Why Your Brain is Begging You to Take a Break (and How to Do It Right) | Dr. Mithu Storoni

Ever feel like the way you work is slowly grinding you down? In this mind-opening conversation, neuroscientist and author of Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work https://amzn.to/44e12jH Mithu Storoni dismantles the industrial-age approach to work. She maps out a brain-aligned framework to tap into unseen wellsprings of energy, motivation and creativity, allowing you to create your best work while feeling fully alive. You can find Mithu at: Website https://www.mithustoroni.com/ | LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mithustoroni/ | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/neuroscience-rhythms-productivity-mithu-storoni If you LOVED this episode, you’ll also love the conversations we had with Dan Pink https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/Z2lkOi8vYXJ0MTktZXBpc29kZS1sb2NhdG9yL1YwL2lDOG9BUkQ4WHgtbWJBVEpEMm1IM09pdWdpcWpLbzhVWFNzZU0wb0hoU00 about the scientific secrets of perfect timing for peak productivity. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  So ever feel like the way you're working is slowly grinding you down into a state of, quote, nervous exhaustion? That same feeling physician noticed in workers over a century ago and termed that phrase, before we became a society of so many knowledge workers, changed devices and endless digital inputs. It's only gotten worse since then, and we have new words for it. Burnout, overwhelm, wrecked even. Well, my guest today has done a deep dive into the science of how our brains actually work best. And what she discovered pretty much dismantles the industrial age approach most of us cling to in our workplaces and our lives, even when we are in control of our own schedules and maybe even work for ourselves. Yes, it turns out we do this to ourselves often.

• 0:45Jonathan Fields?

  I'm raising my hand here. Dr. Methusnaroni, a neuroscience researcher and ophthalmic surgeon, reveals revolutionary insights from her book, Hyper-efficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work. And in our conversation, she maps out a fundamentally different approach, one that aligns with our intrinsic rhythms of creativity and motivation and focus. It's an approach that can transform our experience of work from one of grinding distress into a state of what she calls effortless effort. We explore things like why the nine to five goes against how our brains function, how simple factors like the wrong kind of light exposure can disrupt more of your core cognitive abilities, and we unpack her three-step framework to not just avoid burnout, but to truly thrive.

• 1:28Jonathan Fields?

  Ideas that can reawaken your curiosity, tap into unseen wellsprings of energy, and allow you to create your best work while feeling fully alive and in turn, your best life. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

• 1:51Speaker 01

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• 2:24Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Stio. So I am not in the studio today. I'm actually out on the trail and the Rockies at about 6,000 feet above sea level and boulder. The leaves are exploding with color and it's just stunning out. And yes, I'm wearing my favorite Stio hat. And just last night I was wearing one of my favorite Stio jackets, which if you know me is not unusual. I wear the hat almost every day and my Stio jackets pretty much live on me all fall and winter. There's even a Stio shop back in town practically in my backyard. Here is why I love them. Stio is designed and tested in Jackson Hole at the base of the Tetons by locals who ski and bike and hike and climb and fish there pretty much every day. They have been at it since 2011, so they know warmth and they also know style.

• 3:09Jonathan Fields?

  Everything I have from them, it works great. It holds up in every condition and also looks awesome. And their hometown down is 800 filled down, but it feels more like just your favorite hoodie than a puffy. And ski season is almost here, so gear up now the way that the locals do. Go to stio.com/goodlife for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash good life. Stio.com slash good life. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole. Good Life Project is supported by Ernesta rugs. So a small confession, our front porch has been the most neglected corner of our home since we moved in. It's the first thing anyone steps onto and it's been kind of greeting people with a sad too small mat. Ernesta sent me their samples and now they're making us a rug.

• 3:54Jonathan Fields?

  And the cool thing is for $10, you get five oversized 12 by 12 samples. So you see the colors at real scale in your own space before you even get it. So we lived with all five colors for a few days and cool morning light and golden afternoon light. And we're sure to be ross on the sky, but Caldwell just kind of kept quietly winning. The thing you're certain about isn't always the thing that fits. And because Ernesta rugs are custom size, cut to the ins. The one we ordered is made to our exact six and a half feet by nine feet space, not close enough. Visit ernesta.com and order five samples for only $10 and you'll get $50 toward any rug of your choice. That's E-R-N-E-S-T-A dot com.

• 4:37Jonathan Fields?

  Fascinated by the work that you've been doing, fascinated by the evolution of the work that you've been doing as well. And your sort of like recent deep dive into the world of productivity and efficiency. And I have a big curiosity around this work. If I were to ask you, what is the single biggest problem that your work on hyper efficiency solves or speaks to? How would you answer?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  I would say the way we work needs to change. And it is alone responsible for all the downstream effects of stress, burnout, just simply not enjoying work, dropping out rates. And the system of work that we currently have is adapted or engineered to serve a way of working that involves manual work, that involves muscle work, that involves an emphasis on quantity rather than quality. Right now, the world is changing, the work landscape is changing. We are pivoting to needing to work to produce quality rather than quantity because machines

• 5:47Speaker 02

  are going to be doing, if not already, the quantity aspect of work. We are now becoming the thinking workforce, the real brain capital in the economy. And in order to be able to do that at our fullest potential, we need to radically rethink the way we work.

• 6:08Jonathan Fields?

