Afford Anything - The Surprising Science of Six-Figure Thinking

Starting point is 00:00:00 What if landing your dream job requires more than just the right resume? The latest science suggests that understanding and developing your personality traits might be the secret weapon that sets you apart in today's competitive workforce. Welcome to the Afford Anything Podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything but not everything. Every choice carries a trade-off. This show covers five pillars. Financial Psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship. It's double-eye fire. And today's episode, episode focuses on that first letter F, financial psychology, as we are joined by Olga Kazan, a staff writer at the Atlantic and the author of A Book on the Science of Personality Change

Starting point is 00:00:42 called Me But Better. In honor of the F of Double I Fire, financial psychology, we're going to talk about the big five personality traits and how they influence success, including financial success. And we'll explore how changing your personality can lead to better outcomes in career advancement, entrepreneurship and overall well-being. We'll touch on increasing your income as well. When we talk about how certain personality traits correlate with higher earnings, so if you're interested in the psychology of making more money, you'll enjoy today's episode. Olga, welcome. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Thank you for being here. Olga, what is personality?

Starting point is 00:01:20 Personality is the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that come most naturally to you. And I would add a twist on that, which is that they serve some purpose. in your life in that they help you meet your goals. Ooh. But goals are constantly in a state of flux. So does that mean personality is also in a state of flux? I would argue that your personality is in a state of flux. And it does at times adjust to help you meet your goals, which, as you point out, can also

Starting point is 00:01:47 change in life. Right. I'm thinking about people that I know who have been relatively the same for 25 plus years. I know certain people who are shy and they've always. been shy. And sometimes they have goals of making more money at work, but that requires being better at sales. And their shy nature inhibits that. So there are times that personality seems to also work against your goals. And it also seems to be a little bit fixed, at least anecdotally. Yeah. A lot of people do say that. They're like, I haven't changed. I've been exactly the same

Starting point is 00:02:22 since I was a little kid. I will say that that's pretty unusual. Most of us do change over time. the changes might be kind of subtle. So you might not notice it in someone else. They might not even notice it in themselves. But if you've ever done the thing where you look up like a Facebook status update that you posted, you know, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and you're like, what was I thinking? You will see that you have changed as a person. And probably those people that you have in mind did change as well. But one reason why they might have goals that their personality is not getting them closer toward or they feel like it's just a

Starting point is 00:02:59 In their nature, it's sort of inhibiting whatever goal they might have. They might have that desire to change in that way, but they actually are not doing anything about it. So kind of a key concept of personality change is that you have to follow through, meaning you have to actually do stuff to change your personality. Oh, and in a moment I'm going to ask what are the types of things that people can do to change their personality. But staying on the topic of just defining what we're talking about first, your personality can inhibit your goals. Are there? than pursuit of goals, does personality matter? Personality does matter. Personality traits really determine our happiness and our success in life. There's five personality traits and higher levels

Starting point is 00:03:44 on all of those traits tend to correlate with better well-being, better relationships, better success at school and work, even better health and longevity. So it is something where you should want your personality to help you in life. And in fact, if your personality is a certain way, you do tend to be slightly more successful. All right. So you mentioned that there are five personality traits. Can we go over those five? Yeah. So you can remember them with the acronym Ocean. The first is openness to experiences, which is like imaginativeness and creativity. Then there's conscientiousness, which is sort of like ambition, productivity, organization, timeliness, things like that. Extroversion, which some of us might be familiar with, which is sort of like being outgoing and cheerful and active.

Starting point is 00:04:35 There's agreeableness, which is being warm and empathetic toward others and also trusting of others. And then there's neuroticism for N, which is a bad thing. The other ones are good things. Neuroticism is basically depression and anxiety. and the opposite of neuroticism is called emotional stability. You mentioned earlier that having high scores on all five correlate with more success in life. Is that also true for neuroticism? No.

Starting point is 00:05:01 So for neuroticism, you actually want to be low in it. A lot of us think that someone who's kind of depressed or moody or angsty is also like a deep thinker and a brilliant genius. But actually neuroticism, it can really cloud your thoughts and your judgment. it actually gets in the way of productivity and of doing what you want because you're always second-guessing yourself. You're always seeing the negatives of things. So you actually want to be low on neuroticism. You want to be high on the others. But then the ocean acronym falls apart. I know. I know. If you were to flip it, right? I wish there was a word with two E's, but all the rest of the letters in ocean because then they could really redo that acronym. Can you talk about how the Big Five personality traits were originally developed in the research?

Starting point is 00:05:46 The big five really come from trait theory, which it just means that people's personalities consist of traits of adjectives. Starting in the early 20th century, various researchers, starting with Gordon Allport, pulled words from the dictionary that could be used to describe people. At first they had thousands of words like this, and then they would narrow them down and narrow them down and narrow them down until there weren't any synonyms in the list. So one of the versions, I think there was like a 16 trait. great theory at one point. And it had like perfectionism or something. But that's a lot like

Starting point is 00:06:21 conscientiousness. What they basically did is they went until there were no more synonyms. So none of the Big Five are synonyms with one another. They're all like completely distinct. And as researchers were kind of quizzing people about their personalities and sort of asking like, okay, do you tend to be like this or like this? They sort of found that people were basically describing the Big Five. that they were like saying, I really love going to parties, but I'm also really anxious and I love to try new things. They're describing the big five there. They kind of just settled on the big five in the late 80s, early 90s and have run with it since. But Alport's research, I mean, that was back during the Ottoman Empire, wasn't it?

Starting point is 00:07:05 It was like in the 19 teens and like early 20s. Right. Yeah. So it took 60 years before they really settled on it. Yeah, that's because there was just so many different theories of personality. And at the same time, you had a bunch of stuff that was like kind of pseudoscientific. So things like the Rorschach test became popular in this intervening time where they thought you could determine what a person's like by showing them like a really confusing picture, like an ink blot in this case and being like, what do you think this is? And then if someone says, it's my mother, then they're this way or that way.

