Annie Murphy | The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

Srini: Annie welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Annie Murphy: Hey, I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me 

Srini: It is my pleasure to have you here. So I actually found out about your work when I came across your book, the extended mind. And it was kind of funny because I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into as somebody who's really into sort of, you know, becoming more productive, taking better notes.

I thought, oh, this is going to be all about, you know, sort of brain power. And then, you know, I got through the book and realized that you had taken something. I had thought was incredibly abstract and made it very concrete all of which we will get into. But before we do that you know, in a lot of ways, I kind of see you as a social scientist.

So I thought I'd start by asking you what social group were you a part of in high school and what impact did that end up having on the choices that you've made throughout your life and your career?

Annie Murphy: Oh gosh. Well, I went to a distinctive kind of high school. It was an all girl. School that I think in an earlier incarnation, it had been more or less a finishing school for like rich mainline debutantes.

Mainly the main line is a affluent neighborhood outside of Philadelphia. And it still had traces of that when I was there in the the eighties and nineties. And I let's just say that was not me. I was not comfortable. On the lacrosse field or the hockey field hockey field or or in a debutante ball or anything like that?

I was bookish. I was, you know, a kind of budding intellectual. And I found my tight circle of friends too were like that too, but it was really, we were definitely in the minority. And so it was, it wasn't really, until I got to college that I felt like, okay, these are my people. We can talk about ideas.

We don't have to. Mary, the boy from the boys school, there literally was a boastful and lots of my classmates, you know, ended up marrying guys from. And that was not, that was not my destiny. Thankfully

Srini: you're in an environment like that. What did you learn about, but you, don't sort of how people define success, you know, people's values when it comes around, comes to money and wealth, because I think that you do.

All I know about an environment like that is what I've seen on television with TV shows like gossip girl. I knew that we had any duke here who also went to a very similar type of school when she was in high school. But only because her dad happened to be either a principal or a teacher there, not because she came from, you know, significant amounts of wealth.

Annie Murphy: Yeah, and I, I didn't either, my, my parents were middle-class at best, but had sort of dreams of I don't know, vaulting me and my sister into another kind of social world. And it worked in the sense that I got a fantastic education at the school because I was one of only a few students who actually cared about the schoolwork.

So I had almost like mentoring relationships with a lot of my teachers and felt a lot more. A lot more kinship with my teachers than I did with a lot of my classmates. But I would say that being educated in an environment like that, it showed me how different people's values can be. You know? It's so easy when you surround yourself with people who are like yourself, which we all tend to do to imagine that the whole world is like that.

And, you know, I had many experiences to show me that that wasn't the case, but I do think that experience of, of, of growing up. Going to that school, which I attended for 12 years. So it was, it was a very big chunk of my growing up. One thing it really instilled in me and it's, this has been a theme that runs throughout everything I've written is the importance of situation, the importance of context on behavior.

And it's never made sense to me that we have some kind of fixed innate personality or intelligence because. I felt myself to be so different. You know, when I was with my friends, the ones that, the one I mentioned, the one, the ones I mentioned too, were, you know, more similar to me or say with, you know, at home with my family, I felt so different in those settings.

Then I did in the larger school setting that was really so alien to me and so alienating. So I've always had a real appreciation for the role of context and. Situation and people's behavior and in a way that's what the extended mind is all about too. It's all about how the space we're in the state of our body, the the kinds of relationships that we're engaging in, how all those things affect the way we think.

And so to imagine that we have some kind of fixed. Lump of intelligence that, you know, can be evaluated and measured and ranked, and it's always the same and it always functions the same, no matter where we are, how w how we're feeling. I just think that's. That's deeply misconceived. Yeah.

Srini: Well, so, you know, it's funny because context is something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about this past year to one of my mentors said, he said, you don't know your audience.

And I remember where that became apparent to me is when, you know, one of our students showed up for one of our masterminds. With a baby in tow. And I realized I'm giving advice on how to be productive based on, you know, being a 40 year old single male, she's got two infants. So my advice is effectively nonsense.

At this point and it made me realized, I was like, wow, I had not, I overlooked the context of the advice that I was giving. And I realized that that was actually very, very common. So there are two things I wonder about why do you think it is that people. Overlook context when it comes to prescriptive advice.

