Build a Memory Palace to Upgrade Your Productivity – Alon Braun with Dave Asprey, Part 1 : 841

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about anti aging, neurotechnology, scientific innovation and deep tech. And Alon Braun is a friend who founded Neurotech analytics, which is a neurotech focused analytical hub for analytical reports in the neurotech industry. And I am an advisor to his research firm that does that. But he's also an incredibly prolific and successful entrepreneur. He is an advanced student of what's going on inside your mind, inside your brain, different techniques for extending and enhancing memory. One of the techniques he's going to show us today, and I found him to be really noteworthy when it comes to anti aging and cognitive enhancement, all the things that are at the core of biohacking. So our private conversations have been so cool that I said, hey man, you got to come on the show and share some of what we've talked about with the world because it's new and it's really interesting and it's very forward thinking. He's also written a book called the Entrepreneur Journey. And what you'll find there is, if you wanted to really understand what's going on as an entrepreneur, this guy does the deep thinking. Because when you look at personality frameworks, not a lot of people tie those back to entrepreneurship. But I think he's cracked the code here. So lots of wisdom in today's episode. I'm going to do my best to fit it into an hour for you, but we might go a couple minutes over because he's real smart. Alon, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Dave.

How's that for, for an intro?

It's. I made actually. Amazing.

I forgot the most important thing. Yeah. You're a former computer hacker with Israel's cyber Special Forces unit. So he and I are both former hackers and as a matter of fact, I've already downloaded his credit card number while we're starting the show and he also downloaded mine. So now we're even.

Yeah, I can expand on that, maybe to be more correct. You know, I was part in a special unit, he's in Israel and I got like the clearance for this show. Talk about it. So there is a unit named Mamram and I know people don't hear about it much, but this is the name of the unit. And actually all the Israeli high tech has come almost come out of Mamram and we, we have CTOs. They, they people have been special force trained in the programming and software development and you know, managing big Systems and they serve long time in the army and I don't know they, when they go to like after the army they like build basically the Israeli high tech scene and then it's like also influence the Silicon Valley, I guess. There is a similar unit in India, it's called IIT I don't know if people familiar with but in Israel we have the same. And yeah. So.

Yep. Yeah. You sound like a typical Israeli hacker. Yep. Yeah. So just for you guys who aren't from the computer hacking world who know leet speak and all the old school.

Stuff, I will just tell you that.

The Israeli hacking military capabilities are well respected globally. Like, like so this is a guy who is pretty damn smart. But that wasn't enough. So. Oh, and then you decided to become a marine biologist, right?

It's more of like I started after the. Yeah, it's more of like a. Yes, but in the middle I've been into genetic engineering. I had like a. I felt like okay, I take all my knowledge, I'm going to crack biology. So this is where we think that we get, we start to be aligned. I took all this knowledge and went to biology and bioinformatics and genetics and done cloning of genes. I made the glowing. I was, I don't know, I had a startup 20 years ago, a glowing plant. And after that, yeah, I become, I done my master marine biology and coral calcification and I publish about that and.

Oh, and then that wasn't enough so you decided you become a Feldenkrais, like body movement, energy work practitioner. Right.

Yeah. I'm weird. I know it's like. Yeah, yeah. Then I decide, oh, I initially put a focus on myself and my inner self and I, I was optimizing, looking at how these are something called the Feldenkrais method. And I'm practitioner three years of studies and we actually, actually like learn how to improve our movement. We learn how to work with people to improve their movement and actually hacking into the. I guess like I can give an example it will be much simpler because it's. Everything is like body, body communication. So it's like there's not a lot of verbal but I can, I can demonstrate. And so this is something we work every day. We develop the language and like every muscle in my body I'm looking at the relation, I'm seeing how I improve it. And this is work I do every day with my trainers. We actually. And the guide, you know, the KPI is our posture. So we're looking at the posture, we're Looking at how we feel and we optimize for best. And this is one of the thing I believe the most for aging. So if we talk about longevity and aging, I believe our ability to move and to think. So the level of the software mainly is like the most important element for me, like, to improve, keep on learning, especially in the body. But after the Feldenkrais and I will continue, I decided, like, again, to shift. Shift perspective, you know, I will get to it later. About like the. In the entrepreneurial journey I. I get. And you. I know you're familiar with it, Dave, with, with the Integral framework. And like, we can look at. At reality in like different, let's say angle or perspective or glasses. So we have like the world of the inner, inner world, and they have the outer world, and we have the world of the collective, and we have the world of the system, let's call it like that. And so I've been looking at these different worlds and, you know, places within me and optimizing each one of them and hacking my. I don't know, the hacking or improving every direction that I can. So I move from Feldenkrais and this science I move into.

