Speaker 1: Look, I'm gonna fuck up at least one or two things.
Speaker 1: Let's just take that as a given. A balanced life
Speaker 1: includes fucking up. There should always be something fucked up.
Speaker 1: In fact, if there isn't something fucked up, you're probably
Speaker 1: leaving value on the table. You just want to make
Speaker 1: sure that whatever's fucked up keeps moving. It's something different.
Speaker 2: Today, we welcome Sheena Iyngar to the show. Doctor Youngar
Speaker 2: is in a clean professor of business in the Management
Speaker 2: Department at Columbia Business School and a world expert on
Speaker 2: the science of how we make choices and how we innovate.
Speaker 2: I've been wanting to chat with doctor Jngar for a
Speaker 2: while now, since we have so many overlapping areas of interest,
Speaker 2: including our mutual interest in the science of creativity. I
Speaker 2: really admire doctor Yengar as a blind Indian American woman
Speaker 2: in academia. She intuitively used her own approach of thinking
Speaker 2: bigger to find her calling and inspire others to do
Speaker 2: the same. In this episode, we discussed the essential tools
Speaker 2: for innovation and how to maximize potential. We also discuss
Speaker 2: how non experts and outzeiders can learn just enough about
Speaker 2: a field to innovate in it, and we discuss some
Speaker 2: intriguing ideas such as the notion of the quote strategic copier. So,
Speaker 2: without further ado, I bring you one of Colombia's most
Speaker 2: popular professors, doctor Sheena i Angar Shina. Welcome to the
Speaker 2: Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it's good to be here.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming. Your legend a legend
Speaker 2: in the field, and i've esteem professor in the Business
Speaker 2: School at Columbia. Can you, and your own words, tell
Speaker 2: our audience a bit about your main research focus.
Speaker 1: I have spent my entire career studying the answer to
Speaker 1: one big question, how do we get the most from choice?
Speaker 1: We're people that love choice, that love freedom. We all
Speaker 1: know what the power are we supposed to give us right,
Speaker 1: a better life, better everything, and yet we all struggle
Speaker 1: and how do we how do we get the most
Speaker 1: from it? And so I've looked at it through two lengths.
Speaker 1: One is how do we become better picker and finders?
Speaker 1: And that was my first book, The Art of Choosing.
Speaker 1: And then after that I developed my second book, which
Speaker 1: is really based on a methodology I created called Think Bigger,
Speaker 1: which is designed to help you do two things. First,
Speaker 1: how do you become a better picker and finder? And second,
Speaker 1: how do you create meaningful choices when there's no known
Speaker 1: solution to the problem at hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, divergent thinking, you know. I love how you integrate
Speaker 2: these two topics together, choice and creativity. And creativity, as
Speaker 2: you know, is a big area of research of mind
Speaker 2: and interest of mine. So that's wonderful. I really enjoyed
Speaker 2: your new book, Think Bigger. I want to just double
Speaker 2: click for a second on the choice aspect you know,
Speaker 2: your first book. I'm a huge I'm a humanistic psychologist.
Speaker 2: A lot of the humanistic psychologists, like Abraham Abraham Maslow
Speaker 2: talked a lot, a lot about the importance of choosing wisely.
Speaker 2: He often said, we need to, we need to, we
Speaker 2: need to help people become good choosers. And what he
Speaker 2: was referring to was choosing growth, you know, choosing that
Speaker 2: growth option in our lives. Do you think people know
Speaker 2: deep down fundamentally whether or not they're making a choice
Speaker 2: that's good for their organism or is not good for
Speaker 2: their organism from an evolutionary point of view.
Speaker 1: See, I think they have an opinion. Well, okay, let's
Speaker 1: back up. I think that's a few things going on.
Speaker 1: I think many people or almost everyone will, at some
Speaker 1: point in their life, if not at multiple points in
Speaker 1: their life, discover they don't know what they want, they
Speaker 1: don't know what to choose, and they are genuinely buffuddled
Speaker 1: by what to do. Then you have the times when
Speaker 1: you feel like you ought to choose X, but you
Speaker 1: don't really know if it's going to work out. Then
Speaker 1: there's other times when, of course you know that whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing is really not a good idea, but somehow
Speaker 1: you can't help yourself, but you still do it, like
Speaker 1: eating cake and not exercising all that other stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's two. Do you separate these things out
Speaker 2: from each other?
Speaker 1: I would separate the map?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, that's good.
Speaker 1: I do think that they are separate categories.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I definitely agree. Well, how can people
Speaker 2: become good better? How can people become better choosers? That's
Speaker 2: a big topic. You wrote a whole book about it.
