Listeners know you mainly as a scientist and a popularizer of science, speaking at conferences, appearing on panel discussions, radio and television. You've helped people attach meaning to learning and environmental topics. I was very surprised when I read a few days ago that you've joined a small team in an attempt to remake the Estonian Defense Forces (EDF). What is your business with the soldiers?

Cooperation with the Government Office's innovation team was launched in 2021 and that particular project has been concluded by today. But it provided input for continued research – we are pursuing scientific cooperation with the EDF on another level. We also teach classes when the EDF invites us. So there is constructive training and research cooperation.

The articles in question treated with a very innovative project, which followed a trend of young people avoiding military service. We had that problem even before the war started in Ukraine. Attempts to solve the problem developed into something more. While one might imagine us chasing down youngsters who are skirting military service, we realized that it was more important to look at what was happening inside conscription and how young people see the experience.

One source of information about military service that young people have is what their friends tell them. We may campaign until the cows come home, but a couple of friends telling you their most drastic memories, which is what they are most likely to come away with, is enough to leave a young person feeling very insecure.

What might be some examples of experiences that can discourage others from military service?

That is why we had the innovation team group, made up of specialists in different fields. First, there was field work to determine the perception of those who do not go in for conscription, as well as how the experience looks from the inside for those who do.

The reasons can be very different. One might be fear of physical challenges, feeling inadequate or afraid of a task and being unable to escape it.

Another reason is the fear of looking foolish, drawing negative feedback or causing problems for the unit.

The reasons can vary. Thinking about how old they are, we need to take care of them. They are very young, they aren't like us because they lack life experience and can be so much more insecure in many situations. Their passports say they're adults, while their brains say otherwise.

Going by the latter, their psychological needs must be covered and they need a smart environment that supports learning where we can see things from their perspective. Precisely so that they could study as effectively as possible –creating an environment where people really learn requires a calm brain and for the person to feel like a person.

I know that a part of listeners considers this to be a snowflake's world. But the science tells us otherwise. The more the environment can consider the person's point of view, the more effectively they can put themselves to work and make an effort also in truly challenging situations.

There is so much scientific proof of this that it needs to further proving, while it can feel difficult to grasp intuitively.

Do I understand you correctly in that until now, the conscription format to some extent prescribed things to be difficult and uncomfortable and for the relationships between commanders and subordinates to be akin to those of prisoners and their jailors?

It has been the trajectory ever since military service was introduced in re-independent Estonia. It was not a case of Grete and Helelyn (Tammsaar – ed.) showing up and waving a magic wand. The EDF has long been searching for ways to do things better and more sensibly. Because fighting is done by people in a crisis. No matter how many guns we have, they are operated by people, and people's will to defend themselves and show up depends on individuals and individual experience or how they feel thinking back to military service, their unit or commander.

In a way, we pooled our efforts with a trend toward a more sensible organization of things that was already happening without us. But we may have provided a few more knowledge-based tools. We perhaps learned that not all situations that can arise during military service maximally support the conscript. But there is nothing terrible either.

Still, what could be a few examples? The group of scientists, which you joined for a time, spent three days with conscripts, monitoring what they eat, how they sleep and how they get along. What did you recommend based on your findings?

While these may seem like minor details, minor details are what make up the whole. Starting with something as basic as young people entering a strictly orders-based system and not knowing, for example, when it is okay to raise their hand and ask for leave to go to the toilet.

In situations where they need to wait for something, do they know for how long and why? Commanders can also intimidate people by accident, saying that everyone needs to report for a medical checkup or cracking some other foolish joke.

Which, I suppose, is part of military culture.

Exactly. But a young person might think that something very strange is about to happen to them. It starts with not knowing when, whether and where they can do certain things – it is like landing on an alien planet at first. These situations do not involve verbal abuse or violence – not at all – but a young person may not understand what is expected of them and why everything they're experiencing is necessary.

Talking about the settling in phase, young people need a particular kind of support. They need to know that it's okay to fail, that it's okay if they're not immediately experts at packing their stuff. Slow and calm normalization is needed. They need what would amount to support from an older brother from the extended service personnel receiving them.

Moving on, toward the end of the military service period, we often hear [from conscripts] that it became an exercise in sitting around doing nothing and waiting for it to end. That is the flip side of suppressing basic psychological needs –people want to feel they are developing. While it can be a case of paralysis from all the information the young person is expected to absorb at first, by the end, they may be paralyzed by lack of information, feeling there is nothing left to learn or that they're not developing. There are different ways of ignoring these basic needs. That is one example.

