Dr. Adam Grant: How to Unlock Your Potential, Motivation & Unique Abilities
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
discussed 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
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access a free 30-day trial and now for
my discussion with Dr Adam Grant Adam
welcome excited to be here 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 harm
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 and 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 uh by the
way there's extra credit for science
funds on here so wa done one of the best
articles on procrastination ever written
was titled at last my article on
procrastination fantastic I love it yeah
it 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 any 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 uh I don't
know if I can pull this off uh 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 like 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 focused 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
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
gems 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
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 seriously 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 is 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 yeah 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 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 gin 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 like 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 temp them with
highly entertaining YouTube videos uh
that were sort 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 task 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 folks people are
people are on in 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 um 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 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 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 within idea so for
instance uh let's take a a School
academic scenario where um students get
an assignment and the assignment is
contain 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 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 um 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 he was 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 Ratchet 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 a 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 in 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 fundamental 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 intrinsic
motivation we could think about how the
task itself is designed we can think
about reward systems and then we can
think about also the things we say to
ourselves and others which I hope are
not lies but rather U 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 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 he 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 surprised 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 that 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 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 TD 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 Dorothy Parker that said um
the cure for boredom is curiosity
there's no cure for curiosity as there
there shouldn't be a care 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 a 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
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 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 like 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
curiosity 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 raking
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
going to rake a pile of leaves it's a
two-hour task 0 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 at your
own
risk as we all know quality nutrition
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ability to learn new things and to focus
and we know that one of the most
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enough vitamins and minerals from high
quality unprocessed or minimally
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microbiome now I like most everybody try
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huberman to claim that special offer I
have a question about externs
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 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 meta 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 you 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're 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 leper 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 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 extrs and 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 exic
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 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 wait I'm sorry you're on
social media um from time to time I
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 social 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 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
wanton to call it a rhetoric but a
response of you know um you
know clearly 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 hman 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 wasting 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
briged 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 test
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 Tuesday 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 2 Thursday Friday
before 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 I 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
there was some evidence during Co that
uh people have their best meetings right
after lunch uh that there 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 in the
last few hours of the day for deep work
and then doing our core meetings and
interactions and kind of off task
activities in 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 a 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 some 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 norepinephrine epinephrine
which generally okay generally speaking
uh lead to increases 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 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 perial
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 meeting 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 Rich enough to to
grab all my attention and nowadays of
course there are multiple screens
typically I've got two phones in 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 what 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 more and less
social anxiety they've been around
people for much of the day any I I I
send back more Reflections than answers
I don't have any firm Neuroscience
explanations for what you described 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 noon or they might
be up until 4 a.m. or at least 10: a.m.
seems to be a typical rise time for the
undergrad 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 psych ological processes
um early on there's just there seems to
be a benefit of um 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 r 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 an 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 think you 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 shower 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 uh
control and and um Family interactions
this is something I know you you've
worked on and and written about um
but 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
he'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 in
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
academics 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 due
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 system no 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 but right but that's but I'm
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 now I need to write this
down okay and then continue uh I tried
the diero 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 mine
I would imagine you need to you need to
sort of jolt yourself out of that with
lots of access to you know to Freer
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 in 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 the 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
deliberate sentences and then look at
the overlap in that vend 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 um 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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insider.com huberman along those lines
when 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 ruin 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 and worked on a tremendous
range of topics um and always you know I
must say 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 a 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
organizational 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's in the seven
or eight range I know that I'm on to
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 IDI syncratic 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 advisor he
was very gracious and letting me 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 at 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 go 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 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
check 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 ments so
how should we filter positive versus
negative feedback well there's a there's
a met 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 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 uh one of
the things I've I've learned recently is
there's some I would say a 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 that 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 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 G
to just pause for a second I I've never
taken a pause I've taken occasional
pause 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 sandun 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 4our session was brutal I
remember uh 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
gained nothing from this session but I
trust the instructor gain useful
insight and that that was devastating I
was like can I like 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 general 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 masted 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 like 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 Curry to conversation where
we all end up learning and the feedback
was night and day different afterward I
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 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 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 the 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
