Rewiring Executive Function: Metabolism, Sleep & Cognition With Dermot Rock

Rudi Adigbli: Welcome to the Rethink Podcast with another episode and a new guest. Welcome with me, Dermot. Introduce yourself. Happy to have you.
Dermot Rock: Hi, Rudy. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm Dermot Rock from Ireland. I'm the founder of a new company called Cognate, and we help business leaders to dramatically improve their cognition by addressing their underlying physiology.
Rudi Adigbli: That's great. You have such an amazing story. So it's not the first time that we have a discussion and ⁓ I really find it super inspiring and yeah, help me to dissect it and tell me your story.
Dermot Rock: Okay, so the story sort of traverses a significant period. So I'll try to give you the cliff notes and I'm happy to go into more detail on anything. I'm not skirting through it. But a number of years ago, I had a startup which hit the rocks at launch phase. So we were about three years building it and getting every, ticking every box along the way, every marker of success. And at the final hurdle, we ran into regulatory trouble. And it just meant that we couldn't go ahead with it. was no path to success from there. And I pretty much blame myself that anybody that's out there listening that is involved in the startup world, regulation, ⁓ legal issues, stuff like that, it's fairly basic. And I consider myself to be a reasonably clever guy. And to not have seen this coming, I, you know, I really sort of, you know, looked inwards to see like, why have I missed this? What, what was wrong with me? ⁓ you know, that this is something that I should really have spotted. And I guess I became like more and more paranoid about, know, my ability to spot this because many years ago when I was in the army, I had a, ⁓ quite a significant parachute accident, ⁓ which was mostly. sort of superficial facial injuries, but I also suffered a significant brain injury. And, you know, at the time it wasn't particularly apparent that the brain injury was as significant as it was, but over the next about eight years I was suffering seizures. I was having trouble concentrating, having memory trouble. And the neurologists and the doctors that I was seeing were warning that they weren't particularly sure what had caused this. They were fairly sure that it was somewhat related to the trauma I'd suffered. But they warned that, you know, because we're not entirely certain with this, you may see trouble in the future with this. So I guess that, you know, kind of made me think that maybe there is a problem. So I decided I was going to test my cognition and get to the bottom of this and find out if my suspicions were true.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. And this was before the first startup you did or this was after that.
Dermot Rock: Oh no, this was 26 years ago. So when I was still quite a young man, or certainly a lot younger than I am now, but I just kind of really flashed back to that, that once I was having these problems, I guess it was at the forefront of my mind that I've been warned that this could be a problem. So that was the area that I decided to dive into when I experienced that I was having trouble with
Rudi Adigbli: over Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: missing things in my life with the start-up.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah, okay. And what was the feeling when you got the result of the performance test? Because I mean, you experienced already like something is off with your cognition in that sense.
Dermot Rock: Yeah, it was quite confronting to be honest with you. You know, even though this is something that I went looking for, you know, none of us really have a baseline of what our cognition is like or what it should be like, you know, relative to the norm. Almost nobody, you know, including the most high performing executives in the world, almost nobody has ever tested their cognitive performance. And, you know, like I said, even though this is something I went looking for,
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: you know, when you get the numbers in front of you in black and white, it's a real eye opener. And, you know, there's no place to hide. It's, you know, the results are what the results are. And I saw that I was performing extremely poorly, like really, really, really badly for, like I said, I was having relative success in my life. You know, I had lots of things that would indicate I'm reasonably smart, reasonably clever.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: But yet my cognition was, was, you know, on the floor. And the only reassurance that I could take from it is that, you know, having experience in other areas of health or fitness or performance, once you know what the measure is, like doing the test doesn't change what the measure is. But once you know it, you can start to do something about it and address it. And, know, that's what inspired me to look deep into the literature and find out what are all the things I can do that will move the dial on this. how can I make it better? And that's what led me into studying metabolism as a source of this problem.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah, that's great. And it's also great. It seems like you had like a sort of like a, let's say, ⁓ mindset already in place that you were looking for the solution because ⁓ like the old paradigm was basically in particular when it comes to like, the measurement for cognition was or is IQ and the like the agreed upon notion was always that you stay with an IQ. ⁓ for the end of your life and you have like the capacity to have like a sort of range, which is five IQ points ⁓ plus and minus. And although like now we know like the brain is far more plastic, but when you ask people on the streets, I think maybe more than 50 % will tell you like you are stuck with your cognition. So what was the point that you had already this inclination that You can change it or was it something that evolved? Can you walk us through that?
Dermot Rock: Well, like, I guess, you know, obviously no analogy is completely perfect, but I think it's a reasonable analogy to say, if you were to imagine an athlete that, you know, wants to be a powerlifter in the Olympics, you know, their genetic potential is, you know, is there and it is going to predetermine whether they're able to 300 kilos. So, but, you know, notwithstanding the, you know, what gifts you've been naturally gifted with, There's a lot of scope to train hard and to tailor your training such that you get the most out of what you've got. And cognition is kind of similar to that in that by improving your cognition, you're improving the capacity of what you have. So like all the work that I do is about improving the cognitive architecture that someone has so that they get the most out of the natural gifts that they were blessed with.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you mentioned that the first time you took the test it was quite confronting. What was the feeling at that moment and how long it took for you to say, that's the reality and how I move forward as you're describing. Was it like a period of, let's say a week or was it a month where you have to fight through, let's say your ego in order to accept it and say, okay, what can I do? How was it?
Dermot Rock: Yeah, I know what you mean. Like for me, it was pretty quick because you have to remember like what my motivation level was like. I, you know, I was kind of aware of the problem in advance. Like most people, ⁓ most people aren't particularly aware. And, you know, there's going to be like people who are specialists in startups and business, and they're going to be shouting at me if people aren't aware of the problem, you know, it's difficult to have a business from it. And there is some truth in that.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: But I was severely motivated. I knew that this existed and that the numbers were only confirming what I suspected. So I just jumped into it straight away. I decided that I was going to scour the literature and find out what are all the things that will move the dial on this. Like, mean, literally anything, no matter how weird or wonderful it sounded, I was going to try it and I was going to use myself as the experiment. And what you have to remember is that when I started this,
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: I was only on a mission to improve my own cognition. That was it. This wasn't, you know, I didn't start with, can I start a business in this? It wasn't, you know, will other people pay me for this? It was literally, I need help with this and I'm going to find out how I can help myself best first.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then I can imagine that this was already an empowering situation that you have been in because it was like in a word, in a sense, like desperation or you felt something is wrong. And now you were like, okay, now I know like with numbers, there's something severely wrong. And then you were already in the situation. Okay, this is the next step. What I can do is like how I can fix that. That's remarkable.
