I, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are joining us from. My name is Avijit Bhaduri, I am the author of the book Dreamers and Unicorns and I work as a coach. I work with leaders, I work with organizations and I also work in the area of personal branding. This particular series of Dreamers and Unicorns has been focused entirely in the area of mental well-being, well-being in general in the workplace. And one of the things that has fascinated me is that how prevalent the challenges are and how little is done about, anything is done about it. So today we are going to talk to you about one dimension where the statistic itself was staggering. And the statistic was that, let me share this with you, that every single day, women put in 3.26 billion hours, that's with a B, 3.26 billion hours of unpaid work, that's right. What would you feel like if you put on work which is not only not paid for but which is not appreciated? And yet it is vital. So if you think about any of these challenging times that when we are going through it, we often think about the people who are supporting us the most and they are the ones who are least acknowledged. But today I have for you a person who has been doing work in this particular space and she has been really trying to build this organization and not from now but for the last three years and maybe not take away the surprise. So let's just get started. Hi there Bhavna, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much. I am so delighted to have you here. Bhavna is the founder and CEO of Caregiver Sati. We will talk about what Caregiver Sati does. But I want to first introduce the audience to who Bhavna is. And so who is Bhavna, tell me about that. So I remember the day when I was introducing myself, I used to find there have been many occasions to introduce myself and I have to say it's been really hard for two reasons. One is that I don't like to be put in a box. So I think one description might not be enough. So the other is I have often wondered what would I describe myself as that I would feel good about. And one day while introducing myself when I said that I'm a restless soul, it just kind of landed very well. And I think that's really fundamental for me. There is some restless energy about me. I think I am a passionate person who has very diverse interests. I like to dabble in a varied set of things. So people are often surprised that why from motorcycling to crocheting to whatever else. So I think that's a good place to start. Okay. And I know that you are also in the Limca Book of Records. What is that for? So in 2015, seven of us women went to the highest motorable road, Manapas, which is at the Indo-Tibetan-Chinese border. And the fact that it was the first group of women to scale that height gave us the Limca Book of Records. On a motorbike? On a motorcycle, yes. Oh, wow. All right.  And when did you first ride the bike for the first time? Okay. So the story is this that, you know, when I was growing up, my father was in the Air Force and we used to have a scooter.  And it was almost like he's trusting me with his vehicle. And like a good fogey, he was quite clear about, you know, the hoops that you have to cross. So I had to prove to him that not only could I put the scooter on stand and take it off and repair it and all of that before I could ride it and get a license. So I think a two-wheeler riding, the first one was my dad's scooter. And I rode that during my college days.  And one of the leverages that the guys in the batch would have is that those who had bikes. So, you know, they could, they could interest the women to take them to the marketplace on their bikes. And me being the person that I am, I said, you know, I don't want to ride William with you. Just lend me a bike. And, well, motorcycle owners are rather possessive, but I did have a couple of very dear classmates who indulged in me and said, So Excel is the place where I first rode a motorcycle and I just felt that it was hardly any different from a scooter that I was used to. So that was mine. Thanks. And so today we are talking to Bhavna Isar. And she's the CEO and founder of Caregiver Saathi. And this is, you know, season three of Dreamers and Unicorns is really focused on well-being in the workplace. And we are delighted to be partnering with Mana Wellness, which is one of the agencies, which is doing some really pioneering work with a number of organizations and individuals in terms of well-being. So thank you so much for joining us. And if you have any questions for Bhavna, do feel free to add them into the chat box and we will bring them up and, you know, do tell us who you are and tell us where you are joining us from. So back to the conversation that we were having Bhavna. So after Excel, what did you do? It couldn't have been Caregiver Saathi because this is a three-year-old venture. What happened after Excel arrived? You did the usual thing of going in for an MBA and then did you start working somewhere? What did you do? Or do you start something on your own to talk to me about that? So just to bring the previous conversation to an end, what came to me just now was that maybe the first time that I rode a motorcycle was before I was born or was it about to be born. So the story is that my parents decided to go for a month-long honeymoon to the Uttarakhand Hills, the Kumao Hills on a Royal Enfield. And I often pull my mother's leg saying that it is quite possible that I was conceived on that trip. So my love for motorcycles may have started at that point. So, well, that said, I actually studied to be a coder. I was a software person in college and there was just too much peer pressure or probably the phase of our life to be financially independent and the latest thing those days was doing an MBA. And well, everybody on campus was taking the MBA exam and so did I and landed up in XLRI. And I was at a point in my life where having a job was important and earning a living was important. And so I did, I joined Pepsi from campus and worked in a variety of organizations in various HR and HR related roles until last in 2011 when I was at Castrol and and I just felt that life is passing me by and maybe I hit upon my midlife crisis. I felt I must find the purpose of my life. Why do I exist and how can I be meaningfully contributing before it is too late? Is there a contradiction that on one hand there is a restless soul and then you want to find your purpose and sort of stabilize around the purpose and get guided by it? Is there a contradiction in that? Actually, there's not a contradiction. The story is this that, you know, when I was in XL and a few years before that, my dad had a terminal illness. He had a neurological condition that was really rare. And as a family, we had to grapple with that condition. And I think that for me who kind of took the role of being the elder child, I kind of took the responsibility of being the elder son kind of a little psychologically speaking. And, you know, I just felt it was my responsibility to help anchor the family after the trauma that we went through. So I think, and I have been deliberating about this for a while, but I think somewhere I made some meanings. And one of the meanings that I made was that life is unpredictable. My dad was rather fit and, you know, he was a pilot in the Air Force and he just had that illness and suddenly our life turned around. So life is unpredictable. So I think my restlessness might be partly contributed to by that as well. And because of the unpredictability, I think my dad was 54 when he passed. And I just felt that you don't know how much life you have. And what if I hit my 40s and I don't have the time to do what I really want to do? And I just needed to recalibrate and do what I want to do. And not just be the, you know, be the person who is doing a job, providing financially and the regular stuff. How can I make my life meaningful and purposeful? So this is in some sense almost like, you know, moving into a higher calling, so to say, you know, or is this something that already exists in each one of us and we are just not aware of it? Well, how do you describe it? I have been undergoing my internship and personal development journey with Sumedha's. And I have often spoken about how, in a particular lab and a personal growth lab with Raghu, who has been a very, very significant mentor to me, asked a question as to how will you lead Adharmic life? And Adharmic life is one that is aligned with the purpose or your personal experience. And I think my life experience of having been somebody who experienced my dad's illness fairly early was the one that popped up the biggest for me. One of the other things was that my grandparents had relocated from what is now Pakistan. So we don't have an ancestral home to go back to. So if I were to apply my education and professional experience and say, let's say go back to my ancestral home and do good for others who are not so privileged, we didn't have one such home. So I had to find some place where I could make meaning. And I felt that, you know, one of the definitions of the Harmic life is if you can go beyond your personal suffering and make the world a better place for others who might have similar experience. So if my life experience had been that of being a caregiver or a caregiver to a caregiver in the case of a terminal illness, then how is it that I can leverage my academics and professional experience and make it a different experience for others who might be faced with similar circumstances. So that was my apologies, please continue. But that was my Harmic question and I just think that I don't know. I think that everybody has, you know, there are different roles to be played and there are different calling at different stages of one's life. And to quote Raghur again, being a householder and being a, you know, living an everyday life is an important part of our existence as well. So I suppose that I don't know. I don't know if there is a higher calling for everyone or not. It is my higher calling or not. So one, you know, you mentioned something interesting which was that you talked about being the caregiver to a caregiver. So in some sense, a second one once removed. It's like being a second cousin to someone. So from that zone of, in some sense, being a caregiver, but from a greater distance from the source, do you think that is something all of us can leverage and build on? Or is this, you know, is there a different way to become a caregiver? Define caregiving for me. I mean, is it that we all look after, you know, each other in the family? So in that sense is everyone a caregiver is, you know, how do you define that? So at one level, you're absolutely right. We are all caregivers. Caregiver is someone who provides physical, emotional, psychological, financial or social care. Yeah. Now you could be providing care, which is you could be the primary caregiver who is, you know, helping the person with daily activities.  