#1 Neuroscience Researcher: "Get More Done In 30 Days Than Others Do In 12 Months" | Mithu Storoni

Dr. Mithu Storoni 0:00 One of the things I would love everyone to do is really rethink the way we measure productivity in terms of quality. Because as soon as you start looking at quality, managers of organizations with very rigid work structures will start seeing, just like the Denver tie maker started seeing that there were more ties when people had coffee breaks. People will eventually start seeing that, okay, if we look at quality of ideas generated, maybe we need to work a different way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:34 Hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 0:35 Okay? But yeah, so there, there are lots of interesting points here. So the mind is very similar in the sense that the brain has finite capacity. Our brains are really small. Um, they can do marvelous things, but they're very small. They also take 20% of, or consume 20% of the body's sugar despite weighing a fraction of the body, something like 2 or 3%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:59 Hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:01 Now, you can have two options here. You can either look at mental work. Uh, if we look through the lens of, of sport, it's much better ... So what, what is completely wrong and what we're all doing is we are running marathons at the speed of a sprint in a standard intense office job. Most standard intense office jobs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30 That's a great way of putting it.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:32 So if we take that context where you don't have that much, uh, independence over how you're working, if we take that context, well, you have two options. If you're doing intense work, you can't run a slow marathon, so you clearly need the mind to perform intense work. Now, you, you can do it in two ways. Either you can say you will work mentally as sprints, so you work really hard and then do nothing, take a long period off. Now, if you were to do that in, you know, an, an organization, um, your manager would frown at you. The CEO would probably think, "Hmm, is this going to affect the bottom line?" So I looked at how have people been working in the past. Now, hunter-gatherers, um, from what we know of today's data and also anthropological studies from about 100 years ago, 200 years ago, show that hunter-gatherers actually had what is known as a power-- what I'm calling a, a, a sort of a power law fat-tailed way of working, where you do intense work for a really short time, and then you do slower, more moderate work for the next big chunk of time, and then you spend the majority of the time doing very light work. So you don't just work and sleep. You work, but then you kind of wind down like a power law on a graph. So this is how hunter-gatherers, the different communities that I mention, seem to work observationally. I then grew very interested in a- another paper which I referred in my book, which looked at how Darwin, Einstein, and Freud wrote letters. Now, back in Darwin's time, a lot of work, um, sort of scientific study was carried out on the writing table, not in a laboratory, and letter writing act as a, acted as a form of peer review.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:42 Right.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 3:43 If you-- And a, a group of s- of, of researchers looked at how do these three individuals write or how did they write their letters? Did they write-- did they reply to letters as they came in, in which case there would be no pattern to it or they would be kind of serially, or do they write in a certain way? And they found out that these three incredible intellectuals of our, of our time, of human history seemed to write letters in a pattern that resembled a power law, which suggested they wrote really difficult replies rarely, or they replied to difficult letters infrequently, easier letters more of the time, and the easiest for the most period of time. And so putting this together, rather than, say, sprint. Say if you're working in an office, rather than say, "Okay, manager, I'm going to work from 9:00 to 10:00 and then go to the beach for the rest of the day," your manager isn't gonna be very happy. So what I suggest in the book is to use these two principles and create a power law rhythm of working, where you work-- if you're doing focused work, you work in 90-minute sessions, 90 to 100-minute sessions, and you structure those sessions so you do the toughest work, the most mentally intense work for about 20% of the time. If it's super intense, we're at 5%. And then you keep working, but you lower the intensity of your work down so that you always tackle really intense mental work in the first sort of 10 to 20 minutes of your work session. And this links in with another thing, which is that there is data to show that doing more than four hours of really intense mental work in a day carries on to the next day. So the effects of it, the fatigue, the, the, the kind of lack of in-- the, the kind of deficit in capacity actually carries over to the next day, even if you, if you're sleeping. So doing work, intense mental work in a-- or knowledge work in a power law rhythm is the most, um, most apt way to work for a knowledge worker.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:59 Uh, and just that term power law, where does it come from? 'Cause I'm not sure everyone's familiar with it.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 6:03 So a power law is just a A mathematical relationship. So, um, if you want to, if you want an analogy, if you imagine a, a situation where you are doing something ... So let's come back to the, to work actually. So if you think about work, what I mean by power law is you're doing really intense work for the shortest period of time. So the more intense your work is, the fewer the hours or the minutes you're doing it for. The easier your work is, the longer you are doing it for.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:40 In the new book, you write about a concept I've never heard of before, this idea that our brain has 3 different gears. So I'd love you to explain, if you will, what are those 3 gears, and why is it so important that we know about them?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 7:00 Right. So to do this, we have to take a little step back. So what got me writing the book was, um, in the immediate context, the idea that we are constantly trying to prevent going down from zero. So we're trying to prevent burnout, we're trying to prevent stress in day-to-day life, in the way we work. And I first thought about, well, how about rather than looking at, at it from preventing people from going from 0 to -10, why not look at it in terms of how do you go from 0 to 100? So that got me thinking about what is it that we're actually doing, and how are we actually doing it. So, um, about 100 years ago, we had a very big change in the world of work, where after the Industrial Revolution, um, we saw the introduction of assembly lines, and a very really, um, explosive era of mass production, which, which, um, really focused on productivity and on the number of items, on quantity rather than quality of production.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:22 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 8:22 And then when we discovered just how powerful assembly lines were, the concept of assembly lines started filtering down into every aspect of life. This sort of routine, continuous, segmented way of working. After the Second World War, when knowledge work became a much bigger sector in work than manual work, we simply carried on the tradition of working like an assembly line, when in fact we were working with our minds and not with our hands.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:58 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 8:58 So we changed factories into offices, but we never really changed the concept of work and what would make work more productive when you're working with the mind. Um, and then over the last ... Ever since then, so over the last 100 years, 50 years, um, knowledge work has really been, uh, a form of quantitative work in the majority of cases. You know, it used to be largely clerical, so it was about, you know, how many letters are you, are you getting written per day? How many reports are you getting typed? And we're now entering an era where what happened to manual work when assembly lines and, um, mass production k- stepped in is now having, is now happening to mental work. So mental work, the lower level cognitive work, is now going away to the sector of machines, automation, and AI, and we are left doing the high level complex work. So human, human minds are now the main workers, where the work is high level cognitive work that machines can't do. So starting with this approach, I realized that how does the brain work? How does the mind work when it's working? And then I became very interested a, a while ago in a little circuit in the brain called... Well, a little dot, place in the brain called the locus coeruleus, because it looks blue, and as an aside, it was first identified by Marie Antoinette's physician. And this blue area is blue because it's the brain's main hub of norepinephrine or noradrenaline. And this locus coeruleus, and the network that it, it sort of feeds into, um, is a very interesting network because you can sort of gauge, not exactly follow, but sort of gauge what it's doing by following the movements of the eyes, the, the, of the pupils in the eyes. So the way your pupil dilates and its baseline reflects the activity in this small area of the brain. Why is that relevant to all of this? Well, a couple of years ago, there was a very interesting study where they, they, they attempted to link a person's ability to, um, solve puzzles, well, basically their, their intelligence, to the size of their pupils. And the, the link was really that you can gauge just how much cognitive effort a human being puts in by looking at the pupil's dynamics, because the pupil's dynamics tell you how this nerve network in the brain is acting. In other words, this nerve network is absolutely central to cognitive work.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:04 Wow.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 12:05 And so how do we bring all these things together? So, um- About in the 1950s or '60s, there was quite a lot of interest in the idea of a concept called physiological arousal, which we still use now, but there was a lot of research into it then, where they found that how sort of, how wired you are and how alert you are, um, can actually filter down into different aspects of your behavior. It can filter down into the way your muscles react. It can filter down into the way you focus, into the way you concentrate. We all know about the Yerkes-Dodson curve, the upside down U curve, where there's a sweet spot of tension where we, we perform the best. And there were other studies, uh, alongside that that looked at how there is a sweet spot of this physiological wiredness where, where we feel happy. And if you now look into research of this particular area in the brain, you find that it actually has a very interesting pattern of firing. And here we come into the three gears. So this is a very long-winded approach. So if you look at this, uh, network in the brain, which we can say is absolutely central to mental work, it has a very interesting way of firing that we, for the sake of your audience, specifically in the context of mental work, we can use a metaphor to try to understand, okay? To try to imagine. And in this metaphor that I use in the book, we can imagine that the mind and the brain is working at three different gears while it does mental work. I call it one, two, and three. I came up with the concept of the three gears because I very loosely relate it to the way this very special network fires. It fires in three, very broadly, three ways. So we can say it fires in a very low, constant way, which is low tonic. We can say it fires in a very high, constant way. And then it fires in a middle way, where it fires in bursts. And so in neuro speak, we can say, uh, low tonic activity, phasic activity, and high tonic activity. But if you're not doing neuro speak, it's really three different ways in which this network fires.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:32 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 14:32 And this middle zone of firing, which I call gear two, when it fires in this way, you get a perfect level of norepinephrine in the brain s- that brings your prefrontal cortex alive, that, that makes your prefrontal cortex fully engaged, which means this is the sweet spot for mental work. Now, why is this really important? It's important because at the moment we are still all living and working as if we are still following an assembly line of Fordian times. We live and work continuously. We work 9:00 to 7:00, or whatever, 10:00 to 8:00 work days, which are pretty continuous, even with a lunch break. We work in the same way. We sit in front of a computer. And we know that the brain gets very tired after doing a very s- after doing intense mental work for a very short length of time. So as soon as your brain gets tired, it falls out of this sweet spot of gear two. In other words, the way we are working is putting us in a state of gear one or gear three all the time, when in fact, in this era of the knowledge age, we should all be in this middle zone of working. And in my book, I try to explore how to get there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:57 Yeah. Thank you for that really thorough explanation of the backstory and how you came up with those three gears. I must say, I read a lot of books, Mithu, um, each week for this podcast, but your new one, Hyperefficient: Optimise Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work, it's very, very original. I've never heard of this three gear concept before, and I think it's really, really useful. So let me summarize some of the things I've heard from you so far. Okay. There's this idea that actually early on in the 20th century, or maybe even before that, we essentially worked like machines, right? Things were made to be most efficient to create the most amount of cars in a factory. The way most of humanity, much of humanity works today is different. It's not physical labor, it's mental labor. But we're still, in many companies, in most companies, we're still working in a way that is suitable for machines, but not for humans.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 17:02 So I, I would add in there, so far we have worked to produce many tangible things, so many ha- hair dryers, many refrigerators. Then when we started knowledge work in the post-Second World War time, we were also doing quantitative work largely. Even when we were doing mental work, sitting down in offices, what we were doing emphasized quantity. Quantity dec- decided the bottom line. So the number of reports we were able to type out, number of letters, all of that was a measure of productivity. In this new phase, work is all about quality. Because machines are doing all the hard work that are low level, that are quantitative, so the machines can now write emails. They can now write basic, basic articles. They can now formulate, even, even make basic judgments. Um, the human mind now in the workplace has to do the hard things that machines can't do. And doing these tough cognitive work, um, uh, sectors or doing these cognitive, these kind of really tough mental work subtypes like creative idea generation, like, uh, intense problem-solving, that has now fallen on human minds to do. And that is going to be the differentiating factor between one organization and the next, where everyone will be using machines to do all the low-level cognitive work. Now that we are working in this way, quality becomes the bottom line. So rather than having 100 great ideas by doing, having 10 brainstorm sessions, 10 meetings that where you brainstorm, it's much more important to have one incredible idea. Having one idea, one software solution that is truly authentic, truly original, can completely change your company, change the whole landscape, whereas having 1,000 less good or mediocre ideas will do nothing. So we're now entering an era where it's not just what you're doing, it's the quality of your thoughts, it's the quality of your decisions, and for that, we need to work in a different way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:16 Yeah. There's, there's a very optimistic tone throughout your book actually, which is quite interesting because as AI permeates into more and more areas of our life, work life, home life, there's a lot of negativity, there's a lot of worry about what this might mean for the job market, what it might mean for us as humans, and I'm certainly no expert in AI. But one of the things I really enjoyed reading in your book is this idea that if machines and technology can do the kind of basic admin type work and more, right, that a lot of humans find tedious and boring, right? In some ways, that's a good thing if it means that humans can get back to doing what humans do best, generating ideas, coming up with new concepts, being incredibly creative. It's something I think a lot about as a parent, actually. You know, my kids are currently 14 and 11, and like many parents, I think how much of what they learn at school today is going to be relevant for them in 10, 20 years in the workplace. So I often think that one thing I need to teach my kids is to be adaptable. How do you solve problems? How do you navigate an overload of information and actually figure out what you think, right? How do you be creative? How do you generate special ideas? Because technology's gonna do the rest for us, isn't it? So i- is that fair to say from me that it is an optimistic book, that you actually think this AI revolution is going to get humans back to doing what humans do best?