Speaker 1: Rather than wallowing in my failures, I'm saying, when have
Speaker 1: I not failed? And what can I learn from the
Speaker 1: lack of failure that might allow me to not fail
Speaker 1: more often. It's a very very simple idea, but I
Speaker 1: find that a lot of times people skip right by
Speaker 1: it in favor of self flagellating.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dan Heath,
Speaker 2: an American best selling author, speaker, and fellow at Duke
Speaker 2: University's Case Center. Dan, along with his brother Chip have
Speaker 2: co authored four books, but today Eric and Dan are
Speaker 2: going to talk about his amazing podcast called what It's
Speaker 2: Like to Be, in which he explores the world of work,
Speaker 2: one profession at a time and interviews people who do
Speaker 2: what they love to do.
Speaker 3: Hi, Dan, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Hey, thanks, Eric, glad to be here.
Speaker 3: I am excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 3: be discussing your new podcast, which is called what It's
Speaker 3: Like to Be, and it's conversations with different people and
Speaker 3: different professions about what it's like to be a dog trainer,
Speaker 3: or an archaeologist or an FBI special agent. It's fascinating,
Speaker 3: and we're going to also talk about some of the
Speaker 3: great books you've written over the years, but will start
Speaker 3: like we always do, with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 3: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think
Speaker 3: about it for a second. They look up at their
Speaker 3: grandparent and they say, well, which one wins, and the
Speaker 3: grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 3: start off by asking you what that parablel means to
Speaker 3: you and your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: This may sound a little weird, but that parable reminded
Speaker 1: me immediately of a metaphor, and it's the metaphor of
Speaker 1: the writer and the elephant, which comes from the psychologist
Speaker 1: Jonathan Height and actually was central to my book with
Speaker 1: my brother Chip called Switch. Just a back up for
Speaker 1: a second to explain that one of the core findings
Speaker 1: of modern psychology. I know this is something you've talked
Speaker 1: about on your show, is that in our brains we
Speaker 1: all have two independent systems, one called the rational system
Speaker 1: and one called the emotional system. And I think we've
Speaker 1: all had experience when these two systems start fighting with
Speaker 1: each other. Like you know, the rational system comes up
Speaker 1: with the brilliant idea to lose ten pounds, or to
Speaker 1: save more for retirement, or to exercise more, whatever all
Speaker 1: makes sense on paper, it's good for us in the
Speaker 1: long term. And then meanwhile, we also have an emotional
Speaker 1: system that you know, craves those oreos in the pantry,
Speaker 1: or feels like sleeping in a little bit and not
Speaker 1: getting up and jogging, or really wants that new iPhone
Speaker 1: and forget about retirement savings. This is a very very
Speaker 1: familiar dilemma for all of us, that these systems don't
Speaker 1: always align. And so that's what came to mind when
Speaker 1: I heard the parable is thinking about the distinction between
Speaker 1: the good wolf and the bad wolf and the writer
Speaker 1: and the elephant, and I think, and actually, they're not
Speaker 1: the same thing. Even though that's what was triggered for
Speaker 1: me by the parable, because I spent so much time
Speaker 1: thinking about the writer and the elephant, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's as simple as saying, like, the writer is the
Speaker 1: good guy and the elephant's the bad guy. I think
Speaker 1: it's actually much more nuanced than that. I think we
Speaker 1: can be very rational and do great evil. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think that emotional driven decisions, which is the elephant's turf,
Speaker 1: can often be some of the wisest ones that we make.
Speaker 1: It was just fun for me to think about kind
Speaker 1: of comparing these two different versions of a duality that
Speaker 1: we all kind of live with and have to navigate between.
Speaker 3: I love that. It's one of my favorite analogies that
Speaker 3: Jonathan came up with, and I think he borrowed it
Speaker 3: from you know, Buddhism, where the Buddha talked about taming
Speaker 3: the mind is a little bit like taming an elephant
Speaker 3: in some regard, And I think what's so salient about
Speaker 3: those two things? And the insight to me, and I
Speaker 3: think it's the insight that you talk about in your book,
Speaker 3: is that if you only rely on that rational system,
Speaker 3: it's going to lose. Right because of the elephant and
Speaker 3: really wants to go somewhere, There's not much that a
Speaker 3: rider sitting on top of it is going to do
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: The scale difference is one of the central features of
Speaker 1: the analogy, Like we think that the rational part of
Speaker 1: us is in charge, because you know, the writer is
Speaker 1: ostensibly holding the reins and setting the course. But as
Speaker 1: you say, if those two disagree, like who's your money on?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I love that listener, as you're listening, what resonated
Speaker 3: with you in that? I think a lot of us
Speaker 3: have some ideas of things that we can do to
Speaker 3: feed our good wolf. And here's a good tip to
Speaker 3: make it more likely that you do it. It can
Speaker 3: be really helpful to reflect right before you do that
Speaker 3: thing on why you want to do it. Our brains
Speaker 3: are always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call
Speaker 3: reward value, Basically, is this thing worth doing? And so
Speaker 3: when you're getting ready to do this thing that you
Speaker 3: want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on
Speaker 3: why actually helps to make the reward value on that
Speaker 3: higher and makes it more likely that you're going to
Speaker 3: do that. For example, if what you're trying to do
Speaker 3: is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it
Speaker 3: can be useful to remind yourself of why, for example,
Speaker 3: I want to exercise because it makes my mental and
Speaker 3: emotional health better today. If you'd like a step by
Speaker 3: step guide for how you can easily build new habits
Speaker 3: that feed your good wolf, go to Goodwolf dot me,
Speaker 3: slash change and join the free masterclass. A lot of
Speaker 3: making lasting changes in our behavior is about getting the
Speaker 3: elephant to want to go the same direction that the
Speaker 3: rider is going. And briefly, what are some of the
Speaker 3: key strategies that people might think about when the rider
Speaker 3: wants to go one direction and the elephant wants to
Speaker 3: go the other. What are some ways of bringing those
Speaker 3: two into alignment.
Speaker 1: I think there are kind of two key strategies, and
Speaker 1: one is something I suspect you've talked about one hundred
Speaker 1: times on your show, which is I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that people immediately clue into from the analogy
Speaker 1: is don't trust willpower. Where in the analogy you can
Speaker 1: imagine the writer trying to physically restrain the elephant from
Speaker 1: going some direction, you can just in your minds, I
Speaker 1: see the absurdity of that. That's willpower. And I think
Speaker 1: willpower is fragile and fickle and often weak, and so
Speaker 1: I think when we have a writer elephant disagreement, often
Speaker 1: one of the best things we can do is alter
Speaker 1: our environment in a way that resolves or at least
Speaker 1: partly alleviates that tension. So, you know, a trivial example
Speaker 1: is if you're on a diet and you really like oreos,
Speaker 1: like you could fight that day to day temptation of no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to have those oreos today. By golly,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm serious about this diet. And every day
Speaker 1: you walk by them in the pantry, and I mean
Speaker 1: eventually you're going to cave or on the first day
Speaker 1: of your diet, you could just throw away the oreos
Speaker 1: and remove the temptation entirely, which is a way of
Speaker 1: escaping the weakness of willpower. So that that's kind of
Speaker 1: an environmental strategy. In Switch, the book I was talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, we call that shaping the path as distinct
Speaker 1: from you know, the writer elephant stuff. We can shape
Speaker 1: our environment, which in turn shapes our behavior. I think
Speaker 1: the other thing that's a little trickier but powerful, is
Speaker 1: we've got to motivate the elephant. You know, if your
Speaker 1: writer wants to do one thing and the elephant wants
Speaker 1: to do another, can you find a way to tap
Speaker 1: into that kind of core, visceral emotional motivation. And I
Speaker 1: think the error we make, especially in organizations a lot
Speaker 1: of times is we think that we're going to motivate
Speaker 1: the elephant with a cascade of information. You know, like
Speaker 1: if we just shovel enough data and information and charts
Speaker 1: and graphs and data at people, well, by golly, you know,
Speaker 1: their elephants are going to snap in line. And it
Speaker 1: just doesn't work that way. What motivates the elephant are
Speaker 1: our core emotional desires, and it need not be anything selfish.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of powerful emotions that aren't
Speaker 1: the analogy of eating the oreos. I mean, we're motivated
Speaker 1: by doing what's best for our kids, and we're motivated
Speaker 1: by patriotism to our country, and we're motivated by, you know,
Speaker 1: the desire to feel proud of ourselves tenures down the line.
