WEBVTT - Plan for a long life, with Lynda Gratton 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.290 Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. 0:00:10.090 --> 0:00:15.190 This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's 0:00:15.270 --> 0:00:18.210 episode will be a slightly longer one, part of the 0:00:18.270 --> 0:00:21.450 series where I interview fascinating people about how they take 0:00:21.540 --> 0:00:24.600 their days from great to awesome and any advice they 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:27.220 have for the rest of us. So today I am 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.680 delighted to welcome Linda Gratton to Before Breakfast, Linda is 0:00:30.740 --> 0:00:33.520 a professor of management practice at the London Business School. 0:00:33.909 --> 0:00:37.150 She is the author of Living the 100-Year Life, How 0:00:37.190 --> 0:00:40.850 to Build a Career that Lasts and a Life You Love. Linda, 0:00:40.909 --> 0:00:41.830 welcome to the show. 0:00:41.850 --> 0:00:43.070 Thank you, Laura. 0:00:43.630 --> 0:00:45.370 I'm so excited to have you here. Why don't you 0:00:45.390 --> 0:00:47.290 tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself? 0:00:48.150 --> 0:00:51.729 I'm a professor at London Business School. I'm a psychologist. 0:00:52.210 --> 0:00:55.500 I love helping people think about their working lives, and 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.730 I love helping people think about How do I live 0:00:58.770 --> 0:01:01.180 to 100? Not so much the healthy part of it, 0:01:01.250 --> 0:01:03.290 but just what am I actually going to do with 0:01:03.330 --> 0:01:03.910 that time? 0:01:03.930 --> 0:01:06.729 Because it is a lot of time. I mean, could 0:01:06.770 --> 0:01:09.770 many people listening to this reasonably expect to live to 0:01:09.770 --> 0:01:09.979 100 now? Yes. 0:01:12.569 --> 0:01:15.990 I mean, you know, obviously, there's many variables, but actually, 0:01:16.250 --> 0:01:21.729 life expectancy has been increasing decade by decade for many, 0:01:21.770 --> 0:01:25.050 many years now. And so certainly, whereas my father would have, 0:01:25.350 --> 0:01:28.030 my grandfather, the average age would have been 60, for 0:01:28.050 --> 0:01:31.310 my dad, it would have been 70. It's perfectly reasonable. 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:34.680 You may think that you could live healthily into your 80s, 0:01:34.940 --> 0:01:37.890 maybe your 90s, perhaps even to 100. 0:01:37.890 --> 0:01:41.650 So it's not outside the realm of possibilities. But how 0:01:41.670 --> 0:01:43.290 would we, I mean, one of the things you write 0:01:43.310 --> 0:01:48.620 about is how we would approach careers differently if we 0:01:49.020 --> 0:01:51.460 truly thought we were going to live to 100. I mean, 0:01:51.500 --> 0:01:53.620 what does that change if you think you are going 0:01:53.660 --> 0:01:55.400 to have a very long life? 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.600 Well, that's really the puzzle that I've been thinking about, Laura, 0:01:58.620 --> 0:02:02.580 for so many years. And here's the thing. The long 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:06.220 life is a gift, but it does change the rules. 0:02:06.830 --> 0:02:09.290 And I've been wondering about, well, how could I talk 0:02:09.310 --> 0:02:11.780 to people about what a long life is? Because we 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.600 think often about working lives as being ladders that we climb. 0:02:16.020 --> 0:02:18.500 And that over periods of time, you go from one 0:02:18.660 --> 0:02:21.640 rung to another climbing up. But that's just not really 0:02:21.700 --> 0:02:25.399 working when you might be working until you're 70 or 80. 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:29.150 So I've been thinking it less as a ladder and 0:02:29.230 --> 0:02:33.130 more as a weave, where we weave our lives. So 0:02:33.190 --> 0:02:35.910 I guess what I'm saying to people now is stop climbing. 0:02:36.290 --> 0:02:40.150 start weaving. And what I've been wondering about is what 0:02:40.330 --> 0:02:42.850 holds that weave together? And that's where I've come up 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.880 with this idea of these threads, the productive threads and 0:02:45.900 --> 0:02:49.240 the nurture threads that hold our life together. 