Speaker 1: If in your spare time you're exposing yourself to new information,
Speaker 1: new kinds of people, and new situations, your intuition is
Speaker 1: going to get better. If you're stuck in the same
Speaker 1: kind of environments, your intuition is going to get worse
Speaker 1: and worse and worse. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Jonah Sachs and authors, speaker, and viral marketing trailblazer,
Speaker 1: who helped spur the Century values Revolution, which brought the
Speaker 1: ideas of social change to the forefront of business and
Speaker 1: popular culture. Jonah's work has been featured in The New
Speaker 1: York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, NPR, and
Speaker 1: many others. He also pends a column for Fast Company,
Speaker 1: which named him one of Today's fifty most Influential Social Innovators. Today,
Speaker 1: Eric and Jonah discussed many things, including his book Unsafe Thinking,
Speaker 1: How to be nimble and bold when you need it most. Hi, Jonah,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks Eric, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to talk with you about a couple
Speaker 1: of different things. We're gonna talk about your organization, one project,
Speaker 1: and a book that you helped put together called The
Speaker 1: New Possible. And we're also going to talk about a
Speaker 1: book you wrote called Unsafe Thinking, How to be nimble
Speaker 1: and bold when you need it the most. But before
Speaker 1: we get into all that, we'll start, like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear, and the grandson stops thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second. He looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Well, I'll start by saying that I love
Speaker 1: this parable. I've done a lot of teaching about storytelling,
Speaker 1: and I think this is one of the best examples
Speaker 1: of how a simple story can access so much innate
Speaker 1: wisdom inside of us. So I've thought about it from
Speaker 1: many angles, and there's many obvious angles, But the one
Speaker 1: that comes up for me that I think is maybe
Speaker 1: a bit more unique is it points to the enormous
Speaker 1: creative potential in each of us to decide what we're
Speaker 1: going to bring forth in the world. And I have
Speaker 1: a golden retriever, so a kind of a wolf, you
Speaker 1: might say, And the more that I feed her, the
Speaker 1: more she comes up to the table expecting more and
Speaker 1: more and more. And so what I think is that
Speaker 1: it's not just about the good and the bad. It's
Speaker 1: about the habits that form as we feed parts of ourselves,
Speaker 1: as we engage in those habits, they get easier and
Speaker 1: easier because they're coming up to the table. And the
Speaker 1: part that we're not feeding is you know, often the
Speaker 1: distance are cowering because we're not feeding it. So it's
Speaker 1: not just about good and bad. It's also about the
Speaker 1: unexplored parts of ourselves and really thinking about that automatic
Speaker 1: feeding that we're doing of certain capacities and the capacities
Speaker 1: that maybe we're not feeding as much as well. I
Speaker 1: believe that our creative potential comes when we start also
Speaker 1: feeding the capacities on that kind of shadows side. So
Speaker 1: it's a simple morality play on one hand, but also
Speaker 1: talks about the incredible inherent capacity within all of us
Speaker 1: holistically from feeding all of our abilities. I love that.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good interpretation, and I agree.
Speaker 1: I think so much of this is about recognizing what
Speaker 1: our habitual patterns are and becoming more intentional about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, engaging in habitual behavior feels really good, it's
Speaker 1: really easy, and you feel in that kind of groove
Speaker 1: when you're doing it. But like when a groove becomes
Speaker 1: a rut, that's always the hard thing. To figure out
Speaker 1: and doing anything outside of your comfort zone takes a
Speaker 1: huge amount of effort and work, and it's always uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of over there that the growth really happens.
Speaker 1: And that's been a lot of my struggle and my
Speaker 1: work in my life is to figure out how to
Speaker 1: access outside of that zone of comfort. Yeah. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start by talking about the organization that you're
Speaker 1: currently involved in and running, which is called One Project.
Speaker 1: Can you just tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: One Project is? Yeah? So One Project is a kind
Speaker 1: of startup venture. My partner in the venture is Justin Rosenstein.
Speaker 1: He's the inventor of the like button for Facebook and
Speaker 1: inventor of Google Drive, and he's been creating all of
Speaker 1: these tools to help humanity collaborate better. But in each
Speaker 1: of those inventions, he's found that the world doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: get better just because people collaborate more. It's like, what
Speaker 1: are we collaborating on. We can use the like button
Speaker 1: to share love with our friends, but we can also
Speaker 1: use it to create all these terrible, unintended consequences of
Speaker 1: surveillance capitalism. So he stepped away from his work and
Speaker 1: joined up with me to try to figure out how
Speaker 1: to use human collaboration to address those root causes of
Speaker 1: global crises right now, and we see those as a
Speaker 1: broken democratic system and a broken economic system. Basically, the
Speaker 1: capitalism that we engage in right now and the type
Speaker 1: of representative democracy we use are kind of like eighteenth
Speaker 1: century technologies, and all of the technologies for communication and
Speaker 1: for consumerism have grown incredibly quickly, while we're still going
Speaker 1: to the ballot box using pretty much the same tools
Speaker 1: that we used the founding of our nation. And so
Speaker 1: we think for democracy to survive, it needs to upgrade itself.
Speaker 1: For this planet to survive, we need a kind of
Speaker 1: economy that she's not just based on profit, but based
Speaker 1: on human goals. Now, none of that was really possible
Speaker 1: to do a couple hundred years ago, Like how are
Speaker 1: you going to figure out what human goals are when
Speaker 1: you can't even communicate with someone who lose five miles away.
Speaker 1: But now that humanity is kind of global, we're looking
Speaker 1: for ways to move beyond capitalism to think of ways
Speaker 1: that humanity can achieve its goals in a sustainable way
Speaker 1: that drives equity and drives kind of outcomes we want.
Speaker 1: And so that's a giant mission that we have. But
Speaker 1: what we're specifically doing is working in communities who are
Speaker 1: trying to manage resources, trying to manage themselves in new
Speaker 1: ways to be more equitable and more just more sustainable,
Speaker 1: studying what their problems are and seeing how our donations
Speaker 1: and money and also our technologies that we're producing can
Speaker 1: help them step outside of those traditional models and do
Speaker 1: things in a better way. Yeah. I first became exposed
Speaker 1: to your work through a book that you guys put
Speaker 1: together called The New Possible, which I really loved because
Speaker 1: so many of the books about these topics that you're
Speaker 1: talking about are, at least to me, they're very problem focused. Right,
Speaker 1: A lot of us, I think, understand some of the
Speaker 1: current problems. What's broken? You know, it's pretty clear, you know,
Speaker 1: I think democracy is not working very well, the economy
Speaker 1: is only working well for very few and so pretty
Speaker 1: clear problem statements, but not a lot of solutions. And
Speaker 1: I love that this book put together some of the
Speaker 1: best thinking on solutions that I had seen in a while,
Speaker 1: and I found it a really inspiring read. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: We try to pull together global leaders to provide a
Speaker 1: kind of sense of what could be the whole world
Speaker 1: got shaken up by coronavirus, and what we've been through
Speaker 1: over the last year, I think we all learned that
Speaker 1: different ways are possible when foisted upon us, and that
Speaker 1: we actually can change as communities. It's brought some of
Speaker 1: the best in US and of course some of the
Speaker 1: worst in US um but I think it's brought out
Speaker 1: a lot more good than it's brought out bad in
Speaker 1: the human condition in terms of what we're capable of.
