S2E5: Scott Halford, writer and behavioral science expert

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman. Welcome listeners to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. It is season 2, and as promised, I am bringing to you some of those folks in my life that have given me my nudges and evolution that have brought either great big ideas or wonderful teachings into my life. And today's guest, Scott Halford, is one of them. He and I connected through a mastermind group. As I talk about freely, I pursue a lot of people in my life to coach me and help me grow my business and be happier and more successful. And Scott's one of them. And I wanted him to come on the podcast to talk to you because this guy has a great deal of expertise in brain science. And you all know I talk a lot about if you're going to evolve, you need to really get clear about how your brain works. And you need to understand that that voice in your head isn't you thinking, it's you being thought. And all kinds of good topics we're going to talk to Scott about. But first, who is he? He is focused on brain-based behavioral science, and he has amazing clients like Bank of America and Medtronic and all the big ones. More importantly, he's written this book called Activate Your Brain, and he writes the column Brainy Business for entrepreneur.com. And he's here to talk to us today about all things brain, but more importantly, the neuroscience of success. So Scott, I'm so glad to introduce you to my listeners. Welcome.

I am happy to be introduced to them. I, I'm excited because anytime I get to Anytime we talk about the brain, it's a good day. And the reason I think it's a good day is it's interesting. I travel all over the world and teach people about how the brain informs our own success, our peace of mind, our own ability around leadership, all of those different kinds of things. And everybody, I think, is inherently, of course, interested in this 2-pound gelatinous mass between their ears because they know that it, of course, runs the ship. But what I find even more stunning is that very few people know how it actually operates. And so we operate under a lot of myths. And

that's, that's interesting. I'm sorry to interrupt. That's so interesting to me that so many people are fascinated with the brain, but what they don't really understand their brain, they're just operating kind of unintentionally in the world. So they're fascinated with it, but the accountability comes in where it's like, let's start to understand it and use that information for, for good. But, uh, I interrupted you. I, I know you and you're going to talk to us about some of the crazy myths. that we are believing that get us into a lot of trouble.

Exactly. And I, and I, I think you're right. Um, the incredulity is right. It's kind of like, you know, if you owned a, you know, a fast race car just because you thought it would be fun to own a fast race car, but you had no idea how the trunk works or how the engine works. You don't even need to know how the engine works, but you wouldn't even know where to put the gas in or how to put it in reverse. That's kind of the level at which some people understand their own brains. They know that it's in there. They know that they go, but they have no idea how to fuel it. They have no idea how to rest it. They don't know how to optimize it. And so that journey is my evangelism in the world. That's what I am here to do today is to help people to at least get piqued and interested in it. And some of the myths that we operate on under, for instance, one of the big ones is We're not an agrarian brain, meaning that we're not farmer brains. And what that means is millennia ago when we were in the caves, when it was dark out, we slept. When it was light out, we worked. So, we worked from sunup to sundown kind of thing. And that carried into all the way into today. We got people going in it from 8 to 5 kind of thing, wake up with the sun, go down with the sun, and work in between. And you know and I know I know this very well for myself is that, you know, when I was working that 8-to-5 kind of job, I was pretending to be busy most of the time because you literally, your brain doesn't have the stamina or the glucose, the energy to actually stay focused from 8 to 5. It's physically impossible. So, we convince ourselves that we're supposed to do that. And since we don't, we actually create a cortisol, a stressor hormone space, and we end up feeling bad about our day because we didn't stay focused all day. Yeah. Well, you're not supposed to. That's not how the brain works. It's not going to go 8 to 5. And when you try to, you spend all of this energy. And then by the time you get home, you walk in the door and you can't even make a decision about dinner because you're drooling. The part of your brain that invents and is creative and that is the human part of the brain, it switches off because it's spent. You spent it at work. You get home and you can't be available for the people you love. And that is so backwards. You're cranky, you're in a bad mood, you're tired, you can't interact. That doesn't need to be. If you pay attention and get rid of the myth that we're going to be on from 8 to 5 or throughout the day, and understand that the research shows the human brain can actually sprint really well for about 52 minutes, and then take a 17-minute break, which is during that break, you go hydrate, you take up some complex carbohydrates, you know, in the form of nuts or maybe some fruit or maybe some vegetables or, you know, a snack. You might go take a walk, go find a friend to laugh with, play a game. Anything but the work itself. Then you come back to work and your brain is ready to go. You've refueled it and you've rejacked it up so that it can pay attention again. In my book, Activate Your Brain, I do the 50/10 rule because it's easier to add up. So that's one of the myths, you know, is that we're going to focus all day long and it's not true. We're not going to.

