Good Life Project - Ron Friedman, Ph.D. | The Truth About Greatness

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Want to be great at something you love? Don’t follow the age-old tropes. For decades, we’ve been told that, in order to become truly great at anything, we need to devote ourselves to thousands of hours of deliberate practice or have mad talent. Even better if you have both. But, what if that was a lie? Or, at least not the full picture? What if there was a third path that was actually the secret to greatness for many of the world’s top performers across nearly every domain? According to today’s guest, Ron Friedman, there is. Ron is an award-winning social psychologist who specializes in human motivation. In his latest book, Decoding Greatness (https://amzn.to/2UPM2a6), he breaks down the counterintuitive strategies the world’s highest performers take to achieve excellence. He was inspired to write it by research on pattern recognition, skill acquisition, and creative genius, as well as a personal fascination with creators, entrepreneurs, and athletes who accomplish things that almost no one else can.You can find Ron at:Website : https://www.ronfriedmanphd.com/If you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversation we had with Anders Ericcson, also known as the father of world-class performance, excellence and expertise and the person whose research is often misquoted as the basis for the famed 10,000-hour rule : https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/anders-ericsson/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Question for you. Do you have any desire to be truly great at something you love? Well, if you do, maybe here's a piece of advice. Don't follow the age old tropes about how to get there. For decades, we've been told that in order to become truly great at anything, we need to devote ourselves to thousands of hours of deliberate practice or just have mad talent, even better if you have both. But what if that was a lie, or at least not the full picture? What if there was a third path that was actually the secret to greatness for many of the world's top performers across nearly every domain? Well, according to today's guest, Ron Friedman, there is. Ron is an award-winning social psychologist who specializes

in human motivation. And in his latest book, Decoding Greatness, he breaks down the counter intuitive strategies of the world's highest performers take to achieve excellence. And he specifically focuses on one that maybe you've heard of in a different context, but it never really comes into the greatness conversation, at least in the way that he really deep dives into it. He was inspired to write and research this book by research on pattern recognition, skill acquisition, and creative genius, as well as a personal fascination with creators, entrepreneurs, and athletes who accomplish things that almost no one else can. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Day-to-day, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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of your work. And it's around this notion of greatness. And I want to actually talk about that and deconstruct it in a lot of ways. But at the same time, I've had some fascinating conversations that have taken me by surprise over the last few years. When the word greatness came up, just as a phrase, it seems to be fairly innocuous, fairly inspirational and aspirational. But in some context, I've actually seen it be triggering. There's a weight of judgment and expectation that can sometimes ride along with it that has led to unexpected conversations.

And I'm curious whether in the work that you've done, you have found that at all. You know, I don't view greatness as a black and white, this is the standard and this is the best and therefore nothing else is good enough. I think that's probably part of what makes that word triggering for some people. In my case, the way I view greatness is simply top performance in your field as you identify it. And so it's going to differ from person to person. And that's valuable because the things or the elements that you find to be moving and impactful

are the things that we're optimizing for with the approach that I present in Decoding Greatness. So it's really not about one standard for everyone to abide by, but rather a sensitivity to the elements that you find impactful. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense to me. And I think, I wonder if emerging from the window that we are now, you know, like hopefully emerging from, you know, there's also this more complicated sensibility where people kind of like, okay, so my standard for the

last couple of years really has been, I just want to feel like I can breathe. I want to feel like I'm okay. I'm trying to get through each day. And I think we're in an interesting moment because to make the shift from how do I sustain myself, feel safe on the best days, maybe have a good day, to bridge that gap to now say, okay, so how do we move from there where I've sort of been in a place of fear, contraction, relative staticness, to this exploration of the zenith of where I might be capable of going? Well, you know, that's what I love about this approach. And I'm sure we're going to get into what I mean by decoding greatness further in the

conversation. But what I think that this allows you to do is have an analytical and methodical approach to understanding what makes someone's work impactful. And the better you are at unpacking examples that you find moving, the better direction you have for moving from being static to achieving your potential. And that's really what I set out to do in writing this book, is give people the tools that I know that so many top performers are secretly using that no one talks about. And there's a reason why nobody talks about reverse engineering.

There's a stigma associated with it, and I'm sure we'll touch on that shortly. But I think that it's something that needs to be demystified and debunked because the reality is these are the tools that people at the top of their professions are using. And unless you know about them, you're going to feel stuck. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. So you sort of gave us a shorthand of, you know, like, here's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about greatness, which I think is helpful. There's also this interesting split, you know, this sort of like the old school approach, at least publicly. And then there's maybe what's not a new lens that you're advocating, but it's actually a deeper set of truths that an elite few have sort of been diving into. And you're sort of saying, let me pull back the curtain on what's really happening here. But let's kind of talk about the traditional lens on the pursuit of greatness a little bit first, because I think that's the starting point. Yeah. So there are two traditional stories we've been told about greatness and how success happens. The first story is that greatness comes from talent. This is the

idea that we're all born with certain innate strengths and that the key to finding your greatness is identifying a field that allows those strengths to shine. The second major story is that greatness comes from practice. This is the idea that if you just find the right practice regimen and you channel enough discipline that eventually you'll succeed. But there's a third story about greatness, and that's the topic of my book. And it is the path by which a stunning number of artists and innovators and entrepreneurs have traveled, and that path is reverse engineering. But what I mean by reverse engineering is simply finding extraordinary examples in your field and then working backward to figure out how they were created. That makes a lot of sense to me. Before we dive into that, I want to actually,

I want to parse these two different notions and more traditional notions a little bit more. So on the talent side of things, I think a lot of people look at that as, you know, like, you either have it or you don't, you know, there's something that is genetically endowed, and you've got this thing and you know, like you try and match up whatever the domain is to this innate gift that you have. But also once you hit the edge of that, you're busted. It's sort of like game over. And and expertise who pursues this. It gets popularized in no small way by Gladwell and, you know, like as the 10,000 hour rule, which, which Anderson says, no, not quite true, but, but there's this notion of, okay, so there's talent, you know, and then there's this type of practice, which is grueling and hard and incremental in no small way. And I feel like that has been the dominant theory and the dominant approach and the dominant conversation, especially deliberate practice for well over a decade now.