Speaker 2: But is there any specific tangible advice you can just
Speaker 2: give our audience before we get into the creativity.
Speaker 1: I would say the single best piece of advice is
Speaker 1: to be choosy about choosing, particularly in this day and age.
Speaker 1: You have to. You're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: be good at choosing everything. You shouldn't try to optimize
Speaker 1: on everything. You really just have to figure out on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, what's the most important thing that you
Speaker 1: need to make a choice on, because choice is always
Speaker 1: effortful to choose well is effortful?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're bringing to mind the maximizers versus satisfacers distinction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm not somebody who says, don't maximize. I'm
Speaker 1: somebody who says, figure out, what are the things you
Speaker 1: want to maximize on? Nice?
Speaker 2: Nice? Can we ever maximize anything?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Fully? Okay, Okay, well I think that's a subjective thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, I I think the best choice
Speaker 1: I ever made was the choice to study choice, and
Speaker 1: I honestly don't think there was a better choice for me. No,
Speaker 1: you might argue and a Nosina, you could have been
Speaker 1: excellent at a bazillion other things, and so maybe you
Speaker 1: could say I didn't really maximize, but I got what
Speaker 1: everything I wanted from it.
Speaker 2: I feel the same way about psychology. Yeah, No, I
Speaker 2: love that. Yeah, I mean there's just so many it
Speaker 2: could be overwhelming. When you look at your Instagram feed
Speaker 2: and ecy post after posts saying life is short, maximize
Speaker 2: your day, you know, don't waste your life. You know,
Speaker 2: it feels like you feel like a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1: And it's a lot of pressure, and they're trying to
Speaker 1: tell you to do so many things, like I'm literally
Speaker 1: supposed to wake up every morning, love myself, exercise, you
Speaker 1: have to take care of my body, pay attention to
Speaker 1: what I'm eating, meditate, uh, you know, buy things that
Speaker 1: I love, only do things that I love and am
Speaker 1: passionate about. Make sure I socialize, make sure I you know,
Speaker 1: smell the flowers. And on top of that, I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to develop core competencies. It's something. Now, how am I
Speaker 1: going to have time for all of that?
Speaker 2: It's overwhelming.
Speaker 1: So that's why I say, look, I'm going to fuck
Speaker 1: up at least one or two things. Let's just take
Speaker 1: that as a given. A balanced life includes fucking up.
Speaker 1: There should always be something fucked up. In fact, if
Speaker 1: it's there isn't something fucked up, you're probably leaving value
Speaker 1: on the table. You just want to make sure that
Speaker 1: whatever's fucked up keeps moving. It's something different.
Speaker 2: So let's let's like connect some dots here with the
Speaker 2: creativity work. I love this new book, Think Bigger the
Speaker 2: Innovation method. What does it mean to think Bigger? Let's
Speaker 2: start there, Let's uh, how do you conceptualize that?
Speaker 1: So it is literally based on neuroscience. It's how do
Speaker 1: I think beyond the options put before me and create
Speaker 1: something that's a meaningful option to solve for a problem
Speaker 1: for which there isn't currently a solution. That's essentially what
Speaker 1: I think Bigger is striving to do. And it's a methodology.
Speaker 1: You know, we think that for the most part throughout
Speaker 1: history we've had this view, and you know, philosophers and
Speaker 1: religious figures certainly helped create this assumption, which is the
Speaker 1: idea that you know, ideas come to us almost like magic. Right.
Speaker 1: You're maybe you're sitting under a tree and some through
Speaker 1: divine intervention, something comes to you, or you climb a
Speaker 1: mountain and at the top divine intervention or God comes
Speaker 1: down to you and speaks to you. And so we
Speaker 1: have this view that it just happens, right, that it's
Speaker 1: not really in your control. If you're going to get
Speaker 1: a great idea, you know, maybe I can put myself
Speaker 1: in certain places, maybe I can expose myself to some stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's not something that's truly in my control. And
Speaker 1: think Bigger really debunks that. It really says, no, there
Speaker 1: actually is a very structured way in which you can
Speaker 1: go about creating an idea. Go on, okay, okay, Well
Speaker 1: so basically the most I mean it is a you know,
Speaker 1: structured process that we can take people through. But its
Speaker 1: simplest form, what it's saying to you is, when you
Speaker 1: have a problem, you ask yourself first what exactly is
Speaker 1: that problem? Define it in concrete terms, it's how do
Speaker 1: I do X? Whatever X is? Right? And then it's saying, okay, well,
Speaker 1: how has this problem been solved before? Right? And first
Speaker 1: you obviously look at whatever is the available choice set,
Speaker 1: and let's say that's dissatisfactory. And then you say, well,
Speaker 1: how have analogous problems been solved in totally other domains
Speaker 1: or spaces or industries. And now you say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: given the way they solved it, does it give me
Speaker 1: some insights on what I could combine together to create
Speaker 1: a solution for me? At its core, that's all thing
Speaker 1: Bigger is.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we come up with a set of six
Speaker 1: steps of structured process, but at its core, that's all
Speaker 1: it is. It's a structured way of thinking about what's
Speaker 1: my problem? And then how am I going to search
Speaker 1: for pieces of a solution that can be combined together
Speaker 1: to give me an answer, to give me a new choice.
