you have done recently to take a day
from great to awesome.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Mmm. Something I've done recently to take a day from
great to awesome. Well, I've started keeping a wins journal.
I learned that from a great book called I think
(20:58):
it's from their book called The Gap in the Game,
which is by Benjamin Hardy and Forgetting the co author.
But it helps me to identify even in days that
I think are just myth or ordinary small wins that
I've had. Right, I sent out five emails, I received
(21:21):
an inquiry for a new proposal. I drank an entire
picture of water. However, you want to define the scrip
of your winds. And that really has helped me take
a day. I forget if you say good to awesome
or great to awesome, but that really helps him because
it elevates my perception of my work. It helps me
account accountable to being as a former boss of mine
(21:45):
in the garment in the fashion streets to say, keep
your eye with the donut, not the hole. Don't focus
on what it should it could have been, but what is.
So when I do that, winsdow and I keep it
in the drawer in my desk. I used to do
it at the end of the day, but I've started
just documenting it throughout the day. If I'm traveling, I
have I keep a winds file in my notes app
(22:08):
that helps me to make a day go from good
to great to awesome.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
I love it. I love it. That is wonderful. What
are you looking forward to right now?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I'm looking forward to going to London next week. I
leave for London on Saturday. I have been I was
nominated as part of the Thinkers fifty twenty twenty four
cohort and I've been nominated for their Talent Award for
this year. So gonna go to their gala and meet
some really interesting thought leaders from around the world. I'm
gonna be on a Deloitte podcast and I'm collaborating with
(22:42):
a colleague and pal of minding, James Hewitt, who is
Real Vivia, an incredible guest for your podcast. I'll connect
the two of you. He's a performance scientist and we're
doing a conversation next Wednesday after the Thinkers fifty events
at Tavas, which is a global consultancy. We'll be interviewed
by the chief Medical Officer about future work ideas and
(23:05):
the title of our of our conversation is the future
works open for end when humans thrive. So we both
have a vested interest in amplifying, leveraging what makes us
uniquely human and a time of so much change in technology.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Wonderful. That sounds very exciting and London is lovely, so yes, great, it's.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Gonna be great. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
So Natalie, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Just go to Figure eight Thinking dot com. That's the
number eight, Figure eight, like this ice gatting figure athinking
dot com and definitely sign up for the newsletter because
that's where you'll be able to tune into all the
great tips and techniques site. I have beware of the
blogs and my fast company articles and we just started
a sixty six day motor challenge. Not too late to join,
(23:50):
but just go to Figure a Thinking dot com and
the first step is to sign up.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
For the newsletter wonderful. Please go do that and check
out the book Move Think rest as well. So Natalie, thanks,
thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to
everyone for listening. If you have feedback about this or
any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura
at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura,
Thanks for listening and here's to making the most.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Of our time.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(24:44):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:24):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Natalie Nixon to Before Breakfast. Natalie
is the CEO of Figure eight Thinking and the author
of the new book Move Think Rest. So Natalie, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Thank you, Laura, It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, so glad to have you. Why don't you tell
our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I am a creativity strategist. I made up my job title.
What that means is I advise and help leaders, executive
teams and organizations to connect the dots between creativity and
business results. And I do that through my global keynote, speaking,
through my my courses and my facilitations. And I'm from Philly.
(01:09):
I live in Philly. I lived a lot of different places,
but realize the grass is not greener and I'm off
there as well.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Well. I am in the greater Philly region as well.
So it turns out we're actually having this conversation locally.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
We're very very rainy day. Where are you, Laura in.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
The in the suburbs up in the Cameline area? Yeah,
how about how about you?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I'm in the city in mount Airy.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh, I love it. I love it. Well, we are
not that far from each other. So I'm waving, waving
across the river. So so, Natalie, uh, you write in
this book Move Think Rest about the mt R framework.
Those are being the first initials of those words which
you call the motor framework. So why don't you tell
us a little bit about that? What is the Motor framework?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
The Motor framework is a human centered operating system to
help all of us to flourish in a time of
ubiquitous technology. I'm precedent at burnout and new rules for work,
and the motor human centered operating system is people can
think of it as an on ramp to help them
(02:16):
do as I say, toggle between wonder and rigor, which
is related to my Wonder rigor theory. It's the way
that we can think in a more democratized way about creativity.
