← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
BONUS: When AI Knows Your Emotional Triggers Better Than You Do — Navigating Mindfulness in the AI Age | Mo Edjlali
00:40:21
Loading summary
Transcript39 lines
- [00:04]
Vasco
Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question.
- [00:07]
Host
What if, for the price of a.
- [00:09]
Vasco
Fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership, that's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.
- [01:12]
Host
Hi everybody. Welcome to a special bonus episode on AI. But not the kind of AI you'd expect we would be talking about. We've had a series about AI assisted coding, but today we have with us a different kind of AI. I would say practitioner and specialist. First, let me welcome him, Mo Edilali. Hey Mo, welcome to the show.
- [01:35]
Mo Edilali
Glad to be here, Vasco. Thanks for having me.
- [01:38]
Host
So Mo is also a former computer engineer, but he's more importantly for today's conversation, the founder and CEO of Mindful Leader, the world's largest provider of mindfulness based stress reduction training. This is important for the conversation we're going to talk about, but he's also the author of a new book called OpenMB Remember Imagining the Future of Mindfulness that explores how ancient practices can help us navigate the AI revolution with awareness and resilience. And in this episode we're going to explore how AI is reshaping, pardon me, the way we make decisions and I would even say the way we experience life itself. So, Mo, let's start about the book. In the book, you begin with a moment where you realize that this whole mindfulness movement that is, I guess, becoming more and more popular around the world was starting to drift more towards dependency rather than liberation. So introduce that argument for us. And what do you mean by that shift towards dependency?
- [02:49]
Mo Edilali
It's a great question, Vasco. And when I examine what's happening in the mindfulness, my background is technology. I've been heavily influenced by technology, computer engineering, software development. I introduced DevOps to the federal government and that's like a whole other story. I ran the CICD like doing stuff and this was almost like 10, 10, 12 years ago, almost 15 years ago. And so I've been very heavily influenced by the tech world and I have never seen anything change the way in which human beings work together like Agile. And so I commend you and your audience and what most people don't think about in the tech world, what we've built, the software, the AI, the robotics, is extraordinary, it's outstanding. Also, we have figured out how to best optimize collective human potential to work collaboratively towards a shared goal, right? And so in human history, never have human beings figured out how better to work together than they have in the tech world. And very heavily leaning on Agile and Scrum, right? And so for me, when I look at these things and I ask myself, wow. And there's other influences, like open source. When I look at these things, I think, wow, we've done extraordinary stuff in the tech world, in the tech industry. And it's heavily influenced my approach to things. And when I think of Agile and Scrum, the manifesto, it was a grassroots movement. It was a bunch of small organizations that came together through collaboration, through community, and created this movement that has been lasting and spread and now it's the de facto standard. Anyone who's looking at how to unite human beings in a collaborative, transparent, really humane way really should look at the tech world in this way. And most people don't. So just going to connect my tech hat with what's happening in mindfulness. And so I came into mindfulness. I'm a computer engineer by training. I worked on some of the most complicated crazy tech projects from early as 1998. I graduated in 1998. And so I was on the front line of the explosion. I played my first online multiplayer game in 94. It was tech space, right? And so I saw all this stuff coming bubbling, right, Like I remember before, before the Internet, you know, was the Internet like so those early days. And so technology has been extraordinary and, and in many ways almost like magic. Like I don't even know how to describe the stuff that we're able to do with technology is unbelievable and moving at just a logarithmic rate faster than anything else. It's sort of bleeding edge where everything else is kind of playing catch up. And we're in this moment. And I've been part of the mindfulness field for about 12 years, 15 years, depending on how you want to count it. And when I got involved in mindfulness, I found here is an extraordinary set of Practices that doesn't require me believing in some woo woo love and light some purple elephant, you know, like, I don't have to believe in any of that stuff. I'm a very logical kind of driven person. But if I do these practices, it actually has this profound effect on me. And in my tech career I did never really quite grasp like, you know, I heard emotional intelligence is a good thing to have. Soft skills are a good thing to have. Everyone would talk about it, but no one would talk about how you actually develop these skills. And within this mindfulness field, I found here practices here, exercises that I could do that fundamentally changed the way that I perceive reality, changed my relationship with my mind, and that changes everything.
