Afford Anything - Your IQ Won't Save Your Career. Your AQ Might. – with Liz Tran

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

#691: Your IQ used to be your biggest career asset. Then AI scored in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, the SAT, and the MCAT — and suddenly the cognitive skills that once set you apart became something anyone can access for free. Executive coach Liz Tran joins us to talk about what actually drives career success and earning power now. Her answer: AQ, or agility quotient — your capacity to handle change, learn new skills fast, and keep moving when your industry shifts beneath you. The personal finance implications are real. The average half-life of a technical skill is five years. In tech, it's closer to two. That means the expertise you spent years building — and the salary that came with it — can become obsolete faster than a mortgage term. Tran argues the people who protect their earning power long-term aren't necessarily the most credentialed. They're the ones who can unlearn old ways and adapt quickly. We walk through her four AQ archetypes — the neurosurgeon, the astronaut, the firefighter, and the novelist — each with a different default approach to change. Knowing your type helps you understand where you might freeze up during a career pivot, a market downturn, or a high-stakes financial decision. Tran points out that analysis paralysis, something many real estate investors and career changers know well, often comes down to archetype — and there are practical fixes. We also cover her ABCD framework — anchors, bets, classroom, and discomfort — which maps out how to stay functional and decisive during volatile periods. And we get into the six thinking hats theory, specifically how pairing black-hat (downside) thinking with green-hat (future-focused) thinking can sharpen any major financial or career decision. 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. (00:00) Intro to AQ — agility quotient defined (03:19) IQ vs. EQ vs. AQ — how the three differ (04:09) Origins of IQ — born from industrialization (04:41) Birth of EQ — rise of the knowledge worker (05:01) Why AQ matters now — the tech revolution (06:19) AI and IQ — cognitive skills are now commoditized (07:51) Technical vs. durable skills — and why both matter (10:48) Half-life of skills — technical skills expire fast (13:41) Measuring durable skills — how to spot your gaps (15:59) The four AQ archetypes — neurosurgeon, astronaut, firefighter, novelist (25:08) Improving your weak spots — run toward discomfort (30:59) The ABCD framework — four pillars of high AQ (43:56) Anchors — people, places, routines that ground you (54:25) Six thinking hats — six ways to approach any problem (01:04:28) AQ is changeable — it's never too late to grow Share this episode with a friend, colleagues, and your postal person: https://affordanything.com/episode691 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's guest has coached the CEOs and founders of some of the fastest growing companies in the world. Collectively, her clients have raised over a billion dollars in funding and created more than 10 billion in enterprise value. And so when she talks about what separates people who thrive during times of uncertainty, like now, from the people who get left behind, she's drawing from her experience with a front row seat to how some of the high. highest performers think and operate. Her name is Liz Tran, and she's the founder of an AI coaching startup called Inner Genius and the author of a new book called AQ. AQ stands for agility quotient. Liz makes a case that in a career, in a world where careers, industries, jobs are rapidly changing faster than anyone had anticipated. The most important type of intelligence that you can develop, more important than IQ, more important than EQ, is something

that's called your AQ. And we will dive into what that is in today's episode. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship. Aconym is fire with two eyes, double I fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in Economic Reporting at Columbia, and today's episode is about two out of those five letters in double-I-fire. It's a little bit about increasing your income or at a minimum not decreasing your income in a world in which jobs are changing rapidly. It's how to keep up and not get left behind. That's a portion of the through line of today's conversation. And there's a bit not of

entrepreneurship per se, but of that entrepreneurial thinking, the mindset that you carry with you, regardless of what type of role you hold. So today's episode is about the letter I and the letter E. And we're going to describe all of that through the letters AQ. Because in a world where AI, there's a lot of letters here, where AI can outperform the best of us on the LSAT, the MCAT, in a world in which AI does better than us on those raw computation, horsepower measures, raw cognitive ability is not the differentiator that it used to be.

And so what protects your career, what protects your earning power and your ability to build wealth in the long term, is how quickly and how calmly you can adapt to a rapidly changing world. Enjoy this conversation. Hi, Liz. Hi, Paula. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Liz, can you define AQ? What is it? AQ is a new form of intelligence, and it stands for your agility quotient. Essentially, that's your capacity to handle change, disappointment, uncertainty. It's a standalone intelligence in the same way we think about IQ or EQ. Tell me about how AQ differs from EQ. It's clear how it differs from IQ in the form of standardized tests like IQ tests that we're all familiar with. How is it not encompassed under EQ? Yeah, they're related.

They are actually different in terms of the skills that create both. Actually, let me pause right here. I just realized we haven't actually defined EQ and there might be some people listening who aren't familiar with that term either. Yes, definitely. Maybe we'll just even do IQ. We'll throw IQ in there too as a trifecta. Perfect. IQ is your cognitive ability. It's a measure of that. And it's only been around for about 150 years. In the late 1800s, as students around the world were beginning to go to mandatory education, the world needed a way to sort, rank, and place them into the right classroom. This was the advent of industrialization. So you'd leave your family farm and you'd go work somewhere else. So people needed a way to assess and judge your ability. And then that continued on. It turned

into the IQ test. The government used it. School systems used it. The military used it. And in the 90s, as we moved from industrialization to globalization, suddenly skills like collaboration, communication, management became much more important as this role of knowledge worker popped up. And that's where EQ was born, because suddenly your cognitive abilities weren't enough to guarantee you do a good job. You also had to be interpersonally strong with people who came from different walks of life, different cultures, because you weren't just the person doing the work.

oftentimes you were a steward of the work ensuring that other people were successful to. And that was 35 years ago. And here we are now in the middle of a technology revolution. And your AQ is now the most important intelligence because the world is growing and changing at such an exponential rate. I think all of us have experienced this in some way, even in the past few years since the pandemic, when suddenly what was up was down, left was right? And that's what AQ speaks to. And the difference is that EQ is very much about your interpersonal skills with others, whereas AQ, your agility quotient, is a psychological orientation towards life. So are you the type of person who faces chaos and change and is completely undone and overwhelmed by it? Or are you the type of person who sees that and not only can thrive, but can find enjoyment and happiness, within that as well. Can you talk about how AQ relates to the AI advent? Many of the people who are

listening to this are knowledge workers and therefore a bit nervous about the way the AI is going to certainly change their jobs. AI is going to change everybody's jobs, but knowledge workers in particular. Yes, it's such a great question. IQ used to be the way that we would predict if someone was successful. And the way that you measure IQ is you look at cognitive ability. like memory, processing, speed, synthesis, analytics. Those are all things that AI is very good at. And arguably better than us. So even the newer language models, they're scoring in the 99th percentile of IQ tests.

