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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's episode will be a slightly longer one, part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us. So today, I am delighted to welcome A.J. Jacobs to Before Breakfast.
A.J. is the author of several books, such as The Year of Living Constitutionally, The Year of Living Biblically, and The Puzzler. He is the host of the podcast, Hello Puzzlers. So A.J., welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so thrilled to be here. I am a fan and you have made my life better with so many of your tips. So I'm hoping that I can repay by giving some helpful feedback on your show.
I am sure you will. So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Sure. I am a writer. I mostly do nonfiction writing.
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Chapter 2: How does A.J. Jacobs incorporate puzzles into his daily routine?
I've written several books where I try to take on a weird, admittedly an odd lifestyle for a year and then write about the lessons I've learned. So I spent a year trying to live by all the rules of the Bible. So that included the Ten Commandments, but also growing a huge beard and So people would cross the street to avoid me. I tried to be the healthiest person alive.
I wrote a book about gratitude where I thanked a thousand people who had anything to do with my morning cup of coffee, which is very relevant to this show, and try to become as grateful as I could. So those are the types of books and articles I write. And now you're doing a podcast about puzzles. So I would love to hear about this. Why puzzles? Yes, I do. I love it.
I do a podcast called Hello Puzzlers, available everywhere. And we give fun little word puzzles to our guests and to each other. I have a co-host. And that came about because I wrote a book about puzzles, mostly during COVID, which seemed like a good time to write about puzzles. But I am a huge fan of all types of puzzles. Crossword puzzles... word find, jigsaws. I love jigsaws.
I'm not good at them, but I love them. And I am convinced that puzzles are not a waste of time. I know that this show is a lot about not wasting time, using your time best you can. I believe puzzles are a big part of that. Well, tell us about that. I mean, what is it about puzzles that I mean, they're fun. They're fun. But beyond just being fun, what are the benefits of that? Yeah.
And I do puzzles every morning. I do the New York Times crossword. I do connections. I do a few others. I listen to my own podcast sometimes. Don't you already know the answers, though? Well, that makes me feel good. Okay, gotcha. I was a little shot in the arm for the morning.
But I think the benefits include, well, one is, as you've probably heard, that puzzles keep your brain sharp and help with staving off cognitive decline, which I think is true. It's not like... a cure-all, but it does help a little. And it's not exclusively puzzles. It's just about keeping your brain engaged. You could learn a new language. You could learn a new hobby.
But puzzles are one way to keep your brain engaged. But I think there are other advantages in addition. One is, for me... It really helps keep my mind flexible. So puzzles train you to see the world from all these different angles and looking for a solution.
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Chapter 3: What are the cognitive benefits of solving puzzles?
So if you see a clue in the crossword with the word trunk in it, T-R-U-N-K, You're thinking, okay, well, that could be an elephant trunk. It could be the trunk of a car. It could be bathing suit trunks. What my grandma called bathing suits are trunks. And that flexibility of mind seeps out into my whole life.
worldview so that when I'm confronted with a problem at work or at home, I'm able to keep my mind flexible and not lock in on, oh, this has to be the answer. No, I'm able to keep my brain fluid. And finally, And this, I think, relates to a lot of your message. It really encourages what I call the puzzling mindset, which is a mindset of deep curiosity and looking for solutions.
Because we are, the media, as you point out, is so problem-oriented. And it's just, you're hit with this relentless stream of negative news without... solutions being presented, I love it when you can look for solutions. There's a great quote I like by Quincy Jones, the late music producer, and his philosophy of life, he said, I don't have problems, I have puzzles.
And it's just that simple reframe of being like, I can solve this. I'm going to roll up my sleeves. It's a challenge, but it's not a crisis. I'm not going to curl up in the corner in a fetal position. I'm going to try to make this happen and get to the solution. I love it.
And I was listening to Hello Puzzlers the other day, and I was noticing what my brain was doing as I was going through one of your puzzles. And just to, if anyone wants to try it here, it was that there is a South American country that if you rearrange the letters of the capital, we'll give you the name of another country.
And of course, when you hear that, so then I'm like going through my list of, you know, South American countries, which I probably haven't thought about that much. But of course, that has to pull back from somewhere in the back of my brain that I had to fill out that geography thing in 10th grade. And so I'm going back through it like, OK, where is the capital? Where's the capital? Hmm.
