On this episode I speak to Andrew Bustamante, a former ‘covert CIA intelligence officer’. We delve into the psychology of being a spy. Andrew explains the need for officers to know themselves really well, to know how to optimise their own recovery which is in part something helped through profiling and in part a process of self-discovery. We discuss the extreme cognitive load experienced as an officer and the need to retreat to a safe space in order to recover. Getting this wrong isn’t just a case of burnout, but as a spy it means ‘you become a major liability, not just to the operation, but to yourself and your own life.’
We explore psychological profiling and how important it is to fit the right personality to the right operations and delve into the use of MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) as a tool used to help every officer in the CIA understand themselves. Andrew explains his view of the world as a former spy, that ‘every human being you meet is either a source or some kind of support asset or some kind of network capability.’ And we touch on various other topics such as the elite leader, elite surgeon, elite athlete or elite in any field who is perhaps less used to failure than the average joe, or more able to plough on in spite of failure. Andrew shares his view of this, that ‘their failure is not in their skill. Their failure is seen in the rate of alcohol abuse, that they have substance abuse, the divorce rates, the lack of sleep, the sociopathic tendencies, the psychopathic tendencies.’
More about Andrew
Andrew describes himself as an improvement junkie. He’s also a former covert CIA intelligence officer, US Air Force combat veteran, and Fortune 10 corporate advisor. He surrounds himself with knowledge, experiences, and people who help him grow and he look for opportunities to share what he’s learnt with others. For more from Andrew go to everydayspy.com
For more from Fiona go to www.fionamurden.com
Fiona
Well, I think one of the words you use Andrew on your website is intrigue. And I was going to ask you a bit more about that. But starting with you, you've got quite an intriguing background. Can you tell us who you are and what you do?
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, absolutely. My name is Andrew Bustamante, and I am a former covert CIA intelligence officer. And I now run a business called everyday spy.com. And the whole purpose behind my business is to take my experience and knowledge from the CIA and apply it to hacking or making shortcuts for everyday people in everyday life. And a big part of that is because what people don't understand about how intelligence officers work is that our most dangerous, the most dangerous part of an operation is just surviving in everyday life without getting caught without making a mistake, without signing the wrong name, or without being mugged in, in you know, a part of the tourist sector of the town. So everyday life is actually quite dangerous for a CIA officer. And a great deal of our training goes into preparing us to live undercover day to day.
Fiona
I've always thought what a massively, cognitively demanding role it must be from that perspective, because I remember my Dad, one of his friends, who was actually I think he might have been CIA, because he was he was in the States. And it wasn't till he died, that even his wife knew that he had been a spy. And I always think about it. And I think that's just incredible, because you're basically having to completely compartmentalise who you are, with who you are being. And like you say, there's, that's incredibly demanding, it's the sort of thing that could be a tiny little slip up on a day to day level, can make everything come tumbling down around you.
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah. And, you know, I really appreciate that you call out the cognitive load that we find ourselves in, because that's not something that often comes up in my interviews, or in my conversations, most people are very interested in the physical aspect of the job, the disguises and the weapons and the clothes and the cities and the travel. But what what really is at the heart of a CIA officers interests is the cerebral aspect of the job. It's the deep thinking, not in terms of academic thinking. But in terms of real time operational thinking, which is something I'm hoping that we'll be, we'll be able to dig into today because our, our thought structure, our, our cognitive approach is extremely operational, it is not clinical, it is not academic, it is a very practical, but also very, very risk and cost benefit based way of thinking. So, so that cerebral aspect of it, of what it's like to be in one character, while knowing and complementing who you really are. Because if you have a break, if you have a cognitive break between who you believe you are, and who you're trying to be, you become a major liability, not just to the operation, but to your own real actual life. And that that is a problem that CIA officers have, when they lose track of who they really are, and what they're really doing, versus who they're pretending to be. And what they're pretending to do
Fiona
It’s incredible, and the level of metacognition involved there. So being able to think about what you're thinking, and taking that step away from what you're thinking is a hugely demanding skill. But again, it's that cognitive load that you're taking on, because I think people will say to me, oh, Fiona, you know, you're a psychologist. So, do you analyse everyone you see, do you analyse everything you do? And I'm like, probably not more than you do. I maybe have some more information, some more knowledge behind it, but probably not. When I profile someone I do. So that's four hours where I switch into a different mode of thinking, and it's hard work. But I always refer to that and so I couldn't do that the whole time, which in effect, is what you're doing as an undercover agent.
