Afford Anything - The Hidden Psychology Behind Failed Dreams, with Yale’s Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

#626: A software programmer and an accountant walk into retirement planning. Are they being creative? Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, a senior research scientist at Yale University's Center for Emotional Intelligence, says absolutely. Pringle defines creativity as something that's both original and effective, whether you're solving an accounting problem or planning an unconventional retirement. We explore the gap between having ideas and actually implementing them. You have this brilliant vision for starting a business, changing careers, or retiring early, but somehow you never take the first step. Pringle calls this the implementation gap, and she explains why it happens. The conversation centers on a hypothetical couple: both 55 years old, one a programmer, the other in middle management. They want to retire at 57 and travel the world. Pringle uses this example to illustrate how creative problem-solving works in real life. She explains that creativity requires comfort with uncertainty. When you're doing something new, you don't have a blueprint or checklist. There's always the risk that your early retirement plan could fail spectacularly — imagine having to return to work at 59 after the market tanks and your portfolio gets crushed. Here's the key insight: you don't need full confidence to start. Pringle compares creative confidence to fuel in a car. You don't need a full tank — you can start with just a quarter tank and refuel along the way. Each small success builds more confidence for the next step. The bottom line? Innovation happens through constant iteration. Your final destination might change throughout your career and retirement, and that's completely normal. Resources Mentioned: https://www.zorana-ivcevic-pringle.com/ Timestamps: Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising run times. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. (0:00) Implementation gap intro (1:00) Creativity beyond arts (2:00) Original plus effective (3:00) Ideas to action gap (5:00) Retirement as creativity (7:00) Openness drives creativity (8:00) Problem finding process (10:00) Big Five traits (12:00) Openness and creativity (15:00) Traits can change (18:00) Uncertainty creates risk (20:00) Courage versus comfort (23:00) Self-efficacy challenges (25:00) Quarter tank confidence (28:00) Creative failure recovery (32:00) Creative blocks (36:00) Pivoting versus quitting (39:00) Emotions as information (42:00) Metrics versus intuition (50:00) Implementation strategies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you ever wondered why some people turn ideas into action while others just let their ideas fade away? There is a gap between idea and action. It's the implementation gap. And bridging this is the path to a better life. We're going to discuss this in today's episode. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. This show covers five pillars. Financial Psychology, Increasing Your Income, Investing, Real Estate and Entrepreneurship. It's double eye fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant, I trained in economic reporting at Columbia, and today's episode focuses on the letter F, financial psychology, and the letter E, entrepreneurship, because we are discussing creativity, innovation, and the implementation gap with Dr. Zorana Ivchewik Pringle.

Dr. Pringle is a senior research scientist at Yale University's Center for Emotional Intelligence. At Yale, she has conducted groundbreaking research on creativity and emotional intelligence for over two decades. Welcome, Dr. Pringle. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here, Dr. Pringle, a software programmer, an accountant, a financial planner. Are these people creative? They could be without talking to them. I don't know whether they are, but they could be. We oftentimes think of creativity as something that is associated with the arts or culture, design, or these so-called creative industries. But I wanted to write a book to say,

know that is not the end of it. People can be creative in any kind of human endeavor. Actually, my favorite example of somebody who I came across as wonderfully creative was from a very, very unlikely industry. He was a supervisor in a food services unit of a large hospital. Would you think that's creative? Not necessarily when you first hear it, yet it was this feat of. of doing something new, original, and highly effective. Hmm. And so when you talk about doing something that's new, original, and highly effective,

so is that what creativity is? Like, let's first take a step back and define the term. What is creativity? Creativity is exactly that. Creativity is something that is original and effective. We oftentimes discard or not aware of that requirement, it also has to be effective. You are not choosing something effective or original.

It has to be both because without being effective, it could just simply be bizarre. What do you mean by effective? So it needs to be functional or aesthetically pleasing or both? What exactly effective means? It depends on what kind of work you're doing. So if you are, when you said aesthetically pleasing, it could be aesthetically pleasing or it could be evoking particular emotions or different kinds of images or thoughts. if you are an artist or if you are a designer.

But if you are an engineer, it has to be solving a problem, solving a problem in an effective way that hasn't been done before. If you are somebody who has an everyday problem, it has to work for your problem, make it better, and you never encounter it before. It's going to be in some way original. You know, we're talking about creativity, The real purpose of the overall discussion that we're going to have is to help the people who are listening bridge the implementation gap, that gap between idea and action.

Can you lay out how does creativity play a role when we talk about this broader implementation gap, the idea to action gap? Oftentimes when we hear the word creativity, we just go, oh, having ideas. How did people think of that? And when we see something that is wonderfully or inspirationally creative in the real world, we ask the question, how did they think of it? And the assumption there is that is what creativity is. And everything else is, well, once you have an idea, you just build it, you're just implemented. But creativity really is not just having ideas.

