How Exercise Increases Mental Clarity | Dr. Ethan Kross & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | I think probably most people are familiar

00:00:03.860 | with having an important decision

00:00:04.980 | where they have to weigh path A versus path B.

00:00:09.120 | And I was in that place.

00:00:10.060 | I was actually choosing between a job

00:00:11.800 | at one institution and another institution,

00:00:14.540 | each of which had tremendous advantages,

00:00:16.700 | neither had any striking disadvantages,

00:00:20.180 | but it was a really hard decision.

00:00:22.000 | And those close to me at that time will tell you

00:00:23.540 | that it was just brutal.

00:00:25.220 | - Been there.

00:00:26.060 | - Yeah, I made everybody around me suffer tremendously

00:00:28.940 | to the point where people were just like flip a coin.

00:00:30.800 | Now I'm not an indecisive person.

00:00:33.540 | I think it's one of these things where big decisions

00:00:38.540 | I think deserve a lot of time and attention

00:00:41.780 | and it was a time constrained thing.

00:00:43.060 | So I was poring over this pro cons list.

00:00:45.260 | I was watching YouTube videos,

00:00:46.620 | trying to figure out best ways for decision-making.

00:00:48.460 | I was trying to, I actually-

00:00:50.300 | - Isn't it amazing by the way,

00:00:51.420 | when we're in those situations

00:00:52.500 | and I know exactly what you're talking about

00:00:53.980 | because I was pretty sure I was in exactly

00:00:56.020 | the same position.

00:00:57.500 | The things you do in those circumstances

00:01:00.120 | to get some insight are wacky.

00:01:02.840 | Like I'm sure you were Googling things

00:01:04.400 | that you had no business Googling

00:01:06.420 | these kinds of decision trees and-

00:01:09.020 | - Oh yeah.

00:01:09.860 | - I mean, it turns out-

00:01:10.700 | - They're mathematical models that like there's the,

00:01:14.140 | actually my colleague at NYU, Tony Mavishin,

00:01:18.700 | I forget the name of the model,

00:01:19.740 | but there's a model about how many towns

00:01:22.600 | you should evaluate.

00:01:23.440 | It's an old kind of old example of a towns

00:01:25.500 | you should evaluate in terms of where to start a business.

00:01:28.660 | Like, is it two, is it three?

00:01:29.940 | And there's an optimal strategy there.

00:01:31.820 | In any event, most of it wasn't helping.

00:01:34.120 | And I do believe that at some point

00:01:35.420 | you don't want too many committee members

00:01:37.380 | 'cause it just gets confusing.

00:01:38.700 | So the two best pieces of information

00:01:42.180 | came from the following practices.

00:01:43.700 | One was a colleague said,

00:01:46.860 | "Forget all the superficial pro-con stuff."

00:01:49.740 | And I actually think this has proved to be very useful

00:01:52.500 | in all domains of life for me.

00:01:54.580 | He said, "Take yourself through a typical weekday

00:01:58.060 | in one place versus the other.

00:01:59.460 | Wake up, where are you going to go?

00:02:00.620 | How are you going to travel?

00:02:01.620 | Take yourself through the practicals of the day

00:02:03.980 | because everything else falls away

00:02:05.540 | once you're at a place

00:02:06.860 | or you're in a type of relationship.

00:02:08.300 | Take yourself through a given day.

00:02:10.500 | Don't think about the relationship

00:02:12.060 | or the institution that you're going to work for,

00:02:14.020 | the school you're going to go to.

00:02:15.500 | That's important,

00:02:16.660 | but take yourself through the entire day."

00:02:19.140 | So I did that.

00:02:20.420 | And then he said, "Also do it on a weekend

00:02:22.820 | because in our profession, we tend to work all the time,

00:02:27.420 | but occasionally you take a day off."

00:02:29.180 | And so that was very useful.

00:02:30.540 | The other thing that was very useful,

00:02:32.020 | which was completely surprising to me was at that time,

00:02:36.180 | I was training in a boxing gym

00:02:38.020 | and I was doing some speed bag work and decent at it.

00:02:41.500 | You get into a rhythm.

00:02:42.340 | And what's so great about speed bag work

00:02:44.700 | is that you get into a rhythm

00:02:46.820 | where you forget that you're trying to do the movement

00:02:49.420 | in a particular way.

00:02:50.260 | These central pattern generators,

00:02:52.120 | as we call them in neuroscience, take over.

00:02:54.140 | And you're just kind of turning your hands over in a way

00:02:56.600 | and like every once in a while you can think,

00:02:58.820 | okay, I need to put a little more hip swivel into this

00:03:00.820 | or a little more head movement

00:03:02.140 | and practice my slips or something.

00:03:04.480 | But it's largely unconscious after a certain point.

00:03:09.240 | And I was doing that.

00:03:12.260 | And all of a sudden, boom,

00:03:13.540 | a thought just geyser to the surface.

00:03:15.820 | And I made my decision.

00:03:17.300 | And that was my final decision.

00:03:19.420 | And I never went back from that decision.