Speaker 1: And so we wanted to put forth some visions of
Speaker 1: like what a food system could look like, what community
Speaker 1: based economic systems could look like, what systems of collaboration
Speaker 1: might look like if we decide to go forward instead
Speaker 1: of going back to the old way. And I think
Speaker 1: that window has opened up where that discussion of how
Speaker 1: to do things differently is pretty alive in US right now.
Speaker 1: What we want to do at one project is not
Speaker 1: just provide that vision of like, oh, wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: great if we had local food food systems. We want
Speaker 1: to figure out how do we make local food systems
Speaker 1: economically competitive with global food systems. How do we build
Speaker 1: tools so that any farmer can team up with fifty
Speaker 1: other farmers and get their produce to market and maybe
Speaker 1: eventually not even sell that produce for you know, cash,
Speaker 1: but sell it for some other kind of credits that
Speaker 1: are more collaborative than we currently use. So we're looking
Speaker 1: fifty years into the future, which again seems crazy at times,
Speaker 1: but I think scientists are telling us that we have
Speaker 1: fifty or twenty years to turn this thing around, and
Speaker 1: if you really look at it, our current systems do
Speaker 1: not offer a credible path to a sustainable future at
Speaker 1: this point. I believe it's an essay in the book,
Speaker 1: and it's on your website called the Architecture of Abundance,
Speaker 1: And I love the way you go into it because
Speaker 1: you're basically telling the story from somebody who is thirty
Speaker 1: years in the future, and this woman, it's from a
Speaker 1: woman's perspective, is sort of looking back at our time
Speaker 1: today and thinking how was life like that? And it
Speaker 1: paints this really great picture of what could be. It's
Speaker 1: a really compelling way in well, thank you again. My
Speaker 1: background is in storytelling and in turning social change into
Speaker 1: compelling narratives. I was an experimenter in the early days
Speaker 1: of the Internet, spreading stories about factory farming and the
Speaker 1: spoof of the matrix called the Metrix about the harms
Speaker 1: of factory farming. I did a movie called Story of
Speaker 1: Stuff about the problems with over consumption, and by telling
Speaker 1: these kind of stories, I was getting tens of millions
Speaker 1: of people to engage with these somewhat dry social messages
Speaker 1: and learning how story based communication can really activate someone's
Speaker 1: imagination on these tough topics. Is a kind of superpower
Speaker 1: of mine, or a super belief of mine. I'll say, like,
Speaker 1: this is how you do it. So what we try
Speaker 1: to do is say, imagine you're living in this future.
Speaker 1: You know, what does it feel like to participate in
Speaker 1: setting goals for saying? You know, I want to see
Speaker 1: nature come back. I want to see global levels of
Speaker 1: equity increasing by five percent every year. And what if
Speaker 1: we all got together and really talked about what mattered
Speaker 1: most to us instead of this myth where if we
Speaker 1: all just pursue our own self interest it will all
Speaker 1: sort of work out. I mean, that produced a lot
Speaker 1: of abundance for a long time, but we're hitting up
Speaker 1: against limits that we can no longer ignore. So what
Speaker 1: we try to do with that essay will show how satisfying,
Speaker 1: how lovely how exciting it might feel to be part
Speaker 1: of a global effort that's actually working, not just shaking
Speaker 1: your fist at the establishment, but being a citizen that
Speaker 1: is engaging with those solutions. And as a far ideal,
Speaker 1: we're actually trying to build software and trying to build
Speaker 1: in our personal social technology that lets communities do exactly
Speaker 1: that instead of having a profit based economy, start to
Speaker 1: build goals based economies and maybe just doing it a
Speaker 1: small community at the time. But that's what we're experimenting with.
Speaker 1: You know, we're brand new, we're just starting out, but
Speaker 1: we're already making our way pretty well in the world.
Speaker 1: And this isn't exactly what your organization does, but I'd
Speaker 1: like to at least get your insight on it, which
Speaker 1: is what can individuals who want to see change? What
Speaker 1: are places that people can get involved? Because I feel
Speaker 1: like there is a tremendous untapped desire for change, and
Speaker 1: yet there's a lot of I'm not really sure what
Speaker 1: the heck to do, and I know that there's not
Speaker 1: simple global answers for what everybody can do. I'm not
Speaker 1: asking you to be like, well, you just do these
Speaker 1: three steps, but I guess I'd be more interested in
Speaker 1: the way you might think about. Okay, people who care,
Speaker 1: what are ways that they can start thinking about how
Speaker 1: they can contribute. Yeah, I think that the way that
Speaker 1: we're taught to make social change is in two spaces. Essentially,
Speaker 1: we'll call it three. So one is the most obvious.
Speaker 1: You know, get out there and vote every four years
Speaker 1: or every two years and express your voice at the polls.
Speaker 1: And that's just kind of like, that's like showery once
Speaker 1: a week. That's kind of the minimum hygiene you need
Speaker 1: to do to be a citizen. My friend Annie Leonard
Speaker 1: from Story of Stuff taught me that that's just the
Speaker 1: most basic we got to do that. The second is
Speaker 1: you know, giving money, right the redistribution. If you have money,
Speaker 1: you know, give some of it away. Totally agree. I
Speaker 1: talk to a lot of people who don't really realize
Speaker 1: that there's been this sort of time on a tradition
Speaker 1: in many religions and cultures of giving ten percent of
Speaker 1: your wealth away every year. That seems like a lot
Speaker 1: too many people. I think that's the kind of the
Speaker 1: second minimum is to really give back if you have it,
Speaker 1: and if you don't, of course you can't, so that's
Speaker 1: a second. The third is, you know, to see what's
Speaker 1: wrong and raise your voice out in the world. You know,
Speaker 1: get out there and protest, stand out in the streets,
Speaker 1: or write a letter and engage with the political process
Speaker 1: in that way that obviously we've seen around the country
Speaker 1: that can make change as well. But that's a sort
Speaker 1: of sporadic kind of thing that we do. It's performative,
Speaker 1: it's exciting. It's not really building the new, it's kind
Speaker 1: of trying to tear down the old. Also important. There's
Speaker 1: a fourth thing that I think we don't think about
Speaker 1: enough because it sometimes feels too small and it sometimes
Speaker 1: feels like it's just a drop in the bucket, but
Speaker 1: it actually is how we begin to build those citizen
Speaker 1: muscles that make us more and more effective as change
Speaker 1: agents and really demonstrate the new. And you're seeing it
Speaker 1: a lot around COVID right now with these kind of
Speaker 1: mutual aid societies. Is one example, which is like, you
Speaker 1: don't need a big theory of change to change the world.