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 21:12 Absolutely right. So a great way of, of imagining AI or whatever AI evolves into, um, is as really clever assistants. So, um, you know, one way to imagine it is if i- in, in an organization, traditionally, you'd have the senior executive making the really important decisions, and you'd have, um, more junior analysts, junior team members doing all the kind of slightly lower level work, the more mundane routine work, the box-ticking work.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 21:44 Um, and now everyone has AI, so everyone has now become a senior executive in a way, in a way of speaking in their organization. But when you have to work in that way, you will not produce the best ideas if you work in the old way. You now have to work in a completely different way that is very, very separate from the assembly line approach. With the assembly line approach, you focus on quantity, so you can produce many ideas, you can type many emails.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:16 So, so hold on. On that then, just to make this really tangible for people, if you work in an office and you have a boss and they're measuring your, um, output in terms of how many emails did, um, employee A send between 9 and 10, and 10 and 11, 11 and 12, that way of measuring productivity, you're saying, is outdated.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 22:44 Exactly. It is completely outdated. If you're measuring productivity by the i- So it used to work at a time when it did help to know how many letters were typed, how many reports were written. We went through a long era where that was a valid measure of productivity, but now the machines are doing the emailing and the letter-writing. So you're-- the, the, the time that you're sitting at your desk does not immediately equate to productive work. Once pr- productivity changes, so now we have to measure productivity in terms of quality. So rather than asking, "Okay, um, how many emails-- How many hours have you done this week? And let's pay you for overtime," we should ask, "How many brilliant solutions have you generated this week? How many really valid, actionable, sellable ideas have we come up as a team with this week?" That should be the new measure of productivity because as soon as you start using those metrics for productivity, it no longer matters how long you're sitting on your chair for-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:54 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 23:54 ... or how many emails you write. And also, it gives it a-- it's actually a win-win situation because, on the one hand, you don't have to pay employees just to sit there and do nothing. Let me give you an example. If you-- I was, I was speaking to a writer the other day who, um, who told me that they were sitting at their computer for 10 hours, only to be able to write what they could have written in 10 minutes. All right? So they're getting paid for sitting on their chair for 10 hours. It's also very distressing for them. Once they left that chair, they went for a walk. The idea came to them, and they wrote it down in 10 minutes. So they did the equivalent of 10 minutes work in eight hours-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:35 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 24:36 ... in the old system. So in the old system, they were incredibly, they were pro- they were still productive because they sat at their chair for eight hours. But instead, we should think, okay, how much of those, how many of those eight hours actually brought out qualitative-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:52 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 24:53 ... work, so work of really good quality. So if we now start saying, "Okay, well, instead of tying this person to the chair for eight hours," or if you're, you're an independent worker, if you're sitting, instead of sitting at your chair for eight hours, why not introduce elements into your day that put you into the right frame of mind to come up with brilliant ideas? And if you do that, the idea won't come to you eight hours into the day. It could come to you within 10, 10 minutes of sitting there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:25 Yeah. Well, let's talk about these rhythms then, because that really is a big part of the book, this idea that there are rhythms in nature, there are rhythms in our body, there are rhythms in our mind. But unfortunately, many of us are being asked to work in ways that are in complete misalignment with those natural rhythms.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 25:48 Correct. So this actually, um, again, if we go back a little bit into this, actually we go back a little bit, um, further than a little bit. So, um, our hunter-gatherers, our gatherer ancestors, um, as we know from studies on current hunter-gatherer populations, um, by and large, there were of course exceptions, but by and large, when they sprinted, they didn't daydream. This is why we cannot sprint while we daydream. All right? So their mind matched their body. When they were sitting down to rest, they also rested with their mind. When the Industrial Revolution happened, we sort of decapitated ourselves in the sense that we forced our heads to sleep while the body worked on conveyor belts-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:38 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 26:38 ... which became assembly lines. We then had the knowledge work revolution, post Second World War, when we flipped this. We forced the body to sleep while the brain worked. The problem is that the body is connected to the, to the, to the brain, uh, which is not really a problem, but it's a fact. We've, we've acknowledged the fact.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:58 It's a problem when we divorce the two from each other.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 27:01 It's a real problem, and we have completely, uh, forgotten that we exist as a single entity.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:07 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 27:08 And this is why now we're discovering with studies that actually, you know, for instance, um, stretching muscles of the body also relaxes your mind. We're also discovering that in order to get into a really peak focus condition, doing a couple of three-minute sprints before you sit down to work can help you get there if you're feeling a little bit groggy. So we're now using the body to get the mind to where we want it to be-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:34 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 27:34 ... because we are relearning a lesson that we have lived with for many, many years before we decided to go against it. So that's the basis of my observation, and now if you take that and you really look largely at the body and the brain and the, and the world as a whole, we know that the circa- most of your listeners will know from, you know, your, your great shows in the past that there's something known as a circadian rhythm, where your body's physiology, even the, the dynamics of your gut bacteria, mirror the 24 hours rhythm of day and night.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:12 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 28:12 We know that networks in the brain as well as organs in the body change how they behave through these 24-hour rhythms. We also know that the autonomic nervous system connects the body to the brain, and the autonomic nervous system's dynamics, which, which influence whether you're awake, whether you're asleep, whether you're tense, whether you're relaxed, is also tightly tied to your circadian rhythm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:46 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 28:46 And the way we work right now, if you look into the brain's dynamics, the way norepinephrine, which is released from this blue dot, which influences cognitive work, also changes in a circadian rhythm. And then we can go even deeper and look at the way we do different work, and there are studies that show that, for instance, creative work peaks off-peak. In other words, creative work peaks before most people go to work, early hours in the morning, and after most people come home from work, so late in the day. We also know that, again, studies show that focused attention work, so the ability to focus, peaks slightly later. So it peaks in the morning and later on in the morning, and also later on in the afternoon. We also know that we, most of us have what is known as a post-lunch dip in attention.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:40 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 29:40 So these are all inherent rhythms, but you know, if you imagine an average worker going to work, um, an average manager, you go to work in the morning, you prob- you first miss your creative window, which happens shortly after you wake up. You probably take a couple of coffees or, or teas, and they make you really alert, so you again miss this creative window. By the time you get to work, you f- the first thing you do is you have a meeting when you should be doing focused work.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:10 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 30:10 Or you maybe block out your morning with meetings, and then you start doing focused work in the afternoon immediately after lunch when your body wants you to sleep. Now, you can work like that, and we have been working like that for the best part of a century or near a century. The problem is, if you want to come up with quality work, working in that way is really crippling.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:33 Yeah, you can work like that, but there's a consequence, right? You can drive a car with a flat tire, and you can still get somewhere, but there's a consequence.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 30:40 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:41 Right? It's, it's so fascinating. First of all, I love that concept of mind and body alignment. Yes, through the lens of productivity, fine. But if you just take a big picture view as to what do we want as a human being experiencing life, we want our mind and body to be in harmony, right? It's gonna help our health, our happiness, our subjective feelings. Everything's gonna be better when that's in alignment, and I think we all know or many of us have been in jobs in the past or maybe people are listening now currently where, you know, it's so tedious that your mind can be a million miles away on Facebook, on Instagram, or doing whatever, but you're still getting your job done, right? Because sometimes it is that tedious, and you can automate it and do it, but your mind be somewhere else. Uh, 'cause I really think a lot about this through the lens of health, happiness, productivity, but also a lot of our addictive behaviors. I, I honestly feel more and more as I think about why do so many people struggle to cut back on sugar or cut back on scrolling or cut back on drinking alcohol despite knowing the consequence. I think a lot of the time it's because our mind and bodies are not in alignment, so to plug that gap, we take whatever our drug of choice is to try, to try and sew up that gap, basically. Does that make sense to you?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 32:22 Absolutely does. Absolutely does. I'm going to bring in another angle into this, which I think it will be interesting to your listeners, which is that, um, you mentioned the three gears. So our brains, and, and this is another, uh, central theme in the book, as human beings, we like to get into that kind of middle zone, um, of, of mental state, which I call gear two.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:50 And this is the gear that you think most people want to be in most of the time when they're at work.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 32:56 It is the best gear to be in because it's the gear, it's a state of mind. So just to go back again, gear one, two, and three are three distinct states of mind that I describe in the book. I have based... It's a metaphor, and I've based the metaphor on what we just, what we just discussed earlier. Now, in gear one, I describe having a very kind of mind-wandering, gentle pace of mind, where you cannot focus. You sort of want to daydream. So your, your, uh, DMN, the network in the brain that's associated with daydreaming, with mind wandering, that is more active in this, in this state. You also get more alpha oscillations, which, uh, alpha oscillations are correlated to having a sort of a mental windscreen being wiped. So if you have a mind that's really busy, if we're working on a problem, it kind of wipes the slate for you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:48 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 33:48 So this is gear one. Gear two is the mental state you want to be in when you want to work because it allows you to focus. And gear three is a very sort of distracted, um, hyper-aroused state, where you're just reacting. You are doing things fast, but you cannot think and analyze. And one way to imagine this is if you imagine how you feel when you're working during a typical day. So you can kind of feel when your mind feels a little bit slow, when you just cannot bring your focus-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:19 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 34:19 ... to what you're doing. That is gear... or what I describe as gear one, and it sort of feels like a slow speed. Then you can think of how you feel if you're suddenly told, like, "I will have soon," uh, you have a train to catch in the next fifteen minutes. Then suddenly you start reacting. Your mind starts racing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:39 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 34:39 That is what I call a gear three. And in between those two states, it's middle zone, which I refer to as gear two. And in this middle zone, you can focus. You can also kind of play with your attention a little bit. So you can focus. You can still be kind of in a state of gentle focus. You can be in a state of sort of slightly highly a- alert, more kind of aroused focus, where you're trying to brainstorm ideas and so on. But this middle zone, where you can focus, is actually a very pleasant state for us to be in. And I'll tell you why I'm bringing this up now from what you just described. So because it's such a pleasant state for us to be in, we like to be there because when we're in there, and this roughly correlates with, if there's anyone interested in this, in with phasic locus coeruleus firing. When we're in this state, we can focus, and it's not too effortful for us to focus. We still need to try, but it's, it comes to us quite easily, so it's optimal for mental work. But it's also an optimal state, mental state to be in. Before technology, as we have it today, we had to try to get into a mental state where we are able to easily hold our focus. If you are struggling to get into that state, you could feel bored. So for instance, imagine you're standing at a bus stop forty years ago, where there's no, when there's no, uh, cell phone. Nothing tells you when the bus is coming.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:15 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 36:17 You would have forced yourself. You, you would have had to stand there and somehow get into a mental state where you're sort of happy. You find something to focus on, and you're happy. You're not agitated. You don't need something to entertain you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:32 Zone one?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 36:34 So at that point, you are naturally getting into gear two-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:37 Okay

