Producer: Welcome back to Full PreFrontal where we are exposing the mysteries of executive function. I am here with our host Sucheta Kamath. 

Good morning, my friend, as always, good to be with you. Looking forward to your second conversation today with Dr. Christine Carter, but we're going to lead off by talking about Tom Brady and the winning mindset.

Sucheta Kamath: Yes, great to be here with you, Todd. You know, I spend quite a bit of time in Boston and I love big Patriots fan, and Tom Brady is one of my favorite quarterbacks and I know he's not most popular. There's a love-hate relationship with him but recently, a Facebook documentary called Tom vs. Time came out, I think Facebook is experimenting with a new format, I'm not sure what that's all about, but it was kind of interesting. I kind of took a minute to see a footage of that and Tom Brady opened by saying that what are you willing to do and what you're willing to give up to be the best you can be, and I thought that was such a wonderful question. To be the best you can be, you have to give up something and I think that's such an important ways to pursue excellence. So that's what I thought we will talk for a little bit, and he, in this documentary, talks about mental toughness and as you know, as a winning Super Bowl quarterback, he should know a little bit about mental toughness, and so he talks about his coach which his coach Belichick advises all his players at the Super Bowl environment is all about hype and ridiculous BS, and will go on and that wins is the team that works hardest, that's what Tom says he takes from Belichick, and I thought Tom's kind up summary of mental toughness is which is that putting that BS aside and put everything aside that's happening around you, all the noise from all the hype, all the cheering, and just focus on what you need to do, and this kind of clear focus really, do we bring that to our everyday work? Isn't that a great question for us to think about, that we, I don't think come to the table as a Tom Brady mindset, plus sending five emails doesn't require a winning quarterback’s mindset. It's the other attitude that we bring to the table and I want to talk about that today. Our guest Dr. Christine Carter was coming back for the second time. This time, we are going to talk about that mental attitude and what it takes to bring efficacy and efficiency to your work, and how to dive deep and enjoy the work that we do in everyday life focus on that work with that mindset. Angela Duckworth is a researcher who has that a lot of work on grit and she talks about grit as the capacity to stick to it, practicing until you get it right and doing it over and over again until you have a sense of perfection and flawlessness, and eventually, when you operate from that state, it brings you joy and that sense of joy is what we call a well-developed habit.

And so with that, I would love to introduce you once more Dr. Christine Carter. She's the author of the best-selling books, The Sweet Spot: How to Achieve More By Doing Less, and Raising Happiness, and the last podcast, we talked about her work in her book Raising Happiness, and this time, we're going to talk about The Sweet Spot: How to Achieve More By Doing Less. She's a sought-out keynote speaker and a coach. She writes a wedding blog called Brave Over Perfect. She's a sociologist and Senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center where she draws on scientific research to help people lead their most meaningful, joyful, and authentic lives. Her work is syndicated on Greater Good, The Huffington Post, psychologytoday.com, and several other websites. She has earned her two nominations from the American Psychological Association for public sociology and an award from the Council on Contemporary Families. Dr. Carter has appeared on many shows including the Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, Rachael Ray Show. So she's a wonderful speaker and incredibly knowledgeable but extremely practical and easily accessible, so I can't wait to get started with her.

Producer: Oh, I can't wait either. What the great conversation this is going to be. I think part of the problem with today's society is if you ask most people, “Do you have a Tom Brady-esque winning mindset?” I think most people would say, “Well, sure I do.” They really don't and that's the difference between success and mediocrity.

So this is going to be a fascinating conversation. Let's get to it. So here is Sucheta's conversation, her second conversation with Dr. Christine Carter.

Sucheta: Welcome to the podcast, Christine. I'm so happy to have you again and this time, I hope to discuss your second book, The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More By Doing Less. Welcome.

Dr. Christine Carter: Thank you for having me.

