Modern Wisdom - Willpower Expert: The Secret To Effortless Discipline - Angela Duckworth - #1158

Starting point is 00:00:00 People of the UK and Ireland, if you want to come and see me live tickets are very limited for my live tour this October, but they are still available. Dublin is already sold out. However, if you're a fan of modern wisdom, if you love psychology, philosophy, human nature, personal development, and you want to hear stories that I definitely can't tell on the internet, then come and see me live this October. Chris Williamson.Live has got all of the tickets. Dublin is completely gone, but there are limited tickets everywhere else. I'll see you soon. Chris Williamson.com. You wrote one of the defining personal development books of the decade. I wrote it 10 years ago. What's changed in your worldview since then?

Starting point is 00:00:36 Well, as a psychologist, I really did spend the first half of my career trying to understand the importance of individual effort to achieving excellence. And I wrote a book about it. And I recently reread that book. And I wanted to know whether I changed my mind. I mean, you know, I continued to do science, other scientists, and people to keep the – And you know what? I don't disagree with a word in grit.

Starting point is 00:00:58 I really don't. Other people can, but I don't. I feel like there is a final common path to becoming great that requires consistency over time. And that's the message of grit. And, you know, the reason I embarked on this in the first place is that I knew that I had achieved what I had achieved through effort and not through natural talent. So there was a personal dimension and it was my vocation, my calling as a scientist. But as a scientist, I continue to ask the question, you know, like, what else? What else is there? And also, where does this come from? Right. So your DNA will incline you to be grittier or less gritty. But we also know that it's not just your DNA. So I also wanted to know, like, why would somebody be passionate and persevering? And this curiosity inevitably leads you outside of the mind of a high achiever and into their situation.

Starting point is 00:01:54 leads you naturally to like who's around them, what's around them, where are they? And so the second book is about everything that inclines a person to devote individual effort and also everything that makes individual effort pay off. When does grit stop being useful? What are the limits of grit? You know, I think the personal reason why I wrote this second book is that as somebody who has gotten very far in life through her own effort, she has asked the question, you know, when is it not paying off? And I will tell you, when you are trying hard and you're not making the progress you want, well, if you're me at a certain age, you just try harder, right? I mean, wake up earlier, uh, grind. harder and then stay later, right? That's the assumption, right? If I'm trying hard, if I think I'm trying hard and I'm not getting results, it must be that I think I'm trying hard, but I'm not trying hard enough. And then I can try harder, right? I mean, it's kind of like natural. You're like, oh, then, you know, do 20% more, right? You know, you're not getting where you are,

Starting point is 00:03:03 like turn up the volume, right? It's like an inverse Parkinson's law, not that work expands to fill the time given for it, but effort expands to make something happen. Right. And sometimes that works, right? Because sometimes you aren't at 100%. And sometimes like, yeah, like, you know, you're lifting weights and you just like exert a little more effort. So I feel like this trick that we learn, you know, try harder is not wrong, but it's incomplete. And I think the limits, I mean, you ask me like, what are the limits? When you are trying hard and then harder and you're not making progress, you have to do something that was not natural for me, which is to ask whether the situation itself was not the right situation. You know, to me, it felt like, first of all, I don't

Starting point is 00:03:45 know if it would occur to me. Like, you know, I always look inward, right? It's like, you know, what can I do? I don't want to look outward. That was reflexive to me. And also felt kind of, yeah, like, well, I'll use the word cowardly. You can use the word, like, it just felt embarrassing and shameful. It just felt like being a loser to, you know, ask. What, you're saying that you can't do it on your own? Oh, you need a helping hand. You need this crutch in order to be able to get across the line. Exactly. It would be more noble if you suffered more. Yeah, yeah. Right. And it's, the hard way is the best way, right? And so that that like that rule of thumb, right? Like effort is everything. If it's not working, try harder. I think it's dangerous. I think it's incomplete.

Starting point is 00:04:24 And I think by being incomplete, you can like end up in the wrong place. Do you know why I think, one of the reasons why I think that asymmetry maybe that people have has been so prevalent in the modern world, at least of all because of the fact that you wrote a massive book about it. I think that think a big part of it is that on average, more people probably do needs to be told to put their emotions to one side and just work harder. I think that if you were to take an aggregate. If you take 100 people, you'd be like, how many people like actually just need to turn up the volume on their effort? And then how many people actually need to get situated? You would say, like, more people need just to like... Not even that. I think far more people are leaving a lot

Starting point is 00:05:08 on the table when it comes to how hard they're pressing the gas tank, full stop. And you are always going to have more agency over just effort applied. Like it's immediate. It's there right now. Right. I can just do that. I can just do one more rap now. I can just stick about for another 30 minutes now. And the problem is there's a selection effect, which is the kind of people that listen to podcasts like this and read books like yours, are already in the group who are probably turning themselves inside out, thinking that they're not doing enough already. So this is what I call advice hyper responders. So advice hyper responders. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Same more. Yeah. They basically exaggerate that which they are predisposed to already as opposed to correcting the

Starting point is 00:05:52 imbalance. Which I think actually, so you might say that about advice hyper responders. I mean, you could argue that that's just human nature, that our strengths get raced. Then our strengths get stronger, right? Well, yeah. Because you're like the problem with every physical therapy problem that anybody ever had, right? It's like, oh, you're using your like glutes and like because you have strong glutes, you're like you're not using the other muscles, right, like the hamstrings. So, so I think that it could be a general truth, right, that if you have gotten far in life through effort and maybe you're right that numerically like, okay, that's not everyone, like maybe that's the minority, like, then it's those people, maybe not 100 out of 100, who knows what the

Starting point is 00:06:32 ratio is. Like, those people are the ones who like make the mistake of, of just like pushing harder instead of finding a situation where their effort has higher return. Bingo, yeah. They gravitate toward a message that reinforces their worldview already. Yes. And it also confirms what the reason that most people are doing that, which is the fear of being the inverse. Like the person who's already adamant, why, I'm just so, I'm just so lazy. It's like, dude, you haven't missed a gym session in like three weeks. But like you notice when you have a cupcake. As opposed to. to the guy that hasn't left the couch on an evening time for like two months. Right.

Starting point is 00:07:12 For him, advice just goes through him like he's a poltergeist. Yeah. Whereas, like, the imbalance isn't corrected, the predisposition gets exaggerated. That's basically how this. So how do you feel about these advice hyper responders? Do you feel like they are, it's good? Is it bad? Like, what do you think about advice type of person?

Starting point is 00:07:30 It just is. I think, you know, men who hear the message don't be pushy with women. unfortunately in a post-me-2 world, what's happened there is the guys that were just blowing through boundaries and being assholes, they coasted past that advice completely unchanged while the guys who probably could have done with a little bit more confidence to go up and speak to a woman.

Starting point is 00:07:51 Oh, I knew I was too much. I knew that I was too much. I see it everywhere. I see this absolutely everywhere. That's so interesting. That's why I'm saying it's like a general truth. It's not just about like effort. Bingo. It's across the board. Whatever your strength is, it is in a way, a weakness.

Starting point is 00:08:03 Yes. Strength and your fear will be reinforced by, whatever, and this is to sort of bring it into land, in a meritocracy where you are your outcomes, which means that the winners are deserving of their successes and the losers are deserving of their losses, what do you want? I want to own my outcomes. Right. I want to know that if I put my fucking foot on the pedal, it's on me. Yeah, it's on me. Not going to rely on anyone, atomized society, individual responsibility man. I'm going to Sigma, lone ranger wolf my way to the top. Like, it's alluring. It's very alluring. So what do you think about my thesis that individual

Starting point is 00:08:36 effort matters. But what do you think about the thesis? And your situation matters enormously and much more than people think. I mean, do you feel like it's a weak message? Do you feel like it's, you know, what do you think? No, I don't think it's a weak message at all. I think it's a important counterbalance to kind of the prevailing personal development message of the last 10 to 15 years or so. Like even when I think about... Yeah, if you had to like give a one-liner for the personal advice that is given for last time. Like, what's your perspective? I'm like, what is, what is that message?

Starting point is 00:09:11 Fuck your feelings just work harder. Just do it. Fuck your feelings just work harder. Yeah. That's, that's being... By the way, I'm trying to curse less. So you're like a terrible influence on me. I'm sorry.

Starting point is 00:09:19 I'm going to be dropping. I'm afflicted with British. Yeah, that's okay. It sounds much better with your accent. So like, I think you can say anything you want. Yeah, the cussing thing I do need to, I do need to dial it back. There is research actually that shows that like it is actually just a sign of being sincere because like you're not editing.

Starting point is 00:09:35 So, you know. Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex is stepping into a void. I work a lot with children and parents. And so that's a totally different context. Speed run their development. Speed during their education. They're going to start using you when they grow up. Hey, you're a precocious developer here.

Starting point is 00:09:50 I see that your language is come on. Since you're a prodig, you're going to be. But like, so the last 10 or 15 years, I agree there's, I think there are two messages, honestly. I think there's one which is like, just do it, right? I do think there's another one, which is a little more nuanced, right? So for me, as a scientist, I'm not a journalist, I'm a scientist. I study human behavior and I study human behavior change. And I think I speak for pretty much every behavioral scientist when we say that your response, you can change directly, but you can also change your thoughts. And if you change your thoughts, then you don't have to use willpower because your thoughts, like, if you say to yourself, like, I want to go to the gym, then you don't need to use willpower to go to the gym. So you can either change your will, like at the the last thing, he's like, I'm going to force myself to just go to the gym, right? Or earlier than that, you can change your thoughts, you can reframe it, you can rethink it, you can have a paradigm shift.