And when you think about those two things, a lot of people have said, okay, so let me figure out what is that innate thing in me and let me align what I'm doing with that and let me do this deliberate practicing. But it doesn't always work all that well for a lot of people. Yeah. And I think that there's a stunning problem with this idea that practice is the path to getting to greatness. And it's because you can't practice an idea that you've never considered. And so, yes, practice can help you elevate your skill. Yes, having talent is going to be important in terms of achieving success. But if all you're doing is relying on talent or practice, you're not achieving at the height of your potential. And what you need, and what I argue for in this book, is that you need is a methodical set of tools that allow you to deconstruct the work of the people you admire, whether they be your mentors or your contemporaries, which allows you to accelerate your learning

and empower you to find new techniques that you can incorporate into your work, thereby improving both your performance, but also your creativity. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, I think there's an interesting analogy with the world of startups that, you know, for more than a hot minute, sort of like the lean, agile approach to developing rapidly prototyping and like iterating to optimize a product or an idea or a brand has been really in vogue. And, but you hit a limitation in that, a limitation in that you can take a widget and through that

process make it the best possible widget as quickly as humanly possible. But what if there's a completely different thing that's 10 times better than that? I think that's kind of where you're going. There's nothing in that process that lets you see something entirely different that makes the giant leapfrogs towards a whole different level of expression. Yeah, exactly right. And what I talk about in the book is the idea that people who argue against reverse engineering because there's a concern that if you're looking too closely at the work of someone else, then you'll be reducing yourself to a hack or simply imitating their work. That just conveys a misunderstanding of how creativity happens. Creativity comes from blending ideas. It doesn't come from working in isolation. And so the last

thing in the world you want when you're trying to be creative is to shut yourself off in a dark room and try to come up with your own ideas. Because the longer you consider the same ideas, the more likely you are to get stuck in a loop. And so one of the studies that I talk about in the book that I think is so fascinating is this research showing that if you were to get stuck in a loop. And so one of the studies that I talk about in the book that I think is so fascinating is this research showing that if you were to take reverse engineering to its extreme and just copy the work of someone else, you would assume that makes you less creative because now you're just copying. But as it turns out, copying the work of other people actually makes you more creative. And so I'll tell you more about the study. It's research conducted by creativity experts at the University of Tokyo, where they

had amateur artists come into the lab, and they divided them into two groups. The first group was asked to create original paintings for three days straight. The second group was asked to create original paintings. But on the second day, they were asked to copy the work of an established artist. And then on the third day, they were asked to resume creating original works. And then they brought in objective raters, and they had them evaluate the paintings created by the two groups on the final day to determine which group was most creative. And what they found was it was the second group, the group that had paused to copy the work of an established artist that was significantly more creative. And critically, it wasn't by copying the work of the artist whose work they had copied. Rather, they had gone off in completely different directions. So the obvious question is,

why is that? Why is copying someone else's work making you more creative? And it's because copy work or the process of going step by step and trying to recreate the work of an established artist forces you to compare your instinctive inclinations against the choices of a master. And that process of pausing every stroke to determine whether you're on the right path forces you to consider or get into a mindset of considering all sorts of options that you would normally ignore. And so when you go back to creating your own original works, now your eyes are open to pursuing all these different directions and all these opportunities that were actually hidden in

your work the entire time. And so again, if you're opposed to the idea of somebody studying somebody else's work too closely, I think A, you're frankly blind to how learning happens because that's how we first learn is we imitate and then we evolve. And secondly, I think that you are limiting yourself in terms of your ability to be as creative as you could be. And so I describe it in the book as just operating with intellectual blinders. That's what people who assume that creativity comes from within them. And in fact, there is just a much easier and more enjoyable approach. Yeah. There's a certain blessing to being just a touch derivative, or at least make that a part of your process. But here's what jumped out

at me in that study that you referenced. On the second day, that one group was given the task to actually copy the work of a master. My brain went to the place. My brain said, as you were sharing that, what if they were actually given the task of copying the work of just someone whose style and voice was profoundly different than theirs, even if this wasn't a master? Did it have to do with the fact that they were copying the work of a, quote, master? Or was it more about the fact that they were forced into a paradigm of reproducing somebody who approaches the creative process and creates creative output that is so different from theirs that it forces your brain

into more of a divergent mode. And it makes you have to think differently about the work that you're creating from that moment forward. Like what does it even matter that it's a master is what I'm asking. Yeah, I think that's a great question. It's a testable hypothesis. I don't know. So, but you're thinking like a researcher, which is great. What I would say is that I think that's a great question. It's a testable hypothesis. I don't know. But you're thinking like a researcher, which is great. What I would say is that I think that we can all learn something from someone else's work. And the question is just a matter of how you utilize your available bandwidth. So the way that I view this, and I was telling you privately about this article that I'm writing for the Wall Street Journal about creativity and the limitations about the way that we think about creativity and the opportunities that exist

by looking at the work of others. And I think that the way that I, the argument that I think that how people take away from this is that if you have all these guilty pleasures in your life that you are dismissing because they don't feel productive, I want to challenge that. Because I think if you enjoy studying Middle Eastern architecture or reading beat poetry or even watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians, there's value in that because it's in taking apart the elements that make those works unique that you are identifying the tools that you can incorporate or the elements that you can

