The Art of Training What Matters Most (MIQ Process) | Josh Waitzkin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | We had a guest on this podcast, Jim Hollis, he's an 84-year-old, probably 85-year-old

00:00:09.840 | Jungian analyst on, and he just brilliant guy.

00:00:14.120 | He's written some really important books under Saturn's shadow and etc.

00:00:20.100 | And he said, you know, so he has a real kind of like suit up, show up, you know, get to

00:00:24.960 | work kind of mentality, but he also is a very reflective person and he said, you know, if

00:00:30.360 | there's one simple key to life, it's that one understand that most of our daily lives,

00:00:36.820 | our waking lives are in stimulus response, but that it's so critical to take 10 to 15

00:00:41.200 | minutes each day to just get out of stimulus and response and either to just let stuff

00:00:47.080 | geyser up out of our unconscious, subconscious mind, or to just put some real thought to

00:00:54.260 | something that, you know, most everybody is in stimulus response.

00:00:58.540 | I wonder these days with social media and so many things, filling the space between

00:01:03.080 | walking to the car or with the pro players that you work with, you know, I'm guessing

00:01:07.520 | the moment they're on the plane, they're on their phones and texting and all these things

00:01:11.320 | are wonderful technologies, but they fill all the space with stimulus response.

00:01:15.760 | Yeah.

00:01:17.200 | They fill all the space with stimulus response.

00:01:21.160 | And you know, it's not unless you go to a place with no wifi accessibility that you

00:01:26.040 | suddenly realize like, wow, like in most of modern life, we're just constantly in this

00:01:32.200 | tennis or ping pong match with this trivial thing and that trivial thing.

00:01:37.200 | And some of it's essential, but that there's no quote unquote space anymore.

00:01:42.560 | In many ways, my life is built around creating that space.

00:01:45.840 | And it's interesting, when I was playing chess, I experimented with studying chess from everywhere

00:01:50.040 | between 45 minutes a day to 16 hours a day to see where the sweet spot was.

00:01:53.520 | And what I came to was about four and a half hours a day.

00:01:57.880 | But that four and a half hours a day was like a 10 out of 10, like fucking just on fire.

00:02:03.560 | And then the rest of the day became about cultivating those four and a half hours.

00:02:08.040 | And my life today has that kind of rhythm as well.

00:02:11.320 | And, you know, training, like I've spent many years working with people who are just brilliant

00:02:15.880 | in the investment space has been a really interesting way because it's a great laboratory

00:02:19.600 | because people are very driven.

00:02:21.200 | They want to, they're all in, they're motivated, they'll take themselves on.

00:02:25.240 | And it's a great place for me to, over the last couple decades, to like refine the art

00:02:29.960 | of training because I don't like solving for motivation.

00:02:34.440 | That's one thing.

00:02:35.440 | And I think part of that relates to that quirky dynamic from when I was seven that I described

00:02:39.120 | of always being the target and so never having, like not taking on my weaknesses that was

00:02:43.520 | outside of my conceptual scheme.

00:02:45.560 | And so in many ways I don't, I haven't really had to struggle with motivation myself, for

00:02:52.880 | better or worse.

00:02:54.640 | And I love working with people, partnering with people who are all in, who want to take

00:02:58.760 | themselves on.

00:02:59.760 | I don't love having to motivate people.

00:03:01.160 | And so a great laboratory for me is with people who have all sorts of problems, who might

00:03:06.320 | be obstructed but who are all in.

00:03:11.120 | And like you're working with world class investors and what, you know, they're grinding themselves

00:03:15.240 | out 14, 15, 16 hours a day.

00:03:17.880 | Doing less is a huge part of doing much more.

00:03:21.500 | And you start to see like they might be at, like if you think about a 10 out of 10 as

00:03:25.720 | being like in terms of like when they're at their very best creatively, they could slip

00:03:30.080 | from like a 10 to a 2 and not even notice.

00:03:33.680 | And then you begin to cultivate an awareness of where one is in one's creative spectrum,

00:03:39.240 | right.

00:03:40.240 | And then you start to cultivate the art of stress and recovery and like amping oneself

00:03:43.880 | up and then releasing.

00:03:44.880 | And you see that the ability to turn it on is directly connected to the ability to turn

00:03:49.080 | it off, as you know.

00:03:50.720 | If you walk into a fight gym and you study a bunch of fighters in the match, one great

00:03:54.960 | read you can make is looking at the depth of physiological relaxation when the guys

00:04:00.480 | aren't fighting.