Speaker 1: Go out in your community and see what's not being done,
Speaker 1: See who needs a little bit of help in your community,
Speaker 1: and start just offering that help one on one two
Speaker 1: people bring your gifts in terms of volunteering to make
Speaker 1: a safer space in your community. If you think that
Speaker 1: there needs to be more equity in the world, figure
Speaker 1: out who in your community is basic needs are not
Speaker 1: being that and go out and feed some people. And
Speaker 1: in doing so, what happens is you get involved in
Speaker 1: a different kind of economic exchange. You're giving your time,
Speaker 1: you're giving your resources but not your financial resources, to
Speaker 1: new systems, and when you do, you start to meet
Speaker 1: other people who are meeting their needs outside of the
Speaker 1: traditional methods, and you're starting to kind of build these
Speaker 1: new economies. A lot of the most powerful they're they're
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar worker cooperatives out there in the world, like
Speaker 1: the Mondergone Corporation in Spain. They produce a huge amount
Speaker 1: of value and they're all owned not by investors, they're
Speaker 1: owned by their employees. These companies were built by people
Speaker 1: in small towns figuring out how to support each other
Speaker 1: little by little, and in doing so, eventually they started
Speaker 1: building businesses that they owned together. And now there's some
Speaker 1: of the biggest businesses in Europe. But their whole goal
Speaker 1: is to help build community health. So um, as simple
Speaker 1: as it may sound, is like, how do you get
Speaker 1: out there and give your gifts in your community one
Speaker 1: on one and when you do, you're going to start
Speaker 1: joining other communities of change. People also find this on
Speaker 1: the Internet in a lot of ways, to like the
Speaker 1: people who decided that they want to help build world
Speaker 1: knowledge by joining Wikipedia and becoming an editor. People who
Speaker 1: start to get involved in gift economies where you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's feeling belonging, it's feeling like you're part of something.
Speaker 1: It's so much better than getting paid for it. We
Speaker 1: were talking before the show about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1: Many of the things that we take the most joy
Speaker 1: in we never get paid a sent for and science
Speaker 1: shows that when we start paying people for the things
Speaker 1: they love, they stopped loving it and they stop wanting
Speaker 1: to do it anymore. So again, can you go out
Speaker 1: and find a sense of pleasure that doesn't involve economic exchange,
Speaker 1: that involve service, and that's how we start to build
Speaker 1: the seeds of the new economy. I think those are
Speaker 1: great ideas, and I like the idea of here are
Speaker 1: the different levels and different steps you can take. And
Speaker 1: I think that idea of just starting where you are
Speaker 1: in the community you're in with what you can do
Speaker 1: is so important because I think we get very hung
Speaker 1: up on having to do something really big, you know,
Speaker 1: We get very hung up in We've got to make
Speaker 1: this massive change, you know. And I think what that
Speaker 1: often does is stops us from making any change, because
Speaker 1: massive change is pretty hard to do if you're just
Speaker 1: a person, you know. And it's sort of a point
Speaker 1: we make on this show all the time around slightly
Speaker 1: different topics. But when you start stringing together little actions,
Speaker 1: little of this little that it builds it and accumulates,
Speaker 1: and it starts to build a momentum, and like you said,
Speaker 1: you start to meet other people and you're exposed to
Speaker 1: other ideas in other ways that you can participate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that we often get confused because we
Speaker 1: get burnt out from these little actions that don't make
Speaker 1: any change at all that we've been sold as our
Speaker 1: primary way of making change, which are these consumer actions
Speaker 1: like well, if you recycle or if you buy kind
Speaker 1: of better packaging or something like that, you're going to
Speaker 1: save the world. And that kind of seemed exciting for
Speaker 1: a minute when we were like, oh, better packaging, we
Speaker 1: kind of know that there's no amount of recycling, and
Speaker 1: then we hear that of recycling is just dumped in
Speaker 1: the ocean or whatever, and we start to realize that
Speaker 1: these little consumer actions are buying the green product is
Speaker 1: not really making the difference. I see a difference between
Speaker 1: what I would call kind of planting seeds and just
Speaker 1: individual consumer actions when you buy a green product or
Speaker 1: something like that, or try to cut down on the
Speaker 1: plastic in your house. That is a small piece, but
Speaker 1: it's not a social piece of what you're doing. It's
Speaker 1: I think all these changes are important, but all have
Speaker 1: to happen. But what's planting a seed is when you
Speaker 1: get out again into that community and you start interacting
Speaker 1: with other people in giving your gifts, and you start
Speaker 1: making it a part of your identity in your social life.
Speaker 1: That's where you're starting to build community and new opportunities
Speaker 1: open up, and the radical experience of giving as opposed
Speaker 1: to buying differently begins to transform you. I mean, even
Speaker 1: if it doesn't save the world, it makes you. Know.
Speaker 1: All these happiness studies show that service direct service makes
Speaker 1: us happier. So it's like a zero risk thing to
Speaker 1: do basically, but it points to how we begin to
Speaker 1: build these new economies of care as opposed to these
Speaker 1: economies of wealth. We're also learning so much from this pandemic.
Speaker 1: I'm learning it myself that working sixty hours a week
Speaker 1: doesn't feed our creativity just the way that we're on
Speaker 1: these tracks of working so hard. So we've all been
Speaker 1: forced to step back a little bit from work and
Speaker 1: work from home. And many economists think that we'll never
Speaker 1: have a sustainable economy until we all start working twenty
Speaker 1: hours a week, consuming less and having more time to
Speaker 1: do care work, to do community gardening, to be involved
Speaker 1: in volunteer work. And so in some ways, this radical
Speaker 1: act too, of d prioritizing some of your pay work
Speaker 1: for volunteer work and community work is also a step
Speaker 1: towards what has been really studied as a more sustainable economy,
Speaker 1: which is a whole other conversation we could have excellent
Speaker 1: I'd like to change directions a little bit here and
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about your book, Unsafe Thinking, how
Speaker 1: to be nimble and bold when you need it the most,
Speaker 1: Because I think that these acts were talking about our
Speaker 1: inherently creative acts to some degree, right, they need us
Speaker 1: to step outside of our comfort zone. And so I
Speaker 1: wanted to start with some of your working and safe
Speaker 1: thinking and really talk about what you refer to in
Speaker 1: there is the safe thinking cycle. Essentially, what feels good
Speaker 1: is to rely on what you know. What burns the
Speaker 1: least glucose in your brain is to rely on old
Speaker 1: patterns of thinking. And we think, well, I've had success
Speaker 1: in this way in the past, and so I'm going
Speaker 1: to fall back on that. And in some ways that
Speaker 1: makes sense, Like we can't just approach the world as
Speaker 1: an infant every day and try a million new approaches.
Speaker 1: But when the world around us changes really quickly, we
Speaker 1: start to get this sense that, like, maybe what I
Speaker 1: was doing two years ago is not still working. And
Speaker 1: the first response to that is usually not, well, who,
Speaker 1: I'll go try some new things. It's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of fear and stress. You see, you're heading for that cliff. Now,
Speaker 1: what happens in the brain when we get fear and
Speaker 1: stress something called cortical arousal. Cortical arousal starts to send
Speaker 1: stress hormones to your brain. It's really good for giving
Speaker 1: you energy and giving you motivation and drive, but it
Speaker 1: also does something kind of strange and not helpful in
Speaker 1: a world where change is important. So when we evolved
Speaker 1: on the African savannah, we would get a lot of
Speaker 1: cortical arousal when a lion would jump out at us, right,
Speaker 1: and the lion jumps out, and what happens is your
Speaker 1: peripheral vision shuts down, all your bodily systems shut down,
Speaker 1: and you get into this kind of stress response where
Speaker 1: you gain power and energy to do what you know
Speaker 1: will work, what you've done before, to fall back on instinct.