So the Move Think Rest operating system is a way
to build creativity as a capacity, to understand that creativity
is a strategic competency that will allow all of us
(02:38):
to innovate more consistently and sustainably. And if you want,
I can, I can kind of thirty thousand foot level
break down what each of those components are.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well, sure, I'd love to hear, you know. I mean,
maybe people understand generally what move means, but maybe not.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, So when I talk about movement, I'm not actually
talking only about exercise. Exercises great, and it's really important.
What I'm referring to is movement hygiene. We have begun
in our knowledge economy to think about the brain as
kind of disembodied, disembodied from the rest of the body,
and we also separate brain from mind. So when I'm
(03:15):
talking about movement, I'm talking about movement hygiene, which means
that we integrate movement throughout the day. We're making sure
we stand up, we take walks, and that's really important
because when we move, our ideas move, and so the
spinal cord, as some of us may or may not
be aware, is actually an extension of the brain, so
that when we are kind of slumped over at our
(03:36):
desk for long periods of time. Actually, anytime longer than
forty minutes at a time is kind of getting into
a danger zone. Then we actually are constricting blood flow
to the brain, which means we are restricting oxygen, which
means we're not going to actually be doing our best thinking.
So movement hygiene is really important. On the thought part,
I'm talking about the value of forecasting and back casting.
(03:58):
So backcasting is about the of memory and reflection. Forecasting
is about the imagination curiosity. And what's significant about both
backcasting and forecasting you need to slow down in order
to do some really effective backcasting and forecasting. The reason
why that sort of thought matters is that while we
(04:20):
tend to focus on, you know, real sharp cognition and
clear thought, you actually will not be doing your clearest
thinking if you don't incorporate backcasting and forecasting and then rest.
I'm not just saying I'm not what. I'm not recognizing
that every office building have a nap room. I mean,
if that makes sense for your company, cool, But I'm
(04:40):
talking about intermittent rest. Intermittent rest that can be scaled.
So rest in terms of micro breaks, I actually calendar
in buffers on my calendar to make sure that I'll
be hard hitted, and I'll sit at the deskerage way
too long, and I'll make sure that I stand up,
step away from the desk, take a walk, I do
day dream breaks, but also scaling out to sabbatical. So
(05:05):
I interviewed almost sixty people for this book, and I
also interview people who have taken sabbatical work at nonprofit organizations,
tech firms, not only you know, people work in higher education.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
So that's I mean, I'm sure a lot of us
are listening to that, Like WHOA forty minutes is the
danger zone and that's a problem because a lot of
work days are definitely set up with longer periods of
sitting than forty minutes. I wonder if you could talk
through what a work day might look like if it
incorporated this framework to optimize our creativity and our results.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, what it would not look like is back to
back zoom or team meetings. It would look like a
day where you are cognizant of when if you're too
the extent that you're able, where you're a cognizant of
where you get your best, sharp focused thinking of. And
that's different for different people. So for me, I can
do really deep focused thinking work in the mornings after
(06:00):
two o'clock, that's not the best time for me to
do that, So I like to do more kind of
responding to emails and those sorts of things in the afternoons.
It would look like a day where if it all possible,
if you're able to move Because I also interview people
who live with physical disability, so I was really interested
in what movement, thought, and rest looks like when you're
restricted in movement, or if you live in a socioeconomic
(06:23):
environment where it's not safe to just go for a
walk perhaps or the space isn't even designed for that.
So making sure that you start your morning with some
sort of walk or movement. Making sure that meetings, even
if they are done on zoom or in person, spark
(06:43):
new types of thinking. So something like question storming is
a really great technique to integrate into collaborative team meetings
so that you're not just doing solutions oriented thinking. They're
looking for the answer. We know that you can tell
lot more about people by the quality of the questions
if they're asking even more than their answers. So those
(07:06):
are just a few.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Examples what are your favorite kinds of breaks? I mean,
are those going to be like movement breaks? Often? I
guess you could get both the moving and the resting
together as well, exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So that's a really good point. The move think rest
framework is not siloed. It's not first to move, then
you think, then you rest. So for example, when you
stand up for a day dream break, that's affecting thought
as well as rest. I love to go for short
walks in the woods. The other thing I've learned in
my research A lot of times people aren't going for
(07:38):
a short walk because they think, oh, well, I don't
have thirty minutes. You don't need thirty minutes. I have
a three minute I have a walk that I know
it takes three minutes. I have a walk that I
know takes nine minutes. Sometimes I can take a fifteen
minute long walk and at the end of the day,
if I'm fortunate, I'll be able to take there's a
walk I take the thirty minutes. You and I live
in the Philadelphia area. Philadelphia is an incredible city where
(08:00):
nature is integrated throughout the city. So here in Mount Airy,
I live across the street from the woods, so I'm
really fortunate that I can just kind of dip into
the woods whenever I'm able. So my favorites are going
for a walk doing daydream breaks. My daydream breaks last
sixty to ninety seconds. That's really all it takes for
me to return to work revived and refresh. And I
(08:22):
didn't do it this morning, but I really try to
stretch my body for at least ten minutes on a
yoga matt every single morning before I get to work.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Excellent habits for sure. Well, I'm going to take a
quick ad break and then we'll be back with more
from Natalie Nixon. Well, I am back talking with Natalie Nixon,
who is the author of the new book Move, Think Rest.