You know, the example I was, I was thinking of this morning is, you know, all these authors who basically started putting the effort in the title of their book after mark Manson's book, publishers have lost their damn minds. I'm like there's context there. That matters. Mark is a good writer. And so there was that, but then, you know, also in terms of prescriptive advice yeah.

When people read a self-help book where they take an online course, they completely overlooked context. If you think, oh, I'm just going to do this, what this person did and I'm going to get the same results. And it's like, well, no. I mean, you're like, I grew up the son of a college professor. That's a pretty different context than somebody who grows up, you know, like getting shot at, in the hood.

Annie Murphy: Yeah, well, it seems to be a pretty universal cognitive bias that we, although I will say it's much stronger in Western societies than in, in it, it appears to be stronger in Western societies than in Asian cultures or Eastern cultures, but the cognitive bias is to focus on the individual and to attribute to the individual, all these innate inherent characteristics, you know, the psychologists Lee Ross called it, the fundamental attribution error.

You know, it is fundamental. It's like at the root of of all of our thinking, we tend to attribute fixed characteristics to other people, but interestingly, We often bring in situational context when we think about ourselves, because we know, we know that we acted that way because we were in a grumpy mood that day, or we didn't do so well on that test.

Not because we're not intelligent, but because we were nervous or something like that. So we have access to our, our own insights, you know, and that leads us to bring in more context more of a such situation. Influence then when we look at other people and their behavior from the outside, and yet still, I think we have this persistent bias to overlook the role of context and background and environment and situation, even when it comes to ourselves.

And that was something I addressed in my very first book, which was called the cult of personality. It was. Personality testing. It was a cultural critique and scientific, sorry, scientific critique and cultural history of personality testing. I did find I did and do find personality tests. So fascinating because not only because they're used by organizations to sort of put people into boxes, which I think.

Offensive, but also, and this always flummoxed me. People want to be put into boxes and in some sense look, go out of their way to take these tests and to really take their findings to heart. I think there's a real, a really strong drive. You know, I heard from so many bands of the Myers-Briggs after I wrote that book, but people who said it had changed their lives and all the rest.

So I think we really have a kind of built in bias. It seems to want to attribute fixed Qualities to ourselves and others. And I think that's because it's cognitively easier to process than, than always taking the situation into account. And it's also emotionally more satisfying.

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Find them wherever you get your podcasts supported by the Templeton world. Charity founded. Yeah, it's funny. You say that because in know the book that you and I were talking about before we hit record that life-changing science of detecting bullshit. Like one of the things that John Petrocelli talks about is the fact that most of these personality tests are in fact bullshit.

He said, and then Vanessa van Edwards, who studies people for a living, she said almost all of these have no actual. Real, you know, systematic, like proper scientific method research, backing them, which is amazing. And people make huge, massive decisions, which does that sort of follows up as a natural segue to the other part of context.

So this is something I saw in the corporate world where I just did not thrive where, you know, This is something I think where people overlook context is with performance improvement plans, right? One of the things that happens, if you're somebody like me, who's been fired from every job you had is you get put on a performance improvement plan, but nobody ever thinks about whether you're in that mood, right job in the first place, which is a huge mismatch of talent and environment, which is overlooking context.

And I always said, as like performance improvement plans, don't improve performance. Prevent wrongful termination lawsuits. And why is that? Like, why is it that, you know, in the context of an organization where somebody sucks at a job, nobody thinks to say, oh, maybe we put this person in the wrong role.

We should find something that they might actually be good at.

Annie Murphy: Yeah. Well, it does seem to be, there's such an enormous. And the corporate world on hiring and finding the right person instead of creating the right situation for that person to thrive in. You know, and I, I really came away from the research that I did on the extended mind, thinking that we need to rethink the role of leaders and managers.

We need to think of them, not as people managers. Exactly. But as situation creators, you know, they need to. Yes find the right people, but then put at least as much effort into creating environments in which those people can think well, and, and and thrive emotionally. And I think that piece gets left out a lot.

Oh,

Srini: well, you know, before we get into the book what was the narrative around careers when you're growing up with your parents? And then what is it that, you know, kind of puts you down this trajectory to where you ended up writing this book in the previous.

Annie Murphy: Oh, interesting. Well, I, I was a very self-driven child and my parents were pretty laid back and I mean, they, they had hopes and dreams for my sister and me, for sure, but not in a directive way was kind of like whatever you want to do, we'll support you.

