Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: making time. I know you're extremely busy. Oh my pleasure completely.
Speaker 1: We have a mutual friend, Josh Whiteskin, who have known
Speaker 1: for quite a long time and will always talk about
Speaker 1: I was just texting with him about fifteen minutes ago.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Well tell him you're talking to Scott Kaufman.
Speaker 1: I will, I will. That's very funny. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: great guy. Yeah. So you probably get like lots of
Speaker 1: the same kinds of questions. So I thought i'd, you know,
Speaker 1: try to take the to another higher level because in
Speaker 1: some ways we've had different We've had like powallel paths.
Speaker 1: So I've studied the science of high performance, the science
Speaker 1: of greatness, all this stuff my entire career. And you've
Speaker 1: you've been in the trenches, right, You've really been doing
Speaker 1: this firsthand. My I was the last research assistant of
Speaker 1: Herb Simon. As an undergraduate and mentor, I was mentored
Speaker 1: by Randy Palish, and I noticed that both of these
Speaker 1: individuals are people that you talk about in your own work. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I've the Randy Palace just to make sure
Speaker 1: of getting it right. That's the last lecture, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's obviously done more than that, so I we can
Speaker 1: talk about that. But I have his book face out
Speaker 1: in my living room so I see it every day.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. Yeah. I took his Usability Engineering Usability
Speaker 1: design course at Carnegie Mellon. Okiddy, very cool, really great guy,
Speaker 1: and I learned a lot from him. Yeah, So I've
Speaker 1: been I've been studying. I've been trying to debunk this,
Speaker 1: this ten thousand hours rule for quite some time in
Speaker 1: kind of a similar way you have. And I just
Speaker 1: want to point out how it's different from how others
Speaker 1: are trying to debunk it. So other people in my
Speaker 1: field have been trying to debunk the ten thousand hour
Speaker 1: role by saying, well, look, Erickson really demotes the value
Speaker 1: of talent, so you know, and that they're missing that
Speaker 1: part of the picture. And I've been arguing, well, No,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not quite the point there. The point
Speaker 1: is you can really go up that learning curve really fast,
Speaker 1: and it's not completely just because of talent. It's because
Speaker 1: of all these other factors of like really knowing how
Speaker 1: to learn, knowing how you know, the role of inspiration.
Speaker 1: I talk about a lot the role of active learning
Speaker 1: strategies and things of that nature, and so I read
Speaker 1: your stuff and I see a lot of commonalities in
Speaker 1: the sense that you're saying like, look, we can really
Speaker 1: we can cut like you know, eight tenth of the time,
Speaker 1: you know, to learn some of this stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: not just because the person is cutting eight tenth, it's
Speaker 1: just because they're more talented than someone else. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to directly explicitly point that out. How I think, like,
Speaker 1: you know, our perspectives kind of conversion are actually different
Speaker 1: from the other the ten thousand hour MythBusters if that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear some of your own personal experiences, like
Speaker 1: what you think are maybe some of the main principles
Speaker 1: that can help rapidly accelerate up the learning curve despite
Speaker 1: the you know, the genes that you're born with yeah,
Speaker 1: or in spite of the genes you're born with in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases. So I think that there are
Speaker 1: a number of factors and they have a lot of interplay.
Speaker 1: I mean, as you know that there's the inspiration, the drive,
Speaker 1: intrinsic motivation or reward or punishment, extrinsic motivation, punishment or reward.
Speaker 1: But they are they're handful of things that I tend
Speaker 1: to highlight when I'm trying to explain to people why
Speaker 1: it's possible to say, as I did in my thirties,
Speaker 1: go from not knowing how to swim I couldn't swim
Speaker 1: one lap to swimming say forty laps in a session
Speaker 1: within a week to ten days. And it came down
Speaker 1: to looking at thessumptions in a given field, the so
Speaker 1: called best practices, and then for each of them, asking
Speaker 1: what if I had to eliminate this, or what if
Speaker 1: I did the opposite. So, for instance, a lot of
Speaker 1: people think of freestyle swimming as I did, which is
Speaker 1: swimming on top of the water. You kick really hard,
Speaker 1: you pull to propel yourself through the water. The method
Speaker 1: that ended up solving all of my problems is called
Speaker 1: total immersion, and it flips all of that on its
Speaker 1: head and re examines the basic sort of flawed assumptions
Speaker 1: that underlie most swimming instruction. So they don't they have
Speaker 1: you kick as little as possible because it's an energy drain,
Speaker 1: it's an energy sink, and they have you focus on
Speaker 1: alternating from your right side to your left, so you're
Speaker 1: not swimming on your stomach or chest, as a lot
Speaker 1: of people think. You're alternating almost as a boat or
Speaker 1: a vessel, from extended fuselage right to extended fuselage left.
