The Habit Mechanic - Unlock your Human-AI Edge

Surviving the AI Revolution: Why Brain State Intelligence Matters

• Dr. Jon Finn

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Brain State intelligence is the key to unlocking opportunities in the AI revolution which data shows we're now experiencing. Understanding this concept is crucial as businesses like IBM replace human workers with AI systems that can complete complex cognitive tasks faster and more cheaply.

• Our brains operate like batteries with three charge states: recharge (sleeping/recovery), medium charge (routine cognitive tasks), and high charge (complex mental work)
• AI is now replacing medium-charge work across industries, which explains the 67% decline in graduate recruitment since 2019
• To remain irreplaceable, we must consistently access our high-charge brain states where we do work AI cannot replicate
• High-performing professionals who use AI effectively can increase their high-impact work from 4-5 hours to 7+ hours daily
• The future belongs to those who can build their own human-AI team by understanding which tasks to delegate and which require human intelligence
• Accessing high-charge brain states regularly leads to greater happiness, health and sense of progress


Speaker 1:

Hello Habit Mechanics, dr John Finn here, I hope you're well Just doing a walking pod. I want to talk about brain states, brain state intelligence. Brain state intelligence is the key to unlocking the opportunities that are presented to all of us in the AI revolution which I think the data now shows we are in. There's a lot of talk about changes that would be coming down the line to how businesses, to what humans are valued for, where they can add value, where they can earn money, and now we're starting to see changes. So one of the big news stories the last week or so is that IBM laid off 8,000 HR staff and in their discussions about this, it's because they're going to replace lots of what those people did with AI.

Speaker 1:

Remember, ai is technology that can complete complex cognitive tasks on a continuum through to very complex cognitive tasks. This is the first time in history we've had this technology. The Industrial Revolution automated complex manual labour. The Industrial Revolution automated complex manual labour and there was multiple iterations of that. We're still advancing what machinery can do, but it was the first time. The Industrial Revolution as we understand it was the first time that we could automate manual labour at scale, and now the AI Revolution is the first time we can automate complex cognitive tasks at scale. So I've seen workforce disruption disruption.

Speaker 1:

So I wanted to revisit brain state intelligence, because this is the thing that we need to understand if we want to get our head around. Well, what, what is it that ai can do faster and more cheaply than I can do? Because if I understand that, I don't have to worry about it replacing me, I can actually use it to supercharge me. So, to think about this, we have our brain battery metaphor. But I mean our brain literally is like a battery. It runs on chemicals and electricity and it operates in three charge states. It has the recharge state where we are sleeping, and also we have non-sleep recharge, where we're recharging the battery, and this is think of your brain batteries operating in a 24-hour cycle, so every 24 hours it needs to recharge.

Speaker 1:

The second brain state is medium charge. This is where we do complete, simple, simple cognitive tasks. Simple for what? In relation to what our brain is capable of. So it's very it's doing things that we've already learned how to do. By and large, it's habit-type thinking. It's that kind of busy work people describe that's become addictive actually, and I think COVID has something to do with that sort of work where you always feel like you're busy but you never get anything done. You never feel like you're making progress. That's a medium charge brain state. And the third brain state is the high charge brain state. This is the brain state we used to do our mentally complex work, to really think cleverly. It's effortful. Our ability to do high-charge thinking is a limited cognitive resource. We only can do so much of it each day. So where AI is coming in is it's very clearly able to do medium charge work in many, many tasks much faster and much more cheaper than humans can.

Speaker 1:

So just interestingly, yesterday so you know, anyone who runs their own business will tell you it's difficult to run your own business right, it's also very rewarding, but it's difficult. So yesterday I was working at the weekend. I worked all weekend actually, because I've got a lot of things to do at the moment. Um, there's no violin coming out here. I enjoy what I do, but I was using some software that's pretty complicated, um, and we've used this software on and off for a few years, but we decided to start to use it more consistently now and what I was amazed by.

Speaker 1:

So previously, when you got stuck, you had to reach out to their support and say, look, I'm stuck with this, how do I do this, how do I do that? Now they have, and they've had a sort of a support bot, if you like, for a while where you can just ask it questions, but it typically wasn't very good, but now, just using it this weekend and last week, it's amazing. I mean, it just knows every answer to every question you've got. So instead of getting frustrated, you can literally solve your issues in minutes rather than having to wait for a support email. So see how that bot is able to replace a human doing the same job, and it can probably replace teams of humans, as we've seen actually in multiple cases across industries where many humans have been replaced by that type of technology, and, broadly speaking, we call that technology agentic AI. So agentic AI, in other words, ai agents. They're able to do medium-charge work cheaper and faster than humans, and that's coming online now and that's the biggest disruptor we're seeing.

