June 9, 2025 • 13 mins
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Brain State intelligence is the key to unlocking opportunities in the AI revolution which data shows we're now experiencing. Understanding this concept is crucial as businesses like IBM replace human workers with AI systems that can complete complex cognitive tasks faster and more cheaply.
• Our brains operate like batteries with three charge states: recharge (sleeping/recovery), medium charge (routine cognitive tasks), and high charge (complex mental work)
• AI is now replacing medium-charge work across industries, which explains the 67% decline in graduate recruitment since 2019
• To remain irreplaceable, we must consistently access our high-charge brain states where we do work AI cannot replicate
• High-performing professionals who use AI effectively can increase their high-impact work from 4-5 hours to 7+ hours daily
• The future belongs to those who can build their own human-AI team by understanding which tasks to delegate and which require human intelligence
• Accessing high-charge brain states regularly leads to greater happiness, health and sense of progress
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello Habit Mechanics , dr John Finn here, I hope
you're well Just doing a walkingpod.
I want to talk about brainstates, brain state intelligence
.
Brain state intelligence is thekey to unlocking the
opportunities that are presentedto all of us in the AI
(00:23):
revolution which I think thedata now shows we are in.
There's a lot of talk aboutchanges that would be coming
down the line to how businesses,to what humans are valued for,
(00:48):
where they can add value, wherethey can earn money, and now
we're starting to see changes.
So one of the big news storiesthe last week or so is that IBM
laid off 8,000 HR staff and intheir discussions about this,
(01:11):
it's because they're going toreplace lots of what those
people did with AI.
Remember, ai is technology thatcan complete complex cognitive
tasks on a continuum through tovery complex cognitive tasks.
(01:36):
This is the first time inhistory we've had this
technology.
The Industrial Revolutionautomated complex manual labour.
The Industrial Revolutionautomated complex manual labour
and there was multipleiterations of that.
We're still advancing whatmachinery can do, but it was the
(01:59):
first time.
The Industrial Revolution as weunderstand it was the first
time that we could automatemanual labour at scale, and now
the AI Revolution is the firsttime we can automate complex
cognitive tasks at scale.
So I've seen workforcedisruption disruption.
(02:27):
So I wanted to revisit brainstate intelligence, because this
is the thing that we need tounderstand if we want to get our
head around.
Well, what, what is it that aican do faster and more cheaply
than I can do?
Because if I understand that, Idon't have to worry about it
replacing me, I can actually useit to supercharge me.
(02:47):
So, to think about this, wehave our brain battery metaphor.
But I mean our brain literallyis like a battery.
It runs on chemicals andelectricity and it operates in
three charge states.
It has the recharge state wherewe are sleeping, and also we
(03:09):
have non-sleep recharge, wherewe're recharging the battery,
and this is think of your brainbatteries operating in a 24-hour
cycle, so every 24 hours itneeds to recharge.
The second brain state is mediumcharge.
This is where we do complete,simple, simple cognitive tasks.
(03:34):
Simple for what?
In relation to what our brainis capable of.
So it's very it's doing thingsthat we've already learned how
to do.
By and large, it's habit-typethinking.
It's that kind of busy workpeople describe that's become
(04:00):
addictive actually, and I thinkCOVID has something to do with
that sort of work where youalways feel like you're busy but
you never get anything done.
You never feel like you'remaking progress.
That's a medium charge brainstate.
And the third brain state isthe high charge brain state.
This is the brain state we usedto do our mentally complex work
(04:22):
, to really think cleverly.
It's effortful.
Our ability to do high-chargethinking is a limited cognitive
resource.
We only can do so much of iteach day.
So where AI is coming in isit's very clearly able to do
medium charge work in many, manytasks much faster and much more
(04:51):
cheaper than humans can.
So just interestingly, yesterdayso you know, anyone who runs
their own business will tell youit's difficult to run your own
business right, it's also veryrewarding, but it's difficult.
