Data/transcripts/3gtvNYa3Nd8_20241225194531.txt

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast
where we discuss science and
science-based tools for everyday
[Music]
life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a
professor of neurobiology and
Opthalmology at Stanford School of
Medicine my guest today is Dr Adam Grant
Adam Grant is a professor of
organizational psychology at the Wharton
School at University of Pennsylvania he
has authored five bestselling books and
most recently has authored a new book
entitled hidden potential he received
his bachelor's degree from Harvard
University and his Doctorate from the
University of Michigan today we discuss
peer-reviewed studies and tools based on
the data from those studies that can
enable people to meet their goals and
overcome significant challenges
including how to overcome
procrastination as well as how to see
around or through blind spots as well as
how to overcome sticking points in
motivation and creativity we also
discuss the research on and practical
tools related to the underpinnings of
performance in any endeavor including
how to increase one's confidence and how
to have a persistent growth mindset by
the end of today's episode it will be
clear to you that Dr Adam Grant has an
absolutely spectacular depth and breadth
of knowledge and that knowledge is both
practical it is based on peer-reviewed
research and he conveys those tools with
the utmost Clarity and generosity indeed
by the end of today's episode you will
have more than a dozen new tools never
discussed before on the hubman Lab
podcast that you can apply in your
academic Endeavors in athletic Endeavors
in Creative Endeavors in fact in any
area of life before we begin I'd like to
emphasize that this podcast is separate
from my teaching and research roles at
Stanford it is however part of my desire
and effort to bring zero cost to
Consumer information about science and
science related tools to the general
public in keeping with that theme I'd
like to thank the sponsors of today's
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again that's waking up.com huberman to
access a free 30-day trial and now for
my discussion with Dr Adam Grant Adam
welcome excited to be here very very
excited to have you here uh your career
both public facing and academic career
have covered an enormous range of topics
so we have a lot to cover look who's
talking um and anytime uh two professors
sit down or even one Professor um says
we have a lot to cover I think everyone
listening braces themselves like oh no
but these topics uh I assure everyone
are of the utmost interest and you cover
them in such both fabulous detail and
you make it very clear so I'm really
looking forward to this I'd like to
start off by talking about something
that I'm obsessed by and I know a lot of
people are obsessed with and struggle
with and I know you also have a recent
publication on this topic which is
procrastination I am a bit of a
procrastinator but a different way of
stating that is that I love deadlines I
learned in college that I love love love
deadlines because it seems to harness my
focus and my attention I like just
enough I guess you call it anxiety or
autonomic arousal for the you know
Neuroscience or physiology oriented
folks for me just brings
about a total elimination of all of the
distractors and it seems to both slow
and accelerate my perception of
time and it seems to bring out my best
to have deadlines but I would prefer to
not have to procrastinate in order to
self-impose deadlines I prefer that
other people impose those deadlines in
fact so what do we know about
procrastination why do some people
complete things well in advance why do
other people procrastinate is it that
they're seeking deadlines as I believe I
am and
interestingly and sort of alluding to
this recent paper
viewers what is the relationship between
procrastination and creativity I feel
like we should just deal with all that
later let's put it off no good one by
the way there's extra credit for science
funds on here
so done one of the best articles on
procrastination ever written was titled
at last my article on procrastination
fantastic I love it yeah just made me
smile um so I think the the the basic
question I think to start with is why do
we procrastinate and I I thought I was
immune actually when I came into this
topic uh I was the the person who
annoyed my college roommates by
finishing my thesis a couple months
early uh I found out there was a term
for me I'm a precrastinator uh so the
you know the focus and the pressure that
you get from a deadline I get that the
moment the project starts um and
sometimes months or years in advance and
so I was really proud of finishing
everything early and then I discovered
there are things that I procrastinate on
too uh which was a little bit
disappointing are you willing to share
what some of those I am uh so I um I
procrastinate on anything that's
administrative uh so I'm right there
with you you want to get time on my
calendar it could take me weeks to
respond you asked me a question about
social science I will be back to you in
a minute um I procrastinate on grading
takes me forever uh I basically put off
a whole bunch of tasks that I thought
had nothing in common it turns out that
I procrastinate when I'm bored like
boredom is I guess it's probably my most
hated emotion and so I will do anything
to avoid a boring task and I think this
goes to why people procrastinate which
is a lot of people think it's laziness
or you're not disciplined enough but
actually the the research on this is
really clear that you're not avoiding
work when you procrastinate in fact a
lot of our
procrastination is is focused on doing
things that involve a lot of energy
you've seen people probably clean their
entire houses when they're putting off a
task um so it's it's not that you're
being lazy it's that you're avoiding
negative emotions that a task stirs up
so for me it's boredom uh for a lot of
people it's fear or anxiety um I don't
know if I can pull this off I have an
extreme case of impostor syndrome in
this role um the the challenge in front
of me is too daunting um for some people
it's confusion I haven't figured it out
yet and so I can't work on this because
I I feel like I'm stuck um so what's I
guess the big question for you then
Andrew is what's what's the emotion that
causes you to
procrastinate you know it's hard for me
to identify the stick here I think of it
more as the carrot that comes with
deadlines and again I I don't consider
myself a procrastinator per se I just
really love deadlines and
procrastination is a terrific way to
simulate the deadline uh so for me so
you wait so you delay starting or
finishing a task in order to have a a
sense of time pressure that's right it
builds a certain amount of internal
arousal in me to know okay I've got 72
hours to complete something and it's now
game time I like the game time before
the game time before a podcast I'll put
in anywhere from you know several days
to weeks or even months in preparation
so it's really elastic depending on the
topic but when it came to exams in
school or if it comes to writing
deadlines um I consider the the shipping
of the product or the presentation of
the live event that I happened to be
doing as the second game or event the
first event is the pressure and the
excitement of getting into the groove of
doing Focus work because for me that's
such a drug I mean it feels like all
having all the systems of my brain and
body oriented towards one specific thing
is just sheer Bliss for me so it sounds
like then you're you're actually not a a
chronic procrastinator thank you I've
never that's never been uh the way I've
viewed myself but now I'll I'll I'll
take that it's a strategy for you it is
a strategy that's right and ient you
know I was fairly Wayward youth barely
finished high school Etc so by time I
got serious about school which was my
second year of
University when deadlines were presented
like there's an exam there's a midterm
exam on a given date that was exciting
to me that was exciting I was like okay
that's the big thing that's my
opportunity to to prove myself to myself
because I was really coming from behind
and then the opportunity to or I should
say the the feeling of dropping into
that Groove like this is the exciting
part is the preparation you know
likewise with podcasting for our solo
podcast I love the research as much as I
love presenting the material maybe more
maybe more right likewise for University
lectures or for traveling and giving
seminars as a traditional academic I'm
sure you're familiar with that right
it's it's the preparation is where you
realize it's almost like I I think of it
as somebody like like a minor in a mine
and just finding a gem and of course
there then there are all the thoughts of
what you can do with that later and
you're going to show people it has a
certain value to the world Etc but but
it's the the searching and finding those
G that is like even as I talk about it I
feel like my body's going to float out
of the chair a little bit I I have the
same experience it's the it's the the
sort of the Unleashed curiosity and then
the rush of Discovery and by the time
you're teaching it or explaining it like
but I already know this like I'm not
learning anything anymore and yes I'm
excited to share it and I hope it's
helpful to other people so you know I
think as as you talk about what your
process looks like I don't even think
what you do qualifies as procrastination
technically seem to getting better and
better I me serious if if you think
about how procrastination is is defined
it's it's delaying despite an expected
cost and you don't think there's a cost
you actually see a benefit that's right
and I've tried starting that's not
procrastination that's just delay yeah
I've tried starting things earlier and
um and I should say that my process
often begins much earlier than the
physical process like if I was being
observed in an experiment be okay you
know Andrew's finally sitting down to
write this book chapter or you know
finally sitting down to research some
papers for an episode but I'm thinking
about it all the time I mean much to the
dismay of people in my life you know I'm
I'm I'm constantly thinking about these
things I mean walking to take out the
recycle I'll have ideas and then I'll
write them down I constantly am writing
things down voice memos into my phone I
have a method of capture where I
basically try and just grab everything
and then filter out what's useful do you
have a process like that for for
gleaning ideas a little bit I do now so
um when when G Shen and I started this
research on procrastination she had she
had come to me she was a very creative
doctoral student and she said I have my
best ideas when I'm
procrastinating and it was it was one of
those moments where I didn't believe her
but I thought it was an interesting
enough idea that it was worth exploring
and I said show me get let's get some
data let's see if we can we can test
this and she ended up um Gathering data
in a Korean company where she surveyed
people on how often they procrastinate
and then got their supervisors to rate
their creativity
and sure enough found that people who
procrastinate sometimes were rated as
more creative than people who rarely do
like me the
procrastinators and I remember asking
her what about the chronic
procrastinators and she's like I don't
know they never filled out my
survey yeah as I recall from that paper
there's inverted u-shaped function with
procrastination on the vertical axis and
and um uh and creativity on the
horizontal axis flipped sorry okay so
um explain to me then the relationship
between procrastination and creativity
Yeah so basically the the peak of
creativity is in the middle of
procrastination ah okay got it and yeah
there's a there's an upside down U curve
there and so then I thought this was
fascinating so then you know we go into
the lab to say can we replicate this can
we control it in an experiment and the
hardest part of that was how do you
randomly assign people to procrastinate
like to my knowledge never been done
before and we eventually figured out
that we could give people a bunch of
task to do and then tempt them with
highly entertaining YouTube videos uh
that were sort of placed on their screen
and we put different numbers of YouTube
videos there so that uh you know if
there's only one you're not tempted to
procrastinate much if there are four
you're probably going to get sucked into
a little bit of a YouTube spiral if
there are eight uh you might be putting
off the test that's much less exciting
than than you know watching Jimmy
Kimble's Mean Tweets for example and
this was done in a fairly naturalistic
environment for these people are people
are on a a computer they're they're
asked to you know to solve some creative
problems that look pretty similar to
what you might do in your job and then
we're going to score your creativity
later and um it turned out that the
people who were attempted to
procrastinate moderately um ended up
generating the most creative ideas so
why is that um there are a couple things
that happen and you have to look at both
sides of the curve so what's wrong with
the procrastinators and also what
happens to the the extreme
procrastinators um and in both cases
what happens is um you end up with a
little bit of tunnel vision so um when I
dive right into a task I'm stuck with my
first ideas and I don't wait long enough
to incubate and get my best ideas I'm
less likely to reframe the problem I'm
less likely to access remote knowledge
because I'm just I'm just diving right
in and meanwhile The Chronic
procrastinators um end up in the same
boat because they don't get started
until the last minute and so they have
to rush ahead with the easiest idea to
implement as opposed to really
developing the most novel idea and
meanwhile the the people in the middle
who you know are starting to feel that
pressure of of like wow I you know I
kind of Spun my wheels for 10 minutes
watching a bunch of YouTube videos I'm
running out of time for this task they
still have enough time to work on the
ideas that were active in the back of
their minds and and that gives them a
shot at more novel ideas so I've tried
to adopt this to answer your question
I've tried to adopt this as my process
now to say I will still dive into a
project ahead of schedule but I will not
commit to an idea until I've let it
incubate for a few weeks and I'm working
on other things whereas an earlier
version of me like when I'd sit down to
write a book um as soon as I had the
book idea I would start writing on day
one now I have the idea I file it away
and I give myself at least a month
before I begin drafting um and I think
it feels less productive but it's far
more
creative what are your thoughts about
some of what you described being an
unconscious way of seeding the mind and
the unconscious with an idea so for
instance uh let's take a a School
academic scenario where um students get
an assignment and the assignment is
contained within a folder and it just
says assignment okay and it's a doe on a
particular date and it says do on that
particular date and they're given the
folder but they have no sense of what
the assignment is you can imagine one
category of procrastinator that will
take that thing and put it down and
avoid looking at it entirely versus
another category of procrastinator that
will Flip Flip it open and take a look
at okay this is going to be an essay on
you know um I don't know something about
economic theory in the late
1700s close it and then
procrastinate there is an idea which I
frankly I subscribe to a little bit um
because we recently did this series on
Mental Health not Mental Illness but
mental health with Dr Paul kti where he
talked extensively about the unconscious
and how the unconscious mind is always
working with ideas things that we are
concerned about performance these sorts
of things even if we're not aware of
them um what what are your thoughts
about the creativity that seeded by
slight procrastination being related to
actually knowing what you're
procrastinating on specifically I I
think it turns out to be I don't want to
say essential but
critical so one of the things we found
is in order for moderate procrastination
to fuel creativity you have to be
intrinsically motivated by the thing
you're procrastinating on interesting
and so what what happens is if if you if
you're bored for example by the topic
you're not going to open the folder
you're not going to start thinking about
it at all it's not going to begin you're
not going to do any subconscious
processing you're not going to have any
unexpected connections um between this
topic and something else you've learned
uh learned about or or been curious
about if you're interested in the
problem then when you put it off you're
much more likely to still keep it active
in the back of your mind and that's when
when you begin to to see you know I I
imagine you could explain the biology of
this um I I imagine for example there's
um there's probably um there are
probably more neural networks um that
are connecting um you probably get you
get access to ideas that previously
would have been sort of separate nodes
and so I think that you you want to know
what the topic is right you don't want
to just see the blank assignment but you
also have to find a reason that this is
exciting to you um otherwise you're
going to avoid it as opposed to letting
it
percolate that brings us to the topic of
intrinsic motivation um and I'd like to
link that up with the topic of
performance so when I was in university
uh there were many topics that I was
excited to learn about some more than
others of course um but occasionally I'd
be in a class or I'd get an assignment
that frankly i' had minimal interest in
never zero but minimal interest and as a
way of dealing with that I embarked on a
process of literally lying to myself and
just telling myself okay I'm super
interested in reading this and I'm going
to force myself to be interested in
reading it and lo and behold I would
start falling in love with certain
things maybe it was it was even the um
you know the arrival of a word that I
didn't recognize and then I would go
look it up and I knew I was studying for
the gr at that time so I file that away
I still have my notebooks of all the
vocabulary words that I learned in the
course of my university courses that
frankly made the verbal portion of the
GRE pretty easy you know which if you
ever try and study for that at the end
it's pretty tough to commit all those
new words to uh to memory and context so
I could find little hooks and and
through those hooks I could kind of r it
my way into a larger interest and then
lo and behold I'm really interested in
Greek mythology you know or that
actually like that one at first but um I
didn't have to trick myself but you know
maybe we could spend a little bit of
time talking about what is true
intrinsic
motivation is it always
reflexive uh can we make ourselves
intrinsically motivated about us given
topic or scenario or group of people uh
and then let's talk about how intrinsic
motivation links to Performance because
there's a rich literature on this as I
recall and I remember you know the
Stanford study of rewarding kids for
things they were already motivated to do
maybe we could touch on that a little
bit and remind people who haven't heard
about it but I'm fascinated by this
topic because I feel like so much of
life is about doing things that
initially we don't feel that excited to
do yeah and yet succeeding in life you
know until you can afford to offload
your uh administrative work to somebody
else which hopefully by by now you have
find a way to get it done right uh this
is fun Al to being a functional human
being frankly not just successful in air
quotes but functional we got to do stuff
that we don't enjoy doing yeah so I
think we we can talk about a couple
different ways to nurture Inns of
motivation we could think about how the
task itself is designed we could think
about reward systems and then we could
think about also the things we say to
ourselves and others which I hope are
not lies but rather uh persuasive
attempts uh let's let's start on that
one actually I I don't know a lot of
people who are that good at deliberate
self-deception well well I like to think
it was only around a particular set of
uh goal motivated Pursuits um but at
that time for me also was survival as I
mentioned I didn't do well in high
school I really wanted to perform well
in University but I knew that working
just for the grade wasn't going to carry
me it was it it felt
catabolic um and I don't know maybe I at
that age I was still in the window of
heightened neuroplasticity we know it
never closes but um but I think I also
fell in love with the process of
learning how to do what I just described
yeah so I think for most people the best
method of self-persuasion is actually to
convince somebody else uh so I'm
thinking of Elliot Aronson's classic
research on cognitive dissonance where
he would he would ask you to go and tell
somebody else a task you hated is really
interesting and if he paid you a lot to
do it you still hated the task because