That's actually funny. You moved through Feldenkrais, which is a movement practice. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, that was a dad joke.

But I decided, like, to do like, big data and understand like, the world, you know, and like, big data people, marketing, clicks, traffic, buying traffic, selling traffic. And because I put myself, okay, I will make some money. So this was my KPI.

So you became a wealthy guy, and right now you're working on your body, your mind, your spirit, your longevity, and understanding how all of that works.

Yeah.

So there are not a lot of people with your background. I think it's safe to say that. And what intrigues me is that after the mindset of being a computer hacker, you really understand systems thinking in a way that most people don't. And you understand how to move a system. You don't quite necessarily understand everything about it. So you, you. Everything's a black box. You push on it, something comes out. Like, you talk about KPIs over and over. Did you get the thing to do what you wanted it to do? And when you look at our consciousness or our aging and all, it's the same thing. We might not know everything, but we know enough to make it do what we want.

Exactly.

And it seems like that mindset is kind of percolates through all the stuff you've done, even if you're looking at the body It's a distributed system of tiny information processing nodules called cells or subcellular components. And that's why you start very low down and you start working on that system and suddenly posture changes or longevity changes or brains change. Now there's two things that I think would be most interesting for the bulletproof radio audience and for the Upgrade collective Live members who are here for. Who have lots of really cool comments. One of them is definitely going deeper on the entrepreneur side around Ken Wilber's integral theory and how what that is and how you tie it in with the entrepreneur's journey in your book. So we're going to get there. But I think first the area that would be really impactful for people is talking about memory palaces. I mentioned these I think in and headstrong.

Yeah.

And I've had a few interviews a while back with a Swedish memory expert. But you have a whole new take on these things. Can you walk me through what is a memory palace and then what you did to hack that?

Yeah, I will, I will start a little bit before and I say we made, we made in neurotech. We made a big conference. I think it was one of the biggest in that right now and in and we got like hundred entrepreneurs and different people that everything was around aging and brain and memory. So I was looking who can help, who can do something in technology wise scientist. I was looking like in the electrode like implant. You know people that implant themselves with electrode, they look into external stimulation in order to enhance working memory. And I came to with the time I came back to my thinking that I don't see that something will work. So right now, immediately for me because I really want result. I want immediate result and I want to see a proof. So it's like this is also why I like your work so much. It's because you look exactly like you say you look. What works. So this is the most important what works. So the KPI is like it needs to work. It doesn't important what is assigned. We will find the science science after we find that it's working. So yeah I, I think me and you, it doesn't matter for us. Like it can be a spiritual direction, it can be a body direction, it can be anxiety, it can be nervous system, it can be psychology. Doesn't matter as long as it's working.

Yes.

And you know, so I think it's the recent years, you know there's so much, so much information in the Internet. So like people also like team fairies and blogs like that and start looking what is actually working for everything? How can we validate?

So let me ask you this. If you found out that carrying a teddy bear around with you all the time made you smarter, would you do it?

Yeah, absolutely.

See, See, you're my kind of guy. I just want to be clear.

Absolutely. I will go, I will take the teddy bear and I go to the psychologist that maybe I have too much masculinity and I need to take down my masculinity a little bit. But I will carry the teddy bear.

I love that.

Yeah.

Okay.

After that. So I was, I was watching, I was watching a Netflix documentary about a memory and there was a very nice guy named Nelson Dalles and he was a four time US Champion. And I decided, okay. And he said, you know, I, I've been learning all this memory from my, my grandmother and she had Alzheimer and, and also in my family it was the same and like my grandmother and it was horrible. And it's for my, there was event with my mother and I said, and with the time I understood that memory need to be something. Like there is a bottleneck in the memory, in the working memory and I want to improve it. So I started to work with Nelson Delis in how do I improve my, the software level. You know, and we started testing my memory and I see like, you know, my memory is like actually pretty bad. I like, I can remember like six numbers and like this barely. It's like if you give me a test, it's like it's not good. It's like until today it's not good. Maybe I learned too much in my life that maybe it's like over capacity but it's not amazing. And so I was like in six numbers and with time.