It is, okay, you have an idea, you are starting with something. but as a rule, that idea you start with is going to evolve and change in that process of implementation. So the process of creative thinking, of evaluating those thoughts, of building on them, elaborating them is an ongoing process from having the first kernel of idea or a vision to having something that is a performance or a product in the real world that has an influence in our lives. So let's apply this. Let's say there's somebody who's listening. A couple, 55 years old. One is a programmer. The other works a middle management job for some big corporate faceless corp. Right. They want to retire at the age of 57. And when they retire, they are not quite sure what they want to do, but they'd like to travel. They'd like to maybe live somewhere a little bit quieter or more scenic. Would that be considered a creative endeavor, that whole retire? it could be, depends how you approach it. So if we take the definition of creativity,

it's something that is original but also effective, that could be approached in a creative way. And when you said, you know, there's a couple, and they are in their 50s, and they would like to retire, I'm like, hmm, that kind of hits close to home. It's ideas that did occur to me. And my husband is, in my personal opinion, the most creative person I know.

and he approaches every problem in life or every situation with life, sometimes really explicitly saying, how can we take this as a creative problem? And if you approach it like that and say, I have never been in this situation before, never retired before, never considered how two people can retire together and do something different,

that has potential because it's open-ended. It is not anything that, has existed before you can draw from your personal experience, it has all the makings of a creator problem. Let's just stick with that couple for a moment. What might be some of the challenges they face when it comes to transforming their idea into action? First, they have to have some kind of idea. So you said that they have a vision that they would like to retire someplace potentially different where they are living right now and they may be wanting to travel and explore the world and then get inspired. They are not quite sure what they want to do, but they have this openness.

And the key to creativity is openness to experiences. So you are open to pursuing something to having broad set of experiences from which you can draw and take different courses of action. So they have makings of all of these things. Of course, if your goal is retirement, you don't want to start planning it or thinking about it when you are 55, if your goal is to retire at 57. So there is a long-term component. And that is interesting in the context of creativity because much of creativity is a long-term endeavor. Think of how any big consumer product comes to be and comes into doing. world and influencing our lives, it takes time for that to be developed. So the same thing in the

course of personal lives, there is a long time building to this creative problem. You mentioned earlier that ideas as they are implemented often iterate. How much of that is intentional and how much of that simply happens? That is a beautiful question. The psychologist and scientists who study creativity call this process problem finding. It is a little bit of a misnomer in a sense, because when we hear problem finding, we get this idea how you find a problem and then you solve it and then you implement it, but it's not linear like that. Problem finding is, yes, you identify something that is worth working on, but then you also ask questions about it. You formulate a problem in one way and then you examine it from a different perspective.

And then you do this multiple times in the course of having an idea, having another idea, considering them, and then building on them. So this process can be intentional. Sometimes it doesn't feel so. There are people for whom it can feel, use the word organic. It's a beautiful word, something that is spontaneous, is something that comes intuitively. But we can also make it intentional.

Knowing that this process really helps the final outcome, we can say, okay, let me step back. Let me consider the problem from multiple angles. You describe this as problem finding. And that's a bit of a paradigm shift, because so often when we're in school as students, we are handed a set of problems from our teacher. And so the teacher in fourth grade math class says, these are your arithmetic problems, go find a solution.

And then even as we get older, high school, college, grad school, very often our teachers hand us a set of problems. And so we don't go out and seek them. They're simply handed to us. And oftentimes, depending on the career that you have, if it's a highly structured career in which you are simply executing tasks that are given to you by your manager, it might be the same at work as well. So how do we paradigm shift into finding problems when throughout so much of life we've been trained to simply receive a discrete set of problems? Creativity is possible under certain circumstances. So not every problem can be a creative problem or should be a creative problem. If you are given in your fourth grade math class a set of arithmetic problems, creativity is not necessarily going to help.

You don't want to be original. you want to know what seven times eight is, and there's only one correct answer. Creative problems are specific in the way that there's potential for multiple possible solutions or multiple possible approaches. We are not looking for a single correct answer. In scientific terms, that is called they are ill-defined problems. So something that, yes, maybe we are given a problem from, let's say that you are in college, and you have to write a research paper.

You are given a topic, you are given guidelines, how you're going to get maximum number of points, or however it is graded. But beyond that, there is leeway. There is something that is possible to formulate or approach from different angles. That is where possibility for creativity lies. If you really have to go through a checklist

and not deviate from the checklist, there is no possibility for creativity. You mentioned earlier that openness to experience is essential for creativity, and it strikes me the openness to experience. It's one of the big five personality traits. Yes. So is it the case that there are some people who are naturally wired to be more creative? And the reason I'm asking this question right now is, as you describe, if something is highly structured and there's only one,

right answer, then there's no possibility for creativity. I recall from my school days that I had plenty of fellow classmates who loved the subjects for which there was only one right answer because they loved the fact that there was that level of certainty and structure, whereas I conversely hated it for precisely the same reason. You are touching on several topics that are really central to creativity there. One is openness to experience is one of the big personality traits, ways how people differ. And the other one is the idea of uncertainty. Let's start with openness to experience. And just for the audience, when I say it's one of the Big Five personality traits for people who aren't acquainted with that, can you quickly walk us

through the Big Five? Yes, the Big Five personality traits are the biggest dimensions, how people differ among themselves. And there's a very handy acronym to remember what they are. It's Ocean. O stands in. for openness to experience. And those are the traits of being imaginative and curious and wanting to play with ideas, trying new things. C stands for conscientiousness. Hard work being organized, being punctual, being reliable.