Speaker 1: And so what you do when you get stressed is
Speaker 1: you double down on that same thing you were doing
Speaker 1: before and you say, Okay, I'm gonna change. I know
Speaker 1: I'm gonna change, but WHOA not today because this is
Speaker 1: really crazy. This is just what I better take the
Speaker 1: safe fruit and you know that sort of works because
Speaker 1: it feels comfortable. But you know, you repeat that cycle
Speaker 1: five hundred times and now the world has changed around
Speaker 1: you so much at what you did before was irrelevant
Speaker 1: and your left clinging to this branch that is, you know,
Speaker 1: swiftly cracking and you can't let go of it. So
Speaker 1: that's what I call the safe thing cycle. You get stressed,
Speaker 1: stress makes you act in stereotypical ways. You get more
Speaker 1: stressed because you're not changing, and there's really no way
Speaker 1: to avoid that. That That is a physiological response. So I
Speaker 1: studied a lot of the science like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: how does anyone ever get out of this? And what
Speaker 1: it turns out is the only way to get out
Speaker 1: of it. And I use the story of Mahatma Gandhi,
Speaker 1: who you know, was incredibly shy, incredibly had no ability
Speaker 1: to speak in public. He got thrown out of being
Speaker 1: a lawyer in Indian had a runaway because he couldn't
Speaker 1: even speak up in court, and when that fear would
Speaker 1: rise up in him, he would shut down. And on
Speaker 1: a train trip across South Africa, where he had fled
Speaker 1: after failing in India, when he was kicked off a
Speaker 1: train for being a person of color freezing on the platform,
Speaker 1: he felt that fear and that shut down, and he
Speaker 1: promised himself that in that moment he was going to
Speaker 1: take that sense of fear and use it as his
Speaker 1: kind of power. He was gonna say, from now on,
Speaker 1: when I get stressed, I'm going to see that that
Speaker 1: means that I'm on the edge of some potential creative breakthrough.
Speaker 1: And he spoke about how he used that then to
Speaker 1: keep putting himself in the most risky situations he could
Speaker 1: and build more and more personal power. And so the
Speaker 1: way out of this. The more that we try to
Speaker 1: press down feelings we don't like, the more those feelings
Speaker 1: tend to well up. So you can't stop your stress.
Speaker 1: But if you start to reframe stress, take that moment
Speaker 1: when you're feeling that arousal and say, oh, this is
Speaker 1: a sign that there's an opportunity opening up for me
Speaker 1: here when I'm outside of my comfort zone. This is
Speaker 1: a moment for creativity. And you start to reinterpret those signals,
Speaker 1: you can get out of that safe thinking cycle. So basically, now,
Speaker 1: whenever I feel stressed out and overwhelmed, I pause and
Speaker 1: asked myself, am I feeling stressed out and overwhelm because
Speaker 1: I'm trying something new? And if I'm trying something new,
Speaker 1: I'm in a situation that demands newness from me. I
Speaker 1: can use that as energy to get into what I
Speaker 1: call unsafe thinking, which yeah, does involve more risk, but
Speaker 1: also gets out of that stereotypical cycle that kind of
Speaker 1: tends to break us down. That story of Gandhi is
Speaker 1: so inspirational to think of somebody who became so influential
Speaker 1: as starting from being so afraid. And he said he
Speaker 1: never lost that fear, he never got rid of it.
Speaker 1: He never liked to go to parties. He was still
Speaker 1: afraid that he would be rejected. But every time he
Speaker 1: felt that fear, it kind of doubled down his resolve
Speaker 1: to treat it in a way that was productive for
Speaker 1: himself for the world. Yeah, and you talk about Steven C.
Speaker 1: Hayes in that section of the book. He's been a
Speaker 1: guest on the show several times, and you know, you
Speaker 1: talk about his idea of how we think that we
Speaker 1: have a way of dealing with things in the external world.
Speaker 1: If there's something in the external world and we don't
Speaker 1: like it, if we can, we try and change it,
Speaker 1: but that when we apply that internally, we get stuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. There's all these great studies that I quote,
Speaker 1: and you know, Steven Hayes's work is really influential in
Speaker 1: my book. But they put participants in a study, they
Speaker 1: cause them pain. They put their arms in ice water,
Speaker 1: and they some of them they said, try not to
Speaker 1: feel this pain, and for the others they just said,
Speaker 1: you know, breathe and let it go, and the people
Speaker 1: who tried not to feel pain felt way more pain
Speaker 1: than the people who just kind of went with it.
Speaker 1: And so he uses that as a kind of an
Speaker 1: example of the more that you resist that fear. And
Speaker 1: this really is true in so many ways. Like I
Speaker 1: use this idea in the book, like what if Gandhi
Speaker 1: had said, every time I feel that fear, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do my best not to feel it. Right, he already
Speaker 1: tried that he ran away from India to South Africa.
Speaker 1: He would have just kept going smaller and smaller until
Speaker 1: he was a shut in, and then, you know what,
Speaker 1: he probably wouldn't feel that fear anymore until he realized
Speaker 1: that he was never leaving the house and his life
Speaker 1: had fallen apart. And then you have all this other
Speaker 1: kind of fear. So no matter how small you make
Speaker 1: your life, you're never gonna stop feeling that fear. And
Speaker 1: no matter how successful you are, I think you're still
Speaker 1: never gonna stop feeling that fear. But if you you know,
Speaker 1: interpreted as your friend essentially, which is you know it's
Speaker 1: hard work, uh, then your personal power starts to come out,
Speaker 1: your creative power. I guess that goes with feeding right, like,
Speaker 1: what are you going to feed? Right? Yeah? Right, And
Speaker 1: it's really that you said it. They're sort of accepting
Speaker 1: the fear, the anxiety, whatever the uncomfortable emotion is as
Speaker 1: being part of it and then reimagining it as fuel
Speaker 1: for creativity. We are not too long ago interviewed a
Speaker 1: woman named Lisa Feldman Barrett who has done a lot
Speaker 1: of really interesting research about how we construct emotions. We're
Speaker 1: taking bodily signals, were taking other cues, and we construct
Speaker 1: an emotion. And this is really powerful work in that
Speaker 1: it says, hey, we can choose to interpret these signals
Speaker 1: that our physiology is giving us in different ways. And
Speaker 1: I think it's that idea of oh, if I'm feeling afraid,
Speaker 1: that's a good sign. I'm pushing myself somewhere, that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're adding another level of clarity to it for
Speaker 1: sure that I hadn't quite thought of before. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like my hands are clammy, my heart's beating fast,
Speaker 1: I'm sweating. Those are all physiological signs of fear. If
Speaker 1: you can step back, you know, through meditation or just
Speaker 1: through awareness or studying heroes of yours like like Gandhi
Speaker 1: and seeing well, what's the step between that feeling and
Speaker 1: that reaction? Do I have agency between the feeling and
Speaker 1: the reaction? And the truth is that yes, we do.
Speaker 1: The problem is the safe thinking cycle, you know, puts
Speaker 1: these ruts in our brain where we skip over the
Speaker 1: agency part and just go right to reaction. And again
Speaker 1: it goes to the parable we started the show with.
Speaker 1: You have a choice of what aspect of this you feed,
Speaker 1: and that's where the power lies. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: certain they're not simple. We're not all going to become
Speaker 1: GANDHIA overnight. Not simple nor easy at all. And back
Speaker 1: to what we talked about earlier about how so much
Speaker 1: of life becomes habitual. These reactions are become entirely habitual.