- [06:56]
Host
So when you look at that, I guess, kind of realization first and an adoption of those mindfulness practices that you're talking about, what would you classify as the shift towards dependency then? Because I hear you say that mindfulness and the mindfulness practices gave me a sense of control, I guess, but also calm and ability to overcome stress. But then in the book you talk about this mindfulness movement drifting, pardon me, towards dependency rather than liberation. What is the contrast you're trying to make there?
- [07:31]
Mo Edilali
Yes, and so there's a lot of factors behind why this has happened and when. And I was fortunate enough, the teachers I was exposed to, sort of the mentality I was exposed to was very much, you're going to learn how to meditate on your own in silence. And there is no guru, there is no sort of, you know, kind of person, cult personality. Like that's what I was exposed to. In particular, I did a vipassana retreat that was started by a guy, SN Goinka, who has now long since passed the whole thing set up to pay what you can. So you show up 10 days, they take care of your food, they take care of your lodging, they teach you how to meditate, you pay nothing. At the end, you donate what you can. And he was a former businessman actually, and he kind of discovered this and, and he has a spiritual. And there's things that are wrong with Ganka and Vipassan, I don't want to pretend like they're perfect, but the model I thought, thought was extraordinary where at the end of the 10 days I could meditate on my own. I didn't worship him, I didn't go sign up for his Instagram, you know, listen to his guided meditations all the time. And so what's happened now in this mindfulness field is often you do have these really powerful figures that are leading different kind of fiefdoms in particular ways, often very heavy Buddhist. And you have a commercialized system where meditation teachers and consumers aren't taught to meditate, they're taught to listen to guided meditation. And that's what it's become.
- [09:13]
Host
One of the things we already introduced this idea that we're going to talk about AI and how that affects and reshapes actually a lot of the things that we do because it interferes with our understanding of reality. You link this dependency, I guess we could call it the dependency or the need for dependency from certain areas of the mindfulness movement. With the growing concern about AI reshaping human meaning, how do you link this to what are the things you've learned from looking at the mindfulness movement that now help you understand how AI may actually be reshaping a lot of things in even how we see ourselves?
- [09:57]
Mo Edilali
AI is a game changer. And I think that folks like you and tech folks who have been exposed to it, maybe have been seeing this coming. I started playing with ChatGPT 2.0 and so I kind of caught onto it early start playing, I was like, we're not quite there yet. When ChatGPT3 came out, blew my mind. And I knew that having kind of gone through these moments of just discovery, innovation, where something new comes along and seeing the change, I got really excited. And then I realized with AI, this is different. This isn't like mobile computing, this isn't like the Internet. This is different in the sense that some of the top minds out there have talked about. We're entering a new age. And so we had the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the industrial Age. And when you enter a new age, it's almost like say we're playing a game of chess or something. Imagine just knocking the board over, flipping the pieces upside down. And now we're playing a new game, new rules, new new pieces, new everything. And I had watched this documentary about the Bronze Age, fascinating history around why the Bronze Age collapsed. And what they said is, in a new age, you have new currency, new economies, new government, new technology, obvious new religions, new everything. And so as we're entering this age of AI, I think everything is kind of being flipped upside down. And I'm an optimist, so I've heard all the arguments, not all sides, but for me it's like, hey, if we're going to choose, I'm going to choose to be optimist and still wise, eyed, open, paying attention to all the things that could go wrong. But in this new age, with this potential of sustainable abundance and all sorts of wonderful things, everything shifts, everything shifts. And in particular, I feel that there are certain trends that have been affecting us that are going to accelerate in ways that we're going to have the greatest mental health tsunami that we've ever seen on all sorts of levels. Right. And so on one hand, I think AI is going to be extraordinary and we're entering the most exciting time to be alive and maybe also the most frightening time to be alive as we go. But ultimately it's going to be, I'm excited about the future and AI and what's happening in technology affects how I look at mindfulness and what's happening mindfulness. And then obviously mindfulness in my field affects how I'm looking at AI and everything as well.