  What is the pain that this is causing us? So if we accept the fact that the way that we've been working probably never was working, but today it really isn't working. How is this showing up? How is this actually manifesting in pain in terms of the work that we're creating, the things you want to put into the world, but also just on a personal level? How is this affecting us?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  So it really started at the, it was started being described in the modern era around about the nineteenth century, middle nineteenth century, when the industrial revolution was in place or was was was happening and many people started working in offices. And many American physicians actually described this as, and one in particular, George Miller Beard, as a disease of nervous exhaustion, which he referred to as neurasthenia. And if we fast forward a hundred years and more, very gradually, the word stress, the word burnout have been growing as cited issues in the workplace

• 7:12Speaker 02

  and have been increasingly recognized as leading to, as causing work absence, sickness, low productivity. In parallel with that, the way we work is addressing new demands. So as technology has improved and grown cheaper, companies are globalized, the boundaries between work and rest, to work and home, have become blurred, long before Covid, so Covid accelerated it, but even before Covid. The globalized way of working has caused us to adapt to working hours which are outside our time zones. I was living in Hong Kong for a long time and people regularly kept New York time.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Um, they worked according to New York markets, when in fact we were twelve hours on the other side of the world, as an example. So this need to synchronize work hours globally and work faster because of technology, because business happens at a faster rate. So synchronization of the way we work, synchronization of time.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Massive acceleration of time. These are some factors that have been changing the burden of work. And while we've seen these factors at play, we have been talking about stress and burnout and ways to improve worker mental health in parallel. And really, both of these things converge on one point, which is the pattern of work that we do is extremely efficient or productive for muscle, but not for the mind. When you're working with the mind, you have to work using a very different template. And had we recognized that back in the middle of the 1950s,

• 9:02Speaker 02

  when this huge transition to knowledge work first occurred, I think we could have reduced this burden by quite a lot.

• 9:12Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm, that phrase nervous exhaustion, as you described, which came into existence, it sounds like, you know, well over a century ago. If you use that phrase right now and you talk to so many different people and you said, do you have any experience of like nervous exhaustion? I bet so many people would be like, oh, yes. They're like, this is, you've just described my persistent state, not just in work, but in life these days. It's so interesting that that language, literally a century later, is still so profoundly relevant.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Exactly, and it's a shame that we ignored it, simply because back then, we didn't have the means or the instruments to measure it, quantify it and address it in the way we are doing now. I mean, along with this phenomenon, we've also, technology's also helped, actually, paradoxically, because technology has allowed the advent of various types of gadgets. And improvements in measuring different aspects of our physiology. For instance, HRV measurements, um, for instance, being able to correlate HRV and measure the autonomic nervous system in other ways.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Also better diagnostic testing of markers of excessive stress. And the, that kind of connection that we're now discovering between heart health and brain health, stretching even to gut health and brain health and heart health. So we're now, technology has also enabled science to really reveal the underlying framework behind these, these conditions and behind this so-called nervous exhaustion. So it's been a friend and an enemy, if you like, but you're right. Nervous exhaustion is something we are now returning to, having sort of ignored it

• 11:10Speaker 02

  or forgotten about it, or just largely just sidestepped it for the best part of the last hundred and fifty years or so.

• 11:17Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, it is so interesting, right? How technology has given and taken simultaneously. It's allowed us to flatten the world, to feel like we can connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime, which in certain ways is just a great blessing. And at the same time, if we feel obligated to connect with everyone all the time in all contexts, it's, it's deeply stifling and alarming. It doesn't let us have any kind of office switch that, you know, nervous exhaustion. If you think in the, the context of the nervous system, it basically just keeps it jacked twenty-four seven. But also the, the point that you made, that so much of that same technology is also allowing us to now

• 11:59Jonathan Fields?

  measure and see the results of it, how it's actually landing within our physiology and psychology. But it seems like the big gap is, okay, so what do we do about this?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. So the, the first thing to be aware of is the fact that.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  The way we work, the traditional nine to five hours, were really extremely efficient for producing goods and hence making profit and hence really boosting the economy of the world even, but definitely of the countries that went through that system. Back when the Industrial Revolution happened, we know about the assembly lines and what they did to the Ford Model T and then eventually the car industry and eventually that assembly line template filtered into pretty much every aspect of our lives. It massively exaggerated production in time and in space and it was a very good template to use.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  And once we had that for manufacturing cars, we actually started using the same template in pretty much all aspects of our existence. So even recently, even now, when you go to a hospital, when you go to a clinic, patients are given the same number of minutes or allocated the same number of minutes as if they passed by the clinician, like in a assembly line. Children go to school and they're taught subjects one after another without... Well, there are pauses, but they're not hugely significant pauses and that happens regularly throughout the day. So this template of maximizing perceived output

• 13:48Speaker 02

  by doing things in this extremely efficient, supposedly efficient way, was one that was adopted widely. And when in the 1950s, we shifted to a large degree from manual labour, so non-agricultural work shifted from manual labour to mental labour. When we started using the term knowledge work, that sort of era, we changed what we did, but we didn't really change how we did it. So rather than clock in in the morning using a, you know, a factory clocking in system, we were present at work and that evolved to we logged in in the morning and until recently we log out in the evening.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  And it's traditional to take a lunchtime break for lunch, just as we used to do in the factories, in assembly line style production methods. Now, the problem is, answering your question of what we can, what can we do about it, is we have grown to learn that the brain operates very differently from muscle, and here are a couple of examples. So with muscle, so with any kind of manual labour, first of all, you feel tired, and you can tell when your muscle is aching, when your joints are aching, and then you stop and take a break. And in manual workplaces around the world, such as construction sites, building sites

• 15:13Speaker 02

  and so on, there are laws about how heavy the object is that you're allowed to lift, so the maximum kind of lifting weight for, for human health. There are laws about how long you should be doing physical hard labour for, before you need a break. And one of the reasons we have these laws is because these are things that are quite visible. You perspire, you grow red, your, your, you know, your limbs start aching. But when it comes to mental work, when you're working the same way with your brain, you don't have these laws. There is no law on cognitive lifting, on mental heavy lifting, there is no law on you can work only so many hours, there's no consistent law, that is to say, only so many hours of

• 15:56Speaker 02

  doing, you know, any kind of mental work before you start, your cognitive resources start waning and you start being affected. But again, thankfully, because of technology, we are now realising what happens inside the brain when the brain is working, and so we are now figuring out what sort of signature things like mental fatigue present us with. And so the brain stops working when it rests, we all know that, but the mind, unlike the muscle, rests or must rest while it works, and it works while it rests. So that's one of the, the very potent differences between the mind and the muscle.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  So if you take muscle and you just make it work, you know it's working while you're making your hands move, or while you're, you're doing something physical, and you know that in order to rest, you can just stop. But that's not how the mind works. If you put the mind through this nine to five, or actually for what for most of us is now nine to eight, or or longer treadmill of work, your mind doesn't just stop when you stop. It depends on its mental state. It could be thinking about work, it could be so exhausted that it cannot fall asleep afterwards, you know, too exhausted, too wired to fall asleep. So all of these things are really striking differences between the brain and muscle. Another quite striking thing about the the mind while it works is,

