Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. So today on the podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have Charles Douhig on the show.
Speaker 1: Charles is the reporter for The New York Times, an
Speaker 1: author of two books on habits and productivity, The Power
Speaker 1: of Habit, Why we do what we do in life
Speaker 1: and Business and Smarter, Faster, Better, The Secrets of being
Speaker 1: Productive in Life and Business. Hey, Charles, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on so really interesting books. One Smarter, Faster,
Speaker 1: Better and who doesn't want to be more productive? That's
Speaker 1: that's the hope, right is that everything everyone at least
Speaker 1: sees something useful in it. I mean, my gosh, it
Speaker 1: is a great, substantial book, but from a marketing perspective,
Speaker 1: like who doesn't want to be smarter, faster and or better?
Speaker 1: And who doesn't want to know a secret who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be more productive in life and who isn't
Speaker 1: in the business world in some capacity so well. And
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting is that is that one of
Speaker 1: the things that I found when I was reporting the
Speaker 1: book is that there is sometimes this tension between being
Speaker 1: smarter or being faster, being better. Right in other words,
Speaker 1: in today's life, there's so much stuff going on, there's
Speaker 1: so many tasks to be done, there's so many emails,
Speaker 1: there's so many phone calls to be returned, that you
Speaker 1: can be busy all of the time and never get
Speaker 1: anything important done. And the most productive people what they
Speaker 1: tend to recognize is that sometimes there's a times when
Speaker 1: you have to be smarter, and sometimes there's times that
Speaker 1: you have to be faster, and sometimes there's times that
Speaker 1: you have to be better, but usually not all three
Speaker 1: at the same time. And the way that you distinguish
Speaker 1: between them is that you take the time, you push yourself,
Speaker 1: You create habits that push you to think a little
Speaker 1: bit more deeply of what you really ought to be doing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I do really like that, So there doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be this antagonism between them whatsoever. That's how
Speaker 1: do you define smarter by the way, So I think
Speaker 1: that smarter, much like productivity, is kind of in the
Speaker 1: eye of the beholder, right Like I think that most
Speaker 1: of us know when we feel like we're being really productive,
Speaker 1: or we know when we feel like we're being particularly smart.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that's important to
Speaker 1: recognize is that productivity and smartness and intelligence that they
Speaker 1: mean different things for different people. Right So, productivity on
Speaker 1: a Wednesday morning might mean that you drive your kid
Speaker 1: off at school as early as you can, and you
Speaker 1: get to your desk and you like power plow through
Speaker 1: a bunch of emails and you're on top of everything.
Speaker 1: But a productive Friday morning might be one where you
Speaker 1: can walk your kid to school and talk to them
Speaker 1: about their week and find out what's going on in
Speaker 1: their life, and you don't feel stressed and overwhelmed. And
Speaker 1: I think the point here is that when we try
Speaker 1: and jam things into these one size fits all definitions,
Speaker 1: we're not paying attention to people's inborn instincts to figure
Speaker 1: out what productivity or what smartness or what better is
Speaker 1: for them. And it's important to have time in your
Speaker 1: life when you can ask those questions and figure out
Speaker 1: what is productively Like, what's the most important thing to
Speaker 1: me right now? What does being productive really mean? Absolutely? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you're best in your optimal when they
Speaker 1: operate as a system and you're kind of firing in
Speaker 1: all cylinders. That's exactly right. I like that. So let's
Speaker 1: cover some of these things you've learned, these insights you're
Speaker 1: going from talking with lots of different people. Let's start
Speaker 1: with the something I think everyone is generally interested in,
Speaker 1: how to increase their motivation. You talk about a concept
Speaker 1: used in the psychological literature called internal locus of control.
Speaker 1: Could you explain a little bit what that is and
Speaker 1: maybe how that relates to Marines? Absolutely, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've probably studied internal locus. So internal locus of control
Speaker 1: is this ability to believe that we have can control
Speaker 1: over our destiny, the choices that we make have impacts
Speaker 1: on what happens in our life. And what's really interesting
Speaker 1: is that as researchers have looked at how people generate
Speaker 1: self motivation, that why some people are so much better
Speaker 1: at motivating and sort of you know, getting things done
Speaker 1: quickly with that with less like stress and effort. What
Speaker 1: they found is that the people who seem easiest to
Speaker 1: seem in a position to sort of trigger their self motivation.
Speaker 1: And we know this also from neurological studies. Are folks
Speaker 1: who have this ability to perceive choices to convince themselves
Speaker 1: that they're making decisions and that those decisions will have
Speaker 1: a real material impact on what happens next. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned the Marines. One of my favorite examples of this
Speaker 1: is in the Marines and then Smarter, Faster, Better. We
Speaker 1: kind of explain this concept by talking about how the
Speaker 1: Marines transformed basic training. So it used to be we're
Speaker 1: all accustomed to thinking of Marines going to basic training
Speaker 1: and sort of being trained in obedience and discipline. And
Speaker 1: that's still true. Right when you're a Marine recruit, you
Speaker 1: still get yelled at plenty by a drill instructor. But
Speaker 1: about fifteen years ago, the head of the Marines, a
Speaker 1: guy named General Charles Krulek, he started changing how basic
Speaker 1: training worked in order to teach recruits, these young eighteen
Speaker 1: and nineteen year olds to develop more of an internal
Speaker 1: locus of control. And how the Marines talk about that
Speaker 1: is they talk about it as a bias towards action
Speaker 1: that they wanted to teach marines to have a bias
Speaker 1: towards action, to take the initiative to charge up that hill,
Speaker 1: even if you're your commanders and around to tell you
Speaker 1: what to do. And what they did is they redesigned
Speaker 1: basic training to force all these recruits to make choice
Speaker 1: after choice after choice. So it's not uncommon in your
Speaker 1: first week or two at basic training that you go
Speaker 1: into the mess hall and you have a big meal
Speaker 1: and all of your colleagues do to and then and
Speaker 1: then you know, most of the mess all will empty
Speaker 1: out except for your unit, and your drill instructor will
Speaker 1: tell you, okay, now go clean the mess hall. And
Speaker 1: someone will turn to the drill instructure and they'll say, okay,
Speaker 1: so like where are the brooms And he says that's
Speaker 1: you know, figure it out, that's up to you. And
Speaker 1: they say, well, should we like throw away the leftover hamburgers?
