#14 — Many Ideas, Taking Action, Working Smart | Nat Pearce

Meditation is the most important tool I use to manage ADHD drug-free, but for years I found it very difficult to stick with it. Turns out the techniques I learned didn't gel with my ADHD brain. After years of trial and error, I finally found a technique that works perfectly. I call it the ADHD-friendly meditation technique. It's actually a lot easier than you'd think. Don't believe me? Why not find out for yourself?

On the 28th of March 2024, at 6.30pm UK, I'm running a live ADHD-friendly meditation and breathwork workshop. Go to drugfreeadhd.org forward slash workshop to buy your ticket. Now, listen to my interview.

With the wonderful Nat Pierce. I am someone that when I have an idea or when something's come into my head, whether it's to buy something, to do something, to create something. I want to do that immediately. And I'll start to put that into, I'm great at starting things. So I'll start to do all the research, start to do what I need to do to get that thing moving. And that has often.

got me not into trouble but like maybe not into the best of scenarios so for example you know i might decide I'm going to do something in the morning I put it in place by the afternoon I wake up the next day and I'm like oh actually maybe I should do a different thing and so something that my co-founder

kind of gets me to do and we we kind of do for each other is to do the sleep on it test and it's amazing how much I change my mind once I've had a chance to sleep on something so that kind of like quick start like wanting to try new things and like get it out in the open is very very relevant to me and sometimes it's an absolute blessing and other times it's a little bit of a curse uh yeah i mean i'm exactly the same but i learned that you know

There's this really fancy word that I learned about two years ago, and it's stochastic. Stochastic. Have you heard that before? I've never heard that. I'm not trying to act clever because I'm not. But the point is that... Stochastic is like a word that sort of describes randomness, but it's a word based on the probability of randomness. So it's like, if you decide that you want to become a dentist...

The steps to become a dentist are laid out for you very simply. And there's a very, very good chance that if you do become a dentist, you'll make quite a lot of money doing it and you'll have a good life. The world of entrepreneurship is... the exact opposite of that it's completely random in many ways you don't know whether your idea is going to work until you actually make it

And that's one of the reasons why being quick start, high quick start, let's say, is so important, I think, in entrepreneurship. And it's funny, you know, you just said that sleep on it thing.

You know what? I don't even need to sleep on it to realize that the idea is bad. It can take me, I just go downstairs and put the kettle on and then I'm just not bothered about it anymore. But I think there's a huge benefit of actually getting... like starting as soon as the idea comes into your head because i think that your energy is at the highest at that moment in time i like i think it's like just having the almost philosophy that you're going to waste things and that's just fine

like part of the creative process so like what what happens like after so you sleep on it right how how many of those ideas are actually useful do you think you know what i would say like

I would say a lot of them. But the ideas often get better when I've slept on it. Or they go in a different direction. So I think... yeah and sometimes I guess I like come up with an idea and like put it into practice and you know use that energy and that was the right thing so it's it is kind of a mixed bag but I am just very conscious that like I

I can start a lot of things and I don't always see them through or I want to like change to like the next shiny thing so I have to be conscious of like where I'm going to put my energy in because I need to be able to sustain that energy so it's no good. Me getting really excited about an idea that's taken me off in a completely different direction. And in the end, I'm not necessarily going to have that energy for it long term. So the sleep on it test for me.

helps me see if you know if I wake up and I still have that energy in the morning then it's it's genuinely something that I'm gonna like stick with but if I wake up and I'm like oh you know what that doesn't fill me up anymore then it's not necessarily a bad idea. So it might be, okay, let's look at who can help us deliver this idea. Or maybe it's, you know, something that lights up my co-founder. So she's better place to do it. It's about knowing, I think.

where you should invest your energy and I for me understanding what gives me energy what takes away my energy has been one of the like biggest learnings over the last couple of years especially when starting my own business so yeah it's not necessarily I like to think that I come up with good ideas obviously but it's

It's about what's the priority right now and what's the best use of my energy and my skill sets. And I think the sleep on it test helps me clarify that. So like. What role does your co-founder.

