Negative Bias, info diet and emotional hygiene

Transcript by Sean Jackson

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Aidan Cammies: Hi and welcome to Brainstorm - the podcast exploring how our minds work, how work affects us and how we can best deal with it. We are Aidan Cammies 

Damiano Tescaro: and Damiano Tescaro. Explorers of the office jungle and mental health aficionados. Buckle up, because ideas are about to get wild.

Aidan:
Hello, Damiano. How are you today?

Damiano:
Hello, Aidan. We said we were going to start with the radio voice. Come on, give me some radio voice.

Aidan:
Hello, and welcome back to Brainstorm. My name is Aidan Cammies, and I'm here with Damiano Tescaro today to talk to you about...

Damiano:
I'm not sure we chose a title yet, but hey, I thought it was about negative bias and emotional hygiene.

Aidan:
That sounds fascinating. What are we going to talk through today? We can cut this out if it doesn't make sense because we never stick to what we plan.

Damiano:
We literally never do. And first of all, communication of service, we do have a new name. We are now known as Brainstorm Squared.

Aidan:
Brainstorm Squared episode one/episode six of Brainstorm. This will not get confusing.

Damiano:
And you may wonder, but why? Why did you change the name? It was already fantastic before. You will be right. We don't really know why we did it, but we really felt we wanted to be really extra special, and there might be some news coming up in the next month. Maybe you will be able to listen to this podcast in other places, in more convenient places who knows? Right, Aidan?

Aidan:
Correctamondo, we're trying to make this go as far and wide as possible, make it easy for you to access as possible. Because if you're at all like me, I don't really want to browse through all of these internal sites. I want to be able to listen to this whilst I'm chopping up vegetables and then shovelling chocolate cake into our mouth.

Damiano:
We would like fantastic, like the shiny thing effect on the teeth when we smile.

Aidan:
If I could wink, that came across in that podcast.

Damiano:
Aidan, so first of all, happy 2021. Right, the new year has started-

Aidan:
Happy 2021 to you too.

Damiano:
Even though I feel that we are all... This is how I tell every single time people ask me how I am. I'm suspended in an eternal presence.

Aidan:
That's deep.

Damiano:
Right?

Aidan:
Yeah. I mean, definitely a Groundhog day, Groundhog year has definitely been the feeling for a while.

Damiano:
Yeah. I think we chose a very good topic for the first episode of the year because there's been a ton of stuff going on. We are three weeks in the year and it feels like we've been here for months already. There has been the US election, Brexit has finally technically happened. We're still in lockdown and there are mutations of COVID going around. There is so much stuff going on. So we decided to talk about emotional hygiene in the first place and information diet in general.

Aidan:
Yeah. This year has been a lot already. And if you're anything like me, it's been difficult to stay away from the news, especially when there's something that's new and exciting is definitely not the word. New and impactful and big, and ah, that happens a lot.

Damiano:
The expression emotional hygiene, I think for most people will sound a bit like eww. Because hygiene is a word that I think most of us feel very prudent about in a way, but this is why I think it's actually, it's good because it triggers something in the brain. And most of us probably don't really associate the word emotional with... Hygiene is very physical, right? It's very practical while emotional is kind of abstract. The inspiration for this comes from a TED talk from a psychologist called Guy Winch.

Damiano:
It's a beautiful talk actually, because he describes in such a beautiful way how the emotional ritual of taking care of literally our emotional hygiene, our cleanliness in a similar way to how we're taught by our parents wash your face, take a shower, clip your fingernails, comb your hair, all the basic things that we assume it's common knowledge. And we assume everybody does. And if you don't, it's kind of just despicable and terrible. He points the spotlight in saying we're not really taught to do this with our own emotions yet our emotions have such a powerful impact on how we are with other people. And it's extraordinary that we don't. So I thought it was an interesting point to start the conversation.

Aidan:
Yeah, absolutely. Up until earlier today, when you first put that in our chat message, I'd never... I don't really recognize the phrase emotional hygiene, but I immediately love it. It kind of shows self-care which we'll chat a little bit about later on. God, I wanted to say chat a little bit about later on.

