April 30, 2025 • 29 mins
You’re not lazy. You’re just out of capacity — and no amount of to-do lists can fix that.
So what do you do when your brain is fried, your calendar is full, and you're still trying to show up for the people (and priorities) that matter most?
Neuroscientist Ariel Garten has been there. As the co-founder of Muse, the brain-sensing headband used by over 500,000 people and backed by 200+ clinical studies, she’s learned how to work with her brain, not against it — using real-time feedback, five-minute resets, and a deeply human understanding of what it means to do less, better.
In this episode, Ariel and I talk about:
- How she uses Muse to train her brain across focus, emotion regulation, and sleep
- The five-minute session she does daily to “work out” her prefrontal cortex
- What happens after meditation that makes the biggest difference
- Her go-to system for catching herself when she’s stressed, triggered, or procrastinating
If you’ve been trying to push through the overwhelm, this conversation is a powerful reminder that focus, calm, and clarity aren’t things you force - they’re things you can train.
Key Quotes:
“What you have to do is recognise that it’s ok to have limitation and it's ok to only do so much in a day.”
“Forcing yourself to do something that you're not good at, trains you to just do it better each and every time.”
“My bad habits became my triggers for better habits — but only once I noticed them.”
Connect with Ariel via LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter). Learn more about brain training and mindfulness with Muse and listen to her podcast Untangle.
Save 15% on the Muse headband when you shop here and use the code HOWIWORK
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Does the very thought of meditating make your brain hurt? Well,
You're not alone. Even though meditation is scientifically proven to
boost emotional wellbeing, slash stress, improve sleep, and enhance memory,
so many of us still struggle to actually do it.
Myself included. I've said it before on this podcast Meditation,
(00:24):
and I just don't seem to click no matter how
badly I want to do it. That's why I was
genuinely excited to sit down with Ariel Gartens, neuroscientist, psychotherapist, entrepreneur,
and absolute trailblazer in the world of brain tech. Ariel
(00:45):
is the brilliant mind behind Muse, the EEG powered headband
that helps even the most distracted minds learn to meditate
and sleep better. Her work has been featured in Forbes, CNN,
and The Wall Street Journal, and if anyone can make
meditation work for the rest of us, it's her. In
(01:06):
this episode, we explore what to do when you can't
sit still for even one meditation session, and how meditation
can finally help you beat procrastination. Plus, Ariel shares her
simple strategy for balancing big goals, family time, and work
without burning out. Welcome to How I Work a show
(01:34):
about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm
your host, doctor Amantha Imber. You may or may not
have heard of news, but if you haven't, I wanted
to start with Ariel explaining exactly what it is.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So MEWS is a brain sensing headbound that helps you
improve your brain health. It comes with a sweet of
experiences that you use to improve your brain health, like meditation,
sleep and neurofeedback training and also tracking the oxygenation to
your profrontal cortex.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Something I was so excited to ask you is to
understand what is your specific routine using MUSE And I
want to get specific on it. So tell me what
does a typical day look like?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh that's a fun question, Okay. So mus has evolved
a lot over the years. We first came out in
twenty fourteen, and then at that point it was a
meditation tool that could track your brain during meditation and
give you real time feedback to help you meditate. So
that's actually how I learned to meditate in the first place.
I was somebody who tried meditation, knew it was good
(02:43):
for me, sucked at doing it because my brain bounced
all over the place. And it was through the process
of building news and using it that I finally was
able to establish my practice. So that's kind of like
stuck with me. And as mus has evolved into multiple
forms of different meditators, so there's a heart, brain, breath, body,
I've continued to explore them. For me. My current meditation
(03:06):
practice is waking up in the morning and starting with
a guided meditation. We have hundreds of guided meditations and
I do that super early before the kids come in
and wake up and jump on my head and all
those things, all those delightful things which I love. And
then we have this new feature with the f Year's device,
which is tracking the prefrontal blood flow and it allows
(03:28):
you to actually train your prefrontal cortex to use more
oxygen and engage more strongly. So I've been doing our
Athena session. So Athena is our latest device. We have
this awesome experience with an owl where you focus on
it and up regulate the activity of reprefrontal cortex and
it makes the owl fly faster. So that's what I've
(03:50):
been doing in the afternoons. And then I'm a super
good sleeper, so I don't tend to use our go
to sleep features because I just close my eyes and
I fall asleep. But in the evening I'll often do
a meditation, sometimes even with my kids, and it is
a beautifully lovely day to wind down, beautifully lovely way
(04:11):
to wind down the day.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So how long are you meditating for in each of
these sections of your day? If you like?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, so it varies. In the morning, it really depends
on how much time I have before the kids wake up,
So like at seven am, I know the day is
no longer my own, So it might be five minutes,
it might be twelve minutes, it might be seventeen minutes.
That's usually the longest because they're going to jump on
my head pretty soon. In the afternoon, the athena sessions
(04:40):
are actually really short. At the provincial cortex ne our feedback,
it's just five minutes. And then in the evening, if
I'm doing something with the kids, it'll be five minutes
because that's all they can handle. And if it's me
on my own, I might even like dig into a
good fifteen twenty thirty minute meditation session where I can
go nice and deep.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Someone me. I have always struggled to have any kind
of a meditation habit, Like, where do you stop? Because
to me, I'm like, man, that's three sessions in a day.
I can't even manage one. So where would someone like
me start?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Okay, so let me start by saying, you don't have
to do more than one meditation in a day. You know,
this is what I do for my business and for
my life, and so I'm like super invested in it.
Any average person, if you can get in one meditation
session in the day, you are flying, and you want
to try to be consistent with it. So you can
start with as little as three or four minutes if
(05:37):
you want to just get started. Choose any time in
the day that works for you. It really doesn't matter when.
