Why Pets Behave So Strangely & The Surprising Rhythm of Your Brain - SYSK Choice

How is your posture right now? If your shoulders are slouched, you may be sending a message to other people that you never intended to send. Your shoulders can communicate confidence, uncertainty, stress and more. Listen as I explain what your posture may be saying about you. https://www.jnforensics.com/post/what-the-shoulders-say-about-us Why are dogs so picky about where they poop? Can cats tell how you’re feeling? And does a goldfish really have a three-second memory? We love our pets, but some of the things they do can be baffling. Eleanor Spicer Rice is an entomologist and author of Your Pet’s Secret Lives: The Truth Behind Your Pets’ Wildest Behaviors (https://amzn.to/3BblxB3). Listen as she reveals what’s really behind some of the strangest things our pets do. Your brain doesn’t work the same way all day long. Certain kinds of thinking are easier at particular times, which means when you tackle a task may be almost as important as how you tackle it. Dr. Mithu Storoni is a physician, neuroscience researcher and author of Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work (https://amzn.to/3TAAOSd). Listen as she explains how to work with your brain’s natural rhythm instead of fighting against it. You might assume that someone with a bigger head has a bigger brain — and therefore must be smarter. Sounds logical, but is it true? Scientists have actually looked at the relationship between brain size and intelligence, and the answer is more interesting than you might expect. Listen and find out what really matters. https://odditiesbizarre.com/people-with-big-heads/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS MONARCH: Write your own money story with Monarch! Use promo code SYSK at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Monarch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get your 1st year of Monarch Core half off at just $50 TREES. COM: Right now, ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Trees.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠have great deals on planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to our show get 20% OFF their purchase when using the promo code SYSK at checkout. VINTED: Ready to clean out your closet and make some extra money? Download the Vinted app for free and start listing! With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn and for a limited time, enjoy free shipping in the US on Vinted. WAYFAIR: Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Wayfair.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. QUINCE: Find your next Fall favorites at Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! DELL: Built for those who want better. The Dell XPS, built for you! PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts! KA'CHAVA: Ka’Chava’s new Salted Caramel is the perfect balance of mouthwatering flavor and benefits. Embrace your salty side. Go to ⁠⁠⁠https://kachava.com⁠⁠⁠ and use promo code SYSK to get 15% off your first order! INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:44Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:24Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, how you hold your shoulders tells people a lot about you. Then things you never knew about pets, dogs, cats, hamsters. And I bet you never knew this about goldfish.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  A goldfish that has everything that it needs can live to be about 20 years old. And they eat everything and they disrupt a lot. So now goldfish are ranked as one of the most destructive invasive species on the planet.

• 1:52Mike Carruthers?

  Also, is it true people with big heads are smarter? And why you should plan your work around your brain? Because your brain is on a schedule.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  We know that creative work seems to be much better if it is undertaken first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Whereas the peak zones for focus actually happen slightly later in the morning.

• 2:18Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:23Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:08Mike Carruthers?

  and classic wool outerwear as well. Quince prices everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. They have bedding, bath, kitchen essentials and furniture. We even have Quince pillows. So this isn't one of those endorsements where I try something once because they sent it to me. We shop at Quince and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers 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 them,

• 3:53Mike Carruthers?

  please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show.

• 4:00Mike Carruthers?

  Something You Should Know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:13Mike Carruthers?

  Hi and welcome. And let's start today with a quick posture check. How are you holding yourself? Because you see, when someone sees you slouching, you're sending a bad message. People with depression often slouch their shoulders. It's a good idea to be aware of how you hold your upper body. When people see broad, straight shoulders, they're likely to read that as strength and confidence. When they see someone slouching, it sends the opposite message. Interestingly, a study showed that if you deliberately sit up straight, it can actually make you feel more proud after a success, increase your persistence at an unsolvable task

• 4:56Mike Carruthers?

  and make you feel more confident in your thoughts. It also seems that good posture can make you feel more alert and enthusiastic, less fearful and give you higher self-esteem after a stressful task. And that is something you should know.

• 5:16Mike Carruthers?