E is for extroversion versus introversion. We are usually very aware of that trait, of sociability, of exuberance in relation to. to others in particular. And then the next one is A, standing for agreeableness. And that is a trait of being kind and caring, nice to others, compassionate, polite, potentially self-effacing. And finally, the N is neuroticism. And what really should we call this emotional sensitivity.

The reason why it's called neuroticism is for historical reasons. it was named more than 100 years ago and kind of stuck. But think of it as emotional sensitivity. It is susceptibility to stress. It is being emotionally changeable, changeable moods, a little gloomy in approach. So O-C-E-A-N, Ocean. Very handy acronym.

Yeah, it's a very handy acronym. All right. So for that acronym, openness to experience, the letter O is highly correlated with, creativity. Can you elaborate on that then? Yes, openness experience is related to creativity no matter what kind of work people do. So artists, scientists, designers, engineers, you name it, those who are creative and who are drawn to creativity are more likely to describe themselves and others to describe them as open to experiences. And when we think of openness, it is

wanting something new. You go to a restaurant, you don't always order the same thing. And you go on vacation, you do not go to the same all-inclusive resort every time. Sometimes maybe you want to splurge. Sometimes you want to relax. This doesn't mean that you are never allowed to go to a place like that. But there is variety. There is interest in variety.

There is being attracted to variety. And there is genetic component to these big traits. That doesn't mean it's 100%. inherited, that doesn't mean it's not changeable at all. It does change through life experiences. In particular, openness experience seems to be boosted by education, in particular higher education. So to what extent are these Big Five personality traits fixed, and to what extent are they malleable? I cannot put a number to it. So we cannot really talk in those terms of to what extent is it's 70% or something like that, but there is a genetic component, and I'd like to use the analogy with athletic ability.

We all know because we have been around people who are athletic. I'm not one of them, but we have experienced them. They could pick up any sport. There's something in their makeup that makes it easier for them. It is similar with personality traits. There are things that come more easily if you naturally, for lack of better terms, have a certain trade. That does not mean you cannot change. And oftentimes people don't change because they don't want to. We choose situations in which we live. We choose situations that are similar or that are a good fit for our existing traits. But what if we said we want to push ourselves in a particular? way. It is possible to change if we approach it that way. And so the original question that I

asked, it touched on two topics. It touched partially on the big five personality traits, but it also touched on uncertainty. Can you elaborate on that comfort with uncertainty? So the student who enjoys arithmetic because there is only one right answer and there's a certain level of comfort and security in knowing that seven times eight has only one right answer. Yes, people have preferences. In creative work, there's always uncertainty. And uncertainty is psychologically experienced as risk. So why is there uncertainty always in creative work? Well, creative work is something that is new.

You are trying something that you haven't done before or that hasn't been done before. You do not have a blueprint or set of checklist steps, how to make it happen. And it's not possible to have it because, well, it hasn't been done before. It couldn't have been developed in a form of a checklist. So there is that uncertainty of, well, will I be able to figure it out? I don't know what the steps are. And there is no way to be certain. And then there is another certainty yet.

And that is, okay, what if I figure it out? What if I have these creative ideas? And I think they're good and I think they're going to be effective, but they are original, so people have not encountered them before. What will they say? What will others say? Will those who matter, whether those be, you mentioned the example of school, teachers, mentors, in the workplace, supervisors, project leads? Are they going to think that this is silly?

Are they going to think you are stepping on toes? Are they going to think that, well, this was not your place? Are there going to be angered? These are all uncertainties of creative work. So to that extent, doing something innovative requires a certain degree of comfort with risk? Actually, I would push back a little bit on that. And in a very interesting way that is little counterintuitive. I have recently come across a quote from the artist Georgia O'Kee. And she said that she was terrified about everything she ever did in her life. but that never stopped her from doing it. And I found that very brave to share, for one,

but also something that I personally identify with. I am not comfortable with risk, but I don't let it stop me. So it's not necessarily that you have to be comfortable with it. You have to say, okay, I am uncomfortable, but I'm going to do it anyway. And that takes skill how to do it in spite of the discomfort. There are some quotes around how courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the willingness to act in spite of that fear. Exactly.

Courage is a big component, big emotional component in the creative process. We have to somehow start bridging that gap from having the idea to start to do something with it. and that sense of risk of personal vulnerability. Can I do this? Vulnerability in front of yourself, what are you going to think about yourself if it shows that you try and you cannot succeed? And vulnerability in front of others,

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and more. Terms apply. Don't miss out on early Black Friday deals. Head to Wayfair. Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. That's W-A-F-A-I-R-com. Sale ends December 7th. Let's take this back to the 55-year-old couple that wants to retire at 57. There is the social and reputational risk that they retire at 57. The market tanks. They tell all their family and friends. Then the market tanks and they can't sustain that retirement. And then at 59, they have to go back to work, but they have to take jobs that are at a much lower level than what they exited from. So there's kind of the personal humiliation of having tried to retire early but quote unquote failed to do so, coupled with the damage to their portfolio because they took out money,

they got hit by sequence of returns risk. Like I'm thinking about all of these, as you're just talking about, the social and reputational risks as well as the kind of ego risks that come from trying to do something innovative and having it not work out in the way that you imagined. Yes, there's always that chance. I cannot say to people. It's not ethical to say to people. Just do this. And if you only have the courage, it's going to work out. No, there's a chance of it working out. But there's also a chance of it not working out. Now, at 59, let's continue with a story. I like this. Continue your adventure. They had two years of traveling the world, which they wouldn't have otherwise. Is that a full failure? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how you look at it. That's the key to how emotions happen. Emotions don't happen as there's a trigger and then that trigger has one possible emotional reaction. There is an interpretation moment there, how we think about it and how we approach it. So maybe they say to themselves, well, we had two years of traveling the world that we never would have had if we did not make this decision.

