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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a lightly edited transcript of Dr. Sahar Yousef’s conversation with Raj Shamani on the Figuring Out podcast, “Guide To 10X Your Focus & Memory.” Dr. Yousef, a cognitive neuroscientist who runs the “Becoming Superhuman Lab,” breaks down the biological laws behind belief, focus, habit change, and burnout, and explains why so many of us feel busy yet unproductive. Across the conversation, she and Raj cover everything from digital hygiene and the myth of multitasking to chronotypes, memory, and the personal cost of ambition. This interview episode was premiered September 8, 2026.
TRANSCRIPT:
Meet Dr. Sahar Yousef: The Scientist Behind the “Becoming Superhuman” Lab
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:02:10 – 00:03:27) If someone’s watching you for the first time, they have no clue who you are, then how would you explain what do you do and why they should watch it?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:03:27 – 00:03:44) So I’m a cognitive neuroscientist, and my research is focused on cognitive neuroplasticity and also cognitive Training. Okay. So I in particular study how we can train the brain to be better, better, faster, stronger.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:03:45 – 00:03:45) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:03:45 – 00:04:35) Which is why my lab colloquially is kind of called the Becoming Superhuman Lab, because that’s what I study. I study how to make superhumans, and I’m obsessed with this topic. I have been for a very, very long time. When I learned early on in my career that the brain is capable of change, that it’s dynamic, that we can, we’re not born with a certain brain or it doesn’t crystallize, that based on training, based on what you think, what you feel, what you do, the habits that you have, your brain can completely change and become different.
Then my question became, that means that people can become smarter. That means that your ability to focus can increase. That means your memory can get better. Like, you can get better at that just like any other muscle, right? Like with fitness. And then of course, now a huge part of what I do is really focused on Minds and machines.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:04:36 – 00:04:36) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:04:36 – 00:05:48) And how they interact together. If you ignore the fact that we are human, and by that, by the way, I mean the biological laws that dictate how our brains and our bodies actually work, like the laws of physics, right? Like if I, like I always say gravity. Yeah. There it is. Laws of physics. Nobody’s questioning the laws of gravity. Like, oh, today, nevermind. It’s not for me. I don’t want to do that. Right. This is how our universe works.
Well, there are also biological laws that dictate how our brains work best, how our bodies work best. And my goal is for people to learn these biological laws so that they can work more in line with their biology instead of against it. Right now, I feel, and I say this all of the time, that the way in which we as a society, human global society, are living and working goes against our biology. It goes against the laws of biology, and we can feel it.
People have brain fog, they’re exhausted, they’re burning out, they’re not reaching their goals. Everybody I always talk to says, oh, I’m busy all of the time, I’m working nonstop, I’m busy, busy, busy, busy. And it’s like, do you actually meet your goals consistently? Oh no, I’m busy all of the time. I’m like, how could that be possible?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:05:49 – 00:06:02) But then Do you see the difference between people who are achieving their goals all the time versus people who are not? Yes. And is it the all the difference is in the brain and the biological laws they’re following?
The Biological Laws Behind Peak Performance
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:06:02 – 00:07:20) The most important word you just said was following. We all have very similar brains. The laws are the same. Physics is physics no matter where you go. The difference between me and let’s say like an Elon Musk is for the laws of physics is I’m not sending rockets into space. Space, right? It’s about, am I learning the laws and am I leveraging the laws? And my big push to every person in the world is you have to learn the laws of your brain and your body so that you can follow them and leverage them, meaning actually get more done.
That’s the concept of becoming superhuman is if you can learn those laws, then you can do amazing things with this brain and body. That other people oftentimes they ignore those laws. They’re exhausted again. They’re burned out. They’re working all of the time, but they’re working inefficiently. These are the issues. You know, they say they have these dreams and they have these goals, but they find it difficult to actually do those things.
But the, so the differences between the people who consistently meet their goals is if they’re following the actual laws of the, it’s, it’s like almost like a cheat sheet. It’s like a blueprint for how to live well.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:07:21 – 00:07:44) So you’re telling me if I follow my biological laws, which is how— like, let’s say if my brain is supposed to function in a certain way and I follow those laws, yeah, then my likelihood of achieving my goals increases than normal people, like other people who are not following? Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:07:44 – 00:07:46) But also I will say, you’re like, I don’t buy it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:07:46 – 00:07:47) Okay. Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:07:47 – 00:07:52) Well, you have to remember the, a lot of biological laws, the laws I’m, hopefully we’re going to talk about.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:07:52 – 00:07:53) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:07:53 – 00:08:28) that I’m obsessed with are also laws around what’s the science behind motivation?
Okay. I’m not doing a good job managing my energy. Okay. I’m not motivated.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:08:29 – 00:08:29) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:08:29 – 00:09:18) I’m motivated for 3 weeks and then I give up. Do you think they’re going to go to the Olympics? No. That means you have to figure out, you have to hack the science of motivation. You have to hack the science of focus. You have to hack the science of managing your time, your energy, all of these things in order to meet any goals, whatever your goals are. You know, you could have any goals in the whole world. But yeah, that’s, these are what I mean by the laws of biology.
I don’t mean like take a blood test necessarily. I mean learn how does the brain motivate? Like what is dopamine really, for example? Right? How does it really work? Because the people that say like, oh, I want to whatever, I don’t know, get fit. I want to raise a certain amount of money. I want to start a company. I want to do these things. That’s great, but what’s the first step? And do you lose hope after 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years?
True.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:09:18 – 00:09:59) Let’s— we’ll come to biological laws, but for simple average human being, okay, superhuman could mean a billionaire who looks like he’s killing it in life, right? So you have also trained a lot of people from a lot of these large companies. You’ve worked with people from Nvidia, Google. You teach a lot of people. You research about ultra achievers. All of these things you do, right? So you have— you’ve dealt with a lot of people who look like superhumans from the outside.
What is one fundamental difference between a brain of, let’s say, a billionaire and a broke person?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:09:59 – 00:10:24) I’ve worked with some pretty amazing people that have achieved Amazing things, truly superhuman things. And I’m always the most curious about people that achieve great things that come from nothing. If you started at zero and you achieved something close to 100, that’s interesting. That’s worth studying, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:10:25 – 00:10:25) Yeah, absolutely.
The Billionaire Brain: Why Belief Changes Everything
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:10:26 – 00:11:59) And I’ve been very lucky, being especially in Silicon Valley, I’ve had access to a lot of some of these amazing people because of the work that I do. It also helps that the lab is called Becoming Superhuman and everybody wants to be superhuman. So it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s popular for a few different reasons. But some of these amazing people that I’ve met, I’ll tell you something that is wildly different from a lot of folks that I see who struggle, and that is belief.
Belief about how the world works. Belief about who it is that they are. These people, these, the billionaire’s brain, they don’t think there are limits. They really don’t. These people don’t think there are any obstacles in their way. When something looks like a brick wall to the average person, that person sees a door. They know that they can open and create doors anywhere. They believe it truly. They believe it. And this is the fascinating thing.
Again, going back to those biological laws, the power of belief is so strong in the human brain. When you believe something, and these are again, the stories that we tell ourselves, who am I? How powerful am I? What am I capable of? It’s like, imagine you are a character in a movie. These people, really, I don’t know, have you heard of the phrase main character energy?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:11:59 – 00:12:00) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:12:00 – 00:14:07) Yeah. They have main character energy for real, truly. And, but everybody can have main character energy. You should be the main character of your life. Mm-hmm. Everybody should be. And I say that not just be to be like romantic, cuz it’s fun, because this is how you can train the brain. If you convince yourself, I’m going to make it. This is going to be my life. This is going to be the door that I’m going to open. This is going to happen for me, and I know it’s going to happen because it’s possible because people like me have done it.
It’s, it’s not, you don’t have the victim mindset. You don’t have the, oh, these are these obstacles in my way that, oh, I have nothing, blah, blah, blah. All these other people, they have this help, they have a, that’s going to keep you stuck. So many amazing examples of people, again, Olympic athletes, people that have just crushed it physically that didn’t start out fit at all, but they make it happen through training.
I think it’s the same thing with mindset. All you have to do is, so here’s, here’s my recommendation, ’cause I do this for a living. This is what I do. I help people train their brains every single time inside of your mind, your brain starts telling you that story. I’m a victim. I come from nothing. Look at my background. I’m not going to make it. You have to tell your brain to shut up. Zip it. Be like, -. Don’t do that. And then you have— I call that, by the way, that’s called redirection.
Redirection. It’s attentional redirection in the brain. So if your attention is somewhere like, oh, I’m a victim. Oh, I’m the— oh, it’s not going to work out. Oh, what if I fail? Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Redirect. You say, -. I’m not going to move my attention. I’m moving my attention. I’m redirecting it back to What’s the story you want? And you, then you repeat it. And you gotta get obsessive about this. Like every day you repeat the story.
Who am I? What’s possible? One of my favorite quotes is, “Anything is possible because nothing is real.” All of this is manmade. All of this is made up. We can make anything happen.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:14:08 – 00:14:29) But then if someone was never believed in themselves ever, They’ve never thought that they can ever become better, achieve their goals, have a dreamy life, become financially free, billionaire, millionaire, whatever, etc., etc., right? If someone never believed, how can someone build a main character energy?
Writing Your Story: How to Build “Main Character Energy”
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:14:33 – 00:15:02) Write the story down. Take a piece of paper, and you don’t have to believe it in the beginning. Just trust me. Get a piece of paper and a pen and write out, even if in the beginning you have to say, this is, this would be believed and this would be written by a version of me that doesn’t exist, that does believe in themselves and they are successful and they’re amazing. Write from that person’s perspective.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:15:02 – 00:15:04) What do you write? Like you take a piece of paper and what do you write?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:15:04 – 00:15:51) You can write, well, what it depends on the, your goals. It depends on your vision. So for example, I might say, I can come up with any scientific question related to the things that I am obsessed with, and I will find the resources, I will find the people, I will find the funding, I will find the doors, I will make the doors open so that I can figure out what those answers are because I’m obsessed with finding out those answers.
And I’m going to keep telling myself that. And when you do that, by the way, let me tell you the science of how this works. What’s going to happen if you write that down, whatever story, but cuz it depends on the person, right? Your story’s going to be different than mine. There’s a network in the brain, okay? It’s a neural network.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:15:51 – 00:15:51) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:15:51 – 00:16:13) Which is a pattern of electrical activation. So a neural network is a collection of different brain areas that in unison, like an orchestra, activate together. So they’re, they’re, they’re connected electrically and they activate together. Okay? We have many different neural networks in the brain, but a An important one is called the DMN, or the default mode network.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:16:13 – 00:16:13) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:16:13 – 00:16:18) Now the DMN is the brain’s storyteller.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:16:19 – 00:16:20) Interesting.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:16:20 – 00:18:03) This is the brain’s narrator, autobiographical narration. Who am I? What’s my identity? What am I? What are the stories? And when people talk about trauma, when people talk about baggage, all this, It’s stories. And I, you collect these stories like in a bag and you’re carrying it around like baggage. So you gotta ask yourself, which stories am I still carrying and are they serving me? And I, when I say serving me, are they actually helping you achieve your goals?
Are they making you happier? Are they making you healthier? Are they giving you an opportunity to live the life that you want? Because if they’re not, get rid of that story, rip that story up, and you have to write your own story. Make up a new story. And then that DMN, every single time, every day you review the story. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re going to get every guest you want, whatever it may be. You’re going to review the story over and over and over again.
And guess what’s going to happen? That DMN, the default mode network, the pattern of electrical activation that it has, it will influence other brain areas that are related to your attention. Now we’re talking about exciting executive function because that your beliefs, your stories, you asked me about the billionaire’s brain and I told you the number one trait they have that’s different is they have crazy beliefs, crazy beliefs.
They don’t see limits. Anything is possible and anything they’re, they’re capable of anything. And if you believe that DMN and those beliefs will impact different brain areas that are related to what you see, what you pay attention to, and what you notice. Have you heard of like priming?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:18:04 – 00:18:04) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:18:04 – 00:18:05) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:18:05 – 00:18:08) It’s explain me, let’s say it’s explain everybody. Okay. What priming is.
Priming: How Your Beliefs Shape What You Notice
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:18:09 – 00:18:11) It, this is the science behind priming.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:18:11 – 00:18:11) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:18:11 – 00:19:18) That if you can have information teed up so that you review that story, that’s why I said like, it’s not enough just to write it down one time and put it in your journal and put it away. No, no, no, no. You’re working on, this is training. You gotta hit the gym every single day. Be like, -this is what’s going to happen. This is what I’m going to do. These are my goals. This is how I’m going to get there. This is the plan. This is the plan.
You keep writing every day. You keep reviewing and keep writing. What’s going to end up happening is you’re going to notice opportunities. The opportunities are everywhere. The possibilities are all right in front of us, but people don’t see them. You will only see what the brain is primed to see. You will see what it is that you truly, your beliefs and the data behind your beliefs are priming you to attend to in the world.
So when you do that, all of a sudden, so many success stories. I know you’ve heard these too. People will say, oh, and then I met this person randomly. Magic, right? They opened the door. I had, oh, one conversation. It just, da da da. Idea came to me.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:19:18 – 00:19:22) I then, all random things they start talking about.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:19:23 – 00:20:16) It’s, it’s not that random. You can make, you can increase the likelihood, the statistical likelihood of these things that feel random if you reset your DMN. If you reset your DMN, that’s a beautiful way to put it. Reach, literally design, use your DMN to design your beliefs about yourself, to redesign your DMN so that you can choose what are the stories I’m telling myself about myself, what’s possible and what I’m going to accomplish and who I am.
And that is going to influence your behavior because the brain is going to, it’s designed this way. This is what I mean by biological laws. Mm-hmm. This is everybody’s brain. Yours, mine, everybody’s. Our brains are designed, they’re designed to look for data that confirms your beliefs. Yeah, true.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:20:17 – 00:20:20) It happens with all the negative things as well.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:20:20 – 00:20:37) Bingo, bingo! Which is why I’m like, if it’s not helping you, get it out of there. Throw it away. Get it out. Like you don’t need it because people are like, oh, I’m a victim. Everybody blah blah blah. Everybody hates me. I don’t get what I want. And guess what? They always see. They’re always complaining, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:20:37 – 00:20:37) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:20:38 – 00:20:54) This happened, then this other thing happened. No, no, no. What’s happening is your beliefs, because that’s how the brain works. That’s a biological law. The brain is going to find and look for data to confirm its own beliefs. So choose your beliefs, design your beliefs.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:20:54 – 00:22:24) Yeah, this is so fascinating. It happens with me all the time, right? I have an irrational belief when it comes to my work. And even if I’m sitting on a random afternoon, I start spotting opportunities out of thin air, and they end up becoming opportunities worth millions of dollars, and I end up just getting them. And I’m like, this— like, 5 days ago, this was not even the real thing. And at the same time, I always play a victim card that because of my life, because of my schedule, because I work, I’m I never— I’m never able to sleep properly.
You know, I’m not this guy who’ll ever be able to get sleep, etc., etc. Every little thing just confirms that belief. And I always just find out new reasons why I can’t sleep. And like just 2 different aspects, same person, business work-wise, opportunities just keep getting them. Health-wise, I just keep falling, falling, falling. And I just keep confirming that even if I have like 10 hours to sleep, I end up confirming some belief and be like, oh, why didn’t I sleep that day?
Because, this happened and that happened. And just— it happens. There’s excuses in my head. Yeah. But I love this. Okay, you said main character energy. Okay, if someone’s watching this and we have to make this, make main character energy exercise sort of stuff.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:22:24 – 00:22:25) Okay, okay.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:22:25 – 00:22:35) So What would you want me to write in this story? So let’s say I today I decide that from right now I’m going to have the main character energy in my life.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:22:36 – 00:22:36) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:22:36 – 00:22:53) Okay. And I am going to write, take a piece of paper and write my story. Yeah. What should I have in this story? Identity, goal, what all did you just threw a bunch of words. Let’s make it simplest. Let’s make it simpler for people to have like a template to start doing it right now.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:22:54 – 00:23:08) Beautiful. First, begin with what we call identity-based beliefs. Okay. Okay. Identity-based beliefs. Now, I actually think we should totally do this on you related to your sleep. Wow.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:23:09 – 00:23:09) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:23:09 – 00:23:15) Because you brought it up yourself, right? You said, okay, you’ve got some beliefs in there that sleep is hard for you.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:23:15 – 00:23:15) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:23:15 – 00:23:19) It’s not easy, but it’s totally not helping you. I’m sure.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:23:19 – 00:23:19) Not at all.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:23:20 – 00:23:22) Okay, so let’s get rid of it. Let’s make a new belief.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:23:22 – 00:23:22) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:23:22 – 00:23:23) You write a new one.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:23:23 – 00:23:23) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:23:23 – 00:23:57) So what you’re going to want to do, so the identity-based beliefs, the way that they work is that you need to write a belief that you have, that Raj has about sleep that’s based on your values. So I’ll give you a few examples just to like, hmm, get you inspired. You might write, I prioritize my health Because I know how important it is for my performance and my business. You might just write that sentence down. Do you believe that?
