Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: it is a new year, so it's time to build
Speaker 1: a new you, to change the way you interact with
Speaker 1: the world and hack that brain. Right, that's right. That's
Speaker 1: why we have an episode of all sorts of tweaks
Speaker 1: that you can make. And before we launch into that,
Speaker 1: I wanted to just let you guys know of a
Speaker 1: new quick and dirty hack, and it's chewing gum. Huh yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Forbes has an interesting article called Chew Yourself a Better
Speaker 1: Brain by David Dissolvo, and it really talks about increasing
Speaker 1: blood flow to the brain, which can have all sorts
Speaker 1: of consequences and uh. In the article, Dissolvo outlines these merits,
Speaker 1: these consequences of gum chewing. We're talking about boosting memory, mood,
Speaker 1: and decreasing anxiety. But it does have its drawbacks, and
Speaker 1: the drawbacks have to do with test taking, because it
Speaker 1: turns out it's really important to chew that gum about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes before you take that test, but spit it
Speaker 1: out when you take the test because apparently the chewing
Speaker 1: of the gum and the thinking at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's too much of an energy drain. Interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to chew gum all the time here at
Speaker 1: work while I was researching and writing and all. But
Speaker 1: then I kind of phased it out about it about
Speaker 1: two years ago. Yeah, come um, it just seemed it
Speaker 1: seemed like it was getting excessive, Like maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be cheering gum all the time. And I think you
Speaker 1: gotta talking to you about all that gum underneath your desk, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean I couldn't fit my leg I
Speaker 1: can only fit my legs under my desk by putting
Speaker 1: them into two like tubes that were free of gums. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's what happens when you choose bubblicious. Indeed. Indeed,
Speaker 1: all right, so here you go. Maybe you didn't have
Speaker 1: your brain last year, but here are the recommendations once more.
Speaker 1: You know, Julie, we are in a new year, essentially
Speaker 1: a new studio, whole new set of rules. In a sense,
Speaker 1: its new year. Everybody is talking about, uh, you know
Speaker 1: what you're gonna change, How this year is going to
Speaker 1: be different last year? We're just gonna go to write
Speaker 1: that one off. But this year, this is the year
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen, or this is the year it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. I swear, Okay, blank slate, folks, how are
Speaker 1: you going to fill it in? What you're gonna do,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna change. Yeah, we have an artificial new
Speaker 1: starting virtue of the calendar. So so yeah, what what
Speaker 1: does it take to change behavior? That's the big question.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people have put in another two
Speaker 1: cents on this. A lot of people have sold their
Speaker 1: two cents on this to a public that is ever
Speaker 1: interested in changing themselves for the better. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: there's that three week myth that persists, this idea that
Speaker 1: in order to change a habit or make a new one,
Speaker 1: all you need is twenty one days consecutive of days
Speaker 1: and boom, there you go. You are now going to
Speaker 1: be a Mandarin expert or some other uh jiu jitsu
Speaker 1: warrior of knowledge and something. Yeah, which, of course is
Speaker 1: ridiculous when you pair it up with the with the
Speaker 1: other addedge, you hear a lot about ten thousand hours,
Speaker 1: isn't it ten thousand hours towards something and you'll be
Speaker 1: you'll be, you'll be great at it. Ten thousand hours,
Speaker 1: a good bit longer than twenty one days. But where
Speaker 1: does the twenty one days thing come from? Well, you
Speaker 1: start trying to track it down, you kind of lose
Speaker 1: your path in the in the history. But it seems
Speaker 1: to have grown increasingly popular back in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: due to a self help book called psycho Cybernetics, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a good source. Who wouldn't trust the bettering
Speaker 1: of their their their, their, their humanity to a book
Speaker 1: called psycho Cybernetics and from the seventies, from the seventies,
Speaker 1: which I'm just I haven't looked it up yet, but
Speaker 1: I can already imagine that the cover to that book,
Speaker 1: because I have looked at some nineteen seventies books on
Speaker 1: self help. Yeah, and again that's where this idea came from.
