Learn how ADHD could make you more creative, and how to boost your productivity by scheduling your week with the Arrow Method. Plus, Mike Wall, author of “Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel (For the Cosmically Curious),” explains why we may have already found aliens. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: ADHD Could Make You More Creative — https://curiosity.im/2RV1riC Boost Your Productivity by Scheduling Your Week with the Arrow Method — https://curiosity.im/2RRlyyb More from Mike Wall: “Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel (For the Cosmically Curious)” — https://amazon.com Mike Wall on Twitter — https://twitter.com/MichaelDWall Profile on Space.com — https://www.space.com/41418-about-us.html Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn how ADHD could make you more creative, and how to boost your productivity by scheduling your week with the Arrow Method. Plus, Mike Wall, author of “Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel (For the Cosmically Curious),” explains why we may have already found aliens.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
More from Mike Wall:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/we-may-have-already-found-aliens-w-mike-wall-arrow-method-for-productivity-and-adhd-creativity
CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got the latest and greatest from curiosity.com, plus a special guest to help you get started in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn how ADHD could make you more creative and how to boost your productivity by scheduling your week with the arrow method.
CODY GOUGH: You'll also learn why we may have already found aliens with some help from author, Mike Wall, Also a senior writer at space.com. Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: There are a lot of misconceptions around ADD or attention deficit disorder. And according to a new study, artists living with attention deficit disorder might actually have an advantage over neurotypical people. Today, we're going to clear the air and explain what this new study implies.
CODY GOUGH: And the subject in this study have been diagnosed with high functioning ADHD specifically, which stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Let's get something straight. Being diagnosed with ADD or ADHD doesn't necessarily mean you can't focus on anything. In fact, one of the symptoms of the disorders is something called hyperfocus. That means a person becomes intensely focused on a topic that interests them. So much so that they might actually have a problem tearing their attention away.
That's why it's maybe not so surprising that a lot of artists have been diagnosed with the disorder, including Solange Knowles and Emma Watson. Perfecting your craft takes undivided attention. And somewhat surprisingly, people with ADD and ADHD can supply that in spades. This new study from University of Michigan psychology researcher Holly White tested another hypothesis.
She recruited 52 college students, half of whom had high functioning ADHD. And she tested their creative muscles in a series of tests. In the tests, participants are basically asked to come up with unique imaginary fruits and words that didn't follow recognizable patterns. You can read all the details of the study in our full write-up on curiosity-and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
But it turned out that the ADHD set outperformed the neurotypical set at breaking the mold suggested by the examples given. The takeaway was that although ADD and ADHD can pose significant challenges to those who live with the conditions, they can also give you an edge in at least one regard.
CODY GOUGH: Today's tip for tackling your time. Have you heard of the arrow method? It's a nice, easy way to stay productive. Ready for this?
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm ready. Here it goes. Step one, frontload of your week with work.
ASHLEY HAMER: OK. What's next?
CODY GOUGH: That's it.
ASHLEY HAMER: What?
CODY GOUGH: Schedule as many of your meetings as you can for the beginning of the week, preferably on Monday or Tuesday. It's perfect for regular meetings, like weekly check-ins and financial updates. So this way, you start your week with a pretty packed schedule, but then the rest of the week is more open. And this comes with three major benefits.
First is flexibility. So if something unexpected comes up halfway into the week, well, that'll give you more time during the second half of the week to actually deal with an emergency or whatever else came up. If a client needs you to fix something, and it'll take all day Wednesday, then you don't want to have to reschedule a dozen meetings on top of fixing that thing, right?
The second major benefit is psychological satisfaction and peace of mind. How good does it feel to cross items off your to do list? Spoiler alert, super good, especially on a Monday or Tuesday. And the third thing is that you can make travel plans more easily. This is kind of like the scheduling benefit.
The arrow method makes it so that not to schedule flights for Monday. On that note, you can feel comfortable scheduling travel plans later in the week without having to rearrange your work schedule. Because if it's Tuesday, and you find out you have to hop on a plane Thursday, then you don't have to reschedule a ton of Thursday meetings because you already had them. Like I said, kind of the same thing as the flexibility point. Bonus, you'll pay less for plane tickets since it's cheapest to travel midweek. Aha. Two birds with one stone.
