Change Your Life in 5 Minutes | Jim Kwik & Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Can you change your life in 5 minutes? Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is the host of one of my favorite health shows.

Business, big business, understand the rules of behavior change, right? They understand it and they apply it. But once you realize how good you can feel with 5-minute practices, very quickly you want more.

Welcome back to the Kwik Brain Podcast. I am your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik, and the topic We're going to talk about today is how to feel better in 5 minutes. This also could be how to have a better brain in 5 minutes, because I think that in order to feel better, we're talking about mental health, starts with brain health. And we definitely have an expert here in his podcast studio. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, it's so good to be here with you. It's the host of one of my favorite health shows. It's the biggest in the UK and through Europe. He's written 5 bestselling books. And the one I want to talk about here, I have a couple here. I have Happy Mind, Happy Life, which was so good. And this I actually haven't read is Feel Better in 5: 30+ 5-Minute Tips to Lose Weight, Improve Sleep, and Move More. Thanks for being on the show.

Jim, I'm really excited. It's exciting to get to know you over the last few hours. I really enjoyed our chats on my podcast and I'm Massive fan of your work.

Yeah, this was a long time coming. We've been talking about doing each other's shows for quite a number of years. Yeah, I'm glad. Thank you. So right now we're in your studio and we've been geeking out about the power of our own brains, you know, and keeping good mental health. And I wanted to have you on my show because it's been on our team's bucket list to have you on the show. When you wrote Feel Better in 5, is that realistic? Like, you're a busy man. Right. You have your business, you have your family. We're all— we talked about juggling and we're all juggling. You know, what are you doing? And is it really possible to isolate 5 minutes for happiness and health?

Yeah, 100%. Look, it sounds a bit like a gimmick, doesn't it? 5 minutes. But if I think about my own life and how I've managed to look after my brain, my body, my heart, whilst being, you know, married, 2 young children, busy job, as well as my job as a medical doctor. You know, I write a book a year, I host a podcast. I also for many years have cared for my elderly parents, right?

Mm-hmm.

So I get what it feels like to be busy, but I've always found a way to look after myself through that busyness. And one of the things I always found with patients is that they will always say to me, Wrong, and I don't have time. You know, I want to be healthy, but I don't have time. I thought this was really interesting because let's take toothbrushing as an example. We kind of know that if we brush our teeth for 2 minutes in the morning and 2 minutes in the evening, which hopefully everyone listening to the show right now does.

Yes, please do that.

We know that 4 minutes a day of toothbrushing, generally speaking, is gonna look after Our dental hygiene for life. Sure, you're gonna have a checkup and you may need some polishing and cleaning, whatever, but by and large, what we don't do is go, oh, I'm, I'm too busy on Monday, you know, I don't have time for my brushing, work's busy, I've got to take— pick the kids up, right? Tuesday, Wednesday, we don't do that and then go, oh, the weekend on Sunday, I'm going to do a 1-hour deep clean on my teeth.

Hmm.

We don't do that. We, you know, anyone listening now knows that that sounds ridiculous. Yet when it comes to behavior change for our health, for our brains, right, we make it too difficult. We make it really hard. People think that 5 minutes is not enough, so they stop doing anything that's going to help them. And this is why they try and go for like a 1-hour walk at the weekend or a 1-hour yoga session. Nothing wrong with that. but in my view, not a substitute for daily practices that can help you. And these practices don't need to take long. Just like toothbrushing can take 4 minutes a day, I do a workout, a strength workout, every single day. I haven't missed a day for maybe 3 or 4 years now.

Wow.

And I would say, I would argue it has nothing to do with motivation. It's because I've applied the principles of behavior change into my life, right? And a lot of the time we don't follow those principles, those rules, when it comes to ourselves, right? So I'll explain the behavior first, right?

Mm-hmm.

How do I do this? Well, I have a morning routine, which we can maybe get into if you want to, but one component of that morning routine is a 5-minute strength workout, right? So how do I do that? Well, there's 2 rules of behavior change. I mean, in the book there's my 6 rules, right? But the 2 rules that I think I'd love to share with people are number one, you've got to make it easy.

