How To Be Insanely Productive Even with ADHD w/ Dr. Jeff Karp | EP #111

31:14People want meaning in their lives. And so this was not a financial transaction with these folks. No, it wasn't at all. In fact, I mean, when I was meeting with them, it was really at the highest possible risk stage of the projects we were just beginning. But I think that the people in the community also felt like not Not only that they were sort of felt invested in the process because I was taking their advice seriously, but there was also this potential for the future that if things started to work out that they might be able to be involved in the translation process. And that's what started to happen is that as we advanced things in the lab, I kept in touch with people.

31:57I sought their advice kind of over and over again. And then when something got kind of ready to be translated, there was a whole bunch of of people who already knew about those projects. And that, I felt, is also one of the key things is that one of the hardest things in spinning out companies is finding a CEO who has capabilities and the network and the adaptability and the relationship component. And what I realized is that when I started looking around what sort of the standard process for spinning a company out from academia was to push the project as far as possible and then to go find a CEO.

32:34But what I discovered was if I could meet with potential entrepreneurs, potential CEOs, the future companies early on, involve them, then there was almost like a number of potential CEOs that I already was interacting with, I already had a relationship with them. We were circling and felt ownership. Yes. Yeah, and feeling ownership. And by the way, you know, you're a serial entrepreneur as I am. And until you find that CEO, you're the CEO, and you'll get just pulled into the details and you need that amazing person. I love this. You mentioned the idea of your life's been about asking questions.

33:18And one of the things I speak about to my kids and to the CEO as I mentor is the single most important thing to do is ask great questions. That is everything. Everything, yeah. Well, there's actually maybe just three points that I can share on the questions. The first is actually between the second and third grade when I had this transformational experience with the tutor who said, how did you think about that? That sort of created this newfound awareness for me. And I realized that when I asked questions, that I couldn't really pay attention in class, but anytime I asked a question, I could hyper -focus for a few moments afterwards.

34:02And whatever it was said to me, imprinted in my mind, I could connect it to other things I knew, and I could recall it later. And so I discovered very quickly after that moment that questions were key to my learning. Interesting. And that's why as I navigated my undergrad, my grad school, I stopped going to a lot of my lectures, and I would just focus on figuring out questions that I could ask other students or go and ask the professor, you know, so questions became the key to my learning. If I was in a class where I couldn't, a lot of lectures were so big that they didn't allow questions. So I stopped going to those lectures because it just, you know, I needed to ask questions.

34:43So that's like one, so I discovered the discovery of questions being important was sort of like happened in elementary school. But then what happened is I got into grad school and it was like I was about to learn this whole new avenue of asking questions, this whole new level. And what happened was that academics typically go into seminars and you were these invited speakers and you sit there and I started going when I entered grad school at University Toronto. And then at the end there's the question and answer period. And people start asking questions and I was blown away by the level of questions that people are asking and those questions weren't coming to me.

35:24And these questions were going right to the heart of what the seminar speaker was talking about. And I almost started shaming myself like, why aren't these questions coming to me? Because I had focused my whole life on asking questions. And so I started to think, you know, what could I do to develop my skill? Because again, it's like I know that if I'm not good at something, it's because I haven't engaged the process that works for me yet. And I started So to think about it, and I realized that there was potentially an opportunity for pattern recognition. So the next seminar I went to, everyone was focused on what the speaker was saying, but I was focused on something different.

35:58Faster. I was focused on the questions that were being asked, and I wrote them all down. I went to seminar after seminar, and I wrote the questions that people in the audience were asking, pages and pages for like two or three months. And then one day I just stopped and I looked at it, and next day I'm looking, next day I'm just sort of thinking about it and then boom, light bulb moment. I realized that all the questions that were being asked fit under four or five different categories. One of them was, was the experiment working? Did the person act, did the scientists have the right controls?

36:30Right. You know, some experiments are really complicated. Another was, are the results important? So if they were developing a diagnostic for blood and they did all their work in saltwater saline and the results looked amazing, you know, it's relevant. It's not relevant exactly. And then so another one was did the speaker overstate their conclusions? Did the data support what they were concluding a lot of the time it actually doesn't? Then there were questions around statistics and there were some other questions. So once I had that awareness of the motivation behind asking the questions, the next seminar I went to, it was like I had my detective hat on.

37:05I was taking notes. All the questions that others were asking before are now coming to me. And not only that, I'm like tapped into my curiosity. Like I'm because I'm thinking of questions, I'm also thinking of the next potential experiment that that person could perform or other applications of their work so I'm able to tap into my creativity. And so what I realize is that questioning is a skill. Regardless of where you're at, you can always move that skill forward. And I brought that to social settings as well where there's always like, you know, early in my life I really struggled socially to connect with people.