Speaker 1: Fear turn away, anxiety turn away. It becomes so habitually,
Speaker 1: don't even know it's happening, you know. I write in
Speaker 1: the book also about this kind of idea of expertise,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really related to this, where you know,
Speaker 1: people try to stay in their zones of expertise, They
Speaker 1: try to stay where they think they know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And I just studied all this great research on the
Speaker 1: people who create the biggest creative opportunities are those who
Speaker 1: intentionally do things that they suck at, things that humble them,
Speaker 1: that they feel that they're bad at, they have nothing
Speaker 1: to prove. We make all these neurological connections where we're
Speaker 1: in that space where we're failing constantly, those early phases
Speaker 1: of learning something new outside of our zone of expertise.
Speaker 1: We are gaining all these lessons both about how to
Speaker 1: fail and how to be humble and how to take
Speaker 1: chances that are low risk. But then also we start
Speaker 1: building up these analogous ways of thinking. So if you've
Speaker 1: never done ballroom dancing before and you're a computer programmer,
Speaker 1: in those first few months of ballroom dancing, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get all these analogies. Your brain is gonna make all
Speaker 1: these weird connections across different domains, and your computing programming
Speaker 1: will get better. You've gotta get away from that idea
Speaker 1: that you're ever going to like win a ballroom dancing competition.
Speaker 1: You know, Like I've been taking singing lessons, you know,
Speaker 1: my teachers like you're never to perform, and I'm like that,
Speaker 1: that's cool. I'm never but I'm I'm terrible at it.
Speaker 1: But like you know, those small incremental improvements that you make,
Speaker 1: and then also the metaphors for my own creativity are huge.
Speaker 1: The other, you know, hilarious thing is that this great
Speaker 1: body of research shows that the more you think you're
Speaker 1: an expert, the more likely you are to be wrong.
Speaker 1: The more highly rate yourself, the worst you're actually doing
Speaker 1: in the world. So these are all kind of related
Speaker 1: ways of just you know, getting into that humble, bold,
Speaker 1: but bad zone and you know, starting to build up
Speaker 1: new skills as opposed to constantly picking away at those
Speaker 1: skills that you really baby can incrementally improve but you're
Speaker 1: not really making progress with anymore. Right, A lot of
Speaker 1: this ties back to how do we make change in
Speaker 1: the world. You know, these things of going out into
Speaker 1: our community and doing something is something that for most
Speaker 1: of us is going to feel uncomfortable and we're probably
Speaker 1: not going to be great at it first, or not
Speaker 1: quite know what to do, or not know how to
Speaker 1: do it, And this willingness to step into that is
Speaker 1: really an important part of the equation. In my first book,
Speaker 1: Winning the Story Wars, I focused quite a lot on
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell in The Hero's Journey. The reason that that
Speaker 1: story of a very ordinary person making extraordinary change, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, the foundation of Star Wars and the foundation
Speaker 1: of the Matrix, and the foundation of million other things,
Speaker 1: the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. The reason that that myth has lived on
Speaker 1: for so long is it reminds us that the things
Speaker 1: that we think we can't possibly do, because the hero
Speaker 1: in those stories is never someone who's big and strong
Speaker 1: and powerful. It's always the weakest, smallest, the little hobbit.
Speaker 1: You know, Moses is eighty years old with a list
Speaker 1: been before he goes back the face Pharaoh. We look
Speaker 1: at characters who say, oh, I couldn't possibly do that,
Speaker 1: and then they through the mentor and through some magic
Speaker 1: gift that they get, they step out into past their
Speaker 1: comfort zone and they figure out they suddenly get a
Speaker 1: new look at why the world was broken. And in
Speaker 1: taking that adventure, they don't get rich and famous and
Speaker 1: get all the great stuff in their lives. They heal
Speaker 1: the world. And so I think this story of stepping
Speaker 1: out of the known. You know, in Star Wars, he
Speaker 1: steps into that creature bar in the episode four, he
Speaker 1: steps onto the edge of reality and just embraces the
Speaker 1: weirdness of the world he's stepping into and get so
Speaker 1: far out of his patterns that you know, he accesses
Speaker 1: this internal force. And so I think we tell those
Speaker 1: stories and we love those stories because it's the constant
Speaker 1: reminder that staying in the world of the known, there's
Speaker 1: really not that much for us there anymore. But we
Speaker 1: can actually be world changing. We change the world if
Speaker 1: we step into the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable. That's a
Speaker 1: lot harder than picking up the phone or getting on
Speaker 1: a website and donating ten bucks. You know, that means
Speaker 1: coming to contact with people that are different than you.
Speaker 1: It means hearing other people's stories that may be uncomfortable
Speaker 1: to you. It may be confronting people who who you
Speaker 1: don't know how to deal with. But when you get
Speaker 1: out into your community, that actually starts to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the book Unsafe Thinking, as you're talking about this
Speaker 1: becoming a beginner again or being willing to venture into
Speaker 1: these uncomfortable zones. You've got a phrase that I love,
Speaker 1: which is to try and be an explorer, not an expert,
Speaker 1: And I think that ties to the hero's journey a lot, right,
Speaker 1: This is exploration, you know, we're going out to see
Speaker 1: what's there. Yeah. I like that explorer idea because it's
Speaker 1: not like the idea is to be a dilettante, where
Speaker 1: you just sort of like float through life trying everything
Speaker 1: with no steaks and not caring. The explorer is somebody
Speaker 1: who is off in the unknown, but is there to
Speaker 1: really learn. They're there to learn, and so when someone
Speaker 1: sees themselves as an explorer, they don't take their mistakes
Speaker 1: as failure, and they don't give up when things get
Speaker 1: really difficult, which they always do. Is you kind of
Speaker 1: move up that learning curve someone who's explorers on mission,
Speaker 1: but at a stage where they actually don't know what
Speaker 1: they're doing. And that's the kind of place that I
Speaker 1: like to be. Again, I often fall back into doing
Speaker 1: the things I know really well because it's just so
Speaker 1: much easier. But I get my energy from getting out
Speaker 1: into those zones. I want to back up in the
Speaker 1: book a little bit and talk about motivation, because you
Speaker 1: brought up some really interesting ideas, and I told you,
Speaker 1: you know, I've read hundreds of these books, and there
Speaker 1: were some some studies in there that I had not
Speaker 1: come across, and it's really talking about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation,
Speaker 1: and we tend to say, hey, intrinsic motivation is a
Speaker 1: lot better do something for the love of it, right,
Speaker 1: that's the best way to be motivated. And we hear
Speaker 1: these studies that say, like you said earlier, well, if
Speaker 1: you start giving somebody money for something they might like
Speaker 1: to do, sometimes it takes the joy out of it.