incorporate into your own work to take that into different directions. And so to answer your question, whether it was the work of a master or just someone whose style is very different, I suspect that either one of those activities would have helped in comparison to simply just working on your own and working in isolation and trying to come up with something uniquely creative. Yeah, that resonates with me. Maybe it's more of a yes and than an either or type of thing. But it would be an interesting test because it is a testable hypothesis, right? You can literally just swap in, you know, like a sixth grader's, you know,

like a diorama project or something like that and see if you get a similar result, which would be pretty fascinating if you did. You brought up this phrase, reverse engineering a number of times now. Let's go deep into this. And it's sort of like what you call the third path, the one that nobody really talks about, but the one that is really secretly being done all day, every day by the people who are at the top of their various different domains and fields. Talk to me more about what we're talking about when we're actually talking about reverse engineering. Yes. So reverse engineering simply means finding extraordinary examples in your field and then working backward

to figure out both how they were created and how you might go about recreating them. So in Silicon Valley, this is a very well-known approach. This is how we got the personal computer and laptops and the mouse and the iPhone. But what people don't realize is that outside of Silicon Valley, this turns out to be quite popular as well. So this is how, in part, how Stephen King and Malcolm Gladwell learned to write and how artists like Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso learned to paint and how there's a great story in the book about how Judd Apatow reverse engineered his idols to become a comedy legend that we all recognize. So reverse engineering turns out to be far more popular and common than most people realize.

And it's an approach that can be applied to any field. And I'm happy to get into how you, the listener, can start applying this regardless of whether you're someone who's a speaker or an entrepreneur or just someone working within an office. There's all sorts of pathways that you can identify in this book that can help you elevate your performance at work. And it really depends on where you are in what field you are hoping to master. And so the specific techniques will be determined by your field. So just to give you a few examples, writers, I'm a writer,

and I can tell you that nonfiction writers will often go to the end of a book and look at the end notes that reveal the bibliography that talks about where the sources that went into creating that book came from. Chefs will often order dishes to go so that they can parse out the ingredients by spreading a dish out on a white plate. Sometimes there's a magnifying glass involved. Photographers will look for clues that are hidden in images like the length of shadows or the reflection in a person's eyes that tell them the location of the light source and also

the time of day in which the shot was taken. So the critical thing is not to passively enjoy experiences, but to continuously ask yourself, how was this created? What can I learn from this? And how do I apply this to my next project? Yeah. So it's about sort of like seeing if you can parse the structure of the ingredients, the elements. And as you mentioned, that's going to be completely different depending on the pursuit, you know, the, each person's unique pursuit. And, but also I would imagine each person's unique makeup. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you.

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Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. there's an approach to thinking that you talk about um that you describe as algorithmic thinking you know which is really sort of like it's putting on a metal lens. It's getting into the pattern recognition level. And there

are sort of like a series of sub skills under that. So walk me through this a bit more. Yeah. So critically, I just want just to put a bow on the previous point. I think we're often told to be curious. I don't know what that means. I mean, yeah, I want to be curious, but I need a method. And that's what I'm trying to do here is give you a method to channel that curiosity. And so algorithmic thinking is a great transition because algorithms like Tinder and Spotify work. And without getting too far into the weeds of how computer programs operate, algorithms like Tinder, what they're very good at is predicting who you are going to find attractive. And how they do that is by giving

you a set of images and asking you whether you like a particular person and you want to get to know them. And you do that by swiping right if you like them and swiping left if you dislike them. And after Tinder has a number of examples of people you've swiped right on, it does some analyses to determine what those individuals have in common. And what's fascinating why these algorithms are so effective is because they're able to identify features that you might not be consciously aware of. And so it might find, for example, that you're attracted to tall individuals or people who are extroverted or people who like spicy foods. That might not be obvious to you by just looking at their images, but by looking at all sorts of features that are indicated in their profile or commonalities in their images, Tinder is able to identify them. And as a result, it's then able to generate predictions about who else you might

find attractive and start feeding you those images. Same for Spotify. Spotify, I don't know if you have Spotify, you do. So I don't know, do you listen to Discovery Weekly? I do, and I'm actually like sometimes curious. I'm like, where's this coming from? Okay, so I'll tell you. So if you are a Spotify listener, there are two features I want to tell you about.

Discover Weekly comes out on Monday and Release Radar comes out on Friday. So Release Radar simply is artists who you've liked in the past. When they have a new song, that will show up in Release Radar on Friday. Discover Weekly, what that does is it looks at patterns within the songs that you have liked and identifies songs, may not be new songs, but just songs that share those underlying patterns. And I feel like I've trained this algorithm. My Discover Weekly has a higher hit rate for me. In other words, I will like 50% of the songs on that list as opposed to Release Radar, which is more like 20%, which is all much better than New Music Friday, which

is like maybe 3% because that's all over the place. And so that's an example. Discover Weekly is very similar to how Tinder's algorithm operates, because it's looking for underlying patterns in examples that have identified as successful examples. Now, how this is relevant to all of us is you can use that same approach to reverse engineer examples that you find resonant in your field. So in the case of, let's say you're a public speaker, what you might do is start a collection of speeches that you have considered impactful. So maybe you have to collect transcripts, or maybe it's just the presentation decks.

So at the end of the book, I give a range of tips to how to incorporate this approach into your life. And the book, I give a range of tips to how to incorporate this approach into your life. And the first tip is become a collector. And it's because just like Spotify or Tinder, you need examples of works that you've considered impactful so that you can start looking for commonalities hidden in those work. And then beyond that, the next step is to play a game called Spot the Difference. Now, Spot the Difference is a game we're all familiar with from childhood. It's when you have two images side by side, and your job is to identify discrepancies

between the two images. What's different about image A versus image B? Here, you can do the same thing for the items in your collection. So again, if you're looking at presentation decks, what you might do is compare the presentation decks that made it into your collection against presentation decks that you consider middling and just didn't warrant being incorporated into your collection. And what you might find are commonalities, like maybe there are fewer words on the decks

that you like. Maybe the images feel more active or have a higher, more positive emotional tone. That sort of comparison is going to help you do what Tinder and Spotify does in order to improve its pattern recognition. You're just incorporating that same approach into your life. And that's the definition of algorithmic thinking. Powerful on so many levels. When I think about this approach, on the one hand, it makes perfect sense. Go and collect a data set of people, things, projects, output that has succeeded on the level where you kind of say, that's where I want to go.

