Speaker 1: We all have that one friend, that friend who somehow
Speaker 1: manages to get to the gym every morning, crush her
Speaker 1: work day, hang out with her family, and read the
Speaker 1: kinds of books you've had on your to read list
Speaker 1: for years, all without breaking a sweat. How do they
Speaker 1: do it? Well, that's exactly the question author, economist and
Speaker 1: Warten professor Katie Milkman wants you to ask, and it
Speaker 1: all comes down to a strategy that Katie calls copy
Speaker 1: and paste. My name is doctor Amantha Immer. I'm an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and this is how I work a show about how
Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. On today's My
Speaker 1: Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an interview from
Speaker 1: the past and I pick out my favorite tip from
Speaker 1: the interview. In today's show, I speak Katie Milkman and
Speaker 1: we start by talking about her collaboration with best selling
Speaker 1: author of Grit, Angela Duckworth.
Speaker 2: I also use this tool that Angela Duckworth, who's one
Speaker 2: of the most fun people to work with, a best
Speaker 2: selling author of Grit and a frequent collaborator of mine,
Speaker 2: who maybe sort of best personifies this sort of part
Speaker 2: of my life and choosing her as a frequent collaborator
Speaker 2: has been a wonderful experience. But she and I wrote
Speaker 2: about something we call copy and paste, which we have
Speaker 2: both done with each other's lives, which is, there's someone
Speaker 2: who you are spending time with who is pushing towards
Speaker 2: a similar goal, and often we're not very deliberate about
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what are the things that they're
Speaker 2: doing that are working that we could emulate. But when
Speaker 2: we gave people in one research study a little nudge
Speaker 2: to go find someone with a shared goal who was
Speaker 2: actually doing better at achieving it and ask them what
Speaker 2: are they you know, what are some of their strategies,
Speaker 2: and then choose one to people ended up doing a
Speaker 2: lot better than when we just said, you know, go
Speaker 2: make a plan, go try to figure out a way
Speaker 2: to get better, or when we gave them lists of
Speaker 2: hacks that other people had generated. It was better to
Speaker 2: go find someone in your social network, someone who was
Speaker 2: close to you, who you could emulate, than to get
Speaker 2: sort of arbitrarily collected hacks, or to just try to
Speaker 2: make a plan in isolation. Because other people know so
Speaker 2: much that's context relevant for you. Write someone else who's
Speaker 2: in your zip code, in your social network, who's also
Speaker 2: trying to run a marathon or write a book. They
Speaker 2: have a lot of the same pressures constraints, and once
Speaker 2: you start deliberately trying to learn from them, you can
Speaker 2: get a lot farther.
Speaker 1: So tell me, what is some things that you've copied
Speaker 1: and pasted from Angela and Hashei Wicks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, one of my favorites. And it's sort of
Speaker 2: embarrassing that I hadn't figured this out sooner. But Angela
Speaker 2: and I both live in downtown Philadelphia, and we commute
Speaker 2: on foot to the university where we work, and you know,
Speaker 2: we neither of us even had cars, I think when
Speaker 2: we first started working together, all of our and there's
Speaker 2: lots of time spent walking across campus to meetings. And
Speaker 2: what Angela had figured out in life, which somehow I hadn't,
Speaker 2: is that every one of those commutes, every one of
Speaker 2: those fifteen twenty thirty minute walks, is actually an opportunity
Speaker 2: to take a meeting by phone that would otherwise occupy
Speaker 2: time when you could be writing a manuscript or doing
Speaker 2: something else productive at your desk. So she always combined
Speaker 2: her commutes with those kinds of phone conversations somebody a
Speaker 2: reporter who wanted to ask some questions, a student who
Speaker 2: wanted some advice, and it didn't need to be a
Speaker 2: face to face conversation. So she never wasted those walks.
Speaker 2: Whereas you know, and it's not that it's wasted, right,
Speaker 2: because you might be having thoughts and so on. But
Speaker 2: there was a lot of time in my day that
Speaker 2: involved commuting, since I walked to and from the campus
Speaker 2: and back and forth across it, and some of that
Speaker 2: getting consuming it with the kinds of calls so valuable.
Speaker 2: So I started doing that immediately after I noticed her
Speaker 2: doing it. One day, she had actually taken a call
Speaker 2: on a commute to come meet with me, and she
Speaker 2: was explaining, oh, yeah, I always do this, and I
Speaker 2: was like, that is so smart. I cannot believe I
Speaker 2: haven't been combining these things. And it opened up a
Speaker 2: huge amount of time on my calendar for doing deeper
Speaker 2: work at my desk.