I love that. And just to stop there for folks, because a lot of the listeners are working to build like humane workplaces and This whole concept that you can muscle your way through a day or caffeinate your way through a day, I think is important to note that you need to get very structured about the refueling. I ran a marathon and it was so counterintuitive. It was counterintuitive because they said, instead of running the whole thing, run and then walk through every water break and then run. And so every mile you're stopping for minutes at a time to hydrate. And they said it will actually improve your time. It didn't make sense to me how going slower would speed up my time. And by gosh, it did. And it sounds like a little bit of the same concept. It's counterintuitive to rest and move forward. And I know in our offices, we pay attention to that. A lot of our office is communal space and couches and views out the window. And we stockpile great snacks and we meditate twice a day as a team. So I love hearing that at least we're practicing one of these things right. So

you are a brain-based culture. That's amazing.

Not yet. Not yet. But I think I got that from you and some other folks. What are some other myths?

Well, another myth is, you know, it kind of is attached to it, is about focus. We as human beings are the least equipped of all the species to focus, which is so interesting because, you know, we're the smartest. We're not the strongest. We're not the fastest. We're not the fiercest, we're not the most poisonous. We're the smartest. That's how we survived. And we're smart because we have the cognitive capability, meaning the knowing, we know how to actually marshal the resources of the brain, whereas other animals are just in default or in automatic. But here's what happens. So if you're a lion, a lioness, and you're out there going to get your dinner, and you're crawling through the fields, and you don't want to be heard, you have the musculature and the neurochemistry that allows you to actually mask The sounds of your body going through the Serengeti, trying to go get that antelope. You are just perfectly, exquisitely focused. You're not thinking, as that lioness, you're not thinking, huh, I wonder what my deadbeat husband is doing at home while I'm out getting our dinner, right? You're not thinking about something that is not in front of you. You're not thinking about picking up the dry cleaning or the emails that you have to do next week. That is the capability of animals, is their ability to focus. Humans, on the other hand, don't have that capability. We actually have to try to do it. We have to teach ourselves to do it. What we're really good at is what we call prospection. We mentally wander. We're awesome at creating the future. We're awesome at envisioning things that have not happened yet. No other species has the architecture to do that. But here's what we do. The myth is that mental wandering is bad. And so we discipline our children, we give them drugs for ADD, ADHD. By the way, it's overprescribed at about 25 to 26% of the population when we believe about 0.1% of the population Actually has that and warrants those drugs. And I'm not anti the drugs. What I'm saying is we have a distracted society and we also don't understand, we have a myth that says mental wandering is not good. Well, guess what? Guess where invention happens? It happens in mental wandering. So here's the takeaway. If people will allow themselves, remember, go back to the 50/10, every once in a while, take 2 or 3 of those 10-minute moments throughout the day that you get back, just stare out the window, prime your brain by saying, hmm, what's something that I need to think about? think about and just sit there and think and allow your brain to wander on it. It's called incubation. And when you incubate, when you give your brain a trough, the big aha comes. There's a bunch of gamma waves and alpha waves that happen in there. This is literally a scientific process that happens when you invent, when you intentionally mentally wander by recording your thought or writing it down, waking up in the middle of the night and writing that thought down because you will forget it. Then you are going to have the sustenance for the execution, which is focus. So every day you want to mentally wander on purpose a few times so that you can invent. And every day you want to focus on purpose so that you can execute. But doing one or the other all day, that's where it gets messy. You don't want to be mentally wandering. You'll be flaky if you're mentally wandering all day. You don't want to try and execute all day. You would be not only weird, but you would be probably not very socially functional in the organization. Yeah. So the myth is that the wandering is a bad thing. It's not. It's the thing that will give you the grit and the ability to invent and create and be powerful to your organization and your life.