That's what I want to do or create or make or be. And then start to deconstruct and zoom out and say, okay, so what's similar about these? What's different about them? Like, what are the shared patterns? And yet at the same time, you know, like, so I live in the world of books similar to you and media, and there have been countless attempts to deconstruct slash reverse engineer the narrative structures of both fiction and nonfiction books, movies, in a way to try and help ensure that when, okay, so now when I write mine, I'm going to follow this thing, this map, this model of how these people have done it before and succeeded at the highest possible levels. And yet in those domains, as much and a huge amount of intelligence and money has poured into

trying to figure these things out and then reproducing them. Almost every epic movie, every movie that comes out in the summer is based on a very particular model. It's like the action movies based on a model. The redemption story, they're all based on proven stories and models that have worked in a really huge way. And yet the hit rate of everybody who's trying to leverage these patterns to become extraordinary, to create the greatest thing tends to still be really low, exceptionally low success rates. So what's happening there? Oh, great question. I think what's happening is that audience expectations are shifting.

So the more you see the same pattern, the less novel it becomes and the more predictable it is. And so in the book, I talk about the example of Twilight, where when Twilight came out, it was the story of a young adult who is in love with a vampire. And as soon as that book came out and became the massive success that it became, there were all of these copycats, and none of them achieved even a sliver of the success of the original. And it wasn't because they were all bad books. It was because audience expectations have shifted. It was no longer novel.

What did succeed? It was when Abraham Lincoln was What did succeed? It was when Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter, right? So it was about finding a unique twist on a proven formula. And what I think is really interesting when it comes to the blockbusters that do succeed is that a large part of them are operated by Marvel. And what is it that Marvel is doing differently? And it's because the reason I chose this particular example is because I think Marvel is actually quite predictable. If you look at its movies and you zoom out and you look at the structure, they're all very similar. And so

some commonalities that you might be familiar with are it usually starts out with a hero who discovers new powers that he or she must learn to control. They tend to make a lot of jokes when they're under mortal danger. There tend to be a lot of infighting between the heroes. A lot of times the heroes are fighting more with themselves than they are with the enemy. There's the pairing of the smart and sassy women with the emotionally immature but very powerful man. There's the fight scene at the end that's usually CGI driven. And then there's a trailer at the end of an upcoming film. It's all very, very predictable. And yet it continues to do well. And it's not just that fans like them. It's also

critics that are giving rave reviews to these films. So that is really interesting. How are they able to succeed with the same pattern over and over again? And so as it turns out, what Marvel does is it tries to be very careful about its selection of director. And this is a research out of INSEAD that looked at Marvel's process, and they termed their approach inexperienced experience. And what that means is they look for directors whose expertise lies in a field outside of superhero films. And they bring that person in, they're sort of inexperienced in the sense that they haven't done a superhero film before, but they're experienced in the sense that they have succeeded as a director. And you can see how each film is slightly different enough to make the formula feel fresh. So in the case of Thor, I don't know if you've seen that film, Jonathan, but the

original Thors were pretty dark. And then they brought in a improv comic to direct Thor Ragnarok. And that film was very funny and was massively successful. And so the approach here is to take a proven formula and modify it just slightly so that it feels fresh. And that seems to be the common approach around many of the most successful evolutions in a wide range of fields, not just movies and books, but also music and art. So there's this notion of figure out what the pattern is, figure out what the model is, but rather than trying to just repeat it as accurately as humanly possible, understand how to do it in a way that is slightly left of center or slightly quirky. I think you have a phrase that is optimal newness. Is that what

we're talking about here? Yes. And it's not my phrase. It's from Kareem Lakhani, who's a Harvard researcher who looked at what are the grant submissions to places like the NIH that get approved. And what they found in their analyses was that it was the research that has a small degree of evolution over the established norm. In other words, that it was the research that has a small degree of evolution over the established norm. In other words, that they push the field just a little bit. But in contrast, the proposals that don't really push the field any further or the proposals that attempt to do something that's never been done before, those tend to get rejected. And so he calls it a minor, what's necessary is a minor dose of novelty, and he calls that optimal

newness. Yeah, and it's funny because in the context, especially where you're trying to sort of convince other people to get on board with something that you're doing, if those other people have the ability to say yes or no, and they're also entrenched in an existing paradigm that would potentially be shaken by you stepping too far out of the box with a proposal, then it's almost like they're threatened. You need their approval, but they're threatened if you go too far outside of what they've all bought into to get where they are. Yes, I think that's right. And I bet there are people listening to this and thinking, man,

what he's suggesting is just copy somebody else's work and just modify it slightly. And as a result, fields are never going to evolve. And I just feel like a better way of looking at this is that all that pressure that you as a creative professional are putting on yourself to be completely original is completely counterproductive. Because not only are you going to have a worse time and be less successful because of all the pressure, you're actually going to be less successful if you do achieve the completely original thing, because chances are audiences won't be ready for it. And so what this approach teaches you is how

to take apart the works that you find impactful, understand what the formulas are that make those works succeed, and then critically, this is where your creativity can come in. And it can come from a variety of different approaches. You want to modify the existing formula. And one of the easiest ways of doing that is to find elements that are working in different fields and incorporate them into your approach. So it's not about just recreating a stagnant formula over and over again, because again, you're not going to succeed at that. What you want to do is you want to evolve, but don't overshoot the mark because if you overshoot the mark, you're going to be rejected. Yeah. And I think that's also part of the benefit of cross-pollination

of getting out of your silo. Okay. So reverse engineer the model in your particular silo. Awesome. Figure out how to go a little bit left, but then it's almost like you were saying that those artists who were shown the work of a master that was completely different from them potentially, be deliberate in exploring other silos, even if you're not interested in them, because they may plant seeds on how to do things in a different way, and not just different, but better. Yeah, exactly right. And a great example of this, and one of my favorite stories in the book is how Barack Obama achieved political success.

