Every holiday, I tend to pack either too much or too little.
At the start of the Easter long weekend, I was overwhelmed by the task of packing for a four-day trip.
To be fair, other things were on my mind, such as the chaotic state of the world and the chaos within my home (i.e., the mess I would be returning to).
I know what you might be thinking…
“Stop your whinging, Jane. What a privilege to be able to pack your bag to go away!”
Indeed, it is! An absolute privilege.
Yet, rather than experiencing gratitude, anxious thoughts swirled through my mind.
“Have I packed enough socks and undies?”
“Do I have enough food to avoid going into the crowded shops?”
“Will the traffic be bad?”
“Will my husband insist on getting hot chips at the Service Station?”
“What books should I take?”
Among these packing questions, one stood out: what books should I take? This question weighed heavily on my mind and here’s why.
When it comes to packing books, I tend to go overboard.
I overestimate how much I can read in a single weekend. I’ll weigh down my backpack with several heavy books, only to find that I don’t end up reading any of them. Ugh.
You’d think more books equal more reading. Wrong.
More books mean more choice. And more choice usually results in decision fatigue and overwhelm.
Determined to change my usual approach this holiday, I told myself it was time to be in reality. I gave myself strict orders: I could only pack what I could realistically read in the time I would be away. That was one book.
Fifteen minutes before I was due to set off, I selected this book: Reasons not to worry – How to be stoic in chaotic times by Brigid Delaney.
I’d purchased this book several years ago, and for whatever reason, I stopped reading it after just 20 pages. I wasn’t ready for it. And when it comes to reading certain books, it’s all about timing. Every book has its time.
Now, I was finally ready to listen to what these Stoic philosophers had to say about living well in times of chaos.
We are living in unstable times. I don’t need to lay out what’s going on. You’ve seen the headlines.
It’s easy to feel powerless and unsure about what to do.
Where should you focus your limited time and energy during chaotic times? How can you focus and study for an exam when the future feels uncertain?
This is why I felt open to wisdom of the ancient Stoics. The Stoics, such as Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, had many great ideas for dealing with the challenges of everyday life and for facing life’s disappointments with grace. This is what I desperately needed!
On my trip, I read most of Reasons not to worry—a breakthrough in itself! Even more powerful, however, were the book’s ideas, which left me feeling calmer.
In this blog, I want to share the most powerful idea I learnt from the Stoics: the control test—a tool that helps you focus on what you can control and let go of what you can’t.
The Stoics believed the secret to happiness and tranquillity was to focus on the things you can control and not worry about the rest. As Bridget Delaney writes in Reasons not to worry:
“The step the Stoics took first, before taking action, was to run everything through a basic test. Called the ‘control test’ or the Dichotomy of Control, the Stoics assessed what they could and could not control about a situation, and focused their attention on areas they could control.”
Delaney provides the following useful image to illustrate the control test.
This image shows that you have full control over three things: 1) your character; 2) your reactions; and 3) how you treat others.
If something relates to one of these three things, it’s within your control and you can take action.
Stoic philosopher Epictetus was a strong proponent of the control test. He believed knowing what you can control and what you can’t was the key to living a tranquil life. In his manual The Art of Living, he lays out what’s within our personal control:
“Within our control are our opinions, aspirations, desires, and the things that repel us. These areas are quite rightly our concern, because they are directly subject to our influence. We always have a choice about the content and character of our inner lives.”
In contrast, what other people think and do is out of our control. Epictetus believed that if we focus on trying to control or change these things, we will torment ourselves and waste our precious time and energy.
Thinking back to the start of the Easter long weekend, I can see that if I had run my anxious thoughts through the control test, I would have felt a lot more relaxed.
Instead of telling myself, “You’re so bad at packing!”, I could have viewed packing as a skill, as something I could work at becoming better at.
For my next trip, I could make a packing list. I could also start packing my bag the night before or even two nights before. Those things are within my control.
It’s also within my control to lower my expectations about packing. Is it really the end of the world if I don’t pack enough socks and undies? Couldn’t I just wash them if I run out?
As for concerns about the traffic being bad, this is out of my control! I can’t control how many cars are on the road or how fast they’re going. However, what I can control is my own driving ability (e.g., sticking strictly to the speed limit and taking regular breaks to recharge).
What about my husband buying overpriced hot chips at the Service Station? It is within my control to encourage him to buy a healthier snack, but ultimately, it’s my husband’s choice. If he wants hot chips, I can’t stop him. But it is within my control not to eat those hot chips.
Since reading Reasons not to worry, I’ve been applying the control test to my life several times a day. When I notice I’m feeling worried, upset, or unhappy about something, I ask myself, “Is this within my control?”
This simple practice has helped me to chill out, conserve my energy, and be less of a control freak. As a result, I feel better, and so does the rest of my family.
As Delaney writes:
“Used well, the control test will change how you use your energy and where you place your care and attention. Your energy should be focused on the first part of the equation: doing the thing well. And you should not direct any energy or worry to things out of your control, such as the outcome or people’s response to what you do, because that is wasted energy. You will only end up with your tranquillity disturbed”.
The control test can help us prepare effectively for tests and exams. You can’t control the way your grades are scaled, the exact questions you’ll be asked on the exam, what your exam timetable will look like, or if you’ll have back-to-back exams. Those things are externals, so the Stoics would say don’t waste your energy worrying about them.
But what you can control is how much you prepare for your exams, how much study you do, how much sleep you get, the strategies you use to learn the information, whether you refer to the syllabus, and how focused you are as you study.
How you prepare is within your control. And the more prepared you are, the better you will do in your exams.
Does the Control Test mean you shouldn’t try to help others in your community or push for environmental, social, or political change?
Not at all.
Delaney writes:
“. . . Stoics were not passive people. Historically they were people of action: political leaders, emperors and soldiers. But they knew that even if they trained hard, acted with integrity, built alliances and put in a lot of effort, they couldn’t control the outcome. They could only control their own character, own actions (and reactions) and how they treated others.”
The control test can help you to stop stressing about things that are out of your control and worrying about what other people think. In the spirit of the Stoics, focus your energy on doing your best work, being the best version of yourself, and treating people with kindness.
Just before I was about to start delivering a presentation, he said to his students:
“You need to sit still during this talk. Don’t fidget!”
It was one of those moments where I thought, “Do I say something about that? Or do I stay quiet?”
Not wanting to undermine this teacher, I held my tongue. Had I been more courageous in that moment, I would have said this to the students:
“Listen up, I’m okay with you fidgeting. If you need to get up and move at any point during this presentation, go for it.”
Look, I know what it’s like to be a fidgety student. When I’m forced to sit for long periods, I start to fidget too.
To keep fidgeting at bay, I’ve developed a range of simple strategies that I incorporate into my day.
My body needs to move every 20 to 30 minutes. If I can get up and move regularly, I feel calm and steady. My body and mind feel good.
But if I suppress my need to move, I become sad and sluggish.
Without consciously realising it, I’ve designed my life to avoid sitting. My environment nudges me to move.
These days, I hardly ever use a car, which I’m relieved about for several reasons. Yes, there’s the astronomical price of petrol due to Trump’s illegal war and the environmental impacts of driving. But most of all, I really dislike driving. It turns out, I’m not the only person who feels this way.
Research by Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman found that commuting to and from work in a car is one of the least enjoyable daily activities.
Instead of driving, I ride my bike and walk wherever possible. I also work from home and use a treadmill desk for several hours each day.
Building regular movement into my day and decreasing my sitting time has made a world of difference.
It’s a rare day when I feel a bit off. If I do feel a bit flat, it usually comes down to one of two things: a lack of movement or a poor night’s sleep.
If you’ve been feeling a bit sluggish, it may be that your chair is getting you down and keeping you down. According to Dr James Levine, you could benefit from a chair release strategy to regain your personal power.
Dr Levine encourages us to release ourselves from our chairs. He says when you escape the chair, you free yourself from “a sedentary psychological imprisonment that forbids self-propulsion, self-expression and self-fulfilment”.
In his book Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It, Dr Levine argues that we didn’t evolve to sit for long periods. He states:
“The goal of sitting is to give our bodies a break from standing, which is the way the human anatomy and physiology is designed. Human design is to be upright for most of the day: walking to work, walking and nurturing our young, walking while inventing, walking while gathering our food, running on the hunt. Sitting, we know from studies in rural populations, is supposed to be undertaken in short batches to break up the motion of a dynamic day.”
In short, our bodies are designed to move.
It may come as a surprise to learn that for centuries, chairs were luxury items that signalled status and power. Only the elite owned chairs.
Fast forward to today: there is no shortage of chairs. Chairs are everywhere and for everyone. They dominate our landscape and our lives.
It seems completely normal to sit all day. Sitting doesn’t have the same stigma attached to it as smoking does.
Dr Levine refers to chairs as “agents of death” because of the harm they can inflict on our minds and bodies. I have to admit, at first, I found the characterisation of chairs as “agents of death” a little over the top. But as I learnt more about the science of prolonged sitting, I understood why Dr Levine took such a strong position.
According to multiple studies, prolonged sitting shortens our lifespan. This study found that for every hour we spend sitting, life expectancy decreases by 22 minutes.
All those hours of sitting add up. I crunched the numbers and discovered that 8 hours of sitting each day for a year reduces a person’s lifespan by 44 days. Over 10 years, you’ve shortened your lifespan by 446 days. Let me put this in context . . .
Over 100 years, instead of living to 100, you’d live to approximately 90.
But it’s not just about lifespan. It’s about healthspan (i.e. the number of years spent in good health) and your overall wellbeing. Regular physical movement adds years to your life and life to your years.
Sitting for long periods is clearly harmful, so why is it that so many ‘fidgety’ students who feel the need to move are medicated and made to feel like they are defective?
When I was a high school and university student, I found myself thinking, “Why can’t I sit still like everyone else? Why do I feel the urge to jump out of my chair and do some karate kicks and star jumps?”
But it turns out, we’re not defective. The problem is the way our modern environment is designed. The modern environment is completely out of whack and out of sync with what our bodies need.
Dr Levine’s research found fidgeters are super sensitive to ‘Move-it’ signals.
What’s a ‘Move-it’ signal?
It’s a signal we receive from a tiny area in our brain called the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothamalus. This signal tells us to move.
Dr Levine explains that our body sends us these ‘Move-it’ signals when we’ve been sitting for too long. Some people ignore these signals, while others (i.e. fidgety people) are super sensitive to them.
When we receive one of these signals, fidgety types take action. They move their bodies in whatever way they can. It could be a leg tapping under the desk or spontaneously getting up to go for a walk.
The problem is that our society is designed to suppress this pulse to move. Our challenge is to find ways to move in environments designed for sitting.
I know it’s not easy to move in most workplaces, classroom settings, and home offices, but it’s not impossible. I’m living proof that it can be done.
Below I list a number of strategies I use to avoid prolonged sitting.
Just to be clear, I still use chairs (I use them when my legs need a break, when I mind map, eat dinner, etc). But movement is the main meal and sitting is more of a condiment!
I always start my day with some form of physical activity. Before I touch my work or study, I do at least 20 minutes of physical exercise (e.g., running on a treadmill and riding a bike). Creating a habit of morning movement is key.
Once the habit is established, you’re starting your day with power and giving your brain the boost it needs to learn new ideas.
When I’m writing or performing admin tasks, I use a treadmill desk. It’s been an absolute game-changer.
You don’t have to fork out thousands of dollars for a treadmill desk. I made my own using a treadmill my friend no longer wanted and a plank of recycled wood.