0:02:49.980 --> 0:02:52.639 So, I mean, sort of thinking about this practically, I mean, 0:02:52.660 --> 0:02:56.679 would people need to be thinking about multiple careers, about 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.240 re-skilling in the middle of life? I mean, what does 0:02:59.280 --> 0:02:59.760 that mean? 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:05.780 Well, the threads are broken into two types. Four help 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:08.579 you to stay productive and four help you to nurture yourself. 0:03:08.620 --> 0:03:13.030 The productive ones, first is mastery, which is exactly about 0:03:13.070 --> 0:03:16.480 learning new skills, doing what you love, doing more of it, 0:03:16.510 --> 0:03:20.730 but also maybe shifting to other things. Second is about 0:03:20.770 --> 0:03:22.810 knowing yourself and the world around you. It's the thread 0:03:22.850 --> 0:03:25.840 of knowing. The third is the thread of cooperation. And 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:28.060 the fourth is the thread of amplification, which is how 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.780 do you work with AI? And so what I would 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:35.270 say to anyone at any point in time is, Think 0:03:35.330 --> 0:03:39.570 about where your threads are. Are they strong? Are they medium? 0:03:39.730 --> 0:03:42.610 Or are they fragile? Because if you think about weaving 0:03:42.690 --> 0:03:45.900 a life, then you have to ask yourself in terms 0:03:45.940 --> 0:03:49.630 of the fabric of my life, is it holding together? 0:03:49.660 --> 0:03:52.580 And one of the things I did when I wrote 0:03:52.620 --> 0:03:56.480 the book is I also developed a diagnostic, a live 0:03:56.540 --> 0:03:59.060 thread diagnostic. You can do it for free. And what 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.420 it helps you to do is actually to work out 0:04:01.500 --> 0:04:04.400 which of your threads are weak and which are strong. 0:04:04.930 --> 0:04:08.290 And here's the thing, that when you're looking at what 0:04:08.310 --> 0:04:12.130 you're doing, how you're spending your time, you could take 0:04:12.170 --> 0:04:15.120 a look at the threads which are weakest and ask yourself, 0:04:15.620 --> 0:04:20.060 what actions could I take today, small action, small experiment, 0:04:20.420 --> 0:04:24.109 that would help me strengthen the thread? For example, the 0:04:24.130 --> 0:04:28.590 thread of mastery. All of us could say, Let me 0:04:28.710 --> 0:04:32.130 think about something in my job today that I really 0:04:32.350 --> 0:04:35.830 loved doing. Make a note of that. Or you could say, 0:04:36.310 --> 0:04:39.789 is there somebody who's around me who's doing something that 0:04:39.970 --> 0:04:43.750 I'd like to do? I could spend 15 minutes talking 0:04:43.810 --> 0:04:47.920 to them. Maybe one of your nurture threads, one of 0:04:47.950 --> 0:04:51.370 those is the thread of friendships. is looking fragile. We 0:04:51.430 --> 0:04:57.580 know that only eight minutes talking to a friend strengthens friendship. 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.580 So what I would suggest to all of our listeners 0:05:00.660 --> 0:05:03.240 is think of an action that you could take right 0:05:03.300 --> 0:05:07.260 now to strengthen one of your threads. But it's one 0:05:07.300 --> 0:05:09.860 other thing I would like to suggest, which is that 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:12.870 you also think about your future and you think about 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:15.170 your future self. And here's a way to do that 0:05:15.230 --> 0:05:20.120 this morning. Imagine your 80-year-old self. Maybe they're sitting in 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:22.640 the bed next door to you or perhaps they're just 0:05:22.660 --> 0:05:26.240 in a chair and ask them, what would you like 0:05:26.300 --> 0:05:26.900 of me now? 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:31.540 That is an interesting question. I'm not sure what my 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.990 80-year-old self would do. She probably wants me to keep exercising. 