So that's, that was nice. But I was you know, I've actually becoming been, I've actually become less ambitious in a sense over time, I was very driven. As a, as a young person. And I was very determined to succeed in a kind of conventional way. And as over time and as life has unfolded, I think I've become more ambitious for my life as a whole and less ambitious for certain in terms of meeting certain career milestones.

And I think you also, as you get older, you learn. You learn about yourself, you learn how you work best. You know, I, I actually, I like you have not necessarily thrived inside organizations. And so I've worked for myself for, for many years now. And that works for me. And so does a certain kind of reflect reflective kind of pace.

I hate being really busy and I, I, I'm still still wrestling with what. Whether one can be productive without being hyper busy, you know? And I don't have an answer for that yet, but I know that when I'm hyper busy, I'm miserable. So that's not enough.

Srini: Yeah. Well, I mean, what, what in the world led you down this trajectory?

Because like almost every single person that I interviewed, this doesn't seem like a sort of linear path that you know, is presented by a high school guidance counselors that says, Hey, this is what you should go do.

Annie Murphy: Oh, no, no. I mean, I kind of had this vague idea that I wanted to be a writer, but who, who knows what that even means?

You know? It took me a while to find my way to writing. To the things I write about, which are, which is social science, which is the science of human behavior. Well it actually, it's not, you know, actually I was going to say it, it wasn't that one winding of a path. My first job was writing for my colleges magazine.

And that's when I started interviewing professors and researchers and realizing that I love. That kind of ideas, journalism. And then my second job was at psychology today where I kind of magazine where I kind of refined that further to realize that I really loved writing about the science, social science and the science of, of, of human behavior.

So and it was not long after that, that I went freelance. So I've been a magazine writer and a book author since then. So. It was a somewhat direct path, but the path that this book took was definitely very winding. I had set out to write a book specifically about the science of learning, which was something I had become really interested in when my, my two children started school and this was now probably a decade ago.

And I ended up, I tried, I tried for many years to write a book about the science of learning. The problem there was that I couldn't find a big idea that pulled together all the disparate pieces of research that I was uncovering in the science of learning. And I really need a big idea to get excited about a project.

And so it wasn't until I landed on the theory of the extended mind, which was proposed by two philosophers, it is not my idea. It's an idea that I borrowed from Andy Clark and David Chalmers. But it wasn't until I read their article, which was written in 1990. On the introducing the theory is the extended mind that I really realized that like, okay, this is what the book will be about.

Or this is what is, this is the big idea that will organize all this research that I've been collecting.

Srini: Yeah. Well, so before we end the book, one last question you're as a parent who was interested in you know, sort of the education and the science of it with two children who have been in school for 10 years, given the background that you have, if you were tasked with changing how our education system for the better, what would you like?

What would you redesign about

Annie Murphy: it? Oh, I'd love to redesign schools from top to bottom. Along the principle. Children are not just their brains. Children have bodies, children are embedded. Like we, all, our children are embedded in physical spaces and children are part of networks of, of relationships and communities.

So an education that would embrace all of those things rather than trying to suppress them or, or, or keep them out of the classroom as is often the case. Now that would be my ideal of an education.

Srini: Oh, well, I think that it makes a perfect segue to getting into the concepts in the extended mind. I think that, you know, one of the things that is, is really was so striking to me about the book was this idea of, you know, sort of the body and the mind working together.

And one of the things you opened the book by saying is that the failure of our technology technology to consistently enhance our intelligence has to do with the metaphor we encountered earlier in this introduction, the computer as a brain too often, those who designed today's computers and smartphones have gotten that users inhabit biological bodies, occupy physical spaces and interacting.

Other human beings, technology itself is brain bound, but by the same token technology itself could be extended broadened to include external resources that do so much to enrich the thinking we do in the offline world. And you know, that struck me so much because I'm a person who literally spends the entire day building systems, you know, to take better notes are all based on this concept.

You know that my friend Tiago forte came up with called building a second brain. There's so little. Talk about this and you were building apps, we're building tools, productivity tools, distraction, blockers. Why is this not a more prevalent narrative? And, and you know, like why, why are we in this sort of trap that we're in of thinking technology is the answer to everything.