Starting point is 00:07:37 Freud had theories about child sexual impulses that didn't really pan out. And so there were a lot of different competing theories about personality. But none of them really stood up or held up with repeated testing and studies like the Big Five did. All right. My understanding was that the original idea was that the Big Five traits are fixed. Yeah, that was one theory at the beginning. There was one study that was very influential early on called Set Like Platt. So essentially this idea that once you are a person, you're set like plaster and you never change.

Starting point is 00:08:13 More recent research has started to question that idea. So there's one concept, which is that we all change over time. So in studies that follow people over decades and decades, most of the people in that study will have changed on at least one personality trait over the course of their lives. It could be for different reasons. It could be because of life events. It could be because of environments that they find themselves in. But most of us do end up changing a little bit, even if we don't try to, even if we're just living life, not doing anything in particular about our personality. Now, if you actually try to change things like therapy, medication, new friend group,

Starting point is 00:08:54 going to college, changing your career, doing things that actively change your personality can make it change even faster. You mentioned earlier that in order to change an aspect of your person, personality intentionally so that it's more aligned with the pursuit of your goals, you have to be really focused on doing it with intention. So I want to talk about how specifically to change each element such that it's more conducive towards meeting your goals. Because I know a lot of the people who are listening to this right now have particular financial goals or career goals or just life goals, but they may find that elements of their personality actually inhibit their goals or their

Starting point is 00:09:37 desires. And so I want to kind of break down each one of the big five in terms of how a person listening to this can change their orientation in that if they want to. And let's just go in order of the ocean acronym, starting with openness to experience. So first, can you describe what does it look? like if a person is low on openness to experience? Low on openness would be, hey, do you want to try a new restaurant tonight instead of the same place we always go? No, no, I like the same old place. Hey, do you want to check out that new foreign film? Everyone's like talking about. It's really avant-garde.

Starting point is 00:10:16 No, let's just watch like the latest Avengers movie. Hey, do you want to maybe go to this country where we don't speak the language and like everything's super new and unusual? No, I don't think so. That wouldn't be right for me. So it's sort of just not wanting new experiences. And how does that play out? Let's say that there's a person who wants new experiences in certain dimensions or certain domains, like maybe they're very open to traveling internationally, but the idea of starting a side hustle completely freaks them out because even that toe dip in the water of entrepreneurship just feels a little bit too radical. Or vice versa. How do do we assess where we stand when openness might be domain specific? Oh, that's interesting. You know,

Starting point is 00:11:04 I did talk to someone like this. She was very open to things generally loved art and like music and kind of a creative, fun-loving person, but she was an extremely picky eater, even as an adult. Very, very, very limited diet, very beige, like potatoes, no fish or sushi or anything like super interesting or like kind of creative foods or anything like that. This is as an adult, so not just like the five-year-olds eating like chicken nuggets. And really what changed, like the thing that inspired her to change is that she fell in love with someone who was like a huge foodie. And he always wanted to go to restaurants. And they were always restaurants where there was like nothing that she could eat. And so she sort of just started to question like, okay,

Starting point is 00:11:50 is it true that there's nothing here I can really eat? Like, is it true that like, all of this would be disgusting to me. And then she kind of just started really slowly. Like you said dip your toe in, and that's really what I would recommend for someone in that situation is just kind of a small foray into the unknown. So if you're really, really uncomfortable with something, you don't have to jump into the deep end and do the most extreme version of that. You can kind of inch your way into it to see if it gradually becomes more comfortable. So what she did is like she would make foods that she was very unfamiliar with and uncomfortable with in kind of new and like tastier ways. Or she would like mix whatever, broccoli or like some vegetable that she didn't like

Starting point is 00:12:36 into pasta or something that she did like and kind of start to introduce it to herself that way kind of gradually. And so now like, I mean, when I met up with her, we ate at this restaurant where we had like bone marrow and octopus and crazy cheeses and pig head sausage and stuff. So she's way on the other end now because she gradually built up her tolerance for the unknown. And that's what I would really recommend for anyone who's kind of like, I don't know about this. I'm curious about it, but it kind of scares me. Right. How would that apply? So I'm thinking about the world of finance. And for certain things like, let's say buying an investment property, there's such a high barrier to doing so that even entering the field feels like a leap rather than a step. What would a person

Starting point is 00:13:24 do in a situation like that. If, let's say, they want to be open to it, maybe they have a spouse who's really excited about it, but they themselves are just, they're low on the openness in that specific domain. Yeah. Let's say financially you're fine and you have this money set aside for the investment property in a way that would not hurt your financial situation if like you weren't able to get it rented out or something for a couple months, right? So I'm assuming that the finances are okay. Yeah. So what I would do in that situation, and this is something that I found really worked for people who were trying to learn new things or kind of broaden their horizons, is I would actually learn from other people who have done the same thing. This is something that I went into with people who were trying to become more conscientious. What they kept running into is that they were sort of like, I have no idea where to begin. I don't know where to start. One guy really wanted to go to grad school, but he didn't know how to study, which sounds really silly. But like if you did, didn't grow up writing papers and studying and applying yourself, you kind of don't know how to memorize facts or present them in a paper. So he had to learn how to study. And what he did is he

