how to protect your greatest asset

Summary

the first self-development book I ever read was Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot. it set me down the path of treating my brain as the most important asset I own. with AI everywhere now, this matters more, not less.

1. the brain is your only non-replaceable asset. money you can re-earn. companies you can rebuild. relationships you can repair. you get one cognitive engine. atrophy it and you’re done.

2. AI is the new processed food. processed food made us obese because we outsourced the work our bodies were built for. AI risks doing the same to cognition. if it does the thinking, you stop thinking. the body adapts to whatever you do, brain included.

3. train it on purpose. exercises like “awareness of time” (estimate how long things take, then measure, then close the gap). reading hard books, not just easy ones. doing math without the calculator sometimes. writing instead of voice-noting. analog notebooks.

use AI as a tool, not a replacement. delegate to it the way you’d delegate to an employee, then think about what came back. don’t just accept the output. try harder.

Transcript

introduction to brain exercise and its impact on cognitive performance

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Hey, let’s talk about protecting your most valuable asset, and that is your brain. I am Jerred Moon. This is the Better Human Business podcast. And years ago, like I was not a big reader in high school, in college.

You know, I read what I was required to read, but I didn’t enjoy fiction, nonfiction, anything like that. And it wasn’t until I graduated college and then, you know, was starting in the Air Force and everything that I started kind of personal development. I started actually reading books that could make me better.

personal story on the transformative power of brain exercise

And I’ll never forget the first book I ever read that was like, I selected it. It’s for self development. I’m trying to improve in the title of the book is Mozart’s brain and the fighter pilot unleashing your brain’s potential. Now, the reason I selected this book was it’s cool. It’s got a fighter pilot on the cover.

At the time, I was training to be a fighter pilot. I’m very interested in your brain’s potential brain performance, all these kind of things. So the book came out in 2001. And to be honest, this is the this is a very important book, I would say, to me. Now, you could read this book and I didn’t get a lot out of it or you think it’s awesome.

But the reason it’s important to me isn’t because of just the content inside, which I will be talking about here in a little bit. But it was because that was the decision that was the book that’s led down this self development journey, this path that I’m going to improve myself by taking courses by reading books by hiring coaches.

daily routines that incorporate brain exercise for optimal mental health

This was the first step in that process. And it’s funny because I actually downloaded that as an audio book. And then probably like 2010 timeframe 2009 2010 something like that. And then I kind of lost it. It wasn’t like an audible. It was just like on a like an MP3 somewhere. And I kind of forgot about the book.

But then I was in this random tiny mountain town in North Carolina that had old books in it, just like that’s what they specialized in. That was kind of their motto, like we specialize in weird, obscure books like it was something like that. That was their tagline. And I was looking through the shelves with my wife and my kids.

And like this book was there. It was Mozart’s brain and the fighter pilot just sitting on the shelf. I grabbed it. I didn’t care what it cost. I was like, I’m buying this book. And I mean, it was only like 10 bucks, but I was like, I’m getting this book. And so I got it. And to be honest, it just symbolizes something for me.

how structured workdays enhance mental engagement and productivity

And one that is deciding to move forward in self development, but also to this desire and interest to always have my brain be my greatest resource, my brain being what drives everything forward. And that’s what this book is for me. As a reminder, it sits on my bookshelf now to remind me of those two things, like one, you have to go out there, you have to decide to get better.

You have to take the steps and you just decide you flip the switch. No one’s going to do it for you. No one’s coming to save you. You need to flip the self development switch to improve. That’s thing one. Thing two, you need to protect your brain at all costs. Your brain is your greatest investment.

You call it your brain, your mind, however you want to process this entity, this thing that’s in our skull that moves us forward, helps us make decisions, does all these complex things. How are you going to protect it? How are you going to sharpen it? How are you going to exercise it? And I feel like this is becoming so, so relevant right now.

simple brain exercises that can be integrated into everyday life

That’s the second part of this thing. The second lesson learned for me is like, how are we protecting our brains right now? Because I feel like we’re in a very dangerous time. In this book, Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot, feel free to read it or don’t. I’m going to give you some good tips from it today anyway.

But in this book, you know, he talks about kind of stretching the mind, right? Like having to do things that engage the brain to better your brain. And if you just think about where we’re at now in society, a lot of we run on autopilot quite a bit in our daily lives. I know I do. I know I have a lot of autopilot activities.

