Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 567 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, how to keep our brains sharp with Therese Huston. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. I’m overjoyed to be welcoming back to Teaching in Higher Ed, Dr. Therese Huston. She’s a cognitive neuroscientist and faculty development consultant at Seattle University, where she transforms good science into great practice. She was the founding director of the university’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and is now a consultant for Seattle University’s Center for Faculty Development.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:18]:

In her latest book, which we’ll be discussing today, Sharp: 14 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life with Brain Science, She delivers a treasure trove of neuroscience backed strategies to help readers think faster, focus better, and perform at their best, whether in the classroom, the office, or beyond. Therese has written three other books, including Teaching What You Don’t Know, which was published by Harvard University Press. Therese is an international speaker and has led workshops for organizations of every size, from huge Fortune 100 companies to small colleges and universities and everything in between. Her favorite presentation was for a standing room only at Harvard Business School, and her least favorite presentation was for a conference in Denver almost twenty years ago where only two people showed up. In addition to her peer reviewed scientific publications, she has written for a variety of trusted media outlets, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Guardian. Therese lives in Seattle with her husband and their Boston terrier, who at only twenty four pounds is the real boss of the household. Therese Huston, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Therese Huston [00:02:40]:

It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Bonnie.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:42]:

I just realized I misspoke. Welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed, and I am excited about the first part of our conversation. I love book dedications. And you write in your dedication, I’m quoting you here, to my husband, Jonathan, because geeking out together is worlds more fun. Please do tell what do you and Jonathan geek out about.

Therese Huston [00:03:08]:

We geek out on so many different things. The probably the topic where we’ve been geeking out recently is dark chocolate.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:18]:

You’ve gone deep in that,

Therese Huston [00:03:20]:

There have been some studies recently. We eat a lot of dark chocolate, first of all, but there have been studies recently that certain dark chocolates contain very high levels of heavy metals. And my husband, if he eats too much dark chocolate, will get a migraine. And so now we’re paying attention to which chocolates have high heavy metals because sure enough, he’s found it’s the heavy metal chocolates that tend to give him migraines. So this has been an eye opener. And it makes our shopping not only does it change what we shop for, but it’s also allowed him to, you know, perhaps overindulge in dark chocolate as long as we buy the right kind. So those are the kinds of things. We we look at an area of our life where we want to make improvements.

Therese Huston [00:04:04]:

We try to read up on science. We come home at the end of the day. Here’s what I learned. Oh, here’s what I learned. And it’s it’s it’s both cute as well as edifying. And and it it just allows us to connect in new ways.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:16]:

You wrote an entire book about being sharp. Tell us about something in your life that has happened to you to get you curious about being sharp.

Therese Huston [00:04:26]:

I don’t know about you, but during COVID, at least during the peak of COVID back in 2020, ’20 ’20 ‘1, I was having trouble getting motivated and focused, especially in the mornings. By the afternoon, I I was deep into my work, but but I developed some really bad habits in that first year or so of COVID, of spending a lot of time just surfing the web and not not in the geeking out way, but just in the I’m I’m gonna search for a green tea that I’ve never tried before and thirty minutes would go by and I’d still be searching and and hopping around in different websites. And so at that point, I realized I needed some practices to dial in, zip up, get my focus going earlier in the day. And at that point, I started doing a little bit of research in in a more pointed and helpful way to find out what’s out there about neuroscience and ways to zip up your focus. And sure enough, there’s there are fantastic ways to do it. And so I learned some techniques and I would begin to apply them. And it made all the difference. Then I realized more people probably need these techniques.

Therese Huston [00:05:32]:

If I needed them, I probably wasn’t alone.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:35]:

So I know that you talk about focus, and I I am sort of taking us to a paradigm that may or may not fit the idea of focus. But I am going to ask for a selfish indulgence because I think a lot about focus. But let’s start before you tell us kinda some ideas and approaches and what the science may tell us. Start by telling us what doesn’t work, which, of course, you do throughout your book. So, well, I always look forward to it. I’m like, okay. Embracing myself. What doesn’t work when it comes to us trying to focus?

Therese Huston [00:06:05]:

I really enjoyed adding those sections to the book about what doesn’t work because there are various myths about memory and focus and productivity. And it was lovely to be able to spend a page or two whenever possible debunking some of those myths, at least when there was good neuroscience to debunk the myth. So what doesn’t work when it comes to focus? The biggest one is multitasking, right? And I was just talking with someone recently who pointed out that her husband, when he’s struggling with something, he’ll say, Oh, I wish I were like you. I wish I was a woman. They’re so good at multitasking. And I had to say, Okay. So backing up, one, multitasking doesn’t make you better at things. Two, it is the case that when you multitask, you make mistakes.

