Brian Johnson examines how Americans encounter roughly 100,000 words daily, arguing that constant stimulation damages creativity and mental health. He cites Stephen King on mental fatigue and Thich Nhat Hanh on what nourishes the mind, then shares his own practices like tech-free hikes and silent drives to reclaim space for original thought.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Here's another little gem from Dan Pink's To Sell as Human. The man is a brilliant writer and a treasure trove of goodness. He tells us that according to research from McKinsey, the typical American hears or reads more than 100,000 words every day. Think about that for a moment. A hundred thousand words every day. When I think about that, I immediately think of a few things. A lion, a king, and a monk. Specifically, I think about Alberto Violdo's wisdom that we are now exposed to more stimuli in one week than our ancient ancestors were exposed to in their entire lifetimes. As he says, we evolved to deal with one lion roaring at us at a time. Now, with 247365 Global News, it's as if the entire jungle is roaring at us all day and every day. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons why obsessive news and talk show consumption is correlated with anxiety, depression, etc. Another by the way, here's a crazy stat from Naysha Winters in the Metabolic Approach to Cancer. She tells us we can slug down more sugar in 30 minutes than our ancestors would consume in an entire year. 30 minutes a year. Yikes. No wonder why we are all so sick. That's our lion. Side note, Emerson and I just read the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and are now working our way through the Chronicles of Narnia.
Love it.
Back to the scheduled programming here. Then there's our King. Stephen King, to be precise. In on writing, King says that the hardest part of his creative journey was when he was a full time high school teacher trying to make it as a writer. Although he loved the kids, at the end of the week he felt like his brain had been attached to jumper cables and it was really hard to simmer down and write anything worth reading. Then there's our monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He tells us that everything we are exposed to is a nutriment that needs to be digested. Those hundred and thousand words we hear and read every day, your brain has to process them and digest them, just like all the food you eat and that sugar you might be consuming.
All of that.
To say, to put it very directly, if you're the typical American, jamming your consciousness so full of words and stimulation all day, every day, you probably have a very hard time coming up with an original thought. Sorry to break the news. At least that's my experience. When I open the tap to too much news, I find myself waking up in the morning thinking about what's going on in the world versus what I want to create in the world. Of course, as with everything, there's a balance. How's yours? And by the way, this is also why I very rarely have any music on and never any talk shows when I'm driving. That's my silent time to decompress and think and integrate. And why I never bring any technology with me when I'm in nature hiking. That's my silent time to decompress and think and integrate again. We all need to find our path and our optimal balance. How's yours? To the extent we're committed to being creative, then reactive, being more creative than reactive, I say we trim that hundred thousand word count down. And remember Mark Twain's quip that anytime he finds himself on the side of the majority, he says it's time to pause and reflect. And of course there's Krishnamurti's genius line that being well adjusted to a profoundly sick society is no measure of health. Let's break away from the noise and make some noise in the world.
Hey, this is Brian with a quick question for you. Do you know what the word optimize literally means? It's from the Latin optimus, which means the best. In our case, we're talking about helping you create the best version of you. So another quick question. What's the best version of you look like?
How does that version of you show.
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