Some of them are great habits that I want to continue and build and build upon. But some things are like mindless, you know, and as we have social media, you know, more and more people on social media, you know, kind of going through scrolling, doom scrolling, all those things that they call it are, I feel like that puts us in our brains being used a little bit less.

the broader implications of technological advancements on brain health

And then like, we could just move outside of social media. I feel like I’m always talking crap about social media, but let’s talk about just watching TV or Netflix or whatever it is, or kids doing this and never having to critically think or use their brains. And if that wasn’t bad enough, just how kind of the direction the world has gone over the last couple of decades, boom, AI hits the scene.

And now nobody really has to critically think about anything. And this is what terrifies me, because we’re right at the start of this. And I think AI is going to be amazing. Okay, I think it’s going to transform the world. I think they’re going to start integrating it into humans somehow, you know, like whether it’s through wearables or actual like, neural link type things that Elon Musk is doing, like crazy things are going to happen over the next decade to two decades to three decades.

I don’t know what it’s going to be. Technology seems to be moving really fast. It’s going to get integrated heavily into our day to day lives. There’s even a big update coming with the new iOS, the operating system for Apple that, you know, not only in their laptop computers, but also the iPhone where they’re just implementing all sorts of AI from being a personal assistant.

closing thoughts on maintaining cognitive sharpness in the modern world

But what’s my fear? My only fear in this is one, I think it’s gonna be awesome, like legitimately, I’m not saying that these things shouldn’t happen. A lot of people involved in AI think that there should be some sort of like restrictions or rules and all these kind of things. And I get it all. But my fear is, you know, kind of like what happened with food, like if you go back to the 1940s, you know, even 1930s, somewhere in that realm, and we didn’t have as much processed food, things weren’t as easy to come by.

People did more manual labor. You know, we didn’t have the obesity epidemic to the level that we have now. But, you know, you go out, you know, whatever, 80 years, 60 to 80 years later, when all these things were coming online, refrigerators come, we’re now starting able to, to store food more easily, they’re processing things more easily.

But calories are too easy to get. And now a lot of the world is overweight, like, that’s my fear, right? That was over 50, let’s call it 50 to 100 years, wherever that timeline started. It’s ultimately been bad for humanity, but also good for humanity in a lot of ways, right? And the only people who’ve done well, are the people who are more mindful and who have decided to exercise and can stick to those things and make, you know, very mindful decisions with nutrition, like you will survive, there will be the survivors, right, who are into fitness and health, who, who got past the processed food problem.

But now we’re going to do that same thing’s about to happen with AI. And what’s going to happen here is, I don’t know how long it’s going to take, like, I don’t know if it’s like I said, one decade, two, three, or maybe it’s another 50. So maybe, maybe we don’t have to worry about it as much. I might be dead by then.

But brains are not going to be used as much. They’re not going to really have to come off autopilot. And people are just going to start hitting the easy button in a major way. You know, when, when a problem comes up, when something comes up, they’re just going to get to a little bit of that mental resistance.

You’ve probably been there. It’s like when, you know, the tasks that you have to do, and you get to a little bit of mental resistance, and that mental resistance is actually a good thing. That means you’re having to engage parts of your brain. And again, I’m not a psychologist, I don’t know, like the inner workings of the mind.

But this is pretty simple, clear cut stuff. Like it’s just like fitness. Like when things start to get hard, like if, if I, if I was squatting and I’m like, well, this isn’t that hard. I can do that all day. But the second it gets hard, I have to get more focused. I have to try harder. I have to put more effort in.

It’s uncomfortable. It hurts a little bit, right? Like in a good way, hopefully. Like there are all these things involved, but it’s no different with the brain. When you, when you go to do an activity, your brain starts to get more engaged. And when you start to get more engaged, it’s more work. And that’s where that mental resistance comes in.

What’s ultimately a good thing for your brain, it’s expanding, it’s engaging, it’s doing things that needs to, to, to grow and to learn new and make new connections. All these things are starting to happen. But what we have the ability to do now that we haven’t had the ability to do before is back off, delegate the tasks to a robot, have AI do it.

We don’t want to have to think about how to send that email. We don’t want to have to think about how to solve that problem or write that paper or do that math equation. We don’t have to do those things. So critical thinking is going to take a massive hit. And I think this is going to be a big issue.