Speaker 1: Verisimilarly to rock climbing in some ways, and everything is
Speaker 1: focused on effort minimization. And so they will come in
Speaker 1: and I'll say, all right, if you feel like you're
Speaker 1: expending a lot of effort you're getting a good workout,
Speaker 1: you're doing it incorrectly. And it was just such an
Speaker 1: incredible juxtaposition with everything I've been shown, including from some
Speaker 1: very very high level performers. And so that then brings
Speaker 1: the second point, which is the best performers are not
Speaker 1: always the best teachers. And this is particularly true if
Speaker 1: they've been doing something for twenty thirty, forty fifty years
Speaker 1: in some cases, because in the same way that if
Speaker 1: you or I or I shouldn't speak for you. But
Speaker 1: if you take a lot of the people listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast their native English speakers, if you had them
Speaker 1: try to take the test of English as a foreign language,
Speaker 1: they might flunk it because if you ask them, you know,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between anything and something quite quite quick, like,
Speaker 1: their minds will freeze. They've never actually had to consciously
Speaker 1: think about what they've been doing. Yeah. Yeah. And similarly,
Speaker 1: you want to look for a teacher or someone you
Speaker 1: can emulate. They don't have to be a teacher per se,
Speaker 1: someone who who has made the most progress in a
Speaker 1: period of say six months or twelve months. And so,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you're trying to learn to dance, there's
Speaker 1: a woman who recorded her dance improvement over a year
Speaker 1: in a one or two minute trailer, and you can
Speaker 1: try to reach out to someone like that. Or there
Speaker 1: was a I think it was a gent young guy
Speaker 1: from the UK who wanted to try to become one
Speaker 1: of the top table tennis ping pong players in the
Speaker 1: UK in the span of a year, and he recorded
Speaker 1: the entire process. So who's going to have more in
Speaker 1: terms of insight on type turnarounds? Someone who's done that
Speaker 1: or someone who has been sort of following the textbook
Speaker 1: for twenty years, and I would argue the former. So
Speaker 1: seeking those types of people out, which is very very
Speaker 1: easy because you can spend a little bit of time
Speaker 1: on Google. I just search for, you know, controversial such
Speaker 1: and such player, controversial such and such coach, and that
Speaker 1: will give you the leads that will lead to all
Speaker 1: sorts of other all sorts of other gold mines. And
Speaker 1: I think that also there's a misunderstanding from a lot
Speaker 1: of people who say, harp on the ten thousand hour
Speaker 1: wile using as an excuse not even to try. And
Speaker 1: that is they view learning or skill acquisition as a
Speaker 1: linear process. And so if you have an next and
Speaker 1: Y access, it's sort of cutting it right down the
Speaker 1: middle of a forty five degree angle. And I don't
Speaker 1: think of it that way, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: most people in the sciences don't. I mean, and this
Speaker 1: applies to options training another thing too. But you have basically,
Speaker 1: let's just say it, correct me if I'm talking out
Speaker 1: my ass here, but a sigmoid function, right, So it
Speaker 1: looks like an s that's been grabbed by the ends
Speaker 1: and extended a bit. So you have this slow, very
Speaker 1: gradual ascent, then this hockey stick which shoots up into
Speaker 1: the sky, and then a point of diminishing returns where
Speaker 1: it's very slow. And that's say that that very slow
Speaker 1: point is where I think you get. That's where a
Speaker 1: lot of intelligent groutwork is involved when you're trying to
Speaker 1: go from say the number five best cellist in such
Speaker 1: and such symphony to the first seat. Okay, that's a
Speaker 1: slog right there. I mean you have to put in
Speaker 1: a ton of time for each incremental game, whereas my
Speaker 1: goal for people is to just say, look, it's commonly
Speaker 1: said you have to spend a lifetime learning language. That's
Speaker 1: complete bs. I mean you can become what most people
Speaker 1: would consider conversationally fluent in almost any language, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: in six months and absolutely. And I used to consider
Speaker 1: myself bad at languages, and I've just replicated that too
Speaker 1: many times for myself and for other people to think otherwise.
