Top 15 Barriers to Human Performance

Welcome to the sci-fi show. I am Dr. Clark Van Gilder and at the sci-fi show, psy for psychology, phy for physics, I

am a professor of both and I like to talk about both of those things. So

today we're going to talk almost exclusively about the psychology side.

So, as you can see on this slide here, this ridiculously long and multi-yolic uh thing, prevalence of barriers to

human performance under uncertainty.

What the heck is that? The short version of that is human beings have problems and it makes it hard to do stuff. That's

the practical version. And so human performance meaning you can do stuff at either an elite level or some

respectable level of expertise under uncertainty. So for instance um folks

uncertainty. So for instance um folks who work in an emergency room, doctors, nurses, etc. Uh first responders, day traders, it's high very stressful thing.

Most day traders fail because of these things that we're going to talk about today. And in fact that was part of the

today. And in fact that was part of the genesis of coming up with this. I was

also trying to turn my dissertation of a learning theory into a book and I got concerned with um you know what are the barriers that my students bring to class

and one thing led to another. And so

this is going to be try to summarize a 30ome page uh report on these prevalence data about things that all of us

suffer from or virtually all of us. And

so before we get into this slide deck that I employed Notebook LM to make for me, basically I gave it the report that I wrote up and I said, "Make me some pretty slides." It does a fantastic job.

pretty slides." It does a fantastic job.

It only took three times of telling it, "Fix that, fix that." All right, but before we get into this slide deck, I want to kind of give an overview of uh

some things here. So let's take a hundred people, a cohort of 100 people.

They could be getting ready to start a program of study at a college or university or some other training program or just the 100 people that are in Costco right now. All right. And

let's talk about what's going on with them as a group. This would apply in the United States um across the board uh probably to a lesser degree in other countries. They

tend to not be as stressed out as we Americans are. 65 of that hundred have

Americans are. 65 of that hundred have significant financial stress.

It's basically twothirds under some sort of significant financial stress which as you can see on the screen uh will lower functionally your

IQ by 13 points. Now think about that.

15 points is the standard deviation on a 100 average IQ score. So on average,

human beings have a IQ of 100, give or take 15 IQ points. That gets you your that gets your first standard

deviation if you took a probability and stats course. Meaning that about 68% of

stats course. Meaning that about 68% of people would be between 85 and 115 IQ points.

you go out another 15 IQ points to the left and right of that 2/3, you have about 95% of folks. And then you go out another standard deviation, you have

essentially everybody 99 something. And

um so that's significant as we'll find out later. It's also that stress can be

later. It's also that stress can be equivalent to not sleeping for 24 hours.

Now, if you didn't sleep for a whole day, how eager are you going to be to go to work, do anything that requires skill, you just want to sleep, you're not going to perform well, period. Just

not going to happen. Um, unless maybe you're a Navy Seal and you've trained to do that, and that's again, not many of us. The um Oh, since I mentioned IQ,

us. The um Oh, since I mentioned IQ, congratulations, ladies. uh for I don't

congratulations, ladies. uh for I don't know almost a decade now. I think you've been one or more IQ points higher than the male of the species.

Congratulations. As as always, girls rule, boys drill, fellas. Get over

it. Move on with it. Congratulate the

ladies and and get moving. All right. 60

of us carry at least one childhood trauma or what we would call an adverse childhood experience. And this will be

childhood experience. And this will be predictive of your ability to self-regulate.

And one of those self-regulation things is emotion regulation. And that's

fundamentally the thing we're going to address today. And by the way, it is

address today. And by the way, it is deficits of emotion regulation skills predict mental illness such as

depression, anxiety, etc. 31 of us survive on insufficient sleep. This has

been my story for a good long while.

almost out of the woods on that. Uh I

tend to get six and a half on a good day. And uh the research is showing that

day. And uh the research is showing that somewhere between 6 and 1/2 and 7 and 1/2 is ideal. So I'm almost into the ballpark and I can tell you it

absolutely uh I am a poster child for some of the things I'm going to talk about today. 27 of us show problematic

about today. 27 of us show problematic addictive cell phone smartphone use. Okay, these

things, these distractors, like you're constantly looking at a ding, ding, ding, and you can't do squat because you're constantly distracted from that.