Yeah.

Right, so why do you have to make it easy? You know, you and me are both good friends with Professor BJ Fogg, you know, world-leading expert in behavior change from Stanford. We had a great chat a few years ago because what was really great about our conversation was that the things I had figured out through seeing patients, he figured out through research. So our conversations together was a beautiful kind of meeting of clinical experience from me and scientific research from BJ, and we basically came to the same conclusion that these small habits done consistently are how most people make changes, right? So the reason I do my workout every day is because it's not a 1-hour workout, it's not a 30-minute workout, it's 5 minutes. Even on my busiest days, I can't say I don't have time, right? I do have 5 minutes. So what do I do? One of the things I do in my morning routine is I come into my kitchen and I make coffee. Now, I'm very particular with how I make coffee. I like the ritual around it. I like a specific type of coffee, right? So I get out my French press, I weigh out my coffee, pour in the water, and I put a timer on my phone for 5 minutes, because that's how long I like it to brew for. Now, in those 5 minutes, Jim, I don't go on email, I don't go on Instagram.

Mm-hmm.

I don't scroll the news. Right? In the 5 minutes whilst I'm waiting for the coffee, I do a strength workout in my pyjamas. Right now, this is really important. Why do I do it in my pyjamas? Well, I've made it about as easy as possible, right? I'm in my kitchen. I've just, I've come down. I'm in my pyjamas. I've got a dumbbell and a kettlebell sitting in my kitchen.

Mm-hmm.

Now, sometimes it's body weight. Sometimes I just do some A few exercises with the kettlebell, but before you know it, five minutes is up. Then I put them down, and I'm rewarded with my beautiful hot cup of coffee. Right? So why does that work? Well, number one, I've made it easy. Now you've got to make it easy because you know one of the problems I've seen this with patients over and over again: we overly rely on motivation. Right now motivation is important, and I know. In your book Limitless, you talk about motivation. It's one of your M's, right? So I get that. But I think we overly rely on motivation. And the scientific research shows us that motivation never stays up forever, right? That, you know, BJ calls it the motivation wave, right? Motivation comes up, motivation goes down. So here's the reality that most people I don't think are applying in their life. If you make something difficult do, you will do it when your motivation is high. Okay? What's the example of this? New Year, right? People wake up on New Year's Day and they decide, this year's going to be different. This year, I'm going to go spinning 4 times a week.

Mm-hmm.

And they do it for 2 weeks or 3 weeks. They actually get it done. But then 3 weeks in, something happens. Work's busy. You know, in the UK, it's raining or it's cold, it's dark. And you just can't be bothered because it's an hour spinning class. So before you know it, the start of February, it's something you used to do. So the problem is, is that you do the behavior when motivation's high, but when motivation's low, if the behavior is difficult, you don't end up doing it. But if you make the behavior easy to do, you'll do it when your motivation's high, you'll also do it when your motivation's low. So, the reason I do a 5-minute workout is because I can never say to myself, Rogan, you don't have time. You don't have time for 5 minutes. So, that's why, that's one of the reasons that habit has stuck now for almost 4 years. I've made it easy. So, that's rule number 1. Rule number 2 is, where do you put that behavior that you want into your life? A lot of people don't give this much thought. They just say, I want to work out. I want to meditate. Okay, great. That's a great intention. There's all kinds of benefits for our brains when we do that, but they don't think specifically about where am I going to put this in my life. Now, any behavior we do needs a trigger, right? Any behavior needs a trigger. So a trigger could be our memory, right? I could remember, hey, you know, I had a message with Jim a few weeks ago. We said on this day we were going to get together and record.

Right.