Damiano:
A me tongue twister by Aidan Cammies.

Aidan:
Daily podcast tongue twister. Self-care has this weird connotation where it feels like it should be very, yeah, you need to be mindful, but also treating yourself. And also you should be having a bath with candles and chocolate-

Damiano:
Oh, yeah, the candles, scented candles everywhere, right?

Aidan:
Yeah. You can't fully relax unless there's fire present. It's got this weird reputation. I always feel guilty when I'm not making myself a priority and not doing self-care, but emotional hygiene seems a lot more practical because as you said, things like brushing your teeth, keeping yourself clean is something that you don't just do once. You don't go, "Oh, it's been three weeks of working hard. Now I'm going to have a hygiene day." It's something that you do little often. Kind of like we chatted about in our last episode about habits and how if we make something as small as possible for it to count as a success we're more likely to do it more. So, treating your brain in the same way rather than going, "Oh, well, I'm going to work really hard and then have an entire week off where I'm going to relax and do all of these things and treat myself." I can speak from experience over Christmas. It doesn't happen that way.

Damiano:
Absolutely, no. Yes. Such a good analogy by the way because I think it's the trap, right? It's the mental trap of thinking that one bath with candles, that one weekend at the spa, it's going to fix everything. It's going to fix your anxiety. It's going to fix the fact that you feel stressed because of, I don't know, what's happening in the world or because you broke up with your partner. That's not really how the mind works. And it's also this, I would dare to say, disrespectful approach to how our mind works, how our brain works in the sense that it's just a one fix thing. You're only going to do one thing and it's going to be all right, but it's not really the case. I'm thinking we were talking last time about the rituals of course, and strategies for this, which path would you like to take today to talk about emotional hygiene? What can we focus on today?

Aidan:
We are doing choose your own adventure. Where do we start? The tangent I want to go on first when you're chatting about how already this year a lot has gone on. I think chatting about negativity bias and the information we consume could be a great start. I definitely want to chat more about emotional hygiene and self-care with you later as well.

Damiano:
Love that. And the information part, I think is probably top of mind for everyone. Literally everyone in the world probably feels this at the moment. So I would definitely say, "Let's start with that." How does your information diet look like at the moment, Aidan? Can you give us a bit of a panorama?

Aidan:
I can definitely tell you about what it's like at the moment, and then I can tell you what it used to be like. And I can tell you what impacts that's hard because I used to read the news all the time. Not quite non-stop, but very regularly. When I was, I don't know, years ages 12 and under, actually probably more like ages 15 and under, I was still very much, "I don't have any responsibilities. I'm going to go home and play with my Lego and Pokemon," which I still do now, which is actually probably a fun tie-in.

Aidan:
Then kind of came that, "Oh, you're a teenager. You're an adult now. The world is bad. Everything's bad. You need to think about what you're going to do with your life. There's all this pressure, responsibility, choose what you're going to do. Ah, and then you're kind of, I don't know if encouraged as the right word, but you have to know what's going on in the world. You need to be a well-informed citizen.

Damiano:
It's your responsibility.

Aidan:
Responsibility, definitely a balance there that isn't really talked about because we can't change everything. We as individuals have the power to change a lot of things, but we can't change everything. And it's important. Stay up to date with politics. It's important to stay up to date with the general state of the climate. News flash, not great, still needs work, but we can't fix everything. If you tried to be... I'm pretty environmentally conscious. I've definitely been hit by eco guilt a lot, especially this past week. I always try and buy things used instead of new, even that eventually becomes so all-consuming. You're like, "Oh, I don't know what to do. I don't eat meat. Wow, it's not the first time. Have I managed to go five episodes without mentioning the fact that I'm vegan?

Damiano:
I think you never mentioned that before.

Aidan:
I won't talk about that for now, because the main point is you can't do everything. You can't be environmentally conscious and help to end homelessness and fix the state of the political landscape at the moment. There are so many things and we can't fix them all. But when we're bombarded by news about all of them all the time, knowing that we can't do anything, it's going to make us anxious. It's going to make us feel stressed knowing that there's all this stuff that we can't control. Do you want to play a little game with me? I've decided I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.

