Unlocking Intentionality with Jeff Karp

Welcome, Jeff.

Hey, how's it going?

Good. So for the listener viewers, Jeff is the author of Lit Life, ignition tools. He's doctor, PhD, Harvard, MIT and a leader around a whole lot of things. He's been a TED med speaker, a TEDx speaker, and his work and Bio Inspiration in particular is innovations Biotech breakthroughs is super cool. And he's been awarded top honors as a mentor at MIT and Harvard, and he's helped many, many others to go on and develop their careers in science, fields of medicine and innovation. So welcome to the show again, Jeff.

Thank you. Yeah, great to be here.

Yeah. So Bio Inspiration, right? I start the show with a little music. I like to look around and take walks around the neighborhood. How did you come up with Bio Inspiration as a concept? Where does that come from for you?

So during my postdoc at mit, I was training in Bob Langer's lab. If you haven't heard the name before, he's a co founder of Moderna and maybe like 60, 70, maybe even more companies. Yeah, just a powerhouse. And I was working in his lab and one night I was kind of walking back to my desk and I noticed a journal article on someone's desk that had a picture of Spider man, like an action figure of Spider man hanging from the ceiling. And I was like, oh my God, what's going on? Because this was, I knew, was a nature journal, which is one of the most prestigious journals. I went back to my desk and searched around, you know, Spider Man, Nature, and I found the article. And what they had done in the article was through understanding how geckos can walk up walls and hang from a single toe, they had learned some new sort of mechanisms of action for how adhesives, you know, things can stick to each other. And they created a dry adhesive tape that could they put on the surface of Spider Man's, you know, whatever it was his hand, and then stuck them to the ceiling. So that was like the thing. And I was blown away by that. I just. I'd never heard of Bio Inspiration before. I'd never seen it in action. And the fact that you could go and learn about something in nature and then turn it into a potential product that could help people, it just, it just really spoke to me. And at the time, I was working with a bunch of clinicians, you know, doctors in various areas. And I kept hearing that new tissue adhesives were required, that sutures and staples had all kinds of shortcomings. And so I started to think, hmm, maybe there's a way that we could, through understanding how geckos stick to walls or surfaces, we could create a tape that was biodegradable and could be used inside the body for sealing surgical wounds.

That's so cool. Yeah, really cool, right? Use something inside, let it disappear, let it be absorbed once it's served its function so that it doesn't. Isn't an artifact there forever. On this related similar topic, let me remind our listeners, viewers to back and look for an episode about this idea of bio inspiration applied to the way teams work together. Teaming by Woolly Barker is a past episode and been very popular, folks. Look at like how an ant colony works together and how bees and like how many things and what can we apply to the teams that we work in? The human interaction goes very much with your idea for this, right?

Absolutely, yeah. I mean it's like hundreds of millions of years of research and development happening all around us. And I think when you really step back and think about it, evolution is the best problem solver. It's an experimental process, highly iterative, and we are literally surrounded by solutions which you can look at as ideas for solving problems. And it's almost like, you know, just with the evolutionary process, it's like this encyclopedia of solutions where new chapters are constantly written. And, and to me it's just so exciting because I also, you know, this whole other element of it all is the more we can connect with nature, the more we connect with our essence, the more we can think about nature in our work and in our day. That's part of that connection process and really attuning to the rhythms of life.

Yeah, it's interesting about like noticing things and becoming aware of things. Whether it's drawing a molecule from the rainforest or noticing a gecko climbing a wall, or thinking about how a shark skin or a fish's scales are. There's interesting things in all these realms to notice the shape of a dolphin. Right. And applied to. Yep.

I love the examples you're bringing up. These are incredible examples. And there's, there's so many. Like there was this high speed train in Japan that every time it went through a tunnel there was like a sonic boom because it was going so fast. And to solve it, part of it was looking at how kingfisher birds, when they're in the air and they're hunting for fish, they have this aerodynamic beak and that allows them to essentially just drop like super fast into the water and capture their prey. And so they designed the front part of the train based on the shape of the kingfisher. Beak. And they were able to eliminate this sonic boom. And, you know, it was. I mean, there's so many, you know, there's this, this, this beetle that exists in the desert that, you know, there's like no water, but in the moisture in the morning, from the humidity, it has these little channels on its back, and the moisture collects on its back, and the channels feed it to its. Its mouth so it can drink water. Like, there's all these things we can learn from. It's just, it's unbelievable.