Yeah, totally. Right.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:23:58 – 00:23:58) Absolutely.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:23:59 – 00:24:01) Absolutely. So you might write something like that down.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:24:01 – 00:24:02) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:24:02 – 00:24:11) Then you’re going to stack the next one. You’re going to say, I know the data on sleep and health. Do you feel like that’s true?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:24:11 – 00:24:12) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:24:12 – 00:24:18) Yeah. Have you had some sleep experts on the pod? Still, it has not helped me. A lot of people have benefited.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:24:20 – 00:24:21) It from it, not me.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:24:21 – 00:24:27) Okay. Okay. The first is identity. We can bond about this. I’m not an easy sleeper either. We should talk about your sleep. Seriously.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:24:29 – 00:24:31) So first is identity. Second is data.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:24:31 – 00:24:47) Second is, well, I should say identity. And then you’re, you’re still mixing your identity with facts that you know. Yeah, pretty much your data. Because we’re going to try to bridge all of these together. Right? Yeah. What else do you believe about sleep? What is it that you know for sure? About sleep.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:24:48 – 00:24:49) It’s going to make me better.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:24:49 – 00:25:05) It’s going to make you even better. So would you maybe— could I even push this a little further and say I could be a smarter, better looking, and happier version of myself if I slept a little bit more?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:25:06 – 00:25:16) Yeah, I’ll ask better questions if I’m— I’ll be more focused. Yeah, there are so many things that I’ll achieve by just sleeping better.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:25:17 – 00:25:32) Yeah. So you might, you’d write all of these things down and then you would start writing, bringing it all together into an identity-based belief. And even though it’s not true yet, you would say something like, I make sure that I wind down for bed.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:25:33 – 00:25:35) Hmm. That’s perfect.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:25:35 – 00:25:44) At an early enough time to make sure I at least get 6 to 7 hours a night. You write what that you essentially you’re designing the habit.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:25:44 – 00:25:45) Like this is the part I don’t believe.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:25:47 – 00:25:52) I know you don’t believe it now, but you have to write it down. And this is the process of fake it till you make it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:25:52 – 00:25:52) Got it.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:25:52 – 00:25:56) Yeah, you gotta like you gotta be like yep, I do that.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:25:56 – 00:25:57) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:25:57 – 00:26:02) Because why? Because you prioritize your health and your performance. You know.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:26:03 – 00:26:13) So it’s like first was identity, second was data, third is What better will happen after this? And fourth was new habit.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:26:14 – 00:26:34) Yeah. And this is where you bring in, I would say, still even one full sentence altogether. I’ll give you an example actually from one of my MBA students, one of my business students. I’m the type of person— oh, now we’re talking about what kind of person are you versus what kind of person is someone else, your competitor.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:26:34 – 00:26:35) Hmm. Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:26:36 – 00:26:53) I’m the type of person who makes sure that I sleep at least 6 to 7 hours a night because I know what an edge it’s going to give me in my business. You’re just going to write that down and you’re like, oh, I don’t do that every night. That’s okay. You’re, but do you believe you can get there?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:26:54 – 00:26:54) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:26:55 – 00:26:57) Yeah. And do you believe it’s true? All the other things you’ve written?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:26:57 – 00:26:57) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:26:58 – 00:27:22) Okay. Once you’ve done this work and you’ve written down that identity, I’m the type of person who does this. Hmm. Then we start going into something that we call implementation intentions. And this is from research from Peter Gollwitzer. Now, implementation intentions are essentially situation action plans. For those who do computer science, it’s like an old school if-then statement.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:27:22 – 00:27:22) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:27:23 – 00:27:23) Okay.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:27:23 – 00:27:23) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:27:23 – 00:27:28) If this, then that. If then, when then is probably a more apt way to describe it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:27:28 – 00:27:29) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:27:29 – 00:27:55) So a situation action plan would be like this. When my alarm goes off every night at 11:00 PM, I begin my designed routine. I start my wind-down music playlist, then I make my herbal tea. I do this, I start doing my physical therapy, whatever it may be.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:27:55 – 00:27:55) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:27:55 – 00:29:24) You go through your routine. The difference between, I’m going to try to go to bed earlier, or, I have this new routine, I’m just going to do it before bed. The difference here is an implementation intention describes in crazy detail what does it look like when you do the thing. You describe like a movie. I want to see you in your house, Raj. Like at, and it’s like 11:00 PM, the alarm goes off and you’re like, ah, where are you?
What is it? What does it look like? What are you wearing? Where in the house are you? What are you doing? Phone’s in your hand. Hmm. It’s truly describe it in detail. I’ll give you another example of the difference between having an implementation intention versus having a goal, because a goal is Wake random. Yeah, it’s it’s like a prayer. You know, it’s like that’s cute. It’s nice, but there’s no plan, right? There’s no way to make it to execute the thing, right?
We got to have a plan. So let’s say I’ve heard a lot of people say I’m going to try to go to sleep earlier. I want to try to get more sleep. Adorable. How are you going to do that, right? We actually have to get serious about what this looks like. Yeah. So usually for people. Unless your body is waking you up super, usually we have, what we have to do is go to bed earlier. Mm-hmm. Not, keep sleeping the other way.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:29:24 – 00:29:25) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:29:25 – 00:29:45) So the question becomes, what kind of implementation intention can you design that’s going to get you to do that? So you don’t say, I’m going to try to get to bed earlier. It’s not going to work. So you describe the situation. When this happens, then I will do this. When, then.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:29:45 – 00:29:59) Okay. So when 11, let’s say when, whenever my alarm goes around 11 PM, this is what I’m going to do. That’s exactly what you want me to design.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:30:00 – 00:30:00) Yes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:30:01 – 00:30:11) And like, I’m on the right side of the bed, I have my laptop on, I’m doing this, like all of this. And like, I’ll shut this down. I’ll be doing like stuff like that, like that minute detail.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:30:11 – 00:30:11) Yes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:30:11 – 00:30:12) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:30:12 – 00:30:27) And then once you visualize it and you’ve written it down, then you begin the habit. You attempt to actually do the habit. And you tr— and here are some other tips here. Make it as easy and small as possible.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:30:27 – 00:30:28) Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:30:28 – 00:30:37) As easy and small as possible. For example, a lot of people benefit from going to bed earlier just by brushing their teeth earlier.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:30:39 – 00:30:39) Interesting.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:30:40 – 00:30:57) That’s it. You could just say, listen, I’m, I don’t know when I’m going to go to sleep, but I told myself I have to brush my teeth at 11. Once you brush your teeth, that means you’re probably not going to eat or drink anything anymore. Mm-hmm. Now you have, at least the kitchen is cut off. You just start cutting everything off. You’re like, I am, then I’m going to get in my pajamas.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:30:57 – 00:30:57) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:30:57 – 00:31:26) Okay. Now we’re even one step closer. You just have to figure out what behaviors that you want to design out. Commit to it, make it as small as possible, but really make the when part, the if part, the beginning, the situation should be as clear as humanly possible. Truly clear. People really skip this step. They say things like, I’ll give you an example of when people want to stop doing something because it’s possible your viewers want to cut a habit.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:31:26 – 00:31:26) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:31:27 – 00:31:30) Stop smoking, stop eating sweets, whatever it may be.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:31:30 – 00:31:32) Start binging on their reels overnight.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:31:34 – 00:31:56) Tricky one, but yeah, totally, totally. You could say, when I have a craving for another piece of chocolate, when I have a craving for a cigarette, then I will do this instead. Hmm. And I’ll tell you, this is a version of an implementation intention for a negative behavior, meaning a behavior you want to cut.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:31:56 – 00:31:56) Okay.
The Neuroscience of Cravings, Habits, and Addiction
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:31:57 – 00:32:09) Not a positive behavior, a behavior you want to add. Say add like positive and negative, right? Add a behavior or remove a behavior. Removing a behavior is insanely difficult. Super, super difficult.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:32:09 – 00:32:10) Way more than adding.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:32:11 – 00:32:11) Yes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:32:12 – 00:32:17) Why? Why cutting off a habit is more difficult than making a new habit?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:32:19 – 00:32:43) Do you have a whiteboard? Yeah. All right. All right. Okay, so We were talking about neural networks before, right? So neural networks again are patterns of electrical activation. So let’s say for example, you have some pattern of electrical activation here in the brain, and let’s say this represents your craving for something you don’t want to crave anymore.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:32:43 – 00:32:47) Yeah. Watching reels. Let’s like binge watching random stuff. Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:32:47 – 00:32:50) Oh wow. Binge watching. Okay.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:32:50 – 00:32:52) So you mindless scrolling, whatever you want to call it.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:32:52 – 00:32:55) Yeah. Great. I’ll even draw a little phone. You know, okay, there you go. Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:32:55 – 00:32:56) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:32:56 – 00:32:59) All right. So this is, this is the craving for it though.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:33:00 – 00:33:00) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:33:00 – 00:33:23) This is not the behavior. This is the craving. So if this dot here represents the actual craving for it, what that, let’s say, ends up getting connected to is a set of patterns of electrical activation here that represents the complex behavior that ends up being you grab the phone and you start scrolling.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:33:23 – 00:33:23) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:33:23 – 00:33:37) Okay. So it starts with a craving. The craving is not, by the way, usually to binge watch. Usually the craving is something else. Usually, and this is where we can get a little more emotional here, it’s a feeling.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:33:38 – 00:33:39) Okay. What do you mean by that?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:33:40 – 00:33:59) Well, let’s, let’s, let’s say craving is not for binge watching. Well, that ends up becoming the behavior for you to satisfy a craving. The craving you think is actually for binge watching, but it’s it’s a craving to binge watch in order to satisfy some feeling. That’s usually what’s happening.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:34:00 – 00:34:01) Like something I’m missing.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:34:02 – 00:34:18) Something you’re missing or something that you want to disassociate from, numb from. Usually, usually, the feeling that people have is. Overwhelm, stress, let’s say.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:34:20 – 00:34:21) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:34:21 – 00:34:27) If you’re overwhelmed, you’re stressed out, you’re tired. Mm-hmm. You lack motivation, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:34:27 – 00:34:28) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:34:28 – 00:34:32) You’re looking to solve for these feelings.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:34:33 – 00:34:33) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:34:33 – 00:34:40) And your brain has decided a nice thing to do. If you have these feelings, you’re like, I don’t, nobody wants to feel this, by the way.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:34:40 – 00:34:40) Right?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:34:40 – 00:35:02) Yeah. These are bad feelings. So if you have these feelings, your brain goes, let’s get out of this. How do I solve this? There’s a few different things you can do, but let’s say you accidentally develop this addiction. Hmm. This habit, because by the way, the word habit is a common one.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:35:02 – 00:35:03) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:35:03 – 00:35:04) We’re all interested in habits.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:35:04 – 00:35:04) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:35:05 – 00:35:12) It’s pretty much the same thing as addiction. It’s the same thing. People hear the word addiction and they think it’s like scary.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:35:13 – 00:35:13) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:35:13 – 00:35:16) Like it’s some moral? Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:35:17 – 00:35:17) It’s a bad thing.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:35:17 – 00:35:31) It’s a bad thing. What about when people are addicted to exercise or addicted to feeling healthy or addicted to being kind? Right? ‘Cause you can, you’ve, I’ve met people who definitely are. Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:35:32 – 00:35:32) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:35:32 – 00:35:40) Addicted to those things. And I know you probably have met lots of these kinds of people because these are the people you collect, people addicted to their own success.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:35:42 – 00:35:43) Absolutely. Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:35:43 – 00:35:49) Yeah. So it’s not a bad thing. Addiction just means habit. That’s it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:35:50 – 00:35:50) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:35:50 – 00:36:15) So we can demystify, dethrone, these words really, they’re coupled together. They’re the same thing. They’re the same thing. So what is a habit? What is also an addiction? It’s also the same thing as just a behavior that you do over and over. I’ll just say that you do a lot, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:36:15 – 00:36:15) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:36:15 – 00:36:50) So what ends up happening is you have a feeling, there is some brain state, some cognitive or emotional brain state, and then what ends up happening is you want to move away from that feeling if it’s a, if it’s a Bad feeling like this, right? You want to move away from it. Your brain wants to help you solve it. It doesn’t want to let you sit in that bad feeling. So whatever it is that you did, let’s say you did binge watching one time when you felt that way.
You’re like, let me distract myself. You know, go somewhere else. We don’t need to think that. We don’t need to feel that. So then you start binge watching and what’s going to happen in the beginning? In the beginning, you’re distracted, right? So it feels good.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:36:50 – 00:36:50) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:36:51 – 00:37:07) Okay. So what you ended up doing is you ended up doing the actual binge watching. So you scrolled. And then what happens, at the, at the very end, let’s say now you’re done scrolling and you put the phone away. This is a bit of a trick question because let’s say you were overwhelmed about a work deadline.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:37:08 – 00:37:08) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:37:09 – 00:37:12) And then you started binge watching for, mm-hmm, 45 minutes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:37:12 – 00:37:13) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:37:13 – 00:37:22) In the evening instead of working on the thing that’s overwhelming you. So then you did the binge watching and then afterwards you put the phone down. Did you deal with the thing that you were actually stressed about?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:37:22 – 00:37:23) No, I get guilty.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:37:23 – 00:37:29) Yeah. So now you have this, you have the overwhelm, and you have shame.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:37:30 – 00:37:31) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:37:32 – 00:37:41) So the person is super sad now. We’re, we’re just super sad. So now that you have overwhelm and shame, that’s even worse than before. No?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:37:41 – 00:37:41) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:37:41 – 00:37:43) So guess what I want to do again?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:37:44 – 00:37:45) Watch again.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:37:45 – 00:37:54) Go around the circle again. So, okay, let’s say you’ve done this one night. But come on, let’s be honest. I’ve done this even like at least 100 times.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:37:54 – 00:37:54) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:37:54 – 00:38:12) Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Here’s the answer to your, your original question. Every single time you do this, you go through this path. Every time you traverse this road and you do it again and again and again, do you see what’s happening here? We’re making it darker. No.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:38:12 – 00:38:12) Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:38:13 – 00:38:53) We’re making it maybe even bigger. Hmm. Stronger. Deeper, this neural network starts to become like a tree trunk, like the roots of a tree. That is how a behavior, if you do it one time, that’s fine. You do it 100 times, 1,000 times, a million times, that’s a behavior that you do a lot. That’s the same thing as addiction. It’s the same thing as a habit. It’s all the same. So habits, addictions, and behaviors that you do a lot are just really entrenched and strong associations between a feeling, a craving, and a behavior.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:38:53 – 00:38:55) So how do we break this?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:38:57 – 00:39:02) One, tip number one, don’t wait for it to get so strong. You know, ideally—
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:39:02 – 00:39:03) What if it’s so strong already?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:39:04 – 00:39:05) Okay, let’s assume it’s strong.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:39:05 – 00:39:16) Because I’m sure there must be hundreds of bad behaviors which are strong in my head. Obviously, hundreds of good behaviors as well. Yes. But the bad behaviors, let’s talk about them. Let’s get rid of them first.
Breaking the Habit Loop: Awareness and the Cognitive Pause
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:39:16 – 00:39:31) Okay. Step 1, awareness. You have to understand and see the loop for yourself. You cannot change something that you do not understand, that you don’t have data on.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:39:31 – 00:39:32) Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:39:32 – 00:39:36) Right? You have to understand a system if you want to change the system. So you need knowledge.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:39:37 – 00:39:37) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:39:37 – 00:39:56) Self-knowledge in this case. So you need to be aware. You need to be able to see your own behavior as it’s happening. That means you actually have to answer the question, what’s the feeling? So step 1 is you gotta identify the emotions and the feelings that cause you to go down the loop in the first place.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:39:56 – 00:40:27) But how do I identify this? Because I don’t know if I’m, if I’m falling into this trap of feeling, like I want to crave something. That craving can be dessert at midnight, it can be binge-watching, it can be just doing all sorts of bad habits. Some— for some people it can be alcohol, smoking weed, smoking, like a cigarette. For some, a lot of young people, it can be porn. Like all of these behaviors stem from feeling, right?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:40:27 – 00:40:27) Yes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:40:28 – 00:40:47) But we don’t know why are they occurring. Yeah, like it can be overwhelm, it can be stress, it can be anxiety, it can be tired, it can be all— it can be just pure shame, or maybe lack of ability to turn around my life, or the feeling like a victim. How do I find out which one is it?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:40:48 – 00:41:15) You have to have what’s called a cognitive pause. So that means when you— before you go grab the chocolate at midnight, before you grab the phone, and maybe you’ve already grabbed it, by the way, you just— you’ve grabbed the phone You’ve opened up Instagram, whatever it is that your app of choice, you grabbed it, you opened it, and you just were about to start scrolling and you go, you have to start to build the awareness.
You go, hold on, hold on, hold on. I’m not saying you can’t have it, by the way.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:41:15 – 00:41:15) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:41:15 – 00:41:17) In the beginning, we just want to know why.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:41:17 – 00:41:17) Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:41:18 – 00:41:27) So you go, okay, hold on. What am I feeling right now? What is it that, why do I want to go and binge watch right now?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:41:27 – 00:41:29) I’m just exhausted. Like just, mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:41:30 – 00:41:53) Okay, so you’re, you’re tired. Hmm. I would still ask you, go deeper. Why are you exhausted? And then I’d, I’d force you to, I, if I were in the room with you, I would say, well, Raj, if you’re exhausted, shouldn’t you go do something else? Like rest, right? Or gain more energy. Do something that gives you energy.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:41:54 – 00:41:54) Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:41:54 – 00:42:00) Like, right? If you’re tired, it, if it depends if it’s right before bed, Then if you’re tired, yeah, that’s right. Go to bed.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:01 – 00:42:01) Sleep.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:01 – 00:42:11) So then you go to sleep, right? We go, we help you with the sleep thing. But if you’re tired in the middle of the day, you’re like halfway in the middle of the day and you’re like, I’m just exhausted and I need a break.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:11 – 00:42:11) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:11 – 00:42:15) This is not a break. There was, by the way, a paper published in Nature.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:16 – 00:42:16) What is it?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:17 – 00:42:32) The world’s like premier science journal, 2024, that actually measured the effectiveness of different kinds of breaks. Okay. One option was no break at all. You do no break. Raj, keep working. Mm-hmm. Tired? So what?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:32 – 00:42:32) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:32 – 00:42:32) Keep going.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:33 – 00:42:33) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:33 – 00:42:33) Hustle.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:33 – 00:42:33) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:33 – 00:42:34) Come on. You’re young.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:34 – 00:42:35) You got it.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:35 – 00:42:36) Let’s go. Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:36 – 00:42:36) Let’s go.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:36 – 00:42:46) The next option was you take a break, and you look outside or you go walk, we’ll take a walk outside in nature. Mm-hmm. Okay. So you’re exposed to something natural. Mm-hmm.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:46 – 00:42:46) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:46 – 00:42:48) The next break was scrolling.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:42:50 – 00:42:50) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:42:51 – 00:44:21) Can you imagine what the results were? Tell me. It showed that scrolling is pretty much the same as not taking a break. So instead of actually letting this brain rest and make energy for you, because again, this is all chemistry up in here. This is like, again, biological laws. You need to learn that if this system is tired in the end, listen, I’m a high performance, like I’m all about Go for it. Productivity and performance.
So if, let’s say for example, treat yourself like an Olympic athlete. If an athlete is telling you, I’m exhausted, right? Then you say, okay, okay, get off the field, go sit and rest, drink some water, get a snack. You know, we tell them to like stretch, get ready. Why? Because I need you to go back out there and keep training. Yeah. If they say, I’m tired, like let me open TikTok. That’s, we already know, we science has already shown that’s not a break.
It doesn’t replenish and increase your energy. Right? Mm-hmm. So going back to this, I would, you would say, oh, I’m tired. I would actually want you to sit down and really dig into the feeling more. You know, are you really, is it just tired? What’s really going on? And like, I, then you need a replacement behavior. So in this previous example, you were doing the scrolling. It’s, this is what I meant by negative behavior, right?
If you want to cut something off, You cannot just say, oh, next time I’m exhausted, I will not binge watch. This is impossible.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:44:21 – 00:44:22) Good luck. It won’t happen.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:44:22 – 00:44:28) It won’t happen. You’re going to do it because look at this. Look at how deep this network was. It’s not your choice.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:44:28 – 00:44:28) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:44:28 – 00:44:32) It’s going to happen automatically. Yeah. You don’t have a choice. Raj is not driving this car.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:44:33 – 00:44:36) It’s automatically just driving it on.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:44:36 – 00:45:04) It’s automatically driving it. So you need to aggressively, that’s what I meant, a cognitive pause. You need to aggressively start, number one, You need to start where it starts, which is the feeling. It starts here. Hmm. The feeling, the brain state, the cognitive state, the craving. Why do you do the behavior in the first place? We have to cut it off there and make you pause and then say, okay, we’re going to do something else.