Speaker 1: But those things are coming from a wellspring of emotion
Speaker 1: rather than information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been right in the center of this for
Speaker 3: the book that I've been working on, and in the
Speaker 3: scientific literature, there is a distinction made between two terms,
Speaker 3: and one is self regulation and one is self control.
Speaker 3: And self regulation is considered the entire process of everything
Speaker 3: that you would do to sort of move you towards
Speaker 3: your goal. And then self control is that moment when
Speaker 3: you have to make a choice right where we would
Speaker 3: call in willpower. And as you've said, the overarching insight
Speaker 3: is do everything that you can do to minimize the
Speaker 3: amount of time that you're going to need to use
Speaker 3: that willpower. There is still a place that we all
Speaker 3: need to use it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: No matter what we do to shape the environment and
Speaker 3: motivate ourselves, there's still a point where we're going to
Speaker 3: be faced with a decision and what can we do
Speaker 3: or not do to make the right decision. But the
Speaker 3: more we can fix all that, the better right and
Speaker 3: all these other strategies. And I've been thinking about this
Speaker 3: idea with motivating the elephant, which is, you know, how
Speaker 3: do we move from half two goals to want two goals? Right?
Speaker 3: You know, how can I take something that you know,
Speaker 3: think that I have to do and how do I
Speaker 3: make it something I want to do? And as you said,
Speaker 3: it's really relying on our emotions. The other reflection I've had,
Speaker 3: based on something you just said there, is that, you know,
Speaker 3: the last five years have made this shape in the
Speaker 3: environment thing so much harder because now you don't have
Speaker 3: to have oreos in your closet because they're five minutes
Speaker 3: away on your phone. You know, door dashes ring right there.
Speaker 4: Bring you a truckload of oreos.
Speaker 3: You want weed delivered, you want alcohol delivered. It's just
Speaker 3: a different world in that way. It's a click away.
Speaker 3: And I think that has made this shape in your
Speaker 3: Environment conversation more difficult than it certainly was when you
Speaker 3: guys wrote your book.
Speaker 4: I think that's probably fair to say.
Speaker 1: And I'm working on a new book that's coming out
Speaker 1: next year, And just to share one little tidbit, I
Speaker 1: did at one point a survey of people who were
Speaker 1: setting New Year's resolution. So I reached out to them
Speaker 1: in late December as they were kind of articulating their resolutions,
Speaker 1: and then I tried some different ways of getting them
Speaker 1: to kind of kick the tires on those resolutions, like
Speaker 1: that definitely what you want to do, and what if
Speaker 1: you think about it this way? What if you think
Speaker 1: about it this way? And one of the things I
Speaker 1: learned was a lot of times we have this instinct
Speaker 1: to go for the measurable thing or the most visible
Speaker 1: thing like this. One woman's response stuck with me, where
Speaker 1: she'd had a lot of very serious health problems, like
Speaker 1: she had long COVID and rest cancer, I mean, just
Speaker 1: kind of a mess. Even simple day to day activities
Speaker 1: could absolutely just demolish her erase her heart rate, and
Speaker 1: so she was having to do a lot of adjustments.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, she has two young boys who really crave
Speaker 1: her attention, and so she had set an initial resolution
Speaker 1: to get in better shape. I mean, it was like
Speaker 1: a classic exercise New Year's result. And then through the
Speaker 1: prompting of the survey, it was like, well, what is
Speaker 1: the goal of the goal is essentially what we were asking, Like,
Speaker 1: you're articulating a goal to get in better shape.
Speaker 4: What's the goal of that goal?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And she was very clear eyed about the reason this
Speaker 1: is important is I want to be a better mom.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to attend to my boys.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to play with them. I
Speaker 1: don't want to have to be the mom that's laying
Speaker 1: down on the couch when they would love to hang out.
Speaker 1: And so then this was the crucial bit. We asked her,
Speaker 1: what are some alternate ways that you could reach the
Speaker 1: goal of the goal without doing that initial goal? In
Speaker 1: other words, how could you be that better mom that
Speaker 1: you aspired to be without necessarily like doing more sit
Speaker 1: ups or jogging or whatever she was planning to do.
Speaker 1: And it was like just a door was opened that
Speaker 1: she hadn't imagined before and all these ideas come pouring out,
Speaker 1: and she's like, well, you know, we used to sit
Speaker 1: on the front porch at night and read books, and
Speaker 1: we could do that again. And we used to play
Speaker 1: board games and then we sort of got out of
Speaker 1: the habit. But board games are nice because that's something
Speaker 1: I could do even if I have to down on
Speaker 1: the couch, like I can still be part of the game.
Speaker 1: And she ended up buying these Harry Potter lego kits
Speaker 1: and it was like all this really tangible, beautiful stuff
Speaker 1: that realized her true mission and doing all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: But it was like it was just out of her
Speaker 1: grasp until she was really poked and prodded about it.
Speaker 4: And I just found that fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. I mean, that is such a
Speaker 3: great spin on it, right, because oftentimes, you know, I've
Speaker 3: done a lot of one on one coaching with people
Speaker 3: around behavior change, and we'll ask, well, why right what
Speaker 3: you say you want something? Well, why do you want
Speaker 3: it right? Which is the goal of the goal that
Speaker 3: you just said? But I love this idea of in
Speaker 3: addition pivoting and saying are there other ways to get
Speaker 3: to that goal besides the path we have articulated. I
Speaker 3: think that's great. That's a really beautiful story.
Speaker 1: I've started thinking about that in my own work as
Speaker 1: just I think we often get satisfied too quickly with
Speaker 1: like whatever way we have of measuring what we're doing
Speaker 1: and what we're accomplishing and learning to insert a little
Speaker 1: tire kicking stage where you're like, are you sure, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: is this goal going to get you to the goal
Speaker 1: of the goal? Or is this just something that's easy
Speaker 1: to measure, something that's easy to cross off on a
Speaker 1: to do list. Is this something that feels good in
Speaker 1: the moment, but three months or three years from now
Speaker 1: won't won't lead you to a place of satisfaction, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean. One of the major frameworks for change
Speaker 3: out there is the catchely titled Trance theoretical Model of change,
Speaker 3: So it just rolls right off the tongue, often known
Speaker 3: as the Stages of change model, and its insight is
Speaker 3: that there's more to change than just jumping in and
Speaker 3: making the change, and that you know, you start off
Speaker 3: in sort of a pre contemplation stage where you're not
Speaker 3: even really thinking it's barely on your radar, right, And
Speaker 3: then there's a contemplation stage where you're sort of weighing
Speaker 3: do I really want to do this? But then there's
Speaker 3: a planning stage, and part of the planning stage is
Speaker 3: making a plan and getting people together. But both the
Speaker 3: planning and the contemplation stage, there's a lot of what
Speaker 3: you're talking about there, which is like, well, why do
Speaker 3: I want to do this? Do I really want to
Speaker 3: do it? What conflicts in life is this going to cause?
Speaker 3: Like what opportunity costs? Is this? If I'm going to
Speaker 3: do this, I'm not going to be doing that. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's just a lot of time really thinking
Speaker 3: through all these things instead of just jumping right into action.
