It Starts With Attraction
Revealing secrets on how to become the most attractive you can be Physically, Intellectually, Emotionally and Spiritually (or as us insiders call it...the PIES). Hosted by Kimberly Beam Holmes and her husband, Rob Holmes, they dive into new and interesting topics released every Tuesday morning.
It Starts With Attraction
Unlocking Learning Strategies and Decision-Making
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Today I'm speaking with Dr Dan Willingham. He is a renowned cognitive psychologist and he's a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. He has done significant work in the areas of learning and in memory and he's written many books for educators on how they can help students that they teach to learn better and to do better in school. But he actually has a book out now called Outsmart your Brain. That's written more for the older student, so this is definitely something for your high schoolers, college aged kids or if you are currently going through a master's degree or a PhD. You're definitely going to find value of his new book. But what we talk about today is applicable to anyone who wants to learn more or to learn better, or if you're in a career where you feel like you might be stuck and maybe it's because you are lacking in something that, if you learned it that it would be a major help for you.
Speaker 1:Let's dive into today's episode. Thank you so much for being on with me today, dr Dan Willingham. How are you? I'm well. Thanks, I hope you are. I am, I'm doing well. Thank you very much. So you have done several books that have focused around this concept of how to help people I'll say it from my perspective learn better or just be able to retain information better, and your newest book that you have out is called Outsmart your Brain, and that's really what I want to ask you a lot of questions about today. But before we dive into that, what got you started in this line of work and in this line of research?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my particular line of work is actually pretty odd given my background. So I started life as a basic scientist. I went to graduate school and my work was on learning and memory. But I was at the intersection of experimental psychology and neuroscience and I was working on problems that are really pretty technical. And I joke in the book. There's a very old joke among people with PhDs like you get your PhD and you tell your parents about it all proud and then they tell their friends, yeah, my son's a doctor, but not the type of doctor who helps anybody. And I sort of did that one better. I was. I studied learning but I couldn't really help you learn anything. That was what my work was like.
Speaker 2:I did that for about 10 years and then, sort of just by happenstance, because I know somebody here in town, I was invited to give a talk to a bunch of teachers and even though I really didn't know didn't know anything at all about that type of learning and education, I rashly I mean I was flattered who's kidding who? I was like sure, I'll go talk about learning to a bunch of teachers, even though I really didn't have the relevant background. And so after I agreed, it's suddenly, like two weeks before this talk and I had agreed six months out and then suddenly I was like I had to write the talk and realize I'm like what am I going to do? And it was too late to back out. So I just basically went through my classes that I teach here at the University of Virginia and picked out some stuff that I thought might be relevant, but I was so certain that this was going to be a disaster. I had just met the woman who is now my wife and who is a teacher, and so I said why don't you come to Nashville with me and watch me give this talk to teachers?
Speaker 2:And then I suddenly realized the talk's going to be a disaster. So she came to Nashville with me and half an hour before I was to give the talk, I'm like don't come. I wouldn't let her come. I was so sure it was going to go badly. Anyway, sorry, this story's kind of long, but the upshot is it wasn't a disaster. I was very surprised to find that teachers didn't know this content, which really is stuff like you would learn in the very first course on learning that you would take at the University of Virginia. A lot of teachers did not know. They thought it was relevant and my career completely changed course because it made me realize my field had done a really bad job of letting people know about what we know about learning. So that's how I got into this. I live in Nashville, do you now?
Speaker 1:That wasn't my takeaway from the story, but when you said that I was like wait. I live in Nashville. What a small world. That's a lovely town, yeah Well, so you? I mean, you've written several books about this, this topic, but the most recent one that you wrote Outsmart your Brain. So why did you decide to write this one, and how would you say it differs from the other ones that you've published?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the other ones that I've published have been directed more towards teachers, towards adults, and this one is very much directed towards students, and I decided to write that one in a way, you know, it seems again in retrospect it seems so obvious like why didn't I do this sooner? But I discovered that my own students at UVA really didn't know how to study and when you reflect on it a moment, it makes perfect sense that they don't. And, of course, students at UVA are some of the most successful students in the system. You would think that they would be really, really good at knowing how to study. But they got to UVA despite their study habits, not because of their study habits.