So yesterday I was working atthe weekend.
I worked all weekend actually,because I've got a lot of things
to do at the moment.
Um, there's no violin comingout here.
(05:13):
I enjoy what I do, but I wasusing some software that's
pretty complicated, um, andwe've used this software on and
off for a few years, but wedecided to start to use it more
consistently now and what I wasamazed by.
So previously, when you gotstuck, you had to reach out to
their support and say, look, I'mstuck with this, how do I do
(05:35):
this, how do I do that?
Now they have, and they've hada sort of a support bot, if you
like, for a while where you canjust ask it questions, but it
typically wasn't very good, butnow, just using it this weekend
and last week, it's amazing.
I mean, it just knows everyanswer to every question you've
(05:58):
got.
So instead of gettingfrustrated, you can literally
solve your issues in minutesrather than having to wait for a
support email.
So see how that bot is able toreplace a human doing the same
job, and it can probably replaceteams of humans, as we've seen
actually in multiple casesacross industries where many
(06:21):
humans have been replaced bythat type of technology, and,
broadly speaking, we call thattechnology agentic AI.
So agentic AI, in other words,ai agents.
They're able to domedium-charge work cheaper and
faster than humans, and that'scoming online now and that's the
(06:43):
biggest disruptor we're seeing.
So when you're seeing peoplelosing their jobs, it's because
they're being replaced by agents.
So what does that tell you?
It tells you that businessesare less prepared than ever
before to pay human beings to domedium-charge work Because they
can get the work done fasterand cheaper.
And you know, we've seeniterations of this with
(07:05):
outsourcing or offshoring overthe years, whether it was call
centres, or my grandfather'sgeneration, who were engineers
building basically industrialmachines in the areas of the
world that I am from, where theindustrial revolution started,
(07:27):
their jobs got outsourced.
I remember my grandfather goingover to India, I think, to
train people to do his jobessentially, but so we've seen
this offshoring before to savecosts, but now we are offloading
this onto AI.
So that's why people are losingtheir jobs, because businesses
are not going to pay humans todo medium charge work, and this
(07:50):
is also why we are seeing such adrop off on graduate
recruitment.
So we've seen the decline ofthe advertisement of graduate
roles from 2019 to now, declinedby 67 percent.
So businesses are less, areincreasingly less, interested
(08:12):
whether you have a degree or not, and we've seen some
acceleration of those numbers inrecent 12 months or so,
depending on where you are inthe world.
And it's because, again, whatmost graduates do fairly
medium-charge work, and so whatbusinesses are doing is they're
replacing instead of recruitinggraduates.
(08:32):
They're investing in AI systems.
So what does this mean?
It means that we're only goingto be really valuable If we can
consistently get into ourhigh-charge brain states.
So that is the key, and we canalso use AI to help us in our
(08:53):
high-charge brain states.
So what we've seen.
So when people are reallynailing it, they're getting a
really good balance betweentheir recharge, their
medium-charge and their highcharge brain states.
We see that people, before wehad this sophisticated AI, they
(09:14):
could maybe do four to fivehours of high charge, high
impact work per day and theywere really nailing it.
What we're now seeing, andthose people would have been
what we called habit mechanics.
What we're now seeing and thosepeople would have been what we
called habit mechanics.
What we're now seeing is, whenyou give those habit mechanics
an AI edge, they're able to doseven plus hours of high charge,
(09:40):
high impact work and thinkingper day Because they're
optimizing their brain states,their brain state intelligent
and then they're also using umagentic ai to co-work with on
(10:01):
their high charge complexthinking tasks.
So this is what we mean by brainstate intelligence.
It's understanding our threebrain states recharge, medium
charge and high high charge.
Recognizing that ai is gonnaand all it is now is disrupting,
(10:23):
is going to and it is now isdisrupting businesses, paying
humans to do medium-charge work.
So every day, more and morebusinesses are deciding they're
not going to be paying humans todo medium-charge work.