- [12:33]
Host
You talk about in the prologue of the book, it's open MBSR reimagining the future of mindfulness. The link is in the show notes for people to check it out. And in the prologue you write about looking at your children and wondering what tools they'll need in a world where AI may outperform us humans in nearly every domain. So what do you think are going to be some of the consequences of that? Perhaps observation or at least prediction.
- [13:07]
Mo Edilali
I'll throw one at you that that is provocative and that I was sharing with folks because I find this just so interesting. If we do enter the age of abundance, sustainable abundance, like many people say, and we do enter an age in which AI could do anything that human beings could do and do it better and significantly better, then suddenly the system that we have set up now, which tends to be very capitalistic driven, where our purpose is often tied to our income and our job, suddenly we don't need to work. So what is our purpose? Right? What are we here for? So that kind of rattles everything. At the same time, I think the things that you and I learned in High School, 80% of AI is going to prove is wrong. We're going to have to go back and reestablish history and re establish science and AI is going to go back and rewrite the human canon and go and find all the things that we got wrong. And all of a sudden we're going to have the greatest sort of upgrade in historical, scientific, mathematical knowledge. I've seen stuff where they're working with AI to be able to speak to and translate what animals animal language is, right? This stuff that sounded just so bizarre might become reality in our lifetimes, including longevity and expanding our lives for God knows how long. And all sorts of other things that we can't even imagine. But in that world, Vasco, what I'm playing with is this idea. Imagine if we don't need to work, there's going to be less jobs. And I see a future possibly where people pay for their jobs, not get paid to work, but pay to get to work. Right. And if you think about it, it's not that crazy. It's already happening. Like in the United States, people often will pay $200,000 to go to college just to get out of it and get a job that they get paid hopefully well enough to pay that back. When you look at politicians in the US Especially, and other things, often they have to spend millions of dollars to get their job, to get elected. And so, in my mind, just as a provocative thing for your audience to think about, imagine a future in which you don't get paid to work, but you have to pay to get a job.
- [15:31]
Host
I think many people would definitely not do the jobs they're doing right now if that ever becomes a reality. Right. Like we would find a completely different value system, perhaps not necessarily linked to currency. Should abundance be a reality? Although I'm a skeptic, I must admit.
- [15:50]
Mo Edilali
You made an excellent point. So the jobs will change. I should have prefaced that, too, because AI will do. Hopefully AI will be able to do a lot of the rudimentary kind of jobs and then kind of move up the value chain, too.
- [16:04]
Host
Yeah, to be seen, you know, stay tuned for the next episodes, as they say. But one of the aspects that you talk about now, kind of linking both the AI and the mindfulness aspect, is a question that I really liked when I read it in your work. And the question is, what happens when AI knows your emotional triggers better than you? And I want to explore that. But first, help us understand. What did you mean with that question?