• 17:21Speaker 02

  if you look inside the brain and some great research coming first from Singapore and now from elsewhere, confirms this, is if you look inside the brain and you look at the the brain's what we call functional connectivity, which means that you have these hardwired uh wiring inside the brain, which are like highways and and roads which are set in stone. And then you have the traffic in your brain that can choose to go on certain highways depending on what the traffic is like. So it actually uses the information that's passing around your brain, uses the most efficient pathways. And what we know, what these studies coming from Singapore show,

• 18:05Speaker 02

  is that if you look inside the brain of someone working really intensely on something, so applying sustained attention, then after a pretty short time, as short as twenty minutes and possibly even much, much shorter, short as five minutes even, depending on the intensity of work you're doing, the route that information takes as it travels around your brain actually starts to grow less and less efficient, which means that the effort you you are required to apply. So the the way the work starts feeling harder, the the the more tired you become. That effort is almost like a compensation to overcome the inefficient way

• 18:49Speaker 02

  in which your brain is processing information. So your brain literally grows less efficient the longer you work. And this pace or this rate of of efficiency decay depends on the load you are working with. And that is of course specific to you. So depending on how good you are with certain things, how easily your work is coming to you and so on. But the bottom line is working in a sustained way across the day like we do. For a large part of that period, your brain is actually working inefficiently. And there is no clear sign that it is doing so, other than subtle signs like you might feel bored.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  You might start feeling more distracted. The same work you're doing might feel slightly harder to do. But since these are not obvious signs, we tend to ignore them. And the casualty is, first of all, we feel more and more tired, but also the output that you're producing is substantially worse. You know, I posted a a study on the fact that there are now A I agents who are able to perform tests of human fluid intelligence better than humans. And thi- this is as a result of supervised learning, not unsupervised learning. So they have to be trained, of course, unlike humans. But you know, some of these tests that A I

• 20:13Speaker 02

  systems are being able to do successfully, as well as, if not better than humans. They are, you know, these kind of little mental quizzes of, um, you know, find the missing figure or choose what goes here, if if this is the pattern in these six matrices and so on. And these are kind of tests of fluid intelligence. So you need to be mentally sharp in order to be able to do them. So this aspect of mental sharpness and mental clarity decays really quickly with continuous work. You can still work in an office. You can produce heaps and heaps of quantity. You can write a hundred emails or, you know, a hundred suboptimal reports.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  You can even produce a thousand ideas. But in order to produce that one idea, you need to work when your brain is most efficient.

• 21:06Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  And so prolonged work. It works against your ability to produce good quality work, which today is probably the most important thing for knowledge workers to be focusing on.

• 21:21Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Good Life Project is sponsored by Quince. So these days, I tend to want fewer things made well. That's how I'm thinking about gifts this year, and it's why Quince is on my list. So Quince makes elevated everyday essentials from premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and stretch denim at 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Cashmere sweaters that start at just $50, they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. Our executive producer, Lindsay, actually just ordered their organic cotton denim chore jacket in indigo blue. Her verdict, dreamy and soft. She also grabbed Quince's bees oil wood conditioner.

• 22:02Jonathan Fields?

  It's made in the USA from beeswax and mineral oil. It's food safe and is lovely on cutting boards and bowls. And I actually just got the yummiest button down from Quince, which is great as the weather gets cooler. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive authors or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about us, let them know it was Good Life Project. It's the best way to support the show. Good Life Project is sponsored by Talkiatry. So you know that moment when you finally say, okay, I need some help? That takes courage and then you start calling psychiatrists and hear, we're not taking new patients or our next opening is months away.

• 22:47Jonathan Fields?

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• 23:34Jonathan Fields?

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• 24:18Jonathan Fields?

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• 24:35Jonathan Fields?

  Sounds like the way you're describing it. So the general container that constrains the rules of pretty much every work environment these days, especially in knowledge work oriented work, thought-based work, is largely a carryover from physical labor-based work, where it made some sense in that environment and where you had both natural triggers. Your body just gets tired. You have to rest it. You're physically exhausted. You can't keep going. And then you had legal structures that came in and said, in order for safety to prevail, you actually must rest in these different ways so that you can recharge. Because not only are you being inefficient,

• 25:20Jonathan Fields?

  but you're risking harm, danger to yourself and to others. That sort of like all the assumptions of that workplace, you know, the nine to five, the we'll just know when we're tired and take breaks. And the existence of a legal structure, that gets ported over to the world of knowledge work. But the legal structures that say you have to take these breaks. They're not there. The physical triggers that we would normally have, our body's just exhausted. My muscles literally can't contract anymore. We don't get those same things when it's largely knowledge work, when we're thinking about things. So we get dropped into an environment where we're sort of like expected to work in the same way, but our brains don't function that way.

• 26:03Jonathan Fields?

  And effectively, we're setting our brains up to work against themselves because we don't have the built-in brakes. We don't have the ways to observe ourselves and really understand and know when we're not functioning well anymore. And in fact, if we feel like, oh, I'm tired, I'm exhausted, this is hard, but I'm on deadline, I have to deliver this thing. I guess I just need to work harder. It sounds like what you're saying is that's actually making the problem worse, not better. Did I kind of get that right?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  That's right. I mean, very basically, if you think about the brain as working in two modes. So the quantity-producing mode, which requires a very low level of complex thinking, of idea generation, of mental gymnastics. That's a low, that's the kind of the quantity-focused mode. So for instance, you can, you can reply to pretty much every email in your inbox in some form after two hours of sleep the night before. Okay, so you can, you can reply, but if you've had two hours of sleep the night before, what you're writing is not going to be of the best quality. So if you are given an article to write, if you're a journalist or writer,

• 27:16Speaker 02

  you have to submit, let's say, 5,000 words by five o'clock. And you've started at nine in the morning and you've just had two hours of sleep the night before. You can write something that amounts to that number of words, but what you write is probably going to make very little sense and will not be original, will not be your best work. And, and you might even have to labor for eight hours to get those 5,000 words or 10,000 words out. Whereas if you had a fresh night of, a, a, a really good night of sleep and you're fresh in the morning and, you know, you're not otherwise tired, you're not worried about anything, you've, you know, you've had a good, good morning so far and you sit at your desk.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  You might be able to reel out those five thousand words in a couple of hours. And not only that, but what you produce will be way more original and of better quality than an AI bot, than a chat G P T or whatever the latest version is. But when you're doing that kind of work, your brain is not focused on quantity, it's focused on quality.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  So if you want to produce quantitatively significant work, so reel out lots of letters in the old days, lots of reports, file information, even do PowerPoint slides, something like that, then you can still do that in a sleep deprived state.