you had a justification like I got 20
bucks to you know to kind of FIB a
little bit about this task um you know
the task is bad but I did it for the for
the payment when you paid you $1 to go
and tell somebody that you loved a task
that you didn't you ended up liking it
more wow and maybe I shouldn't be
surpris but maybe you should tell me why
I shouldn't be surprised because I hope
people got what you just said very
clearly and if they didn't if you don't
like doing something going and reporting
to somebody else how great that thing is
so lying about it to somebody else um is
one way to increase the degree to which
you like or enjoy that behavior or topic
and if you're paid $20 to go lie to
somebody in the positive
direction so against your true belief
it's less effective in shifting your
underlying AFF effect about that thing
your emotions than if you're paid less
correct yeah exactly now I think
obviously in the experiment lying was an
easy way to to show the effect but in
real life I think the way that you want
to apply this is to say all right I've
got to find something about this task
that's interesting to me and then in the
process of explaining it to somebody
else I'm going to convince myself
because I'm hearing the argument from
somebody I already like and
trust and I've also chosen I've chosen
the the reasons that I find compelling
as opposed to hearing somebody else's
reasons and so I think this this goes to
the point that you were making which is
if if you're trying to to find a hook to
make a topic intriguing um you've got to
figure out okay what is it that would
make this fascinating to me and you in a
lot of cases what you're looking for is
a curiosity Gap um I I think social
scientists like to talk about curiosity
as an itch that you have to scratch um
so there's something you want to know
and you don't know it yet so I would say
I I tell my students often like take
your least favorite class and find a
mystery or a puzzle like something that
you you just do not know the answer to
um like I actually I've talked with our
kids about this like what what really
happened to King tutd
do you know can you get to the bottom of
that and all of a sudden you're like I
wonder I need to Google it and then I
need to see if Wikipedia has credible
information on this and the more you
learn about that the more intriguing it
becomes and I think that's that's the
beginning of the process of of finding
intrinsic motivation I see
so inherent in your answer is the idea
that there's something wired into our
neural circuits and therefore
psychology that Curiosity as a verb
the act of being curious and seeking
information where well and I should say
I Define curiosity and I hopefully
you'll disagree with me or agree either
way it doesn't matter as long as we can
get a bit deeper understanding I Define
curiosity as a desire to find something
out where you are not attached to a
particular outcome yes is that right
yeah I I in Psychology is typically
defined as just wanting to know and that
means you're driven by the question not
a particular answer which is exactly
what you're driving at okay great so and
I think it was Dorothy par that said um
the cure for boredom is curiosity there
is no cure for curiosity as there there
shouldn't be a cure for curiosity right
so um and by the way folks we don't know
what neural circuits subserve curiosity
in the brain it's it's got to be a
distributed Network there's no brain
area for curiosity but it's got to be
linked up with the reward systems of
dopamine Etc in some way because when
one discovers something new that
satisfies some curiosity it's clearly
there's a there's a internal reward W
there okay let me back up so if your
child or an adult
is dreading working exploring a topic or
going about an assignment of any kind um
you will give them a question that they
then need to resolve what if the the
assignment is like rake the leaves off
the front lawn do you uh do you say you
know um count the leaves or I mean how
does one get um past the sort of um
procrastination and and generate some
intrinsic motivation for things that one
dreads where it's unlikely that they're
going to discover some knowledge that's
exceedingly useful for the for future
you always start with with okay what's
what's the first experiment I can run
find the most interesting looking leaf
for your favorite leaf and then that
that lasts for about two minutes and
okay now what we still have a lot of
leaves there right I think not all tasks
can be made intrinsically motivating to
everyone and so when when intrinsic
motivation is difficult to find what you
want to substitute with is um is a sense
of purpose um maybe a better way to say
that is um when the process is not
interesting to you um you need to find a
meaningful outcome so there's uh there's
some research on um on the boring but
important effect where kids who have a
purpose for learning um this goes
through high school and think you know
this is not just interesting to me but
I'm going to be able to use this
knowledge to um to help other people one
day um they they're more persistent in
their studying they end up getting
better grades and so I think you know
intrinsic motivation is often driven by
car I it about the how um a sense of
purpose comes from really thinking hard
about the why why does this matter and
so I'd say with the you know the ranking
leaves let's try to connect that task to
something else that you care about um
are you going to um you know pleasantly
surprise your parents when they get home
um are you going to um you know have a
place to play soccer that you didn't
before um and I think then the you know
the the process of of getting to that I
guess what I'd say is if you're trying
to motivate yourself um it's a little
bit harder than if you're trying to
motivate somebody else on this um if I
was going to motivate somebody else I
would take a a page out of the
motivational interviewing Playbook where
I would say Okay Andrew actually let's
play this out for a second so you're G
to rake a pile of leaves it's a two-hour
task 0o to 10 how excited are you about
that a three three really I'm surprised
I I thought you were gonna say zero or
one why is it not lower uh I like any
sort of physical activity because it
allows me to move and I just like moving
my body
there we go okay so you just identified
a potential source of purpose for that
activity um and I'm I don't have a I
don't have a vested interest in
convincing you to do this task I am
genuinely curious about what would
motivate you to want to do it and as you
start to articulate it boom self-
persuasion kicks
in love it um I'm going to start using
these uh these approaches um try it at
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special offer I have a question about
extrinsic motivation
so
if we grow up being incentivized by
extrinsic things you know um you'll get
your allowance if you blank um you can
spend the money that you make and you
know on your paper route doing the
things you really want to
do is there any value in those kinds of
learning based incentives um for kids
and for adults because I mean that's the
real world as well I know I know plenty
of people I have family members that
only work for a paycheck and they're
pretty okay because they like spending
their paycheck probably more than I you
know I'm not intrinsically attached to
money I mean I certainly have needs in
in life but but I don't enjoy spending
money for the sake of spending it or for
gaining more possessions but I know
people that do and I certainly don't
judge um are they somehow existing in a
um in a diminished landscape of
happiness or or because they seem pretty
happy to me uh but they seem to have
also worked out this relationship they
do certain things to get the extrinsic
rewards and they really enjoy what they
can do with those extrinsic rewards
there's a so there's a huge body of
evidence on what are the effects of
extrinsic rewards on motivation and
performance and I think the latest
conclusions if you look at the the
latest met analyses so you know huge
study of studies trying to accumulate
like what's the average effect of adding
a financial incentive to a task that
wasn't incentivized before or to a job
where you know you were paid salary and
now we're going to give incentive
compensation um there is a boost so in
general um people are are more
productive when they're incentivized for
their output but um these incentives are
better for uh for motivating quantity
than quality so you see people get more
done but they're not necessarily more
careful or more thorough are they less
careful and less thorough no um actually
they there's still positive effects on
average they're just weaker um and of
course you could then start to say well
how do I incentivize you know being fast
and
careful um but I think where where we do
have to be really cautious is um there's
an undermining effect of extrinsic
rewards on intrinsic motivation and you
were you were alluding to this earlier
dating back to the early 70s where we
know that if we take an interesting task
and then we pay you for it you might
conclude that you're only doing it for
the outcome and you lose interest in the
task so the the classic demonstration
Mark leer and colleagues is kids playing
video games and they're um they're
playing them because they're fun and
then you start to add in an incentive
and then when the incentive is taken
away they don't want to play anymore
because the meaning of the task has
changed and now I'm doing it because I
want to get something out of it as
opposed to I love the
process I think that that um that
phenomenon um does not have to exist so
we know for example at work um if
managers uh as long as they give people
autonomy um they don't present the
rewards in a controlling way um so
instead of saying you know Andrew in
order to earn this you need to do the
following work uh if they say hey look
you know I'd really love it if you you
know if you would deliver the following
um and in order to make that worth your
while I'm offering this incentive people
react very differently when they have a
sense of choice and control um so I
think that that's I guess the starting
point in the presence of autonomy I
don't I don't think there's a major
downside of of extrinsic rewards I think
you also have to be careful that um yeah
I guess that you're not over justifying
the task in other words you're not um
you're you're not swamping people's
intrinsic reason for doing it but you're
adding a reason to try it so actually um
if we if we go to a different domain for
a second so um look at kids who don't
want to eat their vegetables externs
incentives are very effective to get
kids to try vegetables for the first
time but then the hope is that they
discover a vegetable or two that they
don't mind and then they find reasons to
keep doing it um and I think that that's
how I want a lot of rewards to work I
don't think that rewards should be
carrots that we dangle to try to control
people's behavior I think they should be
symbols of how much we appreciate and
value a particular behavior and if you
frame them that way it's a lot easier
for people to say yeah you know what I'm
that that reward is something that I
really want but I'm I'm not only doing
the task for that reward yeah that that
you basically answered the question I
was going to ask which is and you know
at risk of sounding new Agy um but we
are sitting in California um I could
imagine that when one is focused on the
extrinsic rewards so a physical task or
a cognitive task for an extrinsic reward
if I'm focusing on the exic reward I'm
also air quotes again not present right
I'm I'm thinking about the outcome I'm
not thinking about process and I think
there's perhaps you can flesh out some
of what this is exactly but I think
there's a fairly extensive um data to
support the idea that when we are
physically and mentally present to the
task that we're going to perform better
and presumably our our um intrinsic
liking of that task or performing that
task increases as well is that true yeah
I think so I think so if we want to
break down the mechanisms for why
intrinsic motivation is useful for for
performance um one you touched on
earlier it's focus of attention um
you're it's much easier to find flow
when you're intrinsically motivated you
get into that state of deep absorption
where uh time melts away so you
mentioned you know sort of either
speeding up or slowing down your your
sense of time you forget where you are
sometimes you even lose track of your
identity and you're just you're just
merged into the task uh and so that that
that concentration is helpful there's
also a greater persistence effect that
when you enjoy what you're doing you're
less likely to give up in the face of
obstacles uh you're more likely to think
about it when you're not doing the task
and come up with great ideas and so um
you know I think there's there's a
working harder there's a working longer
there's a working smarter and there's
also a thinking more clearly
effect this is a uh brief but related
tangent one of the things that I've
found incredibly difficult in recent
years is that um you know most of my
life really since I was a small kid I
was forging for things and then you know
I used to give lectures on Monday in
class if they let me until they
eventually stopped me about the stuff I
was reading about all weekend so got an
early start in the the professorial um
front but now if I'm reading something
and I discover a what I think is a
really valuable piece of information or
a tool or a protocol I'm like wow this
is really cool these findings are oh so
cool there's a problem which is that now
I have an opportunity to cast that out
to the world through social media we all
do this could be sorry you're on social
media um from time to time I do you're
all over my feet uh you and and I both
do our own social media by the way which
I really appreciate I think one can
always detect if if someone else is
handling someone's Social Media so yes
I'm on soci media and and I love that I
have the opportunity to both um send out
ideas and information and also receive
feedback I really love the comment
section um and always encourage comments
I I learn from it uh frankly love is a
strong word I learn from it you know and
and you and I were weaned in the
academic culture where frankly the the
kind of hazing that that one receives in
academic culture is very different than
the kind of hazing that one receives on
social media but um let's just say that
if you come up through Academia you
develop a pretty thick skin um I agree I
I do have to say though that there there
was a part of me that was really
surprised when I started posting on
social that I love I love constructive
criticism I was unprepared for the
number of people who will knee-jerk
criticize a study without even looking
at whether the methods are rigorous
right I'm like come on if I posted this
surely it's at least worth considering
the possibility that there's strong
evidence behind it right well that's
where a uh a um a brief uh I want to
call it a r but a response of you know
um you know uh clearly you should read
the study further because I think you'll
be satisfied with the answer or
something I don't know um but I agree it
it can be a little bit harsh in there
sometimes but you know the social media
uh channels are I think have you know
they have it's a double-edged blade um
they obviously have their issues but um
can be a wonderful opportunity to share
information and share it quickly the
problem is that it takes me out of what
I was doing initially which was learning
searching for those gems with with which
to share later and I think there's a
broader landscape to consider this where
people for instance are uh I was at the
beach yesterday it was just absolutely
spectacular day at the beach uh
especially for this time of year and
everyone was taking pictures of that
experience on their phone and probably
sharing that experience either social
media or with friends um this is very
different than taking a photograph and
not seeing that photograph until later
or not sending it out and so there are
now near infinite number of
circumstances where we are taken out of
the rewarding experience I should
rephrase that we are taking ourselves
out of the rewarding experience and
focusing on a different rewarding
experience that I think by definition is
an extrinsic reward so we are taking
ourselves out of our intrinsically
rewarding experiences and activating
these extrinsic rewards and do you think
in any way that's undermining our
experience of things that we really
enjoy um again not to demonize social
media or these channels but um I've
personally found it difficult to refrain
from sharing this knowledge I'm so
excited to share but I deliberately
delay and there's a lot I have a deep
list of folders full of things that I
want to post but I'm just doing it you
know systematically over time because I
really fight the temptation to to do
this mostly because I want to continue
to enjoy this learning process and this
seeking process so much yeah I I feel
the same the same um I feel torn I think
I think it was eie white who said uh I I
rise in the morning Torn Between the
desire to enjoy the world and the desire
to improve the world and this makes it
difficult to plan the day and I I I feel
that every day I think I mean I I even I
felt it this morning I was like okay
it's time to it's time to leave to to
come to the the humman podcast I'm like
wait but I I I didn't hit my minimum
sunlight viewing so what what do I do do
I show up on time for you or do I meet
your criteria the the um the explanation
I was getting my morning sunlight and
therefore I'm X number of minutes or
even hours late would have been
completely fine I figured as much that's
that's a built-in acceptable excuse with
you I think I mean I think everybody
experiences a version of this and um
it's definitely gotten worse with uh
with social media and with smartphones
um I think so one of the the most
startling data points for me was um
Gloria Mark first put this on my radar
uh before covid the average person was
checking email 72 times a day
how do you ever concentrate for more
than a couple minutes if you're self-
interrupting that often you can't um
Brigid Shelty has a great term for this
she she calls it time confetti and she
says we're taking these meaningful
blocks of time and we're slicing them up
into these like tiny little dots of
confetti and uh not only can we not
accomplish anything uh we're also
eroding our own sense of Joy um because
it's really hard to enjoy the you know
the 30- second blip of time that you get
on a task um and I think we know a lot
more about the existence of these
problems than than how to solve them but
one thing we do know is blocking out un
interrupted time is Meaningful uh
there's a great Leslie Perlo experiment
where she takes engineers and she has
them uh she sets a quiet time policy no
interruptions Tuesday Thursday Friday
before noon 65% above average
productivity could you repeat the um the
protocol again yeah so quiet time there
are a couple iterations of it but I
think the most effective one was
Thursday Friday no meetings no
interruptions no slack no emails before
noon and during those periods of no
interruptions one could tend to whatever
their primary purpose is at work yeah so
for me it might be podcasting obviously
I don't have my phone in here and never
do um but it doesn't mean no interaction
with anyone else it just means focusing
on the major task the task exactly and
you come in with a clear sense of
priority and purpose and I don't think
there's anything magical about Tuesday
Thursday Friday before for noon uh it's
just the idea of setting a boundary and
collectively committing to it that that
seems to be important and I think you
know when I think about this uh I'd be
I'd be really curious about your take on
um on chronotypes here because I think
one thing I've learned in the last
couple years is that if you're a if
you're a morning person um you do your
best analytical and creative thinking in
the morning and so the quiet time block
would work very well for for me as a
morning person if you're a night owl you
probably want that block in the late
afternoon and I was encouraged
there was some evidence during Co that
uh people have their best meetings right
after lunch uh that they're something
like 30% less likely to multitask in an
after lunch meeting uh and I guess you
know you could probably unpack the like
the food coma uh you know getting
re-energized by other people but it's
led me to wonder if we should all be
protecting the first few hours and the
last few hours of the day for deep work
and then doing our core meetings and
interactions and kind of off task
activities the middle what do you think
about that as a sequence yeah well I
have a lot of questions about this for
you but um I love that sequence it
certainly fits with my natural rhythms I
I think there's ample evidence to
support the fact that provided one is
sleeping well at night and is on more or
less a standard schedule when I say
standard I mean going to bed somewhere
between let's say 9:30 and 11:30 p.m.
