Speaker 1: Pushkin. My good friend Adam Grant, author in psychology professor
Speaker 1: at U Penn, has a new book out, Hidden Potential,
Speaker 1: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. He sent me a
Speaker 1: draft months ago. I told Adam I love it so
Speaker 1: much that when it comes out, I want to sit
Speaker 1: down and interview you about it, and we'll run the
Speaker 1: interview in the Revision's history feed. Sure enough, Hidden Potential
Speaker 1: has now come out, and on Adam's publication day, he
Speaker 1: came to New York and joined me on stage at
Speaker 1: the ninety second Street y for what turned out to
Speaker 1: be a really really fun conversation as we always have
Speaker 1: whenever we get together. So here it is, thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you all for coming, Adam, thank you for coming
Speaker 1: to New York.
Speaker 2: You know we have done this times we have, and
Speaker 2: this is it's usually on my turf, not yours.
Speaker 1: This is what I was about to say. I was
Speaker 1: going to ask you what is different this time around?
Speaker 1: And you that's exactly right. You have finally come to
Speaker 1: my house. And I was reflecting on this, and I
Speaker 1: was wondering, what kind of an idiot am I that
Speaker 1: I have agreed to go to your turf like seven
Speaker 1: times in a row before demanding that we return to favor.
Speaker 1: This is like a you know in basketball. This is
Speaker 1: like someone seating you know, home territory and saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: just let's just do it at your arena.
Speaker 2: I will say, though, you once invited me to your
Speaker 2: actual house where we had dinner and you cooked.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 3: Do you remember this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't say that was necessarily to your advantage
Speaker 1: if I was cooking.
Speaker 2: Well, it definitely wasn't, because I've never told you this,
Speaker 2: But do you remember what you cooked?
Speaker 3: Yew?
Speaker 2: I think it was tilapia really, or it was something
Speaker 2: that swims and I don't eat seafood. But I didn't
Speaker 2: want to hurt your feelings, so I ate it. I
Speaker 2: feel like we're even.
Speaker 1: Adam that that that's very touching you. You you took
Speaker 1: telapia for me, that's I am. I wanted to start.
Speaker 1: We're going to be discussing your book Hidden Potential, but
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the blurbs on the back, and i
Speaker 1: just want to not read the blurbs, but just talk
Speaker 1: about who has blurbed your book. Okay, So the first
Speaker 1: blurb is from Serena Williams, right, World's Greatest transport. The
Speaker 1: second blurb is from Mark Cuban, the famous owner of
Speaker 1: the Dallas Mavericks, the guy who's on Shark Tank. The
Speaker 1: third quote is from Malcolm glaba me. The fourth quote
Speaker 1: is from yo Yo Ma, world's famous cellist, and the
Speaker 1: fourth quote is from US Navy Admiral William McRaven. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: what's the theory behind the order? Why? Why does Serena
Speaker 1: did she?
Speaker 3: Did?
Speaker 1: She say, I'll give you a blurb if you put
Speaker 1: me first?
Speaker 3: Like? What?
Speaker 1: How does who decided she goes first? Do Cubans say,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to go second to Serena? But not if
Speaker 1: I'm If I'm behind Glavel, I'm you're not kidding him?
Speaker 1: What happened? How did that work?
Speaker 3: I didn't choose the order?
Speaker 1: It's not alphabetical because wait.
Speaker 3: Are you?
Speaker 2: Are you trying to argue for a higher placement than third?
Speaker 3: No? Is that what's happening here?
Speaker 1: No? I don't. I'm not sure. I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: belong third. I think I don't know why I'm ahead
Speaker 1: of Why would I be ahead of Yoyoma? Yoyoma in
Speaker 1: every way is more culturally significant than I ioll be
Speaker 1: from I will be dead and forgotten that people will
Speaker 1: be listening to yoyoma. Okay, William mcgraven defends this country
Speaker 1: and you have a blast like where are your priorities?
Speaker 3: By the way, this is how you treat a guest
Speaker 3: in your home.
Speaker 1: But well, I mean, we have a history of me
Speaker 1: feeding U tilapia. So all right, let's talk about your book,
Speaker 1: which I like a law by the way, otherwise it
Speaker 1: would not have blurbed it. You're interested in character, which
Speaker 1: is is That's sort of an interesting twist, isn't it.
Speaker 1: You would think an organizational psychologists would be someone who
Speaker 1: would be interested in structures and procedures and those kinds
Speaker 1: of things.
Speaker 2: But I'm a psychologist first, and I happen to do
Speaker 2: a lot of my work on people at work. But
Speaker 2: what I care about is people and the quality of
Speaker 2: their lives and how much they get to grow. And
Speaker 2: so if you happen to do that in an organization, great,
Speaker 2: But I could care less about the org chart. But
Speaker 2: I care deeply about helping people reach their potential.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to make an additional observation about your
Speaker 1: books as a group, and that is that it's they're
Speaker 1: fundamentally about character as you say, which you're also very
Speaker 1: interested in sort of interrogating our intuitive ideas about character. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm always reminded and you will know this. Didn't Lee
Speaker 1: Ross write a famous paper which was all about how
Speaker 1: our intuitions about psychology are wrong in the in the main,
Speaker 1: and that it seems to me a lot of what
Speaker 1: you're doing in your books, is this a fair summary
Speaker 1: of them? Is you are continuing on that path of
Speaker 1: kind of interrogating our intuitive notions about psychology.
Speaker 3: Some would call that Gladwellian.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think I think you're don't. Don't you're
Speaker 1: deflecting now, Adam, You're.
Speaker 3: You literally just deflected.
Speaker 1: Ah, I don't.
Speaker 3: No, No, is anyone else watching this happen. His deflection
Speaker 3: is accusing me of deflection. It's not a deflection, it's.