37:41And so what I started to do was observe what are the people who are really good at connecting with people and you know the schmuzers and social settings What questions are they asking and I start listening to those questions and then I start asking those questions You're training up your neural net. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's it's a beautiful thing. You know questions are such a powerful part of our lives I mean I learn so I use questions For example when I'm I'm going to give a presentation I will write out the questions that I want to ask myself and then present answering the questions I've asked myself in that structure.

38:21And then for me, when I'm on stage, the most fun I ever have is the Q &A that follows a keynote. And a lot of times I'll just forego slides and forego everything and just have a conversation with the audience. My favorite time is like, I'm going to say a few provocative things up front and then I jump into the audience and I challenge them. Call bullshit, tell me what you disagree with. What are you concerned about and just get into a conversation because it's so more, unfortunately when we go into a lecture mode otherwise it just glosses over people and them out. Yeah, I totally relate to that.

39:03In fact, one of the things that I like to do in my laboratory is when people are presenting data, I like them to put a title with a very bold conclusion. That may even overstate what the results, but that will provoke a reaction in the room. So we get the best thinking to happen at that moment versus just watching somebody speak. And there's no reason to... What does this mean? What does the data mean and its best possible case? I want to take you to what your massive transformative purpose is now and on the lab side, we'll talk about the book side a little bit. And what is, do you have a moonshot or a set of moonshots?

39:48We're, you know, a defined a moonshot is going 10 times bigger in the world where everyone else is moving at 10%. Right? Where you want to just make, you know, to use jobs words make a dent in the universe. What is it that drives you there? Right at this moment. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, you know, really it's about it's about the book and we'll come back to that one on focus on your science a little bit first. Yeah. Well, for me, I feel like the the moonshot is really in training and in trying to I feel like I've spent so much time in deconstructing problem definitions and creating an ever evolving process for solving problems.

40:35And I would love to bring that to the world in the most massive way possible. So the learnings that you've had and doing the successes you've had, I was talking to in the process of manufacturing or making it live on. And so it's like, it's all of the processes that you've been developing that you think of as the most valuable assets you've been creating. Is that true? Yeah, I think that's it. And I think a big part of that is problem definition. Like for example, when I look at the X Prize RFA's, I'm very inspired by the problem definitions because to me the way to make the biggest impact in the world is to focus on problem definition.

41:32And that can then mobilize the problem solvers to come in. Many who which are not able to really define the problems, but once they see a defined problem, they can contribute their skills and their creativity to solving it. And what I see in the world is that a lot of the problems are not well -defined. and they're ambiguous. And so what ends up happening is that they're great sort of maybe discoveries or science that is done, but that is not translated. The goal of a lot of these initiatives is outwardly stated as translation, but yet the problem definition is not defined in a way that the problem can be solved or that you maximize potential for the solution.

42:17So I think that needs to be moved forward. Yeah, I think in the entrepreneur world that's also defining a product market fit, becoming really clearly defined about what the market needs and what you're delivering. And... Yeah, like one example, just to throw it out there is, it's like in an academic lab, you know, for trying to think of a solution for something, we might say, okay, we're gonna have a drug delivery system and we're gonna put like, you know, three or four different molecules to deliver. in there and each one has a purpose and this sounds really great. But then if you look at it from a translational angle, that becomes extraordinarily complex.

42:58It becomes so risky to do and even like, you know, the clinical trial of having individual arms for each of the agents and there's the complexity of quality control and, you know, all of these things. And it just to me, there's all these amazing problem solvers who are thinking that, like that are missing this concept of radical simplicity for being the guardrails for bringing their science to people in the most impactful, most efficient way possible. And to me, there's almost like this process we're not formally trained in science in terms of how we could impact the world. And I think that because I've focused for many years on trying to figure that out, and I'm still trying to figure it out, trying to make it more efficient.

43:51And there's always things we encounter that are big unknowns. I just feel how do we bring that process to the scientific community in the most impactful way so that people can start thinking about, if we're gonna focus, for example, on an academic sort of exploratory project, it's okay to have a 10 step synthesis to create something, to test, to question, to, you know, that's fine. But if it's a translational project and it's a 10 step synthesis, you know, most of the time that's not okay, that's far too complex. Now, it might be okay if you can create it, you know, get massive investment and, you know, like it's still possible, but it's so risky to advance something like that.

