Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (01:31):
Hello, habit
mechanics.
It's Dr.
John Finn here.
I hope you're having a greatweek so far.
I want to tell you a story abouta grumpy coder who was very
cross at me because I helped himto do better.
I helped him to understand hisbrain states.
(01:53):
So this may have been about 10years ago, and I was working for
a technology company that workedwith elite sports teams, and I
knew the owners of this company.
Um it's subsequently been soldfor quite a lot of money, but I
(02:15):
would go and work with theirstaff individually and
collectively just to help themto be at their best.
The the owners of the of thebusiness of seriously
high-performing people, uh, youwill know their names if you're
into high performance sport.
Um and one day I was at theiroffices and I was just there
(02:39):
doing one-to-one sessions thatday.
So anyone could book a slot andcome do a one-to-one session
with me.
And it was in the afternoon, andI'd had some really good
sessions in the morning, and Iwould was hearing some great
feedback about what people hadbeen working on, and felt quite
(03:00):
pleased that I'd been help uhable to help some people
overcome some of the some of thenew challenges that were
emerging for them.
And then for my next session,the door opened, and I was
confronted by quite a grumpylooking uh guy who's actually
quite big, and um he declaredthat he was a bit angry with me,
(03:26):
and um he took me back slightly,and I was saying, Okay, well,
you know, sit down, let'sexplain to me why you're angry
with me.
So he went on to tell a storythat a few weeks previously we'd
been doing some uh workshopswith the teams, and in that
workshop, one of the thingswe've been talking about was
(03:50):
BDNF, um, brain derivedneurotropic factor, and this is
the neurotransmitter slashprotein that is released into
our brains when we exercise andwhen we move around.
And neuroscientists would callit they'd say it's a bit like um
(04:17):
miracle grow for your brain orlike fertilizer for your brain
or for your neurons.
And the neurobiologicalexplanation of this is that
we're designed fundamentally,human beings, Homo sapiens, are
designed to move around andsolve problems.
So when we move around and solveproblems, problems relating to
(04:41):
getting food, we'rehunter-gatherers, right, getting
some uh tracking down some preyso we can uh frankly kill it and
eat it for our evening meal, orjust pick some nice berries,
etc., or avoid predators in thewild ourselves, you know, this
is what we're designed to do.
When we move around, our brainstarts to get smarter, and this
(05:09):
is if we think about brainstates, you know, fundamental in
shifting from sort of mediumcharge brain states into higher
charge brain states, and thisdoesn't mean you have to go to
the gym, literally walking,because again, we're designed to
walk, so the anthropologistswould would say that human
(05:31):
beings look like they'redesigned to walk about 12 miles
per day, so we're designed to bemoving around.
Um, you know, if you go back toLondon in the like 100 years
ago, people literally werewalking like 10 miles a day.
Now, some people don't evenleave the house in a day, right?
But why the coder was angry atme was, and this is this there's
(05:55):
a senior guy in the team, so youknow, I was quite keen to
impress him, so I was a littlebit anxious that he was um
showing that he wasn't happywith me.
He said that after the lastsession, we'd had the workshop
where he'd learned about BDNFand um how exercise impacts
(06:18):
brain function and brain statesthat he didn't believe what I
was saying and it couldn'tpossibly be right, and to prove
me wrong the next day he cycledinto work to show that this
possibly could not be true, andon arriving at work, he
described that he had the mostproductive morning he had ever
(06:41):
had, and he was annoyed becausehe'd learned that actually it
was a really good idea for himto do some exercise before or on
his way or on his way into work,and he didn't like the idea of
that, he didn't like the ideathat he was gonna have to, if
you really wanted to be, youknow, the role model to his team
(07:05):
and to actually perform to hispotential, that was gonna
involve it him moving around inthe morning before he came into
work, you know, not just gettingout of bed, getting in the car,
parking the car, sitting at hisdesk and expecting his brain to
be in fantastic form that he wasgonna have to work out how do I
(07:26):
start building some exerciseinto my pre-work routines.
So, of course, he wasn't umdeeply angry with me.
Um I think he was just a littlebit of a character, and he was
um just demonstrating that pointto me that actually you know,
(07:46):
being at your best and actuallydoing the things that you need
to do to be healthy and happydoesn't always feel great in the
moment, but if you do thosethings, you get the longer term
wins.