Speaker 1: Not no listen, am, I I'm just a flat up contrarian.
Speaker 1: There's a difference between someone who gently interrogates what we
Speaker 1: get wrong as intuitive psychologists and someone like me who
Speaker 1: just says, provocatively and usually erroneously, that everything we think
Speaker 1: is wrong. I'm a bomb throw You're not a bomb thrower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's I think that's a parody or
Speaker 2: a caricature of your work.
Speaker 3: But no, I think.
Speaker 2: I think I start with really wanting to understand what
Speaker 2: makes me tick and how we can improve the quality
Speaker 2: of our lives. And then within that I want to
Speaker 2: focus on what's.
Speaker 3: Surprising and unexpected.
Speaker 2: So yes, I think you're right, which causes me pain
Speaker 2: to admit.
Speaker 1: Like we think again. For example, the idea of valorizing
Speaker 1: humility as a kind as the kind of cornerstone the
Speaker 1: key as the cornerstone of intellectual growth is really interesting
Speaker 1: and not one. I imagine if you gathered a group
Speaker 1: of people of students and ask them what did they think,
Speaker 1: what characters trait did they think was the key to
Speaker 1: intellectual growth, humility would not be in the top three.
Speaker 3: No, and that's why I wanted to write about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I go to work when we used
Speaker 2: to go to a physical workplace, and still when I
Speaker 2: go to teach, I walk into the classroom and I
Speaker 2: think Donald Trump and Elon Musk both attended this financetitution. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what would I want the next Trump or Musk to learn?
Speaker 2: And strangely, humility is very very high on that list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder how you could so tell me about
Speaker 1: the thought process that led you to think. Okay, the
Speaker 1: next stage in this journey through character, I wanted, I wanted.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be about hidden potential. How did you
Speaker 1: get there?
Speaker 2: I went down this path because I was once told
Speaker 2: that I couldn't write.
Speaker 1: Who told you that?
Speaker 2: The Harvard Writing Office my first week of college when
Speaker 2: they recommended me for remedial writing, which I was then
Speaker 2: told was for jocks and people who spoke English as
Speaker 2: a sixth or seventh language.
Speaker 1: So wait, keep going, this is interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I I failed the required writing test as a
Speaker 2: as a brand new freshmen. It was the first piece
Speaker 2: of feedback I got from Harvard. And if you think
Speaker 2: I had imposter syndrome before, like already worrying, like I'm
Speaker 2: the one mistake.
Speaker 3: I don't belong here. Now I show up, I.
Speaker 2: Take the writing test, They're like, Nope, you must take
Speaker 2: an extra semester of writing.
Speaker 3: And you can't.
Speaker 2: You can't explain your thoughts coherently, and you don't know
Speaker 2: how to structure an argument.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I think I don't belong here.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the point, right, That's why I
Speaker 2: wanted to write this book. Is we make so many
Speaker 2: judgments of other people's potential, and so often they're driven
Speaker 2: by starting ability. Do you have the raw talent? Are
Speaker 2: you a prodigy? Do you look extremely capable? And if
Speaker 2: the answer is no, you think you should give up yeah,
Speaker 2: because you don't have what it takes. And I think
Speaker 2: that's a huge mistake. I think it counts out a
Speaker 2: ton of late bloomers. I think it overlooks many many
Speaker 2: slow learners. And I think it also prevents us from
Speaker 2: stretching beyond our strengths and actually.
Speaker 3: Achieving more than we believe we're capable of.
Speaker 1: But so wait, but this is interesting because I would
Speaker 1: you know, I associate you you're a Can you give us
Speaker 1: a little more insight into your eighteen year old self?
Speaker 1: You said you had imposter syndrome?
Speaker 3: Why I think I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any sense of what it took to
Speaker 2: be a Harvard student. I remember going to my interview
Speaker 2: and the interviewer was the first Harvard graduate I ever met,
Speaker 2: and I just I thought that was a different intellectual league.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if I was smart enough. I didn't
Speaker 3: have any patents yet.
Speaker 2: I did not get a perfect SAT score. But you
Speaker 2: got in Yeah, but I didn't know exactly why or how,
Speaker 2: and they're just evaluating me from a bunch of pieces
Speaker 2: of paper, right, which is a pretty It's a pretty
Speaker 2: poor proxy for somebody's potential.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those of us who didn't get into Harvard are
Speaker 1: always baffled by those who did get into Harvard and
Speaker 1: profess to have imposter syndrome. I'm what I'm getting at
Speaker 1: with all these questions about your college heres is to
Speaker 1: what extent this book strikes me? Each one of your
Speaker 1: books is steadily a little more personal. Some of the
Speaker 1: best parts of this book are where you illustrate some
Speaker 1: of your points with personal stories. And I'm wondering whether,
Speaker 1: in some sense this book is a personal is a
Speaker 1: more personal project than.
Speaker 3: Your Yeah, it might be.
Speaker 2: I think I've gotten more comfortable realizing I've gotten so much.
Speaker 2: I guess reader feedback and also listener feedback from podcasts
Speaker 2: like we like hearing your personal stories, Like don't always
Speaker 2: use the data as.
Speaker 3: A crutch, Like they're not a crutch. That's literally what
Speaker 3: I do. It's how I think.
Speaker 2: Like, if you ask me a question about anything, I'll
Speaker 2: be like, well, what is the best randomized control trial
Speaker 2: on that?
Speaker 3: So This is not me avoiding sharing.
Speaker 2: It's that I consider systematic evidence to be a better
Speaker 2: source of knowledge than my idiosyncratic lived experience. But I
Speaker 2: realized that a lot of people's brains don't work that way,
Speaker 2: and I think I've come around to the idea that, yes,
Speaker 2: if I'm sharing my story in service of explaining an
Speaker 2: idea or revealing a lesson, then that's not about me.