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah. So it's, it's interesting because what the way that we, the way that we structure that because there's so much to what you just said that's really interesting in in my point of view. When you are just like you said when you're switched on, it's extremely resource intensive. It takes energy, it takes time. It takes cognitive processing it burns calories. It, it sucks up attention, right. So, in those moments, that's not sustainable in the long term. So what we have to do is, if you've heard the term situational awareness or personal security, what we'll actually do is we'll schedule our, our day, our everyday life, we'll chunk it into blocks, knowing full well that we'll be in these high cognitive load positions, and that we need to retreat to a safer space, so that we can decompress or unload. So we'll go and have, you know, two to three hours of deep cognitive, cognitive or deep cognition on site on target, doing the operation. But then we'll intentionally retreat to a safe space, a hotel room, maybe a beach, or we'll jump in the car, and we'll go, and we'll be in control of our own vehicle and drive somewhere else to get us off the x or away from the danger area. And it's in those spaces, that we can return back to our standard cognition and our standard self, and then decompress, de-load, and kind of vent some of the energy so we can recharge, and then have a second or third iteration of that throughout the day. So, we're in it for just short periods of time. And then we're out of it for longer stretches of time to recover the resources to go back into it again. And that's one of the ways that we can prevent against having a break, but also like preventing as a cognitive break, and then also prevent against some sort of psychotic break, or some sort of a trauma that we might trigger in ourselves, or over stressing ourselves, whatever it might be, by just balancing this space to recover versus a space to invest.
Fiona
It must be immensely draining. I mean, I think about during the pandemic, I worked with frontliners. So, I see consultants, it's not my job, but I was doing some work, because I've done work with surgeons on emotional resilience before, which is what you're describing. To an extent it's, I talk about it as a wobble board, which I didn't come up with, I read it somewhere else in a paper somewhere. But it's that constant, fine tuning, wobbling, and you've got the wobble board when you're, and I'll use the wrong terminology. But when you're actually in, you know, in the job, undercover. And there, you're kind of having to think and watch the whole time, but then even coming out of it, there's a need to be very conscious of how you're recharging. Because I think there's, this is what I'm guessing because there's an optimal way of recharging. But most of us don't use that most of us don't tap into what are the things that really give me energy? What are the things that revive me? What are the things that feed, feed me, we might have a rough idea, but you can't just have a rough idea in that situation. You have to have absolute clarity.
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, there's an I wouldn't, I would never say that we have the opportunity to be optimised. So, our recovery periods, I love your wobble board. We call it a seesaw in the United States. And it's an it's an excellent example. Because we're sold, we're marketed this idea that balance work life balance, or stress is supposed to be a seesaw or a wobble board that's balanced and is not moving. Right? It's even on both sides. What I've learned in reality is that real success is not a wobble board that isn't moving. It's a wobble board that's always moving. It's always rocking back and forth. That's what it's meant to do. So work life balance isn't about not having the seesaw move at all. It's about having periods where you work, and having periods where you rest, and work and rest and you keep going back and forth between the two. And that is a very healthy thing to do. It's just like, it's very difficult to find time to optimise your wrist. It's also very difficult to find time to optimise your work. It's very true, right. So yeah, so many of us do both kind of poorly. And the way that we handle that at the agencies we recognise that we have to have, we have to optimise work to the extent that we can. So therefore, we have to try to optimise rest, you just can't optimise rest every day. Maybe we spent four or five days doing what we can to have a functional recovery period. And then we'll take you know 48 hours to optimise rest and properly hydrate and properly eat and properly meditate and properly rest properly. You know check in with family, feed our minds with you know, a nonfiction book, whatever it might be. But you're right, the process to learn how you as an individual, optimise your own recovery is a bit of self-discovery. But we are we are psychologically profiled at the agency. So they do to a certain extent, hand us our own dossier and tell us, here's how you work, whether you know it or not.
Fiona
That's really interesting because in it to an extent that on a very, I mean, I would not be put in a position where I was profiling a CIA agent, I work with leaders and surgeons and people like that. But I'm, when we do these profiles, we then write a report. And that report says, you know, this is a description for your personality, but these are your drivers. These are your emotional resilience points of emotional resilience. This is how you're going to behave under pressure. This is where you need to seek support. I'd love to know more about what that looks like, from a real sort of like in depth, because you know, whenever I say profile, people go, whoa. And like, well, it's not the type of profile that you'll have been involved with. So can you tell us more about that?
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, absolutely. So, in in the world where I come from, in, we are very focused on information, right intelligence, the world of intelligence, the profession of intelligence, is really just the profession of information. Whereas most people are processing or learn to process analyse and synthesise what we call overt information or information that isn't intentionally kept the secret, right? We're, we're trained to synthesise and analyse and collect covert information, information that is kept secret. So then we have to, it's still the same process of consumption and analysis and synthesising that into a usable product. It's just a different kind of information. So you might get your information from a book at a library. And I remember, I remember being young enough that I didn't know where to find information. I mean, I'm sure you remember too when we had to find information in an encyclopaedia, or you had to go ask a librarian, right? It wasn't always at our fingertips. There's just like, there's a there's a systematic process for finding overt information. There's also a systematic process for collecting secrets. And that's the skill that we're taught. When it comes to the personality profile that we're given. It's, it's heavily focused on how do you process information. That's the crux that's the most as the centrepiece of why they're profiling us at all. So everything that the vast majority of what we're presented in our own profile is about how we engage with information, consume it, process it, derive decisions, manage risk, understand and comprehend downstream, secondary effects, tertiary effects. So and the primary tool that they use is the Myers Briggs, when they're when they're typecasting anybody in the US intelligence infrastructure. The primary tool is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator,
Fiona
and then derivatives, sorry, sorry, getting excited, no, no,
Andrew Bustamante
and derivatives and derivative tools that come out of that. That's our primary like, professional tool.
