Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: and this is our first recorded episode back from the
Speaker 1: Christmas New Year's e break. You're gonna be getting this,
Speaker 1: you know a little later in January, but this is
Speaker 1: our the first episode we're recording of the New year.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask, Julie, what did you get
Speaker 1: for Christmas? Thank you for asking. I got an accordion?
Speaker 1: Whoa button accordion? Now? What? Now? What is a button accordion?
Speaker 1: Because with accordions I tend to picture like there's that
Speaker 1: little the little deal that you see hoboes and monkeys playing,
Speaker 1: and then there's like the big, honking like weird Ari
Speaker 1: Yankovic Polish Grandfather model. It's sort between those two. Cost
Speaker 1: wise to you, by the way, I'm telling you this
Speaker 1: is crazy. With accordions, they're either like they just go
Speaker 1: up super high. So of course the model I have
Speaker 1: is a reasonable dollar amount, um. But as a result
Speaker 1: is the button one, and it's actually simpler and um.
Speaker 1: The button one has buttons instead of keyboards on one side,
Speaker 1: but it still has that delicious sound that it makes
Speaker 1: when it's you know, um exhaling and inhaling air. That's
Speaker 1: what I do. You have a history with with this
Speaker 1: versus a new endeavor that you're setting out on. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've always been obsessed with them, and um, I always
Speaker 1: wanted one, and my my husband finally said, hey, because
Speaker 1: it's one of the things I wasn't gonna go I
Speaker 1: and buy for myself. Right, But what does this mean
Speaker 1: for me? Yes, okay, it means that, Um, not only
Speaker 1: do I need to learn how to do you know
Speaker 1: these great polka songs that I have to um, sit
Speaker 1: down with a book and learn how to do this,
Speaker 1: I need to use some self control, some willpower. Right.
Speaker 1: And that's the at this time of year that's on
Speaker 1: everyone's mind because New Year's I mean everybody's thinking what
Speaker 1: am I going to do with my New Year? What's
Speaker 1: going to be different this time? Um? You know, because
Speaker 1: there are some people maybe thinking, oh, can I have
Speaker 1: a little more. I knew where I stood in twelve,
Speaker 1: I knew what was going on. I just want to
Speaker 1: stick with that. Well, you can't new year, new things
Speaker 1: going on, So we inevitably end up thinking about things
Speaker 1: we can change. What are we going to do differently?
Speaker 1: And uh and and ultimately we have to face the
Speaker 1: question do we have the the the stick with it?
Speaker 1: Do we have the willpower? Do we have the grit,
Speaker 1: the grit to really make it happen? Do I have
Speaker 1: the grit to poka? Yeah? And I have a feeling
Speaker 1: you do? I think? I think? I think so too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see. You know, if if I get decent at it,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll play for you guys. That would be awesome
Speaker 1: in two years. Well, now now that everyone's going to
Speaker 1: be be wanting and wanting, if they're gonna ride in
Speaker 1: and they're gonna say when is you? Theyre going to
Speaker 1: play the accordion on the part I know. And you guys,
Speaker 1: don't encourage me because I'll just do it every single
Speaker 1: podcast and you'll be like why uh, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this is something I really want to do. And
Speaker 1: so right there there's some motivation, but it turns up
Speaker 1: that's not going to be enough. It's not. No. I
Speaker 1: need to bear down and figure out what willpower is
Speaker 1: and how I can game it. And in order to
Speaker 1: do so, we need to look at willpower and and
Speaker 1: try to get at the bottom of it, scratch at it.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that we can do that
Speaker 1: is we can look towards the American Psychological Association and
Speaker 1: they define willpower as the ability to delay gratification, resisting
Speaker 1: short term temptations in order to meet long term goals.
Speaker 1: The capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse.
Speaker 1: So clearly, if I'm trying to play, I cannot listen
Speaker 1: to my body if it says it has to get
Speaker 1: up and go use the restroom. Right, if that sounds
Speaker 1: reasonable for right? Um, the ability to employ a cool
Speaker 1: cognitive system of behavior rather than a hot emotional system.
Speaker 1: So I can't like go crazy with the according and
Speaker 1: if I'm angry and I'm not doing well and like
Speaker 1: smash it to smithereens right, I got to stay the course. Um.
Speaker 1: And then a limited resource capable of being depleted. So
Speaker 1: this is not something that I should probably undertake after
Speaker 1: a day of crunching numbers, making big decisions. Um. Being
Speaker 1: mentally fatigued. Yeah, this may remind some people of the
Speaker 1: whole the whole idea of of ego depletion and decision
Speaker 1: fatigue that we've touched on a number of times, and
Speaker 1: and that the research into decision fatigue really stems from
Speaker 1: research into willpower and temptation and and and we'll get
Speaker 1: into more of that as as we us as we
Speaker 1: moved through this this podcast. But you know, at this
Speaker 1: time of year, I find like the the easiest models
Speaker 1: that people tend to go to for understanding willpower. Of course,
Speaker 1: it comes to do I have the will to go
Speaker 1: out and do something I don't want to do? Exercise?
Speaker 1: Do I have the will to resist doing something I
Speaker 1: really wanted to eat? Chocolate or junk food? I mean
Speaker 1: right now that in in our brake room somebody brought
Speaker 1: in a big hanking box of like gourmet chocolates. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they're Harry's chocolates or something. Yeah yeah, And
Speaker 1: and and I know exactly what they were doing. They're like,
Speaker 1: I must get rid of this. The temptation is too
Speaker 1: great for me to eat all of these. So they
Speaker 1: brought them into the break room, dumped them, and just
Speaker 1: let everyone have at it. But the thing about those
Speaker 1: chocolates I have to at this point is that they've
Speaker 1: probably been sitting there for six days. No, no, they've
Speaker 1: been sitting there two days, only two days. Yeah, okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that because no, okay, because I I
Speaker 1: considered having a bite, and then I thought, you know
Speaker 1: what if it's just like the other stuff, it's been
Speaker 1: out for a while. Yeah, I put them there, and
Speaker 1: I keep I keep sneaking them back into into his office,
Speaker 1: and I think he was just thrown away first. And
Speaker 1: then I started like mashing them into the keyboard a little,
Speaker 1: and then he had to dig him out with his fingers.
Speaker 1: And by the end of it, he's so covered with
Speaker 1: the chocolate. He just gives into the temptation. There you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know a lot of this, this idea of
Speaker 1: like especially with chocolate things, things like chocolate. We've we've
Speaker 1: discussed this before. It's something that our body wants and
Speaker 1: our body needs. And in a simpler time it would
Speaker 1: be harder to get that candy sugar rush. Now we
Speaker 1: live in an age where you can pretty much eat
Speaker 1: all the sugar you can possibly stand and uh, and
Speaker 1: then our bodies have to pay the price for that.