Speaker 2: That's actually me trying to offer a gift from my
Speaker 2: life to theirs.
Speaker 3: I think this book is a personal.
Speaker 2: Project because I've realized over the course of writing it
Speaker 2: that all my achievements that I'm actually proud of were
Speaker 2: things that I started out bad at. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: thought most of my life the opposite was true. I
Speaker 2: thought what I was supposed to be proud of were
Speaker 2: the things that came naturally to me.
Speaker 1: So this is really interesting, and I want to dig
Speaker 1: into many parts of this, but I want to start
Speaker 1: with we were talking earlier about a lot the kind
Speaker 1: of hidden project in many of your books is interrogating
Speaker 1: our kind of lay notions about psychology that are incorrect,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious about this. So the lay notion this
Speaker 1: book is, to your just point you just made the
Speaker 1: lay notion this book is focused on, is we have
Speaker 1: this kind of veneration of inate ability. But in fact,
Speaker 1: what the evidence suggests is that many of the most
Speaker 1: important accomplishes, accomplishments we have are not about what we
Speaker 1: start with, but what we acquire along the way. And
Speaker 1: what I want to know is what I'm curious about
Speaker 1: is why do we have, in this specific respect, a
Speaker 1: lay notion that's so clearly at odds with the facts.
Speaker 1: Where did it? Why do we Why would we venerate
Speaker 1: innate ability if a natability is not nearly as important
Speaker 1: as like, what's the reason for that?
Speaker 2: It's such an interesting question. Off the top of my head,
Speaker 2: I think there are a couple of things going on.
Speaker 2: Number one, how many parents do you know that are
Speaker 2: living vicariously through their kids?
Speaker 3: I mean, your kids are two in less.
Speaker 1: Than a year, so sorry started, sorry started a lot.
Speaker 2: Of people, you know, whether it's you know, wanting their
Speaker 2: kids to be highly intelligent or accomplished in their careers,
Speaker 2: or you know, great athletes or incredible musicians. Whatever dreams
Speaker 2: people have unrealized they often impose on their kids. And
Speaker 2: I think saying I didn't have the natural ability is
Speaker 2: a convenient way to say, you know what, like maybe I.
Speaker 3: Didn't waste my potential.
Speaker 2: I didn't squander an opportunity, which is a lot of
Speaker 2: cognitive dissonance to live with, to say, maybe I could
Speaker 2: have been great, and I just I didn't have the
Speaker 2: right approach to learning, or the right level of discipline
Speaker 2: or the right coach.
Speaker 3: That's that's unsettling to think about.
Speaker 2: And so I think just you know, kind of blaming right,
Speaker 2: a lack of a progress on raw talent and lets
Speaker 2: us off the hook a little bit would be one thought.
Speaker 2: I think the second thought is that when we see
Speaker 2: natural talent, we're just blown away by it.
Speaker 3: You know, if you've ever.
Speaker 2: Watched a four year old playing Mozart, you know, it's
Speaker 2: mind boggling. And that is that that is a human
Speaker 2: that's cut from a different cloth than me, and so
Speaker 2: it's it's hard to ever see yourself in that person.
Speaker 2: I remember, Actually I'll give you a personal example on this,
Speaker 2: since you invited me to talk more about my share.
Speaker 2: So this is about to become the Adam Grant Show.
Speaker 3: Are you ready?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: I remember when I so you know, I'm an introvert,
Speaker 2: I'm shy, I was extremely afraid of public speaking and
Speaker 2: when I wanted when I decided I wanted to do it,
Speaker 2: I said, okay, I have to go and learn.
Speaker 3: From great speakers.
Speaker 2: So the first thing I did was I watched videos
Speaker 2: of mlks I have a dream speech.
Speaker 3: It was completely demoralizing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I watched this something I will never no
Speaker 2: matter how hard I work at this, I will never
Speaker 2: get that good.
Speaker 3: I might as well quit now. And I think that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it feels unfathomable. Right when you
Speaker 2: see that the innate ability differences between you and someone
Speaker 2: else could be that great, it just seems impot possible
Speaker 2: for you. And so you assume then that that is
Speaker 2: what is required.
Speaker 1: What you're doing with him, okay, is you're assuming that
Speaker 1: what you're observing is in innate. In fact, he's practiced.
Speaker 1: He grows up in a oral culture in the he
Speaker 1: grows up watching his father and others preach sermons. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's he's surrounded in a world that is you know,
Speaker 1: is speaking in that vein. It's like he's actually not
Speaker 1: the right person to look at and see evidence of.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, but we don't know it. Watch someone
Speaker 2: as good as as Martin Luther King Jr. And you
Speaker 2: think that's got to be a god given gift. There's
Speaker 2: no way he was ever bad at speaking, right, He's
Speaker 2: too good, It's impossible. What we don't see is the
Speaker 2: history you're describing. We admire people at their peak. We
Speaker 2: don't get to see the distance they've traveled. We don't
Speaker 2: see the fact that he started entering public speaking competitions
Speaker 2: when he was fifteen years old, that he had twenty
Speaker 2: years of deliberate practice under his belt, that the year
Speaker 2: he gave the Dream speech alone, he gave over three
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty speech, which is probably as many speeches
Speaker 2: as you've given in your career, I would imagine. So
Speaker 2: I think we have unfortunate access to greatness. We see
Speaker 2: people at their peak, and we assume that they started
Speaker 2: far ahead of us.
Speaker 1: But is this a universal affliction or an American affliction?