found a play in stopping you from chasing the shiny things is she more grounded yeah i would say that she is more grounded so alicia and i are We share so much, especially the important things. So we share values. We share a shared sense of purpose. We came together over. the difference that we wanted to see in the world and we have a lot of shared skill sets so both of us come from like a service design background and we're applying that to the world of culture design but

We also balance each other out in a number of ways. So I would absolutely say that Alicia is more grounded. I am forever an optimist. And I'm definitely not saying that Alicia is a pessimist because she's not, but she is a realist. And sometimes she brings me back down to earth when I'm like, we're going to take over the world and it's going to happen tomorrow. And she's like.

we really need to focus on these things right now before we go there and I'm like good point sometimes I really need it and sometimes she needs me to bring that like optimism and that kind of like

you know, that belief that everything's going to be absolutely amazing. And I think, you know, co-founder dynamics are so important. And I think we have a really beautiful balance between each other and I'm so grateful for that because I think if we were both like me that wouldn't be great and if we were both like Alicia um well I think Alicia is wonderful so two of Alicia would be brilliant but you know there would be downsides to that as well so yeah she does

She balances me out for sure. And I like to think I do the same for her. It makes me think, you know, like a lot of people feel that they should start businesses alone.

Like they want to control everything. What would happen? Like just a thought experiment for a second. Like if you didn't have Alicia, like what, what would be your chances of getting to where you are now? So I have such respect for solo founders. I really do. But I would not do it myself. I am not interested in doing something like that on my own. And me personally.

I would not be running this business right now if it wasn't for Alicia. Alicia actually came to me and said, you know, I want to start a business someday and I'd love to do it with someone else. And I was like, oh, cool. Who are you thinking of? And she was like.

you and I was like right okay yeah that was a great idea so she like unlocked this in me but I see I hear a lot of solo founders talking about the things that they struggle with and I often think that if you had a co-founder like maybe things would would be different because even with a co-founder even with someone that I'm like running this with There are days where you're just like, why am I putting myself through this stress? Why aren't I just earning a big paycheck?

as a you know a senior person in an organization where I can do nine to five and I don't have to worry about it and it doesn't affect like the rest of my life like I have those thoughts regularly and having someone that can bring me out of that and likewise I do the same is so valuable but also it's the creativity like I bounce I love bouncing ideas off each other I like you know

I like making decisions together. I'm not in any way going to say that I am best placed to make all of the decisions in our...

our company like i want alicia's input and she she wants mine as well interesting thing though is we are both control freaks so right how the hell do you work that out then you know it's interesting you say that just quickly before i say it's like I know what you mean. And I have thankfully chosen co-founders by accident so far in my career that have kind of let me get away with making the decisions a lot of the time.

So I'm just going to say that quickly. I want to hear how you're dealing with that because maybe I've been lucky with this. So I think first and foremost, like Alicia and I deeply respect each other.

I you know she's one of my best friends like I love her to bits and so with that comes a huge amount of trust and you know yeah going back to saying the same word but like respect as well and i think that is is so important if you don't respect the person that's meant to be your equal then they're not equal and that's not going to work um I think as well we have really worked on our relationship and how we handle conflict and debate in our kind of working dynamic.

and that's something where we differed on so I am quite a confrontational person it's from my East End family roots which I love So, yeah, I can be quite confrontational. I really want to hash things out and I can be very, very forceful with my my opinions. And Alicia.

isn't as confrontational as me so um in the earlier stages I was probably maybe a bit bit more forceful um but we have kind of worked on that together we give each other a lot of feedback um we've learned how to say I disagree without it being like a personal thing so the sleep on it test is wonderful for that so we if we disagree we say look I don't agree at this point

I can't give you a good reason so I need to sleep on it can we come back to it and so we've got really good at that and I think that it's about you know being able to have passionate debates about things but still love each other at the end of it and I think that's what we practice and we make sure that you know it isn't just business all the time like

We have fun together. We do nice things together. And we remember to make time for our friendship because that then supports us and our ability to, you know.

operate together but ultimately like I trust her implicitly so I am often and I think she feels the same like happy to let go of some things and say actually that's helping me so recently we had a conversation about how we can divide and conquer a bit more because we all both of us were doing everything and we've spread too thinly so um this isn't like a permanent thing but right at the moment i'm doing more of our biz dev and this is looking after more of our delivery

And, you know, in a couple of months time, we might swap that around. But it's nice to be able to say, OK, look, I'm not going to worry about that part of the business because you're going to do that. And a lot of we can only do that if we trust each other and we let go of this control.

