Thinking Like A Genius Podcast

6 core emotions based on Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth - happiness - anger - sadness - disgust - surprise - fear Basic emotions include 2 with different interpretations Surprise, fear, disgust being the same Different emotions which are interest, shame & anguish Like joy & rage (elevated version of happiness & anger) Q: How does the brain process information emotionally? Converts words and pictures into emotions. It processes words and information emotionally as it’s the fastest way to get from A to B. It uses pattern recognition and emotions to dramatically increase the speed to get to the end result. The brain does this to save energy and fulfil its primary purpose which is survival. Processing information on an emotional level means little thinking is involved.  It automates the decision making process and bypasses a lot of deliberate thought processes. This is where jumping to conclusion comes from. Its a way for the brain to get from A to B in the shortest time possible and ensure a better chance of survival. When functioning on a primal level the brain has to assess whether a situation is friend or foe.  Friend means relaxed triggering social engagement, with low stress levels and physical demands on the body or brain. This open minded creative method of processing means better engaged, creative thoughts.  Stress on the other hand bypasses the hypo frontal cortex and goes directly to the amygdala where the brain processes fear or threats using fight or flight mechanism.  This is a important reason as this ensures a higher chance of survival than the slower analytical front part of the brain.  The amygdala is connected to the brain stem and rest of the nervous system which allows the direct integration with the vagus nerve which triggers the autonomous nervous system which send signals to the heart, lungs, and organs to activate various hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.   It triggers increased heart rate, faster breathing and the adrenaline dumped into the blood stream provides a massive boost in energy which the body uses to fight or run. According to Loewenstein and Lerner’s classification they decided 2 emotions  types which are used in decision making; Anticipated emotions - future emotions and ones used in immediate decision making. Most research focusing on risk return scenario’s.  Their research uncovered that decision makers tend to compare results of a decision against what could have happened rather than the current state. Time plays a big part in in how decisions outcomes are assessed.  People have a preference for short term outcomes on decisions. This means that the longer a result takes to realise the less valuable it appears to the person. People prefer smaller rewards which occur sooner over larger rewards later on (aka hyperbolic discounting) Affective forecasting  - is a prediction of a persons future emotional sate It is a process that influences preferences, decisions and behaviour in the future. These can be affected by positive or negative emotions, the specific emotion experienced and the intensity. When errors occur during this forecasting people become vulnerable to biases which disables people from accurately predicting future emotions. The following biases have an effect on future emotional states.  Impact bias - people overestimate emotional impact in future events. Overestimation is generally an issue regardless of time or emotional state. Expectation effect Sense making process interestingly a study found that a small gift given as a surprise produce a larger emotional reaction than one with a reason as it facilitates sense-making of behaviour. Ties into novelty aspect which gives a huge dopamine spike. Immune effect - refers to forecasters lack of awareness of the tendency to adapt and cope with negative events. People with better coping strategies could recover faster from an emotional event. Positive vs negative effect - accuracy of future emotional forecasting for positive and negative emotions is dependant on the amount of time before an event happens. Positive emotional forecasting  - is more accurate for long term future events and flip side negative affects are more accurate for short term forecasting. Immediate emotions aka true emotions. Intense emotions negate probability of possible outcomes. Eg Post 9/11 fear of flying increased driving even though statistically it was safer than driving. Intense emotions override any probabilistic thinking. How soon a outcome will happen can affect decision making driven by emotions.  Pfister and Bohm’s framework of how emotions function in decision-making which they saw as being integral 4 roles played by emotions Providing information - positive and negative emotions felt during assessment and this is driven by pleasure or displeasure spectrum. Improving speed - a good decision is important just as much as a fast decision. Somatic markers and emotions can encourage a decision to be made Assessing relevance - Emotions determine relevance to you and your situation and is determined by beliefs, personal history and state of mind leads to different set of relevant information. 2 emotions that most influence this are regret and disappointment. Enhancing commitment  - selfish decisions may be seen as as best overall. Although acting in the best of others/community can also affect commitment and these are determined by love and guilt. How does the brain process information to make decisions? It uses 2 methods Heuristic processing Systematic processing   Systematic processing Requires cognitive functioning and reasoning. Its slower more deliberative processing which requires less emotion but more time and effort. The first requirement is to gather information and structure it. It dependant on factors like motivation and cognitive capacity to deal with information. Motivation to process this way is determined by the gap between desired and actual confidence in judgement (attitude). Motivation increases when judgement is deemed important and relevant to the person. More effort to think when gap between actual and desired confidence is large Systematic processing uses thorough understanding of information through careful attention, deep thinking intensive reasoning which requires focus and time. Systematic processing requires information collection, evaluation, structuring the information into a knowledge tree and to integrate this into current knowledge to enhance the information. It tries to build relevance and coherence out of the information to make sense of it all. Factors which negatively influence it are stress, time, working memory capacity, fatigue and cognitive demand.  Hence the term so broke can’t even pay attention. Systematic processing is a core requirement when it comes to the next part of  decision making.   Heuristic processing It  is simpler faster processing and relies on  Stereotypes Current knowledge structure Biases Situational cues Rules or brain algorithms Somatic markers *Demasio identifies it as a special instance of feeling generated by a secondary emotion. These emotions and feelings have been connected by learning to predicted future outcomes of certain scenarios.* Somatic markers are managed by the prefrontal cortex and work conciously and subconciously and work to assist in decision making   To speed up this process we can do this by checking how we feel. This way we are speeding up the process and identifying the direction for the decision. Post decision analysis can be done to see if it fits requirement, careful of biases. A somatic marker is a body sensation associated with a scenario imagined by a person A somatic marker is when prior to the reasoning process you feel a brief unpleasant sensation when imagining a negative consequence to the decision. Support the show.

Zettlekasten, note taking and personalising knowledge through note taking. Make sure you support the podcast though Patreon to help grow the podcast. https://www.patreon.com/thinkinglikeagenius Facebook Messenger link - for cool updates! https://m.me/thinkinglikeagenius Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/thinkinglikeagenius Twitter - https://twitter.com/ThinkingLikeAG Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/thinkinggenius/ Follow us on socials and make sure you share the love. Lance Wantenaar The books https://amzn.to/2T4STaV - The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb https://amzn.to/2GCO9UQ - Ant-fragile by Nassim Taleb  https://amzn.to/2yAWa8b - Beginning of infinity , David Deutsch ----------------- Podcast intro and shoutout ------------- HappySeller85 and Frank Derko Today I'm talking with Zettelkasten and website creators Sascha Fast and Christian Tietze. Who also created The Archive software which is part of this interview on the podcast. I want to find out more about Zettelkasten and the method and it is a note taking method to document and store notes for long term and obviously using a faster and easier search capability. It is the proverbial index card for the digital age at the moment. This is Mac only piece of software and it allows as I said for easier light no taking method and also for a faster easier search capability.  Welcome to the thinking like a genius podcast.  My name is Lance Wantenaar and I've got two distinguished guests with me today.   00:02:01 Creators of a lovely little program called the archive and the website is called Zettelkasten . I am going to let both Christian and Sasha introduce themselves because they can do a much better job that I could hope to do and we'll find out a bit more about Zettelkasten what it is and how it works. And also some of the interesting insights that they've got.  Thanks Lance.We totally botched the segway . Thanks for inviting us. I'm Christian and I'm the developer of the archive. I'm doing the coding stuff the Zettelkasten project Yeah and I've been doing this this whole thing with Sascha for about seven or eight years now. Yeah so a bunch of years too many. You could say take up of the program grown since you first started with it. Can you rephrase the question. And. Has it. Has it become more and more popular as people became a lot more aware of your site and what you were doing. How did it I know it starts at or from both of you while you were studying and you you started developing the software out of a requirement for note taking and basically documenting your studies and your learning so has it grown organically what's your site the success criteria with the software who are successful and what success really I think the issue with the question is a bit of upside down because we didn't think of software first but thought about the methods because the Zettelkasten method can be realized on manifested with next to every text editor or even with paper. And we both came in and studied in Bielefeld, Luhmann was based in Bielefeld and is famous or is basically the godfather of Zettelkasten principle. And we experimented with a whole lot of software which all work to an extent and then later on the software came and is tailored to that set of Zettelkasten method. Now for the uninitiated Can you please explain the principles of Zettelkasten . What made you decide to start looking at a technology solution for it. I think the most distinguished principle of the Zettelkssaten method is that it's mostly organic. Many solutions let's say either being a software solution or system of organizing knowledge work are more hierarchical or mechanical. That means come with a bunch of categories and sort them sort your notes in so to say all you have like many software you have your folders or folder like structures and such and the Zettelkasten method allows for organic growth. So structure and something similar to fights and tags and therefore just grow out and the total cost method allows allows you to grasp them so you don't need to control it all but the Zetteelkasten method will do it for you. It's kind of a high level explanation I think. And I think in more specific is that you applied it and set it up correctly you just have to think and write and the system will take off the structure for you basically OK so the the structure of how it functions. 00:05:44 I notice that you've got certain ways of starting each note that you create. So it's got a date and time stamp structure to it. Do you have your own way of adding to that index method to clarify it. Or do you rely more on just the normal or the automated date and time stamp that it generates any and the action should be replicated. 00:06:15 So this is this one of the reasons we chose the timestamp for the unique identifier the unique identifier is just a bunch of string I mean that gives the zettel a one note specific address so you can point to its stable solution for the future and the timestamp allows to do it even manually all the automation comes next because if you rely too much on optimization you will become very much trapped in. So if the software does too much for you then you will become dependent. And if the software will not be continued or let's say even you if you switch your operating system then you will you have problems of because of the dependency and therefore most of the automated things are are kind of shortcuts for things that you could do anyhow. 00:07:13 I've started using a Zettelkasten to migrate content over to it and the the principles are fairly straightforward because it's very easy to use is very clean and is very simplified in the way that I can start structuring the notes that I've got. So what are the basic tips that you would give to people that you would suggest to people when they start using it. What are the. They're the basic principles in actually making use of it and getting the most out of the software to structure their content. 00:07:51 One thing that I like to point out to people all the time whether they ask stuff on the forums in the comment section on our blogs via email. A lot of the tips often boil down to don't overthink it. 00:08:04 In the beginning you know just just start. Just write your first let's say 100 notes and then you get a feel for it for for what you're doing. And if you are just creating a second noe in your whole life and tried to optimize the method and overthink it over analyze it. Then you will as the phrase goes be paralyzed because you can't step out of the analyzation step. You just try to to figure out what the truth is. While the truth really is doing things combining things I'd like to say. Playing with the notes that you end up with and try to try to have some some fun with the note taking because if you if you don't enjoy what you do at all. If it's a car then well you want stick to it and then it doesn't matter how how great the method is. 00:08:56 In principle yeah there's a couple of things which I find really quite interesting in the blog. When I was reading through it I noticed you talking about the concept of bread crumbs in your archive and can you just explain that a bit more for me. Bread Crumbs. Can you recall where you found this concept. It was one of your blog posts were you doing search for midwifery and the term I'm probably going to pronounce as . Yeah it's one of the very old old posts which you were searching or looking for some content and you were both looking for the same term of more or less at the same time. An argument from earlier this year. Yeah. Okay so yeah the bread crumb idea there was I mean for context Sascha and I were trying to figure out something. I don't I don't remember the details yet but we we both looked for some term in our note archives Hebammenkunst. Oh what in English Mirotic. Yeah what's it in how to pronounce it in English midwifery . Yes yes that's the English term. Yeah. Where was I. 00:10:18 Yeah so we were looking for this term and it didn't didn't remember what what we came up with in the past like four years ago and so we both searched for this this very specific technical term and then one of my notes said Sascha and I were looking for this specific note another term midwifery like four years ago and it was a term itself the search term that I use midwifery in this case didn't occur in the rest of the note so I left it there because a knew or expected myself to think in the same stupid is stupid trains of thought again in the future and wanted to give myself a clue or a hint when looking for stuff so the bread crumbs idea it really is if you write a note and keep it concise and atomic as we call it then you might still want to help your future self find the note to some extent and assigning tags is one such method. One way to implement this idea to help yourself find the note later and leaving breadcrumbs here really means use the words or combination of words that may be similar that you will look up in the future even if it's not the proper technical term if it's if it's the way you think about the topic. That's probably more important to recover the note later. 