waking up sometime between let's say um
6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. maybe 5:30 or
7:30 um something like that so not
highly unusual Night Owl or super early
bird um for people that are following
that sort of schedule the first let's
just say from zero to eight hours after
waking there tends to be a a fairly
robust increase in all the catamin so
dopamine or epinephrine epinephrine
which generally okay generally speaking
uh lead to increases in alertness
attention and focus that are great for
analytic work uh great for
implementation of strategies that you
already understand and you need to churn
through a lot of stuff um and of course
there's a big increase in the morning
especially if you view morning sunlight
a healthy increase I should say in
cortisol cortisol is not bad folks you
you want cortisol but you want that Peak
early in the day we know that okay so um
for most people it seems at least my
understanding is that um that period of
time 0 to eight or uh eight hours after
waking or so um is best devoted to the
quote unquote most critical tasks but
one of the common problems is that
people take that um ability to implement
a known strategy and they start
battering back all the emails or talking
to all by the way talking to co-workers
is great and it's often required but
it's what the question is whether or not
it's productive conversation or whether
or not it's just conversation and we
tend to have a lot of energy early in
the day and I'm I'm obsessed with the
idea of neural energy as opposed to just
caloric energy um so there we're talking
about neural energy and then post lunch
so really as we get to sort of you know
9 to 17 hours after waking there is a
dip in autonomic arousal that during the
middle of the day the postp perenial dip
there a post lunch sleepiness um that
can be partially offset by delaying your
morning caffeine a bit if you have the
afternoon crash but it's interesting
that you know that more productive
meetings and less um task switching and
distraction occurred um in meetings set
after lunch because that makes me think
that perhaps being a little bit less
alert is going to lend itself to more
focus and indeed that's the the sort of
optimal State relaxed but focused you
know you're not sleepy um but you also
don't have so much intrinsic energy that
you're you know tending to a bunch of
things because I think a lot of people
do feel that way you know and I'm
drinking you know Double Espresso right
now um late midm morning um late morning
uh and you know I can sit still but I
think certain Zoom meetings how do I say
this I don't want to offend any of my
colleagues I mean they are boring enough
they are not content enough to to grab
all my attention and nowadays of course
there are multiple screens typically
I've got two phones and a computer and
you have to really spend some work to
flip over those phones while I'm on a
zoom and things like that um so may were
you saying so it's maybe the reduction
in autonomic arousal that that supports
what you just described but I don't know
um my my thinking uh or my understanding
rather was that creative work and kind
of um brainstorming was best
accomplished in the late afternoon um
I've noticed when lecturing I'd be
curious what your experience is with um
in University lectures when I held
courses in the evening I used to like to
hold my courses 5: to 7:00 p.m. or even
7 to 9:30 p.m. when I was teaching
undergraduates that people were much
looser and more relaxed and I always um
uh thought that that might have
something to do with an increase in Gaba
transmission that's known to happen late
in the late evening that people are just
kind of more relaxed and less social
anxiety they've been around people for
much of the day anyway I I I send back
more Reflections than answers I don't
have any firm Neuroscience explanations
for what you describe but but there are
some emerging theories about how it
might work and it has this 0o to 9 hours
Phase One 9 to 17 hours phase two and
then of course from 17 to 24
hours I'll call it phase three you
should be asleep yeah ideally well that
I I think there's there's a there's a
confound in your your teaching
experience which is undergrads often
sleep in until what or they might be up
until 4 a.m. or at least 10: a.m. seems
to be a typical rise time for the
undergradu so a morning class might be
too early for them to be fully awake but
there is um there's some brand new
evidence that at least on creativity at
work um I read a series of I think it
was three studies recently showing that
early birds actually did do more
creative work in the morning um and in
part uh I think again the I don't I
don't think any neuroscientist has has
touched the mechanisms on this yet but
in terms of the psychological processes
early on there's just there seems to be
a benefit of of the energy level um and
some of that energy leads to more
Divergent thinking uh and later if
you're a morning person you might lose
the ability to to diverge quite as much
and so you end up in a more conventional
space of thought does that does that
track it all with your understanding of
how it might play out in the brain my
understanding is it would be a little
bit in it would be individual but you
know there is something to these Lial
States between sleep and waking so maybe
we can um wrap a convenient bow around
what I said and what you what you just
said which is um that we know that in
the transition States into and out of
sleep and it doesn't necessarily have to
be within the first half hour in and out
of sleep that um there seems to be more
Divergent thinking or at least
activation of neural networks that um
are not as constrained as one observes
when they're in a in a sheer task and
strategy implementation mode right I
mean I think is that similar to the
shower effect the shower effect so
people have ideas in the while or while
running or um while falling asleep or my
best ideas always come within the first
hour after waking that's why I carry a
notebook around and much to the dismay
of people in my life oftentimes I I
don't want to hear or from or talk to
anyone first thing in the morning uh
this is problematic and I had to make
adjustments we'll talk about adjustments
between um uh productivity and uh
control and and um Family interactions
this is something I know you you've
worked on and and written about um but
the those Lial states are are
interesting and and I'd love your
thoughts on this um I've had several
guests on this podcast talk about their
creative process um namely Rick Rubin um
who's famous for his work in music
producing also has a great podcast tetri
grammaton um as well as Carl dice Roth a
colleague of mine who's really in the
0.00001% of um super talented
bioengineers neuroscientists who also
happens to be a full-time um clinical
psychiatrist and has five children okay
um and I asked them about their creative
process because both of them are very
creative um Carl's process involves the
following late at night for him but it
could really be any time of day
deliberately making his body as still as
possible and forcing himself to think
and complete sentences Rick's creative
process although it includes a lot of
different things has a lot to do
with also getting very still lying down
okay other folks that I've spoken to
academic and and artists have referred
to getting their body into motion but
quieting their mind so these are two
opposite processes in one case the body
is still but the mind is deliberately
very active in the other scenario the
body is very active but they're making
their mind sort of in free association
not still but they're not deliberately
thinking about any one thing fascinating
and I'm obsessed with this maybe you and
I could work on this you know I'm doe
for a sabatical maybe we could figure
this out because I think I've never seen
anyone study this before right because
the the the nervous know that the
nervous system I'm not aware of anyone
has done it formally either the nervous
system of course is a is a brain body
phenomenon and so what happens when we
sort of cut off the deliberate
operations of brain or body and it it
doesn't seem to matter whether or not
it's brain or body as long as one is
deliberately shut off and so anyway I
love your thoughts on this um I don't
consider myself like a Ultra creative or
creative type um to any great degree but
me neither that's why but I'm fascinated
right right but that's but fascinated by
these deliberate tactics that highly
creative people have have uh undertaken
um in order to bring about ideas I
certainly have some of my best ideas
when I'm running and I'll just be
running along like my goodness I wasn't
even thinking and now I need to write
this down okay and then continue uh I
tried the daero approach and the the
Ruben approach actually just spent a
week with Rick um overseas and indeed he
spends a lot of time just still thinking
and it's a very hard practice to to get
um to get consistent with I wonder I
wonder if there are individual
differences here on on which needs to be
stable or steady um I'm think you know
I'm thinking about a huge part of
creativity is um is overriding your
default instincts and if you're somebody
whose default is to have your mind
constantly going then quieting would
probably shift your your train of
thought to something more original or
unconventional um the opposite might be
true if you have a naturally quiet mind
I would imagine imagine you need to you
need to sort of jolt yourself out of
that with lots of access to you know to
free ranging thoughts and so um it'd be
interesting actually to study whether we
can predict what you should steal based
on your personality yeah I want and
maybe what we could do with that study I
think we have a collaboration Brewing
you know there's a joke you know two two
scientists walk into a room and what
comes out is a collaboration so um I'd
want to put people in a scanner it's
hard to get people treadmilling in a
scanner because a movement artifact but
and just look at net uh resting Network
activation and compare that to resting
Network activation when people are
completely still and forcing themselves
to think in deliberate delate senses and
then look at the overlap in that VIN
diagram that's what's of interest to me
they may be completely different brain
States they might actually have more
similarity than differences I wonder
then if you can tie that to differences
in the quality and quantity of output so
I would imagine that one of the benefits
of either kind of movement is that you
you end up increasing the volume of
ideas which we know is good for variety
and ultimately increases the probability
that you stumble onto something new but
then I think this the being still part
is probably better for the filtering
process of I think one of the hardest
parts of creativity is actually judging
your own ideas um most most creative
people have many terrible ideas in fact
the most creative people have the most
horrible ideas U because they just have
a lot of ideas and um I think that maybe
there's a there's a way in which
quieting either your body or your mind
allows you to gain some distance from
the idea and see whether it's boneheaded
or
promising I'd like to take a quick break
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one is trying to gauge the quality of
their ideas um how do you cope with uh
how does one cope with not placing a
judge on that that um causes some you
know false negatives where you're where
you're wiping out great ideas because um
you know Rick Ruben talks a lot about
you know don't give the audience what
they want they don't know what they want
they haven't seen it yet if it's a truly
creative idea they haven't seen it and
um but of course we all have to develop
our own sense of taste so well how does
this process work for you I mean you've
written about it worked on a tremendous
range of topics um and always you know I
must say with with such rigor and such
Clarity of communication about those
topics yeah it's absolutely true I mean
like 100% so we say around here no weak
sauce you know and great phrase there's
no weak sauce in your game it's
incredible so um when do you get your
ideas and how do you filter those
ideas I feel like the when could be
anytime uh I think the I mean you've
you've clearly experienced this too for
me the best thing about hosting a
podcast is I have an excuse to learn
about anything I want from almost anyone
I want and I get to call that part of my
job and so I feel like you know that
having that built-in mechanism for
learning means ideas could could come at
any moment uh the the filtering process
for me is um it's evolved over the last
few years what I what I do now is if I'm
let's say I'm I'm starting a new book
I'll write a draft of the first chapter
and I send it to five to eight people
whose judgment I trust and by Design
some of those people are in my field
they're you know deep-seated in
organization ational psychology others
are you know very far outside but
curious about the topics I'm interested
in and I asked them for a zero to 10
score uh this is something I learned to
do as a as a springboard diver uh where
you I would I would take off um and you
know I'm doing a few flips or twists and
I think my dive is good but I can't see
it because I'm hurling in midair and
it's a everything's a blur and so I have
to rely on my coach to tell me if it was
any good I feel like creative work is
the same way you're too close to it to
know how the audience is going to react
to it and yes you don't want to create
it just for the audience but at the end
of the day you want it to be you know
interesting or useful to them so I asked
for the zero to 10 and no one ever says
10 and then I use that as a calibration
mechanism so if everybody is in the
seven to eight range I know that I'm
onto something promising and now I need
to refine it if I get a bunch of twos
threes three and a halfs I either need
to rethink the idea or dramatically
rewrite how I'm positioning it and I
think one of the mistakes a lot of
people make is they know they need
feedback on their ideas they go to one
or two people and they start to feel a
little bit defensive or threatened and
their ego gets involved and then they
don't ask for any more what they don't
realize is it's actually less painful if
you get more feedback because when eight
different people critique your work you
start to realize that a few of the
comments that sort of bruise you a
little bit were just idiosyncratic and
no one else cared about those issues but
then five people had the same problem
like that is not taste that is a quality
issue and I've got to focus on that and
so it really helps to filter what are
the what are the revisions I need to
make what are the problems and
complaints I need to pay attention to
versus what can I ignore because maybe
this product was not for that person I'm
recalling when I was a postto I had a
manuscript fully prepared and I worked
in a laboratory where I didn't work on
the same thing as my postto adviser he
was very gracious in letting he be the
outlier um and he said well I don't know
anything about this topic so before you
submit it to this fairly prestigious
very frankly very prestigious Journal
I'll be honest um you should probably go
down the hall and hand it to so and so I
don't want to mention who it was because
I'm still in the same Department um and
I gave it to him this individual and he
looked out and he said yeah you know it
looks interesting but I don't think
there's going to be a whole lot of
interest in this it's just like not I
was like no way like this I think this
is really cool but I was pretty dismayed
so I was like oh gosh so what do I do so
I went back to my adviser and thankfully
he's a bit of an iconic CL and he said
that's the best feedback you could have
gotten definitely submit it to that
particular journal and I must say that
paper got accepted faster than any other
paper I've never had an experience like
that I mean it required some revisions I
remember thinking like wow what an
unusual response to after having
instructed me to go ask a a more senior
colleague right he was a at that time
assistant professor and then to get the
ne essentially negative response and
then to take that as like you should
definitely send it out really taught me
a lesson that sometimes one needs to
invert their um their action according
uh to the negative feedback they get not
always but um that was an N of one okay
so it's not uh shouldn't be extrapolated
to too many circumstances but um
basically led me to um not seek out uh
feedback prior to submission of things
terribly often I mean uh I check
information obviously prior to podcast I
checked the validity of the information
in podcasts and papers but um it made me
realize that people's opinions can be
like highly idiosyncratic and and in
some cases outright wrong and really the
the opinion of the journal is what What
mattered most in in terms of getting it
accepted or not so um how do you you
said give it to the greatest number of
people but if it's anything like
comments on social media there's a
salience to negative comments so how
should we filter positive versus
negative feedback well there's a there's
a meta analysis here this is kuger and
Denise um looking at 100 Years of
feedback research and they found that
what drives the utility of feedback is
not whether it's positive or negative
it's whether it focuses on the task or
on the self so if I tell you that your
work is terrible you're going to get
defensive if I tell you that your work
is great you're going to get complacent
if I tell you here's the specific thing
that that I liked about your work you're
going to try to learn to repeat that and
if I tell you here's the thing I didn't
like you're going to try to see if you
can fix it so I actually think we should
worry less about whether the feedback is
encouraging or discouraging and more
about how do I make sure that I get
input that's going to allow me to learn
from my strengths and also overcome my
weaknesses um and actually I one of the
things I've I've learned recently is
there's some I would say growing body of
evidence at this point that asking for
feedback is not the best way to get
people to help you um because when you
ask for feedback you end up getting two
groups of people you get cheerleaders
and you get critics and cheerleaders are
basically applauding your best self
critics are attacking your worst self
what you want is a coach which is
somebody who helps you become a better
version of yourself and the way you get
people to coach you is not to say give
me feedback because they will then look
at the past and tell you what you
screwed up or what you did right what
you want is to say can you give me
advice for next time and then they look
at the future and they'll give you
either a note on something to repeat or
something to correct and this is such a
subtle shift but it can make a big
difference um Andrew one of the things
I've I guess I found myself applying
this to a lot is um uh after giving
speeches uh I used to get off stage and
say i' would love some feedback and you
get back a bunch of oh you know I really
enjoyed that thanks what do I do with
that information I'm trying to learn how
to get better and when I shift the
question to say what's the one thing I
could do better next time it's like oh
don't open with a joke the audience
couldn't tell you were joking um
uh frequently it's give me a little bit
more of a through line uh you focused a
lot on you know a bunch of interesting
points but I lost the connective tissue
and you know those those actionable
suggestions are much more likely to come
when you just ask for a tip as opposed
to an evaluation oh that's so good I'm
GNA just pause for a second I I've never
taken a pause I've taken occasional Paws
to be honest but they're very rare um as
the audience knows oh that that's just
gazillion dollar advice because I think
that um everyone has an ego we all want
to perform Well we'd like to perform
better over time and negative feedback
hurts and it can hurt a little or a lot
depending on how defensive we are but a
tool like you just described to uh
remove some of that
defensive armor that we all have and and
actually let the information in in a way
that's constructive uh is really great
what you described I think is a way to
create constructive criticism but the
constructive part is really coming from
within yeah as opposed to saying I'd
like some constructive criticism and
then hoping that the criticism is
actually constructive so you're taking
control over the process in a healthy
way in a benevolent way that that's the
goal and I think the the big question
that comes up for a lot of people at
this point is okay so I get somebody to
give me advice but it might still sting
how do I get better at taking it
constructively
and I think probably my favorite
technique on this I learned from Sheila
Keen she calls it the the second score
and the idea is that when somebody gives
you a piece of criticism uh that's your
first score so let's say you know they
like I in my in my world they gave me a
three and a half and I want to know how
I can do better next time how do I get
myself to focus on that what I do is say
I want to get a 10 for how well I took
the three and a half and that's the
second score I want to evaluate myself
on how well I took the first score I I
think about this almost every day there
was um actually can I tell you a quick
story so when I was uh right out of my
doctorate I got asked to teach a a
motivation class for Air Force generals
and Colonels I was
25 I think 25 26 um you know they're
they're all twice my age uh they've got
thousands of flying hours they've got
billion dollar budgets uh they've got
well you know this community well their
nicknames Striker and sandune and I was
extremely intimidated so I I walked in
there and I I thought I had to impress
them and I started talking about my
credentials and you know all my research
experience and the feedback at the end
of the 4-Hour session was brutal I
remember at reading the feedback forums
and one person had written more
knowledge in the audience than on the
podium I was like true I can't argue
with that and then another wrote I gain
nothing from this session but I trust
the instructor gain useful
insight and that that was devastating I
was like can I I would really like to
transform into an actual bear and
hibernate for the next four months and
then maybe I'll come out of a hole ready
to hear this I didn't have that option I
had committed to teach a second session
a week later so all I could do was
figure out how am I going to hear this
feedback and really take it seriously
and I guess I applied a version of the
second score and I said all right there
you know there's some generals that are
going to come back and see me again and
I've got to prove to them that I was
open to feedback and one of the things I
heard loud and clear was that uh they
valued humility and I had led with too
much confidence which was just
insecurity Mast and so I thought okay
how do I how do I change the equation
and walked in looked at the room and I
said I know what you're all thinking
right now what could I possibly learn
from a professor who's 12 years
old Dead Silence
oh no this is this is going to go
horribly wrong and then uh one of the
guys in the audience jumps in he's like
oh that's ridiculous you got to be at
least
13 everybody started laughing it broke
the ice and I think what what I was
trying to do was to take myself off the
pedestal and say look I heard your
feedback uh you told me that you didn't
think I had anything to teach you and
I've got to acknowledge that right up
front and be open to the fact that
that's true and so I want to come in
here and learn from you and I want to
see if I can create a conversation where
we all end up learning and the feedback
was night and day different afterward I
one one person wrote although Junior
inexperience the professor dealt with
the evidence in an interesting way I
like all right I'll take it and um
there's something really powerful about
about saying look you know I can't
change the fact that they hated my
session what I can do is convince them
that I was motivated to learn from their
criticism I love this concept of the
second score and thank you for sharing
that story I think um you know very
often um we hear about people like you
who if people didn't catch the math in
there uh you were a PhD by age 25 um and
as far as I know the the youngest tener
professor at pen at 28 so these are
outrageous uh outrageously impressive um
metrics of accomplishment but for you to
share a um a story about uh you know um
