Speaker 1: Welcome to two percent. I am your host, Michael Easter.
Speaker 1: So I recently just turned in a draft of my
Speaker 1: new book to my editor. It was a very long process.
Speaker 1: Took me about two years to write this book. And
Speaker 1: I wrote this book everywhere. I wrote some of it
Speaker 1: in my office, some of it in my kitchen table.
Speaker 1: I wrote it on airplanes, I wrote it in airports,
Speaker 1: all these different places. And I noticed in the writing
Speaker 1: process that some places were much better than others. Some
Speaker 1: places I would be more focused, some places I would
Speaker 1: be more creative. And it really got me thinking about
Speaker 1: place and how the places where we live, work and
Speaker 1: exist affect us and what we do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Lucky for us, I have an old friend who used
Speaker 1: to be a pro soccer player Good Little Factoids, now
Speaker 1: a professor at UVA, and he has a new book out.
Speaker 1: His name is Lighty Klotts. It is called in a
Speaker 1: Good Place, How the spaces where we live, work and
Speaker 1: play can help us thrive. So this is a really
Speaker 1: awesome book. If you happen to be a human who
Speaker 1: takes up space anywhere on this planet, that is to
Speaker 1: say you. So I called up Lighty. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk to him about place We're going to talk to
Speaker 1: him about his past work, which I featured in my
Speaker 1: book Scarcity Brain, and that is where we're going to start.
Speaker 1: He found something really fascinating about the human mind and
Speaker 1: how we are wired to add often when it is
Speaker 1: not a good idea.
Speaker 2: So let's go LIGHTI thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Michael, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: So we first met when I was writing my book
Speaker 1: Scarcity Brain. A came across your study in Nature about
Speaker 1: how humans preferentially overlook subtraction and even wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Subtract about that entire topic. What I thought was
Speaker 1: amazing and awesome is the whole story behind how that
Speaker 1: study started, what kicked off the book, and it starts
Speaker 1: with legos. So tell us that story because it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was playing Legos with my son Ezra, he was
Speaker 4: three at the time. So it was actually the duplow
Speaker 4: blocks and we had we had a bridge basically that
Speaker 4: wasn't level. So the support column on one side of
Speaker 4: the bridge was shorter than the support column on the
Speaker 4: other side of the bridge. And so as a dad,
Speaker 4: I'm like, all right, I can fix this problem. Turned
Speaker 4: around behind me, to grab a block to add to
Speaker 4: the shorter column, but by the time I had turned
Speaker 4: back around, Ezra had removed a block from the longer
Speaker 4: column to make the level bridge.
Speaker 1: And I think the important point here is that you
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in school thinking about engineering
Speaker 1: as well, so it's not like you're the you don't
Speaker 1: know what you're doing here, Like you have a PhD
Speaker 1: in this topic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, literally a PhD in engineering. Yeah, so this was
Speaker 4: like this should have been moment, right, a doting dad
Speaker 4: and a PhD in the topic of making bridges straight.
Speaker 3: But he came up with an answer that was.
Speaker 4: Better, better than I did, And I wouldn't have thought
Speaker 4: of if he wasn't there.
Speaker 1: And didn't you actually make the bridge wonky again and
Speaker 1: take it around and ask your collaborators, colleagues grad students
Speaker 1: to fix it.
Speaker 2: But you would give them.
Speaker 1: You would put the legos on the table so they
Speaker 1: could elevate it, right, And wouldn't most people add, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I.
Speaker 3: Have the version of it right here.
Speaker 4: I mean I still carried around like and so yeah,
Speaker 4: I would you know, make I made a replica, so
Speaker 4: basically this super simplified and then put the blocks next
Speaker 4: to it on the table, and I started bringing it
Speaker 4: around because I was like, I don't I mean, maybe
Speaker 4: people will just get this, but yeah, the super smart
Speaker 4: grad students could smarter than me come in and they're
Speaker 4: all adding. And then I gave it to my collaborator,
Speaker 4: who I'd thought I had been trying to explain these
Speaker 4: ideas to and she was like she failed, and then
Speaker 4: she said, oh I get it, So what you but
Speaker 4: what we've what you've been trying to say is that
Speaker 4: why don't we subtract to make things better?
Speaker 3: And then we were off.
Speaker 1: So then speaking of that, you're off. This means you
Speaker 1: set up a series of experiments and what were those?
Speaker 1: How were they designed? And yeah, how'd that all play out?
Speaker 4: My background's engineering. I do a lot of behavioral science
Speaker 4: stuff and I respect it, and I respected enough to
Speaker 4: know that for a study like that, I needed help.
Speaker 4: And so like Gabe Adams and Ben Coomvers and Andy
Speaker 4: Hale's or the co authors on the study and they're
Speaker 4: all psychology professors, were just at a table that students
Speaker 4: were walking by, and we would give them a lego
Speaker 4: structure that was pre made, just kind of a random structure,
Speaker 4: and said how would you make this thing better. We
Speaker 4: got sixty samples from that and every single one added,
Speaker 4: and we like send an email saying the biggest bias ever.
Speaker 4: But then we went into you know, trying to create
Speaker 4: more like experimental setups where we're trying to figure out,
Speaker 4: like Okay was trying to make it so that subtracting
Speaker 4: is at least as good an option as adding, if
Speaker 4: not better, and then trying to show that people would
Speaker 4: overlook subtraction to their detriment and you would enjoy the
Speaker 4: writing ones. And the classic writing advice right is omit
Speaker 4: needless words.
Speaker 3: All this writing.
Speaker 4: There's a whole profession of editors that exist to take
Speaker 4: things away from our writing and make it better. And
Speaker 4: we would give people summaries of writing and ask them
Speaker 4: to make it better, and everybody would add. And then
Speaker 4: so we did writing. We had a day trip itinerary
Speaker 4: in Washington, d C. That was just almost it was
Speaker 4: impossible to execute. I would argue, totally overloaded schedule. There's
Speaker 4: like a million Yeah, of course, seeing major monuments launch
Speaker 4: at a five star bistro. I mean traffic between these
Speaker 4: things is like three hours of travel time just and
Speaker 4: then gave people a drag and drop interface where they
Speaker 4: could take stuff off of the schedule or add stuff
Speaker 4: to it and buy large people added to this already
Speaker 4: impossible schedule to make it better.
Speaker 2: Or we missed the Vietnam monument. We got to see
Speaker 2: that too.
Speaker 3: That's a good one.
Speaker 4: That's subtractive though, that's down into the earth and it's
Speaker 4: all inspiring because it's subtracting, you know. Then we were
Speaker 4: playing around with like, Okay, how do how do we
Speaker 4: create situations we're subtracting? Is objectively the correct answer, because
Speaker 4: all of the other studies you could just argue, well,
Speaker 4: people just wanted to have a jam pack schedule, or
Speaker 4: people just wanted to have longer words. So the Lego one,
Speaker 4: we created this thing where it was basically.
