Kurt Nelson 0:07 Tim, you know what I've been thinking about Tim Houlihan 0:09 lately? I can only imagine, Kurt Nelson 0:12 yeah, it is ice cream, but also how we are desperately trying to hustle our way to creativity and success when maybe, maybe just think about this, because I've been thinking about it, maybe we should just take a walk instead. Tim Houlihan 0:31 So Kurt Nelson's formula for world peace is solve all your problems with a walk. Kurt Nelson 0:39 Maybe not quite world peace and everything, but you know, lots of our problems, maybe Tim Houlihan 0:45 you know. Yeah, okay, so after talking with Dr Natalie Nixon about her new book, move, think rest, I think you might be on to something here. Kurt actually, she is completely reframing how we approach our best work, Kurt Nelson 1:00 yeah, and I love that. And it's not just about exercise. When she talks about movement hygiene, she's really challenging that whole grind culture, that where everybody's trying to get us to buy into right? I mean, she literally hit a burnout wall as an academic and decided that there had to be a better way, and I think it's fair to say she has pretty good ideas about it, right? No, I Tim Houlihan 1:26 agree wholeheartedly. And we had a terrific conversation with Natalie, and she believes we're in the middle of, how about this? A Human Revolution, not a technology revolution, just going in circles, but here we are surrounded by AI and automation that can give us answers instantly. And her recommendation, her thought provoking idea, is that we should be embracing more spaciousness, more spontaneousness, more be in the worldness, and not just curling up with our AI companions. Kurt Nelson 1:57 That's a lot of messes there. Tim, Tim Houlihan 2:01 it's a messy world. Kurt Nelson 2:06 Okay? So she breaks down. She breaks it down in a way that's not just thinking harder or working longer hours. She talks about back casting and forecasting, really interesting conversation looking at our memories and at metacognition. We love metacognition, using daydreaming and imagination to boost our resilience. Now, remember what her mom used to say, what's that always only boring? People get bored? Tim Houlihan 2:36 Oh, no. We had our conversation with with, you know, Aaron Westgate, that's a whole separate thing about boredom. But hey, it says I like statement. I like the statement that is a line worth stealing, I gotta admit. But seriously, what I love about Natalie's book is that this isn't just another self help, productivity hack. It's a really thoughtful frame on living a better work life. And I think that she's right when she calls this book a big idea book, because it's really a provocation to completely redesign how we think about work. Yeah. Kurt Nelson 3:11 And she's developed an easy to follow, human centered operating system that she calls MTR plus Tim. She's got a playlist, oh yeah, oh yeah, music to live by, yeah. And she has built an actual Spotify playlist for moving, thinking and resting. Just brilliant. And we'll, we'll link to it in our in our notes here. Tim Houlihan 3:34 So Kurt, when was the last time you read a business book with a soundtrack? Kurt Nelson 3:38 Well, I've had soundtracks on the back of the business book, but never one that specifically came with one before, and that's what makes this conversation, I think, really special. She's not just telling us to work differently. She's showing us how we can be more human in our work, from her electric bike adventures to the very specific matcha latte formula, and she's walking the walk. Boom chick. Tim Houlihan 4:10 All right, listeners, what you're about to hear is a master class in reframing, from how we navigate ambiguity to why your next breakthrough might come while you're unloading the dishwasher. Who knows? Yeah. Kurt Nelson 4:22 So grab a mate. Mate, I can never pronounce that, or coffee, or whatever gets you going. You know, for you, Tim, I don't know that could be a Coke Zero. Find a comfortable spot and get ready to rethink everything that you thought you knew about creativity and productivity, as we sit back and enjoy our conversation with Dr Natalie Nixon. Tim Houlihan 4:56 Natalie Nixon, welcome to behavioral grooves. We. Speaker 1 5:00 Thank you so much. It's great to be here. It's wonderful to Tim Houlihan 5:02 have you here. Thank you for joining us from on the road. Oh, man, we know what that's like. So from a hotel somewhere and somewhere, thank you. Okay, first speed round question, would you prefer to ride a bicycle or a unicycle? Bicycle? Kurt Nelson 5:17 Bicycle, very quick and answering that, well, Natalie Nixon 5:21 I actually have, I own a an electronic, electric, electric pedal assist bike, which I adore. I love it almost every day. Tim Houlihan 5:31 Man. I hear great reviews from everybody who has one of them. So, okay, Kurt Nelson 5:35 they're incredible. Yeah, it just make it, make it fun to get outside right then I'll send you Natalie Nixon 5:42 grocery shopping, and it's wonderful. All Kurt Nelson 5:44 right, Natalie, second of our speed round questions, are you a coffee person or a tea person, or are you something totally other, hot, oat Natalie Nixon 5:54 milk, Matcha Latte. I love honey, and oat milk is very important. I can't eat dairy cheese. Okay? Plant, plant cheeses. Kurt Nelson 6:06 So, so the the matcha is, I mean, I I have tried matcha once, I think, and I'm like, going, is this an acquired taste? Is he Natalie Nixon 6:17 may not have had it strong enough? It might have been okay, too weak. I actually like it a bit more potent when you can really I mean, it's ground green tea, you know, yeah. And for me, the oat milk is just a wonderful way to thicken it a bit, and it's just a nice treat in the morning. Tim Houlihan 6:39 Yeah, you do have kind of a formula. It sounds like I do, like there's a way to do it and a way not to do it, in my humble opinion, all right, third, third speed run. Question is, get out and take a walk. Good advice for just about everybody, Natalie Nixon 6:58 yes, when the chapters and move. Think rest, I think it's the Move chapter I I quote St Augustine, who apparently said it is solved by walking. Yeah. Kurt Nelson 7:10 Then we will. We will get into more of that as we go. But before we get there, we have one last Speed Round question, and this one is an agree or disagree with this and I will we can then talk about my 15 year old child on this one so agree or disagree, boredom can be a friend of creativity. Agree, Agree, okay. Can you talk to my kid? Listen? Natalie Nixon 7:42 You can, you can give your kid the quip that my mother would give us when we said, Mommy, I'm bored. She would say, only boring people get bored. Kurt Nelson 7:52 I'm gonna write that down. Well, Natalie Nixon 7:58 we're talking with it was, it was a low key insult. She's She's great, she's 85 and she's still really good at that. Kurt Nelson 8:07 She's still really good at it. Well, I'm from the Midwest, where that's exactly how we parent. It's that. It's the humble like, kind of all right, but no, you're actually really digging at me there. Yeah, okay, got it. Tim Houlihan 8:26 Like, okay, I'm not gonna go there. We are talking with Dr Nelson Nixon about her new book, move, think rest it's the MTR model. It's move, think rest is the MTR model. We're gonna talk about that quite a bit. So I just want to set that up for listeners. Can you start out by telling us why these three components were so important to write about, why these Natalie Nixon 8:47 well, they are the highly misunderstood and under appreciated dimensions of a, what makes us