Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. So today we have Cal
Speaker 1: Newport on the show. Cal is an assistant professor of
Speaker 1: computer science at Georgetown University who specializes in the theory
Speaker 1: of distributed algorithms. In addition to studying the theoretical foundations
Speaker 1: of our digital age. As a professor, Newport also writes
Speaker 1: about the impact of these technologies on the world of work.
Speaker 1: His most recent book, Deep Work, which we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about today, argues that focus is the new IQ in
Speaker 1: the knowledge economy, and the individuals who cultivate their ability
Speaker 1: to concentrate without distraction will thrive. Thanks for being on
Speaker 1: the show today, Cal, sir Scott, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Oh that's an interesting idea, the new IQ in the
Speaker 1: knowledge economy. By that, do you mean the new capital
Speaker 1: of what's the important twenty first century skill. Is that
Speaker 1: what you mean by that? Yeah, something like that. The
Speaker 1: skill that's going to differentiate you know, who thrives and
Speaker 1: who doesn't a twenty first economy is going to be
Speaker 1: increasingly the ability to focus without distraction. So what is
Speaker 1: the difference between deep work and shallow work? So deep
Speaker 1: work is when you're focusing without distraction for a long
Speaker 1: amount of time on a cognitively demanding task, so you're
Speaker 1: giving something your full attention for an extended period of time.
Speaker 1: Shallow work is basically anything else. So you you know,
Speaker 1: in your book you give it even more nuanced definition
Speaker 1: than that where you describe deep work as involving hard
Speaker 1: to replicate skills, and you also make this so you
Speaker 1: may and this is going to be really important for
Speaker 1: our discussion today, is actually unpacking precisely how you define it.
Speaker 1: So in deep work you talk about cognitively demanding and
Speaker 1: hard to replicate versus non cognitively demanding and easy to
Speaker 1: replicate as kind of a difference. Yeah, So replicatability is important,
Speaker 1: especially for understanding the value produced by the work. So
Speaker 1: if the effort you're doing is something that would be
Speaker 1: easily replicatable, by someone who doesn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: specialized training in what you do. That also would push
Speaker 1: it into the shallow work category. So for it to
Speaker 1: be deep work, you really want to be applying your
Speaker 1: hard won skills doing something that you can do because
Speaker 1: you built up those skills, and then you want to
Speaker 1: be applying those skills in a state of unbroken concentration. Right.
Speaker 1: I like that, And the way that you define that
Speaker 1: really does afford a lot of potential for creativity in
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. What you're saying is, you know,
Speaker 1: maximize your individual potentials through this process of deep work,
Speaker 1: allows you to maximize your uniqueness in this world as well.
Speaker 1: So I thought that it left a lot of latitude
Speaker 1: for that. But what thought was really interesting is how
Speaker 1: you make connections between your work and delivered practice, because
Speaker 1: I actually see a difference between your theory and deliberate
Speaker 1: practice as well as flow, and I thought it would
Speaker 1: be useful to your listeners, to us as well to
Speaker 1: kind of unpack the stuff. So how do you see
Speaker 1: the similarity between deep work and deliberate practice? First of all, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: well there's certainly not equivalent, and I think you're right
Speaker 1: though not Yeah, you're the right to point that out.
Speaker 1: So deep work is a much more general category. So
Speaker 1: you know, what unifies deep work is this notion that
Speaker 1: something's getting your full attention and that you're it's not
Speaker 1: easily replicatable. So deliberate practice is an activity that requires
Speaker 1: deep work. So to enter a state of deliberate practice,
Speaker 1: you do have to give something your full, unbroken concentration.
Speaker 1: The sort of the literal neuroscience of mastering the new
Speaker 1: skill doesn't work if you have a lot of noise
Speaker 1: in the circuits. But there's other type of activities that
Speaker 1: would also qualify as deep work which aren't deliberate practice.
Speaker 1: So entering a flow state, for example, is something that
Speaker 1: deep work can help facilitate. But there is a big
Speaker 1: argument out there between you know, honors Ericson and others
Speaker 1: about whether their flow is compatible with deliberate practice. So
Speaker 1: I see deep work as being a much more general category,
Speaker 1: and it supports things like rapid acquisition of skills in
Speaker 1: a deliberate sense. It also supports entering a flow state
Speaker 1: as you apply your skills in a very sort of
Speaker 1: creative and skilled manner, and it can cover other types
Speaker 1: of activities as well. Good so it's kind of like
Speaker 1: this overall umbrella of work that minimizes distractions so that
Speaker 1: you can get things done in a meaningful way. I
Speaker 1: do like that, so let's be you know, I'm really glad,
Speaker 1: first of all, that you're aware of these debates in
Speaker 1: my field of positive psychology between flow versus deliberate practice,
Speaker 1: and they really are unresolved debates, and I thought maybe
Speaker 1: you would have some insights on this. So first of all,
Speaker 1: your theory when you include hard to replicate as part
Speaker 1: of deep work, that immediately takes it away from it
Speaker 1: being equivalent to doort practice, because Ericsson has been quoted
Speaker 1: saying dort practice is superior reproducible performance. So first of all,
Speaker 1: those are different. You know, something that it has to
Speaker 1: cut as be very reproducible as opposed to hard to replicate.