Technically, using a treadmill desk is a form of multitasking (I’m walking and working at the same time), but I’m walking at a slow, steady pace, which doesn’t require a lot of cognitive resources. This means my mind is freed up to focus on other tasks.
In the corner of my office, you’ll find a rack of dumbbells, an exercise bike, a yoga mat, and various other pieces of gym equipment. Most of this equipment I purchased secondhand for an absolute bargain.
Setting yourself up with some simple gym equipment at home means there are fewer barriers to movement and lots of cues to move. It’s also a huge time saver. When I started training at home, I went from spending 30 minutes a day driving to and from the gym down to zero.
Standing is better than sitting. If you’re up on your feet, you’re more likely to move. This is why I recommend using a sit-stand desk if you’re not quite ready to try a treadmill desk or walking pad.
I make it a personal challenge to look for opportunities to move wherever possible.
For instance, when I catch the train into the city, I always take the stairs instead of the escalator (it’s fun to see if I can beat the people going up the escalator). If I’m watching a webinar or video, I’ll walk on my treadmill while listening and learning. I find that when other participants look like they are dozing off or checking their emails, I’m still sharp and focused.
When you’ve completed your work and have a few minutes to spare, get up and go for a walk before you start the next task. This is a great way to replenish your mental energy.
When it’s morning tea or lunch time, get up and walk, kick a football, shoot hoops, etc. Even five minutes of walking around the block or schoolyard will work wonders for your mind and body.
You could also suggest walking meetings where you walk and talk. A research study called Give your ideas some legs from Stanford University found that people have significantly more creative ideas when they walk compared to when they sit.
I even find that something as simple as moving my hands by drawing pictures to capture ideas during a lecture helps to release some energy and keep my mind focused on the task at hand.
Immediately after I sit down at my desk, I set a timer for 20 minutes. As soon as that timer goes off, I’m up and moving. I usually hop on my treadmill or my stationary bike for a five minute exercise snack.
Many of us have learnt to ignore our innate pulse to move. Start paying attention to your ‘Move-it’ signals and acting on them whenever you can.
For me, when a ‘Move-it’ signal strikes, I first sense it in my legs. That’s my cue to get up and move. If I can’t get up and walk, I’ll engage in micro-movements, such as tapping my foot or changing my seat position.
The more you move, the more you want to move. These days, instead of sitting and bingeing a Netflix series, I find I want to engage in more physical activities, such as going for bike rides and bush walks with friends.
Travelling from one place to another can feel like a drag, so naturally, we want to speed it up by taking the car. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I view riding my bike to the shops or walking to the post office as great opportunities to take a mental break and get some movement in.
In his book Time Surfing, Zen Monk Paul Loomans states:
“…travelling can be far more than purely functional. Take advantage of the fact that you’re out and about for a while. You’re in the fresh air and can feel the sun, rain or wind on your skin. You meet people, you see the cherry blossoms, you hear a blackbird singing – the world is full of delights to draw your attention. And best of all…you’re with yourself!”
Fidgeting with a paper clip, some silly putty, or anything that feels good in your hand can help us feel more alert and a bit more playful. In the book The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul explains that this sense of playfulness induces a positive mood, which helps us to learn more effectively, boosts our creativity, and makes us more flexible in our thinking.
Moving our bodies is an essential ingredient for living a happy and healthy life. It also gives us the edge when it comes to learning and generating creative ideas.
So, get yourself a spunky bike, some exercise equipment for your study or office space, and invest in some comfy walking shoes. Trust me, this will be money well spent.
By adding more movement to your day, you’ll experience energy, happiness, and a sense of freedom like never before.
After falling out of the habit of weight training, it feels good to pick up my weights and challenge my body.
At a time of increasing uncertainty, this simple practice helps me to feel strong and powerful. As Professor BJ Fogg says:
“When you feel physically stronger, this feeling ripples out into many other areas of life.”
My muscles were growing, but one part of my body was slowly getting weaker.
What part am I talking about?
I’m talking about my brain, specifically my ability for deep learning and thinking.
About six months ago, it dawned on me that my brain had seen better days. When I confided in my husband about this, he said he felt the same way about his brain.
It wasn’t always like this.
When I was a university student, it was normal to spend several hours each day reading and mind mapping.
Most days, I’d feel confused about a new concept or how one idea was connected to another. I didn’t know the answers to a lot of questions. But I sat with the discomfort, knowing it was a normal part of the learning process.
By the time I submitted my PhD thesis (nearly 10 years ago), I was at the peak of my mental fitness. My brain was sharp and strong.
These days, it feels much harder to think and learn. Too often, I notice that I’m impatient like a toddler. I want the answers quickly.
While learning has never been easy for me, deep learning felt easier 10 years ago because:
Contrast those conditions to the modern environment most of us find ourselves in today:
If you wanted to create a recipe to undermine a person’s ability to learn and think deeply, those would be the perfect ingredients.
Students today find themselves in an environment that actively works against deep learning. In this environment, we are pushed to learn in superficial ways, if at all.
A Guardian piece explored how AI is having a negative impact on students’ ability to study. Survey research conducted in the UK found a staggering 62 per cent of students agreed with the statement, “It’s too easy to find the answers without doing the work myself.”
Only 2 per cent of students said they did not use AI.
In another study, Dr Rebecca Winthrop and her colleagues interviewed hundreds of students and educators about how they were using AI to learn. They found AI was interfering with students ability to learn and undermining cognitive development.
In an interview on Your Undivided Attention, Dr Winthrop said AI was causing cognitive stunting in students. She stated:
“. . . when you assign an essay to a child, a student, they have to think through, what is the data? What is the evidence? Ooh, how does it stack up? Is there a side of the argument that data sits on that isn’t? How do I make a persuasive argument that uses this data and have a position? Those are hugely difficult skills to develop, and they come through practice.
And if you stick in a couple sentences into a chatbot and have it write the essay for you, kids aren’t just merely skipping a couple steps in their homework and being more efficient, they are missing the opportunity to develop their own personal independent thinking skills.”
As humans, we tend to live for the short-term. Thinking about the future and long-term planning are not strengths for most of us, especially teenagers whose brains are still developing.
Now, imagine you’re a young person who finds high school incredibly boring. You’re a little insecure, and you lack confidence in your ability to learn. To make matters worse, you can’t see the point of your subjects and how what you’re learning is going to help you later in life.
Suddenly, a free tool appears in your world that can help you avoid the pain, suffering, and potential humiliation of failure with your school subjects. It can also save you a lot of time.
This tool effortlessly pumps out an essay within seconds when it would take you many hours to write.
Would you be able to resist using this tool?
I’m almost certain I wouldn’t have been able to as a young person.
ChatGPT is incredibly seductive. It’s hard to resist. But resist we must because too much is at stake, especially for young people.
Many people I respect and admire speak enthusiastically about generative AI. There’s this palpable sense that if you don’t get on board the AI train, you’re going to be left behind.
But not everyone thinks this way.
A number of people, including Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology and Dr Rebecca Winthrop from the Center for Universal Education, argue that those who become too dependent on AI for support and validation may suffer in the long run.
The use of AI is resulting in unbuilt skills remaining that way (i.e. cognitive stunting) and already built skills diminishing.
For example, a group of researchers from MIT recently released a working paper called Your Brain on ChatGPT. This study took 54 students and asked them to perform a specific task over four sessions: writing an essay.
The students were split into three groups:
The researchers examined students’ brain activity as they worked on their essays to assess cognitive engagement and cognitive load. They found that the brain-only group had higher levels of neural connectivity, which was associated with stronger memory and firmer ownership of the written work.
The researchers stated in the discussion section of their working paper:
“[AI tools] may unintentionally hinder deep cognitive processing, retention and authentic engagement with written material. If users rely heavily on AI tools, they may achieve superficial fluency but fail to internalize the knowledge or feel a sense of ownership over it.”
The researchers did something really interesting in the fourth and final essay writing session: they switched the groups.
The students in the brain-only group could now use ChatGPT to write their essays and the LLM group had to rely on their brains (no more ChatGPT for them).
How did each group do?
The brain-only group performed better when using ChatGPT. These students had already engaged with the ideas more deeply and therefore seemed able to critically examine the information ChatGPT brought up.
In contrast, the LLM group struggled when it came to just using their brains after using AI to write their essays for the first three sessions.
The lead researcher of this study, Dr Nataliya Kosmyna, summed it up nicely when she said in a TV interview, “Use your brain”.
What I take from this working paper is that if you want to have a deeper learning experience and create more original work, it’s best to avoid using generative AI. But if you must use AI, hold off on using it in the early stages of a writing project.
If you feel like you’ve become dependent on AI, it’s not too late to turn things around.
The human brain is incredibly resilient. You can learn to work differently. You can learn how to learn.
In the book The Disengaged Teen, Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop state:
“More than ever before, what kids need now is to become better at learning. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating rapidly, and everyone agrees that the pace of change will continue to be dizzying. Uncertainty is the new norm. No one knows exactly what shifts in jobs and society are in store. What can best protect and prepare our kids? Rose Luckin, a British professor and AI expert is blunt: Make them “good at learning.” The only thing that can insulate them from rapid change and give them the confidence to move forward is the ability to learn and adapt.”
It’s not too late to reclaim your cognitive power. But you’ll have to push your brain to the point of discomfort without using AI.
Just like you can’t build muscle by getting an exoskeleton to lift heavy weights for you, you’ll have to do the work and resist the temptation to outsource tasks to generative AI. But it’s important to get clear on why you want to build cognitive power and resist the allure of AI.
When a man I used to train at the gym with told me he was using AI to write his blog posts, my first thought was, “Why would you want to do that?”
I refuse to use generative AI to write any of my blogs. Why? Because for the most part, I get a lot of satisfaction from writing.
Yes, it can be frustrating and painful to write.
Yes, I usually always feel awkward and clumsy as I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.
Yes, it can take a lot of time to write an article.
But writing is a form of thinking. It helps me to make sense of the world. It also gives me a sense of purpose.
When I put a piece of my own writing out into the world, I feel good about it. I wrestled with ideas and, as a result, learnt something new.
If I offload all of my work to ChatGPT, I’ve robbed myself of a valuable opportunity to think, learn, and grow.
As Dr Nancy Colier states in her book The Power of Off:
“We are conditioned to believe that easier means better, that the less we have to do, the happier we will be. But often this is not in line with people’s actual experiences. We feel good when we are productive and engaged, which requires effort.”
It’s only natural to be amazed by the things AI can do. But it’s also important to be fully aware of what this technology could do to our brains, relationships, and the quality of our lives. AI can stunt our growth in many ways.
Based on the research I’ve read so far, I’m not convinced that this technology, the way it is currently being rolled out, is good for young people to use. It’s too easy to become dependent on generative AI, to fall for its hallucinations, and to have cognitive skills atrophy or fail to develop at all. Let’s also not forget how energy-intensive all those data centres are.
This is why I’m resisting using generative AI as much as possible. In fact, I recently quit ChatGPT as part of the grassroots boycott #QuitGPT.
If you care about your brain, people, the health of the planet, and all the things that make life rich and wonderful, stop and think twice before turning to an AI chatbot. Be brave: use your brain, build your skills, and trust your thinking.
Toddler (featured in image 2): “Skeptical” by quinn.anya is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
The other day, I was getting my haircut when my hairdresser told me something her 15-year-old son had said. His words took her completely by surprise. He said:
“Mum, I need to try harder this year.”
I hear those words a lot. Try harder.
I hear them from students who want to do better at school and from teachers who are trying to motivate students (“You need to try harder”).
But what does it actually mean to “try harder”?
The problem is that this advice is too vague and abstract.
