Greg McKeown:
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Welcome back, everybody. I’m your host, Greg McKeown. And, of course, on this podcast, we are interested in how to live and lead as essentialists, to be able to apply that in every possible way. And today, we have a most interesting guest, doctor Mithu Storoni, who’s a University of Cambridge-trained physician, neuroscience researcher, and ophthalmic surgeon, that’s an eye surgeon for the rest of us. She advises multinational corporations on mental performance and stress management. She’s the author of the forthcoming book Hyperefficient. That’s an interesting idea, hyperefficient. It caught my attention in a few different ways. The subtitle is Optimize your brain to transform the way you work.
Right now, at the time of this conversation, we have U.S. elections absolutely consuming the conversation. The sense of polarization is tangibly greater than in the 25 years that I have lived in the United States.
I just read someone describe it that we’re in a cold civil war right now. So you don’t see an actual civil war, thank goodness, but that there’s a cold civil war going on at the time of conversation. There’s been riots going on in the UK, and there are massive arguments about whether the response has been right or whether it’s been one-sided and so on.
I say all of that because it really occurs to me that what if we’re not nearly as divided as we think we are? You know, like, what if it is a function of the medium that we’re engaging in and the rules of that medium, which are designed almost entirely for a single digit measurement, which is attention, engagement? You know, how many minutes can I get a user to tap into this? I mean, if that’s your one metric and you have an adaptable technology that’s going to constantly reinforce whatever gets people to do that, eventually you’re going to find yourself with some really toxic addictions because, of course, that’s fear-driven.
You know, people are far more motivated to avoid loss aversions far stronger than potential benefits. And so I just think there is a story we’re all being fed. That’s not even true, but could be self-fulfilling. This is a very serious thing we’re talking about. I can’t think of it as being higher stakes than anything else. It’s like there’s a cloak, and it’s deceiving everybody to think everybody’s an enemy, and to think everybody sees it so differently, to think that they hate you and you should hate them. And it’s propelling this thing. And I think a lot of it is just not true.
Mithu Storoni:
I approach this from a couple of angles. The first is that back to what we just discussed, it’s absolutely true that if you know of events happening as soon as they happen, if you have this strange distortion of space and time, where you feel an event is taking place somewhere far away, which has no real relevance or direct relevance or meaning to you in reality, but tugs at your emotional strings one way or the other. You feel personally involved in that event, even though you really shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t feel threatened, you shouldn’t feel alarmed, but you do. And hence, that event starts involving you. But because you have a very different personal history, emotional history, personal core beliefs than even the next person in your family, your closest next member of family, but someone else is going to have some sort of similarity with your own core beliefs. So because of this strange distortion of space and time, you feel more engaged with an event that is far away from you and should not, perhaps, invite the response that it’s causing in you and that creates. That atomizes us. So it’s having this kind of very strange, giving you this distorted sense of needing to be concerned about things when, in reality, if you were taking a rational point of view, you perhaps would not be. So that’s one angle of it.
The other angle of it is a big problem we’re having now, and I’ve covered this in the book, is that when, you know, Shannon, he’s famously quoted as saying this, but actually, it’s really an interpretation of what he said, which is that “information is the resolution of uncertainty.”
What we’re actually having now is information is the root cause of uncertainty, because the information we’re receiving now is uninvited and is fragmented. And when we are receiving fragmented information, we have an immediate urge and it’s fragmented in a very particular way so that it’s not completely blank. It’s like the last missing shape in a jigsaw puzzle. So your attention is drawn to that, and you are filling in some of the gaps yourself. And you are looking for those fragmented bits of information which are causing you to feel uncertain because they are missing pieces of vital information.
That creates a sense of uncertainty in yourself and in anyone else receiving that fragmented information when you are feeling uncertain. And this is one of the core things I describe in the book is your brain operates in a kind of in three gears. It’s a metaphor I describe. So, very loosely, it’s a metaphor I created to describe how your brain is in three different states while you’re doing knowledge work.
And you can feel this as being kind of very slow and thoughtful and creative, very focused and able to not be distracted. And then gear three is where you are very distractible. You are hyper-vigilant.
Greg McKeown:
I want to make sure that I understand those three gears because it’s really important to your understanding of the world and what you’re teaching. So, gear one, you’re relaxed and can daydream but find it difficult to focus. You want to be in gear one when taking a break, daydreaming, hatcheting aha moments, and going to bed in the evening.
Mithu Storoni:
Correct.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, so that’s an Effortless state of mind.
Mithu Storoni:
So, gear one is a very slow state of mind. Your attention is floating. You can’t fix it on anything, so it’s very good for daydreaming. You’re just letting your attention wander, your thoughts wander without causing yourself to focus. And if you think about how you feel, the pace of your mind is very slow.