Speaker 1: You think that trick is anyone, Well, anyone is a
Speaker 1: big word, I would say the vast majority of people.
Speaker 1: And there are two things I'd say to that. So
Speaker 1: my job is to show people how to chop off
Speaker 1: that first point, part of the sigmoid curve, or to
Speaker 1: get to that hockey stick as quickly as possible. Now,
Speaker 1: when they hit that hockey stick, are they maybe the
Speaker 1: best in the world. No, they're going to be functionally fluent,
Speaker 1: and you can get though, I think, to top five
Speaker 1: percent in the general population and almost any skill in
Speaker 1: six to twelve months. I've just seen too many examples.
Speaker 1: And there are two things I'd say to that. Number
Speaker 1: one is specific the language learning. Based on everything I've
Speaker 1: seen and research that have read, I think adults can
Speaker 1: learn languages far faster than children. The reason that they
Speaker 1: typically don't is because they have mortgages and jobs and
Speaker 1: obligations and a choice. It's an option whether they choose
Speaker 1: to study or not. And if you take a kid
Speaker 1: and throw them into a kindergarten in a different language,
Speaker 1: what choice do they have A and B. They have
Speaker 1: no their obligations, So it's more a function of logistics
Speaker 1: than mental capacity. That's number one, And Hakkuta has done
Speaker 1: some very researchers. This book called in other words, which
Speaker 1: is a little old, but I think everything I've seen
Speaker 1: working with a lot of tech startups would reinforce this. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm getting on my soapbox share because I get all
Speaker 1: amped up. The second thing is, yeah. The second thing
Speaker 1: is that it's very dangerous to focus on averages and
Speaker 1: exclude the outliers when it comes to examining peak performance.
Speaker 1: And so they'll say, well, on average, people in the
Speaker 1: top five percent sleep x number of hours per night,
Speaker 1: and do this, and do this, But the averages can
Speaker 1: be very misleading, and in the way that you know,
Speaker 1: if Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average networth is,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty million dollars there or something like that.
Speaker 1: And that I remember reading a story by or an
Speaker 1: anecdote about Warren Buffett and he was being sort of
Speaker 1: harangued by a bunch of efficient market theorists who say,
Speaker 1: like the markets incorporated all the information that's available therefore
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and he was saying, well, and they
Speaker 1: would argue, they're will, look, mister Buffett, we don't believe
Speaker 1: in stock picking. And if you had ten thousand orangu
Speaker 1: tanks flipping quarters, eventually, just by sheer chance and probability,
Speaker 1: you would have ten who seem to be master coin
Speaker 1: flippers to get heads all the time, and they would
Speaker 1: go off and write books about how to flip coins
Speaker 1: and make tons of money doing that, And that was
Speaker 1: intended to kill Buffett's argument, and he said, well, fine,
Speaker 1: that's true. He said, but if there's one small place
Speaker 1: in Omaha that seems to manufacture these magical coin flipping
Speaker 1: and rang tanks over and over and over, and if
Speaker 1: you find a concentration in a peculiar fashion, you should
Speaker 1: research that. And you can find these kind of mutant
Speaker 1: factories for all sorts of skills. I mean, whether it's chess,
Speaker 1: whether it's jiu jitsu, like the school that's co owned
Speaker 1: by a mutual friend of ours, Josh Waitskin with Marcelo Garcia,
Speaker 1: ten time world champion. You can find these factories tennis.
