Episode 11: Diet Information Overload Syndrome Part II — Better Living Through Meta-Thinking
Update: 2013-02-12
Description
Welcome back to Escape from Caloriegate! Today, we're going to leverage "meta-thinking" -- a.k.a. thinking about thinking -- to manage Diet Info Overload Syndrome.
- We typically use a combo of eight strategies to deal with info-overload:
- 1. We look to a diet and/or diet guru
- 2. We look to a diet "subcult"
- 3. We switch endlessly between diets.
- 4. We default to the CW
- 5. We do N=1 experiments.
- 6. We endlessly quest to find the answer.
- 7. We settle for good enough.
- 8. We say screw it.
- Today, we'll explore a ninth strategy: meta-thinking.
- What Is Meta-Thinking, and How Can It Help Us?
- "Metacognition... refers to higher order thinking, which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. "
- "become a four year old again and ask why, why, why?"
- Grounding Your Meta Thinking in Purpose, Values and a BHAG
- If you don’t know why you want to achieve a particular goal -- be it a goal for fat loss or whatever -- you will lose momentum. Why do you care about those last stubborn 20 pounds? Do you have an answer?
- When will you be off track? If you don’t articulate your values, you will get sidetracked, waste time, and endure extra frustration.
- Do you have a “BHAG” for your own quest for better health/wellness information? What is your dream, if you had no fear and no limits?
- 6 Meta-Thinking Tools That I Find Helpful
- Tool #1: Journaling.
- Journaling is a great tool to address this mental chatter -- to leverage our inner pessimist and inner dreamer to improve our lives and habits.
- "Journaling is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to accelerate your personal development"
- 10 Journaling Tips to Help You Heal, Grow and Thrive
- Tool #2: Theory of Constraints
- The elements of any process can be thought of as like links in a chain. As with any chain, there will always be a weakest link -- the least stable point where it breaks down. That point of collapse is known as the constraint.
- When you identify and deal with your constraints in any system -- a business system, a diet system, whatever -- you often get huge momentum with fractional effort.
- "We each have a ‘learning horizon,’ a breadth of vision in time and space within which we assess our effectiveness. When our actions have consequences beyond our learning horizon, it becomes impossible to learn from direct experience."
- Schefren's Entrepreneurial Emergency
- Strategy #3: The Pareto Principle
- This concept, also known as the 80-20 Rule, tells us that causes and effects in life are not evenly distributed.
- Could the sugar in our diet be 80% of the problem? Robert Lustig sure thinks so. Maybe he's right.
- Strategy #4: Parkinson's Law
- A British historian named Cyril Parkinson developed this concept -- which is famously shorthanded as “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” I love this Law and use it often to speed up projects in my life. Anyone who has ever procrastinated can benefit.
- Strategy #5: The 5 Whys
- "By repeatedly asking the question 'why'…you can peel away the layers of symptoms which can lead to the root cause of a problem"
- You start off wondering about your weight. Ultimately, you unearth a truism about who you are as a person and what drives you. Based on this insight, you can then address the fundamental problem -- In so doing, you might just fix the entire chain!
- Strategy #6: Low information diet
- Author Tim Ferriss popularized this concept in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, but it bears repeating, under-lining and highlighting.
- Albert Einstein, as always, said it best: “any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
- Low info "foods"
- Rich Schefren counsels his clients to always ask:
- 1. "What exactly do you want? The more specific you are about your goal, the easier it’ll be to reach it."
- 2. "What’s the absolute minimum necessary to have it?
- 3. “What’s the fastest and easiest way to get it?”
- I love those questions. Reflect on them and use them often!
- In several upcoming podcasts, we’ll dive deep into three beautiful, elegant and simple strategies to smash through diet information overload syndrome and regain clarity and control. They are:
- David Allen's Getting Things Done productivity system;<
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