Speaker 2: We're going to go and and talk about some of
Speaker 2: the spefic components of that in a second. Thank you
Speaker 2: for that higher level overview. I know you have a
Speaker 2: whole chapter on the creative brain. That's a topic very
Speaker 2: near and dear to my heart as well. What do
Speaker 2: you see as the most relevant findings from the latest
Speaker 2: neuroscience of creativity?
Speaker 1: I would say Eric Kendell's work on how we form
Speaker 1: thoughts is the most relevant. That essentially everything comes from
Speaker 1: learning and memory. So if you think of your brain
Speaker 1: as a giant Excel spreadsheet or a library system, you're
Speaker 1: essentially encoding lots and lots of information bits, and you're
Speaker 1: constantly encoding them and putting them in different shelves of
Speaker 1: your mind. And you know, obviously you're also organizing it
Speaker 1: and reorganizing it in different ways, so that anytime I
Speaker 1: ask you a question, you're pulling different information bits from
Speaker 1: different shelves and making new combinations that's essentially what you're
Speaker 1: doing whenever you're engaging in an act of creativity. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, when I say an act of creativity, I
Speaker 1: think of it as something we're doing all the time,
Speaker 1: So I'm not just focusing on the stuff we bucket
Speaker 1: as creativity, like that piece of art or that that
Speaker 1: song or that new piece of technology. Every sentence you
Speaker 1: utter is an exercise in creativity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because some people, you know, some of my students
Speaker 2: are like, oh, I'm not creative? You know, am I
Speaker 2: a creative person?
Speaker 1: Everybody's creative. I mean, unless you're having saying the same
Speaker 1: sentence all day long, you're creative enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Role may in the
Speaker 2: courage to create, just to find creativity is the capacity
Speaker 2: to bring into being something that did not exist before.
Speaker 2: It's just that.
Speaker 1: Most of what we create, all of us, what we
Speaker 1: create on a daily basis is you know, banal or
Speaker 1: you know, just maybe it sucks. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we're not creating. We're all create And we think that
Speaker 1: the ones who create the super amazing things that we
Speaker 1: all talk about, whether it was Einstein or Steve Jobs,
Speaker 1: we think that they have somehow had a special brain,
Speaker 1: and that's I don't think that's true. I think there's
Speaker 1: just a process that can be used by anybody to
Speaker 1: come up with any sort of interesting solution if they're
Speaker 1: willing to put in the work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about some of that process. You have,
Speaker 2: the kind of this first stage is finding the problem
Speaker 2: in the first place and breaking it down. And that
Speaker 2: seems to be very linked to your prior book, you know,
Speaker 2: in Choice. You know, but how do you find the
Speaker 2: problem that's right for you to solve out of all
Speaker 2: the problems that exist in this world?
Speaker 1: So, as Einstein once said, if I had an hour
Speaker 1: to save the planet, I would spend the first fifty
Speaker 1: five minutes thinking about the problem, in the last five
Speaker 1: minutes thinking about the solution. And the way I interpret
Speaker 1: what he's saying is that, you know, any time I
Speaker 1: have a problem, you know, what am I going to
Speaker 1: do with the rest of my life? What am I
Speaker 1: going to major in in college? You know? How am
Speaker 1: I going to motivate myself? How am I going to
Speaker 1: make myself happy? How am I going to save my company?
Speaker 1: You know, take a bazillion problems that we regularly present ourselves.
Speaker 1: You take that problem and you have to be willing
Speaker 1: to really engage in the process of framing and reframing
Speaker 1: that problem until it's concrete and solvable and one where
Speaker 1: you know, is something you want to solve. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that makes sense for you to solve. So many times
Speaker 1: we just pick up problems because you know, we should
Speaker 1: solve it or it sounds good, but it's actually pretty vague.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's for sure. Well, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: problems that that humans don't know are problems. You know,
Speaker 2: some people are really good at at creating problems. That's true,
Speaker 2: and their equip put it that way before. What is
Speaker 2: the benefit of thinking about it in terms of sub problems,
Speaker 2: you know, and taking each problem apart, and it's to
Speaker 2: its poll.