Speaker 1: So temptation is uh. We see it in other animals
Speaker 1: as well, as we'll discuss. But there's there's something distinctly
Speaker 1: human about so much of this idea of temptation and
Speaker 1: willpower about all right, In a simple sense, our body
Speaker 1: is wanting something that our mind knows we shouldn't have. Now,
Speaker 1: we've discussed the body mind connection in previous episodes, so
Speaker 1: I think we all know that it's a little more
Speaker 1: complicated than that. We're not just this brain creature living
Speaker 1: in this flesh body creature. If we look back at
Speaker 1: some of the philosophy of willpower and choice, if you
Speaker 1: look back at the words of Plato, Plato argued that
Speaker 1: the human experience is one of constant struggle between the
Speaker 1: intellect and the body, between rationality and desire. So along
Speaker 1: those lines of truth, freedom is only available when willpower
Speaker 1: unchanges from bodily emotional, instinctual slavery. So okay, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know it's I think it's one of the things
Speaker 1: that is the tradeoff of having um, you know, highly
Speaker 1: complex exprain. Right, is that these are all these sorts
Speaker 1: of things will present themselves as temptations to as humans,
Speaker 1: probably more so than other species. Right. And what did
Speaker 1: Oscar while to say about temptation? He said, and this
Speaker 1: is from Roy and Gray, and this is the character
Speaker 1: in that book, a hedonistic character that shows up says
Speaker 1: the only way to get rid of temptation is to
Speaker 1: yield to it, resist it, and your soul grows sick
Speaker 1: with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
Speaker 1: So there's a bit of truth to that. It's interesting,
Speaker 1: like the Platonic model and then this Oscar Wild model,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better description, there's the idea that
Speaker 1: will power is the victory of the mind over the body,
Speaker 1: and it's a very it's a winnable thing if you're
Speaker 1: smart enough and you're you have enough fortitude. And then
Speaker 1: there's this Wild model where it's ultimately this hopeless battle.
Speaker 1: Like you can think. You may think you're going to
Speaker 1: defeat the chocolate. You may think you're gonna start going
Speaker 1: to yoga or spin class every you know, three days
Speaker 1: a week or whatever your your January first plan is.
Speaker 1: But wait, by the end of January, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: facing a different story. Now this is jumping ahead a
Speaker 1: little bit about we're going to discuss, but it would
Speaker 1: be interesting to look back at Klato's childhood and Oscar
Speaker 1: Wild and see the amount of stability in each of
Speaker 1: their childhood's and whether or not it was a good
Speaker 1: predictor of their own ability to self control. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about willpower across species, because this is interesting. Yes,
Speaker 1: and as we as we mentioned, certainly humans have it
Speaker 1: more complex than any other creature because we have this
Speaker 1: this culture and these all these ideas about what we
Speaker 1: need to do, and we're we're more self conscious in
Speaker 1: a very real way. But we have performed experiments to
Speaker 1: see if if willpower is exerted elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1: So it turns out studies have shown that that dogs
Speaker 1: can resist temptation. Chimpanzees can distract themselves from sweets with
Speaker 1: other objects, which is particularly interesting because some people do that.
Speaker 1: They try and just like, don't think about the chocolates
Speaker 1: in the brake room. Instead, let's focus on work. Let's
Speaker 1: buffle down, or let's listen to some music or I'm
Speaker 1: you know, something to distract me from the fact that
Speaker 1: the temptation is there. You don't want to go and
Speaker 1: bring the chocolate to your desk because then it's going
Speaker 1: to be even harder. Yeah, mentally, out of sight, out
Speaker 1: of mind. And it's also been found that, like the dog,
Speaker 1: dogs can resist temptation with a little extra glucose, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into the glucose connection to all this
Speaker 1: as well. But but that's again something we've touched on
Speaker 1: when we've discussed a decision fatigue, the idea that you
Speaker 1: can take some glucose and then that will give you
Speaker 1: a boost that you need. Yeah, that's right, because again,
Speaker 1: you've got a finite amount of mental resources and they
Speaker 1: are often taxed when you are hungry and fatigued, and
Speaker 1: so giving yourself a shot of glucose is a nice
Speaker 1: way to bolster your self control. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: keep thinking of a video game model for all of this.
Speaker 1: You know, where you're playing a video game and there's
Speaker 1: like maybe there's like a life meter that fills up
Speaker 1: and depletes a little as you're injured, and then there's
Speaker 1: maybe a stamina meter that depletes as your character runs
Speaker 1: around in the game world, and ultimately a that's the
Speaker 1: way it is in the real world. You have these
Speaker 1: finite resources that you use throughout the day, be it
Speaker 1: physical energy or this emotional intellectual energy, this ego, this
Speaker 1: cognitive load, and different things will take a notch out
Speaker 1: of it. So in the same way that your life
Speaker 1: depletes every time a Goblin statue in the gut with
Speaker 1: a sword. Every time you have to deal with a
Speaker 1: really lofty decision or small decision, or just resisting the
Speaker 1: chocolate that's in the brake room, it depletes your your
Speaker 1: willpower meet just a little more. And if that thing
Speaker 1: bottoms out, then you're eating chocolate. Well, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting too. Um. In the article that you
Speaker 1: wrote how willpower Works, you talked about how they are
Speaker 1: different parts of the brain that respond to willpower into temptation,
Speaker 1: and there's a couple of different parts of the brain.
Speaker 1: One is called the ventro medial prefrontal cortex and this
Speaker 1: is just behind the forehead. What we see is that
Speaker 1: when people are choosing between sweets and health food, for instance.
Speaker 1: I believe this was a two thousand and nine Celtech
Speaker 1: study that you talked about. Um, theo who held out
Speaker 1: against temptation. We're processing in this venture medial prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: but they were also processing in something called the Dorso
Speaker 1: lateral prefrontal cortex. And it thought that this Dorset lateral
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex allows the venture medial prefrontal cortex to weigh
Speaker 1: both taste and health benefits. At this very same time
Speaker 1: as opposed to the test subjects who had low self control,
Speaker 1: who were only making value judgments with the help of
Speaker 1: the venture medial prefrontal cortex. So there's this idea that
Speaker 1: people can differ with self control possibly because of this
Speaker 1: greater use of the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: we need more studies like this to really try to
Speaker 1: figure out whether or not these people are have just
Speaker 1: become more adept at exercising self control and as a
Speaker 1: result they're using dorsal lateral more, or if they are
Speaker 1: inherently more muscled up in that area. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about what it wears down again the
Speaker 1: think of the video game, think of the life meter
Speaker 1: of the stamina meter, and now think of these two
Speaker 1: other meters, cognitive load and ego depletion. So you have
Speaker 1: cognitive capacity on one meter and then you have ego
Speaker 1: on the other. First, we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about cognitive capacity and cognitive load. All right, Cognitive capacity
Speaker 1: basically affects our ability to hold out against temptation. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's essential and working memory, which we use when resisting temptation.