Speaker 1: Because I say, I bring it up because one of
Speaker 1: my favorite chapters in this book is you have a
Speaker 1: chapter on talking about the educational system in Finland and
Speaker 1: how much it differs from the American system and in
Speaker 1: its sort of assumptions about learning and doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: the Finns at least as is expressed in your educational system,
Speaker 1: hold to a notion of innate ability. And you know, so,
Speaker 1: what are we dealing with here? Is there something uniquely
Speaker 1: American about this idea?
Speaker 2: There may be to some extent, I think when yeah,
Speaker 2: when I think about what we do culturally in the US,
Speaker 2: the different from other parts of the world. There is
Speaker 2: a tendency to make the fundamental attribution era more in
Speaker 2: the US. You should define that, Yeah, the tendency to
Speaker 2: attribute people's actions and station to their their innate characteristics
Speaker 2: as opposed to their situation and affordances and opportunity and circumstances.
Speaker 2: An idea that you thoroughly decimated in outliers, I will
Speaker 2: point out, But we still do it a lot in
Speaker 2: the US, right. We like we're an individualistic society. What
Speaker 2: we like to do is we like to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: you you are where you are because of the things
Speaker 2: that are inside of you.
Speaker 3: And I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think in Finland, I think in Estonia, I think
Speaker 2: we could probably make a whole list of other countries,
Speaker 2: there's a stronger sense that every child has hidden potential
Speaker 2: and it's the job of parents and teachers and coaches
Speaker 2: to realize it in two senses of the word, one
Speaker 2: to recognize it and then to develop it.
Speaker 1: It seems to be fundamentally parodoxical, and no one's properly
Speaker 1: explained to me why it would be the case that
Speaker 1: a culture like the United States, which is the highest
Speaker 1: achieving you could argue it's splies achieving culture in the
Speaker 1: world on a number of metrics, should have a notion
Speaker 1: about achievement that is fundamentally wrong. It just doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. In fact, if you said to me that
Speaker 1: America was the one place where people recognize that hard work,
Speaker 1: that everyone has a lot of potential, and that it's
Speaker 1: revealed in hard work practiced over your life, and that
Speaker 1: trying to judge someone on the basis of their performance
Speaker 1: at twelve is a fool's Errand if someone said that
Speaker 1: is a distinctly American view, I would have said, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. It doesn't make any sense at all that
Speaker 1: we should have it backwards of all cultures.
Speaker 2: I think part of the problem is our country feels
Speaker 2: too big to invest in everybody, and so what we
Speaker 2: often do is we say, Okay, well, we're going to
Speaker 2: create gifting and talented programs and we're going to build
Speaker 2: a winner take all system so that the kids with
Speaker 2: the true promise are going to get.
Speaker 3: To rise to the top.
Speaker 2: And that allows us to believe in the.
Speaker 3: Notion of meritocracy. It allows us to feel like we've earned.
Speaker 2: All the success that we've achieved, as opposed to partially
Speaker 2: lucking into it.
Speaker 3: And so I think there is a function there, right.
Speaker 3: It allows us to.
Speaker 2: Think that America, like when we talk about the American
Speaker 2: dream and we say that anybody can live the American dream,
Speaker 2: this is the land of opportunity. We are justifying our system,
Speaker 2: and I think that serves a soothing function for a
Speaker 2: lot of people.
Speaker 1: Another one of my favorite chapters in this book is
Speaker 1: about perfectionism, and it's sort of your critique of where
Speaker 1: perfectionism leads us, what it costs us. And you start
Speaker 1: with a really interesting discussion of your time as a
Speaker 1: diver in high school and how you perfectionist. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how your perfectionism manifested itself
Speaker 1: and how you came to believe it was self defeating?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually first I didn't know I was a
Speaker 2: perfectionist when I started diving, and then at some point
Speaker 2: it crystallized, and I thought it was a big advantage
Speaker 2: because in diving, I mean, you've all heard Olympic announcers
Speaker 2: say perfect tens, and I thought, okay, in a sport
Speaker 2: that's judged on perfection, aiming for perfection.
Speaker 3: Has got to be the way.
Speaker 2: And it was such a liability for me, more than
Speaker 2: an asset. There are a whole bunch of things that
Speaker 2: I did that were counterproductive. One was I just wasted
Speaker 2: a lot of time trying to perfect easy dives as
Speaker 2: opposed to learning harder ones, which limited my degree of difficulty.
Speaker 2: I actually got an award one year for my teammates.
Speaker 2: It was the if only a word, and there was
Speaker 2: a little drawing of me on a paper plate with
Speaker 2: a cartoon that said, if only I had pointed my
Speaker 2: left pinky toe on dive, I would have gotten an
Speaker 2: eight and a half instead of an eight.
Speaker 3: And like, that's not what mattered.
Speaker 2: Like I should have been stretching so I could actually
Speaker 2: touch my toes without bending my knees. That would have
Speaker 2: made me a better diver. I think not only did
Speaker 2: I focus on the wrong things, I ruminated a lot,
Speaker 2: I beat myself up a lot, and I was constantly
Speaker 2: shaming my past mistakes as opposed to trying to sort
Speaker 2: of educate my future self from those lessons, and that
Speaker 2: was that was not helpful.
Speaker 3: Probably the worst.
Speaker 2: Thing that I did, though, was the bocking where you know,
Speaker 2: and diving, when you're gonna take off forward, you walk
Speaker 2: down the board and then jump to the end. Well,
Speaker 2: if my hurdle, if my take off, if my approach
Speaker 2: wasn't perfect, I would just stop and start over, and
Speaker 2: stop and start over, and then there's a two bock
Speaker 2: rule and then I have to get off the board
Speaker 2: and then I'm not doing dives all practice, because like,
Speaker 2: what's the point of Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you balk, you know? It was if you stop
Speaker 1: and start again more than twice, you have to dismount
Speaker 1: from the well.