Dermot Rock: Yeah, well, you know, sometimes, you know, don't know what the current situation is. You know, like in in, you know, in a business before I was looking at, know, in sort of the telemedicine space, there was when we were doing customer discovery and chatting to customers, there was an option to do like a cancer screening test. Okay. And
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: The vast majority of people that we screened asking about would they like this as part of the service, they didn't want it. They didn't want to know if they were somehow genetically predisposed to getting certain cancers. They just didn't want to know. And to me, that felt quite foreign that no matter how uncomfortable the information is, I think it's always better to have it because then you can address it and do something about it.
Rudi Adigbli: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: You know, and in this instance with me, even though I did not like the numbers that I was seeing in front of me, at least once I understood what the numbers were and in the specific areas that I was very weak at, it was like, okay, well, because I know that I'm not performing well in these, maybe we're going to get some quick wins from those. So maybe we can bring the floor up quite quickly in those. And that's exactly what transpired when we started to address them.
Rudi Adigbli: You Mm-hmm. Okay, that's great. So what was the first thing that you had to research and you tried it out and what was the result?
Dermot Rock: For me personally, and again I should emphasize that, you know, this is quite a personal thing. Like it really will depend on what your numbers are like. So like when someone starts an engagement with us, we do an exhaustive amount of testing. Now it's pretty much all done remotely. As much as we can practically do remote, we will do. So we end up with a huge data set on each person. For me personally, it was blood sugar regulation. And you know, Blood sugar, that's one that we would start with a lot of people because once you get that under control, it kind of spills over into many markers of health. So if you manage your energy and your metabolism correctly, you will often see that lots of the numbers and lots of your physiological markers will come up simultaneously. So to use a business phrase, you get a lot of bang for your buck with managing that. You know, ultimately, and this is this is a simplified explanation, but metabolism is is largely about the the conversion and utilization of energy and your brain being such ⁓ an energy dependent, like, you know, an energy hungry organ in the body. It's it's, you know, maybe two percent of your body mass and 20 percent of your of your energy needs and any fluctuations in the delivery of energy. is going to have a massive, massive impact on your brain. I've always found that like that tends to be number one, not always, but tends to be number one that we address with people. And then there are other, some of the other big ones. And I know even when people are listening to this, you know, some of the, the interventions, they're, quite straightforward, you know, like managing your energy, managing your sleep, managing your energy and recovery. These are the things that should be the basis of, you know, almost any health intervention, any longevity intervention, any performance intervention. But the reason that the overlap into all these different fields is because they are so foundationally important. And, ⁓ you know, if you want to build a skyscraper, you need to have good solid foundation underneath. if you get those things correct, then it becomes a lot easier to compound on top of them with more nuanced or niche.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: interventions afterwards.
Rudi Adigbli: I get that. That makes sense. And how are you getting those biomarkers? Do you recommend any devices or do you have like a ⁓ set of tests that needed to be taken or how do you conduct that?
Dermot Rock: Yeah, so the pathway we do with our clients is usually measure, monitor, manage. at the start, we'll measure everything. We'll get a baseline score for people's cognition is obviously our North Star metric. And as people move through the system, we're always going to check that any of the interventions that we recommend or prescribe are going to lead to the outcome of improving their cognitive function.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: So that's always number one and that's, you know, it's done at baseline and then it's done, you know, periodically throughout the process. But we'll also do, you know, your blood panels, you know, ⁓ a wide variety of biomarkers. We'll do genetic testing at the start. We will do, and then we'll, you know, get them to wear different wearables. You know, they'll test their blood pressure, they'll test their, you know, standard wearables, whoop strap, Apple watch, ring, those kinds of things.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: and there were continuous glucose monitors where appropriate, there were ketone monitors where appropriate. So on our dashboard we have, know, what's the baseline? What's the most recent biomarker measure? And then also we can see in real time what's happening right now. So as someone is, ⁓ you know, we'll say enacting the behaviors and the habits and the lifestyle changes that we've recommended for them, what's it doing to their, ⁓
Rudi Adigbli: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: biometrics in real time and what's it doing to their biomarkers over time and all of that leading to again like I said the North Star metric of improving their cognition as we move through each of the phases.
Rudi Adigbli: So then therefore I imagine I will be walked through this process. this means so at the beginning I have this assessment, then you have all these like different ⁓ measurements on the dashboard that are tracked through a device or whatever you are using. And then there is this like the definition of the interventions in that sense, like most of the time you you realize, okay, this is the biggest level. Most of the time it's the metabolic system in a sense. And then are you describing or ⁓ defining a diet or is it basically how I can imagine the like, how the intervention looks like and how much are the intervals check-ins with in terms of the progress?
Dermot Rock: Yeah, so there's a couple of things in that. So first of all, there isn't a sort of one size fits all. There isn't a diet we're not dogmatic about. You have to be ketogenic, carnivore, paleo, vegan, nothing like that. So provided whatever we're doing is moving the markers in the right direction, that's OK with us. Generally speaking,
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: And again, this is very generalized, but to be generally useful to the listener rather than the individual, I think it's OK to generalize a little bit. But from the metabolism side of things, we consume carbohydrates and sugar, which we should use those terms interchangeably because that's what they are. They're the same thing effectively. Because we consume them in such huge numbers and with such great regularity,
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: Sometimes it requires us to adopt a diet or a system of eating, which is, you know, kind of extreme in the other direction, just so that we can get back to being able to use sugar effectively. So what I mean by that is, you know, once we're ⁓ overeating sugar in our diet, we tend to become something that's called insulin resistant. And again, this is very general. And when we become insulin resistant, means that we
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: lose the capacity to utilize glucose the way that it should be used. And glucose is extremely useful. Sugar, carbohydrate, glucose, extremely useful. But if we lose the ability to use it, then sometimes it requires a period of restriction in the opposite direction, just so that it can become useful to us again. So it's literally as simple as that. And I just want to emphasize as well that the metabolism, or if you like, the energy balance
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: side of nutrition is one aspect. But then there's the nutritional completeness side of nutrition whereby all of ⁓ the vitamins and minerals and nutrients that we should be getting into our bloodstream affecting multiple processes in the body is also of huge importance. And most sort of diet doctrine out there kind of neglects this a little bit.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: We tend to focus on people who want to lose weight, ⁓ reduce their body fat, ⁓ and get more metabolically healthy in that regard. But it's also important to remember that there is nourishment for our body that comes from nutrition as well. And that also requires ⁓ close monitoring and attention through our blood testing.