So I don’t like to only talk about issues if I’m not going to talk about some sort of solution. So what kind of solution do I have? Well, part of it is in this book. I mean, I recommend picking up this book, but starting to engage your brain in activities that are, that gets you to that mental resistance standpoint, but doing it intentionally.

One of the most simple examples he has in this book for increasing concentration and focus, being more mindful, engaging the brain more is a simple awareness of time exercise. And so you can do this exercise right now. I picked the easiest exercise in the book. Okay. And it’s the only exercise I’m going to give because there are a lot of other ones in there that are phenomenal.

They’re great. Go read the book if you want more exercises. But this awareness of time exercise, he recommends you start with only 15 seconds. So you start a stopwatch and you let it run, and then you do your best to guess when that 15 seconds has elapsed. Now he does state in the book, like, don’t sit there and count to 15.

It’s not, we’re not trying to see how good you are at estimating seconds by counting one, 1000 to 1000. So you really have to be mindful about, does it feel like it’s been 15 seconds? And he talks a lot about why this exercise, he gets into it. He talks about how Alzheimer’s patients have used some of the worst time estimations ever.

So we’re talking about an unhealthy brain, right? They can’t, they’re always way off the mark about how long something took or is taking there either. They either thought it took five minutes when it took an hour, or they thought it took an hour when it only took five minutes. They’re really bad at this.

So a healthy brain should be able to do this and it engages you more. It helps you focus more. And I’ve done this exercise plenty of times. Now, 15 seconds is the baby, the baby step, right? That’s where he recommends that you start. And to be honest, at 15 seconds, you could sit there and easily count.

You might even be subconsciously counting without knowing it. But increasing that, trying to get to 30 seconds, he even recommends going so far as to 20 minutes, but not sitting there for 20 minutes and necessarily doing nothing. He’s saying you can go like work, answer emails or something like that, and then try and while that timer is running, look and be like, okay, I think 20 minutes is now.

And then you look and see how close you were. So this estimation of time exercise is a great place to start. Start with 15 seconds, you know, stop this podcast, try it out and just see how you feel. See how your brain feels. And 15 seconds is like really easy. Just try and do it in 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute, and see if you start to feel what I’m talking about.

Do you start to feel a little bit of that mental resistance that you’re like, oh man, I’m having to concentrate a little bit more than normal. Like I’m trying to, I’m a little bit more aware and present than normal. These would all be really good things. Okay. These would be great things if you’re feeling that.

And if you’re not feeling that the exercise is too easy, grab this book and read some of the other exercises. Because there’s other ones in here where like he has this like chart of numbers and letters and you have to circle like certain numbers and certain letters in a given time frame. Very mentally demanding.

The things like the Stroop test, all these different tests that can really engage your brain. But I think that’s the next thing, right, to like kind of bring this full circle is like what we had happen in the food industry and the convenience of calories being too easy to get and everything being hyper palatable is a lot of people got overweight.

But there are the people who like kind of saw through the lines like and they were like, okay, I’m not going to eat these things and I’m going to exercise this much to maintain a healthy body weight. They made the right decision and they’re on a good path now. And this is no different for our brains moving forward.

I think we’re right at that start of like, okay, well, I might not have to use my brain as much in work because AI actually is a huge help. So one last thing there, like I’m not saying don’t use AI because it’s dangerous and it’s going to melt your brain, turn it to mush. AI can make your job a lot easier.

It can amplify and augment employees like I think it’s a great tool. But if you get too far into the weeds where you’re not ever having to use your brain anymore, it’s no different than why fitness has gotten so important. Like all fitness is made up work. That’s all it is. They didn’t have to make up work in the 30s and the 40s because they had plenty of freaking work to do.

Now we invent work. We even have different companies who say they invent work better than other companies who invent work. But all we’re doing is inventing work for people to do so they can lose weight, be healthy, and maintain performance. Now we’re going to have to invent mental work. So adding these mental exercises into your daily routine, weekly routine will become no different than physical exercise has in the past for the food industry.

But now it’s going to happen with what’s happened, you know, the brain industry. Like it’s taking our brains offline. So we’re going to have to find ways to engage. And to find ways to engage and to keep our brains sharp, to critically think, we’re going to have to try harder.