Sucheta: So there's no doubt in my mind that we are leading very busy lives and we spend much of our time playing defense, we are trying to catch up, we are multitasking or we are fooling ourselves that we are multitasking, and many of us are even operating without a clear picture of what our total responsibilities are in a given day, and I love that somebody like you has finally managed to pen it down and not just explain but also give us some advice. So I wanted to ask you which is not directly related to the content of the book, but your own management style, how would you describe yourself from how do you have a handle on your own attention, management, organization, big picture thinking? How are you at all these things?

Dr. Carter: Well, it's funny that you should ask because there's a structural solution for everything for me. I cannot rely on my own willpower. I mean, I just look at myself how I've evolved and as a child, I was the biggest slob ever, for example, organizationally. I mean, I can keep my school work pretty organized. I was pretty conscientious but for the most part, like you just looked at my room, it was a disaster. I went to boarding school and I had work crew every weekend because I just couldn't handle basic things I like keeping my bed made. Now, it's interesting to look because I'm extremely organized and it's because I have a set of habits. I can't just rely on my own sense of like, well, what should I do? I don't naturally organize myself but I do get myself into habits that then just - now, it just comes a lot more naturally to just keep things organized, keep things simple, but I'm a pretty creative person. I was an art major in school, I'm still a painter, I'm a writer, like I definitely tend more towards this sort of wildly creative and messy. I've sort of structured my adult life so that you would never know that about me, actually, like if you came to my house, it's clean, it's organized.

Sucheta: Wow, so -

Dr. Carter: And my work too. My work is super systematic and super organized as well, like just in terms of time, it's all done in habits as well.

Sucheta: Yes, so I'd like to call that harmony in chaos, the chaotic process is so essential for creativity but the harmony comes from having that external structure that just gives you a sense that everything is put together. Maybe messy inside once you open it but it's put together.

Dr. Carter: Yeah, totally, totally.

Sucheta: So there are various skills that are collectively known as executive function that include self-awareness, response inhibition, working memory, mental flexibility, planning, and problem-solving, and these skills when mastered, spread our capacity for self-management including organization and prioritization, and in effect, manage life but it's a big challenge for those with executive dysfunction. How do you define productivity in the context of best self-work, and is enhancing productivity a good goal for each and everyone of us, and can we become productive?

Dr. Carter: Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Okay, so I think though that there's a really big difference between - I mean, defining productivity is an important first step, right? Because busyness is not the same thing as productivity. Doing things all the time is not the same as productivity, because right now, in today's day and age, you can be busy all day long and never produce a thing, never create anything, never do anything of any real value but you can feel productive because all you have to do is check your social media feeds all day long and your email, respond to email or something, right? And you may have a job where that is actually productive and important but for most of us, we have to be really careful because now, we can feel productive by being busy all day long but not actually be productive. So to me, it's like, a productive day is like, did I get to do some of my most important work, right? Did I create something even if it's just the structure of an idea? I guess you could go back to the origin of the word, did I produce something? That's a little bit tricky, right? Because I'm not making things, I might not even be writing, producing a certain number where is on the pager anything like that. It goes back to sort of like, where is your value? Where is my value? Where is my social meaning? How can I make the world a better place? For me, that's what it is about and did I take a step or two towards my goals in that area? The important things, the things that matter.

Sucheta: Wonderful, so you're saying that as we get too caught up in the smaller steps, we lose sight of the big picture and that's why we need a little pause to say, where am I going, why am I doing this, and does this matter? And when we asked those questions, those with a great sense of value and big picture understand that much more clearly, I gather.

Dr. Carter: Yeah, yeah, and I mean, the irony is that sometimes, it doesn't feel as productive, right? If I just let myself every day for an hour and a half or so do some of my more deep work, sometimes, I'm not actually, like I don't actually produce that much and it doesn't feel as productive as if I had responded to every single email in my inbox or whatever but it's more important for me to make sure that I'm still doing the creative work even if that's much more difficult sometimes.

Sucheta: Got it, got it.