Starting point is 00:10:45 Like, I want to go to, you know, gym is my temple. Like, I'm the sort of person, right? I think to me, the last 15 years of personal development advice has either been like, just do it or just change your thoughts so that you will want to do it. And I think the message of this book is, I think, blindingly obvious to people who study human behavior for living, which is that our thoughts are much more influenced by our circumstances, by like who you're talking to and what they just said and like, you know, is the can of soda to your right next to your elbow or not? Where's your phone? These elements of your situation are much more in charge of your thoughts than you think. People think they're in charge of their own thoughts, and very often the situation is in charge of your

Starting point is 00:11:32 thoughts. You think people with discipline or high willpower are actually more disciplined, or have they just designed lives that required less of it? So I think one of the like signal discoveries the last 20 years is that we assume that people go to the gym, like, and they go for their run, and they get their work done, and they're not procrastinating, and they control their temper and they have five-year goals, but they actually break down those five-year goals into like one-year goals and they make progress on them. They return emails. Like, we think of those people, is having enormous willpower. And I think like 20 or 30 years ago, that's what scientists would also say. I think the fact that people have willpower, I mean, willpower is a thing. I mean, there's a part of your

Starting point is 00:12:14 brain at the front that is able to suppress or elevate impulses for the rest of your brain. Like, you can will yourself to do things. But the discovery is that highly successful people are not using willpower. Highly successful people are doing exactly what you said, which is they are arranging their lives so they don't need to use well power. I mean, it's it's kind of the opposite of like brute force and being like a general, right? You know, Sun Su said you don't win a war through brute force. You do it strategically and you do it. The law is really the law of least effort, right? So like, how can you set up a situation where you think I want to go to the gym? It's like, well, for me, I'll tell you, it's like this trivial. If I have my gym close out, right? And I'm.

Starting point is 00:13:00 the night before. I mean, I keep my gym clothes in the fourth drawer of my bureau. It's not that hard to reach into the fourth. Like, it's not like I have to climb a ladder, right? So in the morning, I could reach into the fourth drawer of my bureau and pull out a top and a pair of shorts and I'd be ready to go to the gym. It would take me, I think, three seconds and almost no calories, right? So how can that make a difference to whether I go to the gym or not? If the night before, I reach into the fourth drawer and I take out the shorts and the top and I lay it on top of the bureau, I will tell you it makes a huge difference. It makes an enormous, especially when I'm traveling, by the way, because when I'm home, I have a routine. But like, the difference is that, first of all, it's a visual cue, right?

Starting point is 00:13:44 Like, our attention is just whatever we see, right? There's an expression, what you see is all there is. If I see it, I think, oh, right, I could go to the gym. And that micro-friction, the micro-friction of, like, I could open the drawer. I could, like, I could hunt around. I could, like, find it is enough to make the difference. And so to me, the insight is, yeah, don't wait for willpower. Like, that's the worst way to change human behavior. Again, I think I speak on behalf of Angela Duckworth, and I speak on on behalf of scientists who study this, like everyone I know. And also, if you're going to take the message of the last 10 to 15 years, it's like it's all in your mind, it's your mindset and so forth. What books do you need to have visible? What, what quotes do you have? Who do you need to be around to

Starting point is 00:14:31 give you the thoughts that you want to give you the behavior you want? Like that's the three boxes model. The situation is box one. Your thoughts are box two. And your response to your thoughts is box three. That's interesting. Is that, so that's the big change you think over the last couple of decades. For me, I think my, you know, I sound like a politician when I say like, well, it's not a contradiction. Your academic diplomacy is showing. It's really like I'm trying to be honest in a way that doesn't sound like I, you know, am making it up because it is truth. You know, when I was in graduate school, like the very first thing you learn is about the power of the situation. There is a book that I don't think a lot of people have read, but some people have read.

Starting point is 00:15:12 I know Malcolm Gladwell read it and it changed his life. The book is called The Person and the Situation. And it is not a bestseller. It is written by two academics who never went on podcasts, right? They are Dickness Bitt and Lee Ross. And every graduate student psychology has to learn what's in that book. And what's in that book is that people have the experience of being intentional goal directed, right? Why did you do that?

Starting point is 00:15:37 Like, why did you drink that? Why did you say that? What was in your mind, right? And that's only partly true. The book about the person and the situation is really about the power of the situation over the person. the book mostly talks about how whether you're altruistic or you're going to make me curse or not altruism. Like a total fill in the blank. Do it.

Starting point is 00:16:01 Asshole. Okay. Whether you are one or the other. I could have said that in front of a kid. But like I'm trying to. He's called the kid an asshole. It's slightly different. Yes.

Starting point is 00:16:09 I don't do that either. That one I don't have a problem with. But it's very much. So here's a, here's a study that is highlighted in the person's situation. that again, like every graduate student in psychology, it's called the Good Samaritan Study, right? And it actually literally takes place at a seminary. So these are people who are going to go into the ministry, right? It's their job to be altruistic. They're nothing like the predisposed to be lovely. Yeah. And that's like, they're predisposed and it's like all they think about, right? So in the Good Samaritan study,

Starting point is 00:16:41 they basically have in one condition, somebody who's like obviously homeless and suffering, right? And, you know, they're there. In the other condition, that's also true. But in one condition, these good Samaritans, right, these seminarians are like rushing to get to a next appointment, right? Like you give them a phone call and they're supposed to. And another one, they don't. It's a trivial situational feature. It shouldn't affect their character, right? You didn't make them more altruistic by like calling them and saying like, oh, you have to be in this place at two o'clock. But it has a massive effect on whether they stop and have. help the person who needs help. So this is the kind of thing that all graduate students in psychology learn about the hidden power of situations. We feel like we're intentional, but we're much more reactive. Okay, you learn about that in graduate school. So I can't lie and say that I never knew about the power of the situation. But I do think that connecting this to excellence, like connecting this to agency, there are philosophers who have pointed out that the agency of the individual is located within,

Starting point is 00:17:50 there are not many philosophers who say that you have agency over your circumstances, that whether you choose to have water next to you or whatever you're not trying to drink, soda or whatever, like, is up to you. I think that to me was an insight that I hadn't fully appreciated when I started out. It's a feedback mechanism as well, presumably,

Starting point is 00:18:11 that you can engineer more agency, which means that you can engineer further, which means more able to, t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t. think there are many examples of positive feedback cycles. And in a way, when we're talking about like a strength becomes more of a strength, right? And a weakness becomes more. That's also a positive feedback. Right. The Matthew effect, right? Like, you know, the rich get richer, whatever it is you're doing. So I do think situational agency begets situational agency. And it's not just that. But when you start to change your situation and you realize that you do have a responsibility to put things around you

Starting point is 00:18:45 and to be around people who bring out your best, I think that encourages you to do more of the same. What are the environmental similarities that you discovered when studying world-class performers? Well, since we are in Austin, I will tell you that the signature example of grit would be Michael Phelps, right? 365-day-a-year swimmer for a 20-year career, right?

Starting point is 00:19:13 And I had dinner with Michael Phelps's coach, Bob Bowman, who is a coach here now at UT Austin. And to me, the story of Michael Phelps is a perfect illustration of how grit is essential and how grit is not enough. And here's why. You can be as gritty as Michael Phelps. I really don't think there's anybody who's worked harder than Michael Phelps. And he's actually said that himself. He's like, I'm not going to brag about a lot of things. But I will say that I don't think anybody swam hard.

Starting point is 00:19:43 harder than I did. Like nobody practiced and trained. And it's not just the physical, by the way, but mental, something that Bob mentioned kind of like parenthetically last night. It's like, it's not just the mileage that he put into the pool and how he would mentally visualize every competition, but not just what Bob asked him to do, which is to like imagine how you want the race to go, but he imagined all the ways the race could go and then like what he would do so that he was completely able to be like in the moment. But then when you ask the question like, well, Well, would Michael Phelps have become, you know, arguably the greatest athlete ever, right? Because he's certainly the most decorated Olympic athlete by a stretch, right? Nobody's going to approach this record that he has of 28 medals, 23 of them gold across a 20-year career. But you could also ask the question, was he situated, right? And absolutely. Okay, so let's consider that Michael Phelps was born 10 minutes of well. Well, it's actually born an hour away from where Bob Bowman, I think the greatest swimming coach in history happened to be, and he was then moved to be only 10 minutes away because Michael's sisters wanted to swim, and they wanted

Starting point is 00:20:49 to swimmer where all the best swimmers were. So they started going to the North Baltimore Aquatic Center, and that is where the best swimmers were, so the best team, and also the best coaches. Like the kind of youth aquatic center that actually recruits nationally for coaches, which is why Bob Bowman moved from California to Baltimore. So it was a situation. He also had his mom. So he had a ADHD as a diagnosis, as a nine-year-old, I think. And he had this mom who was so situationally wise. She understood that in certain situations, Michael was a pain in the ass. Look, you're got, you know, by the end of this podcast, I'm just going to be dropping F bombs. But he was a pain in the ass. Letters home, you know, teachers saying like this kid doesn't have potential. Like, he's also a disruption. But she knew that in the right situation, he would have complete focus and total effort. So that's the pool. I think these features of a situation, Baltimore Aquatic Center, a team of athletes who even at ages like 9, 10, 11 were used to the kind of practice that elite swimmers do, a coach who ends up being, you know, in the storybooks as like one of the greatest coaches ever, you cannot explain Michael Phelps's achievements without talking about his situation. And then if you just look at, you know, subsequent things, I think Michael actually did have a lot of situational agency. When Bob Bowman moved from Baltimore, Michael Phelps had the good sense to follow him, right?

Starting point is 00:22:21 Like, he knew that he couldn't be the swimmer that he could be with Bob unless he was with Bob, right? So I think there is a story that is not often told. You show me the paragon of grit. And if you keep looking, you will also find a situation that was their ally. The supplement industry is full of products making claims that they can't back, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Momentus. Their co-founder, Jeff Byers, played in the NFL and saw firsthand just how wildly the quality of supplements can vary. So he built Momentus around a higher standard. Every product from Momentus uses evidence-backed ingredients, transparent doses, and independent third-party testing.