It's really fascinating how nature solves problems. I, you know, the, the sonic boom thing is interesting, right? I grew up. There was a plane called the Concord, and I never flew on it, but it's supersonic, like transatlantic really, only. And it flew back and forth until they had some mishaps on it. But it never was economical. It couldn't go places because you couldn't fly it over ground. No community wanted sonic booms overhead, you know, day in and day out with countless passengers. Not to mention it was super, super expensive. Right. But now they're developing new ones and with slightly different shapes, this super long beak and tail and that kind of thing, to try to create a low pressure, no pressure sonic boom that changes the whole thing so that you can trav faster than sound.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I mean, my sense is, is that any problem that you're facing, there are aspects in nature that you can turn to and learn something new that you wouldn't otherwise think of. And when I step back and think about this, it really speaks to how narrow we become in our thinking as we age, as we progress and we think. Our minds are expansive. But, you know, you really encounter the narrowness when you start trying to solve problems. And you realize that, you know, it's almost like you. I show this when I present on this topic. Sometimes I show this example where there's like this car that falls into the water. And this really happened in Europe. And, you know, it's sort of like I say, okay, well, you know, what do the. Where the problem solver is going to do next? And they bring in a crane, and the crane's pulling the. The car out, and it looks like everything's going well. And then the crane falls in. And then I ask the audience, I say, okay, what do you think's gonna. What are they gonna do next? What are the problem solvers gonna do? And everybody bring it. Bring in a bigger crane. And so that's what they do. They bring in a bigger crane and then what Happens that crane falls in, too. So it's like we approach problems with the same thinking, expecting different outcomes. And to me, turning to nature for inspiration is a way to think differently. It's a way to disrupt our mindset, to disrupt the way that we sort of think about problems, to bring in fresh energy, fresh ideas, and it just increases the probability that we can take steps moving forward.

You know, I think about that example you share, and what I picture is, okay, there I am, I'm in my seat, and I. And this happens, and I swim out of the crane, and then I'm like, okay, I just need a bigger crane. But all of my solutions are from the perspective of being the person there in that crane, like, pulling the thing out and not from the viewer, because the viewer of the video can see, oh, that crane's about to fall over, boat about to come off the lift. Or they're like, whatever it is, like, this isn't going to work out. And from our perspective, like, God's eye in this case, like, you could see it from a different place. And yet in our own world, which is actually why coaches don't have to be brilliant to help you solve your problems. Like, I just have to be outside your world a little bit to call out what you can't see from inside the jar. Like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such a great point, I think, and really speaks to just this sense that there's literally limitless ways that we can look at things. And so why are we sort of just accepting that. That one view? And to me, that's also the power of. Or the superpower of diversity. Like, in my lab, I populate my lab with people where there's minimal overlap of the expertise. And so we have, for example, engineers, biologists, immunologists, We've had a gastrointestinal surgeon, we've had a cardiac surgeon, we've had a dentist in the lab. Constantly changing. And so the idea is that if we're sitting around a table, everybody has. It can provide a unique perspective. And when they do that, they feel validated. But we also have access to, like, all of the tools and resources and ways of thinking in immunology and material science and chemistry and surgery and dentistry and, you know, and so when you. When you get. You know, you get these things together, you're able to. To see things from different angles. And to me, that's like, it's really important, I feel, in my personal and professional life to be able to change my mindset, to be able to see different Ways of doing things and not just get stuck in the same process for forever.

Yeah. This is why getting a board of advisors, a coach, why people value consultants so much. Like somebody to look at the challenges you face from a different lens, apply a different approach to it, and if you get multiple of them, wow, all the better. Right? Many different ways of doing it.

Yeah. And, you know, this also kind of speaks to like, when I was coming out of my postdoc at MIT and starting my faculty position at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, I kind of had this, this like, holy crap moment because I had observed what others like, you know, Bob has done amazing, you know, started all these companies and, and it's not about the companies, it's actually about helping patients and bringing techno academic technologies, you know, through clinical trials. And I realized that's what I want to do. Like, I, my passion was just. I knew it, but I had this holy crap moment because I'd seen other people do it, but I didn't know how to do it myself. And I started to think, okay, what do I do here? What's the process? And I'd encountered all kinds of, you know, sort of stumbling blocks and challenges along the way. So I kind of knew that whenever there's something I can't do or I'm not doing well enough, it's because it's not an absolute. It's just because I'm not engaging the right process that works for me and I need to figure out that process, process. And so I started thinking, okay, if I want to make academic discoveries and then bring those to patients, let's say through startup companies, what's the expertise I need? And I started to think like, okay, well, I need like patent lawyers. You know, we've got people expertise in intellectual property and starting companies and clinical trials and manufacturing and reimbursement and regulatory, you know, all these things. And so I said, okay, where is that expertise? Because I can't possibly learn that like all on my own, you know, in a fast way. And I realized it just in the community. And so I made the strategic decision coming out of my postdoc to literally spend every two or three weeks I would meet somebody in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, like patent lawyers, corporate lawyers, reimbursement, regulatory experts, manufacturing experts, people in biotech, med tech, people in consumer health. And I would pharma and I would form relationships and I would look, I didn't know like exactly what I was doing, but I started asking questions. I iterated the questions I was asking I sort of presented myself differently. And what this led to was the formation of an informal advisory board for my lab. And it was like, as we were advancing every project right from the beginning, I could reach out to people and say, do you think this could be manufactured using traditional manufacturing approaches?