44:42It's sort of like, okay, how do we take that 10 step process and turn it into one step? That's how I think you switch from Exploratory to a translational project. Yeah, for sure. I want to dive down and Explore one of your companies one of your products. In fact, we've got one right here called profy Which I love and thank you for this What what's the story behind profit? Where did it begin? Where did this seed for this originate? So when COVID hit, and what is it? Yeah. When COVID hit, we were developing a nasal spray to treat multiple sclerosis. There's a lot of immune cells in the nasal lining, and we had developed a platform spray that could attach to the lining of the nose, stay there for long periods of time, and deliver drugs to those immune cells and we started to get some pretty interesting results.

45:41COVID hit and we asked this question every single project in the lab, how can we help? And we started to discover based on previous reports and some new science that was being developed that COVID spread via droplets. They stayed in the air for a long period of time even after someone infected left the room that these drops. So the six foot rule was not actually going to be a valid option. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, some arbitrariness to that to the six feet. But we got to start somewhere. We got to put something in the ground and then sort of use that as a way to discover how we might change it.

46:21So we also started to learn that COVID combined to goblet cells that are in the nasal lining. And that's a major anchor point. In fact, we started to understand that many respiratory pathogens actually anchor and get, you know, kind of take hold in the nasal lining. That's the major entry point into the body. And so we started to think, okay, how can we help? And we thought, okay, could we develop a three -prong approach for creating a nasal spray that could effectively capture respiratory droplets that could prevent a barrier for the virus to cross the epithelium of the nasal lining, and could we also neutralize the virus and potentially bacteria when it binds to this spray?

47:12And so what we did is we also, in the concept, we sort of applied this concept of radical simplicity because we didn't want to include drugs in it, because we knew if we put drugs in it, that it was gonna take six, eight, ten years to bring this to market. And so we said, the guardrails were, we're only going to use agents that are on the generally recognized as safe list or have previously previously been used as excipients, pharmaceutical excipients, in nasal sprays. And so we looked at that entire landscape and we started sort of looking at the individual components. There's preservatives in nasal sprays that can prevent bacterial growth.

47:48There's surfactants in nasal sprays. Surfactants can, you know, soap is highly effective for most viruses and bacteria, if you kind of wash your hands long enough, you kill most things. And so we started to experiment looking at hundreds of different combinations of agents that we thought might sort of achieve these properties. And we discovered a formulation where we got in laboratory conditions, 99 .99 % kill of COVID -19, H1N1, influenza A and B, adenovirus, RSV, E. coli, and a formative pneumonia. This was with an infectious disease researcher that we teamed up with at the Bringham. And then what we also did is we administered 10 times the lethal dose of H1N1 via nasal drops to a mouse, and they all the mice, they don't do well, they all die.

48:45But if we preadminister the prophy formulation, they all survive. and we saw minimal viral load in the lungs. That's extraordinary. So what we did is we teamed up with two regulatory advisors, one Peter Hut, who is previously the general counsel at the FDA, another regulatory advisor, and then an international toxicology consulting firm. They all agreed that the agents that we had in Profe were safe and that we could regulate this as a cosmetic. We can't make strong claims about this product, that we can talk about the science that we've conducted in the lab and the article that the science that we've been doing, we've put out into the public access so anyone can see our data and we've submitted it for peer review so it's out for peer review right now.

49:30So when did this become available? So I launched the product at the near future summit in October. It was amazing conference, yes. Yeah, yeah, so I was... So October of last year. of last year, what that was 23. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this sounds like what everyone should have on their shelves. And now I have this. Can I just try it? For sure. Yeah. So, what is happening as, so what's in here, surfactant? So we have, yeah, there's a few ingredients that are in there. Profit, everyday nasal spray. So this is actually something that you would recommend to Rose a prophylactic everyday use. Yeah, I before you got an airplane when your kids are sick at home.

50:20Exactly. Yeah, before a meeting, before you go to an event, a concert. So I take it twice a day when I get up in the morning and then midday. And actually, we have some data that's emerging from the lab that this may be effective for allergies as well to prevent allergens from getting, so kind of creating a barrier to allergens. So the data actually is quite compelling and we're still doing some experiments to. I think this is sort of a hepa filter for your nasal cavity. I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, super easy, pleasant, nothing negative. Yeah, yeah, it's like a gel composition.