Rudi Adigbli: Well, that really resonates with me. And also from my understanding, it's really like ⁓ whatever you want to improve, I think. And that's also kind of a new paradigm that you have to look at your body, your mind as a complex holistic system that is interconnected and things are interconnected. And I feel like in the past, we didn't make so much progress because of ⁓ not thinking holistically in that sense. Maybe we... did more progress in like understanding things in a very narrow perspective without like seeing like how they are dependent to each other and how they're interacting. And I really think and I see that how I or I can imagine how this has like a biggest impact. One thing that I ask myself is, so let's say we get everything dialed in in that perspective. Are you also like motivating your clients or put on top intervention after the metabolic ⁓ markers are in shape to, for instance, do specific things that sharpen the executive function directly, like for instance the ⁓ NBEC training system. Maybe you heard of that one that is particularly known for enhancing ⁓ short-term memory, so IEG ⁓ executive function, or is it mostly based on these basic pillars?
Dermot Rock: To begin with, it's going to be a lot about getting the foundational things right. you know, if you were to imagine that what we're addressing is kind of, and again, this is an analogy which will be slightly incomplete, but I think people kind of get the general idea of what I'm talking about. So, you know, by addressing the underlying physiology, I consider that to be more of a hardware style issue. you know, if you've got ⁓
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: you know, ⁓ fluctuating like wildly fluctuating energy levels in your brain. You know, I've already spoke about how like energy demanding the brain is, you know, the place that feels that first is, you know, your prefrontal cortex, which is the, you know, if you like the command center, it's the seat of power for executive function. So, you know, it controls our
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah, yeah. Hmm.
Dermot Rock: It controls our executive function. It controls our ability to manage temperament and regulate ⁓ aversion to risk or otherwise and all these various functions. And these are all things that we can work on. But if we're doing that when the ⁓ hardware issue hasn't been addressed, so if someone is sleeping poorly, if they are poorly energized,
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: if they are not getting sufficient ⁓ oxygen to their brain. And again, these are quite general explanations of the issue. But if those things aren't happening, then there is little point in trying to fine tune how well we practice those things until the basics are fixed. once those things are, you know, we've moved the dial in the right direction on those, of course, we can then start to do cognitive training on all the various aspects. like I said, when we've done the cognitive testing on someone, we've got a black and white number, an objective measure of 23 different areas of cognition in the brain. And then we start to prescribe ⁓ training in each of those areas of the brain. Generally speaking, start to, we focus on bringing the baseline up. So the things that were worst at, we'll get the most gains by bringing those up. And again,
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah.
Dermot Rock: because the brain is quite complex and it's quite difficult to isolate one area. When you bring up one area, it tends to have a synergistic effect on overlapping areas or areas that are overlapping in similar functions. So that's quite a long winded way to answer your question and say that, there are many, many ways that we can build on top of the foundational elements. You know, the earlier part of your question was, you know, with regard to coaching, this is ultimately a coaching engagement. You know, sometimes that can get lost in all the data that we use and all the testing that we use. you know, if we have like a huge dashboard of every centilla of information that's happening inside in your body, ⁓ sometimes what can be lost is that there still has to be a skilled clinician.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah.
Dermot Rock: deciding ⁓ what aspect are we going to focus on this week with this human? Because a human also has competing ⁓ priorities in their life. Maybe they have a newborn child at home and you're harping onto them about the importance of their sleep and they're like, I got to wake up for the 3 a.m. So some things are more important in the moment than ⁓ us chasing our numbers.
Rudi Adigbli: ⁓ yeah.
Dermot Rock: So it's about being human and understanding, you know, how do we navigate this and find the best way around this in the moment.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah, I get that. ⁓ Coming back to your personal story, one thing that you told me is that you improved from the first test your cognition by about 40%. And I asked myself ⁓ how was the experience different from you being at the situation or in the point of your life where you felt your cognition is not ⁓ on point. and increasing it in 40%. So how is your experience different and how did it felt for you like totally subjective?
Dermot Rock: So the subjective side of things can be quite tricky, you know, because we tend to habituate to, you know, kind of how we feel today. And, you know, it's kind of relative to yesterday. We're actually very, very poor. Humans are very poor at comparing ourselves to, you know, a period ago that, you know, isn't so fresh in our memory.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: So because I was measuring all of this, I was very aware of the degree to which I was improving. And I do remember how poor I felt and how kind of chaotic or scrambled my thinking felt. I remember I had another startup. I was busy in that. But I remember sitting down mornings.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: And being genuinely busy, like genuinely I was busy working and doing stuff, but you know, at lunchtime looking back, I would sometimes struggle like what have I actually achieved? Like what have I done? Was I, you know, just a busy fool, ⁓ you know, sort of a bit more scattered and ⁓ not particularly focused or maybe not even completely remembering, ⁓ you know, the importance of something that I was looking up, purchasing or researching. ⁓
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. you Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: I find the greatest difference now just being a greater degree of clarity. And, you know, kind of more than that, I find it a little bit easier to to sort of plan more long term, to be a little bit more strategic, whereby it doesn't feel like a dash to, you know, to just deal with what's in front of me, that I feel like it's possible to have a more long term vision of things. ⁓ and to be more planned and pragmatic about how that's going to happen. The best analogy again that I can think of to describe this is, you know the guy at the, he's either at the circus or at the fun fair or the carnival and he's spinning the plates. So he's running around to all these poles and he's keeping the plates up. And if he doesn't get to one pole quick enough, the plate falls and smashes. ⁓
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: You know, it just feels like spinning all the plates at the same time and they're all at the same momentum and they're all going to need another spin at the same time. So, you know, it becomes a little bit easier to sort of manage competing ⁓ interests and to deal with a little bit more complexity. That's probably the way that I would describe it most is just a greater degree of clarity dealing with more complex and challenging issues.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. That's so interesting because it's exactly like what the executive function should be doing, right? That you have like your long-term vision and you understand in the moment, okay, based on my long-term trajectory, I shouldn't do this or I should do that. And ⁓ it's interesting that you tell me that because I just, ⁓ it reminds me to an... great article I have written about ⁓ on the blog Wait But Why. Are you familiar with him?