Speaker 1: And yet you make the point that I thought was
Speaker 1: really good, which is life's not that simple, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you're doing the work that you're doing because a you
Speaker 1: love it, you care about it, you're interested in it,
Speaker 1: and you're making a living doing it. Intrinsic and extrinsic
Speaker 1: motivation get layered over each other. But we've often been
Speaker 1: told that the minute you put extrinsic motivation and you
Speaker 1: ruin the thing. And I really wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: an idea in the book that you had called motivational synergy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is true that the things that we most cherish
Speaker 1: we don't do for extrinsic rewards, and especially the creative
Speaker 1: things that we do we don't do for money or
Speaker 1: fame or adulation, etcetera. Is well known. I guess that
Speaker 1: perspiration one percent inspiration. We've all heard that. We know
Speaker 1: that it takes a lot of slog work in order
Speaker 1: to bring something creative into the world or to you know,
Speaker 1: do the hard work on ourselves. You come up with
Speaker 1: an idea and then you've got to go and execute
Speaker 1: and it's really hard. So what the actual science And
Speaker 1: you know the problem with pop science obviously, like we
Speaker 1: missed the nuance a lot of the time. Right, So
Speaker 1: we hear the first part about how important intrinsic motivation is,
Speaker 1: and we forget the second part, which is, well, what
Speaker 1: does it actually take Once you've had that creative inspiration,
Speaker 1: how do you stick with it and keep going? And
Speaker 1: so the idea of motivational synergy is that if you
Speaker 1: want to motivate yourself to think differently, to do big things,
Speaker 1: to do creative ideas, to make art, to invent, you
Speaker 1: want to really focus on intrinsic motivational factors. You want
Speaker 1: to do things that feel exciting to you and fun.
Speaker 1: You want to focus on the impact you can have
Speaker 1: in the world. You want to focus on just the
Speaker 1: joy of creation, the actual act of it. That's how
Speaker 1: you get your great ideas out there. But then we
Speaker 1: actually start doing it. You need lots of little extrinsic
Speaker 1: motivators to keep you going, you know, you need those
Speaker 1: little pieces of candy along the way to kind of
Speaker 1: keep yourself committed. You know, I've just had this experience where, like,
Speaker 1: thanks to the pandemic, I finally got myself to like
Speaker 1: work out six or seven times a week. Right, So
Speaker 1: I have an intrinsic motivation. No one's paying me or
Speaker 1: incentivizing me to do it. I just now I do
Speaker 1: it because I like it, I enjoy it. But what
Speaker 1: actually keeps me going from like instead of two times
Speaker 1: a week to six or seven times a week is
Speaker 1: I've got some app that gives badges that I feel
Speaker 1: accountable to. Some algorithm is giving me a little extrinsic
Speaker 1: motivators to keep me not you know, on the mat
Speaker 1: every single day. And so I think that's that's a
Speaker 1: kind of way that when whether we're managing teams or
Speaker 1: managing our own acts of creation, we have to remember
Speaker 1: that it's not one or the other. So let's say
Speaker 1: you're managing a team. If you say, well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give fifty dollars for the best idea, people are
Speaker 1: gonna be like fifty dollars for the best idea, and
Speaker 1: any good idea is worth a lot more than fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: This is stupid, I'm not doing it. But if you
Speaker 1: focus that team on the impact they can have on
Speaker 1: the company in the world for coming up with great ideas,
Speaker 1: that's where better creativity comes from. But then when it
Speaker 1: comes to executing those things, and which is no creative work.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like an ongoing measurement data collection, accounting.
Speaker 1: That's where fun little prizes along the way will actually
Speaker 1: keep people going, and where you can say I'll give
Speaker 1: you fifty bucks if you can collect five pieces of data,
Speaker 1: then someone's actually going to go out and do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I find this such an interesting point because, you know,
Speaker 1: I started this podcast seven plus years ago simply for
Speaker 1: the joy of doing. I had no belief that it
Speaker 1: was going to be anything but something that was fun
Speaker 1: to do. You know, I get to talk to cool
Speaker 1: people and I get to spend time with my producer Chris,
Speaker 1: and it would be great. And then over time it
Speaker 1: actually started working. We got a lot of listeners, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the opportunity to do this for
Speaker 1: a living became a possibility. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: now I've got intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, although it was
Speaker 1: there from the beginning because you're looking at download numbers.
Speaker 1: How many downloads am I getting? Right, that's not intrinsic,
Speaker 1: that's extrinsic. And I found it a really interesting experience
Speaker 1: to try and move between those motivations skillfully and to recognize, okay,
Speaker 1: it's normal that they're both there, that I have some
Speaker 1: intrinsic and some extrinsic, and you know, more often than not,
Speaker 1: what I need is a reorientation to the intrinsic. That's
Speaker 1: just I think the nature, at least for me is achievement,
Speaker 1: as I have to re orient away from the next
Speaker 1: thing and re orient towards the work itself. But I
Speaker 1: found did a really interesting dilemma to work through in
Speaker 1: my own life, to try and move between those motivations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great, that's a great example of it. And you
Speaker 1: know the problem with the Internet and the sort of
Speaker 1: data world that we live in is you get so
Speaker 1: much feedback, right, you know what episodes are working. You know,
Speaker 1: if your goal was to get the most listens, most downloads,
Speaker 1: most subscribers, and you just didn't care what this show
Speaker 1: was about. It's like, I'm just gonna go where the
Speaker 1: where the subscribers take me. You could begin maximizing and
Speaker 1: maximizing and maximizing as the initial mission of this podcast
Speaker 1: slipped further and further away, and in the end you
Speaker 1: would have, you know, something that you wouldn't recognize anymore.
Speaker 1: You would no longer be creative. We see this so often.
Speaker 1: This is why there's so much stupid content on the
Speaker 1: Internet is because not just people but algorithms are just
Speaker 1: trying every combination until you get something that hits the
Speaker 1: part of the brain that says, oh cool, I gotta
Speaker 1: pass this along, or not even pass this along, this
Speaker 1: is gonna sort of just maximize engagement. You know. We
Speaker 1: worked on this film, The Social Dilemma this this year,
Speaker 1: and this really points out how we're living in these
Speaker 1: worlds of lowest quality content for maximum engagement. And so
Speaker 1: if you don't have that core and that center of
Speaker 1: like what am I doing this for? What am I
Speaker 1: on this earth for? You will wind up with your
Speaker 1: million followers, and then those million followers will be gone
Speaker 1: when the platform changes or when people realize how how
Speaker 1: vapid your your content has become. But if you're like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to combine. You know, the extrinsic motivation of
Speaker 1: getting more downloads and subscribers is feedback from your audience
Speaker 1: about how to better do your mission. Then you've got
Speaker 1: that synergy right, Like, no one wants you to do
Speaker 1: your mission. If no one's listening, it's not really helping.
Speaker 1: But if you've got that kind of feedback loop of
Speaker 1: really trying to do the most service for the right people,
Speaker 1: that's where I think the most creativity comes from. But
Speaker 1: you know, you're the podcast. You definitely know better than
Speaker 1: I do. But it sounds like the right kind of
Speaker 1: story to me. We get people who will be like
Speaker 1: so and so will be a guest on the show,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, so and so is huge, But then
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't really want to talk to so
Speaker 1: and so that much, you know. So, I've really tried
Speaker 1: hard to say my criteria. I said this to you beforehand.
Speaker 1: You were like, how did you come across me? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, I must have seen one of your books,
Speaker 1: because my criteria is do I want to read that book?