Now you could be someone who's a family member or you could be someone who's doing this professionally. So a caregiver could be somebody who gets paid for doing this, like a nurse or an attendant or a doctor or a helper of some kind. And you could be a person who is mentally occupied with the act of providing care and is not necessarily physically doing it. So in corporates, for example, a large number of people are what we call long distance caregivers. Right. What does that mean? That means that my parents live in another city. I care for them. I provide emotional and it takes my mental bandwidth to care for my parents who live in another city. This is almost like telemedicine. Well, I think I might want to, I might worry about their safety and security. I might worry about emergency circumstances. I might worry about, you know, whether or not certain checks need to be done. We need to visit them, etc., etc., depending on the age and stage that they are at. So I saw myself as a caregiver to the caregiver for a very long time because my mother was the primary caregiver. In the early days of my career, my parents were based in Gurgaon and I was posted in various other locations. And I saw my role as that of providing support and care to my mother who was doing the everyday tasks. Actually, interestingly, it was only much later that as I was doing a lot of work in this area that I, you know, one day my mother turned around and said, don't you see that you are a caregiver too? So I was a caregiver to my dad, that is true. But I was also the caregiver to the primary caregiver, which my mother was. Which is tougher to be a caregiver or to support another caregiver? Which way is it? It really depends on your personality. So my mother has the personality. She likes to be in the thick of things. She is in the arena. She likes to be at the center of where the action is. So for a person like her, perhaps, you know, being a primary caregiver, she will do the cleaning, the taking care of, you know. So it's a personality thing. Whereas I'm probably the organizer, the person who will look at the bigger picture, who can, you know, do outside chores, etc. So maybe I'm better suited as the caregiver to the caregiver or a well-wisher of a caregiver because caregivers also need caregivers. Caregivers need support systems. They are not super human beings much as they would like to believe they are. And, you know, what I have seen in my own experience of this is the caregiver is very often, you know, the emotional draining of, you know, what it does.  But the petrol pump itself also needs to be refueled if it needs to continue to provide fuel to the others. So in that sense, it is just as demanding for somebody who's a caregiver to be also nourished back in some sense. Emotionally, it does need that whole process. Quite often, I've seen that we assume that the person is strong enough to give the care and therefore doesn't need anything more than, you know, an occasional pat on the back or, you know, sympathy to say that, oh my God, must be so tough and demanding for you. What has been your experience like? See, we live in a society where caregiving has been played out in a certain way. So there are two, three aspects to it actually. The first one is that caregiving is presented to us through stories and through narratives that say that, you know, there is a certain format of caregiving that is ideal. We are fed on stories of Shravan Kumar, Savitri, what have you, which kind of epitomizes caregiving and that is caregiving to the extent that you sacrifice yourself.  Now, there is a certain attributing of nobility to the task and maybe it was right at a certain time. The second thing is, so, for example, a large number of people will say things like, it's an honor to look after the people who brought us up and, you know, there are all kinds of things that are fed to people. The second piece is the gender stereotypes. So, for example, you know, mothers are like this, women wear capes, women are better nurturers, women can multi-task so they can do jobs and do this, you know, if you need someone to provide emotional intelligence in a team, women are a good thing to have because it's just fundamentally a stereotype which is not necessarily restricted only to women. So that's the second part. The third part is that world over and especially in India, we haven't really understood the mental work, the emotional labor that care-related work requires. To go back to the statistic that you quoted, 3.26 billion hours of work, unpaid care work, is done by women and girls in India. And that's not even a word. It is from the Oxfam 2020. No. And in India, that number is truly staggering. 3.26 billion hours, truly staggering number of unpaid work and in many cases we also take it for granted. That's right. So you see, look at our homes, for example, a large number of first men can go about doing their jobs and come back to a cozy, belonging, comforting home that replenishes them because someone is doing, making sure that the meals are in place, the food is, the house is clean, the things are taken care of, even if it is done through health. Somebody is getting it done. And then now increasingly even women. So when women go out to work, they have to rely on either other women, mothers and mothers-in-law and whoever else, or we rely on women and girls from the lower income strata of society. So the whole economy is actually standing on the unpaid care work that is done in the very basic social unit of a family. And I think that the fact that it takes something to organize that, provide that infrastructure is mental work, can cause exhaustion and therefore can cause depletion or whatever. And the second part you may have heard of the placebo effect when someone is unwell, the manner in which the care provider offers the medicine can actually be healing. Now that person who is giving the sweet pill has to be in a certain sense of well-being to be able to care for the person who is ailing. And for that person to have that sense of well-being, many other things should be in place. So if for example, the main provider of the home is unwell and the primary caregiver is caring for that person and is worried about kalka khaana kaha se aayega yaa hum bachon ki school fees kaise pay karenge, then that person is unlikely to have that sense of well-being to care for that person. And that stress sometimes can be for a very long period of time. And chronic stress causes a variety of mental health issues. This is also the biggest reason that women fall off the workforce because they are the primary care providers in the home units. So a large number of women have told me that yeh wali job do humari jaayegi nahi. You know what you are really referring to is that the structure in which you know so as for those those of us who have joined in late into this conversation, I'm talking to Bhavna Isar, the founder and CEO of Caregiver Sati. And we are really talking about this whole concept of caregiving. We talked about the fact that caregiving is part of every culture that is there. And in our culture, the Indian culture, it is looked at farthest through stories, narratives, mythological or otherwise. And there are lots of examples where the person who's done that is nodded and you kind of say that, okay, that person has sacrificed his or her life for you and the purpose of caregiving, either to your immediate family members or to a whole bunch of people who are getting impacted by this whole process. So it could be that you have a family member who's disabled. You could have a family member who's disabled in many ways. You're either a long-term illness or there could be an elderly person who needs looking after. So for a multiple set of reasons, we are looking at a scenario where people and during the pandemic, so many people have had to deal with this scenario where there's a financial insecurity. We don't know whether the role is going to be there. So many people have been put off from the workforce. The employers have taken them off the roads. So the anxiety of, and we don't even know when this pandemic is going to end, you think it's ending and then something else happens. And with this entire thing, how do you really think about the importance of caregiving and what does that really do? And how are we trying to solve the problem? So I want to sort of now talk about how do we solve this? So what does caregiver Sati do? I mean, what is it that you're trying to solve for? What's the problem you're trying to solve for? The problem that I'd like to solve for is that the unpaid care related work is dignified and valued. A large number of times it is invisible and taken for granted. And we value the work that brings in money. And over a period of time, see, there was a time when gendered roles were deeply seated in our society, patriarchal or whatever. And there was a nice predictable way of running a society. Over a period of time, we have started taking this position that gendered roles is not necessarily the right thing. Because everybody should have a choice and be able to explore their own potential. And everybody has a variety of potential. For example, men can be caregivers. Men can do a large number of things or women can ride motorcycles or whatever. And if we have to allow for that, then something else has to change in the equation. So if we have to allow for women to explore their individual potential, which could be masculine or feminine or which could be in any realm, then equally, men need to be able to recognize that they have to share the load that a family unit or an organizational team or a society requires emotional labor. Through the industrial age, we have recognized an appreciated physical labor. Through the knowledge era, we have started appreciating intellectual labor and we started valuing it. However, we are still blind to emotional labor. Look at the job of a customer service executive, a waiter, someone who is providing you a service or an experience. There is physical work, there might be some intellectual work, but there is a significant emotional labor which not many people understand. You and I have been in the HR function for the longest and we know that there is an expectation from HR4 that you will be present. I should be able to come and talk to you at all points in time, for example. But what about the times that I'm depleted? What about the times that I don't have the bandwidth? What about the times that I need someone? In some organizations, you have this concept of HR4HR. What is that? That you cannot have a one-way flow and you need to recognize that any work has multiple aspects and the emotional labor aspect is an amorphous idea yet. It is not something that we have been able