• 28:39Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, it's almost like the assembly line version of knowledge work.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  This is exactly right. And actually, that's the other aspect to it. So since around nineteen, the mid nineteen fifty's, nineteen fifty seven, the majority of knowledge work, what we call knowledge work, has involved data gathering, data processing, data presenting. So if you imagine every organization as a pyramid, most layers of the pyramid were just doing these three things. If you replace cars with data and hands with minds, that's what we were doing. And it's only the tip of the pyramid at the top, the executive kind of peak, people in that segment alone took the decision, solved the big problems, came up with the innovative ideas.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  And everyone else just circulated data. And back when technology was slightly slower, it's an understatement, it was much more important to gather data, to process data and to present information than anything else for everyone else in the pyramid, especially for the lowest layers of the pyramid, because that decided the bottom line, that significantly influenced whether your product was going to be better than someone else's, you know, progress, competition, all of these things. But now, now that we have A I assistance in pretty much every sector of the workplace now, from medicine to law, to accountancy, to management.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  So every aspect of the knowledge workplace, and, and you know, why stop there? Pilots flying planes, um, every aspect of pretty much every workplace now involves some kind of A I assistance. And this means that the basic work of data gathering, data processing, data presenting, even making PowerPoint presentations. This kind of work doesn't need to be done by junior level members of the pyramid. In fact, A I does it better and faster and more powerfully. So everyone on, in every layer of that organizational pyramid now has to act like the people at the top of the pyramid did twenty years ago.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  So now everyone has an A I tool to do this quantitative work for them. But they have to decide how to make a presentation that no one else can make. They have to come up with innovative ideas and innovative ways to use their A I tool in a way that takes the organization forward. So, I mean, you know, another, yet another angle to this is that right now, the U S economy, in- industrial growth, that is to say, is actually more driven by ideas, so by software, by innovation, uh, and by different aspects of these things, by design,

• 31:40Speaker 02

  than by actual product manufacturing, which says so much about where we've come. Which means that the ideas have much more weight than the actual product. And any machine can make the product. And if you extrapolate this to the brain and you look at these two aspects of the brain, quality and quantity, the quantity aspect is now being taken over by A I. So the, the biggest role of the brain in the workplace is generating the thought process, generating the planning, generating the ideas. And that's where working differently comes in.

• 32:19Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and if we're working against ourselves, then um, we shut down our capacity. To do that effectively and also just on a personal level, we add suffering to our own experience of work that doesn't need to be there and that ripples out into our physical health, our mental health, our relationships, our life. It is such an interesting moment to be having this conversation as you described. I recently heard a conversation between somebody who was, I believe, the head of innovation for Adobe, like this, you know, suite of software products, I guess now it's SaaS, where, you know, so many of the world's creatives and agencies and producers have used these tools for years to produce almost everything and anything that we see out there.

• 33:03Jonathan Fields?

  And he was saying, you know, there's now so much AI built into their tools themselves, but the job of all these people is changing. You used to go to the tool as a source to produce the idea that was in your head. Now the tool kind of does all that itself. And the plus and the minus of that is if you're the type of person where you really just wanted to do the data gathering, the basic processing, the basic production, this is going to be an interesting moment for you. But if you're the type of person that actually says, but what if I could spend more time in the land of ideas and innovation and taking things like to a place where they don't exist

• 33:40Jonathan Fields?

  right now, this is such an incredible moment if also we understand how to treat our brains properly along the way and actually step into that mode of work where we can do it in a healthy way. And I want to jump into some of the specific ideas that you offer, but before we get there, there's something that's sitting on my mind that I really want to tease out with you a little bit. Two domains where the early days of work tend to be pretty brutal are also two incredibly high stakes domains of work. One of them is medicine, where I know you have that background. The other one is the world of startups. Very different worlds, but you know, the early training for physicians, even though there's now all sorts of regulations, at least in the US, about what you quote, you

• 34:25Jonathan Fields?

  know, like are and aren't allowed to do, whether those are a by to by or not, it's a completely different conversation. But you know, classically, the training. Is brutal. It is relentlessly long hours, life and death stakes, incredibly fast paced, taking terrible care of yourself, oftentimes barely any sleep. I don't have to explain that. I'm sure you've lived your version of this, you know, like way back when. Startup life is similar in a lot of different ways, but the stakes aren't life or death. They're often, you know, like game changing innovation and often very large amounts of other people's money. And yet, these are two domains where the expectation is people are going to be able to make decisions

• 35:06Jonathan Fields?

  and create outcomes that are as close to perfect and world changing and, you know, like when the stakes are on the line as you could ever want and expect someone to make. How do we square this? How do we square that environment with the expectation of what somebody is supposed to be able to deliver?