Speaker 1: The self help boat said, Hey, just twenty one days,
Speaker 1: that's all it takes. But as we're going to discuss,
Speaker 1: it's much more complex than that, and we'll get to
Speaker 1: an idea of what it takes in terms of days,
Speaker 1: the consecutive amount of time. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the habit loop and what's happening inside
Speaker 1: of our brains. New York Times business writer Charles Doig says,
Speaker 1: habit loops they contain three parts. Okay, First, there's a
Speaker 1: cue or a trigger that tells your brain to go
Speaker 1: into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold. Okay. Second,
Speaker 1: he says, there's the routine, which is the behavior itself.
Speaker 1: And then the third step, he says, is the reward,
Speaker 1: something that your brain likes that helps it to remember
Speaker 1: that habit loop in the future. So like an example
Speaker 1: of this would be the trigger. What's setting this off is, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel kind of low energy in the afternoon, and
Speaker 1: then what should I do? All Right, the automatic behavior
Speaker 1: is I should go and have a soda. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have the big sugary grape soda. And then the reward
Speaker 1: where it is I feel at least a temporary boost
Speaker 1: due to all that sugar in my body. Right, And
Speaker 1: if you keep doing that over and over again, eventually
Speaker 1: those cues, those environmental cues will start to work on you.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe it's three o'clock and you're tired and
Speaker 1: you need that break, and you get that you look
Speaker 1: at the clock and you see that's three o'clock, and
Speaker 1: that becomes one of the cues that adds up in
Speaker 1: this database of I want the soda. Yeah, it's time
Speaker 1: for the soda. The soda. Time to to press the
Speaker 1: hot key on soda behavior. Now, in part, we can
Speaker 1: trace habit making back to the basil ganglia, which also
Speaker 1: plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories,
Speaker 1: and pattern recognition. So decisions meanwhile, though, they are made
Speaker 1: in the prefrontal cortex. And this is really interesting. As
Speaker 1: soon as a behavior becomes automatic, the decision making part
Speaker 1: of your brain goes into a kind of sleep mode. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and in this the basil gangla is the essentially
Speaker 1: it takes the behavior and turns it into an automatic routine.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a hot key, you know, like like when
Speaker 1: you're using Photoshop or any other program, you have that
Speaker 1: hot key, like you know, it's all control or whatever.
Speaker 1: I used to have a zillion of a memorize when
Speaker 1: I was using in design for a living. And uh,
Speaker 1: and so you just go to this automatic behavior, all right,
Speaker 1: just push these these quick keys and we'll do some
Speaker 1: sort of automatic function on the page you're working on. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we do that in our lives. We do that
Speaker 1: when because we're driving to work, as we're trying to
Speaker 1: navigate the hallways of our house without you know, busting
Speaker 1: our elbow and something. Well, Andrewig says that there's a
Speaker 1: real um boon to us when we do that, because
Speaker 1: in a sense, your brain starts working less and less,
Speaker 1: and he says, the brain can almost completely shut down.
Speaker 1: And this is an advantage because it means that you
Speaker 1: have all of this mental activity that you can devote
Speaker 1: to something else. It's why you can listen to stuff
Speaker 1: about your mind while walking to the bus station, while
Speaker 1: driving to work, or while doing you know, data entry
Speaker 1: in an Excel spreadsheet. Right, So because it's all this
Speaker 1: has become habituated and wrote and routinized, and we need
Speaker 1: all this stuff, right, we need this kind of predictability.
