Speaker 1: The power comes when you get to roll up those
Speaker 1: numbers and see in black and white, like how much
Speaker 1: time did I really spend in the last quarter doing email?
Speaker 2: And you you know, you got.
Speaker 1: To look yourself in the mirror at that point and say,
Speaker 1: ten years from now, do I want to be the
Speaker 1: person who spent one thousand hours doing email?
Speaker 3: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 3: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 3: much out of their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 3: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 3: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work day.
Speaker 3: Today's show is a best of episode of How I Work,
Speaker 3: where I go back through the archives and I've picked
Speaker 3: out one of my favorite episodes from this year. But
Speaker 3: before we get into that, just a couple of little
Speaker 3: housekeeping things. Firstly, I'm always keen to get listener questions,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to be doing a few episodes that
Speaker 3: are all based around questions that are on your mind
Speaker 3: about productivity and work and maybe even the future of
Speaker 3: work in this crazy world that we're in. So if
Speaker 3: you've got something on your mind that you'd like me
Speaker 3: to answer or dig into research around, send me a
Speaker 3: note at Amantha at Inventium dot com dot au and
Speaker 3: my email is always in the show notes as well.
Speaker 3: And if you're enjoying How I Work, why not share
Speaker 3: the love and tell other people about it. It's one
Speaker 3: of the ways that this podcast has grown so much
Speaker 3: in the last couple of years. So thank you to
Speaker 3: everyone that does talk about How I Work. It's hugely appreciated.
Speaker 3: And also thank you to the hundreds of people that
Speaker 3: have left reviews for How I Work. It's so lovely
Speaker 3: getting your feedback. So thank you. All right, let's get
Speaker 3: on to today's show and on this best of episode,
Speaker 3: I am so excited to have Dan Heath on the show,
Speaker 3: so if you haven't come across Dwan Heath. Dan is
Speaker 3: the co author, along with his brother Chip, of four
Speaker 3: New York Times bestsellers, which are Decisive, Switch, Made to
Speaker 3: Stick and the Power of Moments. The Heath Brothers books
Speaker 3: have sold over three million copies worldwide and have been
Speaker 3: translated into thirty three languages. Dan is a senior fellow
Speaker 3: at Duke University's Case Center, which supports social entrepreneurs and
Speaker 3: The book that he released this year in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: was an amazing book called Upstream, which is all about
Speaker 3: solving problems before they actually happen. So we took about
Speaker 3: a bunch of different strategies in this book. We certainly
Speaker 3: delve into some strategies around solving problems before they happen,
Speaker 3: and things like how Dan overcame his procrastination tendencies and
Speaker 3: how he has become such an awesome writer. I just
Speaker 3: love this chat with Dan. I hope you will too,
Speaker 3: So on that note, let's head to Dan to hear
Speaker 3: about how he works. Dan. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks so much, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: I must say I feel quite starstruck talking to you
Speaker 3: because I've read all of your books, and I must
Speaker 3: say Decisive in the Power of Moments would make it
Speaker 3: into my top ten business books list of all times.
Speaker 3: So you've just had an enormously huge impact on me
Speaker 3: and how I think.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: And I've just finished reading Upstream, which is obviously your
Speaker 3: latest book, and I think before we delve into that,
Speaker 3: it'd be great to just hear from you. What's the
Speaker 3: premise behind Upstream?
Speaker 1: The premise of upstream is very simple. Actually, it's the
Speaker 1: realization that so many of us in life get caught
Speaker 1: in this cycle of reaction. You know, we're constantly reacting
Speaker 1: to problems and putting out fires and responding to emergencies,
Speaker 1: and we can actually live a long time that way.
Speaker 1: It becomes an almost self perpetuating cycle because the energy
Speaker 1: that we need to put out all these fires is
Speaker 1: precisely the energy that we would have needed to pause
Speaker 1: and solve some of these at the systems level. And
Speaker 1: so upstream is about the idea, can we learn to
Speaker 1: escape the cycle of reaction and began to stop problems
Speaker 1: before they happen. And that's what I mean by that
Speaker 1: word upstream. That's so often we're downstream and reaction mode,
Speaker 1: when we have the ability, if we seize it, to
Speaker 1: move upstream and prevent things.
Speaker 3: I must say it's already started influencing my thinking about
Speaker 3: just how I think about problems at work. And I
Speaker 3: know how we got connected was actually through the book.
Speaker 3: And you use an example of how I tried to
Speaker 3: solve a problem at my work probably going back about
Speaker 3: five years ago in relation to what you call the
Speaker 3: Cobbra effects. So at Inventium, the innovation consultancy that I
Speaker 3: founded quite a few years ago. Now, we were in
Speaker 3: the process of moving office and I wanted to create
Speaker 3: this beautiful open plan environment. We basically got this warehouse shell,
Speaker 3: so it was ours to do what we want with
Speaker 3: the design. And you know, it's this beautiful kind of
Speaker 3: four meter twelve foot ceilings, lots of natural light. We
Speaker 3: got these two big custom made wooden tables where we
Speaker 3: all sit around. It's all very communal, and I thought,
Speaker 3: won't that be great for collaboration and you know, working together,
Speaker 3: because after all, we're an innovation agency, so that's kind
Speaker 3: of what we do. And it turned out to be
Speaker 3: an absolutely terrible decision, like the open plan office is
Speaker 3: impossible to get any work done. And then, funnily enough,
Speaker 3: in I think I was in twenty eighteen, some researchers
Speaker 3: from Harvard published some research which which I came across,
Speaker 3: which talk about how face to face collaboration actually decreases
Speaker 3: quite substantially by about seventy something percent in open plan environments,
Speaker 3: yet digital communication so emails and instant messenger, increases by
Speaker 3: about the same amount. And I kind of thought, ah, yes,
Speaker 3: that is exactly what has happened here, and then as
Speaker 3: a result, the problem that we now have is that
Speaker 3: most days most people choose to work from anywhere but
Speaker 3: the office when they're trying to do deep focused work.
Speaker 3: So I'm curious, like, what your reaction was where when
Speaker 3: you came across this story of mine, and how we
Speaker 3: can use that to I guess, improve our ability to
Speaker 3: go upstream.
Speaker 1: Well, the reason I was so struck by your story
Speaker 1: and included in the book is because it kind of
Speaker 1: relates to one of my own greatest surprises in researching
Speaker 1: this book. And I'll admit when I first started researching upstream,
Speaker 1: my mental model was I'm going to go out and
Speaker 1: find people who are really good at preventing problems, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to shine a spotlight on their work. And
Speaker 1: my mental model was, Hey, once people see that this
Speaker 1: is possible, we're all going to say, you know, we're
Speaker 1: idiots to be stuck in reaction mode all the time.
Speaker 1: Of course, so we should be doing this. Look at
Speaker 1: how easy it is. And when I got into the research,
Speaker 1: what surprised me was, yes, there were people who were succeeding.
Speaker 2: I talk about a lot of them in the book.
Speaker 1: But there are also a lot of people that were
Speaker 1: trying and failing to prevent problems. And so as I
Speaker 1: got deeper, I came to respect that. While I still
Speaker 1: remain a firm advocate that we need to shift our
Speaker 1: attention upstream, it's incredibly difficult for a variety of reasons
Speaker 1: that I talk about in the book and that we
Speaker 1: can talk about here live. It's hard to do systems thinking.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get ahead of problems and to reverse
Speaker 1: engineer them. And in your situation, it's a classic example
Speaker 1: where you know your goal is to do something upstream.
Speaker 1: You want to increase collaboration among your staffers, and so
Speaker 1: you're thinking.
Speaker 2: Well, how do I do that?
Speaker 1: How do I design an environment where people we'll talk more?
Speaker 1: And you came to the obvious conclusion, Well, if we
Speaker 1: have an open office floorplan, people will be closer together,
Speaker 1: there'll be no barriers with them. It won't be a
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty style cubicle environment. Of course, they'll talk more.
Speaker 1: And a lot of other fortune five hundred companies had
Speaker 1: exactly the same instinct that you did, and it all
Speaker 1: made perfect sense until you get in that environment and
Speaker 1: you realize, oh gosh, there's all these counter dynamics where
Speaker 1: it's just like being on an airplane. It's not that
Speaker 1: going on an airplane means we're more likely to talk
Speaker 1: to the people next to us. It's probably the opposite
Speaker 1: that going on an airplane and being trapped against people
Speaker 1: that close to us in physical proximity makes us want
Speaker 1: to put on our headphones or give them a really
Speaker 1: impassive look that deters them from trying to talk to us.
Speaker 1: And so that to me is a kind of system
Speaker 1: a symbol rather of what's complicated about systems thinking and
Speaker 1: why it can be so difficult to accomplish our good intentions.
Speaker 1: And so I came to appreciate the fact that while
Speaker 1: while good intentions are necessary and why we need this
Speaker 1: upstream instinct, we also need to kind of be aware
Speaker 1: what we're up against. And I think in your situation
Speaker 1: and a lot of others, maybe one possible moral of
Speaker 1: the story is that our intuition is never going to
Speaker 1: be good enough to help us guess what the right
Speaker 1: answer is, no matter how obvious it seems. And in
Speaker 1: your shoes, I would have thought exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: If I had to put down money on a study,
Speaker 1: will an open office floor plan increase communication. Of course
Speaker 1: I'm betting on that. I mean, it's just basic sociology.
Speaker 1: But in this case, there were dynamics we couldn't foresee,
Speaker 1: and maybe the only way to have foreseen them was
Speaker 1: to figure out some way to experiment with it in advance.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious whether whether you take the same moral
Speaker 1: away or whether you think about it differently on and.
Speaker 3: The irony is, we experiment on everything, and we teach
Speaker 3: experimentation to our clients. It's such a fundamental part of
Speaker 3: what we do and how we think. And it's interesting.
Speaker 3: I've recently just launched this year long project called My
Speaker 3: Year of Better, which is basically, every week, I'm going
Speaker 3: to try a different experiment on some strategy that is
Speaker 3: meant to make life better. Experimentation is so fundamental to
Speaker 3: what we do. But gosh, this was five years ago
Speaker 3: and experimentation was probably slightly less a focus of what
Speaker 3: we do. So I mean, now one hundred percent would
Speaker 3: move straight to experimentation. Something that always strikes me about
Speaker 3: your books, and I was particularly interested in this decision
Speaker 3: for Upstream is the language that you use and the
Speaker 3: labels that you give to things. I find it's always
Speaker 3: so precise and unique and sticky, which is kind of
Speaker 3: not surprising given that you wrote the book on stickiness,
Speaker 3: Made to Stick. And I want to know in the
Speaker 3: case of Upstream, because for me, and I think for
Speaker 3: most people reading it, like when you get into it,
Speaker 3: you kind of go, of course, it has to be
Speaker 3: called upstream, but I think when you start researching that concept,
Speaker 3: it's not necessarily the obvious title, and you talk about
Speaker 3: how you know you deliberately didn't call it something around
Speaker 3: prevention or proactivity. And I want to know, like, what's
Speaker 3: your process in thinking of like the firstly, the title
Speaker 3: of a book. I'm always so curious about that, and
Speaker 3: I think that the titles of all your books are
Speaker 3: just brilliant, but also then the labels that you give
Speaker 3: to things within the book. So I'd love to know
Speaker 3: a bit more about your process and perhaps for Upstream,
Speaker 3: how did you come to arriving at that for the title?
Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. Let me take that in two parts.
Speaker 1: I'm realizing even as we're talking, I've been throwing around
Speaker 1: this word upstream left and right, and I should probably
Speaker 1: give people some context for what is this word and
Speaker 1: where did it come from? And the origin is from
Speaker 1: a parable that's become well known in public health. It's
Speaker 1: originally attributed to a sociologist named Irving Zola, and it
Speaker 1: goes like this.
Speaker 2: So you and a friend.
Speaker 1: Are having a picnic by the side of a river,
Speaker 1: and just as you've laid out your food and you're
Speaker 1: getting comfortable, you hear a shout behind you from the
Speaker 1: river and you look back and there's a child and
Speaker 1: the river drowning, I mean, thrashing about, and so you
Speaker 1: and your friend just instinctively dive in, grab the child,
Speaker 1: bring them to shore, and just as you're adrenaline level
Speaker 1: so they're starting to subside, you hear another shout and
Speaker 1: you look back and there's another child in the river.
Speaker 1: So you dive back in save that child. And no
Speaker 1: sooner have you gotten them to the shore, that you
Speaker 1: hear two more shouts. There are two children in the
Speaker 1: river now, And so begins a kind of revolving door
Speaker 1: of life saving. And you're gradually getting weary and you're
Speaker 1: not sure you can keep up with the demand. And
Speaker 1: then you notice your friend swimming towards shore and stepping
Speaker 1: out as if to leave you alone, and you say, hey,
Speaker 1: where are you going, I can't do this alone. All
Speaker 1: these kids are drowning, and your friend says, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go upstream and tackle the guy that's thrown
Speaker 1: all these kids in the river. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the perfect symbol of what this book is about. That
Speaker 1: we come to accept our downstream position. We take it
Speaker 1: for granted that our job is to keep fishing drowning
Speaker 1: kids out of the river, and we never make the
Speaker 1: space or reach the conclusion that we could have prevented
Speaker 1: that from happening. Now to your question about the terminology,
Speaker 1: I mean, I will admit, as an author, you know,
Speaker 1: titling a book something like Upstream, which ninety nine out
Speaker 1: of one hundred people couldn't define other than in the
Speaker 1: kind of literal sense of it. You know, my publisher
Speaker 1: was worried some people would think this was a fishing
Speaker 1: book or something. It's terrifying, you know, to name something upstream,
Speaker 1: But it was so central to the book that I
Speaker 1: thought it was worth the gamble, honestly. And the reason
Speaker 1: why I chose Upstream over something like prevention because in
Speaker 1: many ways this is a book about prevention, and in
Speaker 1: a way I'm trying to kind of sex up the
Speaker 1: very idea of prevention, which which has these kind of worrying,
Speaker 1: nannyish overtones to it that I think are completely wrong.
Speaker 1: But one reason I appreciate it upstream as distinct from
Speaker 1: something like being proactive or being preventive, is because of
Speaker 1: the stream metaphor. And what I like about it is
Speaker 1: the way that it suggests to us that upstream is
Speaker 1: a direction. You know, in the parable there are two locations,
Speaker 1: there's downstream and there's upstream. But in the book, what
Speaker 1: I explain is is upstream is actually just a never
Speaker 1: ending spectrum. And I give an example of a specific problem.
Speaker 1: My parents had their home broken in two years ago,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 2: Talk about how.
Speaker 1: Could you could have prevented that break in on radically
Speaker 1: different time scales, you know, from seconds before, if there
Speaker 1: had been a piercing loud alarm that would have triggered
Speaker 1: when the burglars kicked down the door, maybe that would
Speaker 1: have prevented it all the way through hours, through days,
Speaker 1: through months, through years, even decades before. I talk about
Speaker 1: the research of this guy named Richard Trimblay who suggests
Speaker 1: that the best time to prevent crime is by intervening
Speaker 1: with the pregnant mothers who are carrying the future quote
Speaker 1: unquote criminals. And what he means is that many of
Speaker 1: the things that especially high risk mothers have to contend
Speaker 1: with poor environmental conditions, poor nutrition, damaging relationships, depression, and more,
Speaker 1: many of those things which are associated with the aggressive
Speaker 1: instincts of their children can be changed. That you can
Speaker 1: actually nurture high risk pregnant women in a way that
Speaker 1: twenty years later might result in their child going to
Speaker 1: college rather than breaking into someone's house. And so I
Speaker 1: love that kind of stretching of our minds that comes
Speaker 1: with that mental model, that it's not a question of
Speaker 1: you know, one or two downstream or upstream, it's a
Speaker 1: question of how far upstream can we go and should
Speaker 1: we go? And preventing problems.
Speaker 3: I think, like, I mean, it works perfectly as the title.
Speaker 3: But that's interesting hearing you talk about how the publisher
Speaker 3: thought it was a risk, which I can understand that
Speaker 3: as well. Well.
Speaker 2: Now if it's sold aid copies, we know it.
Speaker 3: Was was right. Yeah, I want to know because writing
Speaker 3: a book for you, I've heard you talk about it
Speaker 3: being about a three year process. I guess from inception
Speaker 3: of the idea research, writing, and then all that comes
Speaker 3: with publicity. So that's a long time to be sitting
Speaker 3: with an idea like upstream. And you know, I imagine
Speaker 3: you know when when you're writing a book like this,
Speaker 3: it's always front of mine, probably with your life. And
Speaker 3: I want to know what are some of the most
Speaker 3: significant changes or impactful changes, let's say that you've made
Speaker 3: to your own life to focus more on the stream.
Speaker 1: There's kind of two levels. Well, at the trivial level,
Speaker 1: it's made me much more cognizant of recurring irritance. So
Speaker 1: I'll tell you one that literally just occurred to me
Speaker 1: this morning. So I woke up at six fifteen in
Speaker 1: the morning. I have a sixteen month old who usually
Speaker 1: is the alarm clock in the family, and today it
Speaker 1: was kind of my turn to get up and get her.
Speaker 1: And so I'm waking up. It's in the dark, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get my clothes on. And one thing
Speaker 1: that happens to me all the time I'm getting up,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to put on my clothes in the dark
Speaker 1: so I don't wake up my wife.
Speaker 2: And how do I put my shirt on? You know?
Speaker 1: Is it inside out? Is it right side out? And
Speaker 1: you've got to get the front from the back, but
Speaker 1: I can't see the tag in the dark. I can't see,
Speaker 1: you know, the letters on the front of the shirt
Speaker 1: in the dark, and so I'm just kind of taking
Speaker 1: a stab. And for some reason, my experience is that
Speaker 1: virtually nine times out of ten I guess wrong. And
Speaker 1: then I'm kind of irritated because maybe you wake up
Speaker 1: happier in the morning than I do, but I'm already irritable,
Speaker 1: and then I get my shirt on back words and
Speaker 1: I feel like a chump. And so I was thinking,
Speaker 1: this is exactly the kind of thing that you just
Speaker 1: sort of live with, that you don't have to live with.
Speaker 1: And so I've hatched this idea now where every night
Speaker 1: I'm going to lay my shirt down in the same
Speaker 1: way so that in the morning, when i have to
Speaker 1: do this automatically in the dark, I'll know exactly what
Speaker 1: orientation it's at. And you know, it's not like I'm
Speaker 1: going to win a Nobel Prize for that for that
Speaker 1: dramatic insight, but it's it's an example of how downstream
Speaker 1: reaction can become habitual, even even when it's at a
Speaker 1: recurring disadvantage to us. Now at the at the broader level,
Speaker 1: I think what it's made me think about is my
Speaker 1: priorities in life and how to ensure that the structure
Speaker 1: of my days and the way I spend my time
Speaker 1: is aligned with those, which, of course is just a
Speaker 1: classic difficulty, especially for your you know, small business listeners
Speaker 1: or entrepreneurial listeners, trying to you know, to go back
Speaker 1: to that classic two by two, how to make sure
Speaker 1: you don't collect the important but not urgent things in
Speaker 1: your life, which I'm sure you've talked about many times
Speaker 1: on the show. And so I've begun to become relentless
Speaker 1: about time tracking, which is not natural to me. I'm
Speaker 1: not kind of a you know, genetically organized person, so
Speaker 1: it took some growing pains to get into the habit
Speaker 1: of tracking my time. And then about once every quarter
Speaker 1: I just look and I just have broad categories. You know,
Speaker 1: how much time did I spend writing, how much time
Speaker 1: did I spend speaking or teaching, how much time did
Speaker 1: I spend doing email? And kind of the big buckets,
Speaker 1: at least for me, of ways I spend my time.
Speaker 1: And then I start to try to move those numbers,
Speaker 1: and for me, I know what makes me happy, and
Speaker 1: what makes me satisfied is to spend as much time
Speaker 1: as I can speaking.
Speaker 2: And writing, actually in reverse order, writing first and.
Speaker 1: Speaking second, and everything else in a way is to
Speaker 1: be minimized. I mean, there's a certain amount of email
Speaker 1: that I have to do just to continue relationships, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't want to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time doing email. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: other commitments, you know, things I said yes to that
Speaker 1: I often end up regretting saying yes to. And and
Speaker 1: there's something about looking at the numbers, uh and seeing
Speaker 1: that you can move the numbers in your own time
Speaker 1: expenditures that's very motivating to me in a way I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have guessed as a non organized, non numbers focused person.
Speaker 1: And so that's an example of where I'm trying to
Speaker 1: use kind of the the technology of personal productivity to
Speaker 1: carve out space for the things that are really important.
Speaker 3: M I love that. Yeah, I had Laura Vandicam on
Speaker 3: the show. I feel like it's kind of the queen
Speaker 3: of time tracking quite a while ago, and I'm wondering
Speaker 3: what's like to get granular about it. What's your process
Speaker 3: for time tracking and using software, or using an Excel spreadsheet?
Speaker 3: What is that? What does that look like?
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 1: I use an app called Toggle. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: be the endorser for Toggle, although I'm not a very
Speaker 1: good endorser because I use the Freebee.
Speaker 2: Version of the system.
Speaker 1: But I suspect there's you know, half a dozen others
Speaker 1: that do the same thing. And it's just the kind
Speaker 1: of thing where you go and you set up your
Speaker 1: categories and then when you start something like if I
Speaker 1: start a writing shift in the morning, I just have
Speaker 1: to go and kind.
Speaker 2: Of click a button.
Speaker 1: It's super easy, but the payoff comes if you're relentless.
Speaker 2: About doing it.
Speaker 1: The power comes when you get to roll up those
Speaker 1: numbers and see in black and white, like how much
Speaker 1: time did I really spend in the last quarter doing email?
Speaker 1: And you you know, you got to look yourself in
Speaker 1: the mirror at that point and say, ten years from now,
Speaker 1: do I want to be the person who spent a
Speaker 1: thousand hours doing email? And then that opens the door
Speaker 1: to change.
Speaker 3: That's awesome and I like that distinction between the two
Speaker 3: types of upstream thinking that you've applied in your life.
Speaker 3: I remember reading in the book the story about how
Speaker 3: you bought a second computer, cha Ja, And I was
Speaker 3: wondering if you could talk about that, And also I
Speaker 3: was curious because that then led to you talking about
Speaker 3: how you do a lot of your best work in
Speaker 3: coffee shops. So perhaps could you explain what happened with
Speaker 3: just that very simple upstream solution there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, this is a This is another from
Speaker 1: the category of recurring irritants that we just for some
Speaker 1: reason endore. So I have a proper office with a
Speaker 1: proper desk, but for whatever reason, I do my best
Speaker 1: writing in coffee shops. And that's that's always been the case.
Speaker 1: And I have my regular routines. I try to sit
Speaker 1: in the same table, and I put my headphones on,
Speaker 1: and that's just kind of where what.
Speaker 2: Works for me.
Speaker 1: But as part of that, you know, I'm lugging my
Speaker 1: laptop around, and so every time I go to the
Speaker 1: coffee shop, you know, I got to fish my power
Speaker 1: cord out of the bag, plug it into the wall,
Speaker 1: finish my shift, and then I come back to my
Speaker 1: office to do email or calls or whatever, and then
Speaker 1: I got to fish the power cord out of the bag.
Speaker 2: Again and plug it into the wall.
Speaker 1: And I've got one hundred cords going from my desk,
Speaker 1: so it's always just a little bit of a nuisance.
Speaker 1: And and this just seemed like that's the way reality
Speaker 1: has to be. You've got to constantly be doing this
Speaker 1: with your power chord. And then, I'm embarrassed to say
Speaker 1: it took being in the process of writing a book
Speaker 1: called Upstream to make me think, hmm, what if? What
Speaker 1: if I lived in a world where I had two
Speaker 1: power chords? And so I know you're all astonished by
Speaker 1: my genius, but I bought a second power chord and
Speaker 1: I fixed one of them permanently to my desk. So
Speaker 1: now it's just a trivial matter of setting my laptop
Speaker 1: in and I move it a quarter of an inch
Speaker 1: to plug it in, and another one lives always in
Speaker 1: my laptop bag. And so again, you know, no great insight,
Speaker 1: there no great need for creativity. It was just kind
Speaker 1: of a flash of recognition. And in the book I
Speaker 1: talk about the force that explains why this is so uncommon.
Speaker 1: You know, why did it take me writing a book
Speaker 1: about prevention to even think about this?
Speaker 2: And it has to do.
Speaker 1: With a force called tunneling, and tunneling is a word
Speaker 1: from a book called Scarcity written by El dar Shafir
Speaker 1: and Sinndel Mull and Nathan And what they mean by
Speaker 1: tunneling is they say, when we're juggling a lot of
Speaker 1: problems in life, at a certain point we give up
Speaker 1: trying to solve them all and we shift our mental
Speaker 1: model into what's effectively tunnel vision. I mean, just call
Speaker 1: up that visual image in your mind. You're in a tunnel.
Speaker 1: You're just trying to knock things down one at a time.
Speaker 1: You know, in a tunnel, the only way you can
Speaker 1: go is backward and forward, and for most of us,
Speaker 1: forward is the only direction. And so what that means
Speaker 1: is I've got to constantly be parrying the problems that
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with. I'm going to work around to get
Speaker 1: to the next one. And tunneling becomes, you know, one
Speaker 1: of these self reinforcing habits. Because when you're in a
Speaker 1: tunnel and you're used to tunneling and only question is
Speaker 1: how far forward can you get?
Speaker 2: In a day?
Speaker 1: You stop asking, hey, am I going the right direction
Speaker 1: at all? Or is there a or tunnel that I
Speaker 1: could put myself in, or is there a way I
Speaker 1: can step out of this tunnel? For an hour a
Speaker 1: day and consider some of my behaviors. And so tunneling
Speaker 1: is one of the villains, if you will, in the
Speaker 1: book that helps to explain why it's so uncommon or
Speaker 1: unnatural to shift into upstream thinking.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting. Since reading the book, I've actually developed
Speaker 3: a list on my to do list software of things
Speaker 3: that I am doing repetitively in terms of every week,
Speaker 3: but that I find either mine normally boring or irritating,
Speaker 3: or something that I could either outsource or find a solution.
Speaker 3: And then what I'm planning to do is weekly review
Speaker 3: that list and try to think more upstream.
Speaker 1: You had any easy wins, like any second power chord
Speaker 1: kind of stories.
Speaker 3: Well, well, it's funny because I do have a second
Speaker 3: power chord story, but that happened before the book. So
Speaker 3: in my home office setup, it's funny, like you, I
Speaker 3: do my best work in coffee shops, but in my
Speaker 3: home office setup, I've got the rooms kind of split
Speaker 3: in half, and half of it is the podcast studio
Speaker 3: with the soundproofing barriers and so forth, and the other
Speaker 3: half is where I would do normal work like writing
Speaker 3: or something like that. And I used to only have
Speaker 3: one power cord and I would move it between both
Speaker 3: sides of the office, and it struck me that that
Speaker 3: was quite annoying, having to go under the desk and
Speaker 3: find the right cord and so forth. And so I
Speaker 3: too bought a second power cord.
Speaker 2: A non expli association of people.
Speaker 3: I know, I know exactly. I feel like Apple and
Speaker 3: missing a trick by, you know, not bundling in two
Speaker 3: power cords into the one package. But I think that's great,
Speaker 3: just the idea of thinking about recurring irritance in your life.
Speaker 3: I don't want to delve into the coffee shop thing.
Speaker 3: How did you discover that you get your best work
Speaker 3: done in coffee shops? Was there a moment? Was you know,
Speaker 3: why did you even start doing that? If you've got
Speaker 3: this lovely hoime office.
Speaker 1: Well, my love of coffee predates my love of writing.
Speaker 1: So I was already spending a lot of time in
Speaker 1: coffee shops. And I need to be heavily caffeinated before
Speaker 1: I get really productive. And so I'm not sure there's
Speaker 1: any great epiphany story behind this one. But I did
Speaker 1: notice that when I was writing Made to Stick, which
Speaker 1: was the first book that my brother Chip and I
Speaker 1: wrote together in those days, I was a horrible, horrible procrastinator.
Speaker 1: I mean I loved to have written. As some famous
Speaker 1: author said, whose name I'm spacing on now, I love
Speaker 1: to have written. But writing was something that I would
Speaker 1: put off, just relentlessly, and it got to the point
Speaker 1: where I would procrastinate so badly that the only way
Speaker 1: I could get myself to write to get over that
Speaker 1: hump was I would actually go down the street. And
Speaker 1: there was this copy center called Kinko's that rented computers
Speaker 1: by the hour, and I started going there and paying.
Speaker 1: I mean I had a computer, mind you. I started
Speaker 1: going there and paying to use their computers because I
Speaker 1: would feel so guilty about procrastinating when I was paying
Speaker 1: someone for computer usage. And that's what got me over
Speaker 1: the hump. And I sort of eventually weaned myself over
Speaker 1: that idiotic payment system and kind of downshifted to coffee shops.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Maybe it's something about just feeling like
Speaker 1: you're being held accountable to the productive people around you
Speaker 1: in a coffee shop, But I don't have any sensible
Speaker 1: explanation for why that works. But it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where you don't really need one if you're careful
Speaker 1: in studying yourself at your best moments, you can learn
Speaker 1: a lot. And we can spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: wallowing in what doesn't work and in our problems and
Speaker 1: in our frustrations. But if we just kind of flip
Speaker 1: the lens a little bit and say, hey, when things
Speaker 1: do work, when do they work, and why do they work?
Speaker 1: And for me, the answer to that question was, Hey,
Speaker 1: I seem to really be able to click when I
Speaker 1: sit in the same table in the same coffee shop
Speaker 1: and order the same thing and put on my headphones.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. I think for me, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: writing is such a lonely activity, and I think when
Speaker 3: I'm in amongst other people, whether they're working or chatting,
Speaker 3: I just feel like I'm not missing out on stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm just kind of in amongst it. But then I'm
Speaker 3: doing my work. Now. I'm so encouraged to hear that
Speaker 3: you are a procrastinator. I think I read your books
Speaker 3: and they're brilliant, And I've heard you say that with
Speaker 3: the books that you've written with Chip, your brother, you
Speaker 3: kind of take on predominantly the writing role and he
Speaker 3: takes on the research role. Have I got that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's encouraging to hear that you procrastinate over writing.
Speaker 3: Does that still happen when you're writing now or has
Speaker 3: it become so routine and habitual that you've got your
Speaker 3: setup and when you're in the coffee shop with your
Speaker 3: stuff that you need, you're kind of straight into It's
Speaker 3: kind of almost have loth And what's that like for you?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: I am am pleased to say that I am a
Speaker 1: largely cured of procrastination. So if you are a procrastinator,
Speaker 1: please no hope, because I was right there with you
Speaker 1: in the trenches. Now, I don't know that my solution
Speaker 1: is scalable, because my solution was to have a brother
Speaker 1: slash collaborator who was whatever the opposite of a procrastinator is.
Speaker 1: You know, he was the kind of student who would
Speaker 1: turn in their urn paper a week early just to
Speaker 1: make sure it was out of the way. And I
Speaker 1: was the kind of student who had started at three
Speaker 1: am in the morning with you know, six caffeine pills
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: And then I think, you know, my wife.
Speaker 1: Is also the opposite of a procrastinator, and so I
Speaker 1: think between the two of them, they kind of beat
Speaker 1: that instinct out of me. But it also has a
Speaker 1: lot to do, as you said, with habits. And you know,
Speaker 1: one thing that has been true for me that that
Speaker 1: I've you know, back to that idea of studying your
Speaker 1: own right spots. One thing that is absolutely crystal clear
Speaker 1: from me is that I do much better with momentum
Speaker 1: in writing. So if I can write, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: five days out of thirty that is far far better
Speaker 1: from me than writing fifty days out of five months,
Speaker 1: I will literally have more words on the page, and
Speaker 1: there'll be better words with the twenty five days quickly
Speaker 1: than with the fifty sporadically. And so that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that over time you start to learn about
Speaker 1: yourself is you know, what is it that elicits your
Speaker 1: best work and work that you're proud of, and how
Speaker 1: do you replicate that.
Speaker 3: It's interesting what you say about I guess having non
Speaker 3: procrastinators around you. And obviously with Upstream, this was your
Speaker 3: first solo book, and I'm curious as to how that
Speaker 3: was as a process and did you have to develop
Speaker 3: different strategies for getting the book written given that it
Speaker 3: wasn't a partnership with Chip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was, I mean it was it was like
Speaker 1: starting over. You know, it's like half of the half
Speaker 1: of the team has gone. That's an enormous hole to fill.
Speaker 1: And and I think probably it's shaped up about like
Speaker 1: you would expect. You know, some things, some things were
Speaker 1: really good about it. I didn't have to negotiate everything
Speaker 1: in the book, and I could kind of do things
Speaker 1: the way I wanted it.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's always the advantage of working solo,
Speaker 1: as you get to have your way. And the downside was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a much lonelier process. I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't have a partner to talk things through, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have someone in the boat with me rowing
Speaker 1: that we could we could agonize about things together.
Speaker 3: And uh.
Speaker 1: And of course the obvious is I lost his incredible
Speaker 1: research ability. I had to basically hire a small team
Speaker 1: of people. I had to basically hire a research team
Speaker 1: to uh, to try to fill some of the things
Speaker 1: that he did as as an individual. So it was
Speaker 1: a lot of new habit creation, a lot of new routines.
Speaker 1: But I think I grew from that. You know, it's
Speaker 1: any time you try something new that that scares you
Speaker 1: a little bit. It may work or it may not,
Speaker 1: but either way, you're probably going to grow. And I
Speaker 1: felt like I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting the idea of not having that person
Speaker 3: to bounce ideas around with, almost that sparring partner. And
Speaker 3: it reminds me of this idea that Adam Grant talks
Speaker 3: about in terms of developing a challenge network, so deliberately
Speaker 3: seeking out a network of people who you can go
Speaker 3: to to critique your work. So how did that work
Speaker 3: for you? I mean, obviously you've got an editor, as
Speaker 3: all authors do, but were there other strategies that you
Speaker 3: put in place to I guess get that feedback.
Speaker 1: I suspect this is just me. This is not like
Speaker 1: some kind of universal rule. But I'm the kind of
Speaker 1: writer where if I, if I get a lot of feedback,
Speaker 1: it's demotivating to me.
Speaker 2: Like I sort of like this idea of.
Speaker 1: Unveiling, Like I like to go in my little hole
Speaker 1: and do some writing and then voila, show it to
Speaker 1: people and get their action at that point. And if
Speaker 1: if people are kind of quibbling with me or pushing
Speaker 1: back on a day to day basis, it makes me
Speaker 1: question myself in an unhelpful way. So I do, for
Speaker 1: sure get feedback, and it's it's critical, it's indispensable, but
Speaker 1: I do it in a in a more formal way
Speaker 1: than perhaps the Adam Grant strategy suggests. Like I basically
Speaker 1: with this book, had had a moment roughly halfway or
Speaker 1: sixty percent of the way through the process where I
Speaker 1: had created a kind of draft one point zero book
Speaker 1: that I shipped out to a bunch of people for feedback.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of things that I want to
Speaker 1: point out about it. One was it was at a
Speaker 1: time in the process where I could afford for them
Speaker 1: to push back. I think a lot of writers make
Speaker 1: the mistake of you know, you get ninety percent of
Speaker 1: the way there and then you start asking for feedback,
Speaker 1: and at that point you just if you get negative feedback,
Speaker 1: you can't afford to take it on. You know, your
Speaker 1: your instincts are going to be to push back and think, oh,
Speaker 1: well that's just nitpicking, or you know that you know
Speaker 1: I can't afford to revisit that. Doing it earlier in
Speaker 1: the process allows you to kind of, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a mental space to really rethink things if they were
Speaker 1: necessary and in some cases with the book they were
Speaker 1: The other thing that I believe in with respective feedback
Speaker 1: is I believe in I believe feedback is better when
Speaker 1: it's specific. So I don't tend to ask people, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you think of the book. I don't want
Speaker 1: them to be tied up in trying to spare my
Speaker 1: feelings or you know, trying to play back what they
Speaker 1: think I want to hear. And I also don't necessarily
Speaker 1: trust if they had something that was core to the
Speaker 1: theme of the book. I don't know that you want
Speaker 1: to trust someone who's spent five hours thinking about your
Speaker 1: book over yourself that spent two years working on the book.
Speaker 1: But what I think you absolutely can trust is just
Speaker 1: people's instinct about Hey, did you like this part or
Speaker 1: did you not?
Speaker 2: Was this interesting? Was it not?
Speaker 1: You know, which of these two things did you like better.
Speaker 1: It reminds me years ago I had the conversation with
Speaker 1: the founder of Icebreaker. We were talking about market research,
Speaker 1: and he said, my mental model of market research is,
Speaker 1: you know, imagine if you called people into a focus
Speaker 1: group room as a brewer and you said, hey, what
Speaker 1: kind of beer would you really like to drink? You know,
Speaker 1: people people are going to come up with an answer
Speaker 1: to that, but you really can't trust that answer because
Speaker 1: people just don't have a language to articulate their perfect beer.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what I would say. I
Speaker 1: would probably try to come up with something that sounded smart,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure it would be useful guidance. But
Speaker 1: he said, what you absolutely can take to the bank
Speaker 1: is if you hand people two glasses and you say, hey,
Speaker 1: which of these beers tastes better to you? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's gold. That's useful feedback. And so that's the spirit
Speaker 1: of what I try to honor with the book is
Speaker 1: is I want to get feedback at a point in
Speaker 1: the cycle when I can use it. And the second
Speaker 1: thing is I want to get feedback that's particular enough
Speaker 1: that I can really trust it.
Speaker 3: I like that idea of, you know, getting feedback when
Speaker 3: it's sixty percent done. I couldn't agree more. It's so
Speaker 3: hard really taking on feedback when you feel like you're
Speaker 3: really close to shipping the product, because you've just got
Speaker 3: way too many biases in play. So that's such good advice.
Speaker 3: I want to know, how how do you know when
Speaker 3: you're onto a winning idea for a book, because I
Speaker 3: just think with all of your books, I just go, oh,
Speaker 3: they're so brilliant, and they're so universally appealing as well,
Speaker 3: so that in those really early stages, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: really keen to know with all of your books, where
Speaker 3: did the ideas come from? And how did you know that, yes,
Speaker 3: this is something that is worth spending the next three
Speaker 3: years of my life.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's one where I'm not going to
Speaker 1: have a very satisfying answer, because I just think that fundamentally, nobody,
Speaker 1: as William Goldman once said about Hollywood and why certain
Speaker 1: films do well and others don't, you know, nobody knows anything.
Speaker 1: And I think that's true. I think that I have
Speaker 1: no idea if upstream will sell well or not. About
Speaker 1: All that you can assure yourself of.
Speaker 2: Is two things.
Speaker 1: One is is this a topic that's going to keep
Speaker 1: me fascinated for the period of years that it takes
Speaker 1: to properly research and write about a book? And Chip
Speaker 1: and I have had several experiences where we started books
Speaker 1: that we were quite excited about in month one and
Speaker 1: then we literally burn three or four or five months
Speaker 1: and decide, I just don't think this is it. I
Speaker 1: don't think I can keep my attention up for two
Speaker 1: more years of this stuff, and so you just flush it,
Speaker 1: I mean literally just wasted work, but not in the
Speaker 1: long run since so you can assure yourself of your
Speaker 1: own attention. And that was one that for me. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if nobody else in the world thinks Upstream is interesting,
Speaker 1: I do. And I've been thinking about these ideas for
Speaker 1: about eleven years now. I mean I literally started my
Speaker 1: first word file keeping notes on Upstream in like two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, so I knew for sure this was
Speaker 1: a book that was going to be fascinating for me,
Speaker 1: which is a big deal. And then the second thing is,
Speaker 1: I think you can assure yourself that at least for
Speaker 1: the kind of book that we're talking about. This is
Speaker 1: certainly not true for novels or historical fiction or whatever,
Speaker 1: but for these kinds of books, you can assure yourself
Speaker 1: that a lot of people are facing the problem that
Speaker 1: you're tackling. So with Made to Stick, you know, we
Speaker 1: knew for sure that there were a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the world who had really good ideas that they
Speaker 1: were trying to get across to other people. They needed
Speaker 1: to build alliances, they needed to make great presentations, They
Speaker 1: wanted to give powerful vision speeches to their teams, and
Speaker 1: so we knew the need was there if we could find.
Speaker 2: A set of tools that were useful.
Speaker 1: And so there's some comfort that comes from knowing, at
Speaker 1: least you're tackling a problem that's really important and really pervasive.
Speaker 1: But in terms of, you know, does do the two
Speaker 1: of those things translate into book sales?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: I think there's ten confounding variables in the middle.
Speaker 3: I've heard you say in terms of what makes a
Speaker 3: great business book, in terms of the how to business books,
Speaker 3: like the genre that you write with in you said,
Speaker 3: do people crave the information in the book? And does
Speaker 3: the book deliver useful tools? And I really loved that
Speaker 3: as kind of thinking about Okay, you know, they're two
Speaker 3: things I guess to guide your decision making.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I heard a speech years ago from this publisher named
Speaker 1: Ray Bard, and I remembered it to this day, and
Speaker 1: he talked about the notion of a felt need, which,
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking a lot about writers and writing today.
Speaker 1: But I think many of these ideas apply to lots
Speaker 1: of different markets, and this one certainly does, and felt
Speaker 1: need is the idea that it's not enough to give
Speaker 1: people a product, you know, in this case, a book
Speaker 1: that is good for them, they have to have, they
Speaker 1: have to feel a need for it. And the example
Speaker 1: he gave was was memorable. He said, the perennial bestseller
Speaker 1: What to Expect when You're Expecting for pregnant Women is
Speaker 1: the perfect example of felt need. You know, you find
Speaker 1: yourself pregnant, you've done the pregnancy test, and you get
Speaker 1: the pink strip, and you're like, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: am I in for? What's gonna what's going to happen
Speaker 1: to my body? And what's normal and what's not normal?
Speaker 1: You crave information. And ray Bard contrasted that with a
Speaker 1: book for men that was how to have more empathy
Speaker 1: for the bodily changes your wife is going through during pregnancy,
Speaker 1: and he said every man should be required to read
Speaker 1: that book. I mean it should be, it should be,
Speaker 1: you know, a legal it should be a legal requirement
Speaker 1: for men to read that. But there's probably not the
Speaker 1: felt need, which is of course telling about men. But
Speaker 1: I think his point is right that having a book
Speaker 1: that's good for you is not the same thing as
Speaker 1: a book that you demand, and so I think when
Speaker 1: we're in the business of trying to get people to
Speaker 1: buy what we're selling them, we have to pay attention
Speaker 1: to what their felt need is, not what do we
Speaker 1: think would be good for them.
Speaker 3: That's such great advice really, for anyone putting anything out
Speaker 3: into the world that they're hoping someone will find a value.
Speaker 3: I love that. I would also ask with your books.
Speaker 3: I feel like they've all got these very elegant frameworks
Speaker 3: that sit behind them, and I want to know what's
Speaker 3: what's your process for developing those because I'm imagining once
Speaker 3: you've got your initial idea, it's the framework that would
Speaker 3: come next before you even start putting pen to paper
Speaker 3: in terms of writing the prose of the book. Is
Speaker 3: that sort of fair to say in terms of your process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1: Just to give listeners a concrete example, we've talked a
Speaker 1: couple of times about this book Made to Stick. That's
Speaker 1: about how do you make your ideas stick with people?
Speaker 1: And the core of the book is a six part
Speaker 1: framework that sticky ideas are simple, they're unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional,
Speaker 1: and they're often told us stories. And so we're using
Speaker 1: a little kind of cheesy mnemonic there success minus the
Speaker 1: final s. We didn't find a seventh trait, so we
Speaker 1: have this kind of truncated version of the word success
Speaker 1: to help people remember. And before, as you said, before
Speaker 1: we started the book, we knew what that framework was
Speaker 1: and it guided the production of the book. But of
Speaker 1: course we spend a lot of time in the wilderness
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what those traits are and which
Speaker 1: ones do we believe. And with our first four books
Speaker 1: we had a framework for each one in the same spirit,
Speaker 1: and that's really the heart of our collaboration that yes
Speaker 1: I do most of the writing and yes Chip does
Speaker 1: most of the research, but the hard part is really
Speaker 1: what's in the middle of those two things, which is
Speaker 1: figuring out what are the patterns in the research that
Speaker 1: you're doing, and windows academic research seem to meet up
Speaker 1: with real world experience, and when are you hearing the
Speaker 1: same things from very different disciplines in a way that
Speaker 1: makes you trust the idea more. And on top of
Speaker 1: all that, it's not enough for something to be true,
Speaker 1: it also has to be useful, at least for the
Speaker 1: kind of books we're writing. You know, we don't want
Speaker 1: to just have academic debates. In our books, we want
Speaker 1: people to have tools that will make them better business
Speaker 1: people or government leaders or teachers the next week. And
Speaker 1: so part of what we kind of aspire to in
Speaker 1: our books is are the ideas we write about are
Speaker 1: they true? Are they backed by some kind of evidence?
Speaker 1: And are they practical? And are they interesting enough to
Speaker 1: keep a reader flipping through a book. So if we
Speaker 1: can overlap all of those circles in a neat, little
Speaker 1: ven diagram, that's where our framework emerge is from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great. Like how much toing and throwing is
Speaker 3: there to land on the final framework? I guess this
Speaker 3: is several weeks, a several month process. You know, once
Speaker 3: you've I guess done a lot of the research that
Speaker 3: sits behind the framework.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's months and months and months. I mean it's
Speaker 1: the heart of the book.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: The framework is fundamentally what we're offering people. I mean,
Speaker 1: the book is a package for the framework, but you
Speaker 1: could communicate the framework in a workshop or a speech
Speaker 1: or an article. The framework is the thing. And so
Speaker 1: you know, from the very beginning we are we're iterating,
Speaker 1: and you know, we probably take a couple of months
Speaker 1: just Blue Sky to research and start to see if
Speaker 1: themes are bubbling up, and you know, by three to
Speaker 1: six months in we're starting to try to come up
Speaker 1: with draft frameworks and then they get iterated one hundred
Speaker 1: times before we finally land on something that we think
Speaker 1: is the right blend of simplicity and practicality and.
Speaker 2: Completeness.
Speaker 3: I am fascinated by this, and I've also very encouraged
Speaker 3: to hear what a long, intensive process it is, because
Speaker 3: I look at these in your books and I'm like, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: that's so brilliant. So I'm very encouraged to hear about
Speaker 3: how challenging it is. Just from a selfish point of view,
Speaker 3: I know we're almost out of time. And look, my
Speaker 3: last question for you, I guess relates to everything that
Speaker 3: you have written and learned in the process of writing
Speaker 3: your books, because they do cover such fundamentally important topics
Speaker 3: like how to change people, how to make decisions, how
Speaker 3: to create these defining moments in your life. And I
Speaker 3: know for me, you know, as I mentioned, decisive and
Speaker 3: power of moments have been ones that I think I apply.
Speaker 3: I still apply, you know, some of the strategies from
Speaker 3: those books almost every week of my life, like for example,
Speaker 3: with Decisive, I still whenever I'm faced with a whether
Speaker 3: or not decision where there's essentially should I do this
Speaker 3: or shouldn't I, I remember that those decisions fail fifty
Speaker 3: percent of the time, and I de liberately look for
Speaker 3: some true alternatives and with the power of moments that
Speaker 3: that influenced my thinking not only about work and customers,
Speaker 3: but also just about time with my daughter and deliberately
Speaker 3: crafting these defining moments that still impacts me to this day.