Speaker 3: Like a.
Speaker 4: Sandwich, a panel on the bottom and a panel on
Speaker 4: the top, and then there was a stormtrooper, a Lego
Speaker 4: stormtrooper being protected by the top panel, and then there
Speaker 4: was like a column of supports going up. And the
Speaker 4: task was to try to put a masonry block on
Speaker 4: the top panel without it collapsing and crushing the stormtrooper.
Speaker 4: So if you didn't do to any modifications, it would
Speaker 4: just collapse and crush the stormtrooper.
Speaker 3: It was set up so that the most.
Speaker 4: Common modification people did was to add a whole row
Speaker 4: of blocks to strengthen the top the top row. The
Speaker 4: subtractive way to do it was to move one block
Speaker 4: and just drop the platform down. And we gave people
Speaker 4: financial incentives. We told them to so it costs money
Speaker 4: to add blocks, and they kept the money they had
Speaker 4: if they If they didn't ad blocks, we told them
Speaker 4: that the goal was to do it in as fuel
Speaker 4: blocks as possible. So again they were getting the wrong answer,
Speaker 4: but it was very narrow, narrow context. So eventually came
Speaker 4: of this really elegant grid designs that you could show
Speaker 4: people on a computer screen. And basically, I mean there
Speaker 4: were a bunch of different designs, but all of them
Speaker 4: were symmetrical from left to right and top to bottom,
Speaker 4: except there were extraneous marks in one of the quadrants.
Speaker 4: And then we tasked people with like, how would you
Speaker 4: make this symmetrical? And the subtractive way to do it
Speaker 4: was to remove the extraneous marks from one quadrant. The
Speaker 4: additive way to do it was to add to three quadrants,
Speaker 4: which of course took more work, and people would still
Speaker 4: add not even consider subtraction and then move on.
Speaker 2: We overlook it.
Speaker 1: And it's not that one is any better than the
Speaker 1: other inherently adding or subtracting. But the point you're trying
Speaker 1: to make is that if you are consistently overlooking subtraction
Speaker 1: as an as an option to solve a problem or
Speaker 1: make an improvement, then you're you're missing like half the options.
Speaker 2: And those options are oftentimes more efficient.
Speaker 4: Right, And they're like the if you think about this
Speaker 4: as like a marketplace of ideas, those are the ideas
Speaker 4: that nobody's thinking of, right, I mean, because everybody's overlooking them.
Speaker 4: And so I would argue, you know, if I have
Speaker 4: to pick between adding and subtracting, I would just take heading.
Speaker 3: But we don't have to.
Speaker 4: Pick their like complementary approaches to making things better. And
Speaker 4: because the subtractive ones are so underused, I would argue
Speaker 4: that there's probably more potential there to make your life better.
Speaker 1: I would imagine A big one with businesses is meetings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you look, you look at the stats on meetings, and
Speaker 1: I have been growing in frequency and duration over time,
Speaker 1: and I actually think probably after people started to work
Speaker 1: from home, I think that there's probably more meetings because
Speaker 1: it's like you got to meet with someone, but they're
Speaker 1: often not as productive as we think. It's almost like less,
Speaker 1: there's more in the meeting space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: Bob Sutton, who's he's the author of the No Asshole
Speaker 4: Rule and a bunch of other books. But he and
Speaker 4: I have this like rule of halves for meetings that
Speaker 4: I think he came up with, but he keeps trying
Speaker 4: to give me credit for. And it's, you know, basically
Speaker 4: like making these Okay, can the meetings be half the
Speaker 4: frequency or half the half the number of time, half
Speaker 4: the number of attendees, And you're just like putting rules
Speaker 4: on it. But and also I mean there are companies
Speaker 4: that do meeting doomsdays, which just take meetings entirely off
Speaker 4: the calendar and then you can immediately add them back.
Speaker 4: But it's like flipping the flipping the framing in your
Speaker 4: brain where it's like, Okay, is this something that we
Speaker 4: should add to our calendar versus is this something that
Speaker 4: we should we should have to subtract. And I think
Speaker 4: they end up with far fewer meetings. But that's definitely
Speaker 4: a huge time stink.
Speaker 1: It could be an email or it could be to
Speaker 1: our previous point about information, just someone make a decision,
Speaker 1: you don't have to run it by fifty people.
Speaker 4: Right, And there's this whole thing of you know, one
Speaker 4: of the reasons that we do this, you know, on
Speaker 4: the biological perspective, is just we want to show competence, right,
Speaker 4: We want to show that we're effectively making change in
Speaker 4: the world, and that is that disadvantages subtraction because like
Speaker 4: when we subtract something, the change isn't visible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really smart. You played professional soccer. Did you
Speaker 1: find this in your soccer career at all in terms
Speaker 1: of like how you were training, how just anything in
Speaker 1: that field.
Speaker 4: There was a marathon er who like got sick before
Speaker 4: a big marathon and therefore didn't couldn't train as much,
Speaker 4: and then did really well in the marathon because like
Speaker 4: he effectively forced to taper, And that's how this idea
Speaker 4: of like scaling down your training before the games.
Speaker 3: Actually came to be. So there's definitely that piece.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite soccer ones is you can often
Speaker 4: these constraints can help. Like I'm coaching a bunch of
Speaker 4: eleven year olds right now, and like if you tell
Speaker 4: them they can only touch the ball twice and not
Speaker 4: dribble it. Actually the soccer gets much better because they're
Speaker 4: forced to pass and then sometimes even you know, taking
Speaker 4: people off the field so to shake the system out
Speaker 4: of its out of its slumber. So basically, if you're
Speaker 4: playing like eleven on eleven and you're just like it's
Speaker 4: not dynamic enough, you go down to like nine people
Speaker 4: on one of the teams, and then all of a
Speaker 4: sudden people are having to cover more ground and it
Speaker 4: just breaks people out of the regular patterns. So definitely
Speaker 4: those things, but it's also hard. I mean, like one
Speaker 4: of the things, I think, the more you care about something,
Speaker 4: the harder it is to subtract. And when you're trying
Speaker 4: to be a professional soccer player, it's really really hard
Speaker 4: to be like, oh, I'm not going to do this
Speaker 4: thing that everybody else is doing and that's going to
Speaker 4: help me get ahead.
Speaker 3: It's it's really hard.
Speaker 4: To think that way. And I would say probably I
Speaker 4: probably overtrained. I probably aired on the side of doing
Speaker 4: too much and not being fresh enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I feel like in the wellness world, do
Speaker 1: you see this, especially as people are starting to get
Speaker 1: into health and wellness, The question becomes what do I
Speaker 1: need to add and do? An example would be weight loss.
Speaker 1: People are like, what special diet do I need to add?