Dr. Mithu Storoni 36:38 ... because you have nothing to help get you there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:43 Right.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 36:44 So when you-- Transitioning into gear two happens, or you have to actively try to do it From a gear one state. So a gear one state is when you're not really focusing, you're kind of mind-wandering, you're kind of in a very slow state of mind. If you want to shift yourself from there to a state where you can focus on what you're doing, you're not bored, you're not drifting away, you're present, okay? That transition has always needed us to make a little bit of effort. But right now, technology, by r- arousing you and alerting you with exciting things and interesting things, gets you f- into that zone two state very easily, which is why if you are working and what is in front of you on a screen is boring, it's much more comforting to look at your phone, where you don't really have to put the effort-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:44 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 37:44 ... to be interested. It interests you. That you mentioned dopamine, so the dopaminergic and cholinergic networks are all influenced by the locus coeruleus. So we're kind of looking at the whole brain as a sort of package, all right? So in the past, you would have to-- we would have had ample training to put ourselves into the right mental state for focus. But right now, technology is doing it for us all the time. So if you wake up and look at an iPad, look at your phone, that immediately wakes you up, makes your mind work faster, and pulls you into this middle zone two. Whereas in the past, you would have had to do it yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:24 So what's the problem if someone does wake up and, using a smartphone and stimulating and exciting content, put themselves right into the middle of zone two? You're saying that zone two is a good thing, where we get a lot of focused work done. Why is it a negative then if someone was to wake up and go straight to zone two?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 38:49 Because even more important than actually getting into gear two is being able to navigate yourself to be in the right mental state.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:58 Right.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 38:58 And you are using a crutch, and this crutch is so effective that we are, we are sort of entering into an existence where people with no attention disorders before now need, now rely on this very powerful crutch to get into a right mental state-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:19 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 39:19 ... of feeling alert, of feeling happy, of feeling present.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 39:23 And they need this mechanism there, and this is why if you are at work doing something not inherently exciting, you feel even more, uh, distractible, and you feel even... Y- you find the work even more of a struggle. If you rely normally on sparkling technology, sparkling Facebook feeds and swipes and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:51 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 39:51 ... and, and, and you know, posts to get you there, you lose the ability to get into the right state of mind yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:59 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 40:00 And that is what we are seeing now more and more.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:03 Just taking a quick break to give a shout-out to Vivobarefoot shoes. Now, I've been a huge fan of Vivobarefoot for over 10 years now, well before they started supporting my podcast. They are the only shoes that I wear, and they really have had a huge impact on my own life and the lives of many of my patients. You see, when people start wearing minimalist shoes like Vivos, you can see improvements in things like back pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain. Even things like plantar fasciitis can often get better. And scientific research shows us that just wearing Vivos for about four months or so improves the strength in your feet by over 60%, which is absolutely incredible. One thing people don't realize about these shoes is just how flexible they are, which allows your feet to do what your feet naturally want to do rather than the shoe dictating your foot's movement. Vivobarefoot are giving my audience a 15% off one-time code when you make your first order, and they make it really easy for you to give them a try. They give a 100-day trial for new customers, so if you don't like them, you just send them back for a full refund. I'm a huge fan. I really hope you take advantage of this offer. To get your 15% off code, all you need to do is go to vivobarefoot.com/livemore or click on the link in the description box below. What's

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:34 the relationship between these topics that you're talking about and writing about and these three gears and our health and things like burnout?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 41:49 So we all feel good. So taking a step back, um, and in, in a really powerful study on mice, it's a very small study, they managed to stimulate this network that I'm very loosely basing the gears on, the locus coeruleus norepinephrine network. They used optogenetic stimulation to put a bunch of mice into what I define as gear two versus gear three. And they found that when these mice are in a state of gentle curiosity, sort of the optimal state of mind in which you're able to do focused work, where you're curious but you can focus, that sort of equivalent state of mind in these mice. When the mice were put into a state of gentle curiosity, their brains were very efficient at clearing away toxic byproducts and at sort of maintaining the homeostasi- stasis. And this is especially relevant, especially important Because these mice were engineered to, to be more susceptible to neurodegenerative disease

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:59 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 43:00 So if you take a bunch of mice who are susceptible to neurodegenerative illness, and you put them into gear two, and then you subsequently put them into gear three, a gear three state, they're- they are less likely to develop disease compared to if you only put them into a gear three state for a short period every day. So putting, so putting your brain or your mind into this middle zone and staying in this middle zone for much longer than staying in this sort of rushed gear three state of mind seems, in animal studies, to be very protective for the brain and for the mind. And to your point, it's a question we won't know the answer to because it takes a long time for-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:51 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 43:51 ... neurodegenerative diseases to develop. But could it be possible that the way in which we are working in this assembly line state, ignoring circadian rhythms, working with a very mental load, very heavy mental load, all of this is putting us into a gear three state because our minds are having to work harder and faster to get through the material. And staying in a gear three state for prolonged periods of time without ever entering this sort of gently curious state of mind, in these mice clearly amplified their risk of disease in the future. So could it be contributing to chronic stress and burnout? And really, actually it is, we know that. But also could that be putting us at risk of developing some kind of disease, neurodegenerative illnesses in the future? This is all speculative, I want to just underscore that, but that's what animal research makes you think about.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:58 It also makes me think about the concept of being tired and wired, which you write about at length in Hyperefficient. Because it seems to me that this would be quite a, I imagine, quite a modern concept to be, you know, this idea that you can be tired, your body can be tired, but your mind still be hyperactive. So you're lying in bed, you can't sleep even though you want to. I wonder how often that exists in traditional hunter-gatherer communities, where I imagine body and mind are in much more alignment. So when body is active, mind is active, and at night when body is tired, mind is also kind of relaxed a- and ready to switch off.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 45:46 Absolutely. And this is why there is data, um, that going on a very long walk, so moving your, your body at a slow pace for a long period of time helps you, helps your brain wind down. So you sort of have to bring the two into alignment for the two to relax together. But also to your point, this wired state is a very interesting state to be in because you might think... And, and just for your listeners, what, what does this feel like? Well, it feels like if you've had a very long day, and you're still at work, and you still haven't finished what you're supposed to do, you keep taking coffee, you just force yourself to carry on.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:34 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 46:35 All right? Even though you're, you're really tired, you haven't slept. You're really tired, but that coffee just makes your eyes wide open-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:42 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 46:42 ... so you can just quickly, you know, type or, or write emails or just come up with any idea and so on. But what this wired state is actually doing is actually it's creating a sort of dissociation in your cognitive performance. So you can perform low-level cognitive work faster and or, or at the same speed as earlier on in the day.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:06 So firing off a few emails, getting back to a few sort of-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 47:09 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:10 ... low-grade, not too stimulating tasks.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 47:13 Exactly. Um, stimulating, but low-grade, where you don't have to think.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:16 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 47:16 So you just have to kind of act. All right? But if in that state you ha- you, you're asked to solve your son's differential equation, um, or you have to make a really important, difficult decision, you just can't think. You can't play chess in that state.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:35 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 47:35 So there's actually a dissociation, and the neural underpinnings of this is to do with norepinephrine, uh, which is fired by... which is released by your locus coeruleus, this, this network that I'm talking about. And what this ultimately re- results in is many people who suffer from insomnia actually get into this state late into this, into the night. And one of the ways to get into this state is by pushing yourself during the day, working despite tiredness, where you've kind of pressed the pedal so hard that your gear is almost stuck in gear three. So your body is tired, but you've really pushed the pedal so hard that your mind is just not clocking back.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:23 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 48:23 And that's what stops you from falling asleep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:28 This idea that our bodies have a rhythm, nature has a rhythm, but modern life, certainly in urbanized settings, means that often without even realizing it, we're overriding these rhythms, we're flattening these rhythms, and it has a consequence. And I often wonder, you know I- Often like to sort of take a big picture view on society, see, well, what is going on? If I was an alien coming here, what, what, what would this society look like? And two things come to mind. One is if you think about so much of our work now is mind work, it's mental work, right? So many of us are in front of a screen, right? If you're an alien looking at this from, from up there, you'd see a lot of humans sitting in front of bright screens not doing very much. You know, our fingers are moving, right? But it- we're not actually ... It doesn't look as though we're doing much, right? Our bodies aren't moving that much. It's just our, the workings of our minds are going, and our fingers are tapping. And it's, it's probably very different now to 100 years ago when if we looked at humans, you'd see a lot of movement. Certainly if you look at hunter-gatherer communities, of course you would see that movement. But I also think about this explosion in coffee shops, right? Now, I love a coffee as much as the next person, but I do feel that this epidemic of cafes and coffee shops in airports, stations, villages, towns, I think what does that say about the way that we are living? I think it says something very, very powerful that often we don't want to acknowledge. If we're living lives that require us to get powered up by caffeine every day and wound down by alcohol every night, that says something quite worrying about the state of society, I think.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 50:37 It's a legal upper and downer. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:39 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 50:40 Um, so I talk about coffee in the book, and I describe how some accounts suggest that coffee breaks came into being when a tie-making factory or business in Denver, Colorado, discovered that employees actually ended up making more products when they were given two coffee breaks during the day. Um, now we usually-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:02 Quantity.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 51:03 Quantity. I was just gonna say-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:04 Quantity, right, over quality