Speaker 2:I mean, basically, what happens in most education systems is when students first come to kindergarten or pre-K, they're not held responsible for their learning at all, which is, of course, completely appropriate, that you know. It's the teacher's job to ensure that everybody's learning. But by the time they graduate grade 12, they are held responsible for their learning in a lot of different ways. They're expected to know how to commit things to memory. They're expected to take complex readings home and tackle them on their own and know what to do and be resourceful if they're having trouble understanding them. They're supposed to cope with test anxiety, so there's lots of expectations, but none of this is systematically taught to students. So that was why I wrote the book was to try to help students out.
Speaker 1:So I've heard this said in several different circumstances over the years. So I clearly am not in. I say clearly I'm not in high school, I'm not in college. I am getting my PhD right now, though. And I say clearly I'm not in high school, I'm not in college, I am getting my PhD right now, though. So I'm several years removed from maybe the ideal person that this book was written for, but there's a lot of debate about the people who study. I was a very studious student and I could get A's on my tests, but I didn't necessarily retain the information, and so do you really focus on helping people to study in such a way to where it actually takes a hold of their memory and they're like part of what they can retain later on? Or is this really more of how to get an A on your tests?
Speaker 2:It's more about the former than the latter. It's more about really learning and having things stick with you, but I also try to recognize the realities of the content that I teach and I want you to sleep with the book under your pillow and all that. But I recognize some of you. You know you're in the School of Engineering and you're here because this course was offered at a convenient time and you heard it. Maybe it wasn't very hard, right? You know, like we've all been there, I still want you to get something out of the course. But I recognize that this course is not your first priority.
Speaker 2:So what I do in the book is I try to help students succeed in those courses and then also make wise choices about how to think, about where should I put my effort? When does it really matter that I do need to remember this six months from now and how can I make sure that happens? And then other things. It's like you know what? I'm an engineer. This is an art history course. I thought it would be fun. I candidly don't care if I remember this six months from now, but I need to at least get a B in this course. I think that's perfectly valid and you would study in slightly different ways for each of those circumstances different ways for each of those circumstances.
Speaker 1:What are the aspects of studying that you believe are important to take into your career, into adulthood, in just that same concept we're talking about, in retaining things for memory and being able to succeed well in the work that you do.
Speaker 2:There are, I think, substantial differences in learning in the workplace. I think most people in their jobs they don't have specific coursework set for them. It happens, but it's more rare. I think it's much more common that as part of your daily workflow, things are, you're doing things, things are coming across your desk that you would like to remember, but you don't have time set aside that is devoted to learning, and you certainly don't have someone coming in and saying listen, here's the best sequence in which to learn these things. I'm also going to stand by and tell you I think you've mastered that content. You're ready to move on to the next. These are all aspects of learning and schooling that you don't have in the workplace. So I think the problem is quite different.
Speaker 2:Now, your brain's not different, right? You don't bring a new brain with you to work, and so the principles of what really helps memory and what doesn't it seems like it might help memory but actually doesn't don't change. But the way you want to put them to work is slightly different, and so the book is very much written for students. It's written for formal education. So if you're in the workforce and you're occasionally doing trainings, you're sitting in meetings where someone's doing a PowerPoint thing. It's kind of similar to a lecture. Those principles will apply very directly. The other stuff like that's my next book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see that being a huge need, because it's true and I consciously didn't realize it until you said it there are things in the workplace we are expected to learn but we're not being graded on them. It're going through some kind of course to aid you in your work, or you just happen to have someone who was a teacher be your supervisor and they can structure it for you that way. Do you think that's something that companies should move?