00:11:42 You're dealing with a lot of contextual. You need to understand or try and put in as much contextual information in it that makes sense for you to make it easier for you to find it in the future. That's one thing. Just think of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretl use. The breadcrumbs to find back. 00:12:01 And yeah this is exactly what Christian used because the I think the basic situation was that I wasn't able to come up with it and then research together and the actual other the situation a couple of weeks ago was basically the same. 00:12:17 I wasn't able to remember and Christian told me that five years ago I wasn't able to remember but you read I wrote down why I wasn't able to remember and think I think a good illustration would be to think or to compare to how the brain works because in the brain there's a concert or in neuro new law. OK the brain science thingy is just a concept that's called depth of processing or level of processing area that means if the more you process an information the better your record will be. For example if you just repeats a certain vocabulary like a hundred times then you have one kind of processing so it's just repetition. But for example if you want to translate plants to plants in Germany. But when you use the word plant as a German speaker in an English sentence you add another layer of processing because of usage and the more you process information and contextualize it the better you will be. Recall this this concept and the reason why this is is because you're using more entrance points to this to this concept so you don't rely on strong connection because of repetition but also can go an indirect route. It's a kind of similar concept to what it is. It's a. Little like like this acronyms. If you if a string I try to remember like the bones in your hand and then you make them make a saying which with the first letters corresponding with the first letters of the bone. Yeah in the Zettlekast No00:14:09Finally comes translating the transformation if you the activation part is some mechanically activated for example through the search. So what Christian searched was some bunch of words and the areas in the archive that got activated which means you recall that the other list that is that you can see in the search results and the more paths you have to one note that you can find and the more meaningful path the better you can recall that information. For example I searched or I remember that concept through midwifery real Translation is something like How to Slowly process a thought via speaking or something like that. 00:15:01 So Christian was able to access this thing through speaking thinking let's say and midwifery midwifery was an association that was really old and really idiosyncratic because what it is based on a misunderstanding or a mis recall of mine and therefore he'd increase the depth of processing or the level of processing through a misunderstanding. And that is yeah. And that's how basically improved recall can work in the in the zetteelkasten method because the more you increase the depth of processing the more entrance points you have to the truth some concepts and the better you can let us in a practical sense use your search function. 00:15:52 Reminds me of some concepts which I've been researching and basically when the brain starts developing knowledge it uses various methods of picking out highlights and what you will get is that it'll do. It will use pattern recognition to identify common pieces of information or repeated pieces of information and then what it does it's structures and knowledge depending on the patterns that it identifies. 00:16:19 So then what you do what you've got is like for example you've got a chair and in chair you've got various examples of a chair you've got you know a high chair you've got a stool you've got just a footstool or you've got a settee or a couch they all fall under the group descriptive word of chair but they all linked in various ways because of the structure and the function that the chair has00:16:50So if somebody says you go and have a seat you know they they're the inference is to a chair and you can see from the general shapes that you'll be sitting either on it on a kitchen chair or it'll be if it's in a lounge it'll be on a you know get a big soft bag or it'll be on a settee or something else. So now what you've got is you've got a descriptive word of chair you've got multiple examples of that which you can reference because it's based on a function. 00:17:25 Now what you have is that you can structure that under something else which is called furniture. Furniture includes tables chairs foot stools various other piece of information. 00:17:38 And that gives you a conceptualized usage of all of the furniture pieces within a room. Now what the Zettlekast method way that you're talking about the contextual information is that the more you've got context the more you've got although you've got random pieces of information like chair table side table or anything else of that nature they all fall under the group or the contextual term of furniture and that falls that can be described as part of a room. So now what you've got is you've got conceptualized examples of information but within that you've got pieces of singular descriptive terms but each one has got a function. Now you've the way that the brain works is that you've got these chunks of information that add groups together to make the processing easier. And it ties them together based on context or relationship00:18:34So the more you've got a relationship between the pieces of information the more you've got context of the usage of that information as a whole. So let's take midwifery for example you know midwives he deals with the medical profession. It also deals with somebody assisting with birth which means you also got pregnancy in that you've got after care for say breastfeeding or post post births after care you've got also the pre and post-natal care. So you've got a whole structure of knowledge which all can fall under the midwife ry functional word as a whole. So conceptually you've got a bunch of contextual information which is all encapsulated within that word and the structure which develops out of that.00:19:25Does that make sense. Yes OK. 00:19:28 So that's why I think the the whole concept you talk about having context and tags and making conceptualize and making sure it's contextual is so valuable because it makes information a lot more personal to the person who's actually writing the notes which is why it's so important to process the information and make it relevant to you. I think that's the other thing that which is quite important is the relevance of the information to the person actually creating the the notes and the Zettle's. 00:20:00 I think one member of our forum pointed out the difference that it makes if you work like that. 00:20:07 He said every time he set up in knowledge information system the it got more difficult the more he used it the more information and the more knowledge he accumulated the more difficult it was to use. And once he started with a zettlekaste method he was surprised that it got easier to use the more information and the more knowledge he fed to his archive. And I think this is because of the same mechanics that underlie those metaphors now functional metaphor in language or my metaphor of how the brain works. That's the underlying mechanic that that makes the system become better the bigger it is. And that could be an underlying mechanic that makes the system worse the bigger it is. And normally on the systems I encountered in my past were exactly are the latter. They got worse the bigger they got the same it got just bloated and you couldn't use some functions of software. So an example would be having to rely heavily on keywords. The more you use the bigger the keyword gets and the bigger the keyword gets the less meaning you've got. For example would search in my archive for nutrition. I would get thousands of thousands of notes back and basically meaningless for me to search for this keyword. But if I don't rely on it or use a better approach to tagging not in a useful sense but in the in the spirit of the zettlekaste method you basically reduce the amount to very small amount of very meaningful notes and therefore the mechanic of zettltekasten allows you to be better with time and I think that's the big important thing you want to be improve with more complexity and not worsen the problem with more complexity. 00:22:02 One idea that I think is part of the original introductory post on a Web site where we talk about Luhmann and what Zettlekasten is and how we use it and how it is a partner in communication in these things. I think part of that post is the bottleneck in Luhmann paper based archive and note taking was the entry of new notes and part of this is because he had to type in. I think in the beginning he type but the stuff you find online is all handwritten. So there is a lot of you know handwriting takes takes time and that's one part of the bottleneck and the other part of the bottleneck is that to find out where to put links to and where you want to where you want to edit all notes to link to this new one that you're drafting at the moment. You have to search and browse through your archive and have to read things. This all takes time and there was a bottleneck or one bottleneck of the method because you was so productive with his ninety thousands of notes but all this took a lot of time and that's a different kind of bottleneck than let's say if you don't don't find anything meaningful. So even though I would argue that that this part of this kind of bottleneck is not really that stressful because you interact with your archive and you find out new things and you it's a different feeling than then. Then if you don't have a clue if the system gets in the way of the archive not the application that be developed but the note archive that I'm speaking of. If you're note archive is hindering you to make sense of things to find existing stuff because the search isn't powerful to create new notes because it takes so much time. If all this gets in the way that's frustrating but if the real bottleneck is engaging with your archive and making meaningful connections that's a I would say fruitful kind of work and then you learn something while you work and that's a think I would presume. Part of why it's not frustrating and while it feels good if the archive grows instead of you getting worse and cluttered. 00:24:14I've tried over the years using various services to take notes and collect my writings together.I've used Onenote for for quite a while but I still sometimes feel that it's not as functional as I wanted to be. I've not looked at how interconnected it is although you can link from one to the other. I've not played around with that level of integration is it as it is and the other thing that I find is that it becomes a very big application. It's very heavy and I quite like Archive because it's it's quite light is very text base is very very fast and the way that it functions which makes life a bit easier because Onenote can be a very very big archiving method. Although I've kept with it for such a long time and I've got a lot of information in there it does become quite bloated. For me it it's very much a learning curve. Using the archive but I'm finding out as I become more comfortable on developing my own method of building it out and getting the best out of it00:25:22I think there's there's merit in using applications like Onenote because you if you have the input devices necessary you can you can draw next to textual content and keep more engaging notes. Let's say more into what you would do on paper if you scribble and not just write down outlines or text which is well you're pretty boring in the end and makes recall arguably harder. Like notes you take let's say during lectures visualizations and graphs in the statistics or something like that. The window in which your notes with images. That's useful to quickly capture thoughts but in the end you would have to let's call it. You would have to serialize these images to text to make them findable because in the end stuff that you search for is text based and Onenote I think. For example it's great to replicate parts of what paper can do and to take notes and keep folders of multimedia or mixed media stuff but I can hardly imagine how it would will scale if you have a thousand notes and a thousand notes isn't that much in the end. It's you can get to a thousand notes in a couple of weeks if that's all you do with everything. What did I say weeks wait months when all you do for let's say you get your bachelor's degree is studying and taking notes then then you get to a thousand pretty quickly but yeah in one note I mean just try to imagine having a thousand notes in one not even if the application would launch instantly and if there's no lag and loading time and delay. How would you link things. Would you link an image to a note with your link in text to two part of the note where an image is because the image is interesting and the mixed media content also means that on a single canvas you have multiple points on multiple things that that can be potentially relevant for future use then not atomic or split up properly and not reusable. So I don't know how Onenote would scale. 00:27:34 It's okay I just find that the searching is not as accurate as what I wanted to be and I sometimes have to look for the information manually which is which is bit of a problem although you can get a certain amount of image search back out of it.00:27:51I don't always find that I get the information that I that I want I have to specifically know some of the terms out of recordings and some of them. Sometimes it doesn't get contextual information right. So it's it's okay. I mean it. Now I think it's a big library for me. What I'll do over time is probably move it over to the archive so I can actually start building that out and start using that lot more and a lot more relevant way. The other thing I wanted to talk about with you both is the most intriguing article that I read about is the barbell method of reading. I found that quite a fascinating article. Can you tell me a bit more how you came about this method and what have you learned from the whole process. Have you developed this even further. 00:28:42 I didn't came up with it upfront but rather developed out of just interacting with my zettlekasten and the barbell method as I have borrowed the name from Nassim Taleb the author of anti fragile and a bunch of other very good books. This barbell method refers to a specific form of interacting in an uncertain environment so you rephrase you can can vary in the field but you basically invest your time mostly in very safe endeavors and a small fraction of time you invest your yourself in very high risk but high reward endeavours. For example in investing it would be that you invest 90 percent in real estate and 10 percent in venture capitalism or something like that. And in reading or knowledge work you are pretty much confronted with a similar problem because it's highly uncertain. 