Therese Huston [00:06:56]:

So he’s right about that if he feels that he’s performing poorly because multitasking is compromising his performance. He’s right. But three women aren’t any better at it. So it’s really fascinating. So many of us feel like we’re doing better, we’re getting more done, because we’re doing two things or maybe even three things at once, right? You’re in the kitchen, you’ve got your laptop out, a family member, maybe it’s a kid, maybe it’s a partner, but someone’s talking to you and you’re volleying back and forth between the conversation and the email, the conversation and the email. The truth is you’re you’re not doing two things at once. You’re really what psychologists call task switching. So you’re not multitasking, you’re task switching.

Therese Huston [00:07:38]:

Would it would it and and what happens is that you make more mistakes, as well as you slow down. It feels like you’re fast, but you’re actually slowing down. Would it be okay if we did a demonstration of this, Bonni? Because I find it so powerful.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:53]:

Yes. Yes. And and I, I’m I’m ready for it, and I’m I’m already bracing myself because I already fully believe that we can’t multitask. So I’m I’m ready to prove to the world that I, as a human being, am not able to multitask as well as other humans. Yes. I’m ready.

Therese Huston [00:08:09]:

Yeah. Okay. Great. And the reason I I don’t need to convince you, but there may be people who who are who believe that you know what? Yeah. But actually, I’m better at it than most people. So I invite them. We’re gonna do this demonstration, but they can then do it offline. They can they can stop the podcast and try it themselves.

Therese Huston [00:08:26]:

So here’s what I’d love for you to do, Bonni. I’d love for you to say the alphabet out loud from the letter a to the letter f as fast as you can. Go.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:34]:

A, b, c, d, e, f.

Therese Huston [00:08:36]:

Beautiful. I didn’t time you, but that was fast as we’d expect. Now I’d like you to do the do the same thing, say numbers counting out loud from the number one to the number six. Go.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:46]:

+1, 23456. Excellent.

Therese Huston [00:08:49]:

Probably just as fast. Like I said, we didn’t time it, but that’s probably just as fast that you said the alphabet. Now I’d like you to multitask, and I’d like you to go back and forth between saying the alphabet and counting. So it would you would start with a one. Go.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:04]:

A 1 B 2 C 3 D 4 E 5 F F 6. There you go. GH91013. Yes.

Therese Huston [00:09:17]:

And what was the experience like for you?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:19]:

Oh, I definitely felt it. I and also when I read the book too, I’ve I I did the exercise in my own head. I imagine there’s something different about doing it aloud speaking versus doing it in my head, but but I definitely felt that slowdown for sure.

Therese Huston [00:09:35]:

The slowdown and you you know, we tend to make more mistakes. When I’ve done this with other people, they’ll they’ll jump to g. Right? And they’re like, wait. Did I say f? I’m I’m not sure. So we we and it’s a it’s a nice illustration because those are two things you’ve been doing since, what, kindergarten. Right? The alphabet and counting earlier than kindergarten. You’ve been doing it for a long time. You’re really practiced at these, and yet it’s still hard to do the two things simultaneously.

Therese Huston [00:10:00]:

And it’s a nice illustration of how how we make more mistakes. There’s actually research showing it raises your blood pressure. So it creates not that activity, but multitasking in general. So you’re adding more stress. So there are lots of reasons in addition to performance, but also you’re increasing your stress levels that we just shouldn’t multitask. It does not improve performance. And there’s actually research showing that I multitask with people who multitask all the time, find it hard to do deep work. So, you know, it’s hard to know which came first.

Therese Huston [00:10:33]:

Is it that they were someone who had trouble doing deep work and so they tend to multitask or because they multitask, they have trouble doing deep work. But needless to say, if you multitask all the time, there could be a good chance that you’re gonna find it harder when you really need to focus to write a paper or to to prep a lecture. You’re gonna find it harder to get deep into that work.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:53]:

As you were sharing these examples, I do think it’s important for people to really recognize the difference between multitasking and task switching. And the other thing that was coming to mind for me is imagining either of us in the classroom since we both teach. What what’s happening in the classroom that is helpful to us to be able to see another lens of not just how am I experiencing, you know, counting my letters and my numbers or trying to accomplish tasks on my own. But what about when we add that layer of attempting to ascertain how other people are experiencing things? I I the example that I often give, I feel I felt I made a really big shift in my career. I had taught in what is called corporate training. This sounds so yucky when I say it that way, but that was my the first decade of my career in technology training for corporations and things. And I will tell you that that people who work for companies pay a lot better civil attention to to a presenter than you will find most eighteen to twenty two year olds. So I had to recalibrate.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:01]:

My brain would I would realize it so vividly when I moved to teaching predominantly eighteen to twenty two year olds for a while there to be, wow, I can’t use the same gauge. I used to be able to tell, quote, unquote, how I was doing, and now that’s no longer there. And then, of course, so many of us experience that moving to teaching entirely online. I had taught online previously, but for so many people, that was another huge shift, which is still occurring today where they think they’re not paying enough attention to me, and I think, well, isn’t that an interesting phrase, the word paying attention? You know, what do they owe you? But, also, I I I try to be very gentle when I say this because I certainly experience those feelings too. All they’re giving you information wise is the degree to which they’ve been socialized to pay civil attention to you, but you can’t get any information about learning. And and since learning is so carefully tied to attention, I don’t know if if you’ve had that stress where you kinda walk in and you go like, I don’t, how do I get attention in a real positive way that we can focus on things in order to facilitate learning? That was a very long question. You’re such a good listener. I can’t help it, but I was just thinking about that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:16]:

You know, that we can’t multitask, but our brains certainly, when we go into a teaching capacity, they’re really making every effort to try to multitask. Is there anything that you do in your own teaching to try to help train your brain to pay attention to the things it really should pay attention to as far as facilitating and fostering learning?

Therese Huston [00:13:38]:

So you’re asking a couple of fascinating questions.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:40]:

Probably 13. It’s good.

Therese Huston [00:13:42]:

I love it. So, you know, one one thing I’m pulling out of there is, as instructors, it’s very hard to single task. We’ll just let’s let’s give an alternative to multitasking. As an instructor, it’s very hard to single task when you’re in front of a classroom or when you’re leading a discussion because you’re thinking about the topic that and the where you you know, what are the particular key points you need to address as well as what are the details to get there as and you’re noticing what are students doing? How many of them have their hands up? How many of them seem to be checking their phones under their desks? Whatever. You’re monitoring them. You’re also keeping an eye on the clock. You’re noticing that if you happen to use the whiteboard, you’ve noticed you filled the whiteboard and you needed some more space. So can I erase things or are they still writing right? So in a sense, there are multiple streams that you’re having to pay attention to and you’re switching between each one.

Therese Huston [00:14:43]:

And so in that respect, it’s inevitable that you’re going to have to multitask in the classroom. When I think about single tasking, it’s important when you’re sitting at your desk and you have, you can just focus on the lecture that you’re preparing or the notes that you’re reading from a meeting, or the conversation that you’re having with the student who’s in your office to really single task in those moments. But during teaching, unfortunately, we do have to task switch a lot. Now there’s also the issue of how do we get students to single task. Right? How do we get them to devote their attention to either the activity that you’re having them do in small groups or get them to single task in paying attention to you and thinking through critical thinking or getting them to memorize the content that you’re presenting. And I love the observation that you’ve made that the cues, the signals that you get from adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s is very different from the cues that you might get from an 18 year old. An 18 year old might be slumped back in their chair and actually be paying very close attention to you. Whereas you might expect that a 40 year old has their pen poised and they’re leaning forward and they’ve got maybe their eyebrows furrowed because you can tell they’re thinking hard about the problem, right? The cues are very All those ladder signals are what you would expect, whereas you might see very different cues from someone who hasn’t been trained to respond that way.

Therese Huston [00:16:14]:

Let’s just say it that way. So one thing that I you know, you did an episode recently on on classroom assessment techniques, and I think that’s a great one for people who are wondering, are my students really paying attention? That’s lovely. You can interweave classroom assessment techniques, and it gives an opportunity to find out, were they paying attention for the last ten minutes? If if the visual cues aren’t there, you need you need other alternative ways to measure that because you can’t just trust the signals that you perhaps are expecting to see. And it can be then there’s some people who like cold calling, right, as a way to test. I’m I’m always mixed about it. I think you could give students plenty of of heads up that you’re gonna cold call. What are your thoughts? Are you are you a fan of cold calling? Where do you stand?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:00]:

I’m a fan of warm calling. So it’s exactly what you what you said as, like, a heads up. Maybe I have you turn to the person next to you so that there’s a opportunity for more introverted or neurodiverse individuals to to think about and answer and reflect on it. And then I’m giving you a warning that I’ll be calling on a couple of you so that I do like the warm the warm yeah. Not not a

Therese Huston [00:17:22]:

not a huge fan of calling.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:24]:

Yeah. Yeah. I love the idea too with the the classroom assessment tech techniques, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes too for people who wanna revisit that one or if you missed it. The the nice thing about any type of a technique like that is it takes the focus off of us, puts it back on them, and and puts an appropriate level of challenge and intellectual curiosity back on them instead of because part of it when is when we put so much pressure on ourselves to try to hold it all up, you know, and pay attention to you were mentioning the whole list of things I’m cracking up. I’m like, okay. What the temperature is? Am I hungry right now? Is somebody else hungry? Like, you know, just it’s pretty overwhelming. So to have even this is this is something that I guess is really outdated because when anytime I mention a parking lot, people look at me like, what are you talking about? This is, I guess, an old school facilitator’s technique, but you’d have somewhere on the whiteboard a parking lot. And so if I can’t get to a question because, actually, I was planning on there’s a whole exercise later on.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:26]:

I but I wanna make sure that I call back to a question someone had. Or if there’s a topic we won’t have time to get to, I could bring up the parking lot the next time for us to revisit. That that’s a helpful technique for me too to go. Or do I wanna write something down? Oh, someone I just got reminded of this thing, and I know my brain is noodling on this. Yeah. I forgot to do this thing. Write it down. You know how or put it I have a app called drafts on my phone.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:49]:

Just get it out of my head so that I can attend to what’s in the moment. You know, another big thing that has been happening to so many of us, and you touched on this a little bit earlier, has to do with motivation. Mhmm. So if you could just, in the next few minutes, solve all of our problems having to do with motivation, that would be wonderful. And I know I won’t be alone in thanking you for your good work here. What works when it comes to motivation?

Therese Huston [00:19:18]:

There are days when we all need a little more. Right? There are days when it could just be a poor night’s sleep. It could be that you’re highly stressed, and you’re beginning to feel burnout. And that burnout is leading you to feel less motivated. Or it could be the tasks in front of you that are just not motivating. You know, it might might be a meeting that you’re dreading that you know you need to show up for and you need to prep for, or a class that you need to teach and it’s not your favorite topic or not one that you know well, but you need to get through it or one that you know the students will hate. So many different dimensions of this, like, where you can have flagging motivation to say the least. So a couple of great strategies.

Therese Huston [00:20:01]:

One thing from the neuroscience that’s key to understand about motivation is that dopamine is the let’s do this chemical. So dopamine is a neurotransmitter and some people call it the reward chemical. I like to think of it as the let’s do this because it can spur you towards action. So you need to increase your dopamine if you’re feeling unmotivated. And I’m not suggesting that you go the pharmaceutical route necessarily. There are easy things that you can do within your everyday that don’t require any chemical changes to or outside external exogenous changes. So the way that there are a couple of ways to increase dopamine. There’s so much right now about deliberate cold exposure.

Therese Huston [00:20:51]:

Right? If if if I have another podcast recommend a cold plunge. Okay, a cold plunge is nice at the beginning of the day. We might, in your morning, shower turn on the cold for a little bit, but that’s at the beginning of your day and maybe that’s when you need motivation. But I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s often at three in the afternoon. I can’t justify turning away from my work just yet. But I also feel so unmotivated for whatever the last tasks are that need to be addressed at the end of the day. So one one way and so basically cold exposure will increase both adrenaline and dopamine, which can lead you to feel more motivated. A thing that I do, I live in Seattle.

Therese Huston [00:21:34]:

We’re recording this in early March. It’s usually about 40 degrees outside in the mornings, and in the afternoons, it’s only about 50 here. And so what I will do is I will go for a cold brisk walk without a coat on. I basically will tie the coat around my waist and head out for a ten to fifteen minute walk. And the idea is to feel uncomfortable the same way you would feel uncomfortable in a cold shower. Now, I haven’t seen any research that this will increase dopamine. So and that would be hard to measure. You can’t exactly put someone out on a cold walk and then do neuroscience on them while they walk, at least not that kind of neuroscience.

Therese Huston [00:22:11]:

But what I find is when I come back from one of these cold brisk walks, I am incredibly motivated. I have a new level of desire to do what And I don’t spend the whole walk thinking about the task. I might think about the task or I might distract myself with something else and enjoy it, but I come back highly motivated to work. So giving yourself a burst of cold that way can be a really nice way to increase I find your motivation and dopamine. Another strategy that you can do without leaving your desk, and this is also a favorite of mine. There’s research showing that listening to music that moves you will immediately lead to an increase in dopamine in a key area of the ventral striatum. So the ventral striatum is part of your brain in the basal ganglia. It’s deep in your brain, it’s basically above your ears, but deep inside your brain.