Speaker 3: And it's pretty clear that this upfront work makes it
Speaker 3: easier to make a change, and even in your case,
Speaker 3: it may modify what the change you actually want to
Speaker 3: make even is.
Speaker 4: And switch.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I found most useful in
Speaker 1: my own life and I'm working with organizations is.
Speaker 4: A very simple idea.
Speaker 1: My brother and I our favorite thing is is simple
Speaker 1: ideas that, for whatever reason, are not in wide adoption.
Speaker 1: And I think this is one of those. We call
Speaker 1: it finding the bright spots in the context of change.
Speaker 1: It's to say, whatever it is you're trying to do,
Speaker 1: chances are you're already hitting that goal or that aspiration
Speaker 1: and some perhaps limited situations in your life right now.
Speaker 1: So I was a lifelong procrastinator, actually a surprisingly big
Speaker 1: hurdle to doing my work as a writer, but even
Speaker 1: as a serial procrastinator. There were times when I didn't procrastinate, right,
Speaker 1: those are the bright spots. So it's like bright spots
Speaker 1: are anytime you have a difference in performance, a difference
Speaker 1: in outcomes. By definition, you have bright spots the most
Speaker 1: positive moments in a field of mixed data. And the
Speaker 1: question is what can you learn from those? Not are
Speaker 1: they a good thing or a bad thing. They're obviously
Speaker 1: a good thing, and we're obviously aware when we do
Speaker 1: a good job. But the next step is to really
Speaker 1: reverse engineer what allowed us to succeed. And so you know,
Speaker 1: in my own case, I started learning things like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if I get into email, I'm doomed. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just like a distraction machine. So I figure out
Speaker 1: various ways to shape my path to keep that at bay.
Speaker 1: And well I do better in the early morning, Well
Speaker 1: I do better in coffee shops. And all that stuff
Speaker 1: is coming out of bright spots analysis. Rather than wallowing
Speaker 1: in my failures, I'm saying failed, and what can I
Speaker 1: learn from the lack of failure that might allow me
Speaker 1: to not fail more often. It's a very very simple idea,
Speaker 1: but I find that a lot of times people skip
Speaker 1: right by it. In favor of self flagellating.
Speaker 3: That's a great idea, and there is usually something to
Speaker 3: be learned from those. Are you able to share at
Speaker 3: all what the upcoming book is or is that still
Speaker 3: all under wraps.
Speaker 1: It's still a little bit under wraps, but I will
Speaker 1: say this that it's another book about change.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So Switch came out in two thousand and ten, and
Speaker 1: Switch is fundamentally about behavior change. So it deals with
Speaker 1: a lot of different kinds of change organizational change, personal change,
Speaker 1: societal change, but it's through the lens of how do
Speaker 1: we change behavior? This book is different. This is more
Speaker 1: coming from a perspective of operations and strategy and systems.
Speaker 1: So I almost think about them as as kind of
Speaker 1: sister books, you know, both dealing with change, but from
Speaker 1: different altitudes.
Speaker 3: Got it. So let's change direction now and talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about your podcast, What It's Like to Be.
Speaker 3: Why don't you tell us about it? I sort of
Speaker 3: gave my little spiel on it, but you tell us
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So What It's like to Be as a show
Speaker 1: where in every episode I interview someone from a different profession,
Speaker 1: so a cattle rancher or an ocean lifeguard, or a
Speaker 1: professional Santa Claus, and I just pepper them with one
Speaker 1: hundred nosy questions about what they do all day. I
Speaker 1: find that I just have an almost excessive curiosity about
Speaker 1: what people do and their jobs. And there was this
Speaker 1: one Thanksgiving dinner I had with my wife's family, and
Speaker 1: I remember looking around the table and I could have
Speaker 1: told you if there had been a pop quiz like
Speaker 1: what each person did, like their profession, and probably their
Speaker 1: employer name. But for many of them, I didn't have
Speaker 1: a clue how they actually spent eight or nine hours
Speaker 1: a day when they were doing their thing, Like there
Speaker 1: was just a black hole where a concrete understanding of
Speaker 1: their work was. And so I thought, wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: great to have a sh show where you kind of
Speaker 1: have an excuse to be nosy and to talk to
Speaker 1: people and you know what is it that makes a
Speaker 1: welder really mad? And you know who do meteorologists fight
Speaker 1: with at the office? And you know what's like the
Speaker 1: moment of triumph for a mystery novelist. And it's just
Speaker 1: been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 4: To work on.
Speaker 3: It's really fun to listen to. I think you told
Speaker 3: an origin story about there being a plumber come into
Speaker 3: your house, right, and you wanted to ask him all
Speaker 3: kinds of questions and you just were like, well, but
Speaker 3: I'm kind of an introvert and it would be a
Speaker 3: little bit weird. But I'm the same way, like I
Speaker 3: see somebody doing something and I want to ask all
Speaker 3: kinds of questions that I'm like, is that even appropriate
Speaker 3: to ask? Quite? You know, I mean, I'm digging for
Speaker 3: the weird stuff here, you know, because there's weird stuff
Speaker 3: in every job. So yeah, it's really fun to listen to.
Speaker 3: And the list of things that you have are great.
Speaker 3: I mean professional Santa Claus is great FBI special agent.
Speaker 3: What it's like to be an archaeologist, like I've always
Speaker 3: wondered about that dog trainer.
Speaker 4: Lots of great ones, I remember the archaeologist.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite parts of the show is getting
Speaker 1: into job specific jargon. Like the archaeologist said, a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, people will ask me, you know,
Speaker 1: did you dig up any yards of historical importance today?
Speaker 1: And he was like, no, no, no, No. Shards are
Speaker 1: glass and glass doesn't last. What we find our shirts
Speaker 1: sh e r ds and that means like little pieces
Speaker 1: of pottery that have been broken over the years, one
Speaker 1: of my stock questions for guests is like, what's a
Speaker 1: word or phrase that only someone from your profession would
Speaker 1: be likely to know and what does it mean? The
Speaker 1: welder his phrase was drag up, and you'd have to
Speaker 1: hear it in his voice. I mean, he has just
Speaker 1: absolutely one of the most enthusiastic, like he could have
Speaker 1: been a character in a TV show. He's just such
Speaker 1: enthusiasm and such a distinctive voice. But he says drag up.
Speaker 1: Is it means you quit?
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 1: So he said he went to his boss one day
Speaker 1: and said, I'm dragging and the boss was like, what
Speaker 1: he said, I'm dragging up? And this boss said, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you mean. And he said, I'm leaving.
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. You didn't come off the cheddar.
Speaker 1: So I found something about a dog. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: getting to look through a people at different people's lives
Speaker 1: and what brings them satisfaction and what makes them mad
Speaker 1: and what stresses them out.
Speaker 4: And that's the gist.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if, in that guy's case, if that's actually
Speaker 3: a Welder term or just something he just made it.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that's a lucky read, yeah story, I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm going to fish here a little bit for lessons
Speaker 3: out of these, and they can be lessons that you've
Speaker 3: heard of in multiple ones, or ones that you've pulled
Speaker 3: out of individual ones. But one of the big things
Speaker 3: is like meaning at work, right, And we've all seen
Speaker 3: scenarios or heard stories of the janitor at the hospital
Speaker 3: who thinks his work has a ton of meaning because
Speaker 3: he gets to make a clean place and that aids
Speaker 3: people in healing, right. And then we also know people
Speaker 3: who it doesn't matter what you tell them about their work,
Speaker 3: they just think it's meaningless, right, even if it might
Speaker 3: have some degree of meaning. So in talking to all
Speaker 3: these people, have you been able to pull out any
Speaker 3: threads of how we can find more meaning in the
Speaker 3: work that we do.