human and B, what makes our work much more dynamic, and when, as I work with a lot of leaders and a lot of C suite folks who are highly accomplished and got to where they are by knowing the right answer, what is the solution, and really, not only did, but kind of had to buy into that hustle and grind culture. A lot of what I end up doing is offering people very counterintuitive ways to think about their current approaches to help them reframe. So it's no surprise that I eventually landed on what I call the motor framework, or move think rest to help people counter intuitively, rethink how they might, might arrive at their best work. Kurt Nelson 9:46 Yeah, and I think it's, it's really fascinating, because we don't normally think about All right, if I'm trying to be creative in different things, thinking that makes sense, right? But the other two components that that kind of surround it. Are not necessarily those things that we go, oh, this is how I would go about doing that. So did this? Was this something that you Was this an intuitive kind of thought for you that you then went and did the research? Was it research driven first? How did you come about getting to those three components of it? Natalie Nixon 10:19 It was really intuitive, driven, which a lot of my I'm a framework nerd with this self reflexivity, reflecting on how I'm going about my own work, and then following this nudge, following the breadcrumbs, and then, and then exploring the research behind these intuitive questions that begin to emerge from me and even the thinking part, the way I am exploring thinking to help us be more creative, be more innovative. It's not just cognitive, rational thought, the thinking dimension. I'm really talking about the value of back, casting and forecasting movement part, I'm not just talking about go out and exercise. Yes, exercise is important, but exercise is also a bit of a triggering word for some of us. Like, for example, I don't personally like gyms, and so it's really about leaning into what I call movement hygiene, and then the rest part. What I'm not saying is every corporate building should have a nap room. That's, that's, that's your jam, if that makes sense for your work culture, cool, but, but I'm really talking about intermittent rest and in scaling rest. So thinking about rest, there's a micro bricks throughout a day. But also thinking about rest in terms of sabbatical, and not just in the academic realm. But I, you know, I interviewed almost 60 people for this book, and so a lot of tech companies offer the option to take sabbatical after five years. And even nonprofits, some people who work in nonprofits, so so that the framework is about back, casting, forecasting, movement, hygiene and intermittent rest. And I absolutely came upon it because I hit my own burnout wall when I was an academic. So that was kind of the first personal data point. And then after I retired from academia, was building my business full time as an entrepreneur, those of us who are solopreneurs, you have to become very self aware about taking care of yourself and making sure you do your best work and designing your own guard rails. And I was just noticing that when I thought I was procrastinating, and I would step away to unload the dishwasher, go for a five minute walk, when I would come back to the work at hand. My thinking was sharper. It was clear. Something that it stymie to me just began to click together. And so those were the intuitive moments that that caused me to explore further. Maybe there's something to this. Tim Houlihan 12:56 Well, you started that answer, and I felt like we were in an intervention. Hi, I'm Natalie. I'm a model nerd, and but you answer that beautifully. And before we went live, you were talking about how it this is a big idea book. Can you tell it really is? And I think you also just sort of teed up how nuanced the message, some of your messages are but can you say why you think it's a big idea book? Natalie Nixon 13:25 I think it's a big idea book because we are at an inflection point where we have unprecedented burnout, we have ubiquitous technology, and we have new rules for working, and the new rules for working are in terms of space and the space and time dimension, in terms of where we do our work, but also how we're spending our time and the and the we also are at a point where generationally, we've got at least four generations working at well, let's see Gen X sorry, we go back up. We've got Gen Zed millennials, Gen Xers, and maybe a challenge of boomers, right? So we've got this intersection of a lot happening, and because of that, we actually can pause and rethink how we're going about work, because we actually can. So for example, if the covid pandemic had happened in 1982 it would have been a very different impact on work and society, because we didn't have zoom and teams and and Skype and all those sorts of things to to fill in the ways that we work. So when I say we were at a really interesting moment in time where we actually have technology that can do basic tasks, and some of the research I was doing, I went all the way back to even look at where do our current ideas and mythologies and stories we tell ourselves about productivity come from. It's really rooted in the first industrial revolution. And. God bless Frederick Winslow Taylor, who was actually a very creative person. He was really into, you know, measuring every single motion on the assembly line, because that was, that was like this incredible revolution of work. And the first industrial revolution created a culture of work that was about speed, output, efficiencies. You measure what you can see, oftentimes humans became a casualty, because humans became mechanized in the process. And so we've carried that model forward, even though GDP, gross domestic product, does not measure things like search engines, it doesn't measure email, it doesn't mention like to the major things that a knowledge economy, we're using all the time to get work done. So the big idea that I'm introducing is the following question, what if, instead of asking, how might I be more productive this week, how might my team be more productive this quarter, we asked, what might I cultivate this week? What might my team cultivate this quarter? And cultivation, I lobbed on to that word, because before the first industrial revolution, as I was exploring this idea, I was learning that most societies around the world were agricultural based economies where cultivation is the ML. Cultivation is a both and model. It values solo practitioner and the collective it values speed, but also slow. And it acknowledges that, yeah, we should measure what we can see, but also there's a lot going on during dormancy and when we need to sleep on it and when we need to let things marinate so so that that's and I realized that Wall Street may not be very keen to embrace this right away. However, the technology actually can allow us to work very differently. I really believe we are in the middle of a human revolution, not a tech revolution. The Tech is a lever to help us amplify what makes us uniquely human. Kurt Nelson 17:10 So Natalie, I don't know if you can see the big grin on Tim's face or not. I do. I do, but what you just said has been a multitude of conversations that Tim and I have had between ourselves with other guests, different pieces, but this whole first industrial revolution in the agricultural society before Tim has been a big proponent of almost exactly what you were just saying. So you touched his heart, I can tell Tim Houlihan 17:39 you know, you just talked about