flesh it out with a with a personal
example I too would want to turn into a
barar 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 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 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 heels
psychologically from getting all this
you know battering feedback from these
uh you know these uh highly accomplished
individuals all these inment and you
know literally wearing them presumably
on their body body uh so for you to 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 uh
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 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 to 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 e easier said than done is 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 realized
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 Ali
Crum 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 is the work of David joerger
and colleagues at UT Austin that uh
indeed growth mind 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 aop
psychology growth mindset it tells you
everything you want everything you need
and everything you sort of need to know
and just the name um but uh we all find
it difficult to implement um just just
telling myself I'm not as good as
something as 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 at all met analysis 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
circum ances 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 think
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
GU 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
scaffold wood on a building um and in
learning theory basically the idea
behind scaffolding is we're 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
instill 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 mindset
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 res nesin I uh
studied this actually uh we did um we
were looking at growth mindset at work
and uh Justin's uh well he's at 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 a 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 um 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 6 months there was
no cost to their performance u 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
they're 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 U 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 recentish
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 what motivated you to carry out
that study and what some of the major
takeaways were yeah definitely um you
you summarize 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 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 task that you don't like
even more than you did before I like oh
that's an interesting idea it 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 a day because it's highly
individual completely agree yeah and and
it depends on whether or not people have
kids and they're pets and you know 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 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 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
.01% at doing that um 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 he's 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 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 I it's
it's uh it's boring for all the wrong
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 quotquot Peak
Performance um something we can talk
about and we forget that um yes often
times 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 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 benefit fit of mhen
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 gan from that
experience seems to have carryover into
other things like you know I'm going to
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 of 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 2 3 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 work 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 work day
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 felt like every day
and then you you leave you know you you
you 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 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 diving
coach Eric best uh 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 worthless 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
gave 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 because 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 bounds 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 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 900m and those those
two habits are enormously helpful
particularly in 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 of 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 MH yeah I
carry a small notebook around with me
now and write things down I was just
curious 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
trying to 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 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 ious
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 it's 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 our 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 heris sixs 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
San 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 as
that I'm not biased
bias um it's it's technically called the
bias blind spot in Emily pron and 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 metabias 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 biased 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 explains 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
reflective 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
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 toite
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 going to 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 Insight 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 successful author and my
students basically held me hostage and
they said you've been doing this
research for you know 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 uh a master student at
Berkeley there was a guy who's now moved
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 um 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 anyone 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 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 and exert
a lot of proficiency and even control in
their profession 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 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've 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 proz 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
sales people they're often Visionary
leaders uh prosecutors are often highly
effective scientists right we Excel
criticizing other people's work and
finding what's wrong with it um
politicians are great at currying 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 device 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 if I 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 did 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
waiting 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
into 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 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
healthy 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 pose 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 uh try and overcome some of
their blind spots and be better thinkers
better meaning it serves themselves and
people around them better uh is that
teaching them what a hypothesis is that
a 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 foraging 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 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 in 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
um 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 you're
blind spots are invisible to you and so
this is why other 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 train 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 surround 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 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 a
like is a is a slightly different
category because it's as the name
suggests it's a like it's a 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 uh 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 like 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 like 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 every one 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 the
every bit of information in the paper
and indeed how it's written from 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 certainly not what I'm
saying but what I do realize and and I'm
realizing again now 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 study is essentially what I
do for all studies um but I have my way
of doing it and it's going to differ
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
takeways I get criticized a lot for not
being concise enough and I agree but I
but also get criticized for putting
things taking things out of context so
uh such a tight rope walk it's a tight
RPP 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 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 might be
robots um I feel like this is an
appropriate place to ask about something
else since we're talking about sort of
percept 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
8 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 brought about a word that we don't
hear about very often but that I I
rather like which is edicate 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've 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 one of your values so what that
means concretely is I 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 Lon 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 are 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 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 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 it's amazing
how common this is and I think one of
the things that's
fascinating to me is I guess 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 I
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 you're 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 thing thinking the right
things um I know you've now researched
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 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 has 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 you're not a natural you
don't have the talent that it takes and
I think the big myth there is that 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 and 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 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 waste 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