Speaker 1: I tell you what, Yes, I have come to appreciate
Speaker 1: I used to kind of half roll my eyes at
Speaker 1: that janitor in the hospital story. Yeah, But I think
Speaker 1: I don't have quite the same eye rolling circumference anymore
Speaker 1: because I've heard a lot of that kind of sentiment
Speaker 1: from people in a way that I believe that in
Speaker 1: a way, the meaning is in the eye of the beholder.
Speaker 1: And one of my favorite examples is the very first
Speaker 1: episode of the show is a stadium beer vendor who
Speaker 1: spent over thirty years just walking the stands of stadiums,
Speaker 1: most frequently the Baseball Stadium in Baltimore and absolutely adored it.
Speaker 1: And I remember when we booked that interview, I was thinking, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this will be fun. You know, maybe we'll hear some weird,
Speaker 1: nerdy details about how many beers can you carry, and
Speaker 1: what it's like to sell and what sells best, and
Speaker 1: you know, maybe get some drunk stories, and it'll just
Speaker 1: be a playful, fun episode. But it wasn't was It
Speaker 1: was a reflective episode. It was a soulful episode because
Speaker 1: of you know, this guy was at a point in
Speaker 1: his career, right at retirement where he's looking back and
Speaker 1: he's thinking about the choices he's made and he feels
Speaker 1: really good about them, and it was just beautiful. He
Speaker 1: told me, you know, one of the things I had
Speaker 1: no idea about was, at least for this stadium, you
Speaker 1: tended to work the same stands, so like he had
Speaker 1: an area that he worked game after game after game,
Speaker 1: which meant, in turn, he had a community. I asked
Speaker 1: him at one point. I said, you know, how many
Speaker 1: people do you think you would recognize, you know, and
Speaker 1: know their names on the street from working these stands
Speaker 1: And he said over one hundred.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, he knew multiple generations of families.
Speaker 1: And he told stories about, you know, people who had
Speaker 1: gone into the program because they had a problems with
Speaker 1: alcohol and you know, working through that with him. And
Speaker 1: let me see if I can find this quickly. He
Speaker 1: had this quote that just absolutely blew my mind. He
Speaker 1: was talking about his relatives' reaction to this work and
Speaker 1: you know sometimes they might be skeptical. Oh, here it is,
Speaker 1: here it is.
Speaker 4: He said.
Speaker 1: I had relatives that said, man, you squandered your life.
Speaker 1: You had so much potential to do so many things.
Speaker 1: And I said, this is him talking.
Speaker 4: No, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I've had a great life. It gave me a lot
Speaker 1: of free time. I worked very, very hard. I never
Speaker 1: missed work. I never complained about the job. I kept
Speaker 1: my nose clean and I loved it. Could I buy
Speaker 1: a brand new car, No? Could I get a big house, No?
Speaker 1: Could I take vacations to the Caribbean or fly to Europe? No?
Speaker 1: But could I have a good life? The answer was yes,
Speaker 1: a very very good life in my mind, and I loved.
Speaker 4: What I was doing.
Speaker 1: And I know for a fact that I brought something
Speaker 1: good to the ballpark and that the people brought something
Speaker 1: good back to me. I mean, it's beautiful, isn't that Gangbusters?
Speaker 1: I mean, wouldn't we all to feel that way at
Speaker 1: the end of our career, like we know we did
Speaker 1: something that mattered, that brought something to others, that we
Speaker 1: took something away. That was the moment when I realized
Speaker 1: this show wasn't just interesting, but I think it's getting
Speaker 1: at some really important themes. It was like the moment
Speaker 1: when I doubled down on him.
Speaker 3: Going back to where we started with a pair of
Speaker 3: two olds. We all have a beer vendor inside of
Speaker 3: us that sees our job is meaningful in the community
Speaker 3: that we make in a good life. And we all
Speaker 3: have the beer vendor inside of us that thinks our
Speaker 3: job sucks and we could have done so much more,
Speaker 3: and why aren't we in Europe? And he's clearly exhibiting
Speaker 3: a choice there in how he sees things.
Speaker 1: I thought too about the Ocean Lifeguard episode in a
Speaker 1: way was similar as a guy who spent thirty plus
Speaker 1: years as a beach lifeguard in southern California, you know
Speaker 1: where you really have to be skilled. Yeah, because a
Speaker 1: lot of servers, a lot of big waves. What I
Speaker 1: was thinking about was, you know, I write business books,
Speaker 1: and so I'm in you know a lot of business
Speaker 1: meme circles, and there's been one meme over the past
Speaker 1: few years. It's been about drawing boundaries and don't get
Speaker 1: yourself too invested in work and don't get your identity
Speaker 1: too tied up with what you do. And it's almost
Speaker 1: like the mental model is that that work is fundamentally
Speaker 1: exploitative or extractive, and so you have to kind of
Speaker 1: put up fences to keep it from encroaching on what's
Speaker 1: special about you. And it's not that I think that's wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean I think there is truth there, and I've
Speaker 1: experienced that truth like I've been in times where I
Speaker 1: was too invested in work in an unhealthy way.
Speaker 4: But there's a.
Speaker 1: Counterpoint too, which is when you listen to this ocean
Speaker 1: lifeguard talk, I mean, his profession was absolutely central to
Speaker 1: his satisfaction in life. He's met his wife through the work,
Speaker 1: his kids grew up in the waves with him, his
Speaker 1: best friends are all lifeguards. He's had a band that
Speaker 1: plays music for thirty years, all life guards. He's had adventures.
Speaker 1: It's too simplistic to think of work as being extractive.
Speaker 1: When you talk to people like this who have found
Speaker 1: so much meaning in.
Speaker 3: Their work, I couldn't agree more. I have found that
Speaker 3: narrative to be one that is, like many things partially right.
Speaker 3: As you said, Yeah, there is some truth in the
Speaker 3: fact that if we're not careful, work can consume everything else,
Speaker 3: and depending on who we work for, we may have
Speaker 3: to be more or less careful. But you and I
Speaker 3: both know is working for ourselves, that that same thing
Speaker 3: can happen right in doing your own thing. And yet
Speaker 3: at the same time, I think it's very reductive to
Speaker 3: think of work as only something that takes you away
Speaker 3: from the meaningful moments of life. Right. The other meme
Speaker 3: around this is nobody on their deathbed set I wish
Speaker 3: I spent more time at work. Well, maybe and maybe not.
Speaker 3: Like again, I think that's a little bit reductive because
Speaker 3: work is for most of us where we spend a
Speaker 3: big chunk of our time, and it is a big
Speaker 3: chunk of how we put value into the world. And
Speaker 3: to say that that's not important is to cut off
Speaker 3: a big part of our life in a way that
Speaker 3: we don't need to. And so, like many things, I
Speaker 3: think that that meme is partially right and partially wrong,
Speaker 3: and it's a matter of finding some sort of balance
Speaker 3: there that works. Where I do get value personally from
Speaker 3: my work, and I also have things that are not
Speaker 3: my work. It's not the whole of my life.
Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think of a conversation I have with
Speaker 1: Larry Jefferson, who became a professional Santa Claus. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know there was such a thing until I'm out Larry.
Speaker 1: But not only is there one, there are many professional
Speaker 1: Santa claus Is. There is a Santa Claus school that
Speaker 1: you can attend. And the thing that's fascinating about Larry
Speaker 1: is he spent twenty plus years in the military. This
Speaker 1: is a button up, disciplined, organized guy. And he gets
Speaker 1: to the point where he can retire and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, what do I want to spend you know,
Speaker 1: the next couple of decades of my life doing And
Speaker 1: he says this, I mean, can you imagine the look
Speaker 1: on some of his military brethren's faces when he told
Speaker 1: him he's going to Santa School.
