- 5 days ago
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00:00so when i wake up in the morning for instance like many people i'm not i don't feel immediately
00:06alert like i don't feel like i could just dive into writing if writing is the most important
00:10thing i need to do that day or i have some transition time do you think that people should
00:15embrace natural transition times on the time scale of a day or that they should train themselves to
00:22like you know bounce into effort like go with the flow or um or force oneself through through the
00:29door well how i relate to that personally i've spent a lot of time thinking about day architecture
00:33what i call it like i call day architecture and and um and there's i think there's some very
00:39systematic things we can do and i think but i think like anything they should be individualized
00:45right i don't think that everyone should follow a certain model because we're all very different
00:48one of you know that old book that tim actually produced the audio book um daily rituals oh yeah
00:54like one of the best things about daily rituals is how few patterns there are through them it's just
00:58i love that look we'll put a link to it such a good book it breaks down the daily routine it's
01:03like two to three to four page chapters on like a hundred some brilliant artists and scientists and
01:09creators and they're just so random how they live some are out partying all night drugs alcohol
01:15caffeine others are super regimented and monk-like it's the range of daily architectures is is so vast
01:22so i think we need to have like that awareness and that sense of humor and humility about it and
01:28we can get systematic instruction at the same time i think it's important to hold both of those
01:31i mean what you just asked i i do believe that that that beautiful period when we first wake up
01:39and that dream state is so powerful and i think that people almost almost all people immediately pick
01:46up their phone and start checking messages which just shuts down one's awareness of what's been
01:52happening beneath the surface all night so i think that that's a real lost opportunity i remember
01:58year when i was 11 years old i read this my dad actually gave me this this hemingway um essay on
02:05his creative process and there's one of my favorite one of the most sometimes there's like an insanely
02:09potent book that's put together and it's two that come to mind are lessons of history which is this
02:14short compilation of will and ariel durant um two of the greatest historians who've published
02:19tens of thousands of pages this is a short compilation of of a handful of thematic essays
02:24it's only like a hundred pages of of all their life's work boiled down to a few themes it's
02:29unbelievably potent and hemingway on writing is another book of that nature which takes all of
02:33hemingway's from from his from his books from his letters private letters from his articles and essays
02:40and notebooks like everything he's written about the creative process and boils it into this like short
02:46book on his principles of creativity just unbelievable but before that book came out
02:49i read this piece the short thing he'd written about the creative process which was essentially
02:54he'd always leave a sentence unwritten he'd end his work day with a sentence like half written
02:59so leaving with a sense of direction and then he would let it go you know he'd go out drinking he
03:05would do all the things that hemingway did and then he returned to it first thing in the morning and
03:10that like unwritten sentence had become a paragraph in a page in his mind and it would be a way to hit
03:14the ground running and that's what really spurred me to start creating this process in my chess life
03:19of always ending my chess study with something left like posing my unconscious a question like
03:24studying the complexity and then releasing it which later became and then tapping into it first thing
03:28in the morning pre-input which later became my miq process and then i developed team-wide miq processes
03:33the teams that i work with all have versions of the miq that they utilize as individuals but then as
03:40teams and it's an amazing way to develop a shared consciousness in a team to have everybody be able to
03:44tap into the question that's top of mind for every member of their team or for a leader to be able
03:49to be aware of what is the most important question for every one of my scientists or my analysts or
03:54anything it's a really powerful way to cultivate shared consciousness and it becomes our game tape
03:59because if we have an m if we're tracking our miqs let's say i'm studying something for three weeks
04:05or for four weeks um and what do i think is most if i'm tracking the questions that i think are most
04:12critical for that thing and i'm deepening my analysis of it what i arrive at what i think in day one
04:18will be very different from the miq in day 14 and then we can study the gap and then we can study the
04:22patterns of the gap the gaps and this is what i call miq gap analysis so if i'm setting a chess position
04:28like if i play a chess game against you and it's incredibly complex um and i don't quite understand
04:34this position and then i do a deep deep analysis of it what i'll arrive at after 14 or 16 or 18 hours
04:40of study will be different from what i felt during the game now what's interesting is this is a cool
04:47thing about chess study if we if my understanding was here during the chess game after like a few hours
04:52i might be like really far away from that but after i've completed the study i'll usually be like very
04:57similar but deeper so it's often like deeper like closer than where you were after a few hours of
05:04study but it's like a deeper level in but what's the gap between that and that between where i was
05:10in the game and what are the patterns in the gaps and then if you think about those patterns in the gaps
05:15through those lenses of the technical the thematic and the psychological right we deconstruct it in that
05:21way then that becomes our game tape right one of the hardest things for mental athletes is to
05:26actually have game tape the way basketball players do or foilers do or fighters do where you can see
05:31the actual game tape we need to create our mental game tape so this is a way that i it both enhances
05:36the creative process and creates the game tape for the training process and then studying the gap analysis
05:43we do reveals what we need to focus our deliberate practice on this difference between physical endeavors
05:49and cognitive endeavors i think is so key nowadays most people are involved in cognitive endeavors and