They can beat us at the LSAT, at chess games, at the SAT, even at the MCAT, which is much more about specialized knowledge. suddenly the rarity of having a high IQ or having a high IQ has actually become very cheap and very common. AI has leveled the playing field from an IQ perspective because even if you're someone who doesn't classically score as smart on an IQ test, you have it at your fingertips. You can have that memory. You can have that synthesis. You could have that knowledge.

So what actually does become a differentiator? and that's your AQ because what you can learn how to do is understand how to use all these technologies very quickly. So a big part of AQ is learning aptitude, which basically is about how fearlessly and how calmly do you embrace new subject matters and learn new skills? And how quickly also can you not only learn, but unlearn old ways of being and adopt new ways of being? And so that's actually what we need. And the analogy that I use, in a world of AI is that your IQ becomes like a car. It's a commoditized product. And your AQ is you, the driver of that. And you are the one who is being rated on your responsiveness, your reflexes,

your ability to take those hairpin turns. That's your agility quotient. Whereas anyone can access that high IQ vehicle. You can get a fast car. That's AI. Would it be accurate to say then? AQ is adaptability, comfort with change. Would those all be accurate descriptors? Exactly. In the same way that with IQ and EQ, there are many skills that roll up into this overall intelligence. It's exactly as you said. Are you adaptable? Are you comfortable in ambiguity on certain situations? Are you good at problem solving where you haven't done that before? Can you bushwhack, which means can you create a path where there hasn't been one for you before? It's interesting because the world used to be such that there were career ladders. A ladder is something that you can explicitly see in front of you and you climb upwards using the same muscles towards the same vertical. And that's just not the case anymore.

None of us will have a career ladder. Gen Z is anticipated to have 18 different jobs across six industries in their post-educational lives. And this was a study that came out in 2023. So I imagine it's probably intensified since then, since that wasn't even the beginning of the AI revolution. And I think it's not uncommon for us to all expect that we'll have to change our jobs multiple times. And so the key here with AQ is how do you become an all-purpose general athlete who can weather any situation? no matter how unpredictable it might be. You use the term all-purpose general athlete.

How does that dovetail with the value of specialization? So the way that I divide that is into two camps. The first camp is your technical skills, which speak to specialization. Anything that's a technical skill is something that is bespoke to a specific job. Financial analysts. Those skills are technical,

graphic design, even brand marketing or writing, being a writer, I work primarily as an executive coach to CEOs. That's a technical skill because I can't take that to another job, right? The work that I do technically as a coach, I couldn't use that to be a financial analyst. Technical skills are so important as we move into this world of AI, we need to remember that they are not our full identity, that we exist beyond that because we can learn, use them and discard them when they become irrelevant. The average half-life of a technical skill is five years, and within the tech industry, it's actually closer to about two or two and a half years. So very quickly, you find that anything that you've spent painstaking time learning is not going to be relevant, certainly within five years. You'll have to

relearn it again. On the other hand, these general abilities, we call them durable skills, because they're durable across industries, across time. And those are your more human-oriented skills like communication, written in verbal communication, problem-solving, even learning aptitude, which is what we talked about before, fearlessness with trying new things. So your durable skills are actually what you need to hone in addition to technical skills. So holding that balance, and it's harder actually in many ways to remember to invest in your durable skills because they're less urgent. Right. And so that requires always having a goal for yourself, whether it's a book that you're reading around personal development, or it's a course that you're taking, or it's just

simply a goal that you set for yourself. So that's actually the most important thing is having the self-awareness to know that you are beyond just your technical skills. And I think that the way that we describe ourselves and our jobs reflects that. So when people ask me what I do, I lead with durable skills and I actually say my job is to help people reach their greatest potential, durable skill, and I do that through my technical skills of writing, serving as an executive coach, and giving speeches and building workshops. Those are all technical skills. They will likely change and I'll wait them differently depending on what the future needs. But my overall durable skill and my mission in this world is to help people reach their greatest potential.

The durable skills, those sound like transferable skills. Yes, exactly, exactly. I think one of the challenges that many people find is that when you try to hone these skills, honing these skills is often non-quantifiable. As opposed to technical skills where often technical skills, there are benchmarks. In some cases, there's licensure requirements. There are quantifiable measures to assess your progress in learning a technical skills. skill. But when it comes to durable skills or transferable skills, such as interpersonal communication,

there aren't those quantifiable benchmarks. So you don't have any way of knowing if the work that you're doing is efficient, effective. There's often not much of a feedback mechanism. How does a person solve for that? It's very true. And that is where there's a bit of self-awareness and introspection and reflection that needs to happen. And I think that's why we can actually avoid honing our durable skills for some time because we may not even know that we have gaps in specific areas.