  Two thirds of US households have at least one pet living in that household. Cats, dogs, hamsters, turtles, birds, fish and who knows what else. And while we pet owners like to think we understand our animals pretty well, there is much more, I suspect, that you don't know, things you've always wondered about. And that is why Eleanor Spicer Rice is here. She is an entomologist and author of many nonfiction books, one of which is called Your Pet's Secret Lives: The Truth Behind Your Pet's Wildest Behaviors. Hi Eleanor, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Hi Mike, thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

• 5:56Mike Carruthers?

  And so let me first ask you about the science behind all this. Because you know, people say, oh, you know, when your cat does this or your dog's tail does that. And I don't know if they know what they're talking about. And how would anybody know what they're talking about? How, is this real science?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. What I did was I took our most kept pets in the United States, North America. And I went to the peer reviewed journal articles and I found the studies that were absolutely the most jaw dropping studies to me, the ones that I didn't know. And then I had a researcher go with me and we verified that these studies are solid and that they, they make sense statistically and all of that.

• 6:43Mike Carruthers?

  So let's start with something really fascinating. And let's pick dogs since that's the most popular pet. Something so amazing about dogs that I probably don't know.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  There's some things about dogs that have, I've noticed before, but I just did not think that there was a reason for why they were doing it. And one of the things that was just amazing to me was that when they go to the bathroom outside, when they go number two, when your dog goes to the bathroom, do you watch it spin around? Kind of go one way and go the other way and then kind of stop?

• 7:15Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I just thought that was a random funny little thing that a dog was doing just to put himself in position to go to the bathroom. But it turns out that what's actually happening is that the dog is aligning its body with the north-south axis of Earth's electromagnetic field.

• 7:33Mike Carruthers?

  No way.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  It's real. And the thing is that we've often, we've thought, we've heard these wild stories of dogs coming home from long distances and over places that they'd never been before. You know, there was this dog in the 1920s, Bobby the Wonder Dog, who got left in Indiana on vacation and had to go 2,500 miles to get to Oregon to get home over land that Bobby had never been over before. And that's, nobody could figure out how the dog could get from one place to the other. And people thought that one of the things that dogs could use is Earth's electromagnetic field to help orient them, like give them a directional sense. And a lot of animals can detect the field.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Cows can, deer can, hammerhead sharks, lots of birds. So, but humans cannot. And one of the ways that we figured out that dogs are able to detect the field is because when they go to the bathroom, animals who can detect the field when they're resting or when they're relaxing in some way, feel more comfortable aligned with Earth's north-south axis. So if you drive by a cow pasture, for example, and everything's calm and everything's normal outside, you often see the cows are facing the same way. And if you watch to see which way they're facing, it's usually north to south or south to north. And that's the same thing for dogs when they stop to go to the bathroom. I have a little dog, Nature Boy. He's, he's very, very short. He's compact.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  And it's so fun to me to watch him now because I would say probably more than nine times out of 10, if it's not an emergency, he always stops north to south or south to north when he is going to the bathroom.

• 9:17Mike Carruthers?

  So my dog, when it goes, she goes to the bathroom, what I find interesting is like she gets, she's like all ready to go and then decides, no, no, not here. Let's try over there. No, no, no, no, the, no, no, no, no, no, let's go.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:33Mike Carruthers?

  Why are they so picky?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  It's a big decision for where they need to go to the bathroom because they're leaving a lot of information in their bathrooms. So with number two, they're saying, they are saying, this is me, this is where I am and this is my area. This is my hood. And with number one, what they're saying, they, they actually say a whole bunch. Urine can tell the other dog's sex, whether it's receptive to a mate, if it's a familiar dog, how big the other dog is, you know. Oh, and something about that with, with urine anyway is that small dogs, like my dog Nature Boy, when they're going to the bathroom, they actually aim higher than large dogs do when they pee.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  And researchers believe that it's because they want to make the other dogs think that they're actually bigger. So it's like wearing platform shoes. So your dog is very picky about how they want to, how they want to spread the message of their presence in the area. But when they do go to the bathroom, they're giving a lot of information away.

• 10:39Mike Carruthers?

  So I get that dogs are leaving information when they go to the bathroom. But what I don't really understand is why other dogs find it so fascinating. Like my dog, and I've seen plenty of other dogs do this where, you know, they'll go up to the rock or the fire hydrant or the tree or the phone pole that, that every other dog pees on and just sniff away like it's, it's so, why is it so interesting?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  That is what they are getting all of the news in the neighborhood. So, all of that information that we just talked about that they have been handed, all of that information changes on a daily basis. The dogs who show up at different places come at different times of day. Some dogs are receptive to mates at different times of the year. And so, they're picking up every single bit of news that they possibly can.