Speaker 1: If I do, then that person becomes a guest because
Speaker 1: then I get to read their book. And I've tried
Speaker 1: really hard. I'm not saying I'm perfect at it by
Speaker 1: any stretch, but I've tried hard to really say, let
Speaker 1: me let that continue to be the guiding criteria of
Speaker 1: whether I think a guest is the right fit. Does
Speaker 1: it interest me? And then trust that if it interests me,
Speaker 1: it's going to interest the people who listen. But again,
Speaker 1: it's an orientation back towards intrinsic. Yeah, and I guess
Speaker 1: the whole thing is just a sort of interesting world
Speaker 1: we live in now, where like people try to create
Speaker 1: art or try to create creativity with these constant feedback loops,
Speaker 1: how do you manage them productively? Let good ideas? Just
Speaker 1: to take chances with this, you know, constant minute to
Speaker 1: minute feedback cycles. It's hard, and it's hard for artists,
Speaker 1: right right. You talk about in the book this idea
Speaker 1: when we're talking about learning of putting off important decisions
Speaker 1: or leaving your creative options open longer. You talk about
Speaker 1: a tendency people have two seize on an obvious solution
Speaker 1: and then freeze on it. Say a little more about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of the things I hate the most
Speaker 1: about creativity because I move quickly, I think quickly. I
Speaker 1: like to come up with solutions and try to make
Speaker 1: them happen. The problem is this kind of also goes
Speaker 1: to this trap of intuition that we wind up in,
Speaker 1: which is like we feel in our hearts all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, we have these flashes of insight like oh,
Speaker 1: I get it. I know what to do about this,
Speaker 1: and that might come from a really deep sense of knowing,
Speaker 1: like this really good research on how intuition can be
Speaker 1: this sort of underground synthesis of all you've learned in
Speaker 1: your life and all these heuristics you're building, and intuition
Speaker 1: can also be this just expression of bias. Right, We've
Speaker 1: seen all this work on how people you know, make
Speaker 1: snap judgments, how wrong those snap judgments can be. So
Speaker 1: we don't know. You know, if you've got an idea
Speaker 1: for a film, is like, I want to make this film.
Speaker 1: It sounds amazing. That could be because your whole life
Speaker 1: experience has led you to that moment of inspiration. It
Speaker 1: could be because two weeks ago you saw a film
Speaker 1: just like it and you forgot you saw it, and
Speaker 1: now you want to make it like that's kind of
Speaker 1: the boundaries of how this stuff kind of works. So
Speaker 1: what the recommendation is you're thinking of ideas, the best
Speaker 1: thing to do is to generate a lot of them
Speaker 1: and to listen to that voice that says, these are
Speaker 1: the best ones. I like them. But then also let
Speaker 1: it just date and try to clear out all the
Speaker 1: most obvious ideas. Exhaust yourself by generating as many ideas
Speaker 1: as you can, and push yourself then to come back
Speaker 1: for another session where all the easy ideas are off
Speaker 1: the table, and to try to solve the problem for
Speaker 1: whatever you're trying to solve with ideas you hadn't thought
Speaker 1: of as you and your team exhausted all the obvious ones,
Speaker 1: and then come back and take a look at what's
Speaker 1: left on the table, and you want to look at
Speaker 1: the ones that are resonating with you. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't believe that the way to get to the great
Speaker 1: of success is then to immediately go ask a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people on the internet what they think. That's not
Speaker 1: how we really just ate great ideas, look at the
Speaker 1: ones that appeal to you on a intuitive emotional level,
Speaker 1: and then do the hard work of asking yourself where
Speaker 1: is this intuition coming from Is it because I've seen
Speaker 1: this done before? Sometimes doing things that have been done
Speaker 1: before is actually a good idea. But why is this
Speaker 1: resonating with me? Is it resonating with me because it
Speaker 1: reminds me of something personal in my life that I've enjoyed,
Speaker 1: And then would that resonate with my audience or would
Speaker 1: that resonate with those I'm inventing for. I study a
Speaker 1: lot of investors in Silicon Valley and how they tend
Speaker 1: to invest in founders they believe in and that just
Speaker 1: feel right to them. But it turns out that those
Speaker 1: people always look pretty much like them, same skin color,
Speaker 1: same age, same educational background. So they can't stop. They're
Speaker 1: never gonna stop feeling it about people. But you want
Speaker 1: to ask, you know, do I feel it because of
Speaker 1: past experience with people just like this, or do I
Speaker 1: feel it because of the actual data and things that
Speaker 1: they're saying. This is why the Viennese Philharmonic couldn't get
Speaker 1: any women into the orchestra. And they're like, well, we
Speaker 1: just can't. We're listening, we're picking the best people and
Speaker 1: they're all men. But then they put them behind screens
Speaker 1: and did blind auditions, and suddenly you know the orchestra
Speaker 1: is now almost gender balanced because that intuition can be
Speaker 1: so clouded by those snap judgments. So again the idea
Speaker 1: is like, get those ideas out there, get the non
Speaker 1: obvious ideas out there, and then judge all those ideas
Speaker 1: based on where you think your intuition is coming from,
Speaker 1: correcting for the biases that you think you have based
Speaker 1: on your life experience, gender, class, etcetera. I found that
Speaker 1: the most fascinating part of the book because it's a
Speaker 1: question that I wrestle with a lot, and I've thought
Speaker 1: a lot about. And you could go find fifty people
Speaker 1: who could tout for us how good intuition is, and
Speaker 1: then we could find a ton of people who could
Speaker 1: talk about all of our cognitive biases. All of our
Speaker 1: implicit biases are heuristics that aren't helpful, but I've very
Speaker 1: rarely seen anybody talk about them together very much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the hardest thing to write, Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: not an easy answer, right. I often think about intuition
Speaker 1: as like, yeah, you have a gut sense of something,
Speaker 1: But man, have I had lots of gut senses. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was a heroin addict for years. Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I was pretty certain I was always making
Speaker 1: the right decision, and I could not have been more wrong,
Speaker 1: you know. So I just always think that question of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: intuition is valuable, and it goes wrong so many ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't go out there and convince anybody
Speaker 1: who's had a good intuitive insight to not listen to
Speaker 1: their gut. You're not gonna get on any podcast saying
Speaker 1: don't listen to your gut, because we all know that
Speaker 1: it works. And yet the whole field of behavioral economics
Speaker 1: and Daniel Kneman and the work that Michael Lewis wrote
Speaker 1: about a moneyball all comes from the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: our our heuristics and our snap judgments are terrible, and
Speaker 1: we have to use this kind of medicognition that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about on this show this whole time, basically,
Speaker 1: which is like step back from your judgments and step
Speaker 1: back from your automatic thinking and try something new. And
Speaker 1: so balancing those two things is just incredibly difficult. The
Speaker 1: one thing that I would say really works, though, is
Speaker 1: if you're working in a space, let's say you're evaluating
Speaker 1: board games, right, that's your job. You gotta evaluate board games,
Speaker 1: and you don't know if you should trust your gut
Speaker 1: because you've been in the business for fifty years. It
Speaker 1: seems to work, but you've been slowing down lately. You're
Speaker 1: not picking great board games lately from inventors. Strange example. Now,
Speaker 1: but let's say that you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to start picking the ones you don't like. That's never
Speaker 1: gonna work. But what you can start doing is start
Speaker 1: playing games in your spare time that are very different
Speaker 1: than the games you usually play. Start talking to people
Speaker 1: who are very different than you. Start looking for people
Speaker 1: who see the world differently, and immerse yourself in unfamiliar
Speaker 1: experiences and ask yourself, how can I get as much
Speaker 1: input that breaks my patterns of thinking as possible so
Speaker 1: that when then I do go into those places where
Speaker 1: I'm relying on my intuition, my intuition has been shaken
Speaker 1: up quite a bit, right, So some researchers at Harvard
Speaker 1: we're able to kind of overcome some of their implicit
Speaker 1: biases by just flashing pictures on the screen of people
Speaker 1: of different races in unexpected jobs and life situations, and
Speaker 1: by just exposing themselves again and again. Two things that
Speaker 1: break their stereotypes, their actual implicit biases went down. So
Speaker 1: if in your spare time you're exposing yourself to new information,
Speaker 1: new kinds of people, and new situations, your intuition is
Speaker 1: going to get better. If you're stuck in the same
Speaker 1: kind of environments, your intuition is going to get worse
Speaker 1: and worse and worse. And I guess in some ways,
Speaker 1: like this whole book is this all the same theme,
Speaker 1: which is right, like that things work for a while
Speaker 1: and then they stop working. And if you don't expose
Speaker 1: yoursel often new inputs, all those things that worked will
Speaker 1: stop working. And that's, you know, the same first safe
Speaker 1: thinking cycle as it is for how to build good
Speaker 1: intuitions so you can cultivate your intuition, and doing that
Speaker 1: is a really powerful way. We also do that by
Speaker 1: creating more diverse teams, right, We don't just trust our
Speaker 1: own intuition. We share our intuition with diverse people, and
Speaker 1: that creates a way to correct for those biases as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such a good summary of those things, and it
Speaker 1: makes me think about my example of being like a
Speaker 1: drug addict, right, was that my world was so small,
Speaker 1: you know it was collapsed down to only one thing mattered,
Speaker 1: you know, So of course the intuitions were terrible. And
Speaker 1: I feel like we can't leave this point without at
Speaker 1: least a brief introduction of the most inspiring mayor I
Speaker 1: have ever read about. I'm terrible at pronouncing names, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you do it, so I don't butcher it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his name was Mochus, and he came into Bogata in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties when it was the most dangerous city
Speaker 1: in the world. It was the worst place to live
Speaker 1: on you know, the drug wards were raging in Colombia.
