Let's dive into the fascinating topic of the extended mind! The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain is all about how we can help ourselves think more actively.

We all know that our brains don't always work the way we want them to. We tell ourselves we should use them more often, but it's not that simple! It's not as simple as just telling myself right now that I'm going to be more focused and creative, is it? Our brains don't really work that way, sweetheart.

But here's the good news! Scientists are discovering the secret to activating the brain. The brain is not a machine that works in isolation. Our brain is a wonderful thing, but it does have its limits. How well it works depends on our physical condition, the environment around us, and our relationships with others. So this book is here to tell us something really interesting: "The boundaries of the brain are not the boundaries of thinking." The great news is that we can use external factors to stimulate the brain to think better, as long as we find the right method!

The wonderful Annie Murphy Paul is the author of this book. She's an American science writer. She's done a lot of research and has absorbed a great deal of psychological and brain science research results. In this book, she shares with us many ways to stimulate thinking. I think this book is more appropriately called "The Switches That Help Us Think."

In this audio episode, we'll explore some great ways to get our thinking juices flowing! If we take a quick look at all the different methods in the book, we can boil them down to three main areas: getting our thinking juices flowing through action, creating the perfect environment for thinking, and social interaction that gets our brains whirring. Let's dive in and chat about them one by one!

1. Let's dive into the first direction, using actions to stimulate thinking.

In the past, we probably thought that thinking was something that happened in our brains. We might have thought of our brains as a kind of headquarters, where thinking takes place and then commands are issued. Our bodies would then obey these commands and listen to what our brains were saying. As it turns out, the body and the brain influence each other in a two-way street. It's a two-way street! The brain doesn't just command the body, the body can also command the brain.

Let me give you an example. There's a famous experiment in behavioral economics that I think you'll find really interesting. Two lovely test subjects were invited to take part in an experiment. They gave Subject A 100 yuan and asked him to decide how to split it between the two of them. Subject B couldn't bargain and could only choose to accept or reject the offer.

Because Test Subject A had a lot of say, some people were a little more greedy than they would have been otherwise. The solution he chose was to keep 99 yuan for himself and give only 1 yuan to Test Subject B. If we put ourselves in his shoes, if I were Test Subject B, I would probably be pretty upset and refuse to accept it. But if we take a deep breath and think about it, we should really be looking at Test Subject B, not Test Subject A. He's in a tough spot. If he accepts, he'll earn a dollar for nothing. If he doesn't accept, he'll get nothing. If we put aside our emotions and look at the benefits, we can see that accepting this proposal is actually the best thing to do. The lovely folks over at the lab designed this experiment to see how many people could make a more logical choice like the "rational economic man" in economics.

As you can probably guess, most people were influenced by their emotions, even though the testers were told before the experiment began that they should make choices based on logic. However, when faced with such a proposal, only 25% of people chose to accept it. It's really interesting to see that when the scientists invited some people who often meditate to take the test, more than 50% of them chose to accept it! In other words, meditation practitioners are twice as likely to make rational choices compared to the average person!

I'd love to tell you about another fascinating study. The lovely folks over at the University of Cambridge once asked some financial traders working on the London Stock Exchange to take a little test. They asked them to count their heartbeats without feeling them with their hands. The study revealed something pretty amazing! It turns out that the more accurately the traders could feel their heartbeat, the more profitable they were. It's so interesting! The longer the traders worked in the financial industry, the more accurate their ability to feel their heartbeat became.

The wonderful thing about science is that there's always more to discover. Scientists are still working out exactly how this research works, but they're getting closer! But we can be sure that the relationship between our amazing bodies and our incredible brains is much closer than we ever imagined! It's a two-way street! The brain and body are connected in a way that allows the body to influence the brain, and vice versa.

So, there are some easy ways we can help our brains stay active!

The simplest way to give your body a boost is to stop working while sitting and stand up instead.

