Speaker 1: Hello there.
Speaker 2: I am on holidays for a couple of weeks, so
Speaker 2: I have hand picked some episodes that have been my
Speaker 2: absolute favorites over the last two years to share with you.
Speaker 2: I will be back with brand new episodes very soon.
Speaker 2: Have you ever noticed that bronze medalists often seem happier
Speaker 2: than silver medalists. It seems weird, right, but you also
Speaker 2: sort of understand it. If you win bronze, you get
Speaker 2: to go home as an Olympic medalist, but if you
Speaker 2: win silver, you probably just end up thinking if only
Speaker 2: I pushed a little bit harder. Maybe you've felt this yourself,
Speaker 2: even if you're not an Olympic athlete. Maybe you've got
Speaker 2: a B plus in school, which is a great mark,
Speaker 2: but couldn't help thinking about how close.
Speaker 1: You were to an A.
Speaker 2: That's regret and it feels well bad. But Dan Pink
Speaker 2: says it's and he's got a whole lot of research
Speaker 2: to back it up. Dan is the best selling author
Speaker 2: of Drive A Whole New Mind, When and Now, The
Speaker 2: Power of Regret, How Looking Backwards Moves Us forward. Dan
Speaker 2: is one of my favorite authors, and his last appearance
Speaker 2: on How I Work was one of my favorite episodes,
Speaker 2: so I'm super excited to have him back. We discuss
Speaker 2: why having no regrets is not the superpower people think
Speaker 2: it is, and how Dan changed his behavior based on
Speaker 2: regrets in his own life, and how Dan's approach to
Speaker 2: work and motivation has changed since he wrote Drive many
Speaker 2: years ago. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an
Speaker 2: organizational psychologist and founder of behavioral science consultancy. Invent Him
Speaker 2: and this is how I work a show about how
Speaker 2: to help.
Speaker 1: You do your best work.
Speaker 2: For the last couple of years, Dan has immersed himself
Speaker 2: in the world of regret and the power of this
Speaker 2: underrated emotion. So I wanted to know how does regret
Speaker 2: inform his day to day decision making.
Speaker 3: It's changed between today and a few years ago. Before
Speaker 3: I started doing the research. I mean, I was someone
Speaker 3: who sort of thought about regretted something to avoid, but
Speaker 3: then when I couldn't avoid it, it really brought me down,
Speaker 3: and so then I tried to avoid it even more.
Speaker 3: Now I have a better understanding that regret is a powerful,
Speaker 3: powerful teacher that regret if we treat it right, not
Speaker 3: doing it the way I was doing it, not ignoring it,
Speaker 3: not wallowing it, and it can clarify what we value
Speaker 3: and instruct us on how to do better.
Speaker 1: And so what are some.
Speaker 2: Of the routines, whether they be things that you might
Speaker 2: do daily or even annually to like As the result
Speaker 2: of investigating Regres.
Speaker 3: So, one of the things that I learned was something
Speaker 3: and this is this is new to me, that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that it's new. Is something called self compassion, which
Speaker 3: I don't know whether you've talked about that on your
Speaker 3: show before. When we make mistakes, we tend to be
Speaker 3: brutal on ourselves. When you think about our self talk,
Speaker 3: that is the way we talk to ourselves.
Speaker 4: It is cruel.
Speaker 3: I mean, if I were to broadcast my self talk,
Speaker 3: if I were to let you listen in on it,
Speaker 3: you would think I was a lunatic. If if I
Speaker 3: were to use this the way that I talked to
Speaker 3: myself in a workplace, I would be I would be sacked.
Speaker 3: And so what we should do is but that's not useful.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of research showing that self esteem is
Speaker 3: overrated and self criticism is overrated. What's woefully underrated is
Speaker 3: something called self compassion. And with self compassion, we should
Speaker 3: look at our mistakes and our screw ups and treat
Speaker 3: ourselves with kindness rather than contempt. We should recognize that
Speaker 3: these mistakes are part of the human condition, that everybody
Speaker 3: has them, and we should also recognize that our mistakes
Speaker 3: are a moment in our lives, not the full definition
Speaker 3: of our lives. So that's been really helpful for me
Speaker 3: to actually treat myself with greater compassion.
Speaker 2: And so how do you specifically do that, because there
Speaker 2: are a few strategies in your book, The Power of Regret,
Speaker 2: for I guess giving yourself more self compassion.
Speaker 1: But what do you specifically do?
Speaker 3: So I have some regrets, and I've had some regrets
Speaker 3: about kindness, and the kindness regrets that I have are
Speaker 3: not regrets about having been a bully, having really affirmatively
Speaker 3: mistreated people. I don't think I've ever done that. But
Speaker 3: I have regrets about, in a weird way, about inaction,
Speaker 3: in kindness, in actions. So when I was in school,
Speaker 3: when I was in university, when I was a young professional,
Speaker 3: there are many situations where people were being excluded, they
Speaker 3: weren't being treated fairly, they weren't being treated right. I
Speaker 3: wasn't doing the affirmative excluding, but I saw it going
Speaker 3: on and I knew it was wrong, and I didn't
Speaker 3: do a damn thing, and that bugs me to this day.