When you say six numbers, do you mean you can remember six numbers at a time or six on a dual in back?

No, no, no, no. Not at back at the time. It's straight.

Six is below average for a vice president.

Exactly.

Seven is where the typical vice president can, can go actually. Eight is where a vice president goes. Seven is sort of like average. So you're slightly below average. If you get to 9 and 10. You tend to find people at higher levels in an organization because they can remember more. So you're a little below that surprises me actually.

Yes. Actually I'm the type of person like, you know, left the keys and he's like, I don't know, my consciousness like shift places and I don't notice stuff. But I started to work with him and we saw that I managed to Improve myself to remember 100 numbers now. So after that I reach 100 and I can say, and I can recite hundred numbers forward and backwards. That was already like, okay, something isn't. It's working. Whatever it is, it's working. So the mind palace. Then I started to see, okay, mind palace, what it is and what's the biological implication of the why, what is the meaning? What is the relation between mind palace and biology? And I'm sure, and now I will mention what is mind palace? Because we get to the point is like we actually. It's a trick, a technique which is thousand years old. And it's actually like developing Greece and people use it through the last, I don't know, a thousand years or 2,000 years. And actually you imagine like a place. And in the place you place, you imagine like a virtual place. And they can be a home that you grow up in or like, you know, a school or whatever it is. And you place object in this, in this palace or in this house or in this location. And actually. And you also make them, you animate them and you make them do something really nice or emotional. This object. And I don't know how, but you remember. This is really easy to remember. So I played with my little children and they remember amazing stuff. So if you transfer. So I understand that if you translate something into a memory palace, you can actually remember it. We have this like with these places and I worked with Nelson and we built like a big palace. I had like a palace of a. I don't know, it was like 50 rooms and every room had like, you know, 10 places. So I had like a stack of 500 places I can like populate now.

So when you're, when you're building a palace like this, just to put a picture to it for people, you imagine a house or a palace and you walk in the front door and there's a shelf there and on the shelf you can put something. And if you're going to remember the number one, you have a little object that's always number one. So you place the vase there, right? And then on the shelf underneath that you place, you know, the basketball, which is number two, or whatever your little internal thing is. And then you, in your mind you can like explore this big thing. Like you would explore a video game. Those three dimensional Duke Nukem Doom. Everything you play is descended from those games. So I'll go back to old school. So it's kind of like that and it's super powerful. But is that really working memory because working memory is sort of like RAM versus this is something that's being translated by ram. You're using like a RAM doubler.

I think that when you look at the object, it's like working memory. So when you are with the object, but so the palace is actually the layer before the working memory, actually. So it gives you the network of connection. So basically you are building like a stack or a network that you actually, when you have one item, you can continue with other item and actually drag them from your brain. So it's actually the palette itself is just the neural connection and the objects will be like the items. So I think that you understand when I take an item, it's basically I'm populating my. But when I look at the room, if I look at the room and I see like five item or seven items, this is my current working memory. And I look at them, I have seven of them. Let's say this is what I'm able to hold. So the rooms in the house hold this items. But then I said, okay, I can do that. And I. And I, I must say, I. Working with the. I'm like a working company. I have like people, I have coaches, great coaches that I work with in different area of my life and taking care of all the time. Emotional, philosophical, can be body, everything that I can. And I spoke to like my coaches and nobody's, you know, everybody know this mind palace. You know, they know memory palace, what you do with that. It's nice when you maybe you want to impress somebody with great memory and you want to show people as an expert, but I don't know. But actually you do because you can use your phone. So what's the point?

I don't use the memory palace I built very often. It's probably kind of rusty and got some ivy growing on it, right?

Yeah.

But you use yours regularly, right?

Yeah, exactly. So what happened? I said, okay, I will find a good use for this. It has to be. There have to be a good use for this tool. And so I gave it, I started the experiment and what I done, I have a big project management system and I have like a few hundred items in the project management system which are like, you know, different. Basically it's representing wants. So my project is like once, but it's like parts of wants.