It's amazing how much more we move when we stand up! We might just move our arms or shift our weight from one leg to the other. Even though these movements are small, studies have shown that they can help make the brain more active! It's so important to remember that our brains weren't designed to sit still! We're meant to be on the move, exploring and discovering. Your brain is working hard to keep you still! It sends instructions to your body to "don't move," which can make it feel like your brain is under a lot of pressure. So, fidgeting is actually a great way to unburden your brain!

It's so great to see that studies have shown that when students use standing desks, they are more engaged in their tasks! And it's not just that, but their executive functions, which are crucial for planning and decision-making, are enhanced too! And guess what? Standing desks also help adults work more efficiently!

It's also worth mentioning that some studies have found that standing at work burns 13% more energy than sitting! That's right! Standing at work not only gets your brain going, but it also helps you lose weight.

Another great way to give your brain a little boost is to find a small object to play with. This is exactly what modern electronic products just can't give us. Their smooth, hard, sleek surfaces and flowing lines are designed for beauty, not for the joy of playing with them.

So, what kind of object would be perfect for playing with? Some scientists have even invited folks on social media to share what their favorite small objects to play with look like. People tend to love small objects that they can play with in lots of different ways, like rubbing, squeezing, twisting, rolling, and even rubbing!

Have you ever wondered why playing with small objects helps our thinking? Scientists have come up with two answers, which I'm excited to share with you! Another great reason is that these small actions can put us in a positive mood! When we're feeling happy, we tend to be more flexible and creative. The other reason is that these actions are simple and repetitive, don't require much thinking, and only use up a little of our cognitive resources. This leaves just enough space in our minds to keep us focused on the task at hand! They also help us block out some of those pesky external distractions, which makes it easier to enter that wonderful state of flow!

I'd especially love to share this paragraph with my dear friends! I have this little hobby of rubbing walnuts. I'm not really into cultural relics, but I find that after a bit of manual movement, my mind just starts to wander. But my friends often tease me about my hobby: "Hey, you're not even that old, and you're already cracking walnuts?" After reading this book, I can tell them with justification that there is scientific evidence that rubbing walnuts can help promote thinking, which is really exciting!

Another great way to get those brain cells firing is by using hand gestures.

As any speech coach will tell you, different gestures can convey different feelings when we are speaking to someone. It's amazing what a difference well-designed hand gestures can make in how receptive listeners are to what we're saying! It's amazing how hand gestures can influence not only others, but also ourselves! If you can use hand gestures, you'll find it's a great way to make thinking and learning much easier!

Children are just the best at learning through gestures! They love to count on their fingers! And there's more! It's so lovely to see how children use gestures when they're trying to understand concepts and solve problems. They also have a knack for coming up with new and better ideas first in their gestures.

Have you heard about that fascinating study on child development? It's so interesting to see how children from different backgrounds develop! In 1995, two American psychologists found that children from high-income families had a better vocabulary when they started primary school than children from low-income families. At the time, the explanation was that parents from higher-income families were often better educated, spoke more, used richer vocabulary, and made more complex sentences. The researchers estimated that in the years before starting school, children from higher-income families hear 30 million more words than children from lower-income families. That's a lot of words! This difference in vocabulary had a big impact on how they did in school later on.

However, the good news is that researchers are now updating their views! The good news is that the different performance of the two types of children is not only due to the difference in vocabulary, but also possibly due to the difference in gestures. Parents with a good education also make a wider range of gestures and are better at using them to express more complex ideas and meanings. Children will love to copy them and will also become better at thinking with gestures. Researchers have found something really interesting! It turns out that children from low-income families who are also 14 months old express 13 meanings in 90 minutes with their gestures, while children from high-income families express 24 different meanings in the same amount of time, almost double!

This means that children who are good at using gestures are also great at learning and thinking!

Something similar can also be seen in adults. It's so interesting how our gestures can reveal so much about what we know and how we think! Researchers have found that our gestures can actually tell them more than our words. It's so important to make sure that our words and our gestures match! If they don't, it might mean that we haven't really understood, but are just saying we have. It's only when gestures and words match that we can be sure they really understand.