Another is feeling lonely. Instead of the whole class going in for military service together, because classmates can have very different relationships, the innovation team proposed groups of friends joining. We support having friends there, whether coming in together or making friends once conscripted, for no one to be left out or be made fun of because of the language they speak or poor Estonian skills. Conscripts who do not speak Estonian as their first language can struggle greatly.

The third thing to consider is how can we make people feel they've chosen to be there and can pick their activities in what is a very closed system and one of limited autonomy. There are a number of ways to do that – helping people attach meaning to the experience.

What needs to be done to achieve that?

That is what we discussed at the Kuperjanov Battalion this summer, what we taught extended service personnel. One thing we can do when starting to study something is ask why we're doing it. Explaining hand signals, ranks and what have you, instead of answering questions by saying "because I said so." You need to start civilized, explain things, such as being ambushed – discuss where and why it might happen, ask conscripts whether they've played cops and robbers. To reach a place where conscripts could think, without too much pressure, why they need to know something as people and soldiers.

Another thing that supports the feeling of autonomy is letting conscripts solve puzzles themselves and really listening to what they come up with, instead of only looking for the right answer and suppressing wrong ones. To let them feel as free agents in a closed system, not free physically but cognitively, respected as thinkers – this supports both their motivation and deeper knowledge acquisition.

I will now become a general trained in the Russian army whose approach is based on the principles obtained there. The general listens to you or reads about these principles in the newspaper and thinks that the EDF has no more rules or that the rules are being dissolved. And he'll ask whether it is not all just undermining the system for when we need to send these people to the front line in service of a single goal.

Empirical answers can be found close enough. Unfortunately, those same Russian armed forces are not far from here – how are they doing for motivation today? Why are young people escaping Russia?

Considering that the system on the other side of the border is among the most classically controlling and seeks to completely suppress a person's basic needs, we could think about their level of motivation – are young men in Saint Petersburg and Moscow thrilled to be sent to the front? They are not. Are they skilled at waging war? Again, they are not.

In the case of the Russian army, soldiers are little more than cannon fodder who can be sent on very risky missions without knowing the outcome. What are the principles Ukraine is relying on in this war?

We see Ukraine as a perfect example of how autonomous motivation works. Most people fighting for Ukraine have probably realized that they have no real alternative and it is not something someone else is requiring them to do. They have realized that they only have one country, that it exists nowhere else on this planet and the only way to protect it is to defend it themselves. That is how autonomous motivation works. Suggesting that motivation stems from things being interesting and fun is a misinterpretation. I'd like to know just how much fun they're having there. It is not out of interest or for fun!

While what we're doing might be an interesting activity, a lot of the things we do thoroughly, and what we should do thoroughly, are things we have given meaning and value to ourselves, regarding which we feel they are the right things to do based on our own perspective.

The defending side finds motivation easier to come by in protecting their country, families and homes.

We could say that it is a fact they'll win. With this level of motivation, they will eventually emerge victorious. It can be no other way. Of course, the other side is trying to come up with narratives and stories to help internalize the value of the war, but even the greatest illusionist could not come up with such a story in this case – a story to make the attacker really believe in the necessity of it all.

News of war has been everywhere for two and a half years now. How often do you look at it from a psychologist's perspective? Do you notice any interesting details? Has the nature of war changed?

Everything develops in dynamism. I believe that the entire world's understanding of how to react has changed. The whole world has a better idea of what our eastern neighbor really is and what it is not. People no longer cry between reading the news and making coffee in the morning. The order of these things has changed. But the tonality of messages and their effect is the same. Good news also makes you feel you must not break down. The fear of something else going wrong.

The other side of it, and what I consider as a psychologist, is what happens after. All those stories and lives torn apart. How to process this massive trauma. I cannot even imagine how many decades it will take to work through this trauma that no one needed in the first place. The psychological restoration work might prove very costly.

One interesting thing about the war in Ukraine is how much technology affects it. Like soldiers never being sure a drone won't show up to make things very unpleasant for them. How many things in this war have made the situation psychologically more difficult for the soldier?

Technology keeps developing and the military sector has often been at the forefront of technological innovation. What's new moves from the military field to the civilian one and not the other way around.