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Starting point is 00:23:29 modern wisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. Isn't that interesting? First off, an inversion of the athlete going with the coach as opposed to the coach going with the athlete

Starting point is 00:23:43 because usually people think about the athlete as being the once-in-a-generation talent. Yes. But what Michael Phillips identified was that he would only be what he could be if he was around this particular guy. This particular arguably once-in-a-generation coach.

Starting point is 00:23:55 also what's kind of interesting you know you the word is situation when people think about situation it's kind of amorphous it's like big it's ephemeral but he'd found this singular this one linchpin that because he would have left his teammates he would have left his home he would have left his routine his car the maybe the new pools a little bit longer or colder or wider or something maybe the chlorine slightly different or maybe you can't get the same kind of food or the raw milk that he was drinking on a weekend isn't available or he's not got his friends or his golf or whatever. It's like his situation was a guy.

Starting point is 00:24:29 So how have you come to think about this? Because look, I really appreciate you saying, asking me for critique at the top. It seems like your career in academia has made you sort of wanting to hear things. I was a little bit worried when I was like, Angela Duckworth's next book is going to be about situation in environment design. I was a little worried when I first thought about that because I'm like, with a productivity background

Starting point is 00:24:49 and like spending a lot of time with David Allen's getting things, done and environment design like you know you don't want to be distracted by your phone don't have it next to you on the table I'm like don't you yeah like can't be it can't it can't be and what I'm keen to do is to everyone now understands that your environment sort of can influence you I want to move past like don't have the chips in the house yeah yeah you're like this I know yes yeah yeah yeah no that's great um but I want to go to I want to get really deep on the environment design stuff what is the cutting-edge shit that makes the biggest difference that people don't already know. People know that they shouldn't live that far from their

Starting point is 00:25:23 fucking gym, right? People know that they should. By the way, they don't necessarily do anything about it, right? So, like, before we just skip over, like, oh, everybody knows that, like, you know, what's within your reach is what you're going to eat. Like, everybody knows that. How many people put that into practice? When I wrote the chapter on, like, set up your space, I was like, blindingly obvious, but nobody's doing it. But I agree with you. There are also chapters on everybody knows it's important, but they don't think it's possible. I mean, there's other things, but before we skip past like what's within reach and I'll just say, I think in my research, by the way, when I ask Americans, like, what's the best way to control your behavior? They say it's to control the

Starting point is 00:26:05 situation. Ask the same Americans, what do you do? They say they use willpower. Why? Well, then I asked follow-up questions. I said why. And one of the most common responses was, I want to be the sort of person who can do what they want because of their will, not because they need the situation. They don't want the situation to be a crutch. I think it needs kind of a mark of character. Like, you don't want to be the kind of person who needs to take GLP-1s or to, like, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:30 you want to be the sort of person who doesn't need that, right? So I think that, that to me is at least part of the answer. But you ask the question, like, what's not obvious, right? So let's get to that. Here's something that I think is not obvious. I think it is not obvious that by and large, you'll be more successful achieving. your individual goals if you do it as part of a group. And I'm not talking about just sort of like,

Starting point is 00:26:54 oh, being specifically on a swimming team. I'm literally talking about like a, so somebody's trying to run a marathon, someone's trying to be a better public speaker, entrepreneur, start a company, become a better marketer, right? If you ask the question, could I find other people who don't necessarily work with me on my project, but are just striving for the same goals, also trying to run a marathon, also trying to go to the gym more, also trying to fund a company, but maybe a different company, right? Research shows, and I think this is countercultural, research shows that you will be more successful on average if you do that in a flock, like as part of a tribe. And the reason I say it's countercultural is that DIY is the prevailing, like DIY is an expression, do it yourself

Starting point is 00:27:39 was introduced more than 50 years ago, but it's now 50 times more common. And when I see young people in particular, the things that they try to do, they try to do with their own individual effort, it doesn't necessarily occur to them to find, you know, other aspiring writers, like other aspiring, whatever it is. And that to me is an insight that if I could go back in time, I think of young people that I've advised and, like, I'm trying to help them with their time management and their confidence and so forth. How often did I say, who else do you know that is trying to, like, be a graduate student? And how often did I say, like, like, let's help you find a group. Because it's easier in some ways if you're a swimmer because you

Starting point is 00:28:19 join a team. I think it's less obvious, but just as transformative to do that for like quite literally any individual personal goal you have. What like? What is some of the non-obvious goals that people have used groups to help them with? So one of the, you know, examples that I found in my research on this was there was a group of surgeons. And it wasn't necessarily they were trying to be better surgeons, but surgery is like an all-consuming thing. What they really wanted to do, they were all young men. They were just finishing, I think, like, the part of their specialized training. So they're all going into orthopedic surgery. They met at a conference because, you know, that's what they did for their late. But they had a dinner, and they said that they had a different goal other than being

Starting point is 00:29:05 world-class surgeons, which they all, by the way, ended up being. Like, they're all chaired professors at, like, the best hospital systems in the country. They had another goal. They wanted to be good fathers and they wanted to be good husbands. And they wondered how they would do that, right? And they were living in different cities. They had their own lives. And at this point, they're strangers, right? But they decided to have dinner at the next conference and the next one. And then they decided to have a group text thread. And you asked these men who are now at retirement age, how different would your lives be if you had tried to become world-class orthopedic surgeons and achieve this other goal of being men, you know, being men who showed up for their family and so what's the road not taken?

Starting point is 00:29:47 And each of these men will say that the road not taken is not the best road, that they are, that their lives were transformed. And then they gave examples, you know, they've seen each other through true tragedy and every possible, you know, personal struggle. And it was because they had this group. And it really was nothing more or less than a group text thread. And then getting together a few times, you know, with some increasing frequency, right? So now not just at conferences and so forth. When I think about my own career, like when I interviewed them, I was like, oh, what about me? Like, I don't have that. And I'll tell you that I have room to grow too because I have collaborators. I have a team that works in my lab. I don't have what these men have. Like I don't have

Starting point is 00:30:33 this like group of people who are struggling with the same professional and personal challenges, you know, it is essentially creating Alcoholics Anonymous for yourself. Like, it's creating a mutual aid society, which is how Alcoholics Anonymous sometimes calls them. It's like, I don't have that. And I think it would even for me at 56 and a lot to be grateful for, I think it would transform my life. And I'm actually trying to start one. I like actually reached out to these women who were like, what? Like all in their 50s, actually one in their high 40s, or maybe she's 50s. And I said like, I interviewed these surgeons. I want to try to do what I'm

Starting point is 00:31:13 trying to do, but I would like to try to do it like somehow in some kind of fellowship or community with you. Do you want to make the Avengers assemble of high powered lady academics? They are really high powered, I have to say. I think it's very important if you're going to decide to

Starting point is 00:31:29 start a group, right? You can join a group. If you can find a group, I think you just join a group, right? Like, you're trying to marathon and you just find the local running club. They're apparently over 60 in Philadelphia. So like, there's got to be a running club wherever you are, and there's probably a group of people who, like, want to write a book or whatever. But if you're trying to find a group like these orthopedic surgeons could not find a group that they could just join of like other elite orthopedic

Starting point is 00:31:51 surgeons who cared about family and so forth, well, then they start one, right? If you're going to do that, I think you should probably look for two things. I do think stage of life, like the difference between a mentor and a peer is that a mentor is above you. They are farther than you. They're above you and honestly they're usually older than you. So I think finding somebody who's at the same stage of life and then who are really like like minded. And so yes, you won't be surprised that the women that I reach out to are all like very accomplished women and they're all around my age. You know what makes me think about. It makes me think about the difference between reading fiction and nonfiction with the mentor versus peer relationship. So in a mentor relationship,

Starting point is 00:32:28 it's largely unidirectional, right? The advice is going to come from them to you. But in the same way is reading fiction can often teach you more stuff than reading nonfiction does because you understand the protagonist's motivations and okay well what does that mean it causes you to reflect it's more indirect in the same way when you've got a peer group indirectly the advice that you need to give somebody reveals something about yourself to yourself which is by the way part of the magic of a.A. Right. Alcoholics Anonymous as they say like you only keep it when you give it away. I mean there is something in the advice giving that is self-awareness. Well I mean it has How you mentioned before about the identity element of personality, right? I am the sort of person that goes to the gym. I am the sort of person that does the thing. Like it is hard to proselytize about this thing that somebody else should be doing without it at least somehow throwing into sharp contrast the fact that you're not doing it yourself. I actually did do a random assignment study where we asked people to give advice. Ask kids, right? Like, you know, how do you not procrastinate? And so that was the whole advice giving is an intervention.

Starting point is 00:33:36 Exactly. And, you know, yeah, their grades went up. So, like, basically in the treatment group, which was like, you know, in a few minutes, like, just write down the things that you would advise other students to do. Like, that was the whole thing. Like, we didn't tell them anything. They weren't even giving it to a student. It was an imaginary student. They were told to, like, give it to students.

Starting point is 00:33:52 And actually, we don't lie in our studies. So we actually did give it to other students because it was actually good advice, it turns out. And then the students who were randomly assigned to give advice. And then the control group was just a control group. It wasn't that they received. It was just a control group that, like, didn't do that. this, they actually did by themselves. I do think there's something about like, I think it's partly, by the way, self-awareness. Like you, you basically do some reflection. And then also there's a

Starting point is 00:34:16 kind of like, well, I just said it. So like I should probably do it. Right. Like a kind of consistency. Like you don't want to be a hypocrite. Yeah. Yeah. But I do think your point about what is the difference between a peer and a mentor is profound. And I guess if I, if I wanted to sum up what I just said about like, what's something non-obvious about your situation? Like, are you doing things alone? And more and more Americans are doing that. Over the last 15 or 20 years, we're spending more time alone in every category of age, and particularly with young people, but it's not just young people. We're also spending less time out of the house, it turns out, like by over an hour. So over the last 20 years, we're spending like, you know, less time just not under our own roofs, which means that we're very likely alone, but we're sort of isolated, right, from the rest of society. And a new finding that was just published. not by me, but by, you know, scientists who specialize in this, we're speaking about 300 fewer words a day. So we're sort of becoming a isolated, silent. Oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:35:17 You don't mean vocabulary breadth. You mean volume of words spoken. Number of words over the last, say, 15 years. God, the same thing is not true for me. The podcast are in the room. Well, maybe you are like bucking the trend. But imagine what it would be like without your data. You know what it's like when Bill Gates walks into a stadium and everybody.