Speaker 2:towards? I don't think. I think the formal aspect. No, I think that people should have autonomy to decide what it is they need to learn next, what would most benefit them. I think a lot of companies are afraid to do that because they they think that people will not choose wisely and won't know how to go about it once they start and won't know how to go about it once they start, and I think that's valid. And again, this is a problem I'm interested in and working on now. I mean, I'm especially interested not just in committing things to memory, but also in gaining thinking skills, because, whatever it is, 70% of American workers now are knowledge workers. They're reasoning, they're making decisions, they're expected to solve problems, to be creative.
Speaker 2:These are things you can get better at in particular domains. That's, of course, a type of memory, a type of learning, and so the question is how do you get better at that? Unless you set aside a little bit of time, are thoughtful about it, it's probably not going to happen very quickly if you just say well, you know, I'm here at work, I'm doing it all the time. Surely I'm getting better, and I always point out you know what. I've been driving since I was 17. I think I stopped improving at driving when I was 18. And since then I've just been kind of driving. If you want to get better at things, you have to be thoughtful about how you're doing them driving. If you want to get better at things, you have to be thoughtful about how you're doing them, try new things out and so on.
Speaker 1:Do you believe that everyone should have a part of their day or a part of their week where they really do focus on learning or on these thinking skills like you're talking about? And if so, what is that? What? What would you recommend that that look like for the most effective way to do that?
Speaker 2:A lot depends on on what it is. So the first thing I would say is everybody should certainly be thoughtful about how they want to grow and what, what they need in order to sort of get to the next level, whatever their goal is. In order to determine what that is, it would be really smart to have a mentor, to have a few mentors, a few different people you could talk to and say okay, so here I am. I'm in operations at this midsize company. I've been here for 10 years. These are the kinds of things I know about and here's what my goal is. Here's what I want to do. What do I need to learn in order to get there? The odds that you're going to be able to figure that out on yourself, I think, are kind of remote. You need someone more experienced to help you figure it out and then, depending on what that next thing you need to learn is, there are different things you might want to do you need to learn is there are different things you might want to do.
Speaker 2:You mentioned setting aside time, which might be appropriate for some types of skills there are, especially if it is. You know, one of the things I think is really important is. There are certain it's the right term way to put it sort of thinking technologies. These are cultural inventions Mathematics is one example, Propositional logic is another example that are very useful for certain types of thinking. They're not useful at all for other types of thinking, and if there is a technology like that that would be useful in what you do and you don't know it, you probably ought to learn it.
Speaker 2:If you're involved in risk management or risk assessment and you don't know probability theory, you really ought to learn probability theory, because you're thinking about probability anyway and there's all kinds of stuff about probability you don't know, so that would be set aside. On the other hand, there may be skills you're trying to improve where the best way to learn it is not to set aside time but to tweak your daily workflow so that the things you have to do anyway end up being more of a learning experience for you and not just a get it done experience.
Speaker 1:Can you give some examples of what you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, this is all my next book folks, so stay tuned. This is something I've been working on thinking about a lot. One of the things I think is really important is, if you're trying to be a better decision maker, it's very hard in most work contexts to get the feedback that you need. In many situations, people are getting feedback yearly and they're getting feedback from their supervisor who doesn't even observe them that much and who's using in parts what are supposed to be objective data that you know. Survey after survey shows most workers feel like those data are maybe objective. They're not being interpreted in an objective way. You can't improve at something if you're not getting high quality feedback. So one thing you can do is to try to create your own feedback.
Speaker 2:The reason that's so hard in the workplace is the feedback is almost always delayed. So I do something like I'm responsible for figuring out, finding and selecting a subcontractor for some job. So I choose someone and it's not until six months later I find out these people are terrible. So naturally I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm never going to hire them again. That part's easy. What I really want to do is go back and say why did I think this was a good idea in the first place. You know what was my decision-making mechanism? Well, if it's six months later, I'm never going to remember right. So you need some mechanism by which you're capturing some of those decisions so that, once you find out how they turned out, you can evaluate them.
Speaker 1:So being more thoughtful on the front end, maybe documenting how you're making decisions on the front end.