Speaker 1: But also it's something we use when stay holding a
Speaker 1: string of numbers in our heads. And this is this
Speaker 1: is where it gets really fascinating. There was a study
Speaker 1: from the University of Iowa, specifically Professor A. Bob A. Shift,
Speaker 1: and he found that people task with remembering a two
Speaker 1: digit number held out better against temptation than people remembering
Speaker 1: a seven digit number when tempted with chocolate cake. So,
Speaker 1: so again, there people are walking down the hall somebody
Speaker 1: comes out and says, all right, this is the number
Speaker 1: you need to remember. You remember the number twelve. You
Speaker 1: you're remembering the number. You know seven, it would have
Speaker 1: to be a million, wasn't it a million and something? Right?
Speaker 1: And nine? One? Two? Yeah, that sounds good. You gotta
Speaker 1: remember that. And then they walk a little further down
Speaker 1: the hallway and then somebody comes out with a big
Speaker 1: chocolate cake. You know, it's Cindy's birthday in the office.
Speaker 1: Here have some cake. And then you have to continue.
Speaker 1: And then at the end of the hallway, see if
Speaker 1: you remember those numbers that were given to you. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is that if if you distract the
Speaker 1: brain with a more difficult task memorizing seven instead of two,
Speaker 1: it becomes harder for the participant in the study to
Speaker 1: make a healthy food choice, you're having to hold seven
Speaker 1: numerals in your head. Your cognitive capacity is depleted enough
Speaker 1: to wear that chocolate cake may just do you in.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're only having to remember too, then your
Speaker 1: meter is less depleted and therefore you may be able
Speaker 1: to take the punch, take the hit of resisting that
Speaker 1: chocolate cake. So that's why I think ego depletion also
Speaker 1: comes in because it's a nice sort of counterpart to this. Right,
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before. Roy F. Baumeister, he's a
Speaker 1: psychology us at Florida State University, and he's done quite
Speaker 1: a bit of work on ego depletion. And here's a
Speaker 1: pretty good example of how he proves its existence. He
Speaker 1: had students sit down next to a plate of freshly
Speaker 1: baked chocolate chip cookies. Okay, so imagine the smells wafting
Speaker 1: into your nose. Some were allowed to snack away and
Speaker 1: others were ordered to abstain from the cookies. And afterwards,
Speaker 1: both groups were asked to complete difficult puzzles. So it
Speaker 1: turns out that the students who had been forced to
Speaker 1: resist the cookies had so depleted their reserves of self
Speaker 1: control and trying to do that that when they were
Speaker 1: faced with this task, this puzzle, they quickly threw in
Speaker 1: the towel, whereas their cookie chomping counterparts were able to
Speaker 1: conserve their willpower and work on that puzzle. So again,
Speaker 1: what you're seeing here is the finite mental resources and
Speaker 1: how to use them best. And this, you know, I
Speaker 1: think this also gives me a lot of insight into
Speaker 1: how I work. Like I find we have a fair
Speaker 1: fairly nice teleworking policy at work, which means, you know,
Speaker 1: we can work from home or from a coffee shop
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I enjoy working from the actual house
Speaker 1: a little bit, but I can't do it all the
Speaker 1: time because there's just so many temptations I have to resist.
Speaker 1: And they're not all like bad. It's not just like
Speaker 1: should I drink alcohol at nine am? I mean there's
Speaker 1: something like that, Or should I just sleep all day?
Speaker 1: Not that kind of thing, but biscuit, isn't it. Well,
Speaker 1: there's that there's like should I go check on the
Speaker 1: cat and then and then in the afternoons when the
Speaker 1: cat is running wild and and that's also competing for
Speaker 1: my attention or you know, temptations to to walk around,
Speaker 1: temptations to go ahead and have lunch a little early,
Speaker 1: temptations to to go and turn on the TV for
Speaker 1: a minute or something. You know, They're just all these
Speaker 1: things that I could do, and I'm having to resist
Speaker 1: all of them, and it kind of builds up. Um.
Speaker 1: Where I put myself in a and say the workspace
Speaker 1: here at work, or in a limited space like a
Speaker 1: coffee shop, then I can focus more on the opposite.
Speaker 1: When I'm at work, it's harder for me to concentrate
Speaker 1: because there are people round and I would like to
Speaker 1: talk to them, and so it takes more willpower for
Speaker 1: me to bout down the hatches and really focus, Whereas
Speaker 1: if I'm working from home, then I just turned up
Speaker 1: the music, um, really loud, and then just sit there
Speaker 1: and focus and blaze through. But again we're talking about
Speaker 1: distractions here to say nothing about the Internet, of course,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that, yeah, that comes with its own
Speaker 1: set of rules, right, Um, all right, So how do
Speaker 1: you bolster it right? How do you make willpower become
Speaker 1: more central to what you're trying to accomplish. There's something
Speaker 1: called closing the loop or the Zigarnic effect. Really interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: for those of you who are sci fi fans and
Speaker 1: you've cut the movie Looper, there's closing the loop in
Speaker 1: that movie, which involves killing your future self when your
Speaker 1: future self is sent back in time to your past self.
Speaker 1: It's kind of complicated but also kind of cool. But
Speaker 1: the idea is that there is a loop that is closed,
Speaker 1: and that that just closes the book on you as
Speaker 1: a time travel into wind hit Man, and so this
Speaker 1: is a sort of similar thing. The idea is that
Speaker 1: we create these these various open loops in our life,
Speaker 1: and that The example that comes to mind and solely
Speaker 1: to me, is that I'm telling somebody about a movie
Speaker 1: or a book that I really dig, and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll bring in a copy of knowledge of borrow it.