Just try to be consistent with it so that you
can build a routine. So that's why doing it, for example,
every morning or right before you brush your teeth, right
after you brush your teeth, or after your snack break,
you know, whenever is going to fit for you. So
the first thing to remember is that meditation is not
about your mind going blank. You're gonna have lots of
(05:59):
thoughts that come up, and that is a Okay, that's
how meditation works. That's how our brains work. So in
the simplest meditation, you're just going to sit there. You're
going to have a thought that comes up, or a
feeling that comes up. You're going to notice it, and
you're going to be like, yep, that happened, and then
you're going to bring your attention back to your breath.
So you sit there and you focus your attention on
your breath. You might have another thought that's okay, you
(06:21):
notice it, and you just bring your attention back to
your breath. And as you sit there with your attention
back to your breath, you are training your body in
multiple ways. You're training your mind to be able to
observe what's going on, and you're training it to redirect
and put it onto an object of focus that you
care about. In this case, it's your breath, which is neutral.
(06:42):
In the case of work, it might be you know,
the priority that you need to do. It might be
the task at hand, it might be the meeting that
you need to remember about that's coming up next. And
as you do it, you train your brain and body
to learn to be calm and self regulated in the
face of these funny urges, these funny motions, these funny
thoughts that happened to us as humans. You need any
(07:03):
more inspiration as to why you should meditate? A couple things.
So one study with doctor Eileen Luters looked at people
as they age. She looked at their brains of meditators
and non meditators, and people who meditated had brains that,
on average look seven point five years younger.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Wow, that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yes, totally, And muse is used by the Mayo Clinic
for multiple different conditions. They published a study in twenty
seventeen with breast cancer pations awaiting surgery and improved their
quality of life and decrease their stress during the cancer
care process. They've published work in multiple different domains, including
super busy doctors using MEWS in the middle of their
day at Mayo, improving their cognitive function, improving their sleep,
(07:45):
and their latest study on long COVID demonstrated that it
reduced brain fog and improved symptoms in long COVID. So
meditation's really good for you. And whenever you have that
like nagging, like I don't know if I should do it,
just remember all the benefits and that aging brain and
what it may look like if you meditate.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Can you tell me more about the athenus session that
you do in the afternoon and what the purpose of
that is.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Okay, So we have a brand new device that's come
out called Athena and it has both EEG sensors that
measure the electrical activity of your brain as well as
sensors frontal near infrared spectroscopy, and that is using optics
and red and infred light to actually track the amount
of blood flow to your brain. So in the same
(08:31):
way that a functional MRI is looking at the amount
of blood flow in various areas of your brain to
see how it's consuming oxygen and whether it's active during
an activity. The f NEARS also, instead of using a
big machine and complicated electromagnetics, FNEARS is using light to
look at the blood flow right at the blood brain
(08:52):
barrier and to see how much oxygen your brain is
using and how much oxygen your brain is demanding. So
this is a brand new feature that we have in
this new device, and it actually allows you to track
the blood flow to your performtal cortex as well as
train it to upregulate its function to work. More so,
(09:16):
in the same way that you go to the gym
to work your muscle. It's an activity that works your
prefrontal cortex to enable it to strengthen its capabilities and
perform more effectively, which is cool because your prefrontal cortex
is the part of your brain associated with your attention,
your inhibition, your planning, and so these kinds of neuro
(09:37):
feedback sessions have been demonstrated to significantly improve your cognitive
function and inhibition and attention.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Okay, so it's kind of like you're taking your brain
to the gym in the afternoon, yes, okay, and how
long does that gym session last?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
For so the athena sessions are short through just five minutes,
because it's like it's quite a demanding to to do,
just like you don't want to do squats for you know,
more than two minutes. You do your little dose and
it really is effective and it builds over time.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Like I'm imagining your workday, like you're obviously very busy,
wearing a number of different hats. What do you do
throughout the day, Like if you can feel your focus
whining for example.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, the most interesting part of having a good meditation
practice is not what you're doing during your meditation, but
what you actually then do throughout the rest of the day.
So in meditation, what you train your brain to do
is to notice when your mind is wandering, notice the
contents of that mental cogitation, and then be able to
(10:44):
change your attention to where you want it to be,
or change your attention onto the kinds of thoughts that
you want to be thinking. And so throughout the day,
I'll start to notice if I'm feeling stressed, if something
happens and leaves me with an un pleasant feeling, like
you get an email that makes you feel uncomfortable or
makes you upset. In a meditation practice, you learn to
(11:07):
observe your emotions. And so I've now become pretty a
depth throughout the day of feeling when something's happening, whether
that is stress, whether that is unpleasant emotion, and then
being able to distance myself from it and to breathe
deeply recognize that you know, that emotion that I felt
about that email doesn't need to move into my next conversation,
(11:30):
or if it starts to move into my next conversation
because I'm feeling kind of, you know, crappy about it,
I can have the self reflection to like to say so, like, hey,
I'm coming in. I just had something hard to happen,
Give me a minute, and then refocus and reregulate. And
it's been an incredibly powerful tool to use both when
I'm feeling emotionally justsregulated and when my attention to starts
(11:51):
to flag. You know, you've been working on something for
a while and you lose interest in it, or you
notice that you're just checking emails repeatedly, and so I
can catch myself stop and say, hey, what are we
supposed to be doing? Back to task?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Do you have certain triggers or flags that your brain
is used to noticing to get you back on track?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Okay? So one is the uncomfortable emotional feeling that often
sometimes happens from like a colleagues's interaction, where I might
feel like I've been left out of something, or you
get an email about someone being mad because you didn't
do something properly or something didn't work properly. And then
what I do is I very quickly like kind of
compartmentalize it and understand what that was. I'm actually like,
(12:35):
this is what triggered me, And then I call myself,
take a deep breath, you know, reregulate and say Okay,
let's move to the solution. So how do we solve this?
At take perspective, I, you know, try to understand how
the other person was feeling or thinking. I then recognize
that whatever I'm thinking they're thinking probably wasn't correct to
begin with. But at least, you know, gets me outside
(12:56):
of myself and gives me an insight into what might
be going on. And then I try to work towards
solution and propose solution.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
How about when you're feeling yourself procrastinating or checking email
more often than you need to, or scrolling on the
socials again, like, do you have methods or triggers that
you use when you feel yourself straying from the task
at hand.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Email checking is a big one for me. When I
get off task, I just go back to checking the
top of my email, and then I'm only dealing with
the things that are on the top of my email
and not the actual things I need to work on.