• 35:26Speaker 02

  So a couple of things. So we'll come to medical life last because that's where, yeah, I can bore you with my own experience. But, you know, startups are, they're such an important area to focus on. And I would say the following. So the difference between medicine and startups, the biggest difference from my perception is that, yes, you want to, you enter medicine because you have some kind of an inner passion, inner calling, inner interest that leads you to medicine. But ultimately, when you're doing your training, which lasts a very long time here in the UK,

• 36:05Speaker 02

  you completely, you're doing it on a day to day basis. So you lose the fact, the idea that, oh, you always wanted to do this. But because you are not responding to one core idea, you're responding to a whole system. Now, when it comes to a startup, usually it happens in phases. So the startup begins usually, especially the most grueling part, with an idea.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  You don't go to go to work every day in an office and think, okay, I'm working towards a startup. You first have the idea and then you go about it. So you have some kind of a personal vision that drives you to it. And that vision, that initial vision is really, really important. That the passion that drives you towards that, the fact that you you recognize it, you visualize it, you picture the end product, which is consistent through your journey. That so that vision is really important. The second thing to remember with startups is the kind of person who leads a startup, so not works for it eventually, not someone who joins the team of a startup that that has already hatched. But the person who actually

• 37:16Speaker 02

  creates a seed for the startup, usually people often tend to have a certain type of personality and that personality is a very high degree of uncertainty tolerance. So if you're naturally a very, very anxious person, you will not be driven to the startup journey if you're doing something else. At least you won't be driven alone to the startup startup journey very easily. So it usually it needs a certain type of kind of of mental frame of of of personality and usually people have a slightly better tolerance of uncertainty. Now, if you put those two together with another third thing, which is the fact that the startup journey happens in phases.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  So as I said, you first have the idea and then you start realizing the idea, so putting it into concrete form. Now, the idea stage of the startup usually happens in a slightly less threatening and less uncertain setting. It the idea might not take complete shape. At that stage, but you have the idea in the first place, usually when you're doing something else, because you haven't begun your startup yet, okay? So, and that idea generation bit is absolutely critical and pivotal to your startup journey,

• 38:40Speaker 02

  because you have that as your guiding star, as your north star to anchor on as you, as you carry on. Beyond that, you're going to need fixes, you will need adjustments, you need to adjust your journey, but the original idea had to be hatched before you began your journey. And so when you are going about it, in, in my book, I describe how certain ways of working can allow you, for instance, to work for longer periods throughout the day than the standard assembly line way of work. So for instance, we are better at innovative thinking, at creative thinking, first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening. That's what our brain's physiology optimizes us for.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  We are better at doing really focused work in the middle of the morning and up until lunchtime, and in the middle of the afternoon up until early evening. Again, this is how our brain's rhythm works. So anchoring onto this way of working and changing the pattern from a consistent pace, uh, the same kind of work and the same, uh, work matter throughout the day, changing from that to working in what I describe as rhythms, allows you to actually work for long hours across the day and keep your mind in an optimal state to do the work you're doing as best you can. And a startup founder needs that hard work.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  They cannot just take a day off, work from home, or, you know, take long breaks. So, once you have the idea, fueling that sort of way of working allows you to be very productive across an entire day.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  And then, once the implementation stage has has gone through, I mean, while you're going through it, you you get all the, you know, the usual barriers, you get failures of expectations, you get things that suddenly emerge, barriers that suddenly emerge out of nowhere, and then you need problem solving. You need to sit back and solve problems. You need self-control to keep your eye on the ball. So all of those things, again, although they are there, they still don't push you away from your, that original big idea. That's still up there as your north star. But in order to navigate this, again, a different way of working, this rhythmic way of working can be very helpful. And then, of course, finally, you know that there is an end.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  And, you know, startup founders everywhere, this this journey is grueling, but they visualize the end, that they know the end will happen. And then it does. And then, once it does, it creates a new sort of standard, a new baseline for expectation, for uncertainty tolerance, for taking that journey all over again. So that is sort of how startups navigate. And also during that that journey, the really important thing is to keep your brain in an optimal state, to make the best possible decisions, as you say, and to figure out a way to go around the wall instead of just punching your way through it.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  And, again, the way you work can shift your brain into very distinct states that are optimal for all of these things. Again, I describe this in my book, but, you know, things like waking up, you know, extremely early in the morning actually puts you in the zone of innovative ideas. Playing around with your physiology when you're experiencing a roadblock can help you shift your brain into the right state. Can in effect effectively change gears, change your brain's gears. And you know, one way to conceptualize this is your brain is, your brain has a network. Uh, which really works a little bit like a gearbox. And you can shift your brain's gears to shift into different mental states.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  So this is another strategy to use during that journey. To reduce your reactivity to uncertainty and keep you in what I call gear two, which is an optimal mental state. For this type of problem solving and innovative work. And then finally you get to your end and then you do it all over again. Hmm. So, um, and another thing to, to just bring into it is this idea of intrinsic motivation. Which is a technical term, but essentially it just means that. You can do really hard work, really tough work and keep going for really long hours. Day after day, week after week, month after month.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  If you are able to get into a mental state. By choosing what you're doing in a way, by, by kind of figuring out when you're doing what you're doing. And by tweaking your goal, adjusting your goal, which is ideal in the, in the case of a startup. So that the process of working feels so pleasurable. That it creates almost an energy, it, it, it creates rocket fuel inside you. To propel you forwards and make you want to keep going.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Even if the journey is tough, even if you're tired, even if the goal you are looking towards sometimes looks hazy. And this idea of, and that's separate to extrinsic motivation, which is a standard motivation in any workplace. So your pay, your salary, you know, your salary at the end. Uh, the promise of the job you have, the promise of career progression. These are standard external motivators which salaried jobs have. But when you're doing a startup. Ideally, you want to be so energized by the idea of your of your startup that just progressing towards it creates a sort of momentum

• 44:43Speaker 02

  that keeps you going. And, you know, as an aside, if you look at the brain circuits, the circuit for alertness, for energizing your brain, which I describe, I call it the LCNE network, or the blue dot network. This circuit is very closely tied to the circuit of motivation. So when you're motivated for something, and you will know this in your day to day life, if you're working on something really late in the day, but you're really motivated by it, you suddenly derive energy from somewhere, even though you hypothetically theoretically should not have that energy because you're sleep deprived, you've been working for fourteen hours. But suddenly, you just have this energy.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  So the motivation circuits release energy, and I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, but they release a sort of a rocket fuel inside your brain that allows you to do, to carry on working for long hours. And many startup founders would tap into this source of mental energy to stay at their optimal.