to dignify, quantify or value. Now, consulting or therapy, how will you value that work? There is an element of the number of hours of work that you put in. There is an element of your intelligence, your experience, your exposure that makes you different. But there is an X factor that makes some people better than others. That X factor is that presence, that engagement, that sense of connection, that emotional labor. I kind of like the way you described it as this being sort of some kind of a phase. The industrial era valued physical labor. So in some sense, hands were the primary element of it. So tangible stuff, which you can see, count, feel. And a lot of that hangover is still there in the corporate world. So which is why there's this whole obsession that if you can't measure it, you can't see it and you can't feel it, ignore it. It doesn't matter. In fact, there are lots of corporations which make a virtue of this and say, if it can't be measured, ignore it. And then you kind of would look at the evolution as computers started to sort of become more mainstream, move from the hands to the head. And sort of say that this is the era of the head where intellectual work, knowledge worker, we started celebrating that. So from blue collar work, we sort of moved to the white collar workforce and started that becoming important. And then kind of see a scenario where whether it is blue collar workforce or the white collar workforce, both of them for different set of reasons sometimes, they need emotional support, they need the whole notion of well-being, whether it's physical well-beings, mental well-being, relationships or the spiritual well-being for a variety of reasons, it needs to be addressed. So we are, I think, moving from the notion of a blue collar workforce and a white collar workforce to what I would term as a red collar workforce that it's the heart. Interesting thing. Yes, absolutely. So it is the time when we should be looking at the emergence of the red collar workforce, which is going to be really providing the emotional support of it. And you can pick the color that you think more appropriately represents it. But to me, that is what it is. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that the intangible factors are becoming more important. And I've mentioned this multiple times in my show that we are living in a time where the intellectual capability, the IP of the company, the brand, the leadership bench, all of this actually provides and makes up 90% of the firm's value. So when you look at things which you can't measure and count, I mean design, a firm makes a product which has a beautiful design and you're attracted to it, that actually has a significant impact on the firm's value. So you have to start valuing things which you can't measure and count. So you kind of say that, okay, so this is a great design, says we have to get past that mindset that if I don't know how to measure it, that means it's unimportant. And I think caregiving is in that zone. So have I got a sort of accurate summary of what you wanted to say? Yes, and I think well articulated. You know, you would have found this and when you do your work that a large number of people say organizational culture is something. Now that culture is created by a feel of the place. How do you measure the culture of a place and compare it with another place? So you need structures, you need policies and practices, you need capabilities of people and products and leaders and whatever else. But you also need that X factor of how it comes together, that culture that will make sure that innovation happens, that culture that makes people feel safe, that culture that allows for newer boundaries to be explored. And that can happen when people have a sense of belonging which is emotional labor or which is the emotional setting or the care. So in some ways, for example, for the longest people have said people leave, you know, people join and they leave their managers, right? What does the manager do? That manager could do the 12 points of the Gallup, whatever Q12 for engagement, but still there is something that is, you know, that person cares for you. You know that even if that, you know, like my manager has been harsh with me, I will still live with it. But then I know that, you know, this person cares for me and has my best interest. I trust that person. You can give me the worst rating, you can give me whatever, but I will stay because I have that feeling that I'm valued coming to care. Now that's the care at the workplace. But as individuals in our family units, the care related work tends to get relegated to women, or increasingly now men take on the responsibility of caregiving as well. But it creates a tension, especially in the sandwich generation. Because on one side, you have growing up children who have a variety of other needs. On the other side, you have aging parents or maybe someone who's unwell, and you might be in the middle of senior leadership and therefore having work related responsibilities as well. So the sandwich generation gets triangulated actually. That can cause a very significant mental health challenge for many people. What does it do to people? You know, you've seen this up front and very closely. What does it do to people, you know, managing the stress of work at home, you know, in the office, or now actually it's worse now because that work has also moved to the home.  And then you have uncertainty of multiple kinds, you know, in the air. And how do you address that? And what does it do to people? What have you seen? You know, this is an example that I give very often, which is that holding a glass of water could be something that you can do for 20 minutes. But if I were to ask you, can you hold the same glass of water for two hours? Maybe. Can you hold it for two days? What if you have to stand on one leg to hold that glass of water? What if you are in a desert and you have to hold that same glass of water? So that responsibility or that stress or that glass of water is not necessarily different. However, there is that individual, the context in which that person is the capability, right? Can I shift my hand from one to the other? Can I shift one leg to the other? Can I shift the environment? So there is a context, there is the individual, and then there is the task that has to be done. So stress over a very long period of time when unaddressed can cause a variety of issues. There is something called caregiver stress that is documented as a phenomena. There is something called caregiver depression. There's a very strong correlation with caregiving responsibilities leading to issues like survivors' guilt, PTSD and things like that. What is survivors' guilt? Survivors' guilt is the feeling that I shouldn't have survived that experience or that incident or between the two of us. Why did I survive and the other person? So it's usually certainly with in people who have been in war, conflict, etc. But it could also be with illnesses. So between just like two soldiers from the same battalion, they go across one gets killed in war. So the guilt that the survivor feels, that's what you're describing as survivor guilt. That's right. Why did I survive? Why was I not the one who got impacted by this? In partners, for example, let's say one person is very unwell and one person falls ill, the other person can have this feeling that why did this happen? Why did this not happen to me? And in many cases, for example, I relate with it a lot. For example, I felt for the longest that what is it that I could have done that my dad didn't die young? Now, I know in my aware cognitive self that I did my best. But that experience, the meanings that I have made as a child or as an adolescent, sometimes stay unexplored and have an impact on your well-being. And survivor's guilt is definitely one. This is trauma, right? And illness in the family, long-term illness, watching people that have incurable conditions that are aging that you can't do anything about. So for example, COVID, we were all so helpless for so many people. Even those who had access to medical resources were simply helpless. That is trauma. And that will have a long tail on people. There were so many organizations that we did work with who said, my colleague was here and is not there now. I don't know what to do. My manager I was working with is now gone. Now, there is the presence of the grief in that loss and the unpredictability of life. And that can make you extra vigilant, that can make you nervous, that can make you anxious. And all these are mental health issues. And I don't know about you, but at least me, I certainly felt compassion fatigue as well. We all do. When you're talking about COVID, think about the fact that collectively, the whole world, we kind of initially win this whole thing of, oh, you've got to stay at home because there's some contagious illness, which has come to this mysterious illness. Nobody knew what it was. From there, you really start to say that, okay, maybe this is going to take not a week or 10 days, but maybe I think it's going to take a month. And you kind of readjust your timeframe mentally. And then you kind of say that, no, I think from what it looks like, your rate could be six months. And that itself is, you experience a self of helplessness, fatigue, and you kind of say, oh my God, how will I do this for six months? And the uncertainty, the stress, the health condition, the news of people going away and getting impacted in multiple ways. There's fatigue. And even this whole notion that I sometimes found that, especially in the second wave, that there were so many people who I knew, my loved ones, who were impacted, that at some point of time, you kind of feel that you've become numb. You know, there are colleagues and friends who've passed away. There are my relatives passed away.  