Dermot Rock: I don't believe so.
Rudi Adigbli: Okay, so I highly recommend this ⁓ blog because first of all, he draws pictures by himself and he uses these analogies that are super hilarious, funny, but based on very solid research. And most of the time his blog articles are maybe 20 pages long. And he did for instance one particular where he ⁓ dissect ⁓ what Neuralink is going to do and he just not only describe Neuralink, he just gives you like the whole history of how the brain evolved and in the combination with these funny pictures. And you have to imagine if the pictures look like it's written or it's drawn by a five-year-old, like really like silly, infidel in the combination with highly complex topics. And one of these articles was about the monkey mind and ⁓ procrastination basically. And one of the things that was that the monkey mind is like, and you have to imagine he draw like a skull with the brain and then you have the monkey that is he wants to do everything else besides of working. He just want to ride the roller coaster. He wants to be on the phone and also and so forth. And normally if you are not dialed in, then at some point when you have to deliver something, then you have at some point panic and he called it the panic, the panic monster. And then you can see the picture of like the skull and the monkey mind. So the monkey in the brain doing all sorts of things. And then the panic monster comes and then the monkey behaves. So basically that's probably the analogy when your executive function is not fully dialed in and you are more like, let's say the experiencer of all these different like, ⁓ different competing desires and also competing influence you have on a daily basis. And when you are not in like your monkey mind in that sense, then you are like, then you steering the ship. And this is also the analogy that you saw in one drawing that you have somebody that is steering the ship and the monkey mind or the monkey tries to interfere with the steering. So I have to send you that. think it's super hilarious. Besides of like being very like entertaining while also educating at the same time. I highly recommend it.
Dermot Rock: For sure. Well, like, you know, if you imagine, you know, ultimately the motivation of someone, you know, looking to test and then improve their cognition. And I mean this in the broadest sense, like not necessarily engaging with us. Like they want to achieve more, you know, they're, they're, have, they have higher goals to themselves and they want to put themselves in a position that they have the capacity to achieve those to the best of their ability. And, you know, if, if your brain is, ⁓
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: let's say it has a ⁓ fluctuating ⁓ level of energy. And like, this is keeping it super simple, right? You know, when you're deprived of that energy or the stability of that energy, your brain sees that as risky. it doesn't understand that, you know, this is because we've added a of carbohydrates and then we're having a dip afterwards. It still sees it as scarcity.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: Even if it's only momentary and, you know, we're going to eat later on or we're going to get our lunch in an hour, it still sees that as a moment of scarcity. And whilst we are in moments of scarcity or famine or anything like that, don't plan for the future. We plan for right now. And, you know, your brain goes into more of a survival mode than in a thriving mode. you know, again, I love my analogies at this stage, but, you know, somebody that's living paycheck week to week.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: You know, they're not particularly worried about their ⁓ investments or their pension for when they retire in 50 years time. They're just worried about having money at the end of this week so that they can put food on the table. And the analogy crosses over into something similar with your brain that, you know, if it isn't quite sure when it's going to get ⁓ its next source of clean energy from, it doesn't look after higher functions in the same way as it does
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah.
Dermot Rock: more survival mode functions.
Rudi Adigbli: That's a really great analogy. In particular, you can imagine on a broader scale what it does mean of what kind of environment somebody needs in order to flourish. And I also was thinking while you explaining the whole energy consumption or the energy management of a human being, I was thinking about the whole... dopamine crisis we have right now, the cheap dopamine. So if you combine this with like high sugar spikes, while also consuming like ⁓ cheap dopamine, that's a spiral in a way that you cannot go to a place where you will be able to have like an executive function that is working on like the highest possible achievable amount.
Dermot Rock: Well, if you think about it, if you were left in charge of like your six year old nephew, all right, and you had to mind him for a few hours before handing him back to his parents, right? What is the worst thing that you could possibly, let's say you didn't like your brother, who you were handing him back to, right? And you wanted to give him like the worst evening ever, okay? You would fill the kid full of sugar and you put them on a phone playing video games.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: and like, you know, rot their brain highly, highly stimulated on like this artificial amount of dopamine and, you know, push their sugar through the roof. That's, that's what you do if you wanted to ruin your brother's evening by ruining your child's brain in the short term. So, you know, if we step back from that and say like, that's, that's possibly the worst thing you could do. And yes, you know, the way we spend our days on these devices,
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah, yeah.
Dermot Rock: And you know, the type of diet that we eat is not drastically dissimilar to what I've described there.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah, yeah, I can totally see that. And there was also one particular thing that you have mentioned that you had this seizures and the physicians could not explain why. What happened with those ⁓ while you probing all these things on yourself?
Dermot Rock: Yeah, well, those were quite a while ago. were, you know, maybe 26 years ago I had that accident. And for about eight years after that, I was experiencing seizures. And, you know, like I said, at the end of it, they weren't particularly sure what was going on with that. actually had to be admitted to hospital for a week of tests in a unit that was doing ECGs and EEGs. And they were quite worried about me. I was an otherwise fit and healthy young guy in his 20s that just every so often was just collapsing out of nowhere. And one day it happened to me whilst I was playing a football match and people thought I'd just had that sudden cardiac death that literally thought I was after dying on the field. So that was quite worrying. But really what I took from it was
Rudi Adigbli: Wow.
Dermot Rock: there is some problem in there, even though they haven't got to the bottom of it. And, you know, because that was, I guess, to the forefront of my mind for so many years when I was younger, that's naturally where I went back to when, you know, things weren't working as I felt they should have, ⁓ you know, when my startup failed.
Rudi Adigbli: Hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, I got that. I got that. One thing that also was striking me is the people that you are working with. So these are like high consequence operators, fund managers, founders. And I think I even read somewhere that is like there's like in compounding Like 3 % drop in clarity is compounding into millions in opportunity costs. Can you walk us through what you are meaning or what is the chain of thought here?