Speaker 1: Because most of the time, because we think about it
Speaker 1: as a big problem and we don't break it down,
Speaker 1: that's when it just is too overwhelming. And it's only
Speaker 1: when you break it down. So I have so maybe
Speaker 1: I should pick an example that would that make it
Speaker 1: easier to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of my favorite examples is, well, let's take
Speaker 1: like Netflix. Everybody loves watching TV, so in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: most people might forget about this now, but in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, if you wanted to watch a movie at home,
Speaker 1: you went to your local blockbuster and you reached a movie. Well,
Speaker 1: and if you were late in bringing the movie back,
Speaker 1: you paid a late fee. And so a guy named
Speaker 1: Reed Hastings was like late in returning Apollo thirteen and
Speaker 1: was jacking up his late fees and got really irritated
Speaker 1: because he was going to get yelled at by his
Speaker 1: wife about this. And so what's the problem? He ultimately
Speaker 1: decides for himself. He goes, well, how do we create
Speaker 1: home entertainment that's pleasant? Right? And so what was unpleasant
Speaker 1: for him? He doesn't want to raise his bot to
Speaker 1: go to the local blockbuster to return the movie. He
Speaker 1: doesn't like this whole late fee thing. So you know,
Speaker 1: is there a different financial law? So once and also
Speaker 1: he wants a larger collection of movies and so what
Speaker 1: does he do he? So those are so notice how
Speaker 1: we broke down the problem, like how do we make
Speaker 1: it pleasant? Well, how do I make it so that
Speaker 1: I don't have to lift goat leave my couch? How
Speaker 1: do I make it so that I can just pay
Speaker 1: and not have to worry about late fees? Because that's
Speaker 1: also annoying and unpleasant. And you know, how do I
Speaker 1: make sure I have a really nice selection of movies
Speaker 1: and it's not so dependent on whatever that local shop
Speaker 1: happens to have. And so now he looks at solutions
Speaker 1: for each of those. He says, well, how do I
Speaker 1: get something without getting off my couch. Well, there was
Speaker 1: this new thing that was going on back in the
Speaker 1: nineties called Amazon, which was selling just books. Well, if
Speaker 1: you could order books online, could you order a movie
Speaker 1: online and it would come to you in the mail? Right?
Speaker 1: And turns out, well, yeah, you could get a DVD
Speaker 1: in the mail and it would come intact. H I
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to pay late fees
Speaker 1: because they were a different financial model that would still
Speaker 1: allow us to make money. Well, back then, your membership
Speaker 1: was becoming really popular. And what was your membership? You
Speaker 1: paid a flat fee every month and you could use
Speaker 1: it as much or as little as you want. What
Speaker 1: about that for movies? Okay, Now, how do I make
Speaker 1: sure the inventory is really big? Well, let's go back
Speaker 1: to Amazon. If I put it online, you can just
Speaker 1: order it in the mail. Then I could create my
Speaker 1: warehouses where I would store the movies in places that
Speaker 1: are not as expensive. And by the way, we often
Speaker 1: forget that that's actually how Netflix began.
Speaker 2: Wow Yeah, I love following him on Twitter. He talks
Speaker 2: about his early business model and how long it took
Speaker 2: them before it finally took off. As well, they weren't
Speaker 2: an instant success. H cool, great example, great example of Netflix.
Speaker 2: So what how does this relate to the idea of
Speaker 2: triangulating desire?
Speaker 1: So you take your problem, you break it down, and
Speaker 1: usually I have people break it down to no more
Speaker 1: than five main challenges. If you have a lot of
Speaker 1: challenges for different problems, of course, but I want you
Speaker 1: to pick your no more than five big priorities. If
Speaker 1: you have more than five big priorities, then that's an
Speaker 1: opportunity for you to take the problem you're trying to
Speaker 1: solve and make it less big. So then before you
Speaker 1: try to solve it, I have you identify, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were to solve this problem, how should the
Speaker 1: ideal solution feel like? That should look like, what should
Speaker 1: it be, what it must needs? Must it accommodate? Now?
Speaker 1: What should it feel like? And what should it feel like?
Speaker 1: Not just to the customer, we often either tell you'd
Speaker 1: only pay attention to what the entrepreneur wants or what
Speaker 1: the customer wants. Well, have you look at it from
Speaker 1: three perspectives? What does the entrepreneur want it to feel like?