Dr. Mithu Storoni 51:05 ... we make, we make ties with our hands, not with our minds, with our brains. So coffee is very intricately woven into the story of the Industrial Revolution, and that, you know, some writers, some historians suggest coffee is the backbone, was the backbone to the massive boom of mass production. When we switched to knowledge work, we again, we carried on this old rhythm of working continuously and producing continuously. We equated work with quantity. Back then in the 1950s and '60s, it was number of reports, number of letters, and so on. But it was just having to keep going against your inner instinct to stop and pause and take a break. Caffeine solved that problem when you were on the in- on the assembly line. It continued to solve the problem when you are on the assembly lines of typing desks or of other offices. And what caffeine was doing is putting everyone into a gear three state. So I point out that if you are sitting there analyzing a problem, you need to be able to focus and think and explore in a very coordinated, controlled manner. But if you... I don't know if your li- listeners have watched the film, um, Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin, where he's working on an assembly line, and it's moving faster and faster, and he, he's struggling to keep up. If you're working on an assembly line, actually the faster your hands move, the more products you build. If you're typing letters and you're not thinking, you're just listening to what is taped and putting that out through your fingers, you're not thinking. You can do that much faster. If you have to hang around in the office when you're really tired and pay attention at meetings, you can do that better in gear three than in gear two.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:05 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 53:05 So being in gear three was actually advantageous to productivity of the kind that we've needed for the last 100 years.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:15 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 53:15 But we continue to use that. We continue to define work like that, and we continue to use coffee to fuel ourselves. A larger point, which is again super important, is that as a society, we have grown to ignore the instinct to need to pause and take a break. Mind is very different from muscle. If you're working hard in the gym, you perspire, your limbs ache, you, you start not being able to lift as heavy, and it's visibly, it's, it's obvious to everyone that you're tired. When your mind is tired, you're not perspiring, there is no pain.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:56 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 53:56 No one can see it from the outside. So through this attitude of productivity and this way of working, we have grown to ignore the inner signal we have-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:07 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 54:07 ... of pausing, and in fact, we do the opposite. You mentioned morning and evening. I know many people who take a coffee every hour to keep themselves going. So we are using-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:19 But you gotta pay it back later.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 54:21 You will be paying it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:21 That's the point, isn't it?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 54:22 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:22 Yeah, you can keep going, but there's a cost.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 54:25 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:25 You're kicking it down the road. You're kicking it to later on in the day.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 54:27 You're kicking it to later on the day. You may be kicking it to later on in your life, but you know, you're also kicking it in terms of, in terms of business, in terms of the work you're doing. So by being in that state, in that caffeine-driven gear three state, you are not entering these absolute peak mental states that are necessary.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:51 As we're having this conversation, the Olympics have just finished, okay? And I think this analogy between physical work In the gym where you then perspire and your muscles are tired and you kind of know you then have to take a break. You couldn't keep pushing weights for eight hours a day, nine to five. You, you ... We kind of understand that. I guess the point I'm trying to get to is let's take the track and field events-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 55:20 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:20 ... at the Olympics, which me and my kids have been, you know, watching obsessively for the last few days, and it's just been phenomenal to watch. But let's say a, I don't know, a 1,500-meter runner or a 5,000-meter runner whose job is to peak once every four years at the Olympics. Sure, other tournaments as well, but building up towards the Olympics. The whole program that is put together for them by their coach will absolutely take into account rest and recovery.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 55:54 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:55 Right? It will be, yes, you'll do that, but on, on Mondays, because it's a heavy, intense session, Tuesdays are gonna have to be very light, right? People who run regularly and are in tune with their bodies will know that if they have a heavy session one day, they can't have a heavy session the day after, or if they keep doing that, they're gonna, they're gonna really burn out and hit the wall and get sick. So I think that analogy's really fantastic. With physical work, we kind of get it, that there are these rhythms, and I do wanna talk about power laws, which was a fa- fascinating topic that I read about in your book. The mind's kind of the same, right? If we're having heavy, heavy mental load one day, like, do we need to think about doing different kinds of work the following day? And I'm conscious as I'm asking these questions, Mithu, that your ability to shape your workday may depend on your job, whether you're a freelancer, whether you're an entrepreneur, or whether you are in an office with loads of senior management above you who tell you how you're meant to work, right? So I'm conscious that not everyone is gonna be able to make those changes, but I wonder if you could comment on some of those points.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 57:11 So, um, I'll address the last one first. So one of the things I would love everyone to do is really rethink the way we measure productivity in terms of quality. Because as soon as you start looking at quality, managers of organizations with very rigid work structures will start seeing, just like the Denver tie maker started seeing that there were more ties when people had coffee breaks, people will eventually start seeing that, okay, if we look at quality of ideas generated, maybe we need to work a different way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:49 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 57:50 Okay? But yeah, so there, there are lots of interesting points here. So the mind is very similar in the sense that the brain has finite capacity. Our brains are really small. Um, they can do marvelous things, but they're very small. They also take 20% of, or consume 20% of the body's sugar despite weighing a fraction of the body, something like 2 or 3%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:14 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 58:16 Now, you can have two options here. You can either look at mental work ... Uh, if we look through the lens of, of sport, it's much better ... So what, what is completely wrong, and what we're all doing, is we are running marathons at the speed of a sprint in a standard intense office job. Most standard intense office jobs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:45 That's a great way of putting it.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 58:47 So if we take that context, where you don't have that much, uh, independence over how you're working, if we take that context, well, you have two options. If you're doing intense work, you can't run a slow marathon, so you clearly need the mind to perform intense work. Now, you, you can do it in two ways. Either you can say you will work mentally as sprints. So you work really hard and then do nothing, take a, a long period off. Now, if you were to do that in, you know, an, an organization, um, your manager would frown at you. The CEO would probably think, "Hmm, is this going to affect the bottom line?" So I looked at how have people been working in the past. Now, hunter-gatherers, um, from what we know of today's data and also anthropological studies from about 100 years ago, 200 years ago, show that hunter-gatherers actually had what is known as a power ... what I'm calling a, a, a sort of a power law, fat-tailed way of working, where you do intense work for a really short time, and then you do slower, more moderate work for the next big chunk of time, and then you spend the majority of the time doing very light work. So you don't just work and sleep. You work, but then you kind of wind down, like a power law on a graph. So this is how hunter-gatherers, the different communities that I mention, seem to work observationally. I then grew very interested in a- another paper which I referred in my book, which looked at how Darwin, Einstein, and Freud wrote letters. Now, back in Darwin's time, a lot of work, um, sort of scientific study was carried out on the writing table, not in a laboratory, and letter writing act as a ... acted as a form of peer review.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:57 Right.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:00:58 If you ... And a, a group of s- of, of researchers looked at how do these three individuals write, or d- how did they write their letters? Did they write Did they reply to letters as they came in, in which case there would be no pattern to it, or they would be kind of serially? Or did they write in a certain way? And they found out that these three incredible intellectuals of our, of our time, of human history, seemed to write letters in a pattern that resembled a power law, which suggested they wrote really difficult replies rarely, or they replied to difficult letters infrequently, easier letters more of the time, and the easiest for the most period of time. And so putting this together, rather than, say, sprint... Say, if you're working in an office, rather than say, "Okay, manager, I'm going to work from 9:00 to 10:00 and then go to the beach for the rest of the day," your manager isn't gonna be very happy. So what I suggest in the book is to use these two principles and create a power law rhythm of working, where you work, if you're doing focused work, you work in 90-minute sessions, 90 to 100-minute sessions, and you structure those sessions so you do the toughest work, the most mentally intense work, for about 20% of the time. If it's super intense, for about 5%. And then you keep working, but you lower the intensity of your work down so that you always tackle really intense mental work in the first sort of 10 to 20 minutes of your work session. And this links in with another thing, which is that there is data to show that doing more than four hours of really intense mental work in a day carries on to the next day. So the effects of it, the fatigue, the, the, the kind of lack of in- the, the kind of deficit in capacity actually carries over to the next day, even if you, if you're sleeping. So doing work, intense mental work in a... or knowledge work, in a power law rhythm is the most, um, most apt way to work for a knowledge worker.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:14 Uh, and just that term power law, where does it come from? 'Cause I'm not sure everyone's familiar with it.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:03:18 So a power law is just a, a mathematical relationship. So, um, if you want to, if you want an analogy, if you imagine, uh, a situation where you are doing something... So let's come back to the, to work actually. So if you think about work, what I mean by power law is you're doing really intense work for the shortest period of time. So the more intense your work is, the fewer the hours or the minutes you're doing it for. The easier your work is, the longer you are doing it for, and that inverse relationship is what I describe as a power law.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:00 It reminds me when I, when I first read the first couple of chapters of your new book, and you outline the, this three-gear model that you've come up with, I couldn't help but think of physical exercise and endurance, and this idea of zone one exercise, zone two, zone three, or zone one to zone five, depending on which model you're looking at. And, you know, we've spoken about this on this show a couple times with Peter Attia, also with Professor Steven Seiler from Norway, this incredible sports scientist, on the benefits of being in different zones, right? And if you do lots of zone one... on a three-zone model, so zone one being very light, zone two being moderate, and zone three being, you know, really intense, like sprinting. This idea that actually if you do most of your, uh, endurance work or training in zone one, it's not quite the same as your three-gear model, but I think there are similarities. That's where you get the bulk of the benefit, and that's where you don't also raise cortisol, so your recovery is a lot easier. And yes, you do, you know, a little bit of your training at zone three, where you're sprinting, but you don't do much there. You do a little bit there. It's, it's, again, the, the similarity is that there is a rhythmic nature to us as humans. We can't go all out seven days a week or even Monday to Friday, five days a week. And I kind of feel what you said about how you might wanna structure your day, what this really needs, and I think your book will contribute to this, what it really needs is more open conversations between employees and employers, right? It needs to be the employee needs to, "Okay, these are the things we need you to do," right? And then the employee, hopefully in a very supportive work setting, you need to have a discussion to go, "Okay, great. So over the next five days, you need these 10 things done." "Well, you know what? I kind of know my rhythms. I'm really good at creative work first thing in the morning, but I'm not so good in the afternoon. Um, I can deliver you these things, but let me handle it over the next five days." Do you know what I mean? It needs some sort of push and pull, which isn't there in a lot of companies. And I, I tell you on a personal level-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:06:28 I know

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:28 ... it reminds me, in one practice I used to work at as a GP, um, many, many years ago, I had a, I had a, I had real back problems at the time. And so when I got back to work, I was like, "Yeah, I can get a great chair and a great table that suits me and ergonomic and all that kind of palava, but it is simply not gonna help me to be stuck in a chair between 8:00 AM and midday," right? So I basically insisted with my manager that I was taking a 15-minute break in the middle of morning surgery. That was not done, right? But I said, "No, I need 15 minutes where I can stand up and walk around the block."

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:07:12 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:14 But, you know, there was a bit of friction initially, 'cause it's like it's just not done. But it's like I still saw the same amount of patients, I still got all my paperwork done, right? Because it was much more rhythmic. It was ... It would essentially have been 90 minutes of seeing patients, stop for 10 minutes, go for a walk, good for my back, good for my brain, good to maybe take me down from zone two to zone one before we get back into zone two again.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:07:39 Correct. Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:39 Do you know what I mean? But we need-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:07:40 You need to get into z- zone one for recovery.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:42 Exactly. But the point I'm trying to make is that whoever's listening to this, if you're a freelancer, great, you probably have autonomy to structure this the way you want, but if you're an employer, if you're a manager, right, you've gotta start paying attention to this stuff and going, "People are not machines. They are not robots." Help your staff work in a way that's good for them and that's good for you.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:08:07 Absolutely. So, um, two points here. The first is that, um, I describe in the book how medical ... So you and I are both, uh, physicians. The way we see patients has changed drastically since assembly lines came into being, okay? Because a very, very long time ago, a doctor could, a GP, um, could- would see each patient according to the length of time that patient required, right? So if that patient, um ... If there was a patient w- who was very complex, it would be fine for a GP to spend 45 minutes, an hour with that patient, and if the next patient were very quick, you could spend five minutes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:48 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:08:48 And then as everything started becoming industrialized and, and mass production, we started measuring things, in the National Health Service at least, patients were given five-minute slots with a GP, no matter how complex or how easy their, their, um, illness was, their symptoms were. So this way of working has filtered down, and this is why also within the NHS and beyond, we measure work from the service provider in terms of hours, but actually we are serving the patient much more if we were to not do that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:22 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:09:22 ... and look at quality. So that's the first point.