00:29:46 If a book is good or not or if any text or any information material is useful or not and therefore you should invest your time 90 percent approximately in very safe endeavors and the barbell method allows for that so in the first step of reading you will read for example a book quite fast and just mark interesting or promising paragraphs and then you will read a second time but only the mark paragraph. So you invest most of the time in paragraphs of the book that you already read and evaluate it as interesting or relevant or promising and therefore you skew your time to be invested and more relevant more interesting and more useful amount of text and that just comes naturally with the archive because the process of processing a book for example would be that you read it and mark all the interesting things and then I do it chronologically. 00:30:51 Christian has approach or is written on an approach that is more divorce more pre processing before you fill your archive but I just opened the book from page one and then go through the passages and write down notes and connect them as they go.00:31:10And therefore I naturally use the barbell method of reading because I only invest more much time in understanding and processing parts of the book. If I had already decided that is that this paragraph a useful and I think it's similar to my my approach to literature in general because I'm next to always read books that are recommended I don't read books that are that I came up out of the blue and mostly books that are recommended by people that I got recommended or that are recommended to me. For example I read classics because they're recommended very very much to to very many people and therefore it's a safe it's a safe bet because time is valuable and time is very spare. 00:32:04 And because my life is very short as all of our lives are very short I make sure that I read a lot. That is very useful and very few new stuff. 00:32:16 So to say so you're using a 80/20 principle. Yeah. And actually educating yourself. Yes. Seen a lot more people talk about the way that the approach where the actually first take a look at the book. Take a look at the index of the chapters and how the book is structured the information that's structured and whether it's relevant to you then as you said skim through the book and then start picking out specific areas we specifically want to focus on because you're looking for specific contextual relevant information to you that you can make use of and then extracting that information out of the book based on that making the information contextual by taking notes and trying to structure the information in your own brain and how is relevant to you using the principle of the midwivery is making it all contextual and see how it fits you and how you can relate that to some other knowledge that you that you have which is an interesting approach to have. I'm depending on the books I have I still tend to do a full read depending on the book that I'm reading some of the books I will skip around but it's a skill to develop because you you so used to wanting to read the whole thing because you've been you say taught this is how you read a book which is something you've got to unlearn 00:33:43 Yeah and the ratio and how how you came up with a process that's been really apply the barbell method of reading depends very much on your reading ability if you're a very very fast reader you have more leeway so to say in just reading a book for example if you have learned reading in early age preschool for example then you have much more organic way of reading which has both strengths and weaknesses but if you have this on your side you can many times read the book very very fast and you can read I think and it depends of course which kind of books you read in my experience the Americans have a very very fluffy way of writing books because it's very rich and anecdotes that illustrate stuff and make it more entertaining dilute the bit of informational content. So if I read for example in American book then I know that each chapter begins with the story and I can read in story mode like a switch that you turn like in comparison when you read a novel you will read very differently than you read a non-fiction book. And so for example in American non-fiction book I go into story reading mode in the beginning of the chapter and plow very very fast through first pages and then I will slow down for example and then a couple of reading techniques that you already mentioned like first reading the table of contents and understanding the structure of the chapters and so on and so forth that will allow the assessment how much time you will invest and that is basically the barbell method. It's like a high level thinking approach on reading that you try to make don't seek for novelty so much. 00:35:39 I think that is a piece of wisdom from Nassim Taleb because novelty is mostly garbage and time proven things are mostly good. So focus a lot of time proven things even if it's your only your own time proven a piece of information. 00:35:57 That's a really difficult thing to achieve because the brain actually loves novelty. It's you almost fighting against biology in certain respects because people know nowadays was all the devices available like phones social media everything else. The whole reason why it's so engaging is because of the novelty factor and the dopamine that reward that you get from actually having novel information flow in all the time so it's it's actually getting out of that habit of seeking novelty all the time and trying to retrain yourself to actually seek for novelty of information or connections out of the knowledge that you're gaining. I think that's probably where you need to change your focus a bit instead of looking for new information look for new connections of information that's a that's a good way of actually refocusing yourself to be able to use a novelty factor in the information that you reading which is known. 00:36:56 Do you happen to have experienced this change of focus in the change of the stuff you enjoy when you work with reading material recently and do you recall all that happened. 00:37:07 Yes. For example one of the areas which I've looked into as part of the whole looking into brain learning and connections and also how the brain processes information. One of the areas that I looked into was the connection of the vagus nerve and perception. You could say sensory perception and also how ties to your health because the vagus nerve is really important to health and also having a healthy clear brain and actually dealing with brain fog. So nutrition is very important because that determines how healthy you are as a person and what the impact is on the brain because of the connection or the vagus nerve into your your organs the areas where you you actually dealing with digestion. So if you end up having a poor diet or poor nutrition then that has direct impact on how you feel you are capable to focus. For example a really easy example is a hangover hangover is basically brain fog self-inflicted. So what happens is you wake up you feel dehydrated you feel slow you feel lethargic you're not feeling well you need energy. So the only way to correct that is to basically drink more water eat something which is going to energize you and eat something which is going to help you feel better. 00:38:32 So soon as your body starts regenerating and recovering then suddenly what happens is your brain your head clears up because you you actually processing the toxins see actually getting rid of you could say the excess of that you had the night before and as your body starts recovering then what happens you start waking up. Now you can add in other stimulants like coffee and cigarettes but they're not really ideal. I don't have a problem with really good coffee because I actually drink quite a lot of coffee. But if you rely on that as a method of getting you woken up and started then what happens you start becoming dependent on it and you create a dependency habit where if you improve your nutrition overall and they actually limit that impact on yourself it means that you have less of an impact on your cognitive function capability now where it becomes really interesting is that I hadn't realized just how important the vagus nerve in getting the messages between your organs and also the brain and also the impact on the brain. And this whole discovery of tying nutrition to an impact on your cognitive ability now makes it a lot more relevant to me because it verifies the value of having really good nutrition. There is an age old saying when it comes to exercises that you can't out train a bad diet. So if you want to recover well you want to build muscle. You want to improve. You need to have good nutrition. That's why the top sportsman and high performance athletes when you look at what they do they've got nutritionists they've got physiotherapists they've got psychologists they've got all these people that are working on actually improving their function as a person. But if you have all of that and then you have a really bad diet it doesn't matter how much good the other people are doing the person's engine the energy source is so bad that they can't cope with the extra demands that are being put on them. So if you take a look at people like Formula One drivers all of these high demand sports they can't have bad nutrition because it has a direct impact on their performance not just physical performance but also your speed of processing your cognitive ability of all of the other things that you have to deal with on a day to day basis. And if your nutrition is bad it also has other effects on your your fight or flight system which is integrity linked to your vagus nerve. Now these systems all interrelated and all pendant on each other they're not independent. Your brain isn't independent of your body just as well as your your body is not independent of your brain. Even though sometimes it does feel like it. There are certain times when I do feel like I've got two very separate entities but that's just the nature of the game and that's just for me how these although they look like disparate pieces of information they've got a very real connection on your ability to be able to function and to function and use all of the. You could say advanced capabilities and the really high performance capabilities that you have within the brain lucky we regular folks have fitness YouTubers right. 00:41:54 Yeah yeah I had I rely on a lot of those channels sometimes quite heavily. You get some interesting information if you select the ones that you want to focus on. 00:42:05 You can get some good value out of them but it's been quite interesting because one of the areas that I also looked at and I think I saw you mentioned in one of the articles are writing about health and cholesterol was actually looking how the body actually uses cholesterol and how the cholesterol is a cycle through the body through the various organs and how various things tie into each other and why people have got this incorrect perception that cholesterol is bad in actual effect. Cholesterol isn't bad cholesterol is a really normal integrative process of the way that the body manages energy within the body. The interesting thing is that the brain because cholesterol cannot pass into the brain because a blood brain barrier it has to actually create its own cholesterol for its own energy usage and that is how your brain actually generate energy for itself is that it has to produces itself but it relies on good quality nutrition to be able to create consistent and a healthy source of energy. And that's why the better your nutrition the better you can actually have your brain function for yourself. So it's a it's a really complex integrated system which I hadn't realized the gaps in my information about how the body was actually using it. And that brought taken me down a number of other avenues and they all contextual because now that you understand the importance of the one you realize how it affects all of your other function capabilities because if you go back to vagus nerve the vagus nerve is used in a number of ways because it determines how you cope on many levels. 00:43:49 If you're relaxed you in a very creative focused social engaged and active way of thinking where if you're sitting in a slightly stressed in a situation you then start triggering your stress responses which are you fight to flight mechanism which means that your focus changes from being open and creative and relaxed to being more focused a lot more narrower in your and your attention. And it means that you can lose some of your you could say creative input and actually dealing with things in a slightly better way and actually looking for those disparate connections when you're doing things because if you're in a stress situation with normally means is that you've become really really focused on fixing a problem. And unless you know the physiology of it unless you understand the physiology but you won't understand why you actually thinking that way or why you're reacting that way which is where I've tried to pick out these you could say common patterns of information to actually understand them better. Now that I understand those parts of the story it means that I get a lot more value out of the information that I'm learning is because I try and put myself in a more relaxed state to allow me to use some of the other parts or more creative parts of my brain.00:45:06Sounds like you're beyond the usual mind over body adage. 00:45:11 Yeah yeah yeah. I've I tend to get a bit analytical about things so it's one of the things which I think frustrates a lot of people about me. Certainly some friends that I have seemed to voice their opinion about that I'm sure. Seeing as you either coders and professional students you probably go down the road of being very analytical and also breaking down things into its Nth degree to make sense of it all. Do you tend to do that. Yes. And I'm pretty much annoying my surroundings with it. 00:45:47 Yeah I can I can now confirm that I'm not alone I'm not alone. 00:45:57 Funny thing is this is actually how Christian I met. We met through the university and the first things we talked about was the zettlekasten method and dealing with knowledge work which we did perhaps only because we had no other person to talk with to the same extent and you know loneliness makes you less picky in the end. 00:46:21 Yeah. No. What. What's the saying necessity is the mother of all invention. I wonder what the invention is in this case to me. First all a beautiful friendship. There you go. There you go. 00:46:33 You never know what could happen. Yeah. Especially with me. What are the areas also looked at. 00:46:43 Which I found really quite interesting. Or is your three layers of evidence that you wrote about that. I had some really interesting insights into you. You mentioned Nassim Taleb talking about the fallacy of extrapolated inference. If you're looking at the one part of the article is talking about interpretation of descriptions and also patterns of information. I've tied that back to something which David Deutsch was talking about in one of his books that he read or that he wrote or the concept that he had is that the an idea to have a long term value. 00:47:23 It has to have reach. 00:47:25 I hope I recall correctly is that his principle behind that is that if you actually take a look at the idea itself if you are to try and unpick the idea and take apart you could say any of the subjective part of the idea. 00:47:42 Does it cause the actual core idea to change and break down because it's not supported by solid enough. 00:47:50 You could say evidence if it doesn't change enough. If if the core ideas still functions in itself. Once you've unpicked it from some of the subjective you could say surrounding evidence and some of the smaller supporting ideas then it means that the ideas reach and that kind of comes back to concept of his fallacy of extrapolated inference because there is a big problem especially when it comes to viral part of media and social media is that you very quickly have this extrapolated inference from something which is completely incorrect. 