bead 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 it's like you're
missing the explosive power you don't
have the the athleticism 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 is
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 seem
ought 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 couple
years and 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 he can do is win you know it
yeah it 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 uh 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 priest 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 scien 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
what class was it it's neural
development I now teach neural
development neural development how bad
were you 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 got 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 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 little
on a brick CU you know he had a kind of
a Homer Simpson brain about his object
choice to chew on and he but 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 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 plar
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 under 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 obvious viously uncomfortable
like you got a B+ you don't want to do
any more neural
development 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 I 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 Reese
professor at UC Santa Barbara incredible
neuron anatomist and teacher of neural
development and and laboratory science
ien because um you know I think had I
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 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 that the uh the extreme
perfectionist like how do they ever do
anything and and are they happy people
cuz I 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 my biggest liabilities as as a
diver was I was never satisfied with my
score and one day Eric said to me you
know you you hear Olympic judges talk
about commentators talk about the
perfect 10 that's a misnomer um if you
look at the diving rule 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 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 did 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 your ceiling for
nine is or your threshold for nine is is
so exceedingly it's 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 centerfold list of all the early
admissions to all the fancy IV League
schools 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 suc ESS
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 's this upward spiral over time
but there's also a mountain 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
has changed around you like I'm I'm
allergic to the idea of best practices
like the moment you call it practice
best you've created an illusion that
you're done and the moment like think
about um pre 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 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 2018 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 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 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 um I set 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 and potential standpoint
if we you'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 are tun can't
keep it beat are you thinking about um
becoming a musician or exploring playing
music I mean 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 it '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 then
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 uh my good friend Rick Rubin
who's he's like not obsessed but he is a
real devotees 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 certain genre of music and
Lars Frederickson from ransett is a is a
huge wrestling fan so now got multiple
people that have come into contact with
they 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 y 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 it would be so
interesting if there was a podcast where
you take 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 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
hugely 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 maybe I would I wouldn't I
don't want to wait into that one 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 comp Behavior
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'
like to tackle big stuff I just I know I
love it I love it it's a compliment it's
a compl I mean what are the odds like I
said earlier no weak sauce no weak 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 we 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 a 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 of the
most popular and important podcasts on
the planet Earth might be podcasts 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 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 considerable amount uh through
motivation and um and opportunity I got
that right um I vote Yes uh 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
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 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 were 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 there'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 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
uh vacation with every year I take my
sister in New York for her birthday and
my birthday because our birthdays are
close together and we went and saw a
magician Mentalist um by the name of AI
wind um Azie I think is the correct
pronunciation um who just just like the
last time I saw absolutely blew my mind
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
enjoy doing it um but getting beyond the
the sort of uh 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 Cru verbalist
he does um magic crossw 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
use 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 wisdom
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 we know from
Behavioral Science um you know mostly
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 respon
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 real
that they seem to enjoy right because if
you know something's fake or well we
should we should be I should be more
careful about my language in with magic
like when I went 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 scci 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
on underneath as a foundation so G given
the the Baseline of rigor how do 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 belief
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 weekly 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
riger um we want to go to interest
Clarity and actionability how do we get
to interest let's build a submodel of
the fact 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
hypothesis 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 a with 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 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 I'm almost always
surprised when I say something from you
know here here's here's a synthesis of
research here's a metaanalysis 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 a was
with Lisa Feldman Barrett she's um Psy
psychologist or neuroscientist right
emotion of course yeah and she described
um in how in certain cultures there is a
language for subcategories of emotions
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 partner being
like really unhappy about their haircut
and 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 gives
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 psychologists often say name
it to tame it um affect labeling is one
of the most effective emotion regulation
strategies and 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 and in um
in
2021 um I wrote a New York Times article
on um on languishing um the feeling of
me or
blah and I have never had anything I any
article I wrote resonate like this and
it just like I all the the PO the post
that tag mate 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
is 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 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 under represented 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 ORF
flight and and threat I'm like I don't
know that that helped me that much like
if I could just describe fight or 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 this is 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 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 a 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 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 uh
do you ever just languish or are you
busy enough that you you just feel like
you're always a forward Center of M 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 grad
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 maybe everybody's Baseline is
different like I I think one of the
things I'm I'm really lucky to have 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 do 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 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 no 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 nope 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 you have children
correct three um and a lot of our
listeners either are children or have
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 and
hopefully they are
imperfectionists maybe there are kids
that are just perfectionists by default
but I 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 o interesting well the first
thing I should say is um Becky Kennedy
Dr Becky is my favorite source 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 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 over statement 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 I'll back up into the
principes so I was uh I was getting
ready to give my first T talk 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 think 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 in 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 asks 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 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 self limiting 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 res
like for PR much all I've done for like
almost you heading to 30 years so and
you too you've been 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 least
yes that is a that's a core value like I
think there 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 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 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 because I 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 sounds like a bless 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
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