Speaker 1: So there's a tension there between deep work practice. I
Speaker 1: like your resolution of that saying that that DOLT practice
Speaker 1: is just a subset or a type of it. And
Speaker 1: then with flow doesn't tend to be cognitively demanding, so
Speaker 1: when you're in the flow state, you actually don't feel
Speaker 1: at least you don't feel as though your cognition is
Speaker 1: very being is being taxed very much. It feels effortless. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think there's a couple relevant points there, So these
Speaker 1: distinctions are important. So, for example, when we're saying deep
Speaker 1: work is hard to replicate, more precisely, what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is it would be hard to replicate for
Speaker 1: someone off the street who is untrained in your particular field. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you look at the deliberate training of
Speaker 1: let's say a professional athlete, there's a lot of replication
Speaker 1: involved in the particular skill they might be training. It
Speaker 1: might be a baseball player who's really trying to work
Speaker 1: at getting the handslower at a swing, so there's replication involved,
Speaker 1: But to be able to actually swing at that level
Speaker 1: with that skill to just the average athletic person who
Speaker 1: had no particular baseball train up to that point would
Speaker 1: be very hard to be hard to replicate. So it's
Speaker 1: training where you're taking your current sc ill and then
Speaker 1: you are trying to push your current skills, so it'd
Speaker 1: be hard to replicate for someone who didn't have your
Speaker 1: particular training up to that point. This is a particularly
Speaker 1: important distinction for trying to force a distinction between sort
Speaker 1: of deep activities and the type of activities that increasingly
Speaker 1: fill a lot of the knowledge worker's life, so communication, email,
Speaker 1: sort of social media. There's a lot of belief out
Speaker 1: there that well, this is really important, and this is
Speaker 1: this is really valuable, and so deep work sort of
Speaker 1: distinguishes itself and says, well, you know, partially, what we're
Speaker 1: trying to get at here is activities that some any
Speaker 1: sixteen year old the smartphone couldn't do. Right where you're
Speaker 1: actually trying to apply your training or improve you're already
Speaker 1: high level of training, not something that basically anyone could do.
Speaker 1: Then with the flow state and congly demanding. I mean again,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a really important distinction here, which I'm
Speaker 1: glad we're talking about it, which feels like versus what
Speaker 1: it actually is. Is that what you're gonna say, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: I know, we tell it's it's such an important distinction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your field has a much more precise vocabulary for it
Speaker 1: than I than I'm using properly, so I should be
Speaker 1: careful about it. But well, well, I'll tell you we
Speaker 1: far from understand exactly how to objectively measure effort expenditure.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's objectively measuring that is you know, people
Speaker 1: have tried various different metrics, even from dopamine. You know, production,
Speaker 1: We're far from really like nailing that, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and flow states really mess up. I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of these scales because they have this effortless feel, but
Speaker 1: I guess they would satisfy the definition of cognitive demanding
Speaker 1: that I'm thinking of, which is actually your brain is
Speaker 1: fully engaged on, you know, a single branding task, that
Speaker 1: it's something that's requiring you to actually apply a lot
Speaker 1: of skill, require a lot of concentration, even if the
Speaker 1: subjective experience of the activity is effortless. Sure, and I
Speaker 1: like how you talk about you know, when you are
Speaker 1: engaging something that's challenging, it does ultimately feel more satisfying.
Speaker 1: It does feel like it's kind of like what it's
Speaker 1: like eating junk food, right versus you know, you exert
Speaker 1: the self control to noddy the junk food, but ultimately,
Speaker 1: in the long run you feel better about yourself. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's why is deep work so satisfying? It's Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the sort of multi part explanation. I mean, sometimes
Speaker 1: it gets you into a flow state, which can just
Speaker 1: be sort of intrinsically enjoyable in the moment, but then
Speaker 1: if it's more of a sort of difficult deliberate you're
Speaker 1: trying to improve a skill and it's not that fun,
Speaker 1: you get this more deeper satisfaction in the long run,
Speaker 1: the higher level satisfaction of you know, I feel good
Speaker 1: about myself for having spent the effort required to sort
Speaker 1: of get better at this or master this. So there's
Speaker 1: sort of different different reasons to come up for why
Speaker 1: this type of deep activity can be satisfying for people good.
Speaker 1: So deep work really is this unbrill term that involves
Speaker 1: lots of different tools, and you can bring out different
Speaker 1: tools at different stages of the process of what you're
Speaker 1: working on. So the tools one is like resisting distraction.
Speaker 1: Another is deliberate practice, which is a very specific kind
Speaker 1: of intentional practice. The flow state, hopefully, you know, comes
Speaker 1: as a as a natural Hopefully you don't want to
Speaker 1: intentionally pull. It's hard to intentionally pull flow from the toolkit,
Speaker 1: but hopefully it comes about naturally once you engage in it.
Speaker 1: And then I would add on to that what we
Speaker 1: talked about in your comment thread, deliberate creation, and I
Speaker 1: think that's that does fit nicely within your deep work framework.
Speaker 1: There's not a tension there, right, So it's you know,
Speaker 1: if deliberate practice is intentionally trying to increase your skill
Speaker 1: through repetition of something in a deliberate, effortful way that
Speaker 1: reduces distractions. I would define deliberate creation as a one
Speaker 1: of the tools in the tools in the tooket where
Speaker 1: you deliberately intentionally try to generate multiple possibilities for what
Speaker 1: something could be and try to really reflect and think
Speaker 1: on which ones you want to select to continue and
Speaker 1: trial and error at this point in your work, and
Speaker 1: which not to. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think that that captures well sort of the cycle
Speaker 1: of the creation of things of value. So if we
Speaker 1: take my work as an example, as I'm a professor,
Speaker 1: I write math papers, right, you have these different phases.
Speaker 1: There's this this phase in which I'm trying to deliberately
Speaker 1: master new techniques, new knowledge, trying to understand new papers,
Speaker 1: trying to understand new mathematics. This is a very sort
Speaker 1: of deliberate practice style effort. It is very difficult in
Speaker 1: the moment. In other words, you don't necessarily look forward
Speaker 1: to doing it, though you do get a long term satisfaction.
Speaker 1: Then there's a sort of deliberate creativity type phase, and
Speaker 1: this is where I'm trying to solve a particular problem
Speaker 1: and I'm bringing to bear all the different ideas and
Speaker 1: expertises that I've internalized. I like to spend time in
Speaker 1: the woods on foot, for example, when I'm trying to
Speaker 1: crack a proof. And then there's this sort of deliberate
Speaker 1: you call it production process where now I'm trying to
Speaker 1: maybe take the proof I've solved and try to write
Speaker 1: a compelling academic paper and maybe you might even fall
Speaker 1: into a flow state there or not, but that's also
Speaker 1: going to require a lot of concentration to try to
Speaker 1: sort of craft the paper in a way with that
Speaker 1: I'm proud of. So you know, all of these different processes,
Speaker 1: all of which fall into the umbrella of deep work,
Speaker 1: go into in this example in the end producing something
Speaker 1: of real value, something that could actually is rare and
Speaker 1: viable that the marketplace would value. So deep work supports,
Speaker 1: as you're pointing out, multiple different types of deep efforts
Speaker 1: that all kind of work together. So this umbrella skill
Speaker 1: that I've trained myself to be better at concentrating to
Speaker 1: be better at resisting distraction. This is why I'm starting
Speaker 1: to say that focus is the new IQ, because all
Speaker 1: these core activities that surround the production of rare and
Speaker 1: valuable output all seem to draw upon a skill set
Speaker 1: of I'm comfortable and concentration. I'm comfortable being free of distraction.