00:48:29 And I found that really interesting that you. 00:48:31That was a really valid idea that I got out of that or concept that I got out of that I think it's the structures you can have summarized in the habit of jumping to conclusions. Yeah this is I think a more common way to phrase the phenomenon that underlies both of the things that Nassim Taleb concept of robust phenomena and fragile theories and your extrapolate. I can recall the phrase used but what you used. 00:49:07 Yeah I found one thing that you said particularly well interesting and irritating. That was the part I'm not familiar with the book you cited but the thing about picking an idea apart and doesn't change by picking it apart or by analyzing it. Something like that. Yeah. That what you meant . Yeah I wonder what this means in practice. I mean if someone utters something interesting and do some kind of interpretation in your head that you take note of for example to take this back to knowledge work and the central casting method and then you were inspired we can say to write down what you just wrote down right. No. 00:49:50 I wonder what what kind of objective measure. 00:49:54 Do you need to say that that the idea changed and that you maybe let's do it differently. Is this a bad thing if you don't have the objective truth. 00:50:05 What an idea entails when you talk to someone and pick out some part of it only I think it's more about if you are to look at some of the blog posts that you've got and zettlekasten the whole idea is it's kind of like taking for example how can I have a really good example of where that falls apart. OK In the last number of years people have had a dramatic change in their views on fat and the impact on health people. People used to go down the road of based on on some research done in the 60s and how it was presented and how that's been unpicked is that basically fat is bad for your health. 00:50:54 There's really a saturated fat is really actually quite bad for your health. And that drove a lot of you could say business and interest in developing low fat products and various and proclaiming that it's good for your health. And then over the years people started investigating whether that is really valid and whether that is true that fat is actually bad for your health. And I actually started looking at the supporting research and all of the inferences and the conclusions which were drawn out of that and started taking them apart. And what happened is that the when the core idea was actually analyzed and actually researched re-evaluated it started falling apart. So that's the concept of where these ideas reach started falling down is because when you actually started investigating the supporting elements of the argument it started showing up cracks in the core concept which meant people started re-evaluating it. Now when you start looking at the underlying research and what people are finding out is that no that research wasn't really wasn't it really correct and it's changed a lot of people's perception of whether fat is actually bad for you. And there's a lot of really interesting research which has come out which has highlighted a different change in perspective. Now that's also falls into something else where people have this concept of when you start talking people about the cholesterol. People normally infer that cholesterol is bad for you and that's normally tied to high fat diet or eating loads of fat but that's because it's been you could say initially supported by various people and by researchers and by dogma you could say and now you have something which is called the continued influence which still impacts people's perceptions of that whole core concept is because it was regularly repeated in the news and very source of information through various health articles and presentations. And that perception has not changed enough to get to a point where people are actually questioning it on a on a regular basis. And that's where awareness and very source of information can actually incorrectly skew people's opinions of information which is why I started looking at the actual primary articles. I think it was mentioned in one of your blog posts instead of just looking at the secondary articles that everybody talks about start looking at the primary of articles. What's the source of the information which takes me back to something else which I've seen recently is where a lot of research is actually being re-examined to see if the how relevant it is to the actual conclusion drawn. I think it's been quite prevalent in the psychology fields where they reexamining a lot of inference is based on some of the initial research which is done. I think the marshmallow experiment is a is a prime example where they say that if you've got more self-discipline it'll infer that you'll have more success. But what they actually found is that when you actually break down the population of the research that they applied they two types of participants you had children or participants from you could say a more stable house was more higher mean income which meant that they were less inclined to deal with shortages in you could say food and then they also had some of the participants from areas which were which had less economic free income or were were low on the economic scale which meant their approach to food was I need to eat something now because I might not have it later which means that your primary driver when it comes to that experiment is completely different. It doesn't determines the success it just determines the primary driver when it comes to how they perceive their needs and how their needs are determined by some of the historical environment by their background environment. So that that's a way that the whole concept of the ideas has got reach is you could say exemplified in some of the conclusions and some of the re-evaluation of research and conclusions drawn from that. 00:55:24 I think I would change the word reach for time stable. The more time stable an idea can become the better it is in the task to reasoning behind the barbell method of reading it. 00:55:37 Yeah it comes down to time as the ultimate variable. Yeah. It's very very valid point. So what's next for you guys. 00:55:49 So a lot on the list for me to development to the archive for example but the belt and the road map there's the zettlekasten method course because writing a book in English is just too much trouble of both of us and because especially for me not so very good English. 00:56:09 I'm not sure who's suffering most when they're the editor and proofreader. 00:56:17 But yeah. So preparing presentation slides and doing the video course where you have more leeway and can improvise more on the spot and stuff like that. 00:56:26 I think that's that's the reason behind doing this in video form. As soon as possible I think that's the best I can get. 00:56:39 And then lots lots of applications that turn to the method of writing based on your notes that you putting in zettlekasten lots to come many years of work left. 00:56:51 That's really good because the thing you've got a lot of really valuable knowledge and there's some really interesting articles in here and it's it's good to see it you've got so many people that have participated and posted their own reviews and how they using it. Yeah and some of it we integrate is so you've got a really fantastic site and I see you've also got some YouTube live feeds that you do in live stream events that you do. 00:57:20 Yeah very very unregulated. More like two years ago it was more an experiment I think in hindsight it was like an idea and we wrote it but we didn't follow through. I think we focused more on the on the grid. 00:57:36 So to say yeah the fluffy fluffy presentation stuff no Lance could I bounce a question back to you that you regularly get from let's say newcomers to the method. Yeah. One thing that pops up from time to time is the question what is zettlekasten . And of course such and I have some conception and some idea how we could explain this but what what would you say is zettlekasten the way I perceive zettlekasten is you could say digitize form of index cards. 00:58:11 It's taking published knowledge personalizing it contextualizing it making it relevant to yourself and then making a note of it and then finding ways of using that relevant information for your own purposes. That's how I view zettlekasten. zettlekastem is also seen as a process of note taking and structuring your knowledge to make it usable to yourself because a big problem is that there's so many sources of information. And although I've looked at index cards and yes they are fine. I can type something a lot faster than I can write and my handwriting is terrible but the last thing I want to do is sit and squint at a card to try and figure it out so for me zettlekasten makes sense because I can read what I'm writing instead of trying to figure out what I'm writing. That's how I see zettlekasten is basically digital index cards and what is for you. 00:59:07 The main differentiator to other methods are two other approaches because I can. 00:59:14 1 It's searchable and 2 It's simple and straightforward. Life is complicated as it is the more the simpler the method is the simpler I can make it work for me. The more use I can have out of something. 00:59:28 If something is too complicated and it takes too long to learn and to get involved and integrate into your life people just won't use it. So the simpler and faster and easier something is the better it is for everybody. And it comes down to basically understanding the brain and how the brain functions. The brain tends to go for the easiest method tries to build in shortcuts if things get too complicated. You overload your working capacity and you basically you then just default to whatever's easiest and the easiest isn't always the right decision or the right process or the right thing to do. 01:00:05 For me zettlekasten and if it fits into that method of being easy simple and flexible then it has value to me as a person. 01:00:18 I mean on the upside and the spectrum would be people from do you know the outline of software dot com forums No. 01:00:27 I don't know how old it is. It looks like it's straight from the 90s and nobody ever needed to update the software. I don't know how they deal with spam because apparently the moderator doesn't have to do much according to its own information that I gather but. They're a dedicated bunch of people who talk about outlining software first and foremost but then we'll expand into all the other related things like producing texts taking notes and they came up with the term I think they came up with. I don't know if it's borrowed from somebody else. They call themselves crimpers and CRIMP It's an acronym. I don't recall what it stands for but these crimpers as they call themselves try out all the methods and all the software all the time. If something new comes out they're hooked. They're interested they try it and they spend so much time experimenting with stuff and you said that the brain tries to find interesting things and novelty yet. Yeah. That's either you could go the simple route make the tool as simple as possible and deal with novelty of information. I would say or you just experiment with all the new tools and the shiny new stuff that comes out every week and you don't get to the actual work and don't enjoy the work. In the end because you're just switching tools all the time so that's something to take care of. 01:01:55 Yeah I've just found that over time if there's too much then you don't end up using it more and more. I'm looking at reducing as much as possible and getting as much value as possible and focusing on getting really efficient with key bits of software and key ways of dealing with information. And for me it's the less is more. I'm not a young man anymore so my whole focus on life is to simplify as much as possible and to get as much as possible out of what I do and get as much benefit as possible out of what I do. 01:02:32 That could be in my opinion that could be a difficulty for a zettlekasten method because it's quite simple in the action. 01:02:41 There are some methods so to say or routines how to set up your workflow that that add a bit to it but in reality it's just too fast too fast to be learned. And then you have actually do the work and have no issue in learning something new or to discovering some hidden feature or something like that and I think it's it's a bit of detriment that could be perceived not as sexy but more like raw and you're like in a very very direct and efficient way.01:03:20Yes. Full stop. 01:03:23 It kind of reminds me of a really good analogy 10 years ago when Microsoft was managed by Steve Ballmer. He was absolutely vitriolic about Linux and calling Linux cancer and you know being very anti Linux and every good we had drugs. Yeah I find it really interesting that that whole perception has changed because if you take a look at Windows and Linux systems Unix systems were specifically designed for hardware with very low spec very low hardware requirements but they used a lot of small commands that they could chain together pipe together to get a really big compound effect out of it. 01:04:13 And it doesn't mean that a Unix system is less functional than a Windows system because obviously Windows systems have changed quite a lot on their backs you come down to the realization that you don't have to have all these windows and everything else you can have a really barebones system that actually functions a lot better and there's a lot of scripting and command line which has come back in which is actually enhanced the functionality of the operating system but that they had to change that perception because they thought everything was going to be windows and managed and they actually forgot the power of scripting and connecting various tools together to actually give you a result. So I like the approach of you could say the Unix approach or Linux approach where you've got a bunch of small commands really simple clean functional pieces of tools which put them together and now suddenly what you've got is a really powerful tool and that's my approach is everything else that I try and do. I take a look at what what is the simple basic building blocks of each one. Break it down into its core components and then put it together you've got something fantastic and that's the same thing. Do it the way I look at information. I try to look at information that ways try to look at the core concepts and the core concepts are really functional and do what they want. You put them together you get something fantastic It's like baking a cake. Yeah a cake. Yes. The end result is fantastic. But if you don't understand the core basic components if you don't use the core basic components then it doesn't matter. The end result is it's always going to be rubbish because you don't know how to use the simple clean component. That's how I see it. If it's a tool is easy to use simple to use and I can add value to it by using it in the correct way. 01:06:01 Then to me it's worth a lot more than then something that really complex I truly like the metaphor because if you read recipes and there's like instruction to add for X nobody in their right mind would think oh well I'll just take the bowl take the whole egg with it Shell and throw it in as fast as I can and then you know ingredient added finished you have to crack it open first but that's all that you have to acquire through hard chewing. 01:06:30 Yeah I like that all right making a cake. I'll check some eggs in it. Throw a bottle of milk or a quarter of milk in it. 01:06:38 It looks like ingredients for a cake. Yeah certainly makes a mess of your baking. 01:06:44 No I'm not really inclined to try this but it bit intrigued to have somebody else do this and report. 01:06:52 Excellent. Sascha Christian. Thanks a lot for your time. It's been a pleasure speaking with you both. Yeah. Thanks for inviting us. I'm looking forward to your video lessons if they are anything like your writing it's definitely going to be something to take hold of them and be part of. When do you hope to have something usable that you'll unleash on the world. Yeah this lifetime. 01:07:23 Can't get any more specific.Yes I specifically I failed a lot on timelines and therefore I don't think it's honest to give a date and they hope but we will keep you posted on the website. 01:07:38 Definitely do that. I'll carry on reading your blog and taking part and definitely try and learn as much as possible. Make use of the archive. Thanks. Thank you very much for a really wonderful tool and I wish you all the very best. Thanks a lot. Take care. Support the show.