Fiona
Is there a preferred type? So for people that don't know the Myers Briggs is made up of four facets, and you can give a letter to each facet and the one that's most familiar to people will be introversion and extraversion that you have judging and sensing the four different areas, is there a preferred, so I know that there's, people say, well let a leader is probably this type or a thinker is probably this type. Is there a type that they choose for a CIA agent? Or is it a range of types, and then more about enabling how people use that information correctly?
Andrew Bustamante
I'd say it's closer to the left, it's closer to the latter, because the CIA is only presented it's presented as a very kind of monosyllabic white washing in the movies. There's one CIA officer, right. And in reality, CIA is a very diverse workforce. And what I think one of the reasons that Myers Briggs is such an effective tool isn't because it's academically or clinically or, or or empirically proven to be the best. It's just an effective language, and a very simplified way of creating a common language between all CIA officers. So to your to your point, an analyst can be typecasted. An operator can be typecasted, paramilitary, TechOps, linguists, they can all be typecasted. The person who makes alias documents, the person who creates fake travel accounts, the disguise person, the person who creates clothes that have hidden pockets, the person who masters weapons, all these people can be typecasted with a simple four letter code, and now that basically can sit almost like right next to their name right. Instead of Andrew Bustamante MBA or, or, you know, Fiona Murden, with whatever your professional indicators are. You can also have your Myers Briggs Type Indicator. In your entire employment, all of your supervisors, all of your senior leaders would know exactly what your typecast is. And they can make sure to prevent from putting you into operations where we need a different type cast, because there are certain information where a feeler is needed. And then there's certain operations where a failure of feeler will fail. So we want to identify people who will fit best, according to that Myers Briggs type. So I would be Andrew Bustamante, ENTP, extrovert, intuitive thinker, perceiver,
Fiona
That’s the four letter combination I was thinking in my head. It’s a little game I play sometimes with Myers Briggs, I'm really, really fascinated because I didn't realise that Myers Briggs was used in the CIA. What I find even more fascinating, as you're saying there as well, we know it's not the most empirically rich, but it provides us with the tool we need to do the job. And my husband's company McKinsey, they use Myers Briggs. And when I first found out in a similar way, I not so much with this, because I've now sort of processed that I was like, why are they using Myers Briggs? Myers Briggs isn't the most accurate. But I do know that Myers Briggs from a perspective of a common language that people get, and they can understand, oh, that's why that person and I clash on this, or that's why I get really tired when I do that. It makes sense. And I'm fascinated to hear that you'd be looking at operations, and then looking at what type of person is going to fit best in that operation? And in some ways, it's more similar than I thought to what I do, because mine would be we've got two CEO candidates, they're both exceptional. Who is gonna fit best in this situation with this team, with this culture, moving this strategy forward? And I'm quite excited by that.
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, so it's funny because this happens fairly often. And I think it's, I think it's the CIA's detriment that they let this, this mystique, build this myth about them build and be largely directed by Hollywood, because people don't associate CIA with professional with a professional organisation. They think of it as some sort of rogue Secret Service, right? Like it has spent a great deal of time MI6 has spent a great deal of time Mossad SVR KGB before before that, they've all these professional intelligence services, invest time, money, energy, they stay resource with extremely talented people, because they are professional organisations. So we shouldn't be necessarily surprised to hear that some of the psychological best practices at CIA has fit the current best practices of psychological practice. In clinical and non clinical settings. We shouldn't be surprised to know that the technical Tet, you know, technical coding, technical listening, technical programming, tools and engineering, the CIA uses is what's cutting edge in the rest of the world. Also, we do things as best as we can, using professionals from the best fields if for the most important fields. We just don't talk about it, we don't share it. But we're still always trying to be as as effective and impactful as possible, using best practices. So you know, I don't know if you know, this, Fiona, but CIA actually has its own cadre of psychologists.