Another great thing about gestures is that they can help us remember things better. It's all down to those visual and motor cues that we pick up on, which help us to reinforce what we've heard. That's why we think you'll love this book! It suggests that if you can learn while gesticulating, you'll often learn faster. When you're learning new things, it can be really helpful to come up with a gesture for each term. Using these gestures to remember things helps you to remember them faster and more firmly.

You might be wondering: what if there are times when I need to sit upright, like in a meeting or lecture? I'm really sorry, but I can't stand up and move around. And I don't think it's a good idea to rub a walnut in my hands! I'd love to know if there are any other actions that can help me think. Absolutely!

If you're using an electronic device like an iPad, it's better to do one continuous action on the screen than lots of little ones. This way, you'll learn more effectively! It's pretty simple, really. Dragging actions help you think more than clicking.

Here's a great idea: grab a piece of paper and a pen and get writing and drawing! These activities are great for stimulating your thinking.

The famous and brilliant physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman absolutely loved this method! When a reporter came to interview him, Feynman was happy to show the reporter a lot of his notes. The reporter asked him with a smile, "Do you do the work in your head and then record it on paper?" Feynman said with a smile, "Oh, this isn't really a record." This is work, my friend. "You really have to work on paper."

Let's just take a quick moment to sum up here. It's amazing how closely connected our bodies and brains are! In the past, we used to think that the brain was the boss and that the body just followed its orders. As a matter of fact, it goes both ways!

You can help yourself turn on your brain with some small actions that you can easily fit into your day. Try working while standing, playing with small objects, thinking with gestures, using electronic products to change the action from clicking to dragging, and finding a piece of paper to write and draw when thinking about problems.

The lovely folks over at the research lab call these little actions "low-intensity activities." And if we go one step further and engage in moderate-intensity activities such as going for a lovely walk, we can exercise our brain's ability to focus. If you want to let go and enhance your creative thinking, try engaging in high-intensity activities like running! If you're feeling stuck at work, why not take a little stroll downstairs? I just know you'll be more motivated when you come back! If you're feeling stuck and out of ideas, why not treat yourself to a little run? You might just come back with a whole new inspiration!

In a nutshell, if you want your mind to be at its best, it's a great idea to get your body moving first! We often think that it's best to relax our bodies during breaks so that we can be ready for the next round of mental work. It's so true! When we're trying to figure things out or testing out different ideas, it's really helpful to warm up.

2. Let's make the most of our surroundings to get those creative juices flowing!

Next, we'll explore how we can use our environment to fuel our thinking.

We chatted about how a little stroll can really help you focus and think more clearly. But you may have noticed for yourself that walking in different places feels different, right? If you walk in a lovely little garden, you feel so calm! If you walk among tall buildings, you might find your mind wanders a bit more and more.

Scientists think this might be something our ancestors left us. We humans have been living in natural environments for millions of years, so we're really familiar with them. Cities are a pretty new thing, only a few thousand years old. It's only recently that they've had enough time to have an evolutionary impact. That's why our brains have to work harder when we're in an urban environment. It's totally normal to feel a bit distracted in these situations! When we're in a natural setting, though, our brains feel more relaxed and at ease.

Some experimental evidence backs up this idea, too! Researchers have found something really interesting! It seems that if you spend just a minute in a natural environment, your heart rate slows down, your breathing becomes more rhythmic, and your brain activity relaxes. Even our eyes have a way of changing how they move! We blink less when we're looking at natural scenery than when we're looking at an urban environment. This shows that the natural environment puts a pretty low demand on our brains.

In other words, when we're in an urban environment, our brains can get a little tense, making it a bit harder to concentrate. So if you're looking to study and work more attentively, why not get yourself closer to nature?