Speaker 3: Now what do I do with that? So, first of all,
Speaker 3: one of the most important things, and this gets a
Speaker 3: specific question, is ask yourself a question, do you think
Speaker 3: you're the only person who has experienced that regret or
Speaker 3: that mistake? And the answer, having collected regrets from all
Speaker 3: over the world over the last couple of years, is
Speaker 3: absolutely not. And so when I look at my mistakes
Speaker 3: and I say say to myself, you know what, You're
Speaker 3: not that special. There are a lot of people who
Speaker 3: have those kinds of mistakes. That's a way to minimize
Speaker 3: their pain and then also to begin a process of
Speaker 3: making sense of them.
Speaker 4: And so again I think that the specific practice would.
Speaker 3: Be are you the only person in the world who's
Speaker 3: made that mistake or had that regret? And the answer
Speaker 3: in ninety nine times out of one hundred is no
Speaker 3: freaking way.
Speaker 1: I love that, And.
Speaker 2: I do remember when you actually wrote about that in
Speaker 2: the book around Regrets, around Kindness, and you write, I
Speaker 2: believe that you now go about making kindness a higher priority,
Speaker 2: And I was curious as to how you're doing that.
Speaker 3: One of the things that the way this has been
Speaker 3: useful to me is that if something is bugging you
Speaker 3: for ten years or twenty years, that's a message that's
Speaker 3: telling you something you know, and so what it's telling
Speaker 3: me because I'm sure there are many mistakes that I've made,
Speaker 3: many screw ups I've had that I don't even remember anymore.
Speaker 3: Not only do they not bother me, but I barely
Speaker 3: have any recollection of them. So the ones that we
Speaker 3: recollect and that stick with us are very strong signals,
Speaker 3: and there's strong signals about what we value. And the
Speaker 3: fact that this was such a strong signal finally alerted me,
Speaker 3: convinced me that kindness was something that I value, and
Speaker 3: I started.
Speaker 4: Thinking about that.
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, actually, the people I admire are often
Speaker 3: very kind. I admire that virtue in people, and so regret,
Speaker 3: in my case clarified what I valued. But it also
Speaker 3: instructed me about how to do things better. And I'll
Speaker 3: tell you what. Let me give you a specific example
Speaker 3: of this. And if my wife were here, she could
Speaker 3: she could testify to the truth of this. So again,
Speaker 3: my regrets about kindness were regrets about inaction, and they
Speaker 3: regrets largely about exclusion. And people being left out. That
Speaker 3: was going on in front of my eyes, and I
Speaker 3: didn't do anything about. So if you were to see
Speaker 3: me a man at a social gathering and many social
Speaker 3: gatherings back in the days when we had social gatherings,
Speaker 3: they are reappearing here in the United States of America.
Speaker 3: And what you often see at social gatherings, they're sometimes
Speaker 3: hard for people to navigate. And what you also see
Speaker 3: are you often sometimes see are like clumps of people
Speaker 3: talking and then maybe one or two or three or
Speaker 3: four or five individuals who are kind of marooned at
Speaker 3: a loss right, And my wife will testify to this.
Speaker 3: I now always like go over to that person and
Speaker 3: bring them into the scrum that I'm in. I always
Speaker 3: will widen the circle to invite other people in. And
Speaker 3: I really think, now, now again, is that going to
Speaker 3: qualify me for sainhood?
Speaker 4: No? All right? Do I have a lot more work
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 3: On kindness, Yes, But I would not be doing that
Speaker 3: had I not really faced up to my regrets about kindness,
Speaker 3: thought about them, you know, treated myself with some compassion,
Speaker 3: tried to make sense of those regrets and try to
Speaker 3: instruct myself about what to do next.
Speaker 4: Time.
Speaker 1: That sounds that sounds very beautiful.
Speaker 2: I want to be at your events, Dan, because I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm off in that person standing on the ass.
Speaker 1: What what have you done on a more macro scale
Speaker 1: with your life?
Speaker 2: Like we've sort of talked about some of those, you know,
Speaker 2: concrete day to day things, and you know, I guess
Speaker 2: that is a macro thing, identifying the value of kindness
Speaker 2: being important.
Speaker 1: But are there you know, perhaps like.
Speaker 2: Annual rhythms or rituals that you've got into, you know,
Speaker 2: now understanding the power of.
Speaker 4: Regret, Well, there are a few things.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of So one thing that I
Speaker 3: that I did this past December at the end of
Speaker 3: the year, is that I listed my top three regrets
Speaker 3: from the year, so as kind of like a preemptive
Speaker 3: New Year's resolution, that is, instead of starting with my
Speaker 3: New Year's resolutions, I said, what are my old year's regrets?