If you don’t have a clear picture of what ‘trying harder’ looks like, you’re in dangerous territory because you’re attempting to motivate yourself towards an abstraction.
In the book Tiny Habits, Professor BJ Fogg explains the problems associated with motivating yourself to achieve a vague goal. He writes:
“You’ve probably seen a well-meaning public-health poster in the doctor’s office that shows lots of colourful vegetables with the headline: EAT THE RAINBOW!
At first glance, you think: Yes, I need to eat better food. But then you’re not sure what practical steps to take. How much green and how much red? That means salad and apples, right? It can’t mean mint ice-cream and red licorice, can it? You are motivated to “eat the rainbow,” but maybe you don’t know how. You feel frustrated and end up being a little hard on yourself.”
I didn’t want my hairdresser’s son to feel frustrated and annoyed with himself. He clearly had good intentions.
I asked my hairdresser, “What does trying harder look like for your son? If he’s trying harder, what is he doing?”
She said she wasn’t sure. So, I kept asking questions.
“Does it look like him sitting down and testing himself with flashcards before a test? Taking notes in class? Listening to the teacher instead of chatting with his mates?”
The answer was clear. She said, “Listening to the teacher! He needs to start listening to his teachers.”
I also mentioned that it would help if he learnt his teachers’ names (you’d be surprised how many teachers tell me their students don’t know their names).
Remembering a teacher’s name, staying focused on what they have to say, resisting distractions, taking notes and reading your textbook may sound easy, but these are skills that require continuous practice.
If you’re not used to doing them, they can feel hard.
Even with years of practice under my belt, understanding new ideas still feels hard. These days, reading feels like weightlifting for my mind!
After getting my haircut, for the next 24 hours, I kept thinking about those words “try harder”.
Something was bugging me about it because I felt it wasn’t helpful to tell yourself to “try harder”. . . and then, like a bolt of lightning, the answer hit me: my hairdresser’s son doesn’t need to try harder. He needs to focus on doing a few specific hard things.
By ‘specific hard things’, I mean concrete behaviours he can do right now (or at a specific point in time) to improve his understanding of his school subjects.
For example, if he wanted to start a home study routine, here are some concrete behaviours I’d recommend he try:
These are just a few behaviours that come to mind when I think about “trying harder” with your studies.
Doing these concrete behaviours just once won’t make you go from good to great. But you’ll be surprised by how much meaningful progress you can make in a single, effective study session.
We live in a world where comfort and convenience are increasingly normalised. We expect things, including learning, to be easy.
You don’t have to cook (thank you Uber Eats).
You don’t have to move (thank you car).
You don’t have to experience boredom (thank you social media and Netflix).
You don’t even have to use your brain anymore (thank you ChatGPT and Claude).
By outsourcing tasks that require physical and cognitive effort, we may save time, but there are hidden costs.
People are losing their skills, destroying their health, and atrophying their brains, all while being flooded with unhealthy levels of dopamine. I’d even go as far as saying that people are losing their lives and what it means to be human.
In every moment, we have a choice: we can do the easy thing that gives us a quick dopamine hit, or we can do the hard thing that gives us a slow and healthy release of dopamine.
When you wake up, you can scroll on your phone or do some physical activity.
At the end of the day, you can order takeaway that is engineered to light up the reward pathways in your brain, or you can prepare a healthy homemade meal.
When you’ve got a spare 30 minutes, you can watch some YouTube or go for a walk outside.
You can use ChatGPT to write your essay, or you can use your brain and build your skills.
You can talk to an AI chatbot and have a friction-free relationship, or you can organise to meet up with a friend.
Every time you choose the hard thing over the easy thing, you build your confidence. You can trust yourself to do hard things and survive them. Over time, as you build your skills, those hard things don’t feel as hard as they once did.
For instance, if the Internet goes down and you’re not dependent on ChatGPT, you know you’ll be okay. You can rely on yourself to think and entertain yourself (thank you brain).
This is why I’m committing to doing hard things this year. I’m challenging myself, and I know I’ll be better for it.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about self-harm or inflicting extreme pain on myself.
I’m referring to activities that bring up a cringey discomfort and make me think, “Ahhh, I don’t want to do this!”.
These include activities that require sustained focus and/or mental and physical effort, such as writing an article, going for a run, riding my bike to the shops, and meditating.
The simplest way is to ease into doing those hard things. Turn those hard things into tiny habits.
Here is a list of tiny habits for hard things I’m focusing on doing:
Some of these things may not seem like much, but all of these behaviours require mental and physical effort. Remember, there’s a much easier alternative: sitting, tapping, swiping, and scrolling on your phone.
For instance, I don’t need to chop vegetables and cook my meals. I could eat out or order food to my door. This would save me time and effort (cooking my meals can feel like a part-time job).
But I know I would suffer at some point (physically, mentally, and financially).
Chopping vegetables and cooking take effort, but it helps me cultivate calm. When done with a focused mind (not listening to podcasts or talking on the phone), I really enjoy these activities.
If I were to outsource these activities, I’d be going backwards, because I’d most likely lose my valuable cooking skills over time.
Similarly, writing articles like this one feels hard. But hard doesn’t mean bad. It’s satisfying to focus my mind, wrestle with ideas, and write.
Many of us mistakenly believe that an easy life is a better life. But it’s not. A life where you are constantly pursuing pleasure and taking the easy path can lead to anhedonia.
Anhedonia is the inability to experience pleasure in things that were once pleasurable (e.g., a homecooked meal or a sunset). Some people describe it as life in greyscale.
It turns out the more pleasure we pursue, the more pleasure we need and the more pain we experience.
It may sound counterintuitive, but pursuing hard things makes you feel more motivated and more positive about life.
As humans, we want to challenge ourselves. We’re wired for it.
Psychiatrist Dr Anna Lembke encourages us to take on difficult, even painful, activities as a way of “aligning our primitive wiring with our modern ecosystem”. She writes:
“We are survivors. We’re wired for struggle, especially of physical nature. Yet we live in a world in which we’re largely insulated from pain. And not just pain, but also discomfort of any kind. Everything is supplied to us at the touch of a finger. Now we struggle just to get up off the couch. Our modern ecosystem incentivizes inactivity. Inactivity breeds lethargy. Lethargy breeds anxiety and depression. We must fight against this.”
So, forget trying harder. Work out a few hard things you want to do and focus on doing them instead.
It has made me a calmer, better focused, happier, more mentally flexible, and creative person.
It takes anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes to do this practice, but trust me, this morning practice is time well spent.
It usually feels hard at first, but by the end, I feel strong, confident, and clearer in my thinking. As clichéd as it sounds, this practice helps me be the best version of myself.
What simple morning practice am I talking about?
I’m talking about my movement practice.
Before I do any work (e.g., check my email or messages, read the news, or deliver a presentation), I make myself do some physical activity.
I usually run on a treadmill, ride a stationary bike, or lift heavy weights.
I can’t say I’m leaping out of bed with joy at the thought of exercising. There’s always a little voice in my head that grumbles, “Ugh, do we have to do this?”
But I push forward and lace up my running shoes because I know that by the end, I’ll feel amazing.
Twenty minutes into my movement practice, my husband says he can hear me ‘whooping’ with joy from the other end of the house.
The natural ‘runner’s high’ people talk about is real.
I can relate to Cultural Historian Vybarr Cregan-Reid when he describes his running highs in the following way:
“They are as strong as bootleg whisky. They make you want to stop everyone that you pass and tell them how beautiful they are, what a wonderful world this is, isn’t it great to be alive?”
The amazing thing is that a year ago, I couldn’t run for more than a minute without being completely out of breath. Now I can run for 45 minutes nonstop. And I’m hooked.
How did I get here? And more importantly, how can you cultivate a movement practice that leaves you feeling energised, less stressed, and in a great mood?
Do you remember, as a child, running around the playground, swinging on the monkey bars, and playing games like Chasey?
You did these things naturally and effortlessly, and you enjoyed doing them. No one had to force you to move.
You ran for the sake of running. You ran because it made you feel good and fully alive.
This is what movement does for me. It makes me feel excited about life.
I’ve discovered this is the key to building a long-lasting movement practice: you have to find delight in moving your body. And you have to hang in there for long enough for the delight to show up.
You see, the delight probably won’t be there straightaway. Instead, what you’ll usually find is that there’s some discomfort and resistance for the first 10 – 15 minutes of your movement practice.
But if you persist, trust me, the delight will come knocking at your door and sweep through your house like a group of wild party animals.
Just to be clear, you don’t have to run to experience this delightful feeling. Any moderate-intensity physical activity, such as riding a bike, dancing, and swimming, will do the job.
In the book The Joy of Movement, psychologist Dr Kelly McGonigal makes it clear that you can achieve a natural high from any sustained physical activity.
She says the key to experiencing this ‘exercise induced euphoria’ is to put in the time and effort. She writes:
“You just have to do something that is moderately difficult for you and stick with it for at least twenty minutes. That’s because the runner’s high isn’t a running high. It’s a persistence high.”
The thing about movement is that it takes effort. But that effort is what delivers the delight!
When you do hard things for a sustained period of time, your brain rewards you by serving up a cocktail of feel good chemicals, such as dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, noradrenaline, and endocannabinoids.
From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense.
Life for our ancient ancestors was hard work and often dangerous. To survive, they had to forage and hunt for food, find water, build shelters, and run from wild predators.
These neurochemical rewards (e.g, dopamine and serotonin) would keep them going. And keep going they did!
Hunter-gatherers clocked up thousands of steps each day. They were constantly on the move because their survival depended on it.
But here’s what I find really interesting . . .
Despite being incredibly active, hunter-gatherers’ brains were wired for comfort and laziness. This wiring served them well, especially when food was hard to obtain. Conserving energy through sedentary behaviour was a survival trait.
This explains why most of us feel resistance to the idea of physical exercise.
Fast-forward 30,000 years to today: our modern environment is completely different from that of our ancient ancestors, but our brains are still the same (i.e. wired for comfort).
Want food? You can order it with the tap of a button. In our modern world, you don’t have to move much, if at all.
Because of our ancient wiring, some resistance to physical activity will always be there. We just have to push ourselves to do the hard things first (e.g., exercise), knowing that the rewards will come if we persist for long enough.
As you start moving your body, during those first few minutes, you may find yourself thinking, “Why am I doing this? This doesn’t feel good!”
To which, I say: Can you feel your heart pounding in your chest? Can you hear yourself huffing and puffing? Is that sweat dropping off your face and onto the ground?
Fabulous! You’re on the right track. Hang in there. It won’t be long before your mood starts to shift in a dramatic way.
I have come to love the feeling of my clothes soaked in sweat after I exercise. There was a time when I thought that was gross. But not anymore.
Those sweaty, stinky clothes are evidence that I’ve worked hard. It’s proof that I pushed myself and the feel good chemicals are flowing through my brain and will continue to do so for the next few hours.
In The Official Dopamine Nation Workbook, psychiatrist Dr Anna Lembke explains what happens at a neurochemical level when you do hard things. She writes:
“While engaging in these kinds of painful activities [exercise, meditation, ice-cold water plunges, etc], our dopamine levels rise slowly over the latter half of the activity and remain elevated for hours afterward before going back down to baseline, without ever going below baseline.”
This is why Dr Lembke starts her day by avoiding her phone and doing the hard things first. She said on a recent podcast interview:
“I won’t even go on my laptop until I’ve exercised, eaten breakfast, I’ve read a paper that gets delivered to my house, I’ve made my bed . . . I’ve done all the things I need to do to centre myself for the day.”
Similarly, I equate my movement practice with getting my brain ready for the day and accessing parts of myself that would otherwise lie dormant.