Fiona
I did know that. And you know what I'm now thinking my memory is not very good, so I clearly wouldn't make an agent but I would slip up at the first hurdle. But one of the things I did, I got cleared for MI5 at one point, and when I say cleared, I wasn't cleared to be an undercover agent like you. But I was cleared to do work with that MI5. And I think things like that also add to the mystique is when you're gonna go and do work there. They have to do all these security checks and background checks on you. Of course they do because it's intelligence. It's secret information. It's the whole point of it. But it does add to that mystique as well. And I think as you say, Hollywood will always create a picture - that's what's communicated to the world. And we love films, and we love to think of things in that way. So, you know, it's the PR of the CIA isn't to go around and counter what the movies are coming up with, you know, they've got more important things to be thinking about.
Andrew Bustamante
Well, I would go one step further to say that it's in CIA's best interest to let people think that what's in the movies is true, because then people don't know the truth. Right? If the movie is really showed how we actually execute operations, all of our operations would be at risk because people would know how it works. If people actually knew what tools we use to disguise ourselves, then those tools would be discoverable when we actually try to disguise ourselves, right? If they knew what covers we would use when we go undercover, then they would know what kind of covers to look for. So, it benefits the agency and it benefits secret operators, to have Hollywood miscommunicate what we do it, it's in our best interests. So we're not really interested in whether or not people like us, we're not interested in whether or not people think what we do is exciting or boring. We care about an effective operation in reality, and effective operation is boring, and completely flies under the radar catches nobody's attention. And then we walk away with secrets without anybody knowing we were even there. That is professional intelligence. That is not a good movie, that is a very boring movie.
Fiona
That's very true. But the level of on detection, if you like gain takes immense skill. And it's a lot of it is, it's internal, it's mental. So, you can't portray that in a film because it's what's going on inside your head that has the complexity to it. And like you said, it might not be complexity in terms of being academic or clinical. But it's complexity in terms of managing your own emotions, managing your own cognitive weight, where you're putting your thought processes, how you're processing things. Because I imagine there's a need, and you use this wonderful analogy, I think it's on your website, that the window, and you can have a clear window where you can and I'll describe this wrong, so I'll put it to you to describe, but you can also have a very fogged up window. And it's challenging for anyone to think in an open minded curious way, the whole time is immensely immensely rewarding to do that. And good for us. We know about all the scientific benefits, the scientifically proven benefits of that. But how did you do that? I mean, how could you be in that mode of thinking all the time? Well, I actually correction, we've discussed how it's not all of the time, all of the time that you're actually on your operation? In your
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, on target. Exactly. So that's where the training comes in. Most of us I, again, one of the flaws of an ENTP is that we are very bad at understanding or like inherently believing that anyone could be different than us. Right. That is that is a flaw of an ENTP. So one of the big hurdles that I had to overcome through my own training was understanding that people think different than me, people, they don't make the same assumptions. They some people see risk as absolutely terrifying. And some people could literally sit in their room and not see another human being all day long. And just sit there reading books and sleeping in their bed, and be extremely happy with that.
Fiona
Right? Yes, those are maybe
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, but and that. And it turns out that like my wife is the polar opposite of me on Myers Briggs. And she is, yeah, and she has been instrumental in getting me to understand how different people can be from me. So, the reason I say that is because when I first started going through training, some things came very naturally to me. One of the things that came natural to me was, was sitting across from somebody and kind of being genuinely curious about them. And it's in part because ENTPs are also one of the typecast or one of the personality types that lean towards the kind of sociopath sociopathic behaviour, where we're interested in people in large part because we want to use people. We want to use people to get some kind of advantage at work, we want to use people to get some kind of leverage in our network, whatever we see people as tools. And again, these are all gross kind of overstatements, but they have a functionality and being able to understand that we're not researchers, we're not explorers, right? We're not, we're not rule followers. But we are. We are people who have a very pragmatic use for people. We're resourceful, if you will. So that was something that came natural to me. And when I was able to kind of delve into that and expand upon that, then they were able to give me a vocabulary to then actually analyse an individual in real time, and then a toolset so we could test our theories about a person also in real time, so that during a conversation, we're not just distracted thinking about what's my cover identity, and how do I make this cover sell? How do I stay consistent to my cover? And oh, by the way, in my real life, how do I do all the things I also have to do in real life. But now there's this third dimension of who is the person across the table from me? What are they thinking right now? What makes them I'm tick, if I say this, how will they react? When I say this, let me actually record how they react and use their reaction as information to decide what I do next. Because every conversation has a purpose, because every person in intelligence is a tool, every human being you meet is either a source or some kind of support asset or some kind of network capability. So we have to understand what their utility is. Because if they have no utility, to move the operation forward, then we need to stop talking to them.
Fiona
It sounds quite cynical when you put it like that. Because I mean, meeting you, I wouldn't say that you're in this to use this opportunity or this conversation in any way. I don't know if you've come across Adam Grant, who's a professor at Wharton, he's written a book called Give and Take, and admittedly, it's not in the undercover world. But in the normal business world globally, he's found that through loads of research, people who are more giving are more successful in life. Now, the other side of what you're saying that interests me is I profile leaders, there's a higher answer. And there's a higher percentage of sociopaths and psychopaths within the leadership community. And, and there is a level of being able to connect very quickly when people tune into what their needs are. And you could say use them. Now for you, when you were a CIA agent, it was a necessity to use people I imagine, because like you say it are you, is this wasting time? Is this going to give you the information you need? Is this going to get you further along with whatever? Whatever goals you're trying to, or outcomes you're trying to reach? You could argue, whilst I said it's cynical, that that's the same in any walk of life. You just don't come across that way, though.