Speaker 1: They're all out there, you just have to track them down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw an interview did while ago, and you mentioned
Speaker 1: that you're really interested in the education space, and then
Speaker 1: you made a call. You said, if anyone you know,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to more educators. I want to
Speaker 1: be in this morm. But if I can help you
Speaker 1: at all with that world, that's the world I inhabit,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm more than happy to help you. Because
Speaker 1: you know there's so many deep implications for what you're
Speaker 1: doing for curriculum and teacher training, and I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you entered that space at all, and if you ever
Speaker 1: thought about actually creating like a you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of like teacher training curriculum that really can help students
Speaker 1: learn better and enjoy learning. I, first of all, thank you,
Speaker 1: I appreciate the offer. Secondly, I have looked very deeply,
Speaker 1: and there are a few observations that I've made and
Speaker 1: a few experiments and initiatives that I've focused on. So
Speaker 1: what I realized early on is that I am good
Speaker 1: at curriculum, I am bad at politics and fixing certain
Speaker 1: aspects of public education in the United States are as
Speaker 1: much a political issue, if not more a political issue,
Speaker 1: and have a lot to do with paychecks and maintaining
Speaker 1: the status quo in a lot of ways that it
Speaker 1: has to do with improving education for kids or even
Speaker 1: adults in the US. Now that haven't been said. What
Speaker 1: I decided to do, living in Silicon Valley as I do,
Speaker 1: and having a lot of involvement with tech startups, decided
Speaker 1: to focus on trying to use my platform as an
Speaker 1: archimedes lever for a couple of startups that I think
Speaker 1: are developing solutions that are highly scalable. So for instance,
Speaker 1: there's one called dual Lingo. I was one of the
Speaker 1: first investors in dual Lingo. Dual Lingo offers free language
Speaker 1: learning tools and they're very effective, and it was co
Speaker 1: created by co founded by Luis von On out of
Speaker 1: Carnegie Mellen who was a computer science professor and was
Speaker 1: the creator of recapture. So the capture more intelligent capture
Speaker 1: fields where you have two fields. Everyone's seeing these where
Speaker 1: it's like fill this out to prove it not a robot.
Speaker 1: And the first one they know the answer to is
Speaker 1: it's like x y B hashtag or whatever, and you
Speaker 1: fill that out. The next one is actually taken out
Speaker 1: of a book that has been hard to transcribe that
Speaker 1: a machine can't read, and so it was used for
Speaker 1: transcribing books. So it had this altruistic purpose which is
Speaker 1: very cool and that it would use obviously would look
Speaker 1: at the responses to say a thousand people who saw
Speaker 1: the same image and you would get the right answer.
Speaker 1: So dual Lingo at this point is educating more people
Speaker 1: helping them learn foreign languages for free than the entire
Speaker 1: US public school system or the K at least the
Speaker 1: K through twelve. So it's been a very good investment
Speaker 1: of time and energy. So it's a lateral approach. The
Speaker 1: second is called no Red Ink, which is very interesting
Speaker 1: that people should check out, and it's flown under the radar,
Speaker 1: but it's intended to help teachers and teacher well number
Speaker 1: one students to learn English and English grammar and writing
Speaker 1: more effectively, which is notoriously difficult to teach and very
Speaker 1: time consuming to correct. Uh. And it's it's a very sleek,
Speaker 1: elegant solution to a long standing problem. And they're they're
Speaker 1: they're correcting millions and millions and millions of sentences out
Speaker 1: of time now. Uh. And that has some huge implications
Speaker 1: for other areas of education and expediting the entire process,
Speaker 1: helping to automatically create content that appeals to the interests
Speaker 1: of the students. You know, they would select I'm interested
Speaker 1: in Justin Bieber at the Lakers, this, this, and this,
Speaker 1: and it would help generate content or find content that
Speaker 1: they're interested in, and and they that's what they write about,
Speaker 1: you know, as opposed to you know, Mary chases Bob
Speaker 1: with the dog or some something like that. So I
Speaker 1: have mostly focused on technology as an exponentially growing and
Speaker 1: developing tool for really scaling things effectively. At some point
Speaker 1: I'll probably tackle some of the political issues. But quite frankly,
Speaker 1: that's not my that's not my superpower. I'm too impatient
Speaker 1: and undiplomatic, I think. But you're not impatient, You're interested.
Speaker 1: You're an interesting combination of traits in one human So
Speaker 1: so yeah, so you're like, I mean, I write about it.