Greg McKeown:
I don’t spend nearly enough time in that gear.
Mithu Storoni:
Right. And I think you’re not alone. And this is one of the problems we have at the moment, because this goldfish bowl we are all in stops us from reaching that, from being in that state. You visit that state moments after you wake up in the morning, but it’s quickly driven away by your other commitments and the pace of the world around you.
Greg McKeown:
So, gear two, the prefrontal cortex, is fully online. “In gear two, you can precisely control your attention. This is the brain state optimal for deep mental work. From creative idea generation and problem-solving to learning and brainstorming, it’s where we find flow and achieve peak performance.”
So that’s a very focused state.
Mithu Storoni:
Correct. So, as soon as you can focus and hold your focus, you’re in gear, too. And once you have your focus, you can do a whole spectrum of work. You can do work that involves deep learning, where your focus doesn’t stray at all. You can also do work where you can actively let your attention wander but then pull it back. The bottom line is your ability to focus. You’re not distracted away. The ability to focus is geared two.
Greg McKeown:
It’s your high-quality hours of the day. Normally, it’s early on in the day. You maybe have three cycles worth of high-quality, focused attention ability in a day. It’s not exactly the same for everyone, but it’s approximately that. Gear three. Tell us again about gear three.
Mithu Storoni:
So I don’t know if you’ve seen the film Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin where he’s on the assembly line.
Greg McKeown:
Oh, yes, okay, I know the assembly line scene.
Mithu Storoni:
The assembly line scene where it’s moving so fast that he’s stopped thinking, and he’s just moving. So that’s an exaggeration of what I describe as gear three. Gear three is the mental equivalent of that, where you’re typing really, really fast, but you’re not really reading what you’re typing. You are doing things quickly, spontaneously, mechanically scrolling, but you can’t focus. You’re also reacting very quickly to situations. So someone calls you, you receive a text, and you’re quickly replying on autopilot, but you’re not really thinking. You’re not able to perfect a good chess move. You’re not able to solve a problem. You’re not able to solve a mathematical equation in that state of mind.
Now, these three states correlate with the levels of the hormone norepinephrine or noradrenaline on this side of the Atlantic. And the reason I mention this is because these three states are, you can imagine them as having three different levels of sort of alertness, of feeling wide and alert.
So gear one, your least alert. Gear two, your Goldilocks zone alert. Gear three, you’re too alert and vigilant. And this comes back to our point about the distortion of space and time, which makes you vigilant because you anticipate uncertainty. It goes back to information overload in general because when your brain anticipates, it has to process lots of information. It steps its foot down on the pedal of norepinephrine. And so your gear zooms to gear three. And it also goes back to the idea of working continuously for long hours at the same pace, like in an assembly line, because as soon as your brain gets fatigued, gets tired, and you don’t stop, you don’t pause to rest, your brain essentially pushes down on the pedal of norepinephrine to give itself more energy, more resources to keep going.
And that puts you in gear three.
Greg McKeown:
There’s a metaphor I liked. It wasn’t actually a massive piece of research, but it’s been shared really broadly; it was done by Microsoft, and it was about meeting fatigue and what happens in the brain when you have meetings stacked back to back, and you don’t have a ten-minute break between them, and you can see on the scans, you can see blue, green and red. It demonstrates that if you have no breaks between the meetings, it is back to back. You end up in red brain.
And that’s become sort of a short term language with Anna and I, my wife and I. Oh, I feel I’m in red brain.
Mithu Storoni:
Exactly. Gear three. I think that’s a great way you can imagine. Gear three is red. Borrowing from your definition, your and Anna’s definition, gear three is red. Gear two is green. Gear one is yellow. So it’s not strictly a traffic light. It’s flipped.
Greg McKeown:
No, but I get it. I think that’s right, isn’t it? I think that’s right.
You talk about understanding your gear personality. Is that right? Is this a personality thing that certain personalities tend to be in one of those gears, you know, the most comfortable in a certain gear? Or is it more just to do with our habits?
Mithu Storoni:
So what I described there has been described about 100 years ago when two physicians, I think, somewhere on the West Coast, found that people who were more driven or who were attracted to situations that were sort of more risky and who kind of sought out high competitive work environments or just sort of high uncertainty situations were more predisposed to developing atherosclerosis than those who weren’t.
Greg McKeown:
What is, did you say, astros?
Mithu Storoni:
Atherosclerosis. So it’s the clogging of your blood vessels that leads to heart disease.
Greg McKeown:
So if you’re more in red brain, that’s more likely. Is that what you’re saying?