Speaker 1: And then if I don't do that, if I don't
Speaker 1: bring in the copy of that book or that that movie,
Speaker 1: or whatever it happens to be, then that's always on
Speaker 1: my mind. I'm thinking, Oh, I was going to bring
Speaker 1: in a copy of this novel for Matt to read,
Speaker 1: and I forgot to bring it. And so that's the
Speaker 1: first thing that enters my mind every time I see
Speaker 1: or think of that person. Well, and I've got a
Speaker 1: good example of my friend Maria. I finally wrote her back. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's been a couple of months. She lives in Germany, moved,
Speaker 1: so I don't have a chance to talk to her
Speaker 1: as often two months to to email her. The reason
Speaker 1: is because she writes this beautiful like eighteenth century missives
Speaker 1: that are like very intelligent and thoughtful. Once I always
Speaker 1: feel like I really need to give her something back
Speaker 1: that email. This this email, although saying eighteen century missis
Speaker 1: was no. No. But here's the thing. For the past
Speaker 1: two months, nearly every day I thought, I've got to
Speaker 1: write Maria, write Maria. And what we're talking about again
Speaker 1: is my brain trying to close the loop, my unconscious
Speaker 1: serving up thoughts to my conscious self to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to do this. In the Zigarenic effect, this
Speaker 1: closing the loop actually has its roots in the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties at the University of Germany. The reason it's called
Speaker 1: the Zigarnic effect is because one of those students was
Speaker 1: very intrigued by this experience she and how other students
Speaker 1: had when they went to a restaurant and there was
Speaker 1: a large group of them and the waiter took their order,
Speaker 1: but never wrote anything down, and he delivered every single
Speaker 1: order to every single person. He matched the order to
Speaker 1: the face. Um. She went back later because she had
Speaker 1: left something behind, or rather one of the students did,
Speaker 1: and that waiter looked at her blankly and did not
Speaker 1: recognize or did not know what group she was talking about,
Speaker 1: had absolutely no memory. And she was amazed, and so
Speaker 1: how could you so quickly forget me but have remembered
Speaker 1: all the detail orders of this large group of people.
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, well, once I you know, once
Speaker 1: the order is delivered, I don't have a memory of
Speaker 1: anything anymore that has to do with that or to
Speaker 1: clear out that that bit of cognitive space. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: bloomas Arnick, the student in her mentor said, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if human memory makes a distinction between finished
Speaker 1: and unfinished tasks. And so their research, as well as
Speaker 1: decades of other pure research, resulted in what they called
Speaker 1: this like arnic effect that says, yes, indeed, the unconscious
Speaker 1: mind is like a small child kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sitting there and tugging at the sleeve of the adult,
Speaker 1: the conscious saying, hey, you need to really pay attention
Speaker 1: to this. And so the idea is that self control
Speaker 1: comes into play when the nagging thought is met with
Speaker 1: an action plan and you can then begin to close
Speaker 1: the loop. So this is one of those things in
Speaker 1: your own life. It's kind of you just have to
Speaker 1: figure out the action plan, the the step to take
Speaker 1: that will continue to close the loop. Because if you've
Speaker 1: got a lot of loops open, you know that that
Speaker 1: is first of all, I'm going to be depleting your
Speaker 1: mental resources right right um. And second of all, you
Speaker 1: have to have a very distinct action plan to try
Speaker 1: to close it in order to take that action. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it really drives home why checklist like checking
Speaker 1: things off of on a like a daily checklist. It
Speaker 1: can be such a satisfying experience to some people more
Speaker 1: than others. But like my wife is someone who likes checklists,
Speaker 1: so she's mentioned before how it gives her pleasure to
Speaker 1: check things off because with each check you are closing
Speaker 1: a loop. Like in doing out a bag, it's just
Speaker 1: getting lighter and lighter as you finish up each little project.
Speaker 1: But here's where I think it's really interesting. Even with
Speaker 1: a checklist, you have to be super specific because what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is psychology right. So if you
Speaker 1: write down on your check list, talk to Maria, right Maria,
Speaker 1: or consult with Maria. That's not specific enough, email Maria,
Speaker 1: or if you don't have her email address, get Maria's
Speaker 1: email address. So you have to tell your brain very
Speaker 1: specifically what to do or it wants to skip over
Speaker 1: those things. There's a really interesting article about that in
Speaker 1: UM Mental Floss this month that talks about this this
Speaker 1: ability to try to close that loop. And they used
Speaker 1: Drew Carey as an example because here, yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: he actually sought out UM experts in this and wanted
Speaker 1: to try to figure out how he could organize himself best. Huh. Well,
Speaker 1: And I imagine Mental Floss was bringing this up because
Speaker 1: of New Year's because of resolutions, because when and because
Speaker 1: one of the things you everyone is really piping about
Speaker 1: is that you need to make a specific resolution. Don't
Speaker 1: say this is the year I get in shape. Well,
Speaker 1: how are you going to get in shape? And then
Speaker 1: you know, let's make some realistic, achievable goals towards that end,
Speaker 1: not just I'm gonna go to the gym more, well,
Speaker 1: how many times the weeks you canna go to the gym?
Speaker 1: Or what are you gonna what's your plan? What are
Speaker 1: you gonna try and do? Like, maybe the plan is
Speaker 1: as simple as I'm going to go in this month
Speaker 1: and get a health evaluation, or if you're a little
Speaker 1: more advanced than that, you could say, well, I'm definitely
Speaker 1: going to go to this spin class I've been going to,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna go three times a week, like I
Speaker 1: know I should that kind of thing, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like that old maximum how do you eat
Speaker 1: an elephant one bite at a time? I've never heard that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like it because it's descriptive. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: depressing to me. Yeah, and plus you're going to run
Speaker 1: through the choice needs pretty fast and then you're just
Speaker 1: gonna be eating like elephant elbow and gristle. And that's
Speaker 1: snow fun snow to tail though it's pretty popular these days.
Speaker 1: Um alright, so enough of food trends. Um, what's another
Speaker 1: way to bolster it? Uh? Well, we talked about this
Speaker 1: a little bit with um the animals distracting yourself from
Speaker 1: the thing, and this actually has its roots in a
Speaker 1: study called the Marshmallows Study, very famous study from the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties where psychologist Walter Mitchell devised and experiment using marshmallows, cookies,
Speaker 1: and pretzel sticks to test four year old self control. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know we're talking a lot about marshmallows and sweets now,
Speaker 1: and I know this chocolate in the breaker, and so
Speaker 1: before we get into that anymore, I feel like we
Speaker 1: need to take a quick break and I need to
Speaker 1: go chocolate. And then when we get back, we'll really
Speaker 1: get going with this idea of the childhood mind, childhood
Speaker 1: willpower versus the uh seemingly insurmountable temptation that is the marshmallow.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So we were talking about marshmallows.