Speaker 3: You know, I kind of want to go to Santa
Speaker 3: School now, it sounds pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: I was just like, wait, it was like a record
Speaker 1: screech moment. Wait, there's a Santa School. Okay, tell me
Speaker 1: about that. What do you do in Santa School? And
Speaker 1: exactly one of the funniest things about it was a
Speaker 1: lot of it was very tactical. It's like, well, they
Speaker 1: have to, you know, learn about different kinds of insurance
Speaker 1: that you need when you're holding people's kids on your lap.
Speaker 1: And wow, insurance. The tentacles are everywhere. Yes, But back
Speaker 1: to the point. I mean, here's a guy who just
Speaker 1: consciously intentionally shifted his life to providing these beautiful, warm
Speaker 1: moments for kids. And you think about someone like Larry,
Speaker 1: and you think about the deathbed moment, like, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's easy to think he might have, you know,
Speaker 1: wished he had one more afternoon, you know, at the
Speaker 1: mall to make fifty kids day.
Speaker 3: Exactly. It's a great illustration for what I was trying
Speaker 3: to say. There. Let's go back to the hot dog
Speaker 3: vendor for a second, though, because I think he's an
Speaker 3: interesting case and you know a question I often have,
Speaker 3: and this is just pure speculation, right, but you've worked
Speaker 3: in the areas relating to psychology for quite some time
Speaker 3: again business, but lots of psychology views on that, you know,
Speaker 3: somebody like that that hot dog vendor. I mean, to
Speaker 3: what extent do you think we can take on that attitude?
Speaker 3: And to what extent do you think that certain people
Speaker 3: just have the ability to have a rosier view of things.
Speaker 1: I think it's both of those things and a third thing,
Speaker 1: which is fit. Like I think that Howard Hart, the
Speaker 1: stadium beer vendor.
Speaker 4: I think that he was.
Speaker 1: A glass half full guy just in his bones m
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, if he'd end up working
Speaker 1: in an oil change place, he probably would have been
Speaker 1: a charming guy and made a lot of friends there too.
Speaker 1: But I think that this environment kind of elicited the
Speaker 1: best of him, and I think that's been something I
Speaker 1: definitely don't have any answers here, but it's just been
Speaker 1: interesting to see what a snap there is between certain
Speaker 1: people and the professions they choose, and how little we invest,
Speaker 1: you know, as a society, in helping people find that snap.
Speaker 1: Kids in high school it's like they're learning advanced math
Speaker 1: of the kind that probably one percent of the people
Speaker 1: listening could even do, you know, complicated algebraic matrices and
Speaker 1: things you're never going to see again in your life.
Speaker 1: And they probably couldn't name twenty professions if you put
Speaker 1: them on the spot. You know, it's like these fundamental
Speaker 1: things about the world, like what is it like to
Speaker 1: do these jobs? And what kind of personalities do you
Speaker 1: need to do these jobs? And what kind of relationships
Speaker 1: do you have in these jobs? Are they are they
Speaker 1: kind of short and transactional like it is with the
Speaker 1: professional Santa Claus or are they long term relationship like
Speaker 1: a piano teacher has with their students where they might
Speaker 1: be together for fifteen years, And what are the dynamics
Speaker 1: of those And what does it say about what kind
Speaker 1: of work you might seek out depending on how you're wired.
Speaker 1: And we basically do none of that to help people
Speaker 1: understand themselves and understand how those characteristics of self might
Speaker 1: snap two or not different kinds of trades.
Speaker 3: That is really compelling because we don't, I mean, and
Speaker 3: how are we making career choices? I mean, it's usually
Speaker 3: pretty ill informed.
Speaker 1: I remember my brother Chip, and I keep bringing up
Speaker 1: my brother he was my co author for four books,
Speaker 1: so that's why he keeps coming up. We wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Decisive about making better decisions, and one of
Speaker 1: the things that stuck with me most from that book
Speaker 1: was what we call ooching, which is a word we
Speaker 1: stole from a company that coined it, ooching meaning trying
Speaker 1: things rather than just guessing about them. So on the
Speaker 1: career front, what made me think of it was I
Speaker 1: talked to this college student who was a senior in college,
Speaker 1: had been in a counting major.
Speaker 4: Thought he, you know, he was.
Speaker 1: Good at math, and I think maybe one of his
Speaker 1: parents had done the work, and so it was just
Speaker 1: one of those things where okay, well good enough, I'll
Speaker 1: just do that, and you know, made good grades. And
Speaker 1: as a senior they go on like a field visit
Speaker 1: to an accounting firm. You know, he walks into this
Speaker 1: place and he looks around, he kind of soaks up
Speaker 1: the vibe, and instantly in his gut he knows, oh, man, no,
Speaker 1: this is no. I do not want this. I don't
Speaker 1: want this life. I don't want to be in a
Speaker 1: place like this. And think about I mean, he's a senior,
Speaker 1: you know, he's done the work, he's on the cusp
Speaker 1: of graduation. I came away thinking that is a system's
Speaker 1: failure right there, Like it should be impossible to make
Speaker 1: the mistake that he made, and I blame the system
Speaker 1: rather than him. If you're training for a trade, day
Speaker 1: one is visit the freaking accounting firm.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: My wife went to physical therapy school. I mean, here's
Speaker 1: how you fix this.
Speaker 4: It's nice.
Speaker 1: It's not like some fantastic idea of mine. When she
Speaker 1: went back to graduate school for physical therapy, as part
Speaker 1: of her application, she had to show evidence that she'd
Speaker 1: done one hundred observational hours, meaning like she was a
Speaker 1: shadow for a real working physical therapist for one hundred hours. Now,
Speaker 1: that's how you do it, because right when you show
Speaker 1: up on the first day at grad school, you know
Speaker 1: about to plunk down fifty grand a year. There's no
Speaker 1: mystery about do you know what you're getting into? And
Speaker 1: so I think things like that. We can add so
Speaker 1: much value for people just by helping them get little taste.
Speaker 1: It's like the sampler spoon of ice cream at the
Speaker 1: ice cream par get the little tastes of the path
Speaker 1: that they're headed down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fascinating because my initial reaction would have been
Speaker 3: upon hearing that, like, well, why are you making it
Speaker 3: so hard for somebody to get a degree in something
Speaker 3: like to even get started? But framing it from the
Speaker 3: perspective you just did, it makes complete sense. Right. It's
Speaker 3: not so much that we're trying to keep you out.
Speaker 3: We're just wanting to make sure you really want in.
Speaker 3: M M.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so if I were the education czar for the economy,
Speaker 1: that would be one of my first practices is to
Speaker 1: make sure everybody gets an early taste of the thing
Speaker 1: that they're studying for, training for what have you. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not rocket science.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In the conversation you had with the crisis pr manager, right,
Speaker 3: somebody who gets called in when an organization is in
Speaker 3: some sort of crisis, he said something that really stuck
Speaker 3: with me, and I just want to see if you
Speaker 3: want to elaborate on it a little bit. And he
Speaker 3: was talking about how often what he's trying to do
Speaker 3: with these companies is get them out of debating who
Speaker 3: is right in a situation. So let's say they've had
Speaker 3: an employee who's acted poorly and it's gone public, and
Speaker 3: you know, trying to get them out of like who's
Speaker 3: right and into a framework of what's best, what's the
Speaker 3: best thing to do here? And I'm a recovering alcoholic
Speaker 3: and addict. And there was a phrase they used to
Speaker 3: use in the recovery programs which was would you rather
Speaker 3: be happier? Would you rather be right? And that kind
Speaker 3: of came to my mind when I heard that, But
Speaker 3: this is a slightly different application. But tell me about
Speaker 3: him sharing that and kind of what it brought up
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 1: This was a fascinating conversation because I think I have
Speaker 1: to be honest, Like when I was about to sit
Speaker 1: down and talk to him, I think my mental model
Speaker 1: was largely the one that he kind of mocked a
Speaker 1: little bit in the episode, which was we think of
Speaker 1: people who do PR and especially crisis PR as being spinmeisters.