So what I recommend is that when you're thinking about your own work, take your job and write down all of the durable skills that you think go into that work. And then look at where you think, I haven't, you actually heard anyone say that I'm great at this before. You know, I haven't actually been maybe rewarded or promoted or acknowledged for my contribution in this type of area. And then you can start to see, okay, maybe there's something that I need to do here. For instance, I was working with a client. He came up through. the computer science track, and he's a very much a product-led CEO. We did this exercise, and he has never been specifically given feedback about this, but he's certainly never been

commended for his communication. And people have said, oh, that's a beautiful deck that you made for this board meeting that we had. But no one's ever been like, hey, you're a great communicator, and he noticed he wasn't being invited to panels, even though his company is very much the market leader in what they do. It's an AI company. And so we could infer that was probably a place where he needed to do some work. And the way that you can start to create those, even though there's not licensing or tests that you can take, is that you can start to create some goals for yourself. So his goal was to be invited on some podcasts, be on some panels, and then to do a self-assessment for himself afterwards. So you can create some structure around this. I have another client who was working on

her confidence as a female founder. And it was very much a self-evaluation at the end of a fundraising cycle where after every pitch, she would rate herself on how confident she felt. And she would essentially create, you know, descriptions around those tiers. So I think in a way, you're taking something that feels a little squishy. And you're trying to put as much quantitative information around it as possible. What's interesting about your answer is that you're recommending that people notice the absence of something, which is often something that we overlook. It's that famous Sherlock Holmes, you know, Sherlock Holmes once solved a mystery by noticing that the dog didn't bark, you know, which was his clue that the person was familiar to the dog.

Yes. So noticing the absence of something provided a clue. In the Sherlock Holmes case, it was an important. clue as to who the killer was. But absence is often something, you know, we notice the presence of things. We don't notice the absence of things. Yes. And I would also venture to say that we sometimes don't even appreciate our own greatest strengths because they feel so common to us, because we draw on them every day, that we might not even acknowledge that we do possess very specific durable skills. We undervalue that. We think, oh, well, it comes so naturally for me, it must be easy for everyone.

And so I think the flip side of building your durable skills is also knowing where you're really strong and appreciating that because generally it's a psychological bias where we tend to undermine and undervalue our own strengths. Let's talk about a person's – I don't want to use the word personality. That's not quite accurate. but a person's orientation, their archetype, when it comes to their ability to be comfortable with change and agility, you actually have created a framework where there are four particular archetypes. And I want to walk through those. And people who are listening will probably be able to recognize themselves in one or two of these archetypes. Yes, definitely. And that goes to what I was saying earlier, which is that we don't really tend to see our own strengths and the archetypes are window into that. It's a way to articulate and codify our style for handling change, uncertainty,

disappointment, discomfort. So the first one is the neurosurgeon. And the neurosurgeon's coping mechanism for, you know, big churn and big volatility in life is excellence. They're perfectionists. They do everything they do with a very high standard of quality. It's called the neurosurgeon because neurosurgeons spend 15 years studying to do what they do and they never walk into any surgery without a full team that is fully briefed and prepared. So the neurosurgeons in the world are the ones that can handle a lot of complexity and a lot of detail and they're pushing themselves to be perfect in everything that they do. On the outset, they might seem a little lower aque because they're methodical and slow, but they are actually high aq because once they decide

that they want to make a change, they're resilient. Nothing will stop them from doing that. The opposite is the astronaut, which is very fast, as fast as the neurosurgeon is slow, and they're called the astronaut because they live at the edge of innovation. They're floating around in space. They have a vision for the future that other people may not be able to see and they're fast. They're fast at the two types of change that identify. The first is called reactive, which is the thing that happened to us. The second is proactive, the things that we try to change about ourselves and about our work. And the astronaut jumps into both of those types of change. They are extremely high aque, but the downside is that it might be jarring for the people around them.

So if you're someone who has heard, people say, slow down, or I don't understand what you're saying, Or can you explain that to me? You might be an astronaut because your mind and your vision is already, you know, two years in the future and other people are a little bit slower to catch up with you. Next is the firefighter. It's great in chaotic emergency situations. They're the people that you lead on whenever there's something that spontaneously erupts. They're not very planful, though, because they know that they can handle anything as it comes. They put planning as a lower priority.

because they think, why even plan when everything is going to change anyway? And so they're very high aque when it comes to reactive change, but a little bit lower aque when it comes to proactive change. And then the opposite is of the novelist. So novelist's work is to write a story, make a plot, plan out a whole world. They love planning. I'm a novelist. I always know my quarterly goals, my five-year plan. I have everything that I need to pack. for the week. I'm just very organized. I find a lot of comfort in that. It's a way of controlling chaos. But when the unexpected happens and throws me for a loop, I do not deal with it very well. If a flight gets canceled, if my child care gets canceled, if an important meeting I was looking

forward to moves, I think I don't handle it very well. Because it's the opposite. I'm great at proactive change, but not good at reactive change, the opposite of the fire. And what's important about these archetypes is that it's a style. It's your way that you express your aq and one is not better than the other, but it's just being able to appreciate and see the deck of cards you've been dealt and knowing how to make the most of each hand. Do you know your archetype? Yes, so I took the quiz that you have on what your archetype and I was actually an equal split between three of the answers. And then there was one that I had absolutely zero, clearly not, and then I was actually equally split between the other three. So the one that I was clearly not

was the neurosurgeon. No way it does not resemble me whatsoever. And then my answers to the rest of the questions in that quiz were almost equally split between firefighter astronaut and novelist. What do you make of that? What do you think? The description of both the novelist and the firefighter resonate. I enjoy the act of planning insofar as it's kind of daydreaming about the future but with a semblance of a plan, a concept of a plan. I like that, but I also like the flexibility, the ability to change. I like the adrenaline of dealing with crisis situations. I used to be a news reporter and I loved breaking news.

So I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie in that regard. So both the proactive planning of the novelist as well as the comfort with, in fact, actually kind of thriving on chaos, on breaking news, on running into a burning house and figuring out what to do in the moment, I thrive on both of those. The astronaut, I guess maybe the... the fact that I had some answers there probably just reflects the fact that I'm a little bit of both the firefighter and the novelist. I actually agree. I think what's happening is that, I mean, having listened to the podcast, I think you're a very high AQ person. And also even the work that you did to sort of pioneer the podcast space, that's very astronaut.