0:05:35.050 --> 0:05:38.909 They certainly want you to keep exercising. But my guess 0:05:39.270 --> 0:05:42.170 is they might say things like, make sure that I'm 0:05:42.210 --> 0:05:45.109 not alone when I'm 80. Make sure I've still got friends. 0:05:45.540 --> 0:05:48.540 Make sure I've got adventures to talk about. Make sure 0:05:48.620 --> 0:05:52.780 I've got, you know, people that I love. So I 0:05:52.820 --> 0:05:55.659 think that we can also, the actions are about the 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.440 short term and the future self is to help you 0:05:58.500 --> 0:06:01.560 make sure that you stay on some sort of course 0:06:01.610 --> 0:06:02.260 for yourself. 0:06:03.230 --> 0:06:05.490 And one of the things you talk about frequently in 0:06:05.510 --> 0:06:08.450 the book is sort of like carving out time for, 0:06:08.870 --> 0:06:12.860 you know, experimenting, playing, thinking. You know, how would you 0:06:12.900 --> 0:06:15.200 suggest people go about doing that? They're looking down a 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:19.880 busy schedule this week as, you know, work fills all 0:06:19.900 --> 0:06:22.860 the available spot. Where would you suggest or how would 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:26.109 you suggest sort of carving out time for thinking about 0:06:26.150 --> 0:06:26.850 what you should be doing? 0:06:27.210 --> 0:06:30.310 Well, here's the thing. Although the book only came out 0:06:30.790 --> 0:06:33.130 just recently, in fact, in the UK it was yesterday, 0:06:34.060 --> 0:06:36.880 more than 600 people have already filled in the diagnostic, 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.700 the life threads diagnostic that you can find on my website. 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:45.310 And guess what? The weakest thread is the thread of calm. 0:06:46.410 --> 0:06:48.650 And the thread of calm is the thread that says, 0:06:48.770 --> 0:06:53.690 I'm giving myself time to relax, to think, to reflect. 0:06:53.790 --> 0:06:56.860 And so what really sort of worries me about this 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.779 is that you cannot live a hundred year life on autopilot. 0:07:01.140 --> 0:07:04.160 You've got to make choices, but to make choices, You've 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.159 got to give yourself calm. So I would say to 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:11.440 everyone this morning, what are you doing to calm yourself? 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:13.820 And you'll see in the book all sorts of ideas 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:17.400 about that. It might be that you walk as I do. 0:07:17.460 --> 0:07:18.900 It may be that you run. It may be you 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:20.750 go to a place. It might be a person that 0:07:20.790 --> 0:07:24.710 calms you. But all of us need to find calm 0:07:24.870 --> 0:07:28.670 in our life because otherwise we don't give ourselves the 0:07:28.710 --> 0:07:31.910 gift of thinking about who we are and what we 0:07:31.950 --> 0:07:32.610 want to become. 0:07:33.790 --> 0:07:37.170 Yeah, we need moments to relax and rest and rejuvenate 0:07:37.210 --> 0:07:39.240 if we're going to make it to 100 with any 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:41.200 gas still in the tank. We're going to take a 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:43.210 quick ad break and then I'll be back with more 0:07:43.310 --> 0:07:53.900 from Linda Gratton. Well, I am back talking with Linda Groton, 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.710 who is a professor at London Business School, the author 0:07:56.790 --> 0:07:59.690 of the new book, Living the 100-Year Life, How to 0:07:59.710 --> 0:08:02.190 Build a Career that Lasts and a Life You Love. 0:08:02.610 --> 0:08:05.010 So you mentioned briefly AI, which is, of course, the 0:08:05.050 --> 0:08:06.750 hot topic for everyone these days. 0:08:06.890 --> 0:08:08.070 And it's more. 0:08:07.990 --> 0:08:10.910 Broadly the question, technology is going to change so much 0:08:11.130 --> 0:08:14.370 if we have 100-year lives, if we are working for 50, 60, 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:19.950 70 years of these 100 years. And I know both 0:08:19.990 --> 0:08:23.430 of us are, you know, have experienced huge technological change 0:08:23.450 --> 0:08:25.110 in our lives. In your book, you talk about black 0:08:25.130 --> 0:08:27.890 and white television in the UK in the 50s. And, 0:08:28.670 --> 0:08:30.790 you know, I remember like the early days of the 0:08:30.950 --> 0:08:33.170 internet that, you know, we didn't even know how that 0:08:33.190 --> 0:08:35.770 thing all worked. And of course, now that's all old school. 0:08:36.830 --> 0:08:39.850 How should we be thinking about and preparing and, you know, 0:08:40.710 --> 0:08:43.450 careers with technology that we don't even know exists? And 0:08:43.530 --> 0:08:45.429 maybe the person who's going to invent it hasn't even 0:08:45.490 --> 0:08:46.150 been born yet. 0:08:46.730 --> 0:08:49.719 Yeah, well, I so agree with what you've said. which 0:08:49.740 --> 0:08:53.560 says we cannot imagine the future of technology. And I 0:08:53.660 --> 0:08:57.410 know that because some years ago, I wrote a book 0:08:57.450 --> 0:09:02.750 called The Shift, which was predicting 2025. So I actually 0:09:02.770 --> 0:09:06.070 wrote it 10 years before 2025. And I said, what 0:09:06.090 --> 0:09:08.780 do you think is going to be happening in 2025? 0:09:08.780 --> 0:09:12.690 And I got some of it right. about technology. But 0:09:12.770 --> 0:09:18.110 actually at that stage, technologists overestimated some things that they 0:09:18.150 --> 0:09:21.030 thought would have been happening by 2025. So they thought 0:09:21.070 --> 0:09:24.030 that by 2025, the whole world would be full of 0:09:24.050 --> 0:09:27.910 driverless cars. We'd have drones everywhere. And of course we don't. 0:09:28.090 --> 0:09:30.290 Regulation got in the way, finance got in the way 0:09:30.309 --> 0:09:36.030 and so on. But what they entirely underestimated, entirely underestimated 0:09:36.590 --> 0:09:42.010 was AI and the huge human impact of having a tool, 0:09:42.210 --> 0:09:45.080 it's all it is, it's a tool that sounds and 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:49.420 behaves like a human. And we're only just beginning to 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.760 understand what that means to our work. It's going to 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:57.170 have profound impacts on how we work, on the design 0:09:57.210 --> 0:10:00.760 of work. So for example, right now, AI can make 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:06.220 an expert person like you or me six times more productive. 0:10:07.020 --> 0:10:09.559 So the question I would say is, what do you 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:11.760 do with the rest of that time? Do you just 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.870 spend your time doing more work? Or, and this would 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.870 be my advice, do you spend your time strengthening the 0:10:18.990 --> 0:10:22.240 other threads. Amplification, by the way, is a thread. So 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:25.679 our relationship with technology is a thread in the weave 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.199 of your life. But there's many other threads. There's the 0:10:29.300 --> 0:10:32.760 thread of friendship. There's a thread of intimacy, calm, adventure. 0:10:33.210 --> 0:10:36.650 And so wouldn't it be wonderful if the time that 0:10:36.830 --> 0:10:42.430 AI releases is used to strengthen the other threads in 0:10:42.490 --> 0:10:45.069 our life? My worry, by the way, is it's not. 0:10:45.170 --> 0:10:47.870 It simply used to do more stuff. And that would 0:10:47.910 --> 0:10:51.829 be a huge sadness, really, I think, for humanity if 0:10:51.870 --> 0:10:55.309 we don't realize we have the opportunity here to give 0:10:55.370 --> 0:11:00.960 ourselves time to really strengthen the threads that will help 0:11:01.059 --> 0:11:04.000 us live a good, long working life. 0:11:04.950 --> 0:11:07.530 Yeah. I mean, I just think about something like email. 0:11:07.630 --> 0:11:11.010 I mean, theoretically, it is so much more efficient than 0:11:11.490 --> 0:11:14.330 passing around inter-office memos, which is what we were doing 0:11:14.390 --> 0:11:18.230 before with our colleagues, or calling people up. I started 0:11:18.290 --> 0:11:21.410 a journalism career before email was so common. I would 0:11:21.450 --> 0:11:24.530 spend the entire day on phone tag back and forth 0:11:24.590 --> 0:11:28.680 with people trying to get in touch. And so in theory, 0:11:28.780 --> 0:11:30.860 it's very much more efficient. I love it for that. 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.520 But people did not start working less because they have 0:11:34.540 --> 0:11:36.760 the ability to email. If anything else, it's like, no, 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:40.109 now we're just spending, you know, 15 hours a week 0:11:40.250 --> 0:11:43.130 processing email. So, I mean, how do you avoid that 0:11:43.170 --> 0:11:43.989 temptation then? 0:11:44.190 --> 0:11:48.150 Well, it's unavoidable. I mean, we saw it with the pandemic. 0:11:48.630 --> 0:11:52.939 It's astonishing to remind yourself that before the pandemic, you 0:11:53.020 --> 0:11:56.980 did not have virtual meetings. You didn't. And now we 0:11:57.020 --> 0:12:01.089 know from our friends at Microsoft that we have 50%, 0:12:01.090 --> 0:12:04.090 not just more virtual meetings, but 50% more meetings than 0:12:04.130 --> 0:12:08.429 we ever had. Are we any more productive? No, we're not. 0:12:09.290 --> 0:12:12.640 In fact, if anything, all these meetings are making us 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:18.560 less productive. So the human, we humans, the way that 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:22.100 our brain is wired, the way that we love dopamine 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:25.380 means that we love meetings. We love emails because they're very, 0:12:25.420 --> 0:12:28.610 very fast. I'm clicking my, you know, very, very fast. 0:12:28.630 --> 0:12:31.800 They make us feel good. but they don't help us 0:12:31.820 --> 0:12:35.020 to be productive. And when I said earlier that living 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:38.300 a hundred year life is about not being, you cannot 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:42.400 be on autopilot. One of the aspects of autopilot is 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:45.300 you just keep on doing the same thing over and 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:48.520 over again. You keep on answering hundreds of emails. You 0:12:48.570 --> 0:12:51.660 keep on having loads of Zoom meetings. And if you 0:12:51.710 --> 0:12:54.910 want to keep those threads strong and give yourself time 0:12:55.370 --> 0:12:59.870 to be calm, to make friends, to build great intimate relationships, 0:13:00.420 --> 0:13:03.000 you have got to think about how you spend your time. 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:07.000 Because when we think about weaving a life, the thing 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:11.250 we're weaving is our time. And we each have a 0:13:11.330 --> 0:13:14.230 choice about how we spend our time. One of the 0:13:14.250 --> 0:13:17.510 questions I ask my MBA students is, if you've just 0:13:17.590 --> 0:13:23.630 spent three hours scrolling, which of your eight threads were 0:13:23.670 --> 0:13:25.709 you strengthening by doing that? 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:31.610 Probably nothing that was very helpful for it. Yeah, let's 0:13:31.670 --> 0:13:34.770 talk about, though, about building real relationships. I mean, because 0:13:34.809 --> 0:13:38.090 one of the itches that often being online scratches is 0:13:38.110 --> 0:13:42.650 the human desire for connection. One of the positive things, 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:45.120 I mean, about thinking, like, if you truly believe that 0:13:45.140 --> 0:13:48.400 you will live to 100, I always say, you know, 0:13:48.460 --> 0:13:49.780 you can't make an old friend. 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:50.540 Yeah. 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.370 But if you're going to live to 100... You could, 0:13:54.410 --> 0:13:58.829 in fact, make a friend at 65, 70, who would 0:13:58.850 --> 0:14:00.510 become an old friend. Yeah. 0:14:01.250 --> 0:14:03.670 Oh, I so agree with you. And this is something 0:14:03.710 --> 0:14:05.550 I say to my MBA students, and I say it 0:14:05.570 --> 0:14:07.260 in the book as well, is you can't buy. I 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:13.120 have a 60-year-old friendship with somebody called Shirley. In fact, 0:14:13.179 --> 0:14:16.240 I have a podcast about each of the episodes. And 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:20.620 the episode about friendship features Shirley, and she and I 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:24.540 talk about... when we met when we were 10 years old, 0:14:25.260 --> 0:14:27.350 working in a fish and chip shop in the north 0:14:27.380 --> 0:14:30.330 of England. And we're now, that was the age of 0:14:30.390 --> 0:14:30.890 child labor. 0:14:30.950 --> 0:14:32.730 I was going to say you were 10 years old, 0:14:32.770 --> 0:14:34.510 were you and Shirley working together? 0:14:34.530 --> 0:14:35.370 Yeah, yeah. 0:14:35.430 --> 0:14:35.750 Okay. 0:14:35.850 --> 0:14:36.230 All right. 0:14:36.250 --> 0:14:37.630 So child labor in the UK here. 0:14:37.770 --> 0:14:41.310 Maybe we were 13. These were the Victorian ages. And 0:14:41.350 --> 0:14:44.410 we're still friends. I mean, we're really close friends, actually. Now, 0:14:44.450 --> 0:14:47.470 the reason we're close friends is that The thread of 0:14:47.770 --> 0:14:51.130 friendship for me is pretty weak. It's been pretty fragile 0:14:51.170 --> 0:14:53.530 because my strongest thread is mastery. I've spent a lot 0:14:53.570 --> 0:14:56.170 of my life becoming good at what you see now, 0:14:56.370 --> 0:14:59.970 being a professor, writing, teaching. I haven't really devoted much 0:15:00.030 --> 0:15:04.790 time to friendship, but Shirley has. That's her strongest thread. 0:15:05.250 --> 0:15:08.480 And I am the happy recipient of being a friend 0:15:08.820 --> 0:15:11.340 of Shirley's. And I'll tell you why I realized this 0:15:11.380 --> 0:15:14.700 was so important. Some years ago, I became a friend 0:15:14.740 --> 0:15:18.400 with Robert Walsinger, who is the head of the Harvard 0:15:19.380 --> 0:15:24.170 Study of Adult Development. And they've followed people now for 0:15:24.170 --> 0:15:26.830 80 years, he and his teams before him. So it's 0:15:26.850 --> 0:15:30.950 the longest study of humans. And this is what they found, 0:15:31.430 --> 0:15:33.630 that if you look at people right the way through 0:15:33.670 --> 0:15:38.150 their life, the one thing that predicts their happiness is, 0:15:38.850 --> 0:15:40.580 you know what? Friendship. 0:15:41.620 --> 0:15:44.560 So Shirley knows what she's doing here. Shirley is a 0:15:44.580 --> 0:15:45.560 very wise woman. 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.400 She's a very wise. On my podcast, she tells me 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.760 how she does it, which is basically the allocation of time. 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:56.960 That she plans in time for making sure she's checking in. 0:15:56.980 --> 0:15:58.840 Because I'm just going to take a wild guess here 0:15:58.860 --> 0:16:00.340 because I have one or two people in my life 0:16:00.420 --> 0:16:03.979 like Shirley. And it is wonderful to be the happy 0:16:04.020 --> 0:16:08.880 beneficiary of their checking because they are systematic. And they 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:11.460 reach out. And so Shirley has sort of a routine 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:15.160 of checking in with everyone that she has in her life. 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:19.260 She does. She sends me cards. I got one yesterday 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:22.510 because it was my book launch yesterday. Shirley, of course, 0:16:22.550 --> 0:16:24.670 came to my book launch. But she sent me a 0:16:24.970 --> 0:16:28.350 card that I got this morning saying, well done. You know, 0:16:28.370 --> 0:16:31.489 for my birthday, she sent me an album of the 0:16:31.550 --> 0:16:35.610 photographs of she and I since we were 11 years old. 0:16:35.690 --> 0:16:37.940 And as a friend said to me, She didn't look 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.330 great at 11, but she was still prepared to show 0:16:40.370 --> 0:16:41.230 you a picture of her. 0:16:43.270 --> 0:16:43.790 I love it. 0:16:43.830 --> 0:16:44.850 That is a true friend. 