And if the arrow method sounds familiar, it's kind of like a macro version of the frog method we talked about on a recent episode. Mark Twain allegedly had a phrase called eating the frog. Quote, eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day, unquote.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's still disgusting.
CODY GOUGH: Well, anyway, that's the arrow method. Use that to kick off your week, stay productive, and drink in a little Monday motivation. Today's episode is sponsored by Interior Define. Interior Define is an entirely new kind of furniture brand created specifically to make sofa shopping more comfortable.
ASHLEY HAMER: Every sofa I've ever had has either been a hand-me-down from a roommate or something purchased from a roommate. But the problem is that when I go into a store, like I don't know what I want. I don't know what my style is. I don't know what's going to fit in my apartment. And Interior Define literally uses augmented reality to fix all of those problems.
CODY GOUGH: I would agree. Because with other stores, it's hard to find something that's your style or the right size for your space, right? Well, Interior Define lets you customize your perfect sofa, chair, bed, or table to get it exactly. Whether you live in a small studio, and you need the right sizing, or you need a pet-friendly fabric, or just like a soft cushioned.
ASHLEY HAMER: Interior Define makes it easy to design your own sofa, not your roommate's sofa, with their online sofa configurator. They have an augmented reality app for iOS that lets you visualize pieces in your home. Every order gets free delivery and a 365-day return policy. So get started with free swatches.
CODY GOUGH: You can order free swatches to see and feel fabrics in your home. Just visit interiordefine.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: One more time. That's interiordefine.com.
CODY GOUGH: What if we have actually already discovered aliens? I'm not trying to be weird or funny here, like I usually am. I actually get a really interesting answer to this question that I think is really worth sharing. It came from Mike Wall, the author of the new book titled, Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel for the Cosmically Curious. Sounds like us.
He's been a senior writer at space.com for nearly a decade, and he's talked to a lot of scientists about space exploration, aliens, and more. One of the chapters in his book is called, Have We Already Found ET? And I asked him about it, and here's what he had to say.
MIKE WALL: There are some scientists who think that we've found microbial life on Mars. There are some scientists who remain vocal, like the Viking mission in the 1970s. NASA's Viking landers found signs of alien metabolism in the dirt on Mars, and there are some people who are claiming that to this day. There's another group who claims that a Mars meteorite that people examined back in the mid-'90s, that it actually does contain convincing signs of Mars microbes.
There are a lot of people-- I mean, most scientists don't agree with those claims. But there are vocal groups who do either agree with the first, or the second, or both. So there's an argument within the scientific community that it's possible that we've already found life on Mars. And yeah, we just can't demonstrate it for certain. It's still ambiguous. This is an argument that's going on in the scientific community now.
CODY GOUGH: Do you have an idea of how fringe that is? Are we talking climate change denying scientists, versus the mass consensus, or whatever? Are we talking like a 90/10 split, 60/40?
MIKE WALL: It's probably closer to 90/10 than the 60/40. I mean, yeah. The people who are arguing, the pro-Viking life people are definitely in the very small minority. And the Mars meteorite Allan Hills life people are definitely in a small minority too. But they're credible. I mean, they're scientists. They've analyzed this. And I mean, they aren't crackpots. So I mean, you can't just say, oh, these people are nuts.
And that sort of highlights kind of how tough it's going to be to know if we made that apical discovery because there are so many variables that can go into it. First of all, I mean, say you send a Rover to Mars, looking for signs of like native Martian life. And it turns up a microbe.
I mean, even if everybody agrees it's a microbe, there's going to be a whole other argument about if that microbe is actually native to Mars, or if that Rover brought it with it. Because even if you sterilize a spacecraft, it's impossible to get everything that's on there. I mean, yeah, microbes are really, really tough. And some of them can form these really hard spores that are pretty much indestructible.
It's just there are so many things. I mean, it's going to take just really, really convincing proof for that fine to be generally accepted partially because I mean, you need a high bar for a major discovery like that. And partially, just because scientists are very skeptical people. That's part of the job description.
CODY GOUGH: One more time, that was Mike Wall, author of the new book, Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel for the Cosmically Curious. You can find a link to his book in today's show notes. And if you support our show on Patreon, then you'll be able to hear a full episode of the Curiosity podcast featuring Mike in the near future. Find us on Patreon at patreon.com/curiosity.com all spelled out.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning Curiosity Daily, and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
ANNOUNCER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.