• 11:37Mike Carruthers?

  I want to move on to other animals, but one more dog question because my dog does this. And I know some other dogs do. And if you're a dog owner of a female dog, you probably would like to know this. My dog, who is female, humps. You know, she'll hump on somebody's arm. And I've always thought of that as a male behavior. I don't understand why a female dog would do that.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Well, actually, it's both sexes will hump people because it can be like a self-soothing thing for dogs to hump people. They're asking you to pay attention to them. They're relieving their stress. They're doing that kind of stuff. They're not trying to be weird, but both sexes will hump people or their pet or their toys or their housemates.

• 12:29Mike Carruthers?

  Let's move over to cats. I'm not a big cat person, but I like cats. I've had cats. I've had some really cool cats, actually. But what about cats would I be fascinated to learn?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  So, one thing I love about cats, and this happens with dogs as well, but I'm going to give cats as an example because of how we have lived together for so long, is that they can tell our emotions. So, if you're feeling sad, a cat that loves you, the cat that lives with you, will come up and bump you usually with their forehead. And what most people do with that is instinctively, without thinking, hey, I'm going to do this. They'll reach out and they'll pet their cat. And when they do, the people start to feel get better and the cat will start to look at them and they'll blink at them really slowly. And most pet cat owners who are bonded with their cats will blink back at them.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  And what's happening is the cat is releasing oxytocin, which is that hormone that mothers release when they're bonding with their babies. It's the love hormone that a lot of people talk about. But we are sensing that and releasing oxytocin as well. So, on a chemical level, we are connecting with our cats and it becomes this feedback loop of feeling better that our cats can do for us and intentionally.

• 13:54Mike Carruthers?

  Can you tell much about a cat by its meow? Or is a meow a meow?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  A meow is not a meow. Cats have a lot of different meows. And cats that live in different places have different meows. They teach each other meows. Cats will chirp. They will chitter. There's a, and humans that live with their cats can tell the difference between the meow, whether they've actually thought about it or not. A human will know the difference between I'm hungry, give me food, and let me out, and I am afraid. People who live with their cats, intentionally or not, can tell the difference between the sounds, the vocalizations that their cats make.

• 14:39Mike Carruthers?

  I think one of the first pets people have when they're kids is a goldfish. And we've heard that thing about how a goldfish's memory is only three seconds long. Is that true?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  That's 100% false. And they're actually really, really brilliant, especially like for a fish. And we don't think that they live long, but a goldfish that has everything that it needs can live to be about 20 years old.

• 15:07Mike Carruthers?

  No.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  So, yes.

• 15:09Mike Carruthers?

  A little goldfish that you buy at the pet store or you get at the fair, if you take care of it really, really well, it'll live 20 years.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I have met so many people that have had their goldfish for a lot longer than that. And they, they talk about their goldfish the way that I talk about my children or my dogs. Like, they have really connected with these fish because the fish are, have great, great memories.

• 15:37Mike Carruthers?

  All right. Well, I want to ask you more about that because how great can a goldfish's memory be, really? I'm speaking with Eleanor Spicer Rice. She is an entomologist and the author of the book, Your Pet's Secret Lives: The Truth Behind Your Pet's Wildest Behaviors. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money.

• 16:22Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:02Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:11Speaker 03

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• 17:41Mike Carruthers?

  So, Eleanor, you said that goldfish have this great memory. Well, how great can it really be?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  So, they can remember each other. They can remember the people who are coming to their bowl. So, Mike, if you had a fish, they could remember you. And if I came and visited you, they would know that there was a stranger that was showing up and they'll remember who that stranger is. You can teach them different tricks. So, this team of scientists in Israel last year, a year before last, built a little fish mobile, which was like a little fish tank with wheels. And they taught the fish to drive it. And the fish learned how to drive down the street and get food and drive back home. They learned directions in a, on a landscape. They can remember mazes and all that kind of stuff.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  But all of that combines to be really horrible in terms of ecology because they're so smart and because they're so long-lived and because we get them at the fair and we dump them in a pond or a stream. And they're so adaptable that goldfish come originally, they're Asian carp, and they're beautiful in our bowls. But within a few generations, they, because they have so many babies, they revert back to their wild type, which is this big, boring, dull-colored, very, very, very smart fish. And so, they can have up to 40,000 eggs a year and they grow to be about the size like