Speaker 1: Should we put them in the fridge, And he says,
Speaker 1: figure it out, that's up to you. And what they're
Speaker 1: doing is they're trying to train all these marines to
Speaker 1: make choice after choice after choice, so that making a
Speaker 1: choice becomes instinctual. Because one of the things that we
Speaker 1: know is that when people can look at chores and
Speaker 1: turn them into choices, when they can see some type
Speaker 1: of agency that they can assert, it makes it much
Speaker 1: easier for them to self motivate and get things done.
Speaker 1: I love that. I you know, you see that external
Speaker 1: locus of control is very high and people who are
Speaker 1: depressed absolutely, yeah, absolutely very So it's that's super key.
Speaker 1: So what from a you know, it's interesting you implicate
Speaker 1: the striatum in this because that's not always talked about
Speaker 1: in terms of motivation, but it does seem to be
Speaker 1: a major projection point for dopamine, and we know that
Speaker 1: dopamine is essential for whether or not, you know, you
Speaker 1: want to decide whether something's worth an effort, you know,
Speaker 1: is it worth the effort? If I put this in
Speaker 1: so you can kind of see an interesting linkage there
Speaker 1: between having an internal locus control and being more voted
Speaker 1: motivated more of the extent to what you feel like
Speaker 1: if you intentionally put in that effort, that you are
Speaker 1: actually the one who's causing the result. And a lot
Speaker 1: of that research comes from Mauricio Delgado at Rutgers, who's
Speaker 1: done some really really interesting and very clever and graceful
Speaker 1: studies trying to figure out which parts of our neurology
Speaker 1: become most active when we feel like we can make
Speaker 1: a choice. And what he found is that the straatum
Speaker 1: seems to become more active even if our choice has
Speaker 1: no impact, even if we know that our choice has
Speaker 1: no impact, or that the task that we're doing is
Speaker 1: a meaningless task, simply feeling like we can make a
Speaker 1: decision that has a reward sensation inherent in it. And
Speaker 1: the way he explained this to me, which I thought
Speaker 1: was really insightful, was he said, you know when you're
Speaker 1: driving down the freeway and you're like stuck in like
Speaker 1: a traffic jam on the freeway, and you see this
Speaker 1: exit right, and you know that if you take that exit,
Speaker 1: it's going to take just as long to get home. Right,
Speaker 1: you might as well just stay in the traffic jam.
Speaker 1: But there's some part of your brain that's saying, like,
Speaker 1: turn the wheel, turn the wheel, go take the exit.
Speaker 1: You just want to take control, You want to make
Speaker 1: a choice. That's exactly what I think he's saying is
Speaker 1: that we have this almost inborn instinct to motivate around
Speaker 1: a choice, to seek out something that makes us feel
Speaker 1: in control. And you know, from an evolutionary perspective, You
Speaker 1: can see why that would be really useful, right that
Speaker 1: people who have an internal locus of control, who try
Speaker 1: and assert themselves probably evolutionarily are going to be more
Speaker 1: successful than their peers. But it's also a way for
Speaker 1: us to kind of learn how to trick ourselves into
Speaker 1: self motivating when we're having trouble doing so. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: if you look at other animals, they don't even have
Speaker 1: that agency at all. So yeah, maybe it's like what
Speaker 1: it means to feel human in a sense. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is great, And so I want to
Speaker 1: now turn teams because you know, there's this this is
Speaker 1: phrase called safe spaces that they use an academic institution,
Speaker 1: And it occurs to me that what you talk about
Speaker 1: in terms of psychological safety is actually the reverse of
Speaker 1: safe spaces in that, you know, a lot of students
Speaker 1: today are want to kind of be in a space
Speaker 1: where they can't be challenged, you know, where like they
Speaker 1: want to make sure that what they say is protected
Speaker 1: and in a way that no one, you know, like
Speaker 1: is going to interfere that. But it looks like this
Speaker 1: psychological safety is a much better way of letting people
Speaker 1: feel like free to express their opinions. Could you tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about that. I think that's really
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that, but you're that's a really
Speaker 1: it's a really clever juxtaposition, particularly right now with the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago saying that their campus won't have safe
Speaker 1: spaces and how the university is responding and saying safe
Speaker 1: spaces are important. So you're exactly right. So what we
Speaker 1: know about psychological safety comes largely from studies of team dynamics,
Speaker 1: and in the book the way that we I talk
Speaker 1: about this is on Google. That Google. There is an
Speaker 1: excerpt of this in the Times magazine that Google spent
Speaker 1: about four years and tens of millions of dollars trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to build the perfect team. And
Speaker 1: initially their thought was the perfect team is one where
Speaker 1: you mix exactly the right kinds of people. So maybe
Speaker 1: everyone on the team is friends so they all get
Speaker 1: along really well, or maybe maybe they're people who all
Speaker 1: like the same type of leadership structure, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: a mixture of introverts and extroverts. And Google, because it's
Speaker 1: a data driven company, they basically looked at all their
Speaker 1: good teams and their bad teams, and they tested all
Speaker 1: these hypotheses and they put none of them seem to
Speaker 1: be true. That basically who was on a team seemed
Speaker 1: to not have much correlation with whether that team was effective.