Dr. Carter: Equals less productive, right? You can feel productive simply by multitasking.

Sucheta: Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in this day and age, we see people aspiring to have it all. We have popular celebrities like Kim Kardashian who makes money by taking selfies, and then you have young people thinking that selfie taking will it lead to something substantial or you have athletes who make product endorsement as a by-product of their success and all those can be very enticing for an observer, particularly children, but looking at them, two things happen I see, that many people imitate the superficial behaviors of these individuals and miss the point of - and second thing is they may feel unhappy with whatever level of success they have, and so you recommend to those who are disconnected from purpose, daily actions and bringing that into the forefront of everyday behavior. So can you talk a little bit about not feeling dissatisfied for being a small person, a not successful person? If I may phrase it that way.

Dr. Carter: Right, right, well, I mean, a lot of it is just really asking yourself what is it that you want? Most people are chasing celebrity or money or status, or whatever because they want to be happy, actually, right? So taking a step back and asking yourself what is it that you want? Is It ultimately that you want to lead a meaningful and joyful life, right? Do you want to feel fulfilled? Yeah, probably. So now, let's look at what actually brings fulfillment and joy in our lives. It's social meaning, it's connection to other people. If we look at all the research we have on well-being in general and joy, in every field, the single strongest finding over a hundred years, really, in any field is that a person's happiness is best predicted by the breadth and the depth of their social connection. So we just have to remind ourselves of this all the time, what can I do to add more value to other people's lives? How can I be more connected? How can I be more - well, do kindness and generosity, right? We are easily fooled by things that look like social connection, like having 30 million followers on Instagram, right? The Kardashian takes a picture of themselves, post it on Instagram, it looks like social connection but we've just been fooled, right? We won't get that from that way. Success is the same thing because it looks like status sometimes looks like connection when you have a lot of people looking at you wanting to be near you because you're wealthy or because you're successful. You've just been fooled again, right? It's really much more about, once you have a basic level of security - or security is not even the best word, right? Once you have enough, you have sufficiency to live without starving, the sort of basics of food and shelter, beyond that, it's all connection, and so with your work, it's not about making more money or becoming more famous because you're so much more successful. For people like me, it's not about having a New York Times bestseller. It's about the number of people I could connect with in my work. Who can I help, right? That's what ultimately will lead to feelings of fulfillment.

Sucheta: So beautiful. My last question which I should have asked in the beginning, but in your book The Sweet Spot, you talk about this place where you're feeling calm and energetic, and there is no resistance, and you are effortlessly moving through whatever it is that you are engaged with, and that reminds me a lot about the concept of flow that researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - I hope I'm not butchering his name - talks about, am I right to think that there are several concepts and can you tell our listeners what that is and how can they strive for this wonderful sweet spot?

Dr. Carter: Yes, I think Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow is absolutely in the same category - sometimes, people talk about athletes dropping into the zone - it's this wonderful place of absorbed work where it's not necessarily effortless but there's both great power and a sense of ease or a lack of stress. So if we think about it athletically, right, if a baseball player hits the ball in his or her sweet spot, that's where you're going to hit a homerun. It's where the bat has the most power and there's the least stress. So I think in our modern lives, we spend a lot of time - we get hits but outside of our sweet spot and that means that we can sometimes have a great deal of power but there isn't this corresponding sense of ease, and so in baseball, if you get a lot of hits outside of your sweet spot, you're never going to hit a homerun for starters. Second of all, the bat will usually break, right? It will usually splinter or break, right, because of that resistance, so for me, that was a good metaphor, right?

Sucheta: Beautiful, yeah.

Dr. Carter: As a high-achieving, kind of an over-achieving perfectionist type for most of my life, I was used to getting a lot of hits but I was also feeling the bat start to splinter and break, and you need to find a way to see that I didn't always have to work so hard, right? That there is this other zone where there’s no stress and there's actually much greater power.

