In this latest episode of our recurring Productive Reading series, we look at Elaine Fox, PhD’s fascinating book, Switch Craft: The Hidden Power of Mental Agility.
Dr. Elaine Fox’s book, Switch Craft, helps us build the skills to help us navigate a constantly changing world
This week we’re continuing our Productive Reading recurring series. In the past, we’ve talked about the lessons and key takeaways I found in books about productivity-related topics that I’ve found helpful and thought-provoking, including books by authors like Gary Keller, Charles Duhigg, Brené Brown, Courtney Carver, Jeff Sanders, James Clear, Michael Hyatt, Maura Nevel Thomas, Joshua Becker, Greg McKeown, Cal Newport, Dominique Sachse, Laura Vanderkam, Nir Eyal, and most recently talking about an intriguing book by Dr. Anna Lembke, called Dopamine Nation (episode 474). (Scroll to the bottom of this post for links to the previous episodes in the Productive Reading series.
This time I’m sharing some of my most important takeaways from a book recommended by someone in the TPW community: Switch Craft, by Elaine Fox, Ph.D.
Who is Elaine Fox
The book’s back cover copy tells us that “Elaine Fox, PhD, is a psychologist, author, and the head of the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Prior to her move to Australia, Dr. Fox founded and directed the renowned Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN) at the University of Oxford. She is a leading mental health researcher, combining genetics, psychology, and neuroscience in her work. Dr. Fox also runs Oxford Elite Performance, a consulting group bringing cutting-edge science and psychology to those at the top levels of sport, business, and the military. Her 2012 book Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain is an international bestseller.”
Why did I read this book
This book was recommended by someone in the TPW community in a discussion in the Facebook group–I’m sorry but I can’t recall who it was and couldn’t find the post. The title and description intrigued me, as one of my lifelong weaknesses is that I struggle to cope with change and especially with uncertainty. At the beginning of the book, she included two epigraphs–quotes that she clearly thought were relevant to the book’s topic. One is a quote from Gautama Buddha that resonated with me: “Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change.”
This is another book for which I first bought the Audible version, and there was so much in it that I wanted to be able to think about that I bought a print version of it so I could re-read and annotate passages I wanted to ponder more.
The book is subtitled: The Hidden Power of Mental Agility. The more I looked into it, the more interested I became.
“Harnessing the power of an agile mind–what I call “switch craft”–can be transformative.”
What “switch craft” is:
“Switch craft refers to those natural skills that are necessary to help us navigate a complex and unpredictable world.” It’s the ability to adapt to change and choose the right tools to cope with challenges, obstacles, and stresses of life.
An “agile” mindset: “the capacity to flex our thoughts, feelings, and actions” as needed to address the inevitable change and challenges life brings
The book is divided into several parts
There is a brief introduction that introduces the context of the book and the problem the book is intended to solve. The section called “The Fundamentals” consists of four chapters that explain “Why Switch Craft Matters”. The next four sections discuss and apply “the four pillars of switch craft”: mental agility, self-awareness, emotional awareness, and situational awareness
Many concepts are illustrated with brief case studies and real-life examples. She features exercises in various chapters you can do to help you identify where you fall on the spectrum of skill in the various areas, such as tolerance for uncertainty, flexibility of thinking, mental agility, task switching, and more.
There is a brief conclusion that summarizes “Some Key Principles of Switch Craft”
Introduction – introduces the context of the book and the problem the book is intended to address
“Life is often about opening up to new possibilities and being able to see routes around obstacles and setbacks.”
“Uncertainty is the only certainty. Accepting and adapting to this is crucial. The world can feel like an uncertain place, and it is. Unless we can learn to live with not being sure, it’s very easy for us to become overwhelmed.”
Uncertainty is triggered by things like new or ambiguous and unpredictable situations. She goes on to say:
“What my research in psychology and neuroscience has taught me is that getting used to the intrinsic uncertainty of the world is essential for success: the people who thrive are those with the ability to accept and adapt to constant change and uncertainty.
Her premise is really important to someone like me, who does not naturally cope well with uncertainty or change: “The good news is that we can improve our ability to adapt. It takes practice and we often need to push ourselves outside our comfort zone.”
“Agility is built into our DNA and supports our resilience. The good news is that nature has provided us with all the tools we need to become agile. While we may think that our own times are particularly unstable, most periods in history have been characterized by tremendous upheavals and uncertainties. People have always had to deal with wars, famines, floods, earthquakes, political upheavals, and pandemics. This is why we are actually intrinsically much more agile and resilient than we might think.
This sparked in me the idea that maybe I should reconsider how I think about myself. Looking back over the changes and uncertainties I’ve navigated during my life, maybe I should stop thinking of myself as not coping well with change. Just because it’s uncomfortable doesn’t mean I didn’t navigate it well.
“Drawing on cutting-edge research in science, Switch Craft sets out a practical framework for how you can nurture the mental talents needed to live a successful, fulfilling, and resilient life.
What it’s for:
“It’s important to remember that we are active stewards of our own well-being, rather than passive victims of change, and so we must actively manage our approach to life.”
This is about being proactive, knowing that change will come, that obstacles and crises will arise, and proactively, intentionally preparing ourselves for them, developing skills and tools that will allow us not just to survive, but to thrive.
“Maintaining a flexible mind allows us to thrive amid change. The first step on your switch craft journey is to accept that change and uncertainty are an inescapable part of life. Our lives will change many times, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It is how we navigate those shifts that shape our present and our future happiness.”
“The key to resilience is our capacity to be agile and flexible in how we adapt to challenges and change. Our ancestors . . . have always had to cope with a world that is constantly changing. We often lose this fluidity and become stuck in our ways as we grow older, but our built-in agility can still be released in a crisis or when we work hard to become more open to new ways of doing things.”
“an agile mind drastically improves your chances of success and happiness. But the flip side is also true: an inflexible mind fuels anxiety and stress and a ‘stickiness’ that can torpedo your life.
Part I – The Fundamentals – Why Switch Craft Matters
This is a very interesting section about the difference between change (“the external events that happen all through our lives”) and transition (“the subtle internal reorientation and self-definition that are necessary in order to deal well with changes in your life”).
“Many of us make detailed preparations to get ready for a big change in our lives such as the arrival of a new baby or the move to a new job, but we rarely think much about preparing for the internal transition, and this can really blindside us.”
In one section I found particularly helpful, she outlines and describes the 5 key stages to making a change in your life and offers suggestions on how to prepare for the internal transition as well:
- Pre-contemplation: “Conduct a ‘situational analysis.’ Write down a list of things that are working well for you and that you want to keep in your life. . . . Now, write down a list of things that are not so good. . . . At this stage, don’t make any big decisions or plans.” just make the lists.
- Contemplation: “Now give some serious consideration to anything you might want to change, stop, or start, and make a list of the benefits and costs. Then, make a clear decision. . . . Make the decision specific. . . . Then, tell someone. There is significant evidence that informing others of our intentions makes it much more likely that we will stick with those good intentions.”
- Preparation: Start planning and thinking about the new routine. If you’re planning to instill a new habit or set of habits, list out the potential obstacles, triggers, etc., and then identify some coping strategies for each. This is very similar to what I’ve read in books like The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits. It’s about preparing yourself ahead of time for the challenges of change so you’re ready when the obstacles appear or the challenges come.
- Action: Work the plan–and, she says, “don’t forget to reward yourself for success. Schedule in a reward, perhaps each week; just make sure it isn’t something that may trigger you to go back to your old ways.”
- Maintenance and relapse: She says we can expect to relapse and says don’t beat yourself up; just learn the lesson and start again.
Parts II – V: Chapters about each of the four pillars of switch craft
Mental agility:
“having a flexible approach to a complicated world”; lots of suggestions for how to “escape from the limits of a constricting mindset” and learn how to determine when to be persistent (stick with what you’re doing) and when to switch (try a different approach)
She talks about the concept of grit–something touted, especially in the United States–that “stick-to-it-iveness” that’s such a part of our heritage to keep pushing on through all obstacles and challenges to achieve great things. But she notes that it might not always be the right tool in every situation, and mental agility is about knowing when to gut it out and when to change approaches. This, I think, is a big challenge for many of us. How do we know when to persist with a course of action when things are hard as opposed to giving up on that course too easily and switching to another approach?
“Both strategies are important for different goals and moments in your life. When you are working on a single task that requires repetitive practice, like training for a competition or exam, then persistence is required. When you are working on a complex project with many different elements, however, you may need to switch regularly between different aspects of the task.”
There are lots of suggested simple exercises to improve cognitive flexibility, adaptability, perspective, mental competence, and the other components of mental agility
Self-awareness:
“Being self-aware means that we are aware of our own thoughts, emotions, and actions and how they might impact other people. When we are highly self-aware, we are better able to reflect on how we can do better and what aspects of our behavior we might need to modify. This means that the more self-aware we are, the more agile we can be. . . . It is only by understanding our values, goals, and capabilities that we can really respond agilely to any situation. In this way, the second pillar of switch craft–self-awareness . . . supercharges the first pillar, agility.”
She talks about various personality traits (with some interesting tests to help tease out our own), and the importance of traits like intellectual humility (being willing to accept that you might be wrong) and how to nurture it. She goes into identifying core beliefs and values and why awareness of these is so important to switch craft.
Emotional awareness:
This is critically important in a day and age where we are constantly exposed to emotional manipulation, by people in our lives, by media, by social media, and more. She has a fascinating chapter on the “three principles of persuasion” and how they are used to maximize revenue potential in marketing, among other things.
“Understanding and manipulating emotions is not only useful for persuading someone to buy something, but also to get yourself out of a potentially dangerous situation. . . .” (She tells the story of how a family friend used acute emotional awareness to safely escape a hostage situation.)
There is a chapter with suggestions on learning to regulate your emotions and manage negative thoughts, including reframing the situation and learning to distance ourselves from unhelpful thoughts or feelings.
“Regulating emotions is an important part of switch craft because it allows us to step back and assess a situation clearly so we are in a better position to consider the most appropriate approach. Strong emotions can push us to act on impulse, which might not always be the right solution.”
Situational awareness:
This is a fascinating discussion of intuition as a valuable tool–not a “woo woo” mystical sixth sense, but an actual skill based on finely tuned awareness of the situation you’re in.
“Many studies in psychology tell us that intuition is a very real process where the brain makes use of past experiences, along with internal signals and cues from the environment, to help us make a decision. This decision happens so quickly that it doesn’t register with our conscious mind. . . . Intuition is that part of our mind that presents us with the gist of the situation. . . . To put it another way, intuition provides us with an instinctive understanding of what’s important and what information can safely be ignored.”
She talks about how intuition really is based on “gut feelings”; scientists are getting a better understanding of the interplay between the gut (a layer of neurons lining the stomach and gastrointestinal tract) and the brain–signals that come from the gut to the brain to “help us to turn environmental signals, such as danger cues, into vague feelings of danger that we can then act upon.”
“What’s important to remember is that information coming from our intuition is not stand-alone information. Our gut feelings inform rather than dictate.”
“Many of our ‘intuitions’ are based on an intimate understanding of our surroundings, the context, and this is a vital skill that we can develop and hone. Intuition is an important part of switch craft for exactly this reason–by providing us with often subtle information from our surroundings, intuition helps us to make the right decision at the right time.”
“Intuition is relevant to switch craft because it provides us access to a level of knowledge about the world that is not available to our conscious mind. This type of knowledge is often most important in complex, fast-changing situations. . . .”
Key takeaways and quotes
The importance of flexibility in thinking and approach
“To manage a constantly changing world you must acknowledge that a variety of different approaches are needed. There is almost never a ‘one size fits all’ solution to life’s problems.”
“Switch Craft combines four vital psychological talents into a potent mental weapon to help you make the decision to stick or to switch to another approach, and to get that decision right more times than you get it wrong.”
The interplay of resilience and agility. We talked about resilience in episode 465 (Cultivating Flexibility and Resilience)
“Resilience is not about being unaffected by change and adversity, but doing ‘better than expected’ relative to what you have been through.”
“Resilience is determined as much by what we do and have as by what we think or feel.”
“Being agile is at the heart of resilience” because being agile is about being willing and able to consider a wide variety of tools for addressing any given situation or challenge and choosing the right tool for the job.
“Mental agility is not about changing for the sake of it, it is an informed flexibility that chooses the right approach for the situation.”
There are things you can and should do to develop the mental agility to cope better with change and uncertainty.
Practice – build up your exposure to uncertainty to develop a better tolerance of it. Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Be curious about your own thoughts, assumptions, fears, etc. She offers a bunch of examples of “experiments” you can do to test your assumptions and worries. This was especially helpful to me since I tend to be a worrier. She includes some very rational, practical ways to learn to manage worrying.
Expose yourself to lots of different experiences, situations, people, etc. Get outside your bubble.
“The more we try out a variety of solutions to solve different life problems, the more deeply we embed a profound knowledge of the type of strategy that might work in specific situations. . . . Resisting the rigidity that is so alluring when we have found a comfortable niche is at the heart of thriving. And if you can keep your behavior and feelings agile, you will develop a suppleness of mind that allows you to adapt and optimize your performance, no matter what life throws at you.”
We all deal with varying degrees of stress throughout our lives. “It’s important to have a range of different ways to manage stress and anxiety. . . . No one approach is likely to be effective for every situation.
“Overcoming challenges and experiencing adversity often helps boost our resilience.”
The importance of emotional awareness, the value of negative emotions, but the essential support positive emotions provide to resilience.
The role that intuition plays in our decision-making and agility, and that it’s not magic, but a very real biological and neurological process in which subtle environmental clues are picked up and send signals that can inform our perceptions and our decisions. The most important tool for nurturing intuition is engaging in a wide variety of experiences, as “we acquire intuitive knowledge not by intellectual analysis, but by doing.” Our intuitive skills are strongest in those areas (locations, situations, professions, etc.) that we are most familiar with.
“Switch craft principles to live by”:
- Be open and curious.
- Become comfortable with uncertainty.
- Nurture an agile way of thinking.
- Nurture self-awareness.
- Accept and embrace your emotional life.
- Nurture your intuition.
- Learn to decenter. (Step back and look at the big picture.)
- Learn some breathing exercises and grounding techniques.
- Create an album of happy memories.
- Become ‘stress adapted” by “exposing yourself to as wide a range of experiences as possible. . . .”
- more
The book’s key message
“Switch craft is a supercharged agility that allows us to thrive in a precarious world where many moving pieces come at us from unexpected directions. An unwavering focus on grit [sticking with the same approach and trying to muscle through obstacles] means we risk missing the intrinsic richness, creativity, and wildness of life. . . . It is not quitting or switching for the sake of it that’s important, it is finding the best match for your talents and interests. . . . None of us will ever know for sure whether we’ve taken the right path, or made the right decision, of course, because everyday problems do not have obvious correct answers. But what we do know is that the inherent uncertainty of life requires switch craft to succeed.”
She ends with her wish:
“By learning to understand and accept yourself, appreciate your surroundings, and recognize the power of being agile and keeping an open mind, my hope is that you will be ready to embrace the rest of your life not as a chore, but as an adventure.”
Some final thoughts
There is more to this book than what I’ve mentioned here. What I like about it best is the depth and scientific support for the concepts, but explained in a very accessible way. It’s incredibly thought-provoking and inspiring for this change-phobic person.
What is the relevance of this book to a podcast about productivity? Understanding how our minds work is important. If it helps us identify something that might be interfering with our ability to accomplish the things we care about, and offers ways to develop skills that will help us navigate life more effectively, then it’s worth considering. This is a book I will read again.
What do you think?
Have you read Switch Craft or Dr. Fox’s other book, Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain? If so, what did you think? Share your takeaway with us. If you haven’t yet read it, what’s a productivity-related book you’ve read recently that you’d recommend? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or in The Productive Woman Community Facebook group, or send me an email.
Resources and Links
Dr. Elaine Fox’s books
- Switch Craft: The Hidden Power of Mental Agility Rainy Brain
- Sunny Brain: How to Retrain Your Brain to Overcome Pessimism and Achieve a More Positive Outlook
Other episodes in the Productive Reading Series:
- Gary Keller’s The ONE Thing (episode 133)
- The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg (episode 147)
- 3 books written by Brené Brown (episode 166)
- Soulful Simplicity, by Courtney Carver (episode 182)
- The Free-Time Formula by Jeff Sanders (episode 211)
- James Clear’s wonderful Atomic Habits (episode 230)
- Free to Focus, by Michael Hyatt (episode 250)
- Attention Management, by Maura Nevel Thomas (episode 271)
- The Minimalist Home, by Joshua Becker (episode 324)
- Effortless, by Greg McKeown (episode 349)
- Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism (episode 366)
- Life Makeover, by Dominique Sachse (episode 403)
- Laura Vanderkam’s Tranquility by Tuesday (episode 420)
- Nir Eyal’s Indistractable (episode 454)
- Dopamine Nation, by Dr. Anna Lembke (episode 474)
Additonal links for Dr. Fox
- Follow Dr. Fox on X (formerly Twitter) @profelainefox
- YouTube interview of Dr. Fox on Trend Following Radio (search her name or “switch craft” on YT for more videos of her speaking
- TPW465 Cultivating Flexibility and Resilience
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