No.

Okay, so we got to change our idea. You know, if this goes through a clinical trial, what would we compare to? Because we got to know that early on in our experiments, so we want to incorporate that into our experiment. Otherwise, we won't know whether what we're doing is important. Right. Like, are we actually doing better than what's out in the field? So it's. It's sort of the same. The same thing that we've been discussing here is just this idea of having, you know, maximizing the superpower of diversity and really thinking about the skills that are required and then having the right advisory team, which are your friends, ideally, to kind of help navigate that process.

So what's the connection? It's clear, like, there's an opportunity here to expand your perspective, to learn from nature, to solve problems and innovate. But what's the connection with intentionality for you?

Yeah, so intentionality is a. Something that I think about a lot and has been really critical to my life. And it really actually goes back to. For. We're okay to go back here, like, all the way, you know, rewind to the second grade. So, you know, going back to, like, 1982, 83, you know, somewhere on there. I was born in 75, and I was struggling at that time with undiagnosed learning differences. Adhd. I didn't know it. My parents didn't know it. My teacher certainly didn't know it. And it was not. Nothing was landing for me. Everyone else was. Was getting it. I wasn't getting it. I wasn't connecting with anybody in my class either. At the end of the year, the teacher wanted to hold me back to repeat the second grade. And. And so my parents negotiated that if I spent the summer catching up with tutors, I could go on to the third grade. So all my classmates went on vacation, and here I am in summer school. And that summer, I was asked a question by a tutor that literally put me on a path to intentionality. Like, that's what. That's when it happened. They asked me a question that transformed my life. And so what happened was I would go in, the tutor would ask me questions and games and passages they'd read and stuff. And this one day, I went in, and the tutor read a Passage asked me some questions. Was just seemed like a normal day. But on this day, she did something different, which is after I gave my answer, she looked me in the eye and she asked, how did you think about that? And that question, you know, kind of almost felt like an invasive question to me at the time because I would. Had never been asked it before, and I didn't know how to answer it right. And. But it sort of. My, My, my brain almost like skipped, you know, like I felt like something happened where it sort of jumped or leaped or, you know, and I couldn't stop thinking about afterwards. Wait a moment. I can think about my thoughts. I can think about things before I say it. I can. I was an impulsive kid. I just did whatever I felt. I said what was ever on my mind. I got in trouble all the time, was always in the principal's office for acting out and just doing ridiculous things. And. But at that moment, it was almost like I was embracing metacognition, you know, this ability to think about thinking. And I started to do pattern recognition. I started to observe what people said in different situations. I started to realize anytime I asked a question, I could hyper focus on the answer for a few moments afterwards. And maybe, maybe people who are listening today can relate to that. Like, when you ask a question, it's almost like it's somehow channeling this energy and your attention for a short period of time. There's this window for whatever said. It starts to kind of sink into your mind. And, you know, I. My attention was all over the place. And so I started to realize questions were a survival skill for me. So that's kind of when I started to get on this path of intentionality. It was really for survival.

Interesting, interesting, interesting. So looking at where that comes from and what your intention was, was the, the thing that was cracked open by that question at that time?

Yeah, yeah. And it, boy, did it ever crack things open because I started to realize, like, it was almost like the computer analogy of like, I felt like I had this hardware, but I didn't have software that was working for me. And I had to figure out how do I program that software. So I started to observe intentionally other people's behaviors, things they said I would then try that on. I would behave like I saw other people behave, say what I saw other people say, and then get to know what is, what works, what doesn't work, what's me, what's not me. And so that's how I literally sort of program the software, you know, of my brain Like I realized I was the coder essentially back then.

I don't know what I was like as a kid, but I do remember that about the age of six, my parents took me to learn the first kind of meditation. And then I was exposed to other kinds of meditation and learning to control your mind, that I could slow my mind, notice my noticing. Right. Like bring that awareness to the self and then later through things like body scan, and then pulling back your awareness to think about yourself, sitting, meditating or whatever, wherever you were, and then pulling back to imagine yourself and then to sort of, I mean, people think of themselves actually going places like astral projection, but taking your mind somewhere else. Like being able to detach from things, to notice the thoughts, having the thoughts, the internal dialogue, monologue that you're having inside your own brain moment by moment and then to get some control. Super powerful, right?

Yeah. That's amazing that you had that experience.