Starting point is 00:14:31 learned techniques from other students who were in a similar situation as him. And this has actually been born out in research where if you learn a strategy for how to do something from someone else, you're actually more likely to be successful than if someone just tells you how to do it. the researchers like, here's how you make an exercise plan versus if you go to your friend and say, what's an exercise plan that worked for you? That second one is more likely to be successful for whatever reason. Because as you're learning those strategies, you're thinking about how to apply it in your own situation. So what I would do is I would talk to other people who have investment properties and see how they do it. And then if you're still feeling really scared, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:15 I would do, again, the minor version of that. So like maybe a small, place than some beautiful like dream home, you know, maybe someplace that's like very, very risk, low risk that'll definitely be rented or definitely, you know, turn to profit. Right. Tell me about what you did when you wanted to become more open to experiences. So for me, I was already really open when I started, but I kind of wanted to experiment with like what happens if you try to increase openness even more. So for me, what I really did is I did a, like what's called a peak experience, which is sort of an inspiring experience that people might have. It can be in nature. It can also be not in nature. So a lot of people describe giving birth to their child as a peak experience. And so for me, that was surfing, which I had never done before. So I'm just like not very sporty or aquatic. So it was like a totally new thing. I was a little scared. I'm very afraid of sharks. It was really interesting because it completely,

Starting point is 00:16:17 absorbs your entire brain, trying to do this new thing that is very physically challenging, but also you have to constantly be watching the waves and pushing up and timing everything just right and making sure you're in the right position on the board. So for me, that was a really good way of getting out of my head and trying this new thing in an all-encompassing way. Now, you mentioned conscientiousness following the ocean acronym OCEAN. That leads us perfectly from openness to our second point, which is conscientiousness. First, can you describe what does being low in conscientiousness look like? Procrastinating, looking at TikTok all day instead of doing the work email that you need to send. Oh, I am rock bottom in conscientiousness. We all are sometimes,

Starting point is 00:17:05 right? Can you be so low? You're negative? I'm pretty sure you're not negative conscientious, because you wouldn't have this podcast. But these are, you know, like the typical teenager, sleeping through class, being late, dogate my homework type. Yeah, that's low conscientiousness. Yep. Rockba, I'm claiming like a 0.0001 on conscientiousness on a scale of 0 to 100. Okay. All right. So how do I increase conscientious? Because it's clear how being high in conscientiousness would lead to greater success. That seems pretty evident just from your description of what being low conscientiousness looks like. Yeah. So this is a tricky one because people who low in conscientiousness kind of don't know how to get there. So that's a common problem.

Starting point is 00:17:48 One strategy that I thought was really interesting is called episodic future thinking. And this is when you envision very, very clearly the end results that you want. Let's say you are procrastinating on a PowerPoint presentation that you're going to present to like a team at work. Episodic future thinking is basically like, okay, take a minute and stop and think about that day. You're giving the PowerPoint. point. It's beautifully designed. You're so eloquent. Your boss and everyone else applauds and is like, wow, you're such a star. They all order their favorite sandwiches from the deli afterward. You all have this amazing lunch with your coworkers. It's just a great, awesome day, right?

Starting point is 00:18:31 And so sometimes envisioning something like that can actually give you the motivation to do those boring tasks that add up to that great vision. Because if you think about it, like most amazing things, or really fun things, they have a lot of boring task lead up. Like even an amazing vacation that is like nonstop fun and excitement, you're booking the plane tickets and you're like booking the activities and you're calling your credit card to be like, I'm going to Japan or whatever. None of that stuff is fun, right? But we're motivated to do it because we're imagining ourselves in Tokyo having a great time. Right. But you can apply that with stuff that's not just a vacation with other things in life that you want.

Starting point is 00:19:14 Yeah, I for a while on Instagram would share whenever I would travel, rather than share the travel photos themselves, I would share photos of, I'm packing my suitcase, I'm getting a lift at 530 a.m. You know? Yes, yeah. Oh, now I'm at the gate. Yeah, yeah. I'm waiting for like an hour and a half. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the whole documentation would just end there. Right? Like I would just show the transit element because so much of the time what we see, especially on social media, on Instagram, we see that end result. We see that beautiful vacation and we don't see the 5.30 a.m. wake up to get to the airport. Yeah, exactly. And so what episodic future thinking really does is it helps push you through the 530 wake up for a work presentation

Starting point is 00:20:06 or for, you know, and maybe you're imagining getting a raise or getting a promotion or getting a new job. That kind of stuff can be, it can be really motivating. What I hear in that answer are elements of visualization. Would that be a good line to draw? Yeah, it is sort of like visualization. And I don't mean to imply that it's the secret. Like, if you believe that it will happen. Like, you have to be actually doing the stuff that leads to that thing.

Starting point is 00:20:32 But it kind of just makes those goals a little bit more concrete and present. And some people actually find that it's more motivating to think about a negative outcome that they're trying to avoid their boss yelling at them or everyone being super disappointed or something like that. I mean, for some people, that is more effective to get them going than a positive outcome. So it kind of just depends on whatever is more motivating for you. Other than episodic future thinking, are there any other tactics that can help move a person higher in the realm of conscientiousness? Yeah. So this is going to sound kind of funny. But one thing that came across is that the people who became more conscientious,

Starting point is 00:21:11 did it by simplifying and streamlining a lot. Some of it was literal physical decluttering, like cleaning, throwing a bunch of stuff away and having fewer belongings can actually make it a lot easier to find things. You spend less time looking for stuff. Your space feels clearer so you feel less burdened by your stuff. They also really streamlined their commitments and the things that they had to do. So if there was extra, activities or meetings or just obligations that weren't providing value for them, they would find a way to offload those or to stop coming to those, basically, so that they could focus on what really matters. And even the guy who I interviewed who had never written a paper before, really what

Starting point is 00:21:57 switched for him and made him a lot more conscientious was focusing on one subject area that was interesting to him, as opposed to taking like gen ed classes, surveys of like lots of different things that maybe weren't as interesting to him. So finding ways to simplify as much as possible because you will inevitably do better if you have less to do. But although that does fly in the face of there's a competing theory of if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Right.