Speaker 1: We're talking about children, were talking about temptation and willpower,
Speaker 1: about the depletable resource that is our willpower, and all
Speaker 1: the studies that have gone into it. That's right, little
Speaker 1: fluffy marshmallows. Um. This is the thing that Walter Mitchell,
Speaker 1: the psychologist in the nineteen sixties used to tempt kids
Speaker 1: four year olds. He told the kids that they could
Speaker 1: either eat one treat right away, or if they were
Speaker 1: willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes,
Speaker 1: they could have two treats when he returned. So this
Speaker 1: is just classic short term payoff versus well, not even
Speaker 1: long term payoff, but slightly less short term payoff. I
Speaker 1: can either eat one delicious marshmallow now or I can
Speaker 1: have two later. And this is a very simplistic model,
Speaker 1: but it matches up so well with everything else we
Speaker 1: do in our lives. It's like, can I have the
Speaker 1: short term reward of not working out right now, or
Speaker 1: can I have the long term reward of being in
Speaker 1: better shape, the short term reward of eating as much
Speaker 1: Chinese food as I can possibly stuff in my body,
Speaker 1: or the long term reward of not being dead. It's
Speaker 1: true because if you think this is way too simplistific
Speaker 1: of an experiment, yes, just as you brought up, you know,
Speaker 1: think about that example, your four year old self and
Speaker 1: then you're forty year old self is met with the
Speaker 1: same sort of challenges in a different form. Um He
Speaker 1: found out, uh, the psychologist Walter Mitchell found out that
Speaker 1: those who buckled after just thirty seconds didn't have the
Speaker 1: same coping behavior as those kids who held out. And
Speaker 1: these high self controllers used something called strategic allocation of attention.
Speaker 1: In other words, they sang songs um, they untied and
Speaker 1: retied their shoelaces, they covered their eyes, they played hide
Speaker 1: and seek with the treats on the table. Um basically
Speaker 1: anything to try to divert their attention from the thing
Speaker 1: that they wanted. And when I think back to those
Speaker 1: studies on animals in self control, the one about the
Speaker 1: chimpanzees really stands out because they were essentially doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. They had four adult chimpanzees. This is a
Speaker 1: two thousand and seventh study from Georgia State University, and
Speaker 1: what they did is they had a candy dispenser that
Speaker 1: would um just flow candy for like thirty seconds unless
Speaker 1: the chimpanzees put their hands in front of it that
Speaker 1: would stop the flow. So they quickly learned that if
Speaker 1: they reached for it, that would stop and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: get as much candy. So with one group of the
Speaker 1: chimps they gave they gave them um magazines and something
Speaker 1: like rubber tubes and a toothbrush okay uh. And then
Speaker 1: the other group they didn't give them anything. And what
Speaker 1: they found is that the ones that were given these
Speaker 1: what they called toys these magazines, would flip through the magazines,
Speaker 1: look at the pictures, and by the way. Entertainment Weekly
Speaker 1: was one of the magazines. Also some food and wine
Speaker 1: circulars from Atlanta restaurants, So this is not entirely intriguing
Speaker 1: stuff to a chimp, but nonetheless those are the ones
Speaker 1: that would help hold out for something like longer, which
Speaker 1: is pretty significant from six minutes to twelve minutes, and
Speaker 1: trying to reach for that candy. Well, you know, again,
Speaker 1: I guess just the idea that every time you even
Speaker 1: glance at that slice of chocolate cake, you're depleting the
Speaker 1: wheel power, Like it's just a little more willpower that
Speaker 1: you're having to use not to go eat it. So
Speaker 1: if you cannot look at the chocolate cake and it's
Speaker 1: look at Entertainment Weekly, then all the better, unless you
Speaker 1: happen to run across the full page at for well,
Speaker 1: and then you're just hoast you might as well reach
Speaker 1: for it. Um. So it just it brings up a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting questions about whether or not self control
Speaker 1: is something that is innate or is it something that
Speaker 1: is in our environment. And again this marshmallow study has
Speaker 1: even more um importance when you look at it in
Speaker 1: terms of our environment, because in two thousand and twelve
Speaker 1: researchers at the University of Rochester took this study and
Speaker 1: they kind of turned it on its head, this Marshmallow
Speaker 1: study by looking at the relationship to the reward in
Speaker 1: the circumstances under which it was presented, and how that
Speaker 1: could affect self controlling kids. And again in kids. It's
Speaker 1: really important to do this with because we again we
Speaker 1: begin to see that children exercising self control ages three
Speaker 1: and four, we'll sort of predict how they're going to
Speaker 1: react in their later years and we'll talk more about that. Um.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to get sort of at the the
Speaker 1: the fluff of the marshatflow study here. UM. What they
Speaker 1: did is they had researchers bring out these trades of
Speaker 1: I think it was just like crayons or something like
Speaker 1: a jar of crayons, and they said, okay, kid, um,
Speaker 1: I have like an awesome amount of crayons and markers
Speaker 1: in the other room. But if you can just hang
Speaker 1: on and not use these and wait until I get back,
Speaker 1: you will get the awesome set of crayons markers. And
Speaker 1: so for half of the kids they brought back the
Speaker 1: awesome crowns markers, they got the reward because they sat
Speaker 1: there and they waited. They sat there in didn't color,
Speaker 1: didn't create art, and waited for better tools to be
Speaker 1: brought to them exactly, and then they started doing it.
Speaker 1: The other kids got punked. The researchers came back and said,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it. Okay, So what are they doing here?
Speaker 1: They are setting up circumstances for this reliability or unreliability
Speaker 1: with the researcher. There's a lesson here. One group is learning, Hey,
Speaker 1: if you when adult tells you that he'll bring you here,
Speaker 1: she'll bring you more markers if you don't use the
Speaker 1: ones you have, listen to because we'll probably get more markers.
Speaker 1: And the other team it's like you said, they're getting burned.
Speaker 1: They're realizing, oh man, adults are awful. They did I
Speaker 1: was supposed to get more. I could have been coloring
Speaker 1: this whole time instead of holding out for markers. They're
Speaker 1: gonna never kind of come. This is awful. Innostances shattered.
Speaker 1: It's like Woody Allen kid, by the way, But this
Speaker 1: inner dialogue, though I would say there's an important lesson there,
Speaker 1: it's like, don't It's kind of like I'm going to
Speaker 1: hold off on creating art. Until I'm really good at
Speaker 1: it kind of a thing. But that's just me reading
Speaker 1: too much, you know. It's like, no, you don't hold off.
Speaker 1: Don't you have better tools? Work with the tools you have,
Speaker 1: and then you can get better tools. But anyway, well,
Speaker 1: here's where the marshmallow comes into play. Because now that
Speaker 1: they've set up these circumstances, the researchers bring out the marshmallow, right,
Speaker 1: and they're rolling out the basic, the classic marshmallow test.
Speaker 1: Here's one marshmallow, eat it now, and that's great. But
Speaker 1: if you can hold off eating this marshmallow, you'll get
Speaker 1: two marshmallows and then you can eat those. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the kids got screwed in the art project experiment. They
Speaker 1: buckled after just three minutes while waiting for that second marshmallow,
Speaker 1: because I already learned you can't trust these people. They're
Speaker 1: not going to bring markers. They're probably not going to
Speaker 1: bring me that second marshmallow. I might as well eat
Speaker 1: this marshmallow now and then color a bunch of stuffy
Speaker 1: limited number of markers. That's right. Wow, these kids are
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're angry. The second set of kids,
Speaker 1: once that were rewarded and not punked. They waited for
Speaker 1: twelve minutes, four times longer. Okay, And the video of
Speaker 1: this is great because the kids are so like they
Speaker 1: want that marshmallow. It's sitting right in front of them.