So.

So our project management usually is like what actually when we wake up in the morning, what is what we want from life? In a way, this is my project management system because I have built it in like different area of life in Every area I know now, okay, my next task in food is like, I eat more broccoli. I'm going to make a habit of more broccoli. Nevermind. So like you put all the ones. Now I took all this project management system and I uploaded it to the memory palace. Now how you do that, you take. And this is something I was working on, how I actually do that. I needed to make an object for every project, make an object that remind me of this wand. And I took all this list of objects which look very random. Some of them just a person because I like to put, and I show you later with my entrepreneur journey framework that every project is actually a team and a person and we work with people. So these people start to populate my project management system and then they populate my virtual palace and my man palace. And what happened then was actually amazing. And this is why I like to encourage people to try this. Because what happened then suddenly I found myself like, okay, so if I walk on the stairs now, if I, I can actually work. I can actually do really body things. I can actually swim and work. I can actually sit in the bench in the, in this or in the field and just run, upload object by object, object by object. And I can actually sit with the object and be creative. And I can say, okay, what is the next step in this project? And I can be very relaxed because everything is suddenly like, I know what I want. Every moment of time. If somebody asks me what you want, you know, yes, where we start, it's like now this sense, this remind me of so suddenly feels like the anxiety a little bit went down because I don't need to go nowhere, I don't need to check my phone, don't need to check my computer. Because what is most important is what do I want and what is the next step? How can I be creative in the projects that I want to do?

So I got to pause you for a second there. This is fascinating, but what you just said reminds me of getting things done. Methodology. Remember that one?

Yeah.

And if you guys don't remember this, this is a guy who said the way to inner peace is make sure every email and every piece of paper is fin dialed in a really precise system. Now I did this for two years, which I wish I got back, because the bottom line is he's an anxious person. I should have him on the show because I'm not like trying to attack him, but he's an anxious person. So he dealt with his anxiety with control. You could also just deal with the anxiety and realize I throw all my shit in a big box and if I need to find something, I just flip through there until I find it. Which is more like a memory palace. As long as you remember where you put it in the box. It's in there. Right. Or it's in a search engine. So you just don't like your stress could go down. So what do you do to deal with your anxiety when you don't have everything tracked in a system?

Ah, this. Okay, but this is another topic. Okay. Like for me, anxiety, it's a meaning of like I need to connect more with my body. So anxiety, the more I put focus on my senses, the more it's like I feel better.

And big hack for everyone listening right there is the anxiety's in the body, right. It's not in the mind. Right?

Yeah. So it's like, you know, we all know like porges sympathetic parasympathetic work. And you know, we can start to talk about this and all this subject of, you know, anxiety by itself.

Okay, well, I don't want to take you off your, off your previous track there, but I just, I caught that and I think that's worth noting for people. It's okay if you don't know where some stuff is. You don't have to feel anxiety if that happens. But having a system that tracks it typically reduces anxiety or at least reduces missed opportunity. There you go.

But then when the system is inside of you and you actually can connect to your body, this is what I did. It's basically instead of sitting on David Allen getting things done. And I respect David Allen, but in order to make it work, I need to sit on the computer. Now I don't really. I'm a computer person. I don't like to sit on the computer. I learned if something you learn about being like in software engineer, and this is something every software engineer will tell you. The hate of the computer. We don't like to sit in front of the computer. And then the phone, it's even a night, it's. It's even worse. So I like to connect to my body. I like to develop my body. I like to connect to my emotion. I like to connect to people where the computer get. So as if it's like embodying information can really open up other things. You can be with a project and be Lao, like Tai Chi. I don't know, being swimming now then the realization is. And for that I understand. Maybe this is the idea of what's happening. I'm just Actually taking a construct. And now it's like my wants, actually. So perhaps we can build palaces of who we are and what is our values and what we want. So we take all the, you know, there is all the work of like, you know, we live in a time that every info, you know, every person in the world is exposed now to Tony Robbins. Every person it's not. And every, you know, they have the, the coaches and they'd like, you know, many people, they repeat this information again and again. And people hear it at home and they know it. And people, people already like, they heard the advices. They heard the advices and, and, but what we do, what we do with that. So we hear we should be happy and we hear we do that, we do that, we do that. My responsibility not to be a victim. And there are so many frameworks and we have a ton of advices. What we do with that. How we actually, in the age of the Internet, when everything is accessible, what we do with information. So we file it on the computer. So the five steps that Tony Robbins gave for something, do we file it on the computer and what we do with it? So I started to understand, perhaps it's about like embedding information. And the main work that needs to be done is not getting more information, it's actually embedding the information and actually uploading it to us. And with the time when we upload these networks of information, with the time, you know, you're creating habits in your thinking. So when you're visiting these networks, you're creating habits and things happen in a different way. Things start to change when you actually working directly and constructing these networks. I can get into the topic of neurotech.

