Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 2: I'm Tim Harford, and this.
Speaker 3: Is another crossover episode of my podcast The Happiness Lab.
Speaker 2: And my podcast Cautionary Tales. Laurie, last time I took
Speaker 2: the lead, I told you a story about the tensions
Speaker 2: between everyone taking a vacation at the same time and
Speaker 2: an idea from Stalin's Soviet union, where it was decreed
Speaker 2: that workers had to stagger their days off, no matter
Speaker 2: what that meant for missing leisure time with their friends
Speaker 2: and families. So this time it's the return match, as
Speaker 2: it were. So, what cautionary tale of happiness have you
Speaker 2: got install for me?
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a good one.
Speaker 3: It's a story of how we're all biased towards action
Speaker 3: and how we sometimes struggle to do less, especially when
Speaker 3: it involves doing nothing at all. It's a tale that
Speaker 3: will take us to where the blue skies start turning
Speaker 3: to inky black, because today we're going to go to
Speaker 3: the very edge of space. My story today involves one
Speaker 3: of my favorite American heroes, Major Charles E. Jaeger, as
Speaker 3: a young fighter pilot in World War Two, Chuck not
Speaker 3: only shot down a huge number of enemy aircraft but
Speaker 3: also successfully evaded the Nazis when he was shot down
Speaker 3: over occupied France. During his time on the run, Chuck
Speaker 3: helped the French resistance attack German troops and even won
Speaker 3: a medal for helping an American pilot cross the snowy
Speaker 3: Pyrenees to reach safety in Spain. Chuck was just that
Speaker 3: kind of hero, and he didn't chill out during peacetime either.
Speaker 3: He kept flying, securing his place in history by traveling
Speaker 3: faster than the speed of sound in a rocket powered
Speaker 3: aircraft he named Glamorous Glennis in honor of his wife.
Speaker 3: Other pilots had perished in their pursuit of this speed record,
Speaker 3: but Chuck broke the sound barrier with characteristic nonchalance. He
Speaker 3: even failed to tell his team that he'd fallen from
Speaker 3: a horse and broke in several ribs just before his
Speaker 3: test flight. He probably figured that they wouldn't want to
Speaker 3: trust a guy who could barely raise his arms to
Speaker 3: fly their expensive experimental aircraft. But none of these stories
Speaker 3: explained why Chuck Yeager is a hero to happiness experts
Speaker 3: like me. That stems from an incident that took place
Speaker 3: later a couple of weeks before Christmas in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 3: Chuck was now piloting an upgraded version of the glamorous Glennis,
Speaker 3: the new X one A. The X one A was
Speaker 3: built to travel more than twice the speed of sound.
Speaker 3: Chuck was excited to try out the new aircraft, especially
Speaker 3: since a pilot from the US Navy had recently beaten
Speaker 3: his record. Chuck was pretty eager to reclaim his crown
Speaker 3: as the fastest man alive. Back then, no one really
Speaker 3: knew what would happen to an airplane or a human
Speaker 3: body when it reached that velocity in height. The forces
Speaker 3: Chuck was about to face were as unprecedented as they
Speaker 3: were dangerous. So cut to December twelfth, nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 3: Jaeger's tenth flight and the X one A began routinely enough.
Speaker 3: Chuck and the X one A got carried high into
Speaker 3: the sky by a big bomber plane. The X and
Speaker 3: A was then dropped from the belly of the bomber
Speaker 3: and Chuck ignited the experimental rocket enter. The X and
Speaker 3: A flew upwards fast, but soon started kind of freaking out.
Speaker 3: It was pitching and rolling and tumbling. Chuck grappled with
Speaker 3: the controls inside the cockpit but nothing the pilot did
Speaker 3: seemed to stop the plane's violent descent, and so the
Speaker 3: X one A was now plummeting out of the sky
Speaker 3: while tossing its poor test pilot around like a rag doll.
Speaker 3: At some point, Yaeger was thrown violently into the cockpit's canopy.
Speaker 3: He even cracked the plastic with his flight helmet. All
Speaker 3: this goes to say this was not a good situation.
Speaker 3: In a matter of seconds, the experimental aircraft dropped more
Speaker 3: than six miles. Even if Jeger had known how to
Speaker 3: stop the X one a's rapid descent, he was two
Speaker 3: dazed to operate the controls. Was the plane rolling or spinning?
Speaker 3: Chuck had no idea. There was nothing he could do
Speaker 3: but surrender to the g forces jostling him in his
Speaker 3: seat as the aircraft fell towards the barren Mojave desert below.
Speaker 2: Laurie. This is the kind of cliff hangout opening that
Speaker 2: my cautionary tails listeners will be familiar with. A doomed
Speaker 2: plane and an equally doomed pilot hurtling towards Earth. So
Speaker 2: what did Chuck Yeger do?
Speaker 1: Nothing?
Speaker 3: Nothing, well, mostly nothing, which is why happiness experts like
Speaker 3: me loved what happened next. Chuck was known for his
Speaker 3: nerves as steel, but this situation had him totally spooked.
Speaker 3: He later said that if the X one A had
Speaker 3: been fitted with an ejection seat, he would have used it,
Speaker 3: but most experts say if he'd done that, there'd be
Speaker 3: no way he would have survived. In the parlance of
Speaker 3: test pilots, he would have been committing suicide to save
Speaker 3: himself from dying. So without any way to escape, Yeager
Speaker 3: had two options. Option one, he could do everything in
Speaker 3: his power to write his tumbling rocket ship to be fair.