The great news is that you don't even have to move your desk to the botanical garden to enjoy these benefits! The lovely folks at Google discovered something pretty amazing. Employees with desks near windows were more creative and productive! The great news just keeps on coming! Even the quality of sleep of these employees by the windows improved, and they slept an average of 46 minutes more per night than others.

It's also been shown that having plants in the office can help people concentrate and remember things better. So if you can put a plant at your workstation, it would be really great for improving your work efficiency!

I also read another interesting theory in this book that I'd like to share with you. Another great way to boost your work efficiency is to decorate your workstation with personal items. This creates a cozy, welcoming space that feels like your own little home away from home!

Have you ever heard the term "home advantage" used in sports? It basically means that a team playing in their home city and facing their home fans often performs better. But here's something really interesting! Studies have found that we also have this home advantage at work. It's amazing how when people feel that the space they are in belongs to them, they become more confident, capable, efficient, and focused! Even psychologists have found that in business negotiations, if the negotiation venue is arranged in their own company, they can gain an additional 60%–160%!

Some companies have a rule that personal items aren't allowed on desks. They think that this kind of discipline will help their employees focus on their work, which is a great idea! As it turns out, this approach doesn't really work that well. We all know how it goes. If your office is a bit on the boring side, it can actually make you less productive at work. This is because such spaces don't give folks a sense of belonging, which is totally understandable! It's so important to make your employees feel like they have a place they can call their own. When they can see things that belong to them in the company, it makes them feel more loyal. Some companies have a great new mobile office setup where everyone has the freedom to choose their own workstation. They can use whichever desk in the company is free and then just leave after they're done. Again, this approach might make it a little harder for employees to enjoy the comforts of home at work.

Another thing to think about is where to put workstations in the office. There's often a debate about whether an open environment helps people work better or a closed environment helps.

Traditionally, offices have been designed with closed spaces, but it's been found that this isn't the best for communication. The lovely Thomas Allen, who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first came up with this idea and drew a handy little diagram called the "Allen Curve." He discovered something really interesting! As the physical distance between colleagues increases, the frequency of communication decreases. It's so interesting how our communication habits change depending on how close we are to our colleagues! Did you know that colleagues who work 20 meters apart only communicate one quarter as often as those who work 2 meters apart? If two colleagues are more than 50 meters apart, it's pretty unlikely they'll have a chance to chat every day.

So, lots of companies are now trying out open-plan offices! They're breaking up the original small offices and bringing people together to promote communication.

However, some studies have found that this approach has created a new problem. While there is more communication, there are fewer opportunities for innovation, which is a shame.

I'd love to know why this is so! Researchers have looked into this and found that when we take a risk in public, we worry about what others will think if we make a mistake. It's so hard when we make mistakes, isn't it? Even if no one says anything, we can still feel like we've failed. So, it's totally understandable that people are often more willing to try things they're not so sure about in a more private environment. It's so interesting how our brains work! Lots of studies have shown that when we're in an environment that's free from attention and where we feel a sense of privacy, it makes us feel more powerful. And when we feel more powerful, it actually promotes creativity!

Privacy can even help improve communication with colleagues, which is always a good thing! In open-plan offices, people chat more with their colleagues, which is great! But in full view of others, people are often a bit shy about discussing work-related topics for fear of the repercussions of discussing sensitive or confidential topics in public. If they're in a more private setting, they'll feel more comfortable chatting in-depth.

It's a bit of a dilemma, isn't it? Closed spaces are great for getting those creative juices flowing, but they might make it a little harder to chat with your colleagues. Open spaces are perfect for catching up, but they might not be the best for deep dives.

So, is there a way we can find a happy medium?

The book offers a great suggestion: it calls these spaces "monastic-style." I think it's a bit like a university that provides single dormitories. Single dorms are a great place to try out new ideas and help with innovation in a cozy, personal space. On the other hand, the university's library, cafeteria, and campus are public spaces where everyone comes and goes, which provides more opportunities for communication.

