The Habit Mechanic - Unlock your Human-AI Edge

How much Peak Cognitive Performance are you losing every day ? (...and how to get more)

• Dr. Jon Finn

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The Habit Mechanic Games (Part 3) - how to understand your Peak Cognitive Performance and how you can quickly and easily improve it.

Anyone can easily join The Habit Mechanic Games by downloading the app and enjoying a 14-day free trial here.

Dr. Finn reveals how spending just five minutes each morning and evening on focused activities can shift your brain state, allowing you to earn points, climb leaderboards, and enhance your overall living quality. With the Games set to run from TODAY (Dec 1st) to December 19th, you stand a chance to win substantial prizes, including personal coaching sessions.

Curious about how to get started? Find out more here.

Whether you're an existing member or entirely new to the platform, the Habit Mechanic University Games offer a welcoming entry point. Dr. Jon Finn explains how anyone can easily join by downloading the app and enjoying a 14-day free trial. It's a perfect opportunity for those who have signed up but haven't yet engaged or for newcomers ready to embark on a transformative journey. 

The Games are designed to be flexible and accessible, making it simple to enhance both individual habits and team dynamics. Tune in to uncover practical strategies for leading a balanced and fulfilling lifestyle, regardless of life's challenges.

In this episode, we navigate the unique challenges of our fast-paced world, highlighting the crucial role of deliberate focus and effort in thriving amidst change. 

Dr. Jon Finn emphasizes the importance of high-quality downtime and balance in order to deliver peak cognitive performance. Something that is vital as AI takes over our routine tasks. 

This is NOT just about productivity hacks—it's about optimising your brain for work that machines can't replicate. Join us for a compelling exchange that aims to enhance your cognitive abilities and prepare you to excel in today's ever-evolving landscape.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to this podcast about the Habit Mechanic Games. It's the third in a series of podcasts explaining what the games are all about, how they can benefit you and how you can take part. I'm joined by Dr John Finn, the creator of Habit Mechanic University and the games as well, to tell us more. Now, john, in this podcast, we're going to talk about peak cognitive performance and how people can begin to improve it.

Speaker 2:

get extra hours of peak cognitive performance every day, which I know you have been helping people with very successfully in recent times, so please do tell us more yeah, well, people might be more familiar with the term high charge brain states, and when you're in a high-charge brain state, this is peak cognitive performance and essentially it means you've got the right neurotransmitters, chemicals, proteins in your brain to get to the right activation level so you can really focus, you can think cleverly, you can think creatively, you can think it's when you're really at your best, and we know that every day. This is a limited capacity for the human brain. Our brain is a bit like a battery. It literally runs on chemicals and electricity and we can only get into those brain states for a limited amount of time a day. We call it a scarce cognitive resource and what's happened, I think, particularly since the pandemic, is that it's become harder and harder to get into these peak cognitive performance states because we're being consumed by busyness, digital interruptions or a brain function bombarded by lots of things that create overwhelm. So people talk about brain fog and imposter syndrome and all this stuff that just points towards your brain is not working very well and what we see is that, on average, people might be doing one or two hours of peak cognitive performance per day, but that means that they're leaving three or four hours on the table. So what we see is that by following our methodology and this is the methodology that we're gamifying now in the habit mechanic games is that you're able to unlock at least an extra three hours of peak cognitive performance every single day. And the beauty of this is doing that not only makes you feel good about yourself because you actually achieve things, your brain works better, you make progress, you get to the end of the day and you feel good about yourself, but it also means that you're able to do work consistently that ai can't do.

Speaker 2:

So you know, I think we're in a real, we're in a really interesting period of history where I think it's almost going to be a bit like the covid pandemic, where it kind of people became aware of it. You know what's this thing, and it seems to going to be a bit like the COVID pandemic, where people became aware of it and what's this thing, and it seems to be having quite a negative impact. And all of a sudden, bang, there was lockdown. I don't think AI integration will happen quite as dramatically as that, but I think we're talking about that kind of pace and what's going to happen is that you're going to have to do less work, because some of the work you're going to do is going to get replaced by AI, but the kind of work that you're going to have to do is going to be peak cognitive performance work. So that really is what our system is about.