Mithu Storoni:
So, this study that was done about 100 years ago, somewhere on the West Coast, they took two groups of people. They labeled one A, and they labeled another B, and they put people in a who were more driven, who had slightly higher uncertainty jobs, and they put the people in B who preferred or who had, who preferred really kind of lower intensity lifestyles. And then they looked at their physiological markers, and that’s where the term Type A and Type B personality came from because they found that there were actually a distinctly different sort of pattern of physiological biomarkers at the time in these two groups of people.
Greg McKeown:
Do you know the name of that research?
Mithu Storoni:
I will send it to you as a link. I can’t remember the name immediately, but I have.
Greg McKeown:
That’s fine. We’ll put it in the show notes as well. Carry on, please.
Mithu Storoni:
Yes, because I think it’s such a fascinating paper. And then, so that was the origin of Type A and Type B personality. But what I’m describing here is the fact that it draws in from that. That was the first paving stone in this kind of whole line of research. But what I’m describing in the book is the fact that different people, if you imagine these gears, so you have one, two, and three, and then imagine you have a gearbox, like in a car, and you’re shifting gears, or on a mountain bike, you’re shifting gears.
Now, for some people, what you need to go from gear one upwards is you need a reason for your brain to step on the pedal, okay? So if you have a heavy workload, a lot of stimulation around you, or a lot of uncertainty or threat, your brain steps on the pedal and you go up a gear. Now, for some people, their gearbox, and this is, again, a metaphor, is quite stiff, which means you need more uncertainty, a bigger threat, and a bigger load for the brain to think, “Okay, I need more resources here, I’m going to step on the pedal.”
And for a different group of people at the other extreme, and to be clear, this is a spectrum. So, at the other end of the spectrum, you will have people who have very springy gears, is how I describe it, where their brain only needs to see a slight increase in uncertainty or a slight increase in stimulation or load for the gear to just spring all the way up to three. So, this is a spectrum. So, what this essentially means is that in any environment, our brains are going to react to the same environment in different ways.
Now, a background to this is gear two is the best gear to be in for any kind of knowledge work, and really for normal existence. Because in gear two, you are able to interact the best with the environment around you. Because, as human beings, we are guided by this part of the brain that needs to stay engaged. Now, what this means is whenever we’re doing work, you know, whatever our jobs are, we are aspiring to get into gear two.
When we are in an environment that doesn’t provide enough stimulation, we slide into gear one, and it feels boring. When we’re in an environment that is too stimulating or too uncertain, we shift into gear three because we are hypervigilant, slightly anxious, and trying to do things faster and cope. Now, the same environment will have a different effect on different people because they have a different springiness in their gears, which is why I describe how, on a trading floor at a busy investment bank, you will find traders. And I’ve seen this for myself many times: traders sitting on one side of the room dealing with enormous losses and enormous profits, but enormous red and green numbers, their heart rates perfectly still, and no sign of any tension.
And on the other side of the room, there are these extremely analytical, calm, controlled mathematicians who, at the level of the fifth digit, they get extremely flustered if they make a single mistake. And both of these people are incredibly intelligent and proficient at what they’re working on. They’re also very happy with their work. They’re happy doing what they’re doing. But if you were to swap them around, they would do what they’re doing very badly because the calm mathematicians would go right up to gear three if they were put in front of a trading desk, and the traders would slide down to gear one if they were made to do what these mathematicians, these quants do.
So that’s a great demonstration in one room. But of course, you can think of other demonstrations. I know an artist, for instance, who etches lines on a copper plate which are 1 mm thick and 1 mm distance, and he etches line after line all day long, and that gives him pleasure. So you see how different strokes for different folks, as they say. But it’s all about gear personalities.
Greg McKeown:
So that’s an interesting phrase, gear personalities. But in a way, what you’re saying is different personalities, different kinds of environments will produce one of those gears for an individual differently. So the gears are the same, but what type of work and what type of environment helps you to be in the optimal spot for you is really helpful information to have. When do you feel that you’re able to focus, problem solve, and deal with it in a highly productive way?
What kind of environment do you need for that? And making sure you’re in that type of a situation.
Mithu Storoni:
Exactly. So your goal is to get into gear two. And the first step towards doing that, if you have the choice, is to assess the effect of the environment on yourself. I mean, this could start very early in your career path if you have the opportunity where you can say, “Okay, this kind of environment is not a good fit for me. I feel good. I do better work in this kind of environment.”
And that’s not a judgment on intelligence or on proficiency or on ability. It’s really to do with how you as an individual react. And this can guide you across your ideal pathway.