I think a lot of the way that you speak about finance, investing, it is your own vision for it, right? It's like it's a little bit of a hybrid of money psychology, of, you know, investing best practices, of, you know, there's a lot of things that you pull together. That feels very astronaut to me because it is your specific vision and expression for how you talk about this multifaceted topic. the most high IQ people actually can draw from all the types. And so I love that your background, you know, you worked for the Peace Corps. You had breaking news reporting. There was a lot that went into that before you went to Columbia. And so you probably were able to pick up a lot of firefighter stuff that you now pull into your work.

And obviously, with your work, you do have to be very planful with mapping at how things are going to go. And so that's what I always say is that we all have a default type that shows up at our core. probably how we were as children or how people know us. But the goal is to be able to draw from every type and use that in specific situations. If you have a toolbox and you only have a hammer, hammer is not going to be appropriate for everything. But if you can draw from the screwdriver and the saw, that becomes really flexible and very high a cue.

For a person who's listening to this, who has identified with one or two or three of the archetypes, and in doing so, they now have a concept of how good they are at proactive change and at reactive change. For a person who's listening to this who's thinking, well, you know what, I'm actually not that great at proactive or I'm not that great at reactive. What should they do? But where do they go with that knowledge? Throw yourself into the arena that you aren't as good at and embrace it. So for instance, my mantra as a novelist is, I love chaos.

because I actually don't, but if I convince myself that I do, and so I really try to put myself into situations where I can practice, that's actually the key of it is that it doesn't mean that you're never going to be good at it. It just means that has been your general inclination, and you sort of, you know, when we have a soft spot, what do we do? We try to protect that soft spot. But instead, what you do is you run towards the discomfort. You run towards that feeling of, I'm not very good at that because it's that immersion therapy that will actually make you really good at it. And what I will say is that we humans were meant for agility. If you think about our ancestors, they were hunter-gatherer nomads roaming the planes.

They had no idea where they were going to sleep or where their next meal was going to come from. Our brains have been set up for that type of life. but it's only because we live in 98% temperature-controlled environments, right? We spend 98% of our lives being able to control the exact temperature the room is, where the car is, we know exactly where our food's going to come, we press it with the button, we get to have any modifications we want. That spirit of us of agility is still there. So you take your archetype, you look at that type of change that maybe you are not so good at

or those areas where you need to grow, and then you just say, okay, I'm going to just pretend like I love this and I'm going to thrust myself into this until I get better. You mentioned throwing yourself into discomfort. I know that you also have a framework. It's the ABCDs. So let's talk through those, but let's go in reverse order. We'll start with D because it dovetails with what we've been talking about.

That D is for discomfort. It is for throwing yourself into uncomfortable or something. Sometimes, I'm using dangerous in air quotes, but dangerous situations. Dangerous is a good word. Even if it's not physically dangerous, like we won't die from it. Our nervous systems can feel that way. Our fight or flight reflux could kick in. It makes us feel like there's a lot of danger.

These letters that you're talking about, ABCD, these are the pillars of what you need in your life to be a high-A-Q person. And so whenever you are in moments of particular volatility or change where you really need to draw on your AQ, you can do a quick check across the ABCs and basically say, do I have enough of each of my life right now? Because these are what are going to pull me through this moment of upheaval. So it could be anything. It could be a time where you just have a lot of work on your plate and you're feeling very stressed. or it could be acute situations like a promotion or moving to a new city or a new family member or an illness with your parents, whatever it might be. These are the times where you think, okay, I'm going to walk myself through and we'll start with D.

And the first is discomfort. And this is the idea that most of the time we try to arrange our lives to have as minimal discomfort as possible. To be high aQ, you have to flip that on its head. And you have to say, actually, I'm going to perceive discomfort. as positive signal. This is a good sign that I am moving my life in the right direction. Comfort, we don't need that. I need to feel like I'm always a little bit over my skis, because that's when you know that you're growing and you're changing. And this is a psychological reversal, but it's so important because I think sometimes when we feel like we're not doing well

at something, we beat ourselves up. We say, I'm failing. But the reframe on that, is I'm growing. I'm growing my AQ. And that's why this pillar is so powerful because it takes these situations that can normally make us feel pretty bad about ourselves and actually reframe to understanding that we're growing into higher AQ people. To express this pillar is what I was talking about before, which is almost like the embrace of chaos or discomfort. And the analogy I give is in the same way where, let's say you're training for a marathon, if you feel like your muscles are sore, you think to yourself, oh yeah, I did it. I've been pushing myself. Yeah. So if you feel uncomfortable, you think, great, I'm building my AQ muscle here. So it's just that seeking, that searching,

and knowing that it's not a negative signal about who you are, but it's actually very positive. So that's D. The exercise analogy is a great one because whenever I go to the gym and then I feel muscle soreness. I actually love that feeling. Yes. I think many people can relate to it because it's the feeling of, wow, I did something. Exactly. Wow. Feel how sore I am. I did something at the gym the other day. Exactly. And it happens because the muscle actually breaks and it releases lactic acid, right? And then it comes back and it's even stronger. The same thing is happening to us psychologically. All right. So that's D. But in order to be able to have that comfort with discomfort of the four pillars that you've outlined, I actually kind of want to jump to the other end of the alphabet. I guess that is where we start, because we do need

strong anchors in order to be comfortable with discomfort. Can you talk about the letter A? Yes. Yes, and the two go hand at hand. So A stands for anchors. And just like a boat has an anchor that keeps it steady in rough seas. Anchors are the people, places, and routines that give us stability and grounding. Those are your family members, your friendships, your community. It's also the places you go. Maybe it's your home, your gym. It's your park that's right by your house.