Sometimes movement helps me to experience a wonderful flow state. I feel in tune with my mind and body. Things just feel easier.
But even if I don’t reach a state of flow, moving helps me be more present and show up as the best version of myself in the other areas of my life, such as my work and when I’m with my family.
My movement practice is something I’ve come to genuinely enjoy. It’s not something I need to rush through to tick off a list.
If you’re reading this and thinking “But I don’t like movement” and “I’m not an athletic person”, I get it because I wasn’t always a super active person.
There was a time when movement felt like a grind. I felt clumsy and awkward. It was something I just had to get done.
So, what led to this dramatic shift in how I related to movement?
I shifted from training for my appearance (to stay lean) to training to feel good.
Psychologists would say I became intrinsically motivated to move rather than extrinsically motivated.
When you’re extrinsically motivated, you’re moving to lose weight, achieve a particular look (e.g., the fitness influencer look), or have a sexy body. You’re trying to reach some place in the future, and it often takes you to a place of misery.
In my early twenties, I became friends with a businesswoman who was also a female bodybuilder. I was inspired by her discipline and focus, so when she invited me to attend a Bodybuilding competition, I jumped at the chance. I thought, “Why not?”
I should point out that this was in the pre-social-media era, when you couldn’t easily watch videos of people flexing their muscles online. You had to go to competitions like these, or watch a documentary (rented from a video store), to get a glimpse into the world of bodybuilding.
As we sat in the audience at the Bodybuilding Championships, one perfectly chiselled body after another walked onto the stage and flexed their muscles. I felt inspired.
Without knowing what went into getting visible abs and perfectly toned bodies like these, I remember thinking, “I want a body like that!”
A couple of hours later, the judges announced the bodybuilding champions, and shortly after, the party kicked off as everyone hit the dance floor, including the bodybuilders I had watched strut their stuff across the stage.
At one point, I found myself dancing next to the Female Bodybuilding Champion. She was holding her massive trophy, and I couldn’t help but notice that her face had a pained expression and she was struggling to move and stay upright.
She’d just been crowned Bodybuilding Champion of the Year, so I thought, “Why is she looking so sad and weak?”
I spun around, told her she looked amazing, and congratulated her. I then asked her (shouting over the loud music) how she was feeling. Her answer took me by surprise. She said:
“I’m so tired and hungry. I just want to go home and eat a pizza!”
That’s when I realised she had been starving herself for the competition, and just like that, the idea of achieving a body like hers quickly vanished from my mind.
To achieve the ‘perfect’ look, bodybuilders and fitness influencers often severely restrict their diets, which can be harmful.
In the book How Not to Die (Too Soon), Professor and Personal Trainer Devi Sridhar states:
“For most women, achieving visible abs requires an extremely low body fat percentage (less than 17 per cent, below the 20-23 per cent healthy range), which is often linked to irregular menstruation, brittle nails, feeling faint and disrupted hormone production.”
So, unless you want to feel faint and constantly crave pizza, think twice before setting a goal to look like a bodybuilding champion or a fitness influencer!
When the focus is on aesthetics, you undermine the joy of movement.
In the DW documentary Muscles – More than Power and Pumping Iron, social media influencer and former Bikini model champion Sophia Thiel shared her experience of training to achieve the ‘perfect’ body. She states:
“When you train for the sake of your appearance, it can quickly tear you apart and take away all the joy that the sport normally brings with it.”
Post competition, Sophia found it difficult to maintain her competitive form and stick to her competition diet. Her weight began to fluctuate, and the nasty online comments about her appearance started to take their toll on her mental health.
At some point, Sophia shifted her focus from her appearance to how lifting weights made her feel. She said:
“Today my motivation for working out is very different. It brings a lot more balance to my life. I can deal with stress better. The way I carry myself is completely different, which gives me self-confidence. My sleep and concentration are better too. In other words, training improves my quality of life.”
Making the mental shift, like Sophia did, from wanting to look good to feeling good, is a total game-changer.
But in our image-obsessed world, it’s easy to lose sight of the mind and mood-altering effects of physical movement (spending less time on social media and unfollowing fitness influencers can help with this mental shift).
Harvard Professor John Ratey sums it up nicely when he says physical exercise is like “a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin”. It does wonders for your brain (especially your attention and mood) with no nasty side effects.
To sum up
Instead of reaching for your phone first thing in the morning, try reaching for your running shoes, a set of dumbbells, or a yoga mat.
Developing a morning movement practice is one of the simplest and most powerful things you can do to benefit your brain and improve the quality of your life.
But the key is to find delight in moving for the sake of moving. You need to persist with the movement for long enough – at least 20 minutes – for your brain to reward you with a dose of feel good chemicals.
When movement becomes inherently enjoyable, you’ll find yourself doing it more often. Before you know it, it will be a non-negotiable part of your day. In the words of Dr Kelly McGonigal, “regular exposure to exercise will over time teach your brain to like, want, and need it”.
Image 6: “2013 Fall Classic Natural Bodybuilding Competition – U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys, South Korea – 28 Sep 2013” by USAG-Humphreys is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
We are sold this idea that, if you want to go places in life, goal-setting is absolutely essential.
For many years, I enthusiastically attended workshops with other goal-setting enthusiasts, where I wrote long (and overwhelming) lists of goals.
But towards the end of last year, instead of feeling delight at the idea of setting goals, I felt dread.
When I thought about setting goals, there was a little voice in my head that screamed, “Please don’t make me do this!”
So I stopped, and I listened to that little voice.
I’ve learnt that just as you shouldn’t force yourself to wear tight shoes, it’s not always helpful to force yourself to do certain things.
Sometimes you need to try a different approach, which is exactly what I’m doing this year.
I’ve decided to shift my focus from setting goals to running tiny experiments.
It’s a subtle mental shift that takes me from feeling fixed and rigid to curious and playful.
If you’ve ever created a list of goals or New Year’s resolutions, only to abandon them shortly after (and felt demoralised), tiny experiments may be for you.
In this blog, I’ll share what tiny experiments are and how you can use them to have more fun and experience more growth and learning.
In her excellent book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World, neuroscientist Dr Anne-Laure Le Cunff argues that traditional goal-setting approaches no longer work in these uncertain times. She states:
“The linear way is wildly out of sync with the lives we live today. The challenges we’re facing and the dreams we’re pursuing are increasingly hard to define, measure, and pin to a set schedule. In fact, a common challenge for many people these days is feeling stuck when it comes to their next steps: instead of providing a motivating force, the idea of setting a well-defined goal is paralysing. When the future is uncertain, the neat parameters of rigid goal-setting frameworks are of little help; it feels like throwing darts without a target to aim at.”
Dr Le Cunff argues that the way we set goals is broken. Not only does traditional goal-setting encourage toxic productivity, but it can also leave us feeling dissatisfied, as if we are constantly failing. She states:
“…they [traditional goal-setting methods] create a discouraging perspective where we are far from success. Our satisfaction – the best version of ourselves – lies somewhere in the future.”
She argues a new approach is required that takes us away from “rigid linearity to fluid experimentation”.
A tiny experiment is a fun, low-stakes way to test out a new behaviour and see if it’s for you.
This may not sound revolutionary, but the power of tiny experiments lies in the mental shift they bring.
Instead of pursuing fixed and rigid goals, when you run a tiny experiment, you open yourself up to exploring new possibilities and stepping into the unknown.
In the book Tiny Experiments, Dr Le Cunff lays out a simple process for designing your own tiny experiments.
The process begins by playing a game of ‘self-anthropology’. In other words, you observe your own life and capture those observations by making field notes.
Here are some things to capture in your field notes:
For instance, yesterday I went to stock up on supplies from a small bulk foods store. I got talking to the sales assistant, who mentioned that she worked at two bulk food stores in different areas. I asked her if she noticed any major differences in the customers between the two stores. Her answer surprised me. She said:
“The customers up in the hills are less rushed. They are more willing to chat. People here seem in a hurry… a bit more fast paced.”
This five-minute conversation made me realise I don’t want to feel rushed or give the impression I’m in a hurry and have no time for a chat. I want to experience more calm in my life.
That’s the first step when it comes to designing a tiny experiment: gathering a rich source of observations.
The next step is to come up with a research question and a hypothesis (i.e. an idea you want to put to the test).
I know this part may sound serious and scary, but trust me, you don’t need to be a scientist to come up with a research question and a hypothesis to test.
There’s a magical word that can help to kick-start the process: Maybe.
Maybe if I checked my phone only at certain times in the day, I’d feel calmer?
Maybe if I put my phone away 30 minutes before going to bed, I’d sleep better?
Maybe if I exercised for 30 minutes each morning, I’d feel calmer and less stressed?
Maybe if I got up and walked on my treadmill every 30 minutes for 5 minutes, I’d have more energy?
Maybe if I rode my bike and walked more (instead of driving), I’d feel more relaxed and less busy?
These are examples of potential research questions I’ve brainstormed.
The word Maybe is incredibly powerful. When you use the word Maybe in this way, it sparks your curiosity and opens you up to exploring new possibilities.
Once you’ve come up with a question, you then turn it into a hypothesis.
Below is a figure from the book Tiny Experiments that illustrates how to turn an observation into a research question and a hypothesis.
Last year, I ran various tiny experiments, several of which focused on cultivating calm.
I had noticed that my days often felt hamster wheely, rushing from one activity to the next. I wanted to feel calmer and more grounded.
With this in mind, I designed the following tiny experiment:
After I finish delivering a presentation, I will lay flat on the couch for 15 minutes and do nothing. I’ll do this for the next 5 days.
So, for the next five days, I conducted my lying flat tiny experiment.
After lying flat for 15 minutes, I’d check in with myself: How do I feel? Do I feel less stressed? More grounded? I also reflected on how I felt at the end of the day.
By doing these quick check-ins, I was collecting data on my tiny experiment.
After I’d completed this tiny experiment, I took a step back and asked myself, “How did that tiny experiment go? Was it a success? Do I want to continue doing this?”
I concluded that the experiment had been a success. I discovered that forcing myself to do nothing was a good way to regulate my nervous system and feel calmer.
But not all of my tiny experiments have been quite so successful.
Last year, I ran a tiny experiment that completely backfired.
If I had taken a traditional goal-setting approach, I would have said I had failed dismally and hung my head in shame.
But there is no failure when it comes to running tiny experiments, only growth and learning.
This tiny experiment involved selling clothing on Depop (an online fashion marketplace for buying and selling secondhand clothes).
Tiny Experiment:
I will put up one item of clothing on Depop every day for the next 30 days.
My hope was to earn some extra cash, declutter my wardrobe and extend the life of some of the clothes I no longer wear.
But as I ran this tiny experiment, it became clear it wasn’t working: I was buying more clothes than I was selling!
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but it was Winter time, and I became obsessed with cashmere jumpers (I loved the warmth and soft feel against my skin).
After listing an item for sale, I found myself scrolling through Depop, searching for more cashmere jumpers to buy. I would enter a trance-like state, as if I was using a poker machine.
If I had been selling more items, maybe I could have justified this behaviour, but I was selling very few items. Once postage and fees were factored in, I was earning only $1–$2 per item!
It wasn’t until I bought and put on a jumper that had clearly shrunk in the wash, revealing my belly button in all its glory, that I quickly came to my senses and said, “Enough!”
It was time to get off the consumer treadmill!
I quickly aborted this tiny experiment and deleted my Depop account.
You could say this tiny experiment was a flop. But I didn’t beat myself up about it. As I mentioned earlier, there is no failure when it comes to tiny experiments (only growth and learning), and I had learnt something valuable from this experience.
What did I learn?