51:08Most of it's actually water. So there's you know, it's like 2 % gel and other components. So I'm just thinking about this because it seems like this is extraordinarily simple, effective, but you can't make medical claims. What can you say about this? Well, what's on the box is kind of what we could say and we're sort of experimenting with that as well. And we do have plans to investigate this more rigorously in people. And we're just sort of in the process. Is this available online or? Yeah, you can purchase it online. What's it cost by the way? It cost $20 for a month's supply. So that would be two sprays a day, you know, one in each nostril, so for 30 days or so.

52:03I have my longevity platinum trips that I give out products. And I need to put this in everybody's bags. Now this is, so I remember University of Washington has a protein design labs and they been talking about a nasal spray for something that would bind the spike protein and disable it in that regard. But this doesn't work in that way. No, this works, I think, it's similar to how soap works essentially. So we're disrupting the membranes of the viruses and bacteria, and that can neutralize them. And so it basically reduces the load that your immune system has to do to fight. Exactly. I kind of think of protection in layers.

52:57So, masks will provide a certain level of protection dependent on the masks. I actually do a lot of work with masks. When COVID hit, I co -led this initiative to create a backup plan for N95 masks. So just in case the hospital system ran out of masks. And we made a lot of interesting sort of observations, which is when people wear generally a surgical mask, that the mass material is quite good at filtering out COVID and other pathogens, the problem is that it only filters about 40 or 50 % of the air because there's gaps that occur in the mass. So a lot of the air that you're breathing in and out is actually not being filtered.

53:39And that's where N95 comes in. And we actually, one of the technologies that we also developed during COVID was we developed a surgical, we took a surgical mask, which is readily available. And you know, it has a wire on the top. We added wires to the sides and the bottom of the mask so that you can face fit it like an N95. And then we created this flap on the inside. So if you cough, the flap opens up and captures the cough more efficiently. And then we put these little kind of additions here so that you could cinch the strap to make it tight, like to have a really good fit. You know, we ran a mask competition at X -Prize.

54:21We asked the wrong question, right? We were asking, we overspecified, because we asked for competition to design a new mask that would be more effective, manufacturable, and so forth. What we didn't ask was create a mechanism that was cheap and affordable and easy to filter out. Because this would have been an even better solution.

54:48So your process, you found a, you floated this, you spun this out as a company, found a CEO. How long was that process going from the idea to the product and then getting it launched as a company? So we started working on this in 2020. So I think it was about three years for us to, for the discovery phase, the iteration, all the experiments we did, you know, the formulation, then to find a CEO, to find an angel investor in New York. So we raised a million dollars for it through a single investor, and then to find manufacturers to, you know, and build the right model systems for testing and then to eventually launch the product.

55:38Amazing. How's it doing so far? Yes, doing great. It's doing really great. We haven't really put much into marketing. It's more just sort of word of mouth right now. Yeah. And... And where do people go? What website, can they order it from? It's just profy spray .com is the website and Can you get it on Amazon as well? Yeah, you can also get it on Amazon. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah Amazing. Did you see the movie Oppenheimer? If you did Did you know that besides building the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Labs that they spent billions on on biodefense weapons, the ability to accurately detect viruses and microbes by reading their RNA.

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57:44You'll find it at vioM .com slash Peter. You've been playing in the AI world. And I have to imagine that every biologist, every biomedical engineer, every medical technologist is seeing AI as a whole new set of tools. How do you think about AI? when did you start playing how you incorporating it into your research and your company formation? Yeah, so I mean AI is, I use it more, I would say personally, than in the lab so far. We do have a project in the lab where there's a platform that we've started using that kind of takes all the omics data and allows us to mine it in a very efficient way. So we can identify new targets or new molecules to target old targets.

58:37And so we've been using that right now in the hearing loss space to develop new therapies that can functionally restore hearing. So that's a kind of an ongoing project that's early, but you know, we're gaining momentum on that. So what there's a moment in time where you say we're going to go and invest time in that. What led you to focusing on hearing loss? So what happened was we have always been interested in regenerative medicine and a lot of... You and I have that in common? Yes, yes. A lot of my training was in the area of mesenchymal stem cells or mesenchymal stromal cells. Would you define what that means for folks?

59:22Sure. So these are cells that exist pretty much in all areas of the body. There's debate over the nomenclature and how to define them, but essentially they derive from pericites which exist on blood vessels within all tissues. They're in the bone marrow, they're in fat. that people might be familiar with stromal vascular fraction. They're one of the core cells that have function in that type of a therapy. And so these are adult stem cells that are with us for life. They're very easy to isolate, to culture expand, to freeze, to administer. and they've actually been quite challenging to bring to market as a therapy because you can apply them both as an atologist approach as well as an allergenic approach.