• 45:49Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 45:51Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 45:56Jonathan Fields?

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• 46:37Jonathan Fields?

  Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 46:47Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Vinted. So here's a question that I have been sitting with. How many things in your closet were bought for, let's say, a version of you who never quite showed up? Maybe it's the tailored jacket for the dinners you were gonna go to, or someday pieces with the tag still on them. They're lovely clothes. They're just not yours anymore. That's where Vinted comes in. So Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where everyday people sell the clothes that they're not wearing to people who actually will. Listening on Vinted is quick and simple. You take a few photos, write a short description, and you're done. Once something sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. There are also no seller fees on Vinted. So whatever your piece sells for, you keep.

• 47:29Jonathan Fields?

  What I love about that is how it turns letting go into something that actually feels good. You get more room, a little extra money, and maybe a closet that reflects who you are right now. So see what's hiding in your closet. You might be surprised how much you can earn with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees, so you keep everything you earn. Good Life Project is sponsored by Bombas. So my wife Stephanie has been one of the great gift givers in our family. And her secret is that the best gifts often aren't the flashy ones. They're the ones that people reach for on any given day without even thinking about it. That's why so much of my list ends up at Bombas. Fuzzy sundae slippers for the friend who lives in sweatpants from November to March. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for anyone who runs cold.

• 48:14Jonathan Fields?

  That would be me, by the way. Ski and running socks for the ones who refuse to slow down. Also me, by the way. And water-resistant suede booties. So cushy. My executive producer Lindsay actually more or less lives in hers. And here's what else makes it a good life kind of gift. For every item you purchase, Bombas donates an essential clothing item to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased, one donated. Over 200 million donations and counting, so every gift you give is really two. So head over to bombas.com/goodlife and use the code GOODLIFE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash goodlife. Code GOODLIFE at checkout. You know, we've been referencing this in the context of a startup, but everything

• 48:58Jonathan Fields?

  you're saying, really, you know, like you can think about any person who's listening to this and they think about their work, they can think about, okay, you know, like, what are the expectations about my work hours? Do the things that I'm doing match up with the natural rhythms where my brain is functionally working at its best or in the way that would align best with the type of task or project that I'm working on? Like, we can all think about that. We can think about, you know, is there intrinsic motivation here? You know, like, is the thing that I'm doing, does it matter to me? Or does it just matter to somebody else or some other project where I'm not really invested? I don't particularly care in the outcome, but I know it's a part of what's expected from me, so I'm going

• 49:43Jonathan Fields?

  to check the box and do it. Because what you're saying is that activates, you know, a part of our brains in a way where it can either, you know, like, not add anything energetically to the ecosystem, or all of a sudden, when, in theory, our brains should be pretty drained, it will, you know, like, give us energy. You know, it's almost like, you know, it's unlocking a wellspring of something we didn't know we had in there. And I know so many people who've experienced this, where they have a sort of like a workaday job where it's quite, it's fine. It's okay. It's not great, but it's not terrible. It takes care of letting them honor their values. Like, maybe they have a really strong value around financial security, providing for family, and they appreciate that. They don't have any intention

• 50:27Jonathan Fields?

  of leaving it, but then they go home at night. And in theory, their brains should be pretty exhausted. You know, they've worked hard, they've worked inefficiently and ineffectively, they're not honoring their natural rhythms, and yet they go home, and then there's this passion project that they're working on. All of a sudden, they find themselves lit up, and they can do the six to 10 at night. When in theory, the brain shouldn't really be primed for that. But there's something about that intrinsic connection with what they're doing that lets them say, oh, like, I am so energized by it. I'm actually like having trouble falling asleep after doing it. So, you know, this is really applicable to anybody, you know, in the context of any work that they're doing. One big question that really jumps out at me is you described especially

• 51:12Jonathan Fields?

  understanding what are these rhythms that we have within us? You described how certain times of day tend to be more tied to different types of thinking. And you described them as, you know, like, we have these windows in the morning and then later in the day and then the midday. How universal is that? Like, is this true for everybody? Or do we actually all have our own version of that? And if so, how do we determine what our rhythms are so that we can sync up the type of work that we're doing with our brain being able to do it optimally and us just feeling good while we're doing it?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  So, yes, we think, most of us, have this rhythm. If you return to the idea of circadian rhythms, which most of us have heard of by now, you know, the, the idea that we have this body clock. We synchronize it by looking at light in the morning and we fall asleep at a certain time every day because our body clock has adjusted to that. So we have this circadian rhythm. Now, pretty much everything inside our physiology actually follows a kind of clock. The clock's kind of uncontrolled span can vary. So even our circadian rhythm is actually longer than 24 hours, but we keep it at 24 hours by, because of the, of the effect of the sun,

• 52:33Speaker 02

  of the solar cycle. So in this way, different parts of our body, even different neural networks have their own clocks. So our liver have clock, our liver has lots of clocks. Our heart has lots of clocks. Different regions in the brain have lots of clocks. The reward circuit, the dopamine circuit is actually responsible for our sense of time in many ways. Coming back to whether we all have the same clock and what this rhythm, this rhythm actually looks like, so one of the networks in the brain is based on the neurotransmitter stroke neuromodulator norrepinephrine.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  And it's, the circuit begins in a little area of the brain called the blue dot, literally, it's called the locus coeruleus in Latin. It's blue because it contains norrepinephrine or noradrenaline if you're in this side of the Atlantic. And norrepinephrine is really the chemical that causes your brain to wake up. And we know this because when you're doing something, when you're working out at the gym or running away from danger, we talk about adrenaline running through the veins. So the brain's equivalent of that is noradrenaline or norrepinephrine. Now, this norrepinephrine circuit has a cycle.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  So it increases its activity so that the, the release of norrepinephrine rises first thing in the morning from when you wake up, across the day with a little bit of a dip around lunchtime and then it carries on staying high. And then it declines again in the evening. And there are certain things that it correlates with. So it correlates with the way the, the, the light around you, so your ambient daylight shifts. So when you first wake up in the morning, the activity in this network is pretty low, very soft, because you know, you're in that hazy, just woken up state. And I'm talking about very early in the morning, so you say six or whenever it is you wake

