Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 1: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 1: much out of their day.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work day.
Speaker 1: So the next few weeks over summer, I am dipping
Speaker 1: back into the archives of the last two and a
Speaker 1: half years of hosting How I Work, and I want
Speaker 1: to share some of my absolute favorite episodes. So for today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to share with you the very first interview
Speaker 1: that I conducted and published for How I Work, which
Speaker 1: was with one of my personal heroes, Adam Grant. So
Speaker 1: in case you're not familiar with Adam, he is an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist, best selling author, and Wharton's highest rated professor.
Speaker 1: His books Give and Take, Originals and Option B have
Speaker 1: sold over one million copies and have been translated into
Speaker 1: thirty five languages. Adam has been recognized as one of
Speaker 1: the world's ten most influential management thinkers, and he also
Speaker 1: happens to be the host of one of my favorite podcasts,
Speaker 1: Work Lack, which is a TED original podcast.
Speaker 2: Now, what I loved most about this chat is that.
Speaker 1: Adam is not only a walking encyclopedia of psychology findings,
Speaker 1: but it is fascinating to hear about how he applies
Speaker 1: these findings in his own life to be more productive.
Speaker 1: And finally, before we go to the interview, if you
Speaker 1: are enjoying How I Work, If you enjoy this episode,
Speaker 1: I would love it if you could leave a review
Speaker 1: or a star rating in Apple Podcasts. It is just
Speaker 1: brilliant getting a listener feedback, and it also helps spread
Speaker 1: the word to other people that might want to dip
Speaker 1: into How I Work. And of course, if you are
Speaker 1: a listener to How I Work, you might want to
Speaker 1: subscribe and that way you'll get alerted as to whenever
Speaker 1: new episodes drop. So, without further ado, let's head to
Speaker 1: Adam to hear about how he works.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks Amantha.
Speaker 1: Now, people talk about being productive, but I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever met anyone on your level. So, your books
Speaker 1: have sold over a million copies, Your TED talks have
Speaker 1: been viewed over.
Speaker 2: Twelve million times.
Speaker 1: You've written a huge number of academic papers in well
Speaker 1: established and very well respected journals, and you've been Wharton's
Speaker 1: top rated professor for the last seven years. And then
Speaker 1: if that wasn't enough, your somehow managed to be a
Speaker 1: junior Olympic springboard diver and a professional magician. And when
Speaker 1: I learned all this about you, I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were seventy years old, that would be incredibly impressive.
Speaker 1: But you've actually packed this all into thirty six years,
Speaker 1: and so I've got a ton of questions on how
Speaker 1: on earth you may that all happen.
Speaker 3: Well, that's very kind of you. I don't feel very
Speaker 3: productive on most days, so this is this is gonna
Speaker 3: be one of those one of those conversations where I
Speaker 3: have no idea how to answer some of the questions
Speaker 3: you're gonna ask, but I'll do my best.
Speaker 1: Wonderful, wonderful, Well, why don't we start with the morning.
Speaker 1: I'm really keen to know what does a typical morning
Speaker 1: look like for you, if there is such a thing,
Speaker 1: and what are the critical ingredients in your morning that
Speaker 1: helps set you up for a good day.
Speaker 3: You know, it's changed a lot since we had kids.
Speaker 3: I would say before kids, I would basically wake up
Speaker 3: in the morning and sit down at my computer and
Speaker 3: work until I ran out of ideas, and you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes that would mean I sat for four or five hours.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I would work until late at night, and you know,
Speaker 3: obviously i'd get up to eat and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: But I really liked just waking up and digging right
Speaker 3: into a project and then being laser focused on it
Speaker 3: for as long as I could. And once we had kids,
Speaker 3: obviously I decided I was going to change my schedule,
Speaker 3: and so now it's much more of I wake up
Speaker 3: in the morning, we have family time, our kids go
Speaker 3: off to school, and then once our kids leave, I
Speaker 3: start working and my goal is to finish when our
Speaker 3: kids get home and then not work again until after
Speaker 3: their sleep at night.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: That sounds incredibly well balanced, and I can definitely relate
Speaker 1: to just the schedule changing.
Speaker 2: When you become a parent, everything changes.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, like when you sit down at your
Speaker 1: computer when the kids are off for the day, like,
Speaker 1: what are the first few things that you do to
Speaker 1: get into to that zone.
Speaker 3: I think that in an ideal world, what I do
Speaker 3: is I actually spend a little time the night before.
Speaker 3: If I'm going to work on something creative the next morning,
Speaker 3: the night before I'll spend a few minutes, just kind
Speaker 3: of mapping out a few ideas, and then when I
Speaker 3: wake up, I find that I processed some of them
Speaker 3: a little bit, and you know, whatever version of so
Speaker 3: conscious thought you believe in, and then I feel like
Speaker 3: I can I can just hit the ground running.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. So you're kind of sleeping on the problem,
Speaker 2: so to speak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess. I don't know if it hurts the
Speaker 3: quality of my sleep, but it definitely helps the quality
Speaker 3: of my work.
Speaker 2: That's excellent. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: And on the topic of academic work, I was really
Speaker 1: intrigued when I read Callum Newport's deep work about how
Speaker 1: you that's your teaching work in the fall semester and
Speaker 1: research work in the spring and summer semesters. And firstly,
Speaker 1: I'm curious, is that still accurate? Is that still what
Speaker 1: you do?
Speaker 3: It is? Yeah, I've always taught in the far and
Speaker 3: I just I feel like teaching is an immersive experience where,
Speaker 3: you know, I want to spend time in the classroom
Speaker 3: getting to know my students, figuring out what kinds of
Speaker 3: questions they have. You know, every year I redesigned twenty
Speaker 3: percent of the course. I'd like to redesign more, but
Speaker 3: I don't want to subject the students to the terrible
Speaker 3: ideas that I've had every year. And so I figure,
Speaker 3: if two percent stays constant, then you know, there's there
Speaker 3: at least some major elements that are tried and true
Speaker 3: that have gone reasonably well. But you know, and then
Speaker 3: I just spend a lot of time answering emails, you know,
Speaker 3: doing meetings and office hours, and I didn't I didn't
Speaker 3: want to have anything distract from that work wise, and
Speaker 3: so you know, then I thought, okay, well, I'm going
Speaker 3: to have a semester that's that's teaching focused, and then
Speaker 3: I'll have January through July every year to work on
Speaker 3: research and ideas and some of the other things that
Speaker 3: I've I've brought into my job. And it's been a
Speaker 3: nice balance in part because like right now it's it's
Speaker 3: basically June, and I can't wait to get back in
Speaker 3: the classroom, right I haven't been since December, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: why am I not teaching? It's the most energizing part
Speaker 3: of my job. And you know, in December, I was
Speaker 3: really eager. I had a whole bunch of ideas that
Speaker 3: I wanted to develop, and I was excited to have
Speaker 3: more free time to work on them. And so I
Speaker 3: feel like I get to alternate between two different jobs
Speaker 3: that I love.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. I love that.
Speaker 1: And was that something that you did right from the
Speaker 1: stat of your academic career.
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty common here in the States, at
Speaker 3: least in business schools. I would say, so, I've done
Speaker 3: it from day one. I always wanted to teach in
Speaker 3: the fall because I remembered the excitement of going back
Speaker 3: to school and how I couldn't wait to learn, and then,
Speaker 3: you know, always feeling like in the spring semester, I
Speaker 3: was like, Eh, I'm ready for the summer to come around. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I felt like it was it was the
Speaker 3: right time to really reach students and connect with them.
Speaker 3: And I just, I guess, from from the very beginning,
Speaker 3: I felt like I needed protected time to get research done,
Speaker 3: and I also needed some boundaries to make sure that
Speaker 3: that didn't spill into everything that I wanted to do
Speaker 3: in the classroom and the relationships I wanted to build
Speaker 3: with students. And so I guess, yeah, I've never known
Speaker 3: it any other way. I've studiously avoided teaching in the
Speaker 3: spring or in the not fall, I should say, although
Speaker 3: I've occasionally done a week or so in the spring.
Speaker 3: But that's about it.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, fantastic. And I've also heard with emails.
Speaker 1: Is it true that sometimes you will go a few
Speaker 1: days without checking emails? No good to clarify that. What
Speaker 1: I have heard about your inbox checking is that you
Speaker 1: frame up the task of like you know, waiting, like
Speaker 1: going through an inbox with let's say three hundred emails
Speaker 1: in it, which I'm sure is a daily occurrence for
Speaker 1: you in a really interesting way. Can you talk about
Speaker 1: how you think about inbox checking.
Speaker 3: Well, let me first say that email used to be
Speaker 3: one of my favorite things. I remember in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: I sent my first email. I think it was either
Speaker 3: nine or ten, and it was to a cousin in
Speaker 3: Colorado and it took about forty eight hours. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean it was. It was one of those defining moments
Speaker 3: where I could not believe that I could type something
Speaker 3: on the computer it was just a sentence or two,
Speaker 3: and that it would, you know, somehow travel halfway across
Speaker 3: the country. And so I I just loved email, and
Speaker 3: I thought it was I guess it appealed to this.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm really into efficiency, and it bothers me
Speaker 3: when something is inefficient, and so I love the fact
Speaker 3: that with email I could I could reach multiple people
Speaker 3: at once, and I could you know, respond to multiple
Speaker 3: people quickly, as opposed to having separate phone conversations with
Speaker 3: each of them all the time. And slowly, as I
Speaker 3: went through college and moved into grad school, I started
Speaker 3: to hate email and I wondered what happened. And what
Speaker 3: happened was I started getting too much of it. And
Speaker 3: you know, there's a curse. I'm sure you've experienced this
Speaker 3: as well, that the more responsive you are, the more
Speaker 3: email you get and so but but I didn't. I
Speaker 3: didn't realize it at first. So, you know, it's really
Speaker 3: important to me to get back to people, and so
Speaker 3: often I think I went a couple of years where
Speaker 3: my average average email response time, you know, between morning
Speaker 3: and evening was was just a few minutes max. And
Speaker 3: you know, I took real I took pride in that
Speaker 3: it was it was part of being there for people,
Speaker 3: right And you know what I didn't what I didn't
Speaker 3: quite realize at the time, was Okay, I'm incentivizing these
Speaker 3: people to send me more emails. This is this is reinforcement,
Speaker 3: and so you know that then the number of people
Speaker 3: you'd know goes up. And so I just I just
Speaker 3: ended up with with more emails than I could get
Speaker 3: to in a day. And so I found myself, you know,
Speaker 3: especially if I was if I was working on a
Speaker 3: big project, you know, it would be nighttime and I'd
Speaker 3: have hundreds of emails accumulating, and I felt like I
Speaker 3: couldn't keep up. And so the way that I motivated
Speaker 3: myself was I said, look, this is something I've studied
Speaker 3: in my research, and when a task is unpleasant, like
Speaker 3: you know, trying to clear out three hundred emails, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to motivate myself by thinking about the benefits
Speaker 3: to me, because if I thought the activity was beneficial
Speaker 3: to me, I would already be motivated to do it.
Speaker 3: The only way to motivate myself is to ask myself, Okay,
Speaker 3: what good is this going to do for the people
Speaker 3: that I'm answering? And so I actually started going through
Speaker 3: my inbox and sorting by where I could have the
Speaker 3: most impact. And so it wasn't you know who emailed
Speaker 3: me first, It wasn't necessarily you know who I knew best.
Speaker 3: It was where could I add the most value? And
Speaker 3: as I answered a few of those emails, I started
Speaker 3: to get a rhythm and I started to feel like,
Speaker 3: all right, you know what, this is kind of annoying
Speaker 3: in you know, a aggreate, but I also feel like
Speaker 3: I'm doing something useful here. And then you know that
Speaker 3: that would give me the energy I needed to sort
Speaker 3: of finish the task and get my inbox cleaned.
Speaker 2: That is so cool.
Speaker 1: I'm completely going to change how I look at email
Speaker 1: after hearing that.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you should actually, you Knowmantha, I
Speaker 3: think it's a risky idea because you don't want to
Speaker 3: convince yourself to like email, because then you'll just spend
Speaker 3: all day every day doing email. I think you just
Speaker 3: want to make it bearable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, well that's a good name, making email bearable.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: And I guess like where email can be quite troublesome
Speaker 1: for a lot of people is where they've got the
Speaker 1: inbox open all day and they've got notifications popping up,
Speaker 1: and they're just kind of doing, you know, the just
Speaker 1: check of the email, and you seem to be someone
Speaker 1: who is really good at fighting off those digital distractions
Speaker 1: and just staying focused.
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering, like, how do you do that?
Speaker 1: What are your tricks for not being tempted by the
Speaker 1: various digital distractions that are out there.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's funny. I think I've been really
Speaker 3: intrigued by the science of self control here, because if
Speaker 3: you study self control, one of the things you will
Speaker 3: see in the data is that people with high self
Speaker 3: control actually exercise it less. So if you have really
Speaker 3: great willpower, you use less willpower. And it sounds like
Speaker 3: a paradox, but the reason for that is anyone who
Speaker 3: has good self control recognizes that it's easier to to
Speaker 3: prevent yourself from getting into a situation where you have
Speaker 3: to manage an impulse then it is to manage the
Speaker 3: impulse in the moment. You know. It's the equivalent of saying,
Speaker 3: all right, I should probably set an alarm clock and
Speaker 3: then put it halfway across the room so that when
Speaker 3: I wake up in the morning, I am not tempted
Speaker 3: to just hit this news button. And that's a habit
Speaker 3: that I think you can carry throughout your day. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, I think there are extreme versions of this
Speaker 3: that I actually don't endorse. I guess you could go
Speaker 3: cold turkey and say, all right, you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: turn off all notifications, I'm not gonna check any technology.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna disconnect myself from the internet whatever I need
Speaker 3: to do. And I actually find some of those distractions
Speaker 3: to be useful mini breaks. So you know, when I'm
Speaker 3: stuck on an idea or a sentence when I'm writing,
Speaker 3: I'll actually go over to Twitter and check it for
Speaker 3: you know, a minute or two. But I limit myself
Speaker 3: on a clock, and I also usually have goals for
Speaker 3: how much I have to finish before I'm allowed to
Speaker 3: go over and check, and so that kind of helps.
Speaker 3: And so you know, it's a simple thing, right saying
Speaker 3: all right, I'm going to duse social media five to
Speaker 3: ten minutes a day when I can't be doing anything else.
Speaker 3: So you know, I will do it when when I'm
Speaker 3: sitting on a flight waiting for it to take off,
Speaker 3: or you know, i'll be on it when I am.
Speaker 3: I actually end up doing it quite a bit, and
Speaker 3: you know, in like a left or an uber a taxi,
Speaker 3: and you know, otherwise I'll just I'll use it as
Speaker 3: a small reward for making progress on the things that
Speaker 3: I think are important.
Speaker 2: I like that, so it's a reward.
Speaker 1: And then you said that you set the clock, because
Speaker 1: where I can imagine people coming undone is that they
Speaker 1: go great.
Speaker 2: Adams told me to reward myself with Facebook.
Speaker 1: I'm going to pop on and then two hours later,
Speaker 1: hang on what task was I working on?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: How does that work?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Are you setting a really noisy stopwatch? Do you like? No,
Speaker 2: how does that work? No?
Speaker 3: I just have a time in mind, so you know,
Speaker 3: it's if it's seven fifty six, I'll say, all right,
Speaker 3: I've got four minutes, and then at eight o'clock I'm
Speaker 3: gonna get back to work. And if I fall short
Speaker 3: on that, I'm disappointing myself and I start feeling guilty
Speaker 3: and that's not pleasant. So next time, I'm like, I
Speaker 3: don't want to feel that way again. Let me let
Speaker 3: me just stay on task.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I will also say, though, I feel like,
Speaker 4: if you know, if if the urge to spend hours
Speaker 4: scrolling through Facebook is dragging you away from your work,
Speaker 4: then your work isn't motivating enough.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I feel like I actually feel the opposite of impulse.
Speaker 3: If I'm if I'm scrolling through Facebook, I'm like, ah,
Speaker 3: but I have this really exciting work to do. I
Speaker 3: want to get back to that. And you know, I
Speaker 3: obviously don't think it's practical for every single moment of
Speaker 3: every single day to be that intrinsically motivating. But I
Speaker 3: think to you know, to have an enjoyable and meaningful
Speaker 3: work life, it's it's probably worth asking, you know that
Speaker 3: that desire you feel to engage with whatever you're guilty
Speaker 3: distraction is, how could you actually design your work so
Speaker 3: that it creates that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's interesting.
Speaker 1: You bring up intrinsic motivation and I was quite intrigued
Speaker 1: by I think it must be one of your latest
Speaker 1: publications in the Academy of Management Journal, where you talk
Speaker 1: about when people work on a task that is intrinsically
Speaker 1: and deeply motivating, performance on the extrinsically motivating task falls
Speaker 1: and Aloran, can you talk a bit more about what
Speaker 1: you found there? And I'm personally curious how have you
Speaker 1: applied that to your own life because it was such
Speaker 1: a curious research.
Speaker 3: So, Amantha, you've really done your homework here, because this
Speaker 3: was just accepted for publication in the last few weeks,
Speaker 3: so it's i'd say it's hard off the presses, but
Speaker 3: it's not even on the presses, it's impressed. So this
Speaker 3: is a series of studies the Gisian lead, and we
Speaker 3: started off with this idea that it's assumed to be
Speaker 3: a good thing to have intrinsic motivation, but we all
Speaker 3: have a range of projects and tasks that make up
Speaker 3: our jobs, and nobody's really ever thought about or studied
Speaker 3: the spillover effects. And we wondered, if there's a dark
Speaker 3: side of working on an intrinsically motivating task, that it
Speaker 3: could make your boring tasks even more dull in you know,
Speaker 3: in juxtaposition, and that's basically what we found. So in
Speaker 3: one of the studies, GA gathered data from a Korean
Speaker 3: company and it turned out that the the more you
Speaker 3: have one task in your portfolio of five or six
Speaker 3: that's off the charts and intrinsic motivation, the more your
Speaker 3: performance suffers on your less interesting tasks. And then we
Speaker 3: designed an experiment which was really fun. We had people
Speaker 3: search for YouTube videos as the first task, and so
Speaker 3: the interesting version was to find the most fascinating videos
Speaker 3: on YouTube and then write about what made them so interesting.
Speaker 3: There was there was kind of a medium interest condition
Speaker 3: where you had to search for life hack videos and
Speaker 3: you know, and just summarize what you know, what what
Speaker 3: the practical insights were there. And then in the boring condition,
Speaker 3: we had people watch videos of paint dry, so you
Speaker 3: actually had to sit there and watch paint drying, and
Speaker 3: we had people we had people describe them so that
Speaker 3: we could check to make sure they were actually watching them.
Speaker 3: And so then you've just done an interesting or boring
Speaker 3: task or one somewhere in between. And then in a
Speaker 3: second task, we had you either play a really fun
Speaker 3: computer game or copy numbers from a phone book. And
Speaker 3: it turned out that people who had watched the fascinating
Speaker 3: YouTube videos actually made more mistakes and performed worse on
Speaker 3: the copying task.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting, Like what I was really curious about
Speaker 1: because I was reading that research and reflecting on how
Speaker 1: would I apply that in my own life?
Speaker 2: And I felt quite sort of challenged to go, well,
Speaker 2: how do I do that?
Speaker 1: And I was curious, like I would imagine that when
Speaker 1: you find these things in your research studies, you reflect
Speaker 1: on your own life and think about how can you
Speaker 1: integrate that. So I'm curious if you found a way
Speaker 1: to integrate this into your own life, and if so,
Speaker 1: what is that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have. Actually I think about it a little
Speaker 3: bit like athletes who taper before a big competition. So
Speaker 3: you know, if you're a runner or a swimmer or
Speaker 3: a weightlifter, you're not supposed to do a max like
Speaker 3: a max intensity workout in the few days before your
Speaker 3: big competition. So you know, runners, if they're training for
Speaker 3: a marathon and the you know, in the few days before,
Speaker 3: they won't do a really long run, or same for
Speaker 3: a swimmer or a weightlifter won't lift quite as heavy,
Speaker 3: and the idea is that they're they're kind of tapering
Speaker 3: down to have maximum strength. I think that there's I
Speaker 3: don't know if the analogy holds perfectly, but I've started
Speaker 3: to think about the sequencing of tasks in my days
Speaker 3: as involving some tapering. So I used to think that
Speaker 3: I should put interesting tasks and boring tasks back to back,
Speaker 3: and that as I'm working on something that I find
Speaker 3: just just endlessly intriguing, right after that, I should do
Speaker 3: my most dull task of the day, because then I'll
Speaker 3: have some energy to carry over, and when our data
Speaker 3: show is that's false. Instead of energy carrying over, there's
Speaker 3: just this awful contrast where you're like, wow, this was
Speaker 3: horrible before and now it's going to crush my soul.
Speaker 3: How can I possibly do this? I? How do I
Speaker 3: just spend more time working on this fun task instead?
Speaker 3: And what's interesting is that if this is all assuming
Speaker 3: that you care about your performance in the boring task,
Speaker 3: right that it you know, it's it's it may be dull,
Speaker 3: but it's important or it matters in some way. If
Speaker 3: you don't want your performance to suffer in that task,
Speaker 3: then what you want to do is sandwich a medium
Speaker 3: task in between, and so you taper down from interesting
Speaker 3: to moderately interesting to boring. And if you work on
Speaker 3: a moderately interesting task that's kind of okay before the
Speaker 3: boring task, it's not so different to create that contrast,
Speaker 3: and so the boring task doesn't suffer. Instead, you actually
Speaker 3: do have a little bit in an energy that seems
Speaker 3: to carry over and it boosts your performance on the
Speaker 3: boring task. And so now I think about these these
Speaker 3: kind of little trios of tasks where I start out,
Speaker 3: I go interesting, you know, okay, boring and then I
Speaker 3: go back to the interesting task. And what I love
Speaker 3: about that is that helps power me through the boring
Speaker 3: task because I've got something really exciting to look forward
Speaker 3: to when I finish.
Speaker 2: That's really cool. I love that idea of tapering.
Speaker 1: I feel like I can definitely definitely apply that in
Speaker 1: my own life. That's very cool. One thing I was
Speaker 1: very curious about is that something you're very well known
Speaker 1: for is being such a generous giver, and so much
Speaker 1: of your research has focused on essentially the power of giving.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, I read so much in
Speaker 1: the productivity space about the importance of saying no and
Speaker 1: the power of saying no, and I was curious.
Speaker 2: How do you balance that?
Speaker 1: Because I can't even begin to imagine how many people
Speaker 1: are requesting your time, and I know that you are
Speaker 1: very much a yes person, and how do you balance that?
Speaker 1: How do you know when to say yes versus saying no?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I feel like I'm struggling through this
Speaker 3: the same way that everyone else is. I'll tell you
Speaker 3: what has been most helpful to me, though. I think
Speaker 3: you know. I used to try to say yes to
Speaker 3: everyone and to everything, and I just found that that
Speaker 3: was impossible, as you know, as I got busier, as
Speaker 3: my profile you know, got I guess got raised outside
Speaker 3: the Ivory Tower. I just didn't have enough hours in
Speaker 3: the day to field all the requests that were coming in,
Speaker 3: and so I ended up coming out with a bunch
Speaker 3: of heuristics that more or less mirrored what I've studied
Speaker 3: when I've when I've looked at the differences between you know,
Speaker 3: people who are what I've called successful givers who are
Speaker 3: productively generous, and failed givers who are too selfless and
Speaker 3: end up burning out or getting burned by the takers
Speaker 3: who have they have the misfortune of dealing with. There
Speaker 3: are a few kinds of choices that really matter. The
Speaker 3: first one is to be thoughtful about who you help.
Speaker 3: And so for me, that's That's meant that I have
Speaker 3: a hierarchy of people that I'm trying to support, and
Speaker 3: it's family first, students second, colleagues third, everyone else fourth.
Speaker 3: And at some point I realized that friends were not
Speaker 3: in that list, and I felt really bad about it.
Speaker 3: But then I realized, you know what, I actually my
Speaker 3: goal in a friendship is not to be you know,
Speaker 3: helping the person. It's to be you know, to be
Speaker 3: a friend, and that may involve lots of different things,
Speaker 3: and you know, I'll fit them in wherever, but uh,
Speaker 3: the other the other categories. It was it was important
Speaker 3: for me to be clear because when a request comes in,
Speaker 3: I know that I'm not going to be equally generous
Speaker 3: to everyone. And so I had to realize, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm okay with the fact that my colleagues may well
Speaker 3: think that I'm less generous than my students do, because
Speaker 3: I just did not become a professor to try to
Speaker 3: inspire other professors, right. I became a professor because I
Speaker 3: wanted to have an impact on students the same way
Speaker 3: that you know that I was really influenced by, you know,
Speaker 3: by the the great teachers that I'd had, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to try to pay that forward. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: when when a request comes in, I just kind of
Speaker 3: go through that list, and it depends on how much
Speaker 3: I have in the day. And it was so important
Speaker 3: to put family first there because you know, it's easy
Speaker 3: to say, well, you know, there's you know, there are
Speaker 3: lots of requests that come in workwise that are urgent,
Speaker 3: and you know, you also are able to gain status
Speaker 3: and build connections by helping people. And you know that
Speaker 3: some of the family stuff is sometimes less exciting if
Speaker 3: you're changing diapers, for example. But you know, when I
Speaker 3: took a step back and I thought about my values,
Speaker 3: I knew that it was most important to me to
Speaker 3: be you know, to be showing up for my family
Speaker 3: first and foremost, so that I found really helpful. And
Speaker 3: then the other choices are about how you help and
Speaker 3: when you help. And you know that basically breaks down
Speaker 3: to saying, look, I want to help when I can
Speaker 3: add unique value and when it does not detract from
Speaker 3: my energy or my ability to get my own work done.
Speaker 3: And so what I tried to do was break down
Speaker 3: all the different ways that I was I was trying
Speaker 3: to say yes to people and figure out which ones
Speaker 3: I enjoyed and excelled at. And you know, if people
Speaker 3: are asking for help and domain where I didn't feel
Speaker 3: like I had a unique contribution to make or it
Speaker 3: was exhausting me, I knew that over time that meant
Speaker 3: I was going to have less impact. And so for me,
Speaker 3: that's been kind of zooming in on two things. One
Speaker 3: is knowledge sharing. There's there's almost nothing that bretens my
Speaker 3: inbox more than somebody reaching out and saying, yeah, I
Speaker 3: had this question about, you know, something related to work psychology,
Speaker 3: like has anybody ever studied fill in the blank? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, yes, there's a chance to take all that
Speaker 3: esoteric information that I'm collecting from academic journals and share
Speaker 3: it with somebody who might be curious about it or
Speaker 3: who can apply it in some way, And so that
Speaker 3: that's always a treat, and I feel like there aren't
Speaker 3: that many people who you know, kind of who where
Speaker 3: that's the way that they help. And then the other
Speaker 3: is I really love making introductions, provided that they're mutually beneficial.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I feel like I by virtue
Speaker 3: of the kind of work that I do, I get
Speaker 3: to interact with lots of different industries and kinds of people,
Speaker 3: and it's just really fun to connect the dots between
Speaker 3: two people who could help each other and or who
Speaker 3: could create something really meaningful together. And so I've tried
Speaker 3: to focus on those requests. And that means that when
Speaker 3: somebody reaches out and it's not in one of those buckets,
Speaker 3: I'll let them know that, you know, their request is
Speaker 3: not in my wheelhouse. But if I could be helpful
Speaker 3: by sharing knowledge or by making an introduction, then you know,
Speaker 3: I'd be happy to do that.
Speaker 1: And on that I'm very encouraged to hear that you
Speaker 1: do indeed say no? And how like, how do you
Speaker 1: say no politely? Do you do you have like a
Speaker 1: go to no strategy?
Speaker 3: I have a few of them. Let's let's try them out.
Speaker 3: Make a request, So.
Speaker 2: Adam, I'm gonna be in the US in a couple
Speaker 2: of months time. Can I stay with you for a week?
Speaker 3: No? No? There are a couple different ways would answer that.
Speaker 3: So the first one is, you know, Amantha would love
Speaker 3: to see you when you're in the US. I try
Speaker 3: not to impose people on my family life, and in particular,
Speaker 3: my wife is segmentor and an introvert, and she really
Speaker 3: it's important for her to have boundaries and she doesn't
Speaker 3: like the blurring between work and home. And so you know,
Speaker 3: I learned a long time ago that it wasn't fair
Speaker 3: to her to just invite people that are total strangers
Speaker 3: to her into our home. So as much as I
Speaker 3: would love to have you, I can recommend some great hotels.
Speaker 2: That's great. So you're giving a very clear and detailed
Speaker 2: rationale behind the no.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, look, I don't I don't feel like
Speaker 3: I actually have an obligation to do that. If somebody
Speaker 3: has the gall to ask something that's unreasonable, then I
Speaker 3: can be perfectly unreasonable back. But I still prefer to
Speaker 3: err on the side of politeness. You know another thing
Speaker 3: I might say, though, which is, you know, it's not
Speaker 3: that often that somebody would just ask out of the blue,
Speaker 3: can you stay with me? But I do get a
Speaker 3: lot of you know, well, hey, I'm going to be
Speaker 3: coming through Philly, can we meet up? And you know,
Speaker 3: my standard answer to that is, actually, when I'm in Philly,
Speaker 3: my time belongs to my family and my students, and
Speaker 3: you know those those are my two priorities. And so
Speaker 3: you know, the only way is that the only way
Speaker 3: that I can really protect my time and show up
Speaker 3: for the people that I've made a commitment to supporting
Speaker 3: is to set that boundary. And I really hope you
Speaker 3: understand nice.
Speaker 2: That sounds very polite and reasonable.
Speaker 3: I like that right.
Speaker 1: Now, before we move on to rapid fire questions, there
Speaker 1: was one other thing that I wanted to ask you about,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure if this is still true but
Speaker 1: I'd read that there's a certain way that you start
Speaker 1: every week where you think about what you want to
Speaker 1: accomplish and how you want to help, and that.
Speaker 2: Kind of becomes your compass for the week.
Speaker 1: Is that still something that you do and if so,
Speaker 1: could you maybe elaborate on what that looks like?
Speaker 3: Sure? So I started doing this when I realized that
Speaker 3: I'm I guess, you know, I think about personality in
Speaker 3: terms of we all have lots of traits, but are
Speaker 3: the traits we expressed in any given moment. I think
Speaker 3: that's often governed by our dominant trade, the trade we're
Speaker 3: most extreme on, and my dominant trade is probably being
Speaker 3: goal oriented. If you give me a goal, I just
Speaker 3: get tunnel vision and the only thing I can see
Speaker 3: or think of is that goal. And so I wanted
Speaker 3: to I wanted to improve my peripheral vision. I wanted
Speaker 3: to make sure that I didn't lose sight of my priorities.
Speaker 3: And I saw that going both ways. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 3: I'd get totally focused on a work goal, and you know,
Speaker 3: I'd miss out on some ways that I really wanted
Speaker 3: to be responsive to other people. And then on the
Speaker 3: flip side, right, I get totally immersed in helping somebody,
Speaker 3: and you know, a work task would fall off my plate.
Speaker 3: And so I just want to make sure that those
Speaker 3: those two things, you know, achieving my own goals and
Speaker 3: then helping other people, that they stayed on my radar.
Speaker 3: And so what I what I like to do is
Speaker 3: I like to start a week by asking myself, what
Speaker 3: are three things I want to accomplish and what are
Speaker 3: three people that I want to help or three ways
Speaker 3: I want to be helpful? And then you know, I
Speaker 3: just kind of do an informal check in on a
Speaker 3: daily basis to ask am I making progress toward those goals?
Speaker 3: And I think it keeps me from getting stuck in
Speaker 3: the weeds of the one goal that's happening to loom
Speaker 3: large at the moment, and it forces me to make
Speaker 3: sure that I've got my priorities in order.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, I like that.
Speaker 1: Can you give me an example of maybe what one
Speaker 1: thing that you're trying to accomplish this week has been
Speaker 1: and one way that you are trying to help a
Speaker 1: person or something this week?
Speaker 2: To give an example.
Speaker 3: Sure, So this week my big work goal was finishing
Speaker 3: up a draft of an audiobook that I'm releasing later
Speaker 3: this summer, which is called Power Moves. It's been a
Speaker 3: really interesting project. It's a collaboration with Audible, where they said, look,
Speaker 3: we know you're going to be going to the World
Speaker 3: Economic Forum in Davos in January, and we're wondering if
Speaker 3: you want to do an audiobook around a theme about
Speaker 3: the lessons and you can interview a bunch of people
Speaker 3: and add in your own analysis. And so I ended
Speaker 3: up doing about two dozen interviews and Davos with all
Speaker 3: sorts of interesting leaders and thinkers, and it was around
Speaker 3: the theme of power, asking how it's changing and how
Speaker 3: we can use it for good, and so you know,
Speaker 3: I've been working on that since then, and my goal
Speaker 3: for this week was to finish a complete draft so
Speaker 3: we're ready to record soon. And then in terms of
Speaker 3: being helpful on a professional front, my big goal for
Speaker 3: the week was to help one of our doctoral students
Speaker 3: get a paper out for publication. And so I read it,
Speaker 3: I gave comments. Then we strategized about which journals to
Speaker 3: submit it to and how a best frame it to
Speaker 3: make a contribution. And you know, I had kind of
Speaker 3: I had both of those actually on a to do list,
Speaker 3: and I was just checking out by myself over the
Speaker 3: last couple of days.
Speaker 2: Awesome, I love it. Love those examples.
Speaker 1: Now onto the sort of the rapid fire finish for
Speaker 1: for the show. So a large part of staying focused
Speaker 1: fit is tuning into useful and insightful stimulus and tuning.
Speaker 2: Out the rest because there's so much of that.
Speaker 1: And so to finish off, I've got a few quick
Speaker 1: questions for you on this topic. To start with, what
Speaker 1: podcasts are you currently listening to and loving?
Speaker 3: Oh? I love Invisibilia on NPR. I think it's a
Speaker 3: show about all the hidden forces that cheap behavior, and
Speaker 3: I just think it's mind bending, is a good way
Speaker 3: to describe it. My favorite episodes were How to Become
Speaker 3: Batman and Flip the Script and then I'm also a
Speaker 3: big fan of Revisionist History with Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so good, isn't it?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Awesome?
Speaker 1: What is it a newsletter that you subscribe to and
Speaker 1: actually look forward to reading? Oh?
Speaker 3: I have a lot of favorite newsletters, but one of
Speaker 3: the ones that I get the most out of is
Speaker 3: Dan Pink's Every Other Week.
Speaker 2: I love that one too. That's such a good one. Yes, Now,
Speaker 2: what is a great book that you've read recently.
Speaker 3: I actually just read two outstanding books that were both
Speaker 3: released in the fall. One was Joyful by Ingrid fetel
Speaker 3: Lee and the other was Rule Makers rule Breakers by
Speaker 3: Michelle gelfand fantastic.
Speaker 2: I'm going to check those ones out.
Speaker 1: And finally, what's your favorite research study into productivity and
Speaker 1: what did it reveal?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: There are so many? Do I really have to choose one?
Speaker 2: You do?
Speaker 3: You do?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Oh? That is cruel and unusual punishment. I don't know
Speaker 3: that I can choose a favorite, but I'll tell you. Actually,
Speaker 3: the most interesting one that I read this week, when
Speaker 3: I was procrastinating on some writing, I read this study
Speaker 3: out of Ohio State University, which really bothered me because
Speaker 3: the arrival of my Michigan Wolverines, but I'll try to
Speaker 3: get over that. And it was actually a series of
Speaker 3: I think eight studies which showed but when you have
Speaker 3: a meeting coming up in an hour or two, you
Speaker 3: use the time in between much less productively. And so
Speaker 3: in one of their studies, when people knew they had
Speaker 3: a meeting on their calendar, they use the time between
Speaker 3: now and then to get twenty two percent less work
Speaker 3: done than they would have if they had taken that
Speaker 3: off their calendar. Wow, and you know that it's obviously
Speaker 3: a mistake, right, we waste a lot of time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just saying well, there's no point in starting that because
Speaker 3: I have a meeting in six hours. How could I
Speaker 3: ever make any progress between now and then? And I
Speaker 3: think you know, one takeaway from me on that is
Speaker 3: it's reinforcement for something I've done for a long time,
Speaker 3: which is stacking meetings more or less back to back
Speaker 3: on a meeting day, so you know, on a teaching day,
Speaker 3: what I'll do is I'll hold all my office hours
Speaker 3: back to back. And I learned that I needed a
Speaker 3: little buffer so that, you know, maybe five minutes between
Speaker 3: each meeting just to catch up on email or in
Speaker 3: case a meeting rent long helped. But then I'd have
Speaker 3: another day with no meetings at all, where I could
Speaker 3: really focus and be productive. And this research just kind
Speaker 3: of reinforced that form me.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Oh well, thank you so much for your time, Adam.
Speaker 1: I was really looking forward to speaking to you, and
Speaker 1: you did not disappoint. Now, for those who want to
Speaker 1: get more Adam Grant into their lives, how can.
Speaker 2: We do that.
Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but if that's
Speaker 3: what you wanted. I've had a lot of fun doing
Speaker 3: my work Life podcast with the Ted team, and we
Speaker 3: just finished season one and are just starting to think
Speaker 3: about season two. And then I do a newsletter every
Speaker 3: month called Granted, where I share new insights about work
Speaker 3: in psychology and answer reader questions.
Speaker 2: Fantastic and where can we sign up for that?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's just an Adam grant Net.
Speaker 1: Wonderful, wonderful, And I got to say, I'm loving your
Speaker 1: work Life podcast and also your e newsletter is one
Speaker 1: of the ones that I look forward to.
Speaker 2: So I I thank you for that. Yes, so, thank
Speaker 2: you so much, Adam. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 3: Pleasures a online thank you, Amantha.
Speaker 2: That is it for today's show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed it, why not share it with someone
Speaker 1: that you think would also benefit from my chat with Adam.
Speaker 2: Just click the little share icon.
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Speaker 1: why not leave a review for How I Work Wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to this podcast. So that did for today's show,
Speaker 1: and I will see you next time.