And so I break the habit by as soon as
I notice that I'm in like mindless email mode, It's like, stop,
(13:39):
what are you supposed to be doing? I go to
the list of items that I have that I actually
need to accomplish, and then I dig into the items
that I have to accomplish, or I leave open emails
that I know I need to respond to, and I
go back to those emails. So it's the action. What
I know is my bad habit. Me noticing my bad
(14:00):
have a state is then the trigger for the change.
And you need to know in advance what it is
that you're going to switch to. So I recommend, you know,
having a list of the important things you need to do,
or having you a list of your alternates to that
stupid Scully task, so that you don't even have to
think about how you get out of it. You're just like, oh,
doing the stupid task. Come to the alternate.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I'm curious about your list and what that looks like,
how you film it, where it sets. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, so it sits in a notes document. I just
use the notes on my mac os. I've tried various
task and productivity software notes, but I don't find them
any more effective than just using the notes. And so
I have a to do list. It tends to be
like a running to do list for the week, because
tasks carry over from day to day, and then when
(14:50):
I get to the end of the week, or unfortunately,
when I have an evening work session because I've gone
over what I need to do in a day and
I have to catch up at night. Then you know,
is eating into the meditation time. Meditation does not happen
at night when I have night work sessions. Nobody's perfect.
I just have to balance your time. Then I use
that night session to get the things off my list.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I'm curious about your language there night work session. It
sounds like you're clocking on for night shift, Like is
that something that you're super conscious about, Like if you
are having to work at night, I don't know, compartmentalizing
that in some way? What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So when I was younger and didn't have children, the
night was the most productive time for me, and I
would just relish working from kind of nine pm till
midnight or one am, because that's when I was my
most creative. That was like pure flow. It was amazing.
And then you have a life in kids and obligations
and you can no longer work till one in the
(15:47):
morning without being a miserable person. And I really value
my sleep, so you know, I go to bed at eleven,
wake up at seven, go to bed at ten thirty,
wake up at six thirty. That's the way it is.
I get eight hours. It's beautiful and clean and so
so if I'm doing a night work session, that means
I'm saying good night to the kids at eight thirty,
and instead of doing a meditation or cleaning the kitchen
(16:09):
or whatever else I might want to be doing with
that free time, I'm on my computer chugging through as
much work as I can until lights out at ten thirty.
And because I'm a good sleeper, I can kind of
work till ten thirty. It becomes a little harder to
fall asleep because I've had You know that I'm wound
up with work and I have the light in my eyes,
(16:31):
so it takes me like an extra four or five minutes,
five minutes to fall asleep. This is not normal. Most
people with native lights in their eyes don't fall asleep
so easily. So you know, I can manage it. If
I was not a good sleeper, I would want to
stop that much earlier to make sure that I got
a good night sleep.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
We will be back soon with Ario, and when we return,
we'll discuss her simple strategy for balancing big goals family,
time and work, and how she overcomes the fact that
she is actually very bad at prioritizing. If you're looking
for more tips to improve the way you work can live.
(17:09):
I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've
discovered that have helped me personally. You can sign up
for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot com.
How do you go about setting boundaries for yourself, particularly
from the transition from not being a mother to being
(17:31):
a mother where you know it's like your time and
the decisions that you have around how you use your time,
particularly like with just the demanding role that you have,
How do you set boundaries and rules for yourself?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
It's really hard, And you know, initially in the transition
from being a you know, soul body that could do
whatever I wanted with my time to then being in
a marriage where you know your partner needs things from
you and being a workaholic is not really appealing in
the really, you know, that's the first transition. When it
was just me. You know, you can dive into work
(18:05):
as much as you want, and if you're passionate about
what you do, you can just do that. For many many,
many hours straight, and you can no longer do that
once the obligations of life come in and I have
two children, and it becomes very challenging to make the
right boundaries having the proper support. In my case, I
have an afternote school nanny that picks up the kids
(18:27):
at three thirty till five, so I get that extra time.
There are times when I didn't and had to be like,
three thirty is it? And so we're done with work.
The workday ends early, but it means that every single
night I'm making up that extra hour and a half
from eight thirty to ten. It also means that I
don't get everything done in my workday that I want to,
and so I have to let go of some items
(18:50):
and understand how to prioritize and prioritization in terms of
which client is the most you know, is the highest priority,
which task is the highest priority, knowing some of them
just might not get done, which when you're dealing with
client relationships is really really difficult choices to make. And
you know, in your own work you can say, hey,
(19:13):
I didn't get this done. It's fine, you know it's
only good enough. It's fine, but you can't let a
client down, and so those are the times when it
becomes much harder to set boundaries and I end up
working many, many more hours than I probably should.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Can you tell me about how you approach prioritization. I
find that it is such a hard thing for so
many leaders, and I'd love to know how do you
think about it? You know, I guess from like a
macro view, like you know, the year or the quarter,
and then more of a micro view in terms of today.
How do I actually distinguish between the thing that's going
(19:48):
to shift the dial and the thing that maybe I
feel like I need to do but it's going to
make me work night shift.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
That's a tough question. So as an organization, we actually
set out an annual plan and we start that process
in October. We do our annual planning, We publish what
we're going to do for the year, and then we
try to keep ourselves to that. And there's obviously going
to be a lot of shifts that happen, and part
of it is response to market demand or response to
(20:17):
you know, buyer is the most important thing that we
have to deal with. I am actually very bad at
prioritization because I want to do everything, and so I
will often push myself to do more rather than drop
something that I think is important, which can then lead
to a lot of difficulty prioritizing family, the other things
(20:37):
in your life. And so often that prioritization goes in
two places. One is who is the pain customer? Who
is most likely to be the pain customer, and so
we need to serve them. And two is how is
this going to do the most good, the most good
for the organization, the most good for myself, the most
good for my family, the most good for the customer,
(20:59):
the person using the device. And so it is a
question of you know, what's going to be financially most
rewarding because it's going to allow the sustenance of the business,
and what is also going to achieve the highest good
for these groups of stakeholders, And often those groups of
stakeholders are in conflict with one another. You know, what's
(21:22):
the most good for my family is not the same
as what's the most good for my company. Obviously they
both want my time, and so that's when it has
to really be a value based prioritization.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It sounds like really tough decisions to make. How have
you found yourself making them, you know, day to day
or in the moment, because I'm imagining that this is
probably a daily reality for you in terms of making
those choices around who gets your time.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
So I mean, sometimes you don't even make that decision.