Speaker 1: I writ I call creative people messy mind I say
Speaker 1: creative people have messy minds because they have this ability
Speaker 1: to inhabit seemingly contradictory traits in one in one thing,
Speaker 1: and they're actually really creative people are really good at
Speaker 1: quickly switching between different personality dimensions. Right, So you're you
Speaker 1: said you're impatient, but you're you're you're in patient the
Speaker 1: sense that in the you're existentially impatient. So this is
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing is that you're existentially impatient. Doesn't I
Speaker 1: would call you impatient. I would call you existentially impatient.
Speaker 1: You realize you have one life and you want to
Speaker 1: maximize this life that you live in, and you're you're
Speaker 1: probably maximizing this life more than probably anyone on this
Speaker 1: plot right now trying. Yeah, you know what day it's done.
Speaker 1: You're But at the same time, you mean you do
Speaker 1: have great reflection and in the sense that you really
Speaker 1: follow feedback, so you really can take feedback quickly and
Speaker 1: use that too, do it. But I don't see, I
Speaker 1: don't think like everyone has the same uh not everyone's
Speaker 1: there yet where they're able to really learn from feedback
Speaker 1: as well. What do you think are some of the
Speaker 1: obstacles or blocks, maybe in mindset blocks they're stopping people
Speaker 1: from acquiring feedback so well and then moving forward in
Speaker 1: their skill development. Is that a fair question? That's very good,
Speaker 1: Yeah question. I think there are, of course different types
Speaker 1: of feedback. So there's self generated feedback where for instance,
Speaker 1: you record workouts or blood glucose measurements or what you
Speaker 1: start to spot trends and associations and you can go,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I didn't realize as I realized a
Speaker 1: few days ago. You know, I've been eating fewer than
Speaker 1: thirty grams of carbs per day for a while to
Speaker 1: measure keytone concentration in the blood and whatnot. But if
Speaker 1: you have for me personally, my carbohydrate tolerance is such
Speaker 1: that if I consume, say kombucha that has eight grams carbohydrates,
Speaker 1: even once in two or three days, it will it
Speaker 1: will screw up my metabolic objectives from like three or
Speaker 1: four nhs. Right. The only way I figured that out though,
Speaker 1: is by tracking and writing things down. So the first
Speaker 1: thing would be know thyself, and the way you do
Speaker 1: that is by determining what measurables you're going to follow. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to learn to surf, you're trying
Speaker 1: to learn to swim, like what are the numbers that
Speaker 1: you're tracking? And you can make these up, but you
Speaker 1: can also borrow measurements. So in swimming, I didn't have
Speaker 1: any measurement until Total Gin And you know, I have
Speaker 1: this new TV show, the Tin Faris Experiment. We did
Speaker 1: an entire episode on swimming, and since I already had
Speaker 1: learned how to swim, we took someone who couldn't even
Speaker 1: really put her head underwater and tried to make her
Speaker 1: into a open ocean long distance swimmer freestyle and three
Speaker 1: or four days which was which was very intense. But
Speaker 1: the measurement there that you use is strokes per lap,
Speaker 1: and that tells you how efficient you are, so you
Speaker 1: try to go from say thirty strokes per lap down
Speaker 1: to twenty down to fifteen, and it's an indicator of
Speaker 1: energy conservation and efficiency. So similarly, you know you could
Speaker 1: find these measurables and choose objectives that way. So that's tracking.
Speaker 1: In terms of accepting feedback from other people, you need
Speaker 1: to find teachers who can give you the why and
Speaker 1: not just the how. So it's very typical. For instance,
Speaker 1: I refuse to learn the alphabet until first grade, and
Speaker 1: I was spent soap by my Kargary teacher, which I
Speaker 1: was not happy about. My mom was even less happy
Speaker 1: about because she was like, learn the dam and alphabet
Speaker 1: because I tell you so, And that didn't work for me.
Speaker 1: So I dug in my heels and I resisted. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have had this kind
Speaker 1: of experience with teachers or coaches and positions of authority
Speaker 1: where you're like, well wait a second, like no, I
Speaker 1: want to understand why, and you're a seven year old
Speaker 1: talking to a forty year old and they want to
Speaker 1: punch you in the face and they don't give you anything.