Damiano:
Please, please.

Aidan:
Yes. Okay. So, I am going to go onto a UK newspaper website. I'm going to go for two separate websites, which are on a general different ends of the political spectrum. I'm going to count out the top five or six newspaper articles from each website. How many do you think are negative? How many do you think are neutral, and how many do you think are positive? Feel free to play along at home as well.

Damiano:
Okay. So coming from marketing backgrounds, knowing how powerful negativity is in terms of attention and click through rate, I would say 70% negative. None is neutral. The remaining is positive.

Aidan:
Oh, okay. First one, definitely negative. The headline is Fury at EU Brexit tax. Interesting.

Damiano:
Thank you.

Aidan:
Second one, Wedding with 400 guests was held in COVID test centere. Police raid secret party in Jewish girls school in North London as organizer is fined £10,000. So, again, very negative one. Look at these people, doing these bad things, also.

Damiano:
Shame, shame, shame.

Aidan:
General anti-Semitic vibes. Don't really know why you need to point out there's a Jewish girls' school there.

Damiano:
Very good point.

Aidan:
Prime minister will hold press conferences as up to 70 furious MPS demand a roadmap for lifting lockdown amid fears. There's a celebrity divorce. Oh, God. I hate that. Elegance coach reveals the clothes that make you look common and turn off classy, man.

Damiano:
What?

Aidan:
God, it's not the '70s anymore. Okay.

Damiano:
I'm actually on a good trend, right? Because we are what? The six out of 10 actually already negative?

Aidan:
So far, yeah. Five or six out of 10. British gap year students are quarantined to a French ski resort after 16 tested positive for COVID-19. Seems neutral, sparking anger among locals. Okay. There it is. Already in talks with hotels. Minister refuses to rule out closing borders to foreigners all together. There's a lot of caps in here.

Damiano:
Eight out of 10.

Aidan:
Ethnic minorities, we're up to 50% more likely to die from COVID at peak of first wave from white Britain study fines. I mean, that's a negative thing for sure.

Damiano:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's kept capturing the negative attention, right? Because it's scaremongering, basically. It's trying to, yeah. So it's nine out of 10. Last one. Does this save the category? No? You're laughing already.

Aidan:
It's just another mess. Heathrow travellers blast plans to force all UK arrivals to quarantine at hotels for 10 days. They still face hour-long queues to share negative COVID test paperwork. So that's a 10 out of 10 for negative right there.

Damiano:
10 out of 10 negative.

Aidan:
That's one newspaper.

Damiano:
I lost actually my bet.

Aidan:
So, that little game was to prove a point that overall, newspapers and most media we consume is very negative.

Damiano:
Indeed.

Aidan:
Because it ignites those parts of our brain that elicits an emotional reaction. I may say, "Oh, that's terrible. Oh, I can't believe that." Because people get paid for clicks. People get paid for newspapers sold.

Damiano:
And this is such an important mindset that we have to adopt now when it comes to consuming media because we believe that we are reading news because we are supposed to be informed. The truth is 90% of what we see is designed to trigger analytics, marketing analytics, sales figures. Their editors will show the investors and show their shareholders.

Aidan:
Absolutely, yeah. Without, touching on the general political landscape at the moment. And we all know our friends' algorithms and how they create echo chambers. But the key point I want to talk about is how to try and limit that because I realized thanks to Tim Ferris is the first person I heard about it from is how to help to limit this level of kind of exposure.

Aidan:
And there's something that he has, which is called a low information diet. And this has been really powerful for me for the past, I think I started five years ago, which is I removed all bookmarks to newspaper websites, anything like that. Reduce the amount of stuff that I follow on social media by just going through and going either unfollow, unlike, whatever.

Damiano:
Can I ask a question? Sorry, In case somebody maybe doesn't know Tim Ferris. Do you want to maybe introduce him in two words?