It's It's worse than that. We'll get

into those details later. 23 of us meet criteria for mental illness. And so

mental illness, just the word, it has its own stigma. You're like, "Oh, are you crazy?" No, that's not what we're

you crazy?" No, that's not what we're talking about. Depression, anxiety,

talking about. Depression, anxiety, ADHD, that doesn't make you crazy. It

just means you're depressed. you're

anxious, you have attention issues, and there's more to to deal with. Um,

meaning 23 out of a 100red of us qualify for a clinical intervention,

one in four, basically.

So, this is astonishing. And as you can see, these numbers add up to more than 100. It's like 150 or something like

100. It's like 150 or something like that. And so your typical person has at

that. And so your typical person has at least two or more, two to five is is pretty typical,

but at least one maybe maybe one in 10 of us has none of this. Or if we have something, it's at a small level and it's it's not um it's not meaningful.

Now, one more way to look at this um here is to kind of group them. And

that's these two slides are sort of just a list of things and then regrouping them by a mechanism. So there's just the raw list categorical and then there's a

mechanism way to look at this. I'm going

to do that in the the longer slide deck.

Um saturated cognitive load and structural misalignment. 70% of us have this

misalignment. 70% of us have this working memory exhaustion. You have like four bins of working memory typical human being. And that means sleep debt,

human being. And that means sleep debt, stress, loneliness, you name it, is taxing our working memory. We are

exhausted. And so this is why people cheat. Uh students, there's not I don't

cheat. Uh students, there's not I don't think students are any more or less lazy and lying as the rest of the human

population. uh they're worn out. And

population. uh they're worn out. And

when you have an easy fix like I'm gonna let AI do the work, you'll offload that to to AI and pretend that you learned something which only hurts the cheater.

Doesn't hurt doesn't hurt the professor.

Just irritates them. Number two, chronic autonomic and interceptive dysregulation. Say that 10 times real

dysregulation. Say that 10 times real fast. So autonomic meaning like your

fast. So autonomic meaning like your heart rate and its variability HRV like you can measure that on a a watch or whatever Apple watch bits all those

things. Your HRV your heart rate

things. Your HRV your heart rate variability needs to be higher which reveals you have a greater capacity to regulate.

If it's a low HRV that means you're disregulated you're stressed.

uh interceptive meaning I can feel that I I feel my heart rate increasing. I

feel my ears getting hot. I feel it in my gut. Whatever it is that interceptive

my gut. Whatever it is that interceptive awareness in fact there's one study for day traders actually um the most profitable day traders are the ones at

least uh folks who work on like a trading floor um as opposed to doing it from home or whatever. uh they could predict their uh heart rate without

taking their pulse. They're that in touch with their body, which means they're really good at regulating stress, regulating their emotions.

Number three, hijacked attention and reward circuitry. 50% of us minimum have

reward circuitry. 50% of us minimum have been hijacked by these digital loops, these phones and computers and tablets

and everything. And that changes your

and everything. And that changes your motivation.

it and it it also zaps all of your attentional capacity because you only have so much willpower. Number four,

distortive, affective and identity narrative. So effective meaning uh the

narrative. So effective meaning uh the way it affects you effect as opposed to effect. So an effect like cause and

effect. So an effect like cause and effect. Affect is kind of the word we

effect. Affect is kind of the word we kick around in psychology a lot. You

have a positive or negative affect. Joy

being positive, sadness being negative, offex so to speak. And then identity narratives um that could stem from your

childhood um stem from perfectionism, those sorts of things. More on that later. So

later. So back to the lecture at hand, so to speak.

Extra points if you know what rap song has that line in it. population data on executive control by domain and mechanism as previously threatened. All

right, so let's before we get in it, this is largely US prevalence data with a couple of things like the smartphone

issue is a global data point. Um, I am talking about prevalence, not causation.

I'm sure there's some cause causal factors in the data out there. I'm not addressing that

out there. I'm not addressing that today. I'm just reporting the prevalence

today. I'm just reporting the prevalence and we'll take that as it is. Number

three there that operation on a continuum some sort of continuum. So the

data is clinical data. It's what's

reported but there's any sort of clinical data point has a subclinical level which is more. So for instance, of the millions of pregnancies that occur

each year in America, one in five of them ends in miscarriage.

Those are the ones that were reported.

We It has to be the case that there were miscarriages that happened that we don't know about because mama doesn't even know about it

or didn't report it. Every clinical data point has a subclinical level like that.

Same for these. All right, so moving on.

Let's get at it. Category A,

physiological, the body. Sleep

insufficiency. Almost 31% of us.