Speaker 1: And then they go to the grocery store and they
Speaker 1: buy this massive range of all these new foods and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know, you could just kind of
Speaker 1: eat less of what you're already eating, or like I'm
Speaker 1: going to work out, I need insert ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in equipment.
Speaker 2: It's like, why don't you just take a walk and
Speaker 2: do some push ups? That's free.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the weight loss one is so like obvious, right,
Speaker 4: but it's it's so true that a solution is so
Speaker 4: clearly less one. Reframing though, Like that's helped me because
Speaker 4: I would always have a hard time doing like rest days, right,
Speaker 4: and just like so just naming it something, right, This
Speaker 4: isn't a rest day. This is like my active recovery day.
Speaker 4: And I could do the exact same thing, but it's
Speaker 4: like I feel like the sense of accomplishment from doing it.
Speaker 1: You've got to frame it for the type a personality
Speaker 1: that gets into professional soccer. Yeah, this isn't You're not
Speaker 1: just sitting around, This is actively recovering. Yeah, exactly, Okay,
Speaker 1: So one of the stories I love from your new
Speaker 1: book is how in college and you went to Lafayette
Speaker 1: right in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 1: You are playing Lehigh, which is, I don't know, twenty
Speaker 1: minutes away. They're your giant rival in soccer. Game is
Speaker 1: at Lehigh, so you are on your away turf, and
Speaker 1: all the data says that teams that are away teams
Speaker 1: have a disadvantage because there's crowd around, you're in a
Speaker 1: new territory.
Speaker 2: It just kind of throws you off.
Speaker 1: So your coach, before you guys are headed to the game,
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm going to take a meeting, I'm going
Speaker 1: to mess around a little bit. And you're all waiting
Speaker 1: for the bus, like we got to get to the game,
Speaker 1: and he's just gagging. When you get in the bus,
Speaker 1: he has the bus go like a really obscure route
Speaker 1: that takes way longer. So you show up at this
Speaker 1: game like ten twenty minutes before kickoff and you're kind
Speaker 1: of frazzled. But it got you right into the game
Speaker 1: and you're like, we realized that it almost didn't allow
Speaker 1: us to sit on that field and get in our
Speaker 1: heads about being in this a way setting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and our coach would he said. I confirmed it
Speaker 4: with him, like when I was writing the book, because
Speaker 4: he would always do weird stuff and I was like,
Speaker 4: was that intentional? He's like, yeah, I wanted you guys
Speaker 4: to get off the bus and play. And the idea
Speaker 4: was that you know, all the hoopla around the game,
Speaker 4: any of the nerves, any of the kind of like
Speaker 4: feeling disoriented in a new space, he would just transport
Speaker 4: us right to the soccer field, which is the same dimensions,
Speaker 4: the same grass, very familiar, and maybe have a little
Speaker 4: bit more adrenaline going through our veins. Because we were
Speaker 4: like kind of pissed at him for like messing up,
Speaker 4: you know, we wanted to. Yeah, And so what I
Speaker 4: learned from that is like, when we're like going into
Speaker 4: new territory, it's I mean, it's super important to think
Speaker 4: about how you approach it, and it's not always good
Speaker 4: to just show up right before. But one strategy is
Speaker 4: to show up right before if you think it's going
Speaker 4: to be an intimidating space, and then just get into
Speaker 4: the familiar space as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've noticed, I mean, you do public talks a
Speaker 1: lot and I've noticed too when people want me there,
Speaker 1: you know, two three hours before a talk, they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: just hang out in the green room for two hours.
Speaker 1: You're just kind of sitting there going, I wonder how
Speaker 1: big the crowd is, I wonder how big this stage is,
Speaker 1: what is this how much brighter the light's going to be?
Speaker 1: Do I have a conference where you're just like running
Speaker 1: through your head, whereas in situations where they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just show up like twenty minutes before, you just get
Speaker 1: right into it, and it's like, oh yeah, this is
Speaker 1: just like every other talk.
Speaker 2: You don't have time to sit and stew.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's the person before me going to say? Right?
Speaker 4: And it's like and again, the talk's a great example
Speaker 4: because it's not like you're not prepared, right, You've done
Speaker 4: the talk before, You've prepared at nauseum. And what you're
Speaker 4: doing is like avoiding the awkward spatial stuff so that
Speaker 4: you can like connect with the audience as best as
Speaker 4: best as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's that's another great example.
Speaker 4: I will say that like a good green room does
Speaker 4: that when you like kind of keeps you isolated. But
Speaker 4: if you the worst is when there isn't a green
Speaker 4: room and you go and you're like sitting in the
Speaker 4: audience and then you have to like come from the
Speaker 4: audience and go up on stage awkwardly.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, Yeah, I was the one sitting over that.
Speaker 1: So what prompted you to write the new book?
Speaker 4: I think the new book was in my mind before Subtract.
Speaker 4: I've always been interested in this intersection between like our
Speaker 4: physical world and our mental world. And then to write
Speaker 4: a book, you know, it has to be useful to somebody,
Speaker 4: so trying to figure out what people needed to know
Speaker 4: about that intersection because I felt like the intersection between
Speaker 4: like our physical and mental world, everybody would be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's important, but like where are we supposed to focus
Speaker 4: How can it be helpful to us? And so I
Speaker 4: think that was the motivating factor. And then the book
Speaker 4: was very like, you know, distilling down to what is
Speaker 4: what's important about this relationship and how can it help
Speaker 4: people and how can we use it in our day
Speaker 4: to day lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you wrote about how people have three needs, agency, competence, connection,
Speaker 1: tell us more about those. I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: And then how it applies to place.
Speaker 4: I'll use an example, So agency competence and connection. You
Speaker 4: can think about like kids playing on a beach, right,
Speaker 4: So kids goes to a beach. Agency is like they
Speaker 4: get to decide where to build the sand castle.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: They can they decide where to build it, they can
Speaker 4: decide how big to build it, they can decide how
Speaker 4: the shapes the forms. They can decide whether to make
Speaker 4: packed sand or a drip castle. So this agency is
Speaker 4: their ability to choose their relationship with their surroundings. Competence
Speaker 4: is the ability to actually do something right and to
Speaker 4: to know.
Speaker 3: That you can do this.
Speaker 4: So compensates or growth like if and it's amazing if
Speaker 4: you think about like what a kid's learning building a
Speaker 4: sand castle, right.
Speaker 1: Barn awesome examples of your daughter building sand castles.
Speaker 2: Were you on the Jersey Shore?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jersey Shore, Ocean City, New Jersey, and we go
Speaker 4: there every summer, and you know, but she's like doing
Speaker 4: the drip castles, and I think there's two or three
Speaker 4: and she's like making these really immaculate drip castles. You're
Speaker 4: learning how like the water swirls, right, you're learning the
Speaker 4: material properties of sand, But then you're also learning these
Speaker 4: really important things about yourself. Right, So she'd get frustrated
Speaker 4: if it didn't work, but then she realized that if
Speaker 4: she did it again, she felt good about herself and
Speaker 4: she had some light control.