Therese Huston [00:22:59]:

That’s important for feeling a sense of reward. And listening to music that moves you, you know, it it actually will get you to move in the direction of something that you don’t want to do. And so what’s important here, the the research shows that listening to music that moves you will increase dopamine in your ventral striatum. So you feel a sense of reward and then you that can carry over something that isn’t normally rewarding. You’ll now find rewarding. So you can dive into a task, for instance, that you dread or walk into that meeting that you’re dreading and that you’re gonna go in with more motivation. What’s important here though is that you listen to music that personally is moving for you. So you need to find something that either gives you chills, makes you want to get up and dance, that’s going to help you and but don’t just now listen to the entire playlist, listen to one song and then move into the task that you’re unmotivated by.

Therese Huston [00:23:53]:

Chances are you’re going to suddenly find that you have a renewed interest, and it feels more rewarding than it normally would.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:00]:

You were listing off many examples that are so relatable to what may get in the way of us being motivated. And one thing that you said, I just wanted call attention to because people may not know this about you, but you mentioned the experience of teaching something that we don’t know. And back before I ever got to talk to you the first time for the podcast, back before we knew each other, so this was a long time ago, at least as far as my career in higher education goes. I had a difficult time in a tenure promotion situation, and I won’t go into long detail about it, but I know this will also be relatable to people. I essentially had it come up in that review process that I had had the audacity to teach things that I wasn’t an expert in, and I remember feeling a lot of shame about it. There were many tears shed at the time. I felt kind of embarrassed to go on campus because it was like, oh my gosh. I you know, I’m I’m this sham.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:58]:

I don’t belong here. And now look. Other people know that I it was just like, oh, so many ten year promotion situations are so yucky. But I but that was the time when I came across your book. So anybody who doesn’t know this, Therese has written a wonderful book called teaching what you don’t know, which was published in 2012 and has been so nourishing to me back then. I mean, just this, like like, to open up the pages and go, what like, this happens everywhere you go. If you’re listening to this and anyone has ever created any self deprecating thoughts in your head, please allow Teresa’s book to to assuage those things. It happens everywhere.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:39]:

I mean, maybe it doesn’t happen everywhere. That may be too extreme of a situation. But for most of us, the overwhelming majority of us are going to be in positions to teach what we don’t know. It’s not a bad thing. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, we can, with our beginner’s mind, often create the kind of bridge between where someone is into it. So I just wanted to mention that as a demotivator. It went from really being something that was so demotivating for me, so demoralizing, and part of it’s because that process wasn’t handled well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:11]:

I love the fact that I’m now in a position almost two decades later to, you know, try to advocate for people who are undergoing that they can be treated with more dignity and respect and try to get some of this nonsense to go to go away, but it was just so meaningful. So since you brought it up, I was like, I bet you there’s someone listening who doesn’t know about this book, doesn’t even know that this book exists. It felt very unique at the time. I don’t know if it still is, but it’s the only one I think of. I’ve thought of it so many times and have recommended it to so many people. So that’s my big my big monologue on the book we’re not talking about.

Therese Huston [00:26:45]:

Oh, thank you, Bonnie. And you said you you I found the book very affirming to write. And I’ve I’ve given many talks on it. And people have written to me saying this was a lifesaver because they were an untenured faculty member and they felt this was something that they needed to hide from all of their colleagues. That the you know, they were teaching two courses outside of their expertise, but they needed to pretend that they they knew it all. And I interviewed people from Stanford, from Harvard, from small liberal arts colleges, from big state universities, across the board. I can always find plenty of people. And often what I do in a talk is I’ll ask people after I give them a few examples so that they feel comfortable admitting that they might teach what they don’t know.

Therese Huston [00:27:31]:

And I’ll after I give a few examples, I ask people, alright, so could you raise your hand if you’ve had the experience of teaching something that you don’t know or something where you don’t feel you’re an expert, and at least 90% of the audience always raises their hand. So it’s, it’s much more common. I’m not saying that this is what you should say in job interviews. I’m saying you lead with that. But but be reassured, it’s very common. And and and you just think about any introductory course, right? You’re you’re gonna teach, you know, an introductory psychology. You’re gonna teach everything from dreaming to drug addiction to Skinner. I mean, how could you be an expert in all of those things? It’s impossible.

Therese Huston [00:28:08]:

So we do. We it’s it’s just part of what it means to be a professor in this day and age. We we don’t get the luxury of only teaching what we know best.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:16]:

I mean, it’s like it’s like you said, it is such a common thing. So well and speaking that so many of these things relate to each other, it’s almost like you planned a book that really had a central theme. So when it comes to motivation, another big theme that comes out would be a desire to accomplish more. And tell us about a time in your life when you yourself have succumbed to one of the things that you know doesn’t necessarily work when it comes to being able to get more stuff done.