And so not a lot of people know this, but when Barack Obama first entered politics, he was not a success out of the gate. In fact, he got trounced in his first race for Congress. He lost by a margin of over two to one. And the problem, if you can believe it, was that he was a terrible speaker. He was a law school professor. And as a law school professor, he was used to lecturing students. Voters didn't appreciate being lectured to, and they let him know at the polls. And for a while, he thought about leaving politics until someone on his campaign staff encouraged him to go and study what pastors were doing in the church when communicating to their flock. And what he found after doing that was that they were using storytelling, they were using

repetition, they were using repetition, they were modulating their tone, and he came back to politics and his approach was completely transformed. And what I love about that story is it illustrates that Barack Obama didn't go and find his talent. He didn't go practice for 10 years and come back after 10,000 hours. He looked to see what was working in a different field and incorporated that approach into the way he delivered speeches. And that method is the key to finding your greatness. Again, it's not about practicing. It's not about finding your talent. It is about having a methodical approach to understand what's working in other fields and then finding new ways of combining them with what it is you're approaching. Yeah. No, I love that. As you were sharing that,

this sort of instant memory, a number of years back. I remember seeing Nancy Duarte, who runs like this, one of the leading presentation design firms, deep into storytelling presentation, sharing a keynote where she was putting up these giant images of how she graphically deconstructed some of the greatest speeches in the world.

And one of them was, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s, I Have a Dream speech. And she was just following, she mapped out the linguistic patterns of the talk. And you look at it and you're like, okay, so this is one of the greatest faith-based orators in history, but also political-based, social justice, activism, and the pattern could easily be ported into nearly any other domain. And then I flash back to in a very past life, I taught yoga. And as a newbie yoga teacher, I had no business teaching yoga. But I saw this interesting opportunity the entrepreneur had in me, pops on, and I find

myself actually opening my own studio in the time right after 9-11 in New York City. And we have a packed house because we were a place of community and healing and movement and breath at a time where the city needed it more than ever. And I found myself stepping into a room that was mat-to-mat with human beings who really, really needed something meaningful for me. And I'm a total newbie with no skills. So what's funny is what I did is what you're describing. I went to what was then HMV video in New York City. I went to the video section, like the VHS tapes. I found the top 10 best-selling yoga videos.

I bought them all. And then I watched them and I reverse engineered. I wrote down the exact sequences, postures, and vocal utterings of these teachers. And then I created a little shorthand, put them on a note card, slipped them into a book. So it was just hanging out the side of the book that I would have on my mat just enough so I could see it while I was in the room. And for the first probably six months of teaching, like on one day, I'm Rodney E. On one day, I'm Shiva Ray. On one day, I'm Baron Baptiste. And people are like, wow, you're phenomenal. Like this is such an incredible experience. And I'm kind of thinking to myself, wow, I am stealing like an artist, like nobody's

business here because it wasn't me they were responding to. But in the process of copying and repeating it over and over, I started to really understand what was happening and what was working and why things were put together and the way they were put together. And it was a dramatic accelerant in my ability to, I think, step up and then start to own my own patterns and voice in the room. That's a fantastic story. And what I would argue is that by the end of that process, six months later, you were an original because you were a remix of all of your influences. Now, contrast what you did there with having to face that room and not having any skills and then trying to find your talent or just torturing

those students for six months as you practice your way to greatness. Trust me, there was still some torturing going on. But I think that there's no question that you learned by having an approach that empowered you to build your skills. And how you did that was you took the examples and you distilled them into the techniques or the actions that you should take as an instructor. And that I would argue is something that most people don't do. Most people may have watched the films, but they wouldn't necessarily have identified the particular

phrases that were impactful. This is how I learned how to coach, by the way, is when I would look at various coaching session transcripts, look at certain questions, pick out the ones that I thought were really moving or impactful, and then I just kept a list. And like you, I had that sheet that served uselessly hidden on my lap that I would look down on every once in a while. And again, I'd get the same reaction you did, which was like, wow, this is really great. But it's that process of looking out into the world, finding the examples that you find useful, and then figuring out what's working here.

And if you're not doing that, it's going to take you much longer to get to the peak of your profession. Yeah, I completely agree. And it's interesting because for me, the breakout move, that learning experience was a true accelerant. But the thing that was the real transformative moment for me was when I found myself never looking at that sheet again, because what started to happen is I had embodied enough sequences, ideas, moments, like patterns. And so my attention started to let go of the rote plan

that I showed up to execute, which was a really good plan and more towards constantly reading what I thought to be the perceived needs in the room on a moment to moment basis. And then drawing on my reservoir to respond to it in the moment. So there came a time where years in, if you had asked me, if you'd stopped me, you know, like 42 minutes into a 90 minute class and said, what's coming next? I could not tell you. It was a complete in the moment, unplanned response to what I saw happening in the room, drawing upon what was then, you know, like a lot of experience in understanding what works and what doesn't for this particular energy and moment. And it was a hundred percent improv.

And that when I absolutely, when I moved away from all of the pre-planned stuff, all of the patterns, all of the modeling that I had done, and just allowed myself to be fully present in the moment, that is when a true level of transformation in teaching happened. And I think that that is a natural part of the process as well, is that you're going to use reverse engineering to parse out the ingredients. You may even templatize them for yourself so that you have a proven model you can turn to when you're stuck. But eventually, it's going to come naturally. But unless you're doing that first thing, when you're taking apart the examples, it's going to take much longer to get there.