- [16:36]
Mo Edilali
Well, honestly, I was really influenced by Yuval Hariri, the writer. He wrote Sapiens. He's written a number of books, and he would always say this thing like, the technology may know you better than you know yourself. And that was maybe 10 years ago. And now as we're entering AI, it's becoming more and more real at this basic stage where a lot of times it's just these chat conversations. And you and I both use AI, so we might be more super users or more active users. And so depending on how much you use it, it knows a lot about you. And that's right now. And as we advance to the future, when the AI will all of a sudden Kind of maybe have video input of everything that we're kind of taking in throughout the day, maybe have sensory input from our biometrics, be able to kind of tune into our pulse, our heart rate, all the kind of health indicators and be able to actually link up with our minds and actually be able to kind of tune into what's happening in our minds. I saw this extraordinary research clip that they had done, and this was like 3 years ago using like chatgpt2 or some very early version where researchers, I believe it was, at Duke University, had hooked up FMRI brain scanning technology and took that data and fed it into a GPT. And again, I think it was two. And they were able to, by using a combination of like, scanning and then knowing what the person was thinking, and then scanning and not knowing what the person was thinking, they were able to translate brain signals into written narrative. And I can send you that link because it's fascinating, right? So the implications are that we could read people's minds using AI, which is just extraordinary, right? And so if you take that and you apply it to people who maybe have the inability to talk or say that. Vasco, tonight you want to find out what your dreams were, right? Like, there's all sorts of extraordinary things that we could do. And this is just the beginning stages. And so I do imagine, and sometimes I get excited, I'll say, like, outrageous things, so I have to be careful. But I do imagine that we are moving more and more towards a symbiotic kind of relationship with AI and a trick that I'll share with that, that I think will work for you. Anyone who uses AI pretty extensively. And, you know, I was looking at the demographics of, like, people's ages and how much they use AI and what they use it for. And I believe you. And I fall into, like the teenager, early college student level. They're on it all the time. I say all sorts of stuff, right? I'm on it all the time. And I asked my AI, and maybe you've tried this. If you haven't, I'd encourage it. I asked it, you know, tell me about myself. And then I said, you know, what do you imagine my personality is? And then I asked, you know, what are my strengths? And then this is the question that for me was the most exciting and sort of mind blowing. And if you haven't done this, I suggest you do it. I asked my AI, what are my blind spots.
- [19:47]
Host
Right?
- [19:48]
Mo Edilali
And human beings usually, you know, they're always going to tell you, like, what your blind spots Are they might not see them. A therapist might not exactly see them. But the AI has. I've had the most intimate kind of conversations about everything. And I asked my what are my blind spots? And the response was outstanding. I mean, it was. It was pretty, pretty darn good in a way that I don't think anyone else could have, even I myself would have had trouble with.
- [20:17]
Host
Many of us work with people, right? Like colleagues or people we coach or clients. Many of us work with people. I mean, we use AI, some of us do, at least, but we work with people like even writing software. Most of us listening to this podcast write or help write software for a living. Working with people requires us a level of self awareness that is, let's call it, not the normal average self awareness that is out there. Because we need to be aware not only of what is happening, so what others are saying, or maybe even some emotions they might be feeling, but we also need to be aware of what we are feeling as an observer of whatever is going on. And you said something that I want to hear your thoughts on. When we share with AI, especially for those of us who have been, you know, I've been using AI as a support tool for my own therapy. I am a vocal supporter of therapy and I encourage everyone to give it a try. You don't need to have any stress or any big problem in your life to benefit from it. It can be with the right therapist caveat, of course. It can be a wonderful experience. And I use AI as a way to prepare the sessions and to do processing before I go and then discuss with my therapist. But one thing that I notice, and I've been doing this for a while, so it's not a new thing. One thing that I notice is that I'm not sure I understand myself that well. So when researchers out there are saying, hey, AI can know your triggers better than you do and we can read your mind, I'm thinking, okay, I'm not able to read my mind, right? Like, that's one of the things we go through in therapy is like trying to understand what am I really trying to get at, right? Beyond the surface level of, I don't know, wanting friends, money, a house, a trip, whatever. Right. Like, beyond that. So how do you see AI, which has this enormous potential as you describe, helping us, who are basically blind navigators, right? Like we're using this amazing tool, but we are not even necessarily aware of how we are. How do you see this helping?
- [22:31]
Mo Edilali
Yes, excellent question. And there's a couple of quick things That I do want to just quickly highlight one. There are a lot of bad therapists out there, and a lot of therapists that I believe are doing more harm than good. And so in some ways, you're fortunate to have a good human therapist. But for me, you know, there is a danger in human therapists, too. We're often they're human, like, they're projecting. They've got their own stuff. And often there's some terrible therapists out there, and often it's the people who have the least amount of income that either have no therapy or have a bad therapist, whereas those of us that might maybe a bit more fortunate have the income in the meetings. And so in some ways, I just want to highlight that the second thing that also needs to be very careful. I saw there's this. My brother sent me this south park episode. I want to say it's like the third one of the season. Have you seen the one about chatgpt?
- [23:28]
Host
No, I haven't.