Starting point is 00:35:35 on average becomes a billionaire. I walk into the room and everyone on average becomes a podcaster. Andrew Yang in the American Time Use survey came up with four stats that I thought were fascinating. Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Americans spent attending or hosting a social event declined by 50%. Among young people aged 15 to 24, they spent 70% less time attending or hosting parties in 2024 than in 2023. Men who watch television now spend seven hours doing so for every hour they spend hanging out with another person outside of the house. And number four, this was the most insane.

Starting point is 00:36:14 The average female pet owner spends more time with her pet than all humans put together. Oh God. Right. I didn't know about, I think I knew about the three of those stats. I didn't know about the fourth one. But like this is the painting of the, you know, this is the picture, right, of like modern American life. And one reason I wrote a book on the situation is that I don't think the default settings of the modern world are good. I really don't.

Starting point is 00:36:41 I think this trend toward isolation towards being on your phone all the time, you know, being in some little segregated part of the world where, like, you only interact with people who are basically agreeing with you. Like, I don't think it's good. And so if you're going to change your life, and if you believe the science that says to change yourself, you change your situation, the imperative is even more urgent, is what I'm saying. Isn't it interesting that you've had to sneak this pro-social thing that has happened for the entirety of human history and is the single best intervention, according to the Harvard longevity study people, in making you live longer? Relationships. It'll improve your performance, so maybe you should do it. You know what I mean? We have to sneak it into the meritocracy somehow.

Starting point is 00:37:26 You know, I am not a great commentator on like how, you know, my work fits into the rest of the world. Partly because, and if you knew me well, you would really believe me. I know what I know and I really don't know most things. Oh, my God. Like current events, like basic world history. So I can't necessarily fit my work. But I am a study or I am a student of human excellence. And so, you know, you could say like, oh, the only way that somebody's going to listen to you talk about relationships is

Starting point is 00:37:54 because, like, they think it will help them achieve more in this meritocracy, and you may be right. But I only know what I know, and I am a psychologist who studies high achievers. And I can say, as a student of high achievers, that their relationships, their mentors, which we haven't talked about too much, but their peers, like, they are arguably more important than their physical environment. But I don't want to discount the physical environment either. Somewhere along the way, low energy just gets accepted as a part of getting older. Turns out there's a reason for that. as we age our mitochondria, the parts of our cells that power us, become weaker and make less energy, which is why I'm such a huge fan of timeline. They've developed this that helps to clear out your

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Starting point is 00:39:10 20% off by going to the link in the description below. Are heading to timeline.com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's timeline.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. Okay, hit me up about mentors. What did you learn about mentors? So you can, you know, dig up stats on like, you know, your likelihood of becoming, for example, an award-winning scientist is like two times to four times larger if you're mentored by an award-winning scientist. And the kind of, oh, a mentor makes a difference.

Starting point is 00:39:40 I don't really know that there are a lot of people who need convincing. Like how many people would say, you know, it doesn't matter if like Oprah Winfrey is going to mentor you as you try to make your way, like in media or like it doesn't matter whether you have an editor if you're a writer. Like I think the intuition that mentors matter is common. What is rare, I think, is the idea that you can proactively be a mentor magnet. You can attract mentors. And I will tell you that not every high achiever, but most that I have studied, is a mentor magnet.

Starting point is 00:40:13 And what am I talking about? The sort of person who other high achieving people who are farther down the path want to mentor. And you know, not everyone is equally mentorable. So what are these people like? Like, let me give you a very specific example. I think the situation is so abstract, honestly, that like, you know, you don't know what to do with it because it's like everything. So let me be concrete. I got a email in my inbox on May 13, 2013 from Cody Coleman. I wrote about him in Grit. I also wrote about him in Situated, and he's the only person I put in both books. I wrote about him in Grit, why? Because in

Starting point is 00:40:50 that early email in 2013, he introduced himself as somebody whose life could only be explained through passion of perseverance. He was born to a mother who was serving time in jail. So he was literally born in a prison outside of Trenton, New Jersey. And from those inauspicious beginnings, you know, a childhood, just sheer chaos, right? Like the police were being called like, you know, every other week because of, you know, domestic disturbances. There was a menagerie of cats and dogs. He has severe asthma. You could hardly breathe. His grandmother was taking care of him, but she was basically losing her mind. So, you know, these are not the circumstances that you would think. And the one day, he will graduate from MIT. Prototypical excellence. I mean,

Starting point is 00:41:31 this is a thing. He had this remarkable escape from poverty. So when he emailed me, he said, I watched her TED talk. And I think, I think you have explained a lot about my life and I would like to talk to you. Right. So he basically was asking me for a curiosity conversation. I think that's that's the term that is used for like I'd like to learn something from you right and again not a term well not again it's a term that I want to just hasten to say like I didn't come up with it but I think it's a perfect description so in that email he expresses curiosity he also expresses preparation because he wasn't writing me something that like it took two seconds like he had watched what he had he had read a little bit of what I had written and then he signed off with some of something that I think is signature to mentor magnets. He said, if there's anything that I can do that might be helpful in any way, like, I would love to do that, right? And by the way, he was something like 20 or 21 years old when he wrote this. It's not Shakespeare. It was just sincere. And he signed his name. And you know what? Of all the emails in my inbox, I replied to that one. So who is this

Starting point is 00:42:39 person who's prepared, who has something to say, who wants a few minutes of my time, whom is offering to be helpful. So to be a mentor magnet is to be the sort of person where you know, the universe does reach out to you because you're mentorable. What happens next? So I meet Cody. I find out about a story. I write about it in grit. By the way, he continues to live so I can tell you what happened to him. So after he reached MIT and he graduated with a four nine out of five, he went to Google. From there, he went to Stanford. He got his PhD at Stanford in computer science. He was the third black recipient of a PhD in computer science in the university's history. And now he's the CEO of an AI. startup that according to Forbes magazine, you know, maybe valued at a billion dollars, like at some point in the future. So why does he play a role in this second book? He gave a TED Talk himself, it turns out, years after I gave mine, and he gave it in Palo Alto to a Stanford audience. And because it was a Stanford audience, he had no problem like putting graphs up on the PowerPoint slide behind him. So he has a graph up. And there's a gray line that's gently sloping Oprah

Starting point is 00:43:47 upward and he says that's what most people think you know you meet me here and you think like you know he did better and better he went to mit and so forth like that's not my life this is my life and there's a red exponential curve right talk about the matthew effect when there is a flywheel when good begets better and better begets best you actually get exponential growth this is what he said i think of my life in five-year chapters in each chapter my situation was better than the last and you can only explain my exponential improvement, not linear, but exponential, if you really understand my situations and how each one, right? So from his high school to MIT, from MIT to Google, from Google to Stanford now to San Jose, Silicon Valley, that the opportunities multiplied

Starting point is 00:44:39 and the support multiplied. So I think you can be a mentor magnet. What did Cody not do? He didn't email me and ask me to be his mentor. Mentor magnets do not email people and say, hi, Chris, could you be my mentor? Hello. They don't do that. They ask for a short conversation. They offer to be helpful. They express gratitude. And very often that will lead to another conversation. What they also do, by the way, is work with you on something. So mentor magnets have a habit of asking whether they can contribute to a project that the mentor is already working on. When Cody reiterated his offer to help, I initially thought no. And then I realized I had a project that was ongoing where I was trying to teach little kids to be gritty. And I thought, oh, this is perfect. I'll have Cody Coleman record a video about how from very humble beginnings he got to

Starting point is 00:45:35 where he got through passion and perseverance. So we worked on that project for about three months, which is about, you know, that's what I call the mentors for a season. Like you go from a mentor for a reason. Could I have a short conversation to a mentor for a season? He did that. And then he continued to just be like a grateful, curious, wonderful person. When I read his PhD dissertation, which was on AI, and I didn't understand the math. So I pretty much skipped the acknowledgments. I was like, oh, I know I'm not going to understand this. His acknowledgments are three single spaced pages. He thanks by full name over 200 people, like, you know, dozens of teammates or fellow student. Like, there were 17 administrators of the computer science department at Stanford that he

Starting point is 00:46:21 thanks by full name. Cody Coleman is a paragon of grit. Cody Coleman is a mentor magnet. And Cody Coleman is a perfect example of, like, yes, you need grit. But you also need to have the agency to navigate into better and better situations. What's the relationship between grit and your new insight around situations and burnout? So having experienced burnout, and I'll be honest, when I used to teach burnout, because burnout, you know, burnout is a word that a psychologist named Christina Maslach coined, she was studying burnout. It has a very specific definition. Depression is, you know, you're depressed, you know, it's pervasion. Burnout is specifically about work, right? So when you experience this trifecta of exhaustion and, you know, you're depressed, you know, it's pervasion. Burnout is specifically about work, right? So, so when you experience this trifecta of exhaustion and, you're, you know, you're also like a weird sort of dissociation or like I'm not really present. And finally, like kind of a helplessness, right? This is the trifecta of burnout. That's what burnout is. It's an emotional state characterized by I'm exhausted. I feel strangely not connected to my work anymore. And also

Starting point is 00:47:31 nothing I do is working and I have no agency, right? So that's what burnout is. I would stand up in front of PowerPoint slides and I would tell my MBA students, for example, and my undergraduates about burnout and the psychology of burnout and Christina Maslach's research. and, you know, what we know about burnout. It was completely abstract to me. I could have been talking about Mars. I'm like, you know, Mars is a planet, right? And then I experienced burnout in my own life.