some of the most salient things about humans being casualties. It also disconnected work from home. Because of this big agricultural world, we all worked from home. Everything was a cottage industry, and then the industry. Frederick Taylor comes along and says, no, no, let's set up a factory where we got all these people working together that that created working away from home and commutes and all kinds of problems that go along with that. Oh, Natalie, we Natalie Nixon 18:08 well, it's really not his fault, you know, I get it. Unknown Speaker 18:13 No, this, yeah, he studied Natalie Nixon 18:17 it and, you know, but, but when you think if you love like my husband loves history, I'm not a big history buff, but, but I really acknowledge the value and understanding history and understanding the antecedents of why we're here, makes sense. Yeah, and it the first industrial revolution changed transportation, mother. It's spawned new thinking about new ways to move. It changed the way families interacted. It changed the role of the church at a society where religion was like the OG of everything in the church, right? So what's what's fascinating is that when we were all reckoning with this, the covid pandemic, our kid needs shortened, right? Because once upon a time, we woke up in the morning, we did our ablutions, we had a bit to eat, we stepped over the threshold, and we're at work. And now not all of us, right, but some of us are still experiencing that, so we're actually kind of coming full circle, but we can do it in a slightly different way. Kurt Nelson 19:23 Yes, I think that's fantastic. Hey, grooves, we want to take a moment away from our conversation to thank you for listening to behavioral grooves. If you enjoy the conversations we're having and want to help us keep the groove going, here are a few simple ways that you can Tim Houlihan 19:41 support the show. First off, subscribing to our sub stack is a great way to stay connected with us between episodes. The weekly newsletter provides you with cool insights that are beyond the episodes, and they get delivered straight to your inbox, and Kurt Nelson 19:55 if you haven't already leaving a review or a rating of the podcast on a platform. Like Apple or Spotify or YouTube helps other curious minds discover us. And there's two great things about that. One, it gives us a boost, and two, it costs nothing Tim Houlihan 20:11 and it only takes a second, but it makes a huge difference for us. Plus, we love hearing from you, so don't be shy. Leave us a review or give us a quick thumbs up. Kurt Nelson 20:21 We're coming up on 500 episodes, and we're doing this because we love the conversations we have with our guests. Yeah, we Tim Houlihan 20:27 also want to do it because we love bringing you insightful behavior changing content every week, and we hope that some of those insights will help you find your groove. Kurt Nelson 20:39 So you talked a lot about movement hygiene, and I want to go back to the speed round question where we talked about going for a walk, right? So tell us a little bit about movement hygiene and why, like going for a walk is so important, or why it's important from that perspective. Yeah. Natalie Nixon 20:59 So as humans, we are designed to move. We are not designed to be sedentary. The spinal cord is an extension of the brain. It's an extension of the medulla oblongata at the base of the brain. When I was in high school, I loved biology. Actually thought I was I wanted to be a doctor that I realized in dissection classes I could not handle blood. I love human physiology. It's magical. And I used to love that word, those two words, medulla oblongata is just a really cool, oh, it's fantastic, great. Yeah, so it's at the base of the brain, and the spinal cord is an extension of the medulla oblongata. But what happens when we are sedentary and we're hunched over this laptop. We are restricting constricting blood flow up to the brain, which means we actually are reducing the supply of oxygen to the brain, which actually means our best thinking is not happening. We're not doing our best work. So movement hygiene. It's really about making sure that we kind of choose our own adventure in terms of how we are moving in space. So standing periodically. And I have, I don't have a standing desk, but I have this contraption that I can put on top of my desk, and can go up and down on my laptop on top, if I want to stand, taking short walks, and a lot of the reason people aren't walking more during the day is because they think, oh, a walk has to be 30 minutes long, or has to be an afternoon. It does not. I have walks that I know will only take three minutes. Might be up and down the driveway, around the house, a walk that takes five months when it takes 11 minutes. So depending on the budget of time that I have available, that's what I allow myself to do. And I have to force myself to step away from the laptop, you know, because you get engrossed somewhere. Oh, just one more email. But my timer goes off, I make myself stand up and do that. And so what's happening is that you actually are reducing cortisol. You're allowing those, those yummy, positive hormones be released, like serotonin and dopamine and endorphins when you move, which actually helps with different neural synapses in the brain to function so that you can have the synchronicity of ideas. Now, at the same time, I am astutely aware that not everyone lives in an environment or works in an environment where they can just get up and go for a walk, socioeconomic differences and impact that that different communities have is important to deal with which, which I attempted to do in the book and and I also understand that people who are living with physical disabilities have have a very different set of constraints. However, I interviewed an incredible person named Tyler Turner, who is a Paralympic. He's a, he is a, I want to get this from. He he does like snow sports. He's incredible. He does like snowboarding and and he actually became paralyzed after a skydiving accident. And you know what he does today? He teaches skydiving. He's just, just incredible. But in our interview, he said, You know, I have to do legs off days, because if I don't do days where I remove the prosthetics and allow my my skin to breathe and just give give my body a rest, because there's a lot of other pressure His body has to go through in order to be ambulatory with the prosthetics. I'll get abrasions. I'll get, you know, other other, other bad things will happen. And I thought, wow, what if more of us had legs off days? What if more of us were paying attention to our body in the ways that he is super conscientious about because of living with this physical disability? Be that made us pay attention more to when we need to move and then when we need to rest or move in a different way. Tim Houlihan 25:08 Okay, Captain, discipline. You love the fact that you set a timer and actually say, Okay, I'm gonna move do and that you actually do it. Bravo to you. You are an inspiration to me there, because I get the timer on my watch and says you should move. And I'm like, well, Kurt Nelson 25:27 but I think that goes into an interesting part of this, right? Because a lot of us, Tim and me, both on on this, it's like, I know I should get up and move, and I should be doing different pieces of this, but you have incorporated it in, and have done it. We have some friends, some other colleagues that we work with, who have all of their one on one meetings as much as possible, as walking meeting. Yeah, nice, yeah. So, so, how do you, I mean, how do you