So that was still worth it. Or they may say, well, it didn't work out, but we knew. there was some chance of it not working out, now we are in a situation that is completely unknown and the completely unknown situation calls for, well, creative problem solving. So they are now again in a situation of creative problem solving. I am not saying it's not stressful. It is stressful, but it is by necessity a situation of creative problem solving. So up until now we've been talking about attributes that fuel creativity.

video or that fuel innovation. But let's focus a bit more on the implementation gap, because I think that's where a lot of people get stuck. We'll go back to the retirement example. Many people have ideas about what they would do if they retired early. There is no shortage of ideas, but the actual implementation, transforming those ideas into action is often where people get stuck. Partially, that's logistical because action takes time. It takes effort. And time and energy and attention are all in short supply. So part of that challenge is logistical, but part of that challenge is also emotional. There's a lack of necessarily self-confidence or a feeling of self-efficacy. So this is a very broad question, but can you talk about some of the factors that play into that implementation gap? Let's

start with self-ethicacy. Self-efficacy is defined as a belief that you can rise up to education and successfully complete a task. And oftentimes in everyday life, we talk about confidence or creative confidence. Confidence is essentially what scientists call self-afficacy more late terms. And we do those things that we believe we can. So if you do not have creative confidence, you are not confident, you do not have a belief that you can do something, then you are not even going to tempt it. So we need some level of this creative confidence to even make that first choice. Yes, I have an idea. Now I'm going to start doing something about it. But there are a little bit issues in how we think about this confidence that are not helpful to get us started and keep us going.

What are some of these issues? So the first issue is that we expect or we won full confidence. and we are not going to have full confidence. I was speaking this large gathering of designers. They were experienced designers and museum designers. And the first question after my presentation was, how do we get to the point of having no doubt? And the answer is you can't. That's not possible.

You will have doubts. And you will not be 100% sure and you will not be 100% confident. And the good news is you do not have to be. So if you use an analogy of fuel for our vehicle, creative confidence is a fuel that makes the creative process going from an idea into the first steps and the ongoing steps. You do not need your gas tank to be at full. You can go on and get started and get to a certain destination if it is quadruful.

And once you get to that destination, maybe there is a gas station there. Okay, now let's get back to humans and not vehicles. But it's the same thing. You can get started with just a hint of confidence with, well, maybe I could do it. And then try the first step. Usually with some effort, with asking for help, with whatever strategies we can muster, we can complete the first task of 100.

But once we make progress, there's this feedback loop that happens. We look back and said, oh, I was really able to do this. I wasn't sure I was able to do it, but I did it anyway. And that boosts that confidence. So it brings it a little bit more up. And in that process, other things happen too. Other people observe that we have done something. And then they do something that scientists call verbal persuasion,

but it's a very funny term for essential encouragement, of saying, oh, I believe that you can. can do it. We start listening to them and that boosts our confidence some more and it becomes a positive feedback loop of one thing leading to another. What happens though when we attempt something and we completely fall on our face? We attempt something, perhaps something big, audacious, noble, grand, and we totally botch it and actually end up making things worse than if we had never tried at all. There's the monetary fallout, there's the logistical fallout, but then there's the emotional fallout from that as well. Yes. Remember the topic of risk we talked about? There is no gain without risk,

but risk also involves a chance of loss. Just like all of those investment commercials that say investing has a chance of loss, psychologist Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart have used an economic analogy in talking about creativity and talking about potential of loss and gain. So if you are in the marketplace of ideas, buying an idea that is low on price that is not popular at that time, there's a great chance, potentially, for it to be highly successful, but there's also a chance for it not working out. Maybe there is a real reason why it is not popular, because it was not a good idea to begin with, or it was a good idea ahead of its time, or you did not have the right resources for it. If you think of histories of invention, you see these things over and over again.

They were attempts at inventing something. The idea was the right one. I remember in the 1990s, these, I forgot what they were called, pads of some sort, where there was a very primitive for us now, touch interface. Did not work very well, but the idea was the same thing as we have now on our phones and devices that we value and are a little bit addicted to. So the idea was right, but it was ahead of its time. So it failed at that time, not because the idea was not good, but because of other reasons. So that sometimes happens. That is totally possible. At that time, what we have is a state of being emotionally overwhelmed, and we have to deal with that state of emotional overwhelmingness, First, before we can regroup and try again or try something else.

That story from the 90s reminds me there was also a company that was essentially the precursor to Instacart, but it was pre-smart phone. And so it failed because it was ahead of its time. It was the right idea at the wrong time. And we could go into history of inventions over and over and see that, which also reminds us it is not just about the idea. If you need to remind yourself of that, just think, well, yes, good ideas are not enough because sometimes even good ideas. So what I'm hearing are sort of two different forks in the road. There's one fork, one branch in which you don't have necessarily that full tank of confidence, but you have one-tenth of a tank.