05:55there's so much um it's it's basically like being in a glass house with with with windows everywhere i mean
06:00social media texting um windows uh internet connection on the computer there's just so many points of
06:06entry and um where one can become distracted whereas if you paddle out to ocean you know sure you could
06:13bring your phone perhaps but you're you're limited by um the the environment and the need for safety
06:20of the number of things that you can think about funny i wore an apple watch training a little bit
06:25on the ocean and it and i it was good for me because i wanted to like align my intuition on speed with
06:30what actually it was showing and it was good to calibrate myself but man it i took it off it's so much
06:36better being on the ocean without technology yeah like being liberated from it tracking but yeah
06:41i'm learning to turn stuff off while i work um i mean i have had to learn to just fight things back
06:48because when i started in science i mean that i didn't have a smartphone i didn't any of that and
06:52um yet one really has to fight nowadays for their uh freedom from from these interruptions so it's
06:58something that people really have to cultivate um and so in terms of the the structure of that day
07:03you pose a question for the day like the most important question would it be like let's say like
07:07i'm working on a revision of this book um that i delayed release on because i wanted to add a bunch of
07:12things to it so would one say you know the most important question is you know how do i finish this book
07:16today or is there i'm guessing it's more conceptual than that i think that i think that you can i mean
07:22it's a tool that one can utilize tactically or strategically right so it can be like if you're
07:27in creative flow just leaving yourself with a sense of direction or it can actually be zooming out and
07:32thinking about like what is the highest order question that i that i'm grappling with right but i think
07:39it's like one wants to stretch for the question if one is doing the latter the higher order strategic
07:44thinking it's like you can think of like one is stretching for the question that matters most
07:49with the same kind of intellectual or cognitive intensity that one is experiencing for example
07:56pushing yourself from like 168 to 176 in cardiovascular interval training right like you're really stretching
08:02mentally so you need to be at your stretch point growth comes at the point of resistance right
08:05so we like but intellectually we're not used to really feeling when we're at our stretch point so
08:11we're thinking about a question but that's a question what's the higher order question what's
08:14the higher order question what's the question that really matters and one way to frame it is like
08:18our mind if we're good at something slices like like a knife through butter through most
08:22most things but then there's a place we're stuck like those stuck points are the miqs those stuck
08:28points are like right like we don't need to wait we don't need like vinyls get there like oh but
08:33that's the thing and then we explore there like what how do that stretch within that stuck point
08:37and that's usually where people including myself pivot away i'm thinking outside of the work domain
08:43now like like like i don't want to think about like it's when we tend to i notice that um there's
08:49an infinite amount of uh distraction available nowadays if we want it and you know audiobooks and
08:55podcasts and i think podcasts are wonderful but you know they can be a source of distraction from the
09:00critical question we need to be asking or they can be a source of answers for perhaps the critical
09:03questions we're we're asking but there's just so there's so many of these opportunities to just
09:11look away from from something that is like a it's like a emotional infection it's different than a
09:17than an infection in your skin that's nagging because you can feel it there and you want to get
09:21that thing out right very very primal instinct like get that thing out get the infection out
09:25this is like an emotional infection that you can just kind of not see you if you choose to turn
09:30away but those those are the things that really get you over time that's why we do our cold water
09:35training like that's where we like we train at at living on the other side of pain of enjoying it
09:40like that place that place that like itches like ah it's gonna bounce away from that but that's where
09:44you need to sit right right but we can practice that thematically like loving that discomfort
09:50wanting it hunting for it like finding the place where we're stuck and then and then letting it sit
09:55and then not bouncing away from it but just releasing it and returning to it and we have insights
10:00right because often in those moments like where we have our insights are like when we wake up in
10:05the morning are those stuck points and and i find it's very interesting i'm sure you've done this
10:09like i i i've i've had i've done like hundreds of diagnostics with people on my teams like where do
10:15they have most of their creative breakthroughs and so many of them are in the shower it's really
10:20interesting i think a big part of that is that like the full body somatic immersion moves them out
10:25of conscious thinking into like their because their their mind is experiencing and then the release of
10:31the conscious mind allows the unconscious to to run and then they tap into it first thing in the
10:35morning is when i get my insights or understanding or when the truth hits me square in the face
10:40like there's no avoiding i wake up i think about like okay that's the thing i gotta deal with and i
10:45tend to write it down right away try not to write it down on my phone i think having a point of capture
10:49that doesn't offer any other distractions dude that's why i'm a big believer in pen and paper i
10:54100 agree with you and and like what so first of all i agree first thing in the morning that's the
10:58juice and the whole miq process is geared toward harnessing that like tapping into that right like
11:03feeding them because that just happened to me so many dozens of times where i would just have the
11:07insight in the morning but then i realized i should be finding the areas of stuckness and feeding it to
11:11myself to have the insight about so it's like it's like directing that creative process but then if we
11:17open up our phones like if the moment we start to see emails without reading them or see anything
11:22we're unconsciously solving for what's in the emails yeah it's it's all stimulus response you're