Yeah. At right. Five or six. And it's funny, I don't think about it like, you know, I'm not super tatted, I don't have a ponytail, I don't wear a lot of hemp and that kind of thing. You don't have to have a particular look and feel to have, you know, some guru level practices.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's true, it's true. And I think, you know, just what you said, I mean, it's just so powerful because, you know, we hear a lot of people talking about it these days that like it's. It's like most of your thoughts are not useful. Right. And. But yet the tendency is to latch onto them and sort of have claim, like to connect it with your identity in some way. And that can lead to a lot of negativity, a lot of self shame, a lot of so being able to disconnect or at least be able to somewhat observe the thoughts. And that's actually one thing that happened to me where you know, I was, I practice, tried to practice meditation, didn't really find anything work for me. But when Covid hit and we all had this unintentional pause and my life literally came like crashing down in my living room. And happy to go into that, but I started to get into meditation and I found transcendental meditation, which is like there's this one word, a mantra, and you say it over and over in your mind. And I practiced it for a few months and that actually was enough for me to be able to see, see that. Like, you know, I'd sit there and I'd be saying this word in my head, and then I'd be like, oh, my God, I didn't write that email or I forgot. And I'd be like, jumping out of the meditation to go do it. And I was able to sort of reel myself back in, which is, you know, part of that's the practice. Right. And, and then I started to realize that these thoughts, they appear in my mind. They have an emotion associated with them or some like, impulsiveness, but if I just sit with it just long enough, they start to dissipate and then they disappear. And it's sort of like, really interesting to see that happen. It takes a bit of practice, but once you know that's possible, it's like you can bring that to so many places in your life.

Yeah. So the TM Transcendental Meditation was the thing that I was first introduced to at 6, and they gave me a mantra. And they give you a different mantra at different stages of life, and I don't hardly ever use that one anymore, but I found that the folk like a mantra in, in my experience is just a focal point. So you could focus on your breathing, you could focus on a dot on the wall or a tree if your eyes are open or you just pick something to bring. And then every time you go away, you're like, oh, I have that thing to do and I need to put that. You're like, then you, you have that. But then you go, oh, look at me going away. And then, and then I'm back to the tree, the spot, the breath, whatever it is, and I can pull my focus back to that thing. Yeah, yeah, we're talking. The focus changed on the camera.

I know, right? Look at that. I saw that too. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's almost like I, I, it's like I can't emphasize how powerful this is and how important it is and, and, and not just some, somewhat of like a, you know, importance in the grandness of the, you know, but more like importance to how we think and how we make decisions and how we emotionally regulate and how, how we innovate and how we, you know, decide what we're going to do every day. Because when I just found that, like, when we find just whatever the quiet spot is, and it's different for everybody, but, like, if you go on your, throughout your day and you can just find, like, that one moment, that one place where you're able to just observe your environment without any sort of, you know, streaming thoughts from external sources of the future, the past, but you're just sort of present like observing and you can go to that space daily and sort of just be there even for like five minutes or 10 minutes. It starts to change your life in so many incredible ways because I think it just, you start to connect with the essence of life. Like you start to be able to connect more deeply with the natural environment and, and this sort of like just appreciation of being able to be in this state of clarity, the state of calm. And when you, when you get there and you can start practicing it, it's just really empowering and I think, and really, you know, something that you can eventually end up doing on demand, which is so important in this crazy busy world that we live in.

It's funny, yesterday I had, I was feeling very anxious about one of my business projects that I've been at work on for a year and hasn't gone very well or aspects of it have gone well, but other aspects have really not gone well. And I' tried various things and none of them have worked with this particular project. And then so yesterday I just brought some self compassion and awareness like oh look, this is how I'm feeling about it and this is all the ramifications and just kind of that sort of pulling back third eye kind of perspective on me and my feelings and stuckness around this, this particular business problem. And then so, and I found I had a lot of peace with it. I'm like, well, it's gone how it's go, it could get worse, it could end up ultimately being a bust, you know, but I'm going to see it through no matter what. And then this morning I'm thinking about, well, what did I do around the core business in the pandemic? How did I respond and what really worked there? And I did a couple things that really, really worked. And then I'm like, oh my God, I had this idea and it'll probably apply back to that, but it was sort of a bigger picture idea. But in the pandemic when everybody was freaking out and they're like we gotta stop spending money and we can't operate and that kind of thing, and I'm like, well I'm stuck at home now and I got nothing else to do and I am not worried about my money, so I will just coach for free and I'll coach people anywhere they want. And I just made one or two announcements social media that I would coach for free. And I asked my assistant just keep me booked but to keep it within some reasonable amounts and time boundaries. But I did work A lot of odd times because I was coaching people in Hong Kong and Singapore and Europe and the Middle east and everywhere. So anyway, the year ended up actually being bigger, higher, and it's because I just came from generosity and creating value. And then I had this thought today about all of our marketings beyond that other business project. But it's like, you know, everybody offers like assessments and a workshop and an intro thing and a strategy session in my kind of a world. And I'm like, why don't I just stop all that and take an idea from the recession and from drug dealers on every corner and that is, first one's free. Instead of doing like a strategy assessment where I figure out how to sell you, why don't I just. Just gave you some free coaching and then we can talk more about what it would be after that, if that's of interest. But I just, I like, got really excited about, like, I'm just going to do some free coaching for people and see where I can create value and then, you know, it'll either fit or it won't fit. But I trust that the right things will work out in the process. Right?