And if you take that one-tenth of a tank of confidence or self-efficacy and power, one-tenth of the way there, there's a gas station in every increment, every one-tenth of a tank. 10th increment of a mile, right? There's a new gas station where you can fill up just enough to take the next step. And each little success builds just enough self-efficacy to get to the next one. And it's a beautiful analogy. But then where it runs into challenges is on the other side of that, that other fork in the road where you attempt something and you go one-tenth of a mile, you go one-tenth of a mile, and you go one-tenth of a mile. That self-efficacy starts to build. and then at the half mile marker, you run into such a calamity that it completely knocks you on your butt and it takes you all the way back to square one. And that creates this emotional overwhelm.

What do you do you do you do want to give up on transforming your ideas into action? But the emotional overwhelm of failure can be tremendous. You are bringing up very important points. Yes, it is possible to build creative self-afficacy and each step can build it somewhat. But if we put it like that, it seems linear. It seems it starts a low point, and then next step a little bit more, next step, little bit more, next step little bit more,

and it goes from point A to point B is a straight line. But that's not the case. So it is true that from progress, we build it and we have a greater sense of, yes, we can. But creative process is not linear, and it encounters many obstacles. They are obstacles. They are forks in the road where we take a wrong turn

in the labyrinth of it. And we hit creative blocks. Ever heard of the term creative block? It's real. In most creative processes, it happens one way or another at some point, and we have to deal with it. I have done a study a few years ago when I asked people from different professions,

what are the feelings when you experience a creative block? And just about everybody said frustration, it was the number one by far feeling that happens that then for some people is tinged with self-doubt, self-recrimination even. For others with anger, for others with disappointment, probably depends on exactly. what's going on and probably depends on people's personality. We talked about people's traits earlier. And then we have to use every tool of dealing with emotions in our toolbox to just take the edge off from that overwhelming sense of frustration. We're not going to, these tools do not mean, oh, you're skilled at dealing with emotions. So now you go from state of being overwhelmed and overwhelmingly

frustrated to being calm or peaceful. You just lessen the state of frustration enough that you can start regrouping. And you will have to regroup at some point. How long, is there like an average amount of time that it takes to regroup? Because I've definitely had those failures where I feel like it's taking me a little bit longer to regroup than it ought to. Why has this knocked me on my butt so much? Like, why this thing happened years ago? Why am I still reeling from it? There is no number I could give you because it really depends on what you're doing. So to take personal experience, I hit a block when writing a book. And actually, I found it funny personally. I hit a block when writing a chapter on creative block. I think that's just hilarious. So it took me substantially longer

to finish that chapter than I did others. And how long it's going to take depends on what's going on. Oftentimes, actually, if you're talking about entrepreneurs, they start with one idea, and then that idea does not necessarily work out, but it gives them a hint of something else, and it can take different amounts of time for them to realize, okay, this thing that was, the thing that I was passionate about originally is not working out, but I should recognize that this particular feature is something that is resonating. with people. I remember a story of a group that created the Flickr app for photo sharing. And they started developing a video game. And they developed a video game and it got a small loyal following,

but still small. But they noticed the photo sharing feature inside the game was very popular and at some point decided to spin it off as a separate entity. It was painful because, they really, really, really wanted to make this game. It was the thing they cared about. So how long it takes is sometimes dependent on whether we can detach from something that we originally attached to. Depends on our circumstance. And where that takes me is the concept of the pivot, because what you've just described

in entrepreneurship is often referred to as a pivot and in life also when people talk about career pivots, how do you differentiate between pivoting and quitting? It is a matter of how you interpret the situation. So the same situation can be interpreted by one person, one way, and another person another way. Have you ever been in a meeting and had an experience of it and they are a bunch of colleagues present and then you leave it and you have one experience and the other person has a completely different one? It depends how we interpret it. It depends. How we interpret it? the situation. And emotions do not just happen because there is a one-on-one correspondence between an event and their experience. They happen through this process of what we pay attention

to and how we interpret it. Can a more constructive, more self-efficious or more beneficial interpretation be learned? And if so, how does one go about learning that? If somebody's listening to this right now and they say, you know what, I have a tendency to interpret things in a way that is negative to my mental health. How do I reframe the way that I interpret things? So how do they go about learning that? If that can be done. It can be done. We can learn to handle our emotions better. We can handle to cope better. And the key, one of the most effective ways you have just mentioned, they are reframing. I remember this study that I read about public speaking. And public speaking is a thing that most universally triggers feelings of anxiety.

There are some people who are less nervous, there are some people who are more nervous, there are some people who are cripplingly nervous. And then people were coached. Okay, when you experience anxiety, oftentimes you're working yourself up. You are focusing on it, and you are focusing on the unpleasant aspects of it. And the thoughts that go on in your head are, well, are you going to make it?

how is this going to work? Is everything all right? Then you should have done something else. Oftentimes these shoulds come in the process too. But when people are coached to say, okay, reframe it in a different way. Yes, you are experiencing some physical activation. Your palms are sweating and there is a fluttering going on in your stomach. Okay, that is happening. You are anxious, but you are anxious because, you really care about the pitch you're about to give. You really care about the work you're doing. It completely changes how you approach it.