Annie Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would trace it back. You could trace it back to two points in history. I think if you wanted to go way back, you could look. How old and entrenched this idea is, you know, going back to Rene Descartes. And before that mind and body are separate and mind is elevated above the body. Mind is this pure crystalline sphere where we use our intellect and body is this grubby animal like irrational ungovernable creature that we, that has nothing to do with intelligent thinking.

So that's a very old and entrenched idea in our. And then, and then it, that same idea reached its fullest flower, maybe during the cognitive revolution of the 20th century. Human beings created computers, invented computers, and then looked at computers and said, Hey, our brains are like that. You know, it's really weird.

It's like we identified our brains with this, this thing that our brains had created, but this, this metaphor of brain as computer became incredibly powerful, incredibly pervasive. And it, it really, once you start noticing it, you notice that it, it it's embedded in. So much of the way that we talk about ourselves and our brains, but you know, computers don't have bodies, computers operate the same way.

Whether no matter where they're located and computers don't have friends or relationships. So the way we think about the brain became limited to this incredibly narrow kind of intelligence. Exhibited by computers. But that cuts out, that leaves out really the wellsprings of human intelligence and that's that's, that's been a really, I think, a really tragic oversight.

Yeah.

Srini: Well, so how do we sort of get back to that? Because one of the first concepts, and this is where, you know, I was telling you, my roommate has this business called body brain based breakthrough. The minute I read this. Suddenly everything he did made a lot more sense to me. You said that interoception is simply stated an awareness of the interstate of the body.

Just as we have sensors that take in information from the outside world, retinas cochleas tastes buds, all factory bulbs. We have sensors inside our bodies that send our brains a constant flow of data from within. And it was funny because when I read that, I started to suddenly see numerous sort of, you know, the light bulb went off in my head.

I was like, oh, no wonder I get my best ideas when I'm surfing or snowboarding, because I'm getting that idea. Those ideas are coming, not just from my brain, but for my body. And then of course you have, you know, sort of all this stuff, Steven Kotler writes about when it comes to flow. Cause those are, you know, really, really high flow activity.

Annie Murphy: right. And I wonder if in moments like that, you really have to be attuned to your body to make the things happen that you want to have happen when you're surfing or when you're snowboarding. You're really tuned in and at one with your body. And I wonder if. Receiving its messages or it's the information that the body contains in a way that you you're not when you're sitting at your desk.

Yeah.

Srini: So how do we begin to sort of cultivate what you call interoceptive awareness and, you know, get access to this, you know what you say, otherwise accessible, inaccessible information.

Annie Murphy: Yeah, well, there's a couple of techniques that have been proven scientifically to increase interoceptive attunement.

One of them is a technique borrowed from mindfulness meditation called the body scan, which is really just paying, bringing open-minded curious, nonjudgmental attention to whatever. Rising, whatever sensations are arising within your body at that moment. And when you, when you do that, and especially when you make that a regular practice, You start to realize that there's this constant flow of, of sensations from within that's there all the time.

It's present all the time. And yet we're so used to ignoring it or even actively kind of pushing it away in the course of a busy day. And so I've have made it a habit now to not even do a formal body scan, but just to check in with, with the internal state of my body, kind of the internal world. To always be constantly focused on the external world, which is very easy for us to do in our, in our busy days.

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Srini: So one of the things that you talk about also is this whole idea of physical activity. And I think that this really struck me because to your point, and you say our cultural, our cultural conditions, us to see mind and body separate and so separate in turn that, you know, we have our periods of things.

Basically come from bouts of exercise and considering how many of us give, take our, make our visits to the gym only after work, for example, or on weekends. And you say, we should be figuring out how to incorporate versus physical activity into the Workday and school day, which means rethinking how we approach our breaks.

And it's funny because literally I remember the morning I read that I was like, okay, you know what? For once I'm not just going to sit here and try to power through the morning, I'll just go for a walk.

Annie Murphy: Good, good, good. I'm glad you were moved to. To try that out. How did

it

Srini: go? Oh, I came back with no, suddenly I had all these thoughts that like access to suddenly like a, just an abundance of creative ideas that I hadn't really thought to, to really think about.

Prior.

Annie Murphy: Yeah, and I think that's kind of a myth of productivity that if you really want to get something done, you just have to sit there, you know, and work your brain until it until the task is complete. And actually that's, that's really counter productive. And I think it taps into a second common metaphor for the brain, which is the brain as muscle, you know, with the growth mindset and, and with the idea of grit, we've been encouraged to think of the brain as a muscle.