Memory works, it just happens to be the most unreliable trigger that there is. So I don't rely on my memory for important things like meeting you in my podcast studio. Most people listening don't. They have their Google Calendar, or it will be written down, scheduled, the important things in their life. Right, so memory is a trigger, just very unreliable. So what's a better trigger than memory? A better trigger would be some sort of Post-it note, like a Post-it note on your fridge or a notification on your phone saying, hey, In an hour's time, you've got to meet Jim, right? That also works. But the very best trigger for a behavior, as evidenced by the scientific research on behavior change, is when you stick that new behavior onto an existing habit, right? So your audience may have heard you talk about this before because it works, right?

Mm-hmm.

An existing habit is something you are automatically doing without much conscious thought.

Like making coffee.

Like making coffee, right? So in the morning, I don't need a notification to remind me to make coffee. I don't need my assistant to phone me at 5:30 or 6:00 AM and say, hey, Rangan, don't forget to make your coffee. I don't need my wife to remind me. No, it's a habit. I'm going to do that. So therefore, not only am I going to do it, I'm going to enjoy it, right? So therefore, by sticking my workouts onto my coffee habit, It happens. That's why it happens Monday to Sunday, because I don't miss a day on drinking my coffee. It's part of my morning routine. I love the ritual around it. It's quiet time for me. So, I've made it easy. Again, I don't have to wear any special sports gear. I don't need to put on my running shorts. I do it in my pajamas. What else have I done to make it easy? I've set my environment up to help me. So I used to do just body weight, but then a few years ago I put a kettlebell and a dumbbell in the kitchen. And I remember my wife and I had a conversation. She said, are you going to leave this stuff out in the kitchen? Can't we just put it in the cupboard or put it in the garage? And we actually had a conversation. I said, hey babe, listen, if I put that in the cupboard or put it in the garage, I'm not going to use it. But if it's in the kitchen, I'm going to use it all the time. And again, it's one of those things, out of sight is out of mind, even if I pick up the weight just to move it out the way so I can get to my coffee. By having it there, I'm also visually triggering myself each morning to not forget to do it.

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So it's very simple, but let's be really clear about this. How many people listening to your show, Jim, know that moving their bodies, doing some sort of strength training, is going to help their brain? It's going to improve blood flow, it's going to improve circulation, it's going to enhance the release of BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic I know you've spoken about that many times in the past, right?

Yes. I hope all of our listeners know all that already.

Right. So they know that.

Yeah.

But some of them, despite knowing that, won't be moving as much as they want. They'll think, oh man, I didn't get my movement in today. Right? I want to. Oh, I hear— yeah, I've just heard the latest research. We start losing muscle mass as soon as we hit 30. Our muscle mass starts to go down each year. We know that the amount of lean muscle mass we have is one of the main predictors of our longevity and our health as we get older. Yet despite knowing that, they still think about strength training as something they're going to do in the future when the time is right, when they've got time, you know, when, when somehow miraculously things change, when the kids are always in bed on time, the email inbox is not going to overflow. You know, it ain't going to happen, right? So going back to your original question, is it realistic to change your life in 5 minutes? Well, I would say yes, because I've done this thousands of times with my patients. I've seen what works and what doesn't work. It's over 2 decades now that I've been in practice, so I've seen tens of thousands of patients. And I've seen very few people, in my experience, manage to turn their lives around completely overnight. Very few completely do an overhaul where I'm going to go an hour's jogging every day, 20 minutes of meditation every day. I've rarely seen it happen. The only time I've seen it happen, Jim, is when there's been a significant life experience, something like a job loss or there's been a death or someone's girlfriend or boyfriend has split up with them. Something really big and emotional that has caused them to change everything. Sure, you can change your life overnight when that happens. But apart from that, I just haven't seen it that much. I've seen that these small changes actually are the ones that add up. So in my life as a busy doctor, as a busy father, as a busy son, right? As a busy husband, I haven't missed a 5-minute strength workout a day. So that means, what does that mean? That means in a week, I'm doing minimum 35 minutes. of strength training, right? And multiply that over 4 years, that's a lot of strength training, right? But I don't need motivation. I've set up a system whereby it happens. Now, the beautiful thing about 5 minutes is that, you know, sure, some days it'll be 4 minutes, right? But on some days I'll have time, I'll be feeling good, it will be 10 minutes, right? But the requirement to myself is that I at least do something whilst my coffee is brewing. And then, you know, BJ talks about rewarding yourself for these behaviours. Well, I get the beautiful reward of a hot cup of coffee the way I want it, and then I continue my morning routine. But just one more thing, Jim, on that, which I really want people to understand, is business, big business, understand the rules of behaviour change, right? They understand it and they apply it. So when Amazon went to one-click ordering, Right? And I think that was about 10 years ago now. Estimates say their profits went up by $300 million a year, right? Now, why is that? Well, think back to before one-click ordering. What did you have to do? You scanned, you chose what you wanted, then you have to go to a next screen. And in the next screen, you have to, you know, confirm a few more things. Then the next one, you type in your card details. And the next one, you finally place order, right? 3 or 4 steps that you have to take before you can place the order. Each step is an opportunity to pull out or to procrastinate and not make that order, make that purchase. They make it easy. Before you've blinked now, before you can click, you've got something arriving that evening.