Starting point is 00:47:56 I mean, if I'm completely honest, I experienced burnout while I was writing this book. And why, right? Well, first, what, right? So, like, I was experiencing exhaustion, this weird sort of like, I'm sort of doing this, and I'm doing it seven days a week, and I'm doing it from before dawn to after midnight. but also I'm kind of like the opposite of the flow state. I'm just like, I'm like weirdly not in the moment, right? And a real feeling of sort of like helplessness.

Starting point is 00:48:22 Like I work harder and harder. Nothing's happening. So I was experiencing this emotional state of burnout. What I think was happening is what we were talking about at the very beginning of this conversation. It wasn't going well. I just tried harder. And it's still like I just kept digging the whole deeper.

Starting point is 00:48:38 And I think the danger of only thinking that grit is your superpower and also being ashamed or negligent of, you know, the change of the situation that would make things better. Like, I think, I think what happened was I should have asked for help. And I'll tell you, I asked for it too late. I also did. You said, like, let's not talk about the physical situation. It's kind of obvious. Here's something that wasn't obvious. I was working at home seven days a week in my pajamas. Like, I literally think. You've voluntarily gone back into COVID. It was exactly. It was actually an extension of the pandemic lifestyle. Everybody else went to back to like civilization. I decided to stay, you know, I thought it would be better for a concentration.

Starting point is 00:49:16 Self-imposed misery. It was, it was awful because I was like socially, you know, I was putting in solitary confinement by choice. But I didn't ask for help early enough. I didn't ask for help often enough. I didn't put myself in the company of other people. What would the help have looked like? Well, I had a person that I met three years into writing this. By the way, this book took five years to write, right? Congratulations. Yeah. It's... On being sane. I, you know, I may live a shorter life because of it, but it took five years to write.

Starting point is 00:49:50 But of course, you know, the research took longer, but the hard part for me was the writing. Three years into it when things are going terribly, right? I'm not sleeping. I mean, the stress levels were like, I had cortisol just, like, coursing through my body. So I would go to sleep. It came to the point where I would go to sleep at 10.30. And my body's fight or flight response would wake me up at 11.30. And then I would just be awake all night.

Starting point is 00:50:13 and then start the next day, exhausted, but also trying to work harder, right? I've been there. Have you been there? Have you experienced burnout, by the way? Okay, well, if I finish the story, you tell me yours? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, you get me your rock bottom out and I'll get mine. All right, I'm going to get, okay, so I'm telling my husband I'm retiring. I literally was fantasizing about being a pastry chef. I don't even eat paste. I don't even eat pastry. I'm like, why would I be a pastry chef? I mean, there are all these like escapist fantasies. I had a friend named Julie who was like, you know, you seem a little bit stressed.

Starting point is 00:50:48 I barked. She was like, do you want to go skiing? I was like, I can't go skiing. She was like, you know, do you want to go for a walk? Like it came down to, she was just sort of negotiating. And like, can I take you for a walk for an hour? No, I can't take a walk for a, this is a sign of burnout. Like, no, I can't take a walk for an hour because I need that hour to work because this is going so poorly. I met somebody who I asked for help. I got sort of set up. his name is Rick Cott, and he had just retired from being an editor. And he had time and he had patience. And he had for some reason, like from the moment we met, he had some affection for me. Like he was just sort of, so I would have these calls with him because he lived in New York. I lived in Philadelphia. And he would ask me how it's doing. And with increasing honesty, I told him. And then at each subsequent meeting, like, let's talk the next article. You know, when you have an editor, you're supposed to produce for them, right? And what you're supposed to talk about is the writing and then what you need to do next. And each Saturday I would show up with no pages. And I would say to him, like, I'm wasting your time. Like, I'm a mess. I'm a dumpster fire. And you don't even know me. I did tell him. I was like, I'm actually usually a competent, smart person, but not right now. And he kept meeting with me. And there came a point where he said, you know, I think the problem with this book is not what you're saying, but the structure of it. And then he went off and he reworked the structure. He sent it to me. And I immediately saw. that it was wrong. I said, that's not the structure. You said, how? And then I basically wrote him an

Starting point is 00:52:18 email that was long enough and detailed enough where I got it right. And then that changed everything. And then I did just have to rearrange things because I already had the science and I already knew it. So that was my rock bottom. And that was my belated cry for help. If I had asked earlier, if I had his support earlier or other support, I really think I would have suffered less. Maybe burnout wouldn't have happened at all. But that's why burnout to me is a personal thing now. Like I don't just teach it in the abstract. And I think people who are really gritty and already try hard and you're right, maybe they're in the minority.

Starting point is 00:52:55 I don't know. But I think it's us. It's us who like digs the whole deeper and doesn't ask for somebody to throw you a rope. While you're on a role, let's say that there is someone who is burnout or burnout adjacent. Yeah. What does the science say and or your personal experience about recovering from burnout? So Christina Maslacht is exactly the person to follow. And by the way, over the arc of her long career, I read one for the last, you know, academic.

Starting point is 00:53:23 She's emeritus now, right? Now retired from Berkeley. And just on this note here, and then we'll talk about like what's the prognosis, right? Like, what's the prescription and what's the prognosis? And then I do want your personal story of burnout. But she said in one of the last academic articles of her career while she was still active at Berkeley, like people always think that the problem with burnout is the person and they try to fix the person. Maybe the manager tries to fix the person who's burned out.

Starting point is 00:53:50 Like, what can I do? You know, this person's burned out. I need to fix them. She said, it's almost always that you have to fix this situation. And I am quoting like nearly verbatim. I'm not saying that because I wrote a book called Situated. So what's the prescription and what's the prognosis? the first thing I think that Christina Masak would say is that when there is a mismatch

Starting point is 00:54:09 between the person and their work situation that can create burnout, one of the ways that's mismatched is workload. Like you're doing too much, right? Like you're working 60 hours, you can only really handle 55 or she was like, that's only one. And then she names five others, by the way, like lack of autonomy, like misalignment of values, you know, a system that, you know, for you doesn't feel like it's a fair system. Like, there's, There are many ways that your work situation can be a mismatch. And overload of work hours is only one and maybe not even the most common. So the first thing about the diagnosis before you get to the prognosis and the prescription is you should try to figure out what

Starting point is 00:54:52 the mismatch is. And I will direct you to her work, not mine. Then what is the prescription and what's the prognosis? The prescription is actually to make situational changes. And if you're a leader, you can try to change the situation for others. And if you're a employee, if you're not in charge, I do think you have to look at what's wrong. And in one way or another, and sometimes it does include leaving the position, but not always. Like, okay, lack of autonomy. Like, how do I find autonomy? I mean, I don't have like a one-liner sort of like, oh, do this, because it depends. But you have to fix the mismatch. I mean, that's the key insight. The situation has to change. you cannot will yourself to not be burned out. You cannot think yourself out of burnout. You have to

Starting point is 00:55:37 change the situation. And the prognosis is good. Burnout to me is not like a characteristic of a person like their height, you know, like there are burned out people, like the sort of, like it's an emotional state like joy or pride or fear or depression. Like it has it has a reality and it can feel like forever, but I was burned out and I'm not burned out now. I may be burned out in the future, but it's not permanent. I've learned from over a thousand podcast episodes, the easier that you make your health routine, the more consistent you'll be. It's like golf, right? You want to keep it simple and not makes a bunch of pills. You want the eye of the tiger, not the DUI of the tiger. That's why I'm such a huge fan of AG1. One scoop contains 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and

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Starting point is 00:56:57 slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. The fascinating thing I've sort of come to learn about burnout, at least my particular variant of it, was mine was. Yeah, tell me, can you tell me? Yeah, mine was brought on by getting ill. So I lived in the house that had toxic mold. And for someone that has, how old were you? Like what was? I was three, two years ago. Three years started living in the house four years ago and then moved out about two and a half years ago when I found out. So I had a good bit of time. And my time under tension, as bodybuilders say, was significant. And if you have the wrong polymorphisms, you can't, your detox pathways don't work in the right way.

Starting point is 00:57:36 I live in the house with another guy. He was fine. I was whatever the opposite of fine was. And it was like a fungus or something that was growing. It's the same stuff that, I mean, this country's wonderful in many ways, but your building materials are wood. And that's not a house is a building is not supposed to be made out of wood. It's supposed to be made out of brick, like a civilized society. I will ask my real estate developer husband.

Starting point is 00:57:56 It's just, yeah, because if it ensures the water. It's organic. It's organic material and it gets wet and hot and wet and hot, and then it gets encased in insulation, and then it gets bits of plastic or clad over it. Well, even if it does, there's like little microbes that are in there and you just need one water leak and everything's now ruined. Okay, so then what happened? So anyway, I go through that and my capacity gets limited. No, no, but wait, can you be more vivid? Like, what happened?

Starting point is 00:58:18 Were you like short of breath? Were you, like, what happened? Oh, okay. If you want the, allow me to bring you down the rabbit hole. The first thing that I noticed was a significant decrease in energy. So I was getting very tired on a nighttime. I used to be a club promoter. So being up until very late was kind of par for the course for me.

Starting point is 00:58:35 And by 6 or 7 or 8 p.m, it would feel like gravity was four times as heavy as it should be. Wow. Okay. I would go to sleep for between 10 and 12 hours. And no matter how long I'd slept, I woke up feeling more tired than when I went to bed. So every morning was starting slow. And then you begin this sort of recursive, I am. not the sort of person that has energy, the morning is going to be hard. So it becomes kind of

Starting point is 00:58:57 self-referential. Self-fulfilling prophecy, right? You're like, this is going to be an awful morning. And then it becomes an awful morning. Yeah, I've been there. And that kind of intervention becomes quite difficult. I mean, I couldn't bear the sound of porcelain. Like if anyone was putting cups out, it's a loud sounds, especially punctuating sounds or percussive sounds. Those were very uncomfortable to me. I didn't want to spend time around people that were talking, but I didn't want to spend time in silence. I couldn't put up with music. I didn't want to see my friends as much. I wasn't being as extroverted. It was a lassitude, like the emotion of lassitude of being ill. Yeah. But without knowing that I was ill, which is the fascinating thing. What did you think was going on?