Get stronger, the more you exercise it. But I, again, I think that's a pretty limiting analogy for the brain. It's the brain actually is it's limited in its in its capacity to do a lot, to do a lot of the things that we ask of it these days. And it needs help from the outside. It's not going to be sufficient just to build it up from the inside.

Yeah, well,

Srini: this is another one that really struck me. And I think probably this is common for almost everybody listening to this, myself included. There's one more erroneous assumption about breaks to address. We imagine that we're punishing the brain's depleted resources. When we spend our breaks doing something that feels different from work scrolling through Twitter, checking the news, looking at Facebook.

The problem is that such activities engaged the same brain regions. Down the same mental capital, we used to do our cognition centric jobs. And that made me wonder about walks in general. And this is something that I I've kind of like toyed with. So for me, like despite hosting a podcast, I actually don't listen to podcasts.

I prefer reading books and the only time I ever do listen to them is when I'm going for a walk. And I've always wondered if I'm like, you know, not getting the benefits of the walk because I'm still taking in information.

Annie Murphy: That could be, I think. You know, most of us take our walks outside. So there's actually two things going on here.

There's the physical activity and there's the experience of being in nature. And so you're getting some of the benefits of both of those things, but. There is research that suggests that the benefits of a walk in nature are not as great if we take our our devices with us, you know? So you might want to try going for some walks, you know, where you're just kind of letting your mind run free and see what has.

Yeah.

Srini: So let's talk about this whole idea of movement being connected to our ability to remember and learn, because you say that information is better remembered when we're moving, as we learn it. And then it can help us to remember where accurately, can you expand on that and explain like, why that is and you know, how we incorporate it?

So, for example, let's say I wanted to, you know, after our conversation, remember as much as I could from this conference.

Annie Murphy: Yeah, well, the way memory works is, is kind of not how anyone would have designed it. And that that's because it wasn't designed, it's a product of evolution. And so the way we remember things is, is is a product or a function of of how deeply we've processed, processed the meaning of of, of what, of, what, of the material that we're trying to remember.

That's why a student. Just read a textbook and instruct herself, you know, remember this. It actually is the brain treats as a signal to remember something, the value of remembering something if it's been deeply processed because that suggests, and if it's been repeatedly encountered, because those are signals that this material is going to be useful and is worth expanding the mental energy to, to remember.

So the more cues and the more signals we can associate with a piece of information, the more likely it is that we'll remember that piece of information. That's why when we pair a, a piece of information with with a gesture, for example, like when we're learning a foreign land, Or when we act out what we're, what we're trying to understand or remember, rather than just thinking about it, you know, again, that, that mode of sitting still and thinking that gives our brains, that kind of another hook to like sink into that piece of information.

And then later when we're trying to remember it it gives us another way to sort of reel in that information. Gesturing, acting things out. You know, also this help us remember specific pieces of information and also physical activity, like about a physical activity just before we try to learn something tends to sharpen our cognitive abilities, such that we'll remember that information better later, if we've exercised just before learning.

Srini: Well, okay. So, you know, I remember the chapters on gesture struck me with this line in particular as somebody who does creative work was really one of those things that I thought, man, people really need to, to do this more often. You say privacy supports creativity and out of the way, it offers us the freedom to express.

Unobserved when our work is a performance put on for the benefit of others, we're less likely to try new approaches that might fail or look messy. And it's kind of funny because I always tell people, I was like, I'm an average writer who writes a lot, and it's the only reason I ever write anything worth reading that most of that work is done with nobody watching.

And I think a lot of creative people have this sort of, you know, like, you know, internal narrative that gets in their way, this sort of inner critic where even when they're working in. It gets in their way to not do what exactly would, you know, what you're doing and reap the benefits of what you're talking about here.

Annie Murphy: Interesting. Well that w the passage you just read from the book was from a chapter about how built spaces can support intelligent thinking. And that was, this is, this is really been a hot topic lately, because we're all thinking are those of us. Work in offices, you know, there's, there's a lot of talk and a lot of thinking about what our office is going to look like when an F people return to them.

And part of what we know from research about what kinds of spaces Are congenial for it in terms of encouraging, intelligent thought, have to do with privacy and protect, protecting ourselves from distraction for one thing, which the open office is very bad at. And also get as, as you were saying giving us some privacy.