Speaker 3: This was what Truck tried to do at the beginning,
Speaker 3: but his attempts to use the controls didn't work. At best,
Speaker 3: they did nothing, and they also may have made a
Speaker 3: bad situation even worse. So once the plane's descent became
Speaker 3: too violent, he was forced into option number two. Just
Speaker 3: do nothing, just write it out, and that is exactly
Speaker 3: what saved him. When the X one A hit about
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand feet if finally steady, the aircraft was
Speaker 3: still spinning, but it was the kind of spin that
Speaker 3: Yeager was familiarate. Once all the nightmarish bucking and tumbling
Speaker 3: was over, the veteran test pilot was finally able to
Speaker 3: pull up the nose of his craft down to twenty
Speaker 3: five that I would want to get back to bank.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: If you listen to Yegger's cockpit recordings, his fear is
Speaker 3: very obvious and his relief is palpable. I can't do much.
Speaker 3: Before I got it, he knew he was in trouble,
Speaker 3: but in the end he was going to make it
Speaker 3: home all right. I don't know a thing up or not.
Speaker 3: The wild Ride wasn't a total disaster. The X one
Speaker 3: A had topped out at mock two point four to four,
Speaker 3: and that record was finally enough for Chuck Boy. He
Speaker 3: told his team, I'm not going to do that anymore. Well,
Speaker 3: Jaeger walked away safely from the X one A and
Speaker 3: never flew a wocketplane again.
Speaker 2: I love the story, Laurie, and it's definitely a cautionary tale.
Speaker 2: But what's the happiness moral of this anecdote?
Speaker 3: Well, I first heard this story from one of my
Speaker 3: favorite meditation teachers, the psychologist Tara Brack. She shares it
Speaker 3: as a cautionary tale. But our usual need to constantly
Speaker 3: be in control of every facet of our lives. When
Speaker 3: Rafe's with a problem, most of us instinctively want to
Speaker 3: take action. We feel the need to do something, even
Speaker 3: in cases when we kind of know our actions will
Speaker 3: be ineffective or even make stuff worse. Tera says that
Speaker 3: in times like this we need to copy the great
Speaker 3: Chuck Yeger. We need to pause, take our hands off
Speaker 3: the controls, and just let things be. This pause, Tera writes,
Speaker 3: gives us a possibility of a new choice.
Speaker 2: Now, sitting back isn't something that comes naturally to many
Speaker 2: of us, so let's have a think about the ways
Speaker 2: in which it could actually be the key to performing
Speaker 2: better and feeling happier. When I'm struck by some of
Speaker 2: the caution detales that we've had over the years where
Speaker 2: doing nothing is in fact precisely the right thing to do,
Speaker 2: there's one on the subject of masterly inactivity, which features
Speaker 2: Helena Bottom Krter as the formidable Lady Sale. In the
Speaker 2: disastrous British Army operations in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: this idea of masterly inactivity was raised, and it applied
Speaker 2: not just to maybe the British should never have invaded Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: which I think, with hindsight is obvious, but also parenting,
Speaker 2: maybe we should do less parenting or medicine, maybe doctors
Speaker 2: should be doing less, prescribing fewer tests, prescribing fewer treatments.
Speaker 2: Even soccer goalkeepers are too committed to being active when
Speaker 2: faced with a penalty was in fact they'd be better
Speaker 2: off if they stayed Still.
Speaker 3: Wait, wait, Tim, as you know I'm an American on
Speaker 3: behalf of my fellow Americans, can you just explain what
Speaker 3: this penalty kick example is in a little bit more detail.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, I understand that the joys of soccer
Speaker 2: are finding American shaws these days, but maybe not this
Speaker 2: particular study. So some I think there were economists who
Speaker 2: started that actually looked at what goalkeepers do when faced
Speaker 2: with a penalty kick. And basically, in the penalty kick,
Speaker 2: the striker gets to try and put the ball in
Speaker 2: the net, and they can boot it to the left,
Speaker 2: or they can boot it to the right, or they
Speaker 2: can bout it straight down the middle, and the goalkeeper
Speaker 2: doesn't have much time to react. And so the standard
Speaker 2: procedure for a goalkeeper is just to guess it's fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty. Just dive to the right or dive to
Speaker 2: the left, and you got a fifty percent chance a
Speaker 2: going the right way. Even if you do go the
Speaker 2: right way, you might not save it. I mean, actually,
Speaker 2: most penalties turn into goals. Usually the keeper isn't able
Speaker 2: to save it, but there's a lot of pressure on
Speaker 2: the keeper to try. So the goalkeeper will usually leap
Speaker 2: off to the left or the right. If they leap
Speaker 2: in the wrong direction, well, you know, no one blames
Speaker 2: them for that. But actually quite a lot of penalty
Speaker 2: kicks go fairly close to where the goalkeeper originally was standing.
Speaker 2: They go right down the center or near enough to
Speaker 2: the center, and you can prove that if the goalkeeper
Speaker 2: had not dived either way, they probably would have had
Speaker 2: a better chance of saving the penalty kick. They would
Speaker 2: also have looked ridiculous if the kick had gone far
Speaker 2: to the left or fart of the right, because they
Speaker 2: would have looked like they weren't even And so there's
Speaker 2: that pressure to act, even when just waiting and standing
Speaker 2: still would have been a better thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think it's something that's really hard for
Speaker 3: our mind. I mean, take the medical case you mentioned.