• 19:15Speaker 01

  of a man's big shoe, a big man's big foot, you know? And what they do is, because their memories are so great and because their navigation is so great, they can navigate all these streams and waterways to these massive spawning events. They can go over 100 miles through the water to go to these massive spawning events and then swim back to their streams and release their 40,000 eggs every year. And they're so smart that like they've learned that one of the ways that people get rid of fish that are unwanted in a pond or something is they come and they shock the pond and the fish that were there will float to the top and then they harvest the ones that they don't want in there. It's like weeding a garden. But goldfish can learn really quickly.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  So, when they see the pond shockers coming, they just swim to the bottom and they wait it out. And they're beyond the electric current and they're fine. So, they can evade our detection and they eat everything and they disrupt a lot. So, now, goldfish are ranked as one of the most destructive invasive species on the planet.

• 20:20Mike Carruthers?

  Whoa. And so, when you said that goldfish can live to 20 years, and I don't know, you know, I've certainly never had fish that lived that long and, and don't have, haven't had a lot of fish, but I don't know anybody who's had a fish that lived 20 years. What are we doing that we're killing them off? What are we doing wrong?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Well, we think because we we think about goldfishes living in fish bowls. And so we don't put them in a tank that can provide them with enough space to swim around. They're basically in a very tiny jail cell when we put them in there. And I was saying this, growing up, I had a ton of goldfish in fish bowls. So we have to give them a larger space. And because goldfish are inquisitive and they're very, very smart, they need like dimensions and plants and things to move around in and explore, just like they would in the wild.

• 21:15Mike Carruthers?

  So another pet that a lot of kids have growing up, I had growing up, my son had, is hamsters. We have hamsters and people have gerbils. Not really sure what the difference is, but what about them?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  There's a big difference. I think I think hamsters are much cuter than gerbils. Mike, they'd have like really small tails and they just look like little chicken nuggets with fur. They're just adorable. But here's the thing about hamsters, they can't see very well and they're colorblind. So on those chubby little bellies, they have stink glands. And when they fight, they don't like to actually fight, so they have stink fights. And a male hamster like slam his stink on the ground and the other male hamster will get so mad, he'll waddle up to it and he will slam his stink on the ground. And the stinkiest hamster will win the stink battle.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  They just, to me, that just elevates their adorableness to like another, they turned it up to 11 with that.

• 22:17Mike Carruthers?

  And how long, how long can they live?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Hamsters can live up to, I think, six years. They're prey item. They're not designed, I guess, they're not built for living very long. That's why they have lots of babies and stuff. You know, gerbils are kind of wild too, though, because they dig. In the wild, in Mongolia and China and Russia, they live in these tunnels. And at the bottom of tunnels, they have all these chambers. And if their parents have dug them enough chambers and everything, they'll just live with their parents forever. And they have all these escape holes because they're also a prey item. But in pet stores and people who breed gerbils, they don't give them tunnels. And so what the researchers have found out is if a gerbil is born into a life where there's a tunnel,

• 23:03Speaker 01

  when they're babies, they don't dig ever. They're fine. Even if you just stick them on a flat bottom box for the rest of their lives, they don't dig because they feel comfortable, because there's an imprinting phase of safety when they're young. But if they are born into a place where there are no tunnels, they will dig compulsively for the rest of their lives. So a lot of people who have gerbils don't like to be kept up by them because they sit around all night long and they dig nonstop for hours and hours and hours and hours. They'll never stop. You can give them tunnels forever and they will keep digging tunnels.

• 23:39Mike Carruthers?

  What's another animal that people that people have as pets that surprises you?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  There are so many pets that people keep that I'm amazed that they bond with. Like, for example, you know, things like bearded dragons. A lot of people keep bearded dragons or lizards or snakes in general, reptiles in general. I get turtles. I understand turtles and tortoises. Like, I feel like humans can connect with those. I don't know. What do you think? I mean, could, do you think you could bond with a reptile?

• 24:12Mike Carruthers?