Speaker 1: So it's important to find people who are willing to
Speaker 1: sit down and explain the why. So Josh Waitskin and
Speaker 1: for those who don't know his names, the inspiration for
Speaker 1: Searching for Bobby Fisher the book and the movie, considered
Speaker 1: a chess prodigy. So in the TV episode where I
Speaker 1: was combining learning chess and jiu jitsu in the same week,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be a lot to bite off
Speaker 1: and very injury rich for the jiu jitsu, Josh would
Speaker 1: say he would explain why he's teaching chess in reverse, right,
Speaker 1: so instead of starting with openers like almost everyone does,
Speaker 1: he's starting with King and Pad versus King to teach
Speaker 1: deep principles. And he would say, and Josh has said this,
Speaker 1: but he'd be like, look, we're creating smaller circles. What
Speaker 1: I mean by that is we're taking the mic throw
Speaker 1: something very small that you can grasp, right, not too
Speaker 1: many pieces. We're looking at King and Paul and versus
Speaker 1: King to teach you deep powerful principles like opposition and
Speaker 1: so on. So Josh is great at explaining the why,
Speaker 1: and then you can bear almost anyhow if you can
Speaker 1: bear his training regimen. Oh oh yeah, well, especially the
Speaker 1: jiu jitsu. I mean you have to have a certain
Speaker 1: degree of choke tolerance for that, but I think there's
Speaker 1: the why and then but feedback for me is really
Speaker 1: Peter Drucker, the management theorists, very famous business mind and writer,
Speaker 1: said what gets measured gets managed, and I think that's true.
Speaker 1: So until you start measuring, and it can almost be arbitrary,
Speaker 1: it will affect your behavior. And I remember there's a
Speaker 1: study done. You might be familiar with the study blanking
Speaker 1: on the researchers, but they were looking at whether turning
Speaker 1: the lights up or down in offices increased work productivity.
Speaker 1: And what they found was whatever, any change they made
Speaker 1: improved productivity because people knew they were being monitored. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there we go. Okay, so the author in fact good,
Speaker 1: I can thank you. I needed a label. So it's
Speaker 1: very similar if I tell someone, look, i'm going to
Speaker 1: give you a bottle of pills and they're called placebo
Speaker 1: magic and they're full of you know, whatever, sawdust. I'm
Speaker 1: not suggesting people eat sawdust, obviously, but it's inert. And
Speaker 1: I say you're going to take one of these before
Speaker 1: every meal. Chances are they'll probably lose weight because they're
Speaker 1: just going to be forced. As with a pattern interrupt
Speaker 1: become more conscious of what they do. And that's why
Speaker 1: if you want to lose weight and you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to try and diet, just take a picture
Speaker 1: of every meal you have and send it to your
Speaker 1: fittest friend and like, hey, you're getting you're getting things
Speaker 1: from me now. Yeah, the flash diet, so to speak,
Speaker 1: works really well. It's a great idea. You know, I
Speaker 1: think about positive psychology, and a major tenant of positivechology
Speaker 1: is not you know, achievement is one part of a pillar,
Speaker 1: you know, of the perma model. You also have positive experience,
Speaker 1: positive emotions, and relationships. Positive relationships are important, engagement and
Speaker 1: meaning in life. All these things are important. And so
Speaker 1: you got you hinted that when you taught, when you
Speaker 1: have talked about successes not just being achievement but also appreciation,
Speaker 1: Am I right? Yeah? Yeah, And so I think it
Speaker 1: dovetails really nicely with some of the principles of positive psychology.
Speaker 1: I think to live a life of well being, not
Speaker 1: just hedonistic well being, which is but really a deeper
Speaker 1: sense of well being, there needs to be more than
Speaker 1: just achievement. So I'd love to love to rip off
Speaker 1: that a bit. Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. And I
Speaker 1: think that, uh, I think that for particularly type A personalities,
Speaker 1: they like to pat themselves on the back for achievement.
Speaker 1: But that's almost hardwired, that's your default. I think that's
Speaker 1: the easy part and the hard part that I've tried
Speaker 1: to focus on increasingly because it is not my natural
Speaker 1: instinct or sort of reflex, is to pause and appreciate
Speaker 1: what you've accomplished or what you've done, those things you
Speaker 1: have in your life, the health of your friend's family,
Speaker 1: et cetera, in a very conscious way, because achievement without appreciation,
Speaker 1: on a personal level at least, is pretty close to meaningless.