In terms of routines, it can be something as simple as in the afternoon, sometimes you take a walk at the end of your day. or you have your coffee a specific way in the morning before you check your emails. And while this may seem like things that we all have that we take for granted, in types of stress, we actually drop a lot of these things. We may not reach out to our community or our friends because we think, I do not need to do this right. I can't have social engagements. We may not go to the places that make us feel really good because we don't have time.

And we drop these exercise or spiritual routines that give us grounding because we just feel too exhausted to add something else to our plate. And so this pillar is all about recognizing that anchors have importance, they're valuable, and the more chaotic your life is at any given time, the more discomfort you face, the more you need to even that out with your anchors. And anchors can be, they can be physical places, a home, an office, a third place like a coffee shop or a bar. They can be people. They can be rituals. What's interesting to me about anchors is that they span nouns and verbs. Yes, definitely. Yeah, it's the things that we have in our lives, the people, places, and things we have. And it's also the things that we do. And so if you're wondering if something is an

anchor, then just think about how you feel. Do you feel a little bit more grounded? Can you breathe a little easier. Do you feel comfortable? And so that's actually what it is. They represent comfort to us. And so when we have a lot of discomfort in our lives, we have to actually manufacture comfort too. There's something called the Yerkes-Dotson curve, which basically says that we do need some stress in our lives to be operating at peak performance. Too little stress and we're bored. And our thinking, our problem solving, our creativity, it actually takes a big decline. because our brains say, we don't need to do these things. We're so comfortable. And so there is a level of stress that is good. There's an optimal zone. But when you pass that

zone, then you kick into fighter flight. And that's when actually those prefrontal cortex operations shut down. And so you want to straddle this optimal space where it's kind of like being in flow state where there's just enough discomfort to feel like you're in the unknown and unfamiliar and all your best traits kick in, but not so much that you feel like you're dying. Right. Let's talk about, I actually kind of want to go to the letter C. We're really jumping around the alphabet year. Let's do it.

Yeah. We're embracing AQ. We're jumping all around. Yeah, I kind of want to go to the letter C because I think it sets us up really well for the letter B. Can you talk about the letter C embracing life as a classroom? Yes, C is for classroom. and it's this idea that the world is full of moments to learn.

My favorite example of this is when Satya Nadella took over a CEO of Microsoft in 2014. And there was a lot for him to do. The stock price had been stagnant for many years. Microsoft was seen as a loser and many of the newer technologies like mobile and social. They had a bad reputation for being this really slow-moving bureaucratic beast. And Satya Nadella had to make a lot of big decisions. Was he going to, you know, sell some parts of the business? Was he going to focus on enterprise? But what he did primarily and did first was to transition the employee culture from being a

know-at-all culture where IQ experience was rewarded into being a learn-at-all culture. We're asking questions, trying new things, seeing the world from beginner's mind was what was valued. So that's the way I think about this, where, it's like obviously in life, we all have to just get things done, right? We have to operate. We have to perform. The foundation for that is to see the world with a learn at all mindset. And particularly the more senior you are, the more experience you have in any domain,

then you have even more of an impetus to adopt the classroom mindset. Because otherwise you get stuck in the status quo. You think, been here, done that. I know how to do this, but you miss out on all this new signal. And our world is changing so exponentially that none of us, no matter how seasoned we are, can assume that we are the experts. Didn't you say there's some research around people who ask for advice are actually viewed as more competent by virtue of asking for that advice? Yes. Yes, that is a study that was done through Harvard. And it shows that exactly that. We think that the answers are the way to show our expertise. But actually, it is the people who, ask questions that are regarded as more credible.

Which makes sense because if you know enough to be able to ask intelligent questions, that is, I mean, that is a sign of knowledge. Yes, it is. And it's the one thing that I look for to indicate aQ, if I'm at a dinner party and I see someone who's asking a ton of questions, I think, I bet that person's pretty high IQ. I want to talk to them later. Hmm, interesting. Are there any elements of life that should not be regarded as a classroom, or are there any instances where one might be learning the wrong lessons?

I think that especially for people who have imposter syndrome or tend to be really hard on themselves, just know that you do actually have expertise. And the classroom mindset isn't about questioning yourself or your own abilities. It's just about exploring your aperture for the way you see the world. world. And that's what I'll say is like, you know, there are some people who I think are really tough on themselves and they'll say, I don't want to take this leap or make this decision because I need to learn more. I need to learn more. I need to do more research. I need to ask more people. And what I would say to that is you can take the classroom a little too far. At some point, you're going to have to take action. And that maybe is actually a good segue to

B, which is bets. That's the final pillar we'll talk about. And a bet is a bet is a about taking decisive action when you don't know what the outcome is going to be. Betts are what move us through any volatility because you don't get through a storm by staying still. You kind of have to like go around it. And so that's what a bet is all about. It's about creating movement. It's about creating momentum. And sometimes if we're stuck in classroom for too long, you know, I think, oh, you know,

get certified in this or I need to do more research. And what a bet says is at some point you have to leap. And if you're waiting until you have 100% certainty, it's already too late. And that is a good antidote for analysis paralysis because I hear a lot of people in I teach a class on real estate investing. And the number one thing that I hear from my students over and over is I keep getting stuck in analysis paralysis. I'm so afraid of making the wrong decision that I'm frozen and I can't make any decision at all. Yeah, and I think that particularly for investing, whether it's real estate investing or otherwise, the decision to buy or sell, you're never going to have complete certainty around that,

but you do have to have a good enough framework that you trust into and that you can make that leap when you get to a point where you think, okay, I feel like I've learned enough. And so I think that moment's going to be different for everyone. And so again, it's about the self-awareness to know if, If you're a neurosurgeon, for instance, you might feel like you need a higher degree of certainty than an astronaut or a firefighter. And if you're someone who takes a ton of risks all the time, maybe you need to dial that back a little bit more and learn more and wait more, even hold to your strategy more,

versus constantly changing it. And so I think part of this is just about knowing your archetype, knowing your default settings, and then just adjusting to a place where you feel a little bit of discomfort. Yeah, versus if you're the firefighter archetype, you might embrace so much discomfort because you kind of thrive on that a little bit that you've overbett. Yes, and also I've noticed that some of my clients who are firefighters, sometimes they even create chaos. Yeah.