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable giving a lot of attention to a single thing.
Speaker 1: You know, rare and valuable. Is exactly how creativity researchers
Speaker 1: define creativity, a creative outcome as novel and useful or
Speaker 1: novel and meaningful. So yeah, you're literally defining both of us. Really,
Speaker 1: bottom line that we really want to help people with
Speaker 1: just becoming it from maybe different places, is to increase
Speaker 1: people's creativity. But we call it, we call it different things.
Speaker 1: You know, you call it productivity, output, success, you know,
Speaker 1: I just like, over and over again, call it creativity.
Speaker 1: But maybe I'm one trick pony, but but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly how I think of creativity as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very cool. Okay, So you talk a lot about the
Speaker 1: skillful management of attention and I like that, And from
Speaker 1: a neuroscience point of view, we find that the executive
Speaker 1: attention network is really important, not just for cognitive control,
Speaker 1: but for cognitive flexibility, it's a related but separable. Executive
Speaker 1: function is your ability to change your attention. And so
Speaker 1: that means you also give room in your deep work
Speaker 1: framework for moments where you want to pull your attention
Speaker 1: back a little bit from the task that's immediately in
Speaker 1: front of you and maybe look at something that's related
Speaker 1: to hope jog insights are not right. Yeah, So having
Speaker 1: that type of control over your attention that you can
Speaker 1: be let's say, reading a source and then see something
Speaker 1: relevant and to shift your attention to that and then
Speaker 1: bring it back to what you're looking at before, and
Speaker 1: to be comfortable doing that is a key skill. I mean,
Speaker 1: what underlies it is this when it comes to the
Speaker 1: executive attention network in the brain, is the ability to
Speaker 1: develop this competency in having agency in what you're paying
Speaker 1: attention to and how you're paying attention to it. And
Speaker 1: this is why I express so much worry about a
Speaker 1: lot of digital tools that have been entered into sort
Speaker 1: of the information ecosystem, because a lot of these tools
Speaker 1: are designed to basically hijack that network, to capture your
Speaker 1: attention to build an addiction. And this is why I'm
Speaker 1: very wary about which information tools I let into my life,
Speaker 1: and I can be somewhat curmudgingly about how people actually
Speaker 1: curate their digital tool set, because to take care of
Speaker 1: your ability to focus, to switch your attention, to control
Speaker 1: your attention in the knowledge economy, I think it's the
Speaker 1: same as being an athlete who takes care of your body,
Speaker 1: and it's got to be a sort of a foundational
Speaker 1: activity if you're going to have any sort of success. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you really have to protect your yourself literally, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't eat. I mean, if I'm a professional athlete,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't fly if I said when I'm training, I
Speaker 1: train hard. But when I'm not training, I drink a
Speaker 1: lot and I eat a lot of junk food, because
Speaker 1: you've got to take care of your body. And I
Speaker 1: think the same is true for sort of high creativity
Speaker 1: knowledge work fields. This notion of like, when I'm not working,
Speaker 1: I'm constantly letting these tools on my phone capture my attention,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing this I'm on the tablet while it's
Speaker 1: cognitive junk food. I mean, there is some parallels here
Speaker 1: in some sense that if you're not treating your brain
Speaker 1: or attention with respect, outside of work, you maybe shouldn't
Speaker 1: expect to be able to get full capacity out of
Speaker 1: it the next day when you want to sit down
Speaker 1: and really be deep or deliberate about something. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about the importance of choosing your leisure time
Speaker 1: very carefully, and I think that relates to what you
Speaker 1: just said. But it also I mean, can't you build
Speaker 1: in junk food every now and then, Like do you
Speaker 1: have to live such a life free of all pleasures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can build it in, but you should treat it
Speaker 1: like you would treat junk food. In other words, for example,
Speaker 1: I often will flip the standard idea that you should
Speaker 1: occasionally take breaks from digital distractions. I like to flip
Speaker 1: that idea, and so you should occasionally schedule time to
Speaker 1: spend time with sort of distracting digital media. So I
Speaker 1: put a side an hour tonight where I'm gonna sort
Speaker 1: of click on the ad, you know, the sponsored stories
Speaker 1: with the compelling headlines, and go on BuzzFeed and do
Speaker 1: my social media. I put a side an hour for that.
Speaker 1: But hey, you know what, the other three hours of
Speaker 1: the night, I'm letting my mind be focused on what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I'm being president of what I'm doing, same
Speaker 1: way that I might say, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: have some oreos tomorrow night, and I'm excited about it
Speaker 1: as opposed to I essentially I am always eating oreos.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. And how do you
Speaker 1: incorporate the finding from the creativity literature that some of
Speaker 1: the those who like make the history books, like the
Speaker 1: most accomplished creative people in every generation, tend to have
Speaker 1: the greatest versatility of interests or broad they have very
Speaker 1: broad interests. How do you fit that within your framework? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of times the people, at least
Speaker 1: sort of in my anecdotal experience, So maybe this will
Speaker 1: tie with the with the actual research liters. The people
Speaker 1: who tend to have real innovative insights in their field
Speaker 1: are people who are very comfortable sort of persistently and
Speaker 1: aggressively in taking and internalizing knowledge. So they can come
Speaker 1: to a field and can very aggressively get up the
Speaker 1: speed on the literature, understand it deeply, start looking for
Speaker 1: new connections, and say, ah, you know, I see an insight.
Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily surprising to me that you see
Speaker 1: this sort of renaissance man type hunger in the most
Speaker 1: innovative or creative people out there to turn their attention
Speaker 1: to a field and then with great intensity sort of
Speaker 1: pursue it and master to some degree, and then turn
Speaker 1: and do it nothing else. It's maybe a chicken and
Speaker 1: egg issue here, but it's a type of brain that
Speaker 1: is very comfortable, you know, acquiring internalizing knowledge quickly is
Speaker 1: going to be a brain that's very successful in making
Speaker 1: creative insights good. So curiosity need not be at odds
Speaker 1: with deep practice or deep work, right. So, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: probably a very you like me, we're probably both like
Speaker 1: extraordinary curious about and we're intellectually curious, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: what motivates you to do probably most of the deep
Speaker 1: work that you do, right, So they're not incompatible at all.
Speaker 1: And you know sometimes people put these they pit these
Speaker 1: things against each other, and it kind of bothers me
Speaker 1: when they do that. Yeah, I mean the tension there
Speaker 1: is often is often somewhat you know, it's often somewhat invented.
Speaker 1: I mean where the message I try to give to
Speaker 1: people is that where depth is going to help you
Speaker 1: is depth is what's going to help you master the
Speaker 1: thing you're interested in. Depth is what's going to help
Speaker 1: you take that master read and create new insights out
Speaker 1: of it. Death is what's going to help you take
Speaker 1: those insights and create you know, beautiful products or outcomes
Speaker 1: or results you know from those insights. Basically, all of
Speaker 1: the phases of the cycle that produces things that have
Speaker 1: an impact on the world, have an impact of the economy,
Speaker 1: all draw upon depths. So you can be incredibly curious,
Speaker 1: But to be incredibly curious while living a deep life
Speaker 1: is a much more satisfying thing than to be incredibly curious.
Speaker 1: And to then answer that with a lot of very
Speaker 1: cursory jumping around. And I'm clicking this link, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this, and I heard a Ted talk on this.
Speaker 1: I just looked at this. I mean, there's some notion
Speaker 1: of giving the superficial curiosity versus deep curiosity. We can
Speaker 1: invent all of these new terms. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: need to write another book here. Yeah. No, absolutely, In
Speaker 1: my opinion, that's what's so great about disagreements, or maybe
Speaker 1: called superficial disagreements versus deep disagreements. Now I'm going to
Speaker 1: see everything in the world like that. But you know,
Speaker 1: you wrote this blog post. I read what you read
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, that's really interesting, and I
Speaker 1: find that through conversations with people disagree with me, I
Speaker 1: warn't a lot more. Yeah, I know, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely very productive. I mean when it comes to
Speaker 1: that blog post, for example, I mean what I deal
Speaker 1: a lot with sort of my readers or my audience
Speaker 1: is that the stage of deliberately building the skills and
Speaker 1: expertise on which you know, true innovation and sort of
Speaker 1: satisfying accomplishment is made is really overlooked in our culture.
Speaker 1: And hammer I have to hammer it home again and
Speaker 1: again and again. You're not going to have the world
Speaker 1: changing idea right out of college. And I said, when
Speaker 1: you're nineteen, you're not going to change your field by
Speaker 1: having some sort of hack you came up with. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of this life hacking type ideas out there
Speaker 1: that people are taking in. And so I'm always driving
Speaker 1: build the habit of depths and deliberate and mastering the
Speaker 1: field and understanding the skills and building skill and building value.
Speaker 1: And in some sense, once you have that, then the
Speaker 1: cool stuff gets to happen. But the people I work
Speaker 1: with often don't get there, you know, I mean, the
Speaker 1: people I work with my audience. They want to jump
Speaker 1: straight to that. Can't I just think up a really
Speaker 1: create of idea that well, just it's going to change.
Speaker 1: It's just going to change the world. Can't I drop
Speaker 1: out of college and start a nonprofit and the idea
Speaker 1: will just be so creative that we're we're really going
Speaker 1: to change the world, and I'll find meaning right away
Speaker 1: out of it. And it misses the piece of Now
Speaker 1: you've got to get to the cutting edge before you
Speaker 1: can figure out what the new configurations are right beyond it,
Speaker 1: what the new innovation is, what the new things are
Speaker 1: they're going to create impact. So that's why I'm always
Speaker 1: beating this drum of hard work of building skills is
Speaker 1: harder than people think, especially student It's harder than you think.
Speaker 1: It's hard to build the skills. It takes a lot
Speaker 1: more time, and so probably to a fault, I beat
Speaker 1: that drum with my readers. Yeah. But yeah, like you note,
Speaker 1: with your particular audience, it's not beating the drum endlessly
Speaker 1: helpful to them, right. So yeah, Well, because it's so hard,
Speaker 1: I mean, in that whole sort of cycle of creating
Speaker 1: things of value, I think the part that takes up
Speaker 1: the most time and is the most difficult and the
Speaker 1: most rare, is actually the acquisition of the raw materials,
Speaker 1: the internalization of the knowledge and skills that allows you know,
Speaker 1: elite level creativity and accomplishment. And it really is a
Speaker 1: sort of a and huge investment to try to get there.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that we talk about it enough.
Speaker 1: I don't think our culture talks about enough to sort
Speaker 1: of respect and satisfaction that can come from sort of
Speaker 1: the deliberate acquisition of skills and building of craft and
Speaker 1: billd of talent. We used to talk about this in
Speaker 1: past cultures a little bit more fluidly, and I think
Speaker 1: now we tend to, especially in the American cultural narrative. Now,
Speaker 1: we tend to like stories, for example, natural talent and
Speaker 1: the prodigy, and that if it doesn't come easy to you,
Speaker 1: you're not a math person. If it doesn't come easy
Speaker 1: to you, like you're not meant to do that. And
Speaker 1: there's the natural athlete and the natural mathematician. And we
Speaker 1: sort of miss that long, satisfying process of building the
Speaker 1: expertise on which I'm then going to build something that matters. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. You brought up the T word
Speaker 1: dun dund talent. It's better than bringing up the G
Speaker 1: word gens. People freak out even more if you say
Speaker 1: that genes play a role in anything, people like freak out.