Speaker 1: And I know money does not fix that because it's
Speaker 1: too high up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Money can only
Speaker 1: really check off the boxes at the lower end. And
Speaker 1: I know people in an SF who have hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars who are miserable, and I think partially
Speaker 1: the drive that allowed them to make that much money
Speaker 1: is something that prevents them from living in the prisons
Speaker 1: the present state. They're constantly planning for the next big thing,
Speaker 1: the next big thing, the next big thing, and they
Speaker 1: always feel like they're losing. Yeah, this is part of
Speaker 1: the human condition. I mean, whether it's uh Man search
Speaker 1: for meaning and Victor Frankel for looking at a lot
Speaker 1: of the tech icons of today. The challenges are that
Speaker 1: the people face are very similar, and so I I
Speaker 1: have I have the habit of using a it's called
Speaker 1: the five minute journal, but it's effectively a journal with
Speaker 1: a component that is listing things you are grateful for.
Speaker 1: And it sounds perhaps very self healthy. It is, no,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's a lot of data to support this
Speaker 1: practice in terms of self reported well being, and I
Speaker 1: find that really, I mean, three minutes in the morning
Speaker 1: and three minutes at night is enough to have a
Speaker 1: a not just a non trivial but I'm mean a
Speaker 1: significant impact on my quality of life and sense of
Speaker 1: well being and feeling of being unrushed, which is kind
Speaker 1: of ultimate luxury in my mind. And it's also a
Speaker 1: reason why I read a lot of stoic philosophy, and
Speaker 1: you know, I really feel like it's a good operating
Speaker 1: system for living in high stress environments while keeping things
Speaker 1: in perspective and not overly emotionally responding to things like
Speaker 1: a reactive animal. Now do I always get that right? No,
Speaker 1: not at all. I mean, I'm a bull in a
Speaker 1: china shop, I think most of the time. So we
Speaker 1: all make mistakes, but hopefully each day a little bit fewer.
Speaker 1: How do you define appreciation? Are you talking about it?
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of kinds of appreciation. You can appreciate
Speaker 1: others other people, right, you can appreciate you know the fact.
Speaker 1: There's just lots of different shades of appreciation. What do
Speaker 1: you mean when you use the word When I use
Speaker 1: the word, I'm so glad you asked, because I'm so
Speaker 1: nitpicky with definitions. So this is a to be perfectly frank,
Speaker 1: I think I use it a lot without defining it
Speaker 1: very clearly. So let me think about the context in
Speaker 1: which I use it. Success is another really dangerous word,
Speaker 1: that's really, and happiness those are also really I use
Speaker 1: the word really, squirrel, the age use the W word. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: So for for appreciation, I think for me it is
Speaker 1: it is simply recognition, recognizing the value of what you have,
Speaker 1: and that that would be my attempt, my stab at
Speaker 1: a definition. But I mean, when I write things down,
Speaker 1: it's literally that. And when I write these things down.
Speaker 1: I actually got this advice from from Tony Robbins, who
Speaker 1: I I that guy is a he's an impressive specimen.
Speaker 1: I got to say that there's a lot of that
Speaker 1: guy is a powerhouse. So yeah, when he when he
Speaker 1: puts together these lists for himself, give me a great
Speaker 1: piece of advice, which was you could write down the
Speaker 1: big things, so to speak, which are you know, I'm
Speaker 1: grateful for the health of my mom and dad. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for fill in the blank. But he said, I,
Speaker 1: what's put in one thing that is very fleeting and
Speaker 1: seemingly small, like the two clouds I'm looking at past
Speaker 1: the eucalyptus trees outside my window that I'm looking at
Speaker 1: right now. And I was like, oh, that's smart. That's
Speaker 1: really smart to train yourself to be more observant of
Speaker 1: tiny details, because the small things are the big things.
Speaker 1: And if you don't notice the small things, I think
Speaker 1: that you can have a feeling of being lost, even
Speaker 1: if you're killing it, even if you're you know, slaying
Speaker 1: dragons and hitting home runs. So that's uh, that's mind
Speaker 1: how I try to think about it. Mindfulness is obviously
Speaker 1: can be helpful for that right, huge, huge, And if
Speaker 1: you know, meditation is a dirty word to you, which
Speaker 1: it was for me for a very long time. Then
Speaker 1: start with with guided meditations. You can use an app
Speaker 1: like Headspace or Calm, or you could go to Sam
Speaker 1: Harris dot org. You know, make it easy, you know,
Speaker 1: rig the game so you can win in the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to definitely promote your show, which is
Speaker 1: next week. Am I right? It's coming out next week? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it launches the twenty eighth Tuesday, So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the big day. Great, we'll get this episode out immediately.