So, you know, by the end of themorning, he felt really good
about himself and really proudof himself that he'd had such a
(08:07):
positive impact on the work thathe was doing, and that he was
able to model better behavioursto um to his team members, and
by doing that able to get moreout of his team so that they
could um they could um do moreimpactful work and and move the
(08:27):
the the project forward faster.
And I think that this story isreally interesting as we come
into the AI era.
This was a technology company,and they were building literally
a a tech product from scratch,so you know they were designing
it and building it as they went.
(08:50):
These were not people that hadlearned their jobs and they were
just coming in and doing theirjobs day after day.
The same thing, they got good atit, they'd learned the skills,
and they just came in and didwhat they uh they'd always done.
They were facing new challengesand new problems every day
because you know they weregetting feedback from clients
(09:12):
and from the product managersand the relationship managers
about what needed to be improvedin the product, how could it
become better, etc.
You know, the business is tryingto raise money as well at the
same time.
So this is really insightfulbecause it shows us why brain
states and managing brain statesis more important than ever
(09:32):
before.
Because of the velocity ofchange in the AI era.
So one of the when when I firststarted learning about neural
network AI, the from the thegodfather of this work, Jeffrey
(09:57):
Hinton, and reading about hislife's work, there are a few
things that came in into mymind, which was well, this is
gonna overwhelm people becauseit's gonna just speed up change.
So before that, we were speakingabout the VUCA world, the
volatile, uncertain, complex,ambiguous world.
(10:19):
At that point, we kind of hadthe VUCA world plus the
post-COVID world, and then itwas very clear that if we had a
technology that could literallydo many of the things up until
that point in history, onlyhuman brains could do that it's
going to speed everything up,just like the industrial
(10:39):
revolution sped up theproduction of products and
making things because we didn'thave to rely on only human
physical effort and energyanymore.
We could we could do the samethings humans have been doing,
but with machines, and thosemachines could run 24-7, and
(11:00):
they could lift and lift heavierthings than a human could, and
they could do things at s at thespeeds at faster speeds than
humans could.
And essentially, neural networkI is just the cognitive
equivalent of that.
So I knew that people would begetting more overwhelmed.
Um I knew that uh people weregonna have to uh learn skills
(11:28):
faster, uh in the sense of thewhat I what I've learned to to
make me really good at my jobtoday probably isn't gonna be
the same things that I need tobe really good at my job in in
12 months or even six months.
(11:48):
And technology has been bringingthat style of disruption for the
last um 15 plus years, but notat the pace like neural network
AI is so you know, people havehad to make a transition to
learn how to use PCs and thentheir phones and then different
(12:11):
sales and marketing systems andyou know just adoption to
different ways of working.
We had the agile workflows, wehad the hybrid workflows, got to
learn how to get on with uhyounger colleagues from
different generation, whatever.
And so this is this has beengoing on, but not at the
intensity that the AI world isbringing.
(12:33):
Um one thing that I didn't thinkabout at the time, but it's
become very, very evident now.
When I was speaking, I was at uman AI dinner just with uh very
senior leaders talking about howAI is impacting their
workforces, and there was a verysenior solicitor, um essentially
(12:55):
the managing partner at thefirm, and she was describing how
one of the surprising impactsthat AI is having on their
people is the volume, thesophistication, and the speed at
which their clients are now ableto reply to them.
So if you're um engaging with asolicitor to write you a
(13:19):
contract, um because you'regoing into a partnership deal
with someone or you're employingsomeone, or whatever you need a
solicitor to write you a concontract for, you know, in days
gone by, you as the client wouldhave to, once the solicitor had
given you what they're thedocument they created for you,
(13:40):
which would have been largelysort of a developed document
anyway, that they're just sortof tweaked for your very
specific needs, maybe even justchange the name and address on
it.
Um I'm being unkind to and oursolicitors do much more than
that, but um that you as aclient would have to read the
(14:02):
the contract, read the clauses.
Are you happy with everything?
That is a massive high highcharge brain state task.
But now people can just feedthose contracts into generative
AI.
The generative AI, like once youtrust it, once you've seen it
actually working, and they do,will tell you exactly what they
(14:23):
think about the contract, andthey'll write the reply for you
back to the solicitor about thethings that you'd like them to
change, reposition.