Speaker 1: They're word artists, and they're going to say just the
Speaker 1: right phrase or chain together just the right group of
Speaker 1: sentences or stories to kind of get you out of
Speaker 1: the jam that you've created as a company or as
Speaker 1: a person. And I was really struck and impressed actually
Speaker 1: by the way he reframed that, and he said that actually,
Speaker 1: you rarely can communicate your way out of a crisis.
Speaker 1: There is no stream of bs that's going to like
Speaker 1: absolve you of some.
Speaker 4: Dumb thing that you've done.
Speaker 1: Rather, it's what do we need to do to your
Speaker 1: point about what's the right thing to do at this moment,
Speaker 1: and then let's talk about that thing. He gave a
Speaker 1: bunch of exams simples of There was a health system
Speaker 1: and one of the employees of the health system had
Speaker 1: said just some ungodly hateful thing about LGBTQ folks on
Speaker 1: social media. I mean, it was just like beyond the pale,
Speaker 1: really hostile, and their first instinct was to kind of
Speaker 1: like sweep this under the rug and you know, release
Speaker 1: some kind of corporate boilerplate. Interestingly, one of the side
Speaker 1: themes of this episode was how a lot of what
Speaker 1: holds back like a normal human response to some kind
Speaker 1: of failure is fear spawned by lawsuits. So, you know,
Speaker 1: this health system, they know this employee has done something terrible,
Speaker 1: but they're afraid to say anything about it because the
Speaker 1: saying of what was terrible about it may expose them
Speaker 1: to some kind of lawsuit. And so Chris, this PR guy,
Speaker 1: he's the one, I mean, the guy we might have
Speaker 1: thought as a spinmeister. He's the one on the phone
Speaker 1: with the CEO saying, Hey, you personally have to come
Speaker 1: and talk about this. Like you've done the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: You can't put the wine back in the bottle, but
Speaker 1: you can deal with it. And if you make the
Speaker 1: right moves here, I mean, that employee's got to go,
Speaker 1: and you've got to go talk to the people who
Speaker 1: are outraged rightly by this. And if you do the
Speaker 1: right things and then talk about them, we can take
Speaker 1: a lot of the sting out of this painful mistake.
Speaker 1: And I just thought that that was really different than
Speaker 1: what I expected and really compelling.
Speaker 3: I want to pause for a quick good wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 3: see people making. And that's really that we don't think
Speaker 3: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 3: the context of our entire life. Right, habits don't happen
Speaker 3: in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
Speaker 3: that we have. So when we just keep adding I
Speaker 3: should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 3: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 3: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 3: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 3: might I need to remove. If you want to step
Speaker 3: by step guide for how you can easily build new
Speaker 3: habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
Speaker 3: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. It
Speaker 3: reminded me a little bit of like, if you get
Speaker 3: a good marketing person to work with you, right, the
Speaker 3: thing that they will tell you is, I can't market
Speaker 3: a bad product. We've got to go back to the
Speaker 3: thing itself that you've created and make sure that's good.
Speaker 3: A not so good marketing person will tell you, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can sell that, I can make you know, but
Speaker 3: ultimately it's not going to really be that successful if
Speaker 3: the underlying thing isn't any good. And this crisis PR
Speaker 3: manager was sort of saying the same thing. We have
Speaker 3: to deal with the actual problem, not what we say
Speaker 3: about the problem. Now, what we say about the problem
Speaker 3: is important, right in the same way that what we
Speaker 3: say about a good product is important. But if you
Speaker 3: skip that very first step, it's likely to backfire.
Speaker 1: This PR guy actually represented the family of Elizabeth Smart.
Speaker 1: Some of the old timers listening me, Well, probably remember
Speaker 1: that name. This is in the early two thousands. It
Speaker 1: was just an absolutely horrific case where a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old girl, Elizabeth Smart, was abducted at knife point out
Speaker 1: of her bedroom. I mean in a suburb in Utah.
Speaker 1: I mean just the kind of thing that just never happens,
Speaker 1: and spent about eight or nine months and abductionist people
Speaker 1: hunted frantically for her. This is one of these cases
Speaker 1: just blew up nationally. It was on the news every night.
Speaker 1: This was the era of Larry King, and it was
Speaker 1: like every other night Larry King's doing an Elizabeth Smart show,
Speaker 1: and you know, people are calling the family looking for
Speaker 1: profile stories, and it's just overwhelming to the family, like
Speaker 1: the worst thing has happened to them. And then you
Speaker 1: know the media is coming out of the woodwork, and
Speaker 1: of course the media's job is to milk you for more, right,
Speaker 1: and so very quickly the family members start to lash
Speaker 1: out at the cops. Well that's a bad idea because
Speaker 1: the cops are one of your best allies in this situation.
Speaker 1: So anyway, they bring in Chris to kind of be
Speaker 1: the funnel to defend the family and to try to
Speaker 1: rationalize their approach with the media. And so one of
Speaker 1: the things that happens early on, you've got all this
Speaker 1: media attention, this kind of frenzy. You know, imagine having
Speaker 1: to fill up Larry King Live with an hour with
Speaker 1: basically no new facts, right because the facts are coming
Speaker 1: out at a glacial pace that they don't know where
Speaker 1: she is, they don't know who did this, there's nothing,
Speaker 1: and so what fills the vacuum is ultimately conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: And so you know, within the first month, one of
Speaker 1: them comes out, Well, one of the Smart family, like
Speaker 1: an uncle and the Smart family must have been involved,
Speaker 1: and there were like a couple of supposedly suspicious details,
Speaker 1: and so Chris, I mean imagine being like the advocate
Speaker 1: for this family and they know this is false and
Speaker 1: the worst thing has happened to them. They've lost their daughter.
Speaker 1: They can't find her, and now like the spotlight, the
Speaker 1: finger of blame is being pointed at them. I mean,
Speaker 1: talk about a stressful situation. Chris told me that he
Speaker 1: basically wore down five or six teeth during this area
Speaker 1: because at night he was just.
Speaker 4: Grinding and grinding and grinding geez.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he eventually kind of come bat's this story
Speaker 1: just by doing some of the things we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: just being very open about it, letting the truth speak
Speaker 1: for itself. Even in these situations where you would think
Speaker 1: that our sympathies and our empathy would be with this
Speaker 1: family and we would kind of give them some space, No,
Speaker 1: I mean that they still needed an advocate in their court.
Speaker 1: And fortunately the story has has I guess, an amended
Speaker 1: happy ending, which is she was eventually located, they figured
Speaker 1: out who had abducted her, and she came home after
Speaker 1: just a horrifying experience. But listening to Chris talk about
Speaker 1: what that meant for him, you know, as an outsider,
Speaker 1: he wasn't part of the family, but in a sense
Speaker 1: he became part of the family because of all that
Speaker 1: time and all of that stress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's just that's tragedy compounded upon tragedy, right,
Speaker 3: like the fact that that family had to go through
Speaker 3: that and then they've got to hire a pr manager
Speaker 3: to man. I mean, it's just insane that we as
Speaker 3: a culture do there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he's got Tom Broke call and Connie
Speaker 1: Chung like calling his phone, like peppering for interviews.
Speaker 4: I mean, he actually wrote a great book about.
Speaker 1: The experience, which goes through the whole case in greater
Speaker 1: detail than we have time for here. And I consider
Speaker 1: myself sort of kind of part of the media. But
Speaker 1: it's hard to come away from that book with a
Speaker 1: rosy view of the way things work. There was just
Speaker 1: such a feeding frenzy around the whole thing that just
Speaker 1: was not a good look.
Speaker 3: Have there been other things that you have learned from
Speaker 3: doing these interviews that, broadly speaking, again have sort of
Speaker 3: caused you to think differently about aspects or elements of work.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that's striking to me
Speaker 1: is how I don't know if I have the language
Speaker 1: to talk about this shit, but it's almost like some
Speaker 1: jobs scratch one itch and some jobs scratch multiple itches.