Speaker 2:This is one example, yeah, and having one example of the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say you know something that wouldn't take a whole lot of time in your daily workflow can pay off later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's really good. In the book you have your current one Outsmart your Brain. There are 14 different chapters and each chapter tackles a different part of learning how to understand a lecture, how to take notes, read difficult books but there's three in particular I think are quite poignant for my audience. So, defeating procrastination, well, maybe even planning your work, but this whole concept of planning your work defeating procrastination, staying focused, coping with anxiety so why did you include these as things that need to be there in order to retain information and learn? Well, and then what would you say are some of the highlights of these areas that help someone stay motivated, stay focused and keep moving forward in what they're working?
Speaker 2:towards. They're in the book because they are important to learning and I think it's pretty intuitive. I think your audience will appreciate learning is really difficult if you're anxious because your mind is consumed with being anxious about other things. Procrastination is obviously a problem. Planning is a huge problem. I'll just mention planning is something that really becomes urgent for students, probably about middle school. That's when school starts to get much more serious. Their social lives increase greatly. If they're into sports or musical instruments, the demands for that really increase. But again, there's really no one teaching them how to plan and so it's all pretty seat of the pants and you know by the time they get to me a lot of them. Some of them have figured it out, some of them have not. They get to me a lot of them. Some of them have figured it out, some of them have not. And, as I know very well, some of them are exiting UVA and going to the workforce and it's scheduling is still a matter of sort of writing things on your hand and apologizing when they don't work out you know that when you're late, that's sort
Speaker 2:of it. So, yeah, I mean I offer lots of different ideas in the book. I mean I think that the big thing with procrastination, the most important tip for students, is really to take a page out of what life is like once you're in the workplace, which is, when you're in the workplace it's like it's not. You know it's not. Showing up to work is not optional and you just you have to go and you may procrastinate once you get there, but at least you're in the right spot and you're at your desk. And so the real enemy is making decisions Should I work or should I not? And so many students take the tack of sort of every every night they think, ok, what do I do in the next couple of days? And that's really offering themselves a decision Should I work or should I not work? Because if I it looks like I don't have anything to do I won't work. And they'd be much better off saying every night, from seven till 930, I work, and if I don't have anything to do tomorrow, I'm working on something that's due the next day or even into the next week. And then the question becomes how do you make that a habit? And there are lots of different tricks, many of which are probably familiar to your audience that I talk about there.
Speaker 2:When it comes to distraction, there are a few things that you can do. I think one of the most important is not to choose distraction in the first place. The number of people who try to multitask whether it's media multitasking, having music going, anything else people everybody knows that multitasking costs you. Lab experiments show people underestimate the cost. Yeah, how much it's affecting your primary task. I looked at these data in detail a couple of years ago and was surprised. Even something that is as automatic as driving, even if you're a very experienced driver, people who are listening to music when they're driving are more prone to get into accidents than people who are not listening to music when they're driving. Get into accidents than people who are not listening to music when they're driving. And it's yeah, I mean it's grim. I mean the way I ended up not writing this because I thought it was too inflammatory, but the truth is it's probably fair to say there are a couple of people die each year so that the rest of us can listen to music while we drive. I mean, that's the brute fact of things. So distraction is yeah, distraction is a is a huge problem when it comes to anxiety. I mean, I'm I'm looking at you know again sort of clinical levels of anxiety and of course, the first thing to do is to seek professional help.
Speaker 2:But there are things you can do. If that's not available to you, if there are financial obstacles or if it's just sort of not working out for you at the moment, one of the biggest things you can do is most people with anxiety, they have triggers and they sort of know what the triggers are. So it might be for you there's a weekly meeting. Everyone has to go around the table and sort of you know, talk about what they've done this week, what they've gotten done, or whatever it is. Or maybe you're making a presentation, whatever. Whatever it might be. You know what your triggers are, and so the thing that people try is when they're sitting there at the table and everyone's going around the room, they're sort of trying to talk themselves down and they're saying like, all right, dan, now look, this is not that big a deal. You do this every week.