The decision is made for you. The kid comes in
in the middle of your zoom meeting and she really
wants breastfeed, and like, sorry, it's just what's going to
be happening, Sorry, zoom meeting. You know, sometimes you just can't.
The nanny calls them sick and so sorry, meetings have
to cancel and family gets your time. Sometimes it almost
(22:13):
feels relieving when you don't have to make the decision
that's made for you. Sometimes you really do get the
luxury of making your own decisions. And it's a very
good question how that decision is really made day to day.
You know, I could give you an answer like, oh,
I do it intuitively, but I think really what that
means is I try to do the best I can,
(22:34):
and then stuff is just going to fall into line
and whatever gets done gets done. You know, we're really
imperfect when it comes to managing most aspects of our humanity.
Stuff just happens. Time goes on, People make choices around you,
They impact you. You react in some way, and we
try to put a little bit of guidance towards what
we hope will happen along the way.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
I appreciate your honesty. It is sorry hot, you know,
and I think particularly is a busy founder. It's so
easy to feel torn between the business and clients and
then what your family needs. I definitely experience that, you know,
many many times, and I still don't quite know how
to navigate it. I think something I do reflect on,
(23:17):
and I think it helps me procrastinate less, is that
the time that I've got, and typically my work time
is it's in front of a computer, or it's in
front of clients or with my team, and I think
about how do I really make those hours count, particularly
when if I don't make that count, there's going to
be some sort of a trade off that I'm going
(23:37):
to have to make later in the day when you know,
I'm with my daughter. I'm curious, like if you can
relate to that, or if you've kind of got similar
mental processes or awareness of you know, particularly when your
mind is drifting or you're you know, processing emails in
a way that's not the most productive. What does that
look like for you?
Speaker 2 (23:56):
So I absolutely resonate with this, and even as you
say it, I feel this sense of pressure, and I
think what you have to do is recognize that it's
okay to have limitation, and it's okay to only do
so much in a day, and it's okay to only
be able to accomplish so much in a work session,
and then to make your choices accordingly. You know, I
(24:18):
used to want to say yes to everything because everything
brought such amazing opportunity, and now I unfortunately have to
say yes to a lot less things, but I continue
to find that those bring richness an opportunity. Yeah, I'm
not good at saying no to things, and so I
think for me, it's more about what gets my attention
to say yes to it, and honestly, some of it
(24:41):
is just luck.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
I would love to know you've hosted the podcast Untangled
for I think you're like over five hundred episodes in
or something like that, and you've had so many amazing guests.
Like the risk of asking a very cliched question, I
would love to know what are some of the strategies
that you've heard from guests that you have applied and
that have stuck with you and improved your life in
(25:02):
some way.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
One and this is this is a surprise question that
I'm like thinking about it in real time. So one
was bj Fog, so talking about habits. Bj Fog is
a habit forming specialist. He has a book called Tiny
Habits and Whole Methodology. He recommends that we change our
habits bit by bit in tiny steps, and you celebrate
(25:26):
each tiny step. The most obvious examples if you want
to go to the gym. Going to the gym can
feel really overwhelming, so you put on your shoes and
you know, once you got your gym shoes on, you
celebrate it. And for most people it can feel kind
of cheesy to celebrate your winds, but there's a neural
reason to do that. So you know, you do something,
you establish the habit, and you want to go, yes,
(25:46):
you know I did that. That's great because then you
get a flood of dopamine, oxytose and serotonin that's actually
going to encourage the way that your neurons wire together
and help you learn fast. Another one is David Eagleman. So,
David Egleman is a neuroscientist. He's a sensory perception neuroscientist,
(26:06):
and he talks a lot about creativity. And one of
the things that I always remember from him is teaching
you how to rewire your brain and to make new
neural connections and to do everything with the left hand.
So brush your teeth with your left hand, open the
door with your left hand, and as you do these things,
you train your brain to think and act in new ways.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
That is very cool. I'm going to try that left
handed thing.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
It's a funny one, but it is kind of fitting
into the scheme of how do we optimize ourself? You know,
how do we become our best selves? The practical thing
is you're moving your left hand. But the extension to
that is what are the things that I'm not good
at that I should start doing. They might be uncomfortable,
(26:57):
they might feel weird, but when I do them as
a practical thing to do regularly, I increase that skill. So,
you know, exercise is one of those things for me,
exercising a new muscle. You may not want to do it.
It might feel awkward, it might feel terrible, but it's
like I do it because I know it's strengthening that
part of my body. If I can't remember a word,
(27:20):
instead of like braiding myself for it and thinking about
perimenopause or aging or whatever it is, I stop and
I try to remember the fact, because forcing yourself to
do something that you're not good at trains you to
just do it better each and every time.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
And in terms of the future of wearables and particularly
ones that have brain sensing capabilities, what does that look
like over the next three to five years.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
So I think we're going to see more and more
brain sensing devices on the market. We're already seeing these
things is they get integrated into headphones and into kind
of aspects of our daily life. I think there's more
and more use cases for the use of EEG to
help you focus at work, to help you manage your sleep,
(28:07):
and you know, we're seeing more and more devices coming
out with more and more functionality. So I think the
next three to five years are going to really be
an inflection point. Whereas with the fitbit, for example, you know,
back in twenty ten, very few people had a tracker,
and now they're everywhere. We're at the beginning of that
(28:27):
inflection in brain sensing devices.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Amazing Ariel. It has been so great to talk to
you learn about how you use the muse that's now
going to impact how I use mine. Thank you so
much for your time today.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Oh it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I hope you love this chat with Ariel. And if
you are king to get your hands on a Muse,
Ariel has kindly given listeners of the show a fifteen
percent discount off MEWS. Just go to choose Muse MusB
dot com, forward slash how I Work and enter the
code how I Work at checkout, and those details are
(29:06):
also in the show notes. If you like today's show,
make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to
be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was
recorded on the traditional land of the Warringery people, part
of the Cooler Nation.