Speaker 1: So what I mean is like the forensic accountant that
Speaker 1: I talk to, it's one of my favorite episodes. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where the more you
Speaker 1: hear about this job, the more you're like, gosh, that
Speaker 1: would be a fun job to do, just trying to untangle,
Speaker 1: you know, people who've committed fraud or embezzled funds from
Speaker 1: their organizations, and what are the clues you look for,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a toolkit that you can use
Speaker 1: again and again. And I would contrast that with something
Speaker 1: more like in one case, I interviewed a TV meteorologist
Speaker 1: and in talking to her, her name was Lacey Swope
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma City, which is like the big leagues for
Speaker 1: TV weather because they have some nasty weather, and just
Speaker 1: understanding that her job has these two just completely dissimilar aspects, Like,
Speaker 1: on one hand, there's a lot of serious science involved
Speaker 1: in meteorology, I think more than I realized. Like she's
Speaker 1: kind of conjuring her own models, and she's getting all
Speaker 1: this data from national sources, but she's also tweaking it
Speaker 1: based on what she's observing in the atmosphere, and she's
Speaker 1: looking like three levels up and the atmosphere, you know,
Speaker 1: to see like what are the underlying factors that are
Speaker 1: brewing and causing the weather we can observe. And so
Speaker 1: there's this science aspect, and then there's also this aspect
Speaker 1: where she's got to get on camera and be like
Speaker 1: your wise cracking daughter or you know, someone that you
Speaker 1: like to see on TV, like someone that you want
Speaker 1: to spend time with every morning when you're you know,
Speaker 1: sitting around the living room or whatever, and those things
Speaker 1: could not be more different, Like if you were solving
Speaker 1: for one or the other in exclusion, you would need
Speaker 1: very different kinds of profiles. And that's happened several times
Speaker 1: with the show where it's almost like something I'm watching
Speaker 1: for now is like is this a split personality kind
Speaker 1: of career or is it a one personality kind of career?
Speaker 1: And it's just gotten me thinking about back to this
Speaker 1: theme of are we helping people to discover the kinds
Speaker 1: of careers that are going to fit them and give
Speaker 1: them a lot of satisfaction? Like that's one of the
Speaker 1: things we should be screening for is if you have
Speaker 1: one of these very you know, ambidexterus style personalities or
Speaker 1: skill sets, you're a performer and a scientist. That's hard
Speaker 1: and you've got to really pay a lot of attention
Speaker 1: to can I find a career that scratches both itches
Speaker 1: or do I need to figure out, you know, which
Speaker 1: itch is more powerful and just serve that one because
Speaker 1: I can possibly get both, or one's a career and
Speaker 1: one's a hobby or whatever. But that's just been something
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed thinking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a family member who in high school
Speaker 3: was both really really into r OTC and really really
Speaker 3: into theater.
Speaker 1: WHOA, that's not a Venn diagram intersection you see very often.
Speaker 3: Totally, and so far the ROTC side has kind of
Speaker 3: one out career wise. But I'm kind of curious. He's
Speaker 3: still young, you know, younger, so curious how that might
Speaker 3: play out over time, because yeah, you said, as soon
Speaker 3: as you start talking about that, like two distinct sides
Speaker 3: of a personality, I was like, oh, that makes me
Speaker 3: think of him.
Speaker 4: I remember years ago.
Speaker 1: This was during the Decision Making book we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. I talked to this guy who he worked
Speaker 1: in security at a university in the Pacific Northwest and
Speaker 1: his decision. I was sort of doing some decision counseling
Speaker 1: as part of the research for the book, and his
Speaker 1: decision that he was trying to make is whether he
Speaker 1: wanted to drop that and go back to school to
Speaker 1: get a master's in counseling. It was like a classic
Speaker 1: like two itch situation. You know, he had this kind
Speaker 1: of rigid analytical mind and he was good at it,
Speaker 1: and he was good at security, but he also felt
Speaker 1: kind of unresolved or unfulfilled because he had this other
Speaker 1: instinct that was much more empathetic and human focus and
Speaker 1: nurturing almost And so, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: we were talking about is is this going to be
Speaker 1: a win to just go from one side of the
Speaker 1: spectrum to the other, or are you gonna as soon
Speaker 1: as you make that switch, are you just going to
Speaker 1: miss the other side you've just left behind? Like, are
Speaker 1: you gonna have to solve for both ultimately to be fulfilled?
Speaker 3: And to what extent can you solve for both career wise?
Speaker 3: Or do you have to solve for both like career
Speaker 3: and hobby, Like I mean, there's there's multiple ways to
Speaker 3: sort of take that apart.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we were playing around with with,
Speaker 1: you know, back to the notion of ooching we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier. I'm not too presumptuous in these situations. Life
Speaker 1: is complicated, and I didn't know this guy very well,
Speaker 1: so I was hesitant to like dole out advice, right,
Speaker 1: But the one thing I felt strongly about was, you know,
Speaker 1: before you quit your job and enroll in a master's program,
Speaker 1: it's going to probably set back your net worth one
Speaker 1: hundred grand over two years, like you got to make
Speaker 1: sure this is it, and like you got to ooch right,
Speaker 1: you have to find some counseling situations to observe or
Speaker 1: test out.
Speaker 4: And that was something that I felt pretty strongly about.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I often think of an analogy where it's like with
Speaker 3: things like that, you're standing at the beginning. You're like
Speaker 3: a trailhead that's heading into the forest, and you know,
Speaker 3: up about seven feet there's a turn to the right,
Speaker 3: and you know you can't see what's around that turn,
Speaker 3: but you really want to know. But if you just
Speaker 3: keep standing there, you will never know what's around that turn.
Speaker 3: Once you take a few steps, now you can see
Speaker 3: a little bit further and you can then go, Okay,
Speaker 3: that looks interesting. I'll keep walking, or you know, bear
Speaker 3: around the turn. I better, I better retreat. But I
Speaker 3: think where we get paralyzed as we stand there trying
Speaker 3: to see something that's impossible to see from the vantage
Speaker 3: point we have well said, And that's kind of what
Speaker 3: you're describing here with this guy right, Like he can't
Speaker 3: see what it's like to be a counselor unless he
Speaker 3: goes and is in that situation a little bit.
Speaker 1: Amen, And I think that the error of people make
Speaker 1: so often is that they think they're doing that work
Speaker 1: by thinking about it, Like I imagine he spent a lot
Speaker 1: of hours like imagining himself as a counselor, and well,
Speaker 1: I'd be good at it because of this, and I
Speaker 1: have this trait and I really enjoy this, and I
Speaker 1: just fundamentally don't think that works. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: good at imagining what we're going to feel like in
Speaker 1: situations that we haven't experienced before. And that's why there's wisdom,
Speaker 1: and just don't try to predict something that you can know,
Speaker 1: Like you're saying, don't predict something that's around the corner
Speaker 1: where you could just peek around the corner and take
Speaker 1: a look. And I think that we can often learn
Speaker 1: more about ourselves not by thinking or cogitating, but just
Speaker 1: putting ourselves in new situations and then observing what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we feel? Does it feel like
Speaker 1: a click? Are we kind of instantly engaged? Or or
Speaker 1: are there aspects of it that we never could have imagined?
Speaker 1: That might be a pretty good deterrent to doing any
Speaker 1: more of that. I mean, I think there's only one
Speaker 1: way to find out and that's to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, back to Decisive. Decisive is a book about
Speaker 3: making better decisions, and I wanted to ask about one
Speaker 3: I think really fundamental idea in the book, and it's
Speaker 3: what is narrow framing? And why do we want to
Speaker 3: avoid that? How does that get us in trouble with decisions?
