Episode 78: AI Agents and Executive Functions

Below you can view or listen to Episode 78 of The Personal Brain Trainer Podcast.

Executive Functioning Coaching

In this first episode of the year, hosts Dr. Erica Warren and Darius Namdaran discuss the transformative role of AI agents in 2025 and how they will impact executive functions. They explain the evolution of AI from simple tasks to complex processes and emphasize the importance of active engagement to strengthen cognitive skills. The episode also explores the potential for AI to revolutionize daily tasks, improve productivity, and support neurodiverse individuals by automating repetitive work, thus allowing more time for strategic thinking and executive decision-making.

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Transcript:

Erica: Welcome to the Executive Function Brain trainer podcast. I'm Dr. Erica Warren.

Darius: And I'm Darius Namdaran. And we're your hosts, sponsored by Ivy. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. Well, try Ivy for free now at ah, Ivy App. That's I V, V. I. sponsored.

Erica: By the Executive Functioning Coaching Assessment, a quick online assessment that uncovers challenges and develops personalized strategies for success. Hey, Darius, great to see you.

Darius: Hey, Erica, nice to see you too. For this last episode of the year.

Erica: And drumroll. I'm going to let you tell us what the topic is.

Darius: Well, my favorite topic, obviously, is AI. Okay. My three main favorite topics are mind mapping, AI and executive functions. Okay. And in this one, I want to talk about AI and 2025 and how AI is going to change 2025 and the year ahead to help our listeners get ready for what's coming their way and to use it for their executive functions for them to get what's important done. I just regard executive function as what matters done. Okay. And how to coordinate all of that. And so there's been some major developments in the last five days. We're recording this just towards the middle of December with OpenAI, and there's going to be some major developments in 2025 as well. And they're all centered around AI agents. Okay. And it's kind of like the next level of AI that is coming our way.

Erica: So tell me a little bit about what are AI agents?

Darius: Okay, so what we've had so far is AI has a conversation with you. Okay. So AI is, someone who is a talking buddy, talks through stuff, and you're in a meeting with, you consult with. Okay? Now, an AI agent is an AI that will talk with you and then go do it for you. So at the moment, we've got a bit of an agent experience where you say, write me an email, and it writes you an email. Okay. For example, there's, a whole lot more to AI obviously than that, but we've had that experience of, oh, my goodness, it's just done something for me.

Erica: Okay, Right, Yeah. So I can think of a situation like where I might get an email from a customer, and I can just drop the email in and say, write a response to this as if you are me, because it knows me really well now and it's given me a good portion of what I'm going to write. I'm like, oh, that works, that works. Oh, that doesn't work. And then you can Just kind of doctor it. But it saves you an enormous amount of time because you don't have to write from scratch.

Darius: Correct. But what you've done there is, one step of the process, which is to write the email. Okay. There are more steps to actually sending the email. Okay. So you've got to copy the text, you've got to open your email client, you've got to paste it in, you've got to put the name of the person in, you've got to put your details down the bottom or automatic signature, and then you've got to send it. Okay? An AI agent will do all of that for you with one click of a button.

Erica: But I'd be so afraid that they'd make a mistake.

Darius: Yes, absolutely.

Erica: How do you make sure that doesn't happen?

Darius: So what's going to happen with AI agents is they will gradually develop over 20, 25. So what they'll do and are doing right now, okay, this is happening right now, this is not science fiction. This is happening right now. But it will become more normal for the regular person to be using this. So they will give limited control to your computer. Okay. For very basic example, check my emails for any inquiries, okay? And it will open up and it'll say, can I get access to your emails, please? And you'll say, yes. And it'll open up your Google and it'll say, there are three emails with inquiries right now. So what, what you'll say is, please reply to the inquiries that have come in today, okay? And you'll click go. And it'll open up and say, look, I, I've spotted three inquiries from da da da da da. Okay? And then you'll, it'll say, I'd like to reply this to this person. Does that sound about right? And you go, yeah, that sounds about right. Send. It's done. This is the next reply I'm thinking of for this person. They're maybe asking for this bit of information or that episode or podcast

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Darius: or resource and it found that link and it says, look, I've just put that in there. Do you. Does this sound like a good link to you? Yeah, that's the right link. Oh, no, it's not. Go find the more up to date one that was in the podcast or whatever.

Erica: Right? Or it's on this website.

Darius: Yeah. And it'll paste it in the link. It'll find it or placed it in. Is this good? Yeah, that's good. Now send that. Okay, sent, Done. Next, this one, I've got this ready for you. And It'll be acting like a, an assistant right beside you, you know, and it will become an agent. So if you think about an assistant as an agent, but it's only one type of agent. Okay. And you've done those three responses, and you're like, oh, thank goodness. And I know people with dyslexia who are kind of like, oh, that's just so fantastic. They're very basic emails, for example. They're not a big, long answer, but it takes. It's a process of about five little steps. And if you've got a processing difference, like dyslexia, that sort of thing can just slow you down massively. If you have ADHD, you might have problems with inhibitor control, get distracted as you're switching from one step of the process to another. Whereas the AI has said, right, I found it for you. Ready to the next. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, next.