Aidan:
Two words, Tim Ferris? Human Guinea pig? Human Guinea pig, I think is what he used for his one sentence sales pitch. Yeah, for a long time, he's got a very, very excellent podcast and tries out all sorts of things to be more productive, to be happier, mindful, et cetera. Interviews some really awesome people so Tim, if you want to come on the podcast there's your free advertising spot.

Aidan:
Yeah. But I tried this out and it's been great. It's also been interesting because I chat about with family quite a lot and they go, "But you need to be informed. You need to know what's going on at all times." Do you though? Do you really need stay informed about everything all the time? Because there's a balance. I'm not sticking my head in the sand. I'm just not checking every day, every five minutes. The kind of mantra that I go for is if it's not important and it doesn't affect me, I won't find out about it, and that's okay. Not stick my head in the sand. What I do is counteract this is. Well, like I said, if it doesn't affect me, I probably won't hear about it. If it does affect me, someone's going to mention it on an email or a group chat or a message to me and there we are, I'll find out, it will come to me. I don't have to go looking for it.

Aidan:
If I want to learn more about particular topics, say know what's happening in this country over here at the moment, I'll chat to friends that I know have a keen interest in this. And that already is a great source of delegation/outsourcing because am I going to be able to keep up to date with a completely unbiased understanding of what's happening in US politics and also environmental and also this and this, or do I just reach out to people who already consume all this media? Say for example, my old housemate, Jack who did law and politics. I can just reach out to him and be like, "Yo, what's happening here?" And rather than me going through all of this effort. Again, I'm lazy, but also I don't want to be bombarded by negative stuff all the time.

Aidan:
I can still know what's going on there, but also have time and more positive head space. And when I start the day, I'm not starting off with here are all the bad things that happen that you won't believe I can wake up. And this almost sounds selfish, but this is where it actually does become a self-care, a me focused mindset. I'm starting the day by going, "How can I look after myself? Rather than, "Oh, all these things about, oh, that's bad. Oh, I can't do anything about that," but I'm still taking on those feelings. And going, "How can I help me to feel good today to allow me to help others?"

Damiano:
That is brilliant. And I love in particular that you start with something that you can influence and can control, which is your actions towards yourself. The other question that I wanted to ask you is how long have you been practicing the low-information diet and what are the results that you've seen ever since?

Aidan:
I think I've been doing it for, I think five years. Started probably the second year of university. Like I said, it definitely helps me to have more space, to think about the things that I want/need to do. Our brains haven't really changed much in the past 10,000 years, 5,000 years. We're still biologically designed to go pick up some berries, eat the berries, chat to a maximum of 150 people because that's what Dunbar's number is in the maximum number of relationships we can really hold, but then we've got Twitter. And we've got like you say, a constant bombardment of information that is always there.

Aidan:
There's never been a day where there just hasn't been any news. I've never woken up and go, "Oh, I wonder what the news is today. Nothing happened. You good, carry on about your day. There's always going to be a new thing. It's always like, I don't know, like a soap opera, TV show, which is just always running. There's always going to be another thing.

Damiano:
Ever flowing.

Aidan:
Absolutely. And again, that doesn't mean cut it out completely, but trying to be mindful of that. Trying to restrict it until it's something that you actually want to view. Even if you think you're pretty stoic and mindful, there's only so much you can take of that constant, here's a negative thing. Here's what's going on. Here's what's going on. Here's what's going wrong. Probably that first part of the newspaper game probably wasn't very fun to listen to because it's all negative, negative, negative. It definitely wasn't fun to read through that page, but knowing that that's why I think it felt so intense right then because I don't regularly check it. That is at a low level what we do feel. We may not be conscious of it. If we're conscious and we read a thing and went, "That makes me sad." And your brain goes, "We should stop doing that because there's nothing we can actionably do about that."

Aidan:
But it doesn't, it goes, "Oh, no, that's bad." Scroll. What's the next thing? Exactly. And we talked a bit in the last episode about how I definitely suffer from the infinite scroll and not being able to get off stuff when I get on it.

Damiano:
I raise my hand as well.