Starting point is 00:22:26 And I've heard that too. And I do think that some people who are super conscientious already and have a lot going on do find a way to like squeeze more stuff in. but I think if you're still working on conscientiousness, if you are late a lot, it's probably not a good idea to squeeze even more stuff into that half hour before you have to leave because by the time you're finished with that email, by the time you call the Uber, by the time you find your shoes, by the time, it kind of all adds up. And so that's where that kind of decluttering principle is coming from. We'll come back to the letters E-A-N in a moment after this word from our

Starting point is 00:23:03 sponsors. But before we take this break, I want to share with you. So on this subject of time blindness and low conscientiousness, you can see, I'm reading from my phone. This is an actual conversation that I had with a friend. Friends said, want to head out at about 245? And I said, I need to take a shower. And my friend said, okay, so 245, you know, and then that's a non-answer. And I said, I don't know, I'll let you know it's a bit of a time warp. And then I just started sending literal like play-by-play updates. So my next text was officially out of the shower. My next text was dressed wearing deodorant, eyeliner on. Next text was purses packed, followed by putting on socks, followed by putting on jacket, followed by just hit the elevator button. That's great. And then my final text was

Starting point is 00:24:01 in the lobby, right? And was it before 245? It was 3.10. Okay. It was 3.10 p.m. Okay. So close. Not quite. But I had no idea how to estimate that time. Yeah. You know, like, I just had no idea. And rather than make a promise that I wouldn't be able to deliver on, I was like, I'm just going to deliver a play-by-play right here. So that way I'm setting expectations accordingly. And because I really just don't know how long things take. So the one tip I heard for this is next time you're doing something that you frequently do, like get ready to go out, time how long it takes. Yeah. And that way you will definitely know. By virtue of sending all of those texts, I now have the timestamp for every text. Yeah. So I was actually looking through that to, like, oh, that's how long it takes to wear deodorant.

Starting point is 00:24:51 Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so that is actually one of the tips. So people have trouble knowing how long things take. Everyone has trouble with that, even conscientious people. And the thing you're supposed to do is time yourself. And you'll be surprised it kind of takes longer than you think to do a lot of stuff. Yeah, it really does. There's so many steps to it. And if you think about it, it's a little cognitively demanding, right? Like to have to manage that many steps. But when we think about how long it'll take, we group those steps into chunks. This is actually what happens in the brain. So you have chunks. So you're like, oh, showering, and you'll have that as one chunk. And you'll put that at like 10 minutes, right? Right. But.

Starting point is 00:25:31 in reality, you're showering, getting out of the shower, drying your hair, putting on eyeliner, putting on deodorant. Like, there's a lot of, like, micro steps in that. Right. But we don't necessarily always think about that. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:25:41 Yeah. And I think it's a certain lack of conscientiousness about all of those micro steps that lead me to consistently underestimate the amount of time that something will take, which leads to persistently being late. And also, now that I know that I'm constantly late, I'm reluctant to give an estimated time because if a friend says, hey, do you want to make a moment? meet at 245. My response is, I don't know because I have no way of estimating how long this task, which is showering, is going to take.

Starting point is 00:26:11 Well, now you do. Yeah. As long as it's always the last thing you do before you meet someone. Yeah. The holidays are right around the corner and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need serveware and cookware.

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Starting point is 00:28:02 It's about not being just one thing, but many things for our customers. Big Bank Muscle, FinTech Hustle. That's your commercial payments of fifth, third better. Welcome back. We've talked about O. We've talked about C. Let's move to that third letter, E, which is extroversion. Extraversion is exactly what you think it is.

Starting point is 00:28:29 The person who is the life of the party loves people, loves talking to people. Couldn't wait to get back to working in an office after the pandemic. Just out there doing stuff all the time. And that's extraversion. And why, in terms of success, in terms of financial success, career success, why does extraversion matter? So extraversion is not the most important variable for financial success per se. But what extraversion does is it makes you happier.

Starting point is 00:28:58 And a big part of why it makes you happier is because it expands your social network and the number of people that you socialize with. Socializing makes us happy. Connecting with other people makes us happy. even very small connections that may seem quite meaningless. Talking with your barista, talking with your mailman, things like that can really make you a lot happier. So extroversion tends to kind of create this like positivity and, I don't know, optimism maybe. And in part because of that, in part because it grows your social network, it tends to generate more job

Starting point is 00:29:31 opportunities or opportunities in general. Yeah, I've heard many people say that with a few exceptions, most jobs are sort of made for extroverts or designed for extroverts. There are a few types of jobs that require long periods of deep focused siloed and solo work. But even those require to be able to navigate office politics or workplace politics in the times that you're not doing that deep work. So in pretty much any domain, that level of extroversion and EQ seem to go a long way. Yeah. A lot of introverts don't want to become.

Starting point is 00:30:08 extroverts, and I totally understand that. I'm not suggesting that they completely flip and become a total partier all the time. And I do have one of those jobs that requires a lot of deep work by myself most of the time. I actually have to interview people, but when I'm not interviewing people, I'm just sort of writing for hours at a time without interruption from anyone. But all jobs, even my job, like what I'm doing right now is extroverted. All jobs occasionally require extroversion. You wouldn't have gotten your job if you weren't able to occasionally be extroverted at your job interview. It's just something that's part of life, having to connect with people, having to have sort of a gregarious self-presentation. It's just something we all have to do from time to time.

