As you probably notice, this month we're bringing you our Life of Purpose series and revisiting

some of our most transformative episodes. Tune in to explore expert insights and practical

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What you have to do is go to UnmistakableCreative.com slash LifePurpose. Again, that's UnmistakableCreative.com slash Life Purpose. Thank you. Glad to be here. Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here.

So as I was saying before we hit record here, I kept coming across your name in virtually every book that I had read on the subject of attention and dealing with distraction. And given that this is a subject that I've dedicated a good amount of my upcoming book to, I figured it was kind of a no-brainer to have the person who's the authority on the subject matter here as a guest, not a mistakeable creative. But before we get into your work, I want to start by asking you, what did your parents do for a living? And what impact did that end up having on the choices that you've made with your life and your career? That's a good question. So I grew up in Queens. Neither of my parents actually went to college.

I was the first person in my family to go to college. They weren't all that well off when it comes

to money when they grew up. And so they had to start working right after high school.

My mom was a bookkeeper, or still is, for her whole career, and my dad was a engineer for the mass transit authority for the subway system, and they both still work.

So, you know, they were not in the academic path that I wound up following, like, science and medicine.

But they really valued education, both instilled it in both myself and my sisters.

And so I think that that's really the influence that they had on me was just a strong respect for educating yourself and also a love for science.

Although they didn't engage in it professionally, my dad and my mom were both fans of it.

I remember as a kid watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos

series with him and just taking trips to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan

and just being blown away by science. And they really instilled that excitement.

How old were you when that happened? I was around seven or eight when I first started getting attached and never letting go to this idea of being a

scientist someday. And how did that manifest for the rest of your childhood? Like, what kinds of things

did you do in terms of extracurricular activities? Like, how did your parents encourage and nurture

this interest? And what would you say to parents who are listening about this experience?

Well, you know, it was, it was unusual thing for me to latch on to, given that we didn't know

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