Speaker 3: I've seen the importance of doing nothing in cases where
Speaker 3: friends of mine who've had cancer have been advised, well,
Speaker 3: rather than do some surgery, rather than do some chemo,
Speaker 3: let's just watch and wait. I think this is what
Speaker 3: doctors often call nonoperative management or active surveillance, which I
Speaker 3: think is a funny term, this idea of active surveillance,
Speaker 3: because it feels like there's nothing active about it. It's
Speaker 3: complete inaction. You're just kind of sitting there waiting, and
Speaker 3: I think people don't like that. I mean, some studies,
Speaker 3: especially for some cancer show that this can be really
Speaker 3: helpful for dealing with a cancer.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you go through chemo and surgery, but there's a
Speaker 3: tumor that's going to grow back anyway, and so it
Speaker 3: was just like silly to take the risk of doing
Speaker 3: all that surgery and chemo. But the idea of just
Speaker 3: sitting there and like seeing what your tumor does, it's
Speaker 3: just an incredibly scary situation for people who are facing it.
Speaker 3: People just want to do something, even if if it's futile,
Speaker 3: to feel like they're taking some kind of action rather
Speaker 3: than doing nothing.
Speaker 2: Which I suppose is why that word active is so important.
Speaker 2: Active surveillance, so the idea that you are doing something,
Speaker 2: the challenge of course is to know whether active surveillance,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, masterly and activity, to know whether doing
Speaker 2: nothing is the right thing, And for that you would
Speaker 2: need some kind of statistical evidence base, you'd need some
Speaker 2: kind of rigorous experiment. But I know doctors are quite
Speaker 2: convinced that they are over prescribing too many tests, too
Speaker 2: many treatments that are not necessary. And so the question
Speaker 2: there is, well, why do they feel that that's the
Speaker 2: right thing to do, or or maybe they don't feel
Speaker 2: it's the right thing to do, why do they do it?
Speaker 2: And it is often a fear of being sued by
Speaker 2: a patient, or simply just trying to get rid of
Speaker 2: a patient who is pestering them and saying I want
Speaker 2: you to do something, like okay, fine, you want me
Speaker 2: to do something even though I shouldn't do anything. I'll
Speaker 2: give you this drug or I'll prescribe this test and
Speaker 2: that'll help you to go away.
Speaker 3: So it seems like we'd all be much happier, maybe
Speaker 3: even healthier, if we could figure out the importance of
Speaker 3: sometimes doing nothing. But tim sometimes the best decision isn't
Speaker 3: just to pause and do nothing. Sometimes the best thing
Speaker 3: we can do is to actively take something away but
Speaker 3: it turns out this subtracting stuff seems to be even
Speaker 3: harder for our lying minds to deal with. It's something
Speaker 3: that we're very, very bad at.
Speaker 2: We are, indeed, and we'll learn more about that when
Speaker 2: this Caution Retail's Happiness Lab crossover episode returns after the break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Caution Retales.
Speaker 3: Wait, Tim, remind me do you usually introduce a second
Speaker 3: historic story after the break in your episodes, Because if
Speaker 3: you do, I have yet another fun tale, one that's
Speaker 3: not about the advantage of doing nothing but about the
Speaker 3: power of taking stuff away.
Speaker 2: I'm going to stop you, Laurie, go for it. Go ahead,
Speaker 2: How could I resist?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: Story number two doesn't take us as far back as
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, but it does involve a clever strategy
Speaker 3: for operating yet another hard to deal with vehicle.
Speaker 2: Oh, let me guess, hard to deal with vehicles combine harvesters,
Speaker 2: no giant robots that you get to settle or I
Speaker 2: don't know. Tell me.
Speaker 3: Actually the story involves a bike, like just a regular
Speaker 3: kids bike.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well, hopefully it's a good story.
Speaker 3: Well, the story begins with a guy by the name
Speaker 3: of Ryan McFarland. Ryan came from a long line of
Speaker 3: motorsports junkies. His grandfather was a race car engineer, and
Speaker 3: Daddy McFarland ran a motorcycle shop. All this meant that
Speaker 3: Ryan spent his childhood having fun with all kinds of
Speaker 3: dangerous wheeled vehicles. He rode dirt bikes and played in
Speaker 3: go karts and race stock cars. Ryan was eventually able
Speaker 3: to translate his love for all things wheels into a
Speaker 3: profitable engineering career. He made a name for himself patenting
Speaker 3: both a better bike seat and a new wheelchair suspension system.
Speaker 3: So you could imagine Ryan's delight when he finally became
Speaker 3: a dad himself. Pretty much as soon as his son
Speaker 3: Body was out of the womb, Ryan was ready to
Speaker 3: pass on the farl In family love of wheels. Body
Speaker 3: was two when he got his first cycle, but riding
Speaker 3: a bike Ryan quickly realized is kind of hard for
Speaker 3: a toddler. Ryan was passionate about getting Body on two
Speaker 3: wheels as soon as possible, so he spent thousands of
Speaker 3: dollars buying Body the usual learner vehicles, toddler tricycles, trainer bikes,
Speaker 3: even a training wheel equipped motorcycle.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, a training wheel equipped motorcycle. You're trying to
Speaker 2: convince me that that is a typical learner vehicle. I'm
Speaker 2: not buying it. That seemed like a terrible idea for
Speaker 2: a two year old.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it was tim Basically, nothing Ryan bought worked,
Speaker 3: Plus none of them were all that good at teaching
Speaker 3: a little kid the most important part of riding a bike,
Speaker 3: which is the art of balancing it. You can't learn
Speaker 3: to equalize your weight on a bike with training wheels
Speaker 3: because the wheels wind up doing all the balancing work.