Before we get into neurotech. I just want to clarify. I know because you and I talked about it for probably 45 minutes on one of our calls. What you're doing is you're taking a project, you're putting it in a room in your memory palace, but then you're also creating people or processes to work on it, which I want to make sure that that comes through for listeners and that ties right back to Think and Grow Rich. You know, these round tables that the author of the book talks about saying, well, if you want Thomas Edison working on something, you know, close your eyes and visualize that you've got him sitting at a table with you. What would he say? And magically your brain can do that. So you're kind of putting Thomas Edison or some other whoever's in the rooms in your house and saying, go do some work while I swim. Do I have that right?

Not exactly. It's funny that you mentioned. It's funny that you mentioned Thomas Edison, because my book is about Thomas Edison and I break down all the Thomas Edison journey. But what I can say about that is like, when we are in the mind palace, when we are there and we have this virtual beautiful place that we built with all our projects and all our stuff, and this is what I have, and I noticed that we can actually do stuff inside. Okay, so. And the meaning of that is like, yeah, what is the action we can do on an object? And this is a really fascinating subject. And I think this is what you mean. What can we do per object? What is the abilities? What can we move the object and remember the movement? Not sure. But can we delete an object? Interesting. Might. Yes. Can we sort object in a room? Problem. I managed, for example, to give the object a number and remember the number. But that was quite easy because we can say like, okay, big is like a. I don't know, I don't know, watermelon. And we put the watermelon in the objects that we want. Like, so you can add priority to all your hundred things and you can add like some. You can mark them with some other objects. So you can do that. Then you can say, okay, my priority for 100 objects I enter in the room, I will put, I don't know, a watermelon. I will put it on one of the items in this room. And this is the most priority, most important for me right now. And so interacting with objects. And this takes me to the subject of the book I have built for the past two years because I'm so interested in memory. There was a big. Another big realization that happened for me. It's like that. And this is my start of the journey with a working memory is that we have a very difficult time to make decisions because in order to make the decision is a type of calculation.

Yes.

And this type of calculation, you know, what is the limit Working memory? You actually very difficult for people. And they doubt themselves and they doubt. Where do you want, you know, the cameras? You finish school, Nobody will never work with you about decisions. They never work with you about, like, making, I don't know, like, how do you decide things? And they ask you like a huge question like, okay, what do you want to do when you now, okay, you finished school? What do you want to do for rest of your life? Who you want to marry to the rest of your life? What do you. Where do you want to study? So this question, these big decisions that come to young people, what jobs you want? Like, who has the capability to. To answer that? The only way we use heuristics and we copy other people and we look, okay, my father say that I will do that. Oh, he is successful person. I will copy him. So we just use heuristic because we don't have a way to calculate. We just like the calculation is so complex that it's like, how do you calculate that? The issue is a working memory. We just cannot do the math now. So I went and learned the math and this is the math that I found. Like, most important is something called ahp. And it's very aligned to the work that I done on my Feldenkrais one on the body. And using the AHP I Built the Entrepreneur Journey book, which look at, like I said, okay, I will minimize the audience to like the entrepreneurs or artists at least that have a goal to be. To make a change in the world. And I look and I actually cut the journey into steps and I look at the main decision points and I put calculation, mathematical calculations and how you make the decision for every point. And this because of the working memory issue. And I try to build from the math constructs that I can use in my own. How do you embody decisions like that? So this was my work and this is a book about.