Caffeine overuse. So caffeine has a half life about 5 to 6 hours. So if you're typical, you have about 150 160 milligrams a day, one cup. All

right? Some people have way more than that. If you don't cut it off, you know,

that. If you don't cut it off, you know, by early afternoon at the latest, then that's going to affect your sleep.

Whether you know it or not, it is not improving your sleep quality, it is negatively impacting your sleep quality.

Period. Right? For even for people who fall asleep after having caffeine.

So, there's no bragging about that.

You're you're not doing yourself a favor. Stop it. All right? Drink some

favor. Stop it. All right? Drink some

decap. uh chronic pain. Obviously, if

your back's hurting and you're trying to make a decision, especially when under stress, okay, like am I going to make this trade for, you know, this stock or whatever, of course, you're not going to

think as well. You're because you're distracted by that pain. Physical

inactivity. Here's an interesting point.

sedentary lifestyle, meaning you you don't get any physical activity, is slightly more deadly than smoking 15

cigarettes a day.

Not by much, but sedentary lifestyle is actually more dangerous for you than smoking.

All right, get to the gym, folks.

Category B, clinical mental health. any

mental illness basically one in four of us 18% anxiety 70% substance use major

depressive episodes ADHD now look at that subtitle for Gen Z

it's not just 6% it's 20 almost 22%.

Almost four times higher.

Four times higher. That's nuts. Uh, and

guess who's in school? That's the group that's generally in school. All right,

category C, behavioral and attentional.

We talked about these smartphone stuff already, so let's continue. Uh, that 27% problematic use. So, this could be

problematic use. So, this could be social media as you can see in the next stat there, the 24%. It could be too much news consumption, it could be

gambling pornography all of these things. and we'll we'll see a representation of how it changes your

emotional andor reward system baselines in a not a good way. Um

but all these things uh elevate your arousal if you will. And

so for instance, say like a video game, one of these immersive games where you're walking around and climbing things and shooting things. So there's

everything about that environment is set to reward you. You can hear your footsteps. You're making progress. You

footsteps. You're making progress. You

can see your score changing every time you shoot the bad guy or enough of them get a new toy. Um new superpower, whatever it is in the game. I don't do

I'm play video games, but I'm aware, you know. Um last time I played a video game

know. Um last time I played a video game was uh the 80s and that's when you put a quarter in and I played Defender and I could play that for hours. All right.

um but never got into the front of my TV version. Um but it raises your baseline

version. Um but it raises your baseline in a way that's not good for attention and regulation. Uh category D, cognitive

and regulation. Uh category D, cognitive and effective uh issues. So imposture phenomena, what

uh issues. So imposture phenomena, what is that? Good question. I'm glad you

is that? Good question. I'm glad you asked. It is folks who have plenty of

asked. It is folks who have plenty of skill but don't believe they're any good at anything. might be the opposite of

at anything. might be the opposite of say a Dunning Krueger where you have no skill but you think you do. And by the way, interesting thing about Dunning

Krueger is someone like me, uh, Dr. Van Gilder, I could just as easily become part of the Dunning Krueger myth

because I overestimate my abilities because I'm too sure of myself because I have so many degrees and I I must know everything. like I could I could make

everything. like I could I could make that error. All right. And be just as

that error. All right. And be just as Dunning Krueger as the person who can't spell uh prevalence. Okay. So, uh be mindful

uh prevalence. Okay. So, uh be mindful there's just cuz you got a bunch of fancy letters after your name don't mean you

can't make that same mistake. Um trait

rumination. So, what is rumination? It

is when you sit there and stew on a negative emotion, um, anger, that sort of thing. So,

you've been hurt, betrayed. I've I've

been there. I've I one of probably the main reason that I have a sleep issue is in the past I what I thought was analysis

of the problem. What I pretended was problem solving was really just ruminating. I was just having a

ruminating. I was just having a session. All right. Put it bluntly. And

session. All right. Put it bluntly. And

when I realized it, I'm like, "Oh, Clark, what are you doing, Dr. Van Gilder? Why didn't you see this coming?"

Gilder? Why didn't you see this coming?"

Well, emotion regulation is adjacent. It's it's in my area of

adjacent. It's it's in my area of cognitive stuff, but there's so many specializations, you know, I just didn't didn't remember enough till,

you know, it was too late. And then once I did that, I swerved back into things.