Speaker 1: What is the what would the customer want it to
Speaker 1: feel like? And what would other stakeholders, whether they be
Speaker 1: your shareholders, whether they be the government regulators, I mean,
Speaker 1: what would their feelings be like? And so what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're coming up with these feelings, these most
Speaker 1: important adjectives before you go into generating a solution, because
Speaker 1: this is going to be your criteria for judgment, because
Speaker 1: you could potentially generate a lot of different solutions to
Speaker 1: your problem. And then how are you going to make
Speaker 1: sure that you choose one that actually makes sense? You
Speaker 1: don't want to just vote. If you vote, then it
Speaker 1: just becomes a popularity context contest and they can actually
Speaker 1: be biased in what they choose. So you want to
Speaker 1: have that selection criteria set beforehand.
Speaker 2: How does that relate to the third eye test? Can
Speaker 2: you use the third eye test to help you with that?
Speaker 1: What happens is you use what we call the big
Speaker 1: picture scoring is what we use for the triangulation of desires.
Speaker 1: So let's imagine after you go through the think Bigger process,
Speaker 1: you've now generated our twenty twenty five thirty different solutions.
Speaker 1: You use your big picture scoring to rank thumb and
Speaker 1: so now you know, let's say you're top five, and
Speaker 1: now you pick let's say your top one or two
Speaker 1: or three, not more than three, and now you practice
Speaker 1: the third eye. The third eye is a special way
Speaker 1: of collecting feedback on your idea that enables you to
Speaker 1: forecast how sticky that idea is likely to be. So
Speaker 1: it's a cheap way to do it long before you
Speaker 1: ever prototype.
Speaker 2: Where did you come up with the idea? Like, how
Speaker 2: did that come about?
Speaker 1: The idea of what for third eye?
Speaker 2: Eye test?
Speaker 1: So that's a great question.
Speaker 2: Question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny, and nobody ever asked me that. So,
Speaker 1: as a blind person, one of the things that I've
Speaker 1: always done, which sometimes drives people nuts, but for me
Speaker 1: was very intuitive and I just created it because it
Speaker 1: was my own way of dealing with biases. Is I
Speaker 1: discovered very early on as a blind person, if I
Speaker 1: ask somebody, hey, what do you think of this outfit?
Speaker 1: One person's gonna say, oh my god, I love it.
Speaker 1: The other person's gonna whisper in my ear. You know, look,
Speaker 1: you can count on me. I'm always going to tell
Speaker 1: you the truth. But I really think this looks awful.
Speaker 1: And what you would discover is that getting asking people
Speaker 1: if they like something was really unhelpful. It was unoverwhelming,
Speaker 1: It was confusing to people would have totally different opinions.
Speaker 1: And so I began to realize that that was the
Speaker 1: wrong question and that the better question to ask people
Speaker 1: wasn't do you like this? The better question was to
Speaker 1: ask what does this look like? What you know? When
Speaker 1: I wear this, what image comes to mind? Or what
Speaker 1: image am I presenting? What does it make you think of?
Speaker 1: And then you know, one person says, oh, you look
Speaker 1: really glamorous, or another person says, oh you look so warm,
Speaker 1: another person says, oh, it looks so reserved. But what
Speaker 1: I'm getting is what is the consensus in terms of
Speaker 1: people's perception. Yeah, that now gives me the tools to understand,
Speaker 1: you know what, whether I want to edit, how do
Speaker 1: I want to edit? What part of it needs to
Speaker 1: be edited? That was actually far more useful. So it
Speaker 1: actually started just as a way for me to get
Speaker 1: information on visuals that were, you know, tended to be
Speaker 1: perceived as subjective, and it became a method that I created,
Speaker 1: and then I realized that actually there was a lot
Speaker 1: of science that was consistent with what I was doing,
Speaker 1: because it turns out that if you ask, if you
Speaker 1: there's a wonderful study done by Duncan Watts where they
Speaker 1: take songs and they present them to young people and
Speaker 1: they find and they put them in eight different worlds.
Speaker 1: Two worlds you just hear a bunch of songs and
Speaker 1: you give your ratings independently, and in the other six worlds,
Speaker 1: you hear a song, but you also see how everybody
Speaker 1: else rated it before you got there. And it turned
Speaker 1: out that in those crowd situations, how a song was
Speaker 1: going to be perceived was all over the map. It
Speaker 1: was really uninformative. So and you got a little more
Speaker 1: consistency in the independent worlds. But you know, that's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of how asking people do you
Speaker 1: like or dislike? Is really not informative to know if
Speaker 1: it's a good thing, you really want to know first
Speaker 1: and foremost, how do people see it? What are they seeing?
Speaker 1: Is it even even what they're seeing in line with
Speaker 1: what I want them to see? Well, I might think
Speaker 1: in my mind, what the outfit I just created is
Speaker 1: warm and amazing, and yet other people see it as ow.