1:00:24Right now, one of the things we're doing at my company, Fountain and Partnership with another of my company's circularity is we're beginning to bank adult mesenchymal stem cells. and just having that on, you know, sort of an available asset for people over time. Yeah. So, so go on, please. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, so, so, Mazingamal stem cells are really interesting because they're almost like living anti -inflammatories. And so they have this immunomodulatory secretome that can down -regulate inflammation. Inflammation is a component of pretty much every disease. And so there's been a lot of work that's been done to demonstrate mizankimostem cells have potential to treat many possible diseases.

1:01:20Although there have been few cases where they have actually been able to be brought over the finish line and controlled randomized placebo -controlled trials, which are in regenerative medicine very difficult trials to run because there's a massive placebo effect. In fact, I was just talking to somebody about this yesterday. One of the major trials that was done several years ago was in graft versus host disease, extremely debilitating from bone marrow transplantation. And if you administer mizankamal stem cells, you tend to see a very significant response, not just in the experimental group, but also in the placebo group, which is amazing.

1:02:00Some of these trials showed over 50 % response rate. Find it, buddy. Amazing. Amazing. And so I've actually been looking into that, and I think that, you know, we don't fully understand the placebo effect, but one thing that really intrigued me was something I read about how, you know, when we were all hunters and gatherers, 10 to 15 ,000 years ago and weighed before that as well, how there would be this sort of evolutionary pressure or sort of aspect of life where if there was a treatment developed or a ritual performed and when people believed collectively that there was going to be benefit that that actually would have benefit, that we could, so it's almost like if we believed in an outcome, if we believed in the positive potential of what was being performed, even if the science wasn't there, and if there wasn't a particular mechanism of action, you know, in the way that we describe it now in Pharma, just the belief that something could help, there's some reason from an evolutionary a perspective that that can actually work in causing us benefit.

1:03:12And I think it's just, to me, it's like tapping into the life force that we don't fully understand it right now, but it's there. I mean, if you just look at these so many incredible trials where the response rate is just massive, especially in regenerative medicine with stem cells and other types of related therapies where placebo effect is just ginormous and it makes getting experimental approaches difficult to get through medicine. And before we started speaking, you were asking about FDA and how you'd run it differently. I really think there's something there. Like I really think in some ways, and it's challenging, but in some ways I feel it's unfair.

1:03:54All of these massive placebo effects that have helped people. If you were trying to weed it out instead of to your apple fire. Yeah, yeah, like there's there's got to be a better way and I think if we just set that as a goal Perhaps that's even an x -price to try to understand how could we actually commercialize or you know the the placebo effect? One of my favorite stats that I wrote about in my longevity book was a study done with 69 ,000 women and 1500 guys one of the few studies with mostly women that showed optimists were living 15 % longer than pessimists which again is the impact of mindset.

1:04:34Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, because I was thinking about this this morning, I was walking along the boardwalk, and I was thinking that, you know, like, I think, living with a very positive mindset for some people almost seems like a fantasy. You know, sometimes when you talk to, I've heard I've talked to other people, and they kind of say, oh, you're living in a fantasy world, but you know, it struck me this morning as I was thinking about it, is that it's almost the same if you're thinking negatively, right? Because it often things aren't inherently negative. They're just negative in your mind. We perceive it.

1:05:12We give it meaning. We are meaning -making machines constantly. You know, it's interesting that we are, our mindsets determine what we do with a datum. We either it's an attack or an opportunity. You know, it's a scarcity or a Trant a opportunity to create and transform into abundance. She just one more thing to add that I feel like we're we're at this snapshot in time, right? snapshot in evolution where we have this Survival wiring that really served us well 10 15 ,000 years ago 100 ,000 years ago really served us well We have and then with that there's like this impulsiveness. There's this kind of reactiveness very much focused on survival, but we also have this significant consciousness, this ability to leverage our prefrontal cortex, our neuroplasticity to be able to plan emotionally regulate to, you know, we can actually decrease the size of our amygdala through practicing rituals that that allow us to be more mindful and, you know, in a relaxed state.

1:06:25And I feel like over time, what doesn't serve us well, this impulsivity, the survival wiring, we'll get, we'll evolve out, but we're not at that point yet. And so it's kind of up to us individually to have strategies in our life where we can really tap into our prefrontal cortex. And, you know, neuroplasticity, our brains are constantly rewiring regardless of what we're doing, but we can actually be intentional about that rewiring by using the conscious part of our brains, and I think it's through rituals and practices that we can actually tap into that. Yeah, but I love that. Our default wiring is fear and scarcity, because that would save us 100 ,000 years ago.