Speaker 1: Can we have an honest discussion here about this, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I find your point very relevant important. Angela
Speaker 1: Duckworth in her new book Grit I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've read that book, so she says that talent can
Speaker 1: distract us from the importance of effort. So that's very
Speaker 1: consistent with what you're saying. But can't too much of
Speaker 1: a talk about effort distract us from appreciating talent as well.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't work. It doesn't work both ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting point, and I've talked to Angela about
Speaker 1: this before actually, because no, I think your point is good.
Speaker 1: I think you have to worry about it from both ends.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I've often been an Angelus camp of
Speaker 1: talent can distract from effort, because you know, I work
Speaker 1: a lot with students, for example, and you see the
Speaker 1: harm that comes when there's just this successive search for
Speaker 1: I'm just going to find the thing I'm meant to do,
Speaker 1: and then once I know it's the thing I'm meant
Speaker 1: to do, I can put into the effort, I can
Speaker 1: go after it. And I just paralyze as young people
Speaker 1: in particular, right, because there's this idea that you're meant
Speaker 1: to do something, and you'll feel it like the first
Speaker 1: time you're exposed to it. You'll feel it, you'll have
Speaker 1: this sort of shiver up your spine, and then you'll
Speaker 1: you'll have no problem putting in the effort going forward.
Speaker 1: And it's more complex, right, I mean there's this interplay
Speaker 1: between you're building skill and then you feel you feel
Speaker 1: more competent about it, and then you uncover where in
Speaker 1: that area that maybe your talents lie. And it is
Speaker 1: a very complicated mix. And so yeah, I fall on
Speaker 1: that side of the equation. Sure, And so angel and
Speaker 1: I wrote this paper which I'll share with you, saying
Speaker 1: that expertire high levels of world what we call world
Speaker 1: class expertise equals talent times effort. I read this paper, Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh awesome. And the thing the thing about you know,
Speaker 1: if you define talent is just simple, like let's like
Speaker 1: demystify talent for a second and not make it such
Speaker 1: a magical, mysterious thing. If we just define it as
Speaker 1: the kind of bang for buck that you get out
Speaker 1: of a particular training regimen given equal amount of effort.
Speaker 1: Then you clearly see differences in talent, right, You clearly
Speaker 1: see you give people the same tasks or same work
Speaker 1: to do, and they apply they all equally apply your
Speaker 1: deep work techniques, and they still differ in the performance.
Speaker 1: I think it's disingenuous to say. And I've never seen
Speaker 1: you say this, by the way, so I'm not criticizing
Speaker 1: you at all, but I think it would be disingenious
Speaker 1: for someone to, like a marketer or someone to say,
Speaker 1: it's all about deep work, and if you don't have
Speaker 1: high levels of performance, as Johnny over there, it's because
Speaker 1: you're not following my book slavishly enough, you're not reading
Speaker 1: my book. And so I want to have an open,
Speaker 1: honest discussion about the importance of skills, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to sweep under the rug the importance of other
Speaker 1: variables as well. And that just might be the scientist
Speaker 1: in me. Maybe I should just like STFU, shut the
Speaker 1: f of and just you know, like talk about only
Speaker 1: the parts of science that are directly applicable to helping
Speaker 1: someone improve. But as a scientist, I want to lay
Speaker 1: on the table all the truth, even those that might
Speaker 1: not help you improve, just you have, like I just
Speaker 1: delived my life by the view that self knowledge is
Speaker 1: never wrong, you know, is always a good path to
Speaker 1: learning in life. I don't know, what are you thinking
Speaker 1: about all this? Yeah, and I read that article. I
Speaker 1: I like that article a lot. And really there's there's
Speaker 1: two components. As you just pointed out, you have two variables.
Speaker 1: You have to hold one steady to really get to
Speaker 1: it independent variable. And that's what confuses the whole discussion
Speaker 1: is that your definition of talent, which I like, has
Speaker 1: these two variables in it, which is a sort of
Speaker 1: natural propensity to do this type of learning versus also
Speaker 1: techniques use training regimen or techniques used to actually do
Speaker 1: the learning, and they both have a massive impact on
Speaker 1: the rate at which new skills are learned. But what
Speaker 1: I like about your formulation right now is just said, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's run the thought experiment where we hold very constant
Speaker 1: not just effort, but training regiment that you've been you've
Speaker 1: both spent this many weeks with hondors and are and
Speaker 1: have just the right deliberate expert training routine. Now that
Speaker 1: by itself is going to give you probably a talent
Speaker 1: quotion in a lot of things. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's true. Actually, I mean to let me run this
Speaker 1: by you. That Let's say you had you hold that steady.
Speaker 1: What's left is some sort of inborn propensity for the
Speaker 1: rate at which you acquire new skill. So my question is,
Speaker 1: and actually, as a legitimate question, I've been trying to
Speaker 1: a good straight answer to this from from your community.
Speaker 1: Let's say you you take two individuals and one of
Speaker 1: them has a sort of significantly higher natural propensity for
Speaker 1: learning this particular type of material at a high rate, okay,
Speaker 1: and someone else has a lower natural propensity. There if
Speaker 1: we can measure this somehow, you know, the question I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get at is if you take the person
Speaker 1: with the higher natural ability and they have just not
Speaker 1: great training regimen, and then you take the person with
Speaker 1: the lower ability, but they have a really well trained,
Speaker 1: very sort of knowledge based training regiment. They really understand
Speaker 1: what's important in their field and how to be delivered
Speaker 1: and how to expand it. Where are those curves going
Speaker 1: to intersect? And you know, I asked you know who,
Speaker 1: I asked this question of David Epstein, who I know,
Speaker 1: you know? And yeah, so I if I remember his answer,
Speaker 1: he thinks that you would see the natural ability curve
Speaker 1: once you raise that, it's it's going to surpass at
Speaker 1: some point, you know, not at the far tale. I
Speaker 1: think his point would be, it's probably going to pass
Speaker 1: the curve of the person who has the really good
Speaker 1: training regimen did in some sense you'd get a really
Speaker 1: big return on the natural ability. But what's your cake
Speaker 1: on this? In other words, I want to fully understand
Speaker 1: your question? Do you mind like asking me the question again?