less than Optimal Performance and how
you adjusted to it and and and the
incorporation of the this second score
um that you're referring to I think is
uh is really appreciated because I think
that um as much as we hear you know oh
you know Jordan you know took many more
you know free throws and everyone just
thinks about all the ones he made you
know people think about all the ones he
made that's the way the game works
that's the way the mind works I should
say so it's um I appreciate that you've
flesh it out with a with a personal
example I too would want to turn into a
bear and disappear but I would but I
think that um it's really impressive
what you did and and I and it makes me
think that the second score of getting a
10 at at bringing the three and a half
up right uh as it were um is really
about turning a
score into a verb process you know over
and over again as I've do this podcast
and and as I've taught in the classroom
what I keep coming back to is this idea
that we should be focusing more on verbs
and less on nouns we love to name things
and categorize them but but when we
start living life through a lot of verb
processes so instead of getting Being
Fit uh we think about that you know or
running as a thing we really think about
like just running right it becomes less
daunting and and we accomplish far more
but the idea that um you know and this
has this there are mathematical models
of this I'm sure but where you're
basically talking about you know like an
integral right as opposed to just some
value right you're talking about the
slope of the line yeah right so you're a
three and a half how are you going to
get to a 10 gosh that's a huge gap and
you're dealing with being back on your
heel psychologically from getting all
this you know battering feedback from
these uh you know these uh highly
accomplish individuals with all these
enement and you know literally wearing
them presumably on their body uh so you
for you see and and it's really about
creating it's about taking control of
the slope of that line from the three
onward and it's really a forward-looking
perspective so I don't think we're being
unduly psychological here or analytic I
mean I think it's really about taking a
a moment State and a noun and turning it
into a verb yeah I think that's right I
I'm reminded of the great philosopher
Homer Simpson who said that verbing
weirds language uh so it's harder to
talk about this stuff in verbs I swear I
didn't steal it from The Simpsons but if
it came from Homer Simpson like I'm all
for it you have to I mean that's small
brain small brain but you know given the
size of his brain and people have seen
the image uh uh you know fairly fairly
robust knowledge no I I think you're on
to something I think um verbs are active
and we're we're drawn to them um I think
yeah a lot of times people review their
past work and they just like they end up
shaming an earlier version of themselves
and they they wallow in rumination and
what what we want to try to do in that
situation which is easier said than done
is to say all right like the purpose of
you know of of getting feedback or
advice is not to shame my past self it's
to educate My Future Self um which I
think is very connected to a lot of the
work on growth mindset that that you've
been talking about and uh there's been a
firestorm of controversy around uh can
we teach growth mindset in schools
lately and uh I think what what that is
underscored for me is look you can't you
can't expect someone to listen to One
podcast episode or go through one
workshop and magically believe that
they're capable of learning anything at
any moment um this is something we have
to actively work on on a daily basis and
part of doing that exactly as you said
is thinking about the slope and saying
all right um the person that I'm you
know I'm competing with is my past self
and I want to get a little bit better
today than I was
yesterday yeah I think um along the
lines of growth mindset obviously we
both know Carol DW and uh respect her
tremendously and I um and I realize
there is some controversy now around how
you know readily one can teach growth
mindset or incorporate growth mindset my
understanding and um I'd love to know
your thoughts on this is that when the D
work is combined with some of the alium
work that is growth mindset is combined
with a knowledge just a basic and true
understanding that stress and the
feelings of anxiety and tension that um
can actually be performance- enhancing
when those two things are combined I
think this the work of David joer and
colleagues at UT Austin that uh indeed
growth mindset becomes um more visible
in our in our uh mindsets and
performance um and are there other
aspects to growth mindset and and other
um other mindsets that are now being
woven into that framework that that can
be helpful because I know um gosh if
ever there was a great name for a area
of psychology growth mindset it tells
you everything you want everything you
need and everything you sort of need to
know in just the name um but uh we all
find it difficult to implement um just
telling myself I'm not as good as
something I could be yet it sounds great
but in moments of you know receiving
feedback uh that's harsh um sometimes
it's hard to access yeah it is I think
so the the latest there's a mamera um ET
all metaanalysis and then you know I
think sort of that camp versus the the
Carol and David Camp um you know have
very different views on how big the
effects are but I think one thing they
they seem to agree on is growth mindset
is more important in circumstances uh
where people are more likely to need it
um so if you think about for example um
kids who are impoverished um or
marginalized communities um you know the
message that you actually you know that
you you are capable of um you know of
evolving your skills to the point that
something you're bad at today you could
be good at next year um is really
important when you've never heard that
before um and when you don't have a
single person believing in you I think
where um where we're often missing the
boat is we all right I'm just going to
I'm going to instill this idea in a
person's head and my work is done um and
we know that the context around you
really matters so um actually Carol's
done some research showing that uh
growth mindset is more likely to have an
impact uh when your classroom culture um
also and your teacher right has the
belief that kids are capable of learning
and growing um that your you know your
starting ability is not fixed in any
subject and I think we probably for all
of us as individuals what that means is
we need to think about the the micro
environment that we put ourselves in um
I think you know the guess one one of
the things I've thinking a lot about
lately is scaffolding and the idea that
you know when you're when you're trying
to improve at something you don't need a
a permanent teacher necessarily you
don't need one Mentor you know guiding
you for nine years what you need is is
somebody who can give you the temporary
support that allows you to to scale to a
New Height just like a a scaffold wood
on a building um and in learning theory
basically the idea behind scaffolding is
we're going to initially give you the
support you need to solve a problem and
then we're going to slowly remove the
support so that you learn to to do it on
your own and I think that those those
kinds of scaffolds are often missing so
we instilled the growth mindset like
I've got this belief in my head but I
don't know what I need to do um to you
know to put that belief into action and
that's where um that I guess that that
to me is we have to go beyond mindset we
have to think about how do we put people
in a context that allows them to to put
their beliefs into
practice you are asking me what else do
we need like to support growth ET and
make it effective right yeah I mean we
know people learn what growth mindset is
it's the idea that you're not as good at
something yet okay terrific but it's
very hard to implement in real time
there are I have to presume additional
tools that one can uh bolster the growth
mindset with make it make it more
accessible um and benefit from it yes so
um Justin Berg and Amy rzeski and I uh
study this actually uh we did um we were
looking at growth mindset at work and uh
Justin's uh well he's Stanford I don't
know if you met him yet I have not but
big place um he'll be on the list soon
if uh brilliant creativity researcher
and Amy just joined us at at Wharton and
uh has fundamentally changed the way
that I think about um ideas um in the
way that she studied how we can shape
our context and just done pathbreaking
work there and we we were interested in
growth mindset and we we designed an
intervention where people could learn
growth mindset at work uh so we taught
them to think about how their skills
were malleable how they could stretch
their knowledge into new areas and we
found that teaching them that was not
enough to boost their happiness or their
performance what we needed to also do
was um give them a growth mindset not
just about themselves but also about
their
jobs uh in other words to teach them
that your job is a set of flexible
building blocks that you've got a whole
bunch of tasks that make up your job
some of those are you know are things to
do others are might be interactions that
you need to have and if you break down
your your job into all these tests you
might have some tests that you want to
accentuate and make a bigger part of
your job others that you want to try to
subtract um others that you might swap
with a colleague and a lot of people it
turns out think their jobs are are fixed
by their job descriptions but in fact
you have a ton of opportunity to say
wait a minute you know there's something
there's a strength I have but I'm not
using it right now is there a way we can
bring that into my work and so um in
these couple experiments we did when we
randomly assigned people to learn both
that their jobs were malleable and that
their skills were malleable um they got
a sustainable boost to their happiness
that lasted at least six months there
was no cost to their performance um
meaning you could to redesign your own
job to be more enjoyable without uh
without a drop in the effectiveness of
your contributions uh to your workplace
and I think what I I came away from that
research realizing is like it's not
enough to just say well well I can get
better I can improve because very often
you feel like your your environment is
limited I'm like great like yeah I can
grow but I'm stuck in a deadend job and
so what we need to do there is um is
open up the opportunity for people to um
to to innovate on their own job
description and then growth mindset can
begin to to have an impact I love it it
sounds a bit like adding a s to growth
growth mindset so it's not growth
mindset it's growth mindsets uh because
earlier you mentioned that in the
classroom environment if the teacher
adopts a growth mindset yes as well as
the students well then you have a
culture of growth mindset so it's the um
interconnectedness of of this and the
and the context in which the
individual's growth mindset exists do I
have that right well put yeah we we
ended up calling it dual mindset um but
I think making it a plural is good
because um you know it's it's not I I
have this image of um you know you you
put a person in a in a cage and then
tell them they're capable of growing
still stuck in a cage and so we need to
we need to give them a chance to to bust
through those walls super important I
hate to take us back to an earlier topic
um but there's something that I meant to
ask you that I didn't and I'm absolutely
needing to ask you which is your recent
work or recent ish work it was a few
years back now and you're so prolific
that I have to call it a few years back
um the relationship between intrinsic
motivation and performance on other
tasks um yeah and the reason I asked
this is severalfold
um I did two episodes of the podcast on
ADHD and one of the things that I
learned in talking to experts on ADHD
people with ADHD as well as looking at
some of the novel treatments everything
from behavioral to prescription drug to
even nutrition-based
was that kids and adults with clinically
diagnosed ADHD are actually terrific at
paying attention to things that they
really enjoy or that they're super
interested in so clearly they have the
capacity it's just that they have um
deficits if you will in attending to
things that are less exciting to them
less intriguing to them so if I recall
correctly uh you have a publication that
explored the relationship between
intrinsic motivation and performance in
other stuff yeah and one of the major
conclusions was that having a deep deep
interest in one thing might not be the
best uh condition for performing well at
other less interesting tasks Could you
um could you tell us about that study
what motivated you to carry out that
study and what some of the major
takeaways were yeah definitely um you
you summarized it really well I think um
the the original impetus so this was
another project with G shin and uh G
came to me want wanting to study
intrinsic motivation and we were talking
about what do we know about intrinsic
motivation and what are the gaps in our
knowledge and one thing that has always
bothered me is when psychologists study
something that sounds positive and they
only study the benefits of it like
there's no such thing as an unmitigated
good right all all all sort of enjoyable
experiences have costs all unpleasant
experiences can have benefits we need to
we need to fill out this two by two of
good thing bad thing um good outcome bad
outcome um and so my challenge to her
was can you show me the Dark Side of
intrinsic motivation and she came back
and she said what if there's a cost of
loving a task leading you to hate a test
that you don't like even more than you
did before it's like oh that's an
interesting idea tracks with the basic
psychology of contrast effects uh where
um you know if you eat something
delicious then your least favorite food
tastes a little bit worse afterward and
so I said let's let's study this so um
she ended up getting data from um from
people at work and then we also designed
an experiment and sure enough uh the the
more passionate you are on task one the
more your performance suffers if task
two is really boring and I guess what
what this did for me is it made me think
differently about task sequencing I used
to wake up in the morning and do my most
interesting task first and then the
grading was hell and what I do now is I
start with a moderately interesting task
it's a little bit of a warm-up for me
and then I have an exciting one to look
forward to and if I do have a task
that's boring but important I think the
performance is going to suffer less
interesting um I normally don't ask
about morning routines and how one
structures their day because it's highly
individual completely agree yeah and it
and it depends depends on whether or not
people have kids and they're pets and
you know what other uh but I'll just
share with you a brief anecdote I have a
friend who's a very accomplished
musician and has been for for several
decades now and he told me that he has a
practice of after he gets off stage and
he's like Stadium Stadium sellout level
um
musician um has been for a long time and
shows no signs of stopping just
incredible but a very down toe person um
and he said one of the first things he
does when he gets off stage is to go do
some menial task I thought there's no
way that's true but I've known his wife
since college and she she verified that
statement I was like what what sorts of
medial task you talking about he's like
oh like cleaning up some of the cans and
things that are there maybe even
cleaning a toilet at a venue and I
thought no chance but it turns out to be
true and I said what what's this about
is this about humility he said well
maybe a little bit but he said it
actually makes it a lot easier for him
to return home and deal with the kind of
little things that just are out of scale
with the experiences that he just had
he's tapering way okay I think yeah yeah
I I first of all I was so struck by the
fact that he had um created this process
for himself so long ago and he's also
somebody who's you know he's maintained
he's like been the same marriage for an
extremely long time he's he's extremely
happy in that and his family I mean it
see one of these people that seems to
thrive in all domains of life and I'm
certain that he struggles in some domain
of life because everybody does but um
it sound to me like a very unusual
practice but it seems to kind of relate
to this that you know he has this thing
that he loves doing playing music and
performing in particular and he's just
you know you know
0.01% at doing that um but then just
like bring himself back down to Earth
because so much of life and especially
family life is like dealing with the the
Schmutz and the inconvenience of
everyday life yeah is it's it actually
sounds like what he's doing is he's
resetting his frame of reference to say
if you know if I go right home
then the contrast between you this high
octane experience I'm having um and sort
of muddling through everyday life um is
going to be extreme if I do something
really small then um family time is
going to seem a lot bigger yeah so I
realize that I'm I'm taking a bit of a
leap from your study on intrinsic
motivation and and low performance in in
other domains but you know to me
cleaning up cleaning a toilet is you
know it's it's uh it's boring for all
the reasons right um as you said you do
not want that to be an exciting no and
and listen I mean if I had to do it for
a living I would you right and I would
try and do as well as possible and uh uh
but um right so well I found that study
to be particularly interesting because I
think that these days we um we glorify
high performance even quote unquote Peak
Performance um something we can talk
about and we forget that um yes
oftentimes people who are ultra high
performers can afford to pay other
people to do all the other stuff but I
have to say in knowing some ultra high
performers and in knowing some people in
the um billionaire bracket you know
there's a high incidence of of mental
health issues frankly and um lack of
satisfaction with life that maybe even
comes from not um having to do anything
besides the things that you find most
intrinsically rewarding um we all think
that oh I if I could I would spend all
day doing the things that I find most
intrinsically rewarding but maybe
there's something about this Push Pull
we know the brain works in push pull
with almost everything that having some
experiences each day that are kind of
like H this a thing again do you think
that heightens our level of satisfaction
for the things we really enjoy I would
be surprised if it didn't uh I think I
think contrast effects are very powerful
and we know I mean the there's half a
century of research on happiness
suggesting that the comparisons we make
are what matter
um you know I think I think Tim Urban
probably put it best when he said
happiness is reality minus
expectations and if you only have
enjoyable experiences your expectations
are
rising into perpetuity uh so it doesn't
matter how good your reality is you
wanted it to be better and better um I
think one of the things that mundane
experiences um managed to do for us uh
or maybe a better way to say it is I
think one of the benefits of Munden
experiences is they keep our
expectations on the ground uh and allow
us to be pleasantly surprised by you
know a task that was more interesting
than we expected even though we didn't
love it what are your thoughts on um
what I call Momentum which is when I
have um an experience that I
particularly like like if we record a
podcast and I'm really excited to get it
out into the world or if I have some
experience that I'm left you know very
excited by at the end that often times
the energy again I'm obsessed with this
concept of neural energy the the energy
that I
glean from that experience seems to have
carryover into other things like you
know I'm GNA be much more excited to
just go across the street and get a cup
of coffee feels like a bigger thing than
it normally would um and I would think
that one could kind of ride the wake of
a of a prior accomplishment even a small
accomplishment each day and make the you
know tidying up or doing things that one
would normally find more boring less
boring is that true the way you're
describing contrast effects makes it
seem like it's more of a cliff like that
thing was great and now this thing but I
also can kind of ride high on um
something that happened two three days
ago maybe even two three months ago if
so feeling good equates to feeling good
or feeling good uh accentuates the the
bad stuff this is the tension between
contrast and spillover and you can see
both under different conditions I think
where this is I this is a brand new sort
of I don't think anybody's reconciled
those two two perspectives yet but my
hunch from having worked on the contrast
part of it is we found that it was only
extreme intrinsic motivation that had
the performance cost on other tasks so
if you're if you're enjoying something
um if you like it uh that will give you
a lift for other tests um it's it's
where this is the best thing you've ever
done and now other things suck by
comparison um that's where we start to
see run into a problem I also wonder um
if there's a domain switching effect
here um I think you're you're alluding
to this um I I read some research that
just came out this year showing that um
one of the benefits one of the
surprising benefits of morning workouts
is you actually have more confidence in
your job uh because you get that small
win like I accomplished something this
morning and that gives you a sense of
efficacy that you can carry over into
your you know the start of your workday
uh not to suggest that everyone should
work out in the morning because I'm I'm
with you I think everybody should you
know both work and work out at a time
that works for them but I think um I
think there's something to be said for
uh something went really well in one
realm of my life and that boosts my
belief in my capability to tackle
challenges in a different realm what
about in the opposite direction uh you
were a competitive diver um I have to
presume that there were days when you
had lousy Dives it must have been that
that one day Adam like every day and
then you you leave you know you you your
shower up dry off head head into the
rest of your day and you know how do we
segment away from the you know negative
thought spirals of like something went
really poorly and now you're off into
the domain of life where you can do you
know how to do the things that you're
required to do but maybe there's some
Challenge and some learning involved how
do we cut Moes between negative
experiences I think uh I mean the Ted
lasso strategy is ideal become a
goldfish 10-second memory and then you
don't even you don't even recall the
practice you had earlier today I think
that I don't know anybody who can do
that consistently um and I think the
more disappointing the experience is the
more you tend to to dwell on it I
think uh when when you talk about
segmenting negative
experiences I think the probably the
research that I've liked best on this
and I just want to I want to make sure I
capture this
clearly um I basically so research on
emotion regulation says there there are
two strategies that tend to be effective
one is distraction the other is
reframing uh so distraction is is you
know find something else that will
consume your attention um that's
unrelated to the thing that you just
bombed at uh and the hope is that you
know that that Fades into the background
reframing is a lot of what you were
talking about a few minutes ago which is
okay let me Focus you know not on the
level of my performance but the slope um
my dive-in coach Eric best has a really
great set of questions that he he asks
and you know I I I remember I would I
finish practice like this is a terrible
day I just feel like I'm worth wor lless
as a diver and now diving was a big part
of my identity I'm going to let my team
down now I'm a bad teammate too my coach
is wasting his time and like now you
know he could have been you know
training somebody much better like why
am I doing this and Eric would ask uh
did you make yourself better
today and even if it was a bad practice
there is something that improved yes
okay and sometimes the answer feels like
no and then he would ask did you make
someone else better today like yeah I a
little tip to a teammate um you know
I I made a joke that you know that made