I think where it's going to be tricky for us, the control thing, is less about our relationship and more about the first person that we hire. And when we start to bring people into the team, I think that is when our... control part might um be a little bit trickier but at least again we have each other to hold up we can hold each other accountable and say look you're micromanaging or you know

whatever else it might be because obviously that's a much harder for someone in our team to do that um and i hope no one listens to this and they're like oh my god i don't want to work with these people because we are amazing to work with and we have a lot of self-awareness So that bodes well with, you know, controlling the control freak. No, no one's going to think that. I assure you. You know, I can see you've got the Who Not How book down there to your side.

i do so that that is a for anyone that's listening that's a really important book who not how which is like so many people so many quick start founders so many founders in general so many people with an inclination to start a business they want to do everything themselves and this is like hanging on to those creative ideas but like instead of asking how can i do this maybe we should ask who can do this and that doesn't necessarily mean hiring people it could mean collaborating with people now

I have this side project called Drug Free ADHD, and it's like growing pretty quickly. And I am getting to the point where I'm considering finding, I want to find somebody basically just to take that off me. I want to find somebody who I can just give it to kind of thing. Maybe I'll keep a little stake in it and then let them go on their merry way with it because I think that my strength is in creating things from scratch.

it's getting to the point where it's like, it needs to just, it needs someone that can just run it. But, you know, that's, that's like a who, not how, that's an example of who, not how, like finding someone. How have you found that book? Or how have you found the like... methodology behind it i i really really like it alicia's both of us are reading it at the moment um my co-founder uh and

What we realized recently is that we have been doing that in our business. So a good example is we were creating all of the copy for our new website, which is... launching around the time that we're recording this uh and we just didn't have the time to really

we we had loads of client projects going on at the same time we didn't have the time to really describe what we wanted to do like we were getting in our own heads getting in our own way and um we happened to be introduced to a copywriter who absolutely transformed the words that we would have created for our business and

So we invested in that. We were like really umming and ahhing about it before. We were like, we can write. We're good writers. We write all the time. We can do this. But actually, we needed someone else to... take all of that that was going on in our heads make it really us and also make it really accessible for people that would be coming onto our website so that's a great example um

We also, you know, hired someone to do the whole website. We come from a design background. We could do that ourselves, really. I mean, it would be nowhere near as good as what we've just launched. But it's very easy as a founder to be like, you know what, I'm going to save money.

And I'm just going to do it myself. And it might not be as great, but at least, you know, that's money in the bank. And we haven't done that. So the book was really good for helping us realize that we are thinking in that way. But it's also... helped us think about that even more so one of the things i'm really proud of that alicia and i are talking loads about is that we are looking at our business and saying who not how like who is the best person to help us deliver this

or structure these thoughts or take this on like it doesn't have to be us like we are maybe the thought leaders or the creators or like you know the innovators around it but we don't necessarily need to to deliver it um And so it's definitely liberating. I think it's tricky at the same time because we don't necessarily have the resources or the cash.

to invest in all of the who's that we need so i think what the only kind of i don't know drawback maybe to the book is that a lot of the examples are very very wealthy people with a lot of money and resources to be able to hire anyone they want and i don't think that that's that's not well i know that's not where we are we are at and i know that for a lot of founders that is a bit of a sticking point so

100% agree in principle in practice it can be a bit difficult but I think what I love one thing I really love about the book is that it says Don't look at new hires as a cost, look at them as an investment. And I think that is one of the most beautiful analogies or sentences or quotes about culture and hiring teams and growing teams. that I've ever heard. And so I very much agree with that. I wish I had more in the bank to be able to do that. But I think even reframing it as that.