You know, this one hurt, this one gone, this one passed away. So the first time it happens, there's shock and there's grief. And the second time also to a lesser and then it's sort of your immune system kicks in. And you really think that, so have I stopped caring? Or is it that, you know, I'm feeling that, gosh, you know, I'm not feeling the same degree of guilt, you know, and that I think is really what can be terrible. So yeah, those are all things that people experience. So numbness is a coping mechanism, right? Yeah, I don't want to feel the pain. It is extremely painful. I am experiencing loss and I am experiencing pain or I can experience pain. And this is, I believe that, you know, I coped with my sense of grief through numbing myself. And many people do that. And that is very impactful for that is very impactful or an issue in organizations. So for example, if managers have compassion fatigue and or they have compartmentalized people and they say, you know, our emotions of personal life. How will you get the fullness of the person? How will you get the the innovative part of the person? How will you get the caring part of the person? How will you get that culture that you want to build of humanness, connection, etc. So, but numbing will happen also because people will want to compartmentalize and people will want to cope. And, you know, this is this is how we all cope. And, you know, one of the things that our viewer, Abha Sengar Joshi has asked this question that is there a way to prepare? I'm going to bring that question up on the screen. So is there a way to prepare people for dealing with the inevitable role of life along the way? I mean, and most people seem to be quite unprepared for it emotionally financially and physically. So what is the way to prepare people? What do we do about it? See, one of the things that we have invested a lot and I will go back again to that whole need of industry and economy and therefore we have invested a lot in our physical capacities and our intellectual capacities. One of the things that we have not invested in is our intuition and our emotion, our emotional intelligence and our capacity to care and be human. And perhaps it might be worthwhile for us to build sensitivity and build compassion and be able to deal with, you know, life's uncertainties, for example. Now that requires building the muscle for emotional capacity. Through our education system and through our professional lives, we build our intellectual capacity. We build our, you know, perhaps our physical capacity, but maybe secondary to intellectual capacity. But we don't invest. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we in our mind and in many places I've seen that we sort of place intellectual capacity at the highest level. That's very smart person, very analytical, very logical. And we sort of look at it with a sense of awe. But a very caring person. Yeah, it's nice. But then it's somewhere, you know, in the hierarchy, it's the second rung that we look at. You know, and maybe at the same level as what where we place blue collar work. So I think the red collar work has a long way to go. Before it gets acknowledged and without doing that, I think it's going to be increasingly difficult for people to address the kind of impact that we've seen on mental health challenges and well-being in general. You know, people are unable to step out of home.  See, the other thing is that, yes, there is a hierarchy to intelligences, right? There is the cognitive intelligence gets, you know, gets valued in a certain way because it is directly, it gets monetized very easily. And measured. Sorry. And measured also. And measured also, right? So we have evolved our ways of doing that. Our physical labor also we can now, you know, work with that. Now, empathy or connection or, you know, being able to relate with people is valued. You ask anyone, close your eyes and think of your role model, the person that you would like to have at your bedside at any point when you're in your last days. Think of that person that you want to cherish and honor. Who will that person be?  It will be the person who saw you for who you are.  And I think of managers that I value and love and remember with a lot of regard. It isn't the brightest of people. I have met really, really bright people, but they don't. They will not be the people that I want to at least, you know, so I think what we really need to do is to recognize that empathy, having a sense of human connection is a fundamental skill competence aspect of a person. It gets honed and it gets built in the family unit, depending on the type of experience that you have. Those individuals who are unidimensional and only career people make a certain kind of managers and leaders. Those people who have lived full lives, who have had connections, who build relationships, also bring that to the workplace. And they build a certain type of a culture and a certain kind of outcome at the workplace as well. Those are the managers that people stay with longer. Those are the managers that people want to work with. And even when you are not necessarily working in the same organization or you're not working, I mean, the relationship continues. It's no longer transactional. So you're so spot on that, you know, the people with whom it could be analytically very sharp, etc. I mean, then there is a certain transactional nature to that relationship. Whereas people who are emotionally, you know, very sensitive and people with whom you connect, that relationship stays, you know, I would say forever or whatever, you know, it really stays in your, in yourself, you sort of continue with it. And it's very, very powerful because that's the authentic connection. So in some sense, the human to human connection. You know, we did some research and people who have been caregivers and who have contended with helplessness, who have contended with helping children walk, make the best managers. So for example, a manager is expected to break down the task, allow for fumbling, allow for learning to walk. And a parent who has invested that time is likely to be able to allow for that space in the team as well.   And, you know, and therefore, you know, some of the things that I've spoken about grief, for instance, you know, we believe that grief is only when somebody passes away, that it's grief. But grief in the workplace comes from a hundred other sources. You know, for example, you know, you are expecting a certain kind of a, you know, role and it doesn't come your way. There's grief, but we can't talk about it because it's looked at as being petty. Yeah. Or, you know, something you work very well with the person, the person leaves. And, you know, you experience grief or the person is asked to go. You know, sometimes it has happened that, and that's one of the things culturally, you know, it's fascinating how that is changing certainly in the society around us in India. I noticed that change, that there used to be a point of time when, let's say, somebody has been asked to go for performance reasons or something. The relationship with the organization still continues and the friends and colleagues still stay in touch and, you know, the person comes in and sort of connects because performance is not the only measure of that person. But increasingly, I find that when, you know, people, they are asked to go, it is the end of their connection with the organization and their colleagues. You know, so it's almost as if, you know, you've lost the right to socially connect with those colleagues. So I think that's a very unfortunate part of where we are going. Abhijeet, what has happened is that increasingly in many organizations, people have become instruments of performance. And if you are going to look at people as resources, as talent that needs to be acquired, as instruments of performance, there is a dehumanizing of the person. And by recognizing the variety of roles that a person plays, the person is not just an instrument of performance in the organization. The person is a parent, a son, a daughter, whatever else, in their family system. And they are a citizen of the country, of the society, etc.  And until we can see them for all that they are, we might actually never explore the dark quadrant of the Johari window, so to speak, for that person. Absolutely. And, you know, so there have been so many comments that people, you know, people have mentioned that the ability to be human, to be able to wobble, unless you are comfortable with your own wobbling, unsureness, you don't tolerate it anybody else. So I think the caregiving that you are doing, you know, the organization that you're building and the vision that you have, I'm supremely impressed by that Bhavna. I must say that, you know, the board I've spoken to you about your own, you know, desire to make something happen, not just talk about it. It's extremely exemplary. And I wish you all the luck and all the power and all the resources that, and I hope that there will be a point of time when in every city there will be an organization like Caregiver Sati, which, you know, is there for all of us to reach out and connect.  You know, so loneliness is an issue and grief is an issue and there are so many things that I think we haven't been able to. That's right. I think the important thing that I'd like to say is that workplaces are really potent spaces for social change. Organizations have, are an integral part of society and organizations not only have the power, they also have the responsibility, call it the fiduciary responsibility of creating social change. It is the purpose of the organization is to, if for example, organizations are going to encourage women to come to the workplace at different stages of their lives, I think organizations can play a big part in becoming caregiver friendly workplaces because it is not just women, increasingly both men and women will have to integrate being a caregiver. And I cannot agree more with you and I hope that all the people who are listening, who are in the position to influence that change, you know, are going to be doing that. I wanted to say thanks to Mana Wellness for helping us along in this journey and building this awareness on well-being in the workplace. Bhavna, thank you so much for spending time and chatting with us and I certainly feel that, you know, it's built in me a big takeaway is that the people who we care about are the ones who are really caregivers. So and for me, the other hallmark of this conversation was I think the shift from the blue collar work in the industrial workplace to, you know, intellectual work. And now perhaps it's the time for, you know, from that white collar job to the red collar jobs of the caregivers. So good luck with your dream and thank you so much for being here.