Speaker 1: Maybe refra So we have two curves that we're we're
Speaker 1: looking at here, right, the talent, Yeah, so the talent
Speaker 1: one where? And what what is actually the curve there is?
Speaker 1: That is that rate? That's a good question. So let's
Speaker 1: put let's put the y access like value produced phys
Speaker 1: a measured skill like how successful they are the dependent measure.
Speaker 1: It's like the dependent measure. Yeah. And then so one
Speaker 1: curve we could we could plot would be the what
Speaker 1: where way to put? One curve you could plot is
Speaker 1: the person with low natural ability for mastering this type
Speaker 1: of or average ability for mastering type of skill. Let's
Speaker 1: make the X axis out of though effectiveness of training regime.
Speaker 1: So you sort of have this increase, right, and then
Speaker 1: your other plot is going to be the same Y axis.
Speaker 1: But now let's make the X axis natural ability for
Speaker 1: learning this type of man. So if you for a
Speaker 1: fixed bad training regiment, so at the far left of
Speaker 1: this plot, that's going to be it'll be higher than
Speaker 1: the first plot, right, because when they're both doing when
Speaker 1: they both have bad regiments, the natural ability is going
Speaker 1: to have higher value. So that, well, let me give
Speaker 1: you some data that I think YE speaks to. This
Speaker 1: does makes sense? Yeah, in other words, like who would
Speaker 1: you rather be right? Like the first so you would
Speaker 1: let me answer that question. Because one of Angela's grad students,
Speaker 1: I remember the day he ran into my office so
Speaker 1: excited that he found this finding. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure be published it yet, but it's a really important finding.
Speaker 1: So he found that if you have a really high
Speaker 1: IQ and low grit, you'll still turn out pretty okay.
Speaker 1: Actually in academics, you know, like if you're in school
Speaker 1: and to higher your IQ in a sense, the less
Speaker 1: you actually have to put in the effort to learn
Speaker 1: the material. However, he found that there were multiple paths
Speaker 1: to the same outcome. And this is this is a
Speaker 1: point that I try to make over and over again,
Speaker 1: is that you know, we we should stop pitting these
Speaker 1: different traits against each other because if we look at
Speaker 1: individual level, and we see we look at the distribution
Speaker 1: of your traits within a person, not comparing people to
Speaker 1: each other, we find that people can compensate for lower
Speaker 1: values of other traits with other traits that they have,
Speaker 1: and you miss that entirely if you just compare working
Speaker 1: between people. So you need a within person variation perspective.
Speaker 1: So he found that people who had lower IQs, like
Speaker 1: even average IQs, but were like two standard deviations above
Speaker 1: on GRIT reached the same exact academic outcomes as those
Speaker 1: with two stand viation's higher IQ but lower GRIT. So
Speaker 1: people can reach the same exact outcome with a different
Speaker 1: configuration of traits. And I think that's a good way
Speaker 1: of kind of viewing the world as opposed to making
Speaker 1: these grand pronouncements, Like you know, I cringe when I
Speaker 1: see things like grit is beats everything else, or then
Speaker 1: I see IQ beats everything else. It's like, well, you
Speaker 1: are a person and your dynamic system of motivational processes,
Speaker 1: a self regulatory processes, cognitive traits, not just IQ cognitive traits,
Speaker 1: but like learning strategies which you would put under your
Speaker 1: framework of deep deep work, and the extent to which
Speaker 1: you can harness these learning strategies, the extent you can
Speaker 1: compensate for lower levels of IQ. So I actually think
Speaker 1: it would be really cool to do a study where
Speaker 1: we have people and measure their level of deep work
Speaker 1: practices and see the extent to which that kind of
Speaker 1: mindset and habits compensates for lower levels of ability. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's interesting findings. But you know, another way to
Speaker 1: think about it is, you know, within the context of
Speaker 1: an individual's own life, the only one of those factors
Speaker 1: that they have control over is going to be the
Speaker 1: behavioral aspects, right, I mean, they're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to make a massive impact to some sort of
Speaker 1: natural trait. So in other words, there's some justification for
Speaker 1: focusing in the sort of deliverance of advice to people
Speaker 1: on you know, you're going to have to put in hours.
Speaker 1: They're very deliberate and deep and careful, because what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're taking whatever the base point is and
Speaker 1: you're trying to add the highest that you can to it.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you're helping that individual get to
Speaker 1: a peak level, you know, for themselves. Because if you
Speaker 1: take the high IQ person and then you give an
Speaker 1: incredibly high level of persistence and great work efforts, then
Speaker 1: you start to get to the really elite level producers,
Speaker 1: really elite level academics. It's they have the brain power,
Speaker 1: They got a lot of horsepower there, but they also
Speaker 1: have these crazy sort of deliberate work ethics where like
Speaker 1: they'll disappear like Adam does for days at a time
Speaker 1: or Yeah, and I have actually another point. I think
Speaker 1: I was just going to say that where I think
Speaker 1: I'm on your side a lot is that I think
Speaker 1: we undervalue the value of what the bang for your
Speaker 1: bucking get from these deep practice regimens. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that like brain power doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: the limiting factor in what you can achieve in life,
Speaker 1: is how I would frame it. It It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be a limiting factor. We could still say people differ
Speaker 1: in that brain power, but we can still say it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to actually limit you, yeah, right much in
Speaker 1: the way that you know, if you want to become
Speaker 1: an Olympic athlete. Whether you're going to be an Olympic
Speaker 1: athlete was probably whether that's possible, it's been predetermined. There's
Speaker 1: just how tall are you, Do you have the right
Speaker 1: sort of leg muscles, the type of stuff David writes about.
Speaker 1: But if you want to be in really good shape,
Speaker 1: that's accessible to you, and you know, in some sense,
Speaker 1: I think this is true in sort of knowledge careers.
