This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
There are two kinds of challenges we face.
One kind involves a novel problem.
We don't know why we're sick.
A new disease suddenly sweeps the world, and it doesn't have a cure.
Novel challenges call for discovery, invention.
As a species, we are very good at coming up with such discoveries.
But many of the setbacks in our lives are not caused by such problems.
They are caused by problems whose solutions were discovered a long time ago.
Think about the leading causes of death in most countries.
They are connected to smoking, diet, and sedentary lifestyles.
We know what we ought to do to live better.
We should eat right and exercise, get a good night's rest, live within our means.
So why is it so hard to actually do those things?
Some of us figure out that we have two selves and that they are in conflict, and this is a challenge we need to resolve.
But some of us go through life without paying a lot of attention to this fact or trying to find ways to overcome it.
This week on hidden brain, how to engineer our lives and our minds to do what we know is good for us.
Think about the resolutions you made this year.
Did you decide to read more, work out more often?