Aidan:
Yeah, as much as we try to be mindful, it's always going to be a struggle. Yeah, just trying it out for like a week is a really nice way to start, especially when so much tense stuff is going on right now. Ask a friend to tell you if anything really major that I need to do anything about comes up. Like, I don't know, if I need to evacuate the country, probably let me know. But again, you'll probably hear about that.

Damiano:
Yeah. When you were saying this being mindful because this is really like a word that comes forward on and on and on when we talk, which I love. I think it's one of the key words of our show in general. What I realize is that I make no mystery that I'm slightly addicted to using my phone, infinite scrolling. I tell myself that I'm doing really important things when I'm using my phone. I'm really keeping myself informed, and this is brilliant. I am so smart. I love this. I should always be doing this. And it's a very easy trigger to click because of the dopamine, every time, every time. I have to be honest, for me doing the completely unsubscribed to everything or just stop using, reading Twitter and Reddit all together will be really, really difficult.

Aidan:
Oh, God. I can't do that.

Damiano:
I mean, right, because the addiction is there, of course. The filter that I'm to implement for myself is to be the most cynical marketing person I can.

Aidan:
Okay.

Damiano:
Because if I put my marketing glasses on and I look at my timeline, I start seeing dollar signs when I see things that are clearly targeted towards promotions. And I found that for me using this sort of marketing glasses when I'm reading content, keeping in the back of my mind that there is a social media team, probably a paid team, helps me be very, very critical of the content. It acts like a buffer between me and the emotional response to the content because I look at it from almost "a professional standpoint" where I rate more of the marketing efforts rather than necessarily immediately the content provided that this doesn't work 100% of the time, of course.

Damiano:
The other thing that I've started to do, and I wanted to ask you if it's similar for you, that I tend to follow more like, I guess, projects is how I would call it rather than news specifically. For instance, in the last couple of months, I've been following a project for a markdown editor that I'm using now for the podcast to take notes. And I've been learning a little bit about markdown. So I'm trying to follow now people that are interested in that. A friend of mine is working on eco-sustainable machine learning, for example, algorithms. And I've been trying to catch up. It's a huge topic, but I've tried to catch up a little bit. And what I found is that this opens different bubbles. So, it's not the bubble of the political discourse or the celebrities or whatever.

Aidan:
Eco chamber, kind of.

Damiano:
Exactly, right. It is a slightly different eco chambers that talks about different topics that frankly are less emotionally charged, like battery technology. How is the battery technology evolving and how could this influence the electrification for the future when it comes to manufacturing, transportation, and so on? It's an interesting topic. I must be honest. I don't feel rage or I don't feel absolute joy and happiness when I read these kind of things. But I found that creating these alternative bubbles relieves some of the stress. Did you have a similar effect when you did this?

Aidan:
Yeah, absolutely. And I've got another game I'm going to play in a sec. First of all, I really liked that. That kind of helps to explain it. When you were saying you're approaching advertisements articles that you're seeing with that kind of marketing mindset. That's really interesting because you're pulling away from the emotional standpoint. You're pulling your brain towards that. Okay, very logical. Why am I looking at this? Why am I viewing this? What do I want from this? Which is really powerful because then it's that added a little bit of higher level mindful thinking, which means you go, "Do I actually want this?"

Aidan:
I've got a side tangent of how I like to occasionally visit websites, which I would never usually visit just to mess up people's targeted ads and stuff just a little bit more. I got onto Instagram pretty late. Okay. I'm going to walk you through your first of all, because this is relevant to last week's episode. For me to open Instagram I am required to do this. Swipe up, swipe to the right, confirm my password to get into my hidden space. I then have to swipe down from the top, scroll all the way to the bottom, turn off focus mode. That disables set and enable break. So, I'm going to then click, take a break then click 15 minutes. Then go back onto that list, swipe up, password or finger. And now I'm looking at my Instagram timeline.

Damiano:
That's like 37 clicks.