So that ends up being this feeling, right? That was our first step here.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:45:04 – 00:45:04) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:45:05 – 00:45:14) So instead of going towards the re— the actual binge watching, we’re going to do something else. So let’s say instead, what’s a healthy behavior that you wish you did more of too?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:45:15 – 00:45:16) Let’s say breathwork.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:45:18 – 00:45:19) I mean, yeah, that would be nice.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:45:19 – 00:45:20) Before sleeping.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:45:20 – 00:45:23) Yeah, sure. So you’re going to do breathwork. Great. Okay.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:45:23 – 00:45:24) Like just 1 minute.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:45:24 – 00:45:28) 1 minute is amazing. 60 seconds, close your eyes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:45:29 – 00:45:29) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:45:29 – 00:45:30) That’s it. You don’t have to do anything else.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:45:30 – 00:45:30) You just—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:45:32 – 00:45:34) that’s it. Okay.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:45:34 – 00:45:34) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:45:34 – 00:45:58) That’s going to be the new replacement behavior. Now, here’s what I would tell you if you’re really addicted. If after 60 seconds of closing your eyes, you still want to scroll, go for it. Makes it a lot easier. No. Yeah. But what you’re doing when you do that, by the way, is let’s say the closing your eyes, this is the feeling that started. This is the new behavior. Close your eyes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:45:58 – 00:45:59) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:45:59 – 00:46:01) Right. I’ll draw a little eye for you here.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:46:01 – 00:46:02) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:46:02 – 00:46:13) Okay. So you close your eyes. This is the new behavior. Instead of this going immediately to the original scrolling behavior, it’s going to go here first.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:46:13 – 00:46:13) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:46:14 – 00:46:25) This is, you’re breaking the cycle. Instead of the energy going this way, it’s now going to go this way. Even if it goes this way afterwards, we’re helping. Maybe one time you go, no, I still want to scroll.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:46:25 – 00:46:25) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:46:25 – 00:46:28) Okay. The second time maybe you’re like, okay, fine.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:46:30 – 00:46:30) Really?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:46:30 – 00:46:34) I’ll do something else. This is— you just, you have to find a way to break this thing.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:46:35 – 00:46:42) And if I break this, you’re saying that after 1 minute, if I still want to do it, if I do this every time, I’ll reduce?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:46:44 – 00:46:56) If you do it every time, I promise you’re going to start not doing it. If you— then you’re just going to create a new one. I mean, listen, if you do it every time, then you’re just going to start creating a new habit this way, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:46:56 – 00:46:57) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:46:57 – 00:47:15) Yeah. So you’re just saying, okay, before the route was this way, now this is a new route that I’m going to go to scrolling. Like now you’re going to be that guy that before he binge watches, he closes his eyes for 60 seconds. You’ve just designed a new addiction. But the idea here is you’re giving your brain an opportunity.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:47:15 – 00:47:16) Mm-hmm.
Emotional Regulation and Building New Neural Pathways
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:47:16 – 00:47:26) It’s just an opportunity to redirect. And what we call all of this, by the way, is to do one thing. And that thing is called emotional regulation.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:47:30 – 00:47:31) Interesting.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:47:31 – 00:48:39) That’s what you’re trying to do because every behavior, even people doing hard drugs, porn addiction, it’s coming from an emotion. It starts here. If you can understand the emotion, you can control the behavior because you can choose it. You can design it, but that requires regulating. Regulating is hard. So what you can do is you just can create a cognitive pause and get yourself to do something tiny, easy, not hard, easy, easy, easy.
And then you’re creating a bit of a pattern interrupt, and it’s an opportunity for you to choose something different. So then what ends up happening is this pa— road becomes less traveled. Let’s say this is after 1 month of you closing your eyes after the feeling instead of going immediately. So now it gets skinnier. After 3 months, it’s even skinnier. Then this one, you’ve been doing this, right? So this is getting stronger and stronger, and this one keeps getting skinnier, and this one keeps getting stronger.
That’s the idea. This is how you build new habits and kill bad ones that you don’t want anymore.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:48:39 – 00:48:44) And why killing bad ones is more difficult than building a new one, starting new ones.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:48:45 – 00:49:27) It’s difficult because you are both pruning. You’re both pruning, meaning you’re trying to deactivate and weaken a neural network or a pattern of electrical activation. And in order to do that, you should be building another one. So it’s like you’re doing 2 things. You know, if you think about it from like a business perspective, it’s like, if you’re trying to downsize one department and create a whole new department. It’s a little easier just to say everyone else to keep going.
We’re also just going to build a new department, new project. So you’re doing 2 things. You’re pruning is hard because the energy wants to go that way.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:49:27 – 00:49:27) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:49:27 – 00:50:31) Because you let it, you let it go that way over and over and over again. And then it became, that muscle became really strong. Going back to your identity, remember those stories? Yeah. It’s the same thing. So if you let yourself say, I’m a victim, I’m a victim, I’m a victim, I’m going to stay poor forever, blah, blah, blah, because the system is messed up. Those people who are successful, they were, they did it through tricks.
They got it through luck. I’m unlucky. My family’s not lucky. My, we just, we don’t, that doesn’t happen for us. It doesn’t happen for people from like where I’m from, whatever it may, whatever story you’re telling yourself. Any one of these stories, if you let yourself say that story again, what you’re doing is again, you’re make, you’re just saying that’s, this is what’s up. This is real. This is real. This is real. This is real.
And what we said before, beliefs look for data and data informs beliefs. And then that cycle becomes even stronger and becomes your whole life.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:50:31 – 00:51:02) So when you When you get hired by these large companies to upgrade their mindset or upgrade mindset of their CEOs and their billionaires and multimillionaire executives, right, what actual habit or like a sort of a routine you help them build so that they don’t get— they upgrade their mind and they don’t get exhausted? Because you must be improving something in their life. That’s why they keep coming back to you.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:51:03 – 00:51:09) Yeah, there’s a lot of habits and a lot of strategies. It kind of depends on— we can go through the list.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:51:09 – 00:51:18) Yeah, tell me the list. What can an average 25-year-old or 35-year-old who’s watching this can follow in their life which you teach the top executives?
Bad Digital Hygiene: The Phone Study That Will Shock You
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:51:19 – 00:51:38) Okay, the first, and I would say the most pervasive issue that I see in most people’s lives right now and in places of work as it relates to productivity is what we call bad digital hygiene.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:51:40 – 00:51:41) Okay. What do you mean by that?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:51:42 – 00:52:03) So hygiene, right? It’s like having clean hands and things like this. Yeah. Bad digital hygiene is having a bad relationship with your digital tools and specifically your notifications. I’ll give you an example. You sit down to work, you sit down to focus on something. Where is your phone when you’re doing this?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:52:03 – 00:52:09) Usually it’s on my desk, like right here. Yeah. Like right now it’s not here, but mostly it’s—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:52:09 – 00:52:18) Yeah. Yeah. It’s right there. Actually, for this, I can actually, we can do a mini experiment together. Okay. If you’re up for it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:52:18 – 00:52:19) Okay. I’m up for it.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:52:19 – 00:52:25) Okay. ‘Cause there was a study done in UT Austin that I want to share with you.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:52:25 – 00:52:25) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:52:26 – 00:52:31) But we’re going to pretend like you are doing, you’re, you’re in the actual study itself.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:52:31 – 00:52:31) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:52:31 – 00:52:33) You’re going to be like one of the participants.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:52:33 – 00:52:33) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:52:34 – 00:52:36) Okay. All right. So this is your phone.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:52:36 – 00:52:36) Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:52:37 – 00:52:49) All right. So in this study, everybody came into the lab. So let’s say you’re the, in the exact same situation, right? You’ve just come into the lab and what we’re going to do, Raj, is we’re going to test Your general fluid intelligence.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:52:50 – 00:52:51) Okay, what do you mean by that?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:52:52 – 00:53:23) It means your mind’s ability to hold important information in mind and then get new information and compute with that information without losing the stuff that was already in your mind. Honestly, you’re— you’ve been doing it this whole conversation. Yeah, you’re amazing at it, but that’s why you’re successful. So it’s an important skill. Have you noticed some people, it’s hard for them to do that? They like lose track of what they were trying to remember and they can’t compute the stuff.
Yeah. New stuff. Okay. So there’s actually a test for this, which I bet you would score really high.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:53:23 – 00:53:23) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:53:23 – 00:53:30) Okay. It’s a complex working memory task, and complex working memory is a phenomenal way to test for general fluid intelligence.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:53:30 – 00:53:31) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:53:31 – 00:53:41) I can give you this test later if you like, for real. But let’s say you come into the lab and I want to test that. Okay. And I want to test your attention span.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:53:41 – 00:53:41) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:53:42 – 00:53:43) Mm-hmm.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:53:43 – 00:53:43) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:53:43 – 00:53:49) Oh, now you come in and I say, okay, you have a phone, right? All right, great. Go ahead and turn your phone completely off.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:53:51 – 00:53:53) Like, like airplane or just—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:53:53 – 00:54:00) no, no, no. Full, like dead. Yeah. Not DND, not airplane mode. The side and the button.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:54:03 – 00:54:03) None.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:54:05 – 00:54:33) Okay, it’s off. Okay, scenario 1, your phone is going to be in another room with me. It’s dead. You turned it off. You give it to me. It’s going to be in the waiting room, so I’m going to hold it. You’re going to go into the testing room with a computer. You’re going to sit down and you’re going to hammer out all these tests. Yeah, we’re going to test your intelligence and all these things. Okay, option 2, scenario 2. I, you can keep your phone, but you have to put it in your pocket.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:54:34 – 00:54:34) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:54:34 – 00:54:35) Or a bag.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:54:35 – 00:54:35) Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:54:35 – 00:54:39) Okay. Now imagine, now you come in, you sit down by yourself in the room.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:54:39 – 00:54:39) Hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:54:39 – 00:54:40) And remember, your phone is dead.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:54:42 – 00:54:42) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:54:42 – 00:54:42) This is off.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:54:42 – 00:54:43) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:54:44 – 00:55:08) You’re not taking a text or something in the middle of the test. You sit down, you do the attention span test, you do all the different tests. Scenario 3, you can take your phone out of your pocket, But this time I let you put your phone face down, just like where you said it was when you were working. Okay. Face down on the side. Then you’re sitting in front of the computer and you’re doing all of these assessments.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:55:08 – 00:55:09) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:55:09 – 00:55:10) Okay. Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:55:11 – 00:55:11) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:55:11 – 00:55:14) In this study. And remember, the phone is dead. Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:55:15 – 00:55:20) Yeah. Technically, nothing changes in all 3 scenarios. The phone’s dead. You’re not using it.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:55:20 – 00:55:36) Exactly. It’s like having this eraser nearby, right? It’s just an object. In this study, we were able to see— and by the way, this is one of the most shocking studies I think I have seen in the last number of years on this topic.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:55:36 – 00:55:37) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:55:38 – 00:55:49) When the phone was visible to you in your visual field, dead but face down off to the side, scores were significantly decreased. Across the board.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:55:49 – 00:55:51) Like my attention decreased.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:55:51 – 00:56:10) Yes. It’s the same you, right? Same Raj, same brain, different capability. And think about its attention span, Raj. It was also general fluid intelligence. That means you’re dumber. Literally, if the phone is visible, I’m dumber.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:56:11 – 00:56:11) Even though it’s dead.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:56:12 – 00:56:48) Even though it’s dead. Even though it’s dead. This is the scary reality of how attention works in the brain. Remember the stories we tell, right? The brain is all about storytelling and narration. All the memories you have using that thing, all of the memories you have binge watching, talking to friends, making plans, good news, bad news. Drama, all these things are happening in the phone, right? For me, I don’t know if you use like Apple Pay, but I’m also like tapping.
It’s like my payment system.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:56:49 – 00:56:50) It’s like everything.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:56:50 – 00:57:08) It’s everything. Everything is in the phone. Memories. I have pictures, of my dog. Like all this stuff is on there that I love, right? It’s all there. And you know that your brain knows that. So if you can see it’s always going to be thinking, oh, I’m remembering all those amazing things. And I want to play.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:57:09 – 00:57:14) Like right now, since the time we’ve spoken about phone, I’ve been anticipating.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:57:14 – 00:57:15) Really?
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:57:15 – 00:57:17) Like a notification will come right now.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:57:18 – 00:59:15) But it’s dead. It’s dead. So here’s my recommendation. You should have like a parking lot, a box, something there where you hide your phone. Just put it away so that you don’t see it. Bam. Gone. Out of sight, out of mind. We don’t need it. Right? And this is, listen, I’m not saying all the time, but when you want, When you want 100% of your intelligence. For me, right? I run a business, right? I do research. I teach. I do all these different things.
When it’s game time, again, remember, treat yourself like an Olympic athlete. If it’s game time, it’s go time. You’re making a big important decision. You’re sitting down with your team and you’re having a brainstorm. Get the phones outta the room because you’re literally lowering the IQ of your whole team if you let people have their phones out. The IQ of your employees, the IQ of your team is lower. You’re making everybody dumber just by having phone here, just by having the phone there.
And if you care about this, people like you less. There’s been lots of really interesting studies that people who hold their phone or put their phone out on the table when they’re talking to people and they first meet you seem less trustworthy. Less capable, less intelligent, all of these different things. Why would that be? It’s because I’m really saying, listen, you’re not so important that I’m going to give up the opportunity to put my attention somewhere else.
Somebody more important than you might call me, so I’m going to keep it here in my hand, cuz that’s wherever it is. Usually it’s people in people’s hands or like, some, I’ll like sometimes put it under my arm and carry it that way, whatever. But it’s on the table. Two people who have a coffee chat, right? They put it on the table and they sit down and they have their coffee. But it’s literally lowering the quality of the conversation.
It’s lowering the quality of the connection. You know, you’re not married yet, are you? No. Okay, so you’re going to be dating. It’s also going to lower the quality of your date.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:59:16 – 00:59:17) No, I don’t take that on the dates.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:59:18 – 00:59:19) All right, good, good, good.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:59:19 – 00:59:35) I’ve learned it on my podcast that Days when I have my phone right next to me, my attention during the conversation is much lower versus— that’s why I just always give it to these guys and just, either, either out of the room or they have it somewhere. I don’t even care.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:59:35 – 00:59:36) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (00:59:36 – 00:59:44) And it’s like on airplane mode. The moment you’re like, you entering, before even you enter, like 30 minutes before you enter, you’re just off. Like it’s gone. I don’t care.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (00:59:45 – 01:00:10) That’s such a good habit. I’m so glad you mentioned that. Your listeners need to do that too. It’s the same thing. It’s the same exact thing. I would also recommend going back to your sleep because now I care about your sleep. Remember I used to coach CEOs and I know I’m like, so I’m going to start like coaching you. Bring it back to your sleep. I would ask you to respect your sleep enough because it’s going to impact your performance that much too for you to put your phone away 30 minutes before bed.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:00:12 – 01:00:12) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:00:13 – 01:00:15) You said you did it 30 minutes before I arrived.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:00:16 – 01:00:16) Yeah, but this is—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:00:17 – 01:00:38) yeah, I’m not as important as your sleep, Raj. Your sleep is more important than me. I promise. I promise. Because if you start doing that, oh, you’re going to see such a radical shift in your life and in your mindset. And do you want to know something? Okay, here’s what I— this— I’m going to dare you to do this. Hmm. Okay. And I’m going to follow up with you.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:00:38 – 01:00:38) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:00:39 – 01:01:08) I’m going to dare you to do this. 30 minutes before you go to bed, have a cutoff where you have to turn your phone off. And then don’t turn it back on until 30 minutes after you wake up. If 30 minutes is too much, 15 minutes. 15 minutes before you go to bed, off. And then after you wake up, just let your eyes open because people use the phone as an alarm. It’s right next to them. The phone rings, they immediately grab it and then they start.
They’re still in bed. They’re like doing this.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:01:08 – 01:01:09) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:01:09 – 01:01:09) They’re just like, oh.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:01:11 – 01:01:14) That’s me. Thanks for attacking. Like, that’s just—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:01:15 – 01:01:16) gotta talk about the truth.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:01:16 – 01:01:16) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:01:17 – 01:02:58) I didn’t know that, but it’s— this is the reality for so many people though, right? There’s no, no point in the shame because the shame makes it worse. Remember, it’s adding an extra feeling on top of the other feeling. So that feeling in the morning, you’re looking for stimulation and it’s FOMO. You want to figure out what you missed while you’ve been sleeping. Yeah. But here, okay, here’s my, this is why I want you to not look at it for 15 minutes.
First thing in the morning, your brain is in a very delicate and powerful state. You have an opportunity to reinforce those new beliefs that we were talking about. You have an opportunity to set your brain up for the right mindset, for the right goals, for the right priorities first thing in the morning. When you allow the rest of the world to tell you who you are, where you should be putting your attention. So, hey, there’s news over here.
Look at this notification. Look at this email. I need this, Raj. I need you to send me the— can I see you Tuesday at 3:00 PM? Please confirm. Is that when we’re meet? All this noise, all the noise from the outside is removing an opportunity for your own brain to tell you some amazing idea that’s going to unlock something for you. Because peeps, so many people have such amazing clarity and amazing ideas first thing in the morning.
But right now across the world, I think it’s, it’s a generation of people are losing that. Like we’re missing out. We’re missing out on so many things. So the first mistake you asked me, the biggest mistake that people are making is bad digital hygiene. They leave their notifications on their computers. So they sit down on the computer and now we, let’s say we put the phones away at least, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:02:58 – 01:02:58) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:02:58 – 01:02:59) Phone is gone.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:02:59 – 01:02:59) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:02:59 – 01:03:10) ‘Cause we learned about that. Okay? If you want to be fully focused, you want to have the best productivity, the highest level of effectiveness, you also need to make sure all your other forms of digital hygiene are locked in.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:03:10 – 01:03:11) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:03:11 – 01:03:37) Dialed in. That means, and let me be clear, most of the CEOs I work with, when I sat down and I would observe them working, I would show up with my clipboard and all of my, observational tools and stuff. And I’d be like, go ahead, just, I’ll be over here. Watching. They have, they immediately open a document, right? Let’s say they’re getting ready for the board meeting or something. They open up a document, they’re looking at a deck, and then bing!
What was that?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:03:37 – 01:03:38) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:03:38 – 01:03:50) And then they go here. They have two monitors. On the other monitor, they have like Slack open, constantly pinging, like all this stuff. And the phone is out, and they have an Apple Watch, and they’re just like doing this thing. And it’s just like this.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:03:50 – 01:03:50) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:03:52 – 01:04:01) But the brain is literally a focusing machine. Every single time you switch your attention, you pay for it. It’s not free.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:04:02 – 01:04:04) What do you pay for it? How do you pay? What’s the price?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:04:04 – 01:04:13) I’m glad you asked. You pay for it in time, and you pay for it in energy. And if you don’t believe me, we can test it out.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:04:13 – 01:04:14) Go ahead.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:04:14 – 01:04:14) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:04:14 – 01:04:15) Tell me. Yeah.