Yeah, yeah. No, I love that because I, I think, you know, what you're tapping into that. Into is, is just the, the, the limitless possibilities that exist around us and how when we do new, like, our brains love novelty. And I think, you know, when we're younger, everything is new, right? Like, you know, learning to crawl, learning to walk, every grade is a completely new experience. Like, it's almost like a new world, a new universe for us and, and every skill, every sport, every. Everything is new. And as we get older, we lead these algorithmic lives. Like, we wake up at the same time, we go to bed at the same time, we eat about the same food, you know, every day, we interact with, with the same people, we work on similar problems, you know, we scroll similar sites. And so we become very, very algorithmic. And I think that what happens is, is that that gets. Even though we might be very productive, and we become really good at doing this one narrow thing, our brains start to kind of shut everything else off because, you know, go into this energy saver mode. But, you know, when we start to do new, it can be so energizing, like just making these small changes and, and finding the time. Like it sounds like you did, you just kind of stepped back and you had a moment of pause and you were able to reflect and you had some clarity and this idea came to you and boom, you were, you Know, but I feel like everybody can access that every day. And like, it's like it's right there. But when you do these back to back meetings and then, you know, we only have the certain cognitive capacity, like it's like a battery, right? And, and, or, you know, our bandwidth, you know, it's like that gets depleted. And when you go scroll and when you watch movies and whatever you're doing, you're depleting that. And so we need ways to recharge and restore. And for the other thing, I'll say is like, our brains, I like to think of this as like, press pause. Our brains need a pause to sync up for our conscious subconscious minds, like to swirl around and for all the information to settle. And something I noticed that, you know, people that, you know, your listeners could potentially, you know, you listening, you could practice this. Just give it a try if you're not already doing it, which is, I used to do these back to back meetings, you know, all day long. Every day I get to the end of the day, I feel great because I'd be like, all right, I've done two marathons worth of work, right? And I'm like, all right, this is great. I get like five and a half, six hours of sleep, just barely enough to squeak by. But then, you know, repeat every day. But then I started to think, like there was something that didn't seem right. Like something to me was just a little off. And because there were just so many things I was doing that just weren't valuable. Like I just felt like I was doing like all these little things and like, why am I doing? So what I did was I create, just as an experiment, I created like 10 minutes in between meetings. So instead of booking an hour, do like 45 minute meeting or 50 minute meeting, and then in between, do nothing. Like don't look at your computer, your phone, just like close your eyes or go for a walk somewhere, ideally in nature. And what happened was it was like transformative. I started to connect with what the person I just met with, with some, something that someone said like three months ago. And I would be like, oh my God, we should get together. This could be huge, you know, And I wouldn't have had that thought if I would have just run into the next meeting. And so, you know, it just really showed me that we do, our brains do need those moments too. And I feel like we used to have those moments, you know, like in the bathroom, for example. Like, you know, you have them in the shower, you have like, luckily you Know, like people are not necessarily taking bones into the shower these days because at least that might be a place where, you know, a lot of people get ideas in the shower, right? And it's like, okay, but you can get those ideas outside the shower too. You just have to find a way to, you know, like, like, like create those moments of pause where you're just, you're letting your mind just sort of, you know, sync up and swirl around.

And yeah, our thoughts. I think people have waking up thoughts, they have shower thoughts, they have commuting thoughts, they have running, exercising thoughts. I actually have a notep in my shower from a thing, a product called Aqua Notes. And it had like a little waterproof paper. You can order it on Amazon, go look for Aqua Notes. Looks like a little notepad, but it has a pencil and a little tear off notepad that sticks on your shower wall and you can write down your thought of the day or whatever. And I, I super love it. Like for that kind of thing, like an intention, a brainstorm. I could have an intention up and then flip it up, write a brainstorm, pull that off, take it off with me and then capture it. I generate more ideas than most. I lead with ideation, but I, I also recognize most of those ideas are just noise. Like it's just brain chatter making random connections. And lots of them aren't super useful. Right. I definitely shouldn't pursue all of my ideas. I should let most of them go so that I have some focusability. But it's a useful thing. You talk about the brain interrupt and getting sidetracked. I think one of the biggest things that people are terrified with is public speaking. And I am almost never terrified with public speaking. I can walk in front of 5,000 or whatever and I'm actually pretty good most of the time. But I did stand up comedy a few years ago and I was truly terrified because I was doing something new. I've done things around music and dance before where I've been terrified because it wasn't like my home turf to get up and talk like this in front of a group about something. I, I don't think anything of it. I belong there. Right. But that isn't normal for most people. And you had an experience like this doing your tedmed talk. Talk about how that was for you, what happened, what your insight was.