Speaker 3: And so took a small but I limited to three.
Speaker 3: I'm a big believer in the power of three. If
Speaker 3: I said list ten regrets, maybe you know, I don't
Speaker 3: want to. I don't want to try to manufacture these regrets.
Speaker 3: So I said, what are the three? What are the
Speaker 3: three regrets that I that I have for this year
Speaker 3: from this previous year and what and I and I
Speaker 3: just thought those through and I to them. I'm a
Speaker 3: big believer in getting stuff out of your head into
Speaker 3: a system, whether it's just simply writing it down or
Speaker 3: typing into a document or memorializing it somewhere. And so
Speaker 3: I think that practice at the end of the year
Speaker 3: of saying what are the three big regrets of the year,
Speaker 3: can be a catalyst for what to do about them.
Speaker 3: And if you go through this process that I'm suggesting
Speaker 3: you list a regret, you treat yourself with kindness rather
Speaker 3: than contempt. By disclosing it, you're beginning to make sense
Speaker 3: of it, and then you try to extract a lesson
Speaker 3: from it. Then I think that's super helpful.
Speaker 2: I love the idea in your book about starting a
Speaker 2: regret circle. Can you talk about that and is that
Speaker 2: something you've thought about doing yourself?
Speaker 4: I definitely have.
Speaker 3: I haven't done that one yet, but it is a
Speaker 3: very simple exercise where you get maybe four or five
Speaker 3: people and each of everybody shares you. So you start out,
Speaker 3: one person shares a regret, that person talks about what
Speaker 3: lesson he or she has learned from from it, and
Speaker 3: then you go around and the other people try to
Speaker 3: give them advice and guidance on what to do next.
Speaker 3: Because again, one of the other things that we see
Speaker 3: from that regret teaches us is that there are other
Speaker 3: ways to convey this. Other sources for this as well,
Speaker 3: is that we tend to be much better at solving
Speaker 3: other people's problems than our own. So it's another way
Speaker 3: to enlist the crowd to help resolve some of your
Speaker 3: own problems, which.
Speaker 2: I guess in a way taps into the idea you
Speaker 2: write about using self distancing strategies like exactly, yeah, like
Speaker 2: asking yourself, what would your best friend do in this situation?
Speaker 1: A self distancing strategy is something that you use.
Speaker 2: Are there examples where you've used those in your own life?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: My god, yes, on so many different occasions.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned the decision making tool of what would
Speaker 3: you tell your best friend to do?
Speaker 4: I use that all the time. I use that all
Speaker 4: all the time.
Speaker 3: And you know, because so I'll give you I'll give
Speaker 3: you a very specific for instance, So I have been
Speaker 3: contemplating taking a sabbatical because I am slightly burnt out
Speaker 3: and you know, sort of contemplating, you know, the next
Speaker 3: couple decades in my life. But I'm a little bit
Speaker 3: skittish about taking a sabbatical because I feel like it
Speaker 3: might I might not accomplish anything. I might be spinning
Speaker 3: my wheels. It might be indulgent, it might not be productive.
Speaker 3: And as I contemplated it, I asked that very question.
Speaker 3: I say, what would you tell your best friend to do?
Speaker 3: And and if I would say, take the sabbatical, like,
Speaker 3: I don't even have to think about it when I
Speaker 3: do that kind of when I do that kind of
Speaker 3: self distancing.
Speaker 4: So I use that a lot.
Speaker 3: Another self distancing technique is is talking to yourself in
Speaker 3: the third person. I use that a lot for exercise
Speaker 3: and sports. So when I'm running long distances, I will
Speaker 3: it's embarrassing, but I will like yell at my not
Speaker 3: yell at myself, but sort of exhort myself using my
Speaker 3: first name. So yeah, I use that all the I
Speaker 3: use that all the time. I'm telling you the thing,
Speaker 3: what would I tell my best.
Speaker 4: Friend to do? Is the best decision making tool there is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've absolutely used that one before and it is
Speaker 2: so helpful. I want to talk about writing one of
Speaker 2: the things that you do so well is you tell stories,
Speaker 2: and you're so great at making science and data not
Speaker 2: just understandable but memorable. And I would love to know
Speaker 2: what's your process for finding those stories. And really, in
Speaker 2: the Power of Regret, they're all real life stories that
Speaker 2: ill at the points.
Speaker 4: Well on this one.
Speaker 3: I mean, for this book, I had, you know, a
Speaker 3: pretty distinct approach in that one of the things that
Speaker 3: to write that give me let me, let me take
Speaker 3: two steps back for listeners who won't know this. So
Speaker 3: for this book The Power of Regret, I relied on
Speaker 3: three legs of a research stool. The first leg was
Speaker 3: looking at some existing science on this emotion of regret,
Speaker 3: in particularly social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, to
Speaker 3: try to say what is science, existing science tell us
Speaker 3: about this emotion. The second leg was something that I
Speaker 3: called the American Regret Project, which was a piece of
Speaker 3: quantitative research, numbers based research, where I did a very
Speaker 3: large public opinion survey of the US population, the largest
Speaker 3: survey of US attitudes about regret ever conducted, and tried
Speaker 3: to find some insights there. And then the third and
Speaker 3: this is going to get to your question, is I
Speaker 3: also set up something called the World Regret Survey, which
Speaker 3: was a giant collection tool where I invited people from
Speaker 3: around the world to submit a regret and to my astonishment,
Speaker 3: fifteen thousand, you know, very very quickly, and we're now
Speaker 3: over nineteen thousand regrets from people in one hundred and
Speaker 3: five one hundred and nine countries right now.
Speaker 4: And on that what I did.
Speaker 3: So first of all, on that one, I read through
Speaker 3: at least the first fifteen thousand regrets and started separating
Speaker 3: out the ones that I found super compelling. What's more
Speaker 3: is that I gave people who filled out the survey
Speaker 3: the option of.
Speaker 4: Including their email.
Speaker 3: It was anonymous, but they could include their email address
Speaker 3: if they wanted to have a follow up interview. And
Speaker 3: so and so I read through the regrets, I found
Speaker 3: certain ones that were compelling. If there were ones that
Speaker 3: were compelling and the person was willing to talk to me,
Speaker 3: I would reach out to them by email and do interviews.
Speaker 3: So I did hundreds of interviews to try to find
Speaker 3: the very best, most compelling stories.
Speaker 2: And how do you know when a story is going
Speaker 2: to be effective enough to get your point across.
Speaker 4: It's a good question. I don't know. If you know,
Speaker 4: and I don't have a way to do that.
Speaker 3: I mean, some of it is a some of it
Speaker 3: is a gut some of it is a gut instinct.
Speaker 3: What I tend to do is I tend to tell
Speaker 3: the story to somebody else and see whether they lean
Speaker 3: in or their eyes glaze over. That's, to me sometimes
Speaker 3: a good test. And also the other thing about it
Speaker 3: is that the.
Speaker 4: Stories you use are not equally weighted.
Speaker 3: That is, sometimes a story can be brilliant for three sentences,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, and it doesn't deserve much
Speaker 3: more of that. Sometimes the story needs three pages. And
Speaker 3: so I think that knowing how much weight the story
Speaker 3: deserves is really important as well. And one of the
Speaker 3: things that I think that less experienced writers do is
Speaker 3: that they don't wait the stories properly. That is, they think, well,
Speaker 3: I found out all this information about this person, therefore
Speaker 3: I need to it. And that's often that's often a mistake,
Speaker 3: and knowing like, oh my gosh, I've done three interviews
Speaker 3: with this person and it's taken me three and a
Speaker 3: half hours of my life. But you know what, I
Speaker 3: just need a sentence. You got to be good with that,
Speaker 3: And that's really important. The same thing is true with research.
Speaker 3: You have to be able to explain the research thoroughly enough,
Speaker 3: but in a way that serves the readers rather than
Speaker 3: validates your decisions to do the research. So let may
Speaker 3: be specific there. So there's in the book I wrote about.
Speaker 3: I looked at some of the research on when children
Speaker 3: developed the capacity for regret, So a lot of developmental psychology,
Speaker 3: lots and lots of experiments of giving say, five year
Speaker 3: old scenarios and then seven year old scenarios and then
Speaker 3: nine year old scenarios and seeing whether they comprehend the
Speaker 3: idea of regret.
Speaker 4: There I probably read.
Speaker 3: I probably spent a month reading these papers and looking
Speaker 3: at some textbooks and and things.
Speaker 4: Probably ended up reading.
Speaker 3: I don't know, fifty to fifty five studies on this question.
Speaker 3: And when I got to writing it, I realized I
Speaker 3: could explain it all in like a paragraph.
Speaker 1: Wow, that must take a lot of restraint.
Speaker 3: It does, believe me, it does. But here's the thing.
Speaker 3: Here's the way I look at it. It's like the
Speaker 3: only thing worse than saying, oh crap, I just took
Speaker 3: a month of work and only got a paragraph out
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 4: I don't like that.
Speaker 3: Believe me, that's not a happy day in the Pink
Speaker 3: householder in Pinking World headquarters here, that is not a
Speaker 3: happy day. However, what is an even worse day is
Speaker 3: torturing readers. Is giving readers something that they don't need
Speaker 3: that really bugs That bugs me even more so. It's
Speaker 3: a question of, as is often the case in life
Speaker 3: in general, in my life in particular, which variety and
Speaker 3: intensity of discontent do you prefer?
Speaker 1: And how do you know that you are going to
Speaker 1: be torturing readers?
Speaker 2: I guess that's the case question, like how do you
Speaker 2: know that they don't want to hold chapter around kids
Speaker 2: and regrets?
Speaker 3: I have a I that I think is easier because
Speaker 3: if it bores me, you know, it's like, Okay, I
Speaker 3: don't want to read this. I think I think that's
Speaker 3: I mean, that's I think that's a lot. I think
Speaker 3: that's a lot easier. And again, you know, what you
Speaker 3: want to do is you want to my I mean,
Speaker 3: this is my own bias, but I think I've always
Speaker 3: I think that most nonfiction books, and I've gotten in
Speaker 3: trouble for saying this, but I think that most nonfiction
Speaker 3: books are too long. I think that most books would
Speaker 3: be many of many books would be twice as good
Speaker 3: if they were half as long, because I think that
Speaker 3: that they the authors aren't concise enough, there's too much
Speaker 3: fluff in them, and that many of these books probably
Speaker 3: don't deserve to be full fledged books. And so I
Speaker 3: try to be pretty relentless about what I what I
Speaker 3: put in there, and what and more important, what I
Speaker 3: leave out the high I mean, my favorite compliment in
Speaker 3: this book was I was in the UK two weeks
Speaker 3: ago and I did an interview, a radio interview, and
Speaker 3: the producer said, you know, this book is this book
Speaker 3: is really good, like there's no fluff, and I'm like, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: there's no fluff.
Speaker 2: I would wholeheartedly agree with that, and just pacing it
Speaker 2: moves quickly. I completely agree with what you're saying with
Speaker 2: nonfiction books. I loved the story of Cheryl and her
Speaker 2: friendship with Jen, or rather her lost friendship with Jen.
Speaker 2: How did you decide that that was going to be
Speaker 2: one of the key stories in the book that you
Speaker 2: took throughout it?
Speaker 3: Partly because I found it a very relatable story for myself,
Speaker 3: because I could see myself in the story. So as
Speaker 3: narcissistic as that might sound. That was part of it,
Speaker 3: and the other part of it was is that the
Speaker 3: it was basically the color and emotion with which Cheryl
Speaker 3: described things and the fact that she was so racked
Speaker 3: by this.
Speaker 4: I found that I found that pretty compelling.
Speaker 3: What's more is that this was quite representative of a
Speaker 3: lot of regrets.
Speaker 4: So when when when you know there.
Speaker 3: Were there are plenty of regrets, very very much like Cheryl's.
Speaker 3: So I felt like this was I could see myself
Speaker 3: in it, and I knew that it was representing other
Speaker 3: people as well.
Speaker 2: I could definitely relate to that very relatable story. We
Speaker 2: will be back with Dan soon hearing about the online
Speaker 2: research tools that he swears by. If you're looking for
Speaker 2: more tips to improve the way you work and live,
Speaker 2: I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and
Speaker 2: simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can
Speaker 2: sign up for that at Amantha dot substack dot com.
Speaker 2: That's Amantha dot substack dot com. Now, research is a
Speaker 2: huge part of your process, and as you mentioned, the
Speaker 2: research process for the Power of Regret was a bit
Speaker 2: different because you conducted your own very large scale research.
Speaker 2: But still there's a whole lot of academic research backing
Speaker 2: up the points that you're making. And i'd love to know,
Speaker 2: once you've decided on the topic that your next book
Speaker 2: is going to be.
Speaker 1: About, what does that research process look like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's semi systematic in that.
Speaker 3: So before I write a book, I will write a
Speaker 3: book proposal, And in writing a book proposal, I will
Speaker 3: look in in a cursory way at the key pieces
Speaker 3: of academic research, or at least for this one, the
Speaker 3: key pieces of academic research, just to get sort of
Speaker 3: the skeleton, just to get the broad ideas, and so
Speaker 3: I have a sense of what the broad contours are,
Speaker 3: but at a very broad level of what the research says.
Speaker 3: So then when I start the real research, I'll go
Speaker 3: back and I'll read those papers again more important as
Speaker 3: I will go to the footnotes to see what's being
Speaker 3: cited a lot pull those papers, read those, go to
Speaker 3: their footnotes, read those, and eventually I'll it'll start to
Speaker 3: get a little recursive that I'll start kind of chasing
Speaker 3: my tail and I say, okay, I feel like in
Speaker 3: this one area I've sort of sort of figured out
Speaker 3: the main things to read in what they in, what
Speaker 3: they say, and then then I'll do that for other
Speaker 3: kinds of topics and subtopics. And then at a certain point,
Speaker 3: I will start trying to see the structure of the book,
Speaker 3: and you know, I'll come into it with a vague
Speaker 3: sense of what the structure is. It's usually wrong, that's okay.
Speaker 3: I'll come in and then then I often will start
Speaker 3: writing a piece of it. And for me, when I
Speaker 3: start writing it, I realize I understand the structure better.
Speaker 3: I realized what's working with the structure and what's not
Speaker 3: working with the structure. I also realize what more research
Speaker 3: I need to do, and so I'll sort of begin
Speaker 3: the process us again, except that there'll be less research
Speaker 3: to do and I'll go back to writing. And so
Speaker 3: that's it's sort of like these recursive these recursive loops
Speaker 3: between clinging into the research, doing some writing, and figuring
Speaker 3: it out, using that to do a little more research,
Speaker 3: doing that, then coming back, and so the balance between
Speaker 3: research and writing starts to shift from mostly research and
Speaker 3: little writing to a balance to at a certain point
Speaker 3: mostly writing and very little more research.
Speaker 2: Are their key tools like online tools, for example, that
Speaker 2: you use to do your research.
Speaker 4: I'm a big fan, believe it or not, of Google.
Speaker 3: Scholar which is a database that Google has that is
Speaker 3: that is very good at finding all kinds of all
Speaker 3: kinds of academic papers. It is a very it's it's
Speaker 3: a free tool. It's a simple tool, and it works extraordinarily.
Speaker 3: It works extraordinarily.
Speaker 4: Well, are there any.
Speaker 2: Other pieces of software that you find quite useful for
Speaker 2: your work and organizing your thinking or productivity in general?
Speaker 4: Sure? I use So there are a bunch of different things.
Speaker 3: So I well, when you say software, I mean I
Speaker 3: actually still rely more on paper than a lot of people.
Speaker 3: I for for the research that I care about, I
Speaker 3: print out every paper that I want to read. I
Speaker 3: read every everything on paper, all the all the things
Speaker 3: on paper, and then I actually put them in paper
Speaker 3: files as well. So it's bad environmentally, it's good cognitively
Speaker 3: at least for me.
Speaker 4: And I put.
Speaker 3: All of and so I have these massive, uh kind
Speaker 3: of according files organized by either chapter or parts of
Speaker 3: chapter and so forth, that are stuffed with paper.
Speaker 4: So I do it. So so I use again, I
Speaker 4: use a lot of paper.
Speaker 3: In organizing the regrets from this these thousands of regrets
Speaker 3: from the World Regrets Server, I printed out an enormous
Speaker 3: number of them. And when I was thinking about categorizing them.
Speaker 3: My first move and categorizing them was laying them out
Speaker 3: on a table in my office and just stacking them
Speaker 3: up and restacking them and seeing what categories made sense
Speaker 3: to me. So a lot of it is very for me,
Speaker 3: is very physical and analog. Now that set, there are
Speaker 3: few tools that I that I really like. I am
Speaker 3: a maybe it's a very simple tool, but you know Dropbox.
Speaker 3: If if terrorists hit the drop Box servers, I would
Speaker 3: be out of work for.
Speaker 4: The rest of my life.
Speaker 3: I organize a lot on Dropbox, and so that's really
Speaker 3: important to me.
Speaker 4: And then another one that's less well.
Speaker 3: Known that I use for trying to organize ideas is
Speaker 3: a piece of software called It's very inexpensive. I think
Speaker 3: it's like twenty bucks US. It's called it's called Scalpel
Speaker 3: s C A P p l E. It is a
Speaker 3: it's kind of a mind mapping software. But it's the
Speaker 3: best mind mapping software that I have. It's it's by
Speaker 3: an independent developer, it's not by one of the big
Speaker 3: tech companies. And so I use scapeal on every chapter
Speaker 3: in this latest book.
Speaker 1: Wow, I've never heard of that software. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: look that up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's it's very good.
Speaker 3: It's it's a it's a it's a it's a traditional
Speaker 3: it's it's mind mapping software, which there are plenty of,
Speaker 3: plenty of types of mind mapping software. In my view,
Speaker 3: this one seems the most intuitive, the most user friendly,
Speaker 3: and actually has the fewest bells and whistles on it.
Speaker 3: A lot of the mind mapping software has so many
Speaker 3: extra features that you don't need that ends up being confusing.
Speaker 3: This is very very simple, very elegant, uh, very elegant program.
Speaker 2: Now, a lot of the power of regret is about
Speaker 2: how we can use past mistakes to reorient actions or
Speaker 2: even our goals in the present. And you're, like, you're
Speaker 2: obviously very well known for writing about motive and goals
Speaker 2: when you wrote Drive, And I was wondering for you, like,
Speaker 2: as the way that you set goals or think about
Speaker 2: motivation in your own life changed much since you wrote Drive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think a little bit.
Speaker 3: I mean what I mean, maybe maybe even maybe even
Speaker 3: quite a bit. I mean it helped me understand, I think,
Speaker 3: why I became self employed twenty plus years ago. You know,
Speaker 3: I hadn't written about you know, I didn't know the
Speaker 3: research on autonomy then, but once I understood it as like, oh,
Speaker 3: that makes sense about why I did what I did.