The Myth of Multitasking: A Live Experiment
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:04:15 – 01:04:34) Okay. Grab a piece of paper. You have some paper and a pen. So on this piece of paper, we’re just going to draw 2 lines. There you go. Okay. Now on the top line, I want you to write, I am a great multitasker, but don’t start yet. Okay? And then on the bottom line, I want you to write the numbers 1 through 20.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:04:35 – 01:04:35) 1 to 20.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:04:36 – 01:04:44) 1 through 20. I want you to go as fast as you can. Okay? And then I’m going to time you. I’ll hide the phone so that you’re as smart as possible. No excuses. Okay? Right.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:04:44 – 01:04:46) I’m a great multitasker and 1 to 20.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:04:47 – 01:04:47) Exactly.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:04:47 – 01:04:47) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:04:48 – 01:04:53) And I want you to go as fast as you can. I’ll read the times out out loud and then, and then you can go for it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:04:53 – 01:04:53) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:04:53 – 01:04:57) And then actually, how about this? I won’t read them out loud. I’ll— you just focus.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:04:57 – 01:04:58) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:04:58 – 01:05:31) Okay. Because we’ll have the timer going up there. I’ll watch you and I’ll stop the time when you finish. Okay. Get ready. Get set. Go. 17.72. Super fast. Cool. Now turn this paper around.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:05:33 – 01:05:34) Awesome.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:05:36 – 01:05:52) Draw two more lines. You’re going to do this one more time, okay? You’re going to end with the same outcome. So the output at the end is going to be I’m a great multitasker one through twenty. But the way in which you will arrive will be very different.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:05:52 – 01:05:52) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:05:52 – 01:06:06) You’re going to alternate. Yeah. You’re going to start at one at the at the top line. You’re going to write. You’re going to write the letter I. You’re going to drop down to the bottom line. Write the number one back up to the top line. Letter A, and then down to the bottom line, number 2, back up to the top line.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:06:07 – 01:06:08) After every letter? Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:06:09 – 01:06:11) You’re going to go back and forth until you finish both lines.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:06:11 – 01:06:11) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:06:11 – 01:06:33) Okay. Now listen, listen. If you think, hold on, I’m going to lose time, right? Going back and forth, meaning just my hand moving, right? You can, if you want, you can draw one extra long line, but you have to still alternate. So that means you still have to write in between I one two a.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:06:34 – 01:06:34) Okay, all right.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:06:34 – 01:07:19) But I just want to give you options. Get ready, get set, go! You got this. This is where you guys need to overlay some fun music. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:07:19 – 01:07:19) Done. Done.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:07:20 – 01:07:28) Forty second. Because you went from 17.72 to 41.35.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:07:29 – 01:07:29) More than double.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:07:30 – 01:07:37) More than double. So, and I have a question. We all saw, but did you ever make any mistakes?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:07:38 – 01:07:50) Oh yeah, a lot. Okay. So this time I was focused on like just, yeah, like my brain was not able to comprehend like 2 things at the same time.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:07:50 – 01:07:56) Yeah. Well, really, your brain can’t. This is the point I want to make.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:07:56 – 01:07:58) So you’re saying nobody can be a good multitasker?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:07:58 – 01:08:05) No, no. Listen, what you’re— there’s, let me, and let me, let’s be clear. Let’s define what we’re talking about here.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:08:05 – 01:08:05) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:08:06 – 01:08:24) When people talk about multitasking, the way they talk about it is as if they’re doing 2 different things with full fidelity. At the same time. That’s how they talk about it. Yeah. When they talk about multitasking, they’re like, yeah, yeah, I’m doing this and I’m doing this.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:08:24 – 01:08:24) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:08:25 – 01:08:26) Okay. How many brains do you have?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:08:28 – 01:08:30) One. Yeah. Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:08:30 – 01:08:33) That— how many attention systems do you have? Like, you have one of everything.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:08:33 – 01:08:34) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:08:34 – 01:09:20) Okay. So you don’t have 2 brains. You cannot say, with my full Raj brain, 100% performance, I am 100% doing this And at the same time, I am 100% doing this. You don’t have 2 100s, you have one 100. So if you want, you can take your 100% like a pie chart. You can dice it up. You could say 50/50, 50% of my attention is on this, 50% on this, 80/20, 70/30, 60/40. No matter what your split is, you’re splitting your attention. It’s split.
So when we talk about multitasking, the way people talk about it, they, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have my phone here, but I’m not looking. I have my email open, but I’m focused here. When the notif comes up, no, you, I see you go, huh? And you look.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:09:20 – 01:09:21) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:09:21 – 01:09:29) Even when you’re on calls with people, you’re like on a Zoom call with somebody and you’re look, they’re looking at you and then all of a sudden you see their eyes go down and up again.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:09:29 – 01:09:29) Yeah. Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:09:30 – 01:09:33) Come, we can all see you, right? Nobody’s that slick.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:09:33 – 01:09:33) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:09:33 – 01:10:38) The people think like nobody’s going to notice. You know, you said yeah, because you’ve seen other people do it. I’ve seen other people do it. Everyone’s doing it. And they think that I can see when other people are doing it, but nobody can tell when I do it ’cause I’m fast. No, we can all see. My point here is that it’s not your choice. It’s not your choice to pay attention or not pay attention to distractions when they come up.
The way that the brain works is it’s a monotasking machine, not a multitasking machine. It is designed to focus on one thing. Now, does that mean you can never do 2 things at once? No, of course not. Listen, in my car, I listen to podcasts. I sometimes make calls. I call my mother. You know, I call my mom on my way somewhere. I have her on speaker, and I’m driving. But listen, in that moment, I’m going to be honest with you because this is just, as a neuroscientist, I can just tell you this is how the brain works.
I am not 100% focused on the road.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:10:38 – 01:10:39) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:10:39 – 01:11:08) Otherwise it’s impo— I’m not going to hear my mom. I don’t, I’m not going to listen to anything she’s saying, which, listen, that’s a whole nother conversation about moms. She’s like complaining on my knee, my back, my this, my that. You didn’t, you need to come home, blah, blah, blah. All these things. Okay. That’s a different story cuz it’s always the same stories. But the point here is that for sure it’s not possible for me to 100% focus on the conversation and 100% focus on the road.
Because I know where I’m going in my hometown, honestly, it’s like—
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:11:08 – 01:11:11) yeah, it’s like an autopilot. You’re just going there.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:11:11 – 01:11:52) Bingo. So my point is, listen, it’s nuanced. I’m not saying, Raj, you can never do 2. Yeah, yeah, sure you can, but you just have to know the math. You have to understand the biological laws. You have to know what you’re doing. Be strategic about it. Be strategic about it. Now you know that if you And by the way, what you did just now, oh yeah, what you did here, this is not multitasking because that’s impossible. Again, remember multitasking the way it’s defined.
I, you did 100% one thing and 100% another thing. That’s not possible here. What you’re doing and what is possible, what happens in everybody’s brains, yours, mine, everyone’s, is something called task switching.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:11:52 – 01:11:53) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:11:53 – 01:11:54) Context switching, essentially.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:11:54 – 01:11:54) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:11:55 – 01:13:06) This we do all the time, but every single time you switch your attention from A to B, B to C, C to all of the different one thing to another, to the Apple Watch, to the phone, to the back to the document and back to the thing. And then what? Oh, who? Somebody came in my office. What did you want? But every single time you switch your attention, there’s a payment, a biological payment. So the brain pays for it in time, as you noticed, more than double.
It’s not for free. It takes more time and time is limited. Time is money. And the second thing that it takes is energy. You’re going to exhaust yourself more. And every single time, and listen, this was easy. Whose job is this easy? You want to build an empire, you want to build a company, you want to cure cancer. Nothing is this easy. So when you’re doing something hard and you really want to do good, you have to respect yourself enough to put the distractions out of sight.
Out of mind, notifications off, no email open, no phone next to you, no notifs available, and actually focus on the thing in front of you. And in the beginning, if you’re not used to it’s going to be difficult. It’s going to be painful. Your mind’s going to be all over the place, but you just need to get your muscles hard again. You need to get your muscles strong.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:13:06 – 01:13:12) But what about people who are good at multitasking? Is there someone like that or it’s just a myth?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:13:13 – 01:13:15) Do you want to know something really funny?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:13:15 – 01:13:16) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:13:16 – 01:13:28) There was a study done at Stanford that I’ll send you. So there’s, they’re smart, smart kids, young, healthy brains. Do you know what I mean? Sharp. Okay. So no excuses. You can’t be like, they’re just, they’re dumb.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:13:28 – 01:13:29) No, no, no.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:13:29 – 01:13:55) We got, we got good ones. This study on multitasking asked people upfront, are you a good multitasker? The people who said yes confidently, oh yeah, I’m great at it, they were actually worse when they tested them. That’s crazy. It’s like a joke. It’s like science jokes, right? It’s absolutely mind-boggling, but it’s so fascinating.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:13:56 – 01:13:56) Why?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:13:57 – 01:13:59) Well, unknown to be— you know what it is?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:13:59 – 01:14:01) It’s a random belief they’ve built about themselves.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:14:01 – 01:14:31) It could be because if you multitask so much, by the way, You try because again, we talked about it. You’re just context switching all the time. Your brain is just foggy. I don’t think you see straight. I think this is the problem with most companies right now. Most people are just bouncing back and forth and they think this is normal and they just go like, oh, it’s hard for me to focus. Maybe I have ADHD. Come on. Every 80% of the population all of a sudden has ADHD.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:14:31 – 01:14:34) Why everybody started saying this? Every—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:14:34 – 01:17:13) like, it’s just like 50 things because of the scrolling. That’s why, because our attention spans are shot. This is actually some of the recent research I’ve started doing. Truly, attention spans have just gotten worse and worse and worse. And the more you scroll— and it’s, by the way, it’s not all scrolling. And I’m not just giving like, your podcast a pat on the back here. This is actually the research supports this. There is a massive difference between long-form and short-form media.
The short-form media is truly like garbage and candy for the brain. It is, it’s like junk food. That’s what I mean. So the, how would your body feel if you fill it with junk food? Not so good. Listen, am I saying sometimes we don’t have some junk food? Oh, for sure. No problem. You know, you gotta live a balanced life. You know what I mean? Life is short. Enjoy it a little bit. You know, do it’s okay. But if your whole diet is junk food, if you eat junk food every day, what’s going to happen in one year?
Not so good. Bad things. So this is this relationship that we have with our phones, our devices, our email. This is it’s not. I don’t want people to think I’m just talking about just TikTok either. People are addicted to email. They’re addicted to WhatsApp. They’re addicted to messaging and communicating constantly, all the time, 24/7. And that never allows them to come up with ideas, hear what’s going on inside of them. All of the stuff we talked about before, the self-awareness— you want to train your brain, that takes effort, that takes awareness, that takes focus.
You want to build an empire, you want to build a business, you want to do all these things, that takes focus. And when we removed the ability to focus, this is why everybody thinks they have ADHD because they’re not listening to their biology. Again, it’s like the laws, like the brain works. We just tested you, everybody who’s listening. You believe that Raj is super smart, obviously. That’s why you’re listening. That’s why he’s so successful.
Even you couldn’t do it. You more than doubled your time and you made mistakes. So think about how you work now. When you take this to your life, when you take this to your business, everybody who’s listening, right? When you think about how you work, if you work constantly, I’m sitting down, focus, and then I check this and I check that. If you’re doing it that way, you’re going to make more mistakes and it’s going to take you double the amount of time to get to your goals.
You choose. I’m going to choose the way that’s going to be fast for me. But this is what makes the people that are ultra successful different from everybody else. They just choose differently.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:17:13 – 01:17:14) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:17:14 – 01:17:37) They think about it. They’re aware about it. They’re like, hold on a second. What you said, you said beautifully, I notice the days when I’m on my phone, it’s harder for me to focus. So when we’re shooting, when the guest is right, I tell the guys, I turn it off and I tell the guys, get it outta here. You are in a beautiful example of a CEO that has figured it out. Everybody else can do the same for themselves.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:17:37 – 01:17:52) So you’re telling me that a lot of people think that ultra-successful people have better ideas, but you’re telling that they don’t have better ideas, they just know how to protect their attention so that they can get ideas. Is that what you’re saying?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:17:53 – 01:18:18) They have more ideas. It’s like fishing. I can tell you this is the science of innovation and creativity. Every, by the way, inventor will tell you this. Inventors, artists, engineers, people who build, people who come up with like crazy ideas, they’ll tell you for every one good idea, they had 1 million s* ideas. This, it’s a numbers game.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:18:18 – 01:18:19) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:18:19 – 01:18:41) You have to become like an idea machine. It’s, it’s a muscle. If you’re exercising your idea muscle every single day, you allow your mind to explore and wander and you give it time and space to do it. Listen, you’re going to come up with a lot of stupid ideas. That’s okay. You have to. It’s a process, right? One day after another, and then finally you’re going to hit.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:18:43 – 01:18:49) So what should I do? How, how can someone become a person who gets incredible ideas all the time?
The Science of Great Ideas: Why Boredom Fuels Creativity
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:18:51 – 01:19:05) Okay, you ready? This is my number one recommendation. You might not like it, or you might be surprised. Okay. Be bored. Be bored and do nothing.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:19:07 – 01:19:08) And you get ideas by that.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:19:08 – 01:19:55) And you get ideas. Let me explain. Ideas, new ideas often come when we are mind wandering. That goes back to the neural network that I talked about earlier, the DMN, the default mode network. That’s what that, when that is active, Your brain is creating. Remember in the beginning I said it’s the storyteller in the brain. It’s the storytelling machine. It’s the area of the brain and the areas of the brain that are all about narration and ideas.
So that’s your idea machine. You need to allow the DMN to actually become active. Now, the opposite of the DMN is the central executive network. The CEN.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:19:55 – 01:19:56) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:19:56 – 01:20:03) And it, I mean, listen to the sound of it. The central executive network. Hmm. What do you think? It’s like the CEO. Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:20:04 – 01:20:05) That’s right. What’s the goal? Operator.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:20:05 – 01:22:38) It’s the operator. Beautifully said. It’s the project manager. What are we doing? What’s the goal? And then anytime it’s also in charge of inhibition. So inhibition is, suppressing the things that seem distracting. Listen, I’m on my target. I gotta focus on this. So if you’re telling me, “hey, hey, Sarah, what about this idea?” Ah, shh, I don’t want to hear about ideas. I gotta, I’m doing this focus. That’s your central executive network and you need it.
And it’s mostly frontal areas, right? Because this is where a lot of your executive functioning is happening in the first place. So you’ve got all these different, this neural network that’s again responsible for get s* done, right? Focus and do stuff. The opposite of that is the DMN, and the DMN is again all about stories, daydreaming, being bored. Let your mind wander. When you daydream, that’s when a bunch of ideas can finally come and float to the surface.
So the first step is you have to find time and space to be bored, to be bored, to daydream, to let your mind wonder, because again, remember, it’s easy to remember and understand why. What’s the opposite of that? Get stuff done. What idea are you going to have when you’re like on a deadline to get s* done if you’re busy all of the time? And then what, what do people do when they’re not working? When are you suppo— how is your brain going to shove an idea into your, into your, in front of you, right?
How? You have to let those ideas come to you by cultivating the space for them. You have to make the space for them. So the most creative people, the most amazing innovators, by the way, they force themselves to sit down. Some people call it think time. Some, one of the guests you had on the show, I think Bill Gates, he was really famous by having a think week. I believe it was, whole week he takes off, no busy work, just to think.
See what ideas come. It was actually during his, one of his think weeks that he decided that the internet is not a fad. Can you imagine if, Bill Gates didn’t realize that decades ago? So these ideas come, we have to give them the space to come. And that requires discipline because right now distraction is making money for these tech companies like crazy. Welcome to the distraction economy. So it’s keeping everybody stuck.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:22:39 – 01:22:39) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:22:39 – 01:22:53) It’s keeping everybody stuck in their old loops because also this is how the algorithm works. The algorithms that you’re doom scrolling on, that you’re binge watching on, the way they work is they’re going to show you stuff that you like.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:22:53 – 01:22:53) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:22:54 – 01:23:19) They’re going to show you more of the same. If you want to become a different version of you need to change your content. Your content is actually a great example of this. A lot of other awesome podcasts that are educational, right? About like, how do I become better? How do I level myself up? If all you’re doing when you’re binge watching, if you’re all, it’s just bad news, this, that, just like whatever.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:23:19 – 01:23:19) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:23:20 – 01:23:40) You will become more of that because what you’re doing is you’re just true. The same stories over and over again. You want to start to become a different version of you, a better version of you should also change your algorithm. We call this, by the way, in the classes I teach, changing your content diet. Hmm.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:23:41 – 01:23:43) And that’s very important. I call it bloom scrolling.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:23:44 – 01:23:45) Oh, I love that.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:23:45 – 01:23:55) Yeah, so it’s like how you have doom scrolling. You curate your feed in a way which is bloom scrolling so that it makes you better. Not actually messes up you, messes up your entire system.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:23:55 – 01:24:13) Yeah, it’s a beautiful way to put it. So you got to give yourself think time, even if it’s bloom or doom, you got to put it away a little bit, and then just give your mind and space to breathe. The next thing that’s going to be important, and this is kind of fun, have you ever, have you heard of that anecdote that people have awesome ideas in the shower?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:24:14 – 01:24:14) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:24:15 – 01:24:16) You’ve heard of it? Have you ever had?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:24:16 – 01:24:18) Of course. Really? Yeah, so many times.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:24:18 – 01:24:20) Okay. Hey, do you know the science behind it?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:24:21 – 01:24:21) No.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:24:22 – 01:24:22) You want to learn?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:24:22 – 01:24:25) Yeah, of course. Okay. Okay. I want to learn all the science in the world. Tell me.
Shower Thoughts: The Neuroscience Behind Sudden Insights
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:24:26 – 01:25:07) Okay. So this is the science behind shower thoughts, shower ideas that so many people have. I’ve had the same thing as well. So the way that the brain works is you are loading up, let’s say, remember the neural networks I talked about before, right? So let’s say you’ve got this pattern of electrical activation happening in the brain, right? These neural networks that are on different brain areas, all of this stuff. So you have this pattern of electrical activation.
