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