Dermot Rock: Sure. you know, fundamentally, like, you know, we are dealing with people who are incredibly well put together and they are successful by any objective measure you want to use. These people are highly successful. They're in great careers or they're running great startups or, you know, they're managing vast amounts of money for other people. So, you know, from the outside, it can sound, you know, like What the hell are you talking about when you suggest that these people need to improve their cognition? you know, again, what we don't know, we don't know. until we test, you know, how we're how we're doing, we don't know what's possible in terms of improvement or in terms of opportunity costs. So, you know, the example I give you is, you know, let's imagine ⁓ let's imagine an investor going into going into a meeting. Let's say they were working late on
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: getting prepared for it the night before, they're under slept, there may be six hours into a day of dealing with challenging and complex issues already. They might be after lunch and having a bit of a glucose dip. And when you take all those factors into consideration together, it's reasonable to say that they might have just a marginal dip in clarity. So, you know, they may not and this only has to happen occasionally for this to have huge, huge impact on people working at that level. But let's say they don't, you know, they don't spot a risk factor. Let's say they are just a little bit off. Their attention is just down marginally in like the negotiation aspect of their meeting. You know, let's say their temperament is off when they're, you know, dealing with
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm.
Dermot Rock: an adversary or somebody that's coming at them with a problem, or a board member that's trying to challenge them on something and they snap at them because they're just a little bit out of order in that moment. All of these small little things might not matter so much ⁓ for some of us and the level of lives that we lead and we can recover from them. when you're dealing really at the very, very top, you know, these small aberrations in capacity can have outsized consequences. You're dealing with, you know, you're dealing with hyper successful people that are, you know, responsible for for massive, massive decisions and huge amounts of money. So even the smallest dip and again, you know, to move over just into a physical analogy like the 100 meter Olympic champion, you know, he trains for four years to maybe and like it's not even a guarantee, but maybe he shaves one hundredth of a second off his off his PB to win the gold next time round. But he spends four years and you imagine all the various inputs that go into his training for the four years in order to maybe shave, you know, one one thousand of his overall time of it.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: So you're dealing with very, very micro improvements at the top level. So for some people, this will seem like overkill, the amount of detail and the level of ⁓ perfection that's required. But if you're dealing with people that are operating at the very top, this is important and those dips could move markets.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can clearly see that how this leads to consequential decision. ⁓ I can clearly see how that can compound into in particular if there are people in this high impact environments. ⁓ What is your opinion about stimulants like ⁓ caffeine, for instance? I would really ⁓ try to understand what is your experience on that. What's your opinion?
Dermot Rock: Well, I think it's important when we consider any compound is, you know, what are we trying to achieve, number one? You know, so what's the reason for taking it? And, you know, does it have an impact on other things? So I use coffee in the morning and tend to have a coffee, maybe two coffees in the morning. I tend not to eat until a little bit later in the day.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: And so having a coffee, the impact that I get from it is that I probably do get a bit of stimulation. I probably do get a little bit of appetite suppression. So I find it useful for that, but like I would never take coffee past certainly noon at the latest because any lingering ⁓ half-life of the caffeine that's going to have an impact on my sleep.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: If I have one superpower, it's my sleep. if we were talking about Olympic athletes a minute ago, I think if we went to the Olympics for sleep, I would give it a good shot to get on the podium. So I won't do anything, generally speaking, occasionally I do give in to alcohol, but I won't do anything for the most part that impacts my sleep. So stimulants for the most part, not a massive fan of them.
Rudi Adigbli: Hahaha. Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: ⁓ unless they're early in the day and they fit in synergistically with everything else that you're trying to achieve.
Rudi Adigbli: That's interesting because I have one thing that I observed for instance with myself is like I have sometimes a hard time to have sleep pressure but when I have sleep pressure and I fall asleep ⁓ in a way that I go to bed and I'm so tired that I fall asleep I have tremendous deep sleep. When I don't have that my sleep is not like very deep in that sense and then I ask myself
Dermot Rock: What do you mean by sleep pressure really? you mean that you feel exhausted going to sleep? So unless you're exhausted, you don't manage to get to sleep quickly?
Rudi Adigbli: Yes. Yes. Not even quickly, quickly is one part, but it's also not that deep. That's the thing that is quite odd because I feel like, and I have this like faces in particular, it's mostly ⁓ combined with a lot of arousal in excitement, then a lot of like ⁓ physical and ⁓ cognitive ⁓ exhaustion. And then I can sleep like a stone. However, when I'm like in the middle, Kinda, like not really, like I feel like I'm not fully exhaust all my energy. Then my sleep is not that deep and I'm wondering why, because then it's also the reason why then in that moment I don't have like, I feel like I have it dialed in in terms of my cycle. But the only like, let's say common nominator I find is I really have to exhaust my energies in both like. physical and cognitive and then I have great sleep. If I don't have both it's almost like I cannot really fully sleep, which is odd.
Dermot Rock: Yeah, we frequently see that, you know, like if... data that we have on people, you know, it makes it quite simple actually to, you know, to go back and see what were the trends on the days where somebody did have great sleep and what were the trends on the days that they didn't. And, you know, you can, you can then demonstrate to them quite simply, okay, we've seen every time. if this was you, every time you go for the gym during the day and, you know, you get your steps in, you know, if that's the physical element.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: ⁓ You know, you sleep like a baby. So, you know, in order to recreate that, let's just do that again. And again, that sounds very, very simplified. But the details ⁓ causing that might be more nuanced. So it might be, OK, well, the nights that you didn't leave the office until nine, they're the nights you didn't sleep because, your brain is still working and you haven't given it opportunity to sleep to switch off.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: There are so many things that impact our sleep that it really is worthwhile for anyone to have even the most basic of a sleep routine. that would involve winding down. It would involve regulating the temperature of your bedroom is huge. Our body temperature needs to drop by sort of two degrees Fahrenheit before we fall asleep. So even having a shower, maybe an hour before bed can help with that. A warm shower can help with that.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: because after we have a warm shower, our core temperature drops thereafter. like there are lots of different ways that we can achieve that. But again, it starts with measuring. So for you, I I would I would recommend that, you know, look backwards on the days where you have had it. You already you already know intuitively I need the physical and mental exhaustion in order for me to get that really good sleep. But we just measure a little bit over time and just
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: you will find a trend in there. you usually the trend isn't that difficult to spot. You know, this stuff isn't rocket science. It really isn't. And, you know, I certainly don't want it to come across that, you know, this is any sort of lofty concept or, you know, this is all really, really simple. We just take the data from people that we have a huge amount of biomarkers. We spot the trends in them.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: we spot what are the easy things to change, what will fit with this person's lifestyle and what they're looking to achieve. And you just work from there. So I'm sure if you look back through the data or even if you want to give me a shot, we can look through it and we'll find patterns.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah, that would be amazing if we can do that. And I would also like to pick your brain about ⁓ what is your general opinion about workout. But as far as I got you, it's probably more towards ⁓ does it fit the trend and is it something that fits whatever cycle you have or what is your opinion on that?