And yep, it's worth noting that in the Entrepreneur's Journey, you are starting every chapter with an example from Thomas Edison, which is why I brought him up earlier. And one thing that's nuanced there, that is very computer science, maybe a little bit even transhumanist. There is. Is that what you're talking about with working memory being a limiting factor for decisions? What's underlying working memory is energy production. And in computer science, how much power can you run through a chip before it burns? Right. That's why you have water cooled gaming computers and all this kind of stuff. So a lot of what I focus on is how do I get more mitochondrial efficiency, which means less heat, less waste, less reactive oxygen species to make enough electricity. One of the reasons sickle cell ptosis matters, and some of the supplements that catalyze energy because it makes working memory easier. So now you have, you have better working memory, ideally, and you have more energy, which we know more energy helps you with decision making. In fact, it was a study out of Israel with the parole board that probably proved that the most. So the idea is you get a power upgrade because you exercise, because you make your hardware work, right. And then what you're doing is kind of like installing a virtual machine inside your head where you've now figured out inside your machine, oh, here's how to do arrays, here's how I do sorting, the other basic things any programmer knows how to do. And apologies if you're not a nerd and you're listening to this going, what are these guys talking about? But what's going on here is. Yeah, sorting, right. You know, queuing. I hear all these concepts.

Exactly. Sorting. You know, Dave, if you understand that it's sorting, sorting, it's all sorting algorithm. How do you run sorting algorithm in your own brain? Yes, I think there is answer for that. I can get into this subject, but it's exactly that, and I agree with you totally about, look, I think you are the right person to solve the energy and me to Honda problem and I will follow what you do and in order to enhance my hardware. So that's the reality of things. And I'm working on the software level exactly like that. And there is no point. I will work now on the enhancing energy because I think that you already, like, you know, you have all the relation and network and you're actually doing the work, and that's all. So this is the reality of things. And I do not need to do this work on hardware.

So what we're doing here is a hardware upgrade and then a software upgrade. And what you're doing is basically an operating system upgrade, which is better than a lot of the softwares. What do we think about, like, how do we think. What are the core assumptions we make that underlie conscious decisions? But what you're doing is somewhere underneath that. So if you guys think about this, every now and then on your phone, you do an iOS upgrade and everything kind of shifts. And every now and then you install a new app. So if you listen to a podcast, you get a new idea that's an app, but if you have a new way of thinking that's more effective and more efficient or turns on new capabilities. That's what Alon's talking about here, and that's what's in his book. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty fundamental, groundbreaking stuff. But I got to ask you, how long did it take you to turn this on? Because this sounds like a little bit of work to install a virtual machine inside your head.

A little bit of work. Look, it's like, I will take your question. I move it to my little children.

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It's like I have children. There are five, you know, five and son age seven and two twins five years old. And I'm looking at what they're training with and I start to make games for them and like that can help them to understand to sort things. So I think that you can actually install it really good if you play the right games and not computer games. This is the issue. The issue is it can be computer. But I will explain something like that. You know, our senses do not. It's like we don't operate with numbers. So like musicians, musicians I think that they do this amazing work of like actually embedding math in some ways. So it's actually embodiment of math. So musician actually tapping into these energies and sorting of sound. So if you have a random sound and you need to sort it in your mind. That was really fast. So take like just like bells. Like let's say if you take eight bells with different sounds and you do sort them. Give the child to do that. Make him do it really fast. He will be amazing in his ability to think. So is that because the ability to think and make decision Actually our ability to sort. But it's a multi criteria sorting. So I will. The bronze pioneer is Montessori and the direction of Montessori Education. Right now I do not see more Somebody took a, a bigger leap than the Montessori framework for the little children. But there is a lot of work to do there and build how to install this basic stuff. Even to sort something, just to sort. It's so simple.

It's a reformatting of our education system. So instead of passing some standardized test, you do that. My kids learned to count with their toes. Like moving nuts around with their toes so that the numbers would be embodied in them.

Yeah.

And I think there's value in the Rubik's Cube. My son's really into that right now. But talk about working memory. I mean, he's got God knows how many thousands of algorithms in his head all the time. It's pretty astounding. But stuff like that is not video games. But can we make video games that install this? Do you think that's possible?