and thinking about the return on investment later down the line of, you know, bringing on that person, hopefully it pays for itself. So I think giving context to an approach that we were taking already has been really powerful. Yeah, it's like whenever you do, if you ever did a Colby test, like I mentioned right at the beginning, and you get this quick start score, which I'm sure you'd be like a nine or a 10 out of 10. It's like, it gives you all this advice about what you should do.

and what you should not do as a quick start person. And I think it helped me find who I need around me to get shit done. And one of the great things about Dan Kirby, founder of the tech department and also host of Honey, I Blew Up the Business, cross-promotion. And the person who gave me this book. And the person who gave me that book. Yeah, exactly. He is so good at deciding. He's firstly so good at having the mindset that new employees are an investment. And he's so good at seeing what...

is seeing what is giving the most value to the company and then investing into that. I'll give you an example. I did a talk in Brixton a couple of weeks ago. And as a result of that talk, which was nothing to do with what the tech department sells, like literally completely disconnected. We got three sales leads in a week from it. And he was like, look, we'd been considering.

putting more money into getting public speaking gigs. Let's invest now into it. So it's like, yes, it's a risk. It's always a risk, isn't it? To invest money into things. they you know most of them pay off if you're doing it in the right way yeah and um you know the whole who who not how mindset is I think quite difficult for people to grasp, like you were saying. And I still think it comes down to like a lot of founders want to do it on their own. Yeah.

Nobody can do it on their own. You need an accountant. That's a who, for example. Exactly. I don't know if maybe this is because I'm in... the like culture space or like you know my journey to getting into culture design and stuff like that but like I am very comfortable

Although I'm a bit of a control freak, this is all going to sound a bit contradictory, but although I do like to control things sometimes, I am also very comfortable with... like delegating and and bringing people into a space to kind of like help deliver on things like I I really like I'm I always identify with the kind of category, you know, categorizations of like visionaries and like, you know, that kind of thing. And maybe that kind of links to the quick start thing as well. But I.

I really like the idea of bringing people on this journey and, frankly, freeing up my time to work on the things that I really enjoy doing. have always said that I want to work four hour days four day weeks like I want to work as little as possible on the things that like light me up because I just I'm a big proponent of rest and I think there's

Although I think about my business all the time, and even if I was working four-hour days, I would still be thinking about my business. I'd still be being creative. So is that your goal? Yeah, 100%. Did you say that to Alicia when you started the business? Oh yeah, Alicia laughs about it all the time. What does she think? What's her? Would she do that?

Both of us have been on a journey of like what happens when you don't prioritise rest and you don't look after yourself. Like both of us have had burnout, had like really severe exhaustion and have had to like build ourselves back. from that that's part of how we we connected and i think that you know both of us read a book called rest um by alex sujun king pang and

That book talks about how we, in order to work at our best, we need to prioritise rest. One of my favourite quotes to use in like a talk about wellbeing that we often do is that there isn't a... olympic coach in the world that would recommend to an athlete that ignoring rest is good a good strategy for winning but for some reason we work ourselves to a ridiculous amount

in work and we think that that's like going to help us succeed and I know that you have a strong opinion on this as well and I just want to I think that there's If my energy is protected, then I can have such a greater impact. And there's loads of studies that show that working intensely for more than four hours a day... does not produce anything more so you it doesn't matter if you're there for eight hours the four hours is what what makes a difference and it's it's your

The best ideas, the eureka moments come when you're walking in a forest or you're like, you know, meditating or like doing something else, not working. So yes, like I want to work for four hours intensively, but then I want to. allow my brain to do what it needs to do when I'm out and about doing other things so then I am more creative I can deliver more I'm more productive all of that stuff so it's not that I want to like put my feet up and just like chill out and like just

kick back although i obviously want to do all those things it's with a direct impact on i will have a better business a better impact if i do all of those things i agree I'm exactly the same as you, to be honest. My ideal work hours are like, probably like 6am. in the morning until 11 or no 6 a.m i could do maybe 6 a.m the reason why though it's not like i'm not a 5 a.m kind of guy it's because i've got a son who's two he wakes up really early in the morning that's the reason

Something happens when you're a parent. Obviously, you hear him crying and you're awake then. There's no going back to sleep at that point if it's six in the morning. And then my mind just kicks in straight away, like coming up with ideas or coming up with ways to solve problems and whatever. But I don't want to work in the afternoons. That's like a big thing for me. Yeah. And the afternoons could be for like reading some fiction.