Starting point is 00:59:32 I, fuck knows. Like, being moody. I just press the, you are being a bitch button. You're being a bitch button. Like, every single issue that I've ever encountered throughout my entire life has always been fixed by working harder. Right. And was that your response to this? Of course it was. Of course it was. Suck it up. Yeah. So, yeah, just go harder. Go harder. So I did. Which obviously, made it all worse. And this is what was kind of fascinating. And maybe this, maybe again, my particular variant has got this sort of medical, pharmacological, biological, like, environmental thing. Not generalised, but, yeah, yeah, but if there is something that comes in and suppresses your capacity, what becomes very interesting is the, you working harder actively makes the problem worse. And there's very few situations in life where working harder won't improve things. Very few. Like when you actually, when it comes down to it, like,

Starting point is 01:00:26 it might not make it better, but it's rare that it makes it worse. And this is one of them. And this is like, this is a case where it is. This is one of them. And what's also fascinating. A lot of kind of ironies, I suppose, very unfortunate ironies. One of them being that you get ruthless brain fog. So I forgot the names of people that I'd known for ages. I forgot the names of streets. I forgot the names of cities. I looked down at my shoes one day and couldn't remember how to tie my shoes. But the brain fog was insane. The smell of standing water was awful. The smell of cut grass was awful. Things that I used to usually like. And all of this stuff had changed. And it's your body just, it has no idea what's going on. It's trying to fire all of this

Starting point is 01:01:05 stuff. And I got COVID at the same time. And there was maybe some long COVID stuff. And then EBV. And you go on this weird Sherlock Holmes. Like, you know, you've got the pipe and you've got the pipe and you've got the monocle. God, you literally have the pipe. I do indeed. I need to put in British. Again, I'm pontificate. Yes, it's all going.

Starting point is 01:01:22 You're trying to work out what it is. Is it this? And it's just they're all red herrings. They're all dead ends. I'll fix this thing. Oh, you've got some BPAs. It's like everybody's got BPAs. It's not that.

Starting point is 01:01:32 Or you've got some EBV. Everybody's got EBV. Okay, well, you might fix that. You've got allergies or whatever. You know, whatever it is. And there's all of these things that are problems on a piece of paper, but aren't the reason that you feel like shit. And then you go through all of the reason.

Starting point is 01:01:45 this stuff. But the thing that sort of made me think about it was you saying about the sleep. And what's really, really ruthless for anyone that's going through complex illness, environmental stuff is that they can feel absolutely wiped during the day and wiped when they get to bed at night. And then after a brief amount of time asleep, they're like completely awake. If I could invert my night to my day, I would have been fine. Yeah, because you could have like alert. This is awesome, like kind of, apart from the fact that it's... I'm highly aroused. Yeah, exactly. It's like 12.30. And sure, I did a saliva cortisol test where you spit in a tube like every... Maybe you did one of these too.

Starting point is 01:02:25 Every two hours or every hour you do this throughout the day or the night as well. I didn't need to. I knew what was going on. I've inverted. You literally inverted my cortisol melatonin response. I was like, wow, that's kind of impressive. Like I'm an owl. I've become an owl. I've burned myself out so much that I've become an owl. Right, right. Well, I'm not a sleep researcher, but I'm in the department with one. And he says, you know, the ideal sleep is like a box wave, right? So you're asleep, then you're awake. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:02:51 You're asleep, then you're awake. And pathology is when you're asleep, but you're too aroused and you're like awake, but you're too slow. Like, so I have been there. So then what happened? Then what's the ending? So you're not in this situation anymore. Not to the same degree. Still, it is a very, very slow recovery, and that was two and a half years ago.

Starting point is 01:03:11 But it's better. better adjacent. So it's good. Brain function appears to be at least somewhat back, better days and worse days. But that combined, and the reason that I think at least is associated tangential to burnout, is that when you have a couple of things,

Starting point is 01:03:30 limited work capacity, but specifically limited mental capacity, which is different because it's like attacking your ability to think. Yeah. And I have a friend whose dad was really struggling and was taken into a psychiatric ward. And he turned to her one day and he said, this illness has taken everything from me.

Starting point is 01:03:49 It's even taken myself. And that like sentence really stuck in the back of my mind because it's a very smart man that for a long time had relied on his mental horsepower to get him out of it. It's kind of like being, it's kind of like having the ability to fly or something. And you go, if I get backed into a corner with the world, I can just press the I can fly button.

Starting point is 01:04:10 and that'll lift me out of the situation and I can live to fight another day. And it's the same thing as what most people think of when it comes to their mind. Right. I can use this, this very carefully curated thing between my ears to fix the problems.

Starting point is 01:04:29 And in the past, I've used my mind to fix the problems. But the very thing that I would use to fix this problem is the very thing that the problem is attacking. And it felt so ironic and like very hopeless, hopeless. Like lack of agency, inability to change, low motivation, all of that stuff. And yeah, it was like an induced burnout. And then when you try to apply the foot on the gas lever, like I'll

Starting point is 01:04:52 just try harder. That's the thing that's sapping, it's what you've got the least of and it saps more from what you need it for for recovery. So, and then here's the really, really ruthless thing. And this is like pretty much sort of bringing it into where I'm land where I'm at now. what I realized was that I kind of detrained my grit muscle. How so? Well, because when I learned the lesson of when you try harder things get worse, I need to learn to be gentle with myself. I need to learn to give myself a lot more grace.

Starting point is 01:05:21 I have to just pick a small number of battles each day that you're going to have some discipline in. But obviously that kind of becomes lax and it sort of begins to fluff somewhat. And that explains why I've gained like 12 pounds this year. And that for the first time in ages. Because you're not working out? Because I'm not working out as much and I'm eating more. I'm okay. And then I wasn't getting up on time as much and it wasn't meditating as much and it wasn't

Starting point is 01:05:46 reading as much. And I was taking my foot off the gas with this and that and the other. And I'm like, oh, huh, I have, I now needs to relearn how to do hard things because for a long time doing hard things made me worse. Right. So I'm having to consciously relearn something for the second time. that I already learned like 15 years ago. Like you're coming back to it.

Starting point is 01:06:08 Yes. Yeah, yeah. So it's been a really fascinating, like, full circle thing. I mean, I'm not going to disagree with your story. It's not your, it's not my place to disagree with your story. And I don't disagree with whatever one. But I do want to say that the grit muscle, like one of the things that I have known, not just since writing this book, but I do elaborate on it in this book, is that I don't

Starting point is 01:06:29 think the grit muscle is a voice that says just do it. it's really not. Michael Phelps didn't just do it. Like he didn't just like force himself. Nobody loves swimming more than Michael Phelps. He still does, by the way, right? So the self-talk is not just do it. It's very rarely just do it. Occasionally you do have to just say like, okay, right now I'm going to tell myself to just do it. But talk about exceptions to the rule. I mean, the complaint I have about like the grip muscle and I can be blamed for this like one word, you know, it does. sound like, you know, white knuckle it. But it's really, this is interesting. This is important. I can do it. And I know what to try next. Right. If you have those stuff. It's all about alignment. Actually, what I did this summer, instead of like ruthlessly promoting myself for book tour, which would have been maybe something I should have done, was I went to, so in the book I talk about this professor James Gross at Stanford, who is the intellectual progenitor of this idea of like the situation leads to the thoughts and the response. Or he's, you know, we all think this

Starting point is 01:07:36 in social science, but he kind of laid it out in this really nice framework. And this summer, I spent a sabbatical working on alignment. So to me, what alignment is, is that internally, you're aligned. Like, I want to do this. Why? Because it's interesting and it's important. And I can do this. And I know what to try next. You know what misalignment looks like? Well, it's important, but it's not interesting. Or it's interesting, but I can't do it. Or I think I could do it, but I don't know what to try next. Right. So if you want a picture of the mental life of a paragon of grit, it's a bunch of arrows that are all pointing the same way, right? And that's not just do it. Just do it is like, I, you know, I'm going to like force this arrow another way, right?

Starting point is 01:08:22 The reason why we met and spent a spadical together is that this second book is about aligning all the arrows outside of you. Like, I don't know if you took physics. But in physics, you know, there are a bunch of diagrams with arrows, right? And the arrows are forces, right? And you learn to draw the arrows and you subtract them. You're like, what's the net force? How about friction? But you know what makes something go fast? It's when all the arrows are pushing the same direction. And that's true internally and externally. All I'm saying in this book is line up the arrows. Don't ignore the arrows. Do you have peers? Do you have mentors? Like, what is your physical space? Where do you live? Right? So that's like, of the outside arrows. And the reason why we're meeting to talk about alignment is that we think that a life well lived. We think if you go all the way back to Aristotle, like, what is the good life? It really is about alignment. Because now, like, if I'm aligned with you, right, like my internal arrows are aligned, like, my external arrows, like, are getting, but also, like, my goals are aligned with your goals. They don't have to be the same goals, but they're in alignment.

Starting point is 01:09:25 Like, to me, that is like, that is what the good life is. Like, that's what Aristotle meant. for us. So alignment is to me what this book is about externally, but it's sort of, you know, a bigger concept even than that. Let's do some environment stuff. What did you, after doing all of this research, it's going to be one of the most applicable ways, places that you've gone to, what have you changed environmentally beyond Jim Kit is out? So I've had a fascination with quotes, right? And there are certain poems that I'm, you know, trying to commit to memory, including you know, if by Rudyard Kipling and my current one that I'm trying to memorize is called Pity the Beautiful. Pity the beautiful, the dolls in the dishes. Anyway, so I could tell you

Starting point is 01:10:13 my favorite quotes. Like Nelson Mandela, I never lose. I win or I learn, right? So I have long wanted to memorize certain quotes, but I have changed, which is I write them down on, I print out poems and I paste them on the wall. And I write down quotes and I, like usually on two by two post-it notes, like I was going to try to get them like needle pointed or whatever. Anyway, I was just like, I was going to write it down on a post-it note. And I put them at eye level. And I swear to God, when I leave my office, the last thing I see is Nelson Mandela, right?