Speaker 3: And so Ryan decided to engineer a new kind of bike,
Speaker 3: one that even a toddler like body could learn to balance.
Speaker 2: And how did you do that?
Speaker 1: Well, his solution was.
Speaker 3: To start with a typical bike, but rather than adding
Speaker 3: something new to the bike's design, he chose to take
Speaker 3: something away. He got rid of the pedals. Ryan was
Speaker 3: the first to design what's now known as a strider
Speaker 3: or balance bike. Kids can easily get the bike moving
Speaker 3: just by pushing their feet on the ground, kind of
Speaker 3: like Fred Flintstone style, and without pedals to worry about,
Speaker 3: even a two year old could ride it. On the strider,
Speaker 3: Body was able to learn to steer and balance, all
Speaker 3: the stuff he'd need when he graduated to a real
Speaker 3: bike or I guess a motorcycle. Ryan was able to
Speaker 3: turn his idea not just into a tory for body,
Speaker 3: his balance bike turned into a global company which has
Speaker 3: now sold millions of pedalist bikes in less than a decade.
Speaker 2: I love this, Laurie, and as somebody who's written about
Speaker 2: the history of technology, I feel obliged to point out
Speaker 2: that this is what bikes were originally like. They were
Speaker 2: sometimes called the hobby horses. Oh, the Germans had, I
Speaker 2: think the Louf machine. I forget exactly what it was.
Speaker 2: The dandy horse was another thing they were called. The
Speaker 2: bikes originally didn't have pedals because the whole idea of
Speaker 2: pedaling you needed gears. He needed a chain. It was
Speaker 2: too difficult. And so we had bikes like this all along,
Speaker 2: and then somehow we forgot them, and then Ryan reinvented
Speaker 2: them for toddlers, which is brilliant. But I'm curious, why
Speaker 2: did you want to tell me the story? What's going
Speaker 2: to do with happiness?
Speaker 3: Well, the real reason I wanted to mention Ryan's story
Speaker 3: is it involves a practice that's super good for our happiness,
Speaker 3: but also one that's really hard for our minds to do.
Speaker 3: To get his design right, Ryan had to take something away.
Speaker 3: He had to subtract the pedals, and the research has
Speaker 3: shown that subtracting stuff is much harder than we think.
Speaker 3: I first learned about Ryan's project in this book by
Speaker 3: Lydie Klotz. He's a professor of engineering at the University
Speaker 3: of Virginia. He's written this awesome book called Subtract The
Speaker 3: Untapped Science of Less. But he does all these experiments
Speaker 3: where he shows just how hard it is for adults
Speaker 3: to figure out how to solve a problem that requires
Speaker 3: taking something away. He does these fun studies with his
Speaker 3: college students where he shows them this kind of lego
Speaker 3: bridge type thing that's sort of uneven. It's kind of
Speaker 3: about to collapse because it's got one leg in the
Speaker 3: wrong spot, and he asks subjects do something to make
Speaker 3: this structure a little bit more stable.
Speaker 1: And so subjects have two choices.
Speaker 3: They could add a bunch of new blocks so that
Speaker 3: this structure becomes more stable, or they could just take
Speaker 3: away the one stupid block that's extra on one side.
Speaker 1: And so then all of a sudden, the thing would
Speaker 1: balance better.
Speaker 3: And what he finds is that even if you suggest
Speaker 3: to subjects like hey, it's also possible to take stuff away,
Speaker 3: subjects have a really hard time with this. They're much
Speaker 3: more likely to add a bunch of stuff, which takes
Speaker 3: them more time than just to take one thing away.
Speaker 3: Lidy found that subjects even still do this when you
Speaker 3: charge for the amount of blocks they're going to use,
Speaker 3: So subjects now have to pay ten cents for every
Speaker 3: extra block they put on, and it's still really hard
Speaker 3: for them to figure out that they have to take
Speaker 3: some stuff away to make this work best.
Speaker 2: I had the privilege of interviewing Lidi for the Financial Times.
Speaker 2: I read his book and I found it really fascinating.
Speaker 2: And when I first saw the work on Legos, originally
Speaker 2: the whole idea was sparked because he noticed that his
Speaker 2: son just naturally pulled away the extra block. So his
Speaker 2: son didn't seem to have a problem subtracting, but it
Speaker 2: didn't occur to him to subtract. And when I first thought,
Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, well, I mean no, I like Lego,
Speaker 2: that's great, but is this really of practical significance? But
Speaker 2: then some of the other experiments that Lady had been
Speaker 2: doing with his coauthors were I think much more obviously
Speaker 2: relevant to day to day life. For example, one of
Speaker 2: the ones he did was he got people to suggest
Speaker 2: improvements to a recipe for soup. Here's a recipe for soup.
Speaker 2: How do you make it better? And people would always suggest, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you could add some cream or garlic or salt or whatever.