Or going for a walk or going to the gym or exercising or doing loads of other amazing things. And it's like the amount of times that I've just been sat on my desk at like 2 p.m. trying to solve something and just like smashing my hands on the desk, getting nowhere. and i'll go later like say i get nothing done for the rest of the day and then in the evening i'm reading a book it could be completely unrelated to what i was doing say lord of the rings or something like that

And then I just read something about, oh, Mordor. And then my brain just finds something out of nowhere. And it's like, oh, shit. And then I just run straight to my office, get a post-it note out, and then just start scribbling and just sticking them everywhere. So I remember in the morning to pick it up. again and you are so right i think that work needs to be rethought like we it's just i mean what who was it i think bertrand russell the mathematician in 1936 said

that by the 60s, we'll be working four hours a day. And he said that that will have benefits for the whole of society because it will make people do things outside of work. And no, we didn't do that, did we? And in fact, I don't think people will say, yeah, instead of working four hours, we just do double the amount of work in eight. I don't think so. I think we do four hours of work and piss the other four down the drain.

100% I totally agree it doesn't matter how long you're at your desk there's still a limit on how much actually productive work we can do we know that like or it's very accepted that you know if we are trying to hold our attention on one thing for longer than like 45 minutes or an hour like you know the whole pomodoro method work for 50 minutes or 25 minutes and then have a break like that

that makes sense to people people like yeah I get it but when we talk about like okay well you should only have maybe four of those cycles in a day and you know your brain's gonna chill out after that or it's not going to work as much like we don't want to accept that and it's like well there is a capacity to how much you know we can consume remember

So I definitely, definitely want that to be my future and I want it to be the future for people that work for me and that people that, you know, my clients that I work with, like I want to normalise. working in a different way so that we all are more creative and kinder to ourselves and as a result can create a kinder fairer you know better designed future and world for everyone

But I only think we do that if we look after ourselves. And the funny thing with founders is that the most important resource or asset that you have as a founder is your energy. and how sharp that energy is. So if you are constantly burning that energy down and not doing anything to recharge it, you are damaging your business.

simple as that like overworking does not benefit your business in the long run it actively damages it because it's damaging you and you're not going to be as sharp and you're not going to be as present and all of that stuff so I think like yes it sounds very lofty and a bit like hippie to be like yeah i want to work four hours and i only want to work like four days or like whatever why the fuck but i

Well, exactly. Like, why the fuck not? And there is a bottom line. Like, there is a return on investment. Like, there will be a point when your body forces you to stop, forces you to rest. and that healing process is going to be a hell of a lot longer as a result so we have a choice we can avoid that we can balance working with resting and make that part of our ritual make that part of our routine

Or we can just wait until our body's like, no more. That's it. What is your opinion or like feelings on retirement?

i've never been i'll tell you what like okay right let me just quickly give you some context so like i say to my wife very often i would rather work four out it's funny you say this like four hours a day four days a week till i'm 75 than work eight hours a day five days a week or whatever until i'm 60 yeah i can't imagine me retiring early

But I can't really I imagine me wanting to contribute to something in some way for the majority of my life. So I don't really identify with well, especially as a founder, I guess, like. Retirement seems like a bit of a weird concept now. But I want... what's more important to me isn't about retiring and isn't I definitely don't see retirement as like oh I'm gonna work really really hard so that I have this nice long retirement it's like no I want to have a nice life now

and I want to enjoy myself now and I want to do things that I've dreamed of now I don't want to wait until like I'm old and you know who knows what my health might be like then there's so many factors like it's just it's delaying things it's like the idea of a bucket list like do those things now like you can die tomorrow like i'm very much i believe that i don't always live it i should say like

it's very easy to get like stuck into the weeds um but yeah I don't really think I can't imagine retiring I always want to be like contributing to something in some way and maybe it'll be like coaching and mentoring or doing more like pro bono work when I'm a bit older and you know I'll have more rest than maybe I have have working but yeah I think like I want to I want to continue doing that so I don't really think about retirement in that way