Andrew Bustamante
Well, thank you very much. So one of the things that I was always excited about with our conversation with Fiona is that, because of your training and your background, I feel very comfortable kind of pulling the curtain back with you more than I get to pull it back with the average interview. So I want to pull it back just for a moment here. If you consider if you take the labels away, if you take cultural judgments away, and you take labels away, and you take all of the all of the the self help kind of stuff that we've been consuming our whole lives, take all that away for just a moment, and make it a very simple, you know, by binary combination, right? Productive, not productive, right? Helpful, not helpful, constructive, destructive, just if you look at the world through a very binary lens, you quickly discover that the things that are best for you are very often not best for other people. Because it's not a it's life is not a positive sum game. Life is a negative sum game. Because of the rule of economics, there's limited resources, not everyone can have equal access to all resources, because resources would run out, and then there would be no resources. So, it's a kind of a it's an oversimplification. It's, we're looking at things very binary. So, when it comes to the people that you're trying to reach, even why would we do a podcast, I have a podcast, you have a podcast, the reason we do a podcast is not exclusively to feed other people. We don't do this, even, it's not even our number one priority to, to educate and train other people. Our number one priority is to educate and train people who will use what we're teaching them. The vast majority of people who consume information, they don't use the information, they're entertained by it, they might remember it for like a plug the next time they're at the dinner table or the next time they're at the lunch table. It's very, very few that actually consume it, and it resonates with them. And then they take the next step of reaching out to Fiona to have Fiona come in and do a leadership profile on one of those leaders. You can't affect as much change through a podcast as you can, when you get to personally sit with a leader and actually give them a profile. I can't affect as much change by talking about espionage and talking about spy skills as I can when I have the chance to actually train someone for a day, or an hour, or a week and how they apply these skills in everyday life. So, the podcast platform, the conversation that we're having right now is really just a tool that we're using to find the right people. So we can benefit them to a higher level that benefits that person. And it benefits us. It doesn't it's not the end purpose of it is not just a single conversation. At least that's how I, that's how I look at the world. So, every action I take, every minute I spend is not through the lens of obligation or requirements or social good. Every moment that I use is through a very practical lens of is this advancing my business? Is this advancing my learning? Is this advancing, the legacy I'm building for my children? Is this advancing my wife's financial stability when I leave when I'm gone? Right, it's not romantic, no matter how many romantic books are written, it's not ideological, no matter how many ideological books are written. We are trained to see the world in a very cold clear lens, just like we were talking about, through a clear piece of clear window, a clear piece of glass, instead of letting it be fogged up by, you know, social pressure.
Fiona
So, I'm totally with you on the obligation and not doing things for those reasons. And I really struggle when I see people stuck in environments where they're unable to extract themselves, because might be financially they're tied to that environment. Or it might be that they just aren't able to put their head up and see how things could be done differently. And it's, I just find it painful to see people in that situation. But I guess the difference I would have with you here, though, is I see it as bigger meaning and purpose. And I don't mean, for some existential reason. But looking at it from the perspective of the brain, and how we operate, when we can find our why, our meaning and purpose, which does often have a positive social impact attached to it, is probably framing the same thing slightly differently here. Then everything else falls into that as to why we're doing it. So for me, one thing I love about these podcasts is having conversations with really interesting people who I might not be able to just turn around and say, ‘Hey, I'd love to have a conversation with you’ otherwise, so it gives me the opportunity to do it. I hope that it informs, to some extent and entertains. I'm not looking for more leadership. That's not but there is a there is a bit of it, where I just I, I want to help particularly around personal development. So, this is something that I think what I know you're interested in because you've called yourself an improvement junkie. I think when it comes to personal development, I always feel like I've been put in a position that's fortunate. And you may feel the same in that I've been trained how to, you know, to become a chartered psychologist takes seven years, and I've been trained in tools and techniques that people may not generally bump into. Or they may not be aware that some are properly evidence-based and some are just someone's flight of fancy. And so, I feel it's partly my responsibility, but one that I enjoy, to try and share that with a wider audience. It's why I wrote both my books, but I realised that books in and of themselves, again, really, you know, create that ongoing impact. But it's not about me talking here, it brings me to another point that you've bought up on, I think it's on again, on your website, I would recommend people go to your website, it's your name, isn't it.