00:04:01.480 | And you'll see who the highest level fighters are.

00:04:03.380 | The best guys, man, they can turn it on with wild intensity, but their bodies are so mellow

00:04:07.640 | when they're not going.

00:04:08.920 | And then men, like they're so efficient.

00:04:10.920 | It's so, that oscillation, that range is so huge, right.

00:04:14.080 | But people don't cultivate the art of turning it off in order to learn how to turn it on.

00:04:18.480 | You know, for many, many years, decades, I've been practicing what I call now the MIQ process,

00:04:23.840 | most important question process.

00:04:25.080 | And the essence of it is it's what I came to as the most potent way so far that I've

00:04:31.360 | found to train analysts or thinkers in mental arenas.

00:04:38.880 | You're training people in the art of discovering what matters most.

00:04:44.160 | If you look at, if you talk to like a great chess player actually looks at less than a

00:04:48.840 | lower level chess player, but they look at the right direction.

00:04:51.480 | So you might think a great chess player, people often think like, oh yeah, I can calculate

00:04:54.960 | 50 moves deep, 100 moves deep.

00:04:56.660 | It's all irrelevant.

00:04:57.660 | Move two was inaccurate.

00:04:58.660 | So it was just all an illusion.

00:05:00.360 | The great chess players might look at much less, but they're looking in the most potent

00:05:02.960 | directions.

00:05:03.960 | The lower level chess players are lost in a sea of complexity, right?

00:05:07.240 | So if you're working with like, let's say, a scientist or an investor or whatever, them

00:05:14.320 | straining their mind for what is the most important question, ideally to begin the practice

00:05:20.480 | toward the end of their workday with like a release, a recovery period with full intensity

00:05:25.200 | in a peak performance state, stretch one's mind for what matters most and then release

00:05:29.640 | it.

00:05:31.240 | Release the workday completely.

00:05:32.460 | Don't work all night grinding yourself out at a low level.

00:05:35.000 | Release and then first thing in the morning waking up pre-input, return one's mind to

00:05:38.440 | the critical question and brainstorm on it.

00:05:40.860 | It's very powerful because you're opening up the, you're systematically opening the

00:05:44.880 | channel between the conscious and the unconscious mind.

00:05:47.080 | You're feeding critical questions to the unconscious, which is processing overnight.

00:05:50.640 | And like, I know you know all this, like the consistency with which you come up with an

00:05:53.960 | insight in the morning is incredible.

00:05:55.520 | Interestingly, and you'll probably know why much more than me, improved dreamer call often

00:06:01.200 | happens simultaneously when one starts to have more and more insights about the MIQ

00:06:07.120 | in the morning, which is fascinating.

00:06:08.120 | Then over time, you can have micro-manifestations of this throughout the day before going for

00:06:12.000 | a workout, before taking a walk, before taking a break, before taking a piss.

00:06:14.880 | Instead of going, when you're gonna go to the bathroom in the day, instead of like checking

00:06:19.000 | your phone while taking a piss, you pose yourself at MIQ, you release it.

00:06:23.200 | You do not do anything but piss in the bathroom and breathe and then return to the question

00:06:28.640 | and you'll have an insight.

00:06:29.640 | Right, so you're learning to just oscillate between the conscious and unconscious states

00:06:33.240 | and you're opening up that channel and you're practicing stress and recovery.

00:06:37.280 | And then your physiological workouts are also stress and recovery all the time.

00:06:40.560 | So you're building that theme in everything that you do.

00:06:43.560 | And you realize that like when you're at your very best for four or five hours a day, you're

00:06:47.840 | doing multiples of the work that you're doing if you're just grinding yourself at, you know,

00:06:52.840 | what I've called in the past a simmering six or whatever for 15 or 16 hours a day.

00:06:58.600 | And so people can do so much more in less time.

00:07:00.920 | And my lifestyle is based on that.

00:07:04.200 | You know, I'm training very intensely physically and I'm doing really intense mental work and

00:07:07.320 | I oscillate between them in beautiful ways and I have a lot of empty space for reflection,

00:07:12.320 | for meditation, for like zoning my mind on what matters most.

00:07:17.120 | It's about quality, not quantity.

00:07:19.200 | But it's so interesting how we live in this culture where just quantity is just consuming

00:07:26.360 | everyone.

00:07:28.040 | [Music]

The Art of Training What Matters Most (MIQ Process) | Josh Waitzkin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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