Speaker 3: And so she's growing. And then the connection.
Speaker 4: Obviously, connection comes in spaces from you know, connecting with
Speaker 4: other people, but you're also connecting through the creating of
Speaker 4: the spaces. So what always happens in those projects is
Speaker 4: like one kid's working and they realize that, well, if
Speaker 4: I can get other people to do stuff with me,
Speaker 4: then I can make this thing bigger.
Speaker 3: And so she would you know.
Speaker 2: I need you to get twenty buckets of sand and
Speaker 2: bring them up here.
Speaker 4: Now, Oh, the worst is the water, right because you're
Speaker 4: just like endlessly going down to the ocean, grabbing a
Speaker 4: bucket of water, dumping it in their thing. That's then
Speaker 4: like filtering right into the ground as soon as you
Speaker 4: can like get back to the ocean.
Speaker 3: Just like and just loop. You know, you see it
Speaker 3: in kids.
Speaker 4: But you also you could think back to our hunter
Speaker 4: gather ancestors like agency would be, hey, can I like
Speaker 4: shape this environment so that I don't get killed by
Speaker 4: a predator or so that I am not exposed to
Speaker 4: the elements? Right, that's that's agency. Do I have the
Speaker 4: ability to do that? The competence, Like am I drawn
Speaker 4: to act on my environment to move to move sticks
Speaker 4: around in the world? And you know, now it's it's
Speaker 4: not some you know, the sand castle isn't life or
Speaker 4: death proposition. But if you're not drawn to do that,
Speaker 4: when you're a you know, exposed to the elements, you're
Speaker 4: you're not going to survive.
Speaker 3: So and then the connection, it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 4: How you know, we talk about like social connection and
Speaker 4: like the first reason like Huntergether bands came together was
Speaker 4: to build big stuff.
Speaker 1: I thought that was that was fascinating and it was
Speaker 1: like these sort of large scale projects, right, So they
Speaker 1: would come together start building on a project. And that
Speaker 1: almost led to the development of permanent settlements, right because
Speaker 1: they're going, well, it's going to take a long time
Speaker 1: to build this, so we might as well settle in.
Speaker 1: More people came to help, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: we have towns and cities.
Speaker 4: Eventually, right, you're figuring out, Okay, now we need agriculture
Speaker 4: because we need to stay in this spot. Now we
Speaker 4: need to have like social structures because we got to
Speaker 4: figure out how to organize this town, and so like
Speaker 4: the physical thing led to all these social structures.
Speaker 3: You know, you.
Speaker 4: See microcosms of that even just like Habitat for Humanity, right,
Speaker 4: that's building this most successful charity. It's fundamentally you're building
Speaker 4: houses together, but you're building all these social connections too.
Speaker 4: And there's this kind of culture of shared building that's
Speaker 4: in every culture all over the world by different names.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's agency, competenes, and connection. I think, you know,
Speaker 4: it's kind of known that those are things in the
Speaker 4: psychology world. It's known that those are things that matter
Speaker 4: for our well being. But the how closely tied they
Speaker 4: are to our relationship with our surroundings, and like, in
Speaker 4: fact they like arose from our relationship with our surroundings,
Speaker 4: and yet we've kind of gotten away from that in
Speaker 4: the in current times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I like that.
Speaker 1: A lot of the book was very tactical in the
Speaker 1: sense that it got into how can I upgrade the
Speaker 1: places and spaces where I exist? What spaces do you
Speaker 1: think could use the most upgrade in people's lives.
Speaker 4: We don't do a great job of taking advantage of
Speaker 4: all the spaces to which we have access. This could
Speaker 4: be everything from like an unused room in your house,
Speaker 4: or like the outdoor space around your house to just
Speaker 4: like a different route you could take to work that
Speaker 4: would be much better to you know, all these amenities
Speaker 4: that your office has that you never go to because
Speaker 4: we're just on our like tried and true path. That
Speaker 4: to me is the biggest immediate upgrade that people can have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like you kind of get trapped in a
Speaker 1: cycle of doing the same thing day in and day out,
Speaker 1: and you don't ever think, Oh, if I, to your point,
Speaker 1: change my route, did explore the office and saw what
Speaker 1: it had, or like this room that I've just been
Speaker 1: shoving stuff in and never use, like I could provide
Speaker 1: an opportunity for something totally different that I could leverage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you.
Speaker 4: Know, we talked about the you know, the difference between
Speaker 4: showing up to a space right before versus showing up
Speaker 4: three days before. Like that's something we all can do
Speaker 4: in a lot of our spaces, right, So it's like
Speaker 4: how you can think through like how you interact with
Speaker 4: the space on the.
Speaker 3: When it comes to time.
Speaker 1: How can officers improve when you've worked with companies. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you spend much time in the office
Speaker 1: I've now I work from home, which we can get into,
Speaker 1: but when I used to be in working in offices,
Speaker 1: it was always I don't know, it was kind of
Speaker 1: just like I don't love this place.
Speaker 3: Well, we can workshop this together.
Speaker 4: I'm waiting a piece for the Wall Street Journal right
Speaker 4: now about the offices, and I'm like trying to make
Speaker 4: the point that I think like agency is the first
Speaker 4: thing that offices should give us, and yet we jump
Speaker 4: all these other things, right, And you may have read
Speaker 4: these articles, but like every five years there's an article
Speaker 4: saying like open planned offices are great, or closed offices
Speaker 4: are great, or you know, and then you know, people
Speaker 4: get into the weeds and they're like, well, this pink
Speaker 4: color will make you more creative, and natural light is
Speaker 4: important and all that stuff. You know, there's there's science
Speaker 4: behind some of it, but it's also like such a
Speaker 4: depends on the people, depends on the tas, depends on
Speaker 4: the office. And if there's a general rule, it's that
Speaker 4: like people need to feel like they have some say
Speaker 4: in their relationship with their surroundings, and yet we like
Speaker 4: skip right by that in the in the office design.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like there's some people thinking about open office,
Speaker 1: first clothes office.
Speaker 2: I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: When I was working at Men's Health, we had our
Speaker 1: own offices for a while. To your point about agency,
Speaker 1: I had like these nice pieces of art that I
Speaker 1: liked on the wall.
Speaker 2: It was MySpace. People couldn't come bug me.