Andrew Bustamante
So, I have two websites. If you go to the website, that is my name, then that's where you go if you're looking for me, but if you're looking for my company, it's everydayspy.com. That's where all of my company offerings are where all of our business tools are. Like, many professionals, we end up having two websites, one that is our name for people who are looking for us specifically and one for our company or our business.
Fiona
So great, I'll put those in the show notes anyway. But there's also something you say that that you said you learnt. And again, I may have got this slightly wrong, but you've learned during your time as an agent, and that's ‘learn, apply live’. And I read that, and I thought ‘that's really interesting’, because I think we can spend a lot of our time consuming information learning. Correct? Do we actually apply it? And even more, there's a question over do we actually live it? So, can you can you tell the listeners a bit more about that?
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, absolutely. So, the concept of ‘learn apply live’ is a concept that the agency teaches us as well. Learning is the easiest part and many people will say learning is hard, but in fact learning is the easiest part. Because consuming information being presented with information you can happens in lots of different ways. I mean, watching something on Netflix is consuming information. The thing that happens, that's the first kind of hurdle is taking what you've learned, and then applying it. And that's hard. Because when you're trying to apply something that you've learned, whether it's mathematics, or whether it's something you learned in college, or whether it's something you learned, you know, from the History Channel, or from a documentary, the two steps to being able to apply something are practice and comprehension. So, you have to comprehend what it is that you're trying to do. And then you have to practice doing it. And both of those steps are really quite uncomfortable to us to a cognitive mind. Because a mind likes to do what it's good at, like the human brain is built to be a very efficient, pretty lazy, so it likes to do what it's good at. It likes to do things that it's done before, these are very efficient processes for the human brain. So, when you try to do something different, there's like a grinding feeling in your brain, right? There's a, it's challenging, if you've ever tried to pick up a guitar or pick up a string instrument of any kind, or if you've ever tried to, to draw when you're not for our website. Yeah, exactly right. You feel the cognitive load, you feel the frustration of being bad at something. And that is the process of applying what you have learned. Now, when you work through that, then you get to this place where you now can build into your everyday life, build into your daily practice this new skill that you have learned and applied. And it's now your responsibility to not just leave it where it's at. But to continually develop it, continually find a way to master it, not for the pleasure of others, but for your own benefit. Some people - I play the ukulele and nobody really knows. And I'm not very good at it because I've learned about seven chords. And every time I learn a new chord, it's of course, very difficult to learn a new chord and to learn how to transition between the chords, I know in the chords that I don't know. And I don't have any intentions of becoming a professional ukulele player, or, or having anybody even record my ukulele songs. But my children love them at bedtime. So, so the way that I learn apply and live the ukulele is I pick up this little instrument, I learned a new chord, it hurts my ears every time I try to get the chord, right. It hurts my wife's ears, but my children love it. And then by the time it sounds natural, and by the time it sounds good, it's time for me to learn a new chord and learn a new song and have a new, a new song that my kids can basically just call out at bedtime and say, ‘Hey, Daddy, play this one, daddy, play that one’, right? Whatever it might be. That's one example of learning to play live. And we you know, you can apply that in so many different ways. Whether it's your career, or your personal relationships or, or your physical health,
Fiona
And the apply bit is hard. And I think it's really important to call that out and clearly you were taught that. To the extent that it's become something you know, it's something that you're aware of, that a lot of people aren't. And I mean, I talk to organisations about behaviour change - 70% of the time, behaviour change initiatives fail in organisations. There's billions spent every year on it. And then there's also the individual rate, it's between 80 and 92% failure rate when it's an individual. And people say really, but then you say, ‘Okay, have you tried to stop eating your favourite food?’ Or ‘have you tried to stop drinking, as you know, stop drinking or doing that?’ Yeah. And then people get the hang of this isn't easy, it's hard to make something different to basically reroute your neural networks into a different pathway. That's, not taking the path of least resistance. But it's so critical to growing and learning and, and I think the example you gave there with your ukulele and your kids is just is lovely. How old are your kids?
Andrew Bustamante
I have a nine year old son and I have a five year old daughter. And I started playing the ukulele for them when my daughter was one. And when my son was six, so it's not been my son has a very distinct memory of me not even knowing how to play the ukulele. And he, he knows the first song the first time I ever picked it up, right. And my son is a great example. Because he will pick up the ukulele my son and my daughter will both pick my own ukulele up they'll pick it up off the wall where it's hanging right? And my son strums it once or twice and becomes very frustrated that he can't make it sound right. And then he'll put it down and my daughter will pick it up and she'll turn it upside down and she'll strum it the wrong way and she'll pluck the string I mean she'll just experiment with it and become fascinated with all the different, awkward sounds that it can make, right? If I ever pick up my ukulele and it's out of tune, it's because I know that my daughter grabbed it and just started either loosening or tightening the strings just because she wants to experiment. It's a fantastic example for me of seeing how different people interact with information in different ways. My son is looking for, yeah, my son is looking for a repeatable process that he simply has never learned. And then when he doesn't get it, he gives up, he fails, teach your extent, right? My daughter picks it up with a completely different objective. Her objective is just to experiment, make, see what sounds it can make. And she succeeds. It's a it's a completely different relationship that they have with information, just like human beings.