1:07:05And fear and scarcity doesn't work for us today. It puts you in a very bad situation, a bad place. And I think actively choosing your mindset and shaping. And the way we do this is our brains are neural nets, and you shape a neural net by showing it example after example after example. And if you're willing to take the time like you've been doing to say I'm going to, and this is from the work I do in a program I've been developing called mindset mastery, which is I want people to develop a purpose driven mindset, a abundance mindset, a longevity mindset, a moonshot mindset, because these are the mindsets are going to serve us, a curiosity mindset, right?

1:07:47And I think we can actively shape our mindsets, and it's the differentiator between success and failure and happiness and sadness, and all of the things that we care about. And interestingly enough, right? Genetically, we're very similar to hominids 20, 30, 40 ,000 years ago. You could probably grab a population, put them through our educational system and have some percentage go to MIT and Harvard. But society is what's been sort of shifting. And I think we need to be very careful about how this societal overlay is being shaped going forward. What do you think about that? Well, I think that it's an indulgence to live in negativity.

1:08:40Interesting. I think that because the negativity often is the default mode for most people who listen to conversations and coffee shops or restaurants or... Yes. Yeah. And I feel like it's an indulgence... Or the media who just abuses your amygdala for their own financial benefit. Absolutely. And to that point, I think that I'm kind of going back to AI. One of the thoughts that I've been having is that technology can impact our brains, not just functionally, but also the structure of our brains. And so the hippocampus, the gray matter, can densify or we can reduce the density, depending on what media we engage, what we consume, what technologies we embrace.

1:09:32And I think that we need to steady more how technology not only impacts the function of our brains and the rewiring of our brains, but also how it impacts the structure of parts of our brains like the amygdala, like our hippocampus, and use that as potentially biometrics for how we move technology forward. And I think that what really strikes me is that I like to think about what am I up against in society? And to me there's two things that really stand out. One is $900 billion every year with a B is spent on marketing and advertising to hijack our attention and to serve us what's important. And the algorithms that were served and who's ever behind the algorithms is essentially controlling us.

1:10:21And one of the major reasons is because the second thing that we spoke a little bit about that we're against is this wiring that we have, this primitive wiring for survival, that where our brains also, another component of that is our brains gravitate to a low energy brain state and our bodies gravitate to a low energy body state. It would not have made sense to exercise 15 ,000 years ago because we were outside working hard to survive. And even our brains, it wouldn't have made sense to engage in things that would diminish our cognitive capacity. We need to keep that open for survival scenarios, you know, to complete resources, to problem solve and figure out a way to survive survival.

1:11:07And so these two things, when you bring them together, what happens is that if you don't have rituals and practices in your life to really activate your conscious part of your brain, then you essentially just become robots. And so as you're serve technology, you know, people are serve technology, I think that's one of the biggest challenges is that the people developing technologies we really need to deeply understand and every day remind ourselves that when we serve this technology to humanity, the majority of people who are not engaged in rituals and practices to activate their conscious brain are just going to be robots and do whatever they're told, whatever the algorithms are surfed to them.

1:11:53They're just going to live those algorithms and we need to start to better understand what the consequences of that are. Yeah, I think that is potentially one of the benefits that AI could serve as a warning system for you. Right. So one of the things along this line is we develop these cognitive biases. right? Because our brain cannot process the amount of information coming our way. So we are reactive, we have a, you know, there's a hundred cognitive biases, familiarity bias, bias, you know, a recency bias, negativity bias, and these biases basically allow us to make very quick snap judgments and not use the precious resources of our 100 -nural, you know, 100 million nerves in our cognitive capacity.

1:12:46But I want an AI that I can turn on to say, Peter, you're being manipulated, you're being used, you're being lied to, you're overweighting information from this person because you like the way they look or because they've gotten the same school as you, but the reality is let's look at this information over here. So I mean, there's the counterveiling force that could be offered by AI. I think a Jarvis is my AI wrap around, but is my interface with the world. If you want to, if you want to, I want to dive as we close out into your book, Lit. And we got a little bit of its origin in your childhood, but what's the, let's jump into that.

1:13:43Why do you write it? What's its message? Yeah, please. So I wrote it because my life has really been a living laboratory and I have developed a lot of tools and strategies to navigate all sorts of scenarios. and I really wanted to share those tools with the world. That's really the kind of the origin motivation for writing lit. My wife reminded me that even when we met, in over 20 years ago, I carried around a little book and would just write thoughts that came to me kind of like journaling but more like around like processes, really focused on tools and things that were coming to me on a daily basis.

