Willpower is most ineffective when we need it most.
Today, we have a guest—the first ever—Keira Menon. She not only gives you her version of willpower but also tells you how she went about recording this podcast. This a fun listen so don't miss it.
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Note: (This is an unedited transcript)
There are about 450 episodes, maybe a little bit more, and you probably not heard another voice on this podcast.
And that's because we don't do interviews and we don't have any guests. Well, we didn't have any guests until now. But it was the school holidays, and my niece, Keira decided to do some audio with me. And if you're thinking, oh no, he's going to run some weird stuff just because it's his family. This is delightful. You heard the episode on Willpower?
Well, what Keira is going to do is she's going to run her own take on it. She listened to some of the podcasts, so there's some overlap, but notice how the same information, when brought across by another voice, is just so much different, and this applies to everything that we do. All the information that we have today somebody has already covered in some sort of way.
But it's your voice that matters, and I've said this before on another podcast. But now you get to hear almost the same information, and it comes from a different voice. And then there's a little treat: Keira goes on to tell you how she went about it.
She's gonna talk about technology. She didn't know when she walked into the room this morning what was going to happen. So everything's pretty fresh everything's brand new, and the way she explains it is really cool. So stick with us as she explains about willpower, same information, different voice, and then how she went about doing it. I think you'll like this episode. And if you do, let me know. So we can bring her back in the studio.
Let's talk about willpower.
Will people tend to do is that they want to apply willpower to everything. everything, but in reality it's very easy to run out of willpower. Instead of willpower, what can we use? Benchmarks. Benchmarks rather than willpower are an ideal way to reach almost all your goals.
Willpower asks you to make a decision. Benchmarks are a number. Say you want to eat cake using benchmarks you can go. Well, I want to eat two cakes for this whole week What is it two cakes? No two pieces of cake. Please don't eat two cakes.
That's a bit unhealthy. Okay, anyway You want to eat two pieces slices whatever you call it of cake a week with benchmarks You just go, you eat one, and then the for the rest of the week, you go, you eat another one and that's it you're damn You're done. It's finished.
And if you eat both in one day, well, no cake for the rest of the week. So that's just a number, right? So if instead you decide not to use benchmarks in use willpower, then you always have that decision kind of weighing on you like, “Oh, do I eat cake? Do I not eat cake? What do I do?” (upbeat music)
Let's take another example, like walking.
If you're going for a walk, it should be done every day, so you don't have to make that decision. You'll find people who go on a walk, do so based on their benchmark. That benchmark could be something like, if it's not raining when I leave the house, I'll go for the walk. Now you're not necessarily making that decision.
Decision making is so tiring almost all the time. But if you have a number, you don't have to make that decision. There's also another way of getting things done. And that's having a mantra or something, you say to yourself, “Here's a good one.” Yeah, I found it on Google.
It goes like this. If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission. That means a person would not have to constantly burn energy, wondering if they get permission. Instead, they can do something as long as it's not illegal or heading someone. That alone, takes away the need for decision making. Or, as Nike says, “Just do it.”
The more decision making you have to do, the more stress you'll be in life. if you're feeling stressed, then you're using a lot of willpower. Instead, have a benchmark or better still a mantra. Okay, where's my edamame? Edamame means I'm chairman and what should we call ourselves?
This is edamame productions. Mine won. Thank you, I'm good night. You can put credit to checking over there or something. Are you still recording? Shwani! Ed and mommy production doesn't stop there. She goes on. And now she's going to tell you how she went about it so that you too can do something similar.
If you're doing a podcast or even if you've never tried to podcast before. Okay, so what did I learn first about how to speak when you're doing a podcast? One point for you. Um, you don't say um um no. But you can learn to not say um and you can also cut it out if you do end up saying them. Like I do all the time. Um um um um See, there you guys, just today.
Over time you can learn not to say um, but while you just start, you can always cut it out. Here's the way you stop saying um, you just take a break while you have it to think and then like an um and no one notices that you stop. So you can you notice that I've stopped? No, you don't because it just, it's like a natural pause.