Starting point is 00:30:51 And so for the introverts who are listening to this, how can an introvert practice being more extroverted, even if they don't necessarily want to be extroverted in all domains of life at all times, how can they practice having this skill set of knowing how to cosplay as an extrovert when it matters. Yeah, cosplay is a really good way to put it. So what I would do is sign up for an activity that involves other people and that occurs regularly and that is hard to get out of and that you enjoy. And that is hard to get out of. Okay, the reason is because if you're like, I'm just going to get drinks with people more and you're like sitting there on a text thread going, let's get drinks. how about Tuesday? How about Thursday? How about next Wednesday? I can't. I have to do this. How about next

Starting point is 00:31:34 Friday? Oh, that doesn't work for me. Like, it's just never going to happen. It has to be something that occurs on a day, preferably every week, but like, let's say every other week or once a month. And that is hard to not go to. And the reason I say that is because if you're an introvert, you're not going to want to go. Like, it's going to get to 10 minutes before you have to leave and you're going to be like, I don't know, the couch looks so inviting right now, and you're not going to want to leave the apartment. So I would definitely pick something that's like other people are counting on you to be there. And is it then that just by virtue of going out more, you will become more extroverted? Is this like exposure theory?

Starting point is 00:32:16 Yes, basically. By getting in like reps essentially as an extrovert, by like connecting more with other people, First of all, you have more opportunities to practice so you feel less awkward and uncomfortable whenever you're out socializing. This really happened with me with improv. I was scared to death of improv the first, I don't know, four, five months that I did it. It was really only after that long that I started to feel comfortable doing it. But it was honestly just because, like, I kind of knew the drill. Like, I would get there. Like, I know what games were going to play. Then I know we're going to do scenes. Probably, like, one of the scenes will be.

Starting point is 00:32:53 be like roughly this kind of storyline. We might do this kind of scene, which we did last time. Like, I kind of became more comfortable with it. And when you have that kind of comfort and familiarity with something, it sort of does become your personality. It doesn't feel so unusual or so strange. You feel like it's something that you can do. Yeah. So it's sort of, it is a little bit like exposure. Yes. In this context, what is the distinction between being outgoing versus being extroverted. They're very similar. A lot of people who are extroverted are also very outgoing. But because I know there's so much discomfort around like the idea of becoming an extrovert for people who are very, very introverted, I talked with Sonia Lubamirsky, who's a psychologist who has

Starting point is 00:33:35 studied social connections and happiness, if you are someone who wants to be more extroverted, but you're like more of a listener than a talker, what you can do is go somewhere and listen more than you talk. And as long as you're around other people, as long as you're doing, an activity that still like counts as extroversion. Those are still social connections. You're still benefiting. You're still not alone in your apartment, but you're also not having to like come up with like zingers and like jokes or whatever it is. You're worried about. Right. Often I have found in those environments that if I'm quiet for a while, then when I do speak, people tend to listen more. Totally. Yeah. I ran a meetup group for a while based around foreign film. And it was interesting because

Starting point is 00:34:19 First of all, everyone there was very introverted. So it was like a lot of silence sometimes. But the people who would say the least often had the most knowledge about the film. It's just that like they were kind of like waiting to unleash it. So that's also a form of extroversion. Right. Are there cases when it comes to success or the pursuit of goals when it could be beneficial to be more on the introverted side? Yeah, definitely. So there definitely are jobs where you do. need to really love being by yourself and being quiet and doing deep work. My job is an example. You know, a lot of people who might work in finance or accounting, even like programming, things like that, a lot of those folks are very introverted and it benefits them. Even extreme

Starting point is 00:35:08 extroverts, you know, the same could be said that they often have to like practice being introverted and they have to live more of an inner life sometimes in order to succeed at their jobs. We've talked OCE. Let's talk about the next one. A, agreeableness. It seems to me that this would be healthy to a degree, but up to a certain threshold, agreeableness is pro-social. But beyond that, agreeableness is actually... It can be like people-pleasing almost. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to be too agreeable. You actually don't want to be extreme on any of these. Even emotional stability, which is like low anxiety, it seems great. But if you've ever met someone who has no anxiety, they're like late for their flight. Like I don't know, I didn't book a hotel. Like let's just wing it. Like it's, they're not anxious enough. So you want a little bit of disagreeableness or at least you want disagreeableness on occasion. I have a child, so I'm making doctor's appointments for him and the waits for these appointments are always long. Sometimes I've had to be like, hey, no, I need to get in right now. Like he's really sick. Like get me in. ASAP. Find something. And that kind of like bossy attitude is

Starting point is 00:36:19 pretty disagreeable, but it's also like, I would argue, necessary in some cases. Right. It's self-advocacy. Yeah. Self-advocacy can sometimes be non-agreable. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, but it's, we all have to do that at times. Right. And that's normal. Right. So how do you know if you are trying to be high on agreeableness? How do you know when it is a healthy dose versus when it's excessive? Yeah. Well, so I actually took a scientific personality test throughout this process that I was working on this book. It's at personality assessor.com, and it told me where I fall on agreeableness. And I was always, like, low average. So I was never super high. I was definitely not, like, too high. I kind of, like, teetered between low and average,

Starting point is 00:37:06 basically. So I wanted to kind of be above average, but not, like, all the way to the end. I would say that, like, if you feel like you have really good friendships, really good relationships, you feel a lot of social support from people around you. But at the same time, you're able to draw boundaries and you're able to not just have people walk all over you. That is good agreeableness. So like what agreeableness is not is just like doing whatever your friends tell you to do because you're trying to be agreeable. I actually had a great conversation with someone, a friendship expert who really talked about how boundaries, they might seem disagreeable, but they really help us maintain our relationships, because they kind of, they tell us

Starting point is 00:37:50 literally what the bounds of those relationships are. So I brought to her the example that a friend was telling me I had to text her more often. And you would think that the agreeable way to respond to that would be like, oh, sure, of course, I will text you however often you want, no problem. I'm not a big fan of just texting for fun. I just don't really all day text. I know a lot of people do, and I'm like the only person on earth who doesn't do that, but I just don't. I literally text my friends say, I just put on deodorant. Yeah. I mean, honestly, that's probably healthy, but I just never got in this wing and I don't know.