get people like Tim and me, who will like, just for and go, Yeah, but you know, help us. Help us. Help ourselves here. Natalie Nixon 26:11 Well, two ways. One is to approach a new way of doing something as a prototype, and don't throw the baby out the battle. Or you don't have to do every single meeting as a walking meeting. But choose one. Start small. Choose just one meeting this next week, just one, not every single day, but just one during the five day work week, where you'll not meet on video. You will just take the old fashioned, not an old fashioned phone, but your smartphone device, and walk and talk. Right? So that's one way to ease into it, to treat it as an experiment I called the baby food method. You break it up into small bits and little by little, you know, you try. So that's so one is to is to prototype these new behaviors. The second is to paint a picture for yourself of the pain that will result if you don't do this, which is part of what the book is trying to do, I guess, in a low key way, is to paint a picture of the pain if we don't change our behaviors, right? That you actually are restricting blood flow to the brain. You actually are not doing your best thinking. You will, you will be counter productive. You. It's actually amazing how much we can get done in shorts of amount of time. I like to to I have a lot of of little expressions I like to say, one is that creativity loves constraints. You love it loves constraints on time, loves constraints on budget. It loves constraints on people, talent and so you would, you would be amazed at what you can get done in even a short amount after you've had this, this, this refresh, so painting a picture of the paint. And then that's education, and then also educating yourself on how habits get formed, the ways habits get formed. And Charles Duhigg is, you know, his work on habits was always very helpful, but habits are a feedback loop, and they need a reward, and that's whether it's a bad habit, like a drug addiction, or it's a great habit, like you exercise regularly. And so the there has to be a reward and some sort of in that creates the incentivization to feel that again. So for example, when I was a professor, I used to swim kind of like three mornings a week, and I would sometimes be depending on my schedule for the day. I would get out of the bed at 530 in the morning. And I live in Philadelphia and and the Mid Atlantic region of the states in the fall, winter time that when those dark mornings start to happen, it's like, Oh, I do not want to get out of bed now and and actually, I was, I was reading duhigg's book around that time. And what I learned from that, I realized what was getting me out of the bed is that I treated myself to these wonderful, luxurious lotions and potions and perfume that I would put on after I swam and showered, and that that was my because I love perfume, so that's my jam. So that was the reward that I that actually, for me, it worked. It was something that I looked forward to. And also, he feels so good after a swim, swimming simultaneously calms you down and rejuvenates you. So it was a combination of that feeling and that treat. And it wasn't just like CVS Jergens lotion. I was just like so you know, whatever your treat is going to be, that is how habits can be cultivated, and you can ingrain that, that that feedback loop, so, you know, paint a picture of the pain, prototype it and and understand what a habit is. Tim Houlihan 29:54 Yeah, apparently we can cross CVS as a as a potential sponsor off the list right now. Oh, no, Kurt Nelson 30:02 that's okay, because Natalie, I know exactly the maybe not exactly the ones, but my wife is a big lotion person too, and I'm like, Okay, this is little too cost, $35 are you? It's like, two ounces. Tim Houlihan 30:18 Yeah, Natalie, we've had several conversations with guests over the years about ambiguity and uncertainty and about how to lean into it. We we love the way that you lean into it in in your book. And can you give us your take on why ambiguity and uncertainty is something that we should embrace and not run away from Natalie Nixon 30:42 well, we should embrace it, because it's not going anywhere. There's so much gray everywhere, and it's just interesting that we start out in primary school where play and exploration and exploration is about probing the gray and probing the unknown is, is accepted and is acceptable. We understand that's, that's, that's how we figure stuff out. That's how little people figure things out, and then we slowly but surely cordon ourselves off to air more on the side of certainty. I used to serve on the board of a wonderful organization called Leadership and design and Carla silver is the co founder, and she loves to remind us and and I think that's one of the slogans, is be more curious than certain, right? So certainty is a bit a bit of a faux pas, because we we educate ourselves in a way, to be more certain, but then we get out into work environments where there's so much ambiguity, there's so much great and it turns out we've got to be a lot better at Question framing, at following up with the process. And I experienced in my own pathway of being educated from kindergarten through senior in high school, three very different sorts of educational environments that really visualize, or then you visualize, they've pointed out these different modalities of learning and even either accepting the ambiguity or fighting it. And so I started out in, actually started in crunchy granola, kind of hippie Unitarian school, cooperative nursery school in Philly, and then I went to Philly public school in the neighborhood from kindergarten through third grade, where my parents got very frustrated with not such a great educational learning environment. And so my pop figured out that if we went to a neighboring, not even neighboring, but a school in a suburb of Philadelphia, he they'd have to pay money to the county. But it was I was I was I was. It was a much more rigorous type of educational process, because in the public school I started at, my mother was having to teach a small vacation tales, I was getting an attitude. She She fought to get me into, like the AP class in the school that was 90% black, that those classes were mostly mainly the minority white children, which even then I noticed I was like, Oh, this is weird. Then I went to suburban public school, which was predominantly white, where I experienced racial aggression and moved through that, but I was learning great, and I was an A student, and I was really good at completing the worksheets and getting the Stars and figuring out what the teacher wanted, and then I earned a scholarship to a private Quaker prep school in Philly. There's a lot of Quaker prep schools in Philadelphia, yeah, and where the culture of learning was so different, and my grades plummeted in seventh and eighth grade, and gradually picked them up by ninth grade because, because I was just, like, there was so much new there were, like, sports with sticks, there were there was a campus, like, I didn't stay the same classroom, and it was a culture of learning that valued asking for forgiveness rather than permission. So it was about, you know, it didn't matter if you were wrong? Oh, that's interesting. Let's explore that. And I wasn't used to that. I was is it about just giving the right answer? Wait, the world does not come to a screeching halt. Tim Houlihan 34:31 And that totally screwed you up that really, because I Natalie Nixon 34:35 had been tricked. So I remember I had a moment in about ninth or 10th grade where I realized my