Speaker 2:The problem is, by that time it's too late, you're already deeply into the anxiety and you can't really talk yourself out of it at that moment. The thing to do is that sort of self-talk will help, but do it 48 hours beforehand. So think to yourself okay, is it really likely to happen that I'm going to make an idiot out of myself during this presentation, or is it more the case that I worry about that? I think it's going to happen and then it actually turns out fine, right. And then think through okay, worst case scenario, someone like me gives a terrible presentation. People are laughing and pointing right, what's going to happen? Right, I'm in this thought spiral where I'm thinking I'm going to get fired, I'm going to lose, won't be able to get another job, I'm going to lose my house. Is that really what's going to happen? Actually, if I give a terrible presentation, the worst thing is my boss will say something to me, right, and then you can talk yourself down.
Speaker 2:Now, the key then is 48 hours when you're in the meeting. You can't have that logical thought process when you're absorbed by anxiety, because thinking is too affected by anxiety. Memory is less affected by anxiety. Affected by anxiety, memory is less affected by anxiety. So, even if I'm very anxious, memory will work well enough that I can remember. You know what? I went through this a couple of days ago and I remembered that the thoughts I'm having now didn't really make any sense and that actually might really help you. So that's something that again. There's lots more in the book, but that's briefly. That's something you can try.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely the multitasking information that is shocking and not shocking right, because I think we all kind of know multitasking doesn't help, but a lot of people really want to defend their stance that no, I'm a great multitasker, I can do multiple things. What are some of the things you think would help people to not multitask as much? I mean, there's, there's a drive coming from somewhere, whether it's just the short span of attention. Is there a way to get at the core of what it is, so that focus can have a longer duration?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the thing at first of all is to, you know, sort of do a little sort of sit with yourself a moment and say is this sort of coming from a frantic need to get things done that in calmer moments I would say I'm not really sure this is the way I would advise someone to live. Like am I the kind of person where, if I'm alone, like I can't just sit down and eat a meal, I have to read while I eat, or I have to be watching YouTube, or I'm answering email, or like you know that there's this feeling that if I'm not being productive in some way that you know I'm not doing it right. A friend of mine told me about she was. She went on vacation and her dad said all right, what are your goals for today? And she's like well, I'm on vacation. He says right, our goal is to relax. How are we going to do that? She was like this is a bit so. That's the kind of thing I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2:So first I would sort of do a little bit of self-analysis. Is this where my multitasking is coming? That that may help. The second thing is, you know, recognize this is costing the performance in the primary task, the performance in the primary task. So, at the very least, be selective and recognize, you know, if I'm doing, if I'm trying to do something that's actually really pretty important, maybe I better do that, you know, have some quiet time that's really devoted to that, and allow myself to multitask on stuff. That is, you know, if it's really that important to me to do it, go ahead and do it, but do it on stuff that is less consequential.
Speaker 1:Less consequential. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Well, I cannot wait for your next book to come out. I mean, I love the current book, but for the next one when you talk more about work and things like that do you have any kind of timeframe or idea of what it might be titled?
Speaker 2:I have not. I mean, I've got a bunch of tentative titles. I have no idea when it's going to be out. I've just started writing prose. I mean, the ideas are probably three or four years old now and I spent probably 18 months figuring out how I was going to frame this book so that it would, I hope, make sense to readers, and I'm just starting to actually do the writing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you structure your day for your best work and outcomes?
Speaker 2:Like many people, I'm most productive in the morning, and so things that are more challenging and I think are harder for me, I do those in the morning and then the afternoons. Yeah, things that are more routine.
Speaker 1:Makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:And like everyone else, like all the standard advice I think is pretty good advice. If you're trying to write something, you just have to write every day and you can't wait until you feel like it. You can't wait until you feel inspired, you just have to sit down and write terribly and then revise.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for your time, dr Willingham, and we will put the links to your books in the show notes, especially the one of Outsmart your Brain. Is there any other way that listeners can follow you or keep in contact with the work that you're doing?