We upgrade our technology all the time. You get the new iPhone, you get the new apps, you upgrade all these things. But when's the last time we took time to upgrade the most important thing? Why you felt compelled to update this book? Well, I would say the world has changed, obviously, the past few years. And so this is a book to really prepare you to not only survive but thrive in a post-pandemic AI world. So the external world has changed. And then my personal world has changed also as well. I'm in my 50s now, and we had our first child. And those kind of life conditions make you want to reflect. And it's really deepened my commitment and my conviction to help the next generation, especially, to have a better brain so they could handle the onslaught of information overload, digital distraction, digital dementia, digital depression, and so much more.  Maybe you can help our listeners through that. Yeah, absolutely. There's a big chapter in the new book on sleep. Sleep is one of the most important things we could do for our brain. If people think about when they get a bad night's sleep, whether they have a newborn or not, your brain doesn't really work the same way. How's your ability to think? How's your ability to solve problems?  How's your memory, your focus, concentration? All of that slips. And so, yes, we talk about, it's been an interesting, especially the past few months, with the baby teething and up all night, and it's been a process. It really forces me to double down on what we teach because when we're talking about performance and productivity, especially the mental side of it, it's critical. We get adequate recovery, and so our brain's not meant to go full force 24-7. We need those periodic brain breaks throughout the day and certainly getting good seven to nine hours of sleep, especially the quality of the deep sleep and the REM sleep is so very vital. So we could definitely talk about some of my quick tips to optimize your sleep as well. Maybe this is actually a good place to start. Since you brought it up, all of us talk about it, all of us write about it, and yet whenever people are writing in on Instagram or YouTube, they go, oh yeah, it's fine for you to say you need seven, eight, nine hours of sleep, but come on, be realistic, that's impossible. I'll sleep when I die, I'm a entrepreneur, and if I get four hours of sleep, it's a great day, and I'm at my sharpest when I am only getting five hours of sleep. What say you? So I would say that we probably underestimate, those individuals probably underestimate, and when it comes to our productivity and our performance, even our profitability and certainly our peace of mind, the importance of sleep, I would say that life conditions are tough, right, they're global events, there's this lot of fear that's out there that keeps people ruminating throughout the night, and it keeps them from falling asleep, staying asleep also as well. Obviously people are more addicted to their devices now more than ever, and that could, all the context switching on our phones at night, and the light that comes from our screens, all that adds to the ongoing challenges and the onslaught for us to get restorative rest to be able to bounce back, and not only bounce back, how do you bounce forward? And so there are simple things people could do, I always like to, you know, my last name really is quick, I didn't change it to do what I do, so we offer a lot of quick tips in our book, especially the new one on how to improve your focus, your memory, your ability to read faster, to be able to lead better also as well, and create momentum in your life, but sleep is definitely one of those course, you know, it's right up there, along with exercise and diet and social connections. Some of my favorite things to do for sleep, and I'm curious for you also as well, we've had you on our podcast, and a little bit of the conversation. For me, I notice what moves the lever is sunlight first thing in the morning is really important. It doesn't have to take a lot of time, going outside if it's possible. I know that with our windows, it could keep some of the spectrum of light out, but the reason why sunlight first thing in the morning is so important is it helps you to reset your circadian rhythms, which is important, first thing in the morning to get a good night's rest. For me, I'm very sensitive to caffeine, so I can't have caffeine in my system pass maybe 12, 2 p.m. max. You could stay in your system eight to 10 plus hours, and so I want to be conscious of that. Probably the biggest needle movers, and in addition to light, first thing in the morning, everybody has an alarm to wake up. Simple thing they could do is set an alarm to go to sleep. Your nervous system loves that kind of regulation, and staying on a structured schedule, even on the weekends, and nobody gets this perfect. The goal is not perfection, but some people have so much anxiety about what they eat, or lighting everything, and it kind of negates some of the benefit of eating those good foods, or doing some of the things that are good for you, because that chronic stress is a challenge also. Chronic stress has been shown to shrink the human brain. If we're in fight or flight all the time, it also holds us hostage from, kind of keeps us in our survival brain, and doesn't allow us access easily to our executive functioning, to our critical thinking, to our ability to solve problems. So setting an alarm is very something simple you could do to be able to know it's time to phase in that parasympathetic rest and digest, turning off your devices an hour before sleep, because again, our brains really didn't about to have that kind of stimulus, where we have access to the world's information, this close to our brain. I would also say that two things that could make a big difference, if you think about hunter-gatherers, they would know it would be time to go to sleep because the environment would tell them so. There would be a drop in two environmental factors, in temperature and in light. So again, this is common sense, but it's not common practice. So cooler the better, now where it's so cold, you're shivering, because that would be very distracting and make it more difficult to sleep, and then it's dropping light. And so getting off our devices, because with modern conveniences, Dr. Gundry, it doesn't have to get colder. It doesn't have to get darker, right? We have all these modern technologies that allow for it. So we have to make a conscious choice to do these things and not be mindless about it. Something simple like taking a warm bath or a sauna or a warm shower, when you get out of it that night, your core body temperature is gonna drop, which is a signal to produce melatonin, your natural relaxation tool, and especially if you take a warm bath with magnesium, because you could absorb that magnesium transdermally, which helps you to be able to relax at night also as well. Besides a colder room, a darker room also as well. So some people use the glasses to block out some of the lighting, or they use red bulbs. For us, the big thing is not being on the phone, because again, not only for the light, because we trick our minds into thinking it's still daylight, but also because the content on our phones to be very aggravating and stimulating, especially with the news that's going on today. Yeah, those are all great points. I recommended people in my book, one of the easiest things to do that you just brought up is to take warm, hot bath right before bedtime, and you're right, put some epsom salts in the bathwater. Magnesium is a remarkable sleep aid. And dropping core temperature, we don't go to sleep until our body temperature drops. And that's just a great trick, and people go, oh, I don't have time for hot bath, or that's lazy, and I should be on my phone another half hour, but you're right. Setting a time to go to bed, I keep telling people to get a dog, because dogs will keep you on a timetable. Our dogs literally signal, okay, it's time to go to bed. They all, they sit there and stare at you about 8.30 at night going, excuse me, it's time. And of course, then in our household, they're staring at us at five o'clock in the morning, jumping on our chest to get us up. So dogs are great for, because that's how it's supposed to work, and you just follow your dog's lead. Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom. We have two dogs ourselves, and so a lot of organic natural wisdom in animals for sure.  So it's just, it's a win-win for sleep. Absolutely. I have a lot of patience, since you brought up the word ruminate, that for probably obvious reasons, we do a lot more ruminating than probably our parents did or our grandparents did. Is there a solution to this?  How do you stop this constant talk in your brain? There are a number of tools that are quick and easy and even could be enjoyable, and we could start with small, simple steps. Sometimes making big steps maybe is challenging for a lot of people, but I think little by little, a little can become a whole lot. For my day, it's interesting. I plan my day and it's not always perfect, but I'll give you the principle and people could see what I do, and I'm not saying do exactly what I do, but understand the thinking behind it, and because behind every principle is a promise, and for this is gonna be greater productivity, performance, and the peace of mind. So when I wake up and I'll go to the rumination part, just to set context for my day, I really focus on three or four Cs, and I like to illiterate a lot because it makes it very memorable and sticky for the listeners who happen to be right now driving or working out, and they can't take notes, even though we could turn this into a little bit of a masterclass on brain optimization. The first C in the morning, I really focus on creativity, meaning I wanna pull information out of my brain because that works really best for me. I don't wanna put input in, so that's why I don't touch my phone first thing in the morning you and I talked about in the previous episode that I have a Facebook video that has 37 million views just saying don't touch your phone the first 30 minutes of the day because it rewires your brain for distraction, it rewires your brain for reaction, and it's really hard to have a really good day if you can't really manage that first hour of the day. But it doesn't have to take a lot of time because the challenge with the brain is when we task switch, when we think we're multitasking, but we're task switching and we go from one thing to another, we light up a different network in our brain, the different cognitive web, and the switch, it takes time and it uses up a lot of brain glucose, uses up a lot of energy, so people feel that crash throughout the day, part of it is because of just how we're managing our behaviors throughout the day. I'll give you an example, in the morning I wanna be more creative, I'm not looking for input, I'm looking for output, and for me it comes in the form of that's when I design a podcast, that's when I write, I put together curriculum for programs, I work on the strategy of our business, I'm creating. The second phase, usually around lunchtime in the afternoon, I'm consuming, right? So we're creating, I'm pulling out of my brain, consuming, I'm putting in the input, and what am I consuming? I'm listening to podcasts such as yourselves, I'm reading, I'm doing my research, checking in with the team, consuming, and doing a little communicating. In communicating I try to also task together and I bucket it together so my brain doesn't have to switch different tasks, that's usually, I do most of my communication of when I go on walks, even if it's on a Zoom, I'll carry my phone and I'll go for a walk and I'll get my steps in, and I try to batch all my communication around the same time, and so that would be the third C, so I wake up, I create later in the afternoon, I consume, at some point in