What we tend to do is to put all these words in one tweet because our brain is trying to access the information and that's why we have this um inside because I have no um in the sentence. So that's how you get rid of um. So instead of saying um you just pause. As I was saying you need to like um um no don't just don't say um by um.
The second thing I learned was about speed variation.
If you're speaking like this it's good to have process. We're not too many process because then it sounds like you don't know what you're saying. But then also not to speed it up very fast and don't make it sound boring. But you know, if you constantly just keep the same pace again and again, it sounds a bit boring, you kind of need a balance it out and have good process. But then don't sound like a robot because it just goes through someone's head and comes out the other side.
What you're actually creating is a factor of contrast. So when you go faster, but not too fast, but a little faster. Then you slow down a emphasis on something. Then you create this factor of contrast and contrast is what keeps the listeners attention all the time.
Even if you're just answering a question, you can go fast and then you can suddenly slow down a bit. Yeah, emphasize. But don't keep it all the same because then it sounds really boring. The other thing you can do is change the pitch of your voice. There's always a good difference between your soprano voice and your alto voice.
When you speak, you don't want it consistently just one pitch, one tone, yeah, one tone. You want it to change your tone once in a while, and when you're emphasizing on things that maybe are important. The other easy trick to do is just to stop recording and get out of the room for maybe 30 seconds and when you come back your tones changed.
Yeah. Hello, Edamame Beans. Can we get more Edamame Beans? It's just Edamame. It's not Edamame. Edamame is not a Focaccia bread. What's that? Exactly. It's Focaccia. I don't know. And it's not it's not chai-ti and it's not edamamebi. Non-Bred chai-ti. Okay, it's me again.
And now, Kiera gonna tell you how she went about creating this podcast.
It's a little confusing at first because she's still wrapping a head around something that she's just learned, but you'll get the hang of it. Non-Bred chai-ti. Anyway, what are the tools that you need or require to take kit from a transcription to maybe a phone and then record it as a podcast?
Like you know how on YouTube you can do those closed caption things? It's a smarter version of closed captions because closed captions gets nothing right, just putting it out there. Unless you edit it, it gets nothing right.
But this the software, it's called MacWisper, unlike closed captioning, it gets almost everything right. It gets normal, too. It's normal, normal, normal, normal. It gets it. So once you've got your transcription, you copy it and then you go to this thing called prompts want.
Prompts want basically takes your transcription. Everything that is now in text and makes it into a script. So when you play it, it detects everywhere that you say in the script. I'm using it right now. So when you go off script it pauses and it scrolls down every time it detects the word and it stops when you stop.
So the app knows that you can just go away for a bit and do some impromptu script so yeah impromptu, spree, spree, spree, spree, spree, speed shen then it comes back to the script so it creates that cool column chassis I just was now and yeah it didn't scroll When I said “Spreet” Anyway, the first time I used it, I thought it was timed.
But then I realized it stopped when I stopped speaking. And I was like, “Wow, that's really interesting.” Then I went back to the script and it's goalless and I was like, “Whoa!” If you were to follow a plane signal? Noooah! That was a plane going overhead.
I'm going to give you some instructions and we're going to go really slow.
Basically, what you do is you talk to Mac whisper and it will transcribe all your words. Then you cut it from there, you copy it and you can just paste it on your phone. And once you get it to your computer, then you can turn it on prompts mark and you've already pasted the text there.
So then you start reading and it scores automatically. And then you have your podcast, Flores. You don't always have to think about what you're saying. You just have it there. Ready for you. Awesome. Hello, Edamame beans.So before you came here today, did you know any of this stuff? Absolutely not. No, nothing. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Ah, no. I didn't know any of this. I was just, oh, sound is sound. Podcast is podcast. You recorded it. Perfect. I finished by. It's actually pretty hard and But once you get used to it, you know, it You know, it becomes easier and easier as you go along Yeah, pretty cool. I also learned that Edmame beans are actually really cool without so try it I mean Edmame oh my gosh non-verchite by I'm care manning Edmame out.
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