Share with us that so this is going back to 2014, 2013 actually, when I was asked. So I got a call from Jay Walker, who is the founder, was CEO of Priceline, and then he acquired the rights to TedMed. And, you know, he was running it for several years, and he invited me to. To take the tedmed stage and on the work that we're doing in bioinspiration. And initially, I actually said no because I was so afraid of doing it. I hadn't memorized anything and since, like, grade school. And, you know, most of these, pretty much all the talks are fully memorized, you know, and they're like 15 minutes, 18 minutes, whatever it was. And so I was just. Just. But then I started to reflect, and I was like, if I say no, I'm probably never going to be asked again. And so this is my only shot. So I went back and said, actually, you know, I would really love to do this. And so, you know, I went nuts on putting this talk together. And it was. It was incredible, the effort that, you know, that I was able to kind of muster up to put in there, because it was like, there was the script. I had my slides. I work with an animator to create, like, a one, one and a half minute animation. And I had to get my words to match up precisely with it. And then I had to perform it so it didn't look like it was memorized. So, like, all these stages, I presented it. I rented out the Kresge Auditorium at mit, which is like the biggest auditorium there, and presented to four people, my family sitting there. I practiced for, you know, the head of communications at my institution and my lab, and, you know, just all these. All these people.

Yeah, yeah.

I get to. It was at the Kennedy center in D.C. and I get there and they. They run it. I run it through with somebody and, like, the. Who's. You know, the person who's kind of helping. And they're like, actually, can you make some changes? And I was like, oh, my God. Like, this is memory. Like, how am I gonna do that? Like, it's tomorrow. So then I'm, like, kind of freaking out. Then we have this. This session where they're like, okay, here's how it's gonna go tomorrow. The sort of, like, the rundown. They said, here's the clicker. We just want you to know that you can't go backwards. So if you accidentally hit the button forward twice, you have to yell to the AV person, you know, can you go back a slide? And I'm like, okay, there's no way I'm doing that. And then they said, by the way, sometimes people stop in the middle of their talk and there's a couple reactions. One is, they start crying. They said, we Advise you not to cry. Like don't cry if that happens. And then they said, yeah, it's like, okay. And I'm like, like a little strange. And then they said, okay. And also some people run off the stage. When they stop, they said, don't run off the stage. They said, what you should do is just stand there and smile. Right? That's what we recommend. Just stand there and smile. And so, you know, I'm like really nervous about this talk. I have a pack of halls in my pocket. I'm like eating almost the whole pack before I go up. I get invited to go up and. And by that time I knew it, like inside and out. I could give this talk with thinking about different things. And so I get up and five high definition live stream, you know, like five high definition cameras being live streamed around the world, full auditorium, president of my institutions in the audience giving this, this talk. And things are going really well. And I'm sort of looking at the audience and I'm just like robotically giving the talk. And then all of a sudden I'm like, wait a moment, I forgot a lion. Like, I missed one of the lines that I had. I still was able to keep going. I was like, oh my God. And my brain couldn't get unhooked from that thought. And I stopped. I came to a screeching halt in the middle of my talk. And I'm thinking to myself, oh my God. And my mind is blank, completely blank, other than the thought of just stand there and smile, don't run off, don't cry. And all the swear words are coming to me. I'm sort of like motioning with my hand to try to get like lightning to strike, to energize me, to figure out what to say next. And. And then I. It's like I stopped for 15 seconds. And then what happened was I got the idea, I don't know how I got it to advance the slide. I advanced the slide and it's a blank slide. And I think to myself, like, what a blank slide? Then I clued in. Wait, that was a cue for me. Like, then I moved it ahead one slide. And I remembered when I moved it ahead, the blank slide was a cue to say something. I knew what I was supposed to say. And then I was able to continue. So I continued, finished the talk. And then as I was walking off the stage, the stage manager, you know, whispers to me, we can edit that part out. And then, you know, I left the stage. And. And so what happened after the talk, you know, Some people came up to me and they said, we. We noticed that you stopped in the middle of your talk. And I'm thinking, okay, probably not too hard to notice that. And they said, but, you know, you were able. You were able to recover. Like, we noticed you made a really good recovery. And that was transformational for me because I had been shamed for a talk that I had given, actually, in grad school. Like, someone yelled at me when I. During a question and answer period. And it really, like, I don't know, it just, it just imprinted in, in my mind. And every talk after that, I couldn't. I couldn't get rid of it. But that, like, stopping and then being able to start again, it kind of unhooked me from that, that a. That imprint, that negative imprint. And it gave me the confidence. And it's, you know, one of the chapters in lit is about focusing beyond failure and really seeing failure not as the end, but as one of the steps in the iterative process of evolution, of moving forward. And to me, it was like, this is experience, as kind of horrifying as it was while I was standing there, actually transformed. Every talk after that, I've given to, you know, I'm more confident, more relaxed, more, you know, and so it's made a profound, you know, difference in how I, I get up on. On stage, you know, these days. And it's just. I mean, there's been so many examples like that in my life where it's like, you think you just. And it comes with these expectations and, you know, the, the failures seem at the time huge. But if you look back on your life for all those huge things, most of the time you realize that they were actually a catalyst for something else to happen that then became really great.