Speaker 1: They're using their like sixty color sets that they've already won,
Speaker 1: and they're like they're painting pictures of Marsha. Actually at
Speaker 1: this point they've they've taken all that away, so it's
Speaker 1: just the marshmallow that they're staring down and their little
Speaker 1: feet are just going crazy on the ground and they're
Speaker 1: just like their knees are going up and down and
Speaker 1: they're trying not to eat it. They're turning it up
Speaker 1: the side down, looking at it everything not to eat it.
Speaker 1: But this is really important because, as the studies lead
Speaker 1: author says, this is the last kids. She says, if
Speaker 1: you are used to getting things taken away from you,
Speaker 1: not waiting is the rational choice. And she said that
Speaker 1: it occurred to her that the marshmallow tasking might be
Speaker 1: correlated with something else that the child already knows, like
Speaker 1: having a stable environment. Okay, So this is really important
Speaker 1: because now it becomes this question of well, how much
Speaker 1: does the environment have to do? How much does upbringing
Speaker 1: have to do with as opposed to genetics, um, because
Speaker 1: you know, someone like my husband has incredible self control,
Speaker 1: and I've always thought about it in genetic terms, but
Speaker 1: who knows. As a kid, maybe he could always know
Speaker 1: that the reward was actually in sight, as opposed to
Speaker 1: thinking out, well, I don't know what the carpet might
Speaker 1: be pulled out from under me again. Or he's a Jedi,
Speaker 1: because the way've described it sounds like he has like
Speaker 1: Jedi like turn it off abilities. He does, he doesn't,
Speaker 1: he doesn't understand why the people can't Vetian. Wasn't that
Speaker 1: the thing? We're like, I've made this, this this choice,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not gonna eat me anymore. It's just just
Speaker 1: gonna be vega that. And then we quit drinking like
Speaker 1: seven months ago and for him and was like, whatever,
Speaker 1: flip the switch. So okay. Then there's a question of heredity,
Speaker 1: and now we don't have a lot of data on that.
Speaker 1: There's some information from Edinburgh's university study that looked at
Speaker 1: eight hundred sets of identical and non identical twins to
Speaker 1: figure out how they differed, and they found that the
Speaker 1: identical twins were twice as likely as non identical twins
Speaker 1: to share the same personality traits, suggesting that DNA might
Speaker 1: have had something to do with the way that they
Speaker 1: go about their day. Lead researcher Professor Timothy Bates said
Speaker 1: that the biggest factor they found with self control, and
Speaker 1: there was a big genetic difference in people's ability to
Speaker 1: restrain themselves and persist with things when they got difficult
Speaker 1: and re out to challenges in a positive way. Now
Speaker 1: that being said, um again, you can't just look solely
Speaker 1: at genetics and say that that's the thing right there,
Speaker 1: that's the reason why a person has some uh self
Speaker 1: control or doesn't. And I wanted to bring this up
Speaker 1: because there's a New York Times article called Genetics and
Speaker 1: Crime and it talks about self control and genetics. And
Speaker 1: Terry Moffatt, who's a heavioral scientists Duke University, says that
Speaker 1: knowing something is inherited does not in any way tell
Speaker 1: us anything about whether changing the environment will improve it.
Speaker 1: For example, self control with a lot like height, it
Speaker 1: varies widely. The human population is highly heritable, but if
Speaker 1: effective interventions such as better nutrition is applied to the
Speaker 1: whole population, that everyone gets taller than the last generation.
Speaker 1: And I keep coming back to the whole mind body connection.
Speaker 1: You know. You look at the platonic idea that it's
Speaker 1: it's intellect versus the base demands of the body and uh.
Speaker 1: And then we look at how glucose, you know, the
Speaker 1: simple sugar that we find naturally in various plants. How
Speaker 1: that energizes body and brain and gives us this extra
Speaker 1: booster resolve. It's like the power up in the video game.
Speaker 1: It's like, Oh, I'm about to be defeated about the
Speaker 1: chocolate cake, and then I then I reach over here
Speaker 1: and get this this glucose power up, and now I
Speaker 1: can resist it a little more or be you know,
Speaker 1: remain more focused on the task at hand. That kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You fall into, this this trap though of
Speaker 1: thinking of it in terms of like purely a body
Speaker 1: uh type of situation. You end up reading that quote
Speaker 1: from Moscow Wild and thinking, well, I guess he's right.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no defeating the chocolate cake in the
Speaker 1: long term. If you're locked in a room with it,
Speaker 1: it's gonna wind up in your belly. But there is
Speaker 1: an interesting study that we ran across. This is from
Speaker 1: Stanford University. From Gregory and Walton and Carol Dweck, who
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss a little more in a bed.
Speaker 1: They looked at how belief system plays into it, and
Speaker 1: they found that it did play a vital role in
Speaker 1: how long willpower holds out against desserts and indicaence. So
Speaker 1: what they found in their study was that you had
Speaker 1: individuals who were very informed about how willpower supposedly works
Speaker 1: and the end and very much on board with the
Speaker 1: idea that there is a finite amount of it. They
Speaker 1: did run out eventually and then they're just gonna have
Speaker 1: to eat that cake. And then they also looked at
Speaker 1: people who didn't believe this, that this wasn't part of
Speaker 1: their view of the world and themselves that adhered to
Speaker 1: an idea that that willpower was infinite, that there, that
Speaker 1: it would never run out, that it could never run out,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And you can sort of draw various
Speaker 1: examples from your own life about what what who fits
Speaker 1: into what category, you know, but just think of, like
Speaker 1: I guess, like a really positive person who's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna quit smoking and then they're they're done
Speaker 1: with it, you know, or they think they're done with it.
Speaker 1: That they believe that willpower is and maybe this is
Speaker 1: some insight into the way her husband's mind. Maybe he
Speaker 1: just doesn't see himself as having a finite amount of willpower.
Speaker 1: What's fascinating here, and what the researchers found out is
Speaker 1: that people who felt that the resolve was limitless were
Speaker 1: able to press on, wearied but relentless against the chocolate
Speaker 1: cake or what have you. So, so that's a little
Speaker 1: little it's kind of like a mind of her body
Speaker 1: situation there. It's interesting because Carol Dweck does she does
Speaker 1: talk a lot about belief systems shaping kids to write. Um,
Speaker 1: so when you think about a kid being labeled as
Speaker 1: something right, as being smart or having a lot of willpower,
Speaker 1: you know, what does that do to them psychologically? And
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up a study of one baby
Speaker 1: is born in ninety two in a New Zealand town. Again,
Speaker 1: Terry Moffatt talks about this, and she reports that the
Speaker 1: less self control a child displayed at three years of age,
Speaker 1: more likely he or she was to commit a crime
Speaker 1: more than thirty years later. In fact, we're talking about
Speaker 1: forty three percent of the children who scored in the
Speaker 1: lowest fifth on self control were later convicted of a
Speaker 1: crime versus of those who scored in the highest fifth.