Because it feels so good for them to fix those problems. and their teams just say to them, was that really necessary? Was that actually an emergency? And they have to learn, oh, okay, their chaos is actually, it feels like comfort for them. And so for a firefighter to be high aqueue and to operate and discomfort might actually mean feeling bored, feeling too steady, feeling like things are a little slow. Maybe that's their growing edge. All right.

We're going to take one final break. And then when we come back, let's talk about the six hat theory and why the green and black stand out in particular. Welcome back. Can you tell us about the six hat theory? It was six, right? Yes. Okay, good. It's perfect.

Woohoo. The six thinking hats theory is that there are a lot of different ways to solve a problem. And there's no one that's particularly right. And each of those different styles of thinking is represented by a different hat. So just to go through them super quickly before we focus on green and black, which I think are the most important, white hat, information, that's just your baseline facts and figures of situations. So for instance, if I'm asking you, Paula, about your podcast, I might just be like, how many episodes do you release? How many listeners do you have? So if I say, just to dive into each one of these, so if I say, okay, yeah, we release episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays, we have almost 700 episodes that we've released in total. Those are examples of white hat information. Exactly.

Just the facts. Just the facts. And then related to that, I might say, Paula, what's your process? How do you select your guests? How do you choose the topics? That would be blue hat. Exactly. That's your blue hat.

So we're getting into the process. Right. What's your workflow? How do you book your guests? How do you choose your guests? How do you book them? Actually, you asked me a couple of questions about that before we started recording, you asked me how, I guess this might be a combination of white and blue, but you asked

me how many times a week do I record? Yes, which is funny because I'm very much a blue hat thinker. Now that you reflect back on that, I'm like, of all the things I could have asked you, it's such a weird thing to ask, but that's the way I always like to do. So funny, like at dinner party conversations, you know, someone will be talking about their business and I'm like, well, what's your margin? And my husband's like, that's rude. I'm like, I just want to know. Oh, I need to know. That's a blue hat thinking. You know, I want to understand the infrastructure underneath the product. But then let's go to Yellow Hat, which if I ask you, Paula, describe your podcast with a Yellow Hat. That would be all the positive aspects of it.

What would you say? Well, I get to, I mean, fundamentally, a big part of my job is to read a book and then have a one-on-one conversation with the author about it. What a cool job description, right? Yes. I get to talk to these innovative thinking. and leaders in subjects that I find fascinating, and I get to sit down and have an in-depth one-on-one conversation with them, and then share that with the world and by virtue of doing so impact the lives of tens of thousands of people. That's a very yellow hat. So now let's see the opposite. Put on the black hat and describe your relationship with your podcast, the things that are more challenging. Yeah. I'm terrified about the possibility that

AI can now so accurately replicate my voice. And that poses a huge risk because I have thousands of hours of my voice freely available in the public domain. So it would be incredibly easy for anyone to duplicate my voice and use it for nefarious purposes, whether that's, you know, calling my parents with some kind of a scam. Right. Right. Or whether that's publishing something on the internet. that sounds like me but isn't me. Yes. Right. And certainly I've had so many duplicate accounts, spam duplicate accounts on both Facebook and Instagram where people have imitated me and then have messaged people I know. And in multiple cases, there have been instances where people I know have been duped into thinking that they were messaging with me on a social media platform.

And it wasn't me. It was an imitator and impersonator. Wow. And that was just by virtue of accounts, text and photo-based accounts. So now that duplication has extended or imitation has extended into voice and pretty soon, I'm sure, photo and video. That is really terrifying. Yes. Sorry, that was a longer black hat answer than you probably wanted. Man. No, I actually didn't even, I mean, it makes total sense. Okay, so let's do Red Hat now, which is describing. your work, your podcast through the lens of feelings. What does it make you feel? Oh. I'm not good at this. You're like, this is not my hat. Take it off. Yeah, this is not my hat. I feel awkward talking about feelings. I prefer to stick to facts and processes. And then the final hat is our green hat, which is about hopeful optimism and designing the future. So when you think about where this podcast could

go, what shape it could take. What does that optimistic, planful side of you say? Oh. Well, I would love to, in the future, have deeply researched episodes that are just deep dives into particular topics. I'm talking like two to three hour, like true deep dives so that we're providing university level education on some specific subject matter, Maybe one day we might do index funds, for example, or whatever the topic is. But we pick something and we go super, super deep into it. Like, I'm thinking about the type of topic that we would have to assemble a bigger team. And it would take, you know, but I'm imagining what would it look like if we spent six months researching one two to three hour episode?

That is beautiful. That's a perfect example. Also, just as a listener, I would love that. So out of one, like one data point, but I'm rooting for that. And you can remember green hat because green is like a plant. It's growing. What is this going to grow into? What could this grow into? So those are the hats that you can wear. And in this AI-dominated, uncertain, unstable world that we live in, green and black are the two to wear. And they seem like they're opposites, right? Because black is all about protecting your downsides.

It's about seeing through a critical lens, thinking about what could go wrong. and at the same time, green hat is about what could go well? What if everything went perfectly? What if all of my dreams and my hopes came true? And it's hard because we tend to fall into one camp or the other when we're looking at a particular topic. So either we are just very bullish, gung-ho, we think that anything can happen, or we're feeling pretty down about it and we're feeling bearish.