Starting point is 01:10:48 And you know why that's important? Because I want to say to myself, I never lose. I win or I learn. I believe that. And yet I feel like a loser when I lose. And so I need to see the two-by-two post-it note. So like some of the people I study, including Cody Coleman, Cody Coleman has post-it notes everywhere, literally, like, you know, the post-it note on his mirror, the person. So I become like the people I study. I'm decorating my personal space. It's not just when I'm taking out. And you said, like, what's obvious? It's like people know they shouldn't have Halloween candy around. They should, you know, you don't want to drink Diet Coke. Don't have Diet Coke, right? Like, that's kind of obvious. I'm not saying people do it. But I think what you put into your physical environment is what you put into your head and what you you put into your head is what you do. So that's been the most recent change. Yeah, your body is made up of everything that you put into your mouth and your mind is made up of over everything that you

Starting point is 01:11:38 put into your eyes and ears. Yeah. And yeah, curating that's interesting. Jared, if you ever considered you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider a lot, Chris. What, you drank an entire case of athletic brewing call last night. But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem? Sorry, man. I kept chugging wait for the regret to creep in. Never happened. Didn't you end up going home with that chick with the lazy eye? I didn't seem lazy to me. See, most people like Jared don't actually want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off,

Starting point is 01:12:10 which is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They make the best any brews on the planet, so you can still have something cold and tasty, just without the usual trade-off. You can find Athletic Brewing Co's best-selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you or best option. Get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped direct to your door. Get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in

Starting point is 01:12:29 description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's athletic brewing.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout. Nearby, terms and conditions apply. Athagbrewing company fit for all times. So I've been thinking about the aversion some people have to relying on environment. Yeah. In your opinion, if you remove too much friction from someone's life, does it make them weaker? I think if you remove all friction, then yes, right? Because is like a muscle, right? Like we adapt, right? So the reason on muscle grows is that the challenge exceeds its capacity and then it rips a little bit and then we like repair it and that's how we

Starting point is 01:13:10 work. So I think a life of no friction would be, you know, a life of weak character. So I agree that. But what I want people to do is make hard things easier. Like I talked to Alistair Bromley in my research for this, right? He's a very gritty person. I don't think you can become like one of the world's greatest triathletes without a lot of grit. And his dedication to his training is famous, right? So nobody is going to talk about like winning triathlons without doing the hard work, right? But Alistair Brownlee tried to make hard work as easy as possible. Like he literally bought a house that was close to where he could swim and where he could run. I mean, he could be gritty and just be like, well, I'm just going to like drive to the trip. Like no, but he wanted to make it

Starting point is 01:13:57 easier, right? Like, he does my gym trick of, like, putting out the clean clothes. He was like, oh, by the way, it has to be dry. I mean, maybe somebody who works out that much, like, you know, he has to run the laundry a lot. Like, it has to be clean and dry and the kind of thing you want to get into. So I think, imagine having a world-class coach and a bunch of peers who are also trying to train for a triathlon, maybe not on a team, but just like they're also trying to, you trade tips, your friends. You've got all of these physical things around you, the training clothes, all of that makes doing the hard thing easier, and it still leaves the hard thing, right? It's just like being on Bob Bowman's swim team, right? Like, if you sign up for

Starting point is 01:14:37 this swim team, you will train harder than maybe any other swim team, but you just go and it's all there. So I think that's the lesson. I will never back down because I think it's the law of psychology that you don't improve in human skill without resistance, right? So you can't take the hard work out of excellence, but you can make hard work easier, and you do that by setting up your situation. Yeah, so three things come to mind. The first one is life requires quite a lot of effort, and I think it should be reserved for the places where you don't get to choose how much effort you need to apply, if that makes sense. Second one is one reason why it's less sexy or less well promoted to try and make life easier or to have the peer group thing is that it makes for a really

Starting point is 01:15:26 shit movie. It makes for a horrendous movie. What you want is the protagonist to be brushing up against friction all the time. And then it makes them the hero, right? Because if it's a situation, if it's a lot of hero. If Rocky was him with a bunch of peers and a lovely mentor and he'd laid his clothes out and everything was done. So, okay, well, we've removed a lot of the dramatic tension, which is exactly what makes for a good movie. And I think we've kind of imbibed the story of the hero. And we're now trying to live it that way. Yeah. Yeah. That's so actually insightful. In the last chapter... You didn't need to be surprised about it. Well, I hadn't thought about it before. I am surprised. I can not be surprised. I'm just teasing. In the last chapter of

Starting point is 01:16:07 the book, I wrote the story of my daughter and how she was in seventh grade. She fails her, she's in this like super advanced math class. You know, the kind of math class where like you get to college math, you know, in your junior year or something of high school. Look, I used to teach math. Literally, full time as a high school and middle school math teacher, I know math. And also, I'm a quantitative social scientists. Like, I am not an author by profession. I'm a, I'm actually a psychologist, right? So, so I'm looking at her seventh grade math. She fails these tests. And I'm looking at these questions and I'm like, wow, has seventh grade math changed? Like, I literally couldn't do them. And I said to her, like, look, you know, this little track you're on, which a very small number of kids were on, it's, it does seem too hard. Like, why don't you just go into like the normal advanced math class? You'll still like get to calculus by there. You know, you know, My husband, the real estate developer, objects and he says, I don't want my daughter to learn that she's a failure. I actually don't care about math, but I don't want her to learn the lesson that being a failure. So he brings home scrap paper.

Starting point is 01:17:09 They learn the math together. It's basically a very supportive situation, right? So here's what happens in this little narrative, right? Let's make it into a movie. So Amanda wakes up early. She has coffee for the first time. I mean, it was mostly milk, but, yeah, she drank coffee the first time. she furiously works on the problems of the math test that she had already failed.

Starting point is 01:17:32 Her teacher says, you know what, I'm not going to replace your grade, but I'm going to let you take the test again so you can show me what you can do, right? And you can also prove yourself wrong that you're like not a math person. She's working mornings. She's working evenings. They cut church to like, you know, practice math. And then the time of the moment of truth comes and she takes. the math test and she triumphs and she does 100% on these math tests. We don't count for a grade, but that sets her trajectory. So she finishes, she stays in the math class. She gets a A. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:18:07 She graduates from college years later as a math major. And not any college, but Harvard. So it's like not easy math. And I showed this story to an early reader. And they look at the story. They read the story and they say this is a story of grit. And I'm like, what about the father who learned all this this really hard math and like sat with her and like gave her the next problem, like just like explain things? What about this crap? Like what about the fact that like everybody in our house like tiptoed around her and gave her all this space? Like what about the personal space that she set up where she like put her phone, she actually had the foresight to like zip her phone into a pocket of a coat and then put it into a close? Like what about the math teacher who said, you know,

Starting point is 01:18:49 I'm going to give you a second chance. Like, you know, I'm going to give you a second chance. Show me. So I think you're exactly right, but it's not only because, like, if you have Rocky and he has, like, a lot of things going for him, it doesn't mean. I think you're exactly right about that. Maybe that's the more profound point. But even when we have true stories of people who were gritty and had a great situation, we somehow edit out the situation. We just, like, only want the hero, like a silhouette on a white piece of paper. And the danger of that is that when we go to try to do great, things. We think that's the way to do it. And you just can't do it. You cannot be Michael Phelps without Bob Bowman. Full stop. Yeah. The third thing that it made me think about, so my chosen instrument of choice is talking. And I worked with a speech coach for a good while, and addiction coach and a comedy coach and a bunch of other people did improv and a lot of other things. When I said to my friends that I was going to start to work with a speech coach, they sort of had this alarmed look, or they were a little bit uncertain, and they said something to the effect of,

Starting point is 01:19:56 what if you lose your sort of natural speaking voice, your natural speaking cadence? And I said, well, that's interesting that you would say that about me working to improve something which objectively can be improved with someone that's a professional, because you wouldn't have said the same if I was playing the saxophone. If I was playing the saxophone, as a beginner saxophonist, you would not say, well, what about your beautiful, natural way of playing the saxophone? And you go, well, it's wrong. Or it could be better, right? What about your beautiful way of running? Because they want it to be natural, right?

Starting point is 01:20:27 They want it to be... So this is the distinction. At least this is my total... This is the hat for bro science. So this is like, I should have had this on the whole time talking to you. Wait, what does this hat mean? For bro science. If I'm a bro scientist today.

Starting point is 01:20:38 Oh, okay, yes. It's basically... Because you're the captain here now. Correct. That's good on you. Here's my... Thank you. Here's my working theory, which is...

Starting point is 01:20:48 There are certain things about a... that we feel as being close to our sense of self. Yeah. Like who we are. Yes. Who we really are. The way you speak is so fundamental to the person that you are. The language you use, the cadence that you speak in, how you enunciate words, that's you.

Starting point is 01:21:08 The way that you play the saxophone, that's not you. Interesting. And I think that part of the reason that people have this little aversion to talking about environment and situation as opposed to grit and self-determination is that it feels like it's less me. It's not. It's like there's 100 points. And if it's going to be like 20 to the situation.

Starting point is 01:21:31 Yes. Yeah. Well, it's less you. Then it's less me. It's less you. Not only does it mean that if the environment was to go away, that you're less sufficient. Right.

Starting point is 01:21:41 I put you on a desert iron. It's like truly less you. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. You contribute less to it. Yeah. And you get to own it less,

Starting point is 01:21:48 which means that there's less pride associated with it. And I just want it to be me. Right. It's this almost like transcendent thing. It's just not true. I mean, yeah, I think that's right, right? I'm objection handling on your behalf. It says like 100 points.