Speaker 2: She's so cash, Yeah, brilliant. I love how you like
Speaker 2: you And only you could have come up with something
Speaker 2: like that based on your own personal experiences. You're you're
Speaker 2: a fascinating person. You're you're you're a blind Indian American woman,
Speaker 2: one a top most popular professors at Columbia University. And
Speaker 2: you know you have a creator. You're you're a creative being,
Speaker 2: and that that informed your creative doing. And we've been
Speaker 2: remiss not to not to make that linkage. So I'm
Speaker 2: glad I asked the question.
Speaker 1: I asked, Oh, well, thank you, well, thank.
Speaker 2: You for answering it. Now were you were you born blind?
Speaker 1: I was born with a rare form of retinitis pigmentosa,
Speaker 1: so I was born legally blind and then I lost
Speaker 1: the rest of my vision while I was young.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, So you've had to develop other pathways and
Speaker 2: ways of of of of perceiving the world.
Speaker 1: And I would say that was part of what led
Speaker 1: me to study choice and led me to create Think
Speaker 1: Bigger because as someone growing up blind, the three words
Speaker 1: I hated most where It's not possible.
Speaker 2: Yes, I hate that, hate that too.
Speaker 1: And I would hear that too much, so I would
Speaker 1: always rebel.
Speaker 2: Yo, homegirl, I get it. I was in special education
Speaker 2: as a kid and uh and always was told I
Speaker 2: couldn't do things, and even though I couldn't go to
Speaker 2: college and just you know, being able to prove people wrong.
Speaker 2: There's a professor at the University Pennsylvania who studies the
Speaker 2: underdog motivation and I will always love that research wonderful.
Speaker 2: You know, in the in your book you talk about this,
Speaker 2: this idea of the singular creative genius. Can you can
Speaker 2: you talk a little about what where? What's the research
Speaker 2: show on that?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: Is that a thing? Is that true? And also what
Speaker 2: is a strategic copier?
Speaker 1: So we often think of like Einstein as a great genius,
Speaker 1: and we think he must have had a special brain.
Speaker 1: But in fact, you know, when he died, there was
Speaker 1: some people that stole his brain, preserved it and compared
Speaker 1: his brain against other people's brain. And we've never been
Speaker 1: able to uncover any you know, real evidence that it
Speaker 1: was any different from anybody else's brain. But what we
Speaker 1: do know is that he spent quite a bit of
Speaker 1: time as a patent officer. And when he was a
Speaker 1: patent officer and burned, he reviewed about thousands of different patents,
Speaker 1: and he even developed some patents like a patent for
Speaker 1: a typewriter, a refrigerator, a camera, a really funky blouse
Speaker 1: that I gather nobody would ever wear. But what he's
Speaker 1: doing is he's collecting lots and lots of information bits
Speaker 1: which are being added to the collection that's going into
Speaker 1: his shelves of his mind, like we were talking about before.
Speaker 1: And so if you think about what he ultimately does
Speaker 1: in creating the law of relativity, if he's just got
Speaker 1: more pieces to work with to be able to combine.
Speaker 1: He himself described that time as a patent officer as
Speaker 1: the time in which he hatched his most beautiful ideas.
Speaker 1: So that brings me to your second question, which is
Speaker 1: a strategic copier. So, as T. S. Eliot once said,
Speaker 1: immature poets imitate and mature poets steal. And I actually,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes people laugh at that quote because it's
Speaker 1: meant to be funny, but it's also quite profound as well,
Speaker 1: right that in fact, it's when you're able to steal
Speaker 1: a core concept from something like read Hastings did he
Speaker 1: stole the core concept from Planet Fitness and said, well,
Speaker 1: can I adapt it and use it for renting movies?
Speaker 1: That's strategic copying and it's not like a it's not
Speaker 1: like I P violation. I'm not talking about doing something illegal,
Speaker 1: but it is understanding how to you know, essentially, take
Speaker 1: what you got from somewhere else and figure out how
Speaker 1: to adapt and edit edit it in a way that
Speaker 1: works in your context.
Speaker 2: Well, what, so, what do you what do you make
Speaker 2: of the notion of talent? Then certainly there there's something
Speaker 2: that that the word talent means. What do you think
Speaker 2: Einstein's talent was? Then?
Speaker 1: So this is going to perhaps be controversial for me
Speaker 1: to say, but I think that to the extent that
Speaker 1: you become brilliant, that X or Y or Z has
Speaker 1: to do with how much how many information bits you
Speaker 1: put in your brain and how much time you spent
Speaker 1: really understanding how to manipulate those information bits in as
Speaker 1: many different ways as you could. Now you could argue, well,
Speaker 1: but you know, some people are musicians and some people
Speaker 1: are mathematicians, and I would say yes, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I think which one you choose to be has
Speaker 1: more to do with your preferences than any innate skill.