Speaker 2:

This is not a productivity hack. That's not what this is about. This is about spending more time in your optimal brain states, because, of course, to get into more high charge brain states so you can do more peak cognitive performance work, it means you have to have higher quality downtime, proper sleep, proper rest and just create a better balance across your life. So that's what um peak cognitive performance is. And I'll just say one more thing extend that, because we know the currency of being at our best in the very challenging world we live in is actually deliberate focus and deliberate effort.

Speaker 2:

Learn how to adapt to the world as it changes. So for some people before the pandemic they had no problem getting a good night's sleep, completely fine. Now they're struggling because the conditions of the world have changed. Some people 10 years ago, concentrating for long periods was no problem, easy, can do it standing on my head. Now they're struggling because the world around them has changed and that means that their brain function has changed.

Speaker 2:

So what we're doing is when we're in our peak cognitive performance brain states we're not only doing clever things at work. That's also the brain state that we need to work on ourselves, to build new super habits. It could be a new sleeping super habit or a new confidence a super habit, or a new leadership super habit, and that's the main reason why people fall down when they're trying to make changes, because they agree with everything in principle. These are the things that I I get would be a good idea to do, and they're not able to get into those high-charge brain states consistently enough to put the effort in they need to put into to automate the new behaviors. So I just want to get across how all-encompassing the power of consistently getting in to peak cognitive brain states is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's funny. Just briefly, on the AI revolution, I've heard so many people talk about learning to adapt to AI and then, when you drill into it, they just mean using a piece of software or a platform that's AI powered. More fundamental shift where you need to be more human, be more innovative and creative as a human, and to do that, you need to be giving your peak cognitive performance. So I think that's really fascinating. Now I do know that if people want to start improving, they're getting more peak cognitive performance every day, more hours. Um, the place you guide them to start is with the peak cognitive performance test on the tougher minds website yeah.

Speaker 2:

So there's an assessment on the home page of the tougher minds website. It's not been there for long, so if you haven't checked it out, check it out. And that's getting you to think about practically how you are spending your time. What is getting in the way of you being at your best? So people that are familiar with our self-assessments understand that we have this scoring system of one out of ten because you think that's a really fast way to get people thinking in a constructive way. And here's a couple of the statements.

Speaker 2:

I waste time doubting my decision, second-guessing myself and beating myself up. If you never do that, you give yourself a one. If you always do that, you give yourself a ten. You're probably somewhere in between. Another one my mind feels foggy and it slows down my work. If you never feel like that, you give yourself a one. If you always feel like that, you give yourself a 10. Um, I feel overwhelmed and I make mistakes that take time to fix, meaning it takes me longer to complete my work to a high standard. It takes me longer to complete my work to a high standard. Again, if you always do that, you give yourself a 10. If you never do that, give yourself a one. So that's the kind of cadence um, there's one here. I get distracted, including by my own self-doubt and negative self-talk, meaning it takes longer to complete my work to a high standard. So and then we've got, you know some about a diet. We saw the data didn't with a few weeks ago how junk food is costing the uk economy alone about 270 billion a year. But an interesting aside, one of my clients was telling me that, um, when the when government started to clamp down on the tobacco companies, they all went and bought fast food companies and they laced lots of addictive substances into the fast food. But here's one to get you thinking about that my diet choices leave me feeling sluggish and it takes me longer to complete my work to a high standard. Never feel like that. You give yourself a one. Always feel like that, give yourself a 10. And the final one lack of regular exercise. 10,000 plus steps. Elevated heart rate reduces my mental energy and focus. So lack of regular exercise reduces my mental energy and focus. One, never. 10, always, always. So that's the flavor.