• 54:40Speaker 02

  up. And then at that time, if you live in, again, certain parts of the world, this won't work on the North Pole, when day first breaks, light is redshifted. We know because sunrises look red-orange or very crimson-orange. And when daylight is redshifted.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  We are also slightly sort of gently awake. We're not, you know, really, really brightly awake. You know, we're not in that mental state we are in after four cups of coffee in the middle of the morning. So that sort of gentle awakening state is really good for creativity because your brain is not in that highly focused kind of anchored state. It's in that state where your mind is drifting, your your thoughts are drifting across different ideas. And you can sample things without committing to them. And then, as as the day continues and the sun rises higher, daylight actually shifts towards a bluer end of the spectrum.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  And that's when daylight looks white. And around about that time, again, depending on where you are on the equator, the brain's noradrenaline network, or norepinephrine L C network, that network also continues to go more and more active to the point where you're naturally in a state of being able to focus, being able to really kind of look at your computer screen and understand the P D F that you're reading. That sort of state, you enter into that around about mid morning.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  And you carry on like that until around lunchtime, when there's something called a post-lunch dip, which is a phenomenon where you feel more inclined to sleep. So you're feeling inclined to sleep twice a day, every twelve hours. And then when that wears off around the middle of the afternoon, your brain is back into the state of alertness. And that cycle, that sort of pattern mirrors itself in the evening. So in the evening, as the sun sets, again, there's a red shift in light. And late in the evening is again when you enter this zone of creativity. Now, of course, we all live in artificial light.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Many of us hardly see a sunset or sunrise. So it's very likely that these patterns, or it's very possible that these patterns. Were kind of embedded into us when we were evolving in more natural surroundings. And this may be why these things correlate, but mo- modern medicine, sort of testing of norepinephrine levels, they were first done in monkeys back, you know, around a hundred years ago, a little under a hundred years ago. These show that norepinephrine levels in the brain follow this kind of cycle. And we also know that now, looking at behavioral studies, there are peaks of creativity and creativity peaks off peak. In other words, when you're not at work, that's when creativity seems to peak.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  And focused work, focused attention also peaks in these time zones, but taking this just one step further, attention itself seems to have a cycle. And the cycle means that attention waxes and wanes, so it's it's there and then it kind of recedes a little bit. Every ninety or so minutes, now it varies in some people and in some instances, it can be sixty minutes. In others, it's been measured to be around a hundred minutes. But ninety minutes is sort of an average ballpark. So if you do something that requires you to keep your attention focused for longer than ninety minutes, you are quite literally working against your own attentional rhythm.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  And it's no coincidence that most films are ninety minutes long, that many soccer matches are ninety minutes long in many countries, and you can go on and on like that. So we have these rhythms embedded in our brains. They do vary slightly from one person to another in terms of the exact timing. It also will vary in terms of your geographic location. But by and large, we all have them and we can all tap into them.

• 58:58Jonathan Fields?

  So my curiosity here then is if so many, so much of this is triggered to our environment and the light, the nature of light around us. How is living not just in a world of internal light, but devices? Is that hijacking these rhythms in a meaningful way? Is it changing them?

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Well, it is very likely to be because blue light, and there's a paper I quote in my book, "blue light puts you, increases your alertness." So for instance, if you are doing shift work at night and you really need to pay attention, then having ambient, having more blue light in the ambient lighting actually raises your alertness level. Similarly, if you want to dip into a more creative setting, there is data that suggests that making the light around you more red-shifted, so warmer, puts you in a creative state of mind. And coming back to your question, so part of my PhD in neuroophthalmology involved looking at pupilometry.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  And I was doing this at a very exciting time when the melanotin-containing ganglion cells had recently been discovered. These are special cells in the back of the eye that do not process visual information. They simply calculate and measure the light around you, the ambient light around you, and they relay this information into the clock in your brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and they set the time. And these cells, the pigment in these cells, we are now discovering more and more since I did that research work. But the pigment in these cells respond to around 479 nanometers of light wavelength. So this is at the peak blue end of the spectrum.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  They also respond to bright light through your cones. So bright light and blue light necessarily change your brain's perception of whether it is daytime or not, and the time of day and not. So, and we know, of course, that devices have blue LED lights. So putting two and two together, you know, data around this, research around this, is sometimes quite difficult because it involves lifestyle observations. But it's definitely very, very plausible that looking at blue light is interfering with your body clock, for sure.

• 1:01:29Jonathan Fields?

  So if we zoom the lens out a little bit in this conversation, we say, okay. So and again, I don't want to assume that everybody listening to this conversation is also a knowledge worker. You may be in the trades, you may work in a factory, you may work in your hands, you may be a crafts person, you may be an artist working like very physically. And I also don't want to in any way create a class structure between those. Like there is value in all work, whether you're working with your physical body, predominantly with your mind, or some blend of both, or going back and forth between the two.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  I would actually interrupt you and say, there is even greater value today, thanks to AI, with working with your hands and craftsmanship, because this is something, the human element of this is something cannot, that cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence. So I would argue and hope, of course, that this is one positive shift that AI may well bring to the world around us, because if AI takes over so much of knowledge work, we will return to valuing things made by human hands more than ever.

• 1:02:36Jonathan Fields?

  I hope that's right. I feel like I see that trend coming as well. I'm somebody who gets great joy actually working with my hands and in a physical creation process. So, you know, I'm trying not to project my desire for that to sort of like emerge as something that people center more and value more. But, but the trend does seem like, you know, it's, it's heading in that direction. If we think more generally about, okay, so I'm somebody who wants to be able to show up and whatever work that I do, I want to be able to create the best possible thing, outcome, deliverable product, service, whatever it is, that I'm capable of creating, both

• 1:03:20Jonathan Fields?

  because maybe it'll help other people, it'll help me, it'll just make me feel good about myself, and I want to feel good along the way. Like, I want to feel psychologically and physiologically good along the way. What are one or two of the the first entry points that you might invite somebody to start thinking about reimagining or addressing?