I learnt that selling clothes online was a trap for me. It exposed me to all these other beautiful items that were really hard to resist.
I also discovered that taking photos of my clothing items made me appreciate each piece a little more. In the end, I decided to hold on to and wear several items I had taken for granted.
I also learnt that it was okay for me to quit the experiment and try something else. There was no shame in quitting. In fact, quitting was the right thing for me to do.
You always have options when it comes to your tiny experiments. You get to be flexible because nothing is set in stone.
When you are new to tiny experiments, it can feel daunting to design your own experiments from scratch.
I find it helpful to see examples of other people’s tiny experiments. This is why I belong to Dr Le Cunff’s Ness Labs community: a community of people excited about growth, learning, and running tiny experiments.
In this online community, people share their tiny experiments with each other.
Here is a small selection of tiny experiments people have shared with me:
As you can see, these are all small behaviours performed over short time periods. Most of them can be slotted into even the busiest of schedules. This is the power of tiny experiments.
After you’ve conducted your tiny experiment for the specified duration, you have three choices:
For example, in my experiment of doing nothing, I scaled the 15 minutes on the couch back to just 10 to see if I could still get the same benefits. To my delight, 10 minutes seemed to work just as well as 15 minutes.
When you run a tiny experiment, you’re constantly tweaking and refining what you do, which means you’re continuously learning and growing as a person. This helps build momentum and a feeling of success.
At the end of the day, tiny experiments are a fun, low-stakes way to improve your life. With your sights no longer fixated on some far-off destination, you have the freedom to experiment and see what works best for you.
For context, she was a sales manager who used a BlackBerry phone for work (a fancy, expensive device at the time).
Every minute of the interview, her phone pinged with a notification or she received an email alert on her laptop. She’d glance at one of her devices and, with a panicked look, say, “I need to answer this!”
It was an awkward and disjointed conversation, full of stops and starts. I have to admit, her behaviour annoyed me. I soon realised I wasn’t the only person feeling this way.
The sales manager mentioned that she had a 4-year-old daughter who would get upset with her.
She told me that her little girl would beg her to put her phone and computer away. She’d tug at her clothes and cry, “Mummy! Mummy! Put your phone away!”
I appreciated this woman’s honesty, especially when she said to me:
“On the weekend, I’m with my kids but not truly with them… if you know what I mean”.
I knew exactly what she meant.
That was over 10 years ago. Fast forward to today, and we’re all a bit like that sales manager. But things are a lot worse now.
Instead of being overwhelmed and distracted by phone calls and work emails, we’re dealing with powerful Big Tech companies that hijack our time, energy, and attention.
They’ve made us weak-willed and impulsive.
We’re now in a position where distraction is something we crave rather than put up with.
When we have a gap in our schedule or we have to wait in line, what do most of us do? We reach for our phones without even thinking.
Rather than be alone with our thoughts, we desperately try to fill the space with ‘phone snacks’.
When we feel confused, frustrated, or bored, we run to our devices to escape the discomfort and our brains reward us for doing so.
Every time we switch tasks, our brain releases a little shot of dopamine.
It’s these quick hits of dopamine that train us to crave checking our phones and, ultimately, multitasking.
In an environment of unrestricted tech use, my brain is like a wild monkey. It wants to run around, make a mess, and explore many different things all at once.
I can relate to Dr Nancy Colier when she writes in The Power of Off, the mind on technology is like a “wild, locked-up monkey that’s drunk two bottles of wine chased by a shot of Scotch and been stung by a whole swarm of bees”.
When I start multitasking (and it doesn’t take much to get me going), I feel amped up, frenzied, and agitated. My energy feels a little crazy.
Research shows that as we quickly switch from one task to another, we rapidly deplete our finite mental resources and put our brains under a lot of stress.
But it gets worse . . .
When we multitask, we also experience what researcher Sophie Leroy calls Attention Residue.
In a research paper called Why is it so hard to do my work? Leroy explains Attention Residue as the extent to which your attention is only partially focused on the current activity because a prior activity (the task you rapidly switched from) is still holding part of your attention.
Why does this matter?
Leroy’s research found that when you experience Attention Residue, your performance suffers.
It’s as if you’ve taken a big dollop of the previous task and put a thick slather of it all over the current task, thereby making a mess of the present moment.
The good news is we can stop messing with our precious moments by focusing on one task at a time.
In his excellent book Time Surfing, Zen Monk Paul Loomans encourages us to focus on one task at a time, with minimal interruptions, and do it until completion. He says if we do this, we will experience a sense of calm and pleasure in everything we do.
Even tasks we consider boring or mundane (e.g., peeling potatoes or cleaning your room) can be transformed into artistry when you are truly present.
Part of the problem is that we’re often in a rush to get to the next thing on our to-do lists. But as Loomans warns, “Rushing is like gulping down time. You’re not living for now but for later”.
To counter this frenetic urge to race ahead, Loomans suggests that we accept whatever we are doing as “the activity of the moment”. In other words, we view the task before us as the most important thing we can be doing in this moment and we forget the rest.
It’s a simple but powerful mental shift.
I’ve noticed that when I accept whatever I am doing as the thing I should be doing right now, I no longer feel the urge to work with such intense energy. I feel calmer. An added bonus is that when I slow down, I make fewer mistakes and tend to do a better job.
At the heart of it, doing one thing at a time means showing up to life and being present, to the good stuff but also the painful, boring bits.
If you find yourself reaching for your phone more than you’d like, ask yourself this question:
“Am I reaching for my phone to escape the present moment?”
For me, the answer is usually yes. I’m trying to avoid the discomfort of life. But life tends to be more meaningful and enjoyable when I stay fully present to what’s happening around me, with my phone out of sight.
Technology will dominate your life, and multitasking will be an issue unless you have strategies to protect your time, energy, and attention.
What motivates me to set limits on my tech use (specifically my phone) is a desire to feel calm, grounded, and focused. I also want to live a life of substance, not one in which I am constantly chasing instant gratification.
Here are the strategies that I am currently practising to help me decrease multitasking and cultivate calm:
When I’m with someone or working on an important task, I put my phone away and keep it out of sight. I want to be fully present with the person I’m with or the task at hand. Why?
Because attention is how we show others they matter.
When someone is checking their phone in a social situation, it communicates “I’m more interested in what’s happening on this screen than I am in you”.
When I think back to the interview with the sales manager, it would have been a better experience for everyone if she had put her phone on silent, left it in her bag, and closed her laptop.
There would have been fewer times saying “What was the question again?” and “Sorry, I can’t remember what we were talking about”.
We probably would have felt more connected, too.
Note: Even when my phone isn’t within arm’s reach, I can still catch myself rapidly switching between web browsers and tasks. However, I’ve noticed that my multitasking significantly increases when my phone is within arm’s reach.
You’ve probably heard of intermittent fasting, where you have a window for eating (e.g., 10am to 6pm). But have you heard of phone fasting?
Phone fasting is a period during the day when your phone is not within reach.
As TJ Power states in The Dose Effect:
“A phone fast enables your dopamine to replenish and creates the opportunity for connection and restoration.”
So, as an experiment, for 30 days, I phone fasted from 8pm until 12noon the next day (allowing myself to make urgent calls if needed). I discovered that this made a big difference to my ability to focus. I also experienced a sense of calm like never before.
At the start of the day, I create a ‘Wish List’ (another wonderful concept from Paul Looman’s Time Surfing book).
I write down all the things I’d like to do in the day, but there’s no pressure to do all of them. I then put the list away, and depending on how I feel, I listen to my intuition and trust myself to choose the right activity to begin with.
Before I start a work session, I also declare what I intend to do (e.g., “Chop vegetables for curry” or “Write for 45 minutes”). If possible, I also like to share what I plan to do with another human (I use an online coworking community called Cave Day to do this).
After every 25-30 minutes of work, I aim to take a short movement break (usually 2-5 minutes in duration). This helps me to stay energised and alert. But most importantly, it gives me a brain boost.
What I wish I had understood when I was younger is that you can’t focus for hours on end. It’s not humanly possible because your brain has a finite amount of attentional resources. This means as you focus on doing a task, your attentional resources get depleted (and if you multitask, you accelerate the depletion even more!).
However, research shows you can boost your attentional resources by taking short breaks or, as Paul Loomans likes to call them, ‘breathers’.
A ‘breather’ is any activity that allows you to get out of your head and grounded in your body.
Some of my favourite breather activities include going for a short walk, chopping vegetables, or riding my bike to pick up a package from the post office. These activities allow my brain and thoughts to roam free.
Although many of us default to checking our phones during breaks, resist the urge. The problem with using your phone on a break is that you’re still in your head. This means you’re churning through your attentional resources instead of replenishing them.
The sense of calm and pleasure I experience when I stop multitasking and focus on doing one thing at a time is second to none.
But in the age of the Attention Economy, with so many companies trying to hijack our attention, it takes discipline and practice to stay focused.
Without strategies in place to protect your focus, the default will be multitasking and its friends – chaos, stress, and fatigue.
We may not have a 4-year-old child tugging on our clothes when we’re using our phones. But perhaps we should all listen to the wisdom of that little girl and put our phones away.
Unless you’re a superhero in a Marvel film, no one benefits from exposure to asbestos, lead paint, tobacco, and radioactive substances.
Toxic products are just like toxic people. It’s best to steer clear of them if you can.
If you can’t avoid them, then it’s wise to take precautions and minimise your exposure as much as possible.
Only a small child or a foolish adult would handle asbestos or a radioactive substance with their bare hands.
But I want you to consider that millions of people all around the world are constantly exposing themselves to another class of toxic products and they are unaware of it. What’s unique about these products is that the harms are invisible.
Exposure to these toxic products can result in:
I’m talking about social media platforms, such as TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
Over the years, I’ve read extensively on the invisible harms linked with social media. As someone who was an early adopter of Facebook, I’ve seen these harms firsthand.
I was addicted to social media until I read the book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. I read this book in a day. The book had such a profound impact on me that I deleted all my social media accounts that evening back in November 2020.
I firmly believe now that social media is the mother of all toxic products and it’s time we started relating to it in this way.
As it turns out, I’m not alone in my thinking.
In a 2024 New York Times article, the US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy stated that warning labels should be placed on social media platforms, similar to the warnings that appear on cigarette packs. He wrote:
“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.”
He also wrote:
“Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours. Additionally, nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.”
Mental health issues are just one of many toxic by-products created by social media platforms.
The Center for Humane Technology has created a Ledger of Harms that details the hidden costs linked to social media, including a polluted information ecosystem that makes it hard for people to make sense of complex issues.
Under the heading ‘Making sense of the world: Misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news’, it states:
“A broken information ecology undermines our ability to understand and act on complex global challenges from climate change to COVID-19.”
This is why I believe social media is the mother of all toxic products. By fragmenting our attention and impairing our ability to understand complex issues, it becomes increasingly difficult to solve the massive challenges of our time.
We’ve placed too much trust in social media platforms without fully understanding how they work and what these apps are doing to our brains, relationships, and society.
Even if you understand the hidden harms, you may think that they don’t apply to you. That somehow you are immune to the risks.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard my friends make comments like:
There’s a reason why many parents working at big tech firms like Facebook and Instagram don’t let their children use the apps they work on.
It’s because they know these platforms cause harm.
For too long, we have naively trusted social media to be on our side. We believe what we see in our feed is a reflection of society. But it’s not.
Your feed is curated by the algorithm to keep you clicking, scrolling, and posting for as long as possible. This is why it feeds you outrageous content. Outrageous content hijacks your amygdala (the fear centre of your brain) and captures your attention.
The more data these companies can extract from you, the more profit they make. That’s the business model of Big Tech.