We've been talking about some of your favorite breaks, and
(08:51):
I love the idea of a day dreaming break here,
but I think a lot of people hear that, like,
wait a minute, So Natalie is daydreaming for sixty to
ninety seconds, what are you doing in that time?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Like?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
How do you get yourself to the point where you're
I guess how does one set that up to incorporate
a daydream break intentionally into your life?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Well, I mentioned earlier that I actually have like I
call it buffer zones. In my calendar, there are typically
thirty minutes long twenty minutes song. I'm not daydream for
that long. But the cool thing about daydreaming is that
the more you do it, the more you long for
the more, the better you acclimate to it. What's actually
(09:30):
happening when we daydream is that our default mode network
is getting activated. So the default mode network, or the
regions in the brain where they're different neural synapses that
get activated, the default mote network. I call it the
washing machine of the brain. Because the default mote network
gets activated when we tap out of the world. So
(09:51):
for example, when we are resting or in a nice
deep sleep, when we take a shower, when we're reading
a nice immersive book of fiction, when we are an engaging, rollicking,
laughing conversation with a friend. When we tap out of
the world, it's not that our brain stops working. It's
just working differently, and that's essential because that's where the
(10:14):
synchronization of all what I call the juicy bits of
productivity happen. That's why often if you stay rooted to
your chair and your desk and are trying to figure
out the answer to a problem, you're just stuck. It's
not going to come unless, counterintuitively, you step away and
you're actually letting the default mode network take place. You know,
originally I thought about calling this book invisible Work, because
(10:37):
that's really what I'm talking about. Some of our best
work is happening when it can't be tracked, when it
can't be monitored, because rest should not be treated as
a reward. Rest should actually be integrated into the day.
Movement should be integrated with about the day. The different ways
of thought should be integrated throughout the day so that
that synchronization of different neurosyn apsis can happen. And that's
(10:58):
why when you come out of a nice shower, you think, oh,
that's what I was trying to think of. Oh, this
this new sort of of these new massive ideas kind
of lock into place. There's a reason for that if
I can gig out a bit. You know, when you
write a book, you learn a lot. And so one
of the things I learned is that there's something called
(11:19):
the hypnagogic state, and the hypna pompic state, and the
hypnaggic state. Think gogic, groggy, Right when you're about to
drift off to sleep. That's actually when science times is
now know the research those neurosynapses that really relate to
creativity are really superactive. So, for example, Thomas Edison noticed
(11:42):
that when he started to doze off to sleep, he
had the first time it happened, he had an orb
that's what the literature says, in his hand and it
kind of fell fell to the ground. He woke up,
and all of a sudden he was able to connect
the doct between a problem. So that's so. So what
you can do is plant the seat of a question
of what you're wondering about before a very short nap
(12:02):
or even a deep sleep. The hypn a pompic state
is that state of waking up. So when you've had
a good rest and you're just starting to wake up
to the dawn and the stillness of the room, and
then all of a sudden, for me at least a
lot and I for a lot of other people, ideas
begin to synchronize. That's the hitpen a pompic state. Again.
(12:23):
You can see a question or query in your mind
before you rest, and a lot of the time the
answer does reveal itself. It's just incredible how the brain
works and how we can attune our body in different
habits to optimize our productivity and our creativity.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Absolutely, it's fascinating stuff. I mean, where are these ideas
come from? It sounds like, yeah, sitting at our desks
are probably about the least creative places we're going to be.
But you mentioned one of the things with I mean,
sometimes thinking is done with others. Yes, and you had
an interesting thing. You know, the AI is the hot topic,
but you talked about using as a thinking partner.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Are there particular ways that we could use AI to
sort of help us as we're coming up with Yes,
lots of ideas.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yes. So a lot of people say, you know, AI
is your copilot, it's your co creator, and it is.