  I don't know. I never had a snake and, but it does seem that there are animals like that that don't seem to care a whole lot whether you're there or not. And they just, and snake is another example of, it doesn't seem like it belongs in a glass cage in some boy's bedroom. It seems like it should be out burrowing into the ground or doing whatever it does, not lying in a glass cage.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  I don't understand the need to keep snakes. That said, I have two children who beg me for a snake every day. Like, but we do keep them and they do amazing things, but they've also caused tremendous damage. I mean, in the Everglades, we've dumped so many Burmese pythons out there. They've killed up to, what, 99% of their small mammals? The Burmese pythons have, and we can't catch them because they're so sneaky.

• 25:06Mike Carruthers?

  I want to ask you about spiders. And in fact, I heard a guy that's a big into, what do you call those guys that are big into spiders?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Arachnologists?

• 25:13Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I guess that's what he was. Said that like, you know, a lot of people don't kill spiders in their, their house. They'll take them and put them outside. And he said, those spiders are dead in no time because they've probably been in your house their whole life. They have no idea how to survive in the wild. I mean, it's a nice gesture, but you're not, you're not really saving their life.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it's 100% true. And you know, the thing about spiders, 95% of them in your house have never been outside. And you're never more than four feet from a spider. And I base that on research that was done by Chris Buddle at McGill University, where he did spider densities in all kinds of environments. Even if you're standing in an Arctic tundra, you are never more than four feet from a spider. They're under your floorboards, they're under your, you know, counters, they're under your couch. And so the ones that frighten you in your house, they're adults, they've been living their, their whole lives. So it's kind of wonderful. It helped me to stop being so afraid of spiders. As an entomologist, that was a big shame of mine.

• 26:16Mike Carruthers?

  You know, we've been talking about how people have all these different kinds of pets and keep them and take care of them. And it kind of begs the question, like, why? Why do we have pets? What do they do for us?

• 26:29Speaker 01

  The thing is that despite all that we're saying about not taking these weirdo pets home with you and giving them a life they can't have, the pets that we do have do immense good for our health. And I mean, they, they increase our health and emotionally and physical health. So they decrease our stress, they improve our heart health, and they help children and adults with their social and emotional skills because we're connecting with things that are not talking to us and we're learning about behaviors and learning how to read another being. And dogs can help if a mother is pregnant and has a dog, whether she has a dog when she has the baby or not.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  The mother takes microbes, bacteria and fungi, tiny little creatures from that dog and gives them to her baby. And that baby is shown with those microbes that she got from her dog when she had her baby in her belly. Those microbes are shown to help protect the child from obesity and lower its stress as it grows. So in many weird and microscopic ways, our pets are actually enriching our lives.

• 27:41Mike Carruthers?

  Which is a message I think most pet owners are happy to hear and, and already know that to some degree, that animals, pets enrich our lives or they, or we wouldn't have those pets. I've been speaking with Eleanor Spicer Rice. She is an entomologist and author of several nonfiction books, one of which is called Your Pets: Secret Lives. The Truth Behind Your Pets' Wildest Behaviors. And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. And it is a children's book, but, but it's really interesting. Thanks, Eleanor. Thank you for coming on today.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, Mike. It's been a hoot. I really appreciate it.

• 28:19Speaker 03

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• 28:51Speaker 04

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• 29:22Mike Carruthers?

  Whatever work you do, you want it to be as good as it can be. However, and as I'm sure you know, sometimes your brain doesn't cooperate. There are times when your work seems excellent. Other times, you struggle and aren't really happy with the results. Sometimes, your work flows and seems effortless, and other times, it doesn't, no matter how many cups of coffee you drink. So what if you could get your brain in better sync with what you're doing, so you perform at peak efficiency and do better work? That's what my guest is here to show you. Meet Dr. Metu Staroni. She is a physician, neuroscience researcher, and ophthalmic surgeon.

• 30:04Mike Carruthers?

  She advises multinational corporations on mental performance and stress management, and she's author of a book called, "Hyper-efficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work." Hi, doctor, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 30:21Mike Carruthers?

  So this is very exciting, that we can actually adjust our brain to tune in to the work we're doing and make it better. But before we get into the details, explain the basic thesis here.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  My thesis is that I would guess that while you're working, you're working very well, or you think you're working very well, but you're not working in the right state of mind that you should be in for the work you're doing. So if you could be conscious of your mental state while you work, or even shift to the most optimal mental state you can be in, your work's quality would be vastly better.