Speaker 1: Uh So that's when you begin to wonder, like, what
Speaker 1: are the long term ramifications of this? Can it be gamed?
Speaker 1: How much of this is psychological and um behavioral right
Speaker 1: from from what you learn when you're growing up. And
Speaker 1: I also wanted to say that on the flip side,
Speaker 1: to those those kids who had a lot of self control,
Speaker 1: they grew into adults with greater physical and mental health,
Speaker 1: fewer substance abuse problems. That's that's no surprise. There fewer
Speaker 1: criminal convictions that are savings behavior in financial security and um.
Speaker 1: They say that these pattern held even after researchers controlled
Speaker 1: for the children's socio economic status, homeland and general intelligence. Okay,
Speaker 1: so put all that aside and then begin to think
Speaker 1: about Carol d Wick and her ideas about self esteem
Speaker 1: and what she calls the self esteem trap in education. Again,
Speaker 1: this is this labeling a kid how self control. A
Speaker 1: kid is smart. A kid is not smart because you
Speaker 1: tell them when they have no self control, tell him
Speaker 1: enough times, they're going to believe it. And then how
Speaker 1: are you going to respond to the chocolate cake? It's
Speaker 1: kind of like, well, I'm their chocolate cake. We both
Speaker 1: know how this is gonna end. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: do this now and then you eat. Yeah, And she
Speaker 1: really she dwells more on the smart label because that's
Speaker 1: something that has, you know, the self esteem movement has
Speaker 1: been pretty strong since the nineteen seventies. In other words,
Speaker 1: the education system said, we just need kids to have
Speaker 1: better self esteem and then they feel better. But Carold,
Speaker 1: we kind of scratched at it, and she said, m
Speaker 1: I wonder if the effect of praise could actually have
Speaker 1: inverse conclusions here another word, because the idea here is
Speaker 1: if you tell a child that they're they're not smart enough,
Speaker 1: that they all believe that they're not smart, so then
Speaker 1: the work harder. Well, okay, well I shouldn't say that. Well,
Speaker 1: the original idea is that if you tell them that
Speaker 1: that they're not smart too much, they'll believe it. And
Speaker 1: then there's this idea though that if you tell them
Speaker 1: you're smart, you encourage them, then you'll you'll both of
Speaker 1: them build them up. But then she's examining the question,
Speaker 1: does this backfire after a point? Yes, because what's happening
Speaker 1: here is that the kids who are labeled as smart
Speaker 1: began to think that they are innately smart, that they
Speaker 1: should be smart, that they don't really have to try. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't have to exercise a lot of self control
Speaker 1: or willpower in order to get something done. So what
Speaker 1: happens is that they began to either pick the things
Speaker 1: that are easy and not a challenge or um, they
Speaker 1: began to think and or they began to think of
Speaker 1: themselves as as failures and as posers. Right, and they
Speaker 1: feel like they're going to get uncovered at any moment.
Speaker 1: So what she's saying here is that it's empty praise.
Speaker 1: It's praise like, hey, you're smart, you can do good,
Speaker 1: you can do this, as opposed to sitting there and
Speaker 1: saying you have to have the effort, you have to
Speaker 1: have the self control, and you have to sit down
Speaker 1: and you have to do this because and I won't
Speaker 1: go into the specifics of this, because honestly, we could
Speaker 1: do an entire episode on Just Carold wex work on
Speaker 1: this one principle um. But over and over again, what
Speaker 1: you see or those kids are failing and the kids
Speaker 1: that are labeled as smart in fact, by age twelve,
Speaker 1: if a kid gets called out in class, by a
Speaker 1: teacher is given an empty compliment or empty praise, that
Speaker 1: kid thinks that they're not doing well because they begin
Speaker 1: to learn that if they're being um, if someone's just
Speaker 1: giving them a bit of empty praise, they're being encouraged
Speaker 1: because they're not doing well. Yeah, they're just being patronized like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're you're doing so well, and that doesn't work. You
Speaker 1: see right through that exactly. So this all ties back
Speaker 1: to self control because when we're talking about uh, self esteem,
Speaker 1: you get self esteem by completing something right, by exercising
Speaker 1: self control and then seeing this challenge that you've met,
Speaker 1: that's where self esteem comes into play. So it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting because there are a lot of educators now
Speaker 1: who are starting to say that it's less about i Q,
Speaker 1: it's less about being smart or not being smart. It's
Speaker 1: more about the effort in the character. Well, hopefully all
Speaker 1: of this we've discussed it. It's sort of I feel
Speaker 1: like it may be colors in. You know, again, this
Speaker 1: idea of the mind body connection, that we're not just
Speaker 1: this brain, we're not just this body, but with this
Speaker 1: this interconnected system, and so you can see willpower and temptation,
Speaker 1: you can see the battle on both sides. You can see,
Speaker 1: you can see where where it happens in the mind,
Speaker 1: you can see where it is very much an affair
Speaker 1: of the body, and some of the things we can
Speaker 1: do to to to make it work in our in
Speaker 1: our favor. So certainly, if you're dealing with temptations, uh,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to make your resolutions work, limit your
Speaker 1: exposure to the things that are tempting you, such as
Speaker 1: the chocolates in the brake room, what have you. And
Speaker 1: make your your goals achievable and understandable and simple enough
Speaker 1: that you can actually check them off the list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just have a certain amount of under standing of
Speaker 1: the limitations of willpower. But also you have to be
Speaker 1: careful not to fall back on it. You don't want
Speaker 1: to do whatever extent you can fool yourself into thinking
Speaker 1: willpower is not a depleatable resource. That's that's great, because
Speaker 1: if you're just going like, oh, well, willpower is gonna
Speaker 1: run off at three pm, And that's kind of like
Speaker 1: making an appointment in your outlook calendar to eat the
Speaker 1: chocolate cake at three pm, because you're giving yourself an out,
Speaker 1: You're giving yourself an excuse so it's it's tricky, it's complex,
Speaker 1: but hopefully everyone has a little more understanding about how
Speaker 1: it works now. Yeah. Yeah, And if if all those
Speaker 1: things failed, then just imagine those chimps thumbing through entertainment
Speaker 1: weekly doing a better job than you are at not
Speaker 1: reaching for that chocolate cake. Or you know, if if
Speaker 1: you're dealing with chocolate cake at work, collect pennies off
Speaker 1: the ground and nickels, you know, dirty change from the ground,
Speaker 1: bring them to work in a bag and anytime you're
Speaker 1: the chocolate cake is tempting you in the breaker and
Speaker 1: just like stick one of those coins into it, and
Speaker 1: then you're like, then you've diseased it and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about eating it. I mean, you might
Speaker 1: become a pariah with your co workers, but hey, just
Speaker 1: go over the top. Are just go ahead and squirt
Speaker 1: some catchup all over that cake. Yeah, or I guess
Speaker 1: you could throw it away. I mean, don't you get
Speaker 1: into the tricky area of break room etiquette. But maybe
Speaker 1: that's the thing to do, you know, because it things
Speaker 1: like it's like a weapon in there. Somebody has has
Speaker 1: dropped a bomb in the break room chocolate e delicious
Speaker 1: bomb and maybe you should just dispose of it. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you. You're right, You're right. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about a robot coming in, and
Speaker 1: in fact, Arnie could do that our robot. What if
Speaker 1: you had a delicious pake, good like a chocolate cake,
Speaker 1: but you wrote something on it like butt cake or
Speaker 1: cloe wake a cake? Do you think that that would
Speaker 1: prevent people for meeting it? Like? What term would you
Speaker 1: have to put on there in order for someone not
Speaker 1: to eat it? This would I smell a video project here?