And I can tell you for myself, I talked about starting a collection. As a writer, I collect all the time. I collect headlines. I collect powerful words. I collect transition sentences. And I look at them from time to time. But most of the time when I'm writing, I don't look at them. But initially, I looked at them a lot. So I think that's a natural part of the progression that you develop that collection. You take it apart in terms of analyzing it to determine what makes those elements unique. You might templatize them at the beginning, but eventually you would get to the point where you're your own unique remix.

And so what I think a lot of people get stuck is in the learning process, they feel like, well, that's copying or that's I'm borrowing somebody else's approach. But no, because that's not the end point. That's not the end of the evolution. The evolution will come later. But unless you learn in a way that gives you the tools of the masters, you're not going to achieve the potential that you have in you. Yeah.

I think it's that you've got to, there's a moment where you have to kind of let go and trust, which is a bit of a terrifying moment, I think, for a lot of people. But I feel like you can get to a point of really, really, really good at a lot of different things by holding on to a lot of the patterns of the past and replicating and refining and optimizing around them. You get really good at something. But if we're talking about capital G greatness here, and again, on a very unique personal level, this isn't contrasting you to anyone, but basically stepping as fully as humanly possible into what you're capable of to get to that sort

of like final 1% or one 10th of 1% in your own world, life and domain. I feel like that doesn't happen unless until you reach a point where you're sort of like willing to step out of all the preexisting paradigms and then rise into something that feels like it's different and new. Does that land with you? Yeah, absolutely. But I think the challenge for most people is that they aim for that right out of the gate. And they miss the mark completely because they don't have the tools to get there.

So, you know, I do think that certain directors, for example, Quentin Tarantino, have gotten to where they've gotten by being methodical students of people who've come before them and then remixing the elements in a way that makes them unique. Sometimes those same directors try things that are just unimaginable for someone to get a movie made on the level that they've gotten made had they not originally succeeded by perhaps being less creative. And so I think if you really want to achieve that level of greatness by taking huge swings and achieving that risk-taking, I think that you're better off having a record of success first because achieving it right out of the gate without having that established record of success is much, much harder. And I can tell you, I think that there's something here about how this relates to CEOs. I know a lot of CEOs who are very good in their position, but if they got fired tomorrow,

I don't think they could ever be employed again. And it's because of that match between their particular skills and their particular context. And I think there's a parallel here where if you are trying to learn a new craft, you're going to be far better off by understanding how others have succeeded in the past. And eventually, yes, you will get to the point where you are evolving things in a way that makes you groundbreaking. But if you try to be groundbreaking right out of the gate, it's going gonna be much harder for you to gain that acceptance that you need in order to be successful. Yeah, so agree with that.

I think we wanna leapfrog. I think especially now because there's this expectation of instant extraordinary. It's just like our timeframe for everything has been compressed. And there are certain things you just, you can accelerate, but there are certain things that you can't, there are steps and windows and experiences that you can't eliminate.

You know, and I think, but I think a lot of times we're trying to do that. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. One of the things that comes up for me also is the role of a mentor or a coach or a teacher along the way.

And this kind of goes back to our earlier conversation, you know, Anders Ericsson, who does all of his original work, according to this phrase, deliberate practice. It's, you know, like this grueling, focused, iterative, you know, like optimizing type of practice that is not fun to do, but you put in anywhere from a couple thousand to a bazillion hours doing it and it makes a really big difference.

In his later work, and actually in his last book before he passed, he had shifted his focus and really focused in on the role of a mentor, the role of a coach, and how critical that that relationship was in allowing somebody to move to the next level. And he said, it's not just deliberate practice. There's a huge

importance on having somebody else involved to both call you on your BS. It's not just about motivation, but a big part of that role, I think if I read it right, and I talked to him about this, was the ability to have somebody who is not you see what's happening and then introduce models and solutions and paradigms that you're not aware of to move you through sort of these thresholds. I mean, I'm curious how you see the role of a mentor or a coach in this, the pursuit of greatness. It's a good question. And this probably will reveal more about my personality than it will about any particular insight. But I personally prefer to be self-directed. And while I do see value in a coach, I'm more interested in ways that we can optimize our performance independently. And that just is my personal preference, which isn't to suggest that coaches aren't helpful.

I'm just more interested in thinking about ways that I can learn more from the examples that I encounter because it's going to be hard for me to find a coach who's interested in going off with me and studying all of the different domains that we've already discussed and seeing the connections between those domains and the ones that I'm personally interested in. Now, that said, there is, I think, one really important thing to understand about Erickson's work in terms of finding a right coach is that finding the right coach is actually a lot harder than most people expect. And it's because of something called the curse of knowledge, which I'm sure you've discussed on the show before. And the curse of knowledge, just to refresh everyone's memory, is simply the idea that knowing something makes it impossible to imagine not knowing it, which presents a really serious barrier for a lot of coaches

or a lot of teachers who hope to impart a particular set of skills. And so expertise doesn't necessarily correlate with teaching ability. And in fact, there's research showing that the best researchers in a given field tend to have no relationship in terms of how well they perform as teachers. And it's because of the curse of knowledge. But it's also because so many of the decisions that they make are happening unconsciously and automatically. And so it's not that they don't want to share their insights with you.