It is true that the greater the measure of uncertainty, the more we don't know what will hit us and from where, the more difficult it is on our psyche. We can only hope that the enemy is lazy, careless and doesn't know how to use their tools.

But technology always being a step ahead, the fact that we cannot prepare for the next war brings us back to the previous topic. Why do I say that smart learning is necessary – if we can teach in a smart way, we can also teach people to adjust to change that hasn't yet happened. And we need to!

We are not used to teaching people to manage themselves, are not teaching them to take charge of how they adjust, we're not giving them the chance. We are doing the leading, instead of teaching how to cope or think independently.

The process of independent thought requires making grave mistakes during the study period. Otherwise we'll end up with soldiers or EDF members who are quick to panic because they're not prepared or trained to cope with change. But how to train for change in a smart way is a question of education psychology. The more rigid and old-school our teaching model, where one person speaks and the others listen, while the latter's brains are not engaged in finding a solution, the poorer our level of preparedness in the end.

Could everyone be made fit for military defense using modern behavioral science?

I would like a world where we wouldn't need a military defense system to begin with. I believe that waging war is the worst job in the world.

The toughest job.

The toughest and the most unpleasant. That is also why I'm a member of the Defense League. I have not found a good reason why someone else should do this part for me, which means I have to do it myself. I cannot expect or demand that others do it for me because it's disgusting, and you need to do the disgusting things yourself. We'd like a world where not everyone would have to do it and I do not believe everyone is prepared to do it.

There are many ways to serve society. Even when some people are fighting on the front line, others need to bake bread, look to civil defense, heal the wounded, teach kids etc. In other words, I don't think everyone should be made fit for military defense.

There may be situations which escalate to a point where everyone needs to physically protect themselves or their families, and it would be nice if we could cope with those.

We could consider that perhaps society does not need 100 percent of young people to end up in military service. There may be reasons for some young people to find other outputs.

I would like to have a universal service, not just for men. We may need a certain amount of people to take up arms, but the girls and women, but also the men who really don't want to, could find other ways of being useful in a crisis. We're talking evacuations, medicine, communications, rescue – there are many such roles. We are not allowing everyone to feel like an important part of the crisis management system. We also do not think about why a lot of people are anxious, perhaps also about the war.

There are ways to manage anxiety. We can help our mental health, and two things that are excellent at managing anxiety are learning and helping. If I'm afraid of a vague future eventuality, it helps me if I acknowledge my anxiety but decide to learn a skill that may be needed in such a situation, to become a part of the solution instead of just someone in need of rescuing.

The Teacher of the Year Gala will be held in Jõhvi on October 5. I'm sitting across the table from last year's lecturer of the year and the popularizer of science from the year before. What still motivates you to speak up on education?

I would like to once again thank everyone who nominated and supported me!

I'm bothered by the gap still between maximally effective learning and support and what is really happening.

Studying these things is what motivates me. Discovering and looking for ways to do even better. On one hand, what we don't know yet, and on the other, how to put in practice the things we do know.

How to have children feeling great at school, putting their brains to work and taking great pleasure in it every day. For every child to love learning, their school environment and to know that they are always safe there, always welcome, and it is a place where one becomes themselves.

It is possible to turn school into that for every kid. We know how to achieve it and what supports it, while it is still not the case today. I will not retire or die before we get there.

In other words, it bothers me that we are not putting to use knowledge we already have. It's a source of angst and regularly ticks me off.

You've famously said that every school not observing these principles, where children do not want to go should be closed.

No, I have suggested such schools close themselves, instead of it being done from the outside.

Knowing how learning happens, how every child gets to the best version of themselves, which is when they'll love studying and going to school, is a prerequisite for the best results.

How often are educational decisions based on gut feeling today?

Because there are no studies, my answer can only be rooted in gut feeling. And my gut tells me that every taxpayer-funded discussion involving state institutions, which ends up proposing something based on experience, tradition or because it feels right, is little more than gut feeling today.

If a journalist is answered based on the results of scientific studies, or when the person asks for more time to review recent research findings, that is when you would get different decisions. We don't know for sure, but it feels like decisions are not based on scientific reasoning today.

One major topic that affects students' mental health has to do with technology. At the start of the week, 35 psychologists and scientists, yourself included, almost demanded the state do something about smartphones in schools. Are things that serious?