Put simply, Big Tech does not care about your wellbeing. It doesn’t care about supporting you with your goals or presenting you with accurate information that will help you make sense of the world.
As Philosopher James Williams writes in his book Stand Out of Our Light:
“There’s a deep misalignment between the goals we have for ourselves and the goals our technologies have for us.”
It’s time we said enough is enough to these Silicon Valley tech bros and their relentless pursuit of amassing more and more wealth through their addictive platforms at the expense of our collective wellbeing.
It’s painfully clear that a small handful of tech companies are hurting millions of people and bringing down society. As Jaron Lanier states:
“Bringing down a society to get rich is a fool’s game and Silicon Valley is acting foolish.”
These tech bros got rich because they captured our attention and we gave them our data. But we don’t have to put up with this. There is another way.
The Australian government is leading the way with a social media ban for under-16s. It’s a bold move that Big Tech companies are not happy about.
From December 10, all Australians under the age of 16 will be banned from using social media, such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, and Snapchat.
But why should this ban only apply to teens under 16?
Everyone would be better off by taking a break from these platforms.
As young people move away from social media, I encourage everyone, especially parents, teachers, and older siblings, to try taking a break from these apps too.
Your self-imposed social media ban doesn’t have to be forever. It could be for just 30 days.
If you’re thinking, “30 days! Why so long?”, here’s why . . .
You need to be off social media for a while to clear your head and see how crazy it all is.
What I discovered by deleting the apps is that when I used them they scrambled my brain. When I was on the platforms, they made me performative, jealous, and desperate for attention.
But it’s difficult to see it when you’re under the spell of these mind controlling platforms. Like a person exiting a cult or sobering up from alcoholism, you need to step back and gain some distance to recognise the toxic impact it’s having on you.
If, after 30 days, you feel stronger without social media in your life, you have the option of extending your ban. Or you can delete your accounts. The choice is yours.
There are several other reasons why taking an extended break from social media is well worth doing.
Firstly, this is a powerful way to show solidarity with young Australians as they go cold turkey on addictive tech.
This transition won’t be easy, especially for heavy users of the apps. By joining the under-16s in taking a break from the apps, we can better understand what they’re experiencing and offer support and compassion.
It’s also an opportunity to get to know ourselves better and live more authentic and free lives.
In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier says:
“To free yourself, to be more authentic, to be less addicted, to be less manipulated, to be less paranoid…for all these marvelous reasons, delete your accounts.”
Big tech companies want you to think that without social media, there will be no internet or support groups to help you through tough times. That you will be isolated and lonely without their apps.
But don’t believe the lies.
The Internet will still be there to use and explore. You’ll have chat groups, friends you can email, text, and call, and meet-ups you can attend.
Trust me when I say this: you will adjust and get to know yourself better by taking a break from social media.
Whether you are forced to get off social media by the government or you voluntarily decide to take an extended break, here are my suggestions for a smooth transition off these addictive platforms:
Initially, leaving social media will feel hard. You will find yourself picking up your phone to open the app to start scrolling, but it won’t be there.
You will most likely feel a sense of loss (I did). Expect to feel restless and irritable to begin with.
But these feelings will pass.
What is happening is your brain is adjusting to a new, lower level of mental stimulation. It’s adjusting to a world where it doesn’t constantly receive quick hits of dopamine.
At some point, the discomfort will disappear and be replaced with a feeling of calm.
During this time of adjustment, treat yourself with extra care. Spend time outdoors, go for walks, get good sleep, fuel up on nutritious meals, and do things with your hands (write, draw, colour in, etc).
Engage in activities that connect you to yourself, others and the world around you.
When you engage in healthy lifestyle practices, your brain releases a balanced cocktail of chemicals (including dopamine), which leaves you feeling good rather than anxious.
When you wake up, resist the urge to check your phone right away. Even if you don’t have social media on your device, there are plenty of other ways to get quick dopamine hits, like messaging friends, checking your email, or reading the news.
When you check your phone or email first thing, it puts you in reactive mode. You also risk crashing your dopamine system, leaving you feeling sluggish and flat.
I like to start the day with some form of physical activity, such as going for a run on my treadmill or riding my bike, or tidying up my space. These activities provide a slow release of dopamine, helping set me up for the day ahead.
Some academics say generative AI is like crack cocaine for social media addicts. For this reason, it doesn’t make sense to replace social media with an anthropomorphic chatbot (e.g., ChatGPT) that sycophantically tells you what you want to hear and provides a friction-free ‘relationship’.
Life and human relationships are messy. But unlike AI chatbots, these things are real.
Time gained by stepping away from social media is best spent in the real world with real humans.
Be proactive about your social life. Text or email your friends to organise catch-ups. Take delight in hearing about what they’ve been up to.
Instead of getting a picture-perfect, curated version you’d see online, you’re more likely to receive a raw and refreshingly honest account of what’s been happening in your friend’s life.
Without social media, you’ll find yourself with a lot more free time. Use that free time to teach yourself a new skill or explore a new topic.
When I left social media, I joined a local Yoga studio, upped my kitchen game (learning how to cook delicious plant-based meals) and enrolled in free online courses that would increase my knowledge and skills.
How will you get your news? By heading straight to online news sites.
I have several online news sites loaded into my streamdeck to stay up-to-date with what’s going on in the world (e.g., Democracy Now, Al Jazeera, Guardian, All Sides, and ABC). All I need to do is hit a button, and I’m reading the news with the peace of mind that I’m no longer in a filter bubble.
There will be times when you feel lonely, bored, and sad. Instead of trying to suppress or numb these emotions, journal or draw what you’re feeling and thinking.
You could also write a letter to yourself. If you don’t know what to write, here are some prompts to get you started:
Whatever you would normally post and share, you’re now sharing with an audience of one: yourself. The good thing is there’s no need to worry about offending anyone or being cancelled. You can fully express yourself without the fear of being judged by others.
There are many toxic products in the world that we need to be aware of, and social media is another one of them. We need to treat it with extreme caution, as no one is immune to the harms caused by these platforms.
In the book The Anxious Generation, Dr Jonathan Haidt asks the question:
“What would the sages advise us today about managing our phone-based lives? They’d tell us to get off our devices and regain control of our minds.”
Australian teenagers under 16 will soon be banned from social media, but the rest of us can choose to leave the platforms freely.
In the spirit of reclaiming your mental freedom, I challenge you to run a tiny experiment where you refrain from using social media for at least 30 days.
As your brain adapts to a lower level of stimulation, you’ll experience a sense of freedom, satisfaction, and calmness. You’ll notice your life force, energy, and focus returning to you once again.
I had one of these dreams the other night.
My anxious exam dreams usually go something like this . . .
I’m back in high school and I’m not having a fun time.
I’m freaking out because this exam is in just a few hours. So I’m scrambling. I’m cramming. I’m feeling desperate.
But what I’m doing isn’t working. I’m looking at the page and nothing is going into my brain. I’m filled with this sense of impending doom. But just before I enter the exam room . . . I wake up . . . Phew!
It was just a dream.
I graduated from high school two decades ago!
These dreams usually occur a few weeks before I need to deliver an important presentation. I’m not big on interpreting dreams, but here’s what I believe my subconscious is trying to tell me: “Lift your game. It’s time to start preparing!”
Delivering a presentation is similar to taking an exam. Both activities require you to exert mental effort and be well prepared. They can also bring up a lot of anxiety.
When I deliver a presentation, I have to recall a large amount of content from memory. I also need to keep an eye on the time because running into recess or lunch is not a smart move!
I have to be organised and make sure I have all my props and equipment. I also need to stay calm because if I look stressed, this will make the audience feel stressed and concerned about my wellbeing.
Just like you can’t wing a 3 hour long exam, I can’t afford to wing a presentation in front of a group of 200 students.
I believe the strategies that help me to memorise and deliver presentations can also help you to ace your exams.
Below I share simple things you can do to recall information under pressure and remain calm and grounded in strange and unusual environments.
Some of these strategies may seem a bit over-the-top. But my job is to present ideas to others. If I bomb out, I usually won’t get a second chance to present at the school again. This is why I strive to do my best every time.
When you leave things to the very last minute and feel rushed packing up your gear, there’s a good chance you’ll forget something important.
This is why I gather all my props the night before a presentation. Just before I go to bed, I lay out the clothes I’m going to present in. This means I don’t have to waste my brainpower on this small stuff in the morning.
Just like you need to think quickly in an exam, I need to be able to think quickly on my feet when I present. A solid 8 hours of quality (uninterrupted) sleep helps me to do this.
If I mess with my sleep, I mess with my ability to think.
I’ve developed a strict bedtime routine – I go to bed at the same time and I wake up at the same time. My phone is on silent and charging in another room when I sleep.
Now is the time to develop good sleep habits. Aim to get a minimum of 8 hours of quality sleep each night.
Consider doing some light exercise (nothing too strenuous) before an exam.
Before I deliver a talk, I’ll run on my treadmill or ride my bike for 20-30 minutes. Not only does this make me feel powerful and strong, but it puts me in a positive frame of mind.
It’s a fine line though. If you push yourself too hard (which I have done in the past), you’re going to feel exhausted. You need to make sure you don’t overdo it.
If I do happen to push myself too hard (which doesn’t happen very often as I’ve learnt what works for me), I’ll take a quick 20 minute power nap to re-energise before a talk.
If I’m feeling a bit nervous about delivering a presentation, I don’t make a big deal about it. I view a bit of nervous energy as a good thing.
I think, “I must be excited”.
I’ve also come to see a bit of nervous energy as better than being completely chilled. If I’m feeling super relaxed, I can’t muster enough energy to inject into the room. I’ve also noticed my thinking isn’t as sharp.
If you’re feeling nervous about an exam, say to yourself, “I’m feeling excited!”.
Before I deliver a presentation, I’ll sit and breathe deeply for 2 – 3 minutes. This helps me stay calm, grounded, and focused.
I also put my phone on airplane mode so I’m not distracted by any random texts or calls. At this point, I need to stay in the zone and I can’t have anything throw me off my game.
In the 30 minutes before the exam begins, you need to protect your mental state. Take some deep breaths, put your phone away, and shut out the world around you. Wearing a pair of headphones can also help.
Your brain needs fuel to think and function well. Where does it get that fuel from? Food. So whatever you do, don’t skip breakfast or lunch before an exam.
Before I present, I make sure I eat a healthy meal an hour beforehand. If the talk is at a strange time, I’ll make myself a healthy smoothie. This gives me the energy I need to deliver high energy presentations.
I once cooked up and ate a big vegan schnitzel before I had to deliver an important presentation. I’d never consumed one of these processed schnitzels before, which must have been packed full of salt because I kept sipping on water before the talk.
I remember that I was freaking out because of the unexpected impact of this salty vegan schnitzel. I was thinking, “How am I going to do this? I’m going to need to go to the toilet! Why did you think it was a good idea to eat a vegan schnitzel right before a talk?!”
Luckily, I managed to deliver the talk without any problems. But it was a close call.
I learnt an important lesson that night . . .
Don’t experiment with any new or strange foods before giving a talk. You’re asking for trouble.
Work out what foods make your brain feel good and then stick to those foods before each exam.
If you feel hungry, sleep deprived, or you have a full bladder, these things are going to create some discomfort. It will be hard to concentrate and recall information in the exam.
This is why I always make sure I take care of the basics (e.g., having a healthy breakfast or snack) before I deliver a presentation.
Give yourself plenty of time to get to the exam room. There’s nothing worse than feeling rushed, stressed or getting lost.
This is why I like to set up for a job at least 30 minutes before I need to present. This gives me plenty of time to avoid any technical problems and get grounded.