Speaker 1: But of course the problem becomes when we want to
Speaker 1: change that Hagar and he says that if you want
Speaker 1: to change it or create a new one, you have
Speaker 1: to game those three aspects. So you have to gain
Speaker 1: that trigger or that queue and know that it could
Speaker 1: be boredom or that you're tired, and acknowledge that that
Speaker 1: is the reason, not just that it's three o'clock and
Speaker 1: it's time for that soda. You kind of have to
Speaker 1: break it down and kind of go slow mo with
Speaker 1: your thinking. Um. He also said that you have to
Speaker 1: disrupt the routine and the reward. You have to figure
Speaker 1: that out too. You have to say, Okay, fine, this
Speaker 1: might give me a temporary lift, but how gross am
Speaker 1: I going to feel a half hour later when all
Speaker 1: that sugar is sitting in my belly? Um. And then
Speaker 1: he also said that you can replace that reward, so
Speaker 1: instead of having that soda, you could take a walk.
Speaker 1: And this was really helpful to me when I quit drinking, actually,
Speaker 1: because I had noticed that between the hours of six
Speaker 1: and eight pm at nine that were sort of my
Speaker 1: witching hours, and I would go and work out instead
Speaker 1: of reaching for a glass of wine. Uh. And that's
Speaker 1: replaced that reward for me, and it disrupted the routine,
Speaker 1: So it was really helpful. Yeah. I mean, he stresses
Speaker 1: that with a lot of things are related to behavior.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is just realizing the patterns of behavior,
Speaker 1: being able to look in the mirror and and be
Speaker 1: self aware of what's going on. And you have to remember,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this a lot before. That these are
Speaker 1: neural pathways that once you just have it over and
Speaker 1: over again, they become really grooved in your brain. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that is a pathway that's easy for those signals
Speaker 1: to trot upon. So if you do it less, then
Speaker 1: it becomes you know, the strength of those pathways decreases.
Speaker 1: It will always be there because you created the pathway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and ultimately it's creating new behaviors. Forging new pathways,
Speaker 1: it's easier as opposed to getting rid of old ones.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can think of a think of it
Speaker 1: in terms of art. You have a road between two cities.
Speaker 1: At what are you gonna do? Are you gonna shut
Speaker 1: down one road completely and then build another one that
Speaker 1: you're gonna You're gonna build an additional road and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna sort of and then then that new road
Speaker 1: is going to replace the old one. If you just
Speaker 1: cut off the road, then how are we gonna get
Speaker 1: where we're going? How am I going to deal with
Speaker 1: the the trigger effect of needing that soda in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: I like that idea that there are parallel paths and
Speaker 1: that's how you replace the one after a while, and
Speaker 1: you kind of put those detour signs. On the other one,
Speaker 1: it always exists with the detour signs. Yeah. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the problems with any sort of habit
Speaker 1: that you pick up again a bad habit, is that
Speaker 1: as soon as you you engage in that behavior, those
Speaker 1: pathways go, oh, I remember this road. I haven't taken
Speaker 1: it in a long time. And like you said, the
Speaker 1: environment is a big thing. I like if I if I,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I chose the soda habit. I
Speaker 1: haven't actually had a soda in forever, but it's a
Speaker 1: good good model because I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: have this temptation. Uh So in this case, in this example,
Speaker 1: I'm drinking sodas in the office. So the office is
Speaker 1: the environment in which this behavior has become ingrained. So
Speaker 1: one thing that actually helps is stepping outside of the environment.
Speaker 1: That that that that makes this behavior acceptable. Now, changing
Speaker 1: your environment is not a cure all, but it can
Speaker 1: disrupt some some of that that routine. And that's why
Speaker 1: going on a vacation is often side. It is a
Speaker 1: good example of a of a time to to try
Speaker 1: to break away from a routine. And it's also whining.
Speaker 1: Vacations are often really comforting because we're breaking away from
Speaker 1: a number of routines, even if they're not necessarily you know,
Speaker 1: bad for us. Maybe they're just you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: free from some of the change you weren't even aware of.