Does anything have a short capital? Because that's probably what it's going to be. They rearrange that. And then, of course, you know, I'm thinking, oh, well, you know, I've been to All right, I'll tell you guys the answer. Peru, where Lima is, of course, Mali, the country in Africa. And so it's like, ah, I got it. I got it. I'm very excited.
But it was like that little, you know, that hunting through your brain and then that moment of excitement. I think that's what's really what that's what it does. Right. Oh, yeah. And I like to call that, or people in the puzzle business call that the aha moment. You had an aha moment, and that's what you're looking for. And we as humans are wired for that aha moment.
And I think that you can make that not just about puzzles, but about life, looking for the aha moments in life. But I also love what you did with the strategy, because I think that is very important, too. when you're presented with a puzzle or problem, what is the best way to solve this? And you were like, well, I think it's going to be a short word.
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Chapter 4: How can puzzles enhance creativity and problem-solving skills?
And that was a key insight. That will help a lot. So taking a step back, whenever you're presented with a puzzle or problem, what is the best way to solve that? Instead of diving right in and trying to solve it, step back and say, what strategies should I use? Yeah. And I hear that you may have a puzzle for us. I do. I wrote it this morning. Let's hear it.
It's not all that elaborate, but it is breakfast themed. Okay, well, people haven't had their coffee yet. Maybe we don't need elaborate. Exactly. Well, I just noticed that there are a lot of fun phrases in the English language that include breakfast foods. So I am going to give you a hint, a clue, where I will paraphrase one of these idioms that include breakfast food.
And you tell me what you think might be the phrase. And I will give you the food if you want. I won't give it to you up front, but for instance, and we'll start with an example. Okay. This is a breakfast food phrase that means to earn money. So that is bring home food. Bring home the bacon. Bring home the bacon. Okay. I see how this is going to go. All right. All right.
Got it.
Okay. This phrase means to risk everything on a single plan or a single person. So, oh. Put all your eggs in one basket. Look at that. You didn't even need a hint. Wow. Okay. All right. All right. This phrase refers to the unpleasant process behind creating a finished product.
Okay.
Ooh, how we're making the sausage. Oh, you are good. You are good. You know your breakfast foods. I know my breakfast foods. How about if you've got to face an unpleasant reality, you would encourage people to... Would it be eat that frog or are we going differently? Oh, that's interesting. Some people have frogs for breakfast. No, no, that's what we say.
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Chapter 5: What types of puzzles does A.J. recommend for beginners?
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Chapter 6: How does A.J. structure his writing and idea generation process?
So this is to face, if you're encouraging someone to face an unpleasant reality, you might tell them to. It's the most famous, at least in America, breakfast beverage. Coffee. Yeah. And what do you have to do every morning? You have to, before anything, you open your eyes, you... Oh, okay. You got me here. Wake up and smell the coffee. Wake up and smell the coffee. Okay, gotcha. All right.
All right, we got that. Last one, last one. Last one. This is a person who is very admired or celebrated in a certain community or small city. And it is a... I'll give you the food. Okay. It is toast. So this is a phrase with toast, blank, blank, blank. Someone who is very celebrated. Oh, the toast of the town. Toast of the town. Exactly. You got it.
I have never thought of that many breakfast related idioms, but it's true. It is true. I guess we're all, we're into our breakfast items. Totally. And who wouldn't be? It's a great meal.
Yeah.
It is. It is for sure. So, AJ, how should I mean, are there particular puzzles you would recommend that a newbie look into if somebody is like, OK, this sounds good. I'd like to try doing a few puzzles. Where should people go or what should they try if they're new to this? Oh, that's a good question. And I do think that there are puzzles for everyone.
So some people like logic puzzles, some like number puzzles, some like word puzzles like me. Also, the scientists do say that the more you can vary the types of puzzles, the better it is for keeping your brain active. So I can just tell you some of my favorites. I do the Spelling Bee in the New York Times, which is a good starter puzzle because it's basically... jumble.
It's like, you know, finding words, little word search and anagrams. I do the crossword in the New York Times, which is tough. The Monday is the easiest, but even the Monday is tough. It took me like five years to get where I can finish all of the puzzles. So it is a language that you have to learn.
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Chapter 7: What is the importance of a flexible mindset in problem-solving?
There's a fun one on the Atlantic website called Bracket City, which is free. I recommend that. There's one called parseword.com, which was created by the guy who created Wordle named Josh Wardle. And of course, there is Hello Puzzlers. And we do try to have very accessible puzzles because we know this is part of a lot of people's morning routine.