It changes the nature of your experience, and it changes how well you do. How do you know how well you've done? You just talked about how two colleagues can be in the same meeting, but they walk away with different interpretations of what happened in that meeting. Could that not also be the case as you assess your own successes? It could be. Sometimes people are coming out of a situation that is objectively problematic. You have to be doing better on something.

And then you reframe it as, well, let's look at a positive. And that's not going to be helpful. So not all reframing, not all looking at different aspects is necessarily helpful. What we need to do is ask ourselves, What specifically are we experiencing? Not just try to regulate emotion away and change it, but say, okay, what are we experiencing? And what does that mean? Emotion scientists consider emotions as information.

That sounds really funny to a lay person because what does that actually mean? It means that emotions are giving you signals, are trying to communicate through the the nature of the experience, what is going on in your mind and in the world around you. So, for instance, if you are feeling frustrated, okay, what could that feeling be telling you? It could tell you that what you are doing is not working. If you now have a message, what I'm doing is not working, sometimes when we are experiencing creative block, which is related to feelings of frustration, we just end up working harder. But that's not going to be helpful.

That frustration is telling you what you are doing already is not working. That means you have to take a different approach. So if we are paying attention and very specifically, granularly, to an extent of a particular feeling, not just I'm not feeling well or I am feeling badly, but saying what exactly is that bad or unpleasant feeling? And if you can pinpoint that it's frustration, you have additional information. Only when you take that additional information, you should try to use other strategies

to lessen it so that you can be more open to different kinds of solutions or perspectives. But the first step is to know what is telling you so that you don't end up jumping to feeling better before you have learned what you need to learn. I know plenty of people who would push back on the idea of emotions being useful information because they would make the argument

that decision-making should be based on measurable metrics that are rooted in quantifiable data that are rooted in logic. What they would say is if you want to know whether or not something is working, you develop a set of KPIs around it, you develop a set of metrics around it,

you take a look at the metrics and based on that, assess whether or not it's working and make changes if needed. but something as ephemeral, as emotion, should not play a role in that. Or I guess another way of saying it is if option A, the feeling and the metrics are in concert with one another, there are some people who would say that corroborates it. Option B, the feeling says not working, the metrics say working. What do you do there?

Option C, the feeling says is inverse. The feeling says working, the metrics say not working. What do you do there? Or option D, you just disregard the feelings altogether and go in time. entirely with the metrics. Like, how do you parse this? Well, what you have described there is this drive of trying to do something that is very certain. You want to have specific metrics if it reaches a particular number, this kind of decision. If it reaches another number, this kind of decision.

Nothing to even think about. There is a simple flow chart. And there is no need for anything squishy in there. Sounds very appealing, right? You are now reducing an uncertain process to certain one. Well, okay, in some circumstances, that works. And the issue is that in circumstances that we are talking about here, when you are working on problems that require creativity

or that strive for creativity and innovation, this plain does not work. It might seem comforting to believe that it will work, but in reality doesn't. I love the example of Steve Jobs. Well, everybody likes the sample of Steve Jobs, so I'm not particularly original there. But he was a real role model in saying, yes, it is important to gather information. And yes, he did run focus groups and he did have metrics.

But he also knew, on a very intuitive level for him, that cannot be a checklist-like, low if this, then this, if that fork in the road is taken. Because when you rely on metrics and when you rely on focus groups, they can only do what they can do. And they end up relying on prior experience. So if you show them, if you get a group of people and show them a phone that exists at the time of, if we've traveled in time, almost 20 years now to when we didn't have iPhones and where all the phones had buttons on them. T9 phones. Yes.

If you ask them what they want in their phone, nobody is going to envision the iPhone because they are going to start with what exists. They might suggest little changes here and there of something like some feature working in a different way. but they cannot imagine what we ended up getting in the long run. Actually, the first version, the first design of the iPhone, was very similar to those things that existed already. And he looked at it and said, no, let's start from scratch. And they literally started from scratch. So that is about the creative courage we were discussing earlier.

There is uncertainty in the creative process. We wanted to be reasonable and reducible to metrics. We shouldn't disregard metrics, but we also have to be able to disagree with them and take a different approach too. The same thing was with the phones that existed, and we can go on with any consumer product, and people are going to tell you something similar.

Because they're starting from something that already exists. Reminds me of that quote from Henry Ford. He said, asked people what they wanted, they would have said, a faster horse and buggy. And so it makes sense to me that when you are doing something groundbreaking, something original, that there wouldn't be KPIs around it. There wouldn't necessarily be metrics around it because it itself has not yet been fully fleshed out. And that's true regardless of if you're planning a retirement or building a new business

or solving an engineering problem in a novel manner that has not yet been done before. But there are also people, I think, who would say, is anything truly original or is everything a little bit derivative? There's the Austin Cleon, Steele like an artist, in which he talks about how even works that we regard as highly original are really built on the ideas of others. And just kind of you take a whole bunch of works of art or works of innovation that other people have done and synthesize it in a new way. But it isn't actually that new in and of itself. It's just a new synthesis of old ideas. Indeed, ideas are not coming out of the void. They are built on prior experience and they are built on what came before us.

Creativity is social even if you are doing the actual act completely on your own, like an artist or like a writer or like a computer programmer sitting in front of their computer. Because we are learning from what came before us. We are getting inspired by different experiences we have. And that way, with broader experiences, with that idea of openness to experience and therefore broader range of experiences, we have more material which we can combine together and make connections that have not been made before. And so is innovation then the synthesis of old ideas in a new way?