friends back on the block and the kids I was friends with from public school back there, we were learning to stay in our lane. We were being trained to just just come out the answer. And now I was in a learning environment. We were being. Educated to make up the lane, we would be educated to design what the lane might be. And I didn't have that language, but, but it would, and I couldn't quite ever take it. But it was this moment where I realized, this is like a these are two different systems. And so if you have the privilege and the ability to be invited to follow up with process and ambiguity, you actually are much further ahead, because the ambiguity, as I just said, isn't going anywhere. So it we really need to equip ourselves with tools to navigate that ambiguity so that we can figure out anything you know. And so getting back to where does movement, thought and rest have to do with that. Well, if you, if you incorporate modalities to help you refresh, reframe, which the ways I explore movement, thought and rest help you to do, then you will have a plethora of options before you for problem solving, for innovation, for collaboration, for figuring out what's expert for, for working with the technology, the AI, the robotics, automation in ways that are really co instigators with what you're Kurt Nelson 36:14 trying to do. Yeah, I love the question framing. I love the lane component of don't just stay in your lane. Kind of think about it. It's just a just a wonderful way of of putting this into perspective of the ambiguity and different things. At the beginning, when we were talking you talked about forecasting and back casting from that, that modality of thinking. Can you talk a little bit more about that, and what you mean by those two components and how that fits into the larger model. Natalie Nixon 36:43 Yes, I will. I will couch this by saying I am a mighty daydreamer. So this is in defense of Kurt Nelson 36:51 all of us. My next question was, what do you think about the thoughts on daydreaming? So here we go. We can answer both of them. Natalie Nixon 36:56 There you go, both of them. So the way I'm exploring thought is understanding that a lot of what's rewarded is come up the answer, cognition, sharp thinking, analysis, which is very important, the ways that we get really crisp analysis become great analytical thinkers and critical thinkers is actually, again, counter intuitively, is to engage in modes of thinking that might seem a little woo or seem superfluous to the important stuff, but the back casting incorporates the role of memory, the role of reflection, the role of self, reflexivity, the role of metacognition. Why do I think the way that I think, why are we thinking about this in the way that we were thinking? Why are we Why do we keep approaching an XYZ way that's back casting, forecasting is about curiosity. It's about dreaming. It's about daydreaming. It's about imagination. It's about inspiration, right? And we actually need to back cast and to forecast in order for our cognitive thought to be sharper, to be crisper, to be more analytical. If we think that it's only about let's just lose chat GPT, for example, if it's only about inserting a question getting answered and stopping right there, no, that's that's just the beginning point, right? And it's an aid to help spark thinking or or figuring out a new approach or new set of questions to explore, and then what? Right? So when I say things like, we're in the middle of a human revolution, not a tech revolution. All this, this technology is really challenging us to address our addiction to busyness, to really embrace pausing, because if we can get the answer so quickly, that really means we have time for spaciousness. It means we have time for eyeball to eyeball conversations. It means we have time to explore collaboration differently. It means that we can think more critically now about the answers that have been given us. We don't We shouldn't stop there. We should push it and explore it further. Wow. Tim Houlihan 39:13 Speaking of time, I wish we had so much more time, because this is such a wonderful conversation, but I have to turn the conversation over to one of the coolest parts of the book. We like to talk about music on behavioral grooves, yay, and the fact that you actually have a section in the book called the MTR soundscape. You've got playlists identified for move think rest is absolutely fantastic. How and why? Why Why did you come up with or why did you decide this deserves to have ink on paper, about having a soundscape? Natalie Nixon 39:48 Well, I, years ago, went to a really cool conference called the design and emotion society. I don't think it exists anymore. It was It was started by. Group of Dutch cognitive scientists or social scientists, and it convened anthropologists, artists, psychologists, marketing experts, engineers, just very diverse group of experts who are looking at the intersection between design and motion. And that really set me on this, this curiosity path, to really be interested in the fact that we are sentient beings. We are incredibly sensorial, and there are certain senses that we don't tap into in our particular culture, at least we don't tap into as much as we could. And so as a lifelong dancer, music is kind of the medium that sparks movement in dance. And so I love music, and in my own practice, practice of getting better at movement, thought and rest music is a big part of that. So I developed these, these kind of just bare bones, and probably, like 10 or a dozen songs that there's a movement playlist, a thought playlist and a rest playlist, and it's on Spotify and digital and Spotify, I think, I hope this is true, that I wanted eventually people to add to the playlist. So I hope it's designed a way so that, so that people can add to what are, what are melodies or or songs that help them to think more expansively or to be more reflective? What are melodies or songs to help them, just to chill, to slow down, to rest, and what are, what's music that really energizes them so that, and also, it's just fun, and play is a big part of of this, of this, this human centered operating system to flourish, called motor. Tim Houlihan 41:38 Can I just say that I was surprised. It's, it's hard to bring it down to eight, right? I know, so I just respect for that. At the same time, in the think section, the Queen of Soul has like the greatest song called think, not to see Aretha Franklin, but on the list, Kurt Nelson 41:59 but Natalie just said you can add to it. So Natalie Nixon 42:04 you please add to it. And let's your listeners. Please go and I think on Spotify, it's called, and this is important, there's a period after move and think and rest. So move period, think period, rest period, colon, move, and then move, think, rest, colon, think, so it's three separate playlists. Please add to that. And I guess I was thinking more the rhythm. If I, if we were to write right, I would debate, well, that could go in the movement section. Moving playlist, because it's so peppy, you know, yeah, please add it to think. Tim Houlihan 42:38 I just, I just, I just, I'm sorry, just had, we will put a link in the show notes, by the way. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Kurt Nelson 42:47 Well, you also have, and I know Tim is talking about music and various different things, but you do have a lot of fun, like activities. This is a very applicable book. And then you even have MTR bingo, which I found just, I'm like, going, Oh, I like this. I could, I can play a game. So you said it's playful and various different things. And I think that's one of the great things about the book, and about even just thinking we had asked earlier, how do we incorporate this? How do we make sure that we're doing these? And those are, I think what you have done is help people with all right, it's great theoretically. But now let's get this down into let's do this stuff and not just talk. Natalie Nixon 43:29 Now, what now? Yeah, and actually, yeah. So the bingo games is a fun way, just like ticking off throughout the day. Am I doing like five of these things, right? But, but that also I'm glad, first of all, thank you for for the feedback, and I'm glad you found you find the book actionable, because that is a goal, but, but that, you know, before we started recording, I was sharing how this framework, the move think rest framework, is one more set of tools to serve as an on ramp, to help people build creativity as a strategic competency and and the way I think about creativity in my work and my practice is that it's, I call it the Wonder rigor theory, that it's our ability to toggle between wonder and rigor to solve problems and deliver novel value. So the Wonder is maybe the theory of these ideas, oh, this sounds nice, okay. It's helping me to think differently about my work, but the rigor is make it real, and so that's why the chapters end with reflection, questions, exercises. The appendix has very useful ways to think about putting these these concepts into action for teams, organizations and for individuals. Tim Houlihan 44:38 We like to also talk about how people find their groove, how people stay in their groove. And Natalie, we're interested in how you, as Captain discipline, having all this fantastic insight. How do you stay in your groove? Natalie Nixon 44:56 I stay in my groove through dancing. And through swimming. So I'm a very kinesthetic learner. I love to move and tinker in order to figure things out. Dance is I'm not a professional dancer, but I am a lifelong dancer. I started studying when I was four. I'm now a student of ballroom dance. I do a lot of hip hop dance, and dance allows me, you know, the hip hop dancer that I go to my community is called Dance fit. I reference it in the book, and their tagline is, disguise your exercise, which is brilliant, because you really are disguising your exercise. But dance also allows me to try on different avatars and personas. I can be sassy, I can be sultry, I can be hard, I can be aggressive, I can be whimsical. And so that, again, you know, going back to my dumbed down version of the neuroscience of all of this, it's, it's, it's activating different neuro synapses in my brain, different mindsets for me, so that I begin to normalize that. And so then, when I return to the work at hand, it's a lot easier for me to be bolder within my thinking, to be reflective in my thinking. It also is is activating serotonin and dopamine and all those things. And then swimming. Not only do I swim in a pool that is not, not all the time, but I discovered in 2023 that I love open water swimming, and I did not swim competitively. Growing up, I on an invitation from a friend, I tried out a a swim holiday with a company called swim trek in Greece, and while my first time out was a bit calamitous, because I had a panic attack. I never see all these arms and legs around me once I just got out of my head and into my body and just swam long, slow, extended strokes. It was life changing. It was a way for me to be a clumsy student of student of something, to enjoy nature, to to achieve things I never would have thought I could achieve. For example, I swam from the island of Nevis to the island of St Kitts last November, kind of accidentally, but that's another story. And and the shortest part of that crossing should be 4k took me and my swimming buddy, 5k but like I would have never thought I could do something like that. And so on my worst days, I'm thinking I swam from Nevis to St Kitts. I can do this, Barracuda or sharks. No, I did not, and you're no safety first, yeah, there's, there's a there's a boat kind of shadowing you. You're always at least pairs or trio of other swimmers. You're not just out there in the sea, but it was just life changing. So, so that's how I find my groove. I read a lot. I try to read as much fiction as possible, because for my work, I read a lot of nonfiction, but fiction just is relaxing. It just since I was a child that that is love and contentment to me just to curl up with a good book. Yeah. Kurt Nelson 48:15 Natalie, thank you so much for being a guest on behavioral grooves. I think the insights that we talked about today are just And as Tim mentioned, if we had more time, we could go on and talk about a whole bunch of other stuff, but we'll have to have you back at some point. Natalie Nixon 48:28 But you guys are I love your curiosity and your interest in my work, and I appreciate you sharing your platform. So thank you. Thank you. Tim, Kurt Nelson 48:44 welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Natalie. Have a free, free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our taking a walk brains. Tim Houlihan 48:57 Oh, I like that. I like that. I like that because, you know, I grew up in a world where I did a lot of walking. I grew up on a farm, and there was just always places to walk. And I don't know, you could grow up in a neighborhood and walk everywhere you want to go to, I suppose, but Kurt Nelson 49:13 there's, there's, we've talked about this. I don't know if we've talked about it in the show. I know we've talked about it in in other times, the number of behavioral scientists who talk about they took a walk with somebody to discuss this. You and George Lowenstein, right when you did work with him, you would, what did you do? Tim Houlihan 49:36 Always went for a walk. Rain or shine. Didn't matter what, whether it was, we're getting out more walking, and whatever we had to talk about would be talked about during the walk. Kurt Nelson 49:45 There's something about that walking, and either, you know, sharing that walk with somebody else, or even just being on your own in that walk, where your brain that movement part of it, the. Being outside part of it. It all coalesces into something that brings greater clarity, creativity, a number of factors that I don't think we take advantage of enough, and we should be doing it more. That's my, my, you know, public service announcement to the world. Go out and take a walk, particularly Tim Houlihan 50:31 if you have to think or have a conversation with somebody about big, big ideas. Well, this goes back a long time. St Augustine was in the second century, was big on solving problems by walking. You know, my guess is that Marcus Aurelius and I think that we could probably go, go to the Stoics and find some evidence of walking and solving problems. Kahneman and Tversky, yeah, Richard Thaler likes, Kurt Nelson 50:59 all the way up to the 1970s Tim Houlihan 51:03 I don't have a lot of medieval examples, but you Kurt Nelson 51:07 couldn't even do like Abe Lincoln or George Washington. You come Hey, there you go. All right, yeah, yes, I think you're absolutely true. I don't think this is something that we've just identified. That's ground Tim Houlihan 51:25 race, a new discovery. Get out and walk. Yeah. Kurt Nelson 51:30 All right, what you what do you want to groove on with our conversation? From Natalie, I want to talk about ambiguity. I want to talk about ambiguity. Is your friend. I want to, I want to get really clear on this. So what are we talking about? Tim Houlihan 51:47 This idea that life is changing constantly, and