Does the very thought of meditating make your brain hurt? Well,
You're not alone. Even though meditation is scientifically proven to
boost emotional wellbeing, slash stress, improve sleep, and enhance memory,
so many of us still struggle to actually do it.
Myself included. I've said it before on this podcast Meditation,
(00:24):
and I just don't seem to click no matter how
badly I want to do it. That's why I was
genuinely excited to sit down with Ariel Gartens, neuroscientist, psychotherapist, entrepreneur,
and absolute trailblazer in the world of brain tech. Ariel
(00:45):
is the brilliant mind behind Muse, the EEG powered headband
that helps even the most distracted minds learn to meditate
and sleep better. Her work has been featured in Forbes, CNN,
and The Wall Street Journal, and if anyone can make
meditation work for the rest of us, it's her. In
(01:06):
this episode, we explore what to do when you can't
sit still for even one meditation session, and how meditation
can finally help you beat procrastination. Plus, Ariel shares her
simple strategy for balancing big goals, family time, and work
without burning out. Welcome to How I Work a show
(01:34):
about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm
your host, doctor Amantha Imber. You may or may not
have heard of news, but if you haven't, I wanted
to start with Ariel explaining exactly what it is.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So MEWS is a brain sensing headbound that helps you
improve your brain health. It comes with a sweet of
experiences that you use to improve your brain health, like meditation,
sleep and neurofeedback training and also tracking the oxygenation to
your profrontal cortex.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Something I was so excited to ask you is to
understand what is your specific routine using MUSE And I
want to get specific on it. So tell me what
does a typical day look like?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh that's a fun question, Okay. So mus has evolved
a lot over the years. We first came out in
twenty fourteen, and then at that point it was a
meditation tool that could track your brain during meditation and
give you real time feedback to help you meditate. So
that's actually how I learned to meditate in the first place.
I was somebody who tried meditation, knew it was good
(02:43):
for me, sucked at doing it because my brain bounced
all over the place. And it was through the process
of building news and using it that I finally was
able to establish my practice. So that's kind of like
stuck with me. And as mus has evolved into multiple
forms of different meditators, so there's a heart, brain, breath, body,
I've continued to explore them. For me. My current meditation
(03:06):
practice is waking up in the morning and starting with
a guided meditation. We have hundreds of guided meditations and
I do that super early before the kids come in
and wake up and jump on my head and all
those things, all those delightful things which I love. And
then we have this new feature with the f Year's device,
which is tracking the prefrontal blood flow and it allows
(03:28):
you to actually train your prefrontal cortex to use more
oxygen and engage more strongly. So I've been doing our
Athena session. So Athena is our latest device. We have
this awesome experience with an owl where you focus on
it and up regulate the activity of reprefrontal cortex and
it makes the owl fly faster. So that's what I've
(03:50):
been doing in the afternoons. And then I'm a super
good sleeper, so I don't tend to use our go
to sleep features because I just close my eyes and
I fall asleep. But in the evening I'll often do
a meditation, sometimes even with my kids, and it is
a beautifully lovely day to wind down, beautifully lovely way
(04:11):
to wind down the day.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So how long are you meditating for in each of
these sections of your day? If you like?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, so it varies. In the morning, it really depends
on how much time I have before the kids wake up,
So like at seven am, I know the day is
no longer my own, So it might be five minutes,
it might be twelve minutes, it might be seventeen minutes.
That's usually the longest because they're going to jump on
my head pretty soon. In the afternoon, the athena sessions
(04:40):
are actually really short. At the provincial cortex ne our feedback,
it's just five minutes. And then in the evening, if
I'm doing something with the kids, it'll be five minutes
because that's all they can handle. And if it's me
on my own, I might even like dig into a
good fifteen twenty thirty minute meditation session where I can
go nice and deep.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Someone me. I have always struggled to have any kind
of a meditation habit, Like, where do you stop? Because
to me, I'm like, man, that's three sessions in a day.
I can't even manage one. So where would someone like
me start?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Okay, so let me start by saying, you don't have
to do more than one meditation in a day. You know,
this is what I do for my business and for
my life, and so I'm like super invested in it.
Any average person, if you can get in one meditation
session in the day, you are flying, and you want
to try to be consistent with it. So you can
start with as little as three or four minutes if
(05:37):
you want to just get started. Choose any time in
the day that works for you. It really doesn't matter when.
Just try to be consistent with it so that you
can build a routine. So that's why doing it, for example,
every morning or right before you brush your teeth, right
after you brush your teeth, or after your snack break,
you know, whenever is going to fit for you. So
the first thing to remember is that meditation is not
about your mind going blank. You're gonna have lots of
(05:59):
thoughts that come up, and that is a Okay, that's
how meditation works. That's how our brains work. So in
the simplest meditation, you're just going to sit there. You're
going to have a thought that comes up, or a
feeling that comes up. You're going to notice it, and
you're going to be like, yep, that happened, and then
you're going to bring your attention back to your breath.
So you sit there and you focus your attention on
your breath. You might have another thought that's okay, you
(06:21):
notice it, and you just bring your attention back to
your breath. And as you sit there with your attention
back to your breath, you are training your body in
multiple ways. You're training your mind to be able to
observe what's going on, and you're training it to redirect
and put it onto an object of focus that you
care about. In this case, it's your breath, which is neutral.