Speaker 1: The thing that did matter a great deal was how
Speaker 1: the people on the team interacted, basically the group norms,
Speaker 1: the culture that emerged among those teammates. And in particular,
Speaker 1: they found that there were these two behaviors that, more
Speaker 1: than anything else, seemed to have a huge impact on
Speaker 1: making a group come together there and work well. The
Speaker 1: first was this equality and conversational turntaking. So basically, in
Speaker 1: an average meeting, does everyone kind of pipe up and
Speaker 1: speak up to equal degree. Now that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: everyone talks the same number of minutes. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: there's some meetings when some people are a little bit
Speaker 1: more long winded than others, But say, over you know,
Speaker 1: a month, is everyone basically speaking in rough legal proportion.
Speaker 1: And then the second behavioral norm the second characteristic was that,
Speaker 1: in addition to letting everyone kind of talk up, does
Speaker 1: everyone show each other that they're listening? Do they engage
Speaker 1: in ostentatious listening behaviors? Which means are they like picking
Speaker 1: up on each other's nonverbal cues when someone looks upset,
Speaker 1: or they saying, Hey, Susie, why do you look so upset?
Speaker 1: Are they repeating what people just said? They said? You know,
Speaker 1: hey Jim, what I hear you saying is such and such.
Speaker 1: If you have these two behaviors, this listening and this talking,
Speaker 1: what you get is psychological safety, which Amy Edmondson and
Speaker 1: Anita Wooley have written a lot about it, particularly Amy
Speaker 1: Edmundson at Harvard Business School, and psychological safety is kind
Speaker 1: of this environment where, exactly as you put it, everyone
Speaker 1: feels safe to speak their mind, everyone feels like they're
Speaker 1: being listened to. But at the same time, you also
Speaker 1: feel like you can take risks, like if I bring
Speaker 1: up idea and it's kind of a crazy idea, no
Speaker 1: one's going to hold it against me. If I ask
Speaker 1: a question that maybe is like not a smart question,
Speaker 1: that smart question, or maybe it's an offensive question that
Speaker 1: other people will understand it's coming from a good place.
Speaker 1: And I think I think you're exactly right that what
Speaker 1: safe spaces really aspire to is they aspire to psychological safety, right,
Speaker 1: because what we really want on university campuses or anywhere
Speaker 1: else for that matter, is a place where I can
Speaker 1: be myself, where I can turn to someone and I
Speaker 1: can say, Hey, tell me what it's like to be you.
Speaker 1: I can ask a dumb question, right, and I feel
Speaker 1: safe enough to ask it and they feel safe enough
Speaker 1: to answer it. Yeah. So where I kind of got
Speaker 1: this idea is from Second City in Chicago, the improv
Speaker 1: group we did, so we had some conversations with Kelly
Speaker 1: Leonard and Ann lebera from that group, and you know,
Speaker 1: and just noticed that the kind of safe spaces they
Speaker 1: talk about in academy are almost the exactly opposite of
Speaker 1: what they try to nurture within the improv group. You know,
Speaker 1: what you're saying shouldn't offend others, but you should still
Speaker 1: be safe to have a different opinion and to take
Speaker 1: those risks. So it does seem like that culture of
Speaker 1: comedy and improv is more along lines of what we
Speaker 1: should be promoting and even in academia. Well, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting because one of the things that's true I think
Speaker 1: of improv comedy, and that's also true of good teams,
Speaker 1: is that there's often a little bit of tension in
Speaker 1: that group, not necessarily tension among the group members but
Speaker 1: tension in regards to the ambitions or the aspirations of
Speaker 1: the group. Right, an improv comedy group is saying, by definition,
Speaker 1: we want to be really funny and look really really smart.
Speaker 1: But instead of preparing, we're going to come into this
Speaker 1: thing without even knowing what we're talking about. Right. And
Speaker 1: the best teams, and I think everyone's had this experience,
Speaker 1: the best teams are ones that say, like, look like,
Speaker 1: we want to do something together that's like even more
Speaker 1: amazing than anything that we could all do on our own.
Speaker 1: And it's that tension. It's being comfortable with that tension,
Speaker 1: embracing that tension and saying, look are reach expeeds our
Speaker 1: gasp or our graspic seeds are reach right now, it's
Speaker 1: being okay with that It's not only at the core
Speaker 1: of like why groups sometimes do really well, but also
Speaker 1: at the core of like productivity. Right that, like the
Speaker 1: first step in productivity is oftentimes being able to elucidate
Speaker 1: some ambition, some something you think is wonderful that's not
Speaker 1: in the world yet that you want to bring into
Speaker 1: the world. Absolutely, I think that was very well put,
Speaker 1: and that's, you know, the whole idea of stingling creativity
Speaker 1: is in academia for me is the first thing near
Speaker 1: and dear to my heart. So I love that you
Speaker 1: brought that up. So let's just move all along the lines.
Speaker 1: I still want people to buy your book, but let's
Speaker 1: cover some of these key points you talk about. You
Speaker 1: also talk about focus, and I was wondering how you
Speaker 1: relate that to, uh, you know, some of these plane crashes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's so that's actually my favorite chapter in the book.
Speaker 1: It's it's the story of air Flight France flight four
Speaker 1: four seven, which which most people might remember sort of
Speaker 1: tragically crashed into the ocean without there being anything obvious
Speaker 1: lay wrong with the airplane. And then this other amazing
Speaker 1: story of Quantus flight thirty two, which is actually one
Speaker 1: of the worst mid air mechanical disasters in history. Basically
Speaker 1: one of the wings of the plane, the engine just
Speaker 1: like tore through the wing and basically knocked out every
Speaker 1: single electrical and hydraulic system and everything else, and that
Speaker 1: plane landed completely safely. There wasn't one injury on board.
Speaker 1: And when researchers have looked at those two flights and
Speaker 1: tried to figure out, you know, what made the difference
Speaker 1: what they figured out is that basically the differences a
Speaker 1: problem of attention that on air Finance flight four four seven,
Speaker 1: the one that crashed, the pilots didn't know how to
Speaker 1: manage their attention very well, and so so as a result,
Speaker 1: they became completely overwhelmed. There was this one small incident
Speaker 1: where where one of a tube that helps measure airspeed
Speaker 1: became iced over and the plane lost airspeed information for
Speaker 1: just a couple of minutes, and that set off this
Speaker 1: whole cascade of panic in the cockpit that caused the
Speaker 1: pilots to inadvertently crashed plane into the sea. And it's
Speaker 1: because they didn't really know where to put their attention.
Speaker 1: As academics would put it or scientists would put it,
Speaker 1: they weren't building mental models. They weren't telling themselves stories
Speaker 1: about what was occurring to help their brain figure out
Speaker 1: which alarms to focus on and which ones to ignore.
Speaker 1: Whereas in Quantus flight thirty two, the pilots, in the
Speaker 1: midst of a very genuine emergency, something that normally should
Speaker 1: have crashed almost any plane, they were in the habit
Speaker 1: of telling themselves stories constantly, in fact vocalizing the stories
Speaker 1: to each other, saying Hey, you know, I saw this
Speaker 1: alarm go off, and I thought that this was happening,
Speaker 1: and so I looked at this panel and it's not happening.
Speaker 1: And they basically spent the entire time telling each other's
Speaker 1: stories about what was occurring, and as a result, they
Speaker 1: were able as a group to figure out where to
Speaker 1: put their attention and which details they could safely ignore
Speaker 1: because otherwise they would have been overwhelmed. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: The more that you're under stress, what is the research
Speaker 1: show the more you're understressed, the more you're you get
Speaker 1: laser like focused on something, or the more it diffuses,
Speaker 1: which well, so the risk and you're understresses that you
Speaker 1: fall into what's known as a cognitive tunnel, which is
Speaker 1: that that you tend to react to the most obvious
Speaker 1: stimuli possible. So in some cases that might mean that
Speaker 1: you focus in on one thing and you don't pay
Speaker 1: attention to all the other important details. Or it might
Speaker 1: mean that if there's stimulus after stimulus after stimulus, that
Speaker 1: your attention is jumping from alarm to alarm to alarm.
Speaker 1: And we've all experienced this before when you're driving down again,
Speaker 1: a driving example, when you're driving down the street and
Speaker 1: you know you're going to speed limit and you see
Speaker 1: a cop car suddenly out of the corner of your eyes,
Speaker 1: and you like hit the brake even though you don't
Speaker 1: have to. That's a momentary cognitive tunnel. What your brain
Speaker 1: has done is it has said, I'm so overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: all the stimuli here that this one piece of stimuli
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on at the police car to
Speaker 1: the exclusion of everything else. And that's really dangerous, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're in a car, it's not that
Speaker 1: big a deal, but if you're in a cockpit, it
Speaker 1: can be a really big deal. Or think about what
Speaker 1: happens when we walk into our office every morning, right,
Speaker 1: We walk in and your phone is buzzing in your pocket,
Speaker 1: and you've got one hundred emails to deal with, and
Speaker 1: there's someone knocking on the door asking if you can
Speaker 1: come to this emergency meeting, and there's three other people
Speaker 1: asking you questions. For many of us, every workday is
Speaker 1: kind of like the cockpit of an airplane with all
Speaker 1: these alarms going off, and the people who are best
Speaker 1: at dealing with that, the people who are best at
Speaker 1: figuring out where to focus and maintaining their priorities. What
Speaker 1: research has shown is there people who tend to tell
Speaker 1: themselves stories about how they expect their day to unfold.
Speaker 1: So there are people who visualize their day with like
Speaker 1: just half a degree more specificity than everyone else. So
Speaker 1: if they have a meeting at ten o'clock, instead of
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, I have a meeting at ten o'clock
Speaker 1: and it's going to last to eleven, they take a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes in the morning and they think, I
Speaker 1: have a meeting at ten o'clock, and it's probably going
Speaker 1: to start with Jim bringing up his dumb idea because
Speaker 1: he always brings up that dumb idea, and then Susan's
Speaker 1: going to disagree with him, because Susan always disagrees with Jim,
Speaker 1: And then I can bring up my idea, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to look like a genius by comparison, and that
Speaker 1: act of telling yourself a story, of building a mental
Speaker 1: model of how you expect your day to unfold, that
Speaker 1: seems to be correlated with much much better focus and
Speaker 1: much better prioritization, because you're able to figure out almost
Speaker 1: automatically what you should pay attention to and what you
Speaker 1: can safely ignore that's such useful information. It's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like you want to do cognitive tunneling, but you
Speaker 1: want to cognitively tunnel the most relevant information. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah, so we can like distinguish between like
Speaker 1: unhelpful cognitive tunneling and like productive cognitive tuttling. But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's talk about goal setting because, uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of your readers and a lot of the listeners
Speaker 1: of this podcast constantly fail in their goals. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like to be human is too is to have
Speaker 1: setbacks in your goals. What are some kinds of goals
Speaker 1: you could set to kind of minimize that you're going
Speaker 1: to not be able to reach them. Well, so I
Speaker 1: guess at the out that I would sort of say
Speaker 1: that we should have some goals that we're failing in, right,
Speaker 1: Like if every goal that we set we accomplish perfectly,
Speaker 1: then yeah, a be boring, but it probably means b
Speaker 1: not being particularly ambitious, right, We're not trying to stretch ourselves.
Speaker 1: But see, it would mean that we're not really thinking
Speaker 1: very hard about our goals, right, because just because you
Speaker 1: write something on a piece of paper is like on
Speaker 1: a to do list three days later, that might be
Speaker 1: not the right thing to be chasing anymore, right Like
Speaker 1: prioritization should be an ongoing process. And so when researchers
Speaker 1: have looked at this, one of the things that they
Speaker 1: focused on is they focused on to do list, how
Speaker 1: people write to do lists. There's one set of studies
Speaker 1: that I really love about to do list where a
Speaker 1: guy went in He's gut his last name is Pitchell.
Speaker 1: He's a researcher at Carlton. He went and he looked
Speaker 1: at how people wrote to do list and he found
Speaker 1: that most people used to do list as an external
Speaker 1: memory aid. So what they'll do is they'll come up
Speaker 1: with like a list of things that they want to
Speaker 1: get done, and they'll just drop them down on a
Speaker 1: piece of paper so they don't have to remember all
Speaker 1: of them. And about fifteen percent of them would actually
Speaker 1: write at the top of that to do list a
Speaker 1: task that they had already completed, because it feels so
Speaker 1: good when you like sit down at your desk to
Speaker 1: like cross something off right away, right like pick up
Speaker 1: the milk. I did it last night, that one off.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that he said that the problem
Speaker 1: with that is that that's using a to do list
Speaker 1: for mood repair. It's using it to do list to
Speaker 1: make yourself feel good instead of using a to do
Speaker 1: list as a prioritization device. And so the right way
Speaker 1: to write a to do list, the way that seems
Speaker 1: most correlated with success is at the top of your
Speaker 1: to do list, write your most important goal, write your
Speaker 1: stretch goal, right like, what's the most important thing you
Speaker 1: want to get done this week or this month or today,
Speaker 1: and then under that come up with a plan. And
Speaker 1: there's ways to come up with plans, really simple plans.
Speaker 1: There's a method called smart goals where you just say
Speaker 1: sort of specifically what you want to do and how
Speaker 1: you're going to measure it and is it achievable and
Speaker 1: realistic and what's the timeline. But as a result, every
Speaker 1: time you look at your to do list, if you
Speaker 1: have that most important goal at the top of your page,
Speaker 1: it's going to force you to ask yourself, is what
Speaker 1: I'm doing right now? Does it align with my top priorities?
Speaker 1: Right If I just spent the last forty five minutes
Speaker 1: answering emails, and at the top of my to do list,
Speaker 1: it says, write that memo you've been putting off for
Speaker 1: three weeks. What I probably ought to do is close
Speaker 1: my computer and write that memo. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I spent like forty five seconds coming up with a
Speaker 1: smart plan on how to write that memo, so I
Speaker 1: know where to start. To do lists are most effective
Speaker 1: when they remind us of our most important goals, when
Speaker 1: they cause us to think about our priorities rather than
Speaker 1: just trying to get the next thing on the list done.
Speaker 1: But you have to write your to do list the
Speaker 1: right way to use it as a prioritization device. Well,
Speaker 1: what if like like for me, one of the biggest
Speaker 1: things on my to do list is to actually forget
Speaker 1: what my priorities are. So I feel like I'm screwed. Well,
Speaker 1: but I think that there's a way to do that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that you know what your priorities are.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm about to add I find everything interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but okay, so let me ask you, so, what's your
Speaker 1: biggest goal for this week? Like, what's the number one
Speaker 1: thing you wanted to get done this week? Wrap up
Speaker 1: some of these reports we're running up of on our
Speaker 1: imagination retreats. Okay, yeah, okay, so that's that seems pretty
Speaker 1: And so what what did you spend today doing besides
Speaker 1: this podcast? Well, yeah, I was reviewing one of these
Speaker 1: reports that we did with futurists. Okay, so it sounds
Speaker 1: sounds like your behavior and your stretch cool or in alignment.
Speaker 1: It's true, it's true, but you know, then there are
Speaker 1: just constantly things coming up during the day that distract
Speaker 1: you from it. So you know, I'll get an email
Speaker 1: with someone with it. Oh, Scott used to read this article,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, and then I'm like and then
Speaker 1: it's like, if you like this article, you also like
Speaker 1: these articles. And then I'm like, oh, that's interesting, and
Speaker 1: then well yeah, so that's so. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: what you're saying is that like you have a challenge
Speaker 1: not knowing what your goals are. You have a challenge
Speaker 1: remaining focused on the goals. That's goods And I think
Speaker 1: I think to that point, like that's where mental models
Speaker 1: become so powerful, which is that like you, so when
Speaker 1: I take the subway, I live in Brooklyn, I work
Speaker 1: in Manhattan, and so one of the things I do
Speaker 1: on the subway every morning is like I used to,
Speaker 1: you know, like check my email or read on my
Speaker 1: kindle or whatever it was. Now, I just put everything
Speaker 1: away and for like seven minutes, I actually said a
Speaker 1: time around my watch. For seven minutes, I literally just
Speaker 1: try and envision visualize my day hour by hour, right so,
Speaker 1: and so by the time I get off the subway
Speaker 1: doesn't make very long to do this. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: by eleven o'clock, I intend to have this memo written.
Speaker 1: And from ten to eleven, like what I expect to
Speaker 1: do is just and like, because I've just visualized it
Speaker 1: a little bit, it's so much easier at ten o'clock
Speaker 1: to like close my turn off my email program, close
Speaker 1: the door to my office because I kind of expect
Speaker 1: that that's what I planned on doing. And I think
Speaker 1: that's how mental models work, is that mental models they
Speaker 1: create what seems normal for us. And as a result,
Speaker 1: you don't get distracted by all those emails because you said, like,
Speaker 1: look in my head, I told myself the story from
Speaker 1: ten to eleven, I'm working on the memo, and so
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel weird to turn off my email, and
Speaker 1: so I won't get distracted. Now, that really is super
Speaker 1: helpful information. Thanks for letting me be a bit of
Speaker 1: a smartness. I like being a smart a sometimes, but
Speaker 1: that is that is very useful. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: what's about decision making because that seems like a good segue.
Speaker 1: When we try to make our decisions, there are various
Speaker 1: ways we can do them. And I don't think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are aware of Baijian statistics, right, but
Speaker 1: you are, so this is what That was another one
Speaker 1: of my favorite chapters, just because like the concept of
Speaker 1: like Bayesian psychology is so is so interesting? Ye base
Speaker 1: rates and all that. Where did you learn about that?
Speaker 1: First of all? Well, so I how did I learn
Speaker 1: about it? So that chapter is about poker players, right,
Speaker 1: It's about Annie Duke and sort of the he's a
Speaker 1: professional poker player and how she won the Tournament of
Speaker 1: Champions sort of hand by hand. And I can't remember
Speaker 1: exactly what brought me to Baysian Baysian psychology when I
Speaker 1: finally found these researchers. Some paper they wrote must have
Speaker 1: been like must have come across my screen, and I
Speaker 1: just thought it was really interesting. And Annie talks a
Speaker 1: lot about Bayesian statistics because Basian statistics, So for people
Speaker 1: who haven't heard of basing statistics. Basian statistics is or
Speaker 1: basian maths is this way of figuring out how to
Speaker 1: predict the future when you have limited knowledge, right, And
Speaker 1: what it basically says is you should try and take
Speaker 1: advantage of what you already know, and then figure out
Speaker 1: how much what you already know matches kind of the
Speaker 1: situation you're trying to forecast, and then as you're making guesses,
Speaker 1: look at how successful or how much you fail in
Speaker 1: your guesses. Right. So, like one of the famous examples,
Speaker 1: of course, is you know breast cancer detection rates. That
Speaker 1: we're much better at accurately forecasting whether someone has breast
Speaker 1: cancer if we take into consideration how many times we've
Speaker 1: been right or wrong in the past instead of simply
Speaker 1: just looking at pure statistics. And the way that this
Speaker 1: matters in our life is that what this says is
Speaker 1: that oftentimes all of us have this instinct that we
Speaker 1: can either pay attention to or we can ignore. But
Speaker 1: our instinct is like a big basing machine in our head.
Speaker 1: Our instinct oftentimes can recognize patterns, and it can see
Speaker 1: things that maybe we're not even totally conscious of. And
Speaker 1: if we allow our instincts to help guide us, then
Speaker 1: we oftentimes make much better decisions. We do a better
Speaker 1: job of sort of predicting what's going to happen and
Speaker 1: making a decision as a result, because in many ways
Speaker 1: making a choice about trying to predict the future. But
Speaker 1: the caveat there is that our instinct isn't perfect, right,
Speaker 1: many of us have good instincts, we have like not
Speaker 1: so good instincts. Sometimes our instinct is weaker than we
Speaker 1: think it is. And so how do we train our
Speaker 1: instinct to be as accurate as possible? Well, what researchers
Speaker 1: have found is that the best way to do that
Speaker 1: is to simply expose ourselves to as many different kinds
Speaker 1: of experiences as possible. Right, The more data I have,
Speaker 1: the more I expand my base rate relevant data not
Speaker 1: too yeah relevant right, relevant data, the more that I'm
Speaker 1: able to make a good guess about what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: But the trick is that many of us tend to
Speaker 1: oversample certain times kinds of experiences in particular success right.
Speaker 1: And a great example of this, I think is when
Speaker 1: we're asking people about getting married. That if a friend
Speaker 1: comes up and they say, hey, I got engaged last month,
Speaker 1: it's our instinct to be like, oh, tell me all
Speaker 1: about it, like, you know, how did you meet her?