So if we want to beirreplaceable, then we need to
(10:48):
be consistently able to get intothose high charge brain states
and do the kind of work that aican't do by itself.
And this is why I wrote trainyour brain for the air
revolution and, excitingly,we're just releasing train your
brain for the air evolution minicourse.
So in in under, in under 60minutes, you learn how to build
(11:10):
your own high-performing humanAI team, because that's what
this is about.
It's the simplest way we canexplain this.
It's that actually the futureis if you want to be healthy,
happy and at our best and, bythe way, if you're doing more
high charge work every day,you'll be happier and healthier
because you'll feel like you'remaking progress.
I know I've been working I'venot had a day off for a while
(11:33):
because I'm just so, so busy butI feel really good because I'm
doing work that's reallyinteresting to me.
I'm learning lots of new thingsbecause I'm able to get into
those high charge brain statesevery day.
I'm not recommending everybodydoes this, by the way, I'm just
giving a genuine insight intowhere things are for me at the
moment, but the high chargebrain state is the most
(11:57):
rewarding brain state and it'soften the biggest thing that's
missing.
When people are not happy, whenthey are overwhelmed, um when,
frankly, they have mental healthchallenges, they're not able to
get into the high charge brainstates because they're not
getting the right balance acrossthe three brain states.
So, um, this is this is exciting, and the key is you've got to
(12:23):
build your own human ai team.
That is, you've got to work outwhat are the medium charge
tasks I do every day, what arethe high charge tasks that I
need to do, and then, where canthe AI help me with both?
So we created this new minitraining Train your Brain for
the AI Revolution.
So, under 60 minutes, you learnhow to build your own human AI
team, and this is going to bethe currency of the future.
(12:45):
It's understanding how to buildai into your workflows and then
, once you understand how to doit yourself, you can then coach
and train others how to do this.
You can lead to, you can leadhuman ai teams.
So making that trainingavailable um, certainly, in the
(13:06):
short term it's it's free andI'll put a link beneath this um
podcast so you can access thatum and we go into more detail
and everything I've talked abouton the podcast.
So thank you so much forlistening to me this morning.
Well, it's morning for me,sorry, or whatever time it is
for you.
I hope that was interesting andinsightful, as ever.
(13:27):
If you have any questions, letme know.
And then I hope that you findthe mini course really
interesting and it helps you toimprove your health, your
happiness and your performance,and remember you're only ever
one brain state habit away.
Hello Habit Mechanics , dr John Finn here, I hope
you're well Just doing a walkingpod.
I want to talk about brainstates, brain state intelligence
.
Brain state intelligence is thekey to unlocking the
opportunities that are presentedto all of us in the AI
(00:23):
revolution which I think thedata now shows we are in.
There's a lot of talk aboutchanges that would be coming
down the line to how businesses,to what humans are valued for,
(00:48):
where they can add value, wherethey can earn money, and now
we're starting to see changes.
So one of the big news storiesthe last week or so is that IBM
laid off 8,000 HR staff and intheir discussions about this,
(01:11):
it's because they're going toreplace lots of what those
people did with AI.
Remember, ai is technology thatcan complete complex cognitive
tasks on a continuum through tovery complex cognitive tasks.
(01:36):
This is the first time inhistory we've had this
technology.
The Industrial Revolutionautomated complex manual labour.
The Industrial Revolutionautomated complex manual labour
and there was multipleiterations of that.
We're still advancing whatmachinery can do, but it was the
(01:59):
first time.
The Industrial Revolution as weunderstand it was the first
time that we could automatemanual labour at scale, and now
the AI Revolution is the firsttime we can automate complex
cognitive tasks at scale.
So I've seen workforcedisruption disruption.
(02:27):
So I wanted to revisit brainstate intelligence, because this
is the thing that we need tounderstand if we want to get our
head around.
Well, what, what is it that aican do faster and more cheaply
than I can do?