Let’s say it looks like this. Okay? Some gridlock. Let’s say this is your brain thinking about a problem. So you’re there and you’re thinking about this problem in your head right now. What’s in my brain?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:25:08 – 01:25:08) The problem.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:25:08 – 01:25:10) The problem stuck.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:25:10 – 01:25:10) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:25:11 – 01:25:19) Where’s the solution? If I want a solution to the problem, I actually have to move these networks around. I have to get different electrical activity. Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:25:19 – 01:25:22) To happen because my brain’s occupied with this.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:25:22 – 01:25:48) Mm-hmm. It’s focused on the problem. So this is how you do it. This is the best way I teach all of the business leaders I work with this. You load up all of the data and the information that you need that’s about the problem. You think about the problem, you understand the problem, you look at all the data related to the problem, load it all up. Then, Walk away. You’re going to sit there and be like, okay, and then what do we do?
What’s the solution? What’s the solution? I don’t know.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:25:48 – 01:25:48) I don’t know.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:25:48 – 01:26:55) I don’t know. Get up and do something else. When you do something else, you’re at least introducing a new variable. You’re at least saying, hey, drink some water. At least seriously, something as small as this, because anything you do, anything you touch, smell, drink, listen, listen to a different playlist, different music, get up and move to another room. If you’re sitting at your desk and you’re always working at your desk and you’re like, this is my focus, this is where I’m at, and you’re just like, this is the problem.
The problem is also here. It’s in your, all of the associations that you’ve built up with that problem. Change the environment. So when people finally go on a walk or they go take a shower, they’ve loaded all the data there. So the neural networks related to the problem are still active, They were there recently, at least active. So you then you get in the shower and you introduce new variables. Now you’re not scrolling either, because again, the scrolling is a distraction.
If you distract yourself with I gotta text these people back, get on WhatsApp, I gotta da da da da da all these things. Yeah. You’re not going to solve any problems because now you’re just doing more stuff.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:26:55 – 01:26:55) True.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:26:56 – 01:27:20) You’re doing more stuff. You have to not do stuff to give your brain space to say, “Wait a minute.” light bulb, because the problem was still there and active. And then you’re introducing new variables, whatever they may be. You have a little sip of water, put some water on your face, whatever it is, you got to do something different. And then your brain goes at some point, oh, I got it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:27:22 – 01:27:31) And that’s how you— because you’re mindlessly just standing in shower, all of a sudden you get that Because you’re not focused on problem anymore.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:27:31 – 01:27:57) Yeah, you loosened a little bit and you introduced new data. You introduced new variables and new data. It could be on a walk, you could start cooking dinner, you could go exercise, go on a run, whatever, whatever you want to do, but not something so immersive that you can’t keep thinking about the other thing. This is— so don’t like go sit down and watch a movie. Do you see what I’m saying?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:27:58 – 01:27:58) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:27:58 – 01:28:01) Unless you want to watch a movie you’ve seen 1,000 times.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:28:01 – 01:28:02) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:28:02 – 01:28:04) Do you know how like you can still think?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:28:04 – 01:28:04) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:28:04 – 01:28:22) Well, you now you get it. This explains, see, there’s neuroscience to explain all of these human experiences we have. If you’re watching a rerun of an old, sitcom you’ve seen like a million times, it’s kind of soothing because you can kind of, you’re not really just focused and paying attention. You’re letting your mind wander a little bit.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:28:23 – 01:28:23) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:28:23 – 01:28:42) But when you’re scrolling, it’s all novel. So it’s designed by people like me, by the way, cognitive neuroscientists, people like me who are hired by these companies. We use everything we know about how to capture your attention and keep your attention to make money off of you. It’s all embedded in how all of these things work.
Long-Form vs. Short-Form Content: What It Does to Your Brain
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:28:42 – 01:28:58) Explain me what’s happening to a person when they’re consuming long-form content versus what’s happening when they’re consuming only short-form content. Like, what’s going on in the brain? Like, if you have to draw parallels to long-form brain and short-form brain.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:28:59 – 01:29:20) Yeah. Well, it also depends on the content. So, I’ll say that. We’ve seen like negative content, like the news, honestly. Like, I’ll say something about the news briefly. News media also knows what sells. And what captures attention.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:29:20 – 01:29:22) Yeah, that’s why they do the negative stuff.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:29:22 – 01:29:40) Yeah, because bad news, rage bait, it works. And listen, if one company starts using it, one news channel starts using it, and the other one goes, oh, that’s— well, that’s not fair, they’re going to hurt, the ratings are going to hurt if they don’t also adapt. So now everybody’s doing it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:29:40 – 01:30:39) Yeah, like since the time of like evolution the most primitive feeling that human beings have is threat, threat for survival. So the more you induce threat, more people find it like more people get anxious, and more they get anxious, they want to keep consuming that content. And that’s why a lot of news media all around the world is just tapping on that one primitive emotion that is, I’m going to make sure that you feel keep feeling anxious and anxious and anxious.
And the way you feel anxious is when I tell you everything is wrong. Yeah, like no matter what you’re doing is wrong. And I find out new ways to make you feel that everyone’s against you, everything’s against you. Tomorrow morning you’re going to get up and things going to go down. So we just tap on this emotion since the time of evolution, and that’s why there’s just negative stuff all around. Yeah, see, it’s hard for us to make positive content and grow.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:30:39 – 01:30:44) It is, it is, it is hard. It would be easier to do it the other way.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:30:44 – 01:30:59) Oh, absolutely, absolutely. If I start today, like you and I, yeah, yeah, yeah, like this, we can make this go 10x more viral if we start just making it about threats and anxieties. Totally. About the world.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:31:00 – 01:31:14) And it’s so sad. Yeah, but it is how the world— it’s how the brain works. It’s not, this is another biological law. You can ignore it, but other companies know it and they’re using it against you. So you— we should learn the laws.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:31:15 – 01:31:28) But that’s so sad, man. Shouldn’t we change it? I mean, we’re trying to change it from how— what, what we do. We’re trying to teach people how to get better. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, to each their own.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:31:28 – 01:31:34) Yeah, but I will say we can’t change our biology in that way.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:31:34 – 01:31:38) Like, we keep thinking for survival and threat.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:31:38 – 01:33:17) We have to, because this is an evolution. I mean, this has been like thousands of years. Yeah, what are we— we’re up again. That’s going to be too hard. What you can do though is you can cut yourself off from things. I’ve met many really, high-powered executives that have had to do some pretty serious cleansing of their content because, and some of them, if they’re really in a dark place and their minds are just so foggy and so busy, we have to cut them off completely from the news for a little while.
And you know what I tell them? The world’s going to go to s* whether you’re looking at it or not. You’re not that important. Like, you’re not involved in global news. I know you’re, fancy CEO running a company, but like, You’re not like deciding on what’s happening with the war. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So instead of you every single day, 15 times a day, checking all of the different updates that are coming in and it’s completely fogging up your mind, it’s now you can’t anymore.
At least until you re— it’s like rehabilitation until you rehab yourself back to he— you can hear yourself again. This is another big issue that I’ve seen, people complain, they say like they can’t hear their own thoughts anymore. There’s no internal narration. That’s where all those ideas are going to come from too. It’s coming from the inside. It’s not coming from the outside. Of course you can use the outside stuff to trigger some ideas, but ideas are still coming from inside.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:33:17 – 01:33:18) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:33:18 – 01:33:18) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:33:19 – 01:33:45) People have lost their ability to actually have internal thoughts. That’s so true. It’s like we don’t have internal thinking anymore. Very few people I meet these days who have their original way of thinking and some thoughts which are their own. Okay, coming back to long-form content, long-form brain versus short-form. Brain.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:33:45 – 01:34:27) So people who are watching long-form content have a sense of story and narration because long-form— think movies, think a journey, a long-form podcast that you sink into. There’s highs, there’s lows, you’re learning, there’s, there’s, turns that you didn’t anticipate, right? Like, we didn’t plan to talk about long-form and short-form, but we arrived here. It’s— there’s a whole journey that we’re on, so there’s a sense of story and narration.
This is going to be critical again for that creativity and for something that we call autobiographical planning. This is all again DMN. So you’re able to actually activate that more and do a lot more of your own internal planning, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:34:27 – 01:34:29) What is autobiographical planning?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:34:29 – 01:34:36) Autobiographical planning is essentially you talking about the story of you and planning your future.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:34:37 – 01:34:51) Hmm. And the one where we have to change our future by thinking positive and optimism and having a belief. Where I am the main character and everything nice happens with me, that narration is going to come through the story and narrative.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:34:51 – 01:34:51) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:34:52 – 01:34:56) And that’s autobiographical planning. Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:34:56 – 01:35:16) That is literally the— what we talked about in the very beginning. That is the definition of autobiographical planning, is you sit down and you think, you make the story and you say the story of who you are going to be. But think about kids these days. They almost never do that because they’re scrolling most of the time. So they’re letting the outside—
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:35:16 – 01:35:19) I know so many adults, old people.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:35:19 – 01:35:20) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:35:20 – 01:35:28) Way old, 10 years older than me. They don’t know about their autobiographical planning. Yeah, they have no idea about their story.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:35:28 – 01:36:50) So sad. But it’s the autobiographical planning, by the way, is something that happens when we’re bored. That’s why boredom is so important. We have to find ways to force it. Force it if you need to be bored. And by the way, I’m not saying be bored for 5 hours a day. No, no, no, no. Yeah, we gotta, we gotta get s* done. But a little bit of boredom. Sundays are for boredom. My personal opinion, just a little bit in the morning and a little bit before bed.
Pretty nice. If you can manage it sometimes in the afternoon, because sometimes the afternoons people have crazy ideas. Because they’re tired. They have a little bit of a slump. And when you are a little bit slumping in your energy, oftentimes your inhibition is lower. So you come up with crazy ideas. You just go, let’s do this. You just like, it’s like being a little drunk. You’re just like, why not? Let’s do it. Let’s go after it.
So, okay. Long form. You got story and narrative because long form content typically also does a lot of work around like character building, right? Like for example, think of the difference between your podcasts that are many hours long where you actually really get to know the guest. Really, like there’s a sense of personalization in here. Like people will learn about the person, then you actually develop empathy.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:36:50 – 01:36:50) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:36:51 – 01:37:01) And by the way, there’s a study for this that we can link here. Where, long-form media like films have actually been shown to increase empathy in people.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:37:03 – 01:37:03) Wow.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:37:04 – 01:37:18) So this is the power of long-form media, the power of movies, long-form podcasts that are educational. You can actually increase different things. And memory— you will remember long-form media.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:37:19 – 01:37:19) True.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:37:21 – 01:38:10) Now we go to this side here. By the way, in case, in case someone right now is watching this in a short, okay, that’s fine. I dare you for just the next second, try to remember 3 reels ago. If you’re scrolling right now, if you’re scrolling right now, I, what was the 3 reels ago? What did you see? If you can’t remember, I don’t want you to feel shame. You’re not alone. I can’t remember either. And it’s because short-form scrolling is designed for you to just, it’s just like crack.
You’re just going to move from one thing to the other. It’s just full novelty. So there’s no memory. So you have less memory, which by the way, what’s another word for memory? Learning.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:38:10 – 01:38:10) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:38:11 – 01:38:52) People think they’re like exposing themselves to like new ideas and you can’t freaking remember it. What’s your, it’s not, you’re not absorbing it. Any of it. There’s no me— if there’s no memory, there’s no learning. Here you have an opportunity to learn. By the way, not very many people know this, but, when I was growing up, a lot of people think because I do so much research on like screen time and scrolling and technology and stuff that I like never watched TV.
When I was little, I watched hours of TV every day, like unlimited television, no limits at all from my family.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:38:52 – 01:38:55) So didn’t your brain become this mush? Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:38:55 – 01:40:20) Well, we didn’t have short-form reels. I’m a little old, we didn’t have, there were no cell phones, man. This was before that time. We had old school, I even the first TV, I had to go and change the buttons on the, on the actual television. But no, my, my mom, my mom and my dad, requested that I watch television so I learn English. I was born in the United States, but my family didn’t speak that much English because we had immigrated.
They had immigrated. I was born here, but they wanted me to learn English, so, and they couldn’t teach me. So then they said, you have to sit, you have to sit down, TV time. I had to sit there and I had to watch, but everything is long form and listen. Go look at an old TV show or an old movie from 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and I want you to count how many times the scene changes, cuts. And now compare it to something that came out recently.
Wildly different. Our attention spans have gotten so bad, and Producers know this, directors know this, editors know this, that the more you cut things up, the more it’s going to capture attention. This is even in shows for little kids. Little kids shows are total— totally different than what they used to be.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:40:21 – 01:41:05) Yeah, like I know this, there’s now Netflix in all of their meetings, they ask this one question to the person who’s selling them the show. It’s like Is it second screen viewing or no? Because Netflix wants to make all their shows based on second screen, not the first screen, because they know they’re already watching like phone. So is it, is it like when someone’s on their phone, can they still watch it and be engaged?
Can you actually make them stop their phone and watch and then come back or no? Like you don’t have to make like one long scene where somebody, if they go to their phone, they forget what was happening. So they have to make it like super— yeah, super quick.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:41:06 – 01:41:26) You know how depressing that is when we think about how many billions of people right now on this planet want to become successful? Listen, you’ve started your own empire. Do you talk about how hard you’ve had to work to make that happen? How much focus it requires?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:41:28 – 01:41:29) Dedication.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:41:29 – 01:41:37) Nobody’s taking that many off days. I can tell you this. I have a business. I tell people this all the time. If you want off days, go get a job.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:41:38 – 01:41:38) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:41:38 – 01:41:39) Because they give you time off.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:41:39 – 01:41:40) True.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:41:42 – 01:41:54) I run a lab. It’s my heart and my soul is in it. I don’t, I’m always thinking about it. It’s like my baby. Your business is your baby. There’s no off. You don’t become not a mother. Just, there’s no off day. To resist it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:41:55 – 01:41:55) True.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:41:55 – 01:43:35) So if we know that’s what it takes to succeed, and we right now are letting these companies train our brains in such a way that it’s making it impossible even to watch a movie and focus, think about how boring it is sometimes, sometimes not all the time, but to run a business and start a business. This. Sometimes you gotta do some boring s*. It’s hard, but you gotta get through it. Listen, I do science. Like, you gotta— it’s a slog.
You gotta analyze data. You gotta be looking at stuff. You have to sit there. You have to work late at night sometimes. You’re working hard, and it’s not fun. It’s not always like a movie. If we are training the next generation of brains in the world to be so distracted and so unfocused that they need 2 screens. I mean, this is crazy. It, to me, it feels like mass manipulation. The world doesn’t want people thinking. It’s easier to control people if they’re dumb and not thinking at all.
They’re distracted. Depressing thought, but we go back to this. Okay, so you’ve got short form. There’s story, or in long form, there’s story and narrative. Here, there’s no memory. There’s no learning. Short-form scrolling has also— this is— there’s data to support this increase in depressive symptoms. We know people are more sad. We see an increase in anxiety. The more you scroll short-form reels, short-form media, the more anxious you get.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:43:36 – 01:43:36) Really?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:43:37 – 01:43:37) Yes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:43:38 – 01:43:42) But what if I’m, I’m just laughing and I’m watching funny reels?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:43:43 – 01:44:23) It’s about the cuts. It’s about how short it is. Don’t— if you want to laugh, watch a 20-minute video on YouTube that’s funny. It’s literally— we’re just talking about long and short. We’re not even talking about the content. But that jumpy back and forth, the cuts create more, it seems. Dreams, more anxiety. Now you get depressive symptoms, an increase in anxiety, and an increase in loneliness. Whereas here in long form, we see empathy.
And empathy, by the way, allows you to connect more. So you’d have an increase in connection versus an increase in loneliness. So they’re like opposites of each other.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:44:23 – 01:44:29) But what’s happening in my brain which is making me lonelier if I can consume short form? What’s the correlation?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:44:30 – 01:46:02) You know, I will say this, we’re not 100% sure, but I will give you my hypothesis. As somebody who is studying this right now, what I believe is happening in the brain when, why is it that we are experiencing the loneliness epidemic right now? It’s not just in the United States. We’re seeing it pretty much across any part of the world that has embraced technology. We see this increase in loneliness. Why? Doesn’t make any sense.
Because think about it, you and I and your team, we were all able to connect when we were halfway across the world from each other. It’s pretty cool. Yeah, technology is pretty amazing like that. So I’m not saying, oh, I’m not like anti-tech, oh, it’s terrible. It’s pretty cool. It allows people to connect from all over. It’s amazing. But that means we’re more connected. So how could it be possible that we’re more lonely? Well, again, let’s think about the craving And then the behavior and that whole response loop we talked about before.
When I am, let’s say for example, I’m seeking connection. And let me begin by saying one other important biological law. There’s a biological law that’s very important for us to accept. It’s not your choice. Human beings are pack animals. Yeah, we’re designed for a collective. We’re not designed to live like lone wolves in silos. That means human connection is a need, like food or like water. You need it. You’ll get sick if you don’t get it.
And that’s been proven.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:46:03 – 01:46:03) True.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:46:03 – 01:47:38) Yeah. Long-haul truck drivers who don’t get a lot of socializing, they have nobody to talk to for days and weeks sometimes. Literally their brains start to degrade. They start to atrophy, like they’re experiencing almost like accelerated aging or dementia. It’s so sad because a lot of them are young guys most of the time. But okay, going back to this, when you are craving social connection, which is a natural need— we all do it, we all need it, so we all have the craving— you have 2 options, let’s say.
You can either reach out to a friend, somebody you’re living with, your family, talk to somebody, whoever’s nearby, pick up the phone and call somebody, text somebody, at least, there’s like a whole— from the best is like in real life, real connection. Yeah. Live. Okay. Next best is maybe the phone or something or FaceTime or something like that. Maybe a text. But if you say, oh, I want to know what other people are doing.
If you get on social media, listen, let’s be honest, social media’s not social anymore, right? When you open up Instagram, it used to be when they first started, you would see the pictures and videos that your friends would post. Yeah. It’s not like that anymore. True. It’s other people you don’t know. It’s other people you don’t know. So you are seeking social connection and then you get, you go onto short-form media. And then you start scrolling.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:47:40 – 01:47:41) So you get distracted.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:47:41 – 01:48:01) Sure, you’re distracted, but it feels kind of good in the moment, doesn’t it? Yeah, distraction feels good. So it’s like eating candy when you’re hungry. So you’re hungry, you’re hungry for something real, really food, but you eat candy instead. What happens when you eat candy when you’re hungry? In one hour.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:48:02 – 01:48:02) You feel more hungry.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:48:03 – 01:49:21) Yeah, you’re hungry again, because you never filled yourself with nutrition, with the food your body needs. So you were, let’s say, you were seeking social connection. It’s like hunger. So, but instead of really seeking true connection, you instead went to short-form media and you’re scrolling. It’s like candy. So you’re just going to be even hungrier in another hour. So you’re even— so then you were maybe a little lonely before, and now you’re even more lonely.
Because it’s never satisfying that need. It never satisfies that need. My hypothesis is that what’s happening in the brain is there’s first dopamine. Dopamine is the brain’s primary motivation molecule. So dopamine is all about motivation. You have dopamine and you have, you have a desire for social connection. That’s what you want. So you’re motivated towards it. So in order to get this need met, what do you do? Let’s say you do the— there’s 2 options.