(06:42):
In the case of work, it might be you know,
the priority that you need to do. It might be
the task at hand, it might be the meeting that
you need to remember about that's coming up next. And
as you do it, you train your brain and body
to learn to be calm and self regulated in the
face of these funny urges, these funny motions, these funny
thoughts that happened to us as humans. You need any
(07:03):
more inspiration as to why you should meditate? A couple things.
So one study with doctor Eileen Luters looked at people
as they age. She looked at their brains of meditators
and non meditators, and people who meditated had brains that,
on average look seven point five years younger.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Wow, that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yes, totally, And muse is used by the Mayo Clinic
for multiple different conditions. They published a study in twenty
seventeen with breast cancer pations awaiting surgery and improved their
quality of life and decrease their stress during the cancer
care process. They've published work in multiple different domains, including
super busy doctors using MEWS in the middle of their
day at Mayo, improving their cognitive function, improving their sleep,
(07:45):
and their latest study on long COVID demonstrated that it
reduced brain fog and improved symptoms in long COVID. So
meditation's really good for you. And whenever you have that
like nagging, like I don't know if I should do it,
just remember all the benefits and that aging brain and
what it may look like if you meditate.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Can you tell me more about the athenus session that
you do in the afternoon and what the purpose of
that is.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Okay, So we have a brand new device that's come
out called Athena and it has both EEG sensors that
measure the electrical activity of your brain as well as
sensors frontal near infrared spectroscopy, and that is using optics
and red and infred light to actually track the amount
of blood flow to your brain. So in the same
(08:31):
way that a functional MRI is looking at the amount
of blood flow in various areas of your brain to
see how it's consuming oxygen and whether it's active during
an activity. The f NEARS also, instead of using a
big machine and complicated electromagnetics, FNEARS is using light to
look at the blood flow right at the blood brain
(08:52):
barrier and to see how much oxygen your brain is
using and how much oxygen your brain is demanding. So
this is a brand new feature that we have in
this new device, and it actually allows you to track
the blood flow to your performtal cortex as well as
train it to upregulate its function to work. More so,
(09:16):
in the same way that you go to the gym
to work your muscle. It's an activity that works your
prefrontal cortex to enable it to strengthen its capabilities and
perform more effectively, which is cool because your prefrontal cortex
is the part of your brain associated with your attention,
your inhibition, your planning, and so these kinds of neuro
(09:37):
feedback sessions have been demonstrated to significantly improve your cognitive
function and inhibition and attention.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Okay, so it's kind of like you're taking your brain
to the gym in the afternoon, yes, okay, and how
long does that gym session last?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
For so the athena sessions are short through just five minutes,
because it's like it's quite a demanding to to do,
just like you don't want to do squats for you know,
more than two minutes. You do your little dose and
it really is effective and it builds over time.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Like I'm imagining your workday, like you're obviously very busy,
wearing a number of different hats. What do you do
throughout the day, Like if you can feel your focus
whining for example.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, the most interesting part of having a good meditation
practice is not what you're doing during your meditation, but
what you actually then do throughout the rest of the day.
So in meditation, what you train your brain to do
is to notice when your mind is wandering, notice the
contents of that mental cogitation, and then be able to
(10:44):
change your attention to where you want it to be,
or change your attention onto the kinds of thoughts that
you want to be thinking. And so throughout the day,
I'll start to notice if I'm feeling stressed, if something
happens and leaves me with an un pleasant feeling, like
you get an email that makes you feel uncomfortable or
makes you upset. In a meditation practice, you learn to
(11:07):
observe your emotions. And so I've now become pretty a
depth throughout the day of feeling when something's happening, whether
that is stress, whether that is unpleasant emotion, and then
being able to distance myself from it and to breathe
deeply recognize that you know, that emotion that I felt
about that email doesn't need to move into my next conversation,
(11:30):
or if it starts to move into my next conversation
because I'm feeling kind of, you know, crappy about it,
I can have the self reflection to like to say so, like, hey,
I'm coming in. I just had something hard to happen,
Give me a minute, and then refocus and reregulate. And
it's been an incredibly powerful tool to use both when
I'm feeling emotionally justsregulated and when my attention to starts
(11:51):
to flag. You know, you've been working on something for
a while and you lose interest in it, or you
notice that you're just checking emails repeatedly, and so I
can catch myself stop and say, hey, what are we
supposed to be doing? Back to task?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Do you have certain triggers or flags that your brain
is used to noticing to get you back on track?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Okay? So one is the uncomfortable emotional feeling that often
sometimes happens from like a colleagues's interaction, where I might
feel like I've been left out of something, or you
get an email about someone being mad because you didn't
do something properly or something didn't work properly. And then
what I do is I very quickly like kind of
compartmentalize it and understand what that was. I'm actually like,
(12:35):
this is what triggered me, And then I call myself,
take a deep breath, you know, reregulate and say Okay,
let's move to the solution. So how do we solve this?
At take perspective, I, you know, try to understand how
the other person was feeling or thinking. I then recognize
that whatever I'm thinking they're thinking probably wasn't correct to
begin with. But at least, you know, gets me outside
(12:56):
of myself and gives me an insight into what might
be going on. And then I try to work towards
solution and propose solution.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
How about when you're feeling yourself procrastinating or checking email
more often than you need to, or scrolling on the
socials again, like, do you have methods or triggers that
you use when you feel yourself straying from the task
at hand.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Email checking is a big one for me. When I
get off task, I just go back to checking the
top of my email, and then I'm only dealing with
the things that are on the top of my email
and not the actual things I need to work on.
And so I break the habit by as soon as
I notice that I'm in like mindless email mode, It's like, stop,
(13:39):
what are you supposed to be doing? I go to
the list of items that I have that I actually
need to accomplish, and then I dig into the items
that I have to accomplish, or I leave open emails
that I know I need to respond to, and I
go back to those emails. So it's the action. What
I know is my bad habit. Me noticing my bad
(14:00):
have a state is then the trigger for the change.