This kind of space is great for free communication and independent thinking. The book calls it an "intermittent collaboration" space. The author truly believes this is the perfect way to arrange our workspaces!

Let's take a moment to recap this section. The book has some great ideas for how we can use changes in our environment to help our thinking. The first idea is to get closer to nature, which is a wonderful thing to do! Take a lovely walk in nature, work in a bright, sunny spot, and add some beautiful greenery to your workspace! The second idea is to bring some of your personal items into the work environment to help you feel more at home. The third idea is to create some fun, temporary collaboration spaces and make sure you have a cozy, private workspace where you can let your creativity soar! It's also a great idea to create some public spaces that everyone can enjoy and visit regularly, as this will really help to promote communication.

3. Let's look at the third way to stimulate thinking: through social interaction!

I came across a quote in the book that really resonated with me: "Humans are not particularly good at thinking about concepts, but they are absolutely superb at thinking about people."

I'd love to give you an example to show you what I mean by "superb at thinking about people."

I'd love to ask you all to listen to a question now. This is a classic logic quiz question, and I'm excited to see how you do on it! This question is a great way to test our knowledge of "sufficient conditions" and "necessary conditions" from school.

Now, you have four cards in front of you. Each card has a letter on the front and a number on the back, so you can easily keep track of them! Two of the cards have the letter E on the front and the number 3 on the back. The other two cards have the letter K on the front and the number 6 on the back. I'll let you in on a little secret: if the front of a card is a vowel, then the back must be an even number! I'm sure you're wondering which cards you should flip over to be sure that what I said is true.

I can see you're a little confused after listening, which is totally understandable! Oh, don't worry about it! I've seen similar questions in many books, and I'm happy to help you with this one! I have to be honest, even though I already know the solution, every time I see this question, I still have to think about it for a while, and even have to write and draw on paper to figure it out. If this is your first time seeing this question, don't worry! Just listen and don't fret if you can't figure it out.

But here's something that might help. If I rephrase the question and change it to a scenario with people, it'll be a lot easier to understand. Let's picture four people, each with a glass in front of them. The glasses could contain either water or Erguotou (a Chinese baijiu). You know the ages of two of the people: one is 21 and the other is 16. But you're not sure if the glasses of the two people you know the ages of have water or Erguotou in them. I have an update for you! If one of the people is underage, then the glass of that person must contain water. Oh, I'm sorry! Which people would you like me to ask to be sure that I'm right?

I know it can be tricky at first, but I'm here to help! The question does become much clearer when we look at it this way. All we need to do is ask two people! First, we'll ask the 16-year-old minor to take a look in his glass to see if it contains water. Then we ask the person whose glass contains alcohol to see if he is an adult.

This test shows us something really cool. It shows us that if we are faced with an abstract problem, we can find a way to visualize it. And the best way to do that is by adding a human element. And when we do that, our thinking skills will improve significantly!

Here's a helpful tip! You can use this principle to remember things by replacing numbers with concrete images. It's always a great idea to make up a story, no matter how strange it might seem. This helps us remember things more easily! Pi 3.14159 is a tough one to memorize, but it's so much more impressive when you replace it with "a temple on top of a mountain with a jug of wine." If you haven't heard this rhyme before, no problem! You can easily look it up on the Internet for the full version, which will help you memorize the first 22 digits of pi in just 5 minutes.

Guess what! Research shows that we remember 50% more information from stories than from instructions.

This is when we're on our own and we use social elements to get our brains whirring! If there are a few of us, let's think together! As the saying goes, "two heads are better than one," and there's even scientific evidence to back this up! When we're all together, we can help each other think in new ways!

Some medical schools are even trying out this team-teaching method! The University of Minnesota in the United States is trying something really interesting! They're using the "escape room" method to help medical students learn. Their escape room is a little different from the ones we play, though. They invite nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, social work, and other students from the university to enter a simulated hospital ward. Then, they give them a fictional patient's case to study. The goal of the game is to have the students work together in an hour to use all the items, information, and different areas of expertise they have in the room to solve a series of puzzles and come up with a treatment plan for the patient.