Option A, option B. We’ll go 2 options here. One option is you go short form, you scroll. Okay, so you grab the phone versus you grab a person.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:49:22 – 01:49:22) We—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:49:23 – 01:49:24) they’re friends. There we go.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:49:25 – 01:49:25) Yay!
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:49:25 – 01:50:11) Okay, so there’s 2 other, 2 other, brain chemicals that I want to bring into the mix here. Okay, there’s something called oxytocin and there’s something called serotonin. Okay, so you’ve got oxytocin and serotonin. Oxytocin, if you’ve ever heard of this is a hormone that’s known as the bonding hormone. So this is what bonds humans together. So if your dopamine levels are high, so meaning you’re motivated for what? Social connection.
That means what you want is oxytocin. You’re seeking it. This might be what we could say, this is what’s satisfying it. This would satisfy it. And also serotonin is another neuromodulator that makes you feel good and content.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:50:11 – 01:50:11) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:50:12 – 01:50:13) Makes you feel content and good.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:50:13 – 01:50:15) So bonding, satisfaction.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:50:15 – 01:50:25) Very good, yes. Okay. So this is really like, The science of what it is that we’re looking for here. I’m looking for this, but really, I need these things in order to check this box.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:50:26 – 01:50:26) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:50:26 – 01:50:41) If you go to short form, do you think— what are we bonding with? I don’t know. Like, if I get on and I see one of your reels, or I see one of my own, right, where we both have short-form media, I’m not bonding with this person. I don’t even know them.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:50:42 – 01:50:42) True.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:50:42 – 01:51:22) So I’m not getting any oxytocin. Contentment I’m not getting because I already told you it increases anxiety, right? And depressive symptoms. So it’s leaving the person more sad. So while they’re doing it, they don’t notice because while you’re eating the candy, come on, man, it tastes good. Yeah, we all think it tastes good. It’s delicious. But afterwards is when you feel bad. It’s afterwards where you’re like, oh my God, I ate too much and I feel like crap.
It is— it wasn’t nutritious. Now, if you actually seek real social connection, then you get the oxytocin, you get the serotonin. So you actually get to check the box. So you had the dopamine, you are motivated, you sought social connection, you got social connection. Good.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:51:22 – 01:51:23) But that doesn’t happen.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:51:24 – 01:51:51) Not if you go this way. If you’re— if let’s say, for example, dopamine goes high because you’re hungry, or you’re thirsty, like right now you and I have water, I go, I am thirsty. So I have this need. Dopamine goes up. That’s motivation. Motivation. So I can recruit my motor cortex and everything else to go and grab the water to drink from it. Hmm. If I drink from it, then I satisfy the need.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:51:52 – 01:51:52) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:51:52 – 01:52:11) I got a little bit of hydration, so I feel better. Now, if I had the same loop, but I never get the water, I don’t know. Go eat a cracker or something like this, then I might feel even worse than when I started. Yeah, the need’s never satisfied.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:52:11 – 01:52:13) Ah, well, this is how we look when we—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:52:15 – 01:52:24) Oh yeah, I did. I told you before, I’ve, I’ve always had a sweet tooth. So listen, I— no shame in the game. I’ve always loved sweets.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:52:25 – 01:52:32) Yeah, so this is, this is how we look when we are going for this candy. So this is what’s happening Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:52:33 – 01:53:45) I hope that, I tell my students this all the time, that, I’m passionate about a lot of this stuff because I’m not better than anybody else. I struggle with it myself. I’ve been addicted to scroll. I’ve struggled with addiction to many different things in my life, many things in my life. I’ve had to break addictions. I’m not above this. I studied this stuff, all of this stuff. I even studied addiction and I still became addicted.
Like nothing can prevent this. Like you just need the awareness, the discipline, the desire for better. You have to just do the hard work, right? It’s, and listen, maybe it’s like the question you asked before about the billionaire’s brain. It’s like, are they just born different? Maybe some, some people are probably lucky enough where they don’t have a lot of this addiction stuff. You know, I was not one of those people. I love chocolate.
I love sweets. I would eat dessert all day if I could. So I have to create systems in my life in order to create balance. It doesn’t come naturally. You have to be systems-minded, aware, systems-minded. You got to have the discipline. I think that’s the only way around it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:53:45 – 01:53:48) So we’re going to do— what are we going to do? I’m going to show you a city map.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:53:49 – 01:53:49) Okay.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:53:49 – 01:53:54) Okay. Explain me how my brain works. As if it was a city.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:53:54 – 01:54:30) So nice looking, huh? Okay. All right. Where shall I begin for you? So not that this is what the brain actually looks like, right? It’s not perfectly accurate in terms of locations, but what I think is really beautiful about this particular setup you have here is you have so many of the different brain areas and the neural networks that I think are the most important for Performance. They’re the most relevant. You know what I mean?
We don’t nobody not every single person needs to go get a PhD in neuroscience. You know what I mean? This is like tell me the stuff I need to know.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:54:30 – 01:54:31) Yeah, the meaty stuff.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:54:31 – 01:54:43) The meaty stuff. Yeah. Okay. So let’s use actually an example because we’re here to learn about getting s* done and being productive. I have a goal. I want to meet my goals, right? How do I do that?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:54:43 – 01:54:46) Yeah. How do I become this person who ends up achieving all the goals?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:54:47 – 01:54:56) Yes. Yes. Okay. Let’s say, what does that look like for you, by the way? But you want to achieve your goals. A lot of it is like stuff on the computer.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:54:56 – 01:54:56) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:54:56 – 01:54:57) Right.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:54:57 – 01:55:03) You sit down and you’re reading, you’re writing, researching, coming up with questions, thinking a lot. Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:55:03 – 01:55:05) Beautiful. And it’s on the computer. Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:55:05 – 01:55:05) Right. Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:55:05 – 01:55:07) In your office or wherever.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:55:07 – 01:55:07) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:55:07 – 01:55:08) Somewhere.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:55:08 – 01:55:08) Yeah. Okay.
A Map of the Brain: Story Studios, City Hall, and the Watchtower
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:55:09 – 01:55:23) So in order for that to happen, a few things. One, the default mode network that we talked about before, here called beautifully Story Studios, right? It’s where all the stories are made. This is the story-making machine.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:55:24 – 01:55:29) This is the story about myself that, hey, I want to be this podcaster and this and that. It’s here.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:55:30 – 01:56:47) Beautiful. Yes. And how you’re going to get there too. Like, it’s going to happen. I need to do research, blah, blah, blah. So this story network is sending information. And that information is going into City Hall. This is your CEN, your central executive network, the CEO, the very front section of the brain. And this is going, okay, Raj wants to be the number one podcast in the world. Okay? You want to build that. That’s what we’re, that’s the goal.
That’s what we’re going towards. Then your CEN, this sort of frontoparietal area, that’s going to be focused on how you do that. Goal achievement, goal-directed attention. It’s going to try to quiet everything else down and just stay focused on whatever it is you’re doing. So let’s say you’re doing research, so you’re on your computer and you’re doing research on it, on the next thing, right? You have meaning. This is where the meaning is coming from.
Why, why am I doing it? It’s coming from the story. Then you have City Hall, that the CEO that’s actually going towards the thing, making it happen. Okay? Then you have a really important place here. It’s another neural network. It’s not just a place, it’s a network. The dorsal attention network, the DAN. The DAN is like the watchtower looking. I don’t know if you’ve seen Lord of the Rings.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:56:47 – 01:56:48) No, no.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:56:48 – 01:56:49) It’s the Eye of Sauron.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:56:50 – 01:56:50) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:56:50 – 01:57:13) For those that have seen it, this is the watchtower. The DAN is looking, look, and it’s pointing a spotlight? So it’s like a, like a flashlight or a spotlight. Of your attention on whatever it is that it needs to focus on. Whatever it is that— and this is the tricky part— it says it needs to focus on. Who’s telling it where to shine the light?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:57:14 – 01:57:14) The city hall?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:57:15 – 01:58:22) Sure, the city hall can do that. You know who else might? In the middle? Not this one necessarily. The alarm tower? If there’s an emergency, And this one says, hey, oh my God, panic. Then the DAN will say, Raj, stop focusing on your Google Doc. We have, there’s emergencies happening. Go look at this. Or for example, the dispatch center, salience network. This is like emergency calls, your satellite system. Something’s happening.
I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s not an emergency. Maybe it’s not an alarm. That’s your amygdala. It’s a walnut-sized area deep inside of the center of the brain. And that brain area is the brain’s alarm system. System. Every time there’s some sort of emergency. Okay, so that’s the alarm tower. You’ve got this amazing team, okay, that is either going to help you meet your goals or it’s going to make it potentially more difficult, but it depends on how you set yourself up for success.
So going back to the example, you sit down and you have a goal. You have— that’s your meaning.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:58:22 – 01:58:22) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:58:23 – 01:58:28) Your CEO, your CEN, but it’s your CEO. Let’s say that’s going to start focusing.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:58:29 – 01:58:29) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:58:29 – 01:58:50) Okay. Your DAN says, “Got it. No problem. Let’s focus on the computer. Let’s focus on the research.” So your DAN, the watchtower, goes. It’s focusing on the work. As long as you keep focusing, and as long as nothing distracts you or interrupts you, then maybe as long as you can. You will keep focusing.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:58:50 – 01:58:51) This is my attention.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:58:52 – 01:58:57) Yeah. But what’s the usual setup? Remember when we talked about your phone and where you keep it?
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:58:57 – 01:59:07) It’s like, yeah, there’s one notification, another. There are five tabs opening, two people talking, and then I have to be everywhere, and then I have to message. Yep. Probably scroll a little in between.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:59:08 – 01:59:51) So always happens. So now you’ve got every time the notification comes in, salience network goes, hey. Hey, look over here. What’s over there? Oh, what’s that? And then when 911, this dispatch center, the salience network says, look over here, the watchtower goes, what do you want me to look at? So it looks at something else. So this area, the salience network, is what is the external, essentially, distraction. It is telling you where to orient your attention.
So that’s why you need to keep your digital hygiene clean. You need to have good digital hygiene when you’re sitting down to work. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for failure instead of success.
RAJ SHAMANI: (01:59:51 – 01:59:54) So to shut this down, you have to shut that down.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (01:59:54 – 02:00:17) Well, it’s not shut it down. You can’t shut it down. It’s there to keep you alive. You have to clean your environment and control your environment so that you set this whole system up for success. This is— you can’t shut this down. The brain is going to do its thing. These are the biological laws, remember? Like gravity. You can’t fight this thing. This is the brain.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:00:17 – 02:00:21) Okay, but then I want to clean my environment in a way so that it doesn’t get triggered.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:00:22 – 02:01:29) Yeah. Okay, think about, a lot of people have young kids, right? Imagine if you have a kid and they get— go to school and then they come back with a bad grade and they really studied hard. And then you— they’re like so sad about it. You find out that the teacher let them all be on their phones, talk. There was like a party, they’re playing music, like all these things were happening. People were chit-chatting with each other, people were coming in and out while they were sitting down and taking their exam.
All the parents would go crazy. They would be like, this is not fair, this is not how you run a classroom, this is not how you give an exam. And then they would pretty much, Yeah. Say like, we demand a redo. You have to redo it. But how do you sit down and work? You’re a leader like I am. I run a team, right? When our teams sit down to actually get work done, how, what’s their environment like? Is it built for focus or is it built for distraction?
So this is, this is all of these amazing different brain areas are there to keep you alive. They’re there for a purpose for sure.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:01:30 – 02:01:35) But what are these 2? Oh, hippocampus, which is library and archive.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:01:35 – 02:02:30) This is just your memories. And your memories, by the way, are very, very close typically to the amygdala. So your hippocampus and the amygdala are rather close. This is an important, I would say, maybe an important note. Your amygdala is the seat of a lot of fear, right? Fear and anxiety. Negative affect. Your hippocampus is the seat of a great deal of memory. Things that are negative and scary are more memorable. So, and this is actually true technically for all emotion.
If you can heighten your emotions, you will remember the situation better. If you can increase, for example, even your anxiety, about whether you’ll forget it or not. If you’re afraid of forgetting something, you’re less likely to forget.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:02:33 – 02:02:37) So how do I improve my memory then of the positive things?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:02:40 – 02:03:03) In general, improving your memory, and this is actually a, I think, kind of a fun fact that’s a little bit counterintuitive. If you want to strengthen your memory, Open the aperture of your attention. If you can only remember what you’re attending to, right? You can’t remember something that you weren’t paying attention to.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:03:03 – 02:03:03) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:03:04 – 02:03:27) So if you can heighten and sharpen your focus and your attention, then your memory will get better. It’s like the funnel, right? The attention is what you’re paying attention to, all the stuff that’s getting in. So if you want more stuff to get in, focus on your attention if you want to remember more stuff, right? Things have to come in order to go down into memory.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:03:28 – 02:03:29) Yeah, fair.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:03:29 – 02:03:32) That’s pretty much the end of the brain city map.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:03:32 – 02:03:59) One thing that I keep failing at is waking up super early, and I’ve tried so many times. Some— like, I’ve somehow What do you say, somehow trained myself to get up at like 7:30, 8 AM. But I’m still not able to do the 5 AM club. Like, I’ve tried really hard.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:04:00 – 02:04:01) Why do you want to do the 5 AM club?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:04:02 – 02:04:14) Isn’t it like you become better, your energy gets better, you focus better, all of a sudden your life turns around? This whole hype around 5 AM club, early to rise, early to bed, all that. Isn’t it like that? It’s bulls*.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:04:16 – 02:05:20) For some people, yeah. For some people, but not for everybody. The most important is the foundation, the principle, the biological law, and the principle is that you need to be getting enough high-quality sleep. Shoot for 7 hours minimum. That should be the goal. So if you’re getting enough sleep, that’s the most important. This is the foundation. It doesn’t really matter what time you wake up, right? This myth— this is truly like people get off on this idea that, we have the saying, the early bird gets the worm, right?
We have all of these sayings because waking up late and staying up late has been historically associated with being lazy, with sloth. Doesn’t have to be that way. I’m actually really proud of so many, I would say, modern-day leaders that are actually coming out of the closet Of being night owls, of being PM shifted. Sundar, the CEO of Google, has come out and admitted that he does some of his best thinking at like 10 PM.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:05:20 – 02:05:21) I didn’t know about— what did he say?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:05:22 – 02:05:54) That he does his best thinking at like late at night. And some days he like, after like dinner and blah blah blah, he like likes to really like— that’s his sometimes his really high quality focus time. That’s like, that’s some of the— because he’s PM shifted. Now I know that we gave you a test to do it, a biological chronotype assessment as well, but I want to first talk about chronotypes in general. So yeah, this whole idea of being in the 5 AM club and all of this stuff, this comes from society and it’s honestly BS.
We don’t need it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:05:54 – 02:05:59) Why do you call it 5 AM club porn? Like 5 AM porn, what is it?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:05:59 – 02:06:52) Okay, there is this, there’s this whole I don’t even know what to call it. There’s like, it’s like a club of people, okay, that believe that, and they love doing this as a habit. And you know what, listen, if it works for you, do it. I think it’s great. I know lots of people that wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning. And listen, I’m not getting up super late either. I think it’s great. But the most important thing is to listen to your body.
I call it 5 AM club porn because there’s so many blogs and books and other podcasts posts, tweets, you see all of these different, just articles and all of this content about people. It’s like, if you want to be the most successful version of yourself, you need to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, and then you need to do 25 push-ups, and then you need to drink a tall glass of lemon water with cayenne in it, and then you need to do a cold plunge, and then you need to do this, and then you need to—
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:06:52 – 02:06:52) whatever—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:06:52 – 02:08:26) sauna, then this, then that. And it’s like, oh my God, Like, what are we doing? Like, listen, if you are not getting at least 7 hours of high-quality sleep, what’s the point of you waking up at 5, right? Because of this, idea that we’re all, addicted to. That’s like— see, it’s like, I call it porn because it seems like such a great idea, but it’s not. It’s only a good idea, if you’ve got all the other things, lined up truly.
Like, it’s this thing that people are obsessed with, so they’re talking about it and writing about it, and it’s like, Look, this one CEO woke up at 5 and he does all this s* before 7 AM and that’s why he’s successful. And it’s just not true. That’s not why he’s successful. It’s one of his strategies. But some other CEOs do some of their best work from 8 PM to midnight. It doesn’t matter which time it is. It matters which time it is for you.
And each person is a little bit different. In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to 3 researchers who discovered that human beings do not share one circadian rhythm. So circadian rhythms are the biological sort of clock that we have that tells us when that we have high energy, low energy, so on and so forth, peaks and troughs of energy throughout the course of the day. We thought that all humans, generally speaking, we wake up with the sun, right?
Yeah. And creatures of light, we wake up with the sun and we go to bed at night.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:08:26 – 02:08:27) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:08:28 – 02:09:19) Story is a little more complicated. Welcome to science, right? It’s like a little more complicated than we thought. In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to these 3 researchers who discovered we don’t share one circadian rhythm. We at least have 3 genetic, what are called chronotypes. Now, your chronotype is the— your genetic optimum of when you feel the most energized, when you feel the most, motivated. It’s even for physical fitness, it makes a big difference.
Ideal times you should wake up, go to sleep, so on and so forth. Okay, now the 3 major chronotypes are AM shifted, which are the folks that wake up naturally, hormonally, pretty early in the morning. Biphasic, which is in the middle, stands for the Latin 2 phases or 2 peaks.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:09:19 – 02:09:19) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:09:20 – 02:09:59) And the 3rd, PM shifted. The AM shifted people, they linearly decrease in energy over the course of the day. Now, these individuals, usually by even early evening, are struggling a little bit, right? And their bodies will naturally wake them up. How do you know you’re AM shifted versus the 2nd type? Biphasic. If you wake up super early in the morning, no matter what, even if you go to bed late, your body will wake you up. Can you imagine?
Like, you go to bed at like 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. For some people, it doesn’t matter. Their body’s going to wake them up at 5. I know. You’re like, not me.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:10:00 – 02:10:03) No, I can sleep at 10 and still not wake up.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:10:04 – 02:10:07) Good for you. Wow. Really? You’re good. You can, you can do that?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:10:07 – 02:10:12) Yeah, I can sleep very long. As long as alarm doesn’t hit it, I don’t up. Rarely I get up.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:10:12 – 02:10:15) That’s a blessing. Congratulations. Seriously.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:10:15 – 02:10:19) Yeah, either I can’t sleep, or if I sleep, then you’re sleeping.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:10:20 – 02:10:40) It’s such a— it’s a gift, by the way. It’s such a blessing. It truly— I sometimes, I’m like, I have to— I have systems for it, but I am PM shifted, which means naturally I could, if left to my own devices, I would be up until like 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. Easily.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:10:40 – 02:10:40) Same.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:10:41 – 02:10:44) Like by 4, I’m like, now I’m ready maybe to go to bed.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:10:44 – 02:10:45) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:10:45 – 02:11:11) But this is not functional. If I’m going to bed at 4, then I probably wouldn’t wake up and I have like blackout curtains and an eye mask and all of this stuff to help keep me asleep. And then I’m not waking up until way late in the morning. And you get this, you run a business, I run a business. Like this is not possible. Okay. So I gotta get up. So that means I have to create systems. So I go to bed usually around like 11, by midnight.