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Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:09:56 The second point is, um, I deal quite a lot with organizations at the moment, uh, with private companies, and there is a way, and the thing I hear the most, is there is a way for this to be abused by the employ- employee. So a worker can say, "Oh, you know, I'm just not in my zone, so I'm not gonna come in today-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:13 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:10:13 ... because I'm just not in the right zone," et cetera, et cetera. So actually, it's much better if it comes from the organization.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:19 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:10:19 So rather than the employee saying, "I work best now and, and, and, you know, say, early in the morning, late at night," how about if you're a ... if you, if you have a startup, if you run a company, you're a CEO, you're managing a team, why not look at it this way? As a manager, say, "Okay, if you're working on creative idea generation innovation, why not just you guys, you t- you know, individuals of this particular specific team, work to a separate rhythm? Trade off your hours in the middle of the day for hours earlier in the morning, and do a late night or late evening where you're only doing working creative idea generation." So work that's light, that's kind of you're coming up with ideas, okay? And use-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:06 Those are the times where creativity is highest-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:11:08 Is highest

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:08 ... for most people.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:11:09 For most people. And you can o- of course tailor this a little bit, so you don't have to say really late in the evening. Um, again, very late in the evening, of course, you wind down, so you want to be in that kind of zone two, zone one, uh, barrier. So why not do that for innovative people? So come ... Work early in the morning and in the evening, but take your late morning and early afternoon off. Okay? You can nap, you can do what you like, but you are trading off hours. So ultimately you're working the same number of hours to protect your CEO's, um, requirements, but you're bifurcating your day.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:42 But even that last thing about having the same amount of hours-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:11:45 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:46 ... even that is starting to sound a bit prehistoric now for the modern world, in the sense that if that person is being employed to generate ideas and be creative, surely the metric where you assess performance is, how many creative ideas did you generate? If that was done in a killer three-hour session on a Tuesday morning, right?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:12:11 You deserve the rest of the day off.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:13 Yeah, but it's-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:12:14 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:14 But I get ... It's so different from how companies and structures, and maybe HR departments are set up to kind of monitor things, right?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:12:22 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:22 So I-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:12:22 So what I suggest is doing this in the interim, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:25 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:12:25 So saying, "Okay, so you're doing a trade-off." So people can't just ... It's very difficult for HR, for s- organizations as a whole to just suddenly switch.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:35 Suddenly manage this, yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:12:36 So why not start looking at it in terms of trade-off to begin with? Okay? So start cutting the overall hours a little bit for creative people, for people working only on innovation. And I also describe how to make an environment more creative. Do all of that. Then when that same sub-team rotates to working on putting ideas together, planning, implementation, logistics, change the schedule again. In this case, cancel all meetings for this sub-team that are scheduled in the peak focus hours in the morning. Shift all these meetings to either the post-lunch dip or late in the evening. Outside, so by protecting the hours of focused work. And give them extra leeway, so if they're working very intensely, maybe don't let them, don't, uh, require them to attend meetings at all. Maybe give them that period of time as a break to, to, you know, to, to, to gain back their cognitive resources, either through napping or through just taking a long break. So it's for the organization and manager to tailor the work specific to the work the team is doing at this moment, and be very fluid and flexible.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:58 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:13:58 And that removes the problem, which I constantly get asked, of, "Isn't this open to abuse by a worker? How can a, how can a manager really monitor, uh, given all we have to go by right now are the old measures of productivity?" Ultimately, I 100% argue, as I do in the book, for measuring productivity in terms of quality. Once we get there-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:21 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:14:21 ... we will no longer need to have-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:22 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:14:22 ... this conversation. But until we do, a, a good halfway point is to have this compromise.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:29 Even this concept of it being open to abuse, if you really start to examine that, well, what is one of the most important things that you need in any workplace? It's trust, right? You need mutual trust between boss, employer, manager, employee, right? You, you, you kind of need those things, and presumably any really fantastic system where there is a high degree of trust is also probably open to abuse. But as the ways of measuring that get better, as we change our work structures, then presumably that will come out in the wash as well, people who are abusing that.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:15:11 So I think the important thing is here, I think things are open to abuse because we still use an outdated system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:20 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:15:20 If you place the opportunity to excel, to, to... If you, if you tell your team that, "Look, you have one mission, and that is to come up with an extraordinary solution to this problem that our software is encountering. Because once you, if you do, we can launch it, and then, you know, we will grow as a company, we will have an edge," et cetera, then the onus is on the employee to... You know, you carry that, that, that energy to want to create that idea. So there will not even be time to think about abusing the system-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:59 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:15:59 ... or, or anything. And the other thing I'd love to bring in here is I, I like to think about it in terms of a puppeteer. So when a puppeteer controls a puppet, you can only move the arms and legs. So you cannot do anything to the mind of the puppet, and that is one way of looking at managing a team. So when we talk about, when we think about micromanagement, okay, so how much time are you spending at your desk if you're doing an office job? Or how many patients have you actually seen, if you're working, you know, in healthcare? But that is just the physical aspect. The real, um, bottom line comes out in what is the idea you got while working in your job?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:44 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:16:44 What, uh, brilliant solution did you come up with? Or how many patients did you really correctly diagnose, and how many really tough patients did you manage to find a treatment for?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:55 Yeah. Not, not how many patients did you see-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:16:58 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:59 ... right? Which is just a simple measure of-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:17:01 Quantity

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:02 ... quantity. How many patients did you manage really well? Two completely different things.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:17:09 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:10 And you know, the truth is, when you're in a very pressured, time-pressured system like the NHS, and let's say in a GP practice, you know, some people are seeing 40, 50 patients a day sometimes.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:17:22 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:23 You are incentivized to just get through them, not 'cause you don't care, but because that's your only way to manage the workloads.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:17:33 And that is so inefficient along the line, because-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:37 'Cause people come back. You can be kind and, you know... But if you don't properly try and get to the root cause and manage what's going on, they'll be back next week 'cause what you gave them wasn't working, and they're still struggling. But often managers are going, "That doctor saw 40 pa-," that sort of, "Okay, great. We're meeting our numbers."

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:17:55 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:56 Right? It's-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:17:56 And that is where the downfall begins, where you have complexity in the system. So AI is, which is being widely, um, tried and adopted in different branches of medicine now, can do that sort of five-minute triaging, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:14 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:18:14 But the brain of every human GP is much more sophisticated than that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:19 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:18:19 It is there to solve problems. You cannot solve a problem if you're working like an assembly line.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:25 We, you gave some specific examples of where you, you know, people are being paid to generate big ideas, right? And whether you spend five days coming up with a idea or one hour, it doesn't really matter. It's the idea that moves the needle. But a lot of people still are in jobs whereby they're not being measured in that way. So let's say, I don't know, you work in a call center, right? I, I haven't worked in a call center, so I don't know what your metric is, but I'm assuming that one of them might be how many people did you speak to in any given day? Or how many of the calls you made did you manage to upsell a product off that business? How do you think your ideas and the philosophy you, you put out on Hyperefficient works in that setting, or for someone who, let's say, is working at McDonald's and their job is to serve people- Fry the burgers and, you know, keep that assembly line going basically

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:19:28 So call center jobs unfortunately are under, a- are, are going to be under threat with automation-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:37 Right

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:19:37 ... and AI. Um, and service sector jobs of the sort of frontline service end are also under threat-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:45 I guess you're seeing that, like-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:19:46 With AI

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:46 ... if you go to a service station, and it's all the kind of order on a touch screen, isn't it?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:19:51 Right. Exactly. Exactly. Um, and it's happening everywhere. So I was in Singapore recently. There are robotic waiters, uh, carry your plates to and fro and, uh, take your orders. So these jobs are no longer going to be there to a de- the same degree as they are now

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:12 Right

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:20:12 So with that, with that kind of job, unfortunately, um, you do ... You can be productive without having to get into the right mental states

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:22 And your body and mind can be completely disassociated [laughs]

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:20:24 Sadly. It's still not, it's not good for you, but you do perform better if you are in gear three for those, for those kind of jobs because you're not thinking

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:32 But as you say, and I think that's why your book is so important, you're sort of ... You're writing this book, I think, yes, for work the way it is now and how it has been for 10, 20 years, but also saying, look, things are changing very, very rapidly. Your ability to be creative, your ability to generate ideas, to stay focused, to solve problems, that is going to be one of the highly prized metrics for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, so this is the template of how to get good at that

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:21:04 Exactly true. So around 30% of all work hours in the US will be automated, um, by 2030, current work hours.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:15 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:21:15 So, um, this is a... So we- w- what we're, what I'm, what I'm arguing for in this book is, a- as you say, not as things are now, but as things are becoming because we need to be prepared-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:29 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:21:29 ... for what they are, for how they are becoming. And now very soon, and already we're seeing in different parts of the world, if you have a whole bunch of robotic waiters, say, or robotic call center workers, humans will have a supervisory role, and I've actually touched on that also in the book quite, uh, expansively, where I describe that all... Actually, we are, we are seeing a sort of a slight, um, double-edged sword here because on the one hand, simple jobs are being taken over by automation. But on the other hand, actually, humans are going to have to become more s- uh, s- uh, kind of supervisors. So rather than the doers, they have to become the overseers. So if you have a bunch of automated robots assembling things on a factory floor, you will have a human to make sure everything is being done correctly, and those jobs are incredibly boring, incredibly draining, um, and they require constant sustained attention, which is incredibly hard on mental load. Now, if you have that kind of a job, then I describe some strategies-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:37 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:22:37 ... with what to do to, to, to stay on, on your peak

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:41 Let, let's talk about some of the things that we can all do ourselves, right? To help us upregulate and downregulate through these gears as and when we might need to, right? So, um, again, just to emphasize, gear two is what you are saying we're gonna do our best work in gear two, right? So and ideally you wanna be able to get into gear two without needing super stimulating technology to get you there. Let's talk about napping, right? I, I've, I've got a very clear view on napping, a and I, and I think that a lot of the time the conversation around napping becomes quite black or white. I'll share mine in, in just a moment, but what's your perspective on napping and how that relates to these brain gears?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:23:37 So napping is the most rejuvenating activity you could do during a break to re- to, to essentially refresh your brain's resources. So let's take a step back. When your brain is doing heavy mental work, your, the little cells in your brain are really like little factories. So they are using energy to do the work, and they're producing toxic byproducts. These byproducts are accumulating, um, and your brain's, um, normal, uh, way of working is slowing down. It becomes, your brain becomes less efficient-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:17 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:24:17 ... in the way it processes information as time drags on. So it's measured as time on task effects. Now, when you take, when you nap... So, so the moment you wake up in the morning, you start, from that point onwards, you start accumulating a sleep debt, okay? Um, one of the molecules involved is adenosine-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:37 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:24:37 ... as, as you know. Um, now the sleep debt and, and generally the sort of the, the byproducts of work, of mental work, needs active, uh, homeosta- sort of needs active regulatory mechanisms to clear away and to keep the brain functioning at its peak. So if you just forget about naps, if you just work continuously on something tough for about three hours nonstop, your brain, and if you look inside the brain, you will find it's processing information in a very inefficient way, sort of around, you know, depending on how intense your work is, from around, say, 60, 90 minutes into your work. All right? Stopping at that moment, stopping the load on your brain, it in itself- Will help your brain recover its resources, and just taking a break can make your brain more efficient

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:34 That's not necessarily napping, that's just taking a break

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:25:37 Just taking a break. Now, if you go into a f- a, a deeper level, then you bring in a nap. So napping is in many ways a little bit like scuba diving. If you dive only a few meters below the surface, you can surface, you can come up again very quickly without feeling groggy. But if you dive too deep, then you need to come up really slowly or you'll get the bends, right? In terms of sleeping, you get grogginess. Now, when you're sleeping, as your listeners will know by now, you go through different sleep phases-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:16 Mm-hmm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:26:16 ... you have slow wave sleep is one of them. During slow wave sleep, your brain, uh, at least during the night, goes through a process of, um, sort of self-brainwashing, where glymphatic, um, circulation is enhanced during slow wave deep sleep. And your glymphatic circulation in the brain, your glymphatic pathways, they seem to clear your brain away of the byproducts of metabolism that have accumulated during the day. So when you're sleeping, when you're napping, if you can get into slow wave sleep, it's more restorative for your brain, but you will have trouble waking up again and switching on and getting focused