It's just that they're not even aware of how they're making their decisions unless you ask them to really break it down. And so in this book, I talk about a specific set of questions that you should approach experts with in order to better unpack their process so that you can reverse engineer how exactly it is that they're operating. So I guess what I'm saying is my approach is a more self driven. But to the extent that you want to find a coach, I think finding a good coach is actually really, really hard, unless you have the right questions to arm yourself with. And that's what

I've tried to do in the book is give you those questions so that you know how to approach the expert and talk to them in a way that actually illuminates what it is they're doing. Yeah. And it feels like the questions are not just for the experts, but it's also for the exemplars. It's for the people where you say, okay, so you're the best of the best. Let me figure out how you landed where you are. And a lot of times they're just readily available information, especially if it's more public person, you can watch all the the films, the tapes, their interviews. And, but at the same time, if you're fortunate enough to actually have access to this person, you know, then, then the question becomes, okay, so what do I ask them and how, so that I can get as much of the real relevant information, even the information that they may not be aware of,

that has not just helped them, but will be actually valuable to me in my understanding of how they got there in a way where I can leverage that information in my own path. Well, access is something that we actually have more readily available than we've ever had in the past in terms of finding the expert in your field and getting access to them. And that's through podcasts like this or developing a blog. It has never been easier to find people who are experts in their domain and get a little bit of their time. In fact, one approach that I don't think is used enough is actually contacting someone and offering to hire them to advise. It's something that I think we often assume that unless

somebody has that available on their website that they're not interested. But all it takes is an email to say, hey, I'm interested in some input on this and I'm happy to compensate you for your time. Would we be able to meet? And I just think that that is an approach that I've used and I know that a lot of people are open to that perhaps is underutilized and is an opportunity for some smart entrepreneur to take advantage of in the market. But in terms of what should you ask, I offer three broad categories of questions with examples of each. And those three categories, I'll start with journey questions first, is having a person compare their initial expectations to their actual experiences and talking to them about questions

like, for example, what did you pay attention to at the beginning that turned out to be not very important? That's an example of a journey question, something that they learned from their time as a beginner to where they are now as an expert. A second set of questions concerns process. So it's just kind of asking them to walk you through their day-to-day process when they're in creation mode. So what do you do first? What do you do next? What happens after that? Those sorts of questions that really focus them on their approach and get them to take it apart step by step. A third set of questions are discovery questions.

The discovery questions are things they discovered that they weren't expecting. And a great example of this one is if you know, if you look back to when you first started and where you are today, what surprised you the most? That's an example of a discovery question. And those three types of questions, journey, process discoveries, go a long way towards getting the expert to share some of their insights and help you reverse engineer what it is that's worked for them. Super helpful. When I think about the people

that I've talked about or sought to learn about their journeys and potentially model, there's a trigger that comes up for me also. And maybe an illustration would help explain why. So in a very past life, I have a lot of past lives apparently. I got the yoga teacher. I was also, long before that, I was an attorney and I worked in the financial markets. I worked at the SEC and then, and I was a complete geek about how the markets worked. And I was fascinated by human psychology and how it moves markets, realizing that markets don't move based on fact, they move based on how people respond to their perception of fact. And I started geeking out on trading methodologies and patterns and looking at some of the greatest

traders and their systems and how they're working. And I got interested in currency trading. And then I found this one trader who was massively successful and then had basically taken his model, the way he basically reverse engineered his own model. He put it into a system of rules, built it into a program, a software that, you know, like you could buy for a lot of money back then. And then you would essentially run it on your computer and it would give you the identical buy and sell signals that in theory he would have then acted on. So you, you know, okay,

so this gives me the ability to effectively do what he does. You know, like, so then I get this and I let it run and I get one trade in, right? And I'm like, I make a trade and it does okay. And then I follow the signal for the next one and it does badly. And then the next one, and it does really badly. And then the next one, and my account is cratering at which point I tap out. But then I noticed had I followed the next signal on the next day, it would have been such a huge win. It would have made up for all of my losses times five. But psychologically, I was so, my psychology, my risk tolerance level

was so profoundly different than the person it was modeled on that even if it was a valid system, a valid, like, and he reverse engineered really well, the missing it was modeled on, that even if it was a valid system, a valid, and he reverse engineered it really well, the missing element was risk tolerance. And that turns out to be a massive fail point if you don't have that built into the model. So how do you find out, what are those unspoken elements? What's the missing element that even if you get everything else right, if you don't realize that there's this one profound mismatch in the model, the whole thing fails. How do you elicit that from an exemplar?

It's a great question. It was a very powerful story. I think my heart rate went up listening to it. I don't think I have the risk tolerance myself. Even if you talk to an expert and you get them to share their approach, chances are 70% of the information will be missing. And this is not my opinion. This is research that has been conducted with experts and having them deconstruct their process. 70% of the information goes missing. However, when you talk to three experts, 10% of the information is missing. And it's because there's overlapping information and each one fills the gap of somebody else's work. And so I don't think that reverse engineering at one particular person will ever reveal everything you need to know about their process, no matter what questions you come prepared with. I think a far better approach is to utilize the questions and speak to a variety of experts. And it's not

just a matter of quantity information. It's also about the match between your particular skills, personality, experiences, and expectations. And so sometimes certain formulas may not work for you because you're not that person. So I give the example in the book where I reverse engineer the most popular TED Talk of all time, Sir Ken Robinson. And what you find when you reverse engineer his talk is that he conveys a grand total of one fact over the entire TED Talk. What does he do instead? He's telling a lot of jokes and he's telling you a lot of anecdotes.

I'm not funny. That approach is not going to work for me. So the key is not just to say, okay, because Sir Karen Robinson has the most popular TED talk of all time, I need to use his approach. But instead to look for a model whose work resonates with you and then find a way of first identifying what it is that works. And then secondly, adapting that model either in combination with a number of different models or by taking a particular formula and evolving it to your preference. And one of the things that I think happens almost automatically is that you can't help in your execution to evolve

somebody else's formula. In my case, I've studied a lot of different writers. I can tell you I obviously, like most writers, love Gladwell's work. I also like the Heath Brothers' work very much. And there are lots of other fiction influences that I bring into my work. And that unique combination isn't something intentional. It's just something that happens as a result of consuming lots of different influences. And so in this particular example that you've shared, you really do want to replicate someone's formula to a T because it's going to result in monetary success. But in most cases, when it comes to creative work, executing someone else's formula to

perfection will likely not result in success. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Did you go back and invest in the algorithm once you knew that that final trade work? You did. I tapped out. I was done. Because it was so clear to me at that point that for me to be in it long-term, I would have to be emotionally and psychologically equipped to bear a level of like big swings.