Fiona
That's a brilliant, brilliant example. And I think it makes me think of - my youngest daughter's nine. And with the piano, she would get really annoyed with me if I would sit down and play songs for her. And this is me thinking she's like me, because I always played a lot by ear. So, I think if I can sit down and play your music for you, you can then hear it and it will help you play it. But rather than do that, she'd just get really cross because she's like, ‘Why can't I play it like that? Why can you play it like that?’ and then she'd have another go and give up, because it would frustrate her so much. And it's a great opportunity to talk it through. But I do think that we have natural propensity to explore the world in different ways. In the same way, as if you look at something like emotional resilience, we know that it to an extent it's genetically influenced, it's influenced by epigenetics by our cultural environment. But you can also learn to get better at it to have a higher level of emotional resilience. And I think it's same with learning, it's kind of we have to learn how to learn and we have to help people understand how to learn. And I was gonna ask you that about the ‘apply’ bit? Do you think that our fast paced world, the world that earlier on you described, you know, for you, and I, we might have had to pick up an encyclopaedia now you can just go to Google and find out, put in whatever question you want? Do you think that that takes away from our ability to apply and to deal with that level of frustration that comes with that?
Andrew Bustamante
So, in my experience around the world, there I say the answer is no. And the reason I say the answer is no is because the distractions that exist in the first world. They don't exist in third world. But guess what, everywhere you go, people are the same. People inherently seek out distraction. People inherently seek out a way not to feel cognitive load. We, it's built into us that we want to conserve resources, and we want to be comfortable. So whether you're sitting in a remote tribe in Africa, or sitting with some, you know, hidden culture that, you know, has barely been discovered in Southeast Asia, or whether you're sitting in in London, or New York Times Square, the people in all four locations, while vastly different in terms of health, and nutrition, and education, are all essentially doing the same thing. They're trying to do more of what they like, and less of what they don't like. And in between the two, they're just exploring and letting themselves be distracted. It takes a great deal of effort and work to learn something new, or to practice something that you're bad at. And people don't like doing it. Right. I've I have watched, I have watched young children in African tribes, who are being told it's time to go learn how to practice, you know, goring a pig, or throwing a spear. And they're not excited to do it. It's the exact same image as watching children get ready to go into back to school from recess, and they don't want to do it. And you see the complaints and the foot stomping, and the sad faces and the arguments. It's everywhere. It's it has nothing to do with the technology. The technology is just the current distraction. When we have chips put into our brains, that's going to be the new distraction. When you and I were kids, it was TV. Do you remember when TV didn't run 24 hours a day?
Fiona
Oh, yeah. And I remember, I remember a TV programme, that was the children who only had a little segment each day that had children's TV, and it ‘turn the TV off and do something more interesting instead’ that was part of the song. And it's something you know, sticks in my head. And I think yeah, we not only that, but to your point then there was a concern. It was like the chip becomes the new distraction. That was the distraction from parents then it's like you'll get square eyes if you watch too much TV. Whereas now I know that you know my daughter's got her iPad, she doesn't need the TV should be watching YouTube or something like that. So, I get your point. And I think it's really fascinating and it actually makes me reflect on it. Some people that I've seen in more remote areas of the world and children I've seen in more remote areas of the world. And there are some things that are very special about certain cultures. But you're right, a child is a child, and that the curiosity is there to some extent, and the stubbornness to learn is there on the other. And we potentially, that's what we carry through life with us. But I do think that it makes life far more fulfilling, if we try and tune into that growth, learning. And not just learning to point applying and living.
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, there's a and I would go again, kind of on the same theme, I also think there's a lot of value in being forgiving with ourselves. Because, you know, you threw out some numbers that I'm sure very well researched, right - 70% of, of corporate endeavours fail, corporate change fails. And somewhere between 75 and 92% of individual failure changes or changes, individual change fails. Right? So, I'm certain that that's a very accurate, those are very accurate numbers, the way that we were taught that is the CIA teaches us something called the 80/20 rule. And the 80/20 rule is a mathematical principle that we just apply in large swaths. And it's basically the idea
Fiona
Isn't it originally.