My granddad, right, he had started his first company when he was in his 30s. I think it must have been in like 1970-something. Wow. He's still going now. He's 79 this year. He founded a new company in January. He just, I know, but he just, he's not stressed. I don't think he's been stressed for 30 years.

He doesn't really need to do it. He just does it because he loves it. He works two days a week, basically. And maybe a little bit more if he feels like it. And I think that's probably what I will do. And I think, and one of the reasons I've, I'm like in love with that really is because he is so sharp still. Like where a lot of people around him and his sisters and stuff have like.

really struggled like with aging and whatnot and it's understandable like nearly 80 or in your 80s but like i mean it's amazing how he's managed to carry on

Yeah. Anyway, that's an aside. Have you heard of Ricardo Semler? No, I haven't. Oh, I'm so happy you haven't heard of him. i'm gonna send you some like uh talks he's done he will blow your mind because everything you've just been talking about he he is just all over that so basically the story is he um In 1981, I think, he took over his dad's business called Semco, which is a company in Brazil that makes like...

concrete or something. It's like really old school traditional business. And I think the business was doing like $4 million turnover at the time. Basically, it was a really traditional business with people in suits that would come into boardrooms and there was a hierarchy system.

really strict and he was like i think his dad died or something like that and he like had to take it over and he's like right i'm changing absolutely everything and one of the first things that he ever did was just he fired the entire board like straight away And he replaced them with people from the company that were lower down so that it was a representation across every department. He even had two janitors on the board. And he intentionally did that because he said they can keep us honest.

This is in the 80s. In the early 80s. He then said that people can set their own salaries. In the 80s. But what he did was he made spreadsheets so that everyone could see everyone else's salaries. And he said, look, if you give yourself too high a salary and you don't perform, then you won't be able to work in this company anymore.

so set it right and here's an idea but you get to choose and if you want to work less set your salary lower and let us know it's incredible right and anyway there's just like so many other things that he did that were amazing he's written two books about it one's called the seven day weekend and another one's called maverick which is like

about the story about how he took over the business and everything and anyway he better not read seven day weekend yeah yeah he said like everyone everyone has a bucket list and they're waiting until they're 65 to do it And he says to his employees, he's like, why don't you just do it next Tuesday? The whole thing. He says, you can sell us your days back to us. So basically, if you want to take some time off, then you can take as much time as you want off.

just you can sell the days back to us. So basically we're not going to pay you on those days. You get a certain number of holidays, you get lots of holidays, but if you want to go and like travel around the world a little bit, just do it. Like you don't even have to tell us. I mean, it's so revolutionary what he did. But anyway, the company goes from like 4 million euro turnover to like $300 million as a result. Because everybody's deeply invested in this company.

Yeah, I love that. What he's basically done is look at every part of a workplace that we take as given, like the rulebook, and said, why does it have to be that way? And I think that that's something that I love to do. And I would like to, this is another thing about energy and time and capacity. I am someone that loves to do that.

And I don't always have the capacity and energy and space to question everything. Because if you're just go, go, go, and you're, you know, doing, doing, doing all the time, you don't always have time.

to do that so or you don't have the space you don't have the you it's very hard when you're being reactive to think in such a revolutionary way And I guess I always think like, imagine if we had more space to be creative, imagine what revolutionary things we could do or imagine what systems we could like redesign and all of that.

kind of stuff and I just think that that's the real reason behind working less is to create that space because that doesn't happen in front of a desk in front of a laptop it just doesn't It happens with people and when you have space to think about things. Like I, when last year, Alyssa and I both took the first significant time off since starting the business. So like two weeks.