Speaker 1: If you want to be an effective, high level performer
Speaker 1: who produces things that are valuable and therefore it gets
Speaker 1: a lot of automy over your career, you can do
Speaker 1: that almost certainly, regardless of the sort of the variations
Speaker 1: maybe where you start now, if you want to be
Speaker 1: famous in your field, if you want to be one
Speaker 1: of the an elite level performer who sort of changes
Speaker 1: the world, and maybe there's other types of there's other
Speaker 1: types of factors that are involved. But what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about is like the old story of you don't need
Speaker 1: to outrun the bear, you just need to outrun your friends.
Speaker 1: This is really cool. I mean this a unique opportunity
Speaker 1: to talk to a computer. I stayed compeer science as
Speaker 1: an undergrad as well, so it's cool to like, let's
Speaker 1: think like a computer. Science is for a second here,
Speaker 1: So you know the touring test, right, can you distinguish
Speaker 1: a human from a not human? But what if there
Speaker 1: was like a touring Let's just do the experiment of
Speaker 1: like a touring test versus can you tell the difference
Speaker 1: between someone who is naturally talented versus someone who reached
Speaker 1: the goal through deep work? Like I just thought of this,
Speaker 1: but let's just like think of this. Let's think this through.
Speaker 1: Would there be any practical difference between the two. So
Speaker 1: let's say we have someone who has a lower IQ
Speaker 1: who wasn't naturally intelligent, but they went through all your
Speaker 1: deep practice routines to learn the software of what an
Speaker 1: intelligent how an intelligent person thinks on a regular basis
Speaker 1: habitually to the point where their thoughts are no longer
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from the naturally high IQ person who didn't have
Speaker 1: to deliberately learn how to become intelligent, but has those
Speaker 1: thoughts naturally at the end of the day, Like, is
Speaker 1: there a difference between the two? And given it from
Speaker 1: an artificial intelligence point of view, what is the difference
Speaker 1: between the two? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean,
Speaker 1: there shouldn't be a difference between the two. I think
Speaker 1: the interesting question is would there be right? I mean,
Speaker 1: in other words, would people win this test? And it's
Speaker 1: a difficult question. I've long had a bias towards the
Speaker 1: answer that people would do a lot better at this
Speaker 1: deep work test than I think most people assume. Right.
Speaker 1: In other words, I've seen a lot of this around
Speaker 1: myself and my own life, where these transformations happen basically
Speaker 1: through training and time that to the outside world you
Speaker 1: see striations. I mean, so think about the academic process
Speaker 1: of becoming an academic, right, the grad students always feel
Speaker 1: like the senior grad students are smarter than them. The
Speaker 1: senior grad students feel like the systemt professors are smarter them.
Speaker 1: The assistant professors think the full professors are. How do
Speaker 1: they have these insights? Why? What's the difference in that striation?
Speaker 1: It's also years of training, right, In other words, like
Speaker 1: once you've once you've been training as a grad student
Speaker 1: for a few years, you get sharper at the field.
Speaker 1: You know more about it, you can speak with more authority,
Speaker 1: You're more cognitively flexible because you've internalized more concepts to reconfigure.
Speaker 1: The difference was not that you got smarter, but that
Speaker 1: you've actually trained more or I take myself as an example.
Speaker 1: You know, I was never a math person just because
Speaker 1: that's what I just sort of self labeled. Math wasn't
Speaker 1: something I studied a lot, and now I do mathematics
Speaker 1: at a high level for a living. The difference was
Speaker 1: I took some years in there where I just very
Speaker 1: deliberately practice and tried to improve my math skills. So
Speaker 1: I think in the extremes there's definitely gonna be differences.
Speaker 1: But my bias is that people would do a lot
Speaker 1: better on this hypothetical test. Then most in our culture
Speaker 1: might assume that there's a lot when it comes to
Speaker 1: these more nebulous cognitive, semi social, semi cognitive type positions
Speaker 1: like I'm a thinker, I'm a professor, I'm a writer,
Speaker 1: that there's a lot that really is trained for sure,
Speaker 1: and we have this bia. I wrote this article recently
Speaker 1: and heard a business review with Shia say showing that
Speaker 1: people of a bias towards talent as being the explanation
Speaker 1: of great pieces. And if you tell people's story of
Speaker 1: where they got to where they are today through talent
Speaker 1: versus striving, we are much more likely to pick the
Speaker 1: talented person even though their performance is exactly the same,
Speaker 1: exactly the same level of performance. So this, what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, has real implications for our kind of unconscious
Speaker 1: biases and making hiring decisions as well. Right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I'm curious what the cultural component is of this. I mean,
Speaker 1: in other words, I don't know if you have evidence
Speaker 1: around this that's useful. But is this something that differs
Speaker 1: between different cultures? Like it is the unique question? I mean, anecdotally,
Speaker 1: I've always observed the US culture to be one that
Speaker 1: loves the notion of natural talent, love it. But isn't
Speaker 1: that funny that we also love the pull yourself out
Speaker 1: by your bootstraps narrative as well? Yeah, it's interesting we
Speaker 1: have this division. There's the hard workers, you know, like
Speaker 1: it's okay to pull your up from the bootstraps and
Speaker 1: get a company going that's successful. But but you know,
Speaker 1: our mathematicians and our athletes, and you know, our poets,
Speaker 1: like they all better be Mozart or you know, we're
Speaker 1: not in it. You know, we like Bryce Harper, not
Speaker 1: Daniel Murphy. Right, Yeah, we're deeply conflicted. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: we are. I guess we are. So it's a weird culture,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean again, a lot of this ideas
Speaker 1: came onto my radars really dealing with undergraduates, and you
Speaker 1: probably see something similar. But it's really at that level
Speaker 1: that you first see the sort of concrete impacts of
Speaker 1: a sort of cultural understanding of natural talent and pre
Speaker 1: existing passion and fit theory, this notion that the core
Speaker 1: to satisfaction is all just in the matching of activities
Speaker 1: to pre existing skills, and the reality is of course
Speaker 1: more complicated. It's not at one extreme or the other,
Speaker 1: but you know, that's where I see. I first saw
Speaker 1: a lot of these issues played out actually with students
Speaker 1: who would switch their major in their junior year. Again