Speaker 1: We could We could pull this off at work, all right?
Speaker 1: What would you have to ride on a cake? You
Speaker 1: could have three cakes? We could That could be the
Speaker 1: experiment and they may Actually if someone else wants to
Speaker 1: try this before we get around to it, go for it.
Speaker 1: Like what would happen if you brought in three cakes
Speaker 1: and on one you wrote something yeah, you know, just
Speaker 1: sort of normal, like happy birthdays, easy or something like that,
Speaker 1: and then in the next one you wrote something a
Speaker 1: little little gross, and then on the third when you
Speaker 1: wrote something really gross. What would those cakes look like
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, even though they're all
Speaker 1: the same cake? I don't know. We need to find out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, speaking of Arnie, let's call him over
Speaker 1: and let's do a few quick listener mails. All right,
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from our listener Wesley in
Speaker 1: New York. Wesley says, Hey, guys, I just listened to
Speaker 1: your life hacking episode and wanted to share another life
Speaker 1: hack with you that I learned from a Ted talk.
Speaker 1: Matt Killingsworth gave a Ted talk about how we are
Speaker 1: less happy when our minds are wandering than when we
Speaker 1: are living in the moment. Since watching we talk, I've
Speaker 1: noticed that many of the times that I am feeling
Speaker 1: stressed out or unhappy, it is because I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: things other than what is going on around me at
Speaker 1: that moment. Simply reminding myself to keep focused on the
Speaker 1: moment and not let my mind wander has noticeably improved
Speaker 1: my quality of life. Um, I think that that rings
Speaker 1: completely true with the number of things we've talked about
Speaker 1: on this podcast. You know, to whatever extent you can
Speaker 1: live in the moment, not to say you don't think
Speaker 1: about the past and you don't plan for the future,
Speaker 1: but to whatever extent you can put your mind in
Speaker 1: the present and not you know, worrying about the past
Speaker 1: and fretting about the future. Then all the better. As
Speaker 1: Buck Brennaman from the documentary Buck says, you cannot be
Speaker 1: in two places at one time, right exactly, not dwell
Speaker 1: in the past. Oh, I should also mention too, since
Speaker 1: we were talking about that for gaming things for New
Speaker 1: Year's and posture. Amy Cutty's talk on that, she had
Speaker 1: mentioned that the reason why she was interested in that
Speaker 1: is body postures because NBA female students slightly underperformed um
Speaker 1: concerning their male counterparts. But when I failed to explain
Speaker 1: in that is that the reason they were underperforming is
Speaker 1: because a large part of their grade was dependent on
Speaker 1: the class participation. And so what she was saying is
Speaker 1: if you change their posture, could you get them to
Speaker 1: be more demonstrative? Could you get them to feel more
Speaker 1: confident in order to speak out? So I missed the
Speaker 1: talking about that specifically, and I wanted to mention that. Cool.
Speaker 1: And just on another quick note about some feedback on
Speaker 1: episodes we did those two episodes on shamanism and science
Speaker 1: and psychedelics, and listener Cathy wrote in just wanted to
Speaker 1: to underline the fact that not every shaman is into psychedelics.
Speaker 1: There are certainly other ways to reach some of these
Speaker 1: mental spaces that we discussed in these in those episodes,
Speaker 1: without the use of psychedelic substances, through the use of meditation,
Speaker 1: to the use of yoga, through the use of music,
Speaker 1: or his Cathy points out drumming. Uh so uh. You know,
Speaker 1: as as a side note, we should stress that yes,
Speaker 1: there are other means of reaching those those places, those
Speaker 1: places in the mind. All right, and let's look at
Speaker 1: one last listener mail before we close the bag here.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Richard, and Richard is
Speaker 1: responding to our nutmeg episode, which recently published. Richard says, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Dutch Canadian. H it ain't much without the Dutch
Speaker 1: uh l o L. I love nutmeg. I use it
Speaker 1: in drinks, coffee and Hamburger. I mixed ground beef with
Speaker 1: ground pork. I put in salt pepper in a generous amount,
Speaker 1: not too much because it becomes too sweet. Of nutmeg.
Speaker 1: Nutmeg adds a delicious flavor to Burger's kind of sweet,
Speaker 1: kind of spicy, but not really brings out the burger flavor.
Speaker 1: Love it been using nutmeg all my life. Great and
Speaker 1: egg nog too. Happy holiday? Uh this This was of
Speaker 1: course interesting because I we mentioned the history of nutmeg
Speaker 1: and how fond of it the Dutch are even to
Speaker 1: this day. So I was curious if we had any
Speaker 1: Dutch listeners or listeners of Dutch descent what their thoughts
Speaker 1: are on And sure enough, here's a gentleman of Dutch
Speaker 1: descent who loves himself some nutmex So that was that
Speaker 1: was excellent to hear about. Plus gave us a nice
Speaker 1: little quote there. Yeah, alright, Well, if anyone else thought
Speaker 1: there would like to reach out to us and share
Speaker 1: your thoughts on willpower, temptation, nutmeg, what have you. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook and you can find us
Speaker 1: on tumbler. We are stuff to blow your mind on
Speaker 1: both of those. On Twitter, we go by the handle
Speaker 1: blow the Mind and uh yeah, you can check us
Speaker 1: out there and you can and always droppes a line
Speaker 1: at blur the Mind at discovery dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com