everybody laugh and he was like great
then it wasn't a bad day and I I think
this is this is an example of what good
reframing looks like um to say okay the
goal wasn't to be great it was to be
better the goal wasn't necessarily just
to make myself better it was also to
make other people better um and I think
those are the kinds of questions that
seem to segment pretty well I love that
feedback I think we all get stuck in
those thought Spirals and um again not
to demonize smartphones because they are
wonderful tools but I have to remember
the time I'm 48 years old uh as of
tomorrow and I have to remember a time
in which um negative stuff was probably
happening in the background but I didn't
hear about it because no one was texting
it to me so I'd find out at the end of
the day when I still had time to do
other things in the meantime right um
that said I would also get negative
experiences early in the day and then
carry them throughout the entire day
when nowadays you can get a positive
text message that says okay it wasn't so
bad um or something like that but um I
do think as is probably becoming
apparent about um these channels of
communication are
are either Boons or disruptions to our
our positive psychology it's clear that
we're just like being bombarded all the
time so um just as a as a practical
question uh what is your relationship to
your phone um do you set boundaries
around your phone use or the types of
communications and activities that you
engage with on your phone I do so
everyone I I think everyone I know has a
to-do list I also have a to don't list
and on my to don't list includes I don't
scroll on social media and I don't pick
up my phone uh past 900 P p.m and those
those two habits are enormously helpful
particularly the not scrolling um I pick
up my phone when I have something to
post or when I want to see what the
comments are and then see if there's
something interesting to learn or or
somebody that I want to respond to um
and that that that becomes a really
healthy boundary because I don't get
stuck in one of these rabbit holes where
all of a sudden two hours have gone by
and I feel like uh I feel like I wasted
my time uh where do you post or keep
your to-do and your to don't list do you
keep them on your phone no it's a Word
document on my computer okay so you're
still at the computer screen quite a bit
each day yeah okay I I feel like that's
where most of my good thinking and
writing happens
mhm yeah I carry a small notebook around
with me now and write things down I was
just curious um like one of these yeah
well like one of those yeah yeah I try
not to take notes on my phone ever right
yeah it's it can be problematic for me
uh especially with with voice
recognition now because you just it's
hard to go back to that in a systematic
way for me but I'm a big believer in
these these things that but for those
listening and not watching I'm holding
up a pen so like pencils work too you
you've probably read some of the
research also showing that you have a
better memory for information when you
take notes by hand than by keyboard uh I
didn't know that but I'm very very
gratified to hear that so the and I
suppose if you don't have a pen and you
don't have uh a pencil handy then you
know blood always works just kidding I'm
just kidding don't don't don't uh don't
make yourself or anyone else bleed just
to get an idea down but it is amazing
how sometimes we will have ideas while
running walking showering out and about
and then later try and recall those
ideas and if we don't write them down
they're gone the great Joe Strummer from
The Clash talked about the critical
importance of carrying around a small
notebook such as you did because he said
that the ideas Fall Down Like Rain and
you if you catch them they're there but
if you miss them they truly won't be
there later and that's there's something
kind of eerie about that like why
wouldn't we be able to remember these
potential gems of ideas all right the
the the geysering up of the mind we had
a guest on this podcast for a series Dr
Paul KY um psychiatrist um and he talked
extensively about the unconscious mind I
mentioned this a little earlier but uh
one of the things that really stuck with
me is he said you know everyone thinks
that the prefrontal cortex and the
frontal cortex is the supercomputer of
the human brain sets context planning
strategy switching etc etc certainly in
its valuable real estate to our
intellect and all our abilities but he
said you know the the real supercomputer
is the unconscious mind
however that unconscious mind that lives
below the surface of our awareness is
also what drives a lot of our
unconscious defenses so are so-called
blind spots so projection projective
identification you know I mean these
have these can be both good or bad they
can serve us well or or poorly uh and so
on and so forth but implied in this
notion of the unconscious in blind spots
is that we can't become aware of things
unless we either do dedicated work to
become aware of them or even better
would be dedicated work where we are
asking other people to say Hey listen
you have a blind spot and it is blank
blank and blank so tell us um about the
role of blind spots maybe even some
positive aspects of having blind spots
but more importantly what we can do to
fill in those blind spots and and uh
perhaps also explain how how they can
limit us and if you have any examples
that um from the research where um
people overcoming their blind spots has
benefited them that would be amazing
yeah wow there's a lot there let me well
let me start by saying I
think a lot of people think about blind
spots in terms of hereis ICS and biases
so you think about confirmation bias you
think about the the classic Conan tersi
work uh that ended up winning Dan a
Nobel Prize on um you know the the way
in which um you know our intuitive
judgments um often get anchored in the
way we've done things before um or you
know we focus on the information that's
sellan and available to us and Overlook
you know less obvious information I've
come to think that the the mother of all
biases is uh what I what I think of is
the I'm not biased bias
um it's it's technically called the bias
blind spot in Emily pronin and
colleagues research but the idea is that
I think I'm more objective than other
people and you may have your you may
have flaws in your thinking Andrew but
me like I I see things clearly and
rationally and I think that this is a
it's a really dangerous meta bias
because the moment you believe you're
not biased you are incapable of seeing
any of your
biases um so in some of the research on
the bias blind spot you see that um that
people who have um who score high in
cognitive ability tests so you know high
IQ are actually more likely to fall
victim to the I'm not bias bias because
they've been reinforced for a lifetime
uh that they're really smart and they're
good at thinking oh goodness this
explains some uh we don't talk about
current events on this podcast much but
this explain some current events uh
people that were told their entire
careers that they are perfect or near
perfect and um uh yeah circumstances
eventually came to you know slam them
hard into the concrete on that one or or
in some cases it hasn't happened yet but
we we watch them hurdling toward Earth
um so I I worry a lot about that so I
think the beginning of you know of
seeing any blind spot is recognizing
that we all have blind spots it's part
of Being Human um I think that the
brighter side of that is that we're not
just blind to weaknesses we're also
blind to our strengths um so Jane Dutton
and Laura Morgan Roberts and colleagues
uh did some research on the reflected
best self-portrait this is one of my
favorite exercises to do in the
classroom but also to do in workplaces
sometimes even people end up doing it
with their kids at home the idea is that
you know you do have strengths that
you're not that aware of uh they may be
things that come naturally to you that
you don't even realize are hard for
other people they may be things that are
struggles for you um and so you you
think it's hard to do and therefore I'm
bad at it but other people watch you do
it and realize you're actually quite
good at it so the you need other people
to hold up a mirror to see what these
invisible strengths are so the way the
flect a best self Exercise Works is
you're asked to contact 10 to 20 people
who know you well in different walks of
life might be a family member a couple
friends some colleagues and then you ask
them to tell a story about a time when
you were at your best and you collect
these stories it's it's the most
exciting week of email you will ever get
20 notes let me tell you how great you
are but what's key this goes back to our
discussion of feedback earlier is
they're really specific about a moment
when you are at your best and then your
job is to collect all the stories and do
the pattern recognition exercise and ask
what are the common themes that I've
seen through these stories and it's a
it's a really powerful and Vivid way of
of getting a sense of what are those
strengths and um you know it's not
surprising that in some of the research
when people go through this process um
they end up with much more clarity not
only about what they're what they're
good at and where their potential lies
but also how do I like what do those
situations have in common where I was
able to use my strengths and how do I
get myself in those situations more
often how do I create those situations
more often um I I'll give you a personal
example on this so I I got a bunch of
feedback that uh I was good at helping
other people see their
strengths and I thought okay I don't
feel like I have enough opportunities to
use that strength in my daily life so
what am I going to do about this and I
ended up flipping the exercise upside
down and I picked a 100 people who um
really mattered to me and I wrote a
story to each of them about a time when
they were at their
best and I'm like there's there's no
reason I can't
I can't make this part of my day um it's
probably it was it was probably one of
the best weeks of My Life um it was
better than getting the stories was was
giving them uh and I got these notes
back from people saying you know I I
didn't realize I don't even remember
that thing that
happened um but I think for me it was an
example of saying okay um you know I've
I've always enjoyed um trying to bring
out the best in others uh I don't feel
like at the time I was a I was a first
year doctoral student I didn't feel like
I had anything to contribute to others
I'm try I'm trying to learn how to you
know understand this field and you know
do a worthwhile study and write a paper
I'm not teaching yet I have no value to
add and getting this feedback like oh
you're somebody who helps other people
see their potential I'm like all right
let me let me take some people that I
you know I already recognize um really
amazing things in and let me just tell
them that uh and it took me about a week
to write the the 100 emails and um I
can't think of a a week I've spent
better wow it's so interesting that you
flipped the process on its head a bit um
or a lot and that ended up being the
reward do you think you learned anything
about given that it was early in your
academic career do you think you um
learned anything about your uh
particular Talent OR desire to to do
what you do now I mean so much of what
you described it seems to map well to
what you do now I mean you could be uh
if you were to choose or have chosen uh
just not just but a laboratory scientist
doing experiments um you're clearly
still doing that at a with a tremendous
productivity but you've also decided to
tell the world about the information
that you're Gathering and the work of a
lot of other people as well I guess I
feel a kinship here because we both do
this um much much more interesting to
site other people's work than talk about
what you already know it is indeed um
and it's fun to be able to to weave
one's understanding of the process into
you know like what are other people
doing and know how hard it is to do
really good experiments and um be able
to spot really good experiments but you
did you learn in that early um stage of
your career that like I think I want to
do this later because what you do now is
it Maps pretty well onto what you just
described I I don't think it was it
wasn't crystallized at the time but it
was definitely one of those seeds that
was planted that that must have grown
because I I remember right after I got
tenure
uh a wonderful colleague of mine asked
if I would write a book with him and I
was so flattered and I went into to talk
to my undergrad research lab later that
day and I you know I mentioned off hand
I like hey and you I got this invite I'm
gonna write this book and they freaked
out like no you cannot write somebody
else's book you have to write about your
ideas first like if you're G to write a
book write your own book and I I I was
very resistant because I love other
people's ideas no I what I I feel like
what I do best um I think it was um boy
who wrote about the scholarship of
Discovery versus the scholarship of
integration and I never felt like I was
a Eureka you know blindingly you know
original inside person I felt like what
I was good at was synthesizing ideas um
and you know kind of taking a bunch of
um you know pieces of cloth and and
sewing them into a quilt and allowing
people to see the big picture in a way
they hadn't before and I felt like I
could do that with a colleague who was
already a success uccessful author and
my students basically held me hostage
and they said you've been doing this
research for for over a decade now and
you have a responsibility to share that
outside your
classroom and it reminded me of of that
experience of saying okay there's
something I see in other people I want
to share it with them um and maybe I
could do that on a broader scale so yeah
I think there was there were definitely
dots that connected
there when I was a a master student at
Berkeley there was a guy who's now mov
to Michigan State Mark Breedlove who I
hope to host on the podcast actually is
this really interest does really
interesting work on the biology of
sexual differentiation and Mark I think
that's an invite if you're listening
yeah right uh and he um it is indeed and
he said to me he said you know review
articles provided they are written by
people who um are credentialed in a
given field are cited at you know 100x
any one particular paper now at the time
I wasn't interested in um uh impact
factors in fact I've never paid any
attention to impact factors they their
importance varies in in different
countries and um in the US they they
play some role um more so in Europe but
I I could care less about impact factor
frankly um because those those metrics
aren't what it's going to carry you
through the difficulty of Designing and
carrying out a hard experiment you have
to be intrinsically curious about the
answer right you know this and I know
this but um but he basically said uh
what what uh something that's really
supports your point um which is that
ultimately the ability to synthesize
information is can feel um really good
and he started talking about the the the
feeling that he got from doing that he's
also a tremendous bench scientist as
well in any event um I'm so glad that
you flipped that exercise on its head
because now the world gets to benefit
from you doing that for us all the time
because I I realize now that much of
what you do is to help um people
identify and erase their blind spots by
um and I love your social media channels
um and I noted uh on Instagram and I do
scroll but but I scroll through into
your your channel too um you know you'll
put up in short form content that that
really highlights the key importance of
people embarking on strategies that they
wouldn't reflexively take that that I
see that over and over again it's like
we think that the best leaders do blank
but actually the research says they do
exactly the opposite and and you have a
a vast um kit of those so along those
lines
you know what are some of the most
common blind spots that um You observe
uh and that people could benefit from
understanding and and um doing contrary
action uh around as it relates to uh
let's say interpersonal relations in the
workplace or at home and and and maybe
we could um seed this with uh a finding
that you've also written about which is
that you know people who have an exert a
lot of proficiency and even control in
their professional life will sometimes
bring that to their relationship life
and that doesn't work right the idea
that like being in charge and being
confident is a great is a great set of
attributes um but it can really fail us
in other domains uh can we weave that in
with blind spots yeah we can so I think
that so one of the things I I found over
the past few years is that and this was
inspired by a Phil tetlock framework um
a lot of us spend a lot of our time
thinking like preachers prosecutors or
politicians preachers prosecutors
politicians yeah so you can think about
these as as three mental modes that even
if You' never worked in any of these
careers you you will watch your thinking
colored by at least one of them more
often than you would like so in preacher
mode you're basically prizing your own
views uh and you I mean Andrew you're
a in some in some situations I think of
you as a highly effective professional
debunker of preachers of you know
certain kinds of snake oil when it comes
to health um and you know and biology um
sometimes you take that too far and
people might accuse you of being a
prosecutor uh where you're attacking
other people's views um and then um the
third mode politician mode is is
basically you don't even bother to
listen to people unless they already
agree with your views what I what I
think is is interesting is these these
modes of thinking are adaptive for in in
certain roles um so preachers make great
salespeople they're often Visionary
leaders uh prosecutors are often highly
effective scientists right we excel at
criticizing other people's work and
finding what's wrong with it um
politicians are great at crying favor um
they do a lot of lobbying they win
approval the problem is that all of
these modes stop you from questioning
your own assumptions and beliefs um so
my I I'll tell you my biggest advice is
prosecutor mode uh I've been called a
logic bully my wife had to explain to me
that was not a
compliment oh my
goodness I mean I know I know you've
experienced this too if I if I if I feel
confident that there's strong evidence
that somebody is wrong
I believe it's my moral responsibility
to correct them and that never goes well
amazing um I won't reflect on my own
experience I'll just say yes and yes uh
right right the the um logic word ninja
mode um is one that I think we're
trained in as academics we are and that
and you know if you're a lawyer or you
know or uh many other professions as
well um and I think it holds value and
it can be very effective in certain
domains but um less effective in other
domains yes and I think part of the
problem is you know when I actually
whether you're preaching Prosecuting or
politicking excuse me or politicking you
look like you're not open uh because
you've already in all cases you think
you're right and other people are wrong
and so that makes it really hard for
other people to to reason with you to
disagree thoughtfully with you so my
favorite alternative and and this is at
the heart of what you do for a living um
and for fun is thinking like a
scientist and when I say thinking like a
scientist I do not mean that you need to
buy a microscope or invest in a
telescope what I mean is as as you model
so effectively a good scientist has the
humility to know what they don't know
and the Curiosity to constantly seek out
new knowledge there have been multiple
experiments showing that when people are
taught to think like scientists uh their
judgment improves and so do their
decisions and I think a lot of that
stems from um when when you go into
scientist mode you realize that all of
your opinions are just hypotheses to be
tested all of your decisions are
experiments and so you're like well I
you know I'm not trying to prove that
I'm right I'm trying to find out if I
might be wrong and then if I find out I
am wrong it's easier to Pivot and
instead of being really invested in
being right I can try to get it right um
and I think in some ways that's the
that's the meta message that I'm trying
to communicate to people with my work is
um assumptions are meant to be pressure
tested they're meant to be questioned
and challenged and if you're not open to
rethinking your views um then you
basically turn thinking into a religion
uh and I don't know about you but I
prefer to base my views on on good data
um as opposed to Blind Faith um and I
think that's been a huge part of your
contribution in the last three or so
years to public discourse is um you've
you've helped people think more
scientifically and talk more
scientifically about their daily habits
and behaviors and um I guess my my big
question is how do we help people do
that more often even in domains where
they don't have access to scientific
knowledge and they don't read journals
first of all thanks for the kind words
of feedback I think you know my my goal
is always to you know identify who's
coming to the podcast for health tools
and protocols and hopefully teach them
some science and scientific thinking and
for those that are coming to the podcast
for Science and scientific thinking
hopefully they get some health tools and
protocols also but um because I fell in
love with science for the exact reason
that you're describing which is that I
uh I lived I grew up in a family that
was very divided politically along
religious lines along essentially every
line of like what foods to eat what was
health what wasn't and the only way I
could reconcile um these very frankly
polarized views was to you know embark
on the scientific method POS a
hypothesis and then try and disprove
one's hypothesis and some things get
through the filter and it's a constant
learning so um I should just ask when
you teach people how to be a scientist
in order to try and overcome some of
their blind spots and be better thinkers
better meaning it serves themselves and
the people around them better uh is that
teaching them what a hypothesis is that
a HP a hypothesis is not a question it's
it's sort of a um you're you wager on an
idea with the understanding that you
very well could be wrong and then you
try and disprove that idea is that is
that sort of the Crux of of what uh in
these experiments is um you're
describing as teaching people how to be
scientists like if they just do that
then they'll they're going to benefit I
think that's that's at the very heart of
the lens is I want to just double click
on the idea of disproving your
hypothesis right most people live in a
Land of confirmation bias where they're
they're basically just looking for
support for their pre-existing beliefs
that's right they're click forging we
all do this by the way I'm not
criticizing here we all will have an
idea and then we will click forage
online to support the idea
that we disagree with them they disagree
with us ah here's somebody I agree with
and that agrees with me I think and do
you think this has roots in our um you
know in the neural Circuit underpinnings
of of um
just wanting to have affiliation that
affiliation feels good yeah you having
people that are like us knowing that
we're kind of protected in that yeah I
think that's a big part of it I think
one of the reasons that we we encase
ourselves in Echo Chambers and um hide
and filter bubbles is uh there's there's
a strong evolutionary pressure to avoid
social exclusion and so you know it's
not it's not just the you know being
drawn to affiliation it's also um I I
really want I'm afraid of being
excommunicated from my group and if I
challenge the Orthodoxy of the community
that I belong to I might be an outcast
and I don't think I don't think every
day people think through that logic but
I think there's a there's a deep-seated
um visceral tendency to avoid that and
you know I think the when we think about
teaching people to see their blind spots
more clearly um a lot of that is is
recognizing it's hard to do that on your
own um because by definition your blind
spots are invisible to you and so this
is why other people people's input is so
important and I think you know I'm I
know this makes a lot of people
uncomfortable but I think everybody on
social media should follow people that
they disagree with but not just for the
sake of it you want people who reach