Because if I understand that, Idon't have to worry about it
replacing me, I can actually useit to supercharge me.
(02:47):
So, to think about this, wehave our brain battery metaphor.
But I mean our brain literallyis like a battery.
It runs on chemicals andelectricity and it operates in
three charge states.
It has the recharge state wherewe are sleeping, and also we
(03:09):
have non-sleep recharge, wherewe're recharging the battery,
and this is think of your brainbatteries operating in a 24-hour
cycle, so every 24 hours itneeds to recharge.
The second brain state is mediumcharge.
This is where we do complete,simple, simple cognitive tasks.
(03:34):
Simple for what?
In relation to what our brainis capable of.
So it's very it's doing thingsthat we've already learned how
to do.
By and large, it's habit-typethinking.
It's that kind of busy workpeople describe that's become
(04:00):
addictive actually, and I thinkCOVID has something to do with
that sort of work where youalways feel like you're busy but
you never get anything done.
You never feel like you'remaking progress.
That's a medium charge brainstate.
And the third brain state isthe high charge brain state.
This is the brain state we usedto do our mentally complex work
(04:22):
, to really think cleverly.
It's effortful.
Our ability to do high-chargethinking is a limited cognitive
resource.
We only can do so much of iteach day.
So where AI is coming in isit's very clearly able to do
medium charge work in many, manytasks much faster and much more
(04:51):
cheaper than humans can.
So just interestingly, yesterdayso you know, anyone who runs
their own business will tell youit's difficult to run your own
business right, it's also veryrewarding, but it's difficult.
So yesterday I was working atthe weekend.
I worked all weekend actually,because I've got a lot of things
to do at the moment.
Um, there's no violin comingout here.
(05:13):
I enjoy what I do, but I wasusing some software that's
pretty complicated, um, andwe've used this software on and
off for a few years, but wedecided to start to use it more
consistently now and what I wasamazed by.
So previously, when you gotstuck, you had to reach out to
their support and say, look, I'mstuck with this, how do I do
(05:35):
this, how do I do that?
Now they have, and they've hada sort of a support bot, if you
like, for a while where you canjust ask it questions, but it
typically wasn't very good, butnow, just using it this weekend
and last week, it's amazing.
I mean, it just knows everyanswer to every question you've
(05:58):
got.
So instead of gettingfrustrated, you can literally
solve your issues in minutesrather than having to wait for a
support email.
So see how that bot is able toreplace a human doing the same
job, and it can probably replaceteams of humans, as we've seen
actually in multiple casesacross industries where many
(06:21):
humans have been replaced bythat type of technology, and,
broadly speaking, we call thattechnology agentic AI.
So agentic AI, in other words,ai agents.
They're able to domedium-charge work cheaper and
faster than humans, and that'scoming online now and that's the
(06:43):
biggest disruptor we're seeing.
So when you're seeing peoplelosing their jobs, it's because
they're being replaced by agents.
So what does that tell you?
It tells you that businessesare less prepared than ever
before to pay human beings to domedium-charge work Because they
can get the work done fasterand cheaper.
And you know, we've seeniterations of this with
(07:05):
outsourcing or offshoring overthe years, whether it was call
centres, or my grandfather'sgeneration, who were engineers
building basically industrialmachines in the areas of the
world that I am from, where theindustrial revolution started,
(07:27):
their jobs got outsourced.
I remember my grandfather goingover to India, I think, to
train people to do his jobessentially, but so we've seen
this offshoring before to savecosts, but now we are offloading
this onto AI.
So that's why people are losingtheir jobs, because businesses
are not going to pay humans todo medium charge work, and this
(07:50):
is also why we are seeing such adrop off on graduate
recruitment.
So we've seen the decline ofthe advertisement of graduate
roles from 2019 to now, declinedby 67 percent.
So businesses are less, areincreasingly less, interested
(08:12):
whether you have a degree or not, and we've seen some
acceleration of those numbers inrecent 12 months or so,
depending on where you are inthe world.