that we can reframe world, the world from just stay in your lane to build your own lane. And I really like Natalie's idea about this. I'm just so enthusiastic about we've had a lot of conversations about ambiguity. Debbie Sutherland talked about it. Elizabeth Weingarten, Julia deganji, Annie Duke Nathan and Susanna Furr, possibly our favorite discussion on ambiguity and uncertainty, right? I mean, there is so much rich content on that have has got me rethinking over the years about life is constantly changing. It we never know what's going to happen next. We don't know. So why not just embrace it? Why not just go, Okay, it's here. Let's, let's figure it out. This idea that we live in an ambiguous world and that uncertainty is a state of nature, and yet we're so Kurt Nelson 52:45 often focused in on finding the certainty. And I also love this idea, like the way that that Natalie talks about ambiguity is that it's about not getting into the lane that's been prescribed for you. It's about creating your own lane. It's, it's, that's what she talks about, how good education teaches people to make up the lane rather than just stay in their lanes. And I think that message is key. Now it's scary getting out of the lane that's there because you this is the lane. I know exactly where you know the boundaries are, there's there's lines on either side, and if I stay in there, it's going to be a good you know, I'm safe. You make your own lane. And you know, you you go, as I always talk about when I started my business was this long, clear path highway going down to these cool mountains, way down in the distance, but there was, like, this little dirt path I could take, and I just took a right turn and went down in the ditch, and I didn't know where it allowed because I couldn't see and there wasn't it. There wasn't a path after, you know, I had to form that path, and that was uncertain and different pieces. Tim Houlihan 54:01 Yeah, where does innovation come from uncertainty? Where does any kind of creativity come from? Uncertainty and ambiguity, it is in that's where the space of possibilities exists in the world. So I and I think Natalie, I just so enjoyed our conversation. Like she just, I think she frames this really, really well. Kurt Nelson 54:25 You liked it because there was this metacognition kind of component. There was a little bit of a philosophical bent that you just have, right, this idea of, like, Why do, why do we think the way that we think? Why do I think the way that I think, right? Yeah. Well, you like metacognition too, right? I do. I do. Tim Houlihan 54:45 It's pretty fantastic. It's this connect. It's the connective tissue, in some ways, between our system one thinking and our system two thinking. It's like it what bridges that, that instant, reflexive stuff, with. Wait a minute. I could be thoughtful about this and and when we when we embrace that metacognition, I think that it allows us to engage in what Natalie is encouraging us to do, to embrace that ambiguity. Kurt Nelson 55:14 I will also go back to what we talked about the beginning of this is like the movement, the walking, the this. I loved Natalie's way that she framed it in the book and also in our conversation. But this is as movement hygiene, that it's, yeah, it's not a nice day. It's like hygiene. You have to, you know, we need to do this every day. It's not a component of I'd like to do it. It is something there. And it's not about gym membership. It's not, it's not getting bulking up and running a marathon. It's just, it's movement. It is, yeah, making sure you're not sitting like you and I are both doing right now, sitting in our chairs for eight hours a day, and only time we get up is, you know, to go to the bathroom or to go get, you know, food. Who says I have to get up to do that? I don't want to know. Thank God we're not in the same room. All right, okay, Tim Houlihan 56:14 but how many times do we constrict ourselves by saying I don't have 30 minutes to get, or I don't have an hour to get to the gym right, or, Kurt Nelson 56:25 or I don't even have 30 minutes, right? Or I don't have 30 minutes, yeah, and the idea of, like, saying I can do a 10 minute walk, I can do, I can get, I can do, this is a standing desk. I can lift it up. I can be standing. I can do a little little dance in my office here. Nobody know better. I can turn some music on and just do something, right? Tim Houlihan 56:49 Let that daydreaming get into your brain for just a minute and get exposed to other images so that your unconscious can start doing some of the work that it needs to do on, on the really important stuff. Kurt Nelson 57:00 Yeah, all right, okay, so I know that you really like this idea of reframing. I do this idea of how we frame our thought patterns and different things. So did you want to get into some practical reframes? Tim Houlihan 57:19 I did. I thought about I would love to, because I have some specific examples on an individual level and on a team level and on an organizational level. And so I was wondering if I throw you some things that might be constrictive. Okay, exactly. Roll up your sleeves. Kurt Nelson 57:36 Roll my sleeves up here. Get ready to jar with you. Tim Houlihan 57:41 So I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna throw some things at you and give me some reframes on them. Okay, so, so how about the am I productive? You know, when that voice of the frame in your head, the frame in my head, is questioning my my productivity? Am I productive? I don't know what. How can I Kurt Nelson 58:00 reframe that? So let's think you could frame that as instead of, Am I productive, busy way? Am I flourishing? Am I thriving? Am I in my groove? Ooh, I like that. Okay, okay, okay, how about Tim Houlihan 58:19 if I'm going for something very finite, like, I need to find the answer, and I'm not finding it. And so, of course, that that becomes a roadblock for me, because I'm not finding the answer. How could Am Kurt Nelson 58:32 I asking the right question? Am I can I find a better question to to the situation? Am I looking at the situation from all angles? There you go. Tim Houlihan 58:48 I like those. Okay, how about when I the self talk is? Is I'm just bored. I'm not bored. I'm at the end of the day and I'm tired, and I say, just my ideas don't matter. Kurt Nelson 58:59 How could I reframe that, you know, Speaker 2 59:04 thinking about how what can I do to be more Kurt Nelson 59:12 in my groove? What can I do to be more intentional about what I want to accomplish in these final minutes of the day that my ideas might spur other ideas that matter. So if I'm feeling like I'm not mattering like they're not mattering right now, that doesn't mean that they won't have some implication further on. So what is it that I want to do in the long term? How? How are these? Are these any minor steps to getting to where I need to be? And, you know, like you get, yeah, all right, Tim Houlihan 59:55 because it's because it's steps and the and the existing ideas might actually be. Stepping stones to get me somewhere. So that's kind of what you're saying. Okay, on a team level, let's move to a team level. How should I go from at a again, this is at a team level, thinking about, how do I help get the team from a grind Kurt Nelson 1:00:16 to a group? How can I really, well, that's that's that that I think is a good frame, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, it's not a bad frame. Yeah, I want to frame it as going from a grind to the groove, Tim Houlihan 1:00:30 rather than just being stuck in the grind, right? Kurt Nelson 1:00:33 Like we're stuck