Speaker 1: I'm very respectful of your time. Taylors wants to ask
Speaker 1: you one question, big fan of yours. This is my
Speaker 1: executive producer, Tayler Crist talk to you, Tim. So cool?
Speaker 1: Yeah too, right. So, something I love so much about
Speaker 1: your writing is how it focuses people in on what
Speaker 1: it means to live a good life. You know. I
Speaker 1: think sitting down with your books gets people to reflect
Speaker 1: on their values, on their goals, on their priorities, and
Speaker 1: just how to live a more philosophically satisfying existence. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of appropriate. We were just talking about this, really, Tim,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering just what would it mean for you? For
Speaker 1: Tim Ferris to have lived a good life. If you
Speaker 1: were to take a bird's eye view and look back
Speaker 1: and point it maybe two or three things you've done
Speaker 1: and just say, like, you know, I did all right,
Speaker 1: I did okay in thirty seconds and thirty no, no, no,
Speaker 1: in thirty seconds or least, I said. I've thought about
Speaker 1: this and actually took a seminar a that focused on
Speaker 1: a lot of flute and stuff like Aristotle and you know,
Speaker 1: the Stokes and whatnot, but trying to define the good luck?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? And I think for me it
Speaker 1: would come down to, and this is going to sound cheesy,
Speaker 1: but it's hard not to sound cheesy when you're trying
Speaker 1: to give an overarching answer to this, but I would
Speaker 1: say to have loved, been loved, and to have never
Speaker 1: stopped learning. I think if I check those three boxes,
Speaker 1: especially the first and the third, then things will turn
Speaker 1: out just fine. And it's the order is important. The loving,
Speaker 1: the act of loving others and sort of wrapping gratitude
Speaker 1: into that and all the layers that that includes. I
Speaker 1: think radiates outward and topples a lot of dominoes that
Speaker 1: satisfy a lot of needs and ultimately enhances performance. All
Speaker 1: things in the Achievement boocket, So yeah, to love, be loved,
Speaker 1: to never stop learning. And then in terms of three
Speaker 1: things I've done, man, hopefully the next three things I do,
Speaker 1: I suppose, but I want to convince people that to
Speaker 1: get superhuman results, all you need is a better set
Speaker 1: of questions and a better toolkit. And I've just seen
Speaker 1: hundreds and thousands of examples now where, for instance, before
Speaker 1: our Body comes out and people are like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that stuff's crazy, that's insane, Like I can't do that.
Speaker 1: Only that's Tim Ferriss. That's why he can do it.
Speaker 1: And every in every single chapter, whether it's the breath holding,
Speaker 1: vertical jump, ultra endurance, fat loss, musclegain, any of that stuff,
Speaker 1: I have reader examples that have far outstripped what I've done.
Speaker 1: And that is my goal. My goal is to, hopefully,
Speaker 1: you know, by the time I leave this planet, create
Speaker 1: thousands or tens of thousands or more of a master
Speaker 1: world class learners who in turn can be teachers and
Speaker 1: past that skill set and disseminate that to more and
Speaker 1: more people. I think that's how you get I think
Speaker 1: that's how you get problem solvers and innovators who can
Speaker 1: really solve and create some interesting things. So that's that's
Speaker 1: what I'm aiming for, you know, one, one book and
Speaker 1: TV show at a time. I love it. I wish
Speaker 1: you all the best, him and the thanks I hope.
Speaker 1: I hope educators listen to your message just as much
Speaker 1: as business leaders do. So me too, Me too, man.
Speaker 1: So we'll grab some wine or something and sham on
Speaker 1: that when we meet in person. That would be fun.
Speaker 1: I'd love that. All the best to you. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman.
Speaker 1: I hope you found this episode just as formative and
Speaker 1: thought from if I did. If you read the show
Speaker 1: notes for this episode or your pants episodes, if you
Speaker 1: go to the Psychology podcast dot com, bulling U