Speaker 2:contact with the work that you're doing. Yeah, I mean I'm on. I'm on there. I have a website, daniel Willingham dot com, that I infrequently update. I'm on Facebook and Twitter or X, sorry now at DT Willingham. I'm on TikTok at Daniel underscore Willingham, which is has been hilarious, by the way, for me to be on TikTok, so I've been having great fun with that.
Speaker 1:Good for you. I'm not even on TikTok, but I know many of the listeners are, so they'll love, love going and finding you there.
Speaker 2:There's a story behind that and, like, once we're off air, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1:Oh, sounds good. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it so much. It's been a pleasure, thanks.
Speaker 1:When we talk about the four areas of attraction and the four areas of how we can personally work to be our best selves, it's the areas of physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual, and in today's episode we really covered a lot about the intellectual part of growth and of personal development and ultimately that will translate down the line to being a more attractive person intellectually as well. When we think about learning and memory, there are definitely things that we can begin doing to learn better, to retain information and many of those things Dr Willingham discussed in our episode today. I love these three key takeaways from today's episode. The first one was when Dr Willingham said everyone should be thoughtful in how they want to grow, how they want to learn, what they want to learn, who they want to continue to become. These are key areas that we as individuals should actually spend some time thinking about. I actually have a friend one of our team members on the Marriage Helper team gave me this journal and I really appreciate the gift that he gave this to me and it's a journal that there's not really anything in it. It doesn't have words on it, you can kind of use it however you want to, but the idea of it is to create a theme or themes for your months or for your year and to really be thoughtful, before you ever start writing in the journal, of what are the things that you want to focus on, to improve in each area of your life. And that's kind of the prompt of the beginning of it to sit, to take time to think, to really put careful consideration into how we can continue to grow and develop. And so just this morning I was sitting here and thinking I need more time to think about where are the areas of my life that I'm frustrated with myself, where are the areas of growth and development that I could consider taking into account and working towards through the rest of this year?
Speaker 1:Because if we don't start taking control of our life in a healthy way, then our life will take control of us. We're never going to be able to fully control our circumstances outside environment, things that happen to us. We're never going to be able to fully control our circumstances outside environment, things that happen to us. We don't, we can't, we can't control those things, but we can control our actions and our behaviors. We can't control other people, but we can control ourselves and we can work towards becoming the best we can be, and this applies to the areas we want to learn more as well. So, being thoughtful and how you want to grow intellectually and taking time into thinking, whether it's with your career or hobbies that you have, or your home life or ways that you want to help raise your kids and teach your kids, if you want to get to the next level, what are the things you need to learn?
Speaker 1:I'll give a perfect example of my current life, of how this statement hit me today. So, as a CEO of a company, one of the main roles that I have other than vision casting, other than helping to build and maintain an amazing culture for my team and pouring into them and developing leaders within the team All of that is incredibly important. But another important part of running a company is Ashflow and financial management, and this, admittedly, has been something that I've pretty much historically just handed off to an accountant and trusted that they understood what they were doing. But I've actually been doing a lot of reading and learning over the past month now into different ways to look at profit and loss statements, different ways to think about how to look at certain financial measurements in a business, and it's been incredibly eye opening for me, to the point to where I mean. I won't get into all the details now, but last night I was explaining some of these things to my husband and in talking about how so many companies are, you know, focused on this certain revenue metric when in reality, that revenue metric doesn't matter at all, like, at the end of the day, a company could be making $100 million a year and could still be in debt, right. And so how can we look at it in a better way? So what are some of those better metrics to look at?
Speaker 1:And my husband looked at me and he said you doing this is expanding and increasing your leadership lid. Now, the leadership lid concept is from John Maxwell and he talks about the laws of leadership and how an organization can grow only as much as the capability of the leader of it, and so every leader hits a lid, and once you hit your lid, it stunts the growth of the organization, right? But the same is true with us in our personal lives. We all have current lids on our personal development and if we don't continue to try and push past that, to grow ourselves, to understand and learn more, to be able to push past our current lid or to elevate our current lid and increase it, then we are going to continue to be stuck in certain ways and in certain areas. So what are the things that you need to learn to help you to become more of the person that you want to be?