Is it to first analyze, which is to break apart and then to synthesize, which is to to put back together, is it essentially that process? It could be a process of synthesis. It could be also process or riffing off of something. So it's not necessarily just synthesis. But creative thinking involves combining ideas or taking thoughts in new directions that are not obvious to many people. And there's that component in how we find inspiration and then when we go from.

what ends up being done and how those ideas end up being formed could be through process of synthesis, could be a process of incremental change of something that already exists. So we had flip phones with very small screens and a keyboard, and then the next iteration was the Blackberry with all the keys and a little bit of a bigger screen. So it is the next logical step. So that's incremental building on something. Yes, there's a level of originality there. It's not groundbreaking, but not all creativity or not all innovation are groundbreaking to be useful and to be influencing lives.

It's a matter of degree and a matter of kind. Some of creative work is synthesis, taking all different strands of different work or ideas and putting them into something that combines them. I'm a scientist, and when I build creative theories, new theories of how something works, I oftentimes pull from different strands of research. And then there is something that is completely restarting how we think about something.

So if you think in science, in the history of science, the ideas of quantum mechanics, we're a complete restart in how we think about, the nature of physical properties. Right, because that's more of a first principles ground up. Exactly. Let's go back to the notion of the implementation gap, because we've talked through what it means to be original.

We've talked through self-efficacy. We've talked through a lot of these foundational concepts around doing something that is both original and effective. But many of the people who are listening to this have ideas, whether it's an idea for a business that they want to start or a project that they want to undertake or a life that they want to live or a lifestyle that they want to live, right? Many of the people who are listening to this have those ideas, but the pathway between where they are today and where they want to be

between what is and what could be just feels like such a wide delta. What should they know? As we're closing this out, what are the key takeaways that they ought to know as they start to traverse that? Indeed, it is hard. Indeed, it's going to take time. It starts with the first step. It's a cliche, but it's actually a completely true cliche. It starts with that decision point of, okay, I have an idea.

Am I going to pursue it? Am I going to let it be fantasy, essentially? Let it be something in my head or something I discuss over drinks with a friend. or am I going to take it to next step? Understanding that there are some risks about it, but there are also potential benefits to it. Do I consider that these benefits are worth the effort? And if you value the process of creativity,

if you want to see that vision of retirement in a particular way, of starting that company, take the first step. But then know that the process is going to be long, that it's going to be not linear. That means they are going to be ups and downs, and sometimes they could be prolonged downs, but know that it's possible to learn strategies to get you through those difficult parts. And are there any key strategies that you want to highlight, the ones that get you through those difficult parts? The first one is a little bit of self-compassion. At one point, we were talking about creative blocks, and you mentioned, I should have known better.

And that is oftentimes something we say to ourselves. I should have known. But you didn't know for one reason or another. And give yourself some credit that you, under the circumstances at the time, have done what you could. Imagine that you are talking to a friend, you're talking to somebody you care about. would you tell them you should have known or would you approach it in a different way? And imagining what you would tell a friend, tell that to yourself. Once you can do that, you can then walk through those strategies of just reducing enough

the feeling of being overwhelmed that you can take action. With a reminder to yourself that it will take time. it was not going to take a few months. It is going to take a long and effortful while. And so stay on the path regardless of how long it takes because this is a long-term journey. It takes persistence. I would not say stay on the path because potentially you have to change the path. Maybe you are taking one transportation mode and you have to switch to another one and getting into an allergy land now.

but there isn't one path. And that is in a way liberating, because if you try one way and it doesn't work, you try a different route. So to stay with the analogy, the analogy might be that you know the final destination. You know your starting point and you have an idea of what that final destination might look like, but the roads to there are many. The roads to there are many. And the final destination might change as you go on that route. too. So if you started with those examples we were discussing earlier, you start thinking you're

developing a game, you end up developing a photo sharing app. What is the final destination can change in itself too? So it seems then the innovation is constant iteration. Innovation is constant iteration whether we are innovating in building a new product or whether the innovation is a life that our friends or our family has not had before, but we imagine for ourselves. Beautiful. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to learn more? In the notes, I will include all the contact information, and the best way to find me is on my

website with information about the book and how to stay in touch. Oh, great. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you to Dr. Zorana Yikovychevig Pringle, a senior research scientist at Yale's Center for Emotional Intelligence. What are three key takeaways that we learned from today's conversation? Key takeaway number one. You don't need full confidence to start. Maybe you're thinking about starting a side hustle or asking for a promotion or making a huge career

change. Maybe you want to entirely switch careers or go into a different line of work or maybe stay in your same career but go to a different company. Maybe you're thinking about investing in a rental property for the first time or investing in some type of alternative assets or buying a share of a private business or buying a small business, buying a laundromat. Maybe you're thinking about anything, anything in the world of business, investing, money management that contains promise but also contains risk. Often when we think about these things, there is a crisis of confidence. And the first key takeaway is that you don't need total confidence in order to begin. You don't need to have your entire business plan figured out before you start a freelance consulting gig. You don't need to be

certain that you're 100% ready before you schedule a conversation with your boss to ask for a raise because the confidence is going to build as you make progress and as you make small wins along the way. Confidence is often the result rather than the precursor of starting down the path. If you use an analogy of fuel for our vehicle, creative confidence is a fuel that makes the creative process going from an idea into the first steps and the ongoing steps. You do not need your gas tank to be at full. You can go on and get started and get to a certain destination if it is quarterful. Once you get to that destination, maybe there is a gas station there. That is the first key takeaway.