It's do those emotion regulation things that we're supposed to do. Um, but

rumination is that and it's is it a trait? Well, you be careful with the

trait? Well, you be careful with the word trait in psychology. You have

personality traits. They're stable and they're heritable genetically speaking.

Um, like 50%. Uh so rumination is not a trait in that sense that you can inherit uh it from your ancestors but it's

stable like a trait and and in a bad way. Rumination literally the worst

way. Rumination literally the worst emotion regulation strategy a person could deploy. It has no redeeming value

could deploy. It has no redeeming value other than it um to some degree it does feel good but it's the kind of feel good that you get from scratching an itch.

Like why does scratching an itch feel good when it's literally the worst thing you could do for that scratch or that wound or whatever? You're just making it worse. And rumination's the equivalent

worse. And rumination's the equivalent of that for your brain. Perfectionism.

Um it's literally something that psychologists pay attention to. Um and

it has a pretty wide range because it depends on the demographic, usually age group where this is a thing. It can be annoying to be around a perfectionist because they're they demand too much of

themselves and the people around them and they tend to practice the blame game. Also, it's self-destructive

game. Also, it's self-destructive because uh you will tend to perfect the trivial things instead of the more difficult nuanced things which means you failed. So, you'll blame yourself and

failed. So, you'll blame yourself and others for that. Alexia uh this is an inability to either recognize or

describe emotions. So

describe emotions. So effective labeling is one of the most powerful skills that

a person could deploy to regulate emotions if you do it consistently and pers persistently.

Meaning during or shortly after the episode, you name it and blame it so to speak in a very specific way. So if you're like I

feel bad that's not effective labeling but I am stressed out and afraid because

of this makes me feel like that.

Why does that work? Prefrontal cortex

had to think and specify and categorize in a very fine grained way as opposed to I don't feel good. All right. And so

what that does is prefrontal cortex, you could think in a Marvel universe sort of standpoint, your Dr. Banner appear in the prefrontal cortex, the Hulk, the

amydala, and quite literally uh dendrites that extend from neurons and whatnot in those spaces. And the and the amydala when it gets fired up, it

literally expands. Now the it the body

literally expands. Now the it the body the volume of the amydala doesn't expand, but the neurons in it do.

Likewise up here, the neurons shrink in the prefrontal cortex. It doesn't change its size, but neurons kind of draw back a little bit. And so you want who do you

want to be in control? The Hulk or Banner? Uh, I guess we need a smart

Banner? Uh, I guess we need a smart Hulk. Even though I don't really I don't

Hulk. Even though I don't really I don't want to see that in any more movies, the smart Hulk. It was cute for a time and

smart Hulk. It was cute for a time and I'm thankful because it was a good analogy in this presentation. But you

want you want the prefrontal cortex to be in charge. You want the smart Hulk because you cannot get rid of the Hulk just like Banner couldn't. But you can

learn to control Hulk.

And then you have crappy movies. All

right. Uh last three categories, we can put them all together because they kind of a couple of these things do go together.

So financial scarcity, we talked about that. That's almost twothirds of us.

that. That's almost twothirds of us.

IQ drop of almost one standard deviation, which is you if you've ever felt a night loss of sleep.

This is what this can do to you, even if you don't lose sleep. Time poverty. We do

too much stuff. Probably because we have to work too many jobs to avoid things that we need, especially if you're in a generation younger than mine. I'm Gen X.

I'll be 59 in a couple of weeks.

Um, millennials and my kids generation Gen Z, good luck buying a house. You

didn't win the lottery. You're not an engineer or something with making some seriously good money. Uh, you have to work more, which means you have less

time for people, relationships, social interaction, which is um, possibly more important than your physical fitness.

So time poverty really a big deal and uh 30 to 40% of adults have time poverty.

They can't really put the time into things. Loneliness

things. Loneliness haven't mentioned that yet I don't think at least not in detail. 50% of us

have uh some mild form of loneliness or more. 37.4% 4% of us have a moderate

more. 37.4% 4% of us have a moderate uh to severe and 14 or 15 if I remember right have a severe loneliness problem.

Loneliness is bad for your brain and I mean bad for the gray matter.

It literally shrinks gray matter. That's

not good. Loneliness is we knew it was bad but we thought it was just bad emotionally. It's a sad way to live.

emotionally. It's a sad way to live.

Yeah, it is. And it's also harmful to your brain as an organ. All these all these things are harmful to one or more parts of the body, largely the brain.