different conclusions from you but where
you respect the Integrity of their
thought process those are the people who
really stretch your thinking and I think
that's what we were trained to do um
it's what I was trained to do as a
social science a social scientist is to
listen to the ideas that made me think
hard not just the ones that made me feel
good and to myself with people who
challenged my thought process not just
the ones who validated my conclusions
and I think you know a lot of people
hear that message and they're like no
but I don't want to let that like that
awful perspective into my world I'm like
no you want to be more nuanced in saying
who are the people where before I knew
what their answer was I would be
impressed with the depth and the
thoroughness of their reflection and
their analysis I should be following
those people and learning from them
regardless of the the high hypotheses
that they generate and the results that
they share I'm so glad that you
mentioned the um importance of following
people that you disagree with I think
one thing that we have to highlight and
I'm hoping will maybe even emerge from
this conversation is that follows are
not endorsements and and this is
actually a real problem I mean there are
academics who have lost their jobs not
necessarily for following certain
accounts but for um commenting on
certain common threads maybe even aik
likee is a is a slightly different
category because it's as the name
suggests it's a like it's it sounds like
and it's thought of as a vote of
approval of what's there yeah but when
one's options are just um you know a
heart uh a follow or no heart no follow
um you know I was a big fan of the
thumbs up thumbs down I kind of like the
thumbs up thumbs down because at least
you have that you have an option to to
um to descent um without getting into
online comment battles and things of
that sort but um listen i' I've had um
uh people ask me why do you follow so
and so because follows are also seen as
a sign of support because you're adding
adding followers and presumably uh in
the algorithm raising prominence to a
channel but I'm right there with you I
follow lots of accounts um of people who
I fundamentally disagree with but I'm
trying to learn and I'm also trying to
understand what what their capture
points are like like why people find
them so intriguing yes um anyway I'm I'm
a learner I'm a forager like you so I
I'm in the same boat and every once in a
while I think
it it it's stunning to me I don't know
if you've ever looked at your like your
Instagram statistics um but some
somebody um a colleague of mine actually
showed me I was I didn't I didn't
realize you could look at the effect of
each post on follows and unfollows oh I
didn't realize that and you know the I
think my typical ratio might be two or
three to one for a post so you know I'm
gaining two or three to two or three
followers to everyone that I lose the
idea that I could post anything that
would cause someone to unfollow me like
if I said something interesting enough
that you thought I was worth following
how could how could one post change your
mind about that I think you're too
focused on what I think and maybe not
paying attention to how I think um was
my my first reaction to that and then my
second my second thought was well maybe
maybe What's Happening Here is like
people show up and they don't realize
the foundation of evidence behind the
total body of work and so one post you
know strikes them wrong and they think
this person is not credible or they
think that this person has um you know
lost sight of you know of what rigorous
science is I wonder if you you've had
that experience too of like I I think I
I make the mistake of taking for granted
that anybody who followed me knows that
if I post something I think it's worth
thinking about and um you know it's it's
been carefully studied and I didn't have
a you know I didn't have a dog in the
fight I read this research and said this
cleared the bar not only of an academic
Journal um but I read the methods and I
found them sound enough that we ought to
be discussing this idea um have you had
that experience too um I certainly have
and I should say that you know I was
weaned in an academic culture three
separate mentors very different styles
all of whom um were excellent mentors
but all of whom taught me that you know
there are phenomenal papers where every
bit of information in the paper and
indeed how it's written from start start
to finish is just watertight and
incredible and there are other papers
that are less watertight but
occasionally there will be papers where
one data point in a figure is intriguing
enough to consider following that scent
Trail in your own work even if the rest
of the paper is kind of
eh I mean one data point now that
doesn't mean taking one data point and
casting it out to millions of people on
social media as an actionable item is is
is valid that's not what I'm saying but
what I do realize and and I'm realizing
again now after what you just said is
that indeed people don't know the
context under which like what like what
filters are we working with before we
bring things forward and I think that um
you know my belief is that if it's
grounded firmly in the scientific method
that um that's the best starting place
we were talking about that earlier and I
also understand that scientists differ
tremendously in how they look at even
the same data in the same paper so there
is no governing body that says okay this
paper means blank the authors have their
interpretation the students have their
interpretation in fact the course I used
to teach um to undergraduates which grew
into a very large course we would learn
to ask four questions what's the
question that the authors were asking
sometimes a sub question what methods
did they use what did they find and then
what did they conclude and does it
relate back to the original question and
that simple um breaking out of four
questions of a study is essentially what
I do for all studies um but I have my
way of doing and it's going to from the
way that other people do it um social
media uh I think what's interesting is
that I think there's always going to be
a core following of a of a given person
like your your followers that they're
going to trust you know not necessarily
across the board but there there's a
general acceptance of ideas coming
through I think that on social media
it's hard to strike a balance between
setting the whole context and the action
will takeaways I get criticized a lot
for not being concise enough and I agree
but I but I also get criticized for
putting things taking things out of cont
yes so uh such a tight rope walk it's a
tight rope walk and it's always going to
be a tight RPP walk and so I'm going to
just you know keep going and I know you
will too um and and listen I I'm there's
there's some kids out there it's surely
not going to be that that are going to
take our jobs eventually and um and
we'll find a way to do it much better
who knows through AI or something that
might be robots um I feel like this is
an appropriate place to ask about
something else since we're talking about
sort of perception of of of others and
and gleaning information overcoming
blind spots it's something that you've
written about some years ago now I guess
it would be almost eight years ago now
um about
authenticity um you know the word
authenticity is is such a mindfield such
a mindfield I was going to say such has
such a gravit positive gravitational
pull like oh they're really authentic as
opposed to what's the opposite of
authentic fake right but um I think we
could all learn to draw some lines
between authenticity and oversharing
right how do we gauge authenticity and
we can refer people to that article you
wrote some years ago I think um you may
have written it differently where to be
written today but you talked in that
article about somebody who essentially
decided to tell everyone that he worked
with all the things that he was
interested in um uh doing with them
relating to them and it did not serve
him well okay so that's authen right and
so then there's this um this notion of
benevolent deception in order to
preserve relationship and in importantly
um it it brought about a word that we
don't hear about very often but that I I
rather like which is etiquette like
there's so for social media by the way I
apply classroom rules I'll tolerate any
comment in the comment section but not
the sort of comment that I wouldn't
tolerate in a classroom if you start
insulting other you can insult me but if
you want to insult other people I'm not
going to tolerate that so um that's
where I draw the line classroom rules
there's an etiquette and I think that um
etiquette is important so how do we
balance
authenticity
with etiquette and also with preserving
one's uh uh one's public life or private
or private life right authenticity at
home seems important you could be your
complete self at home except when you
want to you know physically hit your
sister or brother because they ate your
ice cream that's not the right kind of
authenticity no no it isn't I think well
there I think it's such a rich and
complicated topic I think F first thing
is like I I don't want people to be
disingenuous ever but I have a real
problem with people saying as an excuse
for disrespectful Behavior well I was
just being myself um I think David
sedera said yes but yourself is an
 so good so good and I think I
think what people forget is that we have
we all have multiple selves right you
you I mean You' you've you've known this
your whole career um we all have
multiple identities we also could think
about yourself as your thoughts your
emotions um your values your personality
so which facet of yourself are you
trying to be true to um I would argue
that authenticity without boundaries is
careless authenticity without empathy is
selfish and part of being authentic is
caring about other people's values that
should be one of your values so what
that means concretely is don't think we
should worry about being authentic to
what we're thinking and feeling in any
given moment I think what we want to ask
is what I'm about to do or say
consistent with my principles and
sometimes that means you will be false
to your personality in order to be true
to your values sometimes that means you
will you will feel like you're not
honoring your thought or your emotion in
the moment um but you're doing that with
a broader view toward who is the person
that I want to be there was a cultural
critic Lionel trilling who wrote about
the idea of sincerity as opposed to
authenticity and I really like this
distinction he said when when you when
you try to think about being authentic
you're trying to bring the inside out
and to point Andrew that's not always
appropriate or effective he said
sincerity is a little bit more about
bringing the outside in so pay attention
to the person you claim to be and then
try to become that
person and that was a little bit of an
aha moment for me I realized you know
there there're all these people who say
well you should you know you should you
should walk your talk
and I think that's good advice I might
even go a step further and say you know
maybe you should only talk it if you're
already walking
it maybe maybe that would help us avoid
hypocrisy but I think the the the
fundamental message here is that uh we
we all we we all could be authentic to
one part of ourselves and inauthentic to
another part and I think the most
important part is to ask what do I stand
for and if I'm what I'm about to
communicate is not consistent with that
then maybe maybe maybe I could self-
censor such great advice and um I
suppose uh one has to wonder about the
the role of a emotional states you know
I think there are
career-ending mistakes that people make
in a moment um especially online
nowadays and by the way this is not just
for people who are already established
in their career I've heard stories and
there seem to be more and more of these
in the news of of for instance you know
videos of things that people said some
years earlier getting them ejected from
college um a guest on Lex Friedman's
podcast who works in the Securities
World said that one of the lessons that
he teaches his kids is to not film
themselves doing bad things but in and
of course also not to do bad things but
in general to just not film themselves
doing anything because of his
understanding of the risk of of doing
that and we don't want to create a
paranoia but um gosh I mean who you are
when you're 14 is a very different
person than who you are when you're 27
and when you're 50 so I hope so you know
and um
so yeah I think you know balancing
authenticity across the lifespan and
we're expecting young minds to do this
and clearly older Minds can't do it
either I mean I I this is a pretty
well-known case of a chair of a major
Psy the major Psychiatry Department um
we won't name the university but um
basically lost his job for a single
tweet he just was not being thoughtful
in fact he was being um really um like
numb to to other people and lost his job
and and I think he Pro I don't know him
um and it was obvious why he lost it I
don't think it was debatable but um gosh
you think about somebody who's a chair
of Psychiatry which means they're a
psychiatrist which means they're trained
to think about
thinking and there you go I it's amazing
how common this is and I think one of
the things that's fascinating to me is I
guess this this goes back to something
we were talking about a moment ago
but I I think that when when we
communicate we have access to the sum
total of all of our thoughts and
everything we've ever ever said that we
can remember and we forget that other
people only have a snapshot and so one
of the questions I I like to ask is if
this was the only post that somebody saw
of mine would I be proud of it would it
communicate who I am and who I aspire to
be oh that's so good if the answer is no
maybe I should pause before I put that
out there that that is excellent advice
if it were the only post like your one
and only representing you oh fantastic
that now that could be paralyzing if
you're a perfectionist you'll never post
but I think for somebody who's posting
regularly um it's a good filter to just
ask um am I you know am I being
thoughtful
enough so good I won't add anything to
that just say I'll just say so so good
let's talk about potential
I was in junior high school and I
remember having a social studies teacher
who she just would go on and on about
potential she had a special program
after school you could get involved
potential potential potential um and we
hear about this and you know we have
untapped potential you hear we're only
operating at 40% of our abilities you
know people will say that um the
implication is that we have reservoirs
of potential that we're just not
accessing because we're not doing the
right things thinking the right things
um I know you've now resarch this topic
extensively you have a new book on this
topic um tell us about potential like do
we all have huge reservoirs of potential
that we are not accessing and of course
I and everyone else wants to know how
can we access those but maybe you could
also tell us some of the myths around
potential and yeah tell us about tell us
about potential such a such a uh sticky
topic for all the right reasons thank
you I uh you know it's one of those
things where you you've had this
experience I'm sure many times where
you start thinking and talking about a
topic and you realize it's it's been
your whole life but you didn't see it
until then uh and I feel that way about
potential I think that I've been
passionate about helping people achieve
their potential as long as I can
remember I think every every goal I've
ever set hasn't been about stretching my
potential in one way or another um or at
least realizing it and what I've become
so struck by as I've studied this topic
is we all have hidden potential but we
don't know how to unlock it so why do we
often underestimate our own potential um
we judge ourselves by by our starting
abilities um and this is more common for
people with fixed mindsets but even
people with growth mindsets um you try a
new skill it doesn't go well and you
think this is not for me I'm not cut out
for this um and then it gets worse when
other people also you know you're not
just underestimating yourself you're
also being under underestimated by
others other people watch you and say
yeah you don't have the you know you're
not a prodigy um you're not a natural
you don't have the talent that it takes
and I think the big myth there is that
um raw talent is the most important
driver of How High people climb um it's
not motivation and opportunity uh matter
more than raw ability for growth
motivation and opportunity yeah um you
know obviously you know everybody starts
at a different point um but how close
you come to your potential is much more
about the character skills you cultivate
um to to improve it improving over time
and then whether you're in a situation
where you know you you have access to
the knowledge that you need and the
tools you need to keep growing and so
you know a concrete example of this for
me is um when I when I started diving I
was way too late uh I picked it up as a
teenager uh a lot of the elite divers in
the world start by five
goodness and actually in China they're
they're handpicked by for body type and
sent to a version of diving boarding
school where they don't even teach kids
how to swim uh they tie a rope around
them so that they can just pull them
back after after they they hit the water
in the deep end what part of their body
they tie a rope around uh I think it's
their waist so they're diving with a
rope so that when they get in the water
they're not wasting any energy exactly
they're just being dragged through the
water and out that's uh that's my
understanding of it um wow but PR okay
they have to walk they have to climb
yeah okay so there a bunch of other
things they have to do yeah but the the
the swimming apparently is very
secondary anyway um so I started really
late and I
lacked most of the things that you would
want as a diver um I I couldn't touch my
toes without bending my knees uh my
teammates called me Frankenstein because
I was so stiff when I walked uh so
lacking the flexibility I have no rhythm
my coach brought a metronome to practice
one day and I couldn't even keep the
beat uh so you know you think about
diving as a sport of Grace nope and then
I also couldn't jump and I couldn't
twist either and so it's like you're
missing the explosive power you don't
have the the atticism um and I think if
I had if I had just looked at those
abilities I had no business being a
diver and in fact no business being an
athlete I'd already been cut from the
Middle School basketball team three
times I didn't make the high school
soccer team those were the two sports I
had poured a decade into like this was
going nowhere um
Eric just the most incredible coach I
could ever imagine he said to me on the
first day of practice uh he said um you
know yes you're missing all these things
but I believe if you if you pour
yourself into this sport that you could
be a state finalist by the time you
finish high school and he saw more
potential in me than I saw in myself and
that just lit a fire under
me and um you know what that translated
into is a lot of the behaviors that that
you and I have both studied um you know
setting specific difficult goals for I
want to learn these Dives that seat to
reach um for uh you know I want to
increase my score over the next three
meets by 10 points um for I want to
learn how to you know all my limitations
notwithstanding one thing that I can
master that I have total control over is
how clean I go into the water um I can
get a rip entry so that there's no
splash and that's the most important
part of a dive and one of the greatest
compliments I ever got as a diver was I
came out of a meet in um it was a couple
years in I think I was maybe a junior in
high school and uh one of the judges
turned to Eric and said all he can do is
rip and Eric said
so like yes it's awesome it's almost
like saying all can do is win you know
it yeah it was it was a great backhanded
compliment but Eric was like listen he
made the dive it has a degree of
difficulty maybe he didn't jump as high
as he wanted maybe his tight his tuck
wasn't as tight as he wanted um but at
the end of the day like that dive
disappeared straight up and down into
the water you can't not give that a
seven um and that ended up serving me
really well and so I think the the
broader lesson here for me was Eric said
to me um actually last year uh I never
thought about this he said uh I never
got close to even qualifying for Olympic
trials like I did not have the talent to
to be that good but I got way better
than I ever expected and Eric said to me
he said looking back uh he said you got
further with less Talent than every any
diver I've ever coached and that was so
meaningful to me and what it reminded me
was um my proudest accomplishments were
not in the areas where I started out
with the most Talent they were in the
areas where I had overcome the most
obstacles and I think that to me is um
really what drives people around
potential is to say um it's not
performance that's motivating it's a
sense of
progress I love that story and I and I
couldn't agree more I mean I think um
Lord knows my favorite Topic in science
is the course I performed at least after
my freshman year which was abysmal um
least well in the phase when I was doing
well and what class was it neural
development I now teach neural
development neural development how bad
were you at it at first uh okay well I
have to put it in context my high school
and freshman year of college were were
abysmal right I basically no place being
there I can only thank my high school
girlfriend for um being so wonderful
that I followed her off to college and
ended up there um left after my freshman
year came back and then at that point it
was like a step function I worked out of
fear and excitement and love of the
material um I I was a straight A student
thereafter but in my senior year senior
year excuse me I took a course in neural
development which was extremely
challenging um and I a B+ and that B+
still gets me you know but it's a topic
that I love the most it's what I did my
um graduate thesis on it's what I
teached um at Stanford among other
topics and um and I like to think now I
have I guess humility had considerable
Mastery over over the the material but
it's because I didn't do as well as I
would have liked and I applied myself so
much and I think that it just didn't
come naturally to me and then eventually
over time you you kind of get it or you
get um you get it um so it's it but it's
still my favorite topic because because
it was that friction point right it's
the ratcheting through and there's
something I don't know that's just so
intrinsically satisfying to me I used to
watch my Bulldog Mastiff Costello like
chewing on a bone or when he was on a
brick cuz you know he had a kind of a
Homer Simpson brain about his object
choice to chew on and he and he just
looked like he was in just total Bliss
it was like this effort um combined with
some intrinsic pleasure of the process
and so I think that when one is
ratcheting through something that's hard
it feels so good that it's almost better
than the outcome like it it it is better
than the outcome I I think it is and you
know it's it's fascinating because this
is why I'm always bothered by people
saying play to your strengths because if
you do that you will gravitate to toward
the things that come naturally to you
and you're going to miss out on the very
often the the skill that was hard for
you to learn to your point is one that
you end up with greater Mastery over
because you had to put in the extra
effort and you end up deriving more more
satisfaction out of the fact that you
know I this was really tough and I
figured it out um you know implicit in
your story um and maybe partially
explicit in in some parts um when I was
when I was looking at the character
skills that help people realize their
potential um and really fuel unexpected
growth um I I ended up finding three
that I think are underd discussed and um
and well supported by science um I think
that that basically if you want to reach
your potential or um you know achieve
more than you think you're capable of
we're looking at becoming a creature of
discomfort um and embracing things that
are unpleasant or awkward for you uh
that would be the first thing the second
is um is being a sponge and soaking up
new information and also filing
filtering out what might not be useful