Starting point is 00:38:22 I'm never going to get there. And so I was like, what should I do about this texting situation? She's like, you could tell your friend, hey, I'm not a big texter, but I want to keep in touch with you in other ways. Like, could we do a weekly email exchange or a weekly phone call, Zoom, FaceTime, whatever. There's a million ways to keep in touch. And I think that's a healthy form of agreeableness because you're not letting someone just dictate what you're going to do, but you're also letting them know that they're important to you and that you want to keep the relationship going in a way that works for both of you. What can a person do to increase their level of agreeableness? How does a person be intentional about this domain?

Starting point is 00:39:00 So one super interesting thing that I did was I went to a conversation workshop in London, which was all about how to have more. meaningful conversations. And it was really interesting because I thought I was an expert at having conversations because I'm a journalist. But really, I am not. I have conversations the way everyone else does, which is I ask a bunch of questions. What you could do instead of asking people for facts like that is to ask them what a certain situation meant for them, what the meaning behind something was or why something was important to them. Right. So if someone's like, oh, I can't hang out tonight because my kids have their school concert or something. So I'd be like, okay, see you some other time. You could be like, oh, cool. What are they performing? And how long did they work on their songs?

Starting point is 00:39:47 What was it like the first time you saw them, practice their songs for you? Kind of asking more questions about someone's emotional state can actually create feelings of agreeableness because you see them as more of a whole person. You're not just going through the motions of interacting with them. Right, right. Well, and what's interesting to me about that, answer is that what you're talking about is the perception of agreeableness. Because in that particular example, you're not necessarily agreeing to go along with anything. Exactly. You're not necessarily acquiescing to a given demand. Exactly. But you're still increasing perceptions of agreeableness by saying, hey, tell me about the experience of like watching your kid perform on stage. What is that like?

Starting point is 00:40:28 Is it exciting? Is it nerve-wracking? What does that feel like? Yeah, exactly. What was that like? is one of the questions that she suggested that we ask in order to sort of deepen. And it really shows how agreeableness, like, I think people get the wrong impression because it's like, agree. That means you're agreeing with whatever's going on. But really, I mean, you could ask these questions of someone who's like the polar opposite of you politically, religiously, whatever domain you're kind of worried about. And you could still have a perfectly civil and actually super interesting conversation as long as you are focusing on like why, what's, behind some of their thoughts and emotions. Right. Yeah. What are the concerns that led you to think? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:11 Exactly. Yeah. And you're not agreeing with anything they're saying. You're just learning about them. It seems to me then that that agreeableness is almost like curiosity about a person. Yeah. Exactly. It's it's it's warmth and empathy and a big way that we show warmth and empathy is through curiosity and genuine, the kind of genuine curiosity that some of these conversation prompts foster as opposed to just kind of like small talk questions, which have their place, but, you know, are limited. Right, right. Well, I think the reason that small talk questions can be so exhausting is because often it is a recitation of facts. It's, so what do you do? How long have you been doing it? How long have you lived here? When did you move here? What brought you

Starting point is 00:41:56 here? It's like, it just seems like a regurgitation of the same set of facts over and over. over and over to a point where I'm like, I could just put all of this on like a world's longest name tag. I know. You know, if you want my bio data, here it is. Yeah. And that's exactly why this woman, Georgie Nightingall started this whole program is because she was like, I'm so sick of going into networking mixers and having it be like, when did you move here? Where do you live? We're all just exchanging the same five facts. And then we're going home. Like, why are we doing this? We'll probably never see the people in that workshop again. But I feel like I got to know them so well. and the stuff that was important to them and the stuff that they cared about, I felt so close to them for those two days.

Starting point is 00:42:40 Even though it was all very scripted, done in a very prescribed way. I don't know. I think it works. I like the icebreaker. What was your favorite part of today? What was the best part of today? That's a good one. Yeah. You know, I might steal that icebreaker from me because I don't have one. So I've thought a lot about that one. And I think the reason that it works is if you say, hey, what was your favorite thing that you've ever? done in life. That is such a wide scope of time that it's too big. But your favorite part of today, that is such a narrow window of time. And it's easy to recall. Like if you think about just ease of recall, salience, like today is at the forefront of your mind already. So you're not asking them to scrape the like deep, dark recesses of their memory bank. It's just, hey, what was the best part of

Starting point is 00:43:28 today? And it's, of course, it's positive. It wasn't like, what was the worst part of today? Yeah, you know, my mom's group that I'm in does something similar in the very postpartum period when we would gather. We would ask each other the highs and lows. So that did have a negative element. But I think that part was important because like so much kind of bad stuff happens postpartum, if I'm being honest. It's like stressful babies cry all the time. So it's like nice to give the person that release of this very frustrating thing happened, but then also to have that like positive recovery from it where you're like, but the baby smiled at me for the first time. know, whatever happened. So, yeah.