• 31:03Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think for me, and I think many people think for themselves, that your mental state when you're working is just your mental state. You have a good one or a bad one, and some days, things go easily, and some days, things are more of a struggle, but that it is just, it is what it is on that day in that moment.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Right, so that's what I used to think myself, and what many people assume. But it really helps if you imagine your brain as though it were a machine with a set of gears in it. So when you're sitting down to write, to do any kind of work that you usually do, your brain assumes one of three distinct mental states. So it helps to imagine these as three different gear settings that your brain runs on. Gear one, gear two, and gear three. And each of these gears configures your brain into a certain state.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  So for example, in gear one, is a sort of a restful state of mind. Your attention wanders, and your thoughts are quite slow and drifting. In gear two, you're able to hold your attention, your mind feels sharper, and your thoughts feel faster. And in gear three, you can focus, but your focus darts about to anything that comes and distracts you. You can't quite deliberate on problems, you can't analyze things very calmly. So of these three mental states, the optimal mental state to be in is in gear two.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  But most of us end up in gear three, for a variety of reasons, stemming from the way we work and to a whole load of other factors.

• 33:03Mike Carruthers?

  All right, so how does one get oneself into that mental state, assuming you're not in it automatically? How do you, is there a way to kind of get your head in the right place?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  So I'm going to answer that question upside down. So I'm going to answer it by describing what doesn't get you to that right place. And the answer to that is the following. So there are two real sort of issues, features of the way we work, which prevents us from being in this optimal gear two state, where we can focus attention and be in a state where we can analyze, think, and create to the best of our potential. One aspect of the way we work is simply the pattern in which we work. So for instance, when you're focusing on something, when you're doing any kind of

• 33:57Speaker 02

  mental work, the mind or your brain naturally needs to drift away and rest around about an hour, an hour and a half, sometimes two hours into what you're doing, depending on how intense it is. But the way we work with our continuous days, and the way we're expected to put in continuous effort across an entire day and across an entire week, forces us to keep going when the brain or when the mind is tired. But when your brain and your mind is feeling tired and you push on, your brain sort of

• 34:38Speaker 02

  steps on the accelerator, so you go from gear two to gear three, and you stay in gear three for the most part of most days. And this tendency to step on the accelerator and stay in gear three was actually quite advantageous in the past, when we worked on assembly lines and following the Second World War and the Knowledge Age boom, when we did mostly sort of clerical work in the knowledge workspace. And this is why we turn to coffee, we turn to other stimulating sort of features, stimulating cues to stay in that state, because we can work fast, but we can't work well.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  A second aspect of the way we work, which affects this, is simply the environment we are in, specifically, the way technology is accelerating information transfer. So if you think of your brain as an information slicing or information digesting machine, when you're in gear one, you're going through information slowly. When you're in gear two, you're going through information at just the right level. When you're in gear three, your brain is just munching through information as fast as possible. So all the features of the environment that cause your brain to process information much

• 36:04Speaker 02

  faster than it comfortably can, so the very high speed at which information is being transferred, the way information can be transferred at no cost, so the large volumes of salient information your brain is receiving, these two things make your brain think that it really needs to work faster to get through the information, it needs to process more information per unit time. In order to do that, it can't simply work in gear two. Your brain has to push the pedal, and you go up to gear three. And a third element is uncertainty.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  So when your brain feels that the world around has some element of uncertainty, some element of threat, this can be a deadline, this can be some kind of job insecurity, this can be simply confusion about not understanding what you're doing, or even worry that you're not getting through the information you are supposed to be getting through, you're not doing the work, and so on and so on. When you're in that state, your brain thinks, okay, the world is uncertain, in order to make it more certain, I need to figure it out, and I can figure it out by slicing and kind of munching through information as quickly as possible.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  And that also pushes you into gear three, so out of this Goldilocks zone of gear two.

• 37:34Mike Carruthers?

  And just to refresh my memory, gear three is what?

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Gear three is the typical state of mind most workers have on a Friday afternoon after a week of having worked very hard. So the way you would feel is you would have sort of a slight kind of quite fast thoughts raised, not necessarily racing through your head, but you'd be able to think fast, react fast. You can focus, but you can't hold your focus, so your focus flips to anything that's coming your way, whether that's simply a distraction, noise, a beep here, a tone there, or multitasking, so all the different kinds of work that you're having to do at a typical, during a typical work session.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  So it's a sort of a state of mind that's faster with attention that's flying everywhere, and it prevents you from sitting down and thinking deep thoughts, contemplating, analyzing, but most importantly, prevents you from getting into a creative mode. So just as you can't daydream while you sprint, you can't get into a creative state of mind if you're in gear three.