Speaker 3: So it helped inform my understanding of myself, which is
Speaker 3: often somewhat useful. One thing that it did is on
Speaker 3: the on the principle of mastery. It it helped me
Speaker 3: understand the importance of daily progress. So I'm pretty obsessive about,
Speaker 3: you know, recording and charting my daily progress.
Speaker 4: So so you know, at the.
Speaker 3: End of every day, I list what I got done
Speaker 3: that day, or at least three three big things I
Speaker 3: got done that day.
Speaker 4: I for my.
Speaker 3: For even for exercise and running, I always log the
Speaker 3: the miles that I run. I don't do it in
Speaker 3: kilometers I should, but I do it in miles. Log
Speaker 3: the miles that I run. And so that's that's changed.
Speaker 3: How how I do a lot of stuff day to
Speaker 3: day and on purpose, I do ask myself a lot,
Speaker 3: try to ask myself as many times as possible, like
Speaker 3: why I'm doing something, even if I'm in the weeds
Speaker 3: of writing a book, even the weeds of writing a chapter.
Speaker 3: You know, instead of saying to myself, Okay, how do
Speaker 3: I finish this chapter? You know, how how do I
Speaker 3: get this to work? I think I take a step
Speaker 3: back and say, Okay, why am I writing this chapter?
Speaker 3: Why is this advanced the story? Why is this good
Speaker 3: for readers?
Speaker 4: So I do?
Speaker 3: I guess I do now. I think about employee a
Speaker 3: lot of that stuff day to day on my own.
Speaker 2: What was your answer to that question when you were
Speaker 2: writing The Power of Regret? Was there a macro reason
Speaker 2: or motivating factor?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, yeah, No on that there was definitely a
Speaker 4: macro reason there.
Speaker 3: And actually figuring out that macro reason was really important
Speaker 3: to me because I was kind of spinning my wheels
Speaker 3: for a while until I figured that out. And for me,
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do was the macro reason was
Speaker 3: to try to reclaim this emotion because I just think
Speaker 3: we've so fundamentally misunderstood the emotion of regret. We think
Speaker 3: that it is dangerous, when in fact it is actually useful.
Speaker 3: We think that it makes us weak, when in fact
Speaker 3: it can make us strong. And so I wanted to
Speaker 3: reclaim this emotion because I'm convinced it's our most transformative
Speaker 3: emotion and that if people know how to deal with it,
Speaker 3: they're going to lead better lives. So on this one
Speaker 3: there was there was a little bit more perhaps then
Speaker 3: maybe than some of the other ones, that a little
Speaker 3: bit more of a missionary zeal in this one than
Speaker 3: on the others.
Speaker 1: What gave you the idea to write about regret?
Speaker 2: Because, as I said, it doesn't seem like an obvious
Speaker 2: thing to do.
Speaker 3: Because I was, you know, because I was, I was
Speaker 3: dealing with the regrets of my own and I was
Speaker 3: also at a stage in my life where I was
Speaker 3: pondering these things. So you know, I don't know if
Speaker 3: I would have I mean, I've been writing books for
Speaker 3: twenty years, to my amazement, and I don't think I
Speaker 3: would have written this book in my thirties. I don't
Speaker 3: think I had I don't think I had enough mileage
Speaker 3: on me. But in my fifties it felt kind of
Speaker 3: inevitable because I was looking backward at decisions I'd made
Speaker 3: or hadn't made, and some of them bothered me, and
Speaker 3: I said, Okay, how can I use this to live
Speaker 3: the rest of my life? And you know, one of
Speaker 3: the things that I've discovered going back to self compassion,
Speaker 3: is that you know, well, all of us are kind
Speaker 3: of special in our own way. I don't want to
Speaker 3: hurt anybody's feelings. We're actually not that special. So if
Speaker 3: I'm reckoning with regrets, if I'm wrestling with regrets, then
Speaker 3: chances are other people are too. And that's that there's
Speaker 3: a wider appeal for this topic than might meet the eye.
Speaker 2: And like, how do you decide that this is like
Speaker 2: this warrants you know, spending the next three or so
Speaker 2: years of your life on Like how did you know
Speaker 2: it was that important? Because that's essentially what we're talking about,
Speaker 2: if not longer when it comes to writing a book.
Speaker 4: Oh it's even longer.
Speaker 3: I mean I got a call from a newspaper reporter
Speaker 3: last week about a book I wrote twenty years ago.
Speaker 4: You know. So this is one reason why.
Speaker 3: I write book proposals before agreeing to write a book.
Speaker 3: And for me, a book proposal is usually twenty five
Speaker 3: or thirty pages long, and it lays out what the
Speaker 3: book is, who I think is going to buy it,
Speaker 3: why it's different from anything else.
Speaker 4: And that action does two things.
Speaker 3: First, it it forces me to say, Okay, do I
Speaker 3: actually want to spend time with this idea?
Speaker 4: And there are a lot of ideas.
Speaker 3: That you don't want to spend that much time with
Speaker 3: and so, and then also it allows you to see
Speaker 3: whether there's a there there. And because if you can't
Speaker 3: sustain it very easily in thirty five pages, you're not
Speaker 3: going to be able to sustain it very easily in
Speaker 3: two hundred and seventy five pages. And so it's so
Speaker 3: to me that book proposal is a really great test.
Speaker 4: And I have had situations where.
Speaker 3: I I once years ago, was between books, figuring out
Speaker 3: what to do next, and I my wife and I
Speaker 3: had we had little kids at the time, and I said, okay, guys,
Speaker 3: I got to like write a proposal for a new book.
Speaker 3: I'm not getting any traction on this thing. And I
Speaker 3: sent them away to my in law's house and I said, okay,
Speaker 3: give me, guys, give me two weeks, and I can
Speaker 3: you know that way I can just I got to
Speaker 3: get this thing done and I don't want to torture you,
Speaker 3: and you guys can have fun without me. And so
Speaker 3: I buggled down, and I think after like eight or
Speaker 3: nine days, I called my wife and I said, I
Speaker 3: got some good news and some bad news. The good
Speaker 3: news is that you can come home now. The bad
Speaker 3: news is because in writing this proposal, I realized this
Speaker 3: is not a book. This does not hold together as
Speaker 3: a book. And believe me a man, I'd much rather
Speaker 3: find it out then than after I'd contracted to write
Speaker 3: a book and how to disappoint my editors and deal
Speaker 3: with that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yes, definitely.
Speaker 2: And I remember when when I last had you on
Speaker 2: how I work, we did go into quite a bit
Speaker 2: of depth around writing a book proposal. So for anyone
Speaker 2: that is listening and it's like, what is the book proposal?
Speaker 2: I will link to that past interview in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Now I remember, like, right at the end of the book,
Speaker 2: you also write about another regret that you have, and
Speaker 2: you say that you regret not forging enough close connections
Speaker 2: with friends and mentors and colleagues, and now you try
Speaker 2: hard to reach out. I was wondering, what does that
Speaker 2: look like, What practically do you find yourself doing now
Speaker 2: to act on that regret.
Speaker 3: Well, one thing is that if I find myself at
Speaker 3: a juncture saying oh I'm thinking about person A, should
Speaker 3: I reach out?
Speaker 4: Being at that juncture answers the question for me.
Speaker 3: So I've done a much better job about sending someone
Speaker 3: a text message saying, hey, do you have fifteen minutes
Speaker 3: to talk this weekend.
Speaker 4: Nothing wrong, no agenda.
Speaker 3: I just want to see how you're doing, like I
Speaker 3: would never do that before, and now I do that.
Speaker 4: What else do you do on the reaching out? I'm
Speaker 4: trying on this one is.
Speaker 3: That I'm I'm a little bit more likely to initiate
Speaker 3: a social gathering than I have been in the past.
Speaker 3: Usually I never initiated any social gatherings and actually often
Speaker 3: try to avoid them. And so so I'm getting a
Speaker 3: little bit better trying to initiate those.
Speaker 2: Now, Dan, four people that want to consume more of
Speaker 2: your work and certainly the power of regret.
Speaker 1: What's the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 3: I just go to my website, which is Dan Pink,
Speaker 3: da n p I n K dot com, Dan pink
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 2: Amazing, Dan, thank you for writing yet another just amazing
Speaker 2: book that has certainly changed my life.
Speaker 4: So thank you. Thanks for doing what you do.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me back on the podcast. Maybe I'll
Speaker 3: write another one so I can come back again in.
Speaker 4: A few years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please do don't take that sabbatical. No do It
Speaker 1: sounds like that's quickly for to do.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Dan.
Speaker 2: There were so many things that I took out of
Speaker 2: this chat with Dan and also his new book, The
Speaker 2: Power of Regrets, which I loved. I really was into
Speaker 2: the idea about Dan's and your reflection.
Speaker 1: On his top three regrets from the past year to
Speaker 1: inform the year ahead.
Speaker 2: It's definitely of the many things that I plan to
Speaker 2: try implementing in my year ahead.
Speaker 4: Now, if you're.
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Speaker 1: If you're keen for.
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Speaker 2: search for Amantha Imba. How I Work was recorded on
Speaker 2: the traditional land of the Warrenery people, part of the
Speaker 2: cool And Nation. I am so grateful for being able
Speaker 2: to work and live on this beautiful land, and I
Speaker 2: want to pay my respects to Elder's past, present and emerging.
Speaker 2: How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support
Speaker 2: from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: The producer for this episode
Speaker 2: Was Liam Riordan, and thank you to min Nimba who
Speaker 2: did the audio mix and makes everything sound better than
Speaker 2: it would have otherwise.