Sucheta: And what's so interesting, you may not have watched this but Judd Apatow just came out with his stand-up recently on Netflix and I was watching it and he got invited for the fame that he has for being a phenomenal producer of different hilarious movies to be the first pitcher for the - or throw the first ball for the New York Yankees or Mets, I'm not sure - I'm so sorry - but in his routine, he has this most awkward picture that there could ever be of somebody throwing a ball and he said, “In that moment, I was so concerned with who is watching it and what's going to happen, what is the other person going to think about me, and the whole world is going to find out that I can't do it,” and he says, “I understand, you're not supposed to think about those things when you're throwing a ball.” So he had a meta moment but he absolutely was not in the state of sweet spot and he was miserable, and of course, he was a disaster, and so you are certainly talking about people discovering that and you also sound like you are saying to us at that we can master that ability and eventually attune yourselves to get into a sweet spot, correct?

Dr. Carter: Yeah.

Sucheta: So you can eventually become very good at it.

Dr. Carter: Yeah, I mean, that's really good news here. We are not a bat. The sweet spot is not just this a little tiny thing. In any of the realms of our lives, we are able to grow not just our strength which is what we're totally trained to work on mastery, basically, but we can also grow at those realms of where we have some ease with it, right? Where we can reduce stress and really sort of start to eliminate some of the resistance.

Sucheta: Well, as I end my interview, I have a question for you, a personal question. So what is a recent thing that you have done where you have achieved the sweet spot but not in an area of your mastery but something totally new? Can you share that with us?

Dr. Carter: Sure. Let's see... Okay, this is such a dumb example but I'm just going to give it to you anyway. It's totally authentic. So for like, a million years, my assistant and all the people that I've been working with have been telling me that I need to be on Facebook and interact with my readers and the people that I coach on Facebook, and I always just thought Facebook was the biggest train wreck ever for me. It took me so much time. I just didn't like too distractible, right? Like I just couldn't do it in a few minutes and it caused me a lot of stress because of how much time it was taking and I could never figure out what page I was supposed to be on or how to do hashtags or anything, so this is obviously not what people are thinking of in terms of how achieving but I have gotten into this sort of flow where I love - I have a private Facebook group for a coaching group that I have and I can now go onto Facebook, answer all the questions, coach people online, see that their coaching each other, feel like all this positive emotion and it's like, wow, I just helped 111 people in 10 minutes yeah, right?

Sucheta: My goodness.

Dr. Carter: It's just looks like a home run to me, right? Instead of working individually with each person one-on-one, I'm able to do - anyway, so I did find some ease with that but it took me awhile to figure out how to take the stress of it out of it.

Sucheta: Well, Christine, you are not only an author and a scientist, and a well, well thought of person but you're just an incredible human being and you're such a kind person to share your personal stories and make it all real for us. So I'm immensely grateful to you for your time and thank you for coming on the podcast and I can't wait to see you in Boston.

Dr. Carter: I can't wait to see you too! I'm so glad that I get to meet you. That will be so fun.

Producer: Well, Sucheta, as I suspected, what a great conversation with Dr. Carter. Great, great stuff. I learned a lot from Dr. Carter as we did in our first conversation. Any initial thoughts here you want to lead us off with?

Sucheta: Yes, so let's kind of - as I like to do is dress this big picture idea. In this conversation as you heard, there are some big ideas here for us to think about. We all are in search of meaning and fulfillment. By doing what we describe as of the mundane, we free up the part of our day which in return allows us to do the important and meaningful work that we truly are passionate about. Creative work rests on the foundation of artfully tackling daily chores. It's a kind of an oxymoron here, artfully tackling daily chores, how do you bring art to the science of daily chore? But fulfillment comes from meeting all the expectations and obligations, and meeting the requirements of the role that we play in given life, and once we do that, we truly are free. With great effort and commitment, we need to successfully remove the roadblocks so that we can do what the Doctor calls in her book the best self-work. Take this example, it is like fixing the tires, replacing the coolant, getting the oil changed, then putting gas in the car, when you take all these three steps, you're ready to go on a long-awaited road trip with your college friends. If we put off any single thing - not replacing the tires or not replacing the coolant, or not doing the oil change, and then not even putting the gas, then of course, you may be with your friends but the road trip is going to be a disaster. So that's the balance. By taking care of the mundane, you can achieve greater things and greater things come from doing something that brings meaning and fulfillment by being social and being with those who actually kind of understand us.