Speaker 2: That was the rule that my coach, Eric Best had
Speaker 2: to instant because otherwise I would just bock all practice.
Speaker 1: So but what's going on inside your head? Are you enjoying?
Speaker 1: Are you enjoying being a diver?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I loved it.
Speaker 2: I loved it, but I was really frustrated, feeling like
Speaker 2: I couldn't get it right.
Speaker 3: I couldn't get it right. I was really bad.
Speaker 1: And then when did you start reflecting on the experience
Speaker 1: and kind of I think this is the reason I
Speaker 1: asked this question, is forgive me, Adam, if I could
Speaker 1: play doctor Freud for a moment, and if you'd like
Speaker 1: to recline. I feel there's a lot more. There's a
Speaker 1: lot more of your books are a lot more of
Speaker 1: a personal project than you let on, and this one
Speaker 1: in particular, I was reading so and you have these
Speaker 1: little moments where you start talking about diving, and I
Speaker 1: think you know, if I was a psychoanalyst, I would say, Adam,
Speaker 1: this book is really about you trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of the mistakes that little Adam made and the experiences
Speaker 1: that little Adam had. Is that is that not fair?
Speaker 2: I mean, I wouldn't frame that in Freudian terms because
Speaker 2: I think he set psychology back a century. Of course
Speaker 2: you would say that, but it's like, I mean, his
Speaker 2: approach was so unscientific, and if you disagree with him,
Speaker 2: well you're in denial.
Speaker 3: Like I was that helpful to anyone?
Speaker 1: Exhibit A who's in denial? Here?
Speaker 2: I will say there are some good meta analyses of
Speaker 2: randomized controlled trials of psychodynamic therapy that show that it
Speaker 2: can have efficacy for some people in some situations, but
Speaker 2: I'm still extremely skeptical anyway, Uh, I will not.
Speaker 3: Be paging doctor Fry.
Speaker 1: You're in a place called Manhattan and you're dissing psychoanalysis.
Speaker 1: What why? I don't know, Malcolm in active self, you
Speaker 1: want people to buy your book afterwards, and this is
Speaker 1: what you're telling them.
Speaker 2: First of all, I think most people here have already
Speaker 2: bought the book. And I also think there's a point
Speaker 2: at which you stop blaming your behavior on as of
Speaker 2: your parents, Adam, and start taking responsibility for your adult cis.
Speaker 1: I brought but I brought this up because I was
Speaker 1: wondering whether you were doing a version of the same thing,
Speaker 1: which was at the age of how old you know,
Speaker 1: now forty two, at the age of forty two, still
Speaker 1: working out the problems you had as a swimmer as
Speaker 1: a divery.
Speaker 2: Oh, don't ever call a diver a swimmer. Yeah no,
Speaker 2: that's like me calling you a jogger as a runner.
Speaker 2: I think there's a difference between trying to work out
Speaker 2: the problems of little Adam, which is how Malcolm Freud
Speaker 2: would approach this discussion, and trying to figure out if
Speaker 2: there are lessons from my biggest struggles and also my
Speaker 2: greatest moments of growth that could become teachable moments for
Speaker 2: me and others. I'm trying to reflect on the fact
Speaker 2: that I really was my own worst enemy for a
Speaker 2: good part of my diving career, but then I ended
Speaker 2: up ascending to a much greater height than I ever
Speaker 2: thought possible. I should not have gotten where I got
Speaker 2: as a diver. I shouldn't have been a like what
Speaker 2: was I doing in the Junior Olympic Nationals as somebody
Speaker 2: who literally was called Frankenstein because I didn't bend my
Speaker 2: knees when I walked? Like something about this does not
Speaker 2: add up. And so I think that juxtaposing those kinds
Speaker 2: of moments with what does the social science tell us
Speaker 2: is really powerful.
Speaker 1: But if you had, I guess what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: say is the work that you've done, the extraordinary work
Speaker 1: that you've done as an adult, is in some way
Speaker 1: we're all beneficiaries of some of these struggles you had
Speaker 1: as a If you had been this kind of non
Speaker 1: nerdy golden boy who was a kind of diving prodigy
Speaker 1: and to whom things came easily, we don't get this
Speaker 1: book definitely not Yeah. To go back to our earlier point,
Speaker 1: this is another kind of crucial flaw in the kind
Speaker 1: of obsession with innate ability and the way in which
Speaker 1: we celebrate. We happen to celebrate those who achieve things
Speaker 1: early and without a parent effort, and that is that
Speaker 1: we're not thinking about the downstream consequences. Right, We're not
Speaker 1: thinking that a lot of what looks like struggle at
Speaker 1: an early age is simply kind of raw material in
Speaker 1: preparation for some kind of future better thing. Right. Being
Speaker 1: a struggling as a diver as a freshman is, in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, a pretty small thing, but
Speaker 1: it's a little kernel that becomes something really interesting. When
Speaker 1: you're forty and you're interested in writing about hidden potential,
Speaker 1: right starts to matter.
Speaker 2: Then I think you're onto something important here. And I
Speaker 2: think I read a book once they called it Desirable
Speaker 2: Difficulty by you. Yes, I think that, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: actually something that more used to actually stressed to me
Speaker 2: that I hadn't appreciated. So you know, Mauras from the
Speaker 2: book is a chess grandmaster, and I think an extraordinary
Speaker 2: coach who recognizes and brings out the hidden potential in
Speaker 2: kids that nobody else thought had a chance. And one
Speaker 2: of the things Maurice said is he is watched in
Speaker 2: chess over and over again. The biggest prodigies young are
Speaker 2: the ones who have the biggest struggles when they're older,
Speaker 2: because it came too easily to them at first, and
Speaker 2: they're just they're used to kind of having this natural success,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden they lose the game and.