Andrew Bustamante
Correct, correct. It's economics correct. So the idea there is that of the 100% of anything at you can basically broken into two parts 80% and 20%, 100% of problems in your company, 80% of those problems are being caused by 20% of the like the same 20% of issues, right? In 100% of your customers, 80% of your income is coming from 20% of your customer base, right, whatever it might be. So, we're taught to see the same to look at ourselves through the same lens. So, of 100 things that we're going to try 80% of our success is going to come from 20% of all of the things that we've tried, which means we're going to fail 80% of the time. But we have to give ourselves permission to both explore and fail, right. So, in that if you apply that to the ‘learn, apply live’ of 100 things that you're going to learn, you're going to fail at 80% of them. And you're going to retain and successfully apply only 20%. Now of the 100% of things that you try to apply into your life, again, you're going to fail 80% of the time, and only 20% is going to successfully become part of your new routine. So when you look at 20% of 20%, you basically have 7% of the original load, right, so that so all the things that we're all endeavouring to do with our lives right now, whether it's lose weights, or build relationships with our children, or you know, or get a promotion of, of 100 things that you're trying to do right now, only 7% will likely make it into your future state your future life. So you have to be willing to forgive yourself for the 93% failure rate that you're about to have. Don't judge yourself. Just accept it, anticipate it, and reprioritize where needed. But it's what happens is we become fixated on what we fail. And we forget that failure is part of the process.
Fiona
It is for most of us, but just when you're talking, I'm thinking about surgeons. So, what's interesting, because I'm totally with you on everything you've said, and I'm guilty of not having that mindset myself. So, I'm not saying well, I know what the answer is no, I do it right. I don't. But surgeons I find fascinating. And I was asked to give a talk at the Royal College of Surgeons in the UK on the psychology of failure. And what's interesting was surgeons is they've been very successful at school, they probably haven't failed as many times as most people, they've been very successful within medicine. And they probably haven't failed as much as most people and then they're very successful as surgeons, but the problem that that creates is then they're not willing to admit when they have made mistakes, which causes massive issues within an operating theatre. So, it's fascinating. It's a fascinating subject. And like with so many of the things I say I think what I know and what I do are very different, but actually putting it how you've put it with the 80/20 rule makes me feel a bit better about that because I might know a lot about psychology but I don't have to apply it all because you know.
Andrew Bustamante
I love your example with surgeons because with any elite professional, elite athletes, elite surgeons, elite business people, elite operators, elite military members, we become hyper focused on the skill that they have, as if that is the defining character trait of them as a person. And or even like elite lawyers are another example of this right? When yes, they may not have seen failure as clearly as others have seen on the path. It's because they're the 20% of all the people who started out to become doctors of all the people who started out to become surgeons. They're the 20% that made it right up all the people who tried who made it to become who graduated med school, but then went on to become neurosurgeons of that 100%. These, again, are the 20% they're the top 20% of the top 20% of the top 20%. Their failure is not in their skill. Their failure is seen in the rate of alcohol abuse, that they have substance abuse, the divorce rates, the lack of sleep, like you were saying, The sociopathic tendencies, the psychopathic tendencies,
Fiona
number of narcissists amongst surgical population.
Andrew Bustamante
Yes, and it's because of what we just said, Right? In their skill based experience, they've always been the best they've been the best since they were five years old, in empirical, measurable performance. Right? And but they still look at, they look at people and they're jealous in a different way. They're jealous of the of the couple that's been married for 80 years, and is still happy to sit on a pair of rocking chairs holding their hands, right? Like they're jealous of the of the Dad who gets to go to every baseball game, because they don't get to go to every baseball game, they may not even have a relationship with their son or their daughter, right? So it's a different, when you look at the 80/20 rule, you've got to look at the whole life, you can't just look at the one area with the most rigorous standards, you have to look and recognise there's standards that we all have for every element of life. It's just that some standards are dictated to us by some larger certifying agency or certifying organisation, whether that's the School of Medicine, or at the CIA, it's the it's who's collected the most intelligence in one year, whatever it might be. There's always some rubric. But recognise that life does not conveniently always break down into rubrics that have been set by other people.
Fiona
I could talk to you all day, you may not want to. I've got a whole load of things that I haven't asked you but I am very conscious of time, I know that it's six o'clock, and is probably seven o'clock in the morning where you are now. And you've got and I really appreciate you doing something so early. I'm not sure I would be so articulate. But you've got other zooms. So I'm gonna let you go, sadly, because I could hang on and talk to you about all sorts of things. Andrew, you're, it's not just your career, that's fascinating, it's all of you. And your perspectives, your viewpoints, your understanding your experience, your articulation of that is really, really something to savour, and enjoy. So, I say thank you so much for being on. I know that people will enjoy listening to you. And sadly, I will have to say goodbye now.
Andrew Bustamante
No problem Fiona. And I really appreciate the invitation. I will be in London later on in November. And I think I do have a free day there that I built in just because I'm anticipating the travel is not going to go according to the schedule. So I'll send you an email. Yeah. I would be glorious.
Fiona
For lunch in London or find somewhere nice.
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, but then we can continue the conversation for sure.
Fiona
Unfortunately, no audience is invited to that one. So
Andrew Bustamante
thanks very much again for having me. Yes, man. Take care.
Fiona
Thanks so much for being on take care