Thus of course, is nothing but it wisdom, the wisdom in recognizing the importance of deploying the routines systematically and carefully imposing structure on one's self, and not rebelling I guess that structure that you impose on yourself. I personally like to visualize this as the bookends that holds books together, the routines and the structure holds the ever so very parts of the day in place without letting them collapse on themselves. So productivity is to create many bookends to hold various collective tasks of everyday life and hold them in place yet achieve all that you want to do creatively and playfully that brain allows you to come up with. Contrary to the common fear, I have observed that those with executive dysfunction, I often see there is a fear that if I bring in structure and routine, I'm compromising spontaneity and there is a threat to my creative freedom, but in fact, that is exactly the opposite. The more structured you get in the most predictable parts of your life, you can let your brain and self float through the most unpredictable part of your life, and that balance is what that was them is all about. 

Finally, the first to takeaway, the big idea as I'm talking about, the daily habits are really undervalued by most. I find that people spend a lot of time thinking about what should I do next? Just not to feel too rigid or they feel that by deciding in advance what I'm going to do next, they are being less free or less like a vagabond, and that's foolish in my opinion. Such individuals in fact or too busy but not necessarily productive, and they certainly are not free to create and expand their personal reach. This can be extremely a dissatisfying and frustrating experience and that's where I see most people being stuck, and particularly in my work, those are the people that I work with who are stuck, they don't have the freedom, they are caught in the web of their brain creating this illusion that routine is a rigidity and routine is putting shackles around my ankles, and that's not true, so in my opinion, the best way to accomplish more, connect well and aim for the higher is to get the mundane under your control.

Producer: Boy, that seems so trivial but it's so important and if you can deal with that, boy, you can really then begin to process the bigger, bigger challenges. Fascinating stuff. I also thought the discussion that the two of you had about the sweet spot was very, very fascinating. I've always thought of something like that as something that happens more to a world-class athlete or a famous musician, not just for us every day folks.

Sucheta: That's a great observation, Todd. We in fact witnessed the great joy those in the zone or those in the state of flow are experiencing and this happens of course, typically when excellence meets effortlessness. The idea of that happening to us sounds so foreign but if you think about it, if we bring excellence in something that comes with a lot of practice, and then once we master that, if we kind of bring our passion to it, we are in that sweet spot where our personal excellence meets our own passion, and I love that idea to kind of be in search of that in everyday life and this is one she talks about that this can be a great source of mental power, and we can bring that seamlessness to execution and actually get rid of the stickiness, and you can notice that, like there's no specific expertise and needed to answer an email. Well, no, we need some expertise which is composing ideas, organizing your thoughts, kind of sequencing, writing a good beginning, middle, and end, and then proofreading it and then sending it. So now, none of those single skillset evades us, but we are writing an email while we are checking our text, while we have seven windows open, well somebody knocks on our door and says, “Hey, can I have a minute with you?” or while we are really thinking about food, so when we are so distracted, we really don't have the opportunity to get into our sweet spot, and athletes - the athlete who is on the football field doesn't say, “Ah, suddenly, I'm feeling hungry.” Let me grab a sandwich. No, he is kind of forced by the circumstances, and then he has the discipline to stay in those circumstances, and that's when I think that casual versus formal versus informal, casual versus diligent attitude can really come in to help, come to help our own resentment towards that type of effort that needs to go into sending an email. I do Pilates with my Pilates instructor and she often talks about the core, make your core strong. The group of muscles that support our entire body or the posture, or the weight-bearing, and that capacity to handle awkward and unwarranted strain on the body is tackled by the core. So Dr. Carterc’s conversation reminded me of that idea, strengthening the core. In the sweet spot that she's talking about, the sense of flow, person experiences that utmost sense of flow that the work and the life that we have come to love is brought to ease and there's intense effort but without any sort of strain or stress. There's a sense of calmness and there's no pressure that comes from a hardship that one feels from doing something that is new.