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:04 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:27:04 But sleeping in itself, even a micro sleep, will temporarily absolve your brain of the need to feel sleepy. Sleeping in between these two margins sort of ticks all the boxes. It doesn't rejuvenate your brain quite as much, but it does give you the ability to sustain a little more cognitive stamina later into the day. Now, what must be remembered with napping is if you nap, you have to clock up enough sleep debt by the time you sleep from the moment you wake up after your nap, or you won't be able to fall asleep again

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:47 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:27:47 So if you imagine not being active at all in the evening, not doing any work, then napping can interfere with your ability to sleep. But if you're doing intense mental work or physical work, then a nap to break that work session can bring nothing but benefits.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:05 Yeah. So basically, let's just rewind a second. You've said a couple times during this conversation that, you know, on average, we can keep focused attention for around 90 minutes or so, and, you know, you- there's a lot on it in your book in terms of where that research has come from and et cetera, et cetera, right? So a good practice is every 90 minutes or so, we should take some kind of break. Now, before we get to napping, let's just, just go to that break. Does it matter what you do in that break? So for example, you've been on your computer, you're trying to solve a problem or write a proposal, whatever it might be, and then 90 minutes in, your alarm goes off, you go, "Oh, yeah, you know, I, I read Hyperefficient from Mithu Storoni, and I remember I must take a break now." If you then go and have hyper-stimulating content on Instagram, what does that do to our brains and our minds compared to five minutes where you just walk to the, other day, the coffee shop, or you just walk around a green space near your office or in your garden, right? Is there, is there a different impact in terms of how much rest you're getting?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:29:26 Yes. So if you have been doing intense work, focused work, difficult work, then when you reach your 90 to 100 minute endpoint, you need to go back into gear one, because in gear one, your brain rejuvenates itself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:44 Okay, so you're in gear two when you're working-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:29:46 Gear two when you're working

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:47 ... in order to rest, you've gotta get back into gear one.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:29:49 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:50 Okay.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:29:50 And you can go back into gear o- gear one if you are not focusing on something intensely. And by definition, if you're watching-- if you're scrolling on Instagram or you're really riled by something you read on X, then you are not in gear one. So you're not-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:07 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:30:08 ... giving your mind the opportunity to refresh itself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:11 So you're taking a break from your work, but it's not necessarily rejuvenating you whereby you can get back to that same level after five, 10, 50 minutes, whatever it might be.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:30:25 Correct. So it, it's sort of you, you can feel it. If you're working-- If you don't have technology and you're working really hard, it actually feels mentally kind of soothing to just have quiet nature around you, where you sort of feel, you can feel it in your body as well-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:41 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:30:41 ... you can feel rejuvenated. Now, there's an important caveat, and the caveat is, if the work you are doing is mentally or emotionally distressing or emotionally involving, then the moment you leave your work, you might not be able to switch off.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:58 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:30:58 So you have left your office, but your mind hasn't left the office. All right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:04 Okay.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:31:05 So your body might be resting, but your mind isn't.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:08 This is a very common scenario, I would imagine.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:31:09 Very common scenario. So if that happens, you have to add a little something into your break. You still need to get into that relaxed gear one state, but at f- but the first thing you need to do is to unplug your focus, your attention, which is glued really tightly into what you were just doing Now, in that context, actually looking at something on Instagram or Facebook, as long as it's not emotionally distressing, whether through happiness or sadness, so it doesn't matter whether it's positive or negative-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:39 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:31:39 ... it shouldn't be too, um, distressing. As long as you do something engaging to distract yourself and momentarily forget about what you are working on.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:50 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:31:50 But do that for a really short period of time, enough to forget what you are working on, and then go into an environment where you do- where your mind does no work.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:01 Yeah. I love that. I also love there's a few charts throughout the book in how you can upregulate and downregulate. So for example, how might a breathwork practice help you in this sort of setting?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:32:15 Yes. So, um, one of my favorite researchers on this is Mara Martha from California, and her team has shown, and I've referenced her work in the book, her team has shown how you can actually increase, so measurably increase vagal activity by breathing at a frequency of a, at around five breaths per minute. To be really specific, it's good to use HRV biofeedback. But approximately, it sort of approximates to around five breaths per minute, which means that if you are in a sort of wired state after a bout of intense work and you want to relax, doing a short 5, 10, 15 minute, however m- you know, depends on how much time you have, breathing exercise, breathing at that frequency will autonomically shift you to a state of relaxation. So if your mind re- refuses to relax, you can use your breathwork to help you get there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:17 Yeah. It, again, breathwork is free. It doesn't require you to look at a device necessarily, unless you're using something to guide you. It, I, I guess the point I'm trying to make is this idea that we can shift ourselves from gear one to gear two, and back down from gear two to gear one without being overly reliant on devices, on technology. I think it's a good thing. I think there's real resilience in ourselves if we know how to upregulate and downregulate ourselves, and I think breathwork's just a fantastic tool. You mentioned HRV biofeedback. Many people won't know what that means. Cou- could you sort of give us a brief overview of what, what that is?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:34:03 So to, um, really emphasize this, you don't need to do this, but, um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:09 You mean you don't need the HRV biofeedback to do a good breathwork practice?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:34:11 To do a good breathwork practice.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:13 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:34:13 Um, breathing roughly at around five breaths per minute, where your exhalations are longer than the inhalations, will get you there. I mention HRV biofeedback because that's a way, many people have Apple phones which measure HRV, or they have the Oura Ring, and so on. But if you have a way of measuring your heart rate variability, you can watch your heart rate variability change, or the metrics-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:38 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:34:38 ... within your heart rate variability change as you breathe. And there is a certain frequency of breathing where it's re- which is referred to as the resonance frequency, where if you breathe at this particular frequency, you really watch the needle move the most.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:53 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:34:53 And you can tell that by if you are able to measure your HRV in real time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:58 Yeah. Okay, thank you. And then back to napping. So napping is another form of rest. Of course, many cultures around the world nap every day. Um, but you're essentially saying, I think, napping can be very, very helpful if it doesn't disrupt your ability to sleep that night. So short naps, easy to come out off, you know, even a 10, 15 minute very light nap is still doing something quite profound. Yes, if you have a longer 90-minute nap, you're probably gonna go into those sleep stages, it's gonna be very, very restorative, but you're gonna feel groggy when you come out. But it is probably gonna mean that you have more impetus and cognitive ability later on into the evening. You just gotta be careful if you're doing it regularly. You gotta pay attention, is this affecting my ability to sleep at night? But I think you're saying that if you do have that long nap, as long as you're burning up that energy by doing something, whether it be physical activity or whether it be, um, intense cognitive work where you're trying to solve problems or whatever it might be-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:36:10 So you're making yourself tired. That's the important thing

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:11 ... you're making yourself tired-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:36:13 Correct

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:13 ... then you could be okay.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:36:15 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:16 One of my frustrations with, I think, a lot of the way, um, health advice is given these days is often we say, "This is good," or, "This is bad." And the question needs to be for who and in what context, right? Napping is probably really unhelpful if it's causing you insomnia every night.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:36:39 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:40 But if you have structured your day and you're able to where you have a brief nap, let's say 20 minutes after lunch each day, and it doesn't affect your ability to sleep at night, you're able to do it in your workday, which many people can't, and you're functioning well, well, it could be the best thing in the world, right? So I think that individualized approach to saying whether something is good or bad, I, I don't know, what's your perspective on this? 'Cause I, I kind of feel very much these days that things are moving into this kind of sugar's either good or bad. You know, napping is either good or bad. It's like intermittent fasting is either good or bad. Well, no, for some people, intermittent fasting is fantastic. For other people, it's, it's not that helpful, right? Do y- I don't know, what's your perspective on that?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:37:27 My perspective is there is now so much information floating around- That you have to reduce everything into a binary value-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:35 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:37:35 ... for people to take it away. And people like binary values. Healthcare, the brain, the body, the brain specifically is a complex system. A complex system does not involve individual single pathways that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:52 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:37:52 ... that, that influence the entire being, the entire organism. So nuance is everything, and this is why I wrote a book for five years [laughs] um, because I find it very difficult to give people prescriptive takeaways.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:09 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:38:09 Because what applies to Person A will not apply to Person B.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:12 Exactly.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:38:13 Um, and I make that very clear. I talk about something called gear personality as well in the book-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:17 You do

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:38:17 ... where people have different, uh, sort of a way of, of seeing it as gear sort of reactivity. So what works for one person will work very differently for another. So nuance and, and individual consideration has to be absolutely central, and prescriptive binary rules just do not work, and they should not be adopted.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:43 Just taking a quick break to give a shout-out to AG1. Now, AG1 is a science-based foundational nutrition supplement that contains 75 whole food sourced nutrients. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, and also prebiotics and digestive enzymes, which helps support your gut's health. And one of the best things about AG1 is that all this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life, no matter how busy you feel, and it's also really, really tasty. What makes AG1 really special is the team of scientists behind it. I speak to them regularly, and I'm really impressed by their commitment to making a high quality product. If you want to try AG1, they are giving my audience a really special offer. One year supply of vitamin D, which is really good for your immune system, and five free travel packs with your first order. You can see all details at drinkag1.com/livemore or just click on the link below. Now, back to the conversation. How does exercise influence our ability to shift through these gears?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:40:02 So let's, let's take a very simplistic view of this. What does exercise do? It makes your body more active than your baseline currently is. So if you're sitting on a sofa and you're, you're, you're quite relaxed, if you move your body, your body feels more vigorous, more alert, more physiologically aroused, so it will do the same to your mind. So if you exercise, you will raise your mental gear. Now, if you're beginning from a baseline of gear one, then that exercise will put you into gear two. But if you're beginning from an, from a baseline of gear three, you can have one of two effects. If you do very, very intense exercise, so not, um, sprints, but prolonged high-intensity exercise, then your body is going to need your norepinephrine to keep you going, and that will keep you further in gear three. But if you exercise in zone one, so you do a l- long walk for a long period of time, then that exercise will bring you back down from gear three into gear two.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:41:10 So it depends on what kind of exercise you're doing, but most importantly, what state of mind are you in before? And this brings me to walking. So walking is the most underappreciated, um, cognitive tool that we have for creative idea generation, for problem-solving, for a variety of things. And the reason is the following. When you're walking, you have to be alert to be able to move, to be able to be physically active.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:42 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:41:42 So you're forced to be in at least a sort of g- a low gear two state. Gear two, gear one margin, but in gear two. Now, walking keeps you there because while you're walking, you're having to pay attention to things around you. You can't just drift off completely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:58 So ev- even if you're daydreaming whilst you're walking, you're still more alert than you would've been-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:42:05 If you're sitting down

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:05 ... had you been on the sofa.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:42:07 Right. So if you're sitting down and you're feeling relaxed and you're daydreaming, you'll be very near the point where you can drift off to sleep. All right? But if you're walking, your mind can wander, but you're still alert. So it's a very peculiar state of mind, where you actually achieve the daydreaming state, but there's a nuance to it, which I'll describe. But the bottom line is, when you're walking, it helps you keep ... It helps keep you in or near gear two. All right? Now, the second thing is that when you're walking, the world is moving around you, assuming you're walking not on a treadmill, but on, on a, you know, in, in real, uh, in a real situation, the park, on a road, whatever.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:52 In, in the real world, not the virtual world. [laughs]