Speaker 1:

So when you're seeing people losing their jobs, it's because they're being replaced by agents. So what does that tell you? It tells you that businesses are less prepared than ever before to pay human beings to do medium-charge work Because they can get the work done faster and cheaper. And you know, we've seen iterations of this with outsourcing or offshoring over the years, whether it was call centres, or my grandfather's generation, who were engineers building basically industrial machines in the areas of the world that I am from, where the industrial revolution started, their jobs got outsourced. I remember my grandfather going over to India, I think, to train people to do his job essentially, but so we've seen this offshoring before to save costs, but now we are offloading this onto AI. So that's why people are losing their jobs, because businesses are not going to pay humans to do medium charge work, and this is also why we are seeing such a drop off on graduate recruitment. So we've seen the decline of the advertisement of graduate roles from 2019 to now, declined by 67 percent. So businesses are less, are increasingly less, interested whether you have a degree or not, and we've seen some acceleration of those numbers in recent 12 months or so, depending on where you are in the world. And it's because, again, what most graduates do fairly medium-charge work, and so what businesses are doing is they're replacing instead of recruiting graduates. They're investing in AI systems.

Speaker 1:

So what does this mean? It means that we're only going to be really valuable If we can consistently get into our high-charge brain states. So that is the key, and we can also use AI to help us in our high-charge brain states. So what we've seen. So when people are really nailing it, they're getting a really good balance between their recharge, their medium-charge and their high charge brain states. We see that people, before we had this sophisticated AI, they could maybe do four to five hours of high charge, high impact work per day and they were really nailing it. What we're now seeing, and those people would have been what we called habit mechanics. What we're now seeing and those people would have been what we called habit mechanics. What we're now seeing is, when you give those habit mechanics an AI edge, they're able to do seven plus hours of high charge, high impact work and thinking per day Because they're optimizing their brain states, their brain state intelligent and then they're also using um agentic ai to co-work with on their high charge complex thinking tasks.

Speaker 1:

So this is what we mean by brain state intelligence. It's understanding our three brain states recharge, medium charge and high high charge. Recognizing that ai is gonna and all it is now is disrupting, is going to and it is now is disrupting businesses, paying humans to do medium-charge work. So every day, more and more businesses are deciding they're not going to be paying humans to do medium-charge work. So if we want to be irreplaceable, then we need to be consistently able to get into those high charge brain states and do the kind of work that ai can't do by itself. And this is why I wrote train your brain for the air revolution and, excitingly, we're just releasing train your brain for the air evolution mini course. So in in under, in under 60 minutes, you learn how to build your own high-performing human AI team, because that's what this is about.

Speaker 1:

It's the simplest way we can explain this. It's that actually the future is if you want to be healthy, happy and at our best and, by the way, if you're doing more high charge work every day, you'll be happier and healthier because you'll feel like you're making progress. I know I've been working I've not had a day off for a while because I'm just so, so busy but I feel really good because I'm doing work that's really interesting to me. I'm learning lots of new things because I'm able to get into those high charge brain states every day. I'm not recommending everybody does this, by the way, I'm just giving a genuine insight into where things are for me at the moment, but the high charge brain state is the most rewarding brain state and it's often the biggest thing that's missing. When people are not happy, when they are overwhelmed, um when, frankly, they have mental health challenges, they're not able to get into the high charge brain states because they're not getting the right balance across the three brain states.

Speaker 1:

So, um, this is this is exciting, and the key is you've got to build your own human ai team. That is, you've got to work out what are the medium charge tasks I do every day, what are the high charge tasks that I need to do, and then, where can the AI help me with both? So we created this new mini training Train your Brain for the AI Revolution. So, under 60 minutes, you learn how to build your own human AI team, and this is going to be the currency of the future. It's understanding how to build ai into your workflows and then, once you understand how to do it yourself, you can then coach and train others how to do this. You can lead to, you can lead human ai teams. So making that training available um, certainly, in the short term it's it's free and I'll put a link beneath this um podcast so you can access that um and we go into more detail and everything I've talked about on the podcast.

Speaker 1:

So thank you so much for listening to me this morning. Well, it's morning for me, sorry, or whatever time it is for you. I hope that was interesting and insightful, as ever. If you have any questions, let me know. And then I hope that you find the mini course really interesting and it helps you to improve your health, your happiness and your performance, and remember you're only ever one brain state habit away.