I’m asleep. This is my— okay, that’s good.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:11:11 – 02:11:11) That’s not bad.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:11:12 – 02:11:30) No. And you can do that. So I’m telling you, genetically, biologically, my body wants to go to bed in the 2 to 4 AM range. I’m able to shift it back at least 3 hours through behavioral adjustments. Those behavioral adjustments I can outline with you because— do you want to share your results?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:11:30 – 02:12:05) Yeah. So you gave me this whole, questionnaire to fill to find out. Can we do something like— so I filled that questionnaire, it took me like 3-4 minutes, it didn’t take me long. Can we do that for people as well? Can you give me some links so that a lot of people who want to find out what are they, what’s their natural type of sleeping and waking up, and what is the hour where they feel the most energetic versus when they feel really sloppy.
If they want to find out, can we have some link of this test or something?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:12:05 – 02:12:18) Yes, yeah, yeah, our lab has, it’s, it’s www.mychronotype.com, and we can absolutely give, give folks access to it so they don’t have to pay for it, but to get the assessment done, the same assessment you did.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:12:18 – 02:12:30) Perfect, done. So we’re going to, we’re going to go through my results, okay, and then we’ll put out a link in the description for anyone who wants to actually go test Okay, so this is what the report was.
Chronotypes: AM Shifted, Biphasic, and PM Shifted
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:12:30 – 02:12:59) Yes, let’s look at it. So here is an outline first of just the 3 types, right? The 3 different types we talked about: AM shifted, biphasic, and PM shifted. And anybody else who’s watching, if you also take the assessment, you’re going to get a report as well, a PDF report that’s going to go over all of this information. So these are the 3 main chronotypes. Now, as you can see here in the center, we have population distributions.
The population distribution here shows that the majority of people in the world are biphasic.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:13:00 – 02:13:02) Even they are not like 5 AM types. No.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:13:02 – 02:13:20) So that’s why I say it’s stupid, this 5 AM club for everybody. Like, oh, if you want to be the most successful version of yourself, you got to wake up at 5. Bulls*. No, you don’t. No, you don’t. This is great for like a quarter of the human population that naturally they prefer to go to bed early and wake up early. Amazing. If that’s you enjoy.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:13:20 – 02:13:20) Brilliant.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:13:20 – 02:13:22) Yeah, brilliant. Good for you.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:13:22 – 02:13:23) Don’t force that on me.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:13:23 – 02:14:14) Yeah, go work in finance. Everybody’s waking up at 5 and it was great. Awesome, awesome. The majority of the human population is biphasic. Also, research from my lab shows, by the way, PM shifted is actually closer to 10% of the human population, so super minority. So the biphasic energy curve— biphasic stands for the Latin 2 phases or 2 peaks. So that means these individuals have a mid-morning peak So not first thing in the morning.
So they need like 45 minutes, maybe an hour to kind of ramp up, but they’re going to peak in their cortisol levels, their epinephrine, all of these amazing hormones that keep you focused and alert and awake and excited. They’re going to get there. Give it an hour. So if you wake up in the morning and you’re like, oh, okay, but then within 45 minutes you’re like, I feel amazing. Within an hour you feel amazing, probably you’re biphasic.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:14:14 – 02:14:14) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:14:15 – 02:14:57) Now, these individuals, that’s their first peak in the morning. Second, and then they come down for a super afternoon dip, super afternoon dip, like they’re crashing. These folks crash harder than anybody else. So, they could really take a nap in the middle of the day. But if they listen to their body, maybe they take a break, maybe they do a workout, maybe they do some other stuff, they take a little bit of a break. After that, they get a second wind of focus again.
Yeah, the second peak. So sometimes it’s early evening, sometimes it’s later evening, sometimes it’s late afternoon. You know, it really depends when you wake up. But you will have another peak if you’re biphasic, if you play your cards right.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:14:57 – 02:14:57) You—
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:14:57 – 02:15:09) this is what I mean by leverage your biology. Because these people, if they don’t take a proper break midday and they don’t listen to their body, that second peak will be less peaky. They won’t take advantage of it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:15:10 – 02:15:11) Got it.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:15:11 – 02:15:26) So this whole 9 to 5, it doesn’t really serve. It’s not the way this is designed. You should be— you should learn what your chronotype is so you can take advantage of your peak performance hours. 2 to 3 hours every single day, your brain is at its best.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:15:26 – 02:15:53) Is it? You know what, I know somebody— I’m not allowed to take their names— but super successful multi-billionaire, lives on an island. Bunch of things, right? Well, he did some tests with his performance coaches and all those things, right? And he says that he sleeps 4 hours, then functions, then sleep 4 hours. He doesn’t sleep at— he doesn’t sleep like 8 hours at a stretch. Will he come in biphasic?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:15:54 – 02:16:57) No, that’s, that’s an old-school tactic called like split sleep. Listen, it’s hard on the brain and the body. That’s not how our brains and our bodies are designed. Matthew Walker, who’s also at UC Berkeley, one of the world’s most, renowned sleep psychologists, in his book, all his research— yeah, exactly it. Yep. Literally, it spells out all of the sleep research, spells out pretty clearly that we need sustained contiguous hours of sleep.
You even get some higher quality benefits if you go to bed before midnight. I’m not really sure why. Kind of sucks for the PM-shifted people, but it is what it is. So science would definitely disagree with that strategy for sure. Now, if it’s working for performance, fine, but it’s, it’s not going to work for his health. It’s going to be a sacrifice. You know, it would be like, I’ve also met people that drink like 5 cups of coffee a day and they’re just like, okay, but you’re doing something not so great for yourself long.
At some point there will be consequences.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:16:57 – 02:16:58) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:16:59 – 02:17:20) Okay, so okay, you’ve got biphasic people, as mentioned, majority of the human population, and then you have the tired, the lonely, the few. Now really, 10 to 15% of the human population is PM shifted. PM shifted people prefer to go to bed later and wake up later biologically.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:17:21 – 02:17:22) That’s me.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:17:23 – 02:18:07) It is you. You are PM shifted. It is your chronotype. We were able to actually test this and see that your chronotype is PM shifted. Now, every chronotype has a peak, a dip, and a recovery period. Okay. Now for a PM shifted person, and maybe for this so that you can see it too, we do it this way. Okay. So for a PM shifted person, all right, if we take the hours, let’s say of like 9:00 AM to 1:00 AM that you see here on the X-axis, You’ve got creative work ideally being done in the morning.
This might be when you have some of your best ideas. Why? Because you’re probably a little tired in the mornings, aren’t you?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:18:08 – 02:18:09) Yeah, I’m very tired in the morning.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:18:09 – 02:18:36) Because when you’re tired, you’re more likely to allow yourself to activate that DMN and be bored. You can just kind of sit back, give yourself a few minutes, let your mind wander, journal a little bit, brainstorm, just expose yourself to like really interesting, good content. Content and see what comes up, see what ideas you might have. When we are a little bit lower in energy levels, you’re less inhibited, so you’re going to come up with a few more ideas.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:18:37 – 02:18:41) So I should do my reading and like just thinking work during this time?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:18:42 – 02:19:11) You could experiment with it, at least try it. It’s possible you’ve already trained yourself enough to like be able to still get a lot of really to activate that central executive network, that CEN, to get stuff done really early in the morning. But probably, and you’ll tell me if this is true, that you likely hit your peak in the evening for sure. Yeah. That means if that’s—
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:19:11 – 02:19:13) I’m like, go, go, go, go during the night.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:19:13 – 02:19:14) Really?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:19:14 – 02:19:14) Yeah.
Designing Your Day Around Your Chronotype
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:19:15 – 02:20:04) That’s when you should be doing your focused work. You got to get s* done. You got to be doing that stuff at night. That evening range is when people— and by the way, I’m PM shifted too. Women who are PM shifted are even more the minority of the human population. There’s very few of us. So, but PM shifted in general, we’re both minorities in the human population. So this is— we need to be taking advantage of this time. And listen, not every day, because I don’t know about you, but if I stay up super late working, it’s going to ruin my workday and all of this stuff.
I have stuff to do during the day. I have meetings sometimes at 8 o’clock in the morning. So let’s Like I can’t do this often, but sometimes I give myself the gift of allowing myself to work in the evenings, and then when I have time to sleep in the next day, it works really well. I can take advantage of it and get more done. So that’s what I recommend people do is really.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:20:05 – 02:20:06) And what do I do in the dip?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:20:07 – 02:20:21) Ah, administrative work, stuff that is less important for you. We all have administrative work. Even if you outsource most of it, we still have some administrative work, like less important work, like checking emails. And yeah, take your calls then.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:20:22 – 02:20:23) So message then.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:20:23 – 02:20:40) Yeah, send all the messages, take your calls then, and get that stuff done. You have some shopping to do it then. Get a workout in. If you work out here during your dip, your peak will be even pickier. You’re going to feel amazing. So many people wait until after work to go work out.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:20:41 – 02:20:42) Yeah, I do it in the morning.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:20:43 – 02:21:06) That’s great, especially for a PM shifted person. I have recommended to a lot of CEOs that are AM shifted for them to not work out in the morning. Why? Because they wake up at 5. 5 AM club porn, right? They wake up at 5 AM and their brain is already on, man. It’s like what your brain is like at nighttime. They’re ready. They’re fine.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:21:06 – 02:21:08) I should work out in the morning, not at night.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:21:08 – 02:21:52) For you, I would say for me too. Yeah. Because I’m not, listen, I’m not solving the world’s biggest problems in the morning anyway. I’m like drinking my coffee. I’m like, all right. I’m like very meditative. I’m very relaxed, soft? Then later in the day I’m like, all right, let’s go. Let’s, let’s hit it. So yeah, I would, my recommendation is everyone should figure out what their type is and strategically design their day when they can.
Listen, we all have meetings and responsibilities. But at least know what your type is so that if you get an opportunity to protect a few hours in that peak performance window, that for you is the evening. For most other people, it’s going to be mid-morning. That’s the majority. Some people it’s early morning. Protect that time.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:21:53 – 02:22:01) But I’m going to be anxious till 6 p.m. if I don’t do like the minute I wake up and if I’m not like getting all the stuff done.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:22:01 – 02:22:01) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:22:03 – 02:22:13) The whole day I’m going to spend in anxiety of what am I missing out if I’m not doing the work. I won’t be able to think and brainstorm and read, and like, I won’t be able to wander.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:22:15 – 02:22:27) How about if you wander— tried wandering for— you schedule it and you time yourself. You say, I’m going to give myself 1 hour to brainstorm to see if I can come up with how many good ideas for the business and for the podcast.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:22:29 – 02:22:34) Does it? Does like scheduling wandering works? Really?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:22:35 – 02:22:35) Yeah, we call it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:22:36 – 02:22:43) Shouldn’t it be like just it should be what do you call think time? Yeah, but then shouldn’t think time be just out of nowhere random?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:22:44 – 02:22:53) Then it’s not disciplined. Then what if what if you never do it? We’re busy people. I think if you really care about something, you should schedule it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:22:53 – 02:23:19) Got it. Interesting. Let me try this and then I’ll tell you the results if I’m able to actually fix it or not. I love it. Here’s one thing very interesting. You talk a lot about burnout, right? How is burnout different than anxiety or stress? Is it different? Isn’t it like when you’re, when you’re stressed all the time, when you’re anxious all the time, you eventually burn out?
Burnout vs. Stress: Why You Need to Complete the Stress Cycle
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:23:21 – 02:26:16) This is such an important question, and the answer is no, they’re not the same thing. But yes, if you keep stressing over and over and over again, at some point it is likely you’ll burn out, but it depends on how you are experiencing that stress. So let me, let me put it this way. Humans are designed, we’re designed to experience stress. We’re made for it. I know people like usually these days like hate the word stress. It’s like a naughty word.
They’re like everything is about anti-stress and lowering your stress and all this stuff. Listen, stress just means like stress hormones. It just means focus, alertness, motivation. Like it’s lots of good stuff. Like stress is not just a bad thing. You need it. If you removed all the cortisol, for example, in your body, you would be in a coma. Truly, you’d be in a coma. So you need cortisol. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing.
So what is bad though? And as I mentioned, the human is designed for experiencing stress cycles. What is a stress cycle? Stress cycle is the cycle of that cortisol going up, and what goes up must come down. So stress goes up, stress comes down. So we’re designed for experiencing these stress cycles. Get stressed, get stressed, get stressed. Okay, and it’s done. Get stressed about something and deal with it, and it’s done. It’s over.
You can experience this dozens of times all day. Get stressed, complete the stress cycle. What does modern life look like for so many people? They wake up in the morning, the alarm goes off, they grab their phone because that’s the alarm. Then they start scrolling and looking at an email and messages that have come in WhatsApp. They’re just checking all the different things, sending them yes confirmed thumbs up heart blah blah blah blah yeah see you later all of these things already checking the news immediately before you’ve even had the opportunity to listen right to that internal voice.
Where are my priorities? What are my goals? Who am I? What’s the story? Where’s the mindset? Do any kind of work and training on yourself. You’ve launched yourself onto this rollercoaster ride that you didn’t anticipate. And now, unfortunately, in my opinion, you’ve started that stress response. But what happens once you start that way? Usually people keep going until they start work, and then they start work. And then they’re in their first meeting and then the next meeting and then more emails and then more calls and then this thing.
And then when does it ending? It just keeps going and going and going. When are you completing the stress cycle? Remember what we said before, we’re designed for stress cycles. Stress goes up, stress comes down. Stress goes up, stress comes down.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:26:16 – 02:26:17) It’s not coming down.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:26:17 – 02:26:44) It’s never coming down. Stress doesn’t kill. Never completing the stress cycle kills. So if you never complete these stress cycles, it just keeps going up, up, up, up, up, and then you just pass out and go to sleep. And then you wake up the next morning and you just keep doing this and you’re on this roller coaster ride with yourself. Eventually, yes, you’ll experience burnout. Your adrenals like will finally give out and you’ll be like, okay, I’m done.
I’m done giving you cortisol.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:26:47 – 02:26:50) Isn’t how mostly everybody’s living these days?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:26:51 – 02:27:31) Yeah. And that’s why, listen, can you imagine going back and talking to your grandfather and saying, I’m burned out at your age? Why is it that all of a sudden everybody’s burning out? I met a kid, a guy, 22 and a half, just graduated college, just started working. It had been the first quarter of a, any, I don’t I don’t— I met the kid, but my friend is the one who’s supervising the kid. He’s like, this guy is already saying he’s burned out, like clinically.
He’s like, I need to go to the doctor, I’m burned out. And I’m just like, you just started.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:27:32 – 02:27:32) You’re—
The 3M Framework for Preventing Burnout
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:27:32 – 02:29:30) I’m burned out? Like, how could you possibly be burned out? How is that even feasible? But like, right now, everyone, everyone is saying that they’re experiencing this burnout. Well, first of all, I don’t think they are. Clinical burnout is super serious. When people are stressed and they’re anxious, sometimes they call that burnout. That’s not the same thing. You can be stressed. It’s not going to kill you. Chronic stress that never closes out for a very long time can have detrimental effects for your health, for sure.
So the goal is close out your stress cycles. And there’s a framework that I teach in my classes and in my lab called the 3M framework for preventing burnout. What is it? It’s 3 different kinds of breaks, breaks that everyone should be taking in order to actually prevent burnout from happening. Even if you work really hard, this is again made for super peak performers. We developed this framework and we’ve tested it and it works.
3 different kinds of breaks. Micro breaks. This is every single day for a matter of minutes, you need to be taking a break. Every day for a few minutes. You can do that, right? Every week, 2 to 4 hours. Focus on the 2 if the 4 is too much. 2 hours. And then every month, half day to a full day. You can focus on the half if you like. Half day off. When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound that scary, right? Like, come on, what are you talking about?
A few minutes every day? I do that. Yeah. The distinction is, and this is what’s critical, in order for all 3 of these kinds of breaks to actually be effective, biologically effective for you to actually prevent burnout, you have to employ something that we call complete psychological detachment.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:29:31 – 02:29:32) What do you mean by that?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:29:33 – 02:29:57) Glad you asked. You need to be the mental equivalent of off the grid. Complete psychological detachment means you’re not thinking about all of the stuff that’s stressing you out. You’re not thinking about your deadlines. You’re not thinking about necessarily if you have kids, your family, whatever the people that is that you’re responsible for. You are just mentally off. Your mind is not on all of the things. That’s really hard, isn’t it?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:29:59 – 02:30:01) So what do you— so what do you do in the breaks then?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:30:03 – 02:30:07) Well, ideally, you’re just resting, but that’s too hard, I think, for people. When they’re resting, they’re thinking about something. Exactly.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:30:07 – 02:30:07) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:30:09 – 02:30:23) Yeah. So my recommendation is to do something, do something active that is challenging enough, active enough so that it’s impossible for you to do that thing and be thinking about all of your stuff at the same time.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:30:23 – 02:30:24) Like playing something.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:30:25 – 02:30:33) Like hosting a podcast. Right? Like you can’t tune out. We have to stay here. Otherwise, we’re going to—
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:30:33 – 02:30:35) Yeah, I don’t know what to ask then next.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:30:35 – 02:31:05) Exactly. We’re just going to be Okay, thank you for saying that. It’s going to be super awkward. You’re going to host the most awkward podcast in the history of time, right? You’re just going to be like, oh, the host keeps like daydreaming and forgetting what he’s doing and where he is, right? Or like, if I started daydreaming, you’re going to ask me a question and be like, what was the question? Right? It’s not— we have to— we’re engaged right now in something that is cognitively challenging and engaging.
So right now, for me and you, it’s impossible for me to be worried about all the other stuff. I know you have work later tonight.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:31:05 – 02:31:05) Right.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:31:05 – 02:31:06) So do I.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:31:06 – 02:31:10) Okay, this won’t consider— this won’t be a break for me, right?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:31:10 – 02:31:12) Because it’s work, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:31:12 – 02:31:12) It’s work.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:31:13 – 02:31:14) I was just working.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:31:14 – 02:31:20) I’m not, I’m not like stressing about anything at all in this particular moment, but before and after I will.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:31:20 – 02:31:21) Yes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:31:22 – 02:31:27) So this is it for these 4 hours. I’m just going to be like, I don’t care about the world at all.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:31:28 – 02:31:34) Well, then in that case, I would oddly maybe consider this a break for you because you’re in flow. At least.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:31:34 – 02:31:35) Absolutely.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:31:35 – 02:31:37) Your DNA, that, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:31:37 – 02:31:39) That watchtower.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:31:39 – 02:34:01) It’s here. It’s— we’re not letting anything else take us away. So I would actually imagine for you, and actually for me too, we’re both in flow. So for this few hours, I’ve allowed myself to stop worrying about everything else and just be here present in this conversation with you. Now, for most other people, they’re not hosting a podcast or not on a podcast. Okay, so what can you do if you’re going to do a workout to de-stress?