Speaker 1: You have a preference, and maybe that preference. They say
Speaker 1: personality matters, and it probably does to some extent, But
Speaker 1: I also think exposure matters when you're young. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you disentangle those two. But let's just say
Speaker 1: you have some preferences, and now those preferences drive you
Speaker 1: know where you're going to invest more energy collecting more
Speaker 1: information bits?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that where that talent may
Speaker 2: lie then, is your your inclination towards a certain symbol
Speaker 2: system or a certain mode of information processing that you're
Speaker 2: You're intrinsically motivated and enjoy manipulating and learning and synthesizing.
Speaker 1: Maybe sure, like you know, you might think I'm a
Speaker 1: really smart person, right, you and I? But if you
Speaker 1: ask me to write a song, make a drawing a.
Speaker 2: Bepathetic fair enough? This being smart zooming out to all
Speaker 2: the sort of various aspects of your entire life. What
Speaker 2: is the importance of choice for and really becoming a
Speaker 2: good chooser for? How How wide does this go? Does
Speaker 2: it cover relationships? Does it cover your careers, your identities?
Speaker 2: You know, what's the zoomed out version of this? Look like.
Speaker 1: I mean, choice is the only tool we have as
Speaker 1: humans that enables us to go from who we are
Speaker 1: today to whom we want to be tomorrow. Right, So
Speaker 1: that's true across the board. Relationships. You know, you can
Speaker 1: choose everything from the little things like what you wear,
Speaker 1: what you eat, so the big things, what career you undertake,
Speaker 1: whom you marry, how you live, how you die. So
Speaker 1: it's certainly the thing that you're doing consciously and subconsciously,
Speaker 1: you know, every single minute of your life. But do
Speaker 1: I think you should obsess over every choice? No, I
Speaker 1: think that's suboptimal. Do I think you should pay more
Speaker 1: attention to identifying what are the choices that are really
Speaker 1: important that will really affect your life? Yes? I think
Speaker 1: you want to think about, you know, what are the
Speaker 1: things that are most important. So when you said relationships,
Speaker 1: you know, like one of the really important choices you're
Speaker 1: going to make in life is who you're gonna marry,
Speaker 1: let's say, or spend a lot of time with. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to even be marriage. Right now, if you
Speaker 1: were to obsess over every little thing that would be
Speaker 1: good for you, if that person did or didn't do,
Speaker 1: if you'd be paralyzed. But you do need to be
Speaker 1: able to say, look, what are the things that are
Speaker 1: let's say the three to five most important things, and
Speaker 1: to think thoughtfully about that because you want to be
Speaker 1: able to get those things and be able to be
Speaker 1: clear right about it. You're never going to be able
Speaker 1: to optimize across twenty thirty things. You could optimize across three,
Speaker 1: maybe five. Same thing is true for your career.
Speaker 2: Well, let me I want to follow up for a
Speaker 2: second on you saying that even though you're super smart,
Speaker 2: there are certain demeans that if you entered them, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't be too good at. I want to link that
Speaker 2: to this very interesting section of your book where you
Speaker 2: talk about how non experts and outsiders can orange just
Speaker 2: enough about a field to create an innovation for it.
Speaker 2: It's possible that your lack of expertise in those other
Speaker 2: fields could actually make you innovate in them in some way.
Speaker 2: I'm not counting you out in music and art, is
Speaker 2: what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Sure it can help it. Yes, you know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're looking for and then can understand how to manipulate it. Right. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I am not somebody I'm terrible of knowing
Speaker 1: even musicians, right, But I could understand the story of
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney and how he created the song yesterday, and
Speaker 1: that that was an important story because it showed you
Speaker 1: something really important about the third eye. I learn things
Speaker 1: from art and going on art gallery tours even though
Speaker 1: I am blind because in the descriptions, because I'm not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thinking about, oh, most art fits in this tradition,
Speaker 1: which builds on glovety blood tradition, which build one blowdy
Speaker 1: blood tradition. No, as a blind person and an somebody
Speaker 1: who stood his innovation. When I look at art, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing the pieces that are coming together and how this
Speaker 1: is going to affect the future in domains outside of art.
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm able to talk about things like
Speaker 1: how Picasso came up with his idea or what's the
Speaker 1: difference between why Brock versus Picasso became more influential because
Speaker 1: I'm able to look at it through a different lens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that can be yea very valuable, But I'm.