And the most important lens to wear is both simultaneously because they hold two contradictory points of view. So even when I think about investing, you want to, not you, but one wants to constantly consume information, particularly if there's a very high stakes decision to be made about, like if you're thinking about whether or not I should sell my house or sell my stake in this investment, you want to think about everything that could go wrong, right? You want to put your black hat on and you want to do a lot of researching, you want to do a lot of diligence, you want to anticipate that things could go really poorly and model out those scenarios through a premortem. But the same time, too, you also want to be very future-oriented and thinking about how

the world is changing and growing and how you can incorporate those new perspectives into your investing mindset. So I just think about that often where whenever there's a big decision for me to make in life, I look at it through both lenses so that I'm making sure that I'm not bringing either too much of a negativity or a confirmation bias to what I'm doing. So a way of doing a system of checks and balances with your own mind. Right. Negativity bias and confirmation bias.

Yes. Right. To what extent might a person fool themselves as they're doing the self-assessment? Yeah. I think it happens all the time. I mean, we have, as I mentioned before, we humans are notoriously bad at seeing ourselves clearly. Yeah. There was a study done that analyzed the top 1,000 greatest chess players.

they consistently rank themselves as being worse at chess than they actually were. But then when you look at novices, people who just started playing the game of chess within months, they say that they're much better than they actually are. It sounds like Dunning Kruger effect. Yes, exactly, exactly. We just need to accept that we probably won't have a super accurate view of ourselves most of the time. But it's great because that's where we can bring in our fellow archetypes to help us with this. So if I'm actually thinking through a problem, like the other day, I was thinking about whether or not this certain schedule that I have coming up in the spring was actually doable or not given just some constraints I have around personal life and time.

I pulled a novelist friend and I said, look at this schedule of all these cities I have to go to and my travel and tell me everything that can go wrong. I just want to know what you think. She scared me. She was like, well, if you miss your flight here, you're never going to make it there, and then you're going to be behind. And she was like, I probably would book two flights here. I would book one, like the actual flight that you want, and I would book another one an hour later. You know, like, so she went through this whole thing. She was like, okay, well, what if this even moves or this train doesn't come? So that was very helpful.

Wow. And then I reached out to an astronaut friend, and I said, help me imagine how expansive this speaking tour could be. and how much I can fill it with. Like, what could it become? She thought, oh, well, what if you got a sponsor for this event? Or what if you brought in a conversation partner here? All these things that I probably won't do, honestly, but it was really good to hear how she was thinking really outside the box with things.

And maybe I will do some of them. But she was thinking she was saying, you know, you probably wouldn't even have to, you know, you could maybe ask this event to move to this time to make it easier for you. So I think that it's helpful to bring in the other archetypes because astronauts wear the green hat really well. as do novelists, right? They're very intentional and planful. And then you can bring in neurosurgeons and even actually firefighters sometimes for the black hat because firefighters are so astute at problem solving. They can actually even catch problems before they happen. Right. Could you train AI prompts to think as each of these archetypes? That is a green hat way to think. I love that. Honestly, I've never heard that before, but yeah, I think so. Definitely. Absolutely. Nice. Yeah, definitely, I mean, I have heard of being able to train AI to help, you know, do a maybe it's like Myers-Briggs or something, think from this perspective. I hadn't thought about it with the archetypes. I think that would be really useful.

Right. I can see AI prompts both for thinking in the style of each of the archetypes as well as for working through some issue with each of the six hacks. Yes, definitely. Here's a brain dump of all of the information about X. Yes. Now talk about X from the lens of each of the six packs. Yes. And now I'm thinking, okay, I'm having a meeting with my team. Write an agenda from these three hats perspective so that I can make sure that I'm addressing the topic from each of those viewpoints.

That would be very cool. I like this. This is making me think even more that you're an astronaut. So during the break, we were having a conversation. conversation about fact that my score was like basically equally one-third, one-third, one-third in novelist firefighter astronaut. And you were saying that probably is indicative of me being an astronaut. Yes. Because astronauts, the nature of an astronaut is that you can take the best of being a novelist and being a firefighter. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Cool. All right. I'm in the sky.

Actually, I'm above the sky. I'm in space. I'm in space. You're just floating around. with a small tether to hoot. I'm barely tethered. I'm like loosely tethered to reality. I know that's the way I always think about the astronaut. It's so funny. The other day, one of my friends was saying, may we all be reincarnated as astronauts one day?

It seems like such a nice. She's actually a neurosurgeon. She was like, well, that sounds pretty nice. Yeah, big ideas. Lots of big ideas. But there is very much an implementation gap. That's the downside of being an astronaut is there can be such an implementation gap unless you surround yourself with people who are great operators. That's exactly what it is.

And it's because the astronaut is led by passion. So each of the archetypes has one fundamental motivator. For instance, the neurosurgeons is excellence. And the astronauts is passion. They have to love what they do. And if they don't, they're not interested in doing it. And that's actually where the implementation gap comes from. And also because they see the future vision so clearly, their mind is already there. They're not necessarily thinking about the steps that get there of going A, B, C, D to get to Z finally. They're already at Z. Their mind has already happened. Right. Yeah. And especially if you're an astronaut without blue hat thinking. Yes, exactly. Right. So for instance, with your green hat idea for doing these very well-reli,

researched deep dive episodes that are two, three hours long that get into, you know, all the nuances of a specific topic. You have the vision for that. You know what you want it to feel like. You know what the value you want to deliver for the listener. And then someone on your team can actually say, okay, we're going to put X amount of research. This is how much more each podcast episode is going to cost us. This is like how we're going to hire a specific researcher. This is where the job posting we're going to do and like all that stuff can happen. But it can't happen. without your vision and being able to explain that to your team. Right. Exactly.

Yes. So astronauts have to get really good at giving the people that they live and work with very detailed context for understanding their vision. And it's hard sometimes because you can see it so clearly. It already exists. So it's a little bit harder to break it down to its component parts to say, okay, so I started here, then I took a left turn, then I took a right turn that I added this piece of information. But that's actually the skill is that you do not need to do all the implementation yourself, but you do need to help people get to where you are through communication.

