OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson | More Wisdom in Less Time - Video

As we recently discussed, Walter Mischel is one of the world’s leading researchers on the science of willpower. You’ve probably heard about his classic study called The Marshmallow Test.

In our last couple +1s, we’ve been hanging out in an fMRI scanning our brains and seeing some fascinating stuff. Let’s stay in there for one more study on how your brain lights up in different ways depending on the food you eat.

In our last +1, we had our brains scanned and learned that the pain of procrastination is only in the ANTICIPATION of doing something—not in the actual doing. (Good to know!) For Today’s +1, let’s stay tucked inside that fMRI and do a little more brain scanning. Walter Mischel is one of the world’s leading willpower researchers. (He’s the guy who did the marshmallow studies with kids—which we’ll talk about soon.)

Ernest Holmes created the Science of Mind movement and influenced a ton of modern new thought teachers (from Louise Hay to Michael Beckwith). He's all about connecting to that power that's bigger than us and in this Note, we'll explore how to turn on our inner light, tend to our mental garden, look for good and become an outlet for the Divine!

Barbara Oakley taught one of the largest classes in history on “Learning How to Learn.” She also wrote a great book called A Mind for Numbers. In it, she talks about procrastination and shares some fascinating research.

Epigenetics. The word literally means “above the genes.” There’s something “above” your genes? Yah. YOU. And your lifestyle choices!!

A few +1s ago, we talked about Amy Cuddy’s research on how quickly you can build your power and presence by simply expanding your body. We’ve also talked about the research on (https://www.optimize.me/plus-one/presence/) The iPhone Effect—which tells us that simply having a phone in sight diminishes the quality of your interactions. (https://www.optimize.me/plus-one/the-iphone-effect/)

Introverts unite!! Did you know that the majority (!) of Americans are actually introverted? Yep. But... Our society overly values the extroverted/social side of things and doesn't teach us how to cultivate the internal goodness. Fear not, Dr. Helgoe is here to help us learn how to be psychologically patriotic as we build solitude skills and tap into our introvert power.

This is a quick-reading, smart, practical guide on how to, as the sub-title suggests, “Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done. My kind of book. I *highly* recommend it. Big Ideas we explore include rats + rewards (real vs. random), progress hacks to conquer the progress paradox, saying “YES!!!” en route to saying “No” plus the physics of emails and 21st century superpowers.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is one of the world’s leading researchers studying the science of well-being. He co-founded the Positive Psychology movement with Martin Seligman and has written landmark books on Creativity and Flow.

If you’re into Optimizing, you’ve probably heard of something called “Parkinson’s Law.” Although the phrase was originally coined in a humorous commentary about bureaucratic inefficiencies for the Economist in 1955, here’s the basic idea: The amount of time it takes you to complete something will expand to the amount of time you give it.

In our last +1, we talked about the few key behaviors that are most helping us Optimize 80/20-style. The 20% of our behaviors that drive 80% of our good results. Guess what? The same rule applies in reverse. You’re doing a few key lame things that are creating most of your headaches.

Sleep. It's powerful. Way more so that you may think. And Dr. James Maas, a leading sleep scientist, gives us the lowdown on how to optimize our sleep for peak performance. In the Note, we'll look at why sleep is so powerful, signs you're not getting enough of it, and some best practices on how to rock it. We'll add a few more zzz's to your zzz's!

Willpower is the queen of all virtues. It outpredicts IQ by a factor of TWO for academic performance (and everything else we want in life). This class is all about the science of how to systematically build our willpower so we can reach our highest potential.

Once upon a time (1897 to be precise), an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto was studying wealth and income distribution in England. He discovered that a small percentage of individuals owned the majority of land and wealth. In fact, 20% of the population controlled 80% of the wealth and income.