I love it. I love it. Counterintuitive. I once got caught thinking, I'll never forget it. I was in offices and we had these glass fronts and I had a very execution-focused boss and I was just sitting at my desk. Thinking. And he walked by and I could see him in the window. He walked by and then he backed up and he goes, Wakeman, what the H are you doing? And I go, I'm sitting here thinking. He goes, well, stop that and get something done. And that was early in my career. And I just, I thought, gosh dang, I'm just not going to be that boss when I, when I get promoted. But these are fantastic. And I think what I hear you calling everyone to do is just to really question what you think you know for sure, because so much of what got us here isn't going to be sustainable. And I've noticed that in my own work life. And even as I get a little older and wiser, is all those counterintuitive things when we question these myths that what I thought was the key to my success may have been not the case, and that work can be a lot more effortless than we think if we work with our brains rather than kind of against our human nature. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and to your point, the thing is, so your brain, when you feel pleasant, that's not an accident. When you check something off of a list, you get a dopamine bump. It's literally, that's all it really takes. You don't have to do anything big. You just have to start small, but start now. And then you get a checkmark, get dopamine. And dopamine is actually the neurotransmitter implicated in addiction. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Well, you could become addicted to really positive things. And you do that throughout your day. By being energized. When you're tired, it's such a slog, and then you don't do it with quality, and then you have to go back and do it. And so we get into this kind of morass, you know, this circle going downwards that we just spiral into a place of not being very effective. And I think that at the end of the day, we all want to feel accomplished. So if you want to feel accomplished, look at how many checkmarks you got in the day. And the ergonomists, the people who actually look at How much do you actually get done in a day? The average, the running average is you're going to get 9 things done in a workday, 9 things, not 20, not 50, 9. And so, you break it down into 1 big thing, 3 medium things, and 5 little piddly things that you need to get done. When you start to look at your life in boxes of checkmarks, you start to really pay attention to the fact that you can kind of create the life that you want so long as Because you understand how to do it through the lens of the brain.

And I think it's such an interesting concept is this whole design your own life. One of the things that I'm really working on this year in my own life is designing my life to really take a look at what's the truth of, you know, what I actually get done in a day and how long that needs to take and, and where I'm investing time and energy in nonproductive or non-value-additive things. So I loved your last point. Scott, I'm loving what you're sharing, and especially when we get into questioning how we work and what we do and using that information to really design our own lives. I know that you have just so many ideas for using or working with your brain for success, the neuroscience of success. What would you love to share with our listeners? if you could give 'em your best stuff on the neuroscience of success. And I wanna make sure we talk about ego as well, since this is a no-ego podcast. But what are some more tips for success?

Yeah, so some really simple ones. Your mother taught you these. These are all things that you know, but what we know now is that they're critical to brain health. Number one, you gotta move every single day. You gotta move, keep moving. You keep your body moving, you keep your brain moving. When my mother had dementia, she broke her hip. She ended up in a chair for 6 weeks. Well, she went from mild dementia to Massively, more than moderate dementia, almost severe dementia. She became a screamer while she was in that chair. And I asked the gerontologist why, and he said, because when they stop moving, that's when their minds go. And that's true for all of us. We got to move 10,000 steps a day. You've seen that with Fitbit or, you know, other step counters. Just move. We need to be active, whether it's walking around the block, up the stairs. We got to move, right? So number one, 30 minutes a day, faster than a walk. That's all you need. And we got to move, number one. Number 2, sleep is huge, huge, huge. We're one of the most underslept cultures in the world. China is number one. Japan is number 2, by the way. We're underslept and we need right on, dead on about 8 hours. And I know people think, well, I can get away with 6. Sure you can. But when I test you against somebody who drank a 6-pack of beer after 4 days of 6 hours or less of sleep, you will test with about the same mental acuity. And so, you're not going to be sharp. You're not going to be sharp. You need your sleep, dark room, cool room. The brain likes to sleep at about 62 to 64 degrees. Dark room, cool room, quiet room. Get the TV out of the bedroom, bad feng shui. You want to understand that 30 minutes before you go to bed, the priming that you're giving your brain is indicative of how well you will sleep. So, if you're reading your texts and your emails or you're watching violent TV— Or you're watching the news and you're watching presidential politics and your ire is Not good. That's not a good primer for your sleep. All right? So, during sleep, you consolidate everything you learn during the day. It's downloading in your brain. If you do not get to the 7th hour in your sleep, you miss the car wash of your brain. And, the car wash of your brain is the thing that comes in, it literally comes through the valleys of your brain and washes away what we call beta amyloid or tau tangles. And, those are implicated in Alzheimer's. Okay. So if your brain is swollen and inflamed, which happens when you don't sleep so much, it gets sticky and it holds on to those tau tangles and the car wash doesn't come through. So you want that car wash to come through every single night, 30 minutes in the morning before you get involved with your iPhone or the bad news of the day. So you want to enter the day and exit the day in a gentle way, and that's big, the sleep part. The next part is that you want at least 3 what we call awake rests during the day. During those 10 minutes that you get back during the 50/10, take 2 or 3 of those and just sit and just rest your brain. No intake of information, no phone, no computer, no nothing. Just sit there and close your eyes and let it wander. And you might fall asleep, which means you're tired. 3 awake rests per day. Number 4 is got to laugh every day. Laughter. If you got to go online and find things to laugh at, cool. Find a funny friend. Laughter boosts neurohormones that actually make you smarter and that actually take down cortisol, your stressor hormone. And then the 5th thing is every single day, find something about our species that you can be in awe of. That means that you go to the internet, you find those sappy videos where you just go, oh, look at that nice thing that these people did to each other. That's what you do. So those 5 things are kind of how to take care of your brain. And the 6th thing, the very last thing is watch what you put in your mouth and in your nose, your eyes, your ears, all the holes in your head so you're not feeding yourself with anything other than what is coming into those holes. Your body manufactures nothing that your brain needs to eat. You need about 10 times more water for your brain cells than you do for the rest of your body. So make sure that you're drinking tons of water, the 8 ounces a day. 64 ounces. Make sure that you're also eating complex carbohydrates about every hour and a half to 2 hours during your waking hours. That means having a snack of nuts or a snack of blueberries or a snack of an apple that reglucanates your brain. You get more glucose in that brain because that's what it operates on. Do not skip breakfast. Do not skip lunch. Do not skip dinner. You really want to keep your brain fed while you're trying to keep it awake. So you're actually eating more times, just less food. But your brain will eat up all that energy, and I see a lot of people who skip those things. So that's really basic, but you can't imagine how those basics get violated every single day. Those basics get violated every day.