Speaker 2: They're suggest adding steps or adding ingredients, and very few
Speaker 2: people said, no, you need to take away this ingredient
Speaker 2: because it's going to swamp everything else. There seem to
Speaker 2: be this inbuilt bias, and even when he suggested cases
Speaker 2: where it was absolutely obvious that you should take something away,
Speaker 2: people didn't. So for example, in one experiment, they showed
Speaker 2: people itinery for a day in Washington, d C. I
Speaker 2: used to live in DC. It's a lovely city. There's
Speaker 2: loads to do, but this itinery was crazy. I think
Speaker 2: they had twenty four different stops and they would basically
Speaker 2: be going to a Library of Congress, twenty minutes there,
Speaker 2: get back in the coach, down the mall to a museum.
Speaker 2: Twenty minutes in the museum, get back in the coach,
Speaker 2: take you somewhere else, and you just go all over
Speaker 2: DC and try and see everything. And it was clearly insane.
Speaker 2: And they were given this itinery and told, okay, how
Speaker 2: do you make it better? And the obvious answer is
Speaker 2: take out some of the stops, give everything some room
Speaker 2: to breathe, less time driving from one place to another,
Speaker 2: more time actually enjoying what you're seeing. And people just
Speaker 2: didn't do it. They would rearrange the order of engagements,
Speaker 2: they'd maybe try to make things a bit more efficient
Speaker 2: or more logical, but they did not remove stuff, even
Speaker 2: when it was clear that everything was just too much
Speaker 2: and subtraction was the only answer. So this seems to
Speaker 2: be really quite a deep bias in the way we.
Speaker 3: Think, and the travel example, I think shows just how
Speaker 3: much it can affect our when we have too much stuff,
Speaker 3: when we don't realize the power of taking things away.
Speaker 3: I've been on those vacations where it's like just too
Speaker 3: many things, Just like wait, if I just took out
Speaker 3: one or two of these and I could just sleep
Speaker 3: in an extra hour, I could just take a moment
Speaker 3: to rest, I'd feel so much better. But it's not
Speaker 3: just like ephemberal things like travel plans where we mess
Speaker 3: this up, we also mess this up with the literal
Speaker 3: stuff that's inside our houses. And Tim, I know this
Speaker 3: is something that you've actually written a book on the
Speaker 3: kind of striking way that our materialism is problematic for us,
Speaker 3: and sometimes we don't subtract enough of our own stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got involved in this by accident. So I
Speaker 2: wrote a book a few years ago called Messy, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of a messy book. It's about improvisation and
Speaker 2: jazz and filing cabinets and conversations and all kinds of things.
Speaker 2: It's sort of a messy book, and in many ways
Speaker 2: it's the book I'm most proud of. But when I
Speaker 2: published this book around about the same time, Marry Condo's book,
Speaker 2: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying was also out. It
Speaker 2: was a huge bestseller, and so people were always asking
Speaker 2: me to talk about, you know, the contrast between my
Speaker 2: book and Marry Condo's book, because I'm for mess and
Speaker 2: she's for tidy, and you know, and actually I kept saying,
Speaker 2: I don't think I mean, I loved her book. Actually,
Speaker 2: I don't think there's as much of a difference as
Speaker 2: you might think, because really the point that she made
Speaker 2: in the life changing Magic of Tidying is you can't
Speaker 2: organize your way out of too much. You could only
Speaker 2: subtract your way out of too much. You have to
Speaker 2: get rid of stuff. So in fact, her book is
Speaker 2: not really about tidying. Her book is about minimalism. Her
Speaker 2: book is about subtraction. And I've got absolutely no problem
Speaker 2: with that. Sometimes you need that space. And I was
Speaker 2: similarly skeptical about organizational systems. I don't think organizational systems
Speaker 2: solve the fundamental problem of too much stuff going on.
Speaker 2: But yet we fool ourselves into thinking that, you know,
Speaker 2: if only we did have the right hacks, if only
Speaker 2: we had the file of facts, or if only we
Speaker 2: had the right software, then we could solve all the
Speaker 2: problems in our lives by just getting organized. And sometimes, no,
Speaker 2: there's twenty four hours in a day, there's only so
Speaker 2: many rooms in your house, that there's only so much time,
Speaker 2: there's only so much space. And I think a really
Speaker 2: fundamental insight of economics, and people don't think of economics
Speaker 2: as offering wisdom for day to day life, but I
Speaker 2: think it does really fundamental insight and economics is everything
Speaker 2: has an opportunity cost and what that means is everything
Speaker 2: you do, everything you buy, every hour you spend is
Speaker 2: getting in the way of something else. It's something else
Speaker 2: you can't do, It's some other way you can't spend
Speaker 2: that hour, it's some other thing that you can't afford
Speaker 2: to buy because you bought that first thing. And when
Speaker 2: you see everything as potentially getting in the way of
Speaker 2: everything else, you start to realize, as Ldiklott says, not
Speaker 2: only should you be subtracting the bad stuff, sometimes you
Speaker 2: have to subtract the good stuff as well, because subtracting
Speaker 2: the good stuff makes space for more good stuff and
Speaker 2: to enjoy the good stuff that you have.