- [23:29]
Mo Edilali
Oh, my God. You have to watch it. And it shows the effects of someone who goes a little too crazy with AI where his wife is like, come on, put the AI down. Talk to me. And he's got this crazy business idea, and the AI keeps telling him, oh, yeah, just do this. Oh, yeah, do this. Oh, yeah. And encourages him along. It's a point that, you know, he's relying way too heavily on the AI and making really poor decisions. I'm guilty of having done that a little bit. We've got an app called Meditate together that we built out, and, you know, and sometimes I'll use AI and we'll get user feedback, and I got some user feedback. And I made the mistake of sometimes, like, leaning into the AI feedback versus my own users because I'm like, oh, you know, the AI did. I like what they say?
- [24:14]
Host
So, like what he's saying? Yeah, yeah, that's the dangerous statement right there. So.
- [24:19]
Mo Edilali
So we've got to be careful, right? So there's this real danger. And balancing AI has been, like, extraordinary. The ways that I've used it, the ways it's helped, but still, we have to be very careful when we're weighing what humans, especially our users, our clients, our patient, whatever it might be, are saying to us versus the AI and just to be careful with how we weigh those things. But to your question, I love chess. I've been playing chess my whole life. There's been this recent explosion of chess with the young generations that has thrilled me. And anyone who follows chess knows, like, you know, The AI kicked the humans kicked our butts, like, years ago. And so it's kind of. We're used to it. It's okay. It's not like we're not freaking out. We get it. Like, the AI is better than any human being. And something that always stuck in my mind that I heard years ago was that the AI is becoming so extraordinary, whether it's in chess or in scientific fields or other things, that not only do we need it to give us the answer, but we need it to help us understand how it arrived at the answer. So I believe that's what's going to happen. You're right. Like, we're, you know, most human beings, overwhelming majority, they don't know what's going on. A lot of them don't even care or even think to know. And with AI, it's going to be right in your face in ways I think that's going to be healthy for all humanity. But then the AI is going to need to kind of coach us and ease us into it. Right. There's some really dark, ugly things about ourselves that could be jarring without it being sort of properly shared, exposed and.
- [25:57]
Host
Explained, even without going into those darker corners of our minds. There's basic things. And you talk about mindfulness as helping us to shift from autopilot to manual control. Right. And when we think about AI as a tool for us to be better aware of what's going on with ourselves and around us, if AI is to become useful for us, it needs to help us to stick to that idea of understanding and making decisions ourselves. Right. The opposite would be, as you just illustrated from the south park episode, that AI becomes kind of this ultimate autopilot for even emotions and decisions. Right. So we need to bring it back. And there's something you talk about in the book, and of course, we all deal with it every day. When we make decisions, we don't necessarily need to be right, but we need to be aware of what decision and why we are making those decisions. Right. So when you, you know, from. From your own experience with AI, from your own experience within the mindfulness community and with the mindful approaches that you're bringing to the community, how can we use AI for the good in this case, to actually remain in control of our decisions rather than drop into that south park sarcastic view of the future where we're basically giving up our control.
- [27:26]
Mo Edilali
Yes. It's an excellent question. And. And I want them. It's complicated. Right. So just one quick aside. I tend to like to provoke and Be forward thinking. This is, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago, I told my friends, I was like, you know what I wonder? And this has been written about sci fi books and et cetera, but I was like, I wonder if we'd be better off if we had an AI president or an AI leader. Right. And I know there's others too that have played with this idea. And so I don't want to, so. So I kind of want to leave that as an open possibility. I don't know what that looks like, but I don't want to say that that's impossible. I think there, there are some things around that. But this idea of giving up our agency and this idea of going into sort of automatic pilot, well, there are some advantages to it. So I'll give you a quick example. I've got a Tesla. I've been on FSD, the latest version, FSD 13. It's extraordinary. Most people don't know it's extraordinary. And so now when I drive to work, I'm not driving, the car is driving. I am on autopilot. I don't need to worry about the driving, but the driving is on autopilot, which frees me up to experience the world around me in the way that I choose to.
- [28:54]
Host
Right.