Speaker 1: By no means an art expert or a music expert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, but your your point is that non
Speaker 2: experts can still contribute to a field. So I'm not
Speaker 2: kinding you out. Thank you, You're welcome. I want to
Speaker 2: Anthonay's interview talking about one of my favorite scientific papers
Speaker 2: ever published which you and you are a co author
Speaker 2: on it. It's called positive more than unbiased self perceptions
Speaker 2: increased subjective authenticity. I'm really interested in this topic of
Speaker 2: authenticity and the idea that I've called it the authenticity bias,
Speaker 2: where we tend to think the real me is really
Speaker 2: the positive signs of ourselves. Can you unpack a little
Speaker 2: bit about what that research study found and some of
Speaker 2: the implications of it.
Speaker 1: So this is a study actually that my PhD student
Speaker 1: who's now faculty at Berkeley, Erica Bailey. That's her main topic.
Speaker 1: She's passionate about authenticity and we've find in lots of
Speaker 1: studies both included in that paper, and then there's another
Speaker 1: paper right now under review. Essentially, when we do things
Speaker 1: that you might say are fake, you know, like actually,
Speaker 1: we currently have a study under review where we look
Speaker 1: at people that do different cosmetic procedures, you know, like
Speaker 1: botox fillers, et cetera. It turns out that even though
Speaker 1: they're doing this thing which we might say is you know, artificial,
Speaker 1: they the people who do it actually afterwards feel more authentic,
Speaker 1: and they feel more authentic because it is enabling them
Speaker 1: to be more in line with what they perceive to be.
Speaker 1: They're more unvarnished best self, ideal self before it got tainted,
Speaker 1: for example. And so essentially, we have a number of
Speaker 1: studies that show that when when we are able to
Speaker 1: identify or be seen in the ways that bring out
Speaker 1: our better qualities, you know, that's when we feel most authentic.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite quotes is from Dolly Parton where
Speaker 1: she says, you know, everything about me might be fake,
Speaker 1: but I'm really real.
Speaker 2: Well that you just quote a dollar part is No,
Speaker 2: that's wonderful. This research, I mean, this is a really
Speaker 2: rich series of studies and we can't get in all
Speaker 2: the findings, but one of the findings really interesting is
Speaker 2: that this positivity bias that you're describing does not extend
Speaker 2: to other rated authenticity.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: Well, when when we have positive things about ourselves, we
Speaker 1: see ourselves as that means we're authentic, but we don't,
Speaker 1: you know, when it's other people who are doing things
Speaker 1: that are positive, we don't see them as being We
Speaker 1: don't give them the same brownie points of authenticity.
Speaker 2: M what does that make us? Does that make us hypocrites?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: What does that mean about humans? What does that mean
Speaker 2: about humans?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we're a bit suspicious, right if
Speaker 1: somebody else seems too good, then we you know, don't
Speaker 1: always know if there we can trust it. Also, the
Speaker 1: other thing that's very interesting is even when we are
Speaker 1: being authentic and know that we're not faking it, even
Speaker 1: though we see ourselves as authentic, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: others will see us as authentic, which we have a
Speaker 1: hard time wrapping our heads around because we believe that
Speaker 1: since we're being authentic, obviously it'll be self evident to
Speaker 1: other people. But it's actually not so. I think what
Speaker 1: I take away is that authenticity is a social construction.
Speaker 1: We think of authenticity as being purely self generated and
Speaker 1: self defined, but it's actually not true. To the extent.
Speaker 1: That you're authentic depends on both your perception of you
Speaker 1: and my perception of you, and it's only when there's
Speaker 1: alignment between those two perceptions that you're authentic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the whole notion of the real me is
Speaker 2: a social construction as well. Then there's no real me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's just like the third eye test. There's
Speaker 1: no real idea that exists until it exists in a
Speaker 1: way that both you and I understand what it is.
Speaker 2: If the tree is not perceived in the forest, doesn't exist,
Speaker 2: it's interesting question. Yeah. So the takeaway from that paper said,
Speaker 2: taking together these findings suggest that being quote unreal through
Speaker 2: positive self illusions can paradoxically make one feel more real.
Speaker 2: I just find that I find that that research so
Speaker 2: fascinating and kudos, big kudos to her. Oh, thank you
Speaker 2: and to you and your student on that really terrific work. Shina,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for your time today and being
Speaker 2: on my podcast. And I hope our listeners have learned
Speaker 2: how to make better choice is be more creative and
Speaker 2: construct a version of their own self perceived authenticity that
Speaker 2: makes them happier in life. So thank you, Shea, thank you,
Speaker 2: Take care you too.