Yes.

Right? So Amazon use it. I'm not having a go at them, right? They're a business. They're doing what they need to do to maximise profits. Right? Netflix and YouTube. Why does one video or one episode go into the next episode? They understand behavior change. They understand that if at the end of that episode, if before you've decided it's midnight, I need to go to bed now, you know, I've got work tomorrow morning, I need to get my sleep, it's good for my brain. If whilst you're trying to make that decision, they have sucked you into the next one, they know you're going to stay watching. Yeah. So the point I'm trying to make is business knows how to use these rules to get you to buy more or consume more. But humans, when it comes to making positive lifestyle behaviour choices for ourselves, we don't apply those rules. We think it's got to be a 30-minute meditation session. It's got to be 1 hour of yoga. We think 5 minutes can't make a difference, but it absolutely can. And hopefully that's just one of many examples.

I love it. And that's a mindset shift as well. You know, that belief, it's a lie that change can't happen or consistency can't happen in just a handful of minutes. You know, I do believe that if they're using willpower and they're persistent, maybe they could achieve it. But if they're consistent, then they get to keep it.

Yeah. And the thing is, it's not that that's the only thing I do. Sometimes I will have a longer workout later on in the day or go for a run. But for me, those are optional extras.

Yeah.

These 5-minute habits, just like brushing my teeth, it's not optional. It happens 7 days a week. That strength workout happens 7 days a week. And I know whoever's listening to this and they feel they're too busy to work out, right? I have adopted this approach with hundreds, if not thousands, of my patients, and I've seen Over and over again, for the busiest people, this works really, really well. So it's not like I'm not saying don't do anything else. Anything else is you know it's it's an optional extra. But just like I brush my teeth every day, I do a strength workout every day. Now there's two other things I do as part of my morning routine. Now why do I do it in the morning? I share the philosophy that you share, I think, which is the start of the day and the end of the day. are really, really important. If we start the day allowing the world to dictate what we think, what we do, then I think it's no wonder that we end up in a reactive state. It's no wonder we end up doing things that we never wanted to do.

Yeah.

We don't realize— I think many of us don't realize how important those opening minutes of the day are. Again, for people who say they're busy, Right? I'll maybe share a story in a minute about one of my patients who was a single mother. I think she had 2 kids from recollection. She would always be rushing around, but I helped her create a 5-minute morning routine that worked for her, that really helped lower her stress levels and then reduced how many skin outbreaks she was getting.

Wow.

Because I strongly felt that stress was driving a lot of her skin problems. And so I have this little framework for a morning routine that Maybe I'll share with your audience.

Yeah, let's do it.