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  So I would, in a perfect world, I would start long before people enter the job world. And remind everyone that the standard nine to five way of working, where you have one college degree, it's hit and miss whether you make it to college or not. And that defines the rest of your life. And you are defined by that, your job is defined by that, you follow a defined career path, and that's it. You see your life ahead of you. That sort of structure is now rapidly changing, and I believe it will become extinct. And instead, I think there will be greater emphasis on choosing a path,

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  whatever that path is, with your hands of your mind, creating, building, that you feel is a natural good fit for you, that you actually enjoy doing. And in an ideal setting, I would hope, I would wish that youngsters have the opportunity to make this choice without being burdened by societal expectations or pressure from, you know, a certain path that has been stereotypically the right one to take. But instead, looking at something that's a really good fit for you, for your skills, for your personality, something that makes you feel really good. Because what that will do is that lets you follow and be guided by and be energized by intrinsic motivation.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  Because you will enjoy doing what you're doing just for the sake of it, because it gives you pleasure. So that's one thing. Another thing I would, I would say is that we need to really change this nine to five focus on work. And this is a separate argument from, you know, whether you want to work from home or work from office. That's, that's a different argument whatsoever. What, what I'm describing is when you're at work in the office. Rather than having a nine to five rigid strategy of sitting at the desk in a very cramped bay with other workers on your right and left, elbow to elbow, noise, open plan, that sort of thing.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  We need to change the entire ecosystem of that. So for instance, you know, one idea is if your work is mostly creative, so for instance, you might be writing at an, you know, might be a journalist, you might be a writer. You might be even uh working on the R and D section of your startup. So for all of these categories, I would suggest a working pattern where you start your workday very, very early, almost ridiculously early, five thirty or six even, where you have your creative, your burst of creative ideas or where your mind is most fertile for receiving or generating creative and innovative ideas. And then you, you work early and then you don't just follow this rigid nine to five or, you know, six to whatever

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  pattern, but instead you maybe take the period of the, of the day when your creative skills wane. Take that time a little bit lighter. So schedule in your meetings during that time and maybe even sneak in a break and really long lunch break. Have a nap. And then rather than go to, go home on schedule at six P M or seven P M, extend your day back into the creative window, having offset, so having kind of negotiated a break earlier on in the middle of the day. And then do your, do the rest of your workday then. So instead of having this rigid pattern where you clock in, clock out, work in a uniform way.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Make this your pattern of working. If you're doing creative work. Similarly, if you're doing focused work, focusing peaks in the morning and in the middle of the afternoon. So do not schedule meetings during that day, during that time of day. Schedule meetings when during your creative peaks or during the most post lunch dip. And so again, change the way you are working to suit this. Also, if you're using attention, work in cycles, work in this rhythmic cycle in line with your attentional cycle. So a summary is, and this is one way of looking at it, if you take all the ideas from hyper efficient, is you have to find your flame in work. That's the first rule.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  And that is more important today than ever before. Whether you're doing knowledge work, whether you're doing manual work, it doesn't matter. Finding your flame lets you enjoy the work. And one of the ways to do it is, for instance, gradually improving, incremental improvement, finding a kind of a job or a startup kind of area that allows you to improve, that allows you to learn, and in a way that really energizes you. So finding your flame in whatever work you're doing will put you into the right mental state to do your best work, whatever kind of work you're doing. Then the second rule is get in gear.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  And the get in gear aspect means that your brain is in certain gears for certain kinds of work, so suit your work to the time of day. And the third rule is run in rhythm, which is while you're working, respect the idea that there is a rhythmic aspect to your brain's physiology and work in line with this. And of course, all of this is heavily underscored by the need for rest. Need for rest and the need for sleep.

• 1:09:19Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm, I love that framework. That feels like a great place for us to come full circle as well. So I'll wrap with the question I always ask in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer the phrase "to live a good life," what comes up?

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Live in line with your own compass. So do something that gives you joy, that gives you energy, that brings good to the world, and make sure you enjoy every moment of it.

• 1:09:49Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm, thank you.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:09:54Jonathan Fields?

  Before you leave, if you love this episode, you will also love the conversation we had with Dan Pink about the scientific secrets of perfect timing for peak productivity. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music, and special thanks to Shelley Del Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube, too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did, because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven-second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome, too.

• 1:10:38Jonathan Fields?

  But just one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

• 1:10:59Jonathan Fields?

  Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet Wealth Partners. Are you on track for financial independence? If you're on track, the same way you're getting back to the gym, as in, maybe next year, then this one's for you. NerdWallet Wealth Partners offers free tools for high earners who'd like an actual answer instead of a vibe, like their calculator that estimates if you're on track for financial independence. Plug in a few numbers to see how your savings path may support your goals. Think of it as a fitness test that you can take sitting down, or their wealth-building checklist for high earners. It's a step-by-step guide for prioritizing your dollars once you're making six figures. And if you still have questions, you can connect with one of their financial advisors, who specializes in working with high earners in their 30s and 40s. Good news, this is one workout you can actually finish.

• 1:11:43Jonathan Fields?

  Find out more at nerdwalletwealthpartners.com/good. NerdWallet Wealth Partners LLC is an SEC-registered investment advisor. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor does it constitute an endorsement by any securities regulator. Please see nerdwalletwealthpartners.com for disclosures and important information.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed and the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for watch or iPad required. Addition terms apply for all offers.

• 1:12:34Speaker 04

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  Hey, Pablo Torre here. And if you listen to my show, Pablo Torre Finds Out, I think you have a sense of what it's all about. I, you know, dig past the surface level of stuff. And right now, as the NBA season tips off, I do need a reliable and smart way to actually watch these games. And that is why we're talking about Sling TV. Sling gives you not just basketball, but sports at a great price, starting at just $19.99 a month. We're talking NBA, NFL, college football, college basketball, hockey, soccer, and more. And the beauty here is total flexibility. You pick your plan, you add what you want, and you get the sports channels you actually care about. No overloaded packages, no fluff. So get sports and more for a great price. Sling lets you do that. Essential base package needed. Limitations are applicable. Visit sling.com for full details.