Speaker 1: And then we swa We got a new editor in
Speaker 1: chief and he was like really hot on this like
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley trend of open offices, and he switched to
Speaker 1: an open office. And it was like the worst thing
Speaker 1: that had ever happened to me, because now I'm like
Speaker 1: sitting next to people, and I'm you know, I like people,
Speaker 1: but generally in small and fleeting clusters, you know, and
Speaker 1: so they're just like people. I felt like people were
Speaker 1: overlooking me the whole time. I just like I didn't
Speaker 1: get anything done. But I also imagine in his case,
Speaker 1: he's like, no, I actually work better when I can
Speaker 1: just bounce ideas off you guys and harass you and
Speaker 1: make sure you're doing your work. And so how does like,
Speaker 1: how do we find a balance given that we know
Speaker 1: some people are like me where it's like and in
Speaker 1: my space, I need to think in quiet. And then
Speaker 1: you have other people who thrive on more people being
Speaker 1: around and almost the I don't want to use the
Speaker 1: word chaos, but that's how it felt to me of
Speaker 1: the open office.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I mean flexibility and multiple uses and
Speaker 4: making sure that people know that they're allowed to do
Speaker 4: those multiple uses, right. I mean, I think there's a
Speaker 4: lot of these spaces and offices. Like I was talking
Speaker 4: to my editor and she was saying that in her
Speaker 4: office they have like all these great you know, it's
Speaker 4: open plan, but they recognize the editors need to do
Speaker 4: deep work. So there's these places where you can do
Speaker 4: deep work, but the boss just comes in and like
Speaker 4: sits in the deep workplace and just kind of like
Speaker 4: camps out there.
Speaker 3: And so I think making.
Speaker 4: Sure that people know the spaces that they have access to,
Speaker 4: like kind of modeling that behavior is probably pretty helpful.
Speaker 4: Agency could be lost as something as simple as like
Speaker 4: you can't open a window, right, and now you know
Speaker 4: it's nice outside here today we I'm in an old
Speaker 4: building and like the windows sealed shut because they redid
Speaker 4: it with air conditioning, and that that takes away my
Speaker 4: agency in one way, and now I'm probably less likely
Speaker 4: to like rearrange the furniture in my office. So just
Speaker 4: like giving people these like little gateway agency experiences, then
Speaker 4: making them more likely to kind of feel agency in
Speaker 4: their larger relationship with the space might make it better.
Speaker 1: I guess it was probably from a study that you
Speaker 1: referenced in the book that I loved was that in
Speaker 1: retirement homes, when people are allowed to design their space
Speaker 1: how they want, make these choices about how they're going
Speaker 1: to live, they tend to have better outcomes compared to
Speaker 1: retirement homes where it's like this is it.
Speaker 2: It's fixed.
Speaker 1: No, you can't open the window, you can't move the
Speaker 1: furniture around, you can't do all the stuff to the walls.
Speaker 2: So tell us about that. What are those studies find better.
Speaker 4: Outcomes in this case is like likelihood of being alive, right,
Speaker 4: And so the people who are able to customize their space,
Speaker 4: and this is a pretty controlled you know, it is
Speaker 4: controlled and experiments you can get with the people who
Speaker 4: could customize their space where I think twice as likely
Speaker 4: to be alive eighteen months later.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 4: Again, this is like, you know, we talk about like
Speaker 4: these psychological quirks that we have, and we have all
Speaker 4: these needs and again, like the paint color on the wall,
Speaker 4: more creative.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah. But this is like life or death.
Speaker 4: Like agency is like this core need that we have
Speaker 4: and yeah, our space that you our spaces are either
Speaker 4: meeting it or starving it.
Speaker 1: How do you think about that with your kids in
Speaker 1: terms of wanting to give them enough agency and at
Speaker 1: the same time recognizing that you can't just kind of
Speaker 1: let them do whatever the hell they want.
Speaker 4: I love one of my favorite stories with my daughter
Speaker 4: with she like she's this preschool that did an amazing
Speaker 4: job with boundaries, and it's like one of these examples
Speaker 4: where like a spatial concept has been like taken over
Speaker 4: into the social world. Right, we talk about boundaries now
Speaker 4: and it's all about like a human relationship. But of
Speaker 4: course that came from like protecting your physical space. And
Speaker 4: so one of the first things they learned was like
Speaker 4: you could yell space, and that literally meant that people
Speaker 4: had to give you like a ten foot radius around you. So,
Speaker 4: like my daughter's sitting in the in the lego room
Speaker 4: playing and I'm like trying to do laundry coming through
Speaker 4: and like I just have to walk through her orbit
Speaker 4: just a little bit, and she's like space and like
Speaker 4: all right, all right, can I like walk around here?
Speaker 3: And she's like yeah, but you like you can't look
Speaker 3: at me.
Speaker 4: But it was just like her being able to like
Speaker 4: set this like really healthy thing, right, like this is
Speaker 4: this is where I end, and you begin over here,
Speaker 4: but like don't come this is me.
Speaker 3: Don't don't infringe, And that's her identity.
Speaker 4: I think with my son, when there are opportunities for
Speaker 4: him to, you know, of course, like set up his
Speaker 4: own room and so on and so forth, but if
Speaker 4: they're like simple things to do in the house, like
Speaker 4: we have a woodstairs that are a little slippery, and
Speaker 4: so I just wanted to put some carpet tiles on
Speaker 4: them so that people wouldn't fall.
Speaker 3: And I asked my son, like what color do you want?
Speaker 4: And you know, then they just stick on and he
Speaker 4: helped put them on. But I mean he was like
Speaker 4: totally bought into that. You could see his you know,
Speaker 4: his self confidence lifting. But I think it also probably
Speaker 4: makes him like the space better and feel more bought in.
Speaker 4: So I think it's like trying to give them these
Speaker 4: agency opportunities where they make sense, right, I'm not letting
Speaker 4: him decide the you know, what color to paint the
Speaker 4: walls or to do it himself. But it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: now he can be involved and I can give him
Speaker 4: this agency, and he's going to feel a greater connection
Speaker 4: to the space and more agency, which is going to
Speaker 4: help him in a lot of different other ways.
Speaker 1: My sister in law, when we go out and eat
Speaker 1: with her kids, she's like, Lena, do you want chicken
Speaker 1: nuggets or do you want a hamburger? It's not like,
Speaker 1: here's the entire menu, right.
Speaker 4: And I think that's you know, that's a strategy for kids,
Speaker 4: but it's also a strategy for ourselves. It's like well
Speaker 4: known that the more choices we have, like the worst
Speaker 4: the worst our decision is, and then the worst is
Speaker 4: we feel about it. So there's like this classic study
Speaker 4: of chocolate where people given six choices varieties of chocolate
Speaker 4: to choose from are happier with their choice than people
Speaker 4: giving thirty varieties, which included the subset of six.
Speaker 1: And is up just because if you have thirty you
Speaker 1: really have no idea. If you'll it's just overwhelming. You're like,
Speaker 1: there's no way I picked the right one if I
Speaker 1: have thirty, But with six, you go, yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a choice, and I think I might have picked the
Speaker 1: right one.
Speaker 3: I mean there's two parts.
Speaker 4: One is it's like there's just too much to consider
Speaker 4: with thirty and then there's the yeah, the fear of
Speaker 4: the fear of making having made the wrong decision afterwards. Right,
Speaker 4: there's all these ones that you're like, man, if I
Speaker 4: picked that one, I would have liked.