and then the third is um is being an
imperfectionist which is knowing when to
aim for excellence and when to settle
for good and I I hear all of those
themes in your story um I you know that
was OB obviously uncomfortable like you
got to B+ you don't want to do any more
neur development like not at all it was
it was so frustrating and so exciting to
me at the same time and then I went
everything I did in the five or seven
years that followed was all about
learning more about this topic because
and it wasn't about performing well or
proving myself I just I I love the
material so much more because of how
challenging it was and I'm grateful to
you Ben ree the professor at UC Santa
Barbara incredible neuron anatomist and
teacher of neural development and and
laboratory scientist because um you know
I think had gotten an an a I don't know
that I would have fallen in love with it
in the same way isn't that weird you
wouldn't have had to work at it to
discover what was fun about it I imagine
no absolutely and it's still one of my
favorite topics to teach um and learn
about so you mentioned discomfort being
a sponge SL filter if I got that right Y
and an
imperfectionist um yeah tell me more
about the imperfectionist piece because
I feel like um I've had students in my
lab and I've known people in other
domains of life that they're they're
absolutely paranoid about shipping
something out for the world to see it
and of course like no one wants to put
stuff out into the world that isn't
right and God forbid could be wrong but
um or that's going to embarrass us so
you can understand why people are
perfectionists but I never really
understood the the uh the extreme
perfectionists like how do they ever do
anything and and are they happy people
because I can't imagine that they are no
I mean this is so Thomas Curran I think
is the world's leadest leading
psychologist studying perfectionism and
if you look at his meta analyses uh
perfectionism is a recipe for Burnout
and depression and anxiety because
you're constantly comparing yourself to
an ideal that's unachievable um
perfectionists um are not they do get
better grades in school slightly but
they don't do any better at work than
their peers because I think in school
you have a predictable outcome uh you
have a general sense of what's going to
be on a test and if you study hard
enough you can come closer to the A+
whereas at work performance is much more
nebulous and so what happens to
perfectionists a lot of times is they
end up um optimizing the things that are
predictable and controllable and then
you know sort of missing the forest and
the trees and I think the you know the
the antidotes um as far as I know really
have to to do with calibration so you
know I talked earlier about um how I
like to ask for a zero to 10 to find out
you know am I in the ballpark or not
well one of my biggest liabilities as as
a diver was I was never satisfed with my
score and one day Eric said to me you
know you you hear Olympic judges talk
about or commentators talk about the
perfect 10 that's a misnomer um if you
look at the diving role book a 10 is for
excellence not for Perfection there's no
such thing as a Flawless dive I can look
at Dives that have gotten a straight
tens and point out 19 things that were
wrong with them but they were excellent
and so then we had to define the
standards of excellence so what I have
as a recovering perfectionist somebody
who you know just beat myself up
constantly in fact I got um we paper
plate Awards on my swim team and one
year I was given the if only award and
there's a little cartoon in me and it
says if only I had pointed my left pinky
toe I would have gotten an eight and a
half instead of an eight and that was
like the story of my my diving career
and I did not want to be that person
anymore and so one of the things I've
learned to do is to when I start
anything um you know if I sit down to
write a book I'm aiming for a nine uh
and the reason for that is I'm going to
pour a couple years of you know my work
life into this topic um you know
hopefully a lot of people are going to
read it and I want to make sure it's
truly the best work I can produce social
media post I'm okay with a seven like if
I'm only shooting for a nine I'm not
going to post very often because you're
nine you're sealing for nine is or your
threshold for nine is is so exceedingly
high high yeah and I want it to keep
getting higher over time so my idea of a
nine today is much more challenging than
it was 10 years ago and I think this is
this is what people probably don't do
enough um especially if you're an
extreme perfectionist is they don't
realize okay um Let me let me figure out
how important this task is and then for
this task a six is sufficient uh so that
then I can pour my energy into you know
pulling the the seven and a half toward
a nine where it really matters um and
inevitably if you don't do that what you
will do is you will get a bunch of nines
on things that are completely trivial I
went to a high school where we had a
couple kids get um perfect on the SAT
they were the big like Center old list
of all the early admissions to all the
fancy IV League schools I definitely was
not on that list I don't even know if I
yeah I don't even know if I was anywhere
uh near that list um probably not um and
some of them have gone on to have
terrific lives and seem pretty happy and
I know a number of them and in contact
with them and um I think for some of
them that performed exceedingly well on
standardized tests early on um I hear a
bit more dismay in their in their
current life not all but um is there I
have to imagine there are data on his
sort of early high performance being a
seed for challenges later on obviously
you don't want the the opposite um the
sort of what I guess they refer to now
is a you know complete Failure to Launch
you know people not meeting the the
mileston towards being um
self-sufficient adults but um yeah what
are some of the dangers of success when
thinking about realizing one's larger
potential
oh that's such an interesting question
um I
think yeah I think the data on this go
both ways so you know some early success
is um you know it's a motivator it
builds the kind of momentum you were
talking about earlier um you know like
there's a goal setting researchers like
lock and leam have talked about um The
High Performance Cycle where you hit a
goal and then that builds your
confidence and then you set a more
ambitious goal and then you reach it and
there's this upward spiral over time but
there's also a of evidence that
achieving your goals can make you
complacent uh and there's a sometimes
it's called The Fat Cat syndrome where
where you end up resting on your laurels
and then there are also competency traps
where you get good at something and then
you keep doing it the way you've always
done it and you don't realize the world
is changed around you like I'm I'm
allergic to the idea of best practices
like the moment you call a practice best
you've created an illusion that you're
done and the moment like think about um
pre-co like a lot of companies had
really you know what they thought were
effective models for collaboration and
all of a sudden their best practices are
not feasible because everybody's working
remotely uh and they've got to throw
that out the window and look for better
practices for an evolved world so I
think
um those are the things I worry about
most with early
success uh I think that one of the
things I would love to see more people
do when it comes to reaching potential
is um is to figure out what does my
failure budget look like so um I tell
you my experience on this um you know it
started I wrote I wrote a first book um
gave a TED Talk and pretty soon felt
like I was spending 80% of my time
saying things I already knew and I was
getting typ cast I'm like I'm not
learning and growing but I'm also not I
don't feel like I'm contributing new
knowledge to the world what am I going
to do about that and 20 rolls around I'm
like you know what this I'm going to
start a podcast and that will be my you
know my learning mechanism
and I didn't know if it was going to
work I didn't know how the medium would
work for me I didn't know if people were
going to want to listen to my voice I
certainly don't um maybe Morgan Freeman
likes the sound of his own voice I like
I like listening to your podcast thank I
also enjoy listening to yours but
you I think everybody hates the sound of
their voice I just I just wasn't sure
for a lot of reasons whether it was
going to work um and then I thought
about it and I realized well all of the
the pivotal moments in my career have
come from taking a
risk and I thought that I needed to
build the confidence in order to do it
and I was reflecting on goal setting
research as as one does and realized you
know like the confidence is going to
come through doing it um and so let me
try it and I guess what I took away was
if I don't if I never fail it means I'm
not challenging myself I'm not embracing
discomfort um I'm not being enough of an
imperfectionist so so um I set a I
actually set a goal that I would start
at least one project every year that
didn't succeed and let's be clear I'm
not aiming for failure what I'm doing is
is creating an acceptable zone of
failure to know that that's going to
motivate some risk-taking and some
experimentation and hopefully some
growth and I know it's hard for a lot of
people to do this in their lives
especially if you have a you know a
super demanding boss um but I think
we're we're all better off from a you
know a growth in potential standpoint if
we've got you know if you if you succeed
on 90% of your projects that should be a
hugely successful year if you succeed on
100% I think you're aiming too low what
are some of the projects that uh you are
currently spinning in the back of your
mind that would be fun but uh if you're
willing to share um yeah that for you
still strike a little bit of a of an
anxiety cord like oh no like are you um
I don't know are you a musician do you
not are car tun can't keep a beat um are
you thinking about um becoming a
musician or exploring playing music I me
what how the reason I ask it that way is
um how far into your discomfort Zone do
you reach in order to um in order to
challenge yourself because I think that
everyone needs to have thresholds like
there are a lot of things that yeah I
wish I could play a musical instrument
frankly but I'm I'm not that motivated
to do it mostly because I enjoy hearing
other people play music so much that I'm
perfectly happy I'm saded yeah there's
also enough good music out there you
don't have to create yeah there's
definitely a lot of great music yeah um
so I think there's like a there's a
micro and a macro version of this so on
the micro side um in the past year um I
I did this work Life podcast for five
years where I was you know taking the
core of my organizational psychology
work and trying to take on a topic and
and make it interesting and useful to
people and then realizing I was feeling
constrained just to focus on work and as
a psychologist there are lots of other
things I want to take on and so we
expanded into um this second show
rethinking and I have some experiments
I'm tempted to try but I've been really
hesitant to do them so um did you watch
wrestling growing up ever professional
wrestling um I did watch a little bit of
it and then for whatever reason in the
last year of my good friend Rick Rubin
who's he's like not obsessed but he is a
real devotee he's a fan of professional
wrestling he had me watch some um WWE
but even aew he was explaining that it's
basically physical drama he's explaining
why it's so intriguing to him and so
informative to him and then uh I'm a big
fan of of uh certain genre of music and
large Rickson from ranid is a is a huge
wrestling fan so now got multiple people
that I've come into contact with are
like telling me all this stuff about
wrestling so wrestling seems to be
cropping up more and more all right so I
don't know the first thing about
wrestling I think I caught it a few
times as a kid likewise it was Hulk
Hogan and a few others passed across
screen yeah yep yep but the the thing
that I remember was loving the tag team
matches where you know somebody would
get overpowered and then they pull in
somebody to help I think it would be so
interesting if there was a podcast where
you take is issues that people
fundamentally disagree on and you start
a debate and then somebody can tag in if
they want to challenge an argument and
so instead of concent concentrating on
the particular guests you have you
basically have a problem you're trying
to you know to get to the roots of and
you're going to have all these people
jump in and and hopefully build toward a
more insightful perspective on it I have
no idea if this is going to work I'd
really love to try it and this is the
first time I've spoken out loud about it
because I'm like I I don't know that I
want to like that I want to see that
crash and burn and yet like why not like
what's the risk I think it's so cool it
be fun right yeah what what topics are
are uh are you thinking about covering
because I can think of some pretty
pretty controversial topics um but I
want to know what the ones you're
thinking about well I mean I literally
just I mean I'm thinking out loud here
but one one that I think on the
controversial front that would be could
be really rich is um to think about
policies for Trans athletes in sports
that's a controversial topic usually
controversial but also I've I've talked
to some experts on this I I've talked to
some trans athletes um and the people
who are deep in this do not know what
they think the policy should be and so I
I think actually hearing them talk and
you know understanding the complexity of
those issues and then you know maybe
hammering out what what's a policy you
would propose for schools what would you
want for you know for Olympic events um
I I just think that would be fascinating
and I'd love to I'd love to moderate
that discussion goodness uh I may would
I wouldn't I don't into that I'm glad
you would I wouldn't that seems like one
of the most barbed wire topics one could
ever um embark on which is exactly why
I'm going to put in my vote you
absolutely should do this podcast I
think it's an amazing idea actually
folks put in the comment section on
YouTube whether or not Adam should do
this podcast and and that topic in
particular I think it would be amazing
because um one thing that I keep coming
back to in my own mind is that a lot of
the controversies out there stem from
the fact that we very often have
individuals pitted against individuals
yes and there's so much lost in that um
and I think about science and going back
to the scientific method where we have
subfields pitted against subfields when
when you talk about a field like there
was huge controversy over the structure
of DNA and it wasn't one individual
against another what you had are small
groups different camps and there was
some partial overlap there's also you
know if you read the double helix there
was also a lot of uh uh complicated
Behavior you people people entering
romantic relationships just to G
information from the other side you know
human beings not not at their finest um
but in any event small panels arguing
competing teams competing I think is um
far more interesting and informative
than individuals you know butting heads
I think so too and I think um you know
another another one that I think would
be really interesting I mean I'm like
people always say great minds think
alike no great minds challenge each
other to think differently and we just
don't do enough of that so
I I've been thinking a lot politically
like what if we brought together a bunch
of people um who are not ideologues but
are really interested in pragmatic
policy solutions to rewrite the
Constitution if we were going to build
one today you'd like to tackle big stuff
I just I know I love it I love it it's a
compliment it's a compliment I mean what
are the odds like I said earlier no weak
sauce no week sauce like you just you're
you go right for it I mean these listen
these are the issues that people are
really activated by because these are
really core issues they get down to the
autonomic nervous system they're in the
hypothalamus as we say but I don't think
they should be like I look at these
topics and think I just want to get it
right like I don't have a vested
interest in what the model should be I
just know that even the wisest people of
250 years ago were not prepared to
anticipate the world we live in today
and we ought to be constantly like I
don't know I don't think you should live
in a world where you affirm your beliefs
uh I think the only way you learn is by
continually evolving your beliefs and so
I guess I'm trying to figure out more
ways to catalyze that around issues
people care about but I don't care about
the issues I care about the stretching
of thinking and the improving the way
that the world works well I'll tell you
if you decide to do this podcast with
the tag team form I love that you
gleaned it from watching wrestling a
couple of times um around these uh very
controversial issues uh I promise you
that will be one of the most popular and
important podcasts on the planet Earth
might be podcast on other planets I hear
that they're you know galaxies far far
away with a they may have podcast too
may have had them for much longer than
we have but um that's uh that's a winner
yeah well maybe maybe I'll try it as a
little experiment on the rethinking feed
and see if it's an unmitigated
disaster well you know where my vote
lies I I appreciate that so okay so to
go back to your question for a second on
the macro side I've always thought it
would be fun to try to write a Sci-Fi
novel and the question I'm wrestling
with right now is that a good use of my
time like there are great sci-fi writers
out there there aren't that many social
scientists communicating about the
topics that I do and it feels like it
might be I don't know I'm like this
is it might be too much of a diversion
then again uh according to your words um
you had no talent in diving but you
exceeded all all uh performance metrics
um by by a considerable amount uh
through motivation and um and
opportunity I get that right um I vote
Yes I'm not I haven't read much sci-fi
maybe I need to read read more sci-fi
are you a fan of sci-fi I love sci-fi
it's it's one of my favorite ways to
imagine a better world and also you know
prevent a worse one from emerging but I
don't know there's a there's a part of
me that thinks all right there's a
there's Ru Bernstein and colleagues uh
did this do you know this research on um
Nobel prize winning scientists and what
differentiates them them from their
peers uh no but uh being the son of a
physicist and having been surrounded by
just by circumstance a number of Nobel
Prize winners uh when I was a kid young
kid I'm very curious to know what what
the This research says I mean there
there's there are many themes you could
glean from it but the the thing that
really jumped out at me is uh the Nobel
Prize winners are more likely to have
artistic Hobbies H Fineman certainly did
yep um I mean there's a long list of
them but if you break it down in the
data it was um they're twice as likely
as their peers to play a musical
instrument they're seven times as likely
to draw a paint they're 12 times as
likely to do um poetry or fiction
creative writing and get this 22 times
as likely as their peers 22 to dance act
or yes perform as
magicians as a former magician I was
very excited by this yeah well I wasn't
going to ask about magic but let's talk
about it I was on a vacation with every
year I take my sister to New York for
her birthday and my birthday cuz our
birthdays are close together and we went
and saw a magician Mentalist um by the
name of aie wind um Azie I think is the
correct pronounciation um who just just
like the last time I saw him absolutely
blew my mind I there's no way it's not
magic of course I know it's not magic
but it's um that but my understanding is
that there are some things that he and
other great mentalists and magicians do
where they are not absolutely certain of
the outcome they're they're playing it's
probabilistic um and so there's a risk
and a thrill for them too um and that
they're also creating memories and
erasing memories and um that's something
that we I may host aie on the podcast
because he's very effective at creating
memories and erasing memories that's a
lot of what he does and he has tactics
to do that in any event um I wasn't
going to ask about magic but I know that
you were a professional magician at at
one point in your life um and that you
you did this presumably because you
enjoyed doing it um but getting beyond
the the of pull the rabbit out of the
hat or pick or identify the card that
the person picked out of the the
shuffled stack um what is it and what
was it about magic that intrigues you
does it inform anything about um the
work that you do now it does yeah I yeah
I think it when I started I was 12 and I
was just it was just fun and I was
looking for a way to entertain other
people and entertain myself in the
process and then you know became a
challenge can I learn this new skill and
can I can I master this trick I think um
nerdiest thing I did in college was I
started a magic club with David Quang
who is a a stellar magician and Cru
verbalist as he calls it crus verbalist
he does um magic crossword puzzles
essentially that I I can't do it justice
you have to see it it's unreal um and I
watched him for you know our first
performance together and realized one of
us is going to make it as a magician and
it's not me uh he's he's outstanding
anyway um the way it figures into my
work now is I think so much of good
science communication is
misdirection and it's the same skill I
Ed as magician if I told you that the
the card you picked was about to
disappear from the deck and appear on
the window you would not be nearly as
intrigued as if it happened by surprise
and I think the same is true when when
we communicate knowledge I think it's
it's actually why so many of my posts
you flagged this earlier so many of my
posts start with um you know this thing
is not what you think it's actually this
other thing um I think that you know
challenging conventional Wis questioning
assumptions is is what surprises people
um and then leads them to think either I
have something to learn or Oh no I got
to put up a shield because my beliefs
are being um challenged or attacked and
I think the the art form of magic was
always about creating a surprise that
would Delight people um as opposed to
Leading people to feel like they were
tricked or duped or manipulated and so I
think the the challenge for me is to say
Okay I want to figure out what what do
we know from Behavioral Science um you
know mostly f focusing on psychology
because that's my core expertise um what
do we know that's actually different
from most intuition and then how do I
explain that in a way that surprises
people but leads them to say oh that's
so interesting as opposed to that's
wrong and then want to fight about it
it's almost as if you give them the
experience of what you're trying to
teach them so that the oh that's wrong
can't uh be the available response yes
because in Magic you know it's it's um
everyone knows it's magic just like with
professional wrestling Folks by the way
it there's there's some prior
understanding of of what's going to
happen maybe they go off script but I
think that's actually I think part of
the interest in professional wrestling
for those that are extreme fans of
professional wrestling is that they
almost want to wonder about whether or
not some of it is not in the plan like
it's a suspension of of reality that
they seem to enjoy right because if you
know something's
or well we should we should be I should
be more careful about my language in
with magic like when I went to see aie I
mean I I don't think it's actual magic
but he's able to give the illusion of
Magic the real illusion is that it's
magic right it's not the illusion of
making the card hop to somewhere else in
the room um and he is phenomenal and I
highly recommend people go see his show
if they if they get the opportunity but
the I think they're doing a documentary
about him now actually there'll be some
Netflix stuff as well um
but it's the illusion that magic exists
That's so
exciting um so with science
communication yeah I always um aim for
four things I don't always achieve them
but and I think you do as well uh if I
may that um a topic be interesting clear
ideally actionable but not always and
the the quadfecta is when it's also