And it's because, again, whatmost graduates do fairly
medium-charge work, and so whatbusinesses are doing is they're
replacing instead of recruitinggraduates.
(08:32):
They're investing in AI systems.
So what does this mean?
It means that we're only goingto be really valuable If we can
consistently get into ourhigh-charge brain states.
So that is the key, and we canalso use AI to help us in our
(08:53):
high-charge brain states.
So what we've seen.
So when people are reallynailing it, they're getting a
really good balance betweentheir recharge, their
medium-charge and their highcharge brain states.
We see that people, before wehad this sophisticated AI, they
(09:14):
could maybe do four to fivehours of high charge, high
impact work per day and theywere really nailing it.
What we're now seeing, andthose people would have been
what we called habit mechanics.
What we're now seeing and thosepeople would have been what we
called habit mechanics.
What we're now seeing is, whenyou give those habit mechanics
an AI edge, they're able to doseven plus hours of high charge,
(09:40):
high impact work and thinkingper day Because they're
optimizing their brain states,their brain state intelligent
and then they're also using umagentic ai to co-work with on
(10:01):
their high charge complexthinking tasks.
So this is what we mean by brainstate intelligence.
It's understanding our threebrain states recharge, medium
charge and high high charge.
Recognizing that ai is gonnaand all it is now is disrupting,
(10:23):
is going to and it is now isdisrupting businesses, paying
humans to do medium-charge work.
So every day, more and morebusinesses are deciding they're
not going to be paying humans todo medium-charge work.
So if we want to beirreplaceable, then we need to
(10:48):
be consistently able to get intothose high charge brain states
and do the kind of work that aican't do by itself.
And this is why I wrote trainyour brain for the air
revolution and, excitingly,we're just releasing train your
brain for the air evolution minicourse.
So in in under, in under 60minutes, you learn how to build
(11:10):
your own high-performing humanAI team, because that's what
this is about.
It's the simplest way we canexplain this.
It's that actually the futureis if you want to be healthy,
happy and at our best and, bythe way, if you're doing more
high charge work every day,you'll be happier and healthier
because you'll feel like you'remaking progress.
I know I've been working I'venot had a day off for a while
(11:33):
because I'm just so, so busy butI feel really good because I'm
doing work that's reallyinteresting to me.
I'm learning lots of new thingsbecause I'm able to get into
those high charge brain statesevery day.
I'm not recommending everybodydoes this, by the way, I'm just
giving a genuine insight intowhere things are for me at the
moment, but the high chargebrain state is the most
(11:57):
rewarding brain state and it'soften the biggest thing that's
missing.
When people are not happy, whenthey are overwhelmed, um when,
frankly, they have mental healthchallenges, they're not able to
get into the high charge brainstates because they're not
getting the right balance acrossthe three brain states.
So, um, this is this is exciting, and the key is you've got to
(12:23):
build your own human ai team.
That is, you've got to work outwhat are the medium charge
tasks I do every day, what arethe high charge tasks that I
need to do, and then, where canthe AI help me with both?
So we created this new minitraining Train your Brain for
the AI Revolution.
So, under 60 minutes, you learnhow to build your own human AI
team, and this is going to bethe currency of the future.
(12:45):
It's understanding how to buildai into your workflows and then
, once you understand how to doit yourself, you can then coach
and train others how to do this.
You can lead to, you can leadhuman ai teams.
So making that trainingavailable um, certainly, in the
(13:06):
short term it's it's free andI'll put a link beneath this um
podcast so you can access thatum and we go into more detail
and everything I've talked abouton the podcast.
So thank you so much forlistening to me this morning.
Well, it's morning for me,sorry, or whatever time it is
for you.
I hope that was interesting andinsightful, as ever.
(13:27):
If you have any questions, letme know.
And then I hope that you findthe mini course really
interesting and it helps you toimprove your health, your
happiness and your performance,and remember you're only ever
one brain state habit away.
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