Dermot Rock: Generally speaking, when we're talking to our guys, we break down, we'll say, the general concept of movement and gym and all that, we break it kind of into two. Okay, so one of them is exercise and one of them is activity. And both are really, important. activity is about the amount that you're actually moving about
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: like a human would have, you know, a hundred or more years ago when we were more, you know, physically active in our day to day, when we had to do a little bit more physical work where like every small detail wasn't automated. So it's important to be active. And for those of us that sit on our backside for, you know, eight to 10 hours a day looking at a computer screen, it's important to give yourself those breaks throughout the day where you are, where you are active. So, you know, rather than
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: bunching your 10,000 steps or whatever it is that you're trying to get in into one big long walk. You can break that down into five minute walks 10 times a day. That'll be much better for you, both for your brain and for your overall health. It's good to break that cycle of sitting, sitting is a disease. And then number two is exercise. So with exercise, what I find to be the most useful,
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: is the really high intensity stuff. you know, the number of variables that go into exercise are, you know, frequency, volume, intensity, like all these different things. I find high frequency and high volume or high frequency and high intensity, excuse me. train to a really high, high intensity and do it often.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: Okay. But, but because you're doing that, you cannot do it for very long. So the volume has to be reduced. So for that, you know, most, most people, certainly the guys that I deal with, like their, biggest moan is I don't have time, you know, you're trying to get them to do more exercise and like, I don't have time. And you're like, okay, I'll send you a kettlebell. So I post, I post them a kettlebell. I tell them, leave that beside your desk. I send them a 10 minute workout and I say, okay.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: when you get into the office or before you leave, if they're worried about, need to have a shower afterwards or whatever, you say, okay, before you leave, pick up that kettlebell and we're going to do 10 minutes where you are really huffing and puffing and sweating it out. And that high intensity exercise has ⁓ so many benefits for us, like primary of those I find is it's helping you to increase your VO2 max. So the amount of oxygen that our body can use and again, In addition to being very energy hungry, our brain is very oxygen hungry. So the better we become at that particular style of exercise, the more oxygen that we'll get to our brain. And again, within the activity, just get outside for five minutes. Get outside and get a fresh air break. Some people have the bad habit of going out for a cigarette every hour because they can't do it out that nicotine hit. You should be viewing on the flip side of that, I need to have my oxygen break the same as an unhealthy person is having a cigarette break. You get outside for five minutes and I get that oxygen hit. there's lots of these small things that we can do and maybe we don't do them so much because each individual thing, it's not going to make or break the bank on its own. They're easy to do and they're easy not to do. And we have to do them
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: you know, continually over a longer period to really get the benefits. So we kind of don't see the point in the moment. So like the greatness in any of in any probably in any intervention, but it comes from the consistency over time and how those interventions will stack on top of each other. just because, you know, we need to do something maybe a thousand times to really, really see the benefit, you know.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: That journey of a thousand begins with the first one and the second one and the third one. So, you you need to get out of.
Rudi Adigbli: That's great. And you mentioned that already, it's tiny habits. And my question is like, in particular, if you are working with people that they're like most, or like the most constraint is it's the time they have on their hands. So how do you support them to create these new habits or is there a support system at all or how you approach that to put these things into action? Because I find like, For instance, like the whoopstrap, all-red ring, all these kind of things, are great in putting the data together, but they are not so great to really actually tell you, first of all, this is the result. You are not dead recover. I would recommend doing that and that based on your health data, whatever it is. And I feel like ⁓ what you are doing with your company is some sort of giving that. Well, how are you helping them building these habits so they can really integrate these things in order to see the improvement?
Dermot Rock: Well, my starting point is to tell people with the time excuse that it's complete bullshit. You know, like it's it's it never stacks up like either either in the moment or as a long term argument. So the long term argument is about, OK, well, if you don't have time to be healthy now, you know, when are you going to have time to be sick? And, you know, the like we already discussed, there's there's an opportunity cost.
Rudi Adigbli: Hahaha.
Dermot Rock: to not performing at your best. if you're complaining that you don't have 10 minutes a day, which is all you need. People believe that if they don't have an hour to work out, which requires probably two hours of your day because you need to get to the gym and you need to get cleaned up afterwards and get back to where you have to be, maybe that's a two hour commitment. So it's fair to say that people probably don't have time for that. know, both we look at the most successful people in the world, they all have time for that. Even that. What I'm arguing is you don't even need time for that. You need 10 minutes, you know, and if you can't find 10 minutes in your day to do a little bit of exercise, you can't find, you know, a couple of minutes per hour to, you know, to walk around the office and just get a little bit of ⁓ oxygen going and a little bit of blood flowing around your body. ⁓
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: that there's just simply no way that that stacks up. It's not true. Like nobody doesn't have that time. And if you don't make the time for that, know, when are you going to have time to be sick and unhealthy and ultimately less successful in the long term because you you're underpowered. So I'm not sure if that quite answers your question, but.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Yeah. In a way, I totally got that. ⁓ also find like whenever I had like, for instance, an argument with my sister about something that requires time and she's a physician. So of course, it from the outside always sounds like that's a valid ⁓ constraint or a valid argument. And I'm like, no, that it's not when something is a priority, you find time. And most of the things ⁓ do not require a lot of time. And so for me, I totally got that. And one thing that I'm particular when I want to change something, I understand for myself because I know myself very well. So I need to, and sometimes when I have a hard time, I start with a very small commitment, like something that I just ⁓ think I can easily do for a longer period of time. and maybe it requires five minutes, let's say five minutes a day, then I know, okay, I will do it. And most of the time when it's something that ⁓ gives me more energy or it feels good, although it's starting is hard, I want to do it more. And this is how I create like this micro habits sometimes. So that is something that helped me, but I totally agree with you. like, Having not time is basically, ⁓ or the translation of not having enough time is not a priority.