Todays podcast interview is with a Special Boat Service (SBS) veteran who agreed to share his insights into psychology, performance, motivation and mindset. Make sure you support the podcast though Patreon to help grow the podcast. https://www.patreon.com/thinkinglikeagenius Garry Banford now runs  DuratusUK which is a  performance and mindset coaching business to help people achieve their optimum potential and maximisetheir results. Find out more at https://duratusuk.com/ For the books which we discussed in the podcast here are the links. Drive theory - Dan Pink  https://amzn.to/30FgcKQ Stealing fire - Steven  Kotler https://amzn.to/2XRcmkE Rise of Superman - Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal https://amzn.to/2XOfcad The Obstacle is the way - Ryan Holiday https://amzn.to/2JOC2ER Facebook Messenger link https://m.me/thinkinglikeagenius Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/thinkinglikeagenius Twitter - https://twitter.com/ThinkingLikeAG Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/thinkinggenius/ Follow us on socials and make sure you share the love. Lance Wantenaar Full Transcript 00:00:41 Welcome to thinking like a genius podcast helps support the growth of the podcast through Patrick on and get access to support or only content. Today's guest is Garry Banford. Garry is a special forces veteran who retired out of the armed forces and started up his own business. He is the epitome of a thinking soldier and has qualifications in psychology and performance. He now runs Duratus UK which helps individuals and teams develop their optimum performance mindset. Duratus UK's goal is to make your mind strength your defining feature. You learn how to perform under pressure you improve your ways and methods to cope with overwhelmed banish fears over thinking and also procrastination which is the biggest problem for a lot of people. You'll also feel less anxious. You will have a clearer thought process and you will see daily challenges in a completely and also different light because the different perspectives. I had the opportunity to discuss a lot of very important mental processes and issues dealing with performance and how to improve it. He was a fantastic guest. We had a really interesting discussion about a number of topics. He can give you some fantastic tips, actionable ideas and to get in touch with him what you do is contact him on Instagram or Facebook using Duratus_UK or go to his website which is DuratusUK.com. I will post all these details on his contact information in the show notes. I'll also be including some of the links to the books which we discussed in the podcast. So make sure you stay in touch or get in touch with Garry. 00:02:37 Gary thank you very much for coming on the thinking like a genius podcast. 00:02:42 I was pleasantly surprised that you agreed to it because I came by a bit of a left field introduction through it was Instagram and I was actually quite intrigued when I first started looking at your site and the areas that you were involved with. 00:03:00 Lance So there's a couple of things which I found interesting is that your background is obviously from a psychological background because you studied psychology and then you went in to the armed forces and then ended up getting into the SAS and then once you left that you started going back to your kind of roots and then started using your experience in the armed forces plus also your education to go into your current business that you're in. So can you give us a bit of a background on yourself and where you are at the moment or what you involved with at the moment. 00:03:41 Garry Banford Yeah absolutely. Thanks for having me on board. So yeah no thanks for reaching out. It's always nice to connect with people moving in like minded souls as well. 00:03:49 So a little bit about me I love you said studied college only to the A-levels or standard and I often say this to people I studied psychology sport and physics and at a time that nobody really put those three subjects for at least two of them sports and psychology together. This was before performance psychology or sport psychology is really this is back in 96 95 and that was it was it was just bubbling away but there wasn't really an awful lot much of a trend with it so it just worked for me. 00:04:23 I always enjoyed the topics and how they both two things work together so I enjoyed that had a position at university again bubbling away. 00:04:34 But if I'm honest it didn't really float my boat out I was at the time I was looking for a little bit of adventure I was looking for that excitement I was looking at my options I was 18 years old and as an 18 year old who knows what they want to be when they grow up right. 00:04:49 So I certainly didn't so I went down to the Royal Marines careers office initially applied to be an officer and again I think I was 17 and a half at the time and they said I qualified but we'd like to get into a bit more life experience and they recommended I go to Australia go sheep shearing or something like that on a Australian farm. And I walked out of the careers office thinking that's not really what I want. So I almost walked straight back and immediately said Look I want to join the Marines as one of the lads and that's what I did. Again went through the Marine training in 1997 and went through straight through first time which is becoming more and more unusual again. The reason why I was doing it was you know I was never a particularly athletically strong I was always very average but I was just very determined that gave me a career for about four or five years in the Marines before the twin towers attack happened and I'm sure will come onto this a little bit later. But I on watch in the Twin Towers attack. I'm sure yourself can remember it. Lance and many or all of your listeners above a certain age will be able to remember it. You know that feeling that it hit me with I was serving in the military at the time and just felt like I wanted to do something about this terrorist problem and at a time. Again not really wanting to argue the rationale behind it but at the time for me it seemed logical to step in and volunteer my hand up and volunteer for UK special forces which I did again. 00:06:22 So I went through completed that beginning of 2003 and then I was a volunteer for the SBS actually Lance just to correct you a same selection process as the SAS. 00:06:34 So I was a volunteer for the SBS and that's where I spent most of my career from 2003 right up until Christmas just gone by. I finished in December and looking back. I've had words of probably extraordinary career. You know I do think people will look back over that period of time and the situations and environments and the challenges that we were thrown into post 9/11 were extreme to say the least and I know I've certainly learned a lot about me. 00:07:06 I learned a lot about the teams of the guys that I worked with and about human performance and I think one of the touched on just the start of the opening was I've always viewed my viewed my career through the lens of psychology and performance psychology. And I've always used various things to help me in that and I wasn't always great at it. But as as my career's developed and dealing with chaos has become a little bit more normal shall we say. 00:07:36 Those techniques have become more honed and I've become more proficient in them. 00:07:40 I had an incident maybe about four or five years ago when we started within the group to employ performance psychologist. He started talking about stuff in a particular class that he was delivering to the group and I was looking around the room and a lot of people were fairly blank looks and I was thinking myself well everybody use these techniques right. 00:08:02 Turns out that they didn't and hadn't been dealing with all the stresses and strains of the mental stresses and strains of the job by using these simple techniques and it was a reality check for me that I'd probably not done a great job of really talking about what was going through my mind. Maybe when I sat in the back of a helicopter towards a particular area of interest or on the ground when all sorts of things were going on around us and potentially losing control of it. 00:08:30 So it was a reminder to me that you know there's always stuff to be shared and to be learned from that point I guess I did a little bit of a better job of communicating that to my men and to my teams my friends. 00:08:41 So yeah that's that's me in a nutshell I guess right now. 00:08:44 I've since left and you know as you mentioned I run my own business helping elite teams relief organisations or business says business people individuals just perform optimally with a mindset and a performance so something I'm so passionate about. It's always been something I'm passionate about and that's that's where I find myself right now. Lance Wantenaar Digging a bit into the optimum performance side of the discussion. Yeah there's a lot of focus obviously on optimum performance when you start looking at the information which is published. I'm going to use an example of the British cycling team which has become so you could say the vanguard of high performance. You could see results in the way that they and their approaches that they use because they use the 1 percent marginal gains and they they really focused on making small changes and you know focusing on all of the small changes to get a compound effect of increased performance. If you had to take the marginal gains act approach how would you use it within a business sense or a personal sense Garry Banford There's a lot of value. My personal opinion is a lot of value to the marginal gains and we can all be marginally improved in lots of different facets of ourselves. I work in every part of our lifestyles etc. If I'm honest I think most people we're talking to you know that marginal gains principle worked very well with an elite sport like cycling where the gains to be had over your competition can be significant. You know over these long distances in the elite level that everybody is already performing at. But if we're honest with ourselves I think most people can't really relate to the level of performance so by much more into tones principle of the 80 20 and you know there's way more gains to be had in focusing on your strengths and focusing on the things that you're really good at and most of us have huge gains to be made in those areas as well as much as we like to think of ourselves as elite performance athletes. You know even in my background it's something that I always used to talk about with younger guys as they were coming through. Maybe thinking about a career in special forces you know everybody looks at the selection process that as this. 00:11:14 People that served in the military this is you know it's almost an impossible task order performance standards required are just an incredible level. The reality is that the performance standards are actually very achievable and there's thousands and thousands of people have managed to pass these tests. People's problems of self belief and people's problems actually are thinking they're good enough to even attempt to try it. 00:11:42 So I buy into marginal gains and I think at the elite level there's absolute value to it but I think for general people and for most people we could talk all day about sleep. For example with how most people could get the best gains in their performance whether that's lifestyle health wealth even in just getting a better night's sleep. And you know that this isn't marginal we're talking huge leaps in performance advantage. So you know I'm happy to talk about marginal gains with the elite cycling team. Lance Wantenaar I'm more and more about there's lots of general things that we can look at to get these advancements in it from a general perspective. All of these things that I've looked at if I just look at some of the examples my own life I've as you said sleep is a big big factor in actually making a big difference not just on overall functional capability but it gives your brain the capability of actually going through a proper rest cycle switching off and making sure that it can actually process some of the stuff that it's dealt to us almost on an active basis during the day and really good quality sleep is fundamentally really important. There's a lot of misinformation which people post on various forums and whatever you where they where they purport that you know high performance people or really successful business people in their sleep. 00:13:09 It is probably one of the biggest misconceptions that you can get because if you don't have proper sleep you start having a cumulative knock on effect on your cognitive ability. You start having cumulative knock on effect in your house because you start eating foods which are really high. You could say calorific value but low nutritional value to maintain the energy demand and yourself. And what happens is that you you start having a bunch of other knock on effects because of that because your nutrition is starting to have a knock on effect. And you try and support your system by using various other methods like loads of caffeine bad bad food just to give you that thing so you can keep on going. And that starts having a massive the cumulative knock on effect. What you're saying is is that you start making mistakes and then you start going into a massive spiral and at some point along the line you will get to a point where you'll you'll go completely wrong and you'll have a crash of some sort and you basically burn yourself out. And the other thing that I that from to me is fundamentally really very important is nutrition. I really dislike the term diet because a diet normally infers that you restricting yourself in a way that's going to be detrimental to your health. If you're looking at nutrition you start looking at the bigger picture of your quality of your food the types of food and all of the other things that you look at and your mindset actually changes to actually focus on not just what you eat but also when you eat and your food choices change over time of course. What other performance tips would you would you have for people as a base for the meat performance comes down to those those key ingredients. Garry Banford 00:14:56 You know you mentioned a lot of things around sleep. People only know what they know right. And so it's no great surprise that people will spout about what they know and what works for them. The reality is you can't you can't argue with a research you can't argue with the actual data. And in my old organisations used to not value sleep. The process to get people into the organisations know didn't value sleep and the training didn't value sleep. The operations didn't value sleep could be easy to sort of say well you know we were we're working just fine. The reality is we weren't working often optimally because we were we were so drained and we were just living in a state where this is how we felt. And this is what was normal to us. There's that famous sort of information of how much or how little sleep Margaret Thatcher used to get. Oh great. Okay so you know she basically wasn't making fantastic decisions when she was in charge of the country. You know that you can't argue that all the data points towards cognitive skills your decision making your memory retention you know all these things are clearly evidence that the lack of sleep performance drops. 