Speaker 1: It was so much easier to slow down in that
Speaker 1: automated behavior, look at it and say, oh, why am
Speaker 1: I reaching for this? Why am I doing this? You're right,
Speaker 1: because you don't have those environmental triggers. Now, there is
Speaker 1: a kind of average of days, at least in one
Speaker 1: study that shows that there are certain habits that you
Speaker 1: can pick up good habits. Let's say and sixty six days. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the average of days that it took participants
Speaker 1: to have a behavior become automatic. This is a study
Speaker 1: led by Philippa Lally and she's a psychologist at University
Speaker 1: College London. So we are talking about this length of
Speaker 1: time varying anywhere from eighteen days to two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty four. Sixty six was just the average. And some
Speaker 1: habits we're talking about, drinking a bottle of water after
Speaker 1: lunch turned out to be a lot stickier, only took
Speaker 1: fifty nine days on the average. Because that's I mean,
Speaker 1: how difficult is that you're just tipping the bottle. But
Speaker 1: what about doing fifty sit ups each morning? Much harder
Speaker 1: to do nine one days. So other findings were that
Speaker 1: missing a single day did not reduce the chance of
Speaker 1: forming habits. That's good news. And a subgroup, it turns out,
Speaker 1: took a lot longer than the others to form their habits,
Speaker 1: and this suggests that some people are habit resistant. And
Speaker 1: of course other types of habits may take much longer
Speaker 1: than make you know, two four days for instance, for me,
Speaker 1: the sit ups that would that would be like three
Speaker 1: sixty five days for me. So what about you? What
Speaker 1: would be the easiest thing and the hardest thing? Like
Speaker 1: what would take you eighteen days? And what would take
Speaker 1: you well, I guess obviously something I enjoy doing. Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of people who who right are aware of
Speaker 1: this hundred words a day thing where the idea is
Speaker 1: all right, life busy, but you really want to work
Speaker 1: on you know, that novel or work on short stories,
Speaker 1: to write a little poetry. So you just make sure
Speaker 1: you take out time, just carve with just a sliver
Speaker 1: of time to do one hundred words, just you know,
Speaker 1: open up your your word document, you know, grab a
Speaker 1: notebook on words and then you can move on. So
Speaker 1: that would probably be easier for me, just because obviously
Speaker 1: the reward, the reward is also in doing it. It's
Speaker 1: something that I enjoy doing, and so that would be
Speaker 1: something would be easier for me to do. And you
Speaker 1: already have a huge writing muscle, yeah, exactly, so that
Speaker 1: one would be easy. Also I'll have to do is
Speaker 1: open a document or or grab a pet. But uh,
Speaker 1: one of the would be much harder, and one that
Speaker 1: I also would very much like to do would be,
Speaker 1: you know, to do yoga on a much more regular
Speaker 1: basis these days. But for that, obviously I've got to
Speaker 1: carve out a much larger piece of time, like you know,
Speaker 1: at least twenty minutes ideally like an hour. I need
Speaker 1: to either go to a space where I can do
Speaker 1: the yoga or find a space both uh, both physical
Speaker 1: and mental in which to do it every day or
Speaker 1: a few days a week, and it becomes increasingly complex.
Speaker 1: I read that if then statements help with us because
Speaker 1: a lot of times we'll say we want to do this,
Speaker 1: but when we find reasons not to do things, and
Speaker 1: the idea is that instead of finding those reasons not
Speaker 1: to do it. You say to yourself, if it's Monday
Speaker 1: and it's noon and I have thirty minutes, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to X space and do yoga, and that
Speaker 1: that becomes more of an action item in your brain
Speaker 1: as opposed to a plan. Really well, it's like a program,
Speaker 1: you know, because it reminds me like the settings and
Speaker 1: email if you've ever looked at that, where you can
Speaker 1: set things like if this, then that then X. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like and essentially that's what we're talking about, reprogramming
Speaker 1: the self to incorporate new actions or to in some
Speaker 1: cases eliminate other actions or choose one action over another.
Speaker 1: Of course, all of this requires self control and will power.
Speaker 1: And we'll take a quick break and when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about this muscle of self control that
Speaker 1: we can cultivate for ourselves. Okay, we're back, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the role of self control and
Speaker 1: willpower because of course, you can't just have this um
Speaker 1: then like moment with your brain where you slow everything
Speaker 1: down and you examine how and why you're doing things.