Absolutely. Especially VR. And I think especially in the world of VR and what's happening, I was amazed, like to, to like use the Oculus and like, you know, machines like that. And it's, I don't know if people are like aware what's happening, but it's becoming better and better and in the way that like a virtual world is coming and people understand that it's coming if they've been there.

Do you think is it safer to let Google or Facebook install algorithms in your brain with VR?

Good question. I think it's happening already. First of all, okay, it is something already this happening already. So now the question is like, how do we make good choices about like, which. Which podcast we listen to, how we make good choices, which movie we. We. So it's about the choice. Right now we have so much choices. You know, you open Netflix, what do you choose? You open the Internet, what do you choose? So it's all the time a question of a lot of data and best choice. So I think that this is a skill that we need for our children. A multi criteria decision choice fast according to his preference, not according to Netflix preference. So meaning we need to do the groundwork and work with our children. And I work with my children is like, okay, so what is our values? What do we value in a TV series? What. What is important for us in the cartoon and then like be able, like to take like perhaps the. The fact that is a real or the fact that is like enjoyable and the fact that we take few criteria together and how we choose the best show. This is something our kids need to do and we need to do. And I must say it's like, I will repeat the Kids stuff, but it's more for our children because they will have so many choices. The choices are big taking for them most of the time.

How do you deal with fomo? The fear of missing out. This is why choices are hard for a lot of people, especially kids. If I choose this, I don't get to choose this. Yeah. So how do you deal with it yourself? And how do you think about teaching the body to be calm when you make a choice that maybe, maybe it was suboptimal but it was good enough?

I think it's. I will say decisions, I think our body, first of all, I will say something about our body because it's, it's related. It's a. We make choices all the time, especially when we move. So when we move our hand in a certain way, these choices that have been made to move in a certain way, it's a pattern that I rather learn. But we all the time adjusting the patterns and that's the fact of choosing again the movement. Trying with the shoulder a little bit different, trying with the hand a little bit different and see what is more comfortable for us. And all the time optimizing. And it's about little judgments. It's the way I think the operating system working is about comparing little judgments and sorting them out. And so it's not about like if I do that something horrible will happen. It's more about like being on the first of all on the positive result. I mean in the HP network they look at like a benefit and risk and cost. So you look at it. But in our body and in the day to day I think that it's better to leave the first of all the risk parameter out, look at what you want and then put them in. Because if you put the risk parameter first and this is our, this operating system like first of all thinking what can bad happen? You already like put your body in the sense of anxiety. You're making your moq memory smaller probably and you do not make optimal decisions. You just make safe decisions. And so I would say this is how it is.

That's a fear based thing.

Yeah, it's fierce based thinking.

Now it's funny because what you just described there is what you learned in the first year of computer science, the traveling salesman problem, which is when you. And this is something everyone who's ever written their first code has to deal with.

And it's.

You have a salesman who needs to travel to the maximum to 10 cities and there's all these different paths that you could take and how do you Know which flight to take first, in what order. And it turns out it's really hard to do that in the perfect way. You can get it pretty good, pretty fast. But to solve it ideally takes enormous compute power and distributed processing. And this is why travel systems like Sabre exist. If you guys have heard of that. That's what does all of your travel stuff. So this is like 50 years of human engineering and software and hardware and distributed networks to solve that problem. So what you're doing there is you're doing the traveling salesman problem through life going, how do I make optimal decisions at each node in the network? And you're just doing more consciousness than most people. Right.

But what we do in our life, this is what we do. It is, yeah, free will, something, you know, you have a gate currency rename. You know, there's a one gate country that put it in the Constitution. I think the ability to choose and our ability for us to have a free will and to. And I think you promote it a lot. This is our, you know, this is in the heart of everything. Our ability, our. Our freedom to choose. Our freedom to choose and to be who we are and to follow what we want and to the value that we. And do it consciously. I think this is the house of everything fundamental.

Here's a really tough question for you. This is actually from Susan in the Upgrade collective in our live audience. She typed it for me. There are times and this is something I've struggled with for years and I feel like I've got a pretty good grasp on it now, but I wonder how you do it. So there's times when your computer science brain says, all right, I've made this choice. But your non rational, non computer science body has an intuitive thing that says, hold on. My calculations say to do this, My gut says, don't do this. How do you know when that's happening and what do you do?