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:42:54 In the real world, not the virtual world. So if you're doing that, then you are forced, your attention is forced to not stick to anything because everything is constantly moving past.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:07 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:43:08 You can't ... You know, you have to turn your head to keep looking at that blade of grass. But more importantly, if you're working in natural space, nothing really grabs your attention. You still have to pay attention, but not keep your attention attached.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:21 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:43:21 So nothing is grabbing your attention. So when it's not grabbing your attention, your attention can float, and it floats around you, and it floats into your head, and it's, it explores, you know, problems you're working on-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:36 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:43:36 ... fragments of ideas that are floating inside your head. But you can't go down a rabbit hole in your head either-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:45 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:43:45 ... because at some point your attention has to come back out, and because you need to know where you're walking. So it keeps your mind in a very intriguing place or state where your attention is forced to wander and visit different things without becoming too involved and without getting stuck. If you were to do that, try to do that while you're sitting down, you would start drifting off and falling asleep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:12 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:44:12 But if you're doing that while walking, you're alert enough to be able to actually be able to focus on an idea should something suddenly come up from the depths of your mind. And at the same time, you're able to let your attention wander and look at that idea from different angles because your attention is not sticking. And this is why walking has, you know, anecdotally been, um, been credited with generating so many ideas, and I know a couple of managing directors who just take a walk, just leave their desks and take a walk when their team runs into a problem. And after the, the, after the walk, whatever the walk did, they will ha- it will have moved the needle towards a solution by a certain amount.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:00 Yeah. How many writers will credit some of their breakthrough ideas to having come to them whilst on a walk? You know, so many famous writers will say, "We walk for two hours every day." It's what they do. It's part of their work in, in some ways. [laughs] And I guess it speaks to one of those earlier points, which is if you're a manager, you know, yes, encouraging your team in the middle of a working day to go for a 20-minute walk, right? Yes, they're not at their desk reading emails, but we almost need to get to a point where we see that as part of their work. That's helping them. You know, you can actually measure this. Like, I did this once. I, I made this ITV show on stress a few years ago, and you could actually measure how much more productive people were having taken a 20-minute lunch break where they walked in nature. They actually got so much more done than had they just stayed at their desk and pushed through, which completely speaks to, you know, this 90-minute idea and many of the ideas you put forward in, in, in this book. But it's, it's getting out of that mentality whereby if you're not at your desk, you're not working, you know? Which is, as you say, assembly line thinking and not modern, uh, brain-based idea generation type thinking. Um, you, you said something interesting right at the start about when you're sprinting, you, you can't really be daydreaming. And you also mentioned how these gears, these three gears very closely match with what your eyes are doing, right? And of course, you're an eye surgeon as well as a doctor and a neuroscientist. What your eyes are doing in these gears is incredibly fascinating for me. I have become really quite aware of the importance of what our eyes are doing over the past few years from a variety of sources. But a huge part of that has been my work with my incredible movement coach, Helen Hall, who has basically shown me with data as well as with, you know, her imparting her knowledge with me, that if you're running and you have a soft gaze peripheral vision, the way your body moves, the amount your chest rotates in contrast to your pelvis, the length of your stride, these things are all different than if you've got concentric focus vision. And one thing I've been focusing on in my running, especially when I'm doing relaxed running and not fast running, is trying to keep that soft peripheral gaze. So I have experienced and seen the benefits for movement, but it's quite interesting that you're saying that actually our eyes in many ways reflect what gear our brain is in. This is fascinating.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:48:02 So, uh, that's very interesting. So, um, the way I, I, um, entered this avenue is by looking at the way the pupils behaved, which I did as part of my work some years ago. Um, there was a very curious study, um, I forget who the author is, but it was a very... It, it, it, it kind of grabbed the headlines around the world, where, um, the headline was, "The diameter of your pupils can, can, can be a measure of your intelligence"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:36 [laughs]

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:48:38 Which is a completely ridiculous headline. Um, but where it came from is that if you look at the way your pupils behave, so there are two angles to it. Okay, so let's start with the pupils. So if you look at the way your pupils behave, your pupils have a baseline diameter, which is influenced by lots of things, time of day, ambient light around you, but it's a kind of, it's baseline, and your, your resting sort of, uh, alertness, your resting, um, kind of wiredness. And then your pupils also react to situations, so they grow wider with surprise, which we all know. Um, and the extent to which they do that reflect what's going on to a degree, not entirely, in this blue dot, which is the s- the, the, the, the basis roughly of my gear one, two, and three metaphor. So when you're in gear two, your pupils behave in a very distinct way. And- One of the, one of the ways that you can kind of tie it together is the more effort you're applying when you're doing something, so the harder your math problem is, for instance, the more your pupils will dilate, and that's a way of measuring cognitive effort in a laboratory.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:50:01 Now, um, in this way, you see your pupils directly, um, reflecting what is going on inside your brain. But you can take this to a, an, a kind of a wider level and look at the eyes in general. So I describe a phenomenon in the book, um, called, referred to as quiet eye.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:20 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:50:21 Which is something that, again, it sort of, it makes intuitive sense. If you imagine your hunter-gatherer ancestors, okay? Um, if you were roaming, rambling, foraging for food, you would be casually sauntering around something, and then you'd be just casually glancing at it, not focused, but just kind of wandering over it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:50:49 Your eyes would be gradually wandering over it. Think of a different scenario. Now think that your hunter ancestor is running after a prey, which is going to be your dinner this evening. You see the prey. The hunter sees the prey. The hunter keeps the prey in their focused gaze, and they run with focus. All right? And then they sprint when the g- when the prey gets lost. They sprint because they start looking everywhere because the, the, the, the prey starts running away, right? So that enters into gear three. So you see how the way you gaze at things can influence the dynamics in the body, or rather have a correlation with the dynamics in the body, and the quiet eye technique, research on the quiet eye technique suggests that you can use this to change your eye behavior to get yourself into certain mental states. Now, meditators and yogis will know that focused attention meditation puts you into a state of calm focus when you focus on-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:02 Wow

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:52:02 ... a candle flame or you focus on something in your mind with your eyes closed, a picture in your mind. That is one way of stilling your eyes to still your mind, and the quiet eye technique is an application of that where in sport, if you are doing, performing a sport that requires you to be very precise, then looking at the spot where you're aiming or looking at any spot, so even in tennis, looking at sort of the, the small, uh, details of a tennis ball, forcing yourself to keep your gaze there can calm your mind and draw you back into gear two if you were in gear three.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:47 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:52:49 Another angle to it is attention, okay? So when you're looking at something, you're either paying attention to what is right in front of you or your attention is sort of, is sort of expansive enough for you to notice details, nuance in the edges of your vision.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:53:11 And there's another very interesting study, um, carried out in Germany that has shown that if you can train yourself to look at a scene and not just look at what's in the middle of the scene, but sort of, sort of not defocusing as such, but sort of loosening your attention, so you're actually seeing the details in the peripheries of the scene-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:33 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:53:33 ... you're more likely to come up with creative, innovative ideas and ways forward.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:40 Wow.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:53:40 So these are two examples that have been shown to be effective in nudging your mind in, i- into different states.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:50 What, what's truly fascinating for me, and I, I'd love your perspective on this, is that we're saying there's a correlation between our eyes and the state of our brain, right? So one could make the case or the hypothesis that, okay, the hunter has got the prey in mind and is sprinting after it. So the eyes, the eye position, the eye gaze, the pupil diameter is a consequence of what the hunter needs to do. But I kind of see a parallel between breath and eyes, right? 'Cause we, we often say that the autonomic nervous system, yes, we can't really influence it consciously except through your breath, right? So you can slow your breathing down. You can prolong your exhale compared to the inhale to, you know, promote more parasympathetic and, you know, relaxation essentially rather than, um, stress or sympathetic, uh, branch of the nervous system. But I think you can also do it with your eyes, can't you? It's not just the breath. Like, so, so I guess my question is, are the eyes a consequence of what is going on in your brain or can you change what your eyes are doing to influence your brain?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:55:19 So the answer is there is, there is definitely a two-way conversation taking place, and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:27 Like with the breath.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:55:28 Like with the breath. And the quiet eye tech- so the eyes are m- far more complex because, uh, uh, many other pathways and factors come into it. So for instance, one of the reasons why we may have evolved to dilate our pupils at times of Stress when we're under duress is to actually get in, get more light in and take in more data.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:50 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:55:50 Okay? Um, and hence when we're relaxed, our pupils di- uh, constrict, so we have very small pupils. Because-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:58 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:55:58 ... again, one theory is because we take in less data. So the eyes are the scanners of the world, and the state your mind is in when you're scanning the world is reflected in the way your eyes behave-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:13 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:56:13 ... um, primarily through your pupils, but also generally in terms of eye behavior. So you know that when you're distracted and anxious, your eyes will dart everywhere.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:24 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:56:24 Whereas if you are focused, your eyes will be more still. And there is... I mean, you'll always have saccadic, uh, movements, but there's a great, the great paper that suggests that there is a kind of competition whenever you're trying to focus between two, um, between two states, where one is the state of distraction, where your eyes, your saccades are more frequent, and the other is a state of focus, where you have big saccades less frequently. So all these dynamics are taking place.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:56 Okay. Do you think that there is merit in things like, you know, we're, we're living in a, in a very screen-based society these days, so many people are working at screens, or on screens, right? So their, their, their focus is convergent, and it's tightly focused on something which isn't very far from their eyes. Every hour, every 90 minutes, whenever you can take a break, what is the benefit of nipping outside your office or your workspace and trying to look into the distance and focusing on a tree or something? Do you know what I mean? So instead of that near focus, you're, you're doing that long focus. And purely through the lens of, um, like a muscle workout, right? Just the... And you're an eye surgeon, so I think it's a reasonable question that you may [laughs] you may have some insight on. What is it doing to us to be on these screens all the time in terms of that tight, uh, concentric focus on the screen? Is there merit of each day making sure you have some distant vision?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:58:10 So there are two ang- two sides to this. So from the point of, um, ophthalmology, of course you're, you're changing the dynamics of your lens. So it's interesting you just said, "Through the lens of." [laughs] I was going to add through the lens of your lens. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:26 [laughs]

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:58:27 So of course there it's very, very... It's, it's helpful because you're not constantly in near gaze. You're also looking d- uh, going, switching to distance gaze. And, you know, there are cert- certain exercises that optometrists can recommend, like pen push-ups, which try to achieve a similar sort of idea. But I think it's also very relevant for work, right? Because when you're looking at a screen in front of you and you're focusing on something that's bright, that's engaging your attention or trapping your attention, your attention is fixed. So you're not letting it wander.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:02 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:59:03 So if you're doing something that's simply reading and using low-level cognitive skills, fine. But if you're solving a problem, if you're writing something really exciting, you're not going to be able to come up with that without removing, un- un- unplugging your focus-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:19 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 1:59:19 ... and letting your attention wander. And the best environment to be able to do that is in nature.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:25 Yeah. It's fascinating. We as a family went to Kenya this summer, and we did something I've never done before, which is go on safari, and the guide we had was from the Maasai tribe, and his vision was utterly incredible. There, there were times when we were, we'd stop, and he would spot things, like so far away. Say, "Oh, you, there's a giraffe head in those trees there. Can you see it?" I'm, I'm looking. I'm like, "I have n- I, I can't see a thing." Now, that could just be his vision's better than mine. But it really made me think about, you know, we're always responding as humans, aren't we, to our environment, right? So if you are spending your life in nature, and he's a member of a Maasai tribe, and so the way he was brought up, you know, a nomadic tribe, sort of cow herders, um, you know, you need to have good farsighted vision, right? So you are, you could argue you're adapting to that. That, that is something you need. Whereas if you're growing up [laughs] in, in a Western urbanized environment and your parents heavily prioritize academia like many Asian parents do, then, you know, you're spending a lot of time in books, on screens with this kind of near vision. What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:00:56 So it's interesting you mention Asia, because in Asia, there is a very high incidence of myopia from childhood-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:02 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:01:02 ... and it seems to be rising. Um, and there is also, m- various studies have suggested a link between urban and rural upbringing as well, but then you had... There are lots of confounders there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:14 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:01:15 Um, so it is difficult to say, but there is no doubt that adaptation plays a role. So if you are in an environment, and for generations you have been, where you're looking in the distance, um, and there's no... And you're, you benefit more from looking in the distance than you do looking near, especially from childhood, then that, without a doubt, will have consequences. But in Asia, definitely in urban Asia-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:43 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:01:43 ... um, there is- If you read the ophthalmology journals, there are increasing numbers of reports that question what the reason is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:53 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:01:53 I mean, you know, there are lots of theories for it. So in Japan, they're also looking at something called glasses that let in violet light-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:01 Mm-hmm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:02:01 ... because violet light acts as a stimulant according to this particular theory to, for the eyeball to grow appropriately. It kind of prevents children from developing myopia. So we don't know whether it's exposure to light, to indoor light specifically, whether it's a combination of that and other things.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:19 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:02:19 But there's no doubt that the environment you're in is, is giving you the abilities, or it's honing your abilities in the direction that's most, that's most convenient, most suited for the environment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:33 Yeah. I've also read some research which is suggesting that for children, if they can spend two hours plus outside each day, that it dramatically reduces their incidence of myopia and needing glasses. Again, I, I, you know, I can't comment on the veracity of that research and what the confounders may have been in that, but I've certainly heard, uh, and read studies like that, which is-