Speaker 3: They can't take it, and they haven't.
Speaker 2: I think the fundamental problem there, if you look at
Speaker 2: the research, is they have not built the character skills
Speaker 2: that are necessary to face obstacles. They don't know how
Speaker 2: to embrace discomfort, they don't know how to accept the
Speaker 2: right imperfections and say these mistakes are actually part of
Speaker 2: my growth. And so I think that sometimes early success
Speaker 2: does a major disservice to our future selves.
Speaker 1: I reminded a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting
Speaker 1: in a coffee shop in Orlando, Florida, long story, and
Speaker 1: emailed me about that there's two surgeons sitting next to me.
Speaker 1: Of course I was he's dropping and one of them
Speaker 1: had a daughter who was at Cornell Medical School, and
Speaker 1: he was boasting about how she was she loved Cornell.
Speaker 1: Cornell's amazing she got into Cornell. Isn't that fantastic? Blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And I emailed at him and I was like,
Speaker 1: how does this guy get it completely backwards? Why doesn't
Speaker 1: he boast about his daughter that my daughter's having an
Speaker 1: amazing time in medical school. Isn't it amazing that she's
Speaker 1: the kind of person who can go into an institution
Speaker 1: and find what's meaningful to her and flourish. And you know,
Speaker 1: he was focused on Cornell, and he wasn't interested in
Speaker 1: the character traits his own daughter had that allowed her
Speaker 1: to flourish and be happy and find meaningful And I
Speaker 1: was just like, there's something about parents. What you're describing
Speaker 1: is why are parents so bad at kind of decoding
Speaker 1: the psychology of their own children? It just strikes me
Speaker 1: as like, well, why are we making these mistakes? Then?
Speaker 1: Why on earth are we so in love with prodigies?
Speaker 1: Like I don't again, I mean, I'm just baffled by this.
Speaker 2: I mean, when psychologists study this, they talk about parental
Speaker 2: overinvolvement and over identification and the notion that as a parent,
Speaker 2: like we were touching on this earlier, you start to
Speaker 2: define your own success by your children's accomplishments. And I
Speaker 2: just want to sit parents now. I see this all
Speaker 2: the time with our students at PEN. I want to
Speaker 2: sit these parents down and say, like, what your children
Speaker 2: achieve is not a reflection of your greatness as a parent.
Speaker 2: You should be much more concerned with who your kids
Speaker 2: become and how they treat other people. Being a great
Speaker 2: parent is not about how much precedure kids attain in
Speaker 2: their school choices or in their jobs.
Speaker 3: It's not about career success. It's about character.
Speaker 2: I think you might have found someone who had not
Speaker 2: yet internalized that message you.
Speaker 1: Say on the subject of perfectionism, I want you to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about what in gener what
Speaker 1: precisely is damaging about and having a perfectionistic attitude, and
Speaker 1: what do you feel we should have instead.
Speaker 2: Okay, so if you look at the current work, which
Speaker 2: I think is the most comprehensive and rigorous to date,
Speaker 2: what we see goes wrong with perfectionists is one, they
Speaker 2: lose the forest in the trees, so they tend to
Speaker 2: focus on small details and overlook the big picture. Two,
Speaker 2: they do a lot of the rumination and sort of
Speaker 2: self shaming as opposed to self compassion that's necessary for
Speaker 2: learning from your mistakes. And three, they actually tend not
Speaker 2: to stretch themselves much. They want to focus on the
Speaker 2: things they know they can master, as opposed to venturing
Speaker 2: into uncharted territory. And by avoiding failure, they actually avoid
Speaker 2: risk taking, and they avoid learning and challenging themselves, and
Speaker 2: that means they end up with a static or even
Speaker 2: ever narrowing comfort zone as opposed to an expanding domain
Speaker 2: of expertise.
Speaker 1: You make the comment of the book that you think
Speaker 1: perfectionism of the sort you've just defined is on the rise.
Speaker 1: Why would it be on the rise?
Speaker 2: So empirically perfectionism has risen in the US.
Speaker 3: In the UK, and the great nation of Canada. I
Speaker 3: think if you look.
Speaker 2: At why it's increasing, what everybody does is they say
Speaker 2: social media.
Speaker 3: It's got to be social media.
Speaker 2: Everybody has a perfect image of themselves on Instagram, and
Speaker 2: that's leading our kids to have unrealistic expectations.
Speaker 3: That may be part of the story. But guess what.
Speaker 2: Perfectionism started rising a generation before social media existed. It
Speaker 2: started rising when Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers. So there's
Speaker 2: got to be something else going on. And my read
Speaker 2: of The evidence is there are two things that seem
Speaker 2: to be contributing to it, and both of them are
Speaker 2: parental behaviors. One of them is rising parental expectations for kids,
Speaker 2: holding children to increasingly impossible standards, and two is increasingly
Speaker 2: harsh criticism of kids who don't meet those standards.
Speaker 1: Did you so, why would Okay, let's let's take one
Speaker 1: step further. Why would parents? I mean, it seems like
Speaker 1: an obvious question, but I don't know that I know
Speaker 1: the kind of good answer. Why would parents? Expectations have risen,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the nineties, eighties, nineties, what's driving
Speaker 1: parent rental expectations in that era?
Speaker 3: So we don't we don't know.
