Cricket, Brain States, and How AI Changes Our Mental Game

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The AI era is accelerating at an unprecedented pace with exciting developments on the horizon. Dr. Jon Finn explores how we can apply brain state intelligence—a concept visible in cricket performance—to thrive alongside AI in our professional lives.

• England's cricket batsmen demonstrated exceptional brain state intelligence by controlling their activation levels
• Brain State Intelligence involves knowing when to recharge, focus intensely, and optimize medium-charge work
• AI can supercharge our high-charge work by outsourcing brain power to systems with more stable energy supplies
• Medium-charge work can be completely outsourced to agentic AI, freeing more time for recharge
• High performers in sports and business share one common skill: brain state intelligence
• Now is the time to develop these skills before the AI revolution accelerates further

You only have a one Brain State habit away.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello Habit Mechanics .
It's Dr John Finn here.
I hope you're having a greatweek.
So far, yet again, we've seenthe acceleration of the AI era
come hurtling towards us at apace that I don't think anybody
has predicted.
There's been so manyinteresting news stories, so

(00:25):
many interesting insights aboutresults, about what businesses
have invested, what's comingdown the pipeline, what they're
projecting, the technologieshave invested in can actually do
.
Um, so some really, I think,exciting things are going to be
coming in the next weeks andmonths, and I just wanted to

(00:50):
talk very practically todayabout what we can do to help
ourselves thrive, and sport is agreat way to see performance
psychology expressed physically.
It's a bit more difficult whenwe're sitting at our desks doing

(01:10):
the work we do every day toobserve it, but in sport it's
much clearer.
And what we just had in the UK,and actually in Leeds, at the
famous Headingley Stadium, was atest match, the first test
match in a five-match seriesbetween England and India, two

(01:33):
of the best teams in the world,and it was an epic test match,
one which will go down in thehistory books as one of the
greatest, but one which Englandultimately came out on top and
won the game and what wasstriking about England's

(01:54):
performance, in particular theirbatting, was how good they were
or how good their brain stateintelligence was.
Yeah, that's what we're comingon to to.
So we know that we've createdthis new field of psychology
human ai performance psychologyto help people thrive as they
work alongside ai, as we move tothese smaller teams of of

(02:17):
humans, and that's why we'regoing to see cuts in the
workforce right, because we willneed less humans, certainly in
the jobs humans are currentlybeing paid for.
Other jobs may be created, wedon't know.
But the sort of practicalapplication of human high
performance psychology is brainstate intelligence and just

(02:39):
earlier this week we actuallyreleased a new training
programme for personal masterywhich is called the advanced
brain state intelligencecertification.
So it's a five-week onlineprogram where you have some
one-to-one coaching, support andum used to train you how to
become brain state intelligent.

(03:00):
But what we saw with the Englandcricket team and the England
batsmen particularly, was a realawareness of controlling their

(03:20):
activation levels.
So in the past they've beenaccused of, in my language, not
controlling their activationlevels, not being brain state
intelligent, but in the testmatch that's just gone, what we
saw was a much greater awarenessof.

(03:41):
They would call it, in cricket,going up and down the gears,
but I, in cricket, going up anddown the gears, but I would call
it going up and down the brainstates because I want to come
from a first principleperspective and ultimately,
neurons are driving thebehaviour.
So this awareness of when toattack, when to defend, when to

(04:02):
go fast, when to go slow, andwhat we saw just in a cricket
innings, we can extrapolate thator we can compare that to a
24-hour period in your life, andthis is what brain state
intelligence is all about.
It's about knowing when torecharge and what to do so you

(04:26):
secure high quality recharge.
It's about understanding how toproperly do high charge, how to
focus and concentrate reallyintensely when you need to, and
it's about understanding how tooptimize the way that you do
medium charge work and when weextend that into our own lives.

(04:46):
This is where the AI comes in,because we know we can use AI to
extend, augment, supercharge orhowever you want to call it our
high-charge work, becauseessentially, by working with
generative AI like you're tryingto create a strategy report or

(05:06):
a marketing plan and you'regoing to use Claude or ChatGTP
this is like outsourcing brainpower so you can create the
business plan faster because youdon't have to completely depend
on your own brain power andyour own energy resources.
Remember, our brain is poweredby chemicals and sort of

(05:30):
self-generated electricity.
Ai is plugged into the mainsright, so it has a much more
stable power supply than we do.
Um, and then medium charge workwe can outsource completely and
we're going to see much more ofthis, um, I think, in the
coming weeks and months wherewe'll see businesses have
invested significant sums ofmoney into agentic ai that are

(05:53):
basically digital workers, butthey can take a lot of the
mundane work off our plate,which means it frees up more
recharge time.
We don't need to be working atthe desk till 11 o'clock at
night and that means we canbetter charge our brain power up
for those high charge moments.
So I appreciate you might not bea cricket fan, you might not.

(06:16):
You might not know even whatcricket is, um, or sort of what
the rules are, etc.
But I think we can kind of see,just as people that are high
performing in normal life thepeople that are high performing
in any sporting arena, theyshare one common skill set,

(06:43):
which is what I would call brainstate intelligence.
It's just that in our normallives we can now start to use AI
technologies to superchargethat.
So I hope that's a helpfulinsight and it's got you
thinking.
As I said at the start, I thinkthings are really going to ramp

(07:03):
up now.
So if you've been thinkingabout whether it's reading,
train your brain for the higherrevolution, doing the new mini
course, even been thinking aboutbecoming a brain state
intelligence practitioner oreven becoming a certified coach,
or you're thinking aboutactually my people need some

(07:25):
training on this, now is thetime to do it.
That's what every data pointI've seen suggests.
So get ahead of this curve.
Don't get left behind and usethis exciting period of history
to benefit you, to benefit yourfamily, to benefit the people

(07:48):
you work with.
You know.
Don't look back in six monthsand regret kind of missing the
opportunity to get ahead.
And it doesn't matter where ourbrain state intelligence is
right now.
We can improve it and that'swhy we always say you only have
a one brain state habit away.