Now, I just want to quickly make a comment, you can't get into a sweet spot if the work that you're doing is completely foreign to you, but when you're doing unfamiliar, when you're solving a problem that is very difficult and unfamiliar to you, or requires effort piece that you don't have, the sweet spot here is the enormous sense of curiosity that I am curious how to solve this problem, so I'm bringing my passion and I'm completely getting rid of all the distractions that are taking my attention away, and that again, comes from great self-discipline and comes from important commitment to that moment of excellence. If you don't do that, of course, you are going to be just bored or you're going to be stressed out, and you're not going to do the work that needs to be done in a cultivated way.

So I also heard her say that we can help grow these skills and focus on the commitments that we make and develop the discipline to eliminate these points, the sticky points that bring resistance to everyday life. So I have found that people with executive function challenge off and minimize the importance of these aspects of personal growth and they never reach a point where they are doing deep work, thoughtful work, work that requires deeper attention by being absorbed in the experience with great joy because they just are hovering over the cursory or the superficial aspects of life.

Producer: It's such a great stuff, you know, and it's not just LeBron James that can get into the fow. We can all get into the flow, even doing mundane tasks and when you don that, that's when you actually enjoy even simple things like washing dishes because then you're doing it well and you're in the moment. It's all such a great stuff and so impactful to your life when you do it well.

So before we wrap, Sucheta, any closing thoughts?

Sucheta: As I close this podcast and my list of takeaways, I want to reiterate, the secret to personal achievement is not getting a ton of things done at the ones or reaching the Pinnacle of your success ones, rather it is how we navigate the terrain of daily life, how do we plan, organize the day, how do we accomplish the tasks that need to be done to meet expectations of everyday needs? They could be things like replacing the light bulb in the kitchen, it could be replenishing the office supplies such as buying more printing paper, it could be buying more ink cartridges or calling somebody to fix the garage door that's not closing all the way. So none of these pending items are life-threatening or life-altering but if they reach a critical threshold, a certain kind of chaos will ensue and that will disrupt the harmony of being able to roll from task to task, so if you put off closing the garage and it's not closing all the way and you're like, “Eh,” and then you have to take a trip to Florida and you're going to be gone for three weeks, and then the alarm clock, the house alarm doesn't work either. Now, that's likely open garage and the alarm not working becomes a disaster. Now, you have to really juggle who's going to come to help you while you have somebody in your house who's fixing the alarm and fixing the garage while you're traveling or you're visiting Florida? So this chaos is what I witness often and those who don't manage their everyday goals or tours, or the mundane tasks well. Their creative genius and never surfaces or they never have uninterrupted time where they can let their mind wander through the vast plains of imagination and come up with something extraordinary for themselves, or see the extraordinary idea come to fruition and see their own entrepreneurship really materialize and become rewarding for them. They remain scattered, unfulfilled, and lost, and that's why I feel it's such an important, important priority to work on that sweet spot.

Producer: Hang on a second here, Sue, I'm making notes on all this. This is all life-changing kind of stuff if you understand it and implement it. It's focusing on those days that they tasks and avoiding that down the road failure. Sometimes, failure is really are a fluke accident that occur in the moment. Most of the time, it's because you've neglected those day-to-day tasks for so long, it results in a tragedy as you talked about. Fascinating stuff.

So that's all the time we have for today. On behalf of our host, Sucheta Kamath and all of us at cerebral matters, thank you for tuning in today, we look forward to seeing you again next week on Full PreFrontal.