If every ten-year-old drank alcohol during class, we would be very worried, while we're not worried to see the extent to which smart devices are used today. Whereas things might even be simpler in the case of alcohol. I'm exaggerating of course.

The scientific base for what has been proposed is quite solid.

What does it say? What is the problem in Estonia today?

The problem is complex and it is not just in Estonia. Whenever a new technology lands, experiments involving people, including children, start before we know how it affects us. This has been the case throughout human history. First comes the technology and only then do we realize its detrimental effects on the environment, kids or learning.

Perhaps we should not go back all the way to the effects of use – it is not safe, while the worst effect is when a child learns to obtain pleasure from a smart device before they learn to get it from other sources – reading, studying things, exercise, nature, art or what have you. Once that happens, the way back is difficult.

Like with other addictions – once the brain gets used to obtaining pleasure in a simple way, it is very difficult to reorient and find it elsewhere. It is fatally dangerous in some ways.

But there are other effects, all the way to cyber bullying. Mental health is one facet of the problem, but children's happiness and future potential are also on the line.

What is your expectation for the state? What could be the rules?

I would commend [Tallinn Mayor] Jevgeni Ossinovski (SDE) who said this summer that in-depth and knowledge-based treatment of this matter should start in Tallinn schools.

We are likely at the start of a long so-called intervention study, which will kick off with an overview of the best scientific practices for solving the problem of smart devices in different parts of the world.

The problem is that we need a self-managing smart device user. Outright bans do not work.

Would that be the most foolish approach?

That would be about as foolish as doing nothing.

The problem is complex in that the smart device's effect on a child is one thing, while the still ineffective executive functions of a child's development – how easy or difficult it is for them to give up something that's addictive – is another.

​It requires an approach that involves schools, research, teachers and communities. We need to take a close look at how it has been done elsewhere in the world, how it has been studied and how lasting are the effects.

We do not want children to hide their smart device use, to become secretive and lie – we don't need or want that. Or to have them desperately try and catch up on what they missed as soon as the lesson ends.

​It is not a trivial matter and there's no easy answer. We all need to do a lot to arrive at a complex solution that would teach kids to regulate their smartphone use themselves even when no one's looking.

Budget cuts and taxes are all one hears about today, with much more important topics in terms of the planet's future forced to take a back seat. To what extent does it feel to you that we're discussing these things less than a few years ago?

Yes, the results of the soon-to-be-finished Estonian environmental awareness survey corroborate this. Environmental topics have been sidelined by economic ones and we can say this based on data, not gut feeling.

It is a known trait of human psychology that everything which requires abstraction to understand takes a back seat when basic needs are threatened. That is just the case today. Once people feel their standard of living is getting to a point where the roof leaks and there's no food to put on the table, higher or more abstract goals disappear for everyone who have not made them their own.

But we're not talking about saving the planet. We're talking about the ecological niche that humans find suitable, which is on the verge of collapsing. And it will collapse. We have gone far down that path.

It is a loaded topic and it seems very different from one generation to the next, in terms of how seriously people take it. You've written that a part of society is saddling future generations with the responsibility, while not everyone in the younger generations spends their days thinking about how to save the planet. There have been studies and the trend seems to be moving in the opposite direction instead.

Our own study showed it, as did the Estonian environmental awareness survey, that young people aren't quite as aware when it comes to environmental issues. But it makes sense. Because what the adults say is not reflected in what they do. In other words, young people get anxious because they're sold a problem, while no one seems to be making an effort to solve it.

Young people see that the adults have not put an end to practices that ruin biodiversity, climate, aquatic environments etc. and are instead steaming ahead with all of these things, saying that this is the only way the system works. This leaves them with two conclusions: that the adults are not putting their money where their mouths are and that the adults have screwed up and think the kids need to sort it out because they don't know how. It is quite underhanded. Young people should not be expected to solve problems they didn't create.

While I'm deeply involved in environmental education and take great interest in these topics, I believe we need to aim environmental education at those who make economic decisions or consumption-related decisions. They are not children, they are today's decision-makers, you and me.

On the other hand, we must admit that if a person feels they can afford much less than they could a year or few years ago, it is very difficult to think in the context of saving the planet.

Let's recall that the planet will be just fine for a long time to come. We are talking about Man's ecological niche. It's like having a picnic in the middle of the highway. While I may consider that I will soon be hit by a speeding car, I'm fine for the moment. And while I might try and convince myself there will never be a car, it will come.