1:14:29and so that's kind of the origin of lit, but it evolved and I interviewed 40 people, including Nobel Prize winners and Olympic medalists and social justice leaders and indigenous leader and astronauts and people from my laboratory and really just started to ask questions around how do you be intentional, how do you make decisions, how do you make deliberate decisions in your lives, how do you intercept patterns? were these questions the same for every person you interviewed? They were different, yeah, different. And just sort of looking for stories to tell in lit that might connect with different audiences and resonate with people in different ways.

1:15:16So share a few of your favorite stories? Sure. So, well, one of the people that I interviewed, Nelson Delas, five times US memory champion, and he - I could use that. Yeah. I think we all could use that. So he spoke about how when he was younger, he didn't have a good memory at all. He wasn't able to memorize things, and it didn't come easy to him. Someone in his family developed Alzheimer's, and that really created a pain point for him to find ways to improve his memory. And so he was motivated. And he sort of practiced a number of different techniques, one that he landed on called the memory palace, where essentially you envision, let's say a house that a chair your childhood home.

1:16:00And you have a lot of the stuff he does is with a deck of cards. And so someone will give him a deck that's completely randomly shuffled and he will go through and look at the cards. And I forget the exact time, but it's like in a minute and whatever he can memorize a complete deck of cards. And so maybe it's like 40 seconds or I forget what the exact number is, But and so what you do is you assign a card for each person in your life. So like his mom might be like the queen of hearts and his dad, the king of diamonds. And so he based on what he sees with the cards, who walk through his house and sort of, you know, put the card in different rooms and different picture frames and stuff.

1:16:43So now how he he talked about how he got better and better and better at it. and I asked him about the monotony of that process and how did he, you know, practicing can get very boring at times and hard to bring yourself to practicing. And he said that he, you know, he talked about a variety of techniques that he used to bring in fresh energy into that, like, you know, by adding, like mixing things up or adding cards in or taking cards out, or like he just had ways of kind of changing it up. So it would always create, you know, be interesting and intriguing for him. Ginner's mind as you speak about.

1:17:18I think it's the beginner's mind. Yeah. Yeah. I've been actually reading a lot about the beginner's mind recently and So anyhow what happened was he he tells the story about how he had gone tried to climb Everest twice and failed to reach the summit both times and He trained again for a third time and he was on his way up He went into the death zone where you know oxygen levels are so low. You can't survive for very long He was able to memorize a deck of cards in under a minute in the death zone and because he was practicing the cards He realized as he continued to kind of make his way up that he didn't, he wasn't going to be able to make it the third time even though he had failed to previous attempts, even though he had trained for it and he really wanted to make it, his ability to, you know, the process of engaging in this memory work as he went up made, like he was cognitively sharp at that moment, was able to convince himself to turn back and survive.

1:18:13And there's a ridiculously high mortality rate in going after Everest. Yeah, so that's one story that I just found really fascinating. Another Joyce Roche was an executive at Avaughan and she had worked her way up the corporate ladder and she described how she had really debilitating imposter syndrome. She just couldn't figure out how she made it that far. She never felt like she was, you know, she just, she wasn't really tapped into what she had brought to the company. And somebody in her, someone was up for a promotion and it sort of created a pain point because she was like, wait, I should have that promotion for some reason.

1:19:01She was like, just you just used to progressing. Yeah, she was just used to progressing but then someone was up for promotions. She thought, well, I, you know, that felt like, she felt like she should have that And so what she did is she went home and she did some deep thinking and she basically like journaled on what her what what what what the value that she had brought to Ava and What was holding her back and she started to realize through writing out all the valuable things that she had brought that she was indeed Qualified for this position and that she really was deserving of it and that prompted her to really be able to break free from this imposter syndrome, advocate for herself and get that promotion.

1:19:46And she told a number of stories around how that was just really empowering for her. And I think to me, that was just so fascinating because a lot of people suffer from imposter syndrome. And I think that in many ways, I think it's connected to the beginner's mind. I think it's connected there because we engage in a lot of things in our life. Like I feel like I feel most of the things I do, I'm not qualified to do. But that actually maximizes my chance of bringing value to it because I'm focused on what's important. It's interesting. I remember always thinking there's got to be somebody who's much more of an adult leading the stuff than we are.