In terms of being able to experiment without anyone watching. But I, I like the connection you just made now that like, for many of us creative types, the, the the surveillance follows us into a private space because it's really within our own mind. And there's, you know, there's a bunch of ways we can kind of relax that, that, that overseer.

And interestingly, just to go back for a minute, one is very intense exercise. It turns out that very intense exercise tends to dial down the prefrontal cortex, which is that part of the brain. Judges and analyzes and criticizes. And very intense exercise can dial that down in a way that scientists compared to like a drug trip or, or drink or dreaming a dream state where ideas can sort of flow and mingle more, more easily.

So that might be one way to sort of get, get out from under that internal jet. Yeah.

Srini: So what are the other things that you talked about that struck me? And I need to explain why I was really Beto adamant that I don't work in coffee shops. Is this whole idea of like external monitors? I hate writing on my laptop.

I, that's why I do almost all my work at my desk. And your research suddenly made that much more concrete. I was like, oh, okay. So what is going on there? Why is it that when we have these sort of bigger monitors you know, like external monitors connected that we're able to. I know you've talked about the fact that we can take in more and connect.

I make more connections. What's what's going on there.

Annie Murphy: Oh, that's interesting. So you like working in your own office because you're working at a computer with a large screen rather than the small laptop. Okay, got it. Yeah, because part of the problem with writing in a coffee shop might also be. You're aware of other people being around and that takes up some measure of mental bandwidth that is, is preserved when you're in your own space.

But, but yeah, going back to that question of the bigger screen, there's some fascinating research that suggests that the way our brains deal with with abstract information and ideas, the way they deal with it best is by or the brain treats ideas. Concepts as as, as space as mental space, you know, that's, that's what we evolved to do.

That's what we still do best. We still think in terms of physical space, even when we're dealing with digital content. So our abilities to use those kinds of embodied resources of physical navigation and spatial memory. Those are limited when we have a really small screen, but when we have a big screen we can see.

Move physically moving our bodies. We can start employing that spatial memory where things are in a fixed location. And you remember, oh, this is over here. And this is over there in a way that is very hard to do on a small screen where you're always sort of clicking through different windows and nothing stays fixed in its locations.

Basically when we have a big screen, we can bring all these embodied resources that remain dormant when we're when we're either keeping ideas inside our heads or when we're relating to like a very small

Srini: screen. Yeah. Well, it's kind of funny. That makes sense as to why, like almost all the best writers I know.

All right. With physical notebooks first. And you know, I li I'm always baffled by people who can write on a phone. Like I can, I mean, I'm probably too old to do that. Like I'm 43. So for me, I'm not one of these millennials who can text as fast as many of them do just like, wow, that's not even possible for me.

And so there are three things you mentioned later in the book what you call embodied cognition, situated cognition, and distributed cognition. Can you explain what those are and sort of how they play a role in that?

Annie Murphy: Sure. Yeah, the, and those form, the sort of three sections of the book, the first is embodied cognition.

The idea that the body plays an integral role in our in our thinking processes situ situated cognition is the idea that where we are affects the way we think and distributed cognition refers to the fact that thinking happens. Among people and spread across different minds and not just within one mind the one mind of an individual.

Srini: Yeah. Well, let's do this. Let's get into the part. I think that really struck me and ended up making, you know just kind of really influenced the way I thought about. Was this entire idea of externalization because you may be familiar with it in the last probably year or so. It's kind of become, you know, the talk of the town when it comes to knowledge management, which is you know, sancha, Aaron's book how to take smart notes, where he talked about Nicholas lumen you know, who was a social scientist who something like 80 years ago created this system called the Zettel cast and ended up finishing a PhD thesis in a year.

Wrote 58 books and published 500 papers. And I'm like, wait a minute. My dad's a professor like any, for anybody to do that, they had to have done something really weird. But when I connected the dots between that and your work, it made a lot of sense because you talk extensively about the benefits of externalizing knowledge then the value of doing that.

And I, I saw it firsthand in my own experience when I did that and combine the two. So can you talk about, you know, what are the benefits of externalizing knowledge and then how we utilize it?

Annie Murphy: Yeah. So that's really interesting what you say about this note taking system. Cause it sounds like it draws on this this truism that and this that's been supported by, by research that basically when we.