0:16:45.270 --> 0:16:47.110 We all need a Shirley in our life, or maybe 0:16:47.150 --> 0:16:49.130 we could aspire to be a Shirley. 0:16:49.170 --> 0:16:51.530 That is something we can take on as a goal. 0:16:51.550 --> 0:16:51.690 Yes. 0:16:51.830 --> 0:16:52.530 All right. 0:16:52.850 --> 0:16:54.670 We're going to take one more quick ad break, and 0:16:54.690 --> 0:17:04.220 then I'll be back with more from Linda Gratton. Well, 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:06.760 I am back talking with Linda Gratton, who is a 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.980 professor at the London Business School, the author of Living 0:17:10.020 --> 0:17:13.160 the 100-Year Life, How to Build a Career that Lasts 0:17:13.310 --> 0:17:16.890 and a Life You Love. So we've been talking about 0:17:17.050 --> 0:17:22.169 friendship as a way to make life feel better and 0:17:22.830 --> 0:17:25.909 But there's obviously our relationships with other people, too, especially 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:29.220 people in our households. So I was going to ask you, Linda, 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.740 about your morning routine, because I understand that this is 0:17:32.900 --> 0:17:34.720 a way you're nurturing a relationship as well. 0:17:34.980 --> 0:17:36.960 Well, one of the threads is a thread of intimacy. 0:17:37.220 --> 0:17:38.780 And to be honest, that hasn't been one of my 0:17:38.820 --> 0:17:43.200 strongest threads either. But I try my best. So here's 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:47.879 my morning routine. So I am married, second marriage, late 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:53.420 second marriage to Sir Nigel. So in the morning, Sir 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.619 Nigel and I wake up and I look at him. Remember, 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:00.560 we're English. And I say to him, darling, would you 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:04.140 like a cup of coffee? And he says, thank you, darling. 0:18:04.780 --> 0:18:07.479 And I get out of bed and I move to 0:18:07.530 --> 0:18:11.850 a cupboard, which is only one, three strides away. I 0:18:12.310 --> 0:18:14.770 open the cupboard. There's a coffee machine in it with 0:18:14.810 --> 0:18:17.770 a pod. I make the coffee. I come back and 0:18:17.810 --> 0:18:20.470 I say, darling, Here's the coffee, darling. And he says, 0:18:20.970 --> 0:18:24.130 thank you, darling. And we do that every single day. 0:18:24.990 --> 0:18:28.270 That is so sweet. I love that. And there's something 0:18:28.290 --> 0:18:30.970 in here with the hundred year life is that, you know, 0:18:30.990 --> 0:18:34.389 the first marriage, whatever, didn't work out. But when you 0:18:34.430 --> 0:18:37.840 have a hundred years, there are more possibilities. 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:41.320 Oh, yes. I mean, yeah, we just celebrated 10 years 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:45.420 of marriage and we got married when we were pretty old. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:48.639 That you can have an opportunity for a second chance 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:49.560 that could go for a long time. 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:53.159 And that's true for everything. It's true for all of 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:56.300 the threads. You can learn something new. You can know 0:18:56.340 --> 0:18:59.200 yourself more. You can have more adventures. My strongest thread 0:18:59.260 --> 0:19:03.159 actually is adventure. I love having adventures. And one of 0:19:03.180 --> 0:19:05.659 the things that Nadja and I do a lot is 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.180 is go to amazing places and hang out. 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.520 So you mentioned in the book that actually, or we 0:19:13.540 --> 0:19:15.800 talked earlier, one of the things that your 80-year-old self 0:19:16.570 --> 0:19:21.170 might be saying is that they want to have more memories, 0:19:21.270 --> 0:19:25.330 like more good stories, which is something that you, you know, 0:19:25.369 --> 0:19:28.109 looking forward to your 80-year-old self could choose to give 0:19:28.190 --> 0:19:31.230 that person. Is that how you think about it? 0:19:31.609 --> 0:19:37.300 Exactly how I think about it. So, The threads of intimacy, 0:19:37.340 --> 0:19:42.000 we've already talked about them actually. The first is, sorry, 0:19:42.020 --> 0:19:45.050 the thread of nurture. The first one is intimacy. That's 0:19:45.090 --> 0:19:47.410 how you build a relationship with the people you love. 0:19:47.609 --> 0:19:51.960 Second is friendship. But the final... two are about energy. 0:19:52.460 --> 0:19:54.659 The one is about calm, which as I mentioned earlier, 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:57.699 is the most fragile thread for most people. But the 0:19:57.780 --> 0:20:01.410 final one is about adventure. And it's about how you 0:20:01.530 --> 0:20:05.609 boost your energy through adventures. And of course, some of 0:20:05.690 --> 0:20:07.690 it is just about the here and now. It's just 0:20:07.770 --> 0:20:11.409 about doing something right now out of the ordinary. It 0:20:11.450 --> 0:20:13.669 could be quite a small thing, just taking a different 0:20:13.730 --> 0:20:16.390 way into work, speaking to another person who you don't 0:20:16.450 --> 0:20:19.000 normally do, going to a class that you've never been 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:21.800 to before. It could be really small things like that, 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:24.659 but they all add up. And what they add up 0:20:24.740 --> 0:20:28.540 to is a life of adventure. So I'm 71, and 0:20:28.619 --> 0:20:31.830 I have, I'm pleased to say, a little tiny granddaughter. 0:20:31.890 --> 0:20:34.709 She's called Bobby. She's five months old. And I'm already 0:20:34.790 --> 0:20:37.290 talking to her about my adventures. Now, the truth is, 0:20:37.710 --> 0:20:41.820 Bobby can't understand me. She's too young, but I chat 0:20:41.859 --> 0:20:44.530 along and I know that as soon as she talks, 0:20:44.970 --> 0:20:47.730 I will tell her about all the things I've done 0:20:47.770 --> 0:20:50.690 in my life. And that's what I always promised my 0:20:50.690 --> 0:20:51.950 70 year old self. 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:54.380 That you'd have things to talk about. 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:55.260 Yeah. 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:57.880 We talk about this on the podcast sometimes too, of like, 0:20:57.920 --> 0:20:59.459 it's often, you know, it's hard to get up off 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:01.760 the couch and go do something, right? Like we're tired. 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:05.070 We don't have much energy, but time is going to 0:21:05.109 --> 0:21:07.470 pass one way or the other. And, you know, a 0:21:07.869 --> 0:21:09.369 couple hours from now, you could be back on the 0:21:09.410 --> 0:21:11.770 couch if you want, but you will have had a story. 0:21:11.810 --> 0:21:14.830 You'll have had a memory, an adventure. Something that you 0:21:14.910 --> 0:21:17.530 can look back on. And in general, life is more 0:21:17.609 --> 0:21:18.429 rich when you have those. 0:21:18.450 --> 0:21:20.020 And also some of the things are things you do 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.320 every day, but some of the things are things you plan. 0:21:22.340 --> 0:21:24.940 So Naj and I are going to India for a 0:21:24.980 --> 0:21:29.199 few weeks in January. And honestly, I just, every now 0:21:29.220 --> 0:21:31.020 and again, my mind goes to that. And I think 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:33.969 I'm so looking forward to going back to India. We 0:21:34.010 --> 0:21:36.490 went this year as well. last year as well, and 0:21:36.530 --> 0:21:40.690 spending time looking at the temples, eating the food. It's 0:21:40.710 --> 0:21:45.870 not just thinking about them for the future, but it's 0:21:45.930 --> 0:21:48.990