Greg McKeown:
So you’re just that. The test that you’re using is pay attention to when you’re in gear one, two, and three. What scenarios, what circumstances, what work environment? But it could also be a home environment that allows you to be, you know, produces those three different states and do what you can to move yourself back to gear two. What changes need to be made so that you can be in gear two?
Mithu Storoni:
Correct. Absolutely correct. And we actually, under the things we can modify in our immediate environment to achieve that because there are a lot of subtle aspects, there are a lot of not-so-subtle aspects, but that is the first thing to modify. So the first is, of course, if you can choose the right sort of job for yourself, but if you’re stuck where you are, then modify your environment, adjust your environment so that you are doing all the things that get you into that gear two.
Greg McKeown:
For example.
Mithu Storoni:
So, for example, looking at things like open plan environments, things like how well you respond to deadlines. And I’m going to extend this one step further. So one example is when you’re in gear two, and you are involved in different kinds of work through what you do. So, say you’re part of a startup or a company, and you are going through innovation stages, and then you’re going through implementation stages.
So all of those things have a slightly different effect. Your brain needs to work in a slightly different way for each of those phases. And I describe how in the book that, for instance, when you’re doing creative work, you should be at. So again, gear one, gear two, gear three is the basis. But remember, this is still a spectrum. So you can still have a slow gear two and a fast gear two. And a slow gear two is one where you’re almost into gear one.
Now, that sort of mindset is best for creative work, for innovation. How do you adjust your environment to optimize that precise mindset? Well, one thing you can do is, for instance, consider how you measure deadlines and consider how you measure work intervals or work time. So, if you’re working on something very creative and you have a deadline, you were in gear two. But knowing you have a deadline immediately pushes you out of gear two, and you go into gear three, which means you are on the cusp of an idea, of an insight that was about to be generated, and that insight has just disappeared.
So whatever work you’re doing, craft the level of uncertainty, deadlines, stimulation, calls, salient information, and cognitive load to suit the precise mental state you want to be in. So what works, what has worked, especially for me, is timing in terms of the day. So, my usual habit was always to wake up in the morning, get some exercise, and then begin my day with focus. Since writing this book and digging out the studies behind it, I flipped that.
So now I wake up in the morning, I try to prolong that sort of slight sort of interval, you can say a gray area between feeling really fully alert and being asleep, which is gear one. I try to prolong that gear one interval and I wake up, and I immediately begin working on anything that I’m doing that involves creativity.
So now, instead of waking up and exercising, I wake up and block out the first 2 hours to do creative work. I can feel when that creative zone leaves the zone, and as soon as that creative zone dissipates, I then go and do some exercise and do other focused work. So I flipped my daily schedule to make use of the times of day when I’m in that very, very fine, precise mom when I want to be, simply by timing when I work in a different way.
So I’d say, first of all, control the controllables. So, find out what you can control within the framework of where and how you’re working or existing. In this case, one thing you can control, control the controllables. So you can control certain things, like when you wake up, you can control if you look into your day, look at your day when you wake up sometimes. I do know that children can spring onto your bed at five in the morning. I appreciate that.
So you have to find what you can control. So that’s the first step. The second step is you have to kind of take it in sections. So, within a certain day, your children will have their own rhythm, which gives you a lot of leeway, in that you can find some leeway, relatively speaking. You can find excerpts within that rhythm, which you can align with.
So, for instance, take the idea of napping. Now. Children, especially very young children, famously nap. I know there are also some children who don’t nap, but there are some children who do. And napping is a great thing you can incorporate into your day if you do have children who wake up very early and are quite exhausted by the end of the morning. So I would really capitalize on those naps to begin with, which is a great win-win for everyone. I describe in my book how naps are very good for the brain, especially if you nap when your children nap, rise with your children. I completely understand that. But if you capitalize on the napping, you will immediately feel more, more in control of your ability to stay in gear two because sleep deprivation and constant stimulation is one of the reasons why the gear does get stuck in gear. Three, to begin with. So, if you can prioritize the sleep and the napping, you’re going a little way to being able to control yourself.
My final thought is that, remember, the brain is a complex system. It’s an organ with a mind of its own, quite literally. So, when you are trying to navigate these suggestions that I’ve described, always do so using common sense. So this time with your child is so incredibly special; it’s far more important for you to enjoy that time rather than worry about are you in gear two? Are you in gear one? So, always apply this with lots of common sense, but ultimately, taking it back to the idea of work and so on, we’re really at a time when we need to be in gear two. We need to change what we’re doing, so we are. And if we can manage it, we have far less need to fear the impact of technology.
Greg McKeown:
For everybody listening, what is one thing that stood out to you? What’s the news of this episode? And now, what can you do about it? Immediately, within the next few minutes, a tiny action to be able to as much just make things in your life a little bit better. Thank you for listening.