Ideas and information inside our heads. We're limited in what we can do with them in ways that open up when we get that stuff out of our head and onto physical space, when we engage in cognitive offloading. So once we, as I say, get the contents of our minds out onto space, we can relate to them differently.

You know, psychologists talk about the detachment benefit, which is it like we're putting space between ourselves and our thoughts in a way that allows us to look at them and new and and interact with them in ways that wouldn't be possible. If they remained in our heads, we can once we've cognitively offloaded, we can treat ideas and information as material objects that we physically manipulate and move around, you know, I'm picturing like, Ideas on post-it notes that we actually can move around in, in space.

And we can engage in this navigational activity that I was talking about before we can physically sort of navigate through the landscape of, of ideas and information and all those things allow us to think more intelligently than if you know, the material stayed inside our heads. And yet we have this bias as a culture.

Smart people are geniuses. You know, they do it in their heads. They, they they, they are able to engage in sort of mental calculations or mental manipulations when really. Not only is it more efficient and effective to offload that, that material onto physical space and work with it out in the world, but that's actually what experts and masters of their craft.

Do, you know? It's, it's kind of a myth that smart people do it all in their heads. It's actually a characteristic. Expertise and mastery that people effectively cognitively offload.

Srini: It's funny you say that because I don't know if you've ever read it. There was a book called presentation Zen by Gar Reynolds, which I pretty much consider the Bible of, you know, designing good presentations.

And he actually talks extensively about the fact that. You know, he doesn't do anything on a computer until he lays out the story and he uses it to storyboard or presentation. And I remember the, see, there are two things in that book that struck me, that kind of, you know, like reinforced what you've said here.

One was he had a story where he worked at apple and he went into some product designers office from. And the guy had a Mac book, R an iMac on his desk that hadn't been turned on in days. And they, they basically talked over, you know, like sketches. So one of the other things he did was he used post-it notes to plan out his presentations.

And I noticed that I did the same thing and I did it for a book to when I was writing my first book, I had post-it notes on the. Where, you know, I had like, you know, each, I think there was a one color post-it note to mark each chapter and then others to mark the sections within the chapters. And it was amazing how much easier it was to move things around and see where they fit.

And now I remember why I had this idea to order those reusable post-it notes. It was because of your book.

Annie Murphy: Well, good. I'm a big post-it note fan. Yeah,

Srini: I, I, I'm kind of amazed that people don't you know, utilize this whole idea of a physical space.

Annie Murphy: Yeah, I think they might believe that it's actually a, that's too much of a hassle or that it's actually easier or faster just to do it in their head.

And so that's why I'm so intrigued by this research on interactivity, which shows that people actually solve problems not only more accurately and more effectively and more creatively when they do it out in the world, as opposed to in their heads, but actually faster. It's actually faster to solve a problem out in the world than to try to do it in your.

Srini: Well, so another idea that you've talked about that really struck me was this whole idea of imitation. You say in field from biology to economics, to psychological to political science, people are discovering how valuable imitation can be as a way of learning new skills and making intelligent decisions.

And, you know, it kind of takes us back to the beginning of our conversation about why I think publishers have lost their damn minds by trying to put the effort in the title of every book, thinking they're going to have another mark Manson on their hands. So I get where you're saying. And it kind of funny enough, takes us back to the context, but how do you imitate in a way that leads to innovation without necessarily, you know, trying to replicate the success of somebody else and assuming you're going to get the same results.

Annie Murphy: Yeah, that is the trick because while we do, I think we have a bias against imitation in our culture that you can see in this sort of worship. Innovators and, you know, and of originality and being first you know, often when you're trying to master a new skill, the most effective way to do that is to, is to emulate someone who's already mastered it and kind of learn it from the inside by imitating someone else.

And in fact you know, the Roman education system for centuries was based on a, you know, was based on imitation on emits on emulating the masters in. You were able went until you'd reach. The student had reached a point where they were able to put their own twist or their own bring their own take to it.

But then you're right. There is a lot of like stupid imitation that goes on that it's just kind of mindless and so. Really what is key to effective imitation or smart imitation is what psychologists called the correspondence problem, cracking the correspondence problem. And that means T looking at a solution that someone else has come up with and identifying what it is about that solution, breaking it down and figuring out what it is about that solution that would be good to borrow.