I just wasn't. I just knew I was like, no, like if this is going to be my day-to-day existence, even if it, you know, has a higher likelihood to lead to a nice chunk of money at the end, I hadn't cultivated the skills of mine to be able to actually survive that experience. And I think we see that happening with entrepreneurship a lot of times too. People deconstruct what all these startup founders have done and all this stuff, and they dive into the world of startups, not realizing that that is a brutal psychological ca you know, like cauldron. And it's not just about, you know, like taking the steps. It is about understanding the unique skills and state of mind and traits of mind that allow people to survive that, even if you're capable of replicating

the steps that they took. And most of us are not. I think that's a great point. You know, this last night I was reading about the entrepreneur, I forget his name, who founded Ring, that device that you place outside your door that gives you a camera, you can look at it on your phone. And just a few years before receiving a billion dollars for his company from Amazon, he was on Shark Tank, had no money in his bank account, and got rejected by all the sharks. I don't know about you, but that might've told me it's the end of this. This guy stuck with it and was rewarded handsomely just a few years down the road. Yeah. I'm fascinated by that part of it because I think to me, that's the part that we never focus on, but it also is the linchpin in so much of it because

you've got to have the psychometric side of the equation as sussed out as you can if it's something that you're deciding whether you can create your own riff on or version of because if it strays too far from the way that you're wired, even if you know the exact steps, at least in my experience, it's brutalizing and ultimately not successful. It feels like a good place for us to sort of come full circle a bit as well. We started out by sort of like saying, how do people feel about this thing called greatness? And some people experience it as a bit of a latent term. In the context of the world that we live in right now and the invitations that we're being given to rise, to be our best, it feels like there is a call that's not just internal right now to explore this, but also on the level of culture and society of the pandemic is that life is short. And if you are settling

for a day job because you believe that you don't have the talent or you don't have the patience to practice for 10,000 hours, I think you're selling yourself short. I just really do. And that's part of the mission of this book and why I wrote it. And I really do believe that we all have the potential to achieve more as long as we have a methodical approach for understanding what it is that makes great works succeed. And that's what I try to do here. And is the appetite greater? Honestly, I think we're all so burnt out. And one of the things that I think that people need to appreciate is that reducing the amount of work that you do likely will not help you in the immediate term in terms of your energy level.

And it's because if you try to work less, what ends up happening is you put more stress on yourself to do more in less time. And that actually exacerbates your burnout. But a more interesting and useful approach is to learn new things. And there's a lot of research showing that when you learn new things, you elevate your energy, you enhance your confidence, and you're fulfilling your basic human psychological need for growth. And so what this approach gives you is a method for learning new things quicker in a wide variety of fields.

So whether it is you're trying to understand what makes the best blog succeed, why a particular speaker is impactful, how you could write better proposals, all of that comes down to having that methodical approach of collecting, spotting the difference, and then templatizing the works that you find great and then evolving them in different directions. Yep. I'm on board with that. So I'm sitting here in this container of a good life project, always circling back to my same final question. If I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I think that a big part of it comes down to reverse engineering yourself. So I can tell you the right answer for me is I've identified some particular experiences that contribute to the best days.

And how I've done that is actually one of the techniques I talk about in this book, which is called reflective practice. So we talked a lot about deliberate practice over the course of our conversation, deliberate practice against being the Erickson term for finding things that you're not particularly good at executing, isolating them, using lots of iterations to get better. Reflective practice is, I have high hopes for this phrase, because I think it's a term that hasn't made it into popular culture and hasn't received the attention it deserves. It is a term that refers to the idea of looking back on past experiences and using that to distill new insights about what it is that has worked or not worked in the past.

So reflective practice and what that means in practice is getting yourself something that is widely available in any bookstore. It's called a five-year journal. And how the five-year journal operates is that it gives you 365 pages one day for every day of the year. It's got five slots on each day. And so on each day of the year, you'll put in three sentences about what you did that day or what you learned that day. And then if you do this for a year, after a year, you come back to a particular page and you'll enter what you did that day, but also get to see what you did on that same day a year prior. And that experience of reflecting every day on what you learned and also going back to

seeing what you did on the same day previous years helps you translate experience into knowledge. And so you're constantly learning new things. You're constantly reminded of overblown fears of successes that you may have forgotten. You're strengthening your memories. All kinds of good things come from reflective practice. There's also research showing that if you just take a few minutes at the end of each day to write down what you learned on that day, that will improve your performance over 20%. So there's a wide range of benefits to using reflective practice. In my case, what I've discovered through reflective practice is that the best days

tend to have three elements. They tend to include learning, creativity, and exercise. Those are the three pillars for me for a great day. Knowing that is really useful. How many of my days include all of those features? Not enough, but they have gotten better over the course of time. And I would not have had that direction had I not conducted reflective practice to reverse engineer the best days for me. And I'm hopeful that people, as they think on

some of the insights in the book, will incorporate at least that, is start applying reflective practice to reverse engineer what it is that makes a great day for you so that you can start being more intentional with how you use your time. I love that. Thank you. My pleasure. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Kay Anders Erickson, also known as the father of world-class performance, excellence, and expertise.

In fact, we even mentioned him in this episode. And he's the person who did the research that is often misquoted as the basis for the famed 10,000-hour rule. You'll find a link to Andrew's episode in the show notes. And even if you don't listen now, be sure to click and download it so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so,

be sure to follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app so you'll never miss an episode. And then share the Good Life Project love with friends, because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot if we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.