Dermot Rock: Yeah, well, know, people choose, you know, how to make their lives harder or, you know, what they're going to spend their time or focus on. You know, I remember I a guy before that was, you know, hadn't been doing his workouts and said to him like, why, you know, why not? What's what's going on? He's like, I literally don't have time. Right. So I said to him, take out your phone, go into the go into the settings.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Hahaha
Dermot Rock: me how much time you spent on TikTok the last week. You know, and it was a couple of hours. I was like, okay, so you got time for TikTok. look, I get it. Like I'm not saying that nobody should have any, you know, time to spend on, on entertainment or, know, doing, doing, you know, things that will help them to de-stress or like, you know, maybe there's it. And there is, there is a useful use of social media as well, of course. But, you know, you get the point that, you know,
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. Wow Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: We do have time, it's just where we decide to allocate it. And, you know, I just tend to not be very sympathetic towards Alex youth.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. I get that. And there's also one thing that I wanted to ask you. So for instance, like in particular, when we talk about recreational time, spending however you want, I got across this notion of like how there was a period of time where we have more recreational time, where we would like, for instance, the ancient Greek, what they would do, they would train in the morning. and then they have a lot of recreational time and then they would write poetry or whatever it is. And in that period of time, ⁓ a lot of things came up. We came up with deep philosophy that we are still working on and so forth. And I ⁓ observed something in myself when I spent around two weeks in Copenhagen and I noticed that although I maybe worked around just for 50 % What I noticed besides of like, probably sun played a big role and I also tend to had my shirt off a lot, which probably helped as well with my hormones. At some point I noticed first of all that ⁓ I felt sharper. I didn't have so much, let's say resistance to start any work at all. I was almost drawn to the work. And then the other thing that came to my mind was that ⁓ my, my memory got like significantly better and I was like pulling out things that I barely saw. And I was like, ⁓ remember that. And that was very striking to me. ⁓ and, and I was, ⁓ I figured that probably one of the reasons was that I had more breaks and I had this intuitive understanding that maybe if I only work around 50%, I might be, ⁓ able to, ⁓ have an output of 150%. So I wonder what is your opinion on that or whether you have data that support that kind of notion.
Dermot Rock: Yeah, well, like, you know, one of the ultimate aims that we would have would be that, you know, when we work with someone that, you know, you'd be saying to them that you are going to be much better at what you do. You won't have to work as long. Right. But, you know, the people that we're working with are a special breed that, you know, all they see is the opportunity to work better and continue to do those hours most of the time. You know, so it's not it's not about. more productivity means that they can work less. Like these guys, usually they take it to mean like, okay, well, if I'm getting more work in and I continue to work, well, then I'm really going to crush the competition. But back to your point about, you know, your own personal experience being outdoors and, you know, in the good weather and things like that. Like there are lots of various biomarkers which can be objectively measured as improving
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah.
Dermot Rock: through doing that, but like, and this is completely opinion. I believe that there is a special benefit to being outdoors in nature and, you know, taking in the fresh air and the sunlight, which, probably occurs in ways that we don't even know how to measure yet. I genuinely believe that the effect of that is so universally powerful that maybe we don't completely know what's going on there. ⁓
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: There seems to be very little downside, if any, to getting outdoors, being a little bit more active and in nature.
Rudi Adigbli: That's great. So to really summarize or drive your home, drive your point home, when you have like ⁓ only three things that you can do in order to ⁓ improve your cognitive function or executive function, what would it be that you tell, for instance, the audience that from now on you can do these three things and when you dial them in, you have a better outcome. What would that be?
Dermot Rock: Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, so the three are pretty simple to answer because these are the three big movers. And the reason that they're the big movers is because ⁓ each of these are quite general and they overlap into so many things. So if you get the three of these things dialed in, ⁓ without question, your cognitive function will improve. No questions, right?
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm.
Dermot Rock: So sleep obviously is the big one. We'll start on that first because we've already spoken about the sugar stuff. So sleep is very often it's kind of seen as something that gets in the way. Certainly people that are ⁓ quite driven and work in long hours, they prefer if they could get away without sleeping at all. And they tend to sleep, not sleep as much as they should, but
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: Sleep you really do need to get, ⁓ we've always been told like eight hours, but like somewhere between seven to eight hours, like across all the literature is the sweet spot. Okay. So ⁓ if you sleep more than that, it can be problematic. If you sleep less than that, ⁓ it can be problematic. And again, individual response is going to vary, but certainly in terms of duration, seven to eight hours is going to be the sweet spot. And within that, obviously, ⁓
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: the quality of our sleep within that matters greatly as well. You want to be getting more of your rim and in-rim sleep, which are different phases of our sleep, which do different things. But I think in order to sell the concept of sleep, for me, certainly the most important aspect of it is that there's a lot of metabolic waste that happens in our brain throughout the day. And literally the only time that that can be cleared out is at nighttime when we sleep. So if that doesn't happen, I remember seeing, ⁓ I think it was Georgia Ede on one of the podcasts that I saw, she gave a great example of taking out the trash. So your body takes out the metabolic trash at nighttime when we sleep. And if you don't sleep sufficiently and in the right proportions of ⁓ each of the phases of sleep,
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: that won't happen. So, you you need to take out the metabolic trash. So sleep is definitely a huge one. Second of all is I'm going to broadly call it, you know, energy balance. So your brain needs to have a sufficient and stable source of energy. OK. And it needs both. So sufficiency is just about the amount and stability is about, you know, the regularity and consistency of it. But it needs both. So
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Dermot Rock: We would have sufficient energy for our brain if we were to eat, you know, McDonald's and Pop Tarts and, you know, all those, all those sugary things, Coca-Cola. We would have sufficient on average because, you know, the overall amount would be enough. That would be sufficient, but it wouldn't be stable. So we would get huge spikes in energy drop, followed by huge crashes in energy. And our brain doesn't operate well on either. So the excess
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: cannot be used. Okay, so it's like pouring petrol into the engine of a Formula One car. It's not going to go any faster. If you keep filling the engine once it's full, you know, it won't go any faster. It won't go any longer. Like nothing extra will happen. No benefits will occur. And some negatives might happen. Okay, so by having an excess of energy, we need to do something with it. So our body needs to develop systems of what are we going to do with that?