between or part of those days I'm also communicating, and then finally the fourth, which goes back to rumination, I wanna clear my brain, right? And so think about it, in the morning I am creating, pulling out, later on I'm consuming, some point I'm communicating, batched, where my brain is connected with other people's brains, and at night time I wanna clear my brain, and how do I do that to reduce rumination, those constant thoughts or the worries? Things like Yoga Nidra is very helpful, certain breathing, maybe with a mantra, something simple, and none of these things take any money, and it doesn't take a lot of time either as well. Part of how I clear my brain also is just doing some foam rolling before bed, because it gets me into my body, and again, helps support beginning that parasympathetic rest and digest. If I do any consuming at night, I like to read, but I read fiction, because I don't wanna read nonfiction, nonfiction is more for my afternoon, because if I go into nonfiction at night time, if I'm reading books on neuroscience, or marketing, or something, I get into my executive brain, and I don't really wanna go there. Fiction reading allows me to relax, to go into my imagination, my creativity. Fiction reading, by the way, is obviously we teach reading and speed reading, is a wonderful way to build your EQ, your emotional intelligence, it's a wonderful way to enhance your empathy, and perceptual positions through narratives. So, I wanna really emphasize the importance of fiction reading, because it kinda fills it up, if I do do that, I'm not thinking about bills, I'm not thinking about my responsibilities. Another way of clearing is having a conversation with family members. I'll talk to my wife and talk to her about what happened that day, and all of a sudden, I'm clearing, right? I'm allowing myself to have a blank slate. I'll even prepare the next day, my schedule, and I find that when I write things down externally for my planning for the next day, I don't have to ruminate about it, I don't have to think about it. In fact, for rumination, you can even schedule it. You're saying, hey, even during the day, if you find yourself ruminating, you could say, okay, I'm gonna worry about this, but I'm gonna worry about it at 4.15 to 4.30. And then, my mind is like, okay, now I could just enjoy and focus on the task at hand. And then the last thing I'll do at night is I will maybe journal. And that's where I get my other, any excess thoughts out. I think journaling is a wonderful way to clear your mind, to put your thoughts on paper, to have introspection, also kind of process the day, maybe do a little bit of gratitude in a gratitude journal where it allows me to feel good, because gratitude will put you in that parasympathetic rest and digest. Think about three things that really went well that day, that, and you don't have to wait for a greater life to feel grateful. I think that once we start focusing on what we're grateful for, we could have a greater life. So create, communicate, consume, and then clear. All right, you said something that my wife and I were talking about this morning.   She said, Jim Quick, I know that name. I said, yeah, you know, the speed reading guy. And she said, oh, yeah, of course. And I said, I'm gonna learn how to speed read today. And she said, now, why would anybody wanna speed read? Because I love reading my novels, and she had just kind of set down her novel that she was reading this morning. And I wanna enjoy, I wanna immerse myself in those characters, and I don't wanna speed my way through it. So I thought that was an interesting take. Tell me about, can I speed read nonfiction and then enjoy fiction, or what do you think? Accelerating your learning, be able to read faster. I'm not talking about frantic fast. And that's the difference. People think that, well, traditional speed reading is more skimming, scanning words, getting the gist of what you read. We train a lot of financial advisors, attorneys, medical doctors, and you don't want your medical doctor to get the gist of what she's reading, right? It's very important. So you don't read any faster than you can understand. The challenge is a lot of people actually read slower. And because they read slower than what's possible, their focus goes elsewhere.  And when you feed your brain one word at a time, metaphorically, we're starving our mind. And if you don't give your brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. If anyone's ever found themselves, like when I started to talk that slow, and I'm from New York, so it's hard to talk that slow, people's minds would naturally go somewhere else.  You start thinking about other things. Some people would even fall asleep if someone was talking that slow to them. But aren't those the same symptoms of a lot of people with their reading? They get easily distracted, their mind wanders, sometimes they fall asleep. And it's similar to, let's use the analogy of driving. If you're driving a car just around your neighborhood, you're going pretty slow, you're not really focused on the act of driving. Some people will actually arrive where they arrive and not even remember the trip there because they're drinking their coffee, they're texting, even though they know they shouldn't. They're thinking about the dry cleaning. You could do five things when you're going slow.  And that's a myth when we talk about certain lies to learning that you have to read slowly to understand it. In fact, we have the largest online academy for accelerated learning. We have students in every country in the world, 195 nations. So we have a lot of data. We find that those who actually read faster, actually, because we test people every single week in our courses, they actually understand more because they're more focused.  And so one simple thing that everyone could do, I mean, this is a tip, it's not a training, but something simple that would help their speed, focus, and understanding would be using a visual pacer when you read. Meaning, if you just underline the words using your finger on a screen or on reading a book, I prefer reading physical books. I don't know what your audience prefers. Maybe they could put that on social media and let us know and tag us in it when they post. But you're not touching the screen. You're not touching the book. I'm not looking for another excuse to be on a screen. So that's why I like to read physical books. Maybe I'm just old school in that way. But it allows you to improve your reading speed upwards to 25 to 50% immediately with very, very little practice, if any. What I am saying is don't believe everything I'm saying, test it because ultimately the person who's listening right now, they are the expert of themselves. So simple test everyone could do because I like to make it very active because I feel like podcasts are great, but all the podcast books, courses, none of it works unless we put into action, unless we work, right? And so test it, pick up a book, pick up where you left off, put a little mark in the margin with a pen or pencil, read for 60 seconds, time it on your phone. And then when you're done, put a mark in the margin, read how you normally would read, and then pick up where you left off, set your timer for 60 seconds and then try using a visual pacer. And it could be your finger, a pen, a highlighter, mouse on a computer, just something that give you focus and then count the number of lines you read in 60 seconds. That number for most people upwards of 90% without any other practice would be a 25 to 50% lift. Some people will double their reading speed doing that because the reason why is your eyes are attracted to motion. If something ran across your room, you wouldn't no longer look at the camera lens, you would look at what moves because as a hunter-gatherer, that's survival. If you're a hunter-gatherer and you're in a bush and you're hunting lunch like a rabbit or a carrot, depending on your diet, if the bush next to you moves, you have to look at what moves because number one, that could be lunch or number two, you could be lunch, right? So when your finger's underlining the words, your eyes are attracted to the movement and you don't do something called regression. Regression is a bad habit that most of us picked up back in elementary school where we unconsciously reread words. I mean, some people have had the experience of rereading whole lines by accident just because their eyes aren't trained, right? And so just underlining the words will give you more focus and that focus will give you better understanding and you'll have greater speed. And just saving 50% on your reading speed is like what, 20 minutes per hour? And most people read more than three hours a day and that alone will save you an hour a day. One hour a day over the course of a year is what, 365 hours, right? That's how many 40 hour work weeks? Nine? Two months of productivity you get back doing something ubiquitous like reading. And so I would say when you're reading, you never read any faster.  So you're not losing comprehension. If anything, you're gaining it because it's helping you to focus. Our listener is probably going, well, yeah, okay, you're reading 25% faster, but are you really comprehending that much faster or are you just reading faster, but it's not sinking in? Yeah, the comprehension is there because the focus is there.  