Speaker 1: What else have you copy advised from Vangula?
Speaker 2: Let's see another example of something that I think I've
Speaker 2: copied and pasted from Angela is that whenever she is
Speaker 2: working on a new project, she actually goes to the
Speaker 2: sort of world expert and tries to just have a conversation.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of conversation copying. I used to just,
Speaker 2: you know, try to read all the papers and ingest
Speaker 2: all the information and hope that I would be able
Speaker 2: to develop the expertise. I still do that, but she's
Speaker 2: so wise to reach out because the person who's the
Speaker 2: expert on this, you know, it's flattering to hear from
Speaker 2: someone else that they want to learn from you and
Speaker 2: make sure they're getting a science write and share a
Speaker 2: hypothesis and pick your brain for fifteen minutes and they
Speaker 2: can combine it with a walk across campus, so they're
Speaker 2: normally delighted to say yes. And you can get such
Speaker 2: deep insight from someone who's truly the expert on a
Speaker 2: topic when you're a newbie. That's better than what you'd
Speaker 2: get if you just tried to read everything they've written,
Speaker 2: because there's some subtlety that they'll pick up on and
Speaker 2: whatever it is you're up to. So she really taught
Speaker 2: me to pick up the phone or make that ask
Speaker 2: to have more conversations with people who have the expertise
Speaker 2: that's necessary than I was before. So I do that
Speaker 2: a lot more now in my work now.
Speaker 1: I loved the forward that Angela wrote in How to Change,
Speaker 1: and I must say I was excited to read How
Speaker 1: to Change before I got the book, because I felt
Speaker 1: like it I'd heard quite a few people talk about it.
Speaker 1: But then I read the forward that she wrote, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm even more excited to
Speaker 1: read the book now. And one of the things she
Speaker 1: wrote about you is she said that you'll really good
Speaker 1: at quickly learning how to do things more efficiently, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to know some examples of things that you've
Speaker 1: made more efficient and how you did it well.
Speaker 2: One thing both Angela and I love is efficiency, so
Speaker 2: there there's no surprise maybe that you know, we both
Speaker 2: copied and pasted things that the other was doing more
Speaker 2: efficiently than we were, and I think we've gotten more
Speaker 2: efficient in the process. One thing that I think has
Speaker 2: served me really well is an obsession with templates, like
Speaker 2: never write the same email twice if you're going to
Speaker 2: say the same thing, for instance, So I have a
Speaker 2: huge document filled with template responses, which isn't to say
Speaker 2: that they wouldn't be personalized, but to the kinds of
Speaker 2: emails I get a lot right, a student looking for
Speaker 2: advice on companies where they could work if they're interested
Speaker 2: in behavioral science. Oh, I have a template for that
Speaker 2: student wanting research assistant options. Someone reaching out and interested in,
Speaker 2: you know, whether or not I'm taking PhD students next year.
Speaker 2: Someone would like to be a guest on my podcast.
Speaker 2: Someone who's enthusiastic about the book and looking for more
Speaker 2: places to find advice. So there are all sorts of
Speaker 2: emails that as a professor you get at a high frequency,
Speaker 2: and once you start to recognize what those are and
Speaker 2: see patterns, you can instead of creating something new from scratch,
Speaker 2: you can start from a template. I sort of think
Speaker 2: of a lot of what we do in life as
Speaker 2: filling in mad libs, and I think once you see
Speaker 2: things that way, you can do less busy work and
Speaker 2: more deep thoughtful work because you can simplify a lot
Speaker 2: of these processes. Recommendation letters are a little bit like that.
Speaker 2: For me, I have a template for writing a student
Speaker 2: recommendation letter. Of course, lots of tailoring is required, but
Speaker 2: there's sort of a structure that can be reused time
Speaker 2: and again, and that simplifies so much in life that,
Speaker 2: you know, really doesn't require deep thought and all the
Speaker 2: time that it would take if you recreated the will
Speaker 2: from scratch.
Speaker 1: So I hope you are now thinking about who in
Speaker 1: your life could you copy and paste from? And if
Speaker 1: you want to hear more tips from Katie, you can
Speaker 1: listen to the full interview, which there is a link
Speaker 1: to in the show notes. If you're looking for more
Speaker 1: tips to improve the way that you work, I write
Speaker 1: a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that
Speaker 1: I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software
Speaker 1: and gadgets that I'm loving through the interesting research findings.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co.
Speaker 1: That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is
Speaker 1: produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios,
Speaker 1: and thank you to Matt Nimber who does the audio
Speaker 1: mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much
Speaker 1: better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.