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