And people can do this inone-tenth of the time, probably
much faster than that, and itwould have previously taken
them.
And of course, previously theywould have probably
procrastinated on readingthrough the document because it
(14:45):
can be slavish.
But essentially, what the themanaging partner, the in other
words, the CEO of the firm wassaying that the solicitors are
just overwhelmed, they've justnever seen clients respond so
quickly, so thoroughly, and youknow, then putting the the ball
(15:09):
back in the solicitor's courtand expecting them to reply
again quickly.
So AI is changing the world, andthat makes brain states more
important than ever because weneed our high charge brain state
more than ever.
What the high charge, what theAI era is forcing us to do is to
(15:34):
learn more things, is to usethat prefrontal cortex, that
scarce cognitive energy that wehave more and more, if in order
just to do the basics.
So you've got to learn the newAI tool that that you know you
(15:54):
need to use, and when you useit, it makes you so much better.
You've got to get in the habitof doing that, you've got to
process um the increased volumeof things that are coming into
your inbox, but all the timeyou've got to manage your stress
levels and your overwhelm andthat nagging doubt in your head
(16:15):
saying, Am I gonna be able to dothis?
Am I still gonna be relevant?
Is my job gonna be here?
And what about the kids?
Is what they're learning atschool relevant?
What are they gonna be doing?
So you've got this um cacophonyof noise going on inside of our
heads and around us.
(16:38):
So, therefore, getting into ourhigh-charge brain states
consistently is more difficultthan ever before, but more
important than ever before, andagain, that's why we need to
understand our brain states, andwhat the story I started the
(16:58):
podcast with shows is that theall the three brain states, the
high charge, the medium charge,and the recharge, they're
interconnected.
You don't just magically getinto high charge brain states at
will, you've got to put thefoundation blocks in place.
So it's not only about masteringyour your understanding of your
(17:20):
brain states and getting youknow brain state intelligent in
relation to what you need, it'salso about building the habits
that allow you to get there.
So that that is key, and andthat's why I am absolutely
compelled that the mostimportant thing that any of us
can can learn and to get betterat and to work on every day is
(17:43):
building better brain statehabits.
And remember, there are only sixhabits that we need to get
right.
Um, so this is not like anendless list of things that we
need to do, and just by buildingone of those uh six habits,
you're gonna be able to functioncognitively much, much better.
(18:03):
So the story is very simple.
If we want to thrive in the AIera, it's about brain states,
and there are only three brainstates.
So we've got to master thosethree brain states, get the
right balance, and we do that bylearning and building the six uh
brain state habits.
And what just just by startingto do that, we become a habit
(18:24):
mechanic.
That's what we're doing, becausewe're working on ourselves in a
very articulate way.
You know, we're not talkingabout something woo-woo here,
we're not talking about um youneed more motivation, or or you
need you need some therapy, oryou need some um some you need
(18:46):
to change your mindset.
We're talking aboutunderstanding and refining and
tuning up the the the the driverof all of our behaviour our
brain and the fact that ourbrain operates in states, and if
we understand those states andwe can build the habits to help
(19:10):
us to optimise them, then theworld is literally our oyster.
SPEAKER_01 (19:15):
So that's the key.
SPEAKER_00 (19:18):
Um that's why we
always say you're only ever one,
register habit away.
I just want to finish by sayingone other thing.
If you have any questions, youlisten to this thinking, well,
what about this, John, and whatabout that, just send them in to
(19:39):
us and we'll happily answer themin the podcast.
Um, what we're doing or somethings that you don't
understand, then just let usknow.
Because that's what we're here,we're here to help you be at
your best, and we know the theway to do that is to actually um
(20:02):
understand your brain states andum and build better brain state
habits, and in other words,become a habit mechanic, and as
many people are doing actuallyto master that skill, become a
habit mechanic coach, even ifyou're just using the skills for
yourself.
So we're here to help you.
So, any questions let us know,um, and we will we'll answer you
(20:25):
directly, or we'll pick up thosequestions in the podcasts.
If you want to ask a question,but you want to be anonymous,
just say that and we won'treveal your name.
Um, so yeah, we're here to help.
And as overwhelming as it mightever feel, the good news is you
only ever one brain state habitaway.