1:20:27Right? But you find out that's not the case. How many total stories do you tell in the book? So there's 40 stories of people that I interviewed and then there's a bunch of my own stories as well. And to me, you know, Litt is really about resensitizing our aliveness. It's about intercepting patterns and algorithms and habits. Thinking about your thinking. Thinking about thinking. That is the core of it. Yeah, it's interesting. I talk about this a lot that people don't stop to think about their thinking enough. And the other side of the equation is we don't know how to think other than the way we know how to think.

1:21:10Which is an interesting question. So one of the things I love using large language models about is this is what I'm doing. This is the challenge I'm having. How would Steve Jobs solve this? Or how would someone else, you know, so it's interesting that you can use, even within a company, within your board or your leadership team, you're limited by the cognitive experiences and re -acting, you know, thinking that that's within that corpus of individuals. But if you can bring in external, this is where you bring in consultants, and disruptors, and so forth, but large language miles can play that role for you too.

1:21:50Neuro -diversity and just diversity in general, powers evolution. If everything was the same, everything would have become extinct. And I think that that's the case for for everything, that the diversity of thought, the ability to switch between different frames of reference, the ability to look at things through different lenses. And you know, one of the CEOs that I worked with, I think, made him such an incredible CEO, is that on the scientific advisory board, he populated it with the most critical scientists he possibly could in all the potential areas where there were holes in the story. And so it's about trying to look at things from different angles to be able to kind of put the ego aside and be able to consider the different perspectives, the different views and to me That's also what makes life so incredible is that there's so many different ways of being so many different ways of experiencing the world different ways of questioning and doing things and when you're with somebody who does something different or thinks differently, it's an opportunity to contrast that with your process and to discover whether it is what is your process really working optimally for you or is it time to try on another?

1:23:12But they're there in lies some challenges because you have to be willing. You know, it's, I know a lot of people including myself sometimes. I'm so sure of how I'm doing what I just don't want someone to tell me a different approach. It's like time is marching along, a limited amount of resources, money, whatever it might be. And I'm just like, no, we're going down this road. I look at everything on a pendulum. So I kind of think that everything's a pendulum swing. And so I feel like there's times where, for me, I'm really certain about the approach and then there's times where I'm considering all kinds of different frames of reference.

1:23:51And I feel like that pendulum, it's almost like a pendulum for everything. is constantly kind of moving back and forth. And so in life, I just, you know, I've heard a lot, you know, you wanna strike balance, but to me, it's more you wanna have awareness of where you are in the pendulum swing. And you wanna sort of be intentional of like, okay, that's where I want it to be, or do I want it to be more center, or do I want it to be over here? I mean, it can be for an entrepreneur, for a leader, for anyone trying to make a difference, that well for a mom and a dad, I mean, just being, taking the time to understand that, understand your processes and your thinking and be conscious, right, and not reacting.

1:24:30That is a huge... Oh my God. That's everything. Yeah, and I recognize that with my family, my interactions with my family, and you know, there was times where I became a workaholic, I became addicted to the dopamine hits that I was getting from my work, and I really needed to change my way of being. And I got into experimenting with meditation and various mindfulness strategies. And I started to realize that when I was interacting with family members that there was an energy of the conversation. Like let's say if I'm having a conversation with my son, for example, it's like if he's speaking about something, I have an urge to intercept, to show, hey, take a look at this on my phone or I try to say something.

1:25:09And I realize that I take the energy from him and I put it on me, that he stopped speaking. And that's not what I want. Like what my intention is to support him and what he's saying and for him to find his voice and to continue speaking And so to me that's one of the the things that I've been working on is to really in a conversation You know, I used to interest in interject all the time because I was you know with ADHD I lose my train of thought I want to say it. I want to get it out there But I realized that you know other thoughts will come and that's fine and you know things go things come things go but I want to my attention is to support the people that I'm interacting with and to create the right You know environment for deep connections.

1:25:57I love it. So Lit Unautable as well. Yeah, do you read the book or did you have something else read it? Actually Fred Saunders our Sanders reads the book who read Walter Isaacson's book on Elon Musk. Oh nice. I can't wait to download that It sounds like in a beautiful use of time. I mean, an amazing investment. So thank you for that. JeffCarp .com. Yes. And folks can find you there to learn about your work. hire you as a speaker for their events. Profispray .com. I'm going to probably buy this as a subscription gift for all my friends. I mean, this is like, thank you for this gift. Hey. Yeah, no, I love it.

1:26:43I love the science behind it. and I love the simplicity. I'm excited to build our friendship. Me too. Jeff, thank you for spending our time together. I'm willing to chat. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. Pleasure. Who Many our