Speaker 3: I think this is so important for myself in so
Speaker 3: many different way. But this is also something that I've
Speaker 3: seen in my students. Right. They have these college students
Speaker 3: today have these such like over subscribed schedules, like they
Speaker 3: just never have time to do anything. And I think
Speaker 3: that's because they grew up in generation where parents gave
Speaker 3: them so much to do that they got used to
Speaker 3: not ever having time to do stuff. I know you've
Speaker 3: talked a little bit about helicopter parenting. This is something
Speaker 3: that we talk a lot about on the show But
Speaker 3: one way to describe helicopter parenting is the problem of
Speaker 3: not subtracting enough. Right, you want your kids to, you know,
Speaker 3: learn how to play soccer, and you want your kids
Speaker 3: to get piano lessons, and you definitely need them to
Speaker 3: get a math tutor and an SAT tutor and all
Speaker 3: these things, and so you pack as kids' schedule to
Speaker 3: the point that they have no time for rest, no
Speaker 3: time for play, no time for being social with kids
Speaker 3: their age. And the right solution isn't to give them
Speaker 3: more tutoring, it's to just subtract stuff. I think what
Speaker 3: happens is that parents have kids' schedules that are just
Speaker 3: really oversubscribed, and then they get worried of like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: he doesn't have time for play, he doesn't have time
Speaker 3: for friends, So I'll just add in a play. No,
Speaker 3: I'll squeeze that into all the other stuff that kids
Speaker 3: have to do. But this over scheduling, the research shows,
Speaker 3: makes kids like way more anxious. Anxiety disorders are going up.
Speaker 3: Kids will sometimes report sometimes like you know, we very
Speaker 3: busy adults do, that they have no time, that they
Speaker 3: feel overwhelmed by their schedule, when it also feels like
Speaker 3: everyone would just be much happier and probably everybody would
Speaker 3: perform more successfully if we could just take a bunch
Speaker 3: of stuff out of kids' schedules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think an important thing to underline we
Speaker 2: kind of already said it, but let's say it again
Speaker 2: because we're adding, not subtracting as I always do, is
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with any of this stuff. There's nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with having a masth tutel, there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 2: learning an instrument, there's nothing wrong with with learning a sport.
Speaker 2: It's all good. It's just there's a limit. And sometimes
Speaker 2: we like to tell ourselves, oh, well, if we just
Speaker 2: get rid of all the wasted time, we get rid
Speaker 2: of all the bad stuff, then we'll have time to
Speaker 2: focus on what really matters. But actually know, sometimes you
Speaker 2: have to get rid of stuff that you really do
Speaker 2: want to do, that stuff that is worth doing, because
Speaker 2: you can't do everything, and it's painful to face up
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 3: So the question is why don't we follow this idea
Speaker 3: of less is more? Why is it something that's so
Speaker 3: hard for our minds. We'll learn some ways that we
Speaker 3: can all do this better. When the Cautionary Tales Happiness
Speaker 3: Lab crossover it gets.
Speaker 1: Back from the break.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Cautionary Tales Happiness Lab crossover. So, Tim,
Speaker 3: before we left, we were talking about ways that we
Speaker 3: can make subtraction a little bit more obvious for our
Speaker 3: lying minds. And one of the ways that occurs is
Speaker 3: when sadly there's nothing we can do but subtract. I
Speaker 3: know these are cases that you've talked about on Cautionary
Speaker 3: Tales before. So maybe share one of these stories where
Speaker 3: people can actually subtract, but only when they're kind of
Speaker 3: forced into a corner and they have to.
Speaker 2: Yes. The example that has haunted me ever since I
Speaker 2: heard it was Keith Jarrett, the great jazz pianist, and
Speaker 2: his attempt to play a solo piano concert in the
Speaker 2: great German city of Cologne. And that particular concert, it
Speaker 2: was the largest concert that Jarrett had ever played solo.
Speaker 2: He was still quite a young man, I think he
Speaker 2: was still in his twenties. There was a mix up
Speaker 2: at the opera house. The promoter was very young, she
Speaker 2: was a teenage girl called Vera Brands, and she or
Speaker 2: the opera house between them had not got a good
Speaker 2: piano on stage for Keith. He'd requested a particular piano
Speaker 2: Bozendorf for Imperial. He's a real perfectionist. And instead they
Speaker 2: looked around for a bozen door for piano, and they'd
Speaker 2: found this beaten up rehearsal model, not a proper grand piano.
Speaker 2: It's not big enough, but also in really bad condition,
Speaker 2: out of tune, pedal sticking, all kinds of problems. And
Speaker 2: Jarrett basically said, look, I can't play this. If you
Speaker 2: can't get a new piano, I won't play, and he left.
Speaker 2: But it turned out they couldn't get a new piano.
Speaker 2: There wasn't enough time, and Jarrett eventually realized that if
Speaker 2: he didn't play, then this poor girl who was promoting
Speaker 2: basically her first concert was going to be torn apart
Speaker 2: by this crowd of angry German jazz fans who would
Speaker 2: show up for it was a late night concert at
Speaker 2: eleven thirty. He probably had a few beers. They're going
Speaker 2: to show up at this concert and there'll be no concert.
Speaker 2: There'll be know Keith Jarrett. So Jarrett decided, okay, I
Speaker 2: have to do it. I have to play this thing.