And so we know that people could very easily improve their reading speed double on average for our 21 day course that some of your listeners may be part of. We triple reading speed with better comprehension. Absolutely. It's not just speed reading, it's smart reading because we also give people tactics for remembering what they read because starting as a memory coach, I feel like it doesn't make sense to read something if you don't understand and retain what you read. Good point indeed. Well, since you mentioned that, how do we remember what we read? Any tricks to that? Of course. So for four and a half years, I read one book a day for four and a half years, just because I think readers or leaders, people that follow me on social media and they see if they happen to see pictures with me with Oprah or Elon or whoever, I could tell you people always ask how did you connect or how did you bond? We bonded over books, right? You read to succeed, leaders or readers. If somebody has decades of experience like you do and you put them into books, which you did and somebody can sit down in a few days and read that book, they could download decades and the days. That's the biggest advantage in today's society because the faster you can learn, the faster you could earn because knowledge today is not only power, knowledge is profit, right? When you have more information and more expertise, you can make better decisions and our life is a sum total of all the decisions we've made but some people, while there's a gap between those who have and those who have not, clearly, there's also a gap between those who know something and those who don't know those things. And so reading is also an incredible, not just the best way to upgrade your software, your mental software, but it's also an incredible mental exercise. When people are talking about brain games and apps, I could tell you that reading is to your mind what exercises to your body. It's one of the best forms of mental exercise to get novelty, to create new learnings, insights and wisdom from experts like yourself. And so, yeah, I would say one of the best ways to improve your memory of what you read is not only using your finger because that will help you with your focus and understanding. The second thing I would say is, ask better questions and ask more questions. You know, we have part of our brain called the Reticular Activating System, R-A-S. And here's the backstory. Our brains are primarily a deletion device. We're trying to keep information out. If we let everything in, we would, there would be so much anxiety and so much overload, right? There's billions of stimulus we could focus on. So what do we decide to let in? Part of it, that gateway is the R-A-S. Something that's programmed in us from a child is like our name. That's why a name is a sweetest sound to a person's ears because when you hear your name, you have to pay attention because we are programmed like that, right? Other things that activate our R-A-S are things that are important to us and especially the questions that we ask because when we ask a new question, we get new answers and think about questions as a spotlight. When we ask a question, we put a spotlight towards answers. So for example, a long time ago, my younger sister would send me postcards and emails of a very specific breed of dog. It was a pug dog, right? And she kept on sending me these images and my question became, why does she keep sending me these images? And then I realized that she had a birthday coming up and she's a good marketer, right? She was seeding that gift. And the funny thing happened, I started seeing that pug dogs everywhere in my neighborhood. No exaggeration. I would be at the supermarket checking out and the person in front of me will be holding a pug dog. I'd be jogging in my neighborhood and a guy would be walking six pug dogs. And my question for the listeners is, did those pug dogs just teleport into my neighborhood? No, of course not. They were always there, but I was deleting it because it was not important to me. Once I started asking questions, I started to see it. And so same thing in life, when we ask questions, I have a theory called the Dominic Question Theory where we have 60,000 thoughts a day and a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions. And there's certain questions we ask more than any other question and that question determines what we shine a spotlight on. And so if you have more questions when you read about the material, all of a sudden, most people that read a page in a book get to the end and then forget what they just read. Have you ever done that? You read a page in a book, get to the end and just forgot what you just read? Yeah, absolutely.  If you still don't know what Pajita's read, but if you have questions about the content when you're reading, you're saying, oh, there's a pug dog, there's a pug dog, there's another pug dog. You're getting those kind of answers. Even when we teach a lot of students programs and we have a student success program or high school students or college students, one of them is like when you're taking a standardized test, like reading comprehension, remember those? And then at the end, you had to read all these paragraphs and at the end they had the questions. But a simple test taking technique is read the questions first and then you've charged your RAS, your reticular activating system. So then when you're reading, you're like, there's an answer, there's an answer. You're attracting it like a magnet as opposed to reading pages and then getting to the end and seeing the question saying, oh, I didn't, what was important, right? So I would say for greater speed, use your finger while you read, for greater comprehension, ask more questions because questions are the answer. Two thoughts, number one, I have one of my favorite jokes. I come home from my first day at kindergarten and I come running in and I said, mommy, mommy, I'm so glad that you named me Steve. And she said, why? And I said, because that's what all the little kids at school call me. Oh, that was bad. That was bad. Second, so they obviously shown a spotlight on my name. So what about mindless reading? Is that bad? Should we allow our brain to go blank or fall into a fictional novel just for mindlessness? I think that our brains aren't meant to be active in the same kind of critical thinking, logical executive functioning all the time. I think it's important to stimulate different parts of our brains, just like when we use different parts of our body, right? To challenge yourself in new ways. But also, again, having using that time to recover, to relax, some people binge watch a show or some people will do something else. And it's again, who am I to say where to put people's focus? It's really what the outcome is. But I feel like it's very important every once in a while to have a pit stop, to detach from your work or the things that we spend most time on to be able to go in that kind of default space where we could just enjoy something and let our minds wander. For me, reading doesn't do that so much because it's an active process for me as opposed to television, which is more passive. For me, I think reading nonfiction, you learn through information and reading fiction, we learn through imagination. And I think that's equally important, right? Einstein said imagination is more powerful than knowledge. So to be able to use our imagination, to be able to see what's going on and feel what fiction reading, story reading, it's absolutely valuable. But just like anything, if you're doing too much of it, you need to have some kind of harmony, depending on what your outcome is. But of course, I enjoy reading fiction reading. I enjoy a good show here and there or going to a comedy club, but it's because it's important to stimulate different parts of ourselves and also just to relax. Sometimes we have to disconnect, to reconnect. So I'm sure everybody listening wants to know, come on, have you ever binge watched a series on Netflix or something like that? And if so, what's your most recent one? I enjoy a number of things.  I don't have to pay a lot of attention to it. Recent shows, I enjoyed billions just wrapped up. I do a lot in that industry. So it's interesting to see another perspective, even though it's coming from Hollywood, they just wrapped up their series finale. Thoughtful shows, I enjoy watching shows. When I'm active, I use movies and television shows to learn. So if I binge watch something, it's something like elementary, which is modern day Sherlock Holmes and Watson's story that takes place in New York City. And I learned though also, so not only is it passive, I go in and I see his process and there he uses mind palaces, which we teach. In that process, he goes into alpha, theta states and I'm learning and then I'm the basis of his process and I'm all about taking genius because I believe genius leaves clues and unpacking it and then teaching it and helping people to adopt that genius. He has a process for observation and deduction. It sounds kind of heady, but it makes it fun for me. So I could enjoy the show itself and I can keep myself also when I choose to to be intellectually stimulated. So it's not just a passive experience, I make it more active.  I did finish Succession also as well. It's in the same spirits as Billions also as well. It was a good show. I was okay with the ending almost. I want to move on to a new part of your expanded edition, the brain animal code. Oh, wow. And I was forced to take your test. So give me the whole concept of brain animal code. So the new book, people ask why we did this new book and I say as before that the world has changed post-pandemic AI and I realized, you know, like there's personalized medicine based on our genetics and there's personalized nutrition based on things like our microbiome. Well, we offer personalized learning based on people's cognitive type. And so the inspiration for this assessment and we're making it free for your listeners, they could go to mybrainanimal.com, mybrainanimal.com is, I realized people love taking quizzes, right? They want to know what Game of Thrones character they are or what Harry Potter school that they would best fit in. It's a four minute, it only takes four minutes, it's multiple choice, but it helps you to know more about yourself. There's a scene in Matrix where Neo goes to see the Oracle for the first time, if we're talking about binge watching certain movies, that was one of my favorites, Matrix. Me too. Yes. Absolutely. And when Neo walks into the kitchen of the Oracle, there's a sign above the door that I noticed that says, know thyself. And I think a big part of just being happy and fulfilled is having the curiosity to know yourself. And then the other half of it is having the courage to be yourself, cause a lot of people know themselves. That's why they go to therapy or they journal or they meditate or they do certain things. But also it takes courage to be that person in a world full of other people's expectations and opinions and those kinds of things and judgments and fear making mistakes. But the knowing thyself is so important. And I think knowing your brain animal, I don't think I know could support people in really tapping into their real performance and potential. And so this assessment came about because I've been using it with clients on one-on-one. And this is the first time in this new book that we make it available to the general public.  I created this assessment based on various sciences and psychologies, things like personality types like Myers-Briggs and a left brain, right brain dominance theory, learning styles, visual auditory, kinesthetic, multiple intelligence theory out of Harvard University. And so it was a meld and a synergy where I realized after 32 years as a brain coach, it's not how smart you are. It's actually how are you smart?  It's how are they smart? It's not how smart your team is. It's actually how are they smart?  So here it is. Imagine the word code, C-O-D.  