Erica: And then you're having a discussion with it. So if it says like, how's this? And you're like, I don't like it, you can just literally speak it. Instead of typing, say, well, the second sentence I don't really like. Can you make it sound a little bit more friendly?

Darius: That's right.

Erica: The, the third one, you're missing a link. And you can find the link at Good Sensory Learning. Fix all that for me. And can you double check the links to make sure that they're working? And yes, everything that you. Everything said valid. Even if I'm getting it to help me with doing a little bit of research, and it writes a paragraph and it gives me the references, I always ask it, are those valid? Are those actual references? Are they true? And if so, where did you get them? And many times it says, no, actually, I made it up, but this is true. So that's one of the things I think I, would imagine we still need to do is constantly, if it does something, truly does something for you.

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: You always have to double check that it's true and it's.

Darius: Yeah, so. So what? In that case, you might say, look, I want you to open up all the links in that, email, and I want them all as little micro windows on my screen, nicely tiled to the side, proportion them, and then I can just flick through them quickly. Check. Yes, yes, yes, yes, Done. Okay. And, you know how it's a bit of a pain. You open up and it becomes a big screen and then you have to flick through, and it overwhelms your working memory because you're looking through lots of different Information.

Erica: You're like, what was I doing? What was I doing? Something else going on. You've got too many things. And that's right.

Darius: That's a huge working memory risk checking all of that.

Erica: Oh, I get overwhelmed with like, all my tabs are open. I'm like, oh, my God, where's my tab? Which one was it?

Darius: It will go in and you can control the cursor with your mouth. So you'll say, oh, no, no, I don't want the tabs like that. I want them just a little bit smaller, a bit more like a square or whatever. And you just tell it, and it will be moving it like a hand on your computer M by your control.

Erica: So I could say to it, find this tab for me.

Darius: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Erica: I mean, put all my Canva tabs in one place.

Darius: Absolutely, yes, yes. But this is just one particular, very narrow agent. Okay. And so what's going to happen? This. This is an absolute revolution. Okay. What you experience with ChatGPT. Two years ago, the anniversary of ChatGPT was about round about the 6th of December thereabouts, or somewhere around about there. What they've just brought out is 01. Okay. So they had O1 preview. Now, O1 is a step towards being an agent. Okay, so what O1 does, which is different from 4O, there's lots of O's here, isn't there? Okay, 4O and O1. Okay, so 4 is the standard ChatGPT. Really good at just writing and doing all the core stuff. Okay.

Erica: And that's the one that you get for $20 a month.

Darius: Yes. So that's kind of like a technician level, of really good technically at writing, really, really good technically at, processes, etc. Just technical work.

Erica: So it's like an editor.

Darius: Yes. And then above that you've got a manager. And then above that you've got an executive. So if you think about the way we do our work, you've got technician, manager, executive.

Erica: Okay, what about secretary?

Darius: So the secretary is somewhere between the technician and manager. So you've got like an executive secretary,

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Darius: which would be much more like a personal manager, you know, and then you've got like the typist secretary who's really just doing the technical typing of a particular thing and doing it really well, really fast, really efficiently. So, you know, secretary. I think it's quite helpful to think of these three categories and also to think of them in terms of executive functions. Okay. So if you think of executive thinking as the executive, and if you think about the technical Work as processing. We talk about processing and executive function being two functions in our brain, but they're also two functions in our life. And then there's the level of the manager in between. That's the world of automaticity, following processes, the world of reviewing quality, keeping things on track, maintaining things, systems going. So you've got these three different levels that a human being functions at and even three different levels your brain functions at. Now AI is gradually going up these three functions. So I would say the last two years were the function of the technician and this next year we're moving into the function of the manager.

Erica: I see. But then you say that there's also this agents. But from what I understand, the agents are more expensive. Is that true?

Darius: Well, yes and no. It's funny because so OpenAI just released O1 properly, they had the preview out. Now O1 is more intelligent than O1 preview, but in addition to being more intelligent, more reliable. And what O one does is it thinks much more systematically, it thinks much more strategically, like a manager would. So a manager would sit down and say, right, I'm going to write down the procedure for doing this, that and the next thing. And there might be five main steps in the five main departments to deal with. You know, there'll be an inquiry comes in and then once we got the inquiry, we're going to have to send that to our sales and marketing and then that sales and marketing is going to, you know, call them up and then there's a whole process involved. What would be a higher level than a whole sequence of multiple processes to, to chain together a sequence of multiple processes. Do you see what I mean?

Darius: So the technician write an email and send it. That's one process. Say okay, but what's happening now is you're going to need to chain multiple process together to get a real result. And that's what the manager does and that's the agent.

Erica: So like having a social media manager.

Darius: Yes, you'll have a social media agent.

Erica: Then everybody will and that'll just completely change the landscape, which is kind of what's happening. Like I've noticed that with blogging. Like, you know, I used to hand write all my blogs and they took me forever and every week I do one and it would took me hours. But now everybody's blogging because they're using AI to help them and I'm just, I don't have the reach that I used to have.

Darius: Oh really?

Erica: Yeah. So it changes the whole landscape and that'll happen here Too. Even if you, you used AI as a social media manager, because then everybody will be using it as social media managers, and then it's harder to. To reach people.

Darius: Interesting.

Erica: Because more people will be using it. There'll be like a flood. Like there's more blogs, and they're not handwritten entirely.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: So. So in a way it's cool. And in a way it's not cool. It's cool because it makes it easier to create content, but it's not cool because there's so much more content.

Darius: Yes. Yes.

Erica: And then it's hard to rise to the top.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: Fighting with other AI content.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: You know, it's like it's, an. Instead of a battle of people content, it's a battle of AI content. Granted, people are the ones that are conducting the AI content. But. But it's interesting how at first it feels like it creates less work, but then as, everybody starts to use it, it creates more work.

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: You know, it's kind of the, the opposite side of the, like, oh, what a relief. Oh, not anymore. Because it raises the bar.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: Like for, for writing. So now, now everybody can write. Okay, but now that everybody can write, it just changes the landscape.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: Now you're not going to have these incredible writers that stand out above everybody else.

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: So it's fascinating to see how, yes, AI can hit so many pain points, but don't forget that it's going to change the landscape. And

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Erica: in some ways, it'll change the landscape. In beautiful ways, it is fantastic. For the neurodiverse, it levels the playing field. But for other people, for example, for talented writers, it's going to be really frustrating because they'll get lost in the shuffle. They won't get truly recognized for their innate talent anymore because they're going to be fighting against AI which has their talent as well as everybody else's talent that ever existed. So it's kind of interesting. In some ways. It'll kind of dull us down a bit. For some people, it will dull them down. For other people, it will sharpen them up.

Darius: So these three levels of technician, manager, and executive become much more relevant in the AI age, because if you were really good technically at a particular wordsmithing task, et cetera, AI will come and do that. And so you will be pushed up towards using your insights into overseeing that technical task and overseeing whether the AI is on track or not. You know. Yes, I agree. No, I don't. Having a conversation in terms of whether they're on track or not. With that. So everyone's function will be pushed up one level.

Erica: You know what's going to be interesting? And that makes me really curious because you can use AI to support your executive functions, and you can use it in a way that will weaken your skills, but you can also use it in a way to strengthen your skills. It all depends on how you approach it. So, I mean, I technically, as I get older, my executive functioning skills are going to diminish. I already feel it to some extent, which I don't like. But if I went into using AI with the intention of strengthening my executive functioning skills and even asking it, what are some activities that I can do or that you can help me do, but not so much that you're doing it for me that will strengthen my executive functioning skills. Like, you know, a lot of us use Google Maps or whatever. There's so many of these apps that help you get from place to place, and many people are losing their spatial skills. They're not developing that part of the brain.

Darius: Interesting example. Okay. And it makes me think about Ivy and it makes me think about Google Maps. Okay. Google Maps used to give you one route. Okay. Now Google Maps might give you three different options. Okay. And I really like that because it says, right, this one is a bit slower, more direct or smoother roads, and it's not always based on time or whatever. And so you've got the dark blue one and two light blue lines, and then you can click on the difference and in a way, it starts to make you use that spatial function, as it were. Oh, that's an interesting one. Yeah, that's down this route and so on. Depends how much you make yourself sort of engage with that kind of feedback loop or whether you just go, I just do what Google Maps tells me.

Erica: Yeah. I think what you're hitting on is whether you're going to be a passive or an active participant.

Darius: That's right.

Erica: And that's how it is with everything in school. Those students that are passive learners are the ones that are struggling the most. The ones that are active learners are the ones that are growing. So I think the moral of the story is if you are passively going to use AI, you could weaken your executive functioning skills. but if you actively use AI, then you can strengthen your executive functioning skills. And you have to remember that there are two really very distinct areas of executive functioning. There is externalizing executive functioning and there's internalizing executive functioning. So when you externalize, you can use AI to support your executive functions, to increase Your working memory to use Apple Notes to hold information for you, for example. But internalizing is very interesting. So when we talk about internalizing executive functions, we're talking more about metacognition, your inner voice, your visualizations, like all of those inner tools that we have. So if AI can help us to improve our visualization skills, you could ask, how could I visualize that?

Darius: Yes.

Erica: But it's funny when you mentioned the maps, having three choices of maps. Okay, that does help to strengthen cognitive flexibility, but I don't think it helps to strengthen spatialization.

Darius: I'm not so sure, because it's like, oh,

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Darius: right, you want to go over the bridge and do that. Oh, that's interesting. Or you want to go down here. Especially if you kind of know the landscape a little bit.

Erica: Right. As long as you are an active participant. If you are. Because so many people lose the landscape.

Darius: Yes, yes.

Erica: Because they're just too passive.

Darius: and that's what made me think of Ivy, because.

Erica: Tell everybody about Ivy, because not everybody knows what I is.

Darius: Yeah. Ivy is this revolutionary software that we've created, which basically is speech to map. So when you speak to it, it transcribes what you're saying and turns it into a mind map so you can see what matters. So it's helping you focus in on the key things that matters in the map. So it's capturing the whole. All the words on one side, it's distilling them down into keywords and then focusing them to main topics until you get, all right, those are the four or five or six main things I'm thinking about. And the interesting thing is. So this has been approved by the Disability Students Allowance in the UK for DSA for students with dyslexia and adhd. The government will pay for it for them. It's also available to anyone in the world. But the interesting challenge that sometimes I get is, like, does that not make the student passive? And, you know, like, they just get the map, or they get the notes because they've got the whole transcript. They've got, like, some summarized keyword notes, and they've got a mind map that you. What more can you ask for? You know you're there. And what. It. It can seem like that on the face of it. Now, what we want to build into Ivy is this step. At the last two minutes of the thing, ivvi switches on. We've not got it yet, but this is where we're going. ivvi switches on and says, could you help me finalize what you think are the main key points. And ivvi will identify those key ideas and ask what you think. And then you go in there and edit them. And sometimes ivvi’s been too general and said, oh, this is about biology and so on. It's like, no, it's actually about human biology and evolution. And then you maybe find something and ivvi kind of draws you in to engaging with it. So for some students where it's just totally overwhelming and it becomes all or nothing. Oh, I'm just going to take any notes and I'm just going to listen. It's in one ear, out the other nightmare situation. After you've a week or two, it's all gone or you're just writing everything down and nothing's going in at all and you're not really taking useful notes. So I think using that as an example, we need AIs to be coming in and doing those technical tasks that are holding back our executive function tasks, you know, so when we are doing these low level stuff, which is overwhelming our working memory, oh, I'm clicking between screens or whatever and an AI goes, and you just say to the AI, look, organize these screens with you so I can see everything at once. That's just related to this, that and the next thing. And it goes, oh, thank goodness, yes, done, done, done, done, done, sorted. And it saves you five minutes, but it saves you five minutes and focus 20 or 30 times in the day. Then you've got huge benefits. So I think that's absolutely, I came across this quote where someone said, I don't know who said this quote, but it says the world will come to you and ask, who are you? And if you say I don't know, it'll say, I'll tell you. And it's very profound because it's kind of like another way of saying that is the world will come to you and say, what do you want to do? And then if you say, I don't know, the world will say, I'll tell you what you want to do. And so that is executive function. Executive function is knowing what you want to do and having the ability to do it. And it's going to become so much more important to guard your ability to know what you want to do and execute on your ability to do it. Because if you don't, the world or AI or big corporations will come and say, oh, you don't want to do, I'll tell you what to do.

Erica: Right. Well, you know, I also wanted to say I'm going to backpedal a little bit. Because another thing that Ivy can do to keep you engaged is it allows you to highlight.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: As you're listening, you can highlight key terms.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: Which. Which I think in the future, I'm very interested in how that's going to turn things also into study material.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: So that you can actually be looking at the notes as they're going and mindfully actively turning that into, like. Oh, that could be a test question. Ooh, that could be a question. Ooh, that could be a test question.

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Erica: So that you aren't getting stuck and using all your cognitive space on writing. You actually get to use your cognitive space on understanding and categorizing. Or. Or just saying important. Important, Important, Important.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: Having, like that important button.

Darius: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I want to tell you something about that, Erica. What I'd really love to do on that important button is if you click it once, it's important, but if you do a double tap on you, you go, it's a bit more important. And if you do a triple tap, it's even more important. So it's kind of like one tap will be important, two taps will be remember, and three taps will be do. And so as you look through your notes, I want to see, like, a heat map where there's kind of like, really hot spots that are like the do spots. Oh, that was a do. And then there's kind of. Because it's kind of like when you're going through a lecture and you're thinking, yeah, I think that's important. Okay, we'll call that important. I think that's important. You kind of want this sort of warm, getting warm. it's like that game, isn't it? Oh, you. You know, when you close people, people blindfold, and you've got to go and find something, and they go, oh, you're getting colder, colder, colder. Moving. Oh, a bit warmer. A bit warmer. Warmer. You're getting hot. You're getting hot. Oh, no, no, you're getting colder, colder. And. And so it's kind of like that game, and I think that's part of the joy of learning, is just gradually filtering information, going, oh, is that important? I think that's important. Oh, no, that's really important. Oh, yeah, that's really. No, not so important. Boring story. Okay. Useful padding to kind of.

Erica: So it's. It's about sorting and organizing. And that's even the way that AI is going is it's helping to sort and organize.

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: Which is really important for executive functions. I mean, massively Important because we can get so lost in the tsunami of information, particularly now more than ever. And it's only getting worse. There's more and more and more available to us, but that's what A.I. can help us do. Find things quickly.

Darius: Yeah, I think about this quite a bit. Okay, so up until now, up until two years ago, it took a long time to write something and a short time to read it in comparison to the length of time to write it.

Erica: Okay, right, I'll go along with that.

Darius: If you take the ratio of the time it takes to write something compared to the time it takes to read it for a typical person, of course. Okay, so long time to compose, short time to read. Now the ratio has just flipped. Short time to write a five-page essay and a long time to read in relation to the time it.

Erica: And edit well. And edit well. What are they going to do in school? Because how are they going to test knowledge? They're going to have to talk something new.

Darius: Absolutely. But biggest problem is going to be in the workplace. Okay. Wait until your manager discovers how quickly they can create a memo or a report that you have to read. And so they go, right, I've just created a five-page report on this topic, and I want you to read it and understand it. Well, in the past that would have taken them a good three or four hours at minimum to create that memo report to send out to people. And you would take half an hour or an hour to read through it, process it and then discuss it with them. Now that's completely flipped. That manager can create that report in four minutes, and you still take half an hour to an hour to read it.

Erica: Unless you use AI, you drop it into AI and you say, summarize this.

Darius: I know, but it doesn't always do a very good summary, you know, and that's one of the biggest challenges. It's like we as human beings need to be the ones who filter and decide what matters and what doesn't. AI is constantly working on the average of what's important. Whereas often in a meeting or an engagement, we're often looking for the outliers. Especially if you're new or diverse. You're like, oh, you might not have noticed this, but I think this little thing is really very important. You're like, gosh, yes, it's very small but a big impact. Let's remember to do that. And this is quite important. That's quite important. Which AI does not do because it's trained to be the best average performer.

Erica: I'm super Excited about this important button. I really, really like that.

Darius: Yes, yes.

Erica: And the heat map. The heat map. I like the idea of having three kind of three colors. Like a very light red, a, slightly darker red,

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Erica: and like a. Like a really brilliant red. That.

Darius: What about this? I was thinking a light yellow. Okay.

Erica: M. Yeah. Like yield.

Darius: Orange. Orange, yeah. Then instead of red, going purply red.

Erica: You know, or you could go pinky.

Darius: Pinky red.

Erica: Red.

Darius: Because when you watch, a satellite image of the weather system. Okay. They often have, like, a blue for neutral. Okay.

Erica: Safe.

Darius: And then yellow is, like, getting higher, and then red. And then if it's a big gust, it becomes purple. And you can just see this heat map of where, like, important things are, like storm, you know, danger.

Erica: I love that metaphor of a heat map that really resonates with my system. But I think that there really is something to that, because instead of spending all of your time writing down the information, now you get to be the conductor of the information and you're, like, important. Not so important. Important. Not so important. Really important. Extremely important. But little taps on the content so that you are engaged. It's almost like you're playing the content. Like a piano.

Darius: Piano.

Erica: Oh, yeah, yeah. Conductor. Right. And what is executive functioning?

Darius: It's conducting.

Erica: Yes, Conducting.

Darius: Absolutely.

Erica: So there's something that really resonates with me about that. That's really fun.

Darius: And do you know what? One of the reasons I created Ivy was, I think if I is called an intelligent visual verbal interface, that's where Ivy comes from. And for people like me to deal with a huge number of words, I have to translate it into a visual map. And so I think people in the future will require, instead of doing a summary, a word summary, they'll want, like, an org chart mind map of it. You know, what are the five main ideas? What are the sub ideas, what are the details, and what's the actual text? So you can sort of go to the level of detail you need in that particular circumstance, you know?

Erica: Well, it's interesting because it really taps into spatialization, which is really interesting. I guess that's why they called a mind map. But there's also a sequence embedded in the mind map. It also allows you to see the big picture. So it hits on so many different processing arenas. Visual spatial, simultaneous processing, which is really, really nice. But I love the idea that we can teach students to be conductors.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: That really appeals to me because they are too often these kind of passive secretaries. They're so stuck in just recording the material, they have no time to process it. And now they can process, but we have to teach them. I think we're going to have to teach differently on how to be conductors of the incoming symphony of information.

Darius: Yeah. And I think as a developer or the owner of the software, I spend a lot of time thinking about the user experience and how that user experience, acts as a servant rather than a master. And I think we need to be really careful with the way we design things so that the interface serves rather than just does it for you. And I think it's an instrument. We need to design that into the education system, like you're saying. And we also need to design that into our workplace. And over the next year, 2025, as these agents start coming in, going back to the beginning of our story, like Ivy is like a micro agent in terms of if he will do your notes with you and for you and help you get to the point where you've got some visual notes, and then once you've got the notes, it's kind of like, well, how are we going to remember this? And you go on a journey of studying and learning and remembering what images you put in and so on. So basically what I think is going to happen is we've got best practice processes that we in society have established and discovered for studying visually or studying with words. There's some best practice processes and often students don't know them, but AIs will start coming in and helping go through that process and making it more automatic, especially for those students who have low automaticity, as we've discussed in the past, like me. And I think the same applies for the workplace, where you've maybe got a standard operating procedure for a particular task that you do repetitively or is done within your organization.

00:35:00

Darius: These agents will do those tasks for a company, and they will have one person will end up managing maybe three or four of those agents. So let's say if you visualize your role, okay, as an individual, whether you're, chartered surveyor or a doctor or a physiotherapist or a teacher, there are executive functions, executive tasks where you act as the executive. There's managerial tasks and there's technical tasks, and there's a whole heap of technical tasks that every role needs. Fill in this form, submit that form here, save it there, make sure this name is put into it and so on. all these sorts of things that are very administrative and procedural but very important. Many of those will be taken over by agents and they will be so specialized they will just do that particular process for you.

Erica: And the nice thing, I suppose, is they're not human, so they're not as likely to make errors. Where we're going to make errors is in the managing.

Darius: Yeah. So interesting. I'm thinking about agents. Right. And agents are about agency as well. Let's talk about agency, because really what we've just been talking about, agency, would sum it up in many ways, you know, like, will agents take away our sense of agency, our sense of being, deciding this is what we're going to do and that's what we're going to do. And I think there is a temptation, like so many students are just saying, oh, answer this question, ChatGPT, write me an essay and submit it. They lose agency, they lose the ability to write the essay, and they might get caught out. And teachers are getting smart at doing it. But I tell you, in a year's time, it doesn't matter if you white label the text. Have you seen these teachers who are writing in instructions inside of the text, but using white text instead of black text?

Erica: I have not. But I also have to say that so many teachers do that very thing themselves. They get tenure, they create their course content, and then they ride on it until they retire. So they're passive. They're passive teachers. M. But I'll tell you what I've also noticed that they're the ones that are unhappy. Nobody wants to be passive at anything. Because your life, you lose meaning.

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: Your life loses meaning. That really what provides meaning in life is, is growth, is being active and teaching that to students because they don't always know that. They're always looking for the easy way out. What's the easy way to do that? And we have to be careful because easy isn't enjoyable all the time. If you're just doing easy things all day, you don't have that kind of satisfaction at night, as if you accomplish a bunch of really hard things, you know? So it's kind of interesting. Although we want to make hard tasks easier, we don't want to make them so easy that they become passive and then they're not as engaging enough. So it's so funny. Life has so many fine lines. You know, we're opposites because we all want things to be easy but not too easy.

Darius: Yes. Well, I think it, it would be nice to choose the things that we don't want to be easy. You know, like sometimes feeling completely out of control and everything is hard and not easy to do and so on. And a person with neurodiversity, dyslexia, adhd, whatever can feel, that can be paralyzing. And so this hunger towards finding ways to do things more easily is really helpful. But did you. Do you know the story of Churchill laying bricks? Tell us where his mental health. So Winston Churchill, who had dyslexia when he was prime minister, he had a real problem with depression. He would talk about this a lot. One of the few people who talk about the dark dog or the black dog, he called it the black dog of depression. And he would sometimes say, the black dog is coming near me, and I'm feeling, you know, it close by. And what he realized was that he had to go outside every morning and lay three or four courses of bricks. Okay. Can you imagine the President of the United States going outside the back of the White House and laying three or four courses of bricks and then coming back in and carrying on his work? What Churchill did during the war and as a prime minister after it, because what he realized was that he had to do a practical task. And sometimes practical tasks are not easy. Do you know what I mean? It took mental cognitive function and load and practical. And cut your finger on the bricks,

00:40:00

Darius: or, you know, lift up the mortar and shape it properly and place it down and that it was kind of like meditative work for him. And so he would take water and sand, not cement, water and sand, do as mortar, lay the course of bricks, and then he'd lift all the bricks, scrape them off, and put them back down and stack the bricks back up for the next day.

Erica: Wow. That I have not heard that story.

Darius: And that was the one thing he did to preserve his mental health, because he realized he needed to do something physical.

Erica: You know what that was? It was a meditation.

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: It was his own form of tactile meditation; I would call that.

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: Because it's repetitive. It's. Right. I would call that a meditation.

Darius: Well, it's interesting. I was listening to this podcaster who's talking about, you know, how sometimes podcasters ask at the very end, you know, what question have I not asked that you think I should have asked? Or what? What topic do you think we didn't cover that you think we should have? And this guy just came completely off left center, and he said, mental health. And he said, I think we need to feed our mental health. And sometimes we think about mental health as something that comes from outside or. But his point was often doing physical, practical things like fixing something, making something, sorting something, making a bed, building something, and often fixing Something or putting something back into order. And wholeness feeds your mental health. And that's what I think Churchill was doing there. Put yourself into the context of Churchill. Churchill was in a context where, although he was in charge, he was not in complete control. Things were happening to him, at him all the time. And in that time, we were the last country standing against Nazi Germany. They had taken the whole of Europe, and they were on our shores, and they were just about to invade us, and they were just about to take over Britain. And if they did that, Nazi Germany would have had the whole of Europe and Britain, and that would be it. It would be Nazi Germany, America and, China and so on. That's just the way it would. The world would have been okay. The world would be very different. But one man and one nation stood and said, absolutely not. No way. Over our dead body, okay? And they begged the Americans to come and join them. And the Americans said, no, not our problem. We're not touching this thing. And he was completely overwhelmed by being out of control. But sometimes when you take one small thing that you can completely control. I can pick up this brick. I can shape, I can put the mortar, I can complete this. I can point it, and it's beautiful. Finished. I've done, I've fixed. I've brought something to wholeness. And I think that's part of the key, and I've seen this with gardening and studying permaculture, is you need to move from wholeness to wholeness. And so sometimes when you've got a garden, you can just redo the whole garden. And it just. You just live in this whole world of half. In a project that's half done, that's quarter done, that's 1/10 done, and that's just completely rubble. That's not the way to develop a garden or a life or a project. The way to do it, if you're following permaculture principles, is right. Where can we change where we temporarily disturb it and move from wholeness right now into a better wholeness. So we're moving through this transition of disturbance into wholeness. And the goal is to go from wholeness to wholeness as rapidly as possible. And Churchill needed that. And I think our mental health needs that ability to go out there, do something practical.

Erica: It's so interesting because I think everybody has their own way of, finding those. Those kind of meditations that work for them, whether it's laying bricks. I think your way of laying bricks is creating mind maps. I haven't done it in years. But maybe I should do this over Christmas. A puzzle. I am just a ferocious puzzler.

Darius: So what do you mean, like a jigsaw puzzle?

Erica: Yeah. I have not done one in 30 years. But if you give me the biggest puzzle you can find, I will not sleep until it's finished. I can't. I can't. I get completely obsessed, and I'm really good at them, so I can get through big ones. Maybe I'll do a big puzzle over maybe. Yeah, Christmas.

Darius: And I think there's something inside of us for that.

Erica: Oh, it’s so satisfying. And when you finish. But you're right. There is something. And. And just like mind mapping is so satisfying for you, and. And part of this is finding. What is it

00:45:00

Erica: that just satisfies your brain? Is there some kind of organizational. Some people love to do sudoku and other people love to do, like the New York Times has word, search, and all sorts of little things you can do.

Darius: Let's use that analogy of the jigsaw puzzle for a moment and tie it into AI. Okay.

Erica: Yeah.

Darius: So if you think about doing a jigsaw puzzle, okay, there's the technical part, managerial part, and the executive part. Okay.

Erica: Yeah. That's one way of approaching it. Yes. That's the best way, from my standpoint, to approach it.

Darius: So the technical part is, right, we're going to get all the pieces out. We're going to flip them all over the right way around. We're going to identify where the edges and corner pieces are, color code, color, chunk them, into piles and. Yeah, yeah. So can you imagine, let's say you're working with someone to do the jigsaw puzzle. Okay. And you get to the understanding, okay. That that person might be a little bit more kind of, I'm in charge. This is my puzzle. So you back off a little bit. This sometimes happens in our family. I won't mention any names, and you go, well, that's okay. I'll just flip over the pieces, so they're done for you, and I'll just find some corners and maybe I'll pile them up. And then that person's, like, starts doing some of the edges and so on. They're very good at putting in the big picture, seeing the big picture and putting it in. Well, AI is a bit like coming alongside in 2025. Coming alongside and flipping over lots of the pieces.

Erica: I love that. I love that metaphor because that just sounds so satisfying. Or, in fact, you may choose not to give it that role. You might ask it to find you all the edges. Or you may not give it that role. You might say categorize it by color.

Darius: You might.

Erica: What's nice is that you get to choose how you want AI to support you and in what ways you want it to organize information or not. But we do have to think of ways where we can be actively engaged or we're going to lose the joy of our work.

Darius: Yes. I mean, and the reality in that analogy. Let's take it to the next level. We're getting very close to when the AI will have robotic arms, which are coming next year, are here already. And you know, Elon Musk's Optimus is going to be incredible already, is it catches balls really well and so on. So you would have a real-life Optimus. I mean, this is going to happen. A real-life Optimus sitting at your desk, flipping over the pieces with you.

Erica: Oh, my God. You can have the. The ultimate companion as you get older.

Darius: Yeah. And, flipping over the pieces with you. And then. And it'll start rapidly, and it will be able to just put the whole jigsaw puzzle together maybe in 30 minutes. And whereas you. It takes 5 hours or 10 hours or whatever. And again, talking about taking the joy. Well, it's interesting because it's kind of like we've got chess computers that can play chess. And so we could put one chess computer against another chess computer, but we're just not interested in that. But we're much more interested in the human being playing chess against another human being, even if they've spent time with the chess computers, learning from chess computers, human to human. So I think that's a good model for where things are going to go. You know, we're going to say two AIs, two people, they're going to say, look, you know, leave the executive stuff for me. You know, I want to do this, that, and the next thing, let me do X, Y and Z. And the lower-level stuff the AI will come in and do, even though it could do the higher level.

Erica: What I love about these kind of Android things that are coming down the pike to support us is AI does a lot of stuff that we can't see. But when we have these actual. I don't know, what do we call them?

Darius: Robots.

Erica: Robots, I guess. Okay. If we have these actual robots and they're showing us, then we actually can learn a skill through a robot. Because you could have a robot teach you to be a sculptor. You could have a robot teach you to be just about anything.

Darius: Wow. Yeah. I hadn't thought of it in terms of the practical skill teaching.

Erica: Yeah, break it down. And I've seen that even there's a video online of. I think you and I have talked about this. Sal Khan watching AI teach math to his son. But yeah, we could learn how to be a painter just like any famous painter, because AI could show us instead of just doing it for us. It could walk us through the steps, or it could analyze how we swing the golf or play a game and say, well, there's a little bit of a problem here. This is what you're doing wrong. You're

00:50:00

Erica: not holding the ping pong paddle quite right. You're not the baseball; you're swinging a little bit too late. But it can really analyze things so that you can get better at a much faster pace. That I look forward to. I look forward to cooking with a robot. The robot does all the dishes. Oh my God, that sounds so good.

Darius: You know, one of the things that's really going to help for, with the aging population. You know, my dad just died a year ago and, we just celebrated his anniversary that last week. And I could see in the next four or five years, Optimus, Tesla, robots being in a, in a space like where my dad is, you know, there was a moment where he fell, and he broke his back. And you know when you see an old person who's fallen and broken their back and you phoned up the ambulance and the ambulance says it'll take three hours to get there when it should be five or 10 minutes because of some problem, and yet you're like, what do I do? I didn't know how to lift him; I didn't know how to move him. I didn't have the strength. And I got to a point where, oh, right. We figured out a process. We put a cloth underneath him and we started to pull him on the cloth so he could get out of that space. We could start helping him and sort him out and then roll him on his side a little bit, etc. Ease him on his side, etc. And I'm just kind of thinking if I had like a spare pair of hands, I had to call people and some people could and couldn't come, etc. Spare pair of hands to help lift spare pair of hands to. Maybe they've already been trained in health and safety and.

Erica: Or maybe even just brainstorm ideas. 10 different solutions to this problem.

Darius: Oh, wow.

Erica: I hadn't thought about that. It's definitely going to help us to process potential problems better and maybe it'll even help our governments, not be so impulsive with nuclear war and stuff like that. I don't know about that. We're not going there.

Darius: Yeah, yeah, we're not going there. But 2025 I would say is going to be an important year to just be aware of agents and be aware of where there might be a process in your workplace or your work life where you take one particular vertical process where you repeatedly do something and if you could get an agent to go through that sequence with you reliably, consistently, you'll just go, oh my goodness, this is so helpful. So instead of this wide, broad intelligence layer of ChatGPT, which is what we've got so far, we're going to have these very narrow and deep and reliable consistent processes that do it the way you want, that say things the way you want, that have your information, that have your response in it and just do low level stuff reliably for you.

Erica: And I want to invite everybody to get comfortable grabbing that baton and being a conductor because it's vitally important that we are active members to maintain a sense of dignity, to maintain a sense of growth and to keep ourselves happy. We have to be engaged. Yeah, you know, that's very important.

Darius: We have to be agents. You know, like agency executive function is choosing. The thing is a lot of people do not use their executive functions. We just assume everyone does. They don't. A lot of people are on automatic pilot. They're a technician, they're a manager, they go on automatic pilot and that's it. Just do the same thing over and over again. If that's you and you're feeling like that AI is coming for your job in the next few years, unfortunately, and these agents are going to take your job and so you're going to have to either step out of the way for the agent who's going to be employed to do your job instead of you at a, ah, fraction of the cost, or you're going to have to step up and say, right, I'm going to start deciding this is a good strategy. This is a goal, pulling in materials and resources and synchronizing different tools and resources. And a key part of those tools, I'm, sorry to say, is going to be AI and it's out the door, it's out the gate, it's here, it's not going anywhere. So I think we should embrace it.

Erica: And it's an invitation for you not to have to do this repetitive, meaningless work anymore and to have a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

Darius: Yeah. And I think sometimes it's that, you know, let's say, I mean, I painted a bit, a bit of a bleak picture there, but let's just put some numbers on it. So let's say 50% of your time you're doing the technical stuff. 45%

00:55:00

Darius: of the time you're on the managerial repetitive cycle. Look, and the 5% you're making decisions and being an executive of that role or function. And I think what will happen is that executive role will start to expand to 15, 20% while the technical, lower-level stuff gets consumed at 30 or 40% of it done by agents. It will open up the capacity for you to expand that executive decision-making process.

Erica: Well, what a fun discussion.

Darius: Well, next year, looking forward to more Executive Function podcasts.

Erica: Absolutely.

Darius: Or should I call it Executive Function Brain Trainer Podcast? Because we changed the name like a year ago. And we're just kind of finalizing the update of all of those name changes because some of them are listed as the personal Brain Trainer podcast, aren't they?

Erica: Right.

Darius: And we changed it to the Executive Function Brain Trainer Podcast. So same thing.

Erica: Yep. Thanks so much, Darius, as always. Until next time.

Darius: Bye.

Erica: Bye. Sponsored by learningspecialistscourses.com Courses and resources that support educators and coaches.

Darius: Sponsored by Ivy. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. It's ideal for students and managers with dyslexia or adhd. Try Ivy for free now at Ivy App. That's IVVI App. thank you for joining us at, the Executive Function Brain Trainer Podcast.

Erica: Check out our show notes for links and resources and follow us on social.

00:56:45

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