Aidan:
But I can do it all really fast, which is the problem. But the important thing is it's giving me steps to go, "Wait, do I really want to do this? It's at work." I will talk through what's on my timeline right now. So, used to be very not fun politics, try to be more of a ruthless. So I've got a picture of a friend, talking about mental health. Nice. My auntie, oh, they've got a mouse that's broken into the house. That's fine. A sponsored ad for dogs. I love that. I'll ask to sponsor that for my friend who is now running their own dog thing, that's fun. My old housemate, just some nice pictures. Football, acapella, love that. A fun wholesome webcomic, ADHD, another picture of a dog. I try to be rigorous and go. If I see a page that doesn't make me feel good, then I'll go eh, go away. Because I want this to be a space where I can connect with my friends.

Aidan:
This is kind of the crux of it, which is what is the goal behind going onto a thing? For me, Instagram, I want to have things that make me laugh, that make me happy, ways to keep in touch with my friends or weird stuff like ADHD, mental health, from that positive view. I want to be able to learn, but in a nice creative way, which isn't just, here's a bunch of articles, which is better than endless scroll through negative stuff.

Damiano:
Absolutely.

Aidan:
Phone addiction is kind of separate here, but I'd much rather be infinitely scrolling through stuff that brings me a little burst of joy than something which doesn't. So what does... I'm now intrigued? What does your Instagram look like?

Damiano:
Well, I have to be honest. I really like what you were saying here because I've not been as rigorous as you are. To be honest, I've not been as mindful as you are. Now that you've told me this, I will definitely spend probably the next couple of days going through my Instagram feed. But I use Instagram mostly for photography inspiration.

Aidan:
Oh, fantastic.

Damiano:
So I would say 90% of my Instagram is either food photography or portrait/fashion photography. Not because I am a great food photographer, fashion photographer. It's just because it's a visual cue that gives me a lot of happiness. When I have this, sometimes it happens that I say, "Oh, look at this, the light on this portrait is gorgeous. Maybe I can try to do this. And it gives me an idea on something that I could try one day.

Damiano:
So 90% is really about photography. And I think the remaining 10%, I have maybe like 1% of people that I actually know to be honest, very little though, because I don't usually read the descriptions on Instagram. I am sorry, but it just doesn't work for me.

Aidan:
No, that's fine.

Damiano:
And the remaining 10% is a mix of interior design, which I also find very calming from a feng shui place.

Aidan:
Very nice.

Damiano:
And funny comics like The Oatmeal. There is any Italian guy called Instasio, does hilarious illustrations as well. As you said, it's this moment of, for me, it has to be either something artistic that makes me say, "Wow, this is really beauty." Like, look at the colour correction with this picture. I love this. I want to try this. Or it has to be something that makes me kind of smile. If it's neither of the two, like you said, I've started to be quite drastic in saying, "Sorry. You're out of my timeline now."

Aidan:
I like that. So you saying that you didn't really go through monitor, check, but for Instagram at the very least, does it do what you want it to do? Does it match the goal regardless of tech addiction and infinite scrolling?

Damiano:
Yes, absolutely. Instagram is I think for photographers is a bit of a curse at times because there is this like a hyper competitive way of using Instagram where I actually spoke about this with a lot of my colleagues because I think the feeling on Instagram is you have such a high level of quality. You have the best photographers posting amazing things. It makes us feel, I guess, very self-conscious. It's very easy to fall into the imposter syndrome. And I think if that's the case, that's the day I would unplug Instagram. If I start to feel that way because that is a very negative feedback.

Aidan:
I think, I think it's interesting I think you say about how hyper-competitive Instagram is. I can definitely say, especially for Instagram photography, but I'd argue that kind of like that with everything because back in the day it's easy to be the best photographer in a village, in a town. It's difficult to be the best in the world, but you don't necessarily in ye olden times you don't get to compare yourself to everyone else. But right now it's impossible not to compare yourself to-

Damiano:
Very good point.

Aidan:
... to every other person out there. So I think that's another really important thing to do is ask... One of my favorite things is a thing called the five whys, which is where you ask the question why five times. So for example, I want to learn more about politics. Why? Because I want to know how to vote and what changes I need to make in my life. Why? Because I want the best for the people around me, people and community and wider globe as a whole to feel good. Why? Because I care about other people's wellbeing.