Scott, those are just really solid tips that we all have heard. I think we're all looking for the big magic silver bullet pill, but we don't realize is these basic habits really are good upkeep for our, our brains. And it's not rocket science, but it is, it does take some commitment. You know, great tips. Love that we understand the myths. Really want to pick your brain on ego because I love the work that you've done and you teach about another understanding of how our mind works along with our brain. And that's your whole take on ego. Can you tell us more about the ego piece of it?

Yeah. So the ego is such an interesting thing, right? There's lots of definitions. I mean, the ego in Latin just means I, your sense of self. What I teach is that what you believe about yourself predicts your behavior. So if you believe you're the smartest gal or smartest guy in the room, you're going to behave a different, a specific way. If you believe that you're humble and kind, that's a different set of behaviors. If you believe that you're not worthy, that's a whole different set of behaviors. If you believe that you aren't smart, that's a Right? So on and so forth. So what do you believe about yourself? That's where you want to first start. Ego, you know, ego is one of those things that you've got with you. It can be strong or can be weak. Can be strong or weak. You know, if you have a strong ego, that's a good ego. That's like muscle strength. The weak ego is fragile. It hurts people so that it can win. And it will win at all costs. And even if it gets hurt, just as long as you get hurt more. So that weak ego, when it enters into a relationship, Creates weakness in the relationship. And the reason why we want to pay attention to it is that impact is probably the single greatest thing that will predict your overall success in an organization. Do you understand the impact you have in every interaction you have, whether you walk into a room and it's one-on-one or it's one-on-group? And if you don't understand what your impact is, you're liable to be met with some pretty negative stuff. We all know when it gets a little scratchy, when it feels difficult, when the chemistry doesn't work between 2 people. But what we don't pay attention to is how can we shift that? And that has to start with the strength of who you are. Are you the kind of person who, when you walk into a conversation, are you trying to win? Are you trying to be the smartest? Are you trying to always be right? Which is a central craving of the brain, is it wants to be right. Because when it was wrong, it could die or get eaten or poisoned. But we now have the architecture to override that. And in our societal, you know, in the societal ways that we live now, it's important to override that. We don't want to always be the right person. We might have the answer, but sometimes it's important to let somebody else discover it. So with ego, when we're looking at it, what we really want to do is kind of manage it to a place that is strong because the strong ego The strong ego has a big enough palate and strong enough muscles, if you will, that it can pick you up lightly or it can set you down heavily. It has every ability to do everything in between. The weak one, they don't have any strength. So they're always muscling you to the ground and always going to hurt you. So the impact for executives, it's so interesting to me that the lack of self-awareness is probably one of the biggest things I see out there that derail executives. They just don't know what shows up. They don't know how powerful they are, and they don't know how nasty they are. So this ego piece is interesting because, again, some people don't want any ego, which is the kind of idea that you kind of wipe it away, there's a nothingness. Then there's the camp that I come from is you're going to have an ego because you have a sense of yourself, but you want it to be a strong sense of yourself so that you could show up effective and adaptively. Yeah. And then there are the people who just completely don't pay attention to any of that. At the end of the day, what I would ask people to do is really kind of take an inventory of what it is that trips their trigger. You know, what are their triggers that make them weak? What are the triggers that make you defensive? What are the triggers that close you down when you just decide, nope, I'm not going to play. I'm just going to be passive-aggressive, sit here with my arms crossed, my eyes rolled, and make you guess at what I'm thinking, right? Those are all weak positions. And, and if you look at it, yeah, if you look at any of them, you're just never going to get to a place of any kind of effectiveness. So what are your triggers? You know, that's what you want to look at. What triggers you into that? Um, that, that makes— that, that puts you on the high road. You know, I know you talk about the high road and low road. Well, there is the high— the high brain and the low brain. They're literally 2 physical places in the head, um, and they are real. And that high road, low road thing is not just a metaphor. It's a real thing in the brain.