00:16:05 So you know everybody's different. Granted but I think we all need loads more than what most people are getting. 00:16:11 So sleep will always be something I look at I'll always look around you mentioned nutrition again. People get so wrapped up in the finer details in it rather than looking at the macros you know. But meat is more about education it's more about training watch their daily lifestyles. 00:16:26 At the end of the day we're all creatures of habit and the habits that we have are part of our makeup. And you know when people really get a bit of a self reflection on their own habits then when they start to see themselves what the performance or mistakes they're making or when they can have. 00:16:44 The gains again that's a that's on a case by case basis. But there's some big general still think normally comes down to education food sleep fitness and just daily think daily good habits that you can you can put in place to change. Change how you react and work with the environment that you're in. Lance Wantenaar Yeah. Do you actually find that these you could say general good practices then has a knock on effect on people's mindset and motivation as well. Garry Banford Well of course but again I'd argue that they probably don't realise it at first. You know they people don't make the link between six hours sleep for five nights in a row and feeling like rubbish you know they just don't make that connection because it's just what they used to they used to feel like this and like you mentioned that they they have got habits that they need when they first wake up. I need a massive coffee. That's great. You know coffee is awesome you know. And you can enjoy your caffeine cake but people believe that they need these things and that's that's where we get into problems. This is all down to habits. Again I'm not I'm not knocking coffee at all but I'm a big fan of coffee but I think people's understanding of the effects that it has on their physiology is massively skewed. 00:18:01 Lance Wantenaar Yeah. My personal kind of history is coffee is fine. I'm fairly lucky I'm on caffeine insensitive so I can drink a significant amount of coffee and my heart rate won't go beyond its normal beat but because I know I'm so caffeine insensitive I compensate by controlling exactly amount of coffee that I drink. And also I try and get the best quality coffee that I can get. Yeah so it does mean that I go down the nth degree. But you could say pedantic about things when I started going down down that road. But I get roast on demand coffee as good quality as what I can get. And it means that one I enjoy the coffee that I drink but then I don't I don't try and push the limit just because I can. So I just drink the coffee that I have in the morning and the rest of the day I'll drink water or drink you know some other form of tea or something of that nature which is non caffeinated so I'm completely the other way. 00:19:01 Garry Banford I am sensitive to caffeine. Two coffees back to back and you can't shoot me up. So I really I really have to be careful with it. I very rarely you know I choose not to drink coffee after sort of three four o'clock of an afternoon. I've definitely made the switch to green tea. Long live green tea. Again the benefits and myself just enjoy that. 00:19:22 That's interesting because I find this sort of for quite interesting is each person's physiology is incredibly different in how they react and things and that's the other key thing which I think a lot of people need to realise is that there's no cookie cutter thing that's going to work definitively for each person. This in general things which will work but each person has got to educate themselves on their own. You could say parameters in which they have to function which ones work for them which ones don't work for them if they don't take that responsibility of actually educating them about themselves. They'll never really get those benefits over a long period of time because people 17 seem to rely on a lot of generalist statements and they don't actually fine tune it to make it work for them or relevant to them. 00:20:09 Oh absolutely. I mean most people just buy into the next fad example of anything you know if there's a new fat diet a new the next best thing that's just come out people will jump on board that because they're looking for the easy heart. But really it's no surprise. So it shouldn't be a surprise to people that you know everything should take a more generic rules generic best practices that people should know about and then absolutely take a personalised approach. In the day each of our brains is the most complicated thing in the universe you know is any wonder that I got especially you know all the things we eat and the things and the things we think or all have a different effect on all of us. 00:20:47 Garry Banford So is it really that surprising or is it just when we sit down and think about it and we actually remind ourselves that this is obviously the case now. I am 100 percent with you on that. Just one thing works for one person is that you know there's no logical reason why that would work for another just as very generic rules that are best practices and these are the things we have to try and adhere to. 00:21:07 Lance Wantenaar You mentioned a couple of interesting things because my previous podcast guest that I had a state Stefan Chmelik who spoke about the vagus nerve when we went it went into quite a lot of detail about that about how your your gut health has a direct effect on your overall health but also on your brain function capability because of the vagus nerve. 00:21:28 And people actually fail to realise how important actually taking care of their nutrition has got a direct effect on their mental capability. There seems to be a massive you could say a missing link where people don't realise that what goes in is definitely going to have an effect on what happens in the head. It's almost like putting in a poor quality fuel in a car dirty fuel on a car. If you have that you're going to start having problems with misfiring engine damage poor performance as a bunch of other knock on effects because of it. It's the same thing that happens to a person when you start putting in rubbish few or the poor quality food it has a knock on effect on other parts of your actual overall house. 00:22:14 Garry Banford Yeah. No of course you know there's these things these sounds like common sense when you say it but I always smile at the saying that the least common sense is is common sense right because we know most people are like sheep we just go along with what most people are doing and what things were being marketed by and you know not really understanding the effects that all the decisions that we're making. Most of the time you know almost subconscious leads most people. So yeah there's no surprise to me that this is the case. Again I don't profess to be some form of absolute athlete or you know some sort of a well-being warrior. No that's not me at all. I make good sensible choices based on what I know and I continue to try and learn and to grow and to constantly develop my knowledge in these things these areas that will make me more and more healthier more educated. It's just a it's just my good practice that I've got into. 00:23:05 So yeah I don't profess to be some sort of high performance machine although we all all you know I just choose to just make good choices healthy choices you know then I'm not wrestling with these decisions of meat into diets or needing to starve myself in and try and sort of drop so many pounds for a certain a certain period of time so you know I just don't I don't concern myself with all that too much I just try and never pretty healthy life make pretty decent decisions most of the time. Keep it simple stupid learn something that's always worked for me. 00:23:35 Lance Wantenaar You're digging into these two of my favourite topics as well is motivation and mindset. Yeah give us a bit of insight into your views on motivation and also mindset and how they all interlink and how are they. They're all tied together. 00:23:54 Garry Banford So I've not listened to all of your podcasts I love lists to a few and so I don't know if I'll be covering old ground but again I don't profess to be the greatest scholar on all of this. Again I like to keep things really simple for me what's always made an awful lot of sense is just differentiating between the extreme motivators and the intrinsic motivators. And again for yourself it would all be pretty obvious but I'm going to speak to all of your listeners and so maybe some of them don't understand the differences and just those extrinsic motivators being money fame et cetera you know they're not great. 00:24:28 You know people will be motivated a little bit by those things but the really deeply motivated or the deep motivation comes from those intrinsic triggers which things like the greater good of other people helping others and these acts of gratitude and things like that. So for me again related it to my career I guess if I'm honest you know I joined the military just because I was looking for adventure I was looking for excitement at that point in my life I never for one second joined thinking that I would do over 22 years. That was never my plan. Nobody plans or not many people plan that long in advance right. And I certainly didn't either. But you know as things progressed you know I was I was quite enjoying it at the time based on what I knew that I was traveling the world with a great bunch of people and we were having a good laugh doing it's not a bad place to be. Then when the Twin Towers attack for me that was the intrinsic motivation to seeing you know the apparent terrorist attack. I just thought to myself I need to do something about this global terrorist problem you know and whatever that might be in very conscious that one person is always going to struggle to make much of a difference. But however it worked for me and volunteered. You know I was thinking about. I grew up reading. Bravo Two Zero. You know the one that got away books like that and they. So to seed I guess for you know a military career. It sounded really exciting stuff of dreams really. As a boy growing up running around the fields playing army or whatever. You know what. So those seeds have already been sowed. 00:26:00 But again as I experienced nobody ever really thinks they are good enough to be in UK Special Forces because all you ever hear about is the failure rates and so I was probably one of those guys that I I thought I would like a go but I never once expected I was going to knock it out the park. Well after 9/11 that was the real impetus for me to say you know what now is the time. You know I'm not going to get more experience doing what I'm doing. I'm not having an effect on the bigger picture in this job and so for me that was that was my motivation. And then again the rest of my career through all the troubles from all the chaos and through all the the difficult times you know being surrounded by like minded people doing it for the team you know doing it for my friend next to me or you know taking sometimes large risks with my own life I guess sometimes it was always as part of that group. 00:26:51 And no there's no point that you could ever just put your hand up and giving you know you had to just keep going to the end because other people's lives your friends lives or the people you're going to try and help were dependent on it. And so that was always a massive motivator for me. 00:27:05 Looking forward now again not wanting to debate the rationale of my career in UK SF. You know I'm sure lots of people have lots of mixed opinions but you know as I've left now to have left and absolutely looking forward to new chapters and I've got a young family you know my motivation now is around you know being the best father I can be for them and having the most time flexibility which is why I've gone into my own sort of coaching business that allows me. Yes I'm very busy with it but it also allows me a certain amount of control over my time which is the one thing I guess that I probably had the least control over over my 16 years. It's just I'm sorry 22 years that's just gone. You know it was always a thing that probably troubled me the most so now to shape my life going forward with my own business to be able to put the times that I'm choosing to work at the forefront of what I do. It's been a great, It's proved to be a great success for me for my own well-being I think as much as anything. Lance Wantenaar With regards to coming out of the forces and actually starting up your own consultancy. Yeah obviously there's a certain amount of mindset that's associated with it. There's obviously is very big impact for a lot of former forces people as when they actually come out that's a big challenge for them to make that adjustment to public life. And a lot of them seem to struggle with that. What was the difference in your mindset and your approach that you use here. 00:28:32 No. Yeah I understand the question. So this is this is something that I don't want to sound too controversial on but this this constant message that we're getting that people live in the military struggle. I mean is this that of course there are people that struggle and I'll talk about why I think that is but is it a lot of people. Is it the majority or is it actually something that's being made an awful lot of. And in the hope that this sort of government supports these guys a little bit better for me. I was ready for many years to leave. Personally again I guess I enjoy my career before having children and parts of it that I enjoyed certainly the camaraderie the friendships the band to the experiences some of them were fantastic. Know once I had children however you know when you're talking about risk and I'm sure we'll come on to that we talked about risk and you know you think in the big picture for yourself you know you put things into balance. And for me I was very ready to leave the military by the time. But there's this great characteristic of an immediate pensions. And so this was something I wrestled with personally for probably four or five years. You know time will tell if I made the right decision for me. I was ready to leave. So I'd been thinking about this for an awful lot of time and this is I think the one thing that most people don't get right they don't spend enough time thinking about what it is. It's really you know we mentioned earlier about motivation what it really is that's motivating people to do what they do. We're all creatures of habit. We're all sheep ultimately and we will just keep doing the thing that makes us comfortable. I've always been somebody that's like to challenge. 