Speaker 1: and again, they would come to me in their junior
Speaker 1: and so this is kind of wait, why are you
Speaker 1: switching your major in your junior year? And it turned
Speaker 1: out what happened is upper level courses are harder, and
Speaker 1: so they would take these courses and they'd be more
Speaker 1: difficult to say, I'm not enjoying this, like this is hard,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of going to look hard at this. This
Speaker 1: must not be something I'm good at, this must not
Speaker 1: be my passion. I better switch before I run out
Speaker 1: of time to like what I'm supposed to do. And
Speaker 1: so this is where I first was exposed to sort
Speaker 1: of the concrete impacts of the culture that's built around
Speaker 1: the idea that all that matters is there is something
Speaker 1: you're meant to do. If you can just find it,
Speaker 1: everything else will be taken care of, really clever, And
Speaker 1: we can also look at the inverse of that. Plenty
Speaker 1: of naturally gifted individuals choose what they want to choose
Speaker 1: because they learn so easily, and they still are wholly
Speaker 1: unsatisfied at the end of the day. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of cases of that as well, right, Yeah, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: and it works both ways. And I think that you're
Speaker 1: illustrating that your point of yeah, yeah, no, and I
Speaker 1: think that's definitely true. You know, the book I wrote before,
Speaker 1: Deep Work, which is which is probably one that would
Speaker 1: also get us into a discussion. Yeah, I would basically
Speaker 1: say the advice to follow your passion is causing more
Speaker 1: harm than good. Sure, that was the premise of the
Speaker 1: premise of the book, and part of the feedback coming
Speaker 1: back was well, wait a second, though, like some people
Speaker 1: do have these sort of natural you know, something would
Speaker 1: be more well suited for them than others. They have
Speaker 1: a natural propensity for this type of skill versus bad
Speaker 1: and it's not all just the same. And in some
Speaker 1: sense the reaction was, yeah, that's true, but that's not
Speaker 1: really a place where people are struggling. I mean, in
Speaker 1: other words, like people are pretty good as if they
Speaker 1: have like a real strong attraction to a particular type
Speaker 1: of work or effort, they're pretty good at sort of
Speaker 1: gravitating towards that. Where the damage is being done is
Speaker 1: where you give them the narrative that then once you
Speaker 1: do that, you will immediately find sort of motivation, satisfaction,
Speaker 1: and passion in your work that you get a skip
Speaker 1: in some such the hard part of where you actually
Speaker 1: have to get good. Because I remember reading I was
Speaker 1: reading your book when I was writing the passion chapter
Speaker 1: for that book, Where to Create, And I like the
Speaker 1: idea that you shouldn't be following it. But I think
Speaker 1: it also is okay to be one with your passion
Speaker 1: in the sense that you know, the harmonious passion literature
Speaker 1: shows that the more that you could healthfully integrate an
Speaker 1: activity into your identity in a way that makes you
Speaker 1: feel good about yourself the more likely you are to
Speaker 1: want to exert effort in that activity. So there's interesting
Speaker 1: feedback loops. I think between exerting the effort and becoming
Speaker 1: better with that effort, and then once to increase that effort,
Speaker 1: it also becoming more and more a part of who
Speaker 1: you are at a deep identity level. So something I
Speaker 1: want to Maybe we could end on this note because
Speaker 1: I think it was quite poetic. You said, quote, any pursuit,
Speaker 1: be it physical or cognitive, that supports high levels of
Speaker 1: skill can also generate a sense of sacredness. So this
Speaker 1: is really interesting. You know, when you talk about importance
Speaker 1: of meaning, finding, fulfillment, happiness in life through deep work,
Speaker 1: you also refer to a deep life. So your principles
Speaker 1: don't only have to apply to your work. It can
Speaker 1: also apply to your relationships and other things in life
Speaker 1: that are meaningful you Is that right? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So can you unpack more what you mean by sacredness?
Speaker 1: Because I thought it was really interesting. Yeah. So when
Speaker 1: that quote was actually it was drawing from a book
Speaker 1: that was written by two philosophers. Actually, so the head
Speaker 1: of the philosophy department at Harvard and Emeritis professor from
Speaker 1: Berkeley was called all things shining, and they were in essence,
Speaker 1: they were studying the negative impact of the lack or
Speaker 1: loss of sacredness from sort of everyday life. Do not
Speaker 1: have things we could look towards that had some sort
Speaker 1: of value beyond ourselves, And their conclusion was we can
Speaker 1: get that back through craftsmanship. In other words, to be
Speaker 1: to be skilled at a craft exposes yourself to a
Speaker 1: world of values that are cited outside of the self.
Speaker 1: It's not just you determine what do I like what
Speaker 1: do I not like. They use the example of a
Speaker 1: wheelwright and said, the properties that makes a piece of
Speaker 1: pine well suited for the wheel that you're trying to
Speaker 1: skull exist outside of you, and those properties are what
Speaker 1: makes that would good, whether or not you want them
Speaker 1: to be or not, and that there's actually great satisfaction therefore,
Speaker 1: that's found in craft because it opens you to a
Speaker 1: world of sacredness you value and thing to sit it
Speaker 1: outside of just your own decision. So it's part of
Speaker 1: the in my usage, the philosophical argument for why a
Speaker 1: deep life can actually be more meaningful because it's a
Speaker 1: life dedicated to craftsmanship and once you're actually trying to
Speaker 1: hone a craft and apply that craft to create things
Speaker 1: of value. You find more value in your life itself
Speaker 1: because you're moving away from just sort of a constant
Speaker 1: back and forth chattering with sort of the internet seer
Speaker 1: out there, and you're putting your energy on trying to
Speaker 1: actually rest something of value from a world of chaos.
Speaker 1: And so there's something deep there, there's something meaningful there.
Speaker 1: So deep life is not just about you're going to
Speaker 1: get the next promotion. It's also just a much more
Speaker 1: satisfying life to live. Thanks Kel, I really really like that,
Speaker 1: and that's a great note to end on. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much for this chat today. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. Thanks for listening to The Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast with doctor Scott Barr Kaufman. I hope you found
Speaker 1: this episode just as thought provooking and interesting as I did.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to read the show notes for this
Speaker 1: episode or here past episodes, you can visit the Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast dot com. Y