Speaker 1: You also have to have the will to change that habit. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we've we've podcasted exclusively on will in some past
Speaker 1: episodes before and it's, uh, it's a fascinating topic because it's,
Speaker 1: like most things in life, it's not quite what you
Speaker 1: think it is when you actually stop and examine. Willpower
Speaker 1: is not a a set level. It's not like you know,
Speaker 1: playing Dungeons and Dragons where you you roll the dice
Speaker 1: and you have that that set number that that you
Speaker 1: may modify with some magical spells here and there. It's
Speaker 1: it's something that that fluctuates throughout the day based on
Speaker 1: where we are, where our attention is at, what our
Speaker 1: diet consists of, what kind of UH stimuli we're exposed to.
Speaker 1: And the good news is that it is a behavior
Speaker 1: and not something that's hardwired, so it can be changed.
Speaker 1: In fact, in a two thousand meta study of self control,
Speaker 1: Mark Moravin and Roy F. Baumeister we've heard from him before,
Speaker 1: they set out to answer the question does self control
Speaker 1: resemble a muscle? And yes, they say if willpower is
Speaker 1: like a muscle, and muscles can get stronger over time training,
Speaker 1: will power similar can be trained and strengthened. And they
Speaker 1: found this and that meta study. In addition, Australian researchers
Speaker 1: Megan Otan and Ken Chang looked at this question and
Speaker 1: they took a group of people through a customized two
Speaker 1: month exercise program. What do they find. Well, of course
Speaker 1: the people get stronger, um they developed more muscles, but
Speaker 1: they also found that their behaviors, their their self control,
Speaker 1: their willpower changed with the addition of the actual physical muscles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is pretty amazing, and that they threw out the example.
Speaker 1: There's like a like a pebble in a lake, there's
Speaker 1: this ripple effect. You start in stelling willpower into one
Speaker 1: area of your life, and it actually bleeds over into
Speaker 1: other areas of your life because the overall willpower level increases.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about us in the context of the
Speaker 1: bit we found out about how a full bladder can
Speaker 1: actually help with will power at least, you know, temporarily,
Speaker 1: because if you have a full bladder, your brain is
Speaker 1: suppressing the urge to p on yourself essentially, and as
Speaker 1: a result, it is suppressing everything else. So not just
Speaker 1: you over eating at the buffet, but controlling your bladder
Speaker 1: and perhaps not having a cigarette at that very moment.
Speaker 1: It's why drinking more water is such a no brainer
Speaker 1: for for New Year's resolutions, because more water good for
Speaker 1: your body. You're mostly water anyway, right, you can you
Speaker 1: can line up all the health and if it's there,
Speaker 1: but your bladder is going to be more full more
Speaker 1: of the time, thus allowing you to better suppress other
Speaker 1: temptations in your life. There you go. That's a tip
Speaker 1: right there. More water. All right. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the specifics of the study. We're talking about again. A
Speaker 1: two month period in which the participants hit the gym
Speaker 1: three times a week, and before, during, and after the
Speaker 1: exercise that grew group was tested on a visual task
Speaker 1: that measured willpower via distraction and thought suppression. Now, after
Speaker 1: two months, the air rate went down for the group
Speaker 1: from tree to twelve percent, So in other words, they
Speaker 1: were able to not pay attention to those distractions to
Speaker 1: be more focused, and they had that decrease in their
Speaker 1: brain just sort of going willy nilly about things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing too, is that when I first
Speaker 1: started reading some of those thinking, all right, the other
Speaker 1: areas they're going to be affecting their life. It's going
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, well they ate a little more
Speaker 1: broccoli or something easy like that. But now the the
Speaker 1: improvements that they saw related to stuff like cigarette smoking,
Speaker 1: alcohol consumption, held be eating, exercise, and household chore. So
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that cigarettes and alcohol were also
Speaker 1: affected things that you often think. I was having their
Speaker 1: talents a little deeper into the psyche um to see
Speaker 1: to see those areas affected as well by this ripple
Speaker 1: effect is really encouraged. Yeah, and the behavior was all
Speaker 1: over the place. It might be that someone missed appointments
Speaker 1: a lot, in which case they found that a purse
Speaker 1: and went from missing an appointment every day to like
Speaker 1: once a week, or in the case of the cigarettes,
Speaker 1: down from fourteen cigarettes a day to just three. That
Speaker 1: is amazing. Yeah. Alright, So coming back to the old
Speaker 1: idea that we talked about at the beginning of the episode,
Speaker 1: the idea that I apply X amount of time towards something,
Speaker 1: towards a new skill, a new discipline, a new subject.