Perhaps this metaphor can help us understand that even if we do not know the nature of climate problems and what is about to happen, before ecosystems come to the verge of collapse, before the climate becomes such that cannot sustain our food production – which will happen – we can simply decide whether to address both these problems, whether to prepare. We are not really preparing today.

​I believe that one root of the problem and a basic misunderstanding is that someone else somewhere else is the source of these problems. Looking at the data, most problems globally are not down to how many people there are or stem from places where there are a lot of people. Most problems come from places with a very high standard of living.

In other words, we are overconsuming?

Yes. Not everyone on this planet needs to change their way of life. It would be enough for 10 percent to radically change their lives, make them a little simpler, whereas they would not have to give up the things that are really needed. We need a proper education system, social system, healthcare, internal and external security and food safety – we would not have to give those up. We would need to give up everything on top of that. And it is a lot. We consume a lot of things we don't really need.

Are you saying that the narrative where happiness lies in a perpetually growing and blossoming economy is not true?

I would like to meet a scientist and would love to debate things with them – you could host the show – who knows the principles of ecology or the climate system and who can convincingly claim that such economic growth is possible, considering the specifics of ecology and the limited resources of this planet. No scientist has yet managed to prove the viability of perpetual and exponential growth in limited conditions.

In simpler terms?

The economy is a system we have made up, which at its very core does not consider the laws of nature. The economic system is not a natural system.

While we may afford to misuse natural resources for a time, they will eventually run out and will not be replenished in the same way.

It is sometimes believed that technology will solve the problem. Here, we can look to the Jevons paradox, phrased by a 19th century British economist who found that technological progress always ultimately adds to resource use instead of decreasing it.

Therefore, every technological innovation increases resource use. The change that needs to happen is behavioral, psychological, a decision that we ourselves make. Just as we may decide not to take our salary to the casino on day one, we can make a similar decisions regarding our planet, our ecological niche. Whereas taking such a personal decision would not feel like harassment.

The issue today is that because a lot of us do not realize the scope of the problem, we only have superficial knowledge of the nature of problems, these things haven't quite reached our consciousness.

In other words, the economy and budget cuts feel more real than the ecological niche collapsing, which is why we're not all running in the right direction today.

We seem to be going from one crisis to the next in recent years, with fear of war, environmental problems and the economy coming together for a rather anxiety-inducing cocktail. Do you have a simple recipe for training one's mind for such a situation?

What do people need to be happy? They need meaning rather than to be comfortable. One's life can be every bit as meaningful in this crisis, people can decide to help out wherever, help solve this thing. I see a problem and I start to give – giving and helping always manufactures mental health.

We have a narrative in society that we need stuff, but helping and giving, and making sure you're good at it, are known to improve our mental health, render it more stable and help us live. You always feel better when you feel you're doing something that's contributing to the solution.

And of course contributing without secretly expecting a reward or personal gain. Because if you treat it like a transaction, you won't feel better. You'll always feel better if you're doing it for the cause and not for benefit. Naturally, these people are not immune to burning out or losing hope. It is key not to forget needing a network of relationships, needing a family or community, ideally both, that share the same values and can offer social support from time to time. Finding ourselves alone in these efforts at bettering the world, psychological survival becomes impossible.

It is Friday, we are headed for the weekend, which for most people is the only time they can switch off work and obligations. How to make the most of the weekend and feel happier Monday than you were going in Friday?

That is such a lovely question!

We all know the answer. We know that human happiness and many other mental health indicators depend on what the person is striving for in life. Striving for learning and wisdom, maintaining good relationships or improving something makes you happier.

In other words, happiness could be based on concentrating on what we're developing in ourselves, concentrating on relationships, being present in our relationships, just doing something with other people. These should be the vitamins we remember to take, that if I do something with my family, organize something small, just go for a walk on the beach or cook together, that is how I'm helping myself the most.

Another component that we tend to underestimate is nature. Knowing how much research there is to suggest just how beneficial being in nature is for our mental health, coping and being a better person so to speak, I would prescribe everyone spend an hour in nature every day if at all possible. It is another thing that's considered a soft value, while nothing could be further from the truth. The effect time spent in nature has on our well-being is immense. Luckily, it is still something everyone in Estonia can afford.

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