shut the business down it's not shut it down but you know I mean the business was not operating we were both off at the same time weren't doing client work and we like fully switched off and that during those two weeks like we weren't online we weren't doing anything but our like whatsapp like chat was like buzzing because we were constantly like you know I was reading a fiction book and I never read fiction books and

Even though it had nothing to do, like to your point, it had nothing to do with what we were working on. But for some reason, all of these ideas that had obviously been like pushed down because we were so busy. would start to come up and so we were constantly like sharing all of this stuff and it was really beautiful and exciting and it's about creating that within our work weeks and our work days so that

you know, it doesn't take like a two week holiday once a year or whatever to unleash that creativity. That's really interesting what you said, because I've been doing meditation for years now. Obviously, there's lots of different types of meditation, but mantra meditation. Transcendental meditation is a famous version of that. There's also something called Vedic meditation, which is much cheaper to learn.

Like that's one of my problems with transcendental meditation is it costs a fortune for some stupid reason. But one of the benefits of it is that if you basically repeat a mantra in your head, have you done it before? I have.

followed some I've done like not I don't know if you call them courses but like you know in DPAC Chopra I think is his name he does quite a few of them and they always have like a mantra element like whenever I haven't done them enough to like really know much about it but I can say that when I have done meditations

that have a mantra element in them that's when i feel like i'm not in the room that i'm in and like you know when you open your eyes and you're like oh yeah i remember where i am and i i don't have that with i have that with um that type of meditation and i have that with um like gong baths or sound oh i love gong baths they're amazing so good um it's the only time that i'm like it's like tripping it's just

a completely different place. Have you ever done one in a hammock before? No, I haven't. You've got to do that because you're like floating off the air, like almost weightless in a way. And you get that sort of like... leaving your body feeling when you do it yeah yeah exactly so do that in a hammock you just it's just i mean it's it's amazing yeah yeah i'm gonna get a hammock in my garden now or something yeah yeah definitely interestingly that's the

business that my granddad's just started luxury hammocks yeah handmade in india yeah funnily enough probably shouldn't have said that because he's not well he's not officially launched it yet but there's a bit of free promotion for you there um

What was I going to say? Yeah. So transcendental meditation. So you repeat a mantra in your head. They say the mantra is a secret, but it's not true. You could repeat like... the sound i am or like om like over and over again there's like lots of different things you could repeat but if you do it repeatedly the same thing over and over and over and over again your mind stops focusing on the thoughts

and starts to just push its attention to the mantra instead the thoughts start to go quiet and then you have this small separation between the mind and you and you start and this is the most profound thing that can ever happen really in meditation you actually start to become directly aware that you aren't the thoughts. You are just the one who hears the thoughts. So we can spend our entire lives getting all wrapped up in our thoughts, thinking that they are us.

And then through some very deep experiences in meditation, we realize for the first time that we don't have to listen to them. And that's like, that's a liberating experience. Yeah. Yeah. The same thing could definitely happen with gong baths. Honestly, I've just done this stupid ADHD thing where I can't remember what the hell we were talking about. I just know we started talking about meditation. What were we talking about? Like, fuck's sake. Oh, gosh.

I do this all the time, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. But we were talking about working less. We were talking about rest. I have no idea. Why did my mind... I'm going to leave this in, in the post-edit. I'm going to leave this in. Yeah, why did we come to try... If anyone's listening, maybe they could let us know. Yeah, message us after and we'll pick it back up in part two.

Transcendental meditation. Why the hell did I come to that? Oh, got it. Right. When you're reading books, right, and thoughts come up. Okay, they're coming up from your subconscious, apparently.

the exact same thing happens in transcendental meditation so you can sit there you can do 20 minutes in the morning 20 minutes at night and it will give your mind space so that your subconscious can sort of solve the problem for you So instead of trying to force the problem to the front of your brain to force yourself to fix it, you can just let your subconscious do it for you.