Speaker 1:The second key takeaway I had from our conversation is you can't get good if you don't have high quality feedback. And how often in our lives do we push off hearing critical feedback Not critical in the sense of maybe let me say it this way how often in our lives do we push off critiques and feedback critiques of what we did and how we could do it better? Not the critical kind where the people are like what's wrong with you and you and they start attacking us, you know, equating us with the work that we did. That's not what I'm talking about but positive critiques like tell me what I could do better. This is the only way. That might be a strong statement. This is a very important way to be able to grow and to get better at what we do.
Speaker 1:So a couple of months ago, I was speaking and giving a presentation at a conference in Costa Rica to a group of marketing agency owners, and I listened like I left that stage feeling amazing about what I did, and I got great feedback and I really do think that one of the ways that I am gifted if this is so weird to say, because people don't like bragging about themselves, but I do believe that I do have an ability to speak and I think it's something my dad has poured into me, but I do think it's something that God has given me as well, and not just because of me, but because, for whatever reason, this is what God would like me to do with my life, and it's not about me, it's all about what God does, and my mouth just happens to be the voice piece of it. And by no means am I the best or do I even think that it's me in my power that's doing this well. But when I got off that stage I thought, man, like that was that was. I think I really delivered it well. I believe I did a good job. I believe it hit well with the audience, and so I was proud of the work that I did.
Speaker 1:But there's always room for growth right. And so I went back and I listened back through the presentation and all like there was at least five things in the first three minutes that I thought I can do that better. I can do that better. I can't believe that I talked that fast. I could have had a stronger opening statement. My voice was a little shaky in the in the first three minutes, right Like I just went through with different ears and decided this is one of the hardest things to do is to go back and listen to me, do something like that, or go back and listen to the podcast that I do listen to myself speak.
Speaker 1:It's very difficult because of these reasons. When you listen back through it, it feels like it's almost never good enough. But it's the only way to continue to grow is by receiving feedback, either from other people or from myself, and so I actually took that speech and I sent it to people who I really respect their opinion and their feedback, and I asked them to critique it for me. So a question for you here is where can you be more proactive in asking for critical, positive feedback in your life? Not from the people who are just going to push you down and make you feel crappy about yourself, but from people you know love you care about you and have the expertise to give you good feedback in that situation. But also, where can you be more receptive to feedback that people are already trying to give you? That's my second key takeaway from today, and then my third key takeaway is stop the multitasking.
Speaker 1:I am, admittedly, absolutely terrible at multitasking. I am infamous for doing my morning walks while listening to an audio book and trying to either read an article or research something on the internet, and it never fails that I, if I'm trying to read something while listening to something, I will get about five minutes into that and realize I don't know a thing this person has said in the past five minutes, and I have to back my podcast up or back the audio book up in order to actually listen, and so I know that I need to only do one thing at a time. But, just like Dr Willingham said, the stress, the pressure to try and feel productive or to get a bunch of stuff done can lead us to make some very not wise decisions in the way that we use our time and in the way that we multitask, and so I love what his feedback was. For the things that are very crucial, that matter a lot, then don't multitask on those items. If you wouldn't advise your friend to multitask in the middle of that important thing, then don't do it yourself, right? But maybe for some of the things that are more monotonous, more routine, more rote things that maybe you can multitask and if you mess it up a little bit it doesn't matter as much maybe shopping Amazon while also listening to a podcast then maybe those things are a little better to multitask. But, as always, we should never drive and do any of those other things while on our phone.
Speaker 1:Just public service announcement. Because I love each and every one of you, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I know it's a little bit different than what we've typically been talking about, but intellectual attraction is important and investing in ourselves and our growth abilities is an important part of how we can become the best that we can be and live the life that we are called to in the fullest extent of what God has planned out for us. Loved having you on. Share this episode with a friend. Would love if you would leave a review and, until next week, stay strong.
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