Speaker 3: The chocolate better. But that's just chocolate.
Speaker 4: And now you think about like the degrees of choice
Speaker 4: that there are when you're making your surrounding. If you're
Speaker 4: setting up your home office, be like, Okay, what are
Speaker 4: the three most important things in my home office and
Speaker 4: how am I going to design for those first? Before
Speaker 4: I get into all these things that you know, home
Speaker 4: depot or you know, the catalogs are trying to get
Speaker 4: you to start paying attention to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like focusing on the most important questions. You
Speaker 1: had a good example in your book about when you
Speaker 1: were was it the New Jersey school system you.
Speaker 2: Were working for, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Building schools, designing schools, and you talked about how people
Speaker 1: would get obsessed with the paint color on the wall.
Speaker 1: You'd be in these meetings and they'd be like rambling
Speaker 1: forever about the paint color and how did you But
Speaker 1: that was obviously wasn't going to be like a determinive art.
Speaker 1: Is this going to be a really good space for
Speaker 1: kids to learn? Right, Like one shade of white versus
Speaker 1: another probably not going to affect test scores. So how
Speaker 1: would you steer those conversations so they're more productive?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean I didn't do a good job with
Speaker 4: it at the time. I would like let the pink
Speaker 4: color go. But I think I think the way to
Speaker 4: steer it is Okay, So you know this situation.
Speaker 3: These are all well meaning.
Speaker 4: People, right There's teachers and superintendents and architects and engineers,
Speaker 4: and I think the issue there was the professionals, namely me,
Speaker 4: should have done a better job of being like, these
Speaker 4: are the important decisions right now. And if we could
Speaker 4: have said, look, we're here to talk about safety at
Speaker 4: drop off, right, and this is why the circulation in
Speaker 4: front of the school matters. Here's fencing, but here's other
Speaker 4: options to help with safety at drop off, and here
Speaker 4: are the key decisions we really need you to focus
Speaker 4: on and kind of boiled down the technical stuff to okay,
Speaker 4: this is what matters now. Then the people that we
Speaker 4: had assembled would have been able to appine on things
Speaker 4: that actually mattered for the design at that point. So
Speaker 4: I mean the general principle there is like what are
Speaker 4: the what are the important decisions and you know, making
Speaker 4: them kind of manageable for people. Because one of the
Speaker 4: reasons we focus on the paint colors is I mean,
Speaker 4: it's it's very salient, but it's also we have this
Speaker 4: like tendency when we're making decisions to focus on the
Speaker 4: decisions that are like certain and.
Speaker 3: We know that we can actually make them. So the
Speaker 3: pink color.
Speaker 4: If you say we're going to have blue walls, you
Speaker 4: know what blue walls look like, and you know that's
Speaker 4: a different like that's certain, even though it, like you said,
Speaker 4: doesn't actually matter. At least we feel like we've done
Speaker 4: something and had an impact. When we need to like
Speaker 4: really fight that tendency when it comes to our spaces
Speaker 4: because so many of the decisions we can make you're
Speaker 4: not I mean with safety, you know, going back to
Speaker 4: safety and like the circulation patterns you're going to you're
Speaker 4: going to make it safer if you do the right thing,
Speaker 4: but it's you know, you know, twenty collisions instead of
Speaker 4: two hundred and you know that's going to happen over time,
Speaker 4: the outcome is not nearly as certain.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Do you feel like this manifests itself?
Speaker 1: If you're thinking about how do I my office or
Speaker 1: workspace better for productivity? What do you feel like are
Speaker 1: the most important things for people? Does it all just
Speaker 1: go back to agency or like are there sort of
Speaker 1: hallmarks where you see most people most of the time
Speaker 1: tend to do better in a space like X.
Speaker 4: I think it's like agency growth in connection, right, It's
Speaker 4: like again, if you're going to filter it through three things,
Speaker 4: filter it through those three and so I mean we've
Speaker 4: talked about agency and that you know that could be
Speaker 4: the design itself. Growth is interesting because it's not static, right,
Speaker 4: So like the space that you're in, you know, it
Speaker 4: works for a couple of years, and then you're kind
Speaker 4: of like, all right, I'm not it's not challenging me, right,
Speaker 4: And this is often why we renovate. We just a
Speaker 4: new backsplash, It's going to make my life so much better,
Speaker 4: and then like the novelty wears off and you have
Speaker 4: to make another new new bike, new backslash. But I
Speaker 4: think there's other ways to like kind of grow and
Speaker 4: in your space, right, And it's like you can rearrange things.
Speaker 3: You can think about like.
Speaker 4: Okay, what are they you know, what are the pictures?
Speaker 4: And do I want to have new artwork or do
Speaker 4: I want to you know, now that I'm doing writing
Speaker 4: with a treadmill desk, you know, should my desk be
Speaker 4: in a different spot. Those kinds of things are like
Speaker 4: small ways to keep growing with your space. And so
Speaker 4: I think and then connection, right, and I think your
Speaker 4: men's health example is a really great example of that
Speaker 4: where it's like, you know, this the reason that the office,
Speaker 4: the new office design didn't work it was the wrong
Speaker 4: amount of connection, right, And you like people, but writing
Speaker 4: is really hard to do with people all around you.
Speaker 4: And so just being conscious of like, Okay, what do
Speaker 4: I need from this space in terms of the amount
Speaker 4: of connection and how do I set up the space
Speaker 4: to get it? And I'm sorry to not have like
Speaker 4: a kind of wirecutter hack, but it's.
Speaker 3: It's it's really not. It's individual.
Speaker 4: But it's like those those needs are basic, right, Those
Speaker 4: needs are basic, as basic to all of us as anything,
Speaker 4: and then how you meet those needs is going to
Speaker 4: be individual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've always struggled with.
Speaker 1: Trying to remove extraneous stimulation from my office. So there's
Speaker 1: not you know, the metaphorical squirrel darting in my office
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to write, and I'm like, oh, but
Speaker 1: this thing and that thing, and then also not having
Speaker 1: it feel like a prison at the same time. How
Speaker 1: did writing this book, I guess, like, what was the
Speaker 1: space where you would write this book? And how did
Speaker 1: did your ideas on where you worked best change at
Speaker 1: all when you were writing this?
Speaker 4: So for me, I like, there's a variety of spaces
Speaker 4: that I mean, I like the university campus. I go
Speaker 4: to different buildings, but there's not like I'll go to
Speaker 4: this building to write this kind of thing or this
Speaker 4: building to write this kind of thing. I totally agree
Speaker 4: with the distraction thing, right, Like, the spatial distractions are
Speaker 4: a much bigger risk for me than not having the
Speaker 4: space be exciting enough, and so eliminating those is important.