Narrative and trauma stuff. We've we

talked about that already.

All right. The math though, if you're scared of math, you might want to click on to the next section. I'm just going to explain how I we're putting limits on

these numbers. So if you took a stats

these numbers. So if you took a stats class in college, university, you would have done this sort of math. So let's

say you have these three things, sleep problems, stress problems, chronic pain.

The intersection of that place is a dog pile of very negative, heavy cognitive lifting, so to speak. And so

hopefully you remember from your stats class, the sum of the probability of success plus the sum of the probability of failure that has to equal one because your failure and success are your only

two options. They have to add up to all

two options. They have to add up to all of the possibilities in a probability space sample space. So you can solve one

of those pro one minus the other is always going to be true. So if I want to know the probability of it somebody having at least one barrier, it would be one minus the probability of no barriers. And since I have multiple

barriers. And since I have multiple barriers, if I assume they're independent, most of them, perhaps all of them are not, I can at least get an upper bound out of

this. So if you multiply independent

this. So if you multiply independent probabilities, you would have learned this in your stats class, you get the overall probability of in this case failure because one minus a success is

failure. And if you subtract all of

failure. And if you subtract all of those products of failure from one, you have the overall probability

of of that um of it the success if you will. And so that's how I did it. Uh

will. And so that's how I did it. Uh

it would be very difficult to make it any more precise than that. Um but it gives us an upper bound and that's about as good as it gets here. I'm sure I could improve on it, but I'll think of

that later. Somebody else will come in

that later. Somebody else will come in and do it for me maybe. All right. So,

we were thinking categorical.

Now, let's shift to mechanisms because this is a little because what's interesting is that each mechanism might have one or two from this category, one or two from that category, and another

one from that category. The mechanisms

uh don't care how they're affected. They just are. So,

cognitive load um start with that. 70%

of us some sort of cognitive loan problem and that could come from sleep debt, pain, financial stress, just to

name a few. And if you want to perform or learn, you must reduce that load. And so again, I I cheating. So

load. And so again, I I cheating. So

students cheating has always been a big deal in the internet age. It's been much easier to cheat because you can Google it and now you can chat GBT it and come

up with an amazing answer that we know you didn't write because it's obvious you didn't write that because you talked about things that aren't in the course and nobody writes that way except

pointy-headed academics like me. I was

really mad because I use the heck out of M dashes and then guess what? AI loves m dashes. So like I'd stop using M dashes

dashes. So like I'd stop using M dashes but I I don't I don't like it. I so I don't do it usually. Um so you you have to remove those loads. It's a

prerequisite mechanism two autonomic dysregulation 60% of us. So

again this heart rate variability is a good measure. It's not be all end all.

good measure. It's not be all end all.

um V2 max probably more important than your HRV. Uh and again,

your HRV. Uh and again, your watch is probably doing a decent job measuring either one of those things. But more important than the

things. But more important than the actual number is the trend over time. If

you're increasing, that's good. If you're increasing,

that's good. If you're increasing, decreasing, that's not good. That

simple. And basically these the HRV is a measure of stress or autonomic regulation or dysregulation. And so

that's an arousal issue. So a stressed person will be in a hyperaroused state most of the time if not all the time.

They they fly off the handle over the smallest thing. And I know how that

smallest thing. And I know how that feels. I've I've been that problem.

feels. I've I've been that problem.

Sometimes I still am. All right. put

these two together because well they go together. Um attentional capture and

together. Um attentional capture and reward system saturation. So we talked about how gaming

um pornography gambling they elevate arousal to a higher level that is unrealistic.

It's detached from reality.

um the world doesn't actually work that way or reward that way, but you're stuck

up here at this reward saturation level.

And then when you take away the thing that produces that, your brain keeps wanting that, but your reality is down here with the rest of us.

Mismatch that taxes the brain.

attentional capture. So, if the phone is next to me while I'm trying to do stuff and it keeps dinging or I see the light of a notification,

even if I don't turn my head, I saw it.

It registered. I'll constantly going off. This needs to go in the other room

off. This needs to go in the other room when I'm trying to do stuff. Okay. So,

why did I bring it in here?

I forgot. All right. They say the first thing to go is your memory.

I forget what comes after that.

um high salience stimuli involuntarily redirect filtering resources. So that's like I could I

resources. So that's like I could I could see the light of the phone even if I didn't turn my head pretending I'm in

control when I'm not. All right.