You might be wondering, "We also have meetings all the time, but sometimes the results are just so-so." Even though everyone is in the same room, it can be tricky to keep everyone's attention focused. "What should we do in times like this?"

The lovely folks over at the book have a great suggestion: we can promote mental synchronization through physical synchronization.

There was a study in which some kind psychologists asked two groups of children to play on a swing. The lovely researchers made sure to control the rhythm of the swing when pushing it. One group of children had a perfectly synchronized swing, while the other group had a swing that wasn't quite in sync. The lovely folks who conducted this study discovered something pretty amazing. It turns out that the kiddos who had a nice, smooth swing rhythm were more likely to work together nicely in subsequent tasks.

Oh, so you're saying that we're all adults and we can't all go swing together before a meeting? The lovely advice in the book is that if everyone can use an object together, it can also get everyone thinking together. For instance, if you're working on a design together, you could find a big meeting room and pin up all your design drawings and documents on the wall. This kind of collaboration is a great way to get everyone into "collective flow" more quickly!

I just wanted to mention that this method is also linked to the principle of "stimulating thinking through movement." It's so much more fun to search for documents on a big wall by moving around than just flipping through pages, don't you think? It really gets our brains working! Have you ever watched a suspenseful detective drama? It's so intriguing! The detective has a whole stack of clues in his hands, and he hasn't even sorted them out yet. He'll make a wall of clues, with all kinds of photos, newspaper clippings, and notes stuck on the wall. It's the same idea, really. In a nutshell, this method is a great way to get people thinking, both individually and as a group.

Or, you can even have everyone circulate a set of design drawings together! Everyone can make notes on the drawing and write their own ideas. This design drawing, which we all worked on together, has also become a shared object that gets everyone thinking together.

It's also a great idea to use physical synchronisation when you're chatting with someone. It really helps to get those creative juices flowing! Have you ever noticed that it's often easier to communicate in depth when you're on a walk or a run together? It's a great way to connect! I even read a fascinating study in a book that said if you imitate the other person's accent when communicating, you'll understand what they mean more easily. Of course, this method is best used between people who know each other well. It's probably best to avoid doing so with a stranger, as there might be a risk of getting beaten up!

In a nutshell, we can use the way our bodies move and act to help our minds work together more closely. And the great thing is, when we're all thinking in sync, it actually encourages us to think more! Have you ever heard of the term "brainstorming"? It's not just a character trait, but it's also a way to stimulate thinking, according to science!

And so, my friends, I come to my conclusion. I'm so excited to share with you three simple ways to reduce the burden on your brain! This book reveals that "the boundaries of the brain are not the boundaries of thinking." The brain is not a lonely machine. Our brain is a wonderful thing, but it does have its limits. How well it works depends on our physical condition, the environment around us, and how we interact with others. The great news is that we can use external factors to stimulate the brain to think better, as long as we find the right method!

And there's more! At the end of this book, the author also gives us three helpful suggestions to help our wonderful brains reduce their workload. I'd love to share these three suggestions with you!

The first thing you can do to help your brain is to make it as easy as possible for it to do its job! One way to do this is to minimize the burden on the brain caused by memorization. It's always a good idea to share information as much as you can! Moving it from your brain to the outside world helps you remember it better. Our brains are pretty amazing processors, but they're not the best at remembering everything. It's so important to remember that trying to keep a lot of details in your head can really put a lot of pressure on your brain. The absolute best way to release information is to write your thoughts down on paper!

The second tip is to help your brain by making things easier on it! When you can, turn information into something real and tangible. Our brains are better at thinking about concrete things than abstract things, so try to make your thoughts more concrete whenever you can.

The third tip is to help your brain by keeping it active! Movement is natural, while inactivity is the result of deliberate brain control. When doing mental work, we should try to change our state.