Speaker 4: Every writer talks about this, But like the balance between
Speaker 4: like sitting and moving right, you know, some of the
Speaker 4: easiest way to get unstuck is by just getting up
Speaker 4: and going for a walk, even if it's a really
Speaker 4: small one. At the same time, you just got to
Speaker 4: have your butt in the chair for a certain amount
Speaker 4: of time. I mean that like the ideas have to
Speaker 4: you have to spend the time thinking about them and
Speaker 4: try and struggling with it for those walks to be useful.
Speaker 4: But thinking about like the the balance between those things
Speaker 4: is important. And then I mean going back to the
Speaker 4: professional athlete stuff, it's like the the the mindset is
Speaker 4: so dependent on you know, if I can run and
Speaker 4: then get coffee, I am like that's my best time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense. Did you as you were writing this,
Speaker 1: did you change your mind on anything? I found that
Speaker 1: when I write books, there's often I'll often go into
Speaker 1: it with one idea and then like, oh, I actually
Speaker 1: think something different after having done all this research.
Speaker 4: The idea that these psychological needs arguably came from our
Speaker 4: relationship with space aren't just like it's not just another
Speaker 4: way to meet them. It's like they actually came from
Speaker 4: That was just blew my mind. And it's like in
Speaker 4: a lot of it's just everywhere in their research. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's there's the neuroscience research that shows that like our
Speaker 4: spatial networks, like the spatial networks in our brain, those
Speaker 4: are the ones that then got adapted to map our
Speaker 4: connections with other people.
Speaker 1: That makes me think of So you point out on
Speaker 1: the book, how there's this really beautiful building on your
Speaker 1: campus that you walk past.
Speaker 3: It's a memorial gym.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's like it looks like there should be
Speaker 4: Roman baths inside. It's like Beaux Arts, which is an
Speaker 4: architectural style, and it's also like historically significant. I mean
Speaker 4: like the after World War One, the students like donated
Speaker 4: a third of that money to their fallen classmates, right,
Speaker 4: I mean edge. And then in World War Two, Roosevelt
Speaker 4: was here because some like his nephew was graduating or something,
Speaker 4: and he's supposed to just give the commencement address, but
Speaker 4: then something happened in Europe and so it was basically
Speaker 4: his commencement address was like we're going to be in
Speaker 4: war in Europe, and.
Speaker 3: So all these people heard this speech.
Speaker 4: So it's like historically significant, beautiful and sticks out. It's
Speaker 4: like next to tennis courts and open fields.
Speaker 1: It made me think about this, the difference between spaces
Speaker 1: like that that I think were more frequent in the
Speaker 1: past where they're kind of unique, and spaces we have
Speaker 1: now where there's almost a creeping sameness setting in the
Speaker 1: example I like to give is coffee shops. So if
Speaker 1: you go into like a good coffee shop, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you go into the good coffee shop in
Speaker 1: Tokyo or New York City or Mexico City or one
Speaker 1: US are is they all have the same vibe. It's
Speaker 1: all like minimalist, not much in there. It's like you
Speaker 1: could get planted in any one and you'd be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know where I am. It could be the
Speaker 1: one at home I go to. It could I don't
Speaker 1: know where I am. What do you think about that? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you think is driving this sort of like
Speaker 1: sameness you have? And you I think in the book
Speaker 1: you use the example of hotels. How there's like kind
Speaker 1: of hotels are all kind of the same.
Speaker 4: So I mean there's a level of comfort with like familiarity, right,
Speaker 4: Like we the reason hotel chain, like you book a
Speaker 4: Marriott because you know what a Mariat is going to be, right,
Speaker 4: And so I think that same thing could be happening
Speaker 4: with the level of sameness in the spaces, is people
Speaker 4: realize that like, okay, people are going to be more
Speaker 4: immediately comfortable in this coffee shop if it's exactly like
Speaker 4: the coffee shop that is where you know, like like
Speaker 4: the coffee shop in the last.
Speaker 3: City where they were.
Speaker 4: The other side of that coin is that that's like
Speaker 4: you know, in this aligns with a lot of your writing, right,
Speaker 4: that's like an opportunity for Grill. It's like a small
Speaker 4: amount of discomfort that would actually be better for us
Speaker 4: in the long run. I think of it as like
Speaker 4: when you go on vacation to a new spot, for example,
Speaker 4: like we talked about the Jersey Shore before I go
Speaker 4: to the Outer Banks. That's like closer to where I
Speaker 4: live now. Sometimes like this sucks. It's like doesn't seem
Speaker 4: like the Jersey Shore and it's just like the it's
Speaker 4: fundamentally the same geography, but the built environment is like
Speaker 4: slightly different, and I'm just not used to it. But
Speaker 4: then once I go for a run and realize, like, okay,
Speaker 4: like there's no boardwalk, but actually the place where you
Speaker 4: walk is like along the beach and that's cool, And
Speaker 4: there's no amusement park, but there's a soccer field right
Speaker 4: over here that the kids are going to love. And
Speaker 4: now I'm like, okay, I'm comfortable at the Jersey Shore.
Speaker 4: And the outer bank. So it's like this growth opportunity
Speaker 4: from a slightly different space, but it took you know,
Speaker 4: a day or a run to become familiar with it
Speaker 4: and then therefore feel more comfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like you had to you had to get
Speaker 1: out and explore the environment instead of just kind of
Speaker 1: doing what was easiest in the moment.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 4: That's the fastest way to do it, right, is like,
Speaker 4: just get out there and explore it, and then you
Speaker 4: will become comfortable.
Speaker 1: Like something I'll do in Las Vegas is I stopped
Speaker 1: using GPS so much when I'm trying to get somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's like, Okay, we're going to this restaurant in Chinatown.
Speaker 1: I generally know how to get to Chinatown. I kind
Speaker 1: of know the crosstreets of this place, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to put it in GPS. I'm going to figure
Speaker 1: it out along the way. And that has forced me
Speaker 1: to have to pay so much more attention to the
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and the streets, and in doing that, I find
Speaker 1: myself picking up like, oh, I didn't know that that
Speaker 1: place was here. I didn't know that place was I'm
Speaker 1: going to check that out, So I'm just a lot
Speaker 1: more aware of my surroundings by not just immediately defaulting
Speaker 1: to an algorithm saying this is absolutely the most efficient
Speaker 1: way to get there. Just follow the blue dot, Just
Speaker 1: follow the line. Don't pay attention to anything but the
Speaker 1: line and the car.
Speaker 2: How do you? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And i'd also is like your brain as being like
Speaker 4: when you're on GPS, it's like your brain has gone
Speaker 4: to the screen instead of to your surroundings, and it's
Speaker 4: like the screen is two dimensional and doesn't smell like anything,
Speaker 4: it doesn't taste like anything, it doesn't sound like much,
Speaker 4: and you know you're taking you out of like all
Speaker 4: of these other senses.