Again, you know, maybe it sounds ironic as a doctor. I don't like giving set prescriptions to people because I understand we're all different. We all have different preferences. We all have had different experiences with different lifestyle behaviours. We all have different cultural backgrounds. So I like to create frameworks that people can then personalise for themselves. So the framework I use to create my morning routine that I use with my patients to help them create theirs is what I call the 3 Ms. Okay? The first M is mindfulness. The second M is movement. And the third M is mindset. Right? So let's start with the first M, mindfulness. Some form of activity that you enjoy that's going to help you be more mindful. Okay? So it could be meditation. It could be breathwork. It could be journaling if you want. Like something, some form of mindful practice. Now, for me at the moment, it's breathwork. So, I'll get up. Now, I'm early to bed and early to rise. That's a choice I've made, particularly since I've had children, because I realized very early on into my career as a father that I'm a better human being, I'm a better dad, I'm a better husband, I'm a better doctor when I've had time to myself each morning before The family are up and about. I think there's some self-awareness there that I've learned that I function better when I get up early and have time to myself. So I always get up early. These days it's about 4:30 or 5:00. Again, I'm not saying people have to do this. I don't use an alarm clock. I naturally wake up then. And so I'll come downstairs and I'll do some breathwork. Now, I am at a point in my life where I do have a bit more time. So it is more than 5 minutes now for me. But it wasn't for many years. It was just 5 minutes. And I want to make sure people understand that because you can get benefit in probably less than 5 minutes even. So let's say it was 5 minutes of breathwork, okay? And there's many practices out there. The breathing practice I love is something that I call the 3-4-5 breath, where you breathe in for 3, you hold for 4, and you breathe out for 5. Okay, the 3-4-5 breath. Anytime that your out-breath is longer than your in-breath, you help to switch off the sympathetic part of the nervous system, the, the kind of stress state, and you help to promote the parasympathetic state, the relaxation state, right? There's a million breath practices out there. You don't have to do this one, but for many years, this is what I did. Okay, people should find the ones that they enjoy, that work for them. So the first M is mindfulness, right? So you choose a practice. The second M is movement. Right? So I just shared already my 5-minute movement practice whilst my coffee's brewing, right? So I've done my breathwork in the living room, I come into the kitchen, make my coffee, do my workout whilst the coffee's brewing. And then that leads me nicely onto the 3rd M, which is mindset. All mindset means for me, you could do affirmations if you want, but what I like doing, I, like you, I'm a big fan of reading.

Mm-hmm.

I like to read a positive or an uplifting or a thought-provoking book first thing in the morning. So, I've got the reward of my nice cup of black coffee that I've made the way I like it. I've always got 3 or 4 books kicking around my kitchen and my living room because I don't want procrastination. I don't want to come down in the morning and go, oh, where are the books? Oh, which one shall I read today? You know, like I said, with Amazon and the order, Every decision you have to make, right? It's a reason to procrastinate. It's a reason to pull out. So I've made the choice to read something, and this happens every day. This happens seven days a week, right? Again, I've automated it. I've automated it so I don't need to think, and that's why it happens every day. So again, I'd encourage people to if they find it useful. And of course, some people it's not going to resonate with them, but for people who do, give it a try. Try that 3M practice in the morning. See if you can personalize it for yourself. And just to close the loop on that 42— I think she was 42-year-old single mother who said she didn't have time. I taught her the 3Ms. You know what she did? She did 1 minute of 3-4-5 breathing. So that was for her mind. She did 2 minutes of yoga. She just chose some of her favorite moves, 2 minutes of yoga, and then for the final mindset, she did 2 minutes of affirmations. That was it.

5 minutes total.

5 minutes total, right? And what that did is it showed her how she could feel. She, she never knew. She didn't experience that feeling of calm and control, and she did that first thing in the morning. 5 minutes, skin got better, stress started going down. And a few months later, she then expanded that into, I think, 20 minutes, 25 minutes. So the reason 5 minutes is so powerful, A, it works in and of itself. But once you realize how good you can feel with 5-minute practices, very quickly you want more, right? So you naturally start to do more. So yeah, I you know coming back to your first question, can you change your life in five minutes? Absolutely.

Yeah, that's positive proof of it. Well, let's you want to challenge people who are listening or watching this right now. What what can they do? What do you want to challenge them? And they'll maybe make a post. They could tag you. They could tag me in it and share what they do.