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: like I'll give you the short, you know, but basic answer is that it's going to your body fat. OK, so we're going to put on ⁓ a greater degree of adipose tissue and it messes with other processes. But let's let's keep it simple for now. OK, so that's going to be our our consistent balance of energy. And I'll just say one final point on that, because I do think it's important that, you know, we frequently will encourage our guys to experiment with with elements of a ketogenic diet. our body can also make an energy source from ⁓ our stored body fat. They're called ketones. And this is an extremely ⁓ highly potent form of energy that we can use. And we tend to be able to use it even when we have screwed up the ⁓ system of utilizing glucose.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: people who are diabetic or people that have ⁓ Alzheimer's disease, is like, you know, the same pathway as diabetes pushed to an extreme. Those people get vast improvements in their cognitive function within hours if they're switched over ⁓ to ketogenic diet. So again, nothing is a one size fits all. Nothing is, and it shouldn't be for you and you shouldn't take advice from some stranger like me on the internet.
Rudi Adigbli: Yes. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: But these are things that I encourage people to learn about and to explore. And it's certainly something we encourage our users to test. So that's number two is the energy. And the last one, and I'll do this quickly, I promise. And we touched on already is exercise and recovery. And I put them together because we can only do one relative to the other. So if we exercise really, really, really hard,
Rudi Adigbli: No worries. Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: Okay, we need to recover really, really, really hard. So the intensity or the volume or frequency of our exercise must be tethered to how we are going to put our focus and energy into recovering from it. So like Goldilocks of the Porridge, not too hot, not too cold. With our exercise, not too much, not too little, because it always needs to be tempered with sufficient recovery on the other side. And the magic happens. So the growth and the adaptation and
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: supercompensation as we call it in the exercise world happens when we rest and recover afterwards and nourish ourselves sufficiently.
Rudi Adigbli: That makes so much sense. That makes really a lot of sense. In particular,
Dermot Rock: So fix those three, Rudy, fix those three. All the rest is like the icing on the cake or the cherry on top. And that stuff is really powerful too. But like fix those three. Like someone's just listening. They just want to say, okay, what do I need to do to ⁓ like move the dial on this for myself? Number one, test your cognition. And then number two, you know, start to implement some of these factors, even on a very basic level. Just reduce the sugar. Don't worry about ketones. Don't worry about.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: what your glucose levels are, just say, do you know what? One or two meals a day, I'm just going to cut out the carbohydrates or cut out the sugar. See what happens. Do the same. Just become intentional about your sleep. Just decide, okay, I know what time I need to get up every morning. Okay, that's usually for most people quite fixed. Work back from that eight hours. Okay, and the eight hours back is when I need to be asleep. Not when I go to bed, but when I need to be asleep. So work back from that another 30 minutes. That's when I need to be in bed.
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Dermot Rock: And in the build up to that, make sure you're not overstimulated. Turn off your, know, stop using your TikTok. Stop being on Instagram, you know, comparing yourself to the world outside. It's not important. You're trying to get some sleep. Okay. And open the, crack the window open for the last 30 minutes before you go to bed. Make sure that the room is a little bit cooler. These are all simple little tactics you can use. And then with the exercise, don't kill yourself. You don't have to be Mr. Olympia. On day one, just do a little bit more than you're used to doing. Just start to tire yourself out just a little bit. Our body is, it should be used more. should be, ⁓ you know, it should be active. It should be physically active as much as possible. Once we can still recover. So just don't be too hard on yourself. Just do a little bit more. The three of those, just put them together and I promise you, you'll start to feel better. Your brain will start to work better. And you know, the tasks that were. maybe a little bit complicated, we'll start to come just a little bit easier for you.
Rudi Adigbli: Makes so much sense. Makes so much sense. yeah, thank you so much for that. And I have one more question. And it's in regard to what is your long-term vision five years from now with your company, Cognite.
Dermot Rock: ⁓ wow. Well, that's a good question. And I suppose I did say earlier that I'd become a little bit better at thinking strategically and more long term. So I better have a decent answer for this. Yeah, I. Yeah, sure, sure. And that's that's no problem. That's that's good for us. Yeah, I honestly think that that cognition is kind of the new frontier in ⁓ in the health sciences that
Rudi Adigbli: I put you on the test.
Dermot Rock: I honestly think that that cognition is of the new frontier ⁓ in ⁓ in the health sciences ⁓ that You know, we've all become accustomed to wearing our woops strap and, know, the concept of lifestyle medicine and, you know, people have already embraced all of these. you know, cognition is kind of the new frontier. You know, we've all become accustomed to wearing our woops strap and, know, the concept of lifestyle medicine and, you know, people have already embraced all of these. you know, cognition is kind of the new frontier. It's like, OK, so if you're in business or you're, you know, worried about focusing on career rather than being an why is this important? And the reason this is is because we want our brain to work better. We are all, we're all selling our knowledge, whether that's as business people or as ⁓ employees. We're being paid for the power of our knowledge and the power of our decisions. That's ultimately, that's what it breaks down as. hundred years ago, maybe it was a little bit of muscle and brawn and, you know, ⁓ physical output, but we're being paid now for the compute power that's happening in there. And by breaking down all of
Rudi Adigbli: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Rock: the physiological factors as upstream components that impact cognition. What we're really saying is this is what we're really trying to achieve. My vision for this business is that we will conduct with all the data that we have on our users, that we will conduct research to define a physiological state of decision-making readiness. That's quite a lofty goal.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah.
Dermot Rock: it's still uncertain as to how achievable that is, either in the timeframe you've stated or even more generally. But what I would love to be able to do is define ⁓ the specific combination of biomarkers and physical states and measurements that would allow us to define what decision-making readiness really is as a physiological state.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah. That's a lofty goal. And I think it's also super important in particular ⁓ when we think about AI that is coming. I firmly believe in particular if you are able to dial in your cognition and you are able to perform in particular when it comes to like things that... AI tend to be not very good at or you can use it as a leverage. And when you are like very distinct in your abilities in combination, you have a high level of creativity and you have like a well-defined field of expertise. I still believe that at least the next five years from now, you are totally fine. And I think that's why ⁓ executive function and your cognition will be even more important going forward. you can already see like entry level jobs are getting cut. So meaning we probably will have same kind of jobs, but maybe less in terms of quantity. But if you can distinguish yourself by... ⁓ by being very skillful and fast in certain abilities and in particular abilities that are not so well covered with AI at this point of time, I think you will be still well off. So that's why I think it's super important what you are aiming for and I wish you best of luck.
Dermot Rock: That's super Rudy, thanks very much.
Rudi Adigbli: Yeah, thank you so much, Dermot. It was a pleasure having you and I wish you all the best.
Dermot Rock: Thanks Rudy, it was great talking to you and thanks for having me on.