Speaker 2: I think the probably the consensus hunch right now is
Speaker 2: that the world has gotten more competitive. So, you know,
Speaker 2: however hard it was to get into college in the eighties,
Speaker 2: it got a little bit harder in the nineties, and
Speaker 2: it got increasingly difficult over time. And so in a
Speaker 2: world that feels more and more zero sum, I think
Speaker 2: we've we've probably seen a lot of talk about how
Speaker 2: the current generation of kids is the first in America
Speaker 2: that might not sort of outdo their parents or have
Speaker 2: a better standard of living than their parents. And so
Speaker 2: when you see that world, and you see a world
Speaker 2: of scarcity, you think, I've got to do whatever it
Speaker 2: takes to help my kids succeed, forgetting that the very
Speaker 2: things you're doing to try to help your kids succeed
Speaker 2: are just turning them into achievement robots who one day
Speaker 2: realize like, this is no way to live a life
Speaker 2: and burn out.
Speaker 1: How wire you? How did your parents? Would you think
Speaker 1: your parents were guilty of that?
Speaker 2: My mom used to tell me, Adam, no matter what
Speaker 2: grade you get, as long as you do your best,
Speaker 2: I'll be proud of you. And then she would add,
Speaker 2: but if you didn't get an A, I'll know you
Speaker 2: didn't do your best. She said it with a smile.
Speaker 2: I think she was half kidding, but I took it seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, I guess there's a little I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't get the harsh criticism though, but I definitely
Speaker 2: felt like expectations were high.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The last chapter of your book, could you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about interviews and admissions and college admissions
Speaker 1: and things? And I had some big and some small
Speaker 1: questions about that. You have a very interesting part where
Speaker 1: you talk about what the evidence social science evidence tells
Speaker 1: us about the success and or failure of affirmative action programs.
Speaker 1: Can you summarize what social science tells us about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went in to read the evidence to ask
Speaker 2: what is the impact of these programs. A lot of
Speaker 2: people have strong ideological positions on them. I feel like
Speaker 2: my job as a social scientist is to look at
Speaker 2: the most careful research that's been done and try to
Speaker 2: hint the picture of what do we know? And I
Speaker 2: think what the evidence suggests is that affirmative action programs
Speaker 2: are a double edged sword, even for the very people
Speaker 2: they're trying to help. So on the one hand, they
Speaker 2: do manage to open doors for people who have historically
Speaker 2: been denied opportunity by virtue of group membership. On the
Speaker 2: other hand, if you enter a university or a workplace
Speaker 2: that is known to have affirmative action, you perform worse
Speaker 2: if you are a beneficiary of that program than if
Speaker 2: the program didn't exist. So we see this with women,
Speaker 2: we see it with racial minority. What happens is, and
Speaker 2: I don't think this will shock anyone. People start to
Speaker 2: doubt whether they really deserve that spot.
Speaker 3: Am I qualified? Do I belong here. It's a massive
Speaker 3: version of imposter syndrome, and not the healthy kind. And
Speaker 3: then other people will question it too.
Speaker 2: They're like, well, I don't think you really got in
Speaker 2: on your own merit, and that self doubt and constantly
Speaker 2: being doubted by others, that takes a toll.
Speaker 3: It's exhausting to deal with.
Speaker 2: It's distracting to constantly question your capabilities day in, day out.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I came away from this evidence
Speaker 2: thinking I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know where I stand.
Speaker 2: I think that we're sort of damned if we do,
Speaker 2: and we're damned if we don't. But I do think
Speaker 2: there's an alternative approach that might be helpful to think about.
Speaker 1: What two questions about that one is, why isn't that
Speaker 1: same logic hold for the white and if his sharies
Speaker 1: of affirmative action. If I'm a legacy kid gets into
Speaker 1: Harvard because daddy went to Harvard, why aren't I walking
Speaker 1: around with a big burden of imposter syndrome? I want
Speaker 1: to hear because daddy gave seventeen million dollars to Does
Speaker 1: it not work?
Speaker 3: Do it? White people?
Speaker 1: Exempt?
Speaker 2: Can we just pause to acknowledge the fact you just
Speaker 2: called legacy admission affirmative action for white people.
Speaker 1: That's what it is.
Speaker 3: I think that's an accurate characterization.
Speaker 2: I think that not only should legacy admission be banned,
Speaker 2: I think that if there used to be used by
Speaker 2: a lot of Ivy League schools as a tiebreaker, and
Speaker 2: I think it should be a reverse tiebreaker. If you're
Speaker 2: on equal footing with somebody whose parents didn't go to
Speaker 2: an elite institution, then.
Speaker 3: You already had an advantage, so the other person should
Speaker 3: get in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think, first of all, a lot of people don't
Speaker 2: know who the legacies are. I think also there's not
Speaker 2: the same stigma. Historically, there hasn't been the same stigma
Speaker 2: associated with legacy admission, so affirmative action is seen as
Speaker 2: lowering standards. Yeah, and in most cases it's not right.
Speaker 2: It's just saying we're gonna look at people who all
Speaker 2: meet the qualifications and requirements, and then we're going to
Speaker 2: make sure that those whose groups have been historically disadvantaged.
Speaker 3: Get a shot.
Speaker 2: But I think in the case of you know, of legacy,
Speaker 2: there hasn't been that stigma. It's been assumed, oh, you
Speaker 2: come from a genius family, you belong here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the problem is really it's not necessarily The
Speaker 1: problem is inherent in the notion of, in this case,
Speaker 1: treating a group of disadvantaged students differently. It's the narrative
Speaker 1: we tell around the policy that we don't have the
Speaker 1: same kind of We have a disparaging narrative around racial
Speaker 1: affirmative action, but not a disparaging narrative around rich people
Speaker 1: affirmative action.
Speaker 2: Look, we had a Supreme Court ruling that happened as
Speaker 2: the book went to press, and I think actually one
Speaker 2: of the ideas that I flowed in this book is
Speaker 2: maybe an option now that we ought to take seriously,
Speaker 2: which is, maybe we should stop defining people by their
Speaker 2: great membership.