Speaker 1: Did you change anything about the spaces that you frequent
Speaker 1: most after writing this? Like a renovation cruise at your
Speaker 1: house right now, just like overhauling everything or what not?
Speaker 3: Renovation cruise?
Speaker 4: I mean, the decluttering is like a really easy one
Speaker 4: if you really like go into the entrance of your
Speaker 4: door and then like walk into wherever you congregate and
Speaker 4: think about like how other people are going to experience that.
Speaker 4: For me at least, there's like a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: that it's like, oh, I don't want them to see
Speaker 4: that before they interact with me, right, And just streamlining
Speaker 4: that kind of thing is just something that I've definitely
Speaker 4: done that.
Speaker 2: Was really useful for me to think about.
Speaker 1: And I think you used a great example in the
Speaker 1: book of a realtor who will kind of like walk
Speaker 1: into space.
Speaker 2: What are you saying?
Speaker 1: And I think we get it's so habituated to walking
Speaker 1: in and out of our house, we don't think about
Speaker 1: how do other people who have never been here experience this?
Speaker 1: And to your point, it's like if you have all
Speaker 1: this stuff, like that's where their eye is going to
Speaker 1: get drawn and it starts to change the interaction you're
Speaker 1: going to have with that person in a way. So
Speaker 1: it's almost like you have to like the places you
Speaker 1: most frequent. It's almost like you have to try and
Speaker 1: wipe the slate claim go into them anew like what
Speaker 1: am I picking up here, and just spend time thinking
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the realtor also she would like close her eyes
Speaker 4: so that she could like, like the smell, then tap
Speaker 4: more into the smells and the sounds, because those are
Speaker 4: things that we tend to know we just too now, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, there are all these studies showing that people
Speaker 4: who are in like a noisy office environment like yours.
Speaker 4: Men's health, they're like more stress at the end of
Speaker 4: the day, even if they can't tell.
Speaker 3: You that their office environment was more noisy.
Speaker 4: So like, by tapping into those senses, you're realizing you're
Speaker 4: more aware of what's going on and you can notice
Speaker 4: good thing like if it's birds singing or you know,
Speaker 4: pleasant smells. But you can also notice bad things that
Speaker 4: you can then get rid of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that the example you just gave is great.
Speaker 1: I remember there's this one study I came upon when
Speaker 1: I was reporting a book, and it basically took groups
Speaker 1: and had some of them do work in an open
Speaker 1: concept office that was louder. The other group did work
Speaker 1: in a quiet office. Both groups said, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: did I did good work. I wasn't affected. Things are great.
Speaker 1: But when they looked at the actual what they had produced,
Speaker 1: the group who was not as in the noise and
Speaker 1: in the chaos actually had a lot better quality work
Speaker 1: and we're able to do more. So I think, to
Speaker 1: your point, we don't realize a lot of these things
Speaker 1: are affecting us at all, but they are.
Speaker 3: Right right, Yeah, exactly. That's a fascinating study.
Speaker 2: I should have.
Speaker 1: I should have taken that study up to my editor
Speaker 1: in chief and I'm like, look, man, science, I need
Speaker 1: my damn office back, like right now, right now. What
Speaker 1: is like one for kind of one big takeaway before
Speaker 1: we end? What is like one thing people can use
Speaker 1: immediately that you learned in your book?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Does it go back to agency or like what is
Speaker 1: that someone says like, okay, what's one thing I can
Speaker 1: do from reading your book?
Speaker 3: Maybe space before screen?
Speaker 2: Tell us about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the idea is just.
Speaker 4: That like we don't pay enough attention to our spaces,
Speaker 4: like you said, and it's like, all right, well, obviously
Speaker 4: we're like on screens all the time, and spaces do
Speaker 4: all these beautiful things for us that the screens cannot.
Speaker 4: So instead of like fighting that, maybe connect the two
Speaker 4: and it's just like, all right, when you're drawn to
Speaker 4: like look at your phone, use that as a queue
Speaker 4: to be like, have I actually engaged with the space
Speaker 4: that's around me? Have I paid attention to the space
Speaker 4: that I'm in? And I think for me at least
Speaker 4: that goes a long way towards uh yeah, towards number one,
Speaker 4: like getting off my phone. But number two, just like
Speaker 4: appreciating the magic of even a very simple space will
Speaker 4: have cool stuff that you've never noticed about it. And
Speaker 4: I think that's that's a cool useful tip that people have.
Speaker 4: It sounds like early readers have enjoyed and it's been
Speaker 4: sticky for them.
Speaker 1: Do you have a room in your house where you
Speaker 1: don't have screens purposely?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: God, this this Uh sorry, I'm kind of rant now.
Speaker 3: It's like, so I love I mean, I love. Uh.
Speaker 4: There's this new book called The Amazing Generation by Katherine
Speaker 4: Price and Jonathan Hey I and uh like it's meant
Speaker 4: for tweens and it's about like screen time and it's
Speaker 4: just like my son's eleven.
Speaker 3: He like stopped reading Harry Potter.
Speaker 4: It was so interesting to him, and then we had
Speaker 4: a conversation about screens. He's like, you can't let me
Speaker 4: get a phone until I'm like this age. But he
Speaker 4: like really understood it and it was like interesting to him.
Speaker 3: So great book.
Speaker 4: And then I like read a nice post about it
Speaker 4: on LinkedIn and then you know they liked it. And
Speaker 4: then as a result of that, there I'm seeing their
Speaker 4: stuff in my feet and then I see Catherine by
Speaker 4: saying like suggesting we should have one room that's screen free,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, that's the opposite. We should have like
Speaker 4: one room that has the screens.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So that's what I've tried to do in my house.
Speaker 4: It's like, okay, like we have a huge TV.
Speaker 3: It's awesome.
Speaker 4: We can like watch soccer games and it's like the
Speaker 4: players are bigger than we are on the TV. But
Speaker 4: we that's the screen room, right, And I try to
Speaker 4: put my phone in there when I come in and
Speaker 4: try that's where he has to play on his iPad
Speaker 4: and and all the other rooms are are screen free,
Speaker 4: so I do think, yeah, use the space, and but
Speaker 4: I would argue for like one screen room instead of
Speaker 4: one screen free room. I just thought it was like
Speaker 4: super ironic that we've come so far that that was
Speaker 4: like the suggestion from the.
Speaker 3: Anti screen people.
Speaker 4: It's like, just what this one little room you can
Speaker 4: go in and get away from them.
Speaker 2: Totally. I love it. Well, this was awesome talking to you.
Speaker 1: The new book is fantastic, and I also recommend Subtract.
Speaker 1: That's a great one. And I love the work you do.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you taking the time coming on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me, Michael. This is super fun.
Speaker 3: It's always a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for checking out the show, and thanks to Lighty
Speaker 1: for coming on. We are in your feeds twice a week,
Speaker 1: so please keep an eye out for more and we
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