Therese Huston [00:28:47]:

This was an incredibly surprising finding to me. And so I’ll describe the finding, and then I’ll describe my own experience where I I fell into this trap. So the finding is that picturing the glorious outcome, picturing being on the other side and having a task complete and how good that’s going to feel does not help you get more done. So it might reduce stress in the moment to picture, okay. By the weekend, this will be done. I’m gonna feel so much better. I just I you know, it’s but it’s Tuesday, and I’ve gotta a I just I just need to get to Friday night. That might make that might reduce your stress in the moment.

Therese Huston [00:29:28]:

And in fact, research shows it will lower your blood pressure. So a nice indication that it’s lowering stress in the moment. However, what researchers find is that picturing that glorious being on the other side of something that’s onerous, that lowering of blood pressure is actually an indication that you’re less motivated. And when people picture the glorious outcome, they get less done in the next week than people who just write down a few ideas about related to the tasks they need to do. So in an experience I had where I would before I knew about this research where I would make the mistake of picturing being on the other side of a difficult task. It was, I believe, my either my first or my second year of being the director of the the teaching center at Seattle University. And one of the agreements was that in addition to all the work we were going to do to support faculty and their faculty development and their professional development was we would also teach. We wanted to stay in the classroom.

Therese Huston [00:30:29]:

We wanted to be testing out all the ideas that we were discussing with faculty. And we wanted to keep our hand on the pulse of what was happening in the classroom. And there I was so overwhelmed. Oh my gosh, Bonni. I was teaching a course in neuroscience and neuroscience is changing constantly. There were there are two to 3,000 new journal articles published every month, every month in peer reviewed journals in neuroscience. It’s just it’s exploding. So there was so much, you know, talking about teaching us teaching things you don’t know, I had to constantly be learning.

Therese Huston [00:31:00]:

So in addition to my entire day job, I would spend the evenings taking new notes, trying to learn what is in what ways has neuroscience changed and what do I need to know to stay current? And I was so overwhelmed and what I would and I would teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays for that particular course and what I would find myself thinking on Tuesday nights is you just need to make it to 04:00 on Thursday, you just need, you know, by 04:00 and and it would it would it would reduce my stress in the moment. But the research would tell me I probably got less done as a result. And that might have been that might have actually added to my stress because I got less prep work done. Right? So it’s it’s so it’s interesting what do you need in the moment versus what do you actually need in terms of productivity. But there is it’s not that all visualization is bad. So you might be thinking, okay, Therese, I just shouldn’t do any visualization. Visualizing the process actually increases productivity. So what would that look like in the case of teaching that course where I was overwhelmed by all the new neuroscience I needed to be learning? What that might look like would be, I’m going you know, at at 06:00 after I’ve had dinner, I’m going to picture myself opening up my laptop.

Therese Huston [00:32:09]:

I’m gonna picture myself with my stack of of different neuroscience articles that I want to peruse before I start prepping my lecture notes. I’m gonna picture, I’m gonna get a big mug of tea. Right? Picturing all of these steps all the way through to I finished my lecture notes, I’m closing my laptop, I’m gonna go watch a half an hour TV show with my husband before I go to bed. Picturing that process actually improves productivity. Their neuroscience shows that you see five times more brain areas activated when you picture the process than when you picture a glorious outcome. So there are more brain areas being activated. There’s specifically an area called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex that’s being activated. And that’s basically the finger wagging area of your brain.

Therese Huston [00:32:53]:

They’re like, you gotta do it. I know you don’t wanna do it, but you’ve gotta do it. And so what ends up happening is you will get more done. So picture the process. It’s boring. It’s not as much fun as picturing the glorious outcome, but you can actually it’s a great way to improve your productivity.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:09]:

Well, we could keep going and going. You’re such a fascinating person to talk to. Before we get to the recommendation segment, I wanna ask you one final question. You got to be so immersed in all of this research. What are one to two techniques that have been important to you or perhaps even have been challenging to you in some way since doing the research and writing the book?

Therese Huston [00:33:33]:

I’d like to tell you about two techniques that are now part of my daily life. Maybe not seven days a week, but at least five or six days a week. I’d I’d do these two practices. So one we can do together if you don’t mind.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:45]:

Let’s do it.