Speaker 3: Maybe instead of assuming.
Speaker 2: That just because people came from a particular background that
Speaker 2: they had the same degree of difficulty in the same adversity,
Speaker 2: we should actually get to know the individual students and
Speaker 2: find out the obstacles they faced, and then adjust our
Speaker 2: expectations of them according to how much poverty did they
Speaker 2: individually face, according to did they did they run into
Speaker 2: major challenges? And I think that that seems like a
Speaker 2: much more fair way to give people who have been
Speaker 2: disadvantaged or real shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait, I want to it's a very I mean,
Speaker 1: there's much to be said for that idea, and that's
Speaker 1: a longer conversation, but I want ask We're running out
Speaker 1: of time, but I want have one last thing I
Speaker 1: want to say. So this is I'm now I'm asking
Speaker 1: you to give me some advice because I'm working on
Speaker 1: book right now, and this is very I deal with
Speaker 1: this very question we're talking about in this book.
Speaker 3: Are we talking about the revision of the tipping points?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a different book, the revision of the tipping.
Speaker 3: Were allowed to say that publicly that you're reading the tip.
Speaker 1: I'm revising the tipping point. And so I was thinking
Speaker 1: of posing the following question. Given what you're saying, what
Speaker 1: advice would you give to a bright, ambitious African American
Speaker 1: student who's interested in stan wants to be a doctor
Speaker 1: or engineer or scientist some kind, who has two admissions offers,
Speaker 1: one from an Ivy League school and one from an HBCU.
Speaker 1: So one where he goes or she goes with the
Speaker 1: stigma of a firmative action on one where she goes
Speaker 1: without the stigma, what would you tell that student.
Speaker 3: If that's a fascinating question. I'm not sure I'm qualified
Speaker 3: to advise on it is my first reaction. My second
Speaker 3: is a book called Hidden Potential.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm trying to look at what works for
Speaker 2: most of the people most of the time, not necessarily
Speaker 2: assume that I know the path that's going to be
Speaker 2: most effective for a complete stranger. I'd want to see.
Speaker 2: I'd want to see much better data about what are
Speaker 2: the life trajectories of you know of students with similar
Speaker 2: profiles who both have the same set of opportunities and
Speaker 2: then end up for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 3: And you know in one or the other.
Speaker 2: I guess the first thing I would want to do, though,
Speaker 2: is I'd want to know what are your goals?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Are you trying to maximize your status or objective career success?
Speaker 2: Are you trying to you know, to to lead a
Speaker 2: life you can be proud of. Are you pursuing happiness
Speaker 2: or meaning? I think there are lots of different outcomes,
Speaker 2: and I think the big mistake that I see I've
Speaker 2: I've had a lot of students come by office hours
Speaker 2: with these kinds of dilemmas over the years, often their
Speaker 2: grad school dilemmas or their job dilemmas, but sometimes it's
Speaker 2: high schooler is trying to choose a college, And the
Speaker 2: main advice that I find myself giving them is is
Speaker 2: to say, you don't want to just define your your
Speaker 2: success by achieving your goals. You should think about success
Speaker 2: is living your values. If you have a career target
Speaker 2: that you hit, but it requires you to compromise your principles,
Speaker 2: that's not success, that's failure, and it's the worst kind
Speaker 2: of failure because you've abandoned what matters.
Speaker 3: Most to you. So why don't we talk about what
Speaker 3: your values are? Is one of your core principles.
Speaker 2: To break a bunch of excuse me to break glass ceilings?
Speaker 2: Do you want to prove to people that other people
Speaker 2: can follow in your footsteps? Karen Nelton is here. Karen
Speaker 2: did some brilliant work on being a trailblazer? Is one
Speaker 2: of your core priorities in life? To open a door
Speaker 2: and clear path for other people? If so, you can ask,
Speaker 2: do I want to do this by starting out in
Speaker 2: an IVY League school or do I want to go
Speaker 2: to an environment where I might be more supported and
Speaker 2: maybe it's easier to blaze a trail later?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can't predict the future.
Speaker 2: That's the kind of conversation I'd want to have, And
Speaker 2: it wouldn't end with advice. It would it would end
Speaker 2: with me asking what have you learned through this conversation
Speaker 2: about your values and which path do you think is
Speaker 2: going to help you avoid straying from them?
Speaker 1: Adam. But it's a beautiful answer to the question. You
Speaker 1: started by saying you didn't think you could answer the question.
Speaker 1: Then you gave me a beautiful answer to the question.
Speaker 3: That's because I didn't answer the question. No, no, no.
Speaker 1: But it goes to and this is actually, I think
Speaker 1: a lovely moment to kind of sum up we are
Speaker 1: if when I read this book. When I read this book,
Speaker 1: the first and overwhelming thought I had was, we really
Speaker 1: are at we really are asking the wrong questions about
Speaker 1: something like potential. We're just like our premises are all wrong, right,
Speaker 1: That's what you're getting at here, right In one one
Speaker 1: chapter after another, you're just saying, wait a minute, we're
Speaker 1: starting with this perspective, and it's just like we're why
Speaker 1: what do we you know? It's that that kind of
Speaker 1: need to go back to to fundamentals and react ask
Speaker 1: some really basic questions, is what this what is so?
Speaker 1: What is really wonderful.
Speaker 3: About this book?
Speaker 1: And please go and buy Adam this book.
Speaker 3: Thank you all.
Speaker 1: This bonus episode of Revisionist History was produced by Nina
Speaker 1: Lawrence and Jacob Smith.
Speaker 2: It was mastered by Ben Cheno. Special thanks to Daniella Belleazo,
Speaker 2: Paul Durban, and Constanza Gallardo.