Key takeaway number two, creative blocks are information, not actual blocks, not roadblocks. So if you're feeling stuck on a project, if you're feeling frustrated, your emotions are trying to send you information. They're trying to convey something important about your approach. Maybe your side business isn't gaining any traction despite all of your effort. Or maybe in your 9 to 5 job, you keep hitting these walls. And you can't seem to advance and you can't seem to make progress or do anything spectacular, like what you'd hope to achieve within your current role. And instead of working harder for longer hours, instead of trying to knuckle down,

maybe the frustration that you're feeling is telling you that you need to pause and think through a totally different strategy. maybe your business model needs to pivot, or maybe you need to have a more direct conversation with your manager about what's really blocking your project or your promotion. For instance, if you are feeling frustrated, okay, what could that feeling be telling you? It could tell you that what you are doing is not working. If you now have a message,

what I'm doing is not working, Sometimes when we are experiencing creative block, which is related to feelings of frustration, we just end up working harder. But that's not going to be helpful. That frustration is telling you what you are doing already is not working. That is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three, failed ideas can lead to better opportunities because what looks like a failure might actually be pointing you towards something better. It's that expression. It's not rejection.

it's redirection. So maybe you have started a freelance graphic design business, and it's just not taking off. It's like kind of tugging along, getting a client here or there, but it's really not blossoming in the way that you'd hoped it would. But you notice something interesting. You notice that your clients keep asking you not just about design work, but about broadly, website strategy. They're asking you questions about marketing strategy and analytics. And that's not your area of expertise, but maybe you can partner with somebody who does have expertise in that area and create some type of mutual referral system.

Or maybe you didn't get the promotion that you wanted at work, but the process of pursuing it revealed specific skills that you need to develop that could lead to an even better opportunity. You could go win somewhere else. The key to these examples is staying open to pivoting when your original plan isn't working out in the way that you wanted it to. And by virtue of pivoting, you might find a path that is more profitable and more fulfilling than what you had originally had in mind. I remember a story of a group that created the Flickr app for photo sharing, and they started developing a video game. And they developed a video game, and it got a more loyal following, but still small.

But they noticed that the photo sharing feature inside the game was very popular, and at some point decided to spin it off as a separate entity. It was painful because they really, really, really wanted to make this game. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Dr. Zorana Yichchewikovic Pringle. Thank you so much for tuning in. We have a course on how to get a raise, and we're going to open it up for the first time, first time outside of beta, first time full non-beta actual release. We're going to open it up in August. If you are interested in learning more and if you're interested in hearing about this upcoming course, please sign up for our newsletter, afford anything.com slash newsletter because we're going to send all the information there. afford anything.com slash newsletter. And that's for our course on how to get a raise,

which we will be releasing for the first time in August. Affordanithing.com slash newsletter. Thank you again for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with the people in your life. Your friends, your family, your neighbors, your colleagues, your photo sharing Flickr app group, which is still trying to make that video game work. Share it with the people that you play video games with who are still talking about spinning off their best feature.

Share it with that 57-year-old middle manager and the 55-year-old programmer that you plan on early retiring with. Share it with your quarter tank of gas driving buddy who is still waiting for full confidence to be able to ask for that raise. Share it with the coworker who's been, quote, unquote, thinking about starting a side hustle for the past three years. Share it with the person who has like 17 brilliant business ideas, but somehow, never gets past the planning phase. Share it with your friend who is still stuck in analysis paralysis about whether or not to pivot their career or to quit altogether. Share it with that couple that keeps talking about their dream retirement, but they haven't actually crunched any numbers yet. And most importantly, share it with a person who always orders the same thing

at restaurants because they're terrified of trying something new. Share it with all those people, because that is the single most important way. that you can spread the message of F, double I, R.E. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Can I ask you to share it with one more person? Share it with the person who's super good at Excel and doesn't realize that being good at Excel

is actually a creative superpower. Share it with them too. Because Excel, there are some spreadsheets out there that are original and effective, and that's what being creative is. And now you know. Thank you for being an afforder. Again, you can hang out with people in this community.

Like-minded people, you can talk about whatever is on your mind, debt, retirement, Excel. You can do all of that at afford anything.com slash community. And I'll remind you one last time. Don't forget, afford anything.com slash newsletter. That's where we will share all of the details about our upcoming course, which we are going to release in August of 2025, your next raise. All about how to get that raise. Lots of live practice. because you can passively consume information all day about negotiating,

but when you actually get in the ring, so to speak, the Zoom ring, and you actually practice in a structured, guided, supported manner, that's when you build the muscle, right? It's like going to the gym. You put in your reps, right? You get the practice, you get the practice, you get the practice. Then you can go out in the real world, and you'll have built that muscle already. That's what we are creating with this course,

the environment where you can have live practice sessions. Affordainthing.com slash newsletter. We will make announcements about that towards the end of the month, beginning of August. Thanks again for being part of the community. I'm Paula Pan. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.