Yeah. Every great story, right? Every heroic tale has a moment of failure. Often a few of them where you, like, have to reset, look again, pull yourself up, right? That kind of thing. And, and that, that's so real. And people have that, and people have those kinds of things all the time. We've even seen, like, famous actors and performers who have, like, fled the stage because they just couldn't deal with, whatever, a technical breakdown or a thing like that, and had a whole meltdown that, that damaged their Persona, their brand, you know, their, their product. I, I, in that panic that I had over doing standup comedy because I'm like, I'm fine talking about whatever and just kind of riffing on things, but memorizing a specific sequence of something that builds on something else and Is all supposed. All of it's supposed to be funny. Of course, it wasn't actually all that funny, but in the end. But I did. I do remember in the middle of that I lost my place at some point, and I'm like, oh, I forgot. And then I just kind of looked at people. I'm like, I think I forgot to say something anyway, and then I just moved on. Right. Like. And I. And I had been coached in that some years ago, like, when you get pulled out. Nobody pointed out that I might cry or run away, but there, instead of just staying there, like, just call it out. Call yourself out. Like, oh, I got distracted there for a second. What was I talking about? And sometimes the audience will tell you or whatever, or you'll just think you'll pull yourself back by just naming that you, you know, went off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I feel that. And then, you know, I've also, you know, I've kind of shared this story with a few people. And some people, you know, have even said that, like, they've shared their experiences where they've forgotten lines or whatever and have been able to just, you know, as you said, been transparent with it. And they felt even more deeply connected to the audience because, you know, when you get up there and you're sort of giving a performance, there's a separation you're creating with the audience. But when something happens, you know, like when you encounter a challenge or setback, a failure, you know, whatever it is, you're. That actually makes you real. Like, people realize, oh, okay, like, yeah, that that might happen to me. And so it's kind of an opportunity for connection. And actually, one thing that you said also before, like, I think a lot of people are. Feel fearful to get up on stage, but, you know, and it actually made me think of a story. One of my friends, a colleague who's a doctor, professor in Boston, a cancer oncologist, and there actually just was a film about him that they showed several weeks ago in Boston because he actually got cancer. He got the cancer that he researches, and he actually beat it twice. And a remarkable story, a Wolfram Gosling. And. And he was. He played the trumpet. And he played it in, like, the Boston Symphony, like an unbelievable trumpet player, but the cancer was in, you know, was. Was in his face. And so they had to cut a lot away. And so after the, you know, he wasn't able to play the trumpet. And he went back to. He's from Germany. Went back to Germany. And he found the teacher that originally taught him and he worked with him, worked with him to try to get a note, and he couldn't get a note. Couldn't get a note. And then eventually he got a note. And then he said to himself, well, if I can get one note, maybe I can get two. And then he got a second and a third. And then he was able to go. Like, before, he was doing solos and stuff, but now he was able to rejoin the symphony. Not at the point of solos, but he was able to be part of the symphony again. And to me, that's sort of like the. You know, like, it's like this incredible story because it's like, could you get up on stage and say one word? Right? I think most people probably could get up and say one word, right? And it's like, if you can get up and say one word, you probably could say two words. And if you could say two. You know what I mean? Like, it's like you can stretching and expanding and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, it's interesting. I. I got coached in speaking to different size groups, right. And I noticed that, you know, the way you speak physically to, say, a group of four people is different than the way you speak to a group of 4,000 people. Except it's also not like, in reality, you can't speak to four people. You can't speak to 4,000 people. I can talk to one person. And some of the best public speakers pick a person, a pair of eyes out there, and they talk to them for a minute, and then they talk to somebody else for a minute, and then they talk to another person, and they have a series of conversations that everyone's witnessing. Right. But that is powerful. And all of it connected and pulling through. And then if you stop, it's because you started having a conversation with yourself in your hand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a great point, I think, because, yeah, we tend to get, you know, sort of stepping back and thinking, like, okay, you know, speaking to a group of 4,000 can be really overwhelming. But if you can train your mind to speak to that one person and you're connecting with them and you're thinking, this person could be transformed by what I'm about to say, and you're able to. To. To stay with that. Yeah, I mean, you could be comfortable anywhere, and you could really keep getting, you know, your message could be really powerfully delivered.