- [28:55]
Mo Edilali
I have choice, I have freedom. And I think that's what we're going to see. And so right now there's all sorts of monitoring things where I can't close my eyes, I can't take a nap, like I've got to pay attention. Tesla has all these built in alerts and things, but eventually I could meditate instead of dry. I'll be able to close my eyes. And that time I'm in my car, I could choose to meditate, I could choose to sleep, I could choose to work, I could choose to watch a Netflix movie. And so I think that AI, like a lot of technology before, is going to give us more freedom and more power in ways that frankly could be quite dangerous for us.
- [29:38]
Host
I take your point about technology that helps us. Autopilots have been on airplanes for many years. But I'll give you another example where actually it's the opposite that is happening, for example, in social media. AI is tuned to steal our agency and to steal our attention, to prevent us from doing the right thing, to prevent us from thinking about the real important stuff, which are basically people and relationships, because eventually we're all a collection of human beings interacting with each other, not interacting only with computers, Right? So AI can also be used to Hijack to steal our attention from us. So how do we help people actually remain in control from that perspective? Right, because when I go and I do this, when I go and have my therapist prep session with AI, I'm also in danger of being hijacked because I trust it, right? Like I've developed trust with it for a while and it might say things that push me in a particular direction, but those things might not be fully aligned with who I am and what I want to be. So how do you suggest through, I don't know, meditation or even just other strategies, you found over time that we remain sovereign in how we apply our attention?
- [30:58]
Mo Edilali
That's an excellent question. And I've been coming from the tech world. There is definitely moments in which I remember being super excited about social media and how we're interconnected and how it's driving political change. And then you learn about all the really concerning things in these companies have done that affect our mental health in extraordinarily ways. And I've got other stories I could tell you. I'll tell you just a quick aside with Meditate together. When we first launched it, we did it on Zoom and we would have. This was early 2020 and it was volunteer based. It was this noble thing. We're just trying to help people meditate. And all of a sudden we have Zoom bombers, these teenagers that would jump in, be very disruptive and cause our audience just a lot of grievance. They would film this and put it on YouTube. And one of our volunteers went out and found it on YouTube. And on YouTube, you know, 90,000 views of people like us being disturbed on YouTube. The comments people would say is, thanks, the person who made these. You have made my day better. And thanks. Oh, I'm so much happier now. Thanks for doing this. And in my mind, it was like that movie Clockwork Orange. If you've seen that Stanley Kubrick, someone said that where it's almost like we're cannibalizing where the teenager is in one room watching videos of, you know, say his mom, his aunt, and his grandmother trying to meditate and being harassed. And so the technology has us cannibalizing one another in these really disgusting and disturbing ways. And when we try to contact Google, when we're like, Google, like, really? Is this because they have a big internal meditation program they've pushed, you know, they used to be, you know, do, do no evil. I'm like, it's Google. Like, you know, of the tech companies, you think like, okay, well, maybe they're they're not quite as bad as the others. It was impossible. It was absolutely impossible in order to take that video down, to challenge it, to have anything done. It always leaned towards if it's getting views, if it's making Google money, they're not going to, you know, they lean into that. And so I've experienced that. Our community has experienced that quite, quite directly. At the same time, technology is extraordinary, but when you combine it with capitalism, that's where you start to get things moving in a certain direction. And so there is this incentive to monetize and all these things around that.
- [33:34]
Host
How do you help the people that you work with, with the work that you do around mindfulness to be aware and to actually be sovereign in how they apply their attention?