And yeah, you don't want to frustrate them too much at the beginning of the day. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like the crossword puzzles, I have not yet crossed that bridge to like the New York Times crossword puzzle. I mean, maybe someday, but I have not yet attained to that level. I'm sure you could. It's as I say, it's all a language to learn. Yeah, yeah.
No, I know somebody who does it with like either the down or the across. Oh, that's a tough guy. Yeah, a tough woman. Exactly, exactly. I wanted to pivot to your sort of genre of experiential journalism, which you so like own that category with all the books you've done in that. How do you do like how do you come up with your topics for that?
What makes you say that is something I should try doing for a year?
Yeah.
Well, I actually, I am very passionate about idea generation. And in fact, that is one of my, part of my morning routine is I actually spend 10 minutes. I have a remarkable tablet, you know, those tablets, which I like because I cut it off from the internet and I just come up with ideas for 10 minutes. I have, sometimes I have a magazine and I use that as like a mental jungle gym and I
One key is that 98% of those ideas are crap. They are just not good. But hopefully there's 2% that are good. It's really a numbers game, creativity. So I am a huge fan of that. And I come up with book ideas, article ideas, random ideas that I know are not going anywhere, but just keep my brain fluid and flexible. As far as books come, I try to... find books.
First of all, I like to think of the customer, the reader, you know, what would they be interested in? What would, I want my book to check a couple of boxes. One, I want it to be able to improve their life. I want, I want to stay married to my wife. So there are topics that she said, that you just won't go into. And she is, uh, yeah. So there's that there's, uh, I want it to be timely.
I want it to be broad enough so that it can encompass a year's worth of adventures. So my topics are usually big, gratitude, the Bible, health. So those are some of the considerations. And how do you project manage something like that?
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Chapter 8: What personal experiments is A.J. currently pursuing?
How do you sketch out what you're going to do? That's a good quote. Well, first of all, I'm a huge fan of outlining. in terms of writing. I love that. I also keep two different sets of notes to be organized. So I have a note, I have sort of a journal where it's my personal experience, like what it was like to pretend to be a Revolutionary War soldier and fight in the fake battle of Trenton.
And then I have another part where it's all research, because I do like to research, read hundreds of books. So that's one. I also, for the Constitution book, I think this is relevant, I decided to follow Ben Franklin's morning routine, which is to wake up at 5 a.m. And I used to be a night owl, wake up at 9 or 10 in the morning. But I've switched.
So I don't think it's, you know, it is possible to switch, at least for me. And I love it. I wake up at five. The first thing, by the way, Brent Franklin did, he said, he had a little reminder, what good can you do today? Which I love. That is just such a nice. And I try to remind myself and Many days I'm like, I don't know if I'm doing good. Is this helping the world? Maybe, maybe not.
But it's a good goal to shoot for. Yeah. Well, we love Ben Franklin around here. Always with Ben Franklin and the self-help universe. But, I mean, with something like that, I mean, part of when you're writing about your experiences, I mean, nonfiction, it needs to sort of have these epiphanies, like these realizations of something that happened.
And yet when you're going into something, you can't really ā know for sure where the epiphany is going to happen. I'm curious how you think about structuring your activities through a project like that in order to get realizations that will make compelling anecdotes. I love that. That is a great question. And it is hard because you have to...
I feel that it's a balance between having a structure and being able to improvise within that structure. And I think that's in many endeavors. But yeah, I have a structure where I know it's going to start and end at the year. I know that... For instance, with the gratitude book, I hoped at the end that I would become more grateful. It would be a little disappointing if I didn't.
And then I came up with, here are 10... what they call in movies, set pieces. I want to go down to South America and visit the coffee farmer. I want to meet with the guy who tastes the coffee and says, oh, there's a hint of licorice and a little bit of chocolate. And I'm always like, you know, it tastes like coffee to me, but I love that you can taste all that other stuff. So yeah,
having those set pieces and at each one, I'm like, what did I learn? What can I take away that I can give the reader as a lesson? And for instance, with the tasting one, it was a lot about savoring, which is a big part of holding onto that moment for a little bit longer instead of just letting everything flip by so rapidly like we often do. Absolutely.
Well, we're going to take one more quick ad break and I'll be back with more from AJ Jacobs.
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