It's an acronym, like a simple mnemonic. The C in code stands for the animal is the cheetah. The defining trait of a cheetah is they implement, they apply, they act. So cheetahs are very intuitive. They thrive in fast-paced environments because they adapt very quickly, right? They learn so that they can apply. The O in code are your owls. And your owls, the defining trait, is they are very logical, right? They're very rational. And so they like to research. They like to study. They love facts and figures and data. Now, even just talking about two animals, you would notice that these two animals would communicate different. These two animals would invest different or buy different. They would exercise a little bit different, right? They'd be influenced differently also as well. They would lead a team differently. The D in code is, like yourself, is a dolphin. And the dolphin are your creative visionaries. They have strong problem-solving skills. They have exceptional pattern recognition. And often they could see a future that other people can't see yet, right? A visionary like Disney or J.K. Rawlings, who wrote the Harry Potter series. And finally, the last animal, the E in code, are your elephants. And your elephants are defined by the trait of empathy, high levels of empathy and EQ. They love to bring people together, right? They love their team players also as well. If they're gonna learn or if they're gonna exercise, they love going to group classes or creating a, you know, a part of a book club and so on. So these are your four animals. And when people take the quiz, they get a personalized report. There's nothing to buy. They get a personalized report on based on your animal, this is how you could read better. Based on your animal, this is how you could remember names. Based on your animal, this is how you could communicate with other animals differently. And so I feel like if knowledge is power, then this is knowing your animal is like a superpower. You get to know yourself and know the people around you. And what it does is it takes the judgment away. It's like you get to write with your dominant hand, right? If I asked everybody right now to write their first and last name with their dominant hand, they would do it quick. The quality would be pretty good, right? It'd be very comfortable. But if I asked you to put that pen in your opposite hand, your non-dominant hand and write below it your first and last name, it probably would take longer. It probably, the quality wouldn't be as good. It'd probably feel uncomfortable. And when people are trying to learn something outside of their brain animal, it's like learning something with their non-dominant hand. It takes longer, it feels uncomfortable. And the quality, the fidelity is not quite as good. And so sometimes when we're interested in a subject, sometimes the way you prefer to learn your brain animal is different than the teacher's brain animal and you miss each other. It's like two ships in the night. You pass each other without even recognizing the other ones there and you don't have that connection.  So what you're saying is if you reward me with a fish for a trick that I do, I'll do very well or? Nothing like that. But the understanding that you are very creative and you can visualize in the power of your imagination, even animals, they communicate differently. I mean, even if you think about it, their jobs would be different. Like an owl would be a logical thinker. They would fall. Like we had our entire team, a few dozen people take the assessment, obviously. It's interesting, 100% of our customer service team are elephants. Why? They have high levels of empathy. They're our community builders. They're very compassionate. So they wanna serve, right? You know, our student success is their success. Our CFO is an owl. You know, they love data and they love the numbers, right?  And so it's interesting. You can even hire and manage based on brain types.  Your research scientists, your software developers, your cheetahs are often entrepreneurs. They could be EMTs. They could be sales representatives, professional athlete. Your dolphins could be amazing writers like yourself or they could be a marketing specialist or they could be a film director. Elephants would really thrive in, let's say human resource manager or social worker or a PR specialist, a teacher. And then you could also see what famous people or even non-famous, like I talked about friends, right? If people are familiar with friends, then I would say that Chandler was a cheetah, just fast acting on intuition, just moved, doesn't do a lot of thinking. You would say Ross, Ross Geller was the scientist, is an owl, very studious, a professor. You could go to Monica, Monica was the elephant. Always wanted to host all the parties and be the center of the community. You could go to Phoebe, who's the creative with through song and dance and imagination. So you can see this in everything.  So I'm interested, people right now don't do it now, don't take the test, but text it to a friend and they're gonna text you a picture of their animal. And it would explain a lot about their behavior. Yeah, I've, throughout my career, I've been accused of flying at 30,000 feet. And...  Yeah, really, whoever met me, he said, "'Cheese, you're flying at 30,000 feet. "'How do you do that?' That's what I do. So I'm glad I'm a dolphin, I guess. But you should be glad you are whatever this animal is, right? And we are composite of all these things, right? You're a primary, secondary, we're a blend, but it's not like if you're right-handed, it doesn't mean you don't use your left hand.  So it's a great way of discovering your strengths and the strengths of other people around you. Before I let you go, the other big change in this book is AI. And of course, AI is on everybody's mind. And if it isn't, it should be, and it's even on President Biden's mind. Give us your thoughts on this. So the new chapters we add to Limitless Expanded was really about the science of momentum. We still cover the how to change your mindset, your motivation, all the methods for reading faster, improving your memory and all, and your focus and everything. And we added a whole new section on momentum because that's what people want in the new year.  Another thing we talk about a whole chapter on nitropics.  Another section is on AI. And how does it create momentum? Well, my dominant question in this category was, how do you use AI to enhance your HI, your human intelligence? Because I don't see artificial intelligence as artificial, I see it as augmented intelligence, right? It's there to support you, like all technology. And so there's simple things you could do to accelerate your intelligence and your productivity using AI. So let's say you wanted to learn a new subject. I mentioned this word neuroplasticity and instead of looking it up in the dictionary, you could go into AI and say, explain to me neuroplasticity as if I am eight years old and see what comes out of it, right? If you wanted to be able to use things like, we have a podcast too also as well. Sometimes I don't get the book in time for if they happen to be having a conversation with an author and I don't wanna read the digital one as I told you before. And so I'll go into AI and say summarize this book. And or if I have a guest, I will say, propose 10 questions for Steve, for Dr. Gundry, that he hasn't been asked before that would be very relevant to our audience of brain health enthusiasts. You don't have to use things verbatim. I rarely ever, ever do, but it gives you some kind of foundation for your creativity. Another way of using it limitless, the largest chapter is on memory improvement because I think having a strong memory nowadays is so essential because with people forgetting, I believe two of the most costly words are, I forgot and I forgot to do it. I forgot to bring it up. I was gonna say, I forgot to go to that meeting. I forgot that conversation. I forgot the person's name, just on and on. But when you have a great memory, every area of your life gets better, right? Your relationships, your health, everything. Your income, certainly. When you can easily remember facts and figures and sales presentations, client information, product information. But when we talk about the principles and the techniques in the book, you could apply it to AI. So if I wanted to remember a TED Talk, I could say, hey, build me a mind palace, one of the techniques that we teach that we took from a 2,500 year old methodology from ancient Greece. Or I could say, hey, I'm studying this area of business or our brain. And can you mind map this for me? And a mind map is a whole brain note-taking technique and it can do that for you also as well. There's something called retrieval practice. Remember I said that the questions are the answer that you could test yourself. So AI could test your reading speed, your reading comprehension. It could also provide you with thoughtful questions to quiz yourself. So memory is three phases.  So it could help you with that active retrieval, which is a wonderful way to learn also as well. So really the AI applications are truly limitless, right? There's so many different ways to use it. And you don't have to be afraid of it, right? They're just like a tool. Like at first the internet could be overwhelming or social media could be any kind of technology could. But once you put a little bit of thought into it, you can even use AI to learn AI. And that's pretty meta, right? Same thing with your brain. Like your brain is the one organ that named itself, right? Think about that. But AI is a wonderful way to even learn AI for those people who like compare AI to a tree and just see what comes out. Not to bother anybody, but I hope everybody realizes that this entire podcast, if you're seeing this on YouTube, this is actually not Jim Quik that I'm talking to. It is Jim Quik's bot. And you can see how amazing it is. Now, we're just joking. It's actually him, but that is a bit disconcerting. In the future, will Jim Quik's bot be teaching these courses and answering questions? We do have an AI component to our courses. So we do have a quick bot when people join our academy that they have access to and they could ask questions and we've preloaded it with all their courses. And it's remarkably, remarkably accurate. You go into a bot and say, how would Jim Quik memorize the periodic table? And it'll come out with our applications for our techniques and everything. So yeah, we offer that as personalized inside our courses. But yeah, soon, they'll have like holograms and VR and all this technology. But the most important technology I just wanna remind everybody in this conversation is the technology that's between your ears. This three-pound organ of gray and white matter that really has created all the technology in the world, right? The challenge is we upgrade our technology all the time. You get the new iPhone, you get the new apps, you upgrade all these things. But when's the last time we took time to upgrade the most important thing, which is our brain? I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. Make sure to check out the next one here.