I would absolutely agree. And we talk about, you know, the ego bypass is when you make that switch. It's like we all have this toggle switch on our forehead that we can be in low self, and whether you call that weak ego or no ego— I mean ego— or that high self. And I like what you said because a lot of the people that listen to me, I talk a lot about bypassing the ego or beyond ego or, or no ego. And I get questions, you know, so is ego bad? And I loved how you put it. There's just different camps that we say things Mm-hmm. Ego isn't bad. If you want to embrace the concept of ego, just make sure you have a strong, healthy ego, which is good confidence. I bring some great things to the table, but it doesn't get into the area where it's like, I know the way. And so all of those camps are really saying the same thing about ego, but with just some different language and, and examples in my mind.

Exactly. Exactly. We are all saying, basically, show up, know how you're going to impact, and if it's positive and empowering and impactful, that's what we're going for.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I absolutely— speaking of brains, I love picking your brain. You're out speaking and you write a lot and you've shared with us the myths. You've talked about ego and just some strategies for success. If you could give people kind of the primer, what are a few things you know that you wish they knew that maybe would clear up a lot for them so they could be more successful at work? Are there just some general ahas that you wish people had a grasp of that would make their work more effortless for them or easier?

Yeah, one of my very favorite ones is— that's a great question. You know, the thing that I love about the brain is how susceptible it is to your suggestions. I mean, it's like a Labrador retriever, it just wants to please you. And here's the thing, the downside is that it will do, it will attempt to do anything you want it to do. But if you don't direct it, it attempts to do it all. So if you tell your brain what to attend to, what to pay attention to, it will attend to it exquisitely well and give it to you in space. We call it priming, focusing your brain on what you want to see. If you don't tell it what to attend to, it will attempt to attend to everything and fail at most of it. So the tip is this: start telling yourself what you want to see in the world. If you want to see crap, if you don't tell yourself what to see, you will see negative because we're wired toward negative. We have about 5 times more architecture to recognize danger and threat than we do reward. So we're primed toward negative. And so if you don't tell your brain what to see, it's going to see everything that's wrong in the world. But if you tell your brain what to see, it will set up the neurochemistry that will allow you to see more of it. And it's not motivational positive voodoo. It literally is what happens when you reframe the brain from stress to what we call eustress. Eustress is the positive framing of stress. It says, yeah, this is hard. This sucks a little bit, but guess what? I got the licks to do it. I know we can do it. Bring it on. I can do it. As opposed to, this is awful. God. That's a different set of neurochemistry. And you choose. You get to choose what you see. So priming is probably the single greatest tool you have to see in the world what you want to see every day. Are you grateful for it? Are you seeing the positive? Are you looking for solutions? Are you priming your brain to find answers? What are you priming your brain? Are you priming your brain to see the worst in people, right? Are you priming your brain just to see all of the things that irritate you? Because they will show up. So priming is key.

I love the concept of priming. And to me, it's like this superpower we have that we don't often use. And the way I think of it is also this power we have in co-creation. Like, what you see is what you get. It's not about putting a vision board up and I want a yacht and it appears in my driveway. But it's this effect that you are always having on every situation from your own priming. If you walk by me and don't say hello, I can be neutral with that. I can be a good Buddhist and just not attach and conserve my energy and move on. But most of our wiring is to fill in the blank with some negative. Exactly. To think, oh, ever since she got that promotion, she thinks she's all that big and You know, she thinks she's all that and a bag of chips. But the key here is once I see you as rude, I treat you rudely, and then you respond rudely, and then I go, see, I'm right about crap I make up.