Do a workout that is different, hard enough, novel. If you— a lot of people I know go on runs. Don’t go on the same run every single day because you’re going to go on autopilot and just tune out. You’re going to be like on the run and you know exactly where you’re going every single time. So it’s going to be too easy if you do the same exact workout every single time. So change it up, mix it up, make it novel so that your brain goes, oh, hold on a second.
Where are we? What are we doing? And when it does that, you can’t think about anything else. You have to be present. I like to cook. I love food, so I like to cook. Okay? So when I’m cooking, if I make the same recipes that I’ve made hundreds of times, I can be worrying and thinking while I’m chopping my vegetables, doing all the things, right? Easy. But if I do something I’ve never done before, new crazy recipe, totally different, and now I have to focus.
I have to put the baggage down. My watchtower needs to be right here. I can’t be anywhere else. That’s what I want people to find, the mental equivalent of off the grid. This thing is quieted down and you’re focused on something else, immersed. Pick up a hobby, like force yourself. I’m seriously force yourself. I’ll tell you why hobbies are really important, like active hobbies that are new and challenging. Like you’re learning a new skill, learned how to play the harmonica.
So I’m learning by that, by the way. Maybe next time I see you, I’ll bring a harmonica. Or for example, whatever, hacky sack, just something silly, juggling. You could learn how to juggle. You could pick a hobby for yourself and say, I’m going to dedicate, force myself. Even seriously, you don’t actually have to be interested. It could be by force for burnout. You could be like, listen, I’m just a high-performance junkie, and, but I’m worried about burnout.
Okay, then you have to force yourself to have some other hobby cuz that’s a part of your peak performance.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:34:02 – 02:34:03) Interesting.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:34:03 – 02:34:26) You force yourself to have the hobby and then you immerse yourself in it because it’s hard. So if I want to learn how to play the guitar, it’s going to take all of my energy and mind in that moment. I get a YouTube, like video playing and the guy’s like teaching me what to do and I’m like doing the thing. Things, I’m not thinking about anything else. Yeah. I have to be right there. So that’s, those are my recommendations. Every day for a few minutes, you have to go mentally elsewhere.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:34:26 – 02:34:29) What do you mean by few? 15, 20?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:34:29 – 02:34:35) Sure. It’s, it’s, this is different for every person, so I can’t give, but I would say at least 10.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:34:36 – 02:34:36) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:34:36 – 02:34:37) 10 minutes even.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:34:37 – 02:34:38) So 10 minutes a day.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:34:39 – 02:34:39) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:34:39 – 02:34:43) Then 2 hours a week. Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:34:45 – 02:34:46) And half day a month.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:34:47 – 02:34:50) And what do you call them? 3M? Why do you call it 3M framework?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:34:50 – 02:34:59) Micro, mezzo, and macro breaks. Easy to remember. Micro break, mezzo break, and a macro break. 3 different kinds of breaks.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:34:59 – 02:35:13) You did a research, right, recently about people who were stressed, anxious, lonely, depressed, And then you did something about them in 9 weeks.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:35:14 – 02:35:14) Yes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:35:14 – 02:35:16) And then you saw miraculous results. What was it?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:35:17 – 02:35:29) This is currently unpublished, so you’re like the first to hear about this right now. I was literally looking at this data last night. It’s kind of amazing. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m very excited.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:35:30 – 02:35:30) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:35:30 – 02:35:30) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:35:30 – 02:35:31) What is it?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:35:32 – 02:36:01) Okay. I started teaching a class at UC Berkeley for undergraduates, so for younger people. Called Mind, Machine, and Meaning. This class is a living experiment, meaning instead of just learning about things in the class, I’m asking the students to change their behavior. New habits. We’re breaking habits and building new ones. So we’re actually going through behavior change and neuroplasticity while the class is happening.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:36:02 – 02:36:03) Fascinating.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:36:04 – 02:36:05) Hard work.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:36:05 – 02:36:05) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:36:05 – 02:36:06) Class of 450.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:36:08 – 02:36:11) And you’re actually making them go through neuroplasticity.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:36:11 – 02:36:11) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:36:12 – 02:36:14) Each one of them, it’ll be different for each one of them.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:36:14 – 02:36:14) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:36:15 – 02:36:16) Okay. What is it?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:36:16 – 02:37:17) And we’re tracking it all. We’re doing research on the students. So we actually ask the students at the beginning of the class, sign up for science. Let’s do this. Come into the lab and we’re going to test your attention span. We’re going to test your complex working memory. We’re going to test your loneliness. We’re going to test your meaning and life satisfaction. We’re going to test your depression, your anxiety, your stress levels.
We’re going to test all these things. Then we’re going to go through a 9-week digital detox. You’re going to change your relationship with scrolling, the binging, the short-form media. I tell them the same thing we talked about today. Long form could be fine. We had, for homework one week, everyone had to watch a movie without a second screen. That’s homework in my class. This week you have to watch a movie, minimum 90 minutes.
They could also watch your podcast.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:37:17 – 02:37:19) What a privileged class you are in.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:37:19 – 02:37:25) Well, we’re, we’re, but we’re doing the hard work. I’m telling you because it’s become hard. It’s like we were talking about before, right? With Netflix.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:37:25 – 02:37:31) You’re telling me for younger kids it’s harder to watch a movie Yeah, they can’t sit through a 90-minute movie.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:37:32 – 02:37:50) No, even if it’s a good movie, to me, at least, I’m like, this is crazy. I’m like completely like engrossed in the thing. But it’s not their fault. It’s because this, the short form is so— it’s the candy. Imagine if you’re addicted to candy. And what you’re saying is, by the way, do you have like a delicious favorite meal?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:37:50 – 02:37:51) Yeah, so many.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:37:52 – 02:37:53) What, give me like one example.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:37:55 – 02:37:57) Pick up any, like I said, mapu tofu. I love it.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:37:57 – 02:38:08) So good. Okay, like a good one. Like, okay, so that has a lot of nutrition, right? It’s going to fill you up, right? The tofu has also lots of protein and it’s good stuff, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:38:08 – 02:38:09) Yeah.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:38:09 – 02:38:25) If you were addicted to candy, and it’s not your fault, right? Because it’s in your pocket. Candy’s always in your pocket for some reason, and it’s always in your hand and you get hungry, you’re supposed to you’re eating. Now you’re addicted to candy. Do you think people who are addicted to junk food and candy like mapo tofu?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:38:25 – 02:38:27) Not at all. No, even I won’t.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:38:27 – 02:40:39) No, exactly. There you go. So that’s why— so the movie is totally hard work for them. So we have them go through this 9-week digital detox. We have them change their relationship with scrolling, we have them put limits on how much they can scroll, we have them do it in such a way that if they go over the limit, it’s going to send a text message to one of their And I find out too. We all find out. So it like keeps them— it’s social accountability, right?
And because remember, if you take away your coping mechanism for stress, because for most people they’re scrolling because they’re stressed out and it’s become a coping mechanism, they’re numbing. If you take that away from them, they’re going to feel even worse. They’re going to have to sit with those negative feelings and it feels really, really bad. So we also brought in a therapist. To teach them emotional regulation, healthier emotional regulation techniques and strategies.
Then we also had other people who have been through serious digital addiction come and tell their stories. That’s what was happening in class. They were getting the inspiration. What did you call the high-quality content? Bloom scrolling? Yeah, bloom scrolling. We taught them about the content diet and we said, you need to make your doom scrolling into bloom scrolling. Following. Change. Stop following all of these s* accounts that don’t teach you anything.
They don’t challenge you. They don’t expose you to new ideas. Now I want you to actually go in and think about, find new accounts, talk to each other, do research. Which accounts are going to actually level you up and all the whatever in— and everybody’s different. Some of the students are really into, art. Some of them are into— they want to start a business. They’re all over the place, right? For you and your niche, Go find the bloom, seek the bloom.
Then we’re also making sure that they in general have less screen time, and we are replacing the digital connection with real in-person connection. We threw a party, huge party, food, games, the whole thing, live music. We, people went on hikes. We set up the students on blind dates.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:40:40 – 02:40:42) What kind of class is this?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:40:43 – 02:41:31) The best class. Actually, no, it was a lot of hard work. The class is a study. It’s research. I want to see, and I know we can do this, but now I have the data to back it up, that people, especially young people, do not have to be as isolated and lonely, as depressed and anxious, and their attention spans do not need to be as shot as they are. Neuroplasticity is real. Neuroplasticity is real. That means that whatever we did, we did something to make this happen.
You can undo it. It’s like muscles, right? I can eat and never move, and something’s going to happen for sure to my body. Or I can force myself to eat good food and exercise, and then other things are going to happen to my body.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:41:31 – 02:41:40) But what were the results? Like, what happened then? Like, you At the beginning of the class, you got their attention and like you tested a bunch of things.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:41:41 – 02:41:41) Yeah.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:41:41 – 02:41:43) Then you did all of this, made it fun.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:41:43 – 02:41:44) Yes.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:41:44 – 02:41:45) What happened then?
A 9-Week Study: What Happened When Students Cut Their Scrolling
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:41:45 – 02:42:12) It was also hard. They, a lot of tears, by the way. I had a lot of students crying. It was really difficult because it’s, it’s an addiction. Everyone is going through withdrawal together. If I have 450 people, we are all experiencing withdrawal together at the same time. We’re just trying to make it better by injecting connection and play. we, I forced everybody for the final project, you have to pick up a hobby and work on it throughout the semester.
So this was, this was what we did.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:42:12 – 02:42:14) And for 9 weeks, they were not allowed to touch their phones.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:42:15 – 02:42:32) No, no, no, no, they all had their phones. They just scrolled a little bit less. Specifically, also short-form media. That was what I said, social media and the scrolling, we’re going to doom scroll a little less. Watch a movie, watch long YouTube videos, watch other stuff. And by the way, they still scrolled. They just scrolled a little less.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:42:33 – 02:42:35) So if someone was doing for 2 hours, they did it for like 30 minutes.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:42:35 – 02:42:39) Exactly. Some of them were doing it for 6 hours and then they brought it down to like 2.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:42:39 – 02:42:39) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:42:40 – 02:42:40) Awesome.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:42:42 – 02:42:42) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:42:42 – 02:43:45) Then what happened after 9 weeks? Scores showed significantly less lonely, significantly less depressed, significantly less anxious. Their attention spans went up significantly. Their complex working memory, which is a proxy for general fluid intelligence, significantly increased. It’s, it’s almost unbelievable when I look at the results myself. I didn’t think it was going to be this good, to be honest with you. I knew, I knew my intuition told me as a scientist who’s been working with people about this topic for a long time that we were going to see some benefits.
I didn’t realize we were going to see this many benefits so fast. And by the way, they came in at the beginning of the semester when everybody was— just came back from break. And they were all feeling good. And when I had them do the after test, after, 9 weeks, they were in the middle of midterms. So they were all super stressed out. Seriously. And even though they were during midterms, the results were still that uplifting and inspiring.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:43:45 – 02:43:55) But wouldn’t the results be somewhat biased as well? Because, because I’ve gone through such thing 9 weeks, I’m just going to tick all the good things in the survey, right?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:43:56 – 02:44:05) Well, you can’t really gamify your attention span. That’s a digital assessment. Those those cognitive assessments you can’t really game. Sure, I guess you could like lie for some reason.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:44:05 – 02:44:08) Yeah, let’s say I can say I’m less lonely, whatever.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:44:09 – 02:44:36) Sure, it is possible to lie, but this is this is but why would you? It’s all anonymous. There’s no benefit. If anything, the thing that I was worried students would do, especially during midterms, is just answer so fast. That they’re not even paying attention to the answers. They’re just like, ’cause it’s anonymous. I can’t, I don’t want to make them feel like, they have to answer a certain way because you’re right. Then as a professor, they’re going to be like, oh, I need to say these things.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:44:36 – 02:44:40) Yeah. Yeah. But then attention span, like through the device, you found out like it just improved.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:44:41 – 02:44:50) We have a test of attention that we do. It’s a cognitive assessment. These are things that I can test you on too if you ever want to, you come to my lab at Berkeley and we’ll get you fully tested.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:44:50 – 02:44:50) Okay.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:44:50 – 02:45:01) Complex working memory, visual memory, attention span, Attention span, the whole thing. Okay. But you sit down and these are digital assessments that you do. So there’s no, I’m not asking you anything. I’m actually testing it.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:45:02 – 02:45:02) Mm-hmm.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:45:02 – 02:45:13) Can you focus on this boring thing and how long can you go before you make a mistake and miss something? And their scores improved in 9 weeks, even though they were more stressed because it’s now exam time.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:45:16 – 02:45:19) So just, so you are really making short-form devil.
Rethinking Your Relationship With Short-Form Content
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:45:22 – 02:46:34) I’m making it candy, and I have a sweet tooth like you do. I still eat candy, but eat the mapo tofu first. You know, like don’t fill up on the candy. I scroll. Be the first to admit on your show. I’m going to tell the world the anti-scrolling lady. I scroll, but I have limits on it. You know, like and I ask yourself the question. How much time is it worth it for you to give of your life, your precious life, to scrolling every day?
I’m not saying don’t do it. 10 minutes is good, maybe 10 minutes of scrolling. And I’m not even saying that’s all of your media. If you want to sit down and watch good quality YouTube videos for like, I don’t know, 20, 30 minutes, like learn something. Right? You could do okay. I want to do at least half an hour of that. I want to like I have these accounts I’m following bloom. I want to bloom scroll a little bit on these and then but like long form content that’s actually challenging your mind that you remember you’re learning something.
You can pause the video and go look something up. These kinds of things as opposed to the doom.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:46:36 – 02:47:09) Interesting. I heard the moment you were saying how much of the time you’re going to do this. I’m hearing how much of the time. You’re going to invest in becoming dumber, in becoming lonelier, in becoming less empathetic, in becoming— in making your memory worse. All of these things at the same time. Here’s the last thing I ask everybody is, when were you the most powerless or anxious in your life?
Finding Power in Powerlessness: Dr. Yousef’s Battle With Addiction
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:47:21 – 02:48:18) I would say for me, when I was struggling with addiction, I felt powerless. And man, it felt like, a cruel joke from the universe. I study addiction, I study neuroplasticity, I study this stuff, and somehow I got tricked. You know, it’s not really a trick, it’s biology, it’s science, but it’s humbling. and I think it’s an important message because people need to know that everybody— we’re all human, everybody’s susceptible.
It’s about the choices we make. It’s about awareness and being intentional about how you spend your time and also what you do with your life, what you choose to ingest, what you choose to think. Be careful about what you expose your mind to.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:48:20 – 02:48:21) What were you addicted to?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:48:23 – 02:49:11) I’ve been addicted to a great number of things in my life. I have been addicted to, I’ve, I’ve smoked, I’ve drank, I’ve done, scrolling, sugar, you name it. it has been my life’s most what’s interesting? I love the word you used, powerless. From what felt like the most powerless moment in my life. It gave rise to the most powerful feelings I’ve ever had in my entire life. I feel unstoppable and so powerful because of overcoming addiction.
So it was an opportunity.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:49:13 – 02:49:18) So now when you feel powerless again, what’s your personal framework to become powerful?
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:49:21 – 02:50:45) Well, this one is going to maybe sound even a little bit spiritual. I have a few beliefs. One of my beliefs is that the universe and the world is not how it seems, that a great amount of my reality is a construct of my own mind, which means I can influence the world and my life. Through what’s happening in here. So I protect this thing. I protect it by not letting bad stuff in. I audit what it’s doing and what it’s thinking.
And if I’m ever feeling powerless, I remind myself that I am God. I am all-powerful. I create everything in my life. Because you can, you truly can. You can create your own reality, your consciousness, like literally, truly, My conscious experience, if I close my eyes right now, and so do you can dream a reality inside of your mind. Now you might say, but that’s not real. It’s in your mind. But when something is truly real in your mind, it’s real for you.
So much research has also shown us that when you rehearse something and you visualize it, you daydream, you daydream about it, but the brain can barely tell the difference between daydreaming about X and actually doing X.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:50:46 – 02:50:46) True.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:50:47 – 02:50:58) So if you’re ever feeling powerless, you go into a daydream where you are the most powerful person in the world. Go into that daydream because then all of a sudden you’re going to start to feel more powerful again.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:50:59 – 02:51:30) Nice. Here is the last question, which is we always ask people about cost of ambition, right? So what’s the cost? What’s the cost you have personally paid to become the person who you are today? What’s the cost of becoming this top-level scientist, researcher, businesswoman running 50 things at the same time and researching and probably telling the world about something that they don’t believe in? What’s the cost of all of this?
The Cost of Ambition
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:51:33 – 02:53:45) My family and friends know the cost because they see it. There is always a cost. So I’m so glad you asked people this question. I have been relentless and very focused in my life on building what I want to build and doing what I want to do. It doesn’t allow for a lot of space for distraction, but the thing is, I’ve also sacrificed a lot of fun. I’ve sacrificed personal travel, vacations, leisure, scrolling. I avoided getting social media, by the way, just until recently, completely avoided it.
I have, given up friendships. I’ve lost friendships. I’ve lost a lot of very important relationships in my life because of my hyperfocus on prioritizing work. addictions, as I’ve mentioned before, that all comes out of this relentless ambition and relentless drive towards performance. And, yeah, I’ve, I’ve nearly lost my life and given my life. I will say that in the pursuit of my goals and that amount of sacrifice, I can’t say I regret it.
Because even though regretful things have happened because of it, I’m happy with where I’m at today. Not just from a success metric perspective, but I learned and now I can teach and I’ve corrected. And now I prioritize the people in my life, the most important people. I’m like extremely community oriented and there’s people around, my loved ones are around me all the time and I’m around them and it’s completely shifted what I sacrificed and the negative side effects, I would say, what I lost.
I’ve learned from it, which is all we can do, right?
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:53:46 – 02:53:59) Thank you for sharing that. Thank you so much for spending time with us and teaching us about brain and productivity and cognitive things. We have missed one very important topic. We need to do that next time, which are the 10 laws.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:53:59 – 02:53:59) We will do that.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:54:01 – 02:54:10) Can a human being become a superhuman? We will go through it, and we will do that next podcast. So thank you so much.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:54:11 – 02:54:11) Thank you.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:54:11 – 02:54:13) And to many more podcasts together.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:54:13 – 02:54:14) To many more podcasts together.
RAJ SHAMANI: (02:54:15 – 02:54:15) Cheers.
DR SAHAR YOUSEF: (02:54:15 – 02:54:16) Done. Cheers.
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