Since I don’t rely on any notes or palm cards when I present, I need to know my content back to front and inside out.
How do I learn the content?
I use a combination of three highly effective study strategies:
1) Dual coding (using words and pictures to help you learn);
2) Active recall (bringing information to mind); and
3) Spaced practice (spacing out your study, not cramming).
These three strategies are much more effective than rereading and highlighting my notes. I recommend you use these study strategies to prepare for your exams.
Research shows physical movement, including the use of gestures, helps improve understanding and boosts memory.
Whether you’re trying to learn a new concept for an exam or memorise a presentation, don’t be afraid to use your hands and body. Think about what you’re saying. Can you apply a gesture or move your body to help you memorise and improve your understanding of a concept?
You can read more about the power of gestures and movement when it comes to learning here.
Before each exam, keep away from people and places that drain your energy and stress you out. Avoid energy vampires (i.e. people who drain your mental energy and make you feel a bit out of whack) as much as possible. Don’t waste your brainpower on these toxic people. You need all your brainpower for your exams.
Sometimes things will go wrong that are completely out of your control. And you have to just roll with it and do the best job you can under the circumstances.
For example, a few years ago, I did a job where nothing seemed to go to plan. The school receptionist was rude and unhelpful. The venue for the talk wasn’t booked. The students didn’t have chairs to sit on. To make matters worse, it was a boiling hot day and the air-conditioner wasn’t working.
What was I supposed to do?
Having a meltdown wasn’t going to help.
In times like these, you need to remain calm and focus on the things you can do to make things better going forward.
If you have two exams on the same day, you need to think about how you’ll manage your energy levels. You need to conserve your energy.
For instance, if I need to deliver two or three different talks in a day, I manage my energy levels by taking deep breaths, frequent sips of water, and power naps where possible.
Preparing to sit an exam is like preparing to go on stage for a performance. If you can use some of the strategies listed above, you can stay calm, energised, and grounded, which will make a big difference when it comes to recalling information in the exam.
Which strategy will you test out to stay calm and enhance your performance in your next exam?
But just to be clear – this car wasn’t in bad shape when I first got it. I turned this car into a jalopy through neglect and ignoring basic warning signs.
Whenever I gave my friends a lift in this car, I remember that they always looked visibly uncomfortable. They’d say with a nervous laugh:
“Jane, what’s that strange rattling sound?”
“Why is there a red warning light on your dashboard?”
I wasn’t fussed about the red light or the strange rattling sound.
Somehow, I’d missed the adulting lesson on basic car maintenance.
For many years, I never bothered to get my car serviced. I drove it to the point where it rattled and shook violently, the engine would cut out while driving, and the brakes squealed at a painfully high pitch.
It got to the point where I could no longer ignore these problems, but by then, it was too late. My car was beyond repair and could only be salvaged for scrap metal.
I’m embarrassed to share this, as that’s no way to treat a car that gets you from A to B and uses the Earth’s finite resources. But stay with me because there’s an important point I want to make, and it’s this. . .
When I was younger, I engaged in several unhealthy lifestyle practices. Whilst I never smoked, took drugs, or consumed alcohol, I ate huge amounts of processed junk food (I didn’t know how to cook).
I also frequently sacrificed sleep to pull all-nighters to complete my assignments (I struggled with procrastination).
My body seemed resilient. It appeared capable of handling the shocks. But over time, I started feeling tired and rundown. Still, I kept pushing myself like my old car. The only time I could rest was when I got sick.
These days, everything’s quite different.
I am physically unable to thrash my body around like an old jalopy.
Something as simple as consuming too much salt or sugar can send my brain spiralling out of control.
I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago when I visited a friend in hospital. Because I was spending a lot of time at the hospital, my usual routines of grocery shopping and cooking from scratch were disrupted.
But then to make matters worse, I was given $80 worth of vouchers to spend at the hospital cafeteria. I thought, “How bad can hospital cafeteria food be?”.
It turns out really bad.
Cheese kranskys (sausages), heaps of salty hot chips, deep-fried chicken, and soft drinks were the main options at this hospital cafeteria.
Unhealthy food seemed completely normalised in this hospital environment. My jaw dropped when I saw a patient order not just one but five cheese kransky sausages!
In this hospital setting, I also started to eat poorly. It was on my third day of eating hot chips from the hospital cafeteria when I noticed that these chips weren’t doing me any favours. I was feeling off my game.
So I decided enough was enough. I gave the remaining hospital food vouchers to a homeless man who was hanging around the cafeteria, desperate for a feed. It was back to home cooked meals for me!
This greasy processed hospital food had a ripple effect on the rest of my life. I slept badly, which impacted my ability to run the next morning (my joints hurt). I felt resistance to using my treadmill desk because everything felt much harder than usual. Since I was moving less, I was more distracted.
I know all this might sound a bit dramatic, especially to those of us who enjoy a few hot chips (e.g., my husband). Given my friend was in a hospital bed and couldn’t walk, I am fully aware of how lucky I am to be able to run in the first place (even with sore joints).
The point I’m trying to make is this . . .
I also know that small decisions, like eating too many hot chips or staying up late, can add up and take their toll on your mind and body. These tiny decisions can have a big impact on the way you feel.
When I was younger, I could eat whatever I wanted and still feel pretty good. Sometimes I’d feel a bit off, but not in a noticeable way.
As Dr Randy J Paterson states in his book How to Be Miserable in Your Twenties:
“In your twenties, some people can do practically anything to their bodies, experience no immediate physical consequences, and feel emotionally more or less well. Random sleep cycle, sedentary lifestyle, lousy diet, 90 percent of the day staring at screen, binge-drinking, isolation, the works. The body doesn’t completely fall apart, and the mind, while not thrilled, hangs on.
Later on, the effect is more immediate. Live exactly the same way at thirty-five, at forty-five, and things don’t go so well. Take a middle-aged car and drive it aggressively down jolting roads, loaded to the max, old oil clogging the engine, and it’s not going to last long. The baseline mood at forty-with no maintenance, no exercise, no dietary adjustment, no stability, and no social life- is misery. ”
Like a car, the human body requires regular basic maintenance. I see this basic maintenance as a collection of small behaviours that leave me feeling calm, grounded, and focused.
Here are a few things I need to do to keep myself running smoothly:
Every now and then, I’ll abandon these behaviours. I’ll have a day where I eat and do whatever I like. I’ll order takeaway, sit on the couch and binge-watch a series until late at night. I usually pay for it the next day, but it also gives me a better appreciation of these healthy practices and what they do for my body and mind.
It’s all about tuning in and noticing how certain things make you feel. For example, when I was in my mid-20s, I noticed every time I ate deep-fried chicken, I experienced sharp stomach pains.
That was like the red warning light on my car dashboard going off in my body. But instead of ignoring it, I paid close attention. Eventually, I decided it wasn’t worth the pain. So I stopped buying greasy deep-fried chicken and eventually went plant-based, which immediately improved my mental and physical health.
There’s no doubt that modern life can be hectic and stressful. When you’re rushing from one thing to another, it’s easy to overlook the basics and ignore the warning signs.
I’m not proud of how I treated my first car, but I learnt from the experience. Now I make sure I get my car serviced regularly. This saves me time, money, and stress in the long run.
Similarly, we need to pay attention to the way in which we look after ourselves. By dedicating time, energy, and attention to the small things that make us feel better, our experience of the present moment becomes richer. As longevity researcher Dan Buettner says, “You can add years to your life and life to your years”.
“Suzuki Swift 1.3 GTi 1990” by RL GNZLZ is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. (used in image 1)
“Scrap yard 22l3” by Snowmanradio at English Wikipedia (Original text: snowmanradio) is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. (used in image 2)
“KFC Wicked Wings” by avlxyz is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. (used in image 5)
I find this so strange because I really enjoy public speaking. And I also have grown to appreciate spiders (my husband did his PhD on trapdoor spiders).
Whether you love it or hate it, public speaking is a valuable life skill. It’s one worth cultivating.
Having delivered hundreds of presentations, I’ve learnt a lot about what you should and shouldn’t do when giving one.
I’ve also learnt that it’s wise to ignore popular public speaking advice that gets thrown around. Cliches like “Imagine everyone in the room is naked”. That’s not going to help!
Over the past 20 years, I’ve had to learn to go with the flow and be prepared for anything when delivering presentations.
Here are a few things I’ve experienced as a public speaker:
And that’s not even the worst of it.
I’m not bitter and twisted about these experiences. As the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca said:
“Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.”
Looking back, I can have a good laugh about them.
Although these experiences were quite gruelling at the time, I am grateful for every one of them. Why? Because they taught me something valuable.
In some strange way, they also boosted my confidence. I came to see myself as someone who could handle (and survive) difficult situations.
Here’s the thing: nobody is born with a knack for public speaking. It’s a skill you need to work on.
You have to get your reps in (reps = talks). Then after each talk, it’s important to stop and reflect on what went well and what you could do differently next time. I’ve found this to be the best way to refine my public speaking skills.
You can also improve by watching other speakers and noting what you like and what irritates you. This is what I’ve done.
As I watch people deliver presentations, I can’t help but notice small adjustments they could make that would dramatically improve their public speaking.
So, what are the common mistakes I see people make when delivering presentations?
Here are eight things I wish people would stop doing when delivering presentations, along with simple fixes for each one.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people start a presentation by saying things like, “Sorry, I finished putting this talk together an hour ago” or “Sorry, I’ve only had 3 hours sleep, so apologies if I don’t make much sense”.
I’m not kidding. These are all comments I’ve heard from academics presenting at conferences.
When you start with an apology, it creates negative momentum. Your audience collectively thinks, “Ugh, here we go…”.
Starting with an apology is also a sure-fire way to destroy your credibility. For the rest of your talk, you’ll be fighting for the listener’s interest and attention!
So, drop the apology. Even if you’ve only had 3 hours of sleep, the audience doesn’t need to know this (plus, they don’t care).
Begin on a positive note and harness all the energy you have for the presentation. Once you’ve wrapped things up, you can treat yourself to a nice, long nap!
Professional public speaker Scott Berkun says:
“ … most lectures are slow one-way trips into sedation.”
He’s not talking about the speed at which you talk. You can speak at a normal pace, but you need to keep things moving.
Don’t start with a long, boring introduction. Keep your introduction short and sweet, especially the introduction about yourself.
Whenever I deliver a talk, I start by saying something like this:
“Hi, I’m Jane. For the last 15 years, I’ve been experimenting with different study strategies: strategies that make learning less painful, less boring, more fun and more effective. Today I’m excited to share some of my favourite strategies with you. ”
Then, I launch straight into providing value (e.g., sharing a strategy or a new idea).
I don’t go into my qualifications, tell a long story about myself, outline all the points I’ll be talking about, or thank the client for having me there. That’s boring. It feels slow and painful.
As Professor BJ Fogg recommends:
“You should move your audience efficiently through (1) new ideas and (2) a range of emotions”.
If you waffle on too much at the beginning (or at any point), you risk losing your audience’s attention.
You’ve probably experienced sitting through presentations where the presenter read word-for-word what was on their slides.
No one walks away from these presentations feeling energised and inspired. Personally, I feel resentful and drained of my life force.
Boredom factor aside, another major problem with having too much text on your slides is that it creates interference. The audience ends up multi-tasking: switching between listening to you speak and reading the text on your slides.
Research shows that multitasking in this way leads to less retention of information. It can also be stressful for the audience.
This is why my presentation slides consist mainly of images. I use very few words (if any) on my slides. This is a deliberate design decision. I want the audience to be focused on what I’m saying rather than reading what’s on the slide next to me.