00:30:07 I've always been someone that sought out new challenges fresh challenges. I felt like I'd become stale in my career. I've reached the top of my sort of rank structure that I was sort of really happy with when I got to I guess as a career I wasn't really seeking anything else from it. I'd take all my boxes as it were everything I'd join to do I felt like I'd done. And so I was absolutely ready for a new change for a number of years and wrestled with that in my mind as to what it is and let's be honest. You know this is something that we all think about or should think about on a basis you know is are we really doing what really floats a boat which really sort of makes us tick. And for me what I realise towards the end of my career one of the things that I like doing the most was was helping other people. I guess if I'm honest with myself I've said it three times now but not to argue the rationale at all. Well you know if I think it was to try and help other people. Yes. When I first joined I was looking for adventure and excitement but I think as my career progressed I was doing it to try and still have that adventure and excitement definitely something I look for in my. Significance but also I was doing it to try and help people. And I that that passion developed and I've always enjoyed helping people you know whether that's you know my friends whether it's people I don't know using my experiences and using my insights which you know I can completely accept that they are fairly unique. You know aside from my peers and those insights are valuable now to me you know they give me a great context to life. They give me a great concept to death even you know and I guess in answer to the question I was I was I did after an awful lot of thinking on what I would do and I leave and why I was leaving and I was very ready for me I had to find myself in a position where I be helping others because you know this is where I'm in my flow this is the thing that sort of gets me up in the morning. You know I enjoy doing it why wouldn't I do that. So working out how I fits in and fit into business fits into corporate fit into sport. You know I felt like I could and I would but we've all got these fears right so these fears of working out what that is which challenges for me and fortunately for me I revel in a challenge and for it and it's going great guns which is which is awesome I think and announced it to be more specific in my answer about the question. I think people leave the military and they don't appreciate how much of their own self identity was was being that soldier. Now I felt like towards the end of my career I myself wasn't that soldier. I was very much so ready to leave but people often again said they will join the military expecting certain things they'll get it for a certain number of years if they don't continue to progress. You know you and I both know if you're not on a upward trajectory you're on a downward trajectory. You know there's no there's very little in between. If people aren't on an upward trajectory they feel like they're getting stale then they become disgruntled and people will often leave the military disgruntled and feeling like it's the problem in their lives when actually they just can't balance their life and work. They can't blend that work in life. They're using the military because it's really hard because ultimately it's a really selfish job. You go around the world and you know if you've got a family it's really really hard to to keep that family happy. And so what people realise when they leave or maybe don't realise the world is just that their purpose was attached to that job and when they leave they've lost an awful lot of structures that they weren't even appreciating. Bearing in mind most people join a really young age and you know haven't really had to do an awful lot for themselves you know they've had their accommodation sorted they've had their bills sorted they've had the tax sorted they've had their dentist sorted Doctor sorted all this stuff that people just go it's just normal well no it's not just for me. One of the biggest changes was having to cook a meal for myself every single day you know that's you know I'd always woken up and couldn't grab breakfast or I could have gone to the canteen and grab lunch or grab an evening meal. I didn't have to think about what I was eating every single day and there was a great selection. So these changes although to some people like yourself probably think Well I have to think that every single day of course but people leave the military and then all of a sudden these things are new to them and so is it any wonder that these things can spiral out of control and they can feel like they've lost control. 00:34:26 And again that's that's my sort of thoughts for what it's worth why people struggle when they necessarily leave the military. And fortunately for me I thought about that an awful lot and put some plans in place. Lance Wantenaar I think you hit on a very valid point that you were considering it from all angles or something it was in your mind and also you were the topic that you actually touch on the identity because your identity change it also change your perception on how you look at things. And that I think that is probably a very key component in all of it is because people's identities are still attached to their previous role and what they were doing. It's very difficult to make that change because they don't feel like they're in a position where they feel they've got a certain amount of control or autonomy and a lot of motivation and mindset in the activity or getting involved in things comes out of one your identity and identifying yourself but also the amount of autonomy that you have and the amount of control that you feel that you have when you get involved in something if you don't have that control almost feels like you're out of sync with the rest of the world. 00:35:41 Garry Banford Absolutely I think I massively buy into Tony Robbins six human needs being inside the military for some people provides them significance it provides them growth it provides them contribution. So all these things absolutely make people feel really comfortable and feel like they're doing great. When you leave you've lost all that. And I also massively buy into Dan Pink's Theory on Drive and performance multipliers is that something you're familiar with yourself once. 00:36:11 Lance Wantenaar Not yet. It's something I still have to look at. 00:36:14 Yeah. So it's a Dan Pink great book Its called Drive on performance multipliers and he talks about the reason I mentioned is because you mentioned autonomy there. So autonomy mastery and purpose then the three key things that will drive people to to do great things ultimately and to keep working so hard. So autonomy that feeling that you've got some sort of control over your daily activity. 00:36:38 This is this is shown in Google how they give 25 percent of the 20 percent of their workforce is time to work on a project for themselves within the work year and also three and develop this back in their 70s I believe it is when post it notes were invented this is where that came from then by them giving away or allowing their employees to dedicate some of their work time to working for themselves and it has great benefits to people feeling like they've got some form of autonomy this is the working from home principle in a nutshell. You've also got mastery and the feeling that you know you've got you know you are growing in what you're doing but also feeling like you've got great mastery in your particular field and probably more importantly the people around you your peers look at you and say you know he's all over what he does he or she is is incredibly competent and is skilled and is someone that I would go to for advice in his subject matter expertise you know that's a great performance motivates him finally purpose again which is why I've already spoken about with regards to motivation intrinsic why you are doing something you know whether that's helping other people or whether that's you know trying to earn as much money as you can you can debate that one all day with people as to which one will be more successful you know when you're doing things for other people and you're always going to keep pushing yourself that a little bit harder. 00:38:00 There's one other company which I know uses that whole autonomy approach is a clothing company called Patagonia. 00:38:08 Oh yes right. They live on the coast and they let people go surfing is that right. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. 00:38:13 Would be an awesome one where you can just break off and go for a surf and then come back to a meeting. I've not quite been able to get that and doing that in central London is probably not advisable on the terms. 00:38:25 Yeah. If you if you stick a pin in the exact centre of England I live about five miles from the very centre of that. So maybe go for regular surf nowadays is is not going to happen but this is it's about having these experiences where you can get in your flow you can just forget about what you're doing and you can just get you know just fully recharged with whatever it is that floats your boat isn't it. But yeah it's powerful stuff it's absolutely powerful stuff yeah. 00:38:52 Lance Wantenaar Touching on the whole flow aspect. Yeah I've looked at quite a lot of kind of flow research and also a lot of the information which has recently come to light one of the guys which has written some fantastic books is Stephen Cockburn with the rise of Superman also stealing fire. 00:39:15 Yeah and that is a really interesting part of you could say performance but also key insight into the ability of that a person has intrinsically because of biology and various other things. But being able to identify how they can develop certain of their principles to access flow states and also make or help people realize that they do sometimes get into as you said states of flow on those moments where everything else kind of falls away. I knew in that you could say in the zone a lot of people know it as being in the zone. And that's it's actually something I'd like to work on a bit more to try and refine that and actually pick that out. But that's that's a really interesting part of you could say human development which I think is going to potentially have a huge impact once people are a lot more aware of it and become a lot more capable of tapping into those because they triggers to be able to get into that state. Have you done much in that regard. 00:40:26 Yeah I have. I've read both of books that you just mentioned that too by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal. Is that right Steve. 00:40:33 Yeah. Yeah. Jamie. Yes. The fascinating books and things that I can relate to I think one of the nations that they use which really struck me and helped me to relate to it was the the principle of surf and in the beliefs and thoughts around surfing that you know it's a it's a very old sport. Hundreds of years. And the thought that people could serve a wave higher than 25 feet was just so absurd for the vast vast majority. Up until the last 20 odd years and then the last 20 odd years there's just been an exponential growth due to people willing to push the boundaries and get in this flow. Yeah that sort of bought into that so I can relate to that in lots of ways. You know our again our training that we would run and practice time and time again would be as realistic and as chaotic as we could make. So therefore when we did these things for real on deployments that we were we were we ready and I can honestly say most of the time when I was on operations maybe run off the back of a helicopter not an MVD to try and arrest a high level terrorist. You know we I feel like I was in the flow and that was that was you know I can very vivid memory very very vivid recollection of my performance my actions everything. All your training all your senses come together. I often smile to myself when people at least for maybe a footballer and then the cup final or something and we'll describe there's just no feeling like scoring a goal and in particular in a particular environment. You know that's great. But I've always said I can assure you that your body when when it needs to when you like when lives are on the line your body gives you everything it can. You know by its very design we'll give 100 percent of its systems whether that's adrenaline whether it's dopamine whether it's serotonin when it needs to to allow you to function at your best in a time of potential chaos potential crisis but also when you are as prepared as you can be. And in my experience again the rush the feeling the flow that you can get from almost life or death situations is very very powerful. You know it's something that kept me doing what I was doing for a long time. Yeah. So buy into flow. One hundred percent and I'm also interested in where this will go in the next next few years. 00:43:03 Lance Wantenaar How did you find that situation made your evaluation or your your perception of failure and without some discussion was about failure before and why. I've now changed how I perceived failure. Instead of looking as failures you could say a black or white scenario where instead of looking at it from a failure perspective I start looking at it as a journey but also as a learning perspective because the end of the day is as you start when you start or you never do anything 100 percent right. And part of the learning process is actually making mistakes because then you start learning it but as you start developing a skill the discrepancy between success and failure reduces down so that you get a more consistent. You could say results out of the the effort that you put in. But what was for you the biggest insight and actually your change of perception when it comes to failure it's really easy for me. 00:44:02 Garry Banford So my biggest shift in perception was having some absolutely howling failures and not being comfortable with what it felt like whether it was my own feeling about my failure whether it was what how other people viewed me you know my biggest life lessons of being around failure now relate to what you're saying I've always tried to have that perception and I've always understood that you know on reflection my biggest growth personally or greatest growth personally have come from my biggest failures. Now people will hear that people will read about that and they will say Well that's obvious right but it doesn't make the feeling that you get when you you mess up any more uncomfortable it's hideous you know. But that's all when you go back to motivation that's also your motivation to do more. It's a choice you know when you choose to you know not wanting to go into too much detail. It's a calm. My first though I've done a number of operational chores in special forces to Iraq and the work over there was was relatively comfortable. It was it was challenging and there was risks. But it was exciting and there was lots of things going on when I first went to Afghanistan. It was a completely different environment. And but also the stories that people have been bringing back before I managed to get out there were like nothing I've ever heard before and think like good friends of mine would be made good friends of mine were being killed and my own thoughts my own perceptions of what this place was like we shifted massively and so the first time I went out there all this pressure builds up again without going into too much detail. My first performance if you like on my first nighttime operation that I was so fall so often so fall below where I wanted to be my own