Brian Johnson built a half-mile trail on his property and found a metaphor in the work: start narrow, widen incrementally, trim and refine. He connects the physical process to habit formation and neuroplasticity, using the sled-groove metaphor from The Brain That Changes Itself to explain how repetition carves new neural pathways.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less time.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. A couple plus ones ago, we spent some time pulling some weeds together as we created some new habits. Habit? How? By starting small and making it easy. Am I repeating myself and all caps yelling yes and yes. Today I want to spend a little more time on our new property. We're going to talk about my new weed whacker and the little running trail Emerson and I created. First, a confession. I'd never used a weed whacker before we arrived at our new place out here in the country. Note I did mow the lawn and our elderly neighbor's lawn every weekend growing up, but I never got promoted to the weed whacker duties. And I should also let you know I've spent more time at Home Depot over the last few weeks than I had in my entire life. It's been pretty awesome. New Identity Rancher Bry Yee Haw so one of the first things I did after we arrived, I created a little running trail around the perimeter of our property. It's a heavenly little loop that just so happens to be almost exactly a third of a mile. Of course, I think in three, so running a mile was a good opportunity to think of the big three. Then Nama visited and suggested we create another part of the trail at the other side of the property. I mapped it out and saw how it would perfectly connect with our existing loop. Then after a nice day of deep work, I put on my Rancher Bry outfit and got to work. And that's when I started thinking about neuroplasticity. Quick Context after going through my fair share of weed whacker recharges and restrings, I'm becoming a little more adept at this whole trail creation process. What I learned is that it's best to start with a simple little narrow strip that's about a weed whacker wide to kind of draw a basic directional line of where you want the trail to go. Now, once I get that, I go a little wider, then I go a little wider, then I'll rake it out to see what I missed. Then I go back over it and make it just the right width. And of course I'm trimming some branches back that might be hanging in the way and all that jazz as I go. Then, voila, we have a V1 trail. Then the more we go down that path, the more awesome it gets. And as it turns out, that's actually a pretty good metaphor for how our brains wire and rewire themselves as we create new behaviors. I think it was in the Brain that Changes Itself. An amazing book that for some reason I haven't done a note on yet that I was introduced to another similar metaphor. Enter Google Search for the Brain that Changes Itself Sled metaphor, Yep. In that great old school book on neuroplasticity, Norman Doidge quotes Alvaro Pasquale Leone who tells us about the fact that when you go sledding on a freshly snowed on mountain, you tend to create a little groove that you tend to follow both on the way up and the way down. By the end of the day, after a bunch of trips up and down, you're much more likely to follow the grooved pattern. And if you want to change those patterns, you're going to need to figure out how to block the old pathways and create some new ones. And that's what I was thinking about as I weed whacked the extra 0.2 miles to our trail, extending it to a nice 0.5 mile loop. Those two laps for a mile make me think of having strength for two. And yes, I always think in optimized ease. So today's plus one. What habit trails are you trying to create in your life? Let's have a basic map of where we'd like to go. Be willing to start small, tiny and lay the path for new behaviors as we widen those neural pathways with each pass through. Weed whackers optional. But don't forget, when you're whacking away on your new habits in tall grass in a subtropical climate, the bug bites and scratches are to be expected. Yee haw. Let's do this today.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.
Hey guys, this is Brian with a quick little P.S. i'm really excited to let you know about an event we're working on. Plan is to make it the premier self optimizing event of 2020. We're calling it Optimize 2020. You the modern hero. Basic idea. Five days, 101 world class luminaries. One million people. You can learn more and get your tickets to the online and offline event at Optimize Me 2020. Again, that's Optimize Me2020. Hope to see you there.