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought this up, because you know, when
Speaker 1: I look back, that's probably the number one thing that
Speaker 1: I think is important about this book, and certainly the
Speaker 1: number one thing I've taken away personally. And the idea
Speaker 1: is that that's so often in life we make what
Speaker 1: we call in the book a whether or not decision,
Speaker 1: like a decision presents itself like that security guard I
Speaker 1: was just talking about. He was deciding whether or not
Speaker 1: to go back and get a master's in therapy. Just
Speaker 1: this week, my wife and I were thinking whether or
Speaker 1: not we wanted to invest in a repair of this
Speaker 1: pergola we've got in our backyard, a sort of rotting boards,
Speaker 1: and whether or not we should do that, whether or
Speaker 1: not we should go on vacation and blah bay, whether
Speaker 1: or not we should buy this, And the point we're
Speaker 1: making in the book is that this is this is
Speaker 1: a very natural way for decisions to manifest, and it's
Speaker 1: almost inherently flawed because when we put those blinders on
Speaker 1: and we just consider one thing, and the only decision
Speaker 1: we're making is kind of thumbs up or thumbs down,
Speaker 1: buy it, don't buy it, do it, don't do it.
Speaker 1: Like what we're missing is men things. But number one,
Speaker 1: we're accepting the frame as it shows up, and number two,
Speaker 1: we're ignoring the opportunity cost of that decision. So one
Speaker 1: of the things, I mean, I try to take my
Speaker 1: own medicine, right. So with the pergola thing, we got
Speaker 1: this just obscene quote from you know, contractors are so
Speaker 1: busy they can afford to just throw out high numbers
Speaker 1: and see what happens. And so we come back with
Speaker 1: this crazy quote, and I was like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to have a rotten pergola. But that number is like
Speaker 1: two years worth of babysitter covered dates for the two
Speaker 1: of us to go out. And when you think about
Speaker 1: something like that, like the same resource is deployed in
Speaker 1: very different ways. I mean, it was the easiest thing
Speaker 1: in the world. See, this is absurd because the two
Speaker 1: year's worth of dates would be so much more fun
Speaker 1: and satisfying and memorable than fixing some boards in a pergola.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: But when you keep the narrow frame on and you're
Speaker 1: just thinking should we do this or not, then all
Speaker 1: these other arguments in true, like, well, we can't be
Speaker 1: someone who has rotting boards in the backyard, and it
Speaker 1: would be you know, unwise to just let that go.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure we can find the money somewhere,
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah. The fundamental flaw with whether or
Speaker 1: not decisions is often we talk ourselves into feeling like
Speaker 1: the only real positive outcome would be a yes, and
Speaker 1: if we say no, like we've somehow disappointed ourselves or
Speaker 1: shirked an opportunity or something else. But when you can
Speaker 1: make an apples to apples comparison, we could do this
Speaker 1: or this or this, it often becomes surprisingly easy to
Speaker 1: kind of gauge what the right path is.
Speaker 3: So listener and thinking about that and all the other
Speaker 3: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 3: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 3: would it be? Remember, little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 3: a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action.
Speaker 3: And I want to give you a tip on that,
Speaker 3: and it's to start small. It's really important when we're
Speaker 3: trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than
Speaker 3: we think we need to, because what that does is
Speaker 3: it allows us to get victories. And victories are really
Speaker 3: important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good
Speaker 3: about ourselves, and we become less motivated when we're feeling
Speaker 3: bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure
Speaker 3: that you succeed, you build your motivation for further change
Speaker 3: down the road. If you'd like a step by step
Speaker 3: guide for how you can easily build new habits that
Speaker 3: feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf dot me,
Speaker 3: slash change and join the free masterclass. That's one of
Speaker 3: my best ways for thinking about something is not just weighing,
Speaker 3: like you said, whether I want to do that thing
Speaker 3: or not, but either from a financial or time perspective,
Speaker 3: what else could I do with that time or that money,
Speaker 3: Because that suddenly is like, oh wait a second, I
Speaker 3: never thought of it that way. Like, you know, I
Speaker 3: could buy this guitar, but I could also do this,
Speaker 3: or I could go out to dinner three times here,
Speaker 3: or I could buy a new guitar, versus should I
Speaker 3: buy a new guitar? Like, there's just different ways of
Speaker 3: it just opens things up, you know. I think that
Speaker 3: goes along with the general idea in decisive of just
Speaker 3: getting as many options on the table as you can
Speaker 3: early on, right, like getting different perspectives. We just get
Speaker 3: stuck into the binary like relationship should I stay or
Speaker 3: should I go? Well, there's actually a lot of other
Speaker 3: plantations there.
Speaker 1: That's a great example, and people often frame it exactly
Speaker 1: that way. Should I break up with this person or not? Well,
Speaker 1: there's actually one hundred other gradations in between, just mindlessly
Speaker 1: accepting the things that are bumming you out and cutting
Speaker 1: the cord.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So, And this is not a small thing, by the way,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that this is the phenomenon that
Speaker 1: makes corporate mergers and acquisitions such a disastrous lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: the research has been clear for decades that if you're
Speaker 1: trying to make a decision whether or not to acquire
Speaker 1: another company, the best answer is don't because the vast
Speaker 1: majority don't add value and the majority actually destroy value.
Speaker 1: And it's easy to understand why that is when you
Speaker 1: think about it. Through the lens of narrow framing, because
Speaker 1: what happens is a CEO gets enamored with some other
Speaker 1: company and immediately the blinders are on, right. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: that looks promising. You start doing sales jobs to the
Speaker 1: board of directors and to your your management team, and okay, look,
Speaker 1: you know, we really need this company. They're going to
Speaker 1: be the perfect add on strategically for where we're headed.
Speaker 1: You start to believe the sales pitch that you're making
Speaker 1: all the time, and then you know, the target realizes
Speaker 1: how much you like them, and so the price starts
Speaker 1: going up and up and up and up. But it
Speaker 1: just feels too painful, like after all that work and
Speaker 1: all that selling, Like, are you going to back away
Speaker 1: just because the price went up a couple of billion dollars?
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, you know you end up at
Speaker 1: the end of this road with these huge and disastrous
Speaker 1: acquisitions like the one we write about in the book
Speaker 1: is Quaker acquired Snapple at just this almost dot com
Speaker 1: esque price that was doomed from the start. Or you
Speaker 1: know AOL and Time Warner, or you know Microsoft and
Speaker 1: Yahoo and on and on, and I think that's what's
Speaker 1: going on there. If by law, when you were making
Speaker 1: an acquisition you had to consider, what are three other
Speaker 1: ways you could use that twelve billion dollars? Yeah, to
Speaker 1: further your success as an enterprise. I don't think a
Speaker 1: single person would make this error. I think if we
Speaker 1: were forced to consider opportunity cost, it just vanishes. That
Speaker 1: was something that was so fun about the Decision Making
Speaker 1: book is the literature is so complicated, but often the
Speaker 1: most effective fixes were the simplest.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, don't make a weather or not decision, Try
Speaker 1: something instead of guessing about it. And I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: that part of researching decisions.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that is a great place for us
Speaker 3: to wrap up. Dan, thank you so much. You and
Speaker 3: I are going to continue talking in the postial conversation.
Speaker 3: I want to talk a little bit about your I
Speaker 3: believe it's your most recent book called Upstream. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: It is the most recent YEP which is about preventing
Speaker 3: problems before they happen, which is a very wise approach
Speaker 3: to things. We'll be discussing that in the postial conversation
Speaker 3: and listeners you can get access to that as well
Speaker 3: as ad free episodes and other bonus content, as well
Speaker 3: as becoming part of our community and attending special community
Speaker 3: meetings by going to oneufeed dot net slash join again, Dan,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for coming on. I've wanted to
Speaker 3: talk to you for a while now and I'm glad
Speaker 3: to have made it happen.
Speaker 4: My pleasure. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks.
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