Yeah, it's. It's. It's a really useful thing. And that. That other thing of where you're, like, scanning back and forth, like, across the room That's a terrible thing. Or where you just look, you just sort of glaze over and look at the whole. We could feel that you're not connecting with anyone, right? Like.

Yeah, yeah.

It's funny. So we've talked about so many things. How does ADHD live for you? Today was a challenge as a kid. You got some self awareness. What are your rituals and how is it a superpower and how do you use it today?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it definitely stays, you know, still with me today. And I think that, you know, the way I like to kind of think about it is, is, for example, let's say I'm on a boat and the goal is to get down to the end of a river, right? I'm going to bump into every single rock along the way, every overhanging branch I'm going to get trapped up in. But I'm not just going to get sort of, you know, trapped up. I'm going to look, I'm going to look at the rock and I'm going to be like, oh, that's interesting, you know, and I kind of see the rock and then, then I get trapped on a branch and then I'll see a path on the side of the river and I'll get out of the boat and I'll start walking and then I'll be like, wait a moment, I'm supposed to be going down the river to the end. I'll get back in the boat. And so I feel like by the time I get to the end, it's taken me far longer than I had ever imagined. I might be, like, shaming myself in some ways for, like, why'd it take me so long? But the experience that I've had has sort of like, you know, I've tapped into my curiosity. I've had this experience where I've looked at every rock, every branch along the way. And so I have this sort of deep understanding about certain things I didn't have before I got in the boat, right? And I feel like that's kind of how I feel navigating the world with, with adhd, is that I'm kind of going over on all of these places. But in many ways I found it to be a superpower in the sense that I'm able to connect with things in my environment in really meaningful, deep ways. And I'm able to make observations and be able to do pattern recognition and then be able to bring that to my research in my lab, where we're trying to solve medical problems. And it's really important to see what are the patterns that others have used to try to solve this. What are new patterns that we could, you know, approach this with? And so I think, you know, it definitely is challenging in the sense of, you know, I need rituals and practices and habits. So you mentioned that. So one of the things I do I refer to as the distraction disruptor. And this is something, again, everybody could try today, which is what I do is I'll write on a piece of paper the word distraction, and I'll circle it. And then anytime I feel distracted or catch myself in a distraction, I'll put a check mark through the word distraction through that circle. And what that does is it doesn't necessarily stop the distraction, but it intercepts and develops an awareness that I am being distracted. So it almost gives myself a little pause to be like, okay, you're in a distraction. And now I can be intentional about, okay, yeah, I want to continue to be distracted, or, no, I want to get myself out of the distraction. So it gives me almost that. That choice. It presents like a choice. And I also, by looking at the number of check marks I'm sort of putting in this box, I get a sense for my distractibility that day. So it could indicate that maybe I'm not getting enough sleep, and then I can make changes, or I had too much coffee, so I'm all over the place. I'm crashing, or this kind of a thing. Another thing I do is I put my phone. I'll put it there, and I'll start the timer when I'm working. And then when I feel the urge for distraction, I'll look at the clock, and I'll say, can I go another minute or two before I engage in the distraction? So kind of turning it into a challenge. So you refer to that as like a challenge clock. And often when I do that, you know, I'll look at the clock a few times. One more minute, one more minute, and then It'll be like 10 minutes or 15 minutes. So I'm able to then, you know, find something that. So there's all sorts of things like that that I do to, you know, try to navigate. And I don't use those every single day, but I sort of cycle through them, you know, depending on. On the situation.

Well, what works for you, the listener, the viewer, won't necessarily be what Jeff did, but maybe you can hear something from it and be inspired by him as he's inspired by nature or be inspired by one of the things that we talked about today. Jeff Karp jeffcarp.com the book is lit. It's all about getting lighting your own life up life, ignition, tools, lit intentionality and bringing that heightening, developing that for yourself to be. We should all be as productive and accomplish as you. Jeff jeffcarp.com thanks again everyone for watching, for listening. My offer, my inspiration. This thing is sincere. If you want a free coaching call, I don't know, I don't have official structure for it yet, but just send an email to bill@scalingcoach.com bill@scalingcoach.Com and just right free coaching and I'll have my assistant book you a time. We'll give you a little free coaching, see what happens. If it's useful, you'll want more, but in any event, we're happy to do something like that. Let me give a big shout out thanks to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish who creates whole Scaling up framework and we do our annual CEO Summit at Harvard every year and then to the folks at Storeon who help our show get ready produced out the door each and every week. Story is Cameron, Seth Christel and the team over at Story Island. Thanks again everyone for watching for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep scaling.