in the grind. Well, let's figure out ways to set up the environment in order to make sure that as individuals and as team members, we are more likely to be in the groove we've we've talked to a number of people about this right now, but setting up those rhythms, putting in good processes, making sure that you're not if you're A leader, that you're not micromanaging. So there are ways of doing that, but the framing is how, like, all right, we just have to be productive and different things. No, this is about we need to get people in the groove. We need to give make sure that we give them rest periods, like we've talked like Natalie was talking about various different things. Tim Houlihan 1:01:20 Yeah. Okay, I like that. Okay, what about if you're in the meeting and some manager of another department basically, kind of gives you that message of, just stay in your lane. How can you reframe that for yourself? Kurt Nelson 1:01:35 This has never happened, has it? I've actually it's, it's interesting. I've had conversations where it's been like, well, that's not, that's not our it's not what we do. We don't work on that here. We can't, not the way we do it in that lane, right? And I and so again, think about this. Let's, let's, all right, stay in your lane. Well, let's figure out what road we can go down together. Let's read, have that conversation with somebody. Let's design the road together. Let's Are there ways that we can work that allow us to, you know, get to the end zone or that mountain, whatever our destination is that are going to be beneficial for both of us, not your lane, not my lane, our lane, Tim Houlihan 1:02:28 our lane. I like that, okay? And now we've talked about boredom with Aaron Westgate, right? But what about team members who feel like, oh, man, this, this project that we're working in, it's a waste of time. How can you help reframe Kurt Nelson 1:02:43 that again, thinking about, What do you mean by waste of time? What? What is it that is causing that waste of time? Can we learn and again, if I'm thinking like, if I'm an individual and it's like, oh my god, this is I'm just doing the same thing over and over again. Well, what can I learn from it? We talked about this, you know, I think, you know, as you're driving the same path every day to work can be boring, like it's a waste of time. I'm just it takes me 20 minutes to get there. How can I reframe that? How can I What can I observe on a new basis? What can I look at? What can I think about? Can I put on podcast? Or can I do something in that time where I can shift that from being a waste of time to a learning opportunity? Maybe the same thing with, you know, a project or whatever that would be, it could very well be that Okay, on an organizational level, I didn't really have a reframe, because so rarely do we have a lot of control over the organization, especially the culture, even though I buy into Christina bichieri's idea that, you know, we're all part of the norm. So something that we do is influencing the culture at work, of course, of course, that happens, but, but I think at an organizational level that we could, we could think about rest and periods of low productivity, not so much as overhead, but as R and D now people who are just slacking off and not doing their job, I have Very little patience for that. That's, I'm sorry, your Tim Houlihan 1:04:23 apologies are not accepted, but that like that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about there. We've talked to managers who make sure that their people are not scheduled on the tasks that they have to do for more than like 9080 85 90% of the time, so that there's a little bit of buffer. And I think that that's really an important thing to think about. This idea of maybe a low productivity, productivity time could be R and D, not just overhead. Kurt Nelson 1:04:55 That's what I'm doing Tim, by the way. So when I'm not working on this stuff, it's all. So it's R and D in my head, right? It's not that I'm slacking. In all seriousness, I think you're absolutely right. There is this aspect where we can, instead of trying to make sure that our everybody is 100% productivity, 100% of the time, that there's no downtime. No downtime is important. Break time, time to connect with peers, time to laugh, to share the coffee break was invented for a reason, right? It actually increased productivity. You took 1015, minutes off to have some coffee, to share some thoughts with friends, and you came back more productive. That's what they found. That's why, you know those were implemented. It wasn't anything else. I think there's also another reframe that that organizations could do, and that is looking again from our conversation with Natalie, is this ambiguity position where we're always so afraid of it as an organization that we need to have clarity, no ambiguity. Navigation is a core competency, and so people who are good with ambiguity, maybe we should be hiring those people. Maybe we need to be bringing more of those people into the organization, particularly as I think our world is just becoming more and more ambiguous and changing faster and faster. We don't have those year of runways where the world is pretty consistent. I mean that it's changing, you know, daily, if not hourly. Tim Houlihan 1:06:39 So, you know, I'm just gonna say the word. I don't want to say the word, but I'm just gonna say the word, AI is changing our our world and our life dramatically all the time, right? And so being able to navigate that world of ambiguity, of we don't know what's coming with it, I think that that's, that's actually a great thing. Yeah, what else Kurt Nelson 1:07:05 I think we should wrap? I think we, we can wrap this and this idea that, hey, look, we're living in a world that's drowning in answers. And, you know, sometimes we just have to ask better questions. So, yeah, right, because the real revolution isn't finding answers faster. We've we've got that at our fingertips, right? But it might be discovering which questions are worth asking. And I think kind of getting back to Natalie's mother, only boring people get bored, not relating to the way Aaron Westgate talked about it, but, right? Or George Lowenstein, but, but maybe we should just add only uncreative people accept the first answer like, I love that. I love that. Let's just your Houlihan, you came to true. Look at that. Only uncreative people accept the first answer at face value. I love it. There you go. Let's do this. Let's do something new. Okay, all right, let's, let's challenge our listeners out there. We're going to call this our groove challenge. Maybe we'll add it in to our Facebook community group so you can join in there if you haven't already joined in. But you know, so here's the first groove challenge that we're doing for one week before answering any question. Ask yourself, what Lane and I what Lane am I assuming exists here? What would happen if I designed a new one? Or maybe the question is, you know, what is the second answer that I need to find? Right? Like, I'm not gonna just, oh, here's the answer. Let me look and see if there's, is there a different answer to this? And, like, if I look at it from a different perspective, does it give me a new perspective that provides a different result, Tim Houlihan 1:08:56 or a different question, even possibly? Yeah, okay, so with that grooves, we hope that you take this groove challenge and you take some of Natalie's ideas that she talked about and we and that you use them this week as you go out and find your groove. You you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai