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The human brain is one of the most important organs we possess in our body. But it's also the one we understand the least.

Serial entrepreneur Bryan Johnson wants to change that. Johnson is the founder and CEO of Kernel, a company that has developed devices that can monitor and record brain activity. He has begun sending dozens of customers across the U.S. a $50,000 helmet that can analyze the brain's neurons, electrical impulses, and blood flow at the speed of thought.

“To make progress on all the fronts that we need to as a society, we have to bring the brain online,” Johnson says.

Kernel is yet another competitor in the brain-interface market trying to gain a deeper understanding of how the human brain reacts to the world's external stimuli. The private company will allow researchers to use the data to better study brain aging, mental disorders, strokes, and even analyze the experience of psychedelic trips.

Johnson is all in. Kernel is his life's mission. He's spent more than five years and raised about $110 million (half of it his own money) to develop and commercialize the helmets.

Johnson doesn't have the typical Silicon Valley founder story. He grew up relatively poor in Springville, Utah, as the middle of five children. His mother stayed at home with the kids, while his father was a trash-collector-turned lawyer. He had a drug problem and an affair, which led to his divorce from Johnson's mom.

Johnson grew up with little direction, and he didn't know what to do with his life until he went on a two-year church mission in Ecuador. “When I came back, the only thing I cared about was how to do the most good for the most people,” he says. “Since I didn’t have any skills, I decided to become an entrepreneur.”

While in college, he started a business selling cell phones and service plans. He later invested in a real estate development company that wasn't as successful and left him $250,000 in debt. To pay it off, he was forced to take a job selling credit card processing services to small businesses door to door.

And then he hit it big. In 2007, Johnson had an idea for a software company focused on making online payments much more seamless. It was called Braintree, which he later sold for $800 million in cash.

To everyone else, he was a founder who had reached the upper echelons of entrepreneurial success. But Johnson felt anything but successful. He was stressed out, overweight, his marriage was falling apart, and he was having suicidal thoughts.

He decided to overhaul his life, move to Los Angeles, and start over. Johnson began running cognitive and physical experiments to improve his sleep, identify his blind spots, and reboot his overall health.

During his trials, one question surfaced to his mind: "How do we collectively thrive beyond what we can even imagine?"

That's when he took $54 million of his own cash to start Kernel, a neuroscience company to build non-invasive brain recording technology. "Despite the long odds, I consider it imperative that I try. I believe it’s imperative we all try," he writes. "The future of our species depends on it."

Here's what we can learn from Johnson about advancing humanity’s understanding of the brain.

READ.

On unlocking the secrets of your mind: Over the next few weeks, Johnson's company Kernel will begin sending dozens of customers across the U.S. a $50,000 helmet that can, crudely speaking, read their mind. Excited researchers anticipate using the helmets to gain insight into brain aging, mental disorders, concussions, strokes, and the mechanics behind previously metaphysical experiences such as meditation and psychedelic trips.

LISTEN.

On his path to $800 million: Johnson had a winding path full of unsuccessful ventures before he finally landed on Braintree. When he began the company, he had no technical background. When he started, he had three main goals: "1): "I wanted us to be the best payment provider in the world for developers. 2.) I wanted our employees to say it was the best company they had ever worked for. 3.) That our customers would write us love letters." Here's how Johnson turned these audacious goals into a $800-million reality.

On overcoming depression: Johnson had chronic depression for 10 years. "The reality of being human is brutal," he says. When a person is in a depressive states, he adds, their brain is in a biochemical state. "It's not you," Johnson emphasizes. In this video, he explains how our brains can create false realities, how we can deal with depressive biochemical states, and the future of brain-computer interfaces.

WATCH.

On his plan for the future of the human race: Johnson believes that if we are to survive as a species, humanity needs to co-evolve with artificial intelligence in order to ensure our survival. "I would challenge the primary assessment that we need to view this through our amygdala of fight or flight to be scared of this," he says. Here's Johnson's plan for how brain-machine interfaces will blend humanity with AI for cognitive supremacy.

On the value of playing games: Johnson plays infinite games, a game where all you care about is to keep on playing. "I love life. I love playing the game of life. I don't want that to stop, so if I see something that's going to potentially stop my gameplay, I identify it. Like, hey, that thing needs to be solved," he says. Here's how he developed this mindset after a decade of crippling depression where he saw no point in playing the game of life.

TECHNIQUES TO TRY.

Practice "zeroth-principles" thinking: Johnson has a mental technique he calls “zeroth-principles” thinking, which aims to uncover transformative new elements of thought. It is similar, but slightly different, from “first-principles” thinking. Zeroth-principles thinking is about building blocks, or the structure of all things, whereas first-principles thinking is about system laws, or how things interact. "First-principles thinking sets goals in known terms and then pursues them, inventing and learning new things as necessary, but it rarely uncovers brand new conceptual primitives of the kind which the world needs," Johnson writes. Zeroth principles thinking is thinking about concepts where we have no idea about the potential consequences or payoffs of whatever it is we're thinking. Ask yourself: "What concepts are hiding in plain sight but can’t be seen by anyone? How do we, with our limited human cognition, start thinking 'from an alternate dimension?'"

Keep a notebook of annoyances: Johnson keeps a notebook in which he jots down things that annoy him. For example, if he wanted something to eat, and there was no drive-thru, he'd ask, "Why is that the case?" "If I wanted to do something on my phone and I couldn't, I'd ask, 'Why is that the case?,'" he says. "Why do I have to enter my credit card information in a Web browser? Why can't I just press a button?'" That last question led him to the idea of Braintree, the online payment system company he founded in 2007. What annoys you probably annoys other people too, and the solution may allow you to come up with your next business idea.

Try the 'Shackleton Sniff Test:' One of Johnson's biggest inspiration is Sir Ernest Shackleton, an explorer who led an expedition to cross Antarctica via the South Pole — an 1,800 miles from coast to coast. It was a bold, nearly impossible journey. Johnson recommends entrepreneurs take the "Shackleton sniff test," which gauges the audacity of the venture. He recommends asking yourself: “Is this the most audacious goal I could be working toward?” Iterating, reassessing and pivoting will all — inevitably — come later. "But at the outset of your mission, at least, be defiant about your own and others’ assumptions about what’s possible," he adds.

Don't take advice blindly: When you ask a person for their advice, what they tell you is actually a representation of principles they've built upon as a result of their life experience. We should all ask for advice, but not just do as the advice says, he says. The value of advice isn't doing it, it's in understanding the assumption stack that someone's built around a body of knowledge. "There are no assumptions," he says. "You build your own assumptions in life, so I'm always hesitant to give any advice."

Do an audit of your mental biases: In 2018, Johnson went on a quest to achieve "cognitive perfection" for 13 weeks (He was inspired by Ben Franklin's plan for "moral perfection.") He evaluated his biases such as: prejudice, negativity bias, and fading affect bias. Check out his 13-step plan here, and use his template to create one for yourself.

Make sleep hygiene a priority: Sleep is the human reset button. At his lowest, Johnson found himself overeating at night, right before a late bedtime. "No matter what I tried or how hard, I was powerless to stop myself in this vulnerable day-end moment of exhaustion and stress," he writes. "Misery and shame dominated my mind, identity, and emotional states." Matthew Walker's book Why We Sleep introduced him to sleep science and inspired him to become disciplined about his sleep regime. His favorite passage: "The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep." Johnson uses a sleep tracker, fasts for 10 hours before sleep, avoids mental stimulants such as coffee, does a 5 to 10 minute meditation before sleep, and goes to bed at 8 p.m.

Cultivate a child's innate curiosity: Parents normally try to shield their kids from any sort of pain or discomfort, but Johnson emphasizes the importance of letting your children learn the lessons for themselves. "The normal boundaries we have in society bore me to death," he says. Learning through your own experience is much more powerful than learning through someone else's re-telling. Let them make their own decisions, experience the consequences, and then ask them questions to help them discover the world.

QUOTES TO REMEMBER.

“When you start quantifying the mind, you make thought and emotion an engineering discipline."

"How can I do now what matters in 500 years from now?"

"Why would we spend our time not caring about the quality of our life, the quality of our kids' lives, of solving big problems?"

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