Whenever I see someone reading speaking points from their phone, I want to swipe it out of their hand.
Your phone needs to be out of sight when you deliver a presentation. Put it on silent and keep it in your bag (or even better, leave it in another room). Please do not touch it or look at it until you’ve finished presenting.
Why do I feel so strongly about phones and public speaking?
Because phones are a barrier to connection with your audience.
In the book The Workshop Survival Guide, Rob Fitzpatrick and Devin Hunt write:
“Consider the negative impact of having dinner with someone who keeps glancing at their phone…holding and checking your phone projects massive disinterest in your audience, even if it was for a workshop relevant reason.”
Instead of reading speaking points off your phone, use palm cards. But keep them small.
When I was 12 years old, I had a public speaking coach who drilled into me that big palm cards weren’t a good look. She would make me trim existing palm cards so they fit perfectly in the palm of my hand and wouldn’t be visible to the audience. I recommend you do the same.
Now, if you’re thinking, “But Jane, I need my phone to keep track of time”, I have an excellent alternative for you: two kitchen timers.
Before I deliver a talk, I set a countdown timer for the presentation duration (this way I can keep an eye on the time and make sure I don’t go over my allocated time slot). I also have another timer within arm’s reach to time exercises, such as pair shares or break activities.
I used to wear a watch to keep track of time, but this required too much mental energy to figure out how much time I had left.
Here’s the thing: presenting to a room full of people takes a lot of mental energy. This means you need to find ways to save your brainpower wherever possible. Using digital timers to keep track of time is an effective method to conserve mental energy.
Being an effective public speaker is all about removing barriers between you and the audience. If there’s a podium that everyone has been presenting behind, don’t be afraid to go against the norm and step out in front of that podium to present.
By performing this simple move, your audience will instantly feel more connected to you.
Some speakers feel constrained by the podium as their laptop or microphone is placed there. But there are simple and effective technologies you can use to free yourself from feeling tied to this spot.
Most venues have handheld microphones you can use. If not, you can project your voice.
How do you deal with being far from your laptop and clicking ahead to the next slide?
Consider investing in a remote clicker (I use this one). Trust me, this will be money well spent.
One thing that can disrupt the flow of a good talk is when a presenter says, “Next slide, please” or “Can you go back a few slides, please?” and then waits for someone near the laptop to click through the slides.
A clicker allows you to experience total freedom as you deliver a presentation. You can move around the space and maintain control of your slides.
Perfect is boring. Perfect stops you from growing and trying new things.
Think of a lot of TED talk speakers. They are often coached to have a certain polished style.
But the best TED talks are when people bring their own style to the table. They don’t try to be like the other TED speakers. They are fully themselves.
At the end of the day, people want to connect with a human they can relate to. Perfect is unrelatable.
So, don’t fall into the perfection trap. Instead, follow Scott Berkun’s advice and “avoid the mistake of trying to make no mistakes”.
Accept that you will make mistakes. And when you make a mistake, don’t take yourself too seriously. Laugh it off and keep things moving (see point 2).
You must practice your talk before giving it. Please don’t do a dry run on your audience.
In the book Confessions of a Public Speaker, Scott Berkun says:
“Practice until it feels good. Anything you plan to do in your talk must be practised. If you get a new laptop, remote or presentation software, give those things runs well in advance.”
Let me be clear: you are not practising to be perfect. You are practising so you know how to transition from one point to the next.
You are practising so you are confident with your content. The more confident you are, the easier it is to connect with your audience (and deal with hecklers).
Practise sessions also allow you to safely make mistakes and correct them.
So, when it comes to practising your talk, when and where should you do this?
If you can, practice in the conditions of the actual talk. Here’s an example from my own life . . .
A few months ago, I had to deliver an online session for a fashion company based in New York City. This meant I would be presenting at 11pm (not my usual presenting time).
I’m not exactly a night owl, so I was nervous about how I’d go about presenting at this late hour.
A week before the talk, I decided to do a practice session at 11pm. I got up from bed and noticed I could barely string a sentence together. Uh-oh. What was I going to do?
I decided to try having a long power nap at 8pm, wake up, and then do 20 minutes of exercise before practising the presentation.
Through trial and error, I discovered a sequence of behaviours that worked, allowing me to present late at night. When it came to doing the actual presentation, I felt alert and energised. I was able to present from 11pm to 12:20am with relative ease and good energy.
But had I not practised under those conditions, the talk could have very easily been a flop.
It’s normal to feel nervous before a talk. However, you need to find ways to release that nervous energy before presenting, so you appear natural and at ease with the audience.
If you’re visibly nervous, this can make your audience feel on edge and concerned for your wellbeing. This isn’t a great experience for them, and there’s a good chance it will interfere with their ability to absorb what you have to say.
I’ve found that the best way to release nervous energy is to move my body on the morning of a presentation.
A 20-minute run or ride usually does the job at releasing 90% of my nervous energy. Another 5% is usually cleared with a 3-minute deep breathing exercise.
As for the final 5%? I accept that some nerves before a talk are a good thing. I choose to view those nerves as excitement rather than fear.
The final 5% of nervous energy keeps me alert and on my toes, ready for anything that may come my way during the presentation.
The key is to stay in the moment when you’re presenting. Focus on what’s happening in the here and now. Don’t worry about the next part of your talk or the bit you stuffed up earlier. If you can just be in the present and concentrate on what you need to say at this moment, it will help keep your anxiety levels down.
I recommend experimenting with different practices to see what works best for you in terms of releasing nervous energy.
Public speaking skills are like a muscle: the more you work them, the better and more dynamic you’ll be when delivering presentations. There are simple things you can do (and stop doing) to hone and refine your public speaking skills.
The most important thing is that you don’t focus on delivering a perfect presentation. Making mistakes is inevitable. What matters most is that you learn from the experience and continue to grow and improve your speaking skills.
My public speaking journey has been a wild and exciting ride. When you approach speaking with a playful spirit and accept the fact that you can’t control everything, it doesn’t feel so scary. It feels more like a fun adventure.
“Duble herma of Socrates and Seneca Antikensammlung Berlin 03” by Calidius is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. (used in Image 2)
“Windows 7 robot” by randychiu is licensed under CC BY 2.0. (used in Image 6)
I experienced this firsthand when I was an exchange student living abroad. When I was 16, I travelled to the south of Italy to live in a small village called Spinazzola.
This had been my dream, and my parents forked out over $2,000 to make it come true (thanks, Mum and Dad!).,
I wanted to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I set off with an ambitious goal to come back fluent in Italian.
Before I left for Italy, several people had told me that I would pick up the language “just like that!”. I was told that I’d be fluent in no time.
I took their words as gospel truth.
So I became concerned when, after just a few days in Italy, I wasn’t speaking like the locals. I thought, “Why am I not fluent in Italian by now? What’s going on? Is something wrong with me?”
Panic and worry set in. I became stuck in an anxiety loop. Thoughts rolled through my head, such as:
“Am I learning the language fast enough?”
“Am I going to come back knowing enough?”
“How will I compare to the other Australian exchange students? What if my Italian sucks?”
This anxiety spilled over into almost every amazing experience I found myself in: a trip to the local pizzeria with my new friends from school, family dinners, and day trips with other exchange students.
To counteract my fears, I doubled down on my study, carrying a mini pocket Italian dictionary with me everywhere I went (this was well before mobile phones and Google Translate existed).
About a month into my student exchange experience, out of the blue, a young man snatched the pocket dictionary out of my hands.
This man was called Gianluca. He was my host sister’s 18-year-old cousin who had travelled with his parents from Milan to spend Christmas with my host family.
Gianluca was a character. He had wild, voluminous curly hair, a cheeky smile, and a sense of style.
Gianluca was also a slightly arrogant man. He would say whatever was on his mind, seemingly without caring if he upset or offended others.
For example, one of my first interactions with Gianluca was when I sat down on a stool, thereby exposing my white socks. He gasped loudly and said in Italian:
“Jane Christine, white socks with black shoes is a fashion crime! No, No, No!”
I took his words very seriously and have never repeated this fashion faux pas.
But it was the moment when Gianluca snatched the dictionary out of my hands that I remember more than anything else. This moment had a profound impact on the rest of my exchange experience, and I am deeply grateful to him for that.
It was late in the evening. A group of us had been talking and playing Italian card games. Remember, these were simpler times (there were very few mobile phones back in those days and no social media).
I was struggling to follow the conversation in Italian, so I picked up my dictionary to look up a word, but Gianluca stopped me. He grabbed hold of the dictionary and said:
“Put the dictionary down. You don’t need this! Just be here in this moment!”
Gianluca was trying to tell me to relax. To stop hiding behind my dictionary. To stop trying so hard to learn Italian.
He was right. Sometimes, when you try too hard and are too fixated on achieving a future goal, it can get in the way of actually doing what you need to do (in my case, learning Italian).
Oliver Burkeman writes about this in his book Meditations for Mortals. He argues that there are benefits in not trying so hard. He writes:
“The less I’m trying to get something out of an experience, the more I find I can get into it, and the more I can be present for other people involved.”
Those first few weeks in Italy, I had been trying too hard to master the language and get the most out of my student exchange experience. I was trying to frantically get to a place where I could tick the ‘Fluent in Italian’ box.
I can now see clearly that by trying so hard to learn Italian, I was sacrificing my enjoyment in the present moment. I was also undermining my ability to learn Italian.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “La Dolce Vita”. This directly translates to “The Sweet Life”.
But what it means is a relaxed, easy-going approach to life. An approach where you enjoy the simple things: a hearty, simple meal shared with your family, a reviving nap in the middle of the day, and an evening stroll (‘passeggiatta’) down the main street with friends.
Whenever I picked up my dictionary, which was frequently during those first few weeks in Italy, I embodied the polar opposite of “La Dolce Vita”. I transformed a potentially fun, rich moment into an anxiety-fuelled study session.
I also took myself out of the present moment. And effective learning (and living) is all about being present.
Gianluca’s words – “Put the dictionary down!” – hit home. That evening, I put my pocket dictionary away and gave up on trying to master Italian in a day. I took the pressure off myself and relaxed into the experience.
Soon after, I asked my host mother Rosa if I could join a local exercise class. I knew that movement always made me feel better. It relaxed me. I was so happy when Mamma Rosa agreed.
At this class, I’d slip on some special socks over my shoes and slide from side to side on a slippery mat (a slide board).
I took this crazy exercise class with a bunch of middle-aged Italian women wearing spandex and leg warmers (it was Winter). Occasionally, someone would lose control on their slide board and fall to the ground.
For 60 minutes, I was able to get out of my head and get grounded in my body. This exercise class, as strange as it was, made all the difference. It relieved my anxiety and fears straightaway. It calmed my mind and made me feel like I was doing okay.
Ironically, once I felt calmer and less pressured to ‘learn Italian’, I started to pick things up. Learning the language became easier and easier. It didn’t happen in an instant. But it was happening. Slowly but surely, my language skills improved.
When I came back to Australia, I hadn’t mastered Italian (can you ever really master anything?), but I could hold a solid conversation with my nonna in Australia.
The whole student exchange experience fundamentally changed me. I learnt so much more than just Italian.
I learnt the power of a good nap after lunch (strictly enforced by my host mother), the importance of connection and community, and that if you’re having pasta, you must mop up the last bit of sauce with some bread (this Italian tradition is called ‘scarpetta’).
But I also learned not to try so hard. Instead of rushing to get to a specific destination, it’s okay to just explore, learn, and grow at your own pace.
“Mappa ferr Spinazzola-Barletta” (Used in Image 1) by Arbalete is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