Speaker 2:

And then you ultimately get a score and that score mirrors where your brain state is at. So we have three core score groupings. The highest score grouping is what we call the cross the bear profile. This is where your brain states are predominantly in the medium charge. The score grouping is what we call the cross-the-bear profile. This is where your brain states are predominantly in the medium charge zone, so you're not doing enough recharge and you can't get into the high charge brain state. The middle score is what we call the jagged jewel, where you've got some good things going on but still overly dominated by the medium charge brain states. And then the best profile is the arrowhead profile, where you've got a nice balance between a strong basis of recharge the middle is medium charge and the highest.

Speaker 2:

The highest level is consistently doing your four to five hours of high charge brain state work, or in other words peak cognitive performance activities, both on yourself but at work as well. Doesn't matter where you are. We're going to show you in the games how to move from where you are to a better profile. And even if you are in the arrowhead profile, I guarantee you you can do significantly more peak cognitive performance work. We've seen that time and time again. You know sometimes, and very often, three hours over three hours. You know consistently. We're not talking about burning out one day and then not doing anything for the rest of the week, or getting such a bad balance across monday, tuesday, thursday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday that we're just flat out on friday. We're talking about getting a consistent balance, so that's the flavor yeah, great, john.

Speaker 1:

So so it's great to understand, then, that we've got this test peak cognitive performance test. You you've given us some insight into how you would analyze and and categorise those outcomes for people. From there, then, what steps would people start to take and of course, this is all part of the Habit Mechanic Games in the Habit Mechanic University what steps would people start to take to get more peak cognitive performance every day?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So once they understand their brain state score and they understand in more depth what that means, so we unpack the different brain states step by step in the onboarding course in the Habit Mechanic University. We then start to think about our activation levels and understanding what brain states mean in terms of neurotransmitters and the activity of your brain, but in a really simple way, through the lens of our activation model, and you start to map out what your activation looks like over the course of a day versus what you'd like it to look like. We then get you starting to think about what we call your future ambitious, meaningful story, to get that motivation charged up. And then we show you how to create your first willpower story. And then you can go deeper into any of those areas if you want in the onboarding course. But that's the journey that we take you on, is we help you to understand where your brain state score currently is, what that actually means and how you can, step by step, in just as little as 10 minutes per day, start to do things differently that help you to rebalance. Again, not just high charge, it's about getting the balance between good recharge, good medium charge and good high charge, and this is the reality and I really understand what you're saying.

Speaker 2:

Ai seems to be everywhere AI tools, ai, this AI, that. What I've not heard anyone else talk about yet and I believe we're the only people speaking about this is it's okay adopting AI tools, but you need to ready your workforce to be able to optimally sync with how they use those tools, because they're going to take some of our work, but they can't do everything that we can do, and the expertise we have can and is helping companies to get that balance right faster so that they can really optimize the integration between AI and human beings. Humans are feeling overwhelmed and threatened by AI. The good news is when you learn how to create a willpower story and you habitualize that, that's going to help you to not only integrate ai efficiently and effectively into your day-to-day, but it's also going to help you to add much more value to the organization by bringing your best human self.

Speaker 2:

Um. And this is not just this is not just at work, this is life as well, because AI is going to come into everything that we do. So I think we can use it as a tool to empower us and speed up helping us to be healthier, happier at our best, get off this conveyor belt of just being busy, busy, busy, busy. But there's a road map to doing that and we've sort of done the hard work, if you like. All you need to do now is turn up to the games and just follow the step-by-step guide and you will get better results.

Speaker 1:

Well, john, thanks for that. We'll talk more in the next podcast about using a willpower story and the concept of activation to really understand how they play such a role in delivering more peak cognitive performance for people. But just a reminder that the Habit Mechanic University games are part of the Habit Mechanic University app. You can take part, of course, if you're already a member of the app. If you've signed up to the app, perhaps, and haven't activated it yet, haven't started using it yet, well, the games are a perfect place to begin. If you're not yet a user of the Habit Mechanic University app, don't worry, you can download it from your app store and take part in a free trial, a free 14-day trial, and then, of course, you can take part in the Habit Mechanic games. So check those out, find out more. You can find out more about the Habit habit mechanic games using the link in the description of this podcast. John, thanks for joining us. Thank you for listening and bye for now.