Starting point is 00:44:16 Finally, let's talk about that last letter, the letter N. This is one where you actually want to be low on it. This is the only one of the acronym where you want to be low. Yes. I should maybe just start saying that the acronym is not ocean and it's ocean. No, no, I've heard ocean from multiple sources. It's a common acronym for the big five. It's so confusing. But yes, neuroticism, you want to be low on it. Can you describe what that looks like? What does being low neuroticism look like? And conversely, what does being high neuroticism look like? It's like a woman with low anxiety. And she's like, oh, a plane just crashed and we're about to take a flight. Oh, well, that means like they must be doing a lot of extra safety checks. It's the first day of my new job tomorrow. I'm sure everyone will love me and

Starting point is 00:45:02 everything will go great. I honestly am so high on anxiety that I have trouble even like jokingly describing what that would be like. But yeah, it's someone who just does not really worry much and is not really in the dumps much. I can see even from your facial expression right now that you find that hard to relate to. So describe what being high in neuroticism is like. What is that experience? So especially before I started this project, there was a lot more just like dread about the future and worry about the future and getting like all caught up in the worries to the point where like just like Googling stuff a lot, like the same types of things. Just being super nervous about things to the point where you can't think about anything else because you worry almost if you take your eye off the ball of the worry,

Starting point is 00:45:51 it'll come true. Never really savoring anything good that happens because you're kind of on to worrying about the next thing. Or you're just very able to find the negative in the good thing that happened. Not having a ton of hope or optimism about the future or about positive outcomes that might happen. Yeah, that would be high neuroticism. That sounds very stressful. It is. Yeah. When you were high neuroticism, were you aware that that's what you were?

Starting point is 00:46:18 Or did you think that that was just a normal state? Was it such a baseline that you thought everyone was like that? So I think gradually over time I came to realize that it is abnormal, that it's like not normal to feel quite as anxious as I felt at the time. Yeah, I think it was just a gradual because for a long time I kind of thought my life is unique. stressful. But then if that is ridiculous, it's not. People in very poor countries with very meager livings and really stressful circumstances, their lives are stressful. Like my life is actually not that stressful. So yeah, it was kind of a gradual realization. And how did you work your way out of that? Tell us about that. So the thing to do for neuroticism is basically meditation.

Starting point is 00:47:07 So, okay, you could do therapy and medication, which I also. also do. But meditation and various forms of mindfulness, it can be something more like yoga, if you absolutely cannot stand meditation or traditional sitting down meditation. There's like mindful walking as well. There's also meditations where you repeat phrases to yourself as opposed to just following your breath. But basically some form of mindfulness practice seems to be what helps with neuroticism. Are there any other tactics or is that the primary one? is the main one that I did and that I found useful. And in fact, one of the other strategies that I came across was basically mindfulness by a different name. It was like noting,

Starting point is 00:47:54 which is basically just noting the things you're seeing or feeling or hearing. Like literally taking notes? No, no, just like mentally, mental noting. Yeah. I found that to be way more challenging than just meditation. I took an intensive meditation class called MBSR. And mindfulness-based stress reduction. It's like the most studied meditation class that's out there. So I think 10 weeks or something like that or maybe, yeah, I think something like 10 weeks and you meditate for 45 minutes a day and you learn about Buddhism. And I would say the learning about Buddhism element was more helpful to me than even the meditation per se. But yeah. Neuroticism is the one attribute in which being high neuroticism, it does or does not correlate with success. It does not. It does not. No. So that feels counterintuitive.

Starting point is 00:48:51 I know, because so many successful people are neurotic, but they're kind of successful despite their neuroticism. And then if you think about things that involve a great deal of financial risk, which often leads to financial success. It requires a low level of neuroticism to even participate in that kind of thing. So like people who do invest, it does involve risk and being too anxious or too unwilling to take risks means that you're not really doing that. So neuroticism can lead to being too conservative with your money. Too cautious or just like unable to make decisions, unable to break free of like,

Starting point is 00:49:32 like analysis paralysis. Right. Too indecisive, two analysis paralysis, too overly cautious, overly conservative. Okay, that makes sense, actually. It reminds me there's a quote from the finance writer Morgan Housel who says, pessimists get to be right. Optimists get to be rich. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And when they look at the personality types of CEOs, it's usually like extroverted, low agreeableness, and then like low neuroticism. Because starting a company involved, a lot of risk and the people willing to take risks are able to at least manage their anxiety and not let it overwhelm them. You said low agreeableness? Yeah, people who start company, yeah. Why is that? Because being sort of dominant and like top of the food chain and getting what you

Starting point is 00:50:20 want, it tends to be just a personality type that is low in like the touchy-feely element of agreeableness. Interesting. Okay. High extroversion. low agreeableness and low neuroticism. So the low neuroticism leads to the confidence to be able to take risks. Yeah. The low agreeableness means that you have strong leadership, you know, strong vision. I'm not saying people are going to love you. The classic example is like Steve Jobs, who was like he was a difficult person, but like a visionary. So that's what they're talking about there. Right. And then the high extroversion, so you can be around a large team pretty much 24-7 during all your waking. hours and that doesn't drain you. Exactly. So yeah, that makes that the Steve Jobs prototype is actually a perfect example of that because you can really see that in what's been written about him.

Starting point is 00:51:14 And you were asking about like other techniques. This doesn't really help with like all consuming anxiety. But if you have a specific worry that is like standing in the way of doing something, making some sort of leap, one strategy that I learned from Tracy Dennis Tawari is by all means, write down everything bad that could happen. Like make your little list of all the bad possibilities. But then also take a minute and think about all the good things that could happen. Imagine the positive outcomes that are also possible. Because really in most situations in life, both are true, right? Bad things and good things can happen. But when we get to be very focused in dwelling in neuroticism, we can only see that left-hand column of everything bad.

Starting point is 00:51:58 Right. So we've now covered all five, the entire ocean acronym, Do you have any sort of overarching takeaways for this audience in terms of how to use the concept of understanding the Big Five personality traits and understanding that these are malleable and that we can choose to move along this spectrum if we want to? Are there any overarching takeaways for the audience in terms of how to apply this to their own lives? I would basically never tell yourself that you can't do something because you're just not that way. So if an opportunity comes up that requires public speaking and you've never spoken

Starting point is 00:52:40 publicly before and that just doesn't seem like something you would do, I would not let that stand in your way. I would say the only way to make it something that you would do is to do it. So take small steps every day to get you closer to that goal that you want to achieve and you will basically be working on that personality trait in question, whether it's conscientiousness, whether it's extraversion, whether it's something else, just changing a few small things every day or every week, going to one new thing, trying to time your shower and eyeliner routine, you know, whatever it is that you're working on. Just stacking those building blocks up will make it so that you actually can change your personality in the direction that you want.

Starting point is 00:53:25 Excellent. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to know more? Yeah, they can find me but better anywhere books are sold. They can read my writing at theatlantic.com. And I also have a substack at Olga hasan.com. Perfect. Thank you. We'll link to all of those in the show notes as well. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you, Olga. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, personality is not fixed. It's flexible. We've all heard people say, well, that's just how I am. But science now tells us. us that this isn't entirely true. Your personality traits are not set in stone. They can change over time, both naturally, as well as through deliberate effort. And this is really big news for anybody who wants to advance their career or step into entrepreneurship. Maybe you've always been really nervous. You think that you're too anxious to take financial risks, or you think that

Starting point is 00:54:20 you're not outgoing enough to be in a sales position, or that you're too disorganized, to be in management, understanding that your personality traits are flexible, they're malleable, that opens up a ton of possibilities for growth in exactly the areas that are holding you back professionally. So this really jives with the notion of having a growth mindset, which comes from Stanford professor Carol Dweck. And the thing about personality change is that initially the changes might be subtle, but you know how compounding works, really small incremental changes can compound over time. Anything, to quote a previous guest on this podcast, the Hill Bloom, anything greater than zero compounds. So no matter how small the change is,

Starting point is 00:55:08 these really small consistent shifts transform you in ways that over time become major. A lot of people do say, I haven't changed. I've been exactly the same since I was a little kid. I will say that that's pretty unusual. Most of us do change over time. The changes might be kind of subtle, so you might not notice it in someone else. They might not even notice it in themselves. So that's the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, work on increasing your conscientiousness. Because if there's one personality trait that is most directly linked to both career advancement and financial success, it's conscientiousness.

Starting point is 00:55:48 It's being organized, timely, productive, and following through. And that's the opposite of a law is assertive. the opposite of me, right? Like, for those of us who struggle with procrastination and with follow-through, how do we actually become more conscientious? Because as we've just established, we can. Personality can change. Where we fall along the conscientiousness spectrum, that can change. So how do we do it? Well, Olga shared a fascinating technique called episodic future thinking, which can help breakthrough procrastination. She recommends vividly visualizing the positive outcome of completing a task. Not just the end result, but everything, the praise, the recognition, the feeling of

Starting point is 00:56:34 relief or the feeling of achievement, everything that you can use to motivate yourself through the boring parts, give yourself that dopamine rush even when the parts are boring. This type of episodic future thinking, this mental rehearsal, creates a stronger connection between the tedium of today and the rewards of tomorrow, whether those rewards are a promotion or a bigger bank account or simply earning the respect of your colleagues. One strategy that I thought was really interesting is called episodic future thinking. And this is when you envision very, very clearly the end results that you want. Let's say you are procrastinating on a PowerPoint presentation that you're going to present to

Starting point is 00:57:19 like a team at work. Episodic future thinking is basically like, okay, take a minute and stop and think about that day. You're giving the PowerPoint. It's beautifully designed. You're so eloquent. Your boss and everyone else applauds and is like, wow, you're such a star. Finally, key takeaway number three. There are three traits, three key traits that successful entrepreneurs share. If you have ever wondered, if you have what it takes to start a business, well, there is actually a specific personality profile that tends to thrive in leadership roles. And that doesn't mean, oh, you're just born with the right trades. I'm putting born with in air quotes. You can't see me, but, you know, I'm putting born with in air quotes, right? Nobody is born with the right

Starting point is 00:58:04 traits. That's fixed mindset thinking. Instead, there are personality attributes that you can change and you can strengthen if you want to lead a company. And so the winning combination seems to be high extroversion, meaning you have a lot of energy for interacting with others. Low agreeableness, which means you need the ability to make tough decisions without excessive people pleasing. You need to quote the title of an excellent book. You need the courage to be disliked. I'm going to say that again.

Starting point is 00:58:38 I'm going to slow down and say that again. You need the courage to be disliked. and if you want to learn more, there's a great book with that title. High extroversion, which means you're great with people combined with low agreeableness, which means you're not a people pleaser. You don't have a fawning trauma response. And you also need low neuroticism, which means emotional stability, which will allow you to take bigger risks and which will allow you to deal with the anxieties, the stresses, the volatility, the uncertainty.

Starting point is 00:59:14 If you think of somebody like Steve Jobs, he was not always the nicest guy in the room, but he had vision, decisiveness, and comfort with risk. That combination of traits created one of the world's most valuable companies. And so the good news, no matter where you fall along the spectrum, is that by understanding these patterns, you know what specific areas you need to work on if your goal is entrepreneurship or even more generally, leadership. When they look at the personality types of CEOs, it's usually like extroverted, low agreeableness, and then like low neuroticism because starting a company involves a lot of risk and the people willing to take risks are able to at least manage their anxiety and not let it overwhelm them. I'm not saying people are going to love you. The classic example is like Steve Jobs, who was like he was a difficult person, but like a visionary. Those are three key takeaways from

Starting point is 01:00:11 this conversation with Olga Kazan. the author of a book called Me But Better, which is all about the science of personality change. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. First, subscribe to our newsletter, afford anything.com slash newsletter, where we release long, in-depth analyses that you will not find anywhere else. It's not on the podcast. It's not on YouTube. Certainly not on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter. What we publish in our newsletter, you won't find anywhere else. So afford a anything.com slash newsletter. It is absolutely free. Afford anything.com slash newsletter.

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Starting point is 01:01:44 My name is Paula Pan, and I'll meet you in the next episode.

Afford Anything - The Surprising Science of Six-Figure Thinking

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