Therese Huston [00:33:46]:

And that is to do deep breathing where you do a slowed exhale. So there’s fabulous research that this improves decision making, it reduces stress. They’re probably, you know, you’ve you’ve practiced various kinds of breathing techniques. I wouldn’t be surprised. But it’s the slow exhale that really activates your parasympathetic nervous system to help calm you down, but also activates the vagus nerve, which leads to better decision making. So let’s we’ll we’ll we can do it together. So what we’re gonna do is a four second inhale, and then we’re gonna do a hold of your inhale for two two seconds. And then we’re gonna do a six second exhale and then a brief pause.

Therese Huston [00:34:25]:

And we’ll just do the cycle twice. And I love it. I love you’re just getting all settled in your chair.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:29]:

Right? Both of my feet are flat on the ground. Yeah.

Therese Huston [00:34:32]:

There you go. Good. And you don’t even need to do that. But that’s a nice extra step. So good. Alright. So we’re gonna begin. So just exhale.

Therese Huston [00:34:39]:

Let me just go ahead. Okay. Now we’re gonna inhale, two, three, four, hold, two, exhale, two, three, four, five, six. Hold. Inhale two, three, four. Hold two, exhale two, three, four, five, six. How do you feel?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:08]:

Wonderful, wonderful. It’s amazing, right?

Therese Huston [00:35:11]:

Yes. It just like grounds you. It reduces your stress level. Do this you know, we just did we just did two cycles, but the research shows you do that for two minutes, your cortisol levels go down. So on a stressful day, if you can do this right before you walk into a stressful situation, maybe a class that’s creating a lot of anxiety, you’re going to bring your parasympathetic nervous system online, your anxiety will go down, you’re gonna be a clearer thinker, and you’ll be a better decision maker. So if you find yourself realizing, oh, wait, we need to make a sudden change in the game plan for today, you’ll be able to do that. So this is something now I do on a daily basis.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:50]:

I want to add for those of you who may be parents, you’ll actually also be a parent. So after reading Teresa’s book, I would do this with our kids. I would find myself getting angry. I know it’s hard to believe. Hard to believe. But and then instead of getting angry, I would say, gosh. Let’s I think it would be helpful if we all do this together. I just remember doing it the other night at our dinner table, so I can even recommend this, in other context.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:14]:

Yes.

Therese Huston [00:36:14]:

How did it go over with your family?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:16]:

Well, they’re used to that. I mean, they’re they’ll do that in school, so they’re used to it. And I think I got a couple of eye rolls. If I got no other benefit because I didn’t really necessarily check-in to see if it helped them, it certainly helped me for sure.

Therese Huston [00:36:29]:

Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. And and I I listen to some parenting podcast. I don’t have kids, but I’m writing a book for 11 to 13 year olds. So I’ve been reading listening to parenting podcast. And I I love the observation that it doesn’t matter if you get an eye roll, it went in, they heard it, and they can come back to it later when you’re not around and they can play with it and decide like, Oh, actually that did help. I’m not gonna tell mom, but I’m gonna do it now.

Therese Huston [00:36:52]:

So the deep so the slow exhale is key. And the other practice that I now do on a daily basis, I do at least a five minute meditation every day. Sometimes I don’t squeeze it in until right before bed. But there’s fabulous research. And I talk about it quite a bit in the book in different chapters indicating that meditation, particularly mindfulness meditation leads to incredible improvements in memory in focus. You get you get if you do a meditation right before you need to recall something, you can get up to a 75% improvement in your recall. And by just doing a five minute meditation. So this is great on a day where you know you’re gonna be teaching something and you need to remember a lot of things and you’re just like, how am I gonna remember it all? Do a quick meditation, chances are it’ll be easier for everything to come to mind.

Therese Huston [00:37:37]:

So I now I’ve known that meditation is important. I’ve known about it for years. Writing this book convinced me, okay. It’s I can find five minutes. The the brain benefits are too great to ignore.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:49]:

This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations, And I am going to suspect it’s possible. I don’t know because because Teresa and I didn’t share with each other what we’d be recommending, but she could recommend something having to do with breathing. So I’m gonna leave that part out because she does talk about it in the book. I’m gonna recommend two things. The first thing I’m gonna recommend is somewhat related to squeeze the value out of your subscriptions. So she does mention in the book about different apps that we could use or or other resources. Really lovely. I didn’t feel overwhelmed.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:23]:

I had gone and had looked at a couple of the apps, and I thought, you know, I I might subscribe to this, but I subscribe to so many things. I thought I should go look at my Calm app. And and some years ago, I had bought a lifetime membership to the Calm app. It is one of many that has meditations, and it and it I didn’t think it had breathing. Sure enough, it did. So the breathing technique that she was talking about, my my idea here would be that we we benefit so much by rediscovering aspects of existing tools that we use instead of trying to always think that there’s some magic answer. And I have so many dear friends, especially at work, who feel like somehow I like, oh, there’s Bonni has this magic app, and that’s how she’s able to have it together. And it’s like, well, first of all, I don’t have it altogether.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:09]:

But but, secondarily, they’re just we’re so much better if we keep things as simple as they can be, as few of tools as we can. Therese talked about these habits that she’s in, almost, you know, five, six days a week kind of thing. But we just get so much more if we go deeper into existing habits and use them as cues or fulcrums to to build upon them. So I’m gonna recommend squeezing the value out of your subscriptions. If you happen to be a Calm app subscriber, I discovered these breathing things very similar to the technique that Therese described as well as a number of other ones. It was kind of neat because you hold in this particular instance, you hold it in your hand. You can close your eyes because it’ll vibrate your phone a little bit to tell you when you’re supposed to be doing the breathing and holding and then the slow exhale. So that was really nice.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:59]:

The second thing that I wanted to recommend, people, don’t even including the person I’m married to doesn’t always understand the rule that I have for myself. I attempt, although I have occasionally failed, but I attempt to only recommend something once. But that doesn’t mean guests can’t recommend what I recommend, and it doesn’t mean I can’t recommend what guests have recommended. I just have that as for myself. I try to challenge myself that way. So I’m gonna recommend something that was recommended back on episode 559 by Claudia Cornejo Happel, and she recommended a card deck, the live your values deck, sort out, honor, and practice what matters most to you by Lisa Congdon. And I am so fascinated right now with card decks. I’ve got the deck of spaces, which I’ve recommended before.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:50]:

Totally. Noah has told me about other deck. I I am just getting very decked out. I can say that. And so not only did I buy a deck for our family here, Dave and I went through so it’s it’s so lovely. The the imagery, she described it so well. It’s just so colorful, vibrant, and it has a very simple instruction book to use. And Dave and I went through it on a a lunch date that we had together a few weeks back.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:14]:

And then I ended up buying a set for at at work for people to be able to check out from our teaching and learning center to be able to do this either in a class that they’re teaching or if it’s a academic leader, perhaps in their school or college. And so I’m gonna recommend that deck and so excited about continuing to use it in my personal and professional contexts. So, Teresa, I’m gonna pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to recommend.

Therese Huston [00:41:40]:

I’m gonna check out both of those. And I do have a Calm subscription, and I haven’t checked out their breathing exercises. So I’m I I love their I love their sleep stories.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:48]:

That’s how

Therese Huston [00:41:48]:

I use it mostly. Their sleep stories are wonderful. So I will check that out. And I’ll also check out that deck. The recommendation I’ll make today is a meditation app, one that I just recently discovered. And I don’t mention in the book simply because I discovered it in the past month or so after the book was completed, and that’s the Healthy Minds app. What I like about Healthy Minds it’s free, first of all. You you can make a donation if you want, but getting the app and all of its wonderful features comes free, so you don’t have no subscription fee, which is which is lovely for so many of us.

Therese Huston [00:42:21]:

But it is developed by a neuroscientist, Richard Davidson, at University of Wisconsin Madison. He’s he’s the head scientist on the project, and he you’re the the app is wonderful because it goes back and forth between meditations and learning exercises. And each learning exercise will only be about five minutes. And then for the meditation, you can pick. Do you want five minutes? Do you want ten minutes? Do you want fifteen? And you pick which narrator you want. You pick whether you want it to be active. I often do them on a walk. Or do I want it to be sitting where I’m just going to be calm and and in place? And I find it wonderful because so many apps assume that you’re doing a sitting meditation.

Therese Huston [00:42:59]:

Let’s face it, some of us are gonna only have time to meditate while we’re making dinner or whatever the chore might be. So I highly recommend the Healthy Minds if you haven’t explored it. It’s it’s actually won multiple awards in 2024. Even the New York Times Wirecutter gave it an gave it the award for best meditation app in 2024. So Healthy Minds, check it out.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:20]:

Thank you so much for the book. Thank you so much for this recommendation and for a conversation that between us and the teaching and higher ed community has extended almost a decade now. I’m so pleased to be reconnected with you and to get to be nourished by this most recent book of yours.

Therese Huston [00:43:37]:

Congratulations on all the good work and all the ways you’re helping people. Thank you, Bonni.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:43]:

Thanks once again to Therese Huston for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. Thank you so much for being a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community. And if it’s been a while since you’ve been listening and you haven’t yet signed up for the weekly update, you can receive the most recent episodes show notes as well as some other goodies that don’t show up in those show new show notes. Just head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

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