Speaker 1: I can become an expert. I can make this my own,
Speaker 1: I can own this content. So yes and no. Alright,
Speaker 1: Because if you think about someone being a master of
Speaker 1: their universe, you typically think of like then Franklin or
Speaker 1: Leonardo Adventure. These are people who were true polymus who
Speaker 1: could attack new topics, consume them and by habit they
Speaker 1: could do this right now. Some people would say that
Speaker 1: that was the hundreds of the world was much smaller.
Speaker 1: There are fewer tones to go through and become an expert.
Speaker 1: Now we have so much more knowledge, so it's a
Speaker 1: lot more difficult, and you could say that in some
Speaker 1: senses are our willpower, our ability to really concentrate has
Speaker 1: been deluded by all of this knowledge. But it remains
Speaker 1: that if you do something, namely repetition, that you can
Speaker 1: still learn new things, and you may even become an
Speaker 1: expert on you know that ten thousand hours that Malcolm
Speaker 1: Cloud will always talked about. That's a possibility in there too.
Speaker 1: But if you just want to sort of pick up
Speaker 1: guitar or you know, stop smoking, drinking, all of these
Speaker 1: things are available to you. You just need to document
Speaker 1: it and uh repeat wash repeat, yeah, making making a
Speaker 1: pattern of it, regularly consuming it. Be at a hundred
Speaker 1: words a day, be a guitar lessons, or be it. Hey,
Speaker 1: here's a good one. You can listen to a new
Speaker 1: episode of stuff to blow your mind every day for
Speaker 1: a year. I think we have enough now, oh dear, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And you have to document it. This is the important part,
Speaker 1: and this is where we bring up Karen x Chang. Okay,
Speaker 1: she is kind of then, I think the best example
Speaker 1: of this kind of muscle flexing of self control. Now,
Speaker 1: she not only was a program manager of Microsoft Excel.
Speaker 1: At the same time that she was doing this full
Speaker 1: time job, she decided, oh, hey, I think I want
Speaker 1: to teach myself computer graphics. She did within a six
Speaker 1: month period, and then she got a new job as
Speaker 1: a designer at Exact, this is a startup in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Along the way, she taught herself all sorts of things
Speaker 1: like guitar, and she began to realize that she had
Speaker 1: a process in place that could allow her to enjoy
Speaker 1: and explore all the things that she found fascinating. And
Speaker 1: she started a website called give It one dot com.
Speaker 1: And this is based on her own video that went viral.
Speaker 1: Some people may be familiar with this, in which she
Speaker 1: taught herself to dance in a year and every day
Speaker 1: she documented herself and it's a great video because it
Speaker 1: starts up with her doing these sort of awkward popping
Speaker 1: looks like I'm doing right now but you can't see,
Speaker 1: and then she becomes this beautiful fluid dancer after three
Speaker 1: and sixty five days. So what what did she give it?