00:03:21.140 | And so it was in the act of not trying to parse things

00:03:24.640 | to words that words sprung up from my, whatever,

00:03:27.920 | unconscious somewhere in my brain,

00:03:30.160 | cortical or subcortical, I don't know.

00:03:32.240 | And it was like, that's it.

00:03:34.180 | And I was overwhelmed by that.

00:03:36.920 | And again, I don't share all that

00:03:38.160 | because I think it's speed bags

00:03:40.520 | or it's the example I gave before

00:03:42.720 | that's gonna solve it for everybody.

00:03:44.000 | But that these answers to hard problems

00:03:46.640 | seem to come from very diametrically opposed approaches,

00:03:49.760 | verbal construction of complete sentences

00:03:52.000 | with paper or deliberately like Dyseroth does.

00:03:54.360 | And then also like not trying to get an answer at all,

00:03:57.860 | boom, the answer shows up.

00:03:59.040 | What in the world is that?

00:04:00.480 | - So it speaks to this idea that first of all,

00:04:02.840 | there are no one size fits all solutions

00:04:05.400 | to addressing many of the big kinds of problems

00:04:09.260 | and decisions we have to face.

00:04:10.920 | So there are different modalities

00:04:13.160 | to self-discovery and insight.

00:04:15.620 | And yes, you can think very rationally

00:04:17.780 | and work it through and write about it

00:04:19.800 | and have conversations with other people.

00:04:21.720 | And then you can also allow

00:04:23.400 | your unconscious problem-solving machinery to do its thing.

00:04:28.400 | We don't understand completely how this works,

00:04:31.740 | but we do know that your experience is not infrequent.

00:04:36.740 | Many people report having moments of insight

00:04:40.600 | when they are not otherwise engaged.

00:04:44.540 | And one line of thinking is that

00:04:47.880 | we are doing problem solving behind the scenes

00:04:50.520 | that we're not aware of

00:04:51.520 | and the solutions are bubbling up to awareness.

00:04:54.240 | So I actually, this may be the wrong usage of terms,

00:04:57.620 | but I weaponize this process for myself.

00:05:00.080 | So before I exercise, before I get on the treadmill

00:05:03.760 | or row or do whatever I'm gonna do,

00:05:06.600 | I will load up the particular issue

00:05:10.080 | that I'm trying to find a solution for.

00:05:12.260 | Sometimes it's how to word a paragraph.

00:05:15.680 | It might be if I'm working on a book,

00:05:17.480 | how to find the right kind of story.

00:05:19.880 | If it's an interpersonal issue that I've gotta smooth over,

00:05:24.880 | I load that up and then I just get on the device.

00:05:28.760 | It's usually an aerobic exercise that I'm doing.

00:05:31.960 | And I don't really think about it in any fixed way,

00:05:36.480 | but inevitably the ideas,

00:05:39.040 | the potential solutions bubble up into awareness.

00:05:42.900 | That is a real valuable tool that I possess

00:05:47.500 | that I think allows me to have success

00:05:50.660 | in various areas of my life.

00:05:53.300 | It also identifies one of the reasons

00:05:56.700 | why chatter can be so unbelievably pernicious.

00:06:00.620 | So we didn't get to all the benefits of the,

00:06:03.180 | there's one more benefit of the inner voice

00:06:04.500 | that I wanna get to,

00:06:05.340 | but I'm gonna take a detour here for a second

00:06:07.060 | 'cause I think this is really important.

00:06:09.080 | If we think of chatter as the dark side of your inner voice,

00:06:12.300 | you're basically continuing to loop over

00:06:15.020 | the same problem in your head without making any progress.

00:06:18.660 | What if this happens?

00:06:19.620 | Why did this happen?

00:06:20.560 | I'm such an imbecile.

00:06:22.580 | You're just continually going over

00:06:24.240 | that negative phenomenon or experience.

00:06:27.420 | You're not making any headway.

00:06:29.880 | One of the things that that does

00:06:31.580 | is it consumes our attentional resources.

00:06:35.740 | It acts like a sponge that soaks up those limited resources.

00:06:40.060 | And so what that means is when I get on the treadmill

00:06:43.820 | or rowing machine and that's typically the time

00:06:46.660 | that I spend innovating, right?

00:06:48.700 | Coming up with solutions that allow me

00:06:50.660 | to progress personally and professionally,

00:06:53.840 | I don't have, my mind's not working

00:06:57.260 | to solve those problems.

00:06:59.040 | Instead, it is stuck dealing with this other muck

00:07:02.980 | where I'm not getting anywhere.

00:07:04.820 | And so we actually see, if you look at the literature,

00:07:07.700 | that one of the ways that chatter undermines people

00:07:10.740 | is it interferes with their ability

00:07:12.180 | to focus and solve problems.

00:07:14.380 | And that's just one way it undermines people,

00:07:16.900 | but that is a huge, huge liability.

00:07:19.700 | (upbeat music)

00:07:22.280 | (upbeat music)

00:07:24.860 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

How Exercise Increases Mental Clarity | Dr. Ethan Kross & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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