Speaker 2: And so he walks out on stage in front of
Speaker 2: this packed auditorium fourteen hundred people sits down to play
Speaker 2: this piano that he knows is unplayable, and it is
Speaker 2: the concert of a lifetime. It is his most successful
Speaker 2: ever recording, and because of the manifest limitations of the piano,
Speaker 2: he was forced into playing what was basically a much
Speaker 2: simpler melody, a much simpler approach to improvised jazz than
Speaker 2: he would normally use. He was using a restricted number
Speaker 2: of keys, he was avoiding certain areas of the keyboard,
Speaker 2: he was keeping it quite simple and rhythmic. And the
Speaker 2: point is he could have done that on any piano,
Speaker 2: and yet he didn't because it never occurred to him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He always wanted to use the full range of what
Speaker 2: was available, and it was only when all of those
Speaker 2: options were cut off and he was absolutely backed into
Speaker 2: this corner that he discovered this simple style, which continues
Speaker 2: to be his most loved work. And I think that's
Speaker 2: just an insight into the way that we don't do
Speaker 2: it unless we're forced to. We often need this disruption,
Speaker 2: we need this problem to occur before we find a
Speaker 2: new solution, a new way of solving our problems. And
Speaker 2: that new solution, in this case and in many cases,
Speaker 2: actually involves doing less than we've done before.
Speaker 3: And I think this is one of the strategies that
Speaker 3: Lighty Klotz mentions in his book right, which is to
Speaker 3: pretend that you're forced into this, like he suggests in
Speaker 3: a business meeting, and when you're trying to figure out
Speaker 3: some problem, to just have somebody on the team say, Okay,
Speaker 3: what if we were forced to take something away? What
Speaker 3: if we were unable to add something and we just
Speaker 3: had to take something out?
Speaker 1: What would we take out?
Speaker 3: Right? That kind of thought exercise winds up putting you
Speaker 3: in the simulated situation where maybe you can't add anything else,
Speaker 3: you got to take something away.
Speaker 1: What would be the one thing you take away?
Speaker 3: And the experiment, while it doesn't come to our mind naturally,
Speaker 3: when you kind of strong arm people and say no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you have to pick something to take away, what would
Speaker 3: that be, all of a sudden, the strategies can start
Speaker 3: seeming a little bit more obvious. So that's kind of
Speaker 3: one of my favorite ones, is to ask this question, Okay,
Speaker 3: if I was forced to take one thing away, what
Speaker 3: would that be. It's helped me in my schedule immensely
Speaker 3: right where I'm looking at the month ahead and I'm like,
Speaker 3: there are just too many trips, Like I just can't
Speaker 3: fit all this travel in. Sometimes I ask myself, okay,
Speaker 3: if I had to take one away, like if you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, some huge deity came down as like
Speaker 3: no o, your's this kind of schedule monster, like you
Speaker 3: have to take one thing out of there? What would
Speaker 3: it be? Usually I have an obvious answer. I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: I didn't want to do that trip. That's the one
Speaker 3: that's kind of least interesting to me, or maybe the
Speaker 3: least valuable, And that can kind of force you to
Speaker 3: realize like, oh wait, maybe I can just take that
Speaker 3: one out. You don't need the mean schedule monster to
Speaker 3: show up to kind of force you to take something out.
Speaker 1: You can make that decision for yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it reminds me we often see politicians saying, oh,
Speaker 2: we're going to have a rule that if you introduce
Speaker 2: some new regulation, you're not allowed to do that unless
Speaker 2: you cancel an old regulation, a kind of one in
Speaker 2: one out, or sometimes it's one in two out. You
Speaker 2: have to cancel more regulations than you had, and to
Speaker 2: some extent it's a bit silly. I used to long, long, long, long,
Speaker 2: time ago, I used to work in regulatory reform at
Speaker 2: the World Bank, and we used to try to measure
Speaker 2: the burden of different business regulations around the world. Fascinating work,
Speaker 2: and we try to be quite sophisticated and try to
Speaker 2: produce all these comparisons. So one country could say, well,
Speaker 2: this is the regulations for setting up a business in
Speaker 2: this country. But if you're an entrepreneur in the neighboring country,
Speaker 2: it doesn't take you a year to set up a business.
Speaker 2: It takes you seven days. So why is that? What
Speaker 2: are the stages that take so long in one country
Speaker 2: and that don't exist in another country. That's really insightful,
Speaker 2: I think, and informative. But sometimes just that simple rule
Speaker 2: is hey, you've got to remove a regulation, figure out
Speaker 2: what it is. Sometimes that's enough that'll do the job.
Speaker 3: Another thing that does the job is really trying to
Speaker 3: harness your inner economists and to really think about what
Speaker 3: those active opportunity costs are like to really be mindful
Speaker 3: of the other kinds of things you could be doing
Speaker 3: if you were able to subtract something. And one of
Speaker 3: my favorite strategies for that I first learned about in
Speaker 3: Hal Hirschfeldt's great book about our time biases. He talks
Speaker 3: about what economists and psychologists have referred to as the
Speaker 3: yes damn effect and how to deal with it. And
Speaker 3: so the yes damn effect is probably something that will
Speaker 3: be familiar to many of our listeners. Somebody says, hey
Speaker 3: do you want to do this presentation? Or Hey do
Speaker 3: you want to go to this kind of not very
Speaker 3: interesting dinner party, or hey do you want to sign
Speaker 3: up something in your schedule?
Speaker 1: And you feel kind of bad, so you're like yes.
Speaker 3: Then weeks later that project or that dinner party comes up,
Speaker 3: and that's where you say damn.
Speaker 1: And so that's the yes damn effect.