And I have been pronouncing and a lot of my
keynotes that we are actually in the middle of a
human revolution. We're not in the middle of a technological revolution.
We have this tech crush, this infatuation with the technology,
(13:31):
but in reality, the technology, if we play our cards right,
is there to leverage and optimize what makes us uniquely human.
Because let's face it, the AI is not going anywhere.
It is taking over basic tasks, It is eliminating hundreds
of thousands, not millions of jobs. And what will be
(13:51):
your strategic advantage advantage is your capacity for the imagination,
the way you frame and reframe questions, the way you
think critically, the way you were able to take that
quick result that you get from a prompt and chat
GPTEE and acknowledge that now you have spaciousness, right, you
have spaciousness to think more critically, to collaborate more, to
(14:12):
have eyeball to eyeball conversations. So, for example, I love
the otter app because it's actually helped me and it's
given me a freedom in the way that I write.
I'm very oral and oral, and so I will in
advance just write up like five question prompts around a
chapter or a section I'm working on, and I'll just
take a walk. I actually did this during a writing
(14:34):
sabbatical that I gifted myself last year writing move Think Rest.
I did it in Miami. A friend gifted me her
Miami beachside condo at a really nice rate, and I
would just take a walk along the beach and do
a brain dump verbally of my thoughts and my ideas
into the otter app, which you know is a wonderful
(14:54):
transcription app and then I got back to the room
and I would sort and stept and make sense of
those ideas. But it gave me the freedom to just
do free association and just talk. And what it removed
was what I call her negative Nancy, who often sits
on my shoulder and criticizes, Oh, that's not important, No
(15:15):
one's going to read that. Who cares about that? That's stupid,
you know, So that went away. So otters are really
great app way. I like to use Quaud and chat
GPT are two. One of my favorite questions is to
ask is to put in something that I have drafted
and ask what am I missing? What have I not
thought about? Oftentimes it will it will remind me to
(15:37):
think about things differently from a geographical perspective, from a
historical perspective, from a cultural perspective. I miss what does
this mean? In healthcare? So it helps me also to
see the holes and the gaps. And that's what we
get when we have real in person collaboration with people
who have different training than we do, different levels of
(15:58):
seniority or junior You just think, look at the same issue,
but see it slightly differently. And that's essential for innovation.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Wow, Well, we're all going to have a great brain
trust that we can bounce things off.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
In the future, it's going to be amazing. Well, we're
going to take one more quick ad break and then
I will be back with more from Natalie Nixon. Well,
I am back talking with Natalie Nixon. She is the
CEO of Figure eight Thinking. She is also the author
of the brand new book Move Think Rest. So, Natalie,
(16:34):
this show is called Before Breakfast. So we have a
lot of people who are really into morning routines. I
wonder if you happen to have any sort of morning routine.
I know you said you do your best thinking in
the morning, so maybe can tell us a little bit
about what your mornings look like.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So I try to start buffer my day in the
mornings with c pushing it with silence and more stillness.
I pray, I do a shirt meditation. I typically do
my meditations while I'm stretching our reference. I'd like to stretch.
I have them in our home. I has something I
call the She's Sweet and it has like a Netflix
TV zone. It has a stretching zone, has a reading
(17:09):
fiction zone. So in that stretching zone, I burn incense,
I light a candle I put on I have a
whole playlist called Mellow Chill, and I play that sort
of music. I tend to be a kinesthetic meditator. I'd
never thought I was good at meditation until I learned
that through the research for Move Big Rest. But there's
something called kinesthetic meditation. So I'm a swimmer and I
(17:33):
and so as when you some lapse, for example, you
get into this kind of meditative state of just repetition
and you get out of your head into your body. Similarly,
stretching helps me to do that, where I just start
to focus on my breathing. I get more tuned to
my balance and where I'm at in my body. So
that's a big part of how I try to start
(17:53):
most mornings. They'll always succeed, but it always makes me
feel incredibly better. But definitely a prayer meditation stretch. I
also have started tricking my brain into calling water brain juice.
I had a facial like a month ago, and I
have naturally oil a skin and the woman who did
the face and say, oh, your skin's dry, it's absorbing
(18:14):
whatever this stuff was. She's put on my face quick
and I thought I think I need to be drinking
more water, so I have a whole picture of water.
I make sure that I start to drink that because
when you think about if you get a good seven
or eight hours of sleep, you haven't been hydrating at all.