Speaker 1: A hundred off? Well, the idea is that one hundred
Speaker 1: one hundred days is something that a person can sort
Speaker 1: of do like that what she did, although sort of
Speaker 1: three sixty five light right. So in other words, you
Speaker 1: pick a project, you document yourself. Every day you upload
Speaker 1: a video. I think there's only like ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds of the video that shows on the site, but
Speaker 1: you can see real progress after a number of days.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that she says is
Speaker 1: really important in trying to learn something new or do
Speaker 1: something that you not just document that you do it
Speaker 1: over and over again, but that you can see where
Speaker 1: you're going with this. Yeah. Yeah, and so the YouTube
Speaker 1: us of YouTube here achieves that but also is a
Speaker 1: great documentation system. Yeah. So, I mean, if anybody's interested,
Speaker 1: I would say check that out. Um. Personally, I'm playing
Speaker 1: around with the idea of doing that because I would
Speaker 1: love to conquer the accordions are enough playing around with
Speaker 1: a pretending like I'm in some Parisian cafe entertaining folks
Speaker 1: and having their ears bleed. Well, what you need to
Speaker 1: do is do it on your drive to work. That's
Speaker 1: a great idea. Yeah, I think it would work, Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean because things are pretty automated when when it
Speaker 1: comes to driving, why not you get you get one
Speaker 1: of those uh those little uh little cameras that going
Speaker 1: to dashboard, uh, turn it your yourself, and then every
Speaker 1: morning is you drive to work, you're playing the accordion.
Speaker 1: I think that the lawyers of Discovery dot com are
Speaker 1: gonna love this. I think they will, and that secretly
Speaker 1: they will love it. Um. But but I should also
Speaker 1: mention the hundred words a day thing. I was talking
Speaker 1: a bit earlier. Now I am remembering that in the
Speaker 1: the official uh prescribed version of that, um, you are
Speaker 1: keeping track of your word count, like you're saying, yes
Speaker 1: I did, I did a hundred fifty day, I did
Speaker 1: two d the day before and all that, so that
Speaker 1: you you have some level of accountability too. That's because
Speaker 1: presumably somebody is looking at your YouTube videos. Presumably somebody
Speaker 1: is looking at you know, the little ticker that you
Speaker 1: have at the bottom of your web page that says
Speaker 1: how many how many words you're you're pumping out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know about give it one dot com but
Speaker 1: I do know the one hundred words a day. If
Speaker 1: you don't write, they will send you an email a
Speaker 1: little nasty Graham saying hey, you need to do this,
Speaker 1: which is always really helpful, and that's probably a good, good,
Speaker 1: good bit of info for me. Though. About all this
Speaker 1: is because I should if I'm gonna do the hundred
Speaker 1: words a day, I should maybe do the official version
Speaker 1: to where there's a little more accountability and it's not
Speaker 1: just so I forgot for three weeks. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: you know, as I moved through this year and master
Speaker 1: the accordion and then make everybody's ears bleed, how about
Speaker 1: in six months time? Should we say six months we
Speaker 1: we all meet back here in six months I'll play
Speaker 1: for you guys. Um, as I think about this, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna think about that habit loop and those triggers, right um,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna think about my little basil ganglia. I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask it to back off, although I might say, hey,
Speaker 1: you can go ahead and do this when I get
Speaker 1: really good it becomes an automated behavior. But I'm also
Speaker 1: going to think about that repetition and uh, we'll see
Speaker 1: after sixty six days to where I land on this
Speaker 1: if this becomes pretty decent terms of my ability to play.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, thanks for listening. Hope that this episode
Speaker 1: helped your bring good, all nice and shiny for the
Speaker 1: new year. Indeed, and hey, if you need some other tips,
Speaker 1: we let your head on over to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com because that's where you will find
Speaker 1: all the podcast episodes, all the videos, all the blog
Speaker 1: posts we've ever done. There's a nice search bar at
Speaker 1: the top, and you can just top, you know, pop
Speaker 1: something in, pop in brain, pop in self help, pop
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, memory, and to see what you find.
Speaker 1: You might have pop in fully clothed naked men, and
Speaker 1: you'll see what you get men with clothes on. All right, Um,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to send us your thoughts, you can
Speaker 1: do so by emailing us that blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: house to works dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.