self image my own feelings of who I was that I had I had to spend a long time or I only got until the next night but I had to spend an awful lot of thought and energy dealing with my performance and what I could do to achieve it. Now this is what I talk about with my clients is understanding that these experiences that you have vs your worst failures are your greatest learning lessons life lessons and you know for me you know being able to sort of re challenge myself on numerous occasions for many many years worth of operations and to learn and to improve and to build on that. Know that's where you get success and that's where you get mastery. And these are things that this is the process that you've got to go through to get that it's a you know I look at my upbringing and you know as I was always involved in competitive sport from a young age and I've always gamer fied what I've done and it's really helped me to sort of know when I'm losing and to know when I'm winning and to see my improvements. You know I've really sort of used those analogies around competition in my early days of growing up and challenging myself with being prepared. I was thinking this is my point. You know I was never wrong or very rarely a talented person who very rarely the high achiever when it came to sports or when it came to competition I was always struggling to make my mark and to get any form of success for me. But I'm 100 percent confident that those challenges that I faced and those difficulties were what made me be able to deal with my life as it went on and deal with the challenges the increase in challenges that I'd face to now where that get me wrong I'm exactly like the next person when it comes to surprises that we call problems you know that these are these problems that come around the corner to all of us. You know I I struggle with them like the next person but I face them you know and this is something I've learned to do. You have to you have to swallow the frog right. Yeah. You know the saying by Mark Twain around got to you've got to swallow a big ugly frog and that's what you've got to eat and swallow it first thing in the morning right. Because it's not going to taste any better by the end of the day. And if you've got her and if you've got two francs to eat and eat the biggest and ugliest one first. All right. This is just this is the analogy of life. You can't look at your problems and just keep ignoring them you've got to not hit them face on but just think about ways that you can deal with them efficiently and the best ways and massive you know if you if you ever read the books by Ryan Holiday around The Obstacle Is The Way I think I might have I think on my shelf. 00:48:22 I think it's one of those books I could do reread list because it's a great fantastic book. 00:48:28 The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday and you know a lot of my clients that are struggling with facing the problems I get them to read that because you know I can relate 100 percent to the vast majority of stuff that he's talking about in there from my experiences in probably one extreme of dealing with obstacles. 00:48:46 Lance Wantenaar You mentioned a quite interesting aspect about adding gamification into what it is that you did when to help you succeed. I found that is becoming more more prevalent with a lot of the you could skill development that you do and getting people motivated to do to do things because once you start making it interesting you start triggering some of the other single brain chemicals which makes makes you more motivated to do it and triggers some of the intrinsic motivation because then you start getting the novel to get some of the dopamine reward you get some of the you could say the hormonal triggers to actually give you you say the reward out of what it is that you're doing because you be using some of that you could say some of the external factors of the gamification it makes it changes it from being a chore to doing being something enjoyable. And once you start being being able to enjoy it it changes a lot of your internal motivations and also your drive for actually achieving something. 00:49:47 Garry Banford Fear is a great motivator right. Yeah I mean the way I look at strive there's a reason strive is so successful it enables us to compare ourselves to others it keeps ourselves accountable to others and it gives us rewards for successes. You know there's no there's no. This is Pavlov's dog really is it's operant conditioning. This is what it's all around and you know teaching ourselves and training ourselves to look for those things that will give us the positive reinforcement that the positive stimulus is so to me mean hits that you know our brains and our well-being need let's not let's not pretend that we don't need that we can get them from all different kinds of ways of course. I love that though didn't you. Dopamine though Green is the motivator that we're all looking for right. 00:50:31 Lance Wantenaar Yeah it's also something that's intrinsically linked to habit formation because that reward loop get that feedback loop very tightly integrated into dopamine and all of those reward chemicals of course. 00:50:45 Garry Banford Of course we all we are the sum of a biochemical chemistry right now and neurotransmitters and neurochemistry. I mean this is this is who we are. Whether we like it or not and how those things interact and those rewards that are brain gives our bodies of stimulation. This is us. And this is what gets us up in the morning and this is what makes us do what we do. So yeah let's understand these things and let's let's let's optimize. That's right. 00:51:08 Lance Wantenaar The last topic I would like to just delve into is your view on on risk. I know you mentioned a couple of times previously where you said your your risk ratio or your risk assessment changed from being in the forces to when you came out is because you've got a family your you could say risk association your risk values were changed obviously because of you could say your context changed because of your family situation. What is your view on on risk and the impact on how people act and react and also get motivated and you say drive forward to achieving. 00:51:45 Garry Banford I mean we risk is always so it's an interesting. It's a really interesting topic and in my experience of risk is that we're all great at taking little bits of chunks out of risk and so and but to take a massive chunk of risk to make take a massive leap into the unknown is really uncomfortable and not nobody really enjoys doing that. So it means people that take fantastic amounts of risk the chances are that they've built up to this and that's the same in my world I'm sure it's the same in your world I'm trying to think of a guy's name that recently free soloed El Capitan. 00:52:23 Yeah you know he he he doesn't view risk any differently to how we view risk but he's just learned to take you know gradually over time he's just taught himself to view each little improvement that he's made as well he's de risked and I guess that was the same with me you know my training was always exceptionally good. You know the training that we used to deliver and the choke training that we used to do before we deployed anywhere was incredible. And we had to make it as real as chaotic as realistic as possible and this is what we strive to do. Therefore when chaos occurred we'd already prepared for chaos. This wasn't something that was new to us. And when the worst case scenario happened well guess what. Every single time the most dangerous course of action happened. Part of our orders process we would talk about the most dangerous course of action. We planned for this every single time and so it's funny because people often risk is completely perception or completely individual people's perception. And I do some work with the police and we talk about that because you know some of them in certain roles don't value or don't view the risky stuff that they do as risky at all and would look at let's say a real goal kicker or somebody in an Olympic final or a lawyer or a judge making a decision on you know a pretty hideous child child sex case or whatever you know as being way more risky and way more stressful than what they're doing what they are making life and death situation decisions. And it's all down to perception. So it's all how we view the world and it's all out to it's all down to the training that we've had. You know the biggest risk that I felt feel as I've left the military considering the risks that I used to take on a regular basis at work. The biggest risk now for me is where's the money coming from right. You know this is and this is a risk that most people have dealt with every single day of their adult lives. But again this goes back to the people in the military that got a very stable income in a very short amount of money coming in that they can plan against and that's great. And that offers you an awful lot of security it's a massive comfort blanket. You know when I left you know the biggest thing for me was wow this is you know the day that the military stopped paying what was coming up me like ground rush you know and it was this this pressure that I really had to concentrate on to deal with where I was going to earn some money from you know without going into a job that would take all my time and then not you know I wouldn't be meeting my needs of the reason why I was leaving et cetera. 00:54:56 So you know all these things are valid but it's all down to perception you know risk is risk is a fascinating topic yeah it's that it's one that I guess some people would view some things that myself and my colleagues do as just ridiculously risky but I tell you now the people involved in it very rarely feel like it's incredibly risky because of the amount of practice and training that they've had in a particular area. Just to finish on that the parachute training school. So the RAAF teach most of the parachute training into the UK military and UK Special Forces even they still own that training. 00:55:33 And their motto is knowledge dispels fear. Right. So they spend an awful lot of time giving you fundamental information and knowledge and perspective into how few risks there actually are or how unlikely something catastrophic is going to happen because of course the amygdala will always give you the worst case scenarios. Whenever you also are preparing to do something you've never done before. So the more education and more training you can have to inform your thoughts of actually thanks for those thoughts. But you know what. It's not really needed by now and being able to subdue those with coping strategies. It's performance psychology sorry. And you know it's it's really useful stuff. 00:56:17 Lance Wantenaar This has been a massively interesting discussion. I think there is a there's a lot more discussion about rescue again. We can probably go into this so much though we can talk about it. I definitely agree with the approach of the education how that changes your assessment of risk and how the information and also the quality of the information that does have a key fundamental mental aspect or influence on risk evaluation and perception and context right. 00:56:45 People giving you the information that's critical. So are you getting your information from people that lived and breathed and experienced this. Or are you getting information the textbook that you don't even know who the person is written that you can get from Instagram. Like you mentioned earlier you know this is absolutely critical. You know you've got to seek the knowledge and the people that know you know and you know there's a lot of performance psychology out there that's based in theory. And again there's absolute value to a lot of that. But there's also value to the people that have got significant vocational experience combined with that knowledge and theory. You know that's if there's even greater value in that it might be I would say that they're right. 00:58:02 When you supporter and review of podcasts like this from someone like Lance it gains more visibility and motivates him to produce more. What topics most interest you. The best topic gains a shout out on the podcast. Support the show.

I was very fortunate to be able to interview Stefan Chmelik and we had the most interesting conversation about vagus nerve, health and mediation. We also spoke in depth about a range of other topics. http://www.thinkinglikeagenius.com/sensate Or use discount code LW15 on the Sensate website. I was able to snag one of the new Sensatevagus nerve stimulation devices which are now available for consumers. It is awesome. I am more relaxed, focused and healthier because of it. I am going to do a more in depth review but definately get one of these devices. The app is simple and easy to use and it has some very cool meditation audio tracks, Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thinkinglikeagenius/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/thinkinggenius/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/ThinkingLikeAG Support the show.

Find out more about brain fog and how fixing it can improve cognitive capability. Brain health is key to be able to unlock your mental capability to think like a genius.

Memory palaces are referenced in a number of shows like Sherlock Holmes and refernced in popular books like Hannibal. Magnetic memory technique was refined by Anthony Metivier to solve a problem of his to complete his PhD. He combines all the methods to help encode and recall information quickly and easily. Memory Palaces are integral to developing a fantastice memory. It allows you to learn and remember quickly and easily and it develops your thinking skills because of a well develop framework of knowledge which is easier to recall. You develop a skill of remembering and increase your knowledge library which will help you in all walks of life. Support the show.

Gamification process used to stay focused and motivated. Build a structure to your day using this simple method. Find out how this can help trigger flow states and build motivation.

Feedback loops are vitally important in learning and skill development. To develop critical thinking as a skill requires responses to allow you to gauge what you need to act and react to. Feedback loops consist of positive, negative, and no response. Majority of the time, positive and negative is what we use for modifying and developing a skillset. The same principle applies to critical thinking skill development. Skill development can increase exponentially using social learning. Support the show.

In this first episode I talk about all of the topics which I learned about to develop my own critical thinking skill. Some of the topics I cover are: Research into psychology -Think fast and slow Cognitive research Cognitive psychology Social engineering Cognitive biases - how they function more to be researched Mental models - What are mental models Learning - how to learn. How does the brain process information. How do you think? Pattern recognition Working memory Long term memory I also speak about the vagus nerve and some of other areas which I hope to cover. It is a vast topic on learning and developing mental skill sets which I have become so fond of. Support the show.