And you need to know in advance what it is
that you're going to switch to. So I recommend, you know,
having a list of the important things you need to do,
or having you a list of your alternates to that
stupid Scully task, so that you don't even have to
think about how you get out of it. You're just like, oh,
doing the stupid task. Come to the alternate.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I'm curious about your list and what that looks like,
how you film it, where it sets. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, so it sits in a notes document. I just
use the notes on my mac os. I've tried various
task and productivity software notes, but I don't find them
any more effective than just using the notes. And so
I have a to do list. It tends to be
like a running to do list for the week, because
tasks carry over from day to day, and then when
(14:50):
I get to the end of the week, or unfortunately,
when I have an evening work session because I've gone
over what I need to do in a day and
I have to catch up at night. Then you know,
is eating into the meditation time. Meditation does not happen
at night when I have night work sessions. Nobody's perfect.
I just have to balance your time. Then I use
that night session to get the things off my list.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I'm curious about your language there night work session. It
sounds like you're clocking on for night shift, Like is
that something that you're super conscious about, Like if you
are having to work at night, I don't know, compartmentalizing
that in some way? What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So when I was younger and didn't have children, the
night was the most productive time for me, and I
would just relish working from kind of nine pm till
midnight or one am, because that's when I was my
most creative. That was like pure flow. It was amazing.
And then you have a life in kids and obligations
and you can no longer work till one in the
(15:47):
morning without being a miserable person. And I really value
my sleep, so you know, I go to bed at eleven,
wake up at seven, go to bed at ten thirty,
wake up at six thirty. That's the way it is.
I get eight hours. It's beautiful and clean and so
so if I'm doing a night work session, that means
I'm saying good night to the kids at eight thirty,
and instead of doing a meditation or cleaning the kitchen
(16:09):
or whatever else I might want to be doing with
that free time, I'm on my computer chugging through as
much work as I can until lights out at ten thirty.
And because I'm a good sleeper, I can kind of
work till ten thirty. It becomes a little harder to
fall asleep because I've had You know that I'm wound
up with work and I have the light in my eyes,
(16:31):
so it takes me like an extra four or five minutes,
five minutes to fall asleep. This is not normal. Most
people with native lights in their eyes don't fall asleep
so easily. So you know, I can manage it. If
I was not a good sleeper, I would want to
stop that much earlier to make sure that I got
a good night sleep.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
We will be back soon with Ario, and when we return,
we'll discuss her simple strategy for balancing big goals family,
time and work, and how she overcomes the fact that
she is actually very bad at prioritizing. If you're looking
for more tips to improve the way you work can live.
(17:09):
I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've
discovered that have helped me personally. You can sign up
for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot com.
How do you go about setting boundaries for yourself, particularly
from the transition from not being a mother to being
(17:31):
a mother where you know it's like your time and
the decisions that you have around how you use your time,
particularly like with just the demanding role that you have,
How do you set boundaries and rules for yourself?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
It's really hard, And you know, initially in the transition
from being a you know, soul body that could do
whatever I wanted with my time to then being in
a marriage where you know your partner needs things from
you and being a workaholic is not really appealing in
the really, you know, that's the first transition. When it
was just me. You know, you can dive into work
(18:05):
as much as you want, and if you're passionate about
what you do, you can just do that. For many many,
many hours straight, and you can no longer do that
once the obligations of life come in and I have
two children, and it becomes very challenging to make the
right boundaries having the proper support. In my case, I
have an afternote school nanny that picks up the kids
(18:27):
at three thirty till five, so I get that extra time.
There are times when I didn't and had to be like,
three thirty is it? And so we're done with work.
The workday ends early, but it means that every single
night I'm making up that extra hour and a half
from eight thirty to ten. It also means that I
don't get everything done in my workday that I want to,
and so I have to let go of some items
(18:50):
and understand how to prioritize and prioritization in terms of
which client is the most you know, is the highest priority,
which task is the highest priority, knowing some of them
just might not get done, which when you're dealing with
client relationships is really really difficult choices to make. And
you know, in your own work you can say, hey,
(19:13):
I didn't get this done. It's fine, you know it's
only good enough. It's fine, but you can't let a
client down, and so those are the times when it
becomes much harder to set boundaries and I end up
working many, many more hours than I probably should.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Can you tell me about how you approach prioritization. I
find that it is such a hard thing for so
many leaders, and I'd love to know how do you
think about it? You know, I guess from like a
macro view, like you know, the year or the quarter,
and then more of a micro view in terms of today.
How do I actually distinguish between the thing that's going
(19:48):
to shift the dial and the thing that maybe I
feel like I need to do but it's going to
make me work night shift.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
That's a tough question. So as an organization, we actually
set out an annual plan and we start that process
in October. We do our annual planning, We publish what
we're going to do for the year, and then we
try to keep ourselves to that. And there's obviously going
to be a lot of shifts that happen, and part
of it is response to market demand or response to
(20:17):
you know, buyer is the most important thing that we
have to deal with. I am actually very bad at
prioritization because I want to do everything, and so I
will often push myself to do more rather than drop
something that I think is important, which can then lead
to a lot of difficulty prioritizing family, the other things
(20:37):
in your life. And so often that prioritization goes in
two places. One is who is the pain customer? Who
is most likely to be the pain customer, and so
we need to serve them. And two is how is
this going to do the most good, the most good
for the organization, the most good for myself, the most
good for my family, the most good for the customer,
(20:59):
the person using the device. And so it is a
question of you know, what's going to be financially most
rewarding because it's going to allow the sustenance of the business,
and what is also going to achieve the highest good
for these groups of stakeholders, And often those groups of
stakeholders are in conflict with one another. You know, what's
(21:22):
the most good for my family is not the same
as what's the most good for my company. Obviously they
both want my time, and so that's when it has
to really be a value based prioritization.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It sounds like really tough decisions to make. How have
you found yourself making them, you know, day to day
or in the moment, because I'm imagining that this is
probably a daily reality for you in terms of making
those choices around who gets your time.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
So I mean, sometimes you don't even make that decision.