Speaker 1: People were leaving the city and droves trying to leave
Speaker 1: the country if they could. And he came in as
Speaker 1: this really crazy kind of outsider who nobody expected. And
Speaker 1: the way that he got onto the political stage to
Speaker 1: begin with was that he was the chancellor of university
Speaker 1: and all these young people were protesting the decline in
Speaker 1: the services that you know, we're not his fault. The
Speaker 1: city was declining and so was the university, and there
Speaker 1: was like a protest was raging, and he had to
Speaker 1: get up in front of all of these students and
Speaker 1: he had to somehow calm them down and he started talking,
Speaker 1: but no one was listening, and so he steps to
Speaker 1: the front of the stage. He turns around, he drops
Speaker 1: his pants, and he moons the crowd and everyone starts
Speaker 1: cracking up, and um, it breaks the tension in the room,
Speaker 1: and everyone sort of goes home and they're able to
Speaker 1: negotiate in a more calm way. And based on this
Speaker 1: crazy stunt, he winds up getting elected as this independent
Speaker 1: mayor of the city. And basically what he thinks is
Speaker 1: that like the entire population is in this sort of
Speaker 1: rut of thinking and this kind of loggerhead approach to
Speaker 1: being at odds with each other, and he thinks that
Speaker 1: if he can shake people up like the mooning incident,
Speaker 1: he can somehow start to break those patterns of thinking
Speaker 1: and find new solutions. So, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that he did was quite famous was there was
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous cities in the world, pedestrians
Speaker 1: being killed all the time. Nobody followed the traffic regulations
Speaker 1: and putting more police on the streets like did nothing.
Speaker 1: So he hired five hundred mimes and their goal was
Speaker 1: just to make fun of embarrass the people who weren't
Speaker 1: following the traffic regulations. He actually fired a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of the police to hire the mimes. And so the
Speaker 1: minds go out there. When people are not following the crosswalks,
Speaker 1: the minds come behind them and start making fun of them,
Speaker 1: or when when a driver's being a jerk, a mind
Speaker 1: kind of pops out and everyone starts laughing and making
Speaker 1: fun of them. And they found that the traffic finds
Speaker 1: that you could just get away with or just bribe
Speaker 1: your way out of. They had no impact, but both
Speaker 1: the joy and also the embarrassment of being mocked by
Speaker 1: a mime had a huge impact, and the numbers plummeted
Speaker 1: in traffic debts, and in fact, many of the policemen
Speaker 1: applied for to get their jobs back as minds. And
Speaker 1: so this was a famous way that he broke those expectations,
Speaker 1: broke the standard operating procedure, and changed the city. Like
Speaker 1: but the story is really that come forth from his
Speaker 1: learnings are not just these cool little novelties, and actually
Speaker 1: the city found itself again and became one of the
Speaker 1: most successful cities in South America on any number of levels.
Speaker 1: And he did it all with his purpose. What was
Speaker 1: really interesting was that he essentially was a clown. But
Speaker 1: he hired all these behavioral economists to think about how
Speaker 1: human motivation really works and to break those patterns of
Speaker 1: thinking and thought in a civic way. So it was
Speaker 1: very scientific, even though it was also extremely theatrical. You know,
Speaker 1: I tell that story basically because I want people to
Speaker 1: think a little bit about counterintuition. If you cannot get
Speaker 1: down a path straight to your goal, how do you
Speaker 1: find and take risks to go on paths that are sideways.
Speaker 1: It seemed to make no sense, But what really happened
Speaker 1: was he just started a new chain of logic. He
Speaker 1: didn't say, what's a good solution to the same problem.
Speaker 1: He kind of redefined the problem. The problem is not
Speaker 1: that we have too many traffic deaths. The problem is
Speaker 1: that citizens don't respect traffic laws. And when he took
Speaker 1: that problem and ran it with his behavioral economists, new
Speaker 1: solutions started becoming possible. So sometimes just redefining the problem
Speaker 1: and then being willing to take risks can open up
Speaker 1: new solutions. Well, I think that's a great place to end,
Speaker 1: except I did want to circle back very briefly to
Speaker 1: that simple trick of using a screen saver. You know,
Speaker 1: showing like black people in very successful positions, or you
Speaker 1: make the example of short, bold executives. You know, things
Speaker 1: that break our our biases. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: hit that again really quickly because I found that such
Speaker 1: a simple and powerful idea for reducing our implicit bias.
Speaker 1: So you kind of said it, nothing else to say,
Speaker 1: but we jumped by it, and I wanted to highlight
Speaker 1: it because I thought it was a particularly important thing.
Speaker 1: We're at the end of our time. I've loved this conversation.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to talk briefly in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation a little bit about how to work
Speaker 1: with distraction and ways to avoid getting distracted listeners. If
Speaker 1: you're interested in the post show conversation, you can get
Speaker 1: access to that as well as ad free episodes and
Speaker 1: a special episode I do call the teaching song and
Speaker 1: a poem each week, and the joy of supporting an
Speaker 1: independent podcast that needs your help by going to when
Speaker 1: you Feed dot net slash joint. Jonah, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to come on. I've really
Speaker 1: enjoyed this conversation. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you.
Speaker 1: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 1: consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this
Speaker 1: monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 1: It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
Speaker 1: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 1: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 1: To learn more, make a donation at any level and
Speaker 1: become a member of the one you Feed community, go
Speaker 1: to one you feed dot net slash Join the One
Speaker 1: You Feed podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors
Speaker 1: for supporting the show.