270: James Garrett: Brainhacking and The Deep Change Project

James Garrett is a brainhacker and founder of Brain by Design. He’s spoken on stages ranging from Harvard to TEDx and his work has been featured by The New York Times, FastCompany, and Harvard Business Review. He spent years doing research with some of the best psychologists in the world at Columbia, Tufts, and Yale.

He built one of the only brain-based positive psychology curricula in the Middle East and trained thousands of Arab youth in partnership with Queen Rania of Jordan. A rare combination of scientist, trainer, and entrepreneur, in 2019 James launched the Deep Change Project, a year-long personal journey to discover what’s possible at the outer edges of brainhacking and neuroplasticity.

In today’s conversation with us, James explains how the brain works and the capacity to which we can redesign our brain. We explore the way peak athletes train, rest, and the difference between gold medalists and those who do not place on the podium. James also shares some of his personal discoveries over the past several months during his Deep Change Project; including how he has been able to avoid goal-drift, increase focus, connection, and experience greater joy.

Self-directed neuroplasticity is like the meta skill set of the future. If you can get good at rewiring your brain, you can get good at anything. Listen as James Garrett explains how.

Key Takeaways

1. You have the capacity to be your own neural-architect.
2. Brains change well into old age.
3. Attention unlocks neuroplasticity.
4. The difference between gold medalists and those who don’t place on the podium is not in how they train but in how they rest.
5. Your brain can only focus for 90 minutes.
6. You want to start managing energy instead of time.
7. Habits take 66 days to form in your brain. The Deep Change Project involves habit stacking – developing 3 new habits every 2 months.
8. Procrastination is an emotional problem – it’s an emotional resistance to a hard thing.
9. Brains are energy scrooges. You need to negotiate with your brain that it’s worth the energy spend. One of the ways to do that is to shrink the size of the task you’re doing.

Episode Show Notes: https://leadersoftransformation.com/podcast/mindset/270-james-garrett-brainhacking 

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