• 38:51Mike Carruthers?

  You can't daydream when you sprint?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Correct. Have you tried it?

• 38:57Mike Carruthers?

  I'm gonna now. You can't daydream? So what does your mind do when you sprint?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Your mind is in gear three, so I'm talking about sprinting 100 meters or so. So when you're sprinting, the next time you try to sprint, try to see if you can daydream. The reason you can't is because when your body is in gear three fast mode, your mind keeps up, your mind essentially orchestrates that, so your mind mirrors what is going on in the body. But the creative state of mind needs to happen at a slower pace. So if your mind is racing with your body, you simply cannot daydream.

• 39:42Mike Carruthers?

  So I understand, I think I get the three states of mind and all that, but it seems as if that there are an awful lot of things that can affect it, that it isn't in a vacuum, that you're in one or the other or the other. You know, how much sleep you got, you know, how much work you have, what's on your mind, what happened this morning at home, a lot of things...

• 40:05Mike Carruthers?

  Seem to affect it, yes?

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Correct. So this sort of optimal gear two state of mind. And bearing in mind, this is a metaphor that I'm using to just help explain approximately what happens. This state of mind is of course affected by a variety of things. So for instance, if you haven't slept very well, you're going to be feeling tired, your mind's going to feel tired very quickly. And so you're going to slide out of it very quickly. If you then push on the pedal and force yourself to keep working when you are tired and sleep deprived, you actually, your, your needle kind of overshoots and you go into gear three. Other things that can affect this are things like how you emotionally feel, whether there are any emotional triggers around you.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  And also some more subtle aspects of your environment. So for instance, you're more likely to be kind of at the softer end of gear two, at the slower end of gear two, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. If you are not distorting everything with 10 cups of caffeine or things like that, your mind, your brain is naturally in the, in that state at a certain time of day. And how do we know this? We know this because we know that creative ideas, creative work seems to be much better, seems to be performed much better.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  If it is undertaken first thing in the morning and last thing at night, whereas the peak zones for focus actually happen slightly later in the morning and again later on in the afternoon into the early evening, avoiding the period just after lunch. So the mind has these, the brain has these natural fluctuations across a day. And what we tend to do when we work is we, we, we are like swimmers swimming against the current. So we schedule meetings in the middle of the morning or late in the morning, which should be reserved for things that need us to think and focus.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Similarly, the times of the day when we are most creative are the times when we are least likely to actually be at work. So instead of swimming against the waves, we would do far better to swim, to be like a surfer and actually ride these waves, these natural undulations of these mental states across the day. And then we can flip into sort of this gear two state far more easily.

• 42:44Mike Carruthers?

  When you say that people do some work better in the morning and late at night, I've, that's my experience for myself, but I've heard it said that, you know, everybody's different. Some people do better at night than in the morning, but it sounded like what you're saying is that that's, that's not true. So can you clear that up for me?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yes. So actually, both of these things are true. So we all have our 24 hour rhythm, our circadian rhythm. Uh, we, we've wake up with the sun ideally, and we fall asleep when the sun goes down, depending on which latitude you live in. So we have a 24 hour body bodily rhythm. But in some people, approximately a quarter of the population, but studies vary, this 24 hour rhythm shifts slightly. So some people actually wake up earlier and start their day earlier and others begin their day later and end it later.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  But across the entire spectrum, it's usual to wake up and then depending on when you wake up, whether you're an early person or a late person, the period immediately after waking up is actually the period for creative work. Or which is optimal, relatively speaking, for creative work. And then a few hours later, you enter into your zone of peak focus.

• 44:11Mike Carruthers?

  Okay. Well, that's certainly good to know because that, that, I don't think people think that way. When they plan their day, it isn't against the backdrop of what you're talking about. It's against the backdrop of whatever else has to happen and the kids have to get to school and the boss is out of town. Or, you know, there's a lot of other things, but not what you said.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Correct. And this is really part of the thesis that, that you mentioned at the start, which is that, you know, the world is changing now and we are still using the framework or the scaffold that the last hundred years have left us. But now that we have AI and we have automation, a lot of the low level mental work, cognitive work is now being delegated to machines. And this work actually formed a large part of knowledge work for the last 50 or so years. But this is, because this is now being taken away, we now have to work differently because

• 45:17Speaker 02

  we now have to not just work for quantity. You know, anyone can sit through meetings, go to work at, at eight o'clock or nine o'clock, write emails, come up with a hundred ideas in any state of mind. You could be tired, you could be distracted, you could be sleep deprived. But now that we have this era of AI assistant, uh, technology, we now have to really up our game so that we don't measure efficiency or productivity in terms of how many hours we worked or how many emails we sent. We have to flip it. So we have to measure productivity

• 46:00Speaker 02

  or efficiency according to how little time did one amazing idea need? Or how, how few meetings did we require to come up with one innovative brainstormed solution?

• 46:18Mike Carruthers?

  So you've been talking about, you know, scheduling your work to coincide with your mental state, but are there other things people can do to help shift their, their brain into the right mental state to match their work?

• 46:31Speaker 02

  To begin with, you can sit, sit where you normally work, begin your work session by just asking yourself, how focused am I right now? Do I think I'll feel better if I move to a quieter room? How easy is it for me to daydream, to just let my attention drift for a moment?

• 46:57Speaker 02

  These, the answers to these questions will help you establish whether you're in this right zone, in this Goldilocks zone of gear two, or whether you need to change something in your environment to get back into it. So for example, if you're doing some kind of work where you feel the work is boring or dull or monotonous or repetitive, then you will feel your attention drifting and you feel it, you'll find it quite difficult to keep, to stay focused. It will actually feel quite effortful.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  What you do in that sort of situation is in order to make your brain press on the pedal, you actually can increase the number of streams of information flowing your way. So many people describe to you that if they are looking into a security camera, if they're driving, or if they're doing anything else like that, actually doing something on the side can keep their mind in the right zone. Similarly, at the opposite end, you might be filing a report, filing a piece that has a strong deadline that's really, really coming up. But you find that, okay, I really need a good idea for this piece. I, it really isn't

• 48:20Speaker 02

  coming to me. I've sat here for six hours and I've only produced three words. What can I do? So in that sort of situation, what actually really helps is just to leave your work behind, leave your desk behind, go take a walk. A really important feature of the mind is that the mind is not like muscle. It rests while it works and it works while it rests. So when you're taking a walk, you might feel like you're resting, but your mind is actually working on the problem from a different angle. So when you come back after you've taken a walk and you sit back on that chair where you were stuck for six to eight hours, you will suddenly find that somehow your mind

• 49:04Speaker 02

  has come up with, if not an idea, an angle that you can pursue. The problem doesn't quite look as cluttered as it felt before. So these are some of the ways in which you can nudge yourself to be in the right mental state.

• 49:19Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what's so great about this is, as I said in the beginning, I think people think, you know, their mental state is whatever it is at the time and you deal with it, but you don't change it. You just have to deal with it. But, but this is really exciting that we have more control over it than I think most people thought. Dr. Me Tu Storoni has been my guest. She is a physician, neuroscience researcher and ophthalmic surgeon, and she's author of a book called Hyper-Efficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Think. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, doctor. Appreciate you being here.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. Have a great day.

• 50:01Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever wondered if people with big heads have bigger brains and might therefore be smarter than the rest of us? Well, it turns out there is some truth to that. Young people with wide heads tend to have higher IQs. Scientists say skull size is directly related to brain volume and mental ability. And there's more good news for people with big heads. People with bigger skulls have better memories in old age. Researchers tested people ages 70 to 80 with an IQ and memory test, and the ones with the largest head circumference scored much better. They even showed less degeneration three years later and were at lower risk of getting Alzheimer's

• 50:46Mike Carruthers?

  disease. And that is something you should know. You know, several people work hard at putting this podcast together. Our producers, Jeffrey Havison and Jennifer Brennan, executive producer Ken Williams. And because we work so hard at this, we'd like to reach more people and you could certainly help. It's a great way to support this podcast by sharing it with other people, telling them about it and suggesting they listen. And it's pretty easy to do. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 51:17Speaker 03

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• 51:49Speaker 05

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