Speaker 1: When did you realize that you were in love? How
Speaker 1: did you pop the question? We ask all these questions
Speaker 1: about getting married, and that expands our data set about
Speaker 1: marriage experiences, so that maybe we're better off in a
Speaker 1: situation when we're trying to figure out whether we should
Speaker 1: propose or not. But when someone comes up and they
Speaker 1: tell us that they're getting divorced, we never do that, right,
Speaker 1: We never ask, oh, you know, like tell me like
Speaker 1: when did you decide to get divorced, and like how
Speaker 1: did you how did you bring up divorce? How did
Speaker 1: you pop the question divorce? And as a result, we
Speaker 1: don't have a very good data set in our heads
Speaker 1: a set of experiences about divorce. We tend to overbias
Speaker 1: towards success and away from failure, and that can hurt
Speaker 1: our instincts because we think that we have a pretty
Speaker 1: good data set. We think our instincts are pretty good,
Speaker 1: but it turns out that it's being bias by being
Speaker 1: oversampled overexposed to one type of kind of situation. I
Speaker 1: think that's right, and that's really can help us make
Speaker 1: better decisions, But can I get in a way of
Speaker 1: making innovative decisions. I'm trying to like reconcile chapter six
Speaker 1: with the chapter seven. So in my I study creativity
Speaker 1: and I also study expertise. But I find sometimes too
Speaker 1: much expertise makes you inflexible and not allowing you to
Speaker 1: actually see something fresh that would lead to creativity. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yeah, so I think that
Speaker 1: can happen. But I think that I think that there's
Speaker 1: a counter a counterbalance to that, which is that in
Speaker 1: chapter seven about creativity, it focuses a lot on Disney
Speaker 1: and Pixar, who believe that, like, it's fine to have experts, right,
Speaker 1: we should have as many experts as we can, but
Speaker 1: we don't ask people to rely on their expertise to
Speaker 1: be creative. Rather than what we do is we set
Speaker 1: up a process. And that process can take someone who's
Speaker 1: an expert, it can take someone who's a novice. It
Speaker 1: can take someone who's you know, quote unquote really creative,
Speaker 1: like an artist. It can take someone who doesn't think
Speaker 1: of themselves as being creative, and as long as they
Speaker 1: commit to the process, a creative product will emerge. Right,
Speaker 1: and the process is going to do things like ask
Speaker 1: us to look at this problem from other vantage points,
Speaker 1: to say, your expertise might be an advantage, it might
Speaker 1: also be a weakness. So let's think about how do
Speaker 1: we counteract the weakness of expertise the process. The nice
Speaker 1: thing about process is it's kind of agnostic, right. It
Speaker 1: doesn't say this process can only be used by an
Speaker 1: expert or by a novice. It says, regardless of who
Speaker 1: you are, we want you to think a little bit
Speaker 1: and act a little bit like an expert, and think
Speaker 1: and act a little bit like a novice, and hopefully
Speaker 1: in doing so we get a diversity of perspectives. Oh totally.
Speaker 1: And the key there's the adaptability to switch between those
Speaker 1: ways of thinking depending on the situation. Absolutely, you talk
Speaker 1: about intense time pressures in your innovation chapter. Could you
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit how that interacts with coming
Speaker 1: up with new ideas? Yeah? Well so, I mean, I
Speaker 1: imagine your research has looked at this, and there seems
Speaker 1: to be a healthy string of research that shows that
Speaker 1: time pressures can oftentimes push people to be more creative
Speaker 1: because it removes it removes a couple of things. First
Speaker 1: of all, it removes the ability to seek perfectionism, Second
Speaker 1: of all, it oftentimes forces people to be much more
Speaker 1: pragmatic and to rely on what they already know rather
Speaker 1: than coming up with something completely completely new. And all
Speaker 1: of those are really can be really powerful. Now, but
Speaker 1: I guess my insect is always I sort of shy
Speaker 1: away from time like that those studies though, because it
Speaker 1: seems like it seems like it's arguing that we should
Speaker 1: create like false time pressure to become creative. But that's
Speaker 1: not actually, I think what the cities are saying constraints
Speaker 1: is good for creativity. Yeah, the constraints. But why are
Speaker 1: constraints good for creativity? Right? They're oftentimes good because they
Speaker 1: they force because they remove false barriers. Right, they force
Speaker 1: us to be comfortable with that constraint, to forgive ourselves
Speaker 1: our mediocrity along the way. That's an interesting way of
Speaker 1: thinking about it. But the expertise literature always thought of
Speaker 1: it is not and it narrows the problem space. So
Speaker 1: you know, we can have the paradox of choice. We
Speaker 1: can get so overwhelmed when the problem space you can
Speaker 1: have too many operators. I'm dropping, like you know, Herbsimon
Speaker 1: expertise language, but yeah, you know, you have operators that
Speaker 1: allow you to mean Zen's analysis reduce the discrepancy between
Speaker 1: your goal state and your end state. And it seems
Speaker 1: like when you have some constraints, you narrow that all
Speaker 1: the operators that you need to choose, but it still
Speaker 1: gives you freedom to be creative and how you overcome
Speaker 1: the barriers. So I think that, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you could make that argument. Like the way I think
Speaker 1: about it is Chuck Close, right, because by that same token,
Speaker 1: if someone is an expert, we should create more and
Speaker 1: more and more and more false constraints for them, right,
Speaker 1: But we know that there's a point of diminishing returns.
Speaker 1: And we also know that, by the way, if someone
Speaker 1: has all the time in the world, they still oftentimes
Speaker 1: will automatically isolating sort of where they want to focus,
Speaker 1: and in doing so we'll get to the right answer
Speaker 1: relatively quickly. I would make an argument that it's less
Speaker 1: mechanical than this kind of decision tree, right, where if
Speaker 1: we can cut off some of the branches the experts
Speaker 1: will get faster, we'll get to the right answer faster.
Speaker 1: And it's more like Chuck Close, which is that Chuck
Speaker 1: Close made this decision in part because he was disabled
Speaker 1: to paint these portraits by painting all these little boxes,
Speaker 1: and that what that allowed him to do is it
Speaker 1: allowed him to really intensely focus on each box, and
Speaker 1: so can what we consider a constraint wasn't actually a constraint.
Speaker 1: It was actually a freeing mechanism. That's saying, rather than
Speaker 1: have to think about the whole picture, I'm now going
Speaker 1: to allow you to think about that picture square inch
Speaker 1: by square inch. Hm. I like that. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I'm going to chew over the next
Speaker 1: couple of days. I'm not going to respond to right
Speaker 1: away right now, but I think it's really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that. So let's uh, your book has certainly
Speaker 1: given me a lot of stuff to think about. And
Speaker 1: you know, the fun thing for me, honestly, Charles, is
Speaker 1: like seeing how the big pic like, what's the big
Speaker 1: picture like when you take all these different aspects and
Speaker 1: you like look as a global puzzle, you know, does
Speaker 1: it all fit nicely together? Which aspects could potentially contradict
Speaker 1: each other? You know these sorts of things. So well,
Speaker 1: so here's how I think about it. And I'd be curious,
Speaker 1: since I wrote it, I'm maybe too close to it.
Speaker 1: So curious of if you agree or disagreer you saw
Speaker 1: something else? Which is that? Is it? Throughout history, like
Speaker 1: the killer app for productivity and success has always been
Speaker 1: thinking more deeply, right, Like, like the people who seem
Speaker 1: to succeed are the ones who seem to be able
Speaker 1: to push themselves to just think a little bit more
Speaker 1: deeply about like what do I really want to get done?
Speaker 1: What's going to move the needle? How do I stay
Speaker 1: focused on that? How instead of just being busy do
Speaker 1: I become productive? That's Cayle Newport's deep work exactly exactly
Speaker 1: and so and so for me, Like, what all the
Speaker 1: chapters in this book bring together is this idea that
Speaker 1: we don't accidentally sort of trip over thoughtfulness, That we
Speaker 1: need to create habits that act allow us to think more.
Speaker 1: And that when I say something like that, most people think, okay,
Speaker 1: that means that like I need to like take long
Speaker 1: walks in the woods, right and like let my mind wander.
Speaker 1: But for many people that's not actually how they engage
Speaker 1: in thoughtful behavior. That's not how they have contemplative routines.
Speaker 1: That for many people, a contemplative routine is, for instance,
Speaker 1: being in the habit of like arguing with your friends
Speaker 1: because it forces you to think more deeply about the choices,
Speaker 1: or maybe writing long emails to your parents, or describing
Speaker 1: your entire day to your wife, or maybe taking a
Speaker 1: long walk in the woods, or experimenting with a bunch
Speaker 1: of different routines and figuring out which ones actually push
Speaker 1: you to think. Right, right, Because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, our growth goals aren't to create habits. Our
Speaker 1: growth goals is to automatize the things that are taking
Speaker 1: us away from our growth. Yeah, that's exactly right. So
Speaker 1: I don't have to think about brushing my teeth, or
Speaker 1: I don't have to think about exercising that Instead, I
Speaker 1: exercise and during that time, I'm in some habit I'm in.
Speaker 1: I know how to push myself to think more deeply
Speaker 1: about the choices that I'm making, because my instinct, frankly,
Speaker 1: is going to be to like let my mind wander
Speaker 1: and just daydream, or to listen to a podcast, or
Speaker 1: if I'm standing in line, to check my iPhone or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Each of the chapters in the book
Speaker 1: is about, like, here's a way of pushing yourself to
Speaker 1: think more deeply for this one kind of specific goal, right,
Speaker 1: if you want to self motivate, if you want to
Speaker 1: be more creative, and here are the tools that are
Speaker 1: available to you to say, like, how do you make
Speaker 1: this more part of your life? So the common thread
Speaker 1: running your prior book on habits and this book, I
Speaker 1: mean that you see a similarity between both of them, right,
Speaker 1: a little bit. I actually see them as being opposite
Speaker 1: for the reasoning you just elucid that habits are about
Speaker 1: like habits are about not having to think about the
Speaker 1: dumb things in life, just having them happen automatically. And
Speaker 1: productivity is about using that new mental free space to
Speaker 1: think about the things that really matter and training yourself
Speaker 1: to think about them in productive ways. Totally. I was
Speaker 1: just going to say, tame, Yeah, tame your habits so
Speaker 1: that you can be most productive. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. I like it. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for chatting with me today, Charles is really thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast
Speaker 1: with doctor Scott Barry Kauffman. I hope you found this
Speaker 1: episode just as thought for booking and interesting as I did.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to read the show notes for this
Speaker 1: episode or hear past episodes. You can visit the Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast dot com