Right. And you need to be surrounded by people who can take the chaos of that communication and can organize it into those blue hat plans and processes. Exactly. And probably a black hat person, you know, to say, okay, Paula, we're going to do this, but it's going to take more time than you think it is, or whatever it might be, whatever those constraints are. I definitely have some serious yellow hat tendencies. I mean, there's certain advantages to being an astronaut with a yellow hat, that polyana-ish, very optimistic attitude. But yeah,

it can make me impatient with the black hat people. Yes, I think of black hat is glass half empty. Right. You know, yellow hat is glass half full. And then green hat is like, we can take this glass. We could improve it and sell it for three times what we bought it for. Nice. Well, are there any things that I haven't asked you about? Is there anything that you want to emphasize when it comes to developing AQ? I think we covered a ton. Thank you for reading the book.

And the last thing I'll say is just to emphasize this point is that even if you feel like in the past you haven't been the best at change, maybe you feel like. maybe you feel like you've frozen up or you have regret around a specific decision that you made. For instance, I have a client who really wishes that he had pivoted into an adjacent business before a competitor could do it. And he has a lot of regret about that because he didn't prioritize it. He thought he could get six more months. Within two months, a competitor had already taken the lead. So we all have these moments where maybe we weren't as agile as we wanted to, be. My advice is just to let go of that. Your agility is flexible. It's not like IQ, which actually remains stagnant through your whole life. Your IQ can't change. A lot of personality assessments say that

once you are what you are, you cannot change. It is not true for AQ. You can be a low AQ person today and be a high AQ person tomorrow. It's organic. It's going up and down all the time. And so what I want to say is that even if you have some regrets or some doubt, it's never too late. It doesn't matter how young or old you are. We are all capable of being high AQ people. And the mantra, perspective for life that I think we should all carry with us, especially in this world of AI and changing markets all the time, is just to say, I love change and change loves me. I love change. And change loves me too. Yes. It's all working. for us.

Thank you, Liz. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one. Your IQ is kind of a commodity, and that's actually good news, because we live in a world where AI can score in the 99th percentile on IQ tests, and it can do better than the best of us at the LSAT, the MCAT, at playing chess, and so cognitive horsepower is no longer a competitive edge. And so what sets us apart is aQ, agility quotient, which is our capacity to learn quickly, to unlearn old ways, and to adapt in a rapidly changing environment.

If you're a knowledge worker, this is a reframe because the thing that makes you irreplaceable isn't what you know. It's how you flow. It's like how quickly and calmly you absorb the things that are new and roll with the punches. IQ used to be the way that we would predict if someone was successful. And the way that you measure IQ is you look at cognitive abilities like memory, processing, speed, synthesis, analytics. Those are all things that AI is very good at. Right.

And arguably better than us. So even the newer language models, they're scoring in the 99th percentile of IQ tests. they can beat us at the LSAT, at chess games, at the SAT, even at the MCAT, which is much more about specialized knowledge. Suddenly, the rarity of having a high IQ or having a high IQ has actually become very cheap. So that is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, your technical skills expire, but your durable skills don't. The average half-life of a technical skill is about five years. And in tech, it's closer to about two years. And so if you've spent time learning a specific software, a platform or a methodology,

those things become obsolete over time. But your durable skills compound over time. And those are skills like problem solving, communication, the ability to learn. And those are often the skills that we don't invest in because they don't feel as urgent and they're harder to quantify, but they are the skills that carry us through. The average half-life of a technical skill is five years, and within the tech industry, it's actually closer to about two or two and a half years. So very quickly, you find that anything that you've spent painstaking time learning

is not going to be relevant, certainly within five years. You'll have to relearn it again. On the other hand, these general abilities, we call them durable skills, because they're durable across industries across time. That is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three. Discomfort means that you're growing, not failing. A lot of us are wired to think that discomfort is a warning sign.

Liz says that if you feel a little bit over your head, she calls it a little out over your skis. That's a signal that you're building your AQ muscle. It's kind of like going to the gym, then feeling really sore after a workout. It's a little bit of discomfort, positive discomfort, that is a signal that you've just done a good workout. And your muscles are being used in ways that they're not accustomed to being used in a way that helps them grow, helps them get stronger. If you are growing in your AQ, you know, AQ is dynamic. You can be low AQ today

and become high AQ in the future. It's not full. fixed. AQ is a growth mindset. It's a growth area. It's an area where we, anyone can get stronger. The skill that you need to have in order to move into this rapidly changing future is a skill that is improvable. You know, with practice comes improvement. Even if you feel like in the past you haven't been the best at change, maybe you feel like you've frozen up or you have regret around a specific decision that you made? For instance, I have a client who really wishes that he had pivoted into an adjacent business before a competitor could do it. And he has a lot of regret about that because he didn't prioritize it. He thought he could get six more months.

Within two months, a competitor had already taken the lead. So we all have these moments where maybe we weren't as agile as we wanted to be. My advice is just to let go of that. Your agility, is flexible. It's not like IQ, which actually remains stagnant through your whole life. Your IQ can't change. A lot of personality assessments say that once you are what you are, you cannot change. It is not true for a IQ. You can be a low AQ person today and be a high AQ person tomorrow. It's organic. It's going up and down all the time. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Liz Tran. Thank you so much for being an afforder. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please subscribe to our newsletter, afford anything.com

slash newsletter, leave us up to a five-star review in your favorite podcast playing app, and share this podcast with the people in your life, your loved ones, your liked ones, your tolerated ones, share it with your colleagues, share it with your former colleagues, your classmates, your cousins. Share this with all of those people because that is the single most important thing that you can do to spread the message of F-I-I-R-E. Thanks again for being an afforder. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I'm Paula Pan, and I'll meet you in the next episode.