The decision is made for you. The kid comes in
in the middle of your zoom meeting and she really
wants breastfeed, and like, sorry, it's just what's going to
be happening, Sorry, zoom meeting. You know, sometimes you just can't.
The nanny calls them sick and so sorry, meetings have
to cancel and family gets your time. Sometimes it almost
(22:13):
feels relieving when you don't have to make the decision
that's made for you. Sometimes you really do get the
luxury of making your own decisions. And it's a very
good question how that decision is really made day to day.
You know, I could give you an answer like, oh,
I do it intuitively, but I think really what that
means is I try to do the best I can,
(22:34):
and then stuff is just going to fall into line
and whatever gets done gets done. You know, we're really
imperfect when it comes to managing most aspects of our humanity.
Stuff just happens. Time goes on, People make choices around you,
They impact you. You react in some way, and we
try to put a little bit of guidance towards what
we hope will happen along the way.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
I appreciate your honesty. It is sorry hot, you know,
and I think particularly is a busy founder. It's so
easy to feel torn between the business and clients and
then what your family needs. I definitely experience that, you know,
many many times, and I still don't quite know how
to navigate it. I think something I do reflect on,
(23:17):
and I think it helps me procrastinate less, is that
the time that I've got, and typically my work time
is it's in front of a computer, or it's in
front of clients or with my team, and I think
about how do I really make those hours count, particularly
when if I don't make that count, there's going to
be some sort of a trade off that I'm going
(23:37):
to have to make later in the day when you know,
I'm with my daughter. I'm curious, like if you can
relate to that, or if you've kind of got similar
mental processes or awareness of you know, particularly when your
mind is drifting or you're you know, processing emails in
a way that's not the most productive. What does that
look like for you?
Speaker 2 (23:56):
So I absolutely resonate with this, and even as you
say it, I feel this sense of pressure, and I
think what you have to do is recognize that it's
okay to have limitation, and it's okay to only do
so much in a day, and it's okay to only
be able to accomplish so much in a work session,
and then to make your choices accordingly. You know, I
(24:18):
used to want to say yes to everything because everything
brought such amazing opportunity, and now I unfortunately have to
say yes to a lot less things, but I continue
to find that those bring richness an opportunity. Yeah, I'm
not good at saying no to things, and so I
think for me, it's more about what gets my attention
to say yes to it, and honestly, some of it
(24:41):
is just luck.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
I would love to know you've hosted the podcast Untangled
for I think you're like over five hundred episodes in
or something like that, and you've had so many amazing guests.
Like the risk of asking a very cliched question, I
would love to know what are some of the strategies
that you've heard from guests that you have applied and
that have stuck with you and improved your life in
(25:02):
some way.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
One and this is this is a surprise question that
I'm like thinking about it in real time. So one
was bj Fog, so talking about habits. Bj Fog is
a habit forming specialist. He has a book called Tiny
Habits and Whole Methodology. He recommends that we change our
habits bit by bit in tiny steps, and you celebrate
(25:26):
each tiny step. The most obvious examples if you want
to go to the gym. Going to the gym can
feel really overwhelming, so you put on your shoes and
you know, once you got your gym shoes on, you
celebrate it. And for most people it can feel kind
of cheesy to celebrate your winds, but there's a neural
reason to do that. So you know, you do something,
you establish the habit, and you want to go, yes,
(25:46):
you know I did that. That's great because then you
get a flood of dopamine, oxytose and serotonin that's actually
going to encourage the way that your neurons wire together
and help you learn fast. Another one is David Eagleman. So,
David Egleman is a neuroscientist. He's a sensory perception neuroscientist,
(26:06):
and he talks a lot about creativity. And one of
the things that I always remember from him is teaching
you how to rewire your brain and to make new
neural connections and to do everything with the left hand.
So brush your teeth with your left hand, open the
door with your left hand, and as you do these things,
you train your brain to think and act in new ways.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
That is very cool. I'm going to try that left
handed thing.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
It's a funny one, but it is kind of fitting
into the scheme of how do we optimize ourself? You know,
how do we become our best selves? The practical thing
is you're moving your left hand. But the extension to
that is what are the things that I'm not good
at that I should start doing. They might be uncomfortable,
(26:57):
they might feel weird, but when I do them as
a practical thing to do regularly, I increase that skill. So,
you know, exercise is one of those things for me,
exercising a new muscle. You may not want to do it.
It might feel awkward, it might feel terrible, but it's
like I do it because I know it's strengthening that
part of my body. If I can't remember a word,
(27:20):
instead of like braiding myself for it and thinking about
perimenopause or aging or whatever it is, I stop and
I try to remember the fact, because forcing yourself to
do something that you're not good at trains you to
just do it better each and every time.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
And in terms of the future of wearables and particularly
ones that have brain sensing capabilities, what does that look
like over the next three to five years.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
So I think we're going to see more and more
brain sensing devices on the market. We're already seeing these
things is they get integrated into headphones and into kind
of aspects of our daily life. I think there's more
and more use cases for the use of EEG to
help you focus at work, to help you manage your sleep,
(28:07):
and you know, we're seeing more and more devices coming
out with more and more functionality. So I think the
next three to five years are going to really be
an inflection point. Whereas with the fitbit, for example, you know,
back in twenty ten, very few people had a tracker,
and now they're everywhere. We're at the beginning of that
(28:27):
inflection in brain sensing devices.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Amazing Ariel. It has been so great to talk to
you learn about how you use the muse that's now
going to impact how I use mine. Thank you so
much for your time today.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Oh it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I hope you love this chat with Ariel. And if
you are king to get your hands on a Muse,
Ariel has kindly given listeners of the show a fifteen
percent discount off MEWS. Just go to choose Muse MusB
dot com, forward slash how I Work and enter the
code how I Work at checkout, and those details are
(29:06):
also in the show notes. If you like today's show,
make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to
be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was
recorded on the traditional land of the Warringery people, part
of the Cooler Nation.
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