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:02:58 Correct

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:58 ... kind of makes sense.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:02:59 It makes, it makes intuitive sense as well.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:02 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:03:02 Um, again, you know, coming back to the idea of assembly lines and the knowledge work where we make the hands work, we let the head fall asleep, then we make the head work, we let the body fall asleep. You know, this has consequences on the way we function, and our vision is one element of that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:23 Yeah. Um, there's so much more in that book we could cover. Um, I, I definitely wanna ask you about the blue zones. I know that you're friends with Dan Buettner. I know you were invited to go out, I think, to Sardinia to help them with their Netflix series. I'm fascinated by blue zones, so I'd love to ask you, you know, what was that experience like, and what were some of the things that surprised you?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:03:51 So, um, yes, I was involved with the Sardinia segment of the Live to 100, uh, series on Netflix. It was the most fascinating experience of my life because I would... So my part involved a little place called Seulo in Sardinia, and I've never been, I've never visited anywhere like it before in my life. It's a little, uh, town of, of around about 800 inhabitants, and it really is a living museum because it's very hard to get to. It's up in the mountains. It's not anywhere near where the traditional glamorous resorts of Sardinia are by the beach. It's all the way up in the mountains. And once you get there, it's the most astonishing feeling because you see all these extremely old human beings who look really happy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:50 Wow.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:04:51 Their wrinkles are not the kind of wrinkles we see in urban places.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:55 Wow.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:04:55 They're not frown lines. Their wrinkles are smile wrinkles, and they are very deep smile wrinkles, and they're all driving, they're all living slowly, and they seem to all have a smile on them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:10 Oh, wow.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:05:10 And it's also very clear that age and wisdom are deeply respected there. So I think the, the biggest lesson that I've, I've learned from Dan Buettner's work on the blue zones and visiting Seulo in Sardinia is how... And I suppose it kind of comes into this productivity-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:33 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:05:33 ... quality, quantity equation, is how we have engineered a world where things that we can pay for are the things that we value. Um, things that we produce and things that we can sell are the things that we value, and we forget the tremendous value of things like human wisdom, which is intricately tied to human age.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:02 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:06:03 So I, you know, as a little anecdote, uh, I met a, a young gentleman there, a young man there, who was saying how he goes to the bar to watch football matches with his mates. But if there's an old person there, someone who looks like he's above an- above 80, they would much rather forget the football and listen to stories.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:28 Wow.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:06:28 So elderly people walk into the bar full of these, you know, young, energetic young men keen to, you know, watch the score. But as soon as an elderly person comes in, that person has far more value than how many goals your team has.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:46 Wow.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:06:46 And that feeling is infused at every corner, and I think that's what makes that place so incredibly special because there was nothing of, you know, financial value there. But you could really feel, uh, you know, tangibly feel, perceive the value of age and wisdom and the love they have for that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:07:09 Oh. I, I just, just makes me light up inside hearing that. You know, it's these unmeasureables that are so valuable, right?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:07:18 Correct. They're qualitative, and qualitative things-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:07:20 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:07:20 ... are so much more difficult to measure than quantitative. I think another aspect of it is that one of the really important, um, points about the blue zones is that life isn't easy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:07:33 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:07:34 Life is incredibly hard in all of these blue zones. Um, work is a given. So for instance, in Sardinia, as, as you see, you would see on the Netflix series- Goat herders, goat herders, they, they, they, they wake up early in the morning, and they do their job every day, um, no matter what. And their work is grueling. It's tough to go up on the mountains, let alone when you're 100 years old. Um, but there is this sort of undulation to the way they work. So they go up and they work. You know, they, they go up, up... They wake up at 4:00, at dawn. They take their goats up at that early hour, when most of us would feel very, you know, uncomfortable rising from bed. But this is their life. And then once they come back down, they relax. They downshift, and they have a long period of relaxation. So they work at really high intensity, and then they work at lower intensity.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:32 Yeah, that's one of the things I, I, I loved in, in, in your book, Mithu, is you, you mention the blue zones. And I've written about blue zones. I've read Dan's books. I've been fascinated by this concept of what is going on in these long-living communities, and there's a lot of debate about it for sure. And there's many different factors. But you put forward in, in your latest book this idea that could it be the rhythmicity of their lives, that this ebb and flow, this up and down, this upregulation and downregulation, could that be one of the key components that is leading to their long, happy, and healthy lives? It's fascinating, isn't it?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:09:17 It's absolutely fas- ... And, and this is exactly true, and not just the ebbing and flowing, but the ebbing and flowing in tune with nature.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:09:28 So they rise when the sun rises, and they climb the mountain as the sun climbs the sky. And then they come back down, and in the period that I describe as the post-lunch dip, they take a nap. And then it's gentler, easier existence. Chatting with the neighbors, gossiping about neighbors.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:09:56 Doing that in a very gentle, easy way, but then they also have to make their bread. They have to make cheese from the goat's milk. So they still work, but it's the intensity of work and the winding down. And by the time it's evening, they wind down too, and they go to bed early because they have a very early start the following morning. So everything ... They also have a very controllable world. It's incredibly uncertain. So we can just pop to the supermarket to get some milk, but they use their goat's milk-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:36 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:10:36 ... right? So they actually have much more uncertainty, but in a strange way, because their life is simple and not complex, they know how everything works around them-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:48 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:10:48 ... and they can manage that uncertain- They, they have a sense of agency over the things around them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:54 And, and, and I guess it's also, yes, mind and body alignment, but also there's a physicality to the work. Certainly from what you're describing, it's not mind-based work sitting at a screen, right? Uh, at least for these goat herders, where there's actually, there is physical movements happening.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:11:18 Correct. So they, they have a silvopastoral way of life, which means that they really follow more or less the same sort of hunter-gatherer rhythms.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11:28 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:11:29 Because they work with their mind while they work with their bodies. When their bodies stop working, by and large, their minds slow down too.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11:38 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:11:38 So they work together.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11:41 It's interesting, re- this, I know we've touched on it already, but it really is fascinating to think about this idea that because of computers, we can now in the evening be physically exhausted, so the body is exhausted, yet you're still firing off emails or trying to get back to your boss, so your mind is active. And yeah, if we take that big-picture view, there's probably been very little occasion in the past where we've actually had that disassociation [laughs] between mind and body. So no wonder so many people are struggling with sleep, with happiness, with their wellbeing, with burnouts. You know, on, on that very kind of primal level, how can you be well if your mind and body are in different places?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:12:25 And don't forget blue light. So your mind isn't just in a different place, it's in a different time. So your body thinks it's evening, but your mind thinks-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:36 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:12:36 ... it doesn't really think because you know, but there are signals coming in that's telling your mind, "No, no, no, you have to be very, very alert." It's now peak afternoon, peak, you know, late morning with the, with the blue light intensity. So the light also plays a role.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:51 Was there anything else that surprised you in the blue zones? Maybe diet or things that they were eating or drinking, things that you weren't aware of before you went?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:12:59 I mean, every single blue zone has a very unique pattern of diet.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:04 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:13:04 Very, very unique pattern. And I think Dan Buettner's, uh, blue zone work summarizes what they have in common. So what they have in common is this idea of really making your own food, um, not having processed food, and by and large, growing your own food wherever you can.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:24 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:13:24 Um, but of course, every region has its little nuances.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:27 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:13:28 And, but we can't really factor that into the blue zones or into longevity per se, but you know, somewhere like Okinawa will be vastly different to somewhere like Sardinia.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:39 Yeah.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:13:39 But then the way they live, the customs, the religion, the society. Um, people in Okinawa, uh, sit on the floor, whereas people in Sardinia don't. For, you know, as an example. Um, there's goat herding, and there's a lot of gardening. So there are many, many differences between the two. But ... And it is very difficult to bring one common thread. But definitely the, the elements that have been identified, like in terms of diet, like not eating processed food, um, and also not eating to excess.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:16 Mm.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:14:16 So another important factor here is that because they work so hard, and by and large they eat the food that they produce-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:24 Mm

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:14:24 ... in various ways, they cannot overeat.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:27 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:14:28 So, uh, in Okinawa they practice this as hara hachi bu, but in places like Sardinia, it's an inevitable consequence-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:36 Yeah

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:14:36 ... of the way they live.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:37 Yeah. Absolutely fascinating. What a wonderful experience it must have been to go and see this firsthand. Mithu, I think you've, you've just done an incredible job with both of your books. Uh, Stress Proof a few years ago when you first came on the show I think was a wonderful book on stress. I, I still think a lot of the ideas in that, if, if not all of them, still hold true today. I think your new one, Hyperefficient, is wonderful as well. Um, to finish off this conversation then, you, you've covered such an important theme in this book, right? You're, you're really basically saying the way we are working has not worked very well for a period of time, and it's certainly not gonna work very well in the future as AI takes over a lot of these jobs and these low-grade tasks from humans. So for someone who's listening and is getting quite worried by that, going, "Wow, what, what my job may not be there in the future, and Mithu's talking about all these great ideas, but I, I just don't know how to implement them. I'm struggling to get through my day," what kind of advice would you give that person?

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:15:47 So the first advice I'd say is actually the future is very bright. Uh, th- this is the best time to be a human mind worker because you will have incredible assistance doing all the work that you don't like to do. So the best way to position yourself at this moment is to just take a step back and ask yourself how flexible are you mentally? How quickly can you learn? How open are you to learning? At the same time, really focus on what are the kind of mental work genres that you're especially good at. Do you have a creative side that has been buried away somewhere? Or do you have, do you have an extraordinary ability to focus and solve problems? Are you a problem solver? Are you the problem solver of your team? So find your strengths. Learn to learn. So find something to learn all the time. Find comfort in the discomfort of learning something that is completely new. And know that the future will actually be, if we play it right and we embrace technology in the right way, will actually bring us many, many more benefits, and will actually help us out of this very, very un- um, very abnormal way of working for the human brain that we've been forced to embrace for the last hundred years.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:17:19 Love it. Very, very optimistic way to finish this conversation. Mithu, it's a fantastic book. I think it's gonna help so many people. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Dr. Mithu Storoni 2:17:29 Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:17:30 If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one that I picked out especially.

2:17:36 So many people get stopped by procrastination. You know what you need to do. The issue is how do you make yourself take actions?