11:26going into if people can start to think about being reflective versus in stimulus response i think
11:32that's sort of like the widest binning of all this um i have to say the shower i've talked about
11:37this thing about why people have insights in the shower with my friend i'd love to introduce you to
11:41him at some point we've been friends since we were seven years old my friend dr eddie chang he's a
11:45neurosurgeon and the chair of neurosurgery at ucsf and he studies speech and language and he's taking
11:50people with locked in syndrome and developed ai algorithms so that they can speak through a screen
11:55with their face moving in real time by decoding human speech or human speech cortex and a truly
12:01brilliant individual he's been on this podcast he'll come back again asked him about the shower
12:05thing because he used to work on neuroplasticity of the auditory system
12:08we think we wonder if it's the kind of white noise of the shower as well yeah because eddie's
12:18done beautiful work showing that it's the signal to noise in the auditory system that defines whether
12:22or not a certain pattern of speech or or auditory cue gets remembered so when you have this in the
12:29background let's just put this in the terms that we've been referring to this up until now
12:33the thoughts that surface above that noise have a big sharp peak relative to the background so it's
12:39the signal to noise whereas certainly the opposite would be when you're on your phone and you're
12:43scrolling through and you're looking at all the thoughts and feelings and stuff of other people
12:46so how do you capture your own thoughts in terms of which are and filter them through what's meaningful
12:52and what's not meaningful is a is a i think a actually really important question to begin with
12:57and white noise background with very deprived you know visual stimulation most showers aren't that
13:05interesting it's white noise blank walls a few things that are familiar to you so they basically
13:11disappear from your visual field and the idea is that thoughts then can that are constantly geysering
13:18up through your unconscious mind can be captured because everything else is noise perhaps this is a
13:24hypothesis and uh maybe i'll put you and eddie together sometime and just be i'd love that
13:27observer yeah that's powerful yeah so i mean that's how we learn language it's the error signals
13:33against the background noise it's all that's just how you fix stutter it's a it's uh you create
13:39background noise you increase noise to which actually elevates signal in the auditory system
13:45oddly um in any case so you found that four and a half hours was the sweet spot of a focused work
13:54but for some people it might be an hour they might need to train up that level of focus well it's
13:58and if it's four and a half hours it's not like that's like a lot the rest of the day is is feeding
14:03into like those being brilliant right so if it's four and a half hours of creative output time
14:07then there are other periods where one can do have inputs that feed it right i think it's very good for
14:12people to have an awareness of what their energy like what their peaks and valleys are of their
14:16energy throughout the day and then align their peak creativity work with their peak energy periods
14:20i think it's really important to not be in a constantly reactive state one thing i find
14:25fascinating is how people will have meetings scheduled everywhere and then fit their thinking
14:28between meetings and how liberating it is for them when they actually know block out their time
14:32for creative output time right it might be color-coded in their calendar and then have meetings fit around
14:38there um so their day is driven by their self-expression as opposed to by a constant of reactivity
14:44and just more and more and more and more right i think harnessing the undulation of stress and
14:49recovery throughout the day is hugely important i think having workouts throughout the day even
14:53micro workouts during their day meditation periods during the work day everything being quality over
14:58quantity right we can get so much more done if and if you think about it like i mean you talk about
15:04like elite performing competitive teams um it's all about like if you saw how much video analysis and
15:14time the boston celtics coaching staff puts into what ends up being like a 35 second clip that's shown
15:21to a player or the team like it's it's so much work to then the most potent thing right it's like when
15:29you're an elite because but because like like the players are doing something so intense right like they
15:35it's all about quality not quantity they're not training basketball 17 hours a day they could not
15:41possibly play then or they're they're training brilliantly for like you know maybe an hour and
15:48a half a day brilliantly but like with scientifically right or if they're compete if they're playing for
15:54a two and a half to three hour game right then what's the way to optimize for that you don't stack
15:58six hours of training in before three hour game no so much of it is you know body work and setting
16:04some tape and then being primed in the right way to remember what you're looking at on tape
16:08and then taking breaks and returning to it and then like understanding exactly how much load is
16:13in your body and your mind and having your sleep right and your nutrition right and getting everything
16:17optimized and then being a peak performer when it's on right but we don't have that discipline
16:22as mental beings very often but we should in our creative process in our relationships right in the
16:28art of being a mom or a dad or a husband or a wife or a friend like why wouldn't we be cultivating
16:34ourselves and being brilliant at that like i really believe in quality as a way of life that's another
16:38very important principle for me we're either practicing sloppiness or practicing quality if we do
16:44something shitty then we're practicing shitty and that will just how like we can harness the like
16:50thematic interconnectedness on the positive side we can also really harness it brilliantly on the
16:54negative side every time we practice being sloppiness we're using thematic interconnectedness to be
16:59sloppy and everything i really believe that so quality is a way of life is a beautiful way to
17:04practice quality everywhere because it will manifest everywhere right not in a way that's like robotic or
17:10constrictive no in a way that's self-expressive and beautiful living one's life like a work of art yes
17:16it's beautiful amen
17:17it
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