And then noticing and observing how the different. Circumstances of your own, your own situation, because of course, it's, you're not going to be able to just cut and paste somebody's solution to your own situation. It's going to it's going to have to be modified. And so the, the correspondence problem is about figuring out what corresponds here.

What is the, the common element. But with this problem that I'm looking at over here and my own problem that I'm trying to solve, and what can I borrow from someone else's solution that will help me while still adapting and modifying that that borrowing so that it fits my, the particulars of my situation.

Srini: Well, I, you know, I want to finish with this final piece on what'd you call it a group mind, and you say that individual cognition is simply not sufficient to meet the challenges of a world in which information is so, and abundance expertise is so specialized and issues are so complex in this model, a single mind laboring on its own.

Is that a distinct disadvantage in solving problems or generating new ideas, something beyond solar thinking is required. The generation of a state that is entirely natural to us as a species. And yet one that has come to seem quite strange and exotic the group mind.

Annie Murphy: Yeah. And this, this really struck me, especially as someone who's been a freelance writer for 20 years and has really worked in a very solitary way.

Like I'm really fascinated by the group. And why it can be so hard to achieve, even though, as I say, we evolved to think together, to think in groups and. There's so much dissatisfaction and friction and difficulty that we have working in groups thinking together in groups. And, you know, I have a theory about that, which is that we have developed all these practices and protocols that are suited to individual thinking, you know, in our very individualistic culture.

And then we import those into a group setting where they just don't work very well. And so I think we need to. Develop a whole new set of practices and protocols for thinking together in order for group work to do. To be more satisfying, to be more effective. Cause we, we need to figure out how to do it, but right now we don't do it very well.

Srini: Yeah. Well it kind of, to me in a lot of ways explains why I'm able to have floated the abundance of ideas I do because I get to talk to people like you every day. So I have this sort of massive group mind. That this so wide ranging, as I said, that includes porn stars, drug dealers, bank robbers, you know, authors and social scientists.

Like I always jokingly say, you know, if you want to Rob a bank, become a porn star run for president. I can tell you how we're introduced you to the people who can help.

Annie Murphy: Yeah. Maybe you've figured out kind of the bad having the, how to have the best of both worlds. You know, there's this idea. From psychological research called intermittent collab collaboration, which refers to the fact that people who are thinking on their own all the time, they tend to come up with a few great ideas, but a lot of really bad ideas because they're not, you know, they're not running it by their colleagues and people who are in touch with their colleagues all the time tend to come up.

A bunch of like, like, okay, but not great ideas because there's so much social pressure to kind of come to a consensus around acceptable, acceptable ideas, ideas that are acceptable to the whole group. So the way to get the best of both is to sort of oscillate between being alone. And being in touch with other people, and it seems like the way you've set up your own work life, you almost do that by.

Srini: Yeah, it kind of is. I mean, like almost everything I write is the by-product of one of two things, a book that I've read or somebody that I've interviewed or you know, much to my mother's dismay some experience I've had with her.

Annie Murphy: Oh, that's nice to know that moms like moms still

Srini: know. Yeah. Well, it's funny.

I always say the occupational hazard of being a writer is that everybody in your life is at risk of being turned into material in your work.

Annie Murphy: Yeah. Everything's copy. Yeah.

Srini: Wow. Well, this has been really, really fascinating. So I have one last question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the unmistakable creative.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable? Oh,

Annie Murphy: what is it that makes something unmistakable. That's the question. Yeah. Hmm. That is very interesting. I would say. It's the stamp of, of authenticity that can only come from someone who really knows what they're about and really knows who they are at some kind of deep level and the product of, of the product that a person like that will generate from their own mind is going to have the unmistakable stamp of that, of that individual.

And. I think there's so much out there that is the product of conformity. That is the product of, of mindless imitation. And so when you come across something that really bears this stamp that I'm talking about of the unmistakable humanity of one, you know, in, in this one particular instantiation of this individual, like it's, it's precious.

And I think it's, it's really it's unmistakable. It's like, it's, you know, when you see it.

Srini: Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, wisdom and insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you your work, the book, and everything that you're up to?

Annie Murphy: Yeah, well, thanks. This has been a really fun conversation. People can find me at my website, which is www dot Annie Murphy, paul.com. And I'm also really active on Twitter. And I really love engaging with people there so people can find me on Twitter at it's at Annie Murphy.

Srini: Amazing hand for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.