That's it. That's exactly it. And you create this world, and it's a chain reaction for sure. And it's interesting, your point is great, because when we do interventions with people, basically helping them to kind of take their path and put it on a different journey. The big intervention is, is that once you start to prime and see people for what they wish to be seen, not the ugliness that you assume about them, you begin to get different responses back. And when you get that back, it creates this chain event. Some people have to be warned that, you know, it not only feels pretty good, but you're going to kind of be a little bit ooped out by the fact that people are liking you and that they're actually treating you with respect. Some people are like, ooh, I don't like that. I'd rather have the walls up because they're so used to—

Yeah. And it really gets— it gets mind-blowing. I've had that, um, where, you know, people start to discover the world isn't what they thought and that people are actually liking them. And it feels like voodoo because it's so easy. And, you know, I talk to listeners a lot about getting mentally flexible. So just even practicing when you see something and you assume the negative, just for a Just second, just to see if you can change it. Yeah. counteracting that with coming up with maybe 5 other explanations for the behavior that give people the benefit of the doubt and how that just changes outcomes. And it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. So priming is an awesome one because it's something my listeners can really pay attention to, learn more about. And I hope everybody jumps into your books. What's another— if you had one more to give folks? The power of priming and what else?

The other thing is, if you want— so about 25 years old when your brain fuses, 25 to 30. Once it fuses, that means it's finished growing, and from that point forward it will begin to shrink. So all of us over 30 are shrinking our brains. They're getting a little bit smaller every year. The part that we hold our memories in basically flattens out, called the hippocampus. And when it does, you lose your memories. When you lose your memories, you lose yourself. If you want to continue to plump that and actually grow your brain, that's a choice. Default is shrink. The choice of growing your brain means that, you know, you do the exercise that we talked about. But the big thing, the other tip I'm going to give to you, exercise and novelty create an enzyme in the brain called the brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And it's like Miracle-Gro. It grows new neurons as well as makes existing ones connect. So every year, pick at least one thing that you don't know how to physically do and go do it, not to mastery, but to literally do it so that you get neurobinding. So go learn how to cook, take 4 lessons. Go learn to play the flute. Go learn to dance. Learn a language. Not again to mastery, but, you know, do 4 or 5 lessons. You want to go through the struggle because what happens in the struggle is it causes that neurobinding and it keeps the brain supple and it causes it to grow. So people who are lifelong, really lifelong learners and are physical about it or mentally agile, like, you know, learning a language, They're actually activating the brain-derived neurotrophic factor and their brains remain supple. They're less susceptible to dementia. They're more susceptible to having a really sharp, active brain well into their 90s. Do something new.

I love the analogy to the Miracle-Gro. And I think if I remember right from my teaching, there's an important distinction, not just reading about it, not just watching a documentary on it, not just learning new information, But the physical experiential part where you put yourself out there to do the cooking or to speak the language, or for those of us that are road warriors, I'm hoping I get my Miracle-Gro just by having to drive a different vehicle in a different city every single day and figure out some of, of those things to keep that plasticity going.

Absolutely.

Scott, so much that our listeners can use. Definitely will put you down for an encore performance because I know you'll be requested.

I'd love to. Yeah.

Love the tips. I feel like you are my Cliff Notes into, um, all the journals where I'm just like, you know, talk to me about this. There's been so many journal articles published, but you just really synthesize it down to applicable to me today to improve my life and improve my success and Now that people love you as much as I do, how can they get a hold of you? How do they connect with you and continue learning?

Yeah, they can go to my website, scott@scotthalford.com. That's S-C-O-T-T-H-A-L-F-O-R-D.com. Or Scott, that's my email. scotthalford.com is the website, or Complete Intelligence is another one I'm connected to. It's all the same thing. And then my book, Activate Your Brain, you can find it on Amazon. I think it's a great book for people. I've been able to curate what I think is the best for people to have that pliable, effective, fulfilling, successful brain.

Perfect. And Scott's available. He does a wonderful series of training sessions in organizations. And so if you are interested in this podcast and it piques something for you, first, really get up to date on your own brain and be a better owner of your brain, a better user. Read the manual. So to speak, which I think is activate your brain that Scott wrote. Start to change your habits. So those of you that think that you're the one exception who doesn't need the sleep, the water, the break, the daydreaming, the mind wandering, you can keep being that hero through time. But I tell you what, it ends poorly. So for those of us over 30, we're working to keep and grow what we have. And I really appreciate the tips, Scott. It's always a pleasure talking to you.

Fantastic to be here.

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman.