Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 1: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 1: much out of their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work day.
Speaker 1: Today's show is a best of show because I'm taking
Speaker 1: a few weeks off How I Work, and I am
Speaker 1: very excited to share today's episode, which was one of
Speaker 1: my favorite interviews that I've done over the last two
Speaker 1: and a half years, and that was with Dan Pink.
Speaker 1: Dan is the author of six best selling books, including Drive,
Speaker 1: a Whole New Mind, and his latest book When, the
Speaker 1: Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, which spent four months on
Speaker 1: the New York Times bestseller list. You might also be
Speaker 1: familiar with Dan through his ted talk about the Surprising
Speaker 1: Science of Motivation, which has been viewed over twenty million
Speaker 1: times times. I have been a Dan Pink fan for many,
Speaker 1: many years. I tried to get him on the show
Speaker 1: for ages before I finally secured him, so I was
Speaker 1: so excited about this chat. I just think he has
Speaker 1: such a knack for dissecting complex science and finding a
Speaker 1: way to make it not just accessible, but memorable and
Speaker 1: impactful for his readers. And before I throw to Dan,
Speaker 1: I just want to do a shout out for everyone,
Speaker 1: all you kind people that have left reviews for How
Speaker 1: I Work. I read every single review and get all
Speaker 1: the star ratings and just thank you you lovely people.
Speaker 1: It just really does bring a huge smile to my face.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very grateful. And if you are enjoying the
Speaker 1: work that I'm doing on How I Work and you
Speaker 1: haven't left review, maybe today's the day where you might
Speaker 1: take five or ten seconds out of your day and
Speaker 1: do that. It is so appreciated and also is a
Speaker 1: great way of helping other people find how I work.
Speaker 1: So on that note, let's head to down to hear
Speaker 1: about how how he works. Dan, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Amantha. Good to be here. Now.
Speaker 1: I want to start with your books, because you've written
Speaker 1: six books over around the last twenty or so years,
Speaker 1: and I want to start by understanding where do your
Speaker 1: book ideas come from, and maybe if you can talk
Speaker 1: me through how your latest book when came to.
Speaker 2: Be right, Well, I'll start with the second question. First,
Speaker 2: this latest book when came to be largely out of frustration.
Speaker 2: I was making all kinds of timing decisions in my
Speaker 2: own life, and everything from when in the day should
Speaker 2: I exercise, when should I do my writing, and even
Speaker 2: more episodic things like when should I start a project,
Speaker 2: when should I abandon a project if that's not working.
Speaker 2: I was making these decisions in a very haphazard, ill
Speaker 2: informed way, which frustrated me. I wanted to make them
Speaker 2: in a more intelligent way. So I looked around for guidance.
Speaker 2: It didn't exist. And then I started looking around at
Speaker 2: this wonder not even looking around, just wondering whether there
Speaker 2: was any science. And it turned out there was a
Speaker 2: lot of science on this topic. And that's how I
Speaker 2: got into that. Now that the genesis of this book
Speaker 2: is a little bit different from what often happens, which
Speaker 2: is that I have files of ideas, and when I
Speaker 2: when I say ideas, they're barely even ideas. They're just
Speaker 2: shards of stuff. And so I will keep them in
Speaker 2: paper folders. I will keep them in drop box folders,
Speaker 2: I will keep them in email folders. I will keep them.
Speaker 2: I will use ever note, and I return to these things,
Speaker 2: you know, every few months sift through and I always
Speaker 2: have a running list of ideas of stuff I want
Speaker 2: to work on. And when I return to a lot
Speaker 2: of these ideas, they a lot of the ideas stink,
Speaker 2: so I get rid of those, and it's just a
Speaker 2: constant turn. And my view is that in order to
Speaker 2: have a good idea, you have to have a lot
Speaker 2: of ideas, and when you have a lot of ideas,
Speaker 2: you have a lot of bad ideas. And I have
Speaker 2: a lot of bad ideas.
Speaker 1: How do you know whether an idea is good or
Speaker 1: whether it stinks?
Speaker 2: Great question, I'm not sure. I wish there were some
Speaker 2: kind of blood tests, something definitive like that, but there
Speaker 2: is not. Some of it is. It's actually a very
Speaker 2: interesting question on a number of different dimensions. So part
Speaker 2: of it has to do with you know, your own taste,
Speaker 2: and I think in any kind of creative endeavor, people
Speaker 2: develop taste and so something and you say, well, you
Speaker 2: know what, that's not my taste. My intuitive sense of
Speaker 2: of taste says this is not quite right. So that's
Speaker 2: one thing. Second thing would be, is this something I
Speaker 2: really want to work on? And a lot of times,
Speaker 2: something that seems really alluring at first turns out to
Speaker 2: be deadening when you explore it a little bit more.
Speaker 2: And then another one would be I like, you know,
Speaker 2: talking to people about various ideas that I have just
Speaker 2: to hear how they react. And the reaction that I
Speaker 2: find most useful is not that's a terrible idea, that's
Speaker 2: a good idea, but huh, that's interesting. Have you thought
Speaker 2: about X, Y or z and so something that engages
Speaker 2: people enough to ask a question.
Speaker 1: And so with your book, when how how did you
Speaker 1: know or when did you know that you were really
Speaker 1: onto something with that?
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that I do is I
Speaker 2: it's another really good question. One of the things that
Speaker 2: I do when I develop a book is that I
Speaker 2: always write a book proposal. Now, typically when writers are
Speaker 2: just starting out, they do book proposals, as you know,
Speaker 2: as there have more work behind them, they need less
Speaker 2: elaborate proposals. Topic Often for me, I like writing book
Speaker 2: proposals because it's a test of an idea. And so
Speaker 2: there have been many times when I said, hey, here's
Speaker 2: an idea. It's survived over a couple of years on
Speaker 2: the list I've marshaled some research. Hey, this research looks
Speaker 2: pretty good. And then I'll start writing a book proposal.
Speaker 2: And a book proposal is, you know, not a complicated document.
Speaker 2: It basically it says, here's what this book is about.
Speaker 2: Here's where it fits into the whole ecosystem of ideas.
Speaker 2: Here is why I'm the perfect person to write it. Here,
Speaker 2: who's here the people who are going to be interested
Speaker 2: in a book like this, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: there were many times when I thought I had a
Speaker 2: good idea and I started writing the book proposal and
Speaker 2: I was like, no, this is not a good idea.
Speaker 2: It didn't hang together with when it was one of
Speaker 2: the few book proposals that I've written where it just
Speaker 2: was like butter, It just smooth and creamy all the
Speaker 2: way through. And that's how I knew that I was
Speaker 2: onto a pretty good idea.
Speaker 1: Ah, I like that. I mean, book proposals are almost
Speaker 1: like the business case of the ride as well.
Speaker 2: I guess absolutely they are. They are more like You're
Speaker 2: totally right, they are more like a business plan than
Speaker 2: a literary product.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And when you first released when, which I think
Speaker 1: was about a year ago, and I read it from
Speaker 1: memory like a few days after it had come out.
Speaker 1: I thought it was just such a brilliant idea for
Speaker 1: a book. And I feel like I remember you. I
Speaker 1: feel like I remember you talking in an interview quite
Speaker 1: a few months ago where when was quite hard to
Speaker 1: structure in that you went through a lot of different
Speaker 1: drafts of the Table of contests. Can you talk me
Speaker 1: through what that process was like and how you did
Speaker 1: land on the final structure for the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, it's you know, I'm a big believe
Speaker 2: when it comes to book nonfiction books, I think I
Speaker 2: think the same thing. It's true with fiction. I'm a
Speaker 2: big believer in structure. Structure solves a lot of problems,
Speaker 2: structure makes structure helps out readers, and structure gives you
Speaker 2: a sense of whether what you have has integrity. And
Speaker 2: I tried a couple of approaches to structuring the book.
Speaker 2: I knew there are certain like big elements that I
Speaker 2: wanted in there, but I wasn't sure, and so I
Speaker 2: went through several I don't know, maybe fifteen or so,
Speaker 2: as you say, draft table of contents, just to feel
Speaker 2: how it all to feel how it all hung together.
Speaker 2: And I just had a sense And again it goes
Speaker 2: back to one of your early questions that this is
Speaker 2: just not quite right. And once again I would bounce
Speaker 2: it off of other people, not a huge number of people,
Speaker 2: but I would say, hey, what do you think of this?
Speaker 2: What do you think of that? And you know, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to see how other people responded, and I
Speaker 2: think I began simply saying, Okay, you know what I'm
Speaker 2: going to do. I know this is a chapter, so
Speaker 2: let me write this chapter and then put the total
Speaker 2: structure aside. But over time, if you just keep coming
Speaker 2: back to it, and keep coming back to it, and
Speaker 2: keep coming back to it, you will find the material
Speaker 2: in some ways will tell you you what the structure is.
Speaker 2: But again, not everybody agrees with me, not every rid
Speaker 2: agrees with them. But I think structure matters enormously. And
Speaker 2: I see too many books out there that are poorly constructed, wobbly,
Speaker 2: and I think it makes it harder for readers to
Speaker 2: enjoy the book and get something from the ideas presented
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more. And I really like the structure that
Speaker 1: you landed on. I feel like it's not like with
Speaker 1: some books you read them and it's a pretty intuitive structure.
Speaker 1: You kind of go well of course it's structured that way,
Speaker 1: but I like where you landed with when I feel
Speaker 1: like it's not the most intuitive structure, but it works
Speaker 1: really well in terms of I guess, constructing the arguments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about the title as well,
Speaker 1: for when and how did the title come to you?
Speaker 2: This is one of those titles are hard, and I've
Speaker 2: always I've wrestled with titles for various books that I've
Speaker 2: that I've that I've worked on a lot of I mean,
Speaker 2: titles are you know, mostly art, maybe is a little
Speaker 2: bit of science, and I've changed and a lot of
Speaker 2: times I've had books that start out with one title,
Speaker 2: and then as the research and writing goes on, the
Speaker 2: title changes, and the changes again and changes again, changes again.
Speaker 2: This one actually had the same title in the proposal
Speaker 2: as it did in the final cover. The book was
Speaker 2: always called when. I'm not sure why that one held up.
Speaker 2: Whereas other books that I've had have changed their titles
Speaker 2: a lot, and we have wrestled with them. Now now
Speaker 2: occasionally now authors and publishers will do some testing, some
Speaker 2: market testing of titles, and you know, I'm I think
Speaker 2: that can be a good idea many in many cases
Speaker 2: but but I have I have read, wrestled with I
Speaker 2: have wrestled with things. And sometimes when I go back
Speaker 2: to the both the paper and electronic files of other books,
Speaker 2: I forget I don't find them. You know. I look
Speaker 2: at a book called you know, I wrote a book
Speaker 2: called Drive about the signs of motivation. And that book
Speaker 2: was not called Drive until very close to the end.
Speaker 2: And so all my files are labeled something else you
Speaker 2: because that's what you know, whatever the title was back then.
Speaker 2: So titles are titles are. Titles are tricky. And what
Speaker 2: I have found is that I'm much better is a
Speaker 2: common attribute of problem solving is that sometimes we're better
Speaker 2: off solving other people's problems than our own. I'm pretty
Speaker 2: good at coming up with titles for other people. I
Speaker 2: stink it coming up with titles for myself.
Speaker 1: And I actually wanted to delve into that. I remember
Speaker 1: when I read Give and Take by Adam Grant, reading
Speaker 1: in the acknowledgments that he'd thank to you for coming
Speaker 1: up with the title for that book. And and so
Speaker 1: what is that process like when you're advising someone on
Speaker 1: a title.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's some careful reading of acknowledgments there.
Speaker 1: I love the acknowledgment sections of books.
Speaker 2: Yes, so do I I actually love them too. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. What was the question?
Speaker 1: I want to know, like, what's the process that we forgotten?
Speaker 2: Now? I was so amazed that someone had read the
Speaker 2: polishment in a book.
Speaker 1: I feel like writers love the acknowledgment section, and being
Speaker 1: a writer, I love that section. I feel like it
Speaker 1: gives you interesting insight. But yeah, with Adam Grant's book,
Speaker 1: Give and Take, he said that he credits you with
Speaker 1: coming up for the title. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember how how you did that or how that
Speaker 1: process works for you.
Speaker 2: I do remember that particular incident because I live in
Speaker 2: I live in the east coast of the United States, Washington,
Speaker 2: d c. The federal capital of the United States of America,
Speaker 2: and I have been self employed for twenty years, and
Speaker 2: because I am a staunch believer in low overhead, I
Speaker 2: have never had an office outside of my home, and
Speaker 2: these days, for the last eight years or so, eight
Speaker 2: plus years, I have worked in the garage behind my house.
Speaker 2: And whenever this was not probably seven years ago or so,
Speaker 2: I'd gotten to know Adam and he came over and
Speaker 2: we were talking about the idea of this particular book
Speaker 2: that he was contemplating writing, and I thought it was great.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a great topic. I thought he'd
Speaker 2: be a great person to write it. It's a book
Speaker 2: that I absolutely like at that moment, I wanted to read.
Speaker 2: So I was really excited about it. And for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: I said, hey, I think this is your title, and
Speaker 2: it ended up being the title.
Speaker 1: So wow.
Speaker 2: I guess I was inspired by I was inspired by
Speaker 2: his excellent idea, I think, and I also, I guess
Speaker 2: in some part of me wanted to help make this
Speaker 2: book come to fruition so I could read it.
Speaker 1: M I did that. Did that sort of spark of
Speaker 1: inspiration just come to you or were you thinking, I
Speaker 1: guess of you know, different phrases that were in like
Speaker 1: the vernacular. Do you remember how that happened?
Speaker 2: I don't remember that well enough. But see, I actually
Speaker 2: like trying to come up with titles, and because yeah,
Speaker 2: it's I just think it's a really interesting exercise in
Speaker 2: thinking in creativity. But it's one where if I'm not
Speaker 2: integrally involved, I probably do it a little bit better
Speaker 2: than if it's something that has that's something that has
Speaker 2: my name on it.
Speaker 1: And so what's your starting point for that? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were to give advice to a writer who's
Speaker 1: struggling with the title of their book, like, what what
Speaker 1: kind of roots would you recommend that they explore?
Speaker 2: What I would that's another really interesting question. What I
Speaker 2: would suggest would be I'll tell you what I do.
Speaker 2: What I listen for when someone comes to me with
Speaker 2: this issue is I want to hear how they talk
Speaker 2: about it, and I want to ask them questions about it,
Speaker 2: and I want to look for phrases, words turns of
Speaker 2: phrase that somehow seem fresh and novel and interesting and
Speaker 2: make me want to explore. And again, it's there's probably
Speaker 2: a way if I were to completely reconstruct this kind
Speaker 2: of advice, it would be a little bit more systematic
Speaker 2: than that. But but I think there's something to be
Speaker 2: said when it comes to titles for talking about your
Speaker 2: stuff out loud, not giving a speech or anything, but
Speaker 2: just telling your friend or your spouse or another writer, Hey,
Speaker 2: what are you working? Oh, it's about this, that and
Speaker 2: the other thing. And a lot of times within that
Speaker 2: description there'll be a word or phrase that just seems
Speaker 2: really delicious, and you just take that piece of fruit
Speaker 2: up the vine.
Speaker 1: Well, I like that. That's that's nice and I think
Speaker 1: good advice for anyone that's thinking about naming any kind
Speaker 1: of a project, whether it be a book or something else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's also there's also a there's also something
Speaker 2: to be said for generating a lot of ideas for names.
Speaker 2: So and so one thing that you can do for
Speaker 2: generating titles is just, you know, get three or four
Speaker 2: people together and say, okay, we are going to generate.
Speaker 2: We're going to sit here for half an hour and
Speaker 2: we're going to come up with sixty possible titles. And
Speaker 2: you just start like spitting things out and building up
Speaker 2: of other people's ideas. And out of that sixty, you know,
Speaker 2: fifty of them are going to be horrible ideas, but
Speaker 2: within that remaining ten one of them might be decent.
Speaker 1: Mm. Yeah. I want to move on to to understanding,
Speaker 1: like what are some of the practical strategies that you
Speaker 1: apply in your own working life? And I imagine that
Speaker 1: like writing a book like When, which I feel is
Speaker 1: full of really interesting ideas but also is incredibly practical,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of really tactical advice in the book,
Speaker 1: which I love, Like what have been some of I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, out of When or out of any of
Speaker 1: the research that you've done, all the books that you've
Speaker 1: written have been sort of the most impactful I guess,
Speaker 1: tactical things that you've changed about how you work and
Speaker 1: how you work currently in my own life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I mean When had a lot of those. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, one of the ideas and when has to
Speaker 2: do with the pattern of our performance and our attention
Speaker 2: and our mood over the course of a day, and
Speaker 2: how we go through this day typically in three stages,
Speaker 2: a peak, a trough, and a recovery. Most of us
Speaker 2: go in that order. Night outs go in a very
Speaker 2: different order. And I realize I'm looking at some of
Speaker 2: this research that I should be doing my heads down
Speaker 2: analytic work writing first thing in the morning, and definitely
Speaker 2: in the morning. And I change my schedule around there
Speaker 2: so that on writing days, I will set myself a
Speaker 2: word count, however many words, you know, not a lot,
Speaker 2: seven hundred words, say, and I will come into my office.
Speaker 2: I don't come in exceptionally early. I come in at
Speaker 2: half past eight, and I'll say, okay, today I got
Speaker 2: to write at seven hundred words, and I won't bring
Speaker 2: my phone into the office with me, will not open
Speaker 2: up my email, I will not do anything until i
Speaker 2: hit those seven hundred words and then I'm free to
Speaker 2: do other things and that. And so the idea that
Speaker 2: this peak period, this idea that the research showing that
Speaker 2: I had this three or four hour peak of vigilance
Speaker 2: and ability not to be distracted, that I shouldn't fritter
Speaker 2: that away answering email or going on Twitter or any
Speaker 2: of that nonsense. I really stuck to that and use
Speaker 2: that kind of schedule to actually write this particular book.
Speaker 2: And this is the first. Out of the six, five
Speaker 2: of them were late, only one was on time, and
Speaker 2: this was the one on time.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's interesting. And how like I mean, does
Speaker 1: it require much willpower for you to stay off all
Speaker 1: those digital distractions in the morning.
Speaker 2: I'm not a big believer in willpower. I think when
Speaker 2: you start having to use willpower, you're already using the game.
Speaker 2: What I do is is reconstruct the environment. So so
Speaker 2: for instance, as I said, I don't bring my phone
Speaker 2: in the office with me, so I can't check my phone,
Speaker 2: I can't check my text messages or anything like that.
Speaker 2: And I literally do not open up any of my
Speaker 2: email program, any of my email program. I have two
Speaker 2: computers in my office. I don't email open up the
Speaker 2: email program. I'm either computer in my office. I just
Speaker 2: don't open it. And you know, I guess for the
Speaker 2: first few days, I get to be, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit itchy and twitchy about opening it up,
Speaker 2: but after that it just seems normal. So again, to me,
Speaker 2: the key is constructing the environment in a way to
Speaker 2: eliminate distractions. And so that's both the physical environment but
Speaker 2: also the temporal environment. So if I come in and
Speaker 2: the environment doesn't have any distractions, and I'm doing it
Speaker 2: at the right time of day, then I have a
Speaker 2: fighting chance to get some writing done. And I'm I.
Speaker 2: Other people are different, but I am very I rely
Speaker 2: a lot on momentum. And so for me, if I
Speaker 2: do something, if I do that on day one, and
Speaker 2: then day two and then day three, I get into
Speaker 2: this rhythm where each day becomes slightly easier because I've
Speaker 2: done something the day before. I'm not one of those
Speaker 2: you know, there are writers out there who I say,
Speaker 2: there are a couple of writers here in the United States
Speaker 2: who are also TV presenters, and two of them who
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of. I don't want to say the names
Speaker 2: because I don't want to. I actually admire what you're doing,
Speaker 2: but I don't want to be disrespectful. Is that they
Speaker 2: will during the commercial breaks write their newspaper column on
Speaker 2: their phone, just like, oh, two minutes and that let's
Speaker 2: go to commercial. And then there's too many commercial break
Speaker 2: and then they'll they'll write a few sentences or a
Speaker 2: few you know, paragraph on their newspaper column and then oh,
Speaker 2: we're back. I could never do anything like that. Or
Speaker 2: there's another there's another fellow who very accomplished author, very
Speaker 2: smart guy, who is a he's a physician. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of physician writers out there. But you know
Speaker 2: these physicians who, oh, I'm going to write. I always
Speaker 2: write a few paragraphs in between surgeries. That's not me.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's yeah, that's not me either. How do you
Speaker 1: use the other two sections of your day?
Speaker 2: I use the early to mid afternoon typically for answering
Speaker 2: email and putting. I'm a big I have a lot
Speaker 2: of files, paper files, and like filing stuff away and
Speaker 2: oh I need to scan this thing and put it
Speaker 2: into drop you know that kind of stuff that doesn't
Speaker 2: require heavy load, and then during their cover period, which
Speaker 2: is basically like the mid to late afternoon and early evening,
Speaker 2: I generally do interviews. So interviews like this one are
Speaker 2: also even interviews when I am asking questions. So that
Speaker 2: period of the day, so the peak again for most
Speaker 2: of us early in the day, that's when we're most vigilant.
Speaker 2: We should be doing our heads down work the trough
Speaker 2: early to mid afternoon. That is a really bad time
Speaker 2: of day. Our mental performance, cognitive skills are way down.
Speaker 2: And so I do my administrative stuff then, and then
Speaker 2: when I come out of the trough, you know, around
Speaker 2: whenever three o'clock, three thirty four o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: I tend to do interviews like this or things that
Speaker 2: require not necessarily be lockdown and vigilant, but just to
Speaker 2: be open to possibility, open to ideas a little bit
Speaker 2: more mentally loose.
Speaker 1: And how do you manage your emails? Like I imagine
Speaker 1: you must be inundebted with them? And I remember when yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well look I remember when I first reached out to you,
Speaker 1: which is many months ago, there was almost like this
Speaker 1: gatekeeper software that you had in place. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: Yes, I do I use that. Yeah, I did that
Speaker 2: because I was just getting so many emails and I
Speaker 2: was also getting a lot of spam as well on
Speaker 2: certain email addresses that were public, and so so I
Speaker 2: just use a program called short Whale. And what that
Speaker 2: is is essential. It's just like a form, and so
Speaker 2: it says who are you, and what's the topic, and
Speaker 2: how quickly do you need a response, and then gives
Speaker 2: people a short, short, short amount of room to make
Speaker 2: to say what they want. And I find that at
Speaker 2: I find that as a pretty effective, pretty effective system
Speaker 2: for organizing the emails that come in and also just
Speaker 2: forcing people to be brief. What I don't like is
Speaker 2: getting a one thousand word email from someone whom I've
Speaker 2: never heard of before. Very unlikely that I'm going to
Speaker 2: read that carefully. But if somebody, if a reader says,
Speaker 2: if a reader says, hey, I read your book whatever,
Speaker 2: and I have one question. Here it is, and the
Speaker 2: email is two short paragraphs or three four sentences, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to answer that. But if someone
Speaker 2: sends me an email saying someone says me in the
Speaker 2: email saying, I've never read any of your books, but
Speaker 2: here's my life story in fifteen hundred words and can
Speaker 2: we meet to have coffee? I'm probably going to say.
Speaker 1: No, And I want to get into that actually, like
Speaker 1: because I imagine a lot of the emails that you
Speaker 1: receive a request for your time, And how do you, like,
Speaker 1: aside from the obvious, like, how do you decide what
Speaker 1: to say yes to and what to say no to,
Speaker 1: particularly for those opportunities that are perhaps not black and white.
Speaker 2: That's another really great question, and I don't really have
Speaker 2: a good way to do that, and I've changed over
Speaker 2: the years, and I think it's an important question for
Speaker 2: creators and artists to ask. And I can argue both
Speaker 2: sides of it. It's at one point, at some point,
Speaker 2: it's certain moments in one's working life, it's really advantageous
Speaker 2: say yes to everything, because, especially if you're not that
Speaker 2: you know, if you're just starting out, or you know,
Speaker 2: you're trying to get your ideas out there, in some ways,
Speaker 2: the default answer should be yes. I think that when
Speaker 2: you're actually in the act of creating something or or
Speaker 2: a little bit more established, I think in some ways
Speaker 2: the default answer should be no. And so what I've
Speaker 2: seen over the years is that, especially now because it's
Speaker 2: so distracting, and there's so much stuff coming in, is
Speaker 2: the default answer is generally going to be no. Someone
Speaker 2: has to overcome the default that it's a no.
Speaker 1: Do you remember or I guess? Like, how do you
Speaker 1: know when when you've reached that tipping point when you
Speaker 1: should change your default from yes to no?
Speaker 2: You don't? You don't. It's a great question, And you
Speaker 2: know there's certain moments even in and there isn't a
Speaker 2: systematic that I know of a systematic way too. There
Speaker 2: isn't a systematic way to do that, and you know,
Speaker 2: and you got to do what feels right and authentic
Speaker 2: to you as an individual as well. There's some people
Speaker 2: who love saying yes to a lot of stuff and
Speaker 2: who love having lots of things going on. Then there
Speaker 2: are people like me who can't multitask, who don't like
Speaker 2: working on lots of parallel projects, who are you know,
Speaker 2: much more narrow in the way that they approach things.
Speaker 1: Do you have a strategy for saying no politely that
Speaker 1: you've developed over the years?
Speaker 2: I do you know? Because again it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: people aren't trying to be route And what I will
Speaker 2: do is I will try very hard to answer questions
Speaker 2: about the books from readers. I really do try to
Speaker 2: answer all of those. I mean, I honestly don't do
Speaker 2: it immediately, but I will often organize them into batches.
Speaker 2: Just sit down for you know, an hour or two
Speaker 2: and answer thirty or forty or fifty or sixty or
Speaker 2: one hundred emails from readers asking questions or things like that.
Speaker 2: So I try to do that. For people who want
Speaker 2: something else, I just try to be polite and say,
Speaker 2: you know, basically what I said to you, which is
Speaker 2: that I'm terrible at doing two things at one time.
Speaker 2: I'm a terrible multitasker. I'm terrible at having parallel products
Speaker 2: going on, and right now I'm trying to focus on
Speaker 2: one or two key projects. So unfortunately I have to
Speaker 2: say no to most things. So but thanks for contacting me,
Speaker 2: and you know, I just you know, and i'd like,
Speaker 2: you know, I just hope that you know the books
Speaker 2: that you're writing, or the film that you're making, or
Speaker 2: this album you're producing or whatever goes really well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nice. I want to talk about keynote speeches because
Speaker 1: I imagine that how a lot of listeners would know
Speaker 1: you is through your very famous Ted talk, which I
Speaker 1: think has received something over twenty million views. And I
Speaker 1: want to know, like, what's your process for translating a
Speaker 1: book into a speech?
Speaker 2: Yeah, another great question. Well, here's the thing. The a
Speaker 2: book is going to have so much more material in it. Well,
Speaker 2: I mean a good book. It's just not everybody abised
Speaker 2: by this, but a book should and ideally have significantly
Speaker 2: more material than you could even begin to present in
Speaker 2: say a half an hour talk. And so I think
Speaker 2: the key is to figure out think about what the
Speaker 2: audience is and what's the best half hour set of
Speaker 2: material for them. And you know, the way you talk
Speaker 2: about something in front of a group and the way
Speaker 2: that you actually write it are going to be somewhat different.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I generally will talk about it,
Speaker 2: maybe do like a short talk to a very very
Speaker 2: very very very small group of people, like literally around
Speaker 2: the table, and do that a few times and see
Speaker 2: what to see how people react, and then maybe do
Speaker 2: some things that are for very small audiences of you know,
Speaker 2: let's say fifteen people or something like that, just to
Speaker 2: see how people react, sort of like putting out a
Speaker 2: stage production. You go off off Broadway. Then you go
Speaker 2: off Broadway and you get it right until you go
Speaker 2: to Broadway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and where do you start? Like when when you're
Speaker 1: sitting down constructing the first draft of a speech, like
Speaker 1: are you looking through the book going what are the
Speaker 1: most impactful points I can make? Or like what's the
Speaker 1: overall idea? Like where's that starting point?
Speaker 2: I actually start with the audience and so and think
Speaker 2: about try to think about it as much as possible
Speaker 2: from the audience's perspective. So if you think about, you know, okay,
Speaker 2: so you know, here these folks and they're going to
Speaker 2: be sitting there for half an hour, they're imprisoned there
Speaker 2: having to listen to me. What is going to be
Speaker 2: is what is going to be entertaining for them, engaging
Speaker 2: for them, interesting to them, And what among all of
Speaker 2: this is going to make them say, you know, because
Speaker 2: what I want is at the end of that half
Speaker 2: hour to say, Hey, I'm glad I spent that half
Speaker 2: hour listening to this guy, rather than checking my email,
Speaker 2: rather than hanging out with my spouse, rather than taking
Speaker 2: care of my kids, rather than going to the gym.
Speaker 2: That was a good use of a half hour. And
Speaker 2: so it's going to vary from audience to audience and
Speaker 2: so I always start.
Speaker 1: With the audience and what questions like would you ask
Speaker 1: yourself when when you're kind of unpacking the audience in
Speaker 1: preparation for designing a presentation, Uh, you know, one.
Speaker 2: Thing would be out of all the material out of
Speaker 2: all the materials that I have, what are the two
Speaker 2: or three things that this that this particular audience might
Speaker 2: might react to saying oh hm, I never knew that.
Speaker 2: I never thought of it that way. And then what
Speaker 2: are some takeaways that would be most useful to this
Speaker 2: particular audience. So if it's an audience of doctors, it
Speaker 2: might have it's obviously going to have a different takeaway
Speaker 2: than if it's an audience of consumer package good marketers
Speaker 2: or high school principles or you know, military officers.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, that makes sense, makes sense. And now, like
Speaker 1: in the last few minutes that we've got, I want
Speaker 1: to briefly touch on what are some of the things
Speaker 1: that you're consuming, because I think it can be so
Speaker 1: hard for the average person to know, like what should
Speaker 1: they spend their time listening to, reading and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I know I listened to the kind of what
Speaker 1: it was that a secret podcast that you're released to
Speaker 1: your subscribers actually just Yesterday, which had some great recommendations.
Speaker 1: But I'd love to delve into some different things that
Speaker 1: perhaps you didn't mention. So I'd love to know podcasts.
Speaker 1: So you were a big podcast consumer, and if so,
Speaker 1: what are some of the ones that you listen to regularly.
Speaker 2: I am actually not a huge podcast consumer. Part of
Speaker 2: that is that I think one reason for that is
Speaker 2: that I don't ute in a car, so I think
Speaker 2: that's where a lot of people listen to their podcasts.
Speaker 2: And I tend to be interested in episodes rather than
Speaker 2: in a particular show, so I will rely on recommendation.
Speaker 2: That's one of where I rely on recommendations from people.
Speaker 2: There are a few that I there are a few
Speaker 2: that I do look at, Like there's a here in
Speaker 2: the States. There's a national public radio podcast called Hidden
Speaker 2: Brain that I listened to a lot. There is The
Speaker 2: New York Times has a podcast called The Daily that
Speaker 2: I listen to a lot. But I'm really focused on episodes,
Speaker 2: and you know, people recommending episodes to me rather than
Speaker 2: religiously listening to a single show.
Speaker 1: HM. That's a really interesting way I've approaching it and
Speaker 1: thinking about twenty nineteen was what was the best book
Speaker 1: that you read last year?
Speaker 2: Huh. I read a lot of good books last year.
Speaker 2: I mean on the nonfiction side. Two of the best
Speaker 2: books that I've read. One of them was called The
Speaker 2: Art of Gathering by Pria Parker, and it's a book
Speaker 2: about gatherings and how everything from corporate off sites to
Speaker 2: dinners with friends, to having people over to your house
Speaker 2: to whatever parties or whatever. And she has this really
Speaker 2: fascinating way of thinking about how to be much more
Speaker 2: intentional about gatherings. What's the purpose of gatherings, Why it's
Speaker 2: important not to be a chill host at the gatherings,
Speaker 2: why you should exclude people, And it just made me
Speaker 2: rethink a like even so, for instance, tonight, my family
Speaker 2: is having another family over for dinner, and I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about that book, about Okay, how can we make this
Speaker 2: a gathering that is meaningful to everybody. Another book that
Speaker 2: I loved was called Rulemaker Rule Breakers by Michelle Gelfand,
Speaker 2: who is a cultural psychologist at the University of Maryland,
Speaker 2: and it's about really about her whole life's work on
Speaker 2: what she calls tight cultures and loose cultures. Tight cultures
Speaker 2: our cultures with lots of rules, pretty black and white.
Speaker 2: Loose cultures are cultures without so many rules, a little
Speaker 2: bit more gray. And it turns out that this deep
Speaker 2: structure of loose and tight explains many, many, many things,
Speaker 2: from national differences, to class differences, to different parenting styles,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. So those are two. But there's
Speaker 2: so many good books that come out each year, so
Speaker 2: many good books that come out each year, that it's
Speaker 2: hard to keep up out of interest.
Speaker 1: How do you decide which books that you will raid
Speaker 1: and white raid?
Speaker 2: Uh? I really don't have a systematic way of doing that.
Speaker 2: I have these giant piles, and some of it depends
Speaker 2: on some of it depends on my mood, what I
Speaker 2: feel like doing at that particular moment. So the last
Speaker 2: book I finished was a book called I read a
Speaker 2: fair amount of fiction too. I don't read only nonfiction.
Speaker 2: I read a fair amount of fiction. And the last
Speaker 2: book I literally finished it last night as we're talking here,
Speaker 2: is called It's a Book Amazingly Enough by James Patterson,
Speaker 2: who sold fourteen gazillion books, and Bill Clinton, the former
Speaker 2: US president, called The President is Missing. It's a thriller,
Speaker 2: and I think I picked that. I picked up that
Speaker 2: book because I think I was going on like a
Speaker 2: short vacation and I wanted something that was totally easy
Speaker 2: and escapist. But I didn't get to it then, and
Speaker 2: then I just I think I picked it up one
Speaker 2: night when I couldn't sleep and wanted something that was
Speaker 2: an easy read, and so I finally finished it last night.
Speaker 2: It wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: Okay, good noted two quick final questions. So again, going
Speaker 1: back to the acknowledgment section of the book, you thanked
Speaker 1: your wife in when for reading your books out loud,
Speaker 1: and I was so curious, why do you do that?
Speaker 1: Why do you go through that process?
Speaker 2: Well, part of it is that I'm crazy and insane
Speaker 2: and anal retena, But I find that reading out loud
Speaker 2: helps me immensely in writing better. So nearly everything I
Speaker 2: write of significance. So you know, books or articles I
Speaker 2: will read out loud because to me, it's just a
Speaker 2: test of does it sound right? You know, are there
Speaker 2: words in there that are clunkers? Is it as year
Speaker 2: and gleaming as it could possibly be? At the same time, though,
Speaker 2: I like to hear the work read to me, and
Speaker 2: there's only one person in the world who is willing
Speaker 2: to sit in a chair and read me my work,
Speaker 2: and that is my wife. And I learn a lot
Speaker 2: that way too, so hearing putting my hearing it so
Speaker 2: so again it's you know, people have different ways of
Speaker 2: doing things. I just settled on a way that works,
Speaker 2: that works for me. But for me reading out loud
Speaker 2: and hearing the work read out loud it is for
Speaker 2: better is It is a significant part of my editing process.
Speaker 2: It's very time consuming, it's very laborious, but that's how
Speaker 2: I do things awesome.
Speaker 1: And finally, Dan, how can people find out more about
Speaker 1: you and your work?
Speaker 2: They can go to my website which is www. Danpink
Speaker 2: d a n p nk dot com. And I've got
Speaker 2: an email newsletter, all kinds of groovy stuff in the
Speaker 2: resource sections, some videos, all kinds of great stuff off
Speaker 2: at the low low price.
Speaker 1: Of free fantastic And I must say I love your
Speaker 1: newsletter and I will link to all that in the
Speaker 1: show notes. So, Dan, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: on the show. Has just been an absolute privilege to
Speaker 1: hear about how you work.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot. It's a pleasure to have you to
Speaker 2: get your intriguing questions I'm glad I did this at
Speaker 2: the right time of day.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. If you enjoyed my
Speaker 1: chat with Dan, why not share it with someone else
Speaker 1: who you think could benefit from some of the pearls
Speaker 1: of wisdom that Dan shared. I just personally love this
Speaker 1: chat so much. And if you are enjoying how I work,
Speaker 1: why not hit subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast
Speaker 1: and that way you will get alerted as to whenever
Speaker 1: new episodes drop. So that is it for today and
Speaker 1: I will see you next time.