Speaker 3: And I want to know for you, out of everything
Speaker 3: that you've written, what I guess maybe one or two
Speaker 3: or three of the kind of they might be just
Speaker 3: really simple changes, but I guess changes that have had
Speaker 3: you been really impactful in your life. MM.
Speaker 2: You know what are the greatest hits? I think you know.
Speaker 1: One of them, honestly, is the same one that you flagged.
Speaker 1: I think Decisive, which is our book about decision making,
Speaker 1: has fundamentally changed the way I approach decisions. And one
Speaker 1: of the tips that's easiest to explain is the one
Speaker 1: that you mentioned, which is, any time in life you
Speaker 1: find yourself framing a decision about whether or not to
Speaker 1: do such and such, you know, should I buy this
Speaker 1: thing or not? Should I take this trip or not?
Speaker 1: Should I say yes to the project or not. That's
Speaker 1: a dangerous framing. And the reason is because not is
Speaker 1: not a particularly compelling decision option.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like think of a corporation thinking should we acquire
Speaker 1: this firm or not? And the longer you think about it,
Speaker 1: and the longer you ponder it, and the more due
Speaker 1: diligence you do, the more you feel invested in the
Speaker 1: one option that's on the table, and the harder it
Speaker 1: is for you to just say no, because then you've
Speaker 1: flushed all that analysis.
Speaker 2: It's gone.
Speaker 1: And so when you have a decision, you've got one
Speaker 1: option on the table. Rather than frame it is should
Speaker 1: I do this thing? Should I buy this thing or not?
Speaker 1: Challenge yourself, you know, do the opportunity cost question. So
Speaker 1: it's I was talking to someone the other day who
Speaker 1: wanted to write a book that was on their bucket list.
Speaker 1: And so rather than think about it as should I
Speaker 1: write a book or not, you should think, whatever itch
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to scratch by writing a book? What
Speaker 1: if I couldn't write a book, how would I scratch
Speaker 1: that same itch?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a creative thing, and you might have spent
Speaker 1: that time doing improv comedy, or you might have spent
Speaker 1: it painting or something like that, or maybe it's a
Speaker 1: business development thing like the book for you would have
Speaker 1: represented a way to get more clients or more speeches
Speaker 1: or what have you. And if that's true, what would
Speaker 1: you do to advance those goals in the absence of
Speaker 1: a book? And then that's your comparison. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not should I write a book or not? Is should
Speaker 1: I invest hundreds of hours writing a book or hundreds
Speaker 1: of hours getting better at improv comedy. So that's one
Speaker 1: thing I think about all the time, and that that
Speaker 1: has become a permanent part of my decision process. Another
Speaker 1: thing that has stuck with me is the idea that
Speaker 1: you mentioned of peak moments, which comes from the Power
Speaker 1: of Moments book. And the heart of this I think
Speaker 1: I can summarize as follows is what we know from
Speaker 1: people's memories of their experiences is that some moments matter
Speaker 1: dramatically more than others. I mean one hundred or a
Speaker 1: thousand and times as important certain moments are than others.
Speaker 1: And if you even think about your own memories, like
Speaker 1: think back to a vacation you took five or ten
Speaker 1: years ago, or think back to a semester.
Speaker 2: In school or in university.
Speaker 1: You'll quickly realize that the vast majority of that experience
Speaker 1: is gone and what you're left with are certain moments.
Speaker 1: And question is why those moments? And in the book
Speaker 1: we try to answer the question what is it about
Speaker 1: those experiences that's stuck with you? And how can you
Speaker 1: go about creating more? And so what it's taught me
Speaker 1: is I think the most practical lesson that comes out
Speaker 1: of that is to be willing to endure inconvenience for
Speaker 1: the sake of a peak moment. Like I think of
Speaker 1: a time it was a couple of years ago now,
Speaker 1: but there was a full eclipse of the sun that
Speaker 1: was I forget what you call the path of the
Speaker 1: sun that gets the full eclipse. But we were pretty
Speaker 1: close to that path where I am in North Carolina
Speaker 1: in the US. But it required about a let's see,
Speaker 1: three to three and a half hour each way drive,
Speaker 1: so maybe seven hour round trip drive. And I think
Speaker 1: before I wrote the book Power of Moments, I would
Speaker 1: have said forget that. I mean seven hours on the
Speaker 1: road and there's going to be traffic because every other
Speaker 1: Yahoo's going to be trying to see the eclipse. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'll just watch the thing on YouTube and
Speaker 1: be done with it.
Speaker 2: How good can it be?
Speaker 1: But what you realize is five years from now, all
Speaker 1: the details of that drive are going to be gone.
Speaker 1: That's a classic thing that your memory is gonna flush.
Speaker 1: But what you will remember, and what I do remember,
Speaker 1: because I did make the trip, is it's seeing the
Speaker 1: world go dark around you in the middle of the
Speaker 1: day and hearing insects start to make noise because they're
Speaker 1: tricked and they think it's the nighttime, and so you're
Speaker 1: hearing crickets chirp in the middle.
Speaker 2: Of the day.
Speaker 1: And then when the sun finally starts to come out
Speaker 1: the other side, you hear birds chirp as though it's
Speaker 1: the morning. And it's just this, this fundamentally alien and
Speaker 1: wonderful experience that would not have been replicated on YouTube.
Speaker 1: And so yes, I drove seven hours to have an
Speaker 1: experience that lasted about ten minutes. But you know, five
Speaker 1: years down the road, ten years down the road, all
Speaker 1: I'm going to have left is that wonderful moment that
Speaker 1: would have been absent had I done kind of a
Speaker 1: strict minute by minute trade off of time. So that
Speaker 1: was a very long answer to your question. But those
Speaker 1: are two things that have really made a difference in
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 3: That is a beautiful story. And look, we are so
Speaker 3: out of time. Time has flown for me certainly. But finally,
Speaker 3: where can people find you, Dan? And where can they
Speaker 3: get their copy of Upstream?
Speaker 1: Well, wherever you buy books, hopefully they have a copy
Speaker 1: of Upstream on hand. And if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about me, come check out the website Heath Brothers
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: That's Heath H. E. A T. H.
Speaker 1: And you can find out about all the books we've
Speaker 1: discussed right there.
Speaker 3: Fantastic and I will link to all that in the
Speaker 3: show notes. Dan, it has been an absolute joy. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you, it's been fun.
Speaker 3: That is it for today's show. If you have enjoyed
Speaker 3: this chat with Dan, maybe you know someone else that
Speaker 3: would like it as well, So why not share this
Speaker 3: episode with them through hitting the little share icon wherever
Speaker 3: you listen to this podcast from And if you're enjoying
Speaker 3: how I work, I would love it if you could
Speaker 3: leave a review in Apple Podcasts. And thank you to
Speaker 3: everyone that has done so. So that is it for
Speaker 3: today's show and I will see you next time.