surprising so interesting clear
actionable and surprising sort of is the
the ultimate if there's sort of a like a
oh I didn't realize that but it's it's
hard to find data points that satisfy
all four criteria and the surprising is
the least important by far um I assume
table Stakes is it's rigorous oh well
okay sitting underneath all four of
those points are uh that it's s that
it's actual science right someone didn't
just say it right it's not conjecture or
Theory so that means that there's data
to support it and that the data were
collected with with the appropriate
amount of rigor right so there's a
there's a reservoir of stuff that sits
underneath that as a foundation so G
given the the Baseline of rigor how I
find what's interesting clear actionable
and hopefully surprising although I
would I okay I would make a case there's
a classic article that Murray Davis
wrote one of my all-time favorites he
was a a sociologist who wrote a paper
called that's interesting and he opened
the paper by saying um ideas live not
because they're true but because they're
interesting which decimated one of my
core beliefs like I I thought it was
accuracy that drove people's beliefs and
he said no ideas live because they're
interesting
and then he goes to build an index of
the interesting to explain when people
are intrigued and his case is that most
of interest is surprise and he breaks
down all the ways that you can turn
conventional wisdom upside down you can
say that um something you thought was
bad was actually good or vice versa you
can argue that um something you thought
was homogeneous is actually
heterogeneous uh you could argue that
something you thought was individual was
actually a collective phenomenon or vice
versa and he he's got this wonderful
breakdown of of all the ways of being
interesting and he's the one who made
the distinction between ideas that
challenge weakly held assumptions
intriguing you and strongly held
assumptions um you know sort of
offending you but I think from Davis's
View and I think he's right a huge
amount of interest is surprise and so
but I don't think it's the only driver
of Interest so I might I might take your
criteria and say okay we start with
rigor um we want to go to interest
Clarity and actionability how do we get
to interest let's build a submodel of
the factors that drive interest and
surprise might be it might have the
biggest beta weight in the regression
equation um but what else what else
drives interest I have a couple
hypotheses I want to hear yours um
you've been doing this actively um and
highly effectively Beyond surprise what
else interests people in your
content anything that draws on
self-reflection for them boom I think we
all have an innate desire to better
understand ourselves why why we work the
way we do why we don't work as well as
we would like to in certain domains like
some and and cast understanding on on
our experiences of others too like oh
now it makes sense like with I'm going
back to the the kti episodes but we did
several of them so for um I think it's
appropriate you know to learn from him
that narcissism is Envy it represents a
a extreme deficiency in the pleasure um
that people narcissists can have an
extreme pleasure drive but they they
always feel like they have far less than
they would like to have and that others
have far more of it because they don't
have that same yearning for it right and
so that narcissism at its core is deep
envy that to me was like wow you know
and to to realize that and to Now
understand that all this discussion that
you hear out there about narcissist
everyone calling other people narcissist
that um there are genuine narcissists
out there and what they really suffer
from is an extreme deficit in pleasure
and they're constantly envious of others
it reframed everything I thought about
narcissists about them being overbearing
which they can be and often are um etc
etc so I think it's also anything that
leads to um like oh I can I can I can
navigate narcissist better with that
well that I mean that checks all your
boxes um it's very surprising because
it's not the way we normally understand
narcissism but I think you you hit on
for me what's the maybe even it's at
least as important as surprise maybe
more so is
self-relevance and it doesn't have to be
actionable right it has to in a lot of
cases just help you understand or make
sense of something that's been puzzling
or that's you know that's um you know
sort of I I think I'm
almost always surprised when I say
something from you know here here's
here's a synthesis of research here's a
meta analysis and I think it's kind of
obvious and people get excited about it
because it gave them language to
describe something they had felt but
they didn't know how to articulate or
talk about and I think
that I mean I think this is why most of
the most popular TED Talks um are about
human behavior um because people are
interested in people um and if you learn
something about you or about others you
don't have to immediately do anything
with that uh to find it intriguing and
even useful um because it enriched your
worldview a recent guest on this podcast
we haven't aired it yet but um maybe
it'll be out by time this this airs was
with Lisa Feldman Barrett she's um
psychologist turn neuroscientist right
St emotion of course yeah and she
described um in how in certain cultures
there is a language for subcategories of
emotions emotional granularity right so
you know she described a word in
Japanese I don't recall what the word
was um that describes the the feeling of
sadness that one has after getting a
particularly bad haircut something that
I don't think you or I uh are familiar
with but I'm familiar with from my
experience of of romantic Partners being
like really unhappy about their haircut
you're like you're like you're sad but
there but by having a specific word for
a specific experience people feel less
alone and the feeling passes more
quickly in time and and then she gave
some other examples uh from German and
from you know uh Scandinavian um
languages and so forth and I find this
so interesting it's like the moment
people hear that they are not alone in
an experience there's nothing actionable
about it but it it creates a cognitive
shift thereafter in which they suffer
less um or may feel more connected to
others I mean I think it's really a
beautiful example of of exactly what
you're referring to like when we learn
about something and we we identify with
it it's powerful it's very powerful and
I think um psychologist often say name
it to tame it um affect labeling is one
of the most effective emotion regulation
strategies and when we when we talked
about distraction and reframing earlier
I should have said there's a third
strategy which is literally just to
describe what you're feeling um it it it
seems to allow people then to reason
with and process whatever they're
feeling as opposed to allowing the
feeling to control them and I I probably
got the clearest sense of this in um in
2021 um I wrote a New York Times article
on um on languishing um the feeling of
Matt or
blah and I have never had anything I any
article I wrote resonate like this and
it just I all the the PO the posts that
tag me were just like it me it me it us
and it was like the like one and two
word reactions and I I don't think it
was the content that mattered to people
it was the just having the term um all
of a sudden people realized this was
originally Cory Keys's research that I
was referencing um it had been a light
bulb for me to say there's a if you
think about the spectrum of well-being
this is related to your mental illness
versus mental health distinction um
those are two extremes of the Continuum
and on one end we have depression and
burnout on another end we have you know
well-being and flourishing languishing
lives right in the middle as Corey
describes it it's the absence of
well-being so you're not depressed you
still have hope you're not burned out
you still have energy but you're not at
Peak functioning you're missing a sense
of purpose um you feel like you're
stagnating and you're empty and you know
there was something about just saying
the word languishing that led people to
to realize yeah that's a thing and of
course we're languishing we're standing
still in the middle of a a global
experiment that no one opted into which
violates all rules of consent um by by
science last time I checked um but I
think that that that's something that
that probably is underrepresented when
we're trained to communicate as
scientists to say one of the most
valuable things we do is we give people
language to talk about things and I
think that's a massive part of um of
your impact is uh this is one of the big
things I've learned from you Andrew is I
I I used to be a little bit dismissive
of um of cognitive Neuroscience in
particular I thought understanding the
brain has not taught me that much about
the mind like being able to you know
Trace
um uh let's take a simple example like
when I read Joe Leo's research being
able to trace um you know certain um
amydala responses um you know as the
root of how people deal with fight or
flight and and threat I'm like I don't
know that that helped me that much like
if I could just describe fight ORF
flight do I need the amydala and you've
convinced me I was wrong about that
because when people have when they
understand the um the neurological
substrates of their thoughts feelings
and actions um they believe them more
they're like oh like there is a
mechanism for this it's being produced
inside my head and even though I can't
see it um it's there and it can be
studied with the tools of science um I
think that's a really big deal and I I
really regret the fact that I didn't
spend more time on cognitive
Neuroscience because I think I'd be a
better Psy a better psychologist today
oh well again thanks for the kind words
I think that um a fortunate evolution in
our fields or even field if I may um
over the last 10 years is that whereas
Neuroscience itself even needs to be
subdivided into neur anatomy and the
neurophysiology it's lumped into all
Neuroscience but it now includes
psychology computational Neuroscience
cognitive Neuroscience it's all you know
I think I I consider us um you know we
have different perspectives and
different training obviously but doing a
lot of the same things um just uh using
different um different dissection tools
and different different language based
tools and listen what you've done uh I
won't even say masterfully I mean just
with like extreme virtuosity is to wrap
your hands around such an enormous
literature related to psychology I mean
the human mind and behavior and thought
processes and emotions and potential and
you know so many topics and to um and
to extract the the most valuable gems
from that literature and communicate
them in a way that anyone can understand
and um it's it's an extreme gift uh to
be able to do that and it's um and it's
clear it's working because like you
mentioned this article on languishing
which we will provide a reference to or
a link to in our caption because I want
to go read that now I mean I'm always
struck by this feeling of like am I I'm
not tired but you know like I've got
tons to do but like why do I just want
to like sit here for and I'm like maybe
I need to sit here but then you get into
all the like the well okay but you know
I need to there's a lot to do there's a
lot to get up and go I don't want to
waste my life and yeah rest is good too
but I think languishing is something
that like I definitely can resonate with
that so when I had a bulldog it felt a
lot easier to do cuz he was always
languishing but um do you ever just
languish or are you busy enough that you
you just feel like you're always a
forward Center of mass I think everybody
languishes I think it's part of the
human condition and I think it might
even be evolutionarily adaptive because
I I remember um another sort of uh
mind-altering idea I remember reading
Randy nessie's argument that mild
depression could be evolutionarily
functional that you know obviously
clinical depression um is debilitating
in a lot of ways but you know low-grade
sadness um Lincoln's Melancholy um we
know one of one of the things it can do
is broaden your field of vision um and
you know for for many people sadness is
a signal that something is not working
and it can motivate problem solving um
it can in some cases um open access to
New Perspectives um unfortunately those
potential benefits of sadness are often
overridden by the motivational cost and
also the the fact that you now spend all
this time regulating your sadness and
wondering why you're sad right and so
it's it's hard to harness but um I I had
a similar thought about languishing from
this perspective to say that you know
maybe moments of languishing open us up
to change um when we get stuck uh
sometimes we realize you have to move
backward in order to make progress um
sometimes you have to unlearn things
that you thought you knew um in order to
to keep
growing and um I you know I don't a
friend of mine said he read my
languishing piece and he's like you're
not the languishing type I'm like okay
maybe everybody's Baseline is different
like I I think one of the things I'm I'm
really lucky to is high reserves of
energy um but for me languishing is like
I felt like I did nothing today um and
you know in a typical day like if I'm
writing a book I should be able to like
write a thousand words I'm proud of and
I don't like a single word that I
produced or I sat at my blinking cursor
like staring at the computer screen and
for the eenth time wondered like did
they call it a cursor because of all the
writers who've cursed
it and then I end up like Googling
what's the like what are the Latin roots
of the word cursor where did this come
from and like that is not a good use of
time it's like that's not forward Mass
that's like I'm spinning so so good yeah
I I think everybody languishes um and I
aspire to do it less often but not never
love it what does cursor what is the
root of cursor people will look it up
put hey folks put it in the put it in
the uh comments on YouTube um I did I
did look it up oh good okay you'll tell
us now no I I feel like there's a
there's a footnote in Hidden potential
and I'm trying to remember it comes from
um kurer I think and um the cursor um
originally came NOP I don't want to do
it I'm going to skip it I don't remember
this is your Hipp your hippocampus is
smart enough to have discarded that
information and you have more important
things to do forgive me for asking the
question folks put in the comments on
YouTube so good I have one more question
about potential uh you have children
correct three um and a lot of our
listeners either are children or
children um and even for those that
don't have children I'm curious with the
vast array of knowledge that you now
have about potential and the fact that
kids are these incredible sponges right
they I mean they they certainly
experience discomfort we know that they
are sponges we absolutely know that
sometimes they're filters we try and
teach them to be
filters and hopefully they are
imperfectionists maybe there are kids
that are just perfectionist by default
but have to imagine that they aren't
because standards come about when we
become aware of other people's
performance
right what sorts of messages do
you recommend parents give their kids
and what sorts of messages are you
actually implementing that perhaps are
different than you uh were prior to
researching and writing your book on
potential oh interesting well the first
thing I should say is um Becky Kennedy
Dr Becky is my favorite source of of
insight on parenting and she's changed
the way I think of the way I think about
a lot of what I do with our kids um but
my wife Allison is she her instincts
about effective parenting are so
sophisticated I feel like every day I
learned something from watching her
communicate with our kids and so I I
came in thinking all right I'm going to
write this book about potential I'm not
going to do a parenting chapter because
I want everything to be relevant to
parents and um sure enough there's a
chapter that had nothing to do with
parenting where I like oh I actually um
I'm reading this research and there was
a moment where I did something well and
I didn't even mean to do it um and this
is something that I think everyone um
probably underutilizes I don't want
actually that's an overstatement I think
a lot of people um don't appreciate the
importance of of this approach to
Parenting um and I am trying to do it
more often so um quick quick story and
then I'll I'll back up into the
principes so I was uh I was getting
ready to give my first T talk uh a
number of years ago extremely nervous um
I'm a shy introvert I was for a long
time afraid of public speaking I
remember in college literally shaking um
to raise my hand uh being that nervous
and now I'm supposed to get in the red
circle um not my idea of comfort zone
and I happen to mention to our oldest
daughter that I was nervous and I asked
her for advice on what I should do and
she said I think I think at the time
let's see she must have been she was
seven maybe I think seven uh maybe six
anyway um she said uh look for a smiling
face in the
audience
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so it was it was one of those moments
where I'm like oh that's such a good
idea um why didn't I think of that like
yes I can do that I know people who are
going to be in the audience so I asked a
couple of friends to sit the front rows
and I I locked eyes with a couple of
them and my nerves went down a little
bit so a couple weeks later um Joanna's
getting ready to be in a school play and
she's also shy and introverted and she's
nervous and she asked us for
advice and instead of telling her what
to do I said well what did you suggest
to me a few weeks ago and she she
remembered and she said look for a
smiling face
and it it was it was one of like the It
was one of the most moving moments um of
my life like Allison and I got to the
play and she looked at us and she beamed
and I just um I I think what I learned
from that experience
was uh kids need to feel that they
matter and most of us think about
mattering as um you know showing kids
that they're unconditionally loved and
giving them the support they need
but we forget that part of feeling that
you matter is feeling that you make a
difference so as a kid feeling like you
have something to
contribute as a parent asking my
daughter for advice that boosted her
confidence and I think that this is um
I've come to call this the coach effect
uh it's one of my favorite recent
findings in Psychology that uh when when
you're struggling with something um your
instinct is to go to somebody else for
advice and say I need guidance the
problem is that keeps you in a passive
frame of mind
uh it makes you feel like you're
dependent on others what you're better
off doing is finding somebody else with
a similar Challenge and giving them
advice and what that does is it it shows
you that you have something to give um
it boosts your efficacy um the research
on this by Lauren esis Winkler and
colleagues uh is fascinating so people
who give advice instead of receiving it
um randomly assigned end up uh more
motivated and more confident um and I
think this is something every parent
could do right whatever challenge you
think your kid is going to face
find a version of it that you're
grappling with and seek their guidance
on it and when they run into that same
challenge they will have confidence that
they can begin to figure it out on their
own and you can be a coach in that
process as opposed to just telling them
what to do which they may feel like is
not relevant or they may resist because
they don't want to be told what to do by
a parent so that is my favorite
parenting lesson from hidden potential I
love that and I love your statement that
you know kids like adults want to matter
you know that being it you know we hear
you know make them feel important but so
often that's tied to Performance metrics
and those performance metrics are the
very things that are making them nervous
or that are creating anxiety um I love
it um are you taking additional kids for
adoption because I'm I'm raising I'm
raising I'm raising my hand I think
there'd be a lot more developmental
psychologists in the world if uh if we
chose our careers
later super interesting topic and by the
way I'm very much looking forward to
reading your book uh hidden potential um
clearly I have a lot to resolve around
that issue because um I still hear Miss
Rolf in the in uh Middle School just
telling me how much potential we have
and that um and that I wasn't accessing
mine oh no it's like a voice in the back
of my head um all the time and um even
though I feel very happy with um U many
aspects of my life that there are a lot
of things that I want to do that I
haven't done and I think it's through uh
you know limit limited uh what are they
call limiting self- beliefs or things of
that sort sting belief self-limiting
beliefs there you go I can't even say
say the phrase um yeah I do I do think
all your fans are like yeah that Andrew
huberman really hasn't he hasn't really
tapped his potential at all he's
squandering at all well keep in mind i'
I've lived in a fairly narrow trench of
of pursuit you know at 19 I got into
this and I've been doing this like
researching and teaching and doing like
for it's pretty much all I've done for
like almost you heading to 30 years so
and you too you've been in in this in
this game for a long time and that's
it's where we like to play but um but
what I've learned from you today in
addition to many other things is that um
realizing our potential uh has so much
to do with you know reaching outside we
hear about our comfort zone but it's
also reaching into our like deeper
wishes and thoughts and uh I I keep
coming back to this idea of the tag team
podcast and and the origins of that in
your mind it's like I never would have
expected that but it also reveals
something that sounds kind of like
intrinsic to you like you maybe you like
to see things play out uh the way you
think they should be played out as
opposed to the what's clearly a um
intractable Battle of loggerheads these
days yes that is a that's a core value
like I think there I I can't imagine an
unsolvable problem oh I love that man I
want your I want your brain um listen
Adam I want to thank you first of all
for taking the time today to come talk
to us certainly not just about your book
but we covered an enormous range of
topics I mean you talked to us about
procrastination which is sort of the
third rail of life for so many people uh
creativity intrinsic extrinsic
motivation and uh blind spots
authenticity and and so much more but
also I want to thank you for being such
an an active teacher on social media in
the classroom you still run a research
program you're doing TED Talks you're
writing multiple books you know you're
absolute Phenom in terms of the the
amount of information that you're
putting out into the world and uh I must
say I always always always learn from
your posts your podcasts your books like
there are certain people in the world
they're exceedingly rare but you're one
of them that when they open their mouth
people learn and they learn valuable
knowledge and it it's a it's a
incredible thing um to be on the
receiving end and so I just want to say
uh on behalf of myself and everyone else
thank you ever so much for what you do
and um please keep going well thank you
that that means a lot to me considering
the source cuz I the sentiments are
mutual uh I think every time I whether
it's reading one of your posts or seeing
one of your reals um I my overwhelming
thought is that is a master teacher and
if I had been lucky enough to take one
of your classes I might have gone more
of the Neuroscience Direction well um
and then failed but it would it it would
have been interesting to learn more
about at minimum and uh I just have
tremendous admiration for your
commitment to Making Science um
interesting clear and useful to people
thank you well I consider us on the on
the same team in in that regard and um
and I I probably will uh tap you about a
potential collaboration it would be so
much fun to work together um meanwhile
again thank you for everything you're
doing and um like I said just keep going
and please come back again I feel like
there are a thousand other topics we
could talk about and that we should
honored we'll try not to make you regret
that thank you thank you for joining me
for today's discussion with Dr Adam
Grant if you're learning from and are
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