*Why Thinking Less Might Be the Answer to Everything

So it's fair to say that you're a smart guy.

Yes.

Yeah.

Did you say it's fair to say that I'm-

I think it's fair to say that you're a smart guy.

Well, I don't know.

I think, I mean-

[laughs]

... credentials are one thing.

I don't think they correlate [laughs] with smart.

Oh, well, you're an, you're an intelligent man.

Let's, let's, let's jump into the brain here.

What's one thing you believe about the brain that most high-performing men get completely wrong?

Well, I think when people are trying to solve problems, whether it's related to their personal lives, their professional lives, or if they're sports people, you know, how to solve a particular problem, they tend to focus on what they need to solve, and then they tend to problem solve.

The problem is that if you only focus, you are using a part of the thinking brain that we call the prefrontal cortex that's connected to the parietal lobe.

Um, and that gives you a certain amount of, of access to your intelligence.

But to really solve complex problems, you actually need to unfocus.

Mm.

And in my book, Tinker Dabble Doodle Try: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind, I talk about ways in which you can strategically unfocus to turn on the unfocused network in the brain, which is the default mode network.

Now, you might say, "Well, come on, I already don't focus well enough.

Now I've gotta unfocus strategically?" And the answer is yes, because when you focus, you turn off the part of your brain that can solve complex problems.

You have to unfocus to turn on the brain that can integrate information.

So which is why, you know, people sometimes say they have their best ideas on a walk or in the shower, 'cause they're not sitting down looking at something specifically.

What they're actually doing-

So you're saying, just so I understand, when you're focusing, we're gonna, we're gonna...