It's a good question. I will look at it like that. And I put it also. It's coming in. It's in my book. And this is about like, you know, you have all the chakra system and the Kabbalic system and all of them looking very carefully on the like centers of energy in the body. And actually what they are is a mechanism to make this decision. We can choose from our heart. We can choose. And what is that is our body is a mind palace and our heart is a value of connecting and our gut and, you know, they. It's actually I can, I can go over every chakra and they explain the value that is inside. But this is exactly what it is. The heart is connection. How do we make a multi decision? That is not what Susan asks. Susan ask what happened when it's in the heart. But if I want the heart and the brain and if I want the heart and the brain and the sense of who I am and my expression of what I want in life and what about my safety and what about fun? What if I want all of them together? I'm not satisfied with one. And I think the journey is I'm not satisfied. And this is something that I learned from Ken Wilber. And this is integral framework. And we see how we upgrade the way we decide and we actually our values. It's the values that we put attention to. So we start in like. And he described it in colors and it's very beautiful. I really suggest everybody to learn integral philosophy because I think this is one of the main, best philosophical movement that right now, like that is current now. I will say that what you see is that some people, people change with the way they make decisions through life. And also culture change. And also it's individual and cultural. And you see that actually the operating system changed. So it starts with like safety and then it's moved like maybe I will not describe all the colors now and all this. It will be too long. You have order in the blue and you have the orange and it's like can be money and success. And then you have green connection and it's like people are upgrading, they're moving through. And you have then the artist and blue and then you have people in yellow, which is like my sense of being here and helping the world and being safe. And how do you do all of them together? Working with your heart and working with your, with your mind and with your sense of safety. How do you, how do you combine that? And that is the multi criteria decisions that need to be operating. So Susan tried to simplify it when she said she's trying to simplify and say okay, it's actually the heart. No, it's not actually. It's not anything actually. It's actually 7, 8, 10, 20 criterias that we need to operate with. We just simplify because we cannot. So people that move to the heart, it's sometimes because they already understand that money, it doesn't have to be only about money. It's also about our connection to people. But you want to combine, you want them all, you want to learn to do it all. You cannot neglect now your sense of safety. You cannot neglect because then you feel anxiety. You cannot neglect your sense of self worth because then you will feel empty and worthless. And what about connecting to people? So we want all. And this is my answer. And I will get, I dive very deeply into that, into the math of that and how do we do that? And I think this is the center of my work.

It really is the center of your work, from what I can tell. And that decision making, it's easy to make a spreadsheet, say, oh, what should my career be? You do a spreadsheet, oh, careers make you money. So I want to go work on Wall Street. And you realize, oh, hold on, that also makes you miserable. So maybe I'm not going to work 90 hours a week. So then you kind of do a few weighted things. But then at the end of the day, if your gut's screaming at you, no, this is, you know, this is terrible. Whatever you decide and you don't wait that at all, you'll wake up 20 years later and hate your life. Right. They don't teach you that in school in decision making. So you, you account for that in your framework.

Exactly. This is a main account. This is the main thing to account. It's multi criteria decision. And that is a mistake entrepreneurs have. And this is what I picture in my book and this is what I teach. It's how to use all these criteria for the entrepreneur not to make zero meaningful entrepreneurs project, which I see so many of them, which great execution, no meaning or how do you make amazing meaning, but no execution. How do you combine all these parameters together to succeed? Actually something is always missing.

Let's switch gears and talk about entrepreneurship and mission and vision and things like that. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this may end up being a two part podcast because we're just getting going on this part of it. So we've learned a lot about memory palace and decision making. But let's talk about entrepreneurship. And you hit the most important thing first there, which is you see the I have lots of vision and nothing ever happens. And we all know a bunch of entrepreneurs, crazy inventors, people like that, where you know, they might have the greatest thing since sliced bread, gluten free bread, but they it never sees the light of world because they couldn't execute. And then we see the executors who execute stuff that doesn't matter even if they make money. Yeah, it seems like you're allergic to both of those.

I'm totally allergic. This is why I like your work. I must say, I will say it again because you touch the inner self. You're touching dick psychological and you're exploring psychological places, you're exploring the system area, you're exploring the marketing and you're exploring the team and collaborative work. All of them are necessary people all the time neglecting one of them and say, okay, this is evil.

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