And you know what? A lot of the time it does. And I was listening to Martin Scorsese talking, actually, and he does transcendental meditation twice a day. And he says, like, if he's ever stuck with a problem, it... Like, you know, he's like directing a film and there's just some scene he can't get his head around. He said he just sits down in the middle of the day and does 20 minutes of meditation. And he says every single time that meditation session solves the problem.

Well, that's what we were talking about. I've remembered now that it's not when you're at your desk that you come up with the best ideas. It's when you're doing something else. That's when we were talking about how meditation is a great way to do that. And I totally hear you. I have really struggled to get to do meditation consistently, but it's something that...

is always in the back of my mind. Most years, I will say this is the year where I'm going to nail it. I haven't yet. I don't think 2023 is going to be the year, although maybe, maybe, maybe.

Now that we've had this conversation, I'm feeling inspired. When I did this talk in Brixton about my ADHD, is that I said how... Like, so for people that don't know, I'm managing my ADHD without medication. And I talk about it a lot online. And there's three main things that help me do that. One is...

Cold exposure, like getting in ice, cold water, because that boosts dopamine to levels that are equal to cocaine. Like, it's incredible. Breathing techniques, breath work, that for various reasons, that's really beneficial. Those things give you like instant results and really help that it's meditation that changes you forever. Transcendental meditation.

yeah sorry my phone was ringing talking about like professional podcast host here oh good yeah yeah transcendental meditation right oh fucking hell i'm gonna have to edit this bit out I'm going to make a note here because I've fucking... Here we go. There we go. There's a good thing about this software is it allows me to click a button if I've made a mistake to edit it out. That's so good. Yeah, right. Why is it important?

So ADHD or quick start founder, like quick start brain, whatever, doesn't matter. Why is it important meditation? Because it gives you space. Like if like people with ADHD, the number one problem is that the mind is so busy. that often your attention that i was talking about awareness is focused on what the mind is saying yeah and we and if we think we are the mind

and we don't know for certain that we are not the mind, then we believe everything it says, and we do what it says, and then we can often make very big mistakes in life. If we do transcendental meditation twice a day for, say, six months, we know for certain that we are not the mind.

and we have space, that means that we can choose not to listen to it. That means crucially that we don't do impulsive things anymore because we have trained ourselves to give ourselves time to make a decision on whether or not to act on what the mind is saying. And if you keep going and going further, say a year, a year, year and a half into it, you start to have like an inner peace that develops that is very difficult to describe. And in fact, I'll tell you what.

It's similar to the end of a gong bath, but it's all day long. Beautiful. Yeah, that's so powerful. And that is my argument for why you should do meditation. And the last thing. Most people say they can't meditate because it's been explained to them very poorly. They'll often believe that meditation is about quieting the mind. Meditation has got nothing to do with quieting the mind.

Meditation is about being able to handle what the mind is saying and then being able to look at it objectively. So it's called objective observation, which is like you inside your body watching the mind talk. And one of the weirdest things that can happen if you've been meditating for a long time, say a year and a half or more, is you can actually watch your mind having a conversation with itself.

wow it's hard to explain until you've experienced it but really like it's just arguing with itself and you're you are literally separate from it watching it yeah i am sold that is what i need in my life i think that You know, we've spoken before about like I identify a lot with the symptoms of ADHD and that kind of mind noise is a really big thing for me. And I'm sure it is for many founders because I think like.

you know you do have so much going on and you're constantly thinking about the business and what you're going to do next and that client that you need to get back to and then oh am I being a good partner like oh I need to feed the dogs like there is just so much going on constantly I would love to sit back and not have to listen and navigate and orchestrate that chaos all the time because i think like i one of my big things about um you know

being a founder and kind of working in the open and stuff like that is I often get people say to me like oh you look like you've got it all together you're doing so much like you're so busy everything must be going really well and it's like it's really hard to portray what's really going on behind the scenes all the time without you know coming across like uh i don't know like a bit of a chaotic mess on various channels but it's not

you know all streamlined all singing and dancing um there is a lot that all of us need to kind of navigate when we are founding and trying to scale and grow companies and i think that Yeah, I'm going to be looking into transcendental meditation after this.