Yeah, you know the first thing I'm asking to reflect on is because people who listen to your show, Jim. are going to be very motivated in general. I would say that they're wanting to make changes, positive changes in their life.

Yeah.

Right. So I want everyone listening to think back now and go, what was the behaviour I tried to bring into my life that I wasn't able to make stick? And then think about those 2 rules that I just outlined. Number one, you've got to make it easy. Number 2, you've got to stick it onto an existing habit. I bet that the majority of people who weren't able to make that behaviour stick were not following at least one of those rules. Of course, not in every case, but in most cases I found they made the behaviour too hard or they hadn't been intentional about where to put it. So first of all, reflect on that. And then I guess the challenge would be, you know, what's one thing, right? Let's not make it difficult.

Yeah.

Right, there's all kinds of lifestyle behaviours you're gonna hear about on this podcast, on Instagram, on social media. The problem is we've got too much information these days. It's like, oh, I need to do yoga and Pilates and martial arts and this. You can't do it all, right? Pick one thing and apply those 2 rules. Break it down to something really, really simple and intentionally stick it onto an existing habit. Maybe borrow my 5 Minute Kitchen workout if you want, right?

Yeah.

If you want to, it's— there's a— you want to see what I do, there's a video on YouTube called 5 Minute Kitchen Workout, right? But it doesn't matter what you do. Do favourite moves, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. And then, you know, maybe tag you and me on social media. Let us know what you're doing.

I love it.

That's all you have to do. And so just one more thing, Jim, I just wanna say for people who are sceptical about 5 minutes. I spoke to an amazing psychotherapist on my show called Julia Samuel once, and she said to me, Rangan, your book Feel Better in 5 actually saved one of my patients' lives. I said, what do you mean, Julia? She said, I had a patient who was really bad, suicidal, in a really, really dark place. Everything felt too much for that individual. And I gave them your book and I said, just pick one thing. And she said it was unbelievable because actually by making it so simple, he actually started to do them, right? He started off with 5 minutes and—

Yeah.

You know, bit by bit he made other changes and now, now he's doing very well. Yeah, right. But that was really profound for me because I knew 5 minutes worked because I've seen it over and over again with myself and with my patients. But when Julia told me that about one of her suicidal patients, I just want to share that because I know someone listening will know someone who is not doing well. So please do share those techniques and principles with them. It really doesn't need to be hard.

I love that. Yeah, it can be easy and it can be very doable. It's interesting. I never reflected on this, but when my father comes to visit, you know, I'm going to keep our relationship flourishing and it's also our health and active. We get on table tennis. As soon as he comes in, he's the trigger for me and we catch up because I might have been traveling. I don't see him as often as I like. And we just hit back and forth. He's the one that taught me racket sports, you know, very early on. But, you know, you can have a conversation and you and I have talked about It's great. It's a great way of improving your brainpower as well, your brain health. And so we do it and then I catch up. We do it maybe 5 minutes, you know, and then we have a very substantial catch-up and it means everything. Everyone get your copy of Feel Better in 5. And how can people get the book or how can people stay in touch with you?

Well, the book's available, you know, everywhere, all the usual places. So if they're interested, Sure, you can pick it up in whichever country you're in. Yeah. So just staying in touch for me, like I'm pretty active on social media. I guess Instagram would be the main place. And you know, my podcast is one of the main things I do. I love doing my podcast. It's called Feel Better Live More on all the usual podcast platforms and of course on YouTube.

And your Instagram is what?

@DrChatterjee. So that's D-R-C-H-A-T-T-A-J-E-E.

T-T-E-R-J-E-E. Awesome. We'll put all those links to your books, to your podcast, and more at the show notes, always at jimkwik.com/notes. And I want to thank you for joining us for this special podcast. Thank you. I appreciate not only what you do, but also the manner in which you do it. It means a lot. You're an unstoppable force of nature and inspiring force for good. So thank you.

Thanks, Jim.

So everyone tune in, make sure you subscribe, get your copies of the books. I always recommend people get 3 copies of a book, 1 for yourself and 2 to gift out to others. And until our next episode, be limitless.