Aidan:
And once you keep going down, you eventually got to a point where you're like, "Okay, does this goal of, I care about people's wellbeing and wants to do better for them? Am I going to achieve that by reading this article that's got lots of capital letters and exclamation marks?" Maybe not. And also does it make me feel good? No, it doesn't make me... Are there other things that I can do that would achieve this goal of helping other people without having to go through this? And once you get down that low, either you realize actually what I'm doing isn't matching that or yeah, it is, but there's a different way I could be doing that.

Damiano:
This is really nice. The five whys exercise.

Aidan:
Five whys. Yeah.

Damiano:
Well, people, you've heard it here first.

Aidan:
I did not invent that. No, no, no.

Damiano:
Let's not tell anyone.

Aidan:
I can remember where I first heard about that, but it's probably through Scrum or Agile. It's to do with a lot of the time when you're doing work in an IT project. I'm changing it from just pure HTML to unplug and react. In that, okay, why are you doing that? Because it makes it look better. And also it's easier to do. Okay. Why? Why do you want to make it easier to do and look better? Because if it looks better than people are more likely to use it and why do I want to make it easier? So it's less hassle for me to do in the long term. Okay. So, why'd you want to make it less hassle in the long term? And then you eventually go, "Okay, that makes sense to do that." But oftentimes you'll do that and you go, "I don't really know," or, "Because that person told me to." And when you get to that you're like, "Right. Should you really be doing that?" It's like, "No, I probably shouldn't." And that's really good.

Damiano:
That's brilliant.

Aidan:
Yeah. It was a whole thing about sunk cost fallacy and I'm like, "But I already started it ." knowing when to say no and get rid of it is really powerful.

Damiano:
And this, ladies and gentlemen was our connection to the, I guess, dev environment that these are the things that we do here at Brainstorm. We are just like that. We are just like that. Actually, we are basically at the end of the episode. So, do we want to maybe-

Aidan:
It's gone so quickly.

Damiano:
... recap quickly what we were talking about?

Aidan:
Absolutely. So-

Damiano:
Definitely the five why's. I think it's brilliant, unexpected, and fantastic. So I'm going to use this definitely.

Aidan:
Fantastic. I'll scribble that one down so that I remember to put that in the show notes. Just to talk a bit about how newspapers and articles and information in media in general tends to be negative and sensationalized often disguised as, "Oh, you're going to be a good informed citizen if you read this. And how we can't solve everything, so trying to do that all the time is only going to make us feel worse. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ever learn about anything and stay deliberately ignorant, of course not. But there are easier ways to do this. Try and find people or reliable sources of information that you can check at your own pace, asking yourself, "What do I really want from this? And is this actually a positive thing?"

Damiano:
That's really good.

Aidan:
There's a great newspaper in the UK, I think they're also on Instagram called The Happy News by Emily Coxhead. This was basically built on this principle. It's just a paper or online account, which just talks about the happy stuff in the world and focuses on gratitude. And again, not to deliberately go, "Oh, nothing's wrong." But here's the thing, how Tasmanian devils returned to mainland Australia after 3000 years, after a 10 year breeding. Every single one of these things I look at I go, "Oh, that's great. I didn't know about that. Oh, that's great. I didn't know about that."

Damiano:
So glad to hear, so glad to hear.

Aidan:
Yeah.

Damiano:
That is wonderful. That is wonderful. And it goes very well as well with the low-information diet that you mentioned by Tim Ferris, of course. And also like the general umbrella that we started from the emotional hygiene for which we will link the video to the TED Talk. I would really think everybody benefits by watch. It's a very nice video. It's a feel good video, but also is a very insightful video. So hopefully there are a few strategies. Here in Brainstorm Squared, we're really trying to get some actions at the end of the day that you can try to apply. So if you do, please do let us know. Let us know if it works. If it doesn't, if you have other ideas, we'd love to hear from you. And as always it's okay-

Aidan:
It's okay, not to be okay.

Damiano:
... not to be okay.

Aidan:
Have a good day everyone.

Damiano:
Have a great day, bye.

Aidan:
Yeah.

Damiano:
And a three, and a two, and a one, and done.