So that's one of the first things up in your body.
It helps with the organ tissue. Your brain is a
really important organ that needs a lot of water for
(18:36):
lectrolytes and that sort of thing. And then I get
into the work. I typically have mapped out what I
want to get achieve even get done between nine and twelve.
The other thing I've started doing and I interviewed the
co founder for moveth think Rest. I interviewed the copter
flown from moveth think Rests are wonderful kind of quirky
(18:59):
company called I was really really suspicious about it or
skeptical about it when I first learned of it. But
I've also started using it as a room to enter
when I need to do deep thinking work. Flown as
UK base. It is basically a synchronous synchronicity. You drop
into a room that looks like a zoom room, and
(19:20):
it feel a little weird at first because everyone is
just like thinking. Everyone we all have like the same
expressions when we think and they're working, no one talks.
You can put into the chat era your intention like
I want to send five emails or I need to
write a rough draft outline or whatever or finish shape
or proposal, and people will be thumbs up in your intention.
(19:43):
You can have a set a time limit. So it's
really like just as the principles a moth think rest,
it's really adheres to unique breaks throughout the day. When
you do a break with floone, you can opt into
a screen looking at nature, or you can do a puzzle.
So play is a big part. So Flown has been
a really cool work accessory and I highly recommend it
(20:06):
to your listeners, especially given the topic of your podcast.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, well, it's just it provides accountability and you mirror
other people who are working, and it hopefully brings out
the best in you as well.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It feels like you're walking into a hushed library. Yeah,
this is where we're going to work. We're all serious now, yes, yes,
so not Onalie. I asked all my guests a question.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It's kind of the tagline of the show, but what
is something you have done recently to take a day
from great to awesome.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Mmm. Something I've done recently to take a day from
great to awesome. Well, I've started keeping a wins journal.
I learned that from a great book called I think
(20:58):
it's from their book called The Gap in the Game,
which is by Benjamin Hardy and Forgetting the co author.
But it helps me to identify even in days that
I think are just myth or ordinary small wins that
I've had. Right, I sent out five emails, I received
(21:21):
an inquiry for a new proposal. I drank an entire
picture of water. However, you want to define the scrip
of your winds. And that really has helped me take
a day. I forget if you say good to awesome
or great to awesome, but that really helps him because
it elevates my perception of my work. It helps me
account accountable to being as a former boss of mine
(21:45):
in the garment in the fashion streets to say, keep
your eye with the donut, not the hole. Don't focus
on what it should it could have been, but what is.
So when I do that, winsdow and I keep it
in the drawer in my desk. I used to do
it at the end of the day, but I've started
just documenting it throughout the day. If I'm traveling, I
have I keep a winds file in my notes app
(22:08):
that helps me to make a day go from good
to great to awesome.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
I love it. I love it. That is wonderful. What
are you looking forward to right now?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I'm looking forward to going to London next week. I
leave for London on Saturday. I have been I was
nominated as part of the Thinkers fifty twenty twenty four
cohort and I've been nominated for their Talent Award for
this year. So gonna go to their gala and meet
some really interesting thought leaders from around the world. I'm
gonna be on a Deloitte podcast and I'm collaborating with
(22:42):
a colleague and pal of minding, James Hewitt, who is
Real Vivia, an incredible guest for your podcast. I'll connect
the two of you. He's a performance scientist and we're
doing a conversation next Wednesday after the Thinkers fifty events
at Tavas, which is a global consultancy. We'll be interviewed
by the chief Medical Officer about future work ideas and
(23:05):
the title of our of our conversation is the future
works open for end when humans thrive. So we both
have a vested interest in amplifying, leveraging what makes us
uniquely human and a time of so much change in technology.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Wonderful. That sounds very exciting and London is lovely, so yes, great, it's.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Gonna be great. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
So Natalie, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Just go to Figure eight Thinking dot com. That's the
number eight, Figure eight, like this ice gatting figure athinking
dot com and definitely sign up for the newsletter because
that's where you'll be able to tune into all the
great tips and techniques site. I have beware of the
blogs and my fast company articles and we just started
a sixty six day motor challenge. Not too late to join,
(23:50):
but just go to Figure a Thinking dot com and
the first step is to sign up.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
For the newsletter wonderful. Please go do that and check
out the book Move Think rest as well. So Natalie, thanks,
thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to
everyone for listening. If you have feedback about this or
any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura
at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura,
Thanks for listening and here's to making the most.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Of our time.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(24:44):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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