Effective baseline distortion. So we

kind of saw that back with those little sine wave curves that were elevated.

Now, emotionally, you have the very same thing, but down low. And again, your high, so you're you're oscillating, but your baseline is shifted lower. So, your

highs are other people's normal lows, and your lows are other people's abnormal out of this world lows.

And so, depression, anxiety, so mental illness typically the way this goes. And

and again emotion regulation skill deficits are what they call transdiagnostic towards mental illness. Like if you have

a rumination problem, there's a chance there's some probability that you're going to have a depressive or anxiety

episode and need counseling, therapy, interceptive signal failure.

Um before we get to that, let's talk about this incoming data is automatically interpreted as a threat.

So our amydala from an evolutionary standpoint, it's a it's actually a salience detector as opposed to an emotional

center of the brain, which still is an okay way to talk about it. It determines

whether or not it's a threat detected detection system. It tells you how

detection system. It tells you how important the event that just happened is. And that could mean

is. And that could mean elated to scared to death. So, you know, back in the day, saber-tooth tiger jumps into the camp, everybody runs or grabs a

spear, fight or flight, and cuz you could really die. Well, now

I I'll get the same emotional response, at least as far as my brain chemistry goes because somebody flashed a political sign that I didn't

like.

You know, that's not the same kind of threat, but my brain reacts like it is unless I've learned how to regulate those sorts of things. So, just be

careful. Interceptive

careful. Interceptive um signal failure. So this is inability uh to feel the stress building up

basically the easy way to put it. And

sometimes people uh for whatever reason just simply don't have that ability or it's very difficult to develop. All right. One way to do

to develop. All right. One way to do that would be with an app like the healthy minds app that I uh think I mentioned earlier uh that it's free. It

was uh and it's totally 100% science-based. In fact, some pioneers in

science-based. In fact, some pioneers in that area of research uh built it and they built it on donations specifically so that uh money would not be a barrier

to people um improving their mental health. And so that's basically a

health. And so that's basically a meditation uh course uh supported by actual

research. It will positively impact

research. It will positively impact everything. I I won't say that it'll

everything. I I won't say that it'll solve a mental health issue, but it will inevitably solve some of these issues and positively impact the rest. It's

sort of like working out makes all the boats rise because a healthy body can do things better than an unhealthy body.

Period. Especially the brain that's in that body.

Identity and narrative threat. half of

us. This goes back to those adverse childhood events and uh this affects your identity, shame,

all sorts of things. And then this uh structural or social misalignment.

So financial scarcity does that your chronotype meaning what's your circadian rhythm? Are you in a early bird or a

rhythm? Are you in a early bird or a night owl? Does your work schedule match

night owl? Does your work schedule match your chronotype?

If you're not sure what your chronotype is, look it up. Figure out your circadian rhythm and you'll figure it out. Isolation meaning social isolation.

out. Isolation meaning social isolation.

Um social life might be having one, especially as you age. Having a positive

network of relationships is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful,

um, longevity things out there. And

I don't think anybody has put a pin in this yet, but I'll say it because I think it's true.

Stress is the most deadly thing a person can hold on to in their life.

Unstressed people who aren't physically fit still live long. Could it be genetics?

Sure. I think we underestimate I know we underestimate and scientists are starting to realize this how bad stress is

uh for health and longevity. Um but I don't think anybody has settled that yet. So I'll be careful to not

yet. So I'll be careful to not claim more than uh than I have. All

right. Again, we've we've sort of seen parts of this already. Just you know, four things. He's got 150 people in this

four things. He's got 150 people in this list of hundred so to speak. You can't

have that point here. Is these compound?

Most people have more than one.

Uh and these layers are a dog pile of dysfunction, integrated dysfunction.

Now the substrate. So when I say substrate,

the substrate. So when I say substrate, I mean your cognitive substrate, your physiological substrate, your environmental substrate.

They all affect your working memory, your autonomic nervous system. And that if that

nervous system. And that if that substrate or any of those layers to your humanity are overloaded, then these required capacities to perform under

uncertainty, under pressure, like holding multiple ideas in your head, updating evidence without um falling for any of the cognitive biases such as the

anchoring bias, ability to tolerate ambiguity. Some

people need to be certain of everything.

And guess what, dear human being? You

can't be certain of anything truly certain like absolutely certain.