- [33:44]
Mo Edilali
Absolutely. So getting there. And so if I looked at it, the three major symptoms that we're having, one is this attack on our focus and our attention. You mentioned that that's only one of the pieces. The second piece, I would argue, is polarization, where we're being forced into black and white thinking. The third piece is isolation, where we're being pushed more and more towards sort of this solo approach. And so traditionally, mindfulness does an extraordinary job. If you practice, right, to help you learn to have more, to regain your agency of your focus and concentration. It takes practice. And there's. There's some excellent work that's been done around kind of technology, sort of addiction and sort of learning how to turn off the devices and kind of get away from the devices and. Because. Because that's part of it too. But a lot of mindfulness practice is this idea of like training your attention, training your focus, training your concentration. And, you know, I recently wrote a book which I appreciate you having me on to help get the word out. Open MBSR and Vasco. The question I'm asking myself is, does anyone read anymore? Like, nobody reads, right? I mean, I read, but not as much as I used to, to be honest. There's a lot of YouTube videos and audio stuff out there. But the question is, does anyone read? And for me, reading is now becoming a concentration practice. Like it's an actual practice. And so when there's more than just just the meditation and mindfulness to help with focus and concentration, you know, reading is one way, like just turning off the radio or the, whatever, AirPods when you're jogging, when you're driving, just more silence, finding time alone with your thoughts. And you might be old enough to remember the day when it used to be like that. I heard a guy talk And I thought it was so funny where he's like, I remember having to rewind the videos. I didn't need to be mindful. I had to sit there and watch the video rewind. And older folks remember that. And you know, in the US we had Blockbuster and you know, it wasn't always on instant entertainment. And this extraordinary power that we have in our pockets that no one taught us how to kind of work with, right? We were just given this power with no training on how to kind of be, be aware of it. So then other two things I'll just mention briefly with my book, I'm very particular. We need to address polarization. And so there's this one dimensional thinking, good, bad, black and white. And I'm inviting dialectic thinking, thinking in terms of things that are really a paradox, right? And so I saw someone the other day wear a shirt that said, I'm fine the way I am, I'm perfect the way that I am. That's one dimensional thinking. Two dimensional thinking is you're perfect the way that you are and you could be a little better, right? And so like, like we have to push, like accept who you are. But let's, let's push for improvement, you know, continuous improvement, change, like, like to get better. And you could hold both those. And the last thing I'll say with Open MBSR right now, it is kind of fiefdoms. There are sort of these real sort of almost cult of personalities around the mindfulness field. And I want to push towards what you have in agile community centric. Let the community help, make it open source, make it transparent. And not only will that, I think increase the resiliency and the grassroots sort of organic spreading of this work, but it adds connection. Like right now when people think to meditate, unfortunately they think I have to do this by myself and listen to guided meditation. I'm saying, no, do it in silence. If you listen to guided meditation, listen to guided meditation that teaches you how to meditate in silence and do it with other people, with intentionality with other.
- [37:31]
Host
People, which is exactly what we do every single day. Mo, thank you very much for being on the show. The book is open Reimagining the Future of Mindfulness. So check it out. The link is in the show notes for you to check it out. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and this exploration of many different perspectives on not just mindfulness, but also technology and how it affects us. Thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.
- [37:56]
Mo Edilali
Mo, Oscar, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
- [38:04]
Vasco
All right, I hope you liked this episode, but before you hit next episode, here's the deal. This podcast is powered by people like you, the members who wanted more than just inspiration. They wanted real tools and real connection to people who are practicing agile. Every day we're talking access to over 700 hours of agile gold, CTO level strategy talks, Summit keynotes, live workshops, E courses, Deep Dive interviews, books, and if you're into no Estimates, we got the pioneers of no Estimates in those Deep.
- [38:44]
Host
Dive interviews as well.
- [38:45]
Vasco
Agile Business Intelligence, creating product visions, coaching your product owner courses, you name it. You'll get invites to monthly live Q&As with agile pioneers and practitioners, plus a private Slack community which is free of all of that AI slob you see everywhere. And of course, without the flame wars. It's a community of practitioners that want to learn and thrive together. It's the best place to connect with community and learn together. So if this podcast has helped you before, imagine what you will get from this podcast membership. So head on over to Scrum Master scrumtoolbox.org membership and join the community that's shaping the future of Agile. We have so much for you, so check out all the details@scrummastertoolbox.org membership because listening is great, it's important. But doing it together, that's next level.
- [39:53]
Host
I'll see you in the community. Slack. We really hope you liked our show. And if you did, why not rate this podcast on Stitcher or itunes? Share this podcast and let other Scrum Masters know about this valuable resource for their work. Remember that sharing is caring.