Speaker 3: You say yes to something, time passes and then you
Speaker 3: see it in your calendar and you're like, damn.
Speaker 1: So how do we deal with this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's very familiar. I know that experience.
Speaker 1: It's not unique to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My general kind of heuristic is I should just
Speaker 2: say no to more things than I think I should,
Speaker 2: and over experience you learn it, but then you know
Speaker 2: it's never entirely successful. So is there a tick that
Speaker 2: you'd recommend to get more out of this yes?
Speaker 3: And the trick is what's known as the no yay effect,
Speaker 3: or you kind of do the same thing, except you
Speaker 3: start by saying no and then you experience the consequences
Speaker 3: later on of what that feels like.
Speaker 1: So let's kind of play this out. Lauria, do you
Speaker 1: want to do some project?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: To do this date?
Speaker 3: I say no, definitely don't want to do that. But
Speaker 3: I don't stop there. I record the fact that I
Speaker 3: was asked to do this, and so I go to
Speaker 3: that date in my calendar when that project I just
Speaker 3: said no to would have been due, and I write in, Hey, Laura,
Speaker 3: you didn't have to do the project this day. And
Speaker 3: then you get to that date in the calendar and
Speaker 3: you realize, oh, my gosh, my day would have been
Speaker 3: so much worse if I had that huge project to do,
Speaker 3: and then you have the experience of yay.
Speaker 1: And so this is the no yea effect.
Speaker 3: And the reason I love it so much is it
Speaker 3: gives you these kind of periodic reminders of the fact
Speaker 3: that saying no had a reward, right, Like you are
Speaker 3: training your brain to notice that no doesn't just kind
Speaker 3: of feel yucky in the moment, because I hate saying
Speaker 3: no to stuff. I don't like the feeling of like oh,
Speaker 3: it's wanted me to do it. I feel kind of bad.
Speaker 3: I feel kind of guilty. You're kind of giving yourself
Speaker 3: the opposite emotional reaction when that date of the thing
Speaker 3: finally comes up, where you get the moment to remember,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, I just saved myself this time. I'm
Speaker 3: so kind of proud of myself unhappy. And so the
Speaker 3: no yay effect has been really powerful for me because
Speaker 3: it's helped me like, remember how happy I am that
Speaker 3: I didn't sign up for something.
Speaker 2: In the first I really like that, Laurie. It's very
Speaker 2: it's very clever. I actually have an even simpler hack
Speaker 2: that I use all the time. So this works if
Speaker 2: there's someone else to whom you're accountable, if you have
Speaker 2: a spouse, for example. And this just going back to
Speaker 2: that original insight about opportunity cost, like everything you say
Speaker 2: yes to is getting in the way of something else,
Speaker 2: And flip that around. Everything you say no to every
Speaker 2: time you're invited to some commitment, every time you say
Speaker 2: no to that, you're saying yes to something else. So
Speaker 2: the way I phrase it is if I say no
Speaker 2: to some trip, some dinner, some commitment, if I say
Speaker 2: no to that I'm also saying yeah, yes to my family.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be at home. I'm going to be
Speaker 2: spending time with my wife and kids. But I don't
Speaker 2: just tell myself that. I tell my wife that, and
Speaker 2: when I am replying to the email, because it's always
Speaker 2: an email, when I'm replying to the email saying this
Speaker 2: is really kind, but I'm afraid I can't do it.
Speaker 2: I just blind copy my wife and it's like a
Speaker 2: little note to her, look at what I just said
Speaker 2: no to, because I'm saying yes to you, And it
Speaker 2: just makes it much more positive to me. Slightly fills
Speaker 2: my wife's inbox with my refused invitations, but I think
Speaker 2: that overall she appreciates that visibility into the decisions I'm
Speaker 2: having to make every day and saying I'm not going
Speaker 2: to do this, I have something more important waiting for
Speaker 2: me at home.
Speaker 1: I bet that increases marital satisfaction in a bunch of
Speaker 1: different ways. I might have to do this.
Speaker 3: My poor husband's inbox is going to implode with all
Speaker 3: the things I'm saying no too. But the cool thing
Speaker 3: is that there are these ways that we can kind
Speaker 3: of bring subtraction to the forefront. It doesn't come naturally,
Speaker 3: but like with a little bit of extra work, scribbling
Speaker 3: things in the calendar and extra BCC on the email
Speaker 3: kind of bring subtraction to light and maybe that will
Speaker 3: make us a little bit happier.
Speaker 1: Tim, thank you so much for joining me on the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab.
Speaker 2: Well, it's been a pleasure, Laurie, thank you for joining
Speaker 2: me on Cautionary Tales. Dr Laurie Santos, as you know,
Speaker 2: is the host of the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 3: And Tim Harford, as you know, host Cautionary Tales. Both
Speaker 3: podcasts are productions of Pushkin Industries and are available wherever
Speaker 3: you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Now, this is the last of our planned crossover episodes,
Speaker 2: but it isn't the final time that we're going to
Speaker 2: be collaborating. On March the twentieth, Laurie and I are
Speaker 2: going to be teaming up for a special show dedicated
Speaker 2: to World Happiness Day.
Speaker 3: Yes, Tim will be joining me for a chat alongside
Speaker 3: our fellow Pushkin podcast hosts Maya Schunker and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 3: We we'll all be considering ideas for making the world
Speaker 3: a slightly happier place, and we hope to see you
Speaker 3: back then.