That's not something human beings get to enjoy. It's fun to pretend that we can

enjoy. It's fun to pretend that we can be absolutely certain. We might mean that metaphorically, but in reality, you can't be 100% certain of everything. You

might be 99% certain or 99.99%.

But give up on the ditch the sin of certainty. It's not a thing that humans

certainty. It's not a thing that humans get. um and then regulating arousal

get. um and then regulating arousal during some sort of loss. And so those skills, you could keep trying to work on those skills, but if you don't address

the barrier to those skills functioning, so it's sort of like an engine. If you

don't time the pistons, the rest of the system is not going to work well and it will probably break catastrophically if that

timing issue is not resolved.

it'll run but depending on how bad the timing issue it won't run for long. All

right. So those

um implications now I think this is last slide blueprint for success. What would the system look like if it accounted for

these things? And so this could be a

these things? And so this could be a school, a training program, just your self-help, your children.

Um, so let's talk about this. Uh, so the substrate before skill pillar of this thing. So just like it says there,

thing. So just like it says there, teaching regulation skills to a sleep insufficient, attentionally captured cohort without

addressing those conditions just gives instruction the imperance of instruction without any transfer and capability.

And so um again one of the reasons I got into this and looking all this stuff up and writing a report on it and all that uh

was twofold. I was interested in what

was twofold. I was interested in what barriers do my students come to class with before I say anything or do anything. And then also um the the

anything. And then also um the the psychology of trading of day trading.

Um, and these are things that, you know, I have to restructure

what I do so that I don't overload my students because I can't just tell them to fix their problems. Okay? That's something I don't have

Okay? That's something I don't have power over and it would be inappropriate for me to try and do that.

um other than say maybe try this app, you know, whatever. And and so I have to build this system. I have to have a recursive inquiry that scaffolds up slowly to the heights that I need them

to dive through the hoop, so to speak at that level. Onboarding as a readiness

that level. Onboarding as a readiness assessment. So instead of just what's

assessment. So instead of just what's your name, address, email, payment received, what if we took the time to

find out what um their sleep and digital life is like because

we need to. So imagine I have a cohort of 100 people and 10 of them just straight on go for it A to Z.

Well, 30 of you have these load barriers. So, we're going to go, you

barriers. So, we're going to go, you know, um A to G and then we're going to add a couple of things before we get

back on the track to Z. And some of you that have five, you may need to see a psychologist or therapist of some sort before you even start or at least in

parallel to this. Those sorts of things are things we ought to do and we ought to tell people, hey, this is going to take longer.

If you are a normal human being, this is going to take longer because you have these load barriers because it takes 66 days. That's a median to develop a new

days. That's a median to develop a new habit, learn a new skill. And those are simple ones like I'm going to drink a glass of water when I get up. That's what the

best research. There's no 21-day habit.

best research. There's no 21-day habit.

That's a myth. Now that 66 day median value does have a range of 18 to 254 and the reason for that is well all the reasons we've been talking about. All

right. And then finally the clinical pathway probably has to be pretty limited for most systems because most systems don't have a licensed clinical psychologist or therapist who

could give that very direct and regulated advice. And so you would want

regulated advice. And so you would want to have some sort of information. the 99

the 988 lifeline. If you know, you know, uh what that's for. Um and and have that upfront, you know, if you are in this

boat or suspect you are, then maybe a clinical intervention is what you should pursue first or at least in parallel.

And so that kind of does it. That is the um end of this show here. And I hope that this uh enlightened you a little

bit to maybe some of your own issues or people that you care about and some ways to address that. Again, uh an app that I would recommend is the healthy minds

app. It is free. It is researchbased.

app. It is free. It is researchbased.

It is essentially a med a course in meditation which will teach you these awareness and regulatory skills.

uh that will make you a better person regardless of any other uh thing going on with you. You will be your

self-regulation, your emotion regulation will improve. All these boats will rise

will improve. All these boats will rise by this sort of um training. And so I I do highly recommend it. It u there as far as sleep goes, you probably need

something different. and actual mental

something different. and actual mental health issues, you need a therapist. You

need a a licensed person to do that. But

if you're a human being, you'll benefit from the Healthy Minds app. I wish they were a sponsor, but I don't think they do that sort of thing. So, and it's a

little early uh for sponsors, at least as it stands today. So, thank you again.

This was the uh Sci-Fi Show. Please like

and subscribe if you want to hear more about how psychology and physics and science in general uh affect our everyday lives. Later, y'all.

everyday lives. Later, y'all.