Starting point is 01:22:03 How many go to Rocky, right? Like, let's give all 100 points to Rocky. How many go to Adrian? Yeah, exactly. And I can't remember as Coach Mickey. Was this coach Mickey? I think so. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:22:14 And you know what? Maybe there is some kind of like, yeah. I mean, I guess if you were going to. take away some of the Rocky points and give them to Adrian and give them to Mickey. Like, then Rocky has fewer than 100. It's just the reality, though, right? And the question is, like, do you want to be Michael Phelps winning 28 gold medals? Or do you want to get all 100 points for being Michael Phelps without Bob Bowman, without Debbie Phelps, without his teammates? By the way, I just listened to Roger Federer's induction speed. This is like actually what I do.

Starting point is 01:22:43 Oh, my God. I will never get bored of studying excellence. So I don't even play tennis. I don't even watch tennis, but I'm watching Roger Federer's 29-minute acceptance speech to the Tennis Hall of Fame. And if I could do a word cloud of that speech, the single biggest word, the most common thing he said was ecosystem, right? As he is being inducted into the Hall of Fame, he's talking about by name, the two guys who string his rackets, right? The, like, his physiotherapist, like, he named his coaches by name. I didn't realize he had so many past and present. Like, the thing is, is that if you want to get all the points. Like, you can give Roger Federer all the points if he doesn't have all those people that he relies on his agent. Like, okay, that's fine. But he won't be the Roger

Starting point is 01:23:29 Federer that we know. And the question is, how far do you want to go? Are you willing to give up some of the points to other people to the situation and go farther? Or do you want to keep all the points to yourself, a completely DIY, self-made man? I did everything myself and nobody helped me. You can keep all the points, but you won't go as far. Yeah, that's so great. I've got the pie chart in my mind, and it's not just the portion. You can have 100% but the size of the pie is going to be smaller. Yes. As I start to bring more people in. You can have 100% of a little pie or you can have a wedge of a bigger pie. And that to me is the story of success. And I knew it when I studied paragon's of grit, I think. But I wasn't thinking about it very hard. I was like, oh, right. And like, let's talk about you. But now when I interview people, I ask them about their mentors. I ask them about the people that they're training with. I literally asked them about their. physical circumstances. I ask them what's on their desk. I ask them what's in their refrigerator. I ask them about their routines. And so I do think that there is this complete story if you look for it, but we're not looking for it. How do you know when to work harder on yourself and when to change

Starting point is 01:24:32 your circumstances? I'll say this. I think if you want to work harder, you gave me an A and B choice, right? A, work harder. B, change your circumstances, right? I'm going to say that they both end up with change your circumstances and here's why, right? I think to answer your change the Like, if you feel burned out, then you probably are trying really hard. If you recognize this feeling of, like, exhaustion and whatever, like, oh, it's like helplessness. Then you probably are just like you were and just like I was, like, digging yourself a deeper hole. And absolutely, that is like the canary and the coal mind. Change your circumstances.

Starting point is 01:25:05 Like, you need more support and probably, you know, an adjustment of challenge for the time being. All right. That's choice B. So that's when you. But what about working harder? and you made the argument that like maybe that's the modal thing. Like maybe that's most of the time what people need to do. They need to like push hard on their gas. I think you still end up with change the circumstances. Here's why. So say you realize like, you know, I've been giving 70% at work. And if I'm honest, like that's what's holding me back. Right. So now you decide you're going to give 100% or even like 75% right. As a behavioral scientist, I'll say if you're giving 70, try for 75, not for 100. But anyway, leaving that aside. So then if you accept this, you know, three box framework, of all of human behavior. They're like, I want more effort in box three.

Starting point is 01:25:51 That's my response. I want to come into work and be 75, if not higher. Then you have to ask the question, what thought will make me do that, right? I've told you that I don't think the thought is just do it. I think you have to think that your work is more interesting, important, that you can do it and you know what to try next. I think that's the only way to sustain a higher level of effort.

Starting point is 01:26:11 But the reason I say that you eventually get back to circumstances is like, what books do I need to read? What podcasts do I listen to? What people do I need to be with? Like, what mentors do I need? What conversations do I need? What's my physical space need to be so that I can have those thoughts that will get me to work harder? So eventually, I think, whether it's getting a coach, a therapist, a mentor, a peer group, a change of your situation in any way. Like eventually, that's where you end up anyway. Even, I mean, if you're smart about it, even if the answer is like, work harder. Because this is not just to do once. You only have to work harder like today at 4 o'clock in the afternoon once, then maybe you could just use willpower. Go for it. It'll be tiring, but you can do it.

Starting point is 01:26:55 But if you have to do it every day at 4 o'clock and every week and then every year, there's no way you can do it by just forcing yourself. Right. So in your opinion, it's less situation-specific and it's more like iteration-specific. If this is a one-off, then maybe you can just put foot on gaspo. All I'm saying is that willpower is this thing that you can do. use when you really need to. And you can do it once. I think anybody can do it. By the way, we're better at it than animals. Like, we're better at it than dogs and chimpanzees. Like, you can put

Starting point is 01:27:27 animals through, like, the same kind of tasks that you put young children. And human beings are better at delaying gratification, better at forcing ourselves to do things that we don't want to do in the moment. But all I'm saying is that you're right. Like, it's, if it's iterative, if you have to do this again and again and again, and the path to excellence is consistency, right? Like, that is the seminal insight of grit. The path to excellence is consistency, and the path to consistency is a situation that sets up consistency. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So you spent some time at Oxford, right? I did, two years, and I actually started speaking with a faux British accent because of the power of the situation. I was like, cheers. Did it like, oh, you know, trousers around the ankles. And I,

Starting point is 01:28:06 you know, the power of situation is very sure. Look at how far you've fallen. So unfortunate. So I have got this new live show, which I'm about to go on tour with. And one of the things I talk about, because I'm going back to the homeland, the UK and Ireland. Oh, you're going to start in the UK? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm talking about Tall Poppy Syndrome. This is a pretty, unpack this for me, but this is the British. It is, it is an affliction.

Starting point is 01:28:34 And it actually came from New Zealand and Australia originally. Oh, really? Interestingly enough. That's like the origin story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it comes across. It's a situation in which a person who becomes conspicuously successful or wealthy or high status or whatever is derogated by people around them. This is a British thing.

Starting point is 01:28:55 Very, very, very. It's kind of like if football didn't exist, it would be our national sport. That's like kind of how central it is. A deviation, it's typically sort of preceded with the deviation from the norm that somebody decides to do something that's a little bit. Very much so. There's a lot of conformance. Then is derogated is what your point is. 100%. Yeah. I mean, you're allowed to be successful, but only if you treat it as a horrible accident that you got there. Interesting. It's like, it very much is you're sort of ashamed. It's like, oh my God, I appear to have. This explains like all the Hugh Grant humor, right? Like in all this. I appear to have

Starting point is 01:29:34 created a successful business. I'm so sorry. I must not do this again. I promise. I swear it won't happen. It's not very American, by the way. But I, no, no, no, no. My best friend George has got this line. He says, British affliction is cynicism and the American affliction is bullshit. It's so true. Two sides of the same. It's so true, right?

Starting point is 01:29:56 One is, like, I'm better than I. One is feet are too hard on the ground and one his head is too high in the clouds. Ah, good, nice. And, yeah, I think it's beautiful. But I just, what it made me think about. Yeah. Because I've been, I did my first work in progress show last night. here in Austin, I do these secret shows and there's, you know, 50 people.

Starting point is 01:30:13 So I'm working out the material. I'm talking to people live. So I'm getting feedback. Almost, yeah, doing DVDX for a commentary of like, okay, so this is where I'm out. I'm basically talking to myself, but there's a room of people that are listening to me, pontificate to me about whatever. Anyway, the tall poppy thing is kind of there. And I was, everybody had to, because it's all Americans, obviously, in Austin.

Starting point is 01:30:32 I had to get them to pretend to be British. And I was like, imagine that you're British for a second. I've actually for the next hour and a half. I don't know if they could do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Austinites. And the interesting thing about the tall poppy syndrome culture, I can't think of a sociocultural influence that is more high friction for excellence than something like that. We haven't talked about culture, right? Because, you know, when you say, like, if you start out the obvious and everyone can do it, but maybe everyone isn't doing it, it really is. Like, what's within three feet of you?

Starting point is 01:31:05 Push it away if you don't want to do it. Like, move it in, like decorate your space. Okay, fine. culture is the exact opposite culture is like all encompassing it's abstract but it's also the most powerful thing you can do right and when you're in a culture of excellence you know one of the reasons why Michael Phelps ended up being excellent is because he's Michael Phillips but another is that Bob Bowman created a culture of excellence right like it's the expectation what does a culture of excellence look like and how can somebody engineer it themselves you know what is excellence right right excellence is like aspiring toward like a greater level achievement than you I'm One definition, right, which is like aspiring to a greater level of achievement than you have now, right? And one of the things that I think is a problem in society is that there are people and places where that is the norm, right, that we are striving, right? And whatever it is today. Because I think excellence in it's cliche, like, is it a journey? Like, that's the key to it though. It's not that there is a certain watermark. It's just that you're constantly trying to improve. Like anything you do, I am sure.

Starting point is 01:32:08 you came home from your first Ryan was like, I hope, a list of things that you wanted to do differently. You're like, oh, I didn't. So these adjustments, I think a culture of excellence where that is the norm and that that's what everybody is trying to do. And when you describe Tall Poppy syndrome, right, where it's like quite literally the opposite, right, that like, if you do it, it's embarrassing, it's shameful and like it's punished, right? That's the opposite. So I will say that if you really want to change, and I know most people won't move, right, The one thing people are very reluctant, I'll say this, some people can't move, right? It's too expensive. But it's the one life change that people most don't want to do. Why do I know that? There's an economist named Stephen Levitt who is very interested in what's called status quo bias. It's your tendency to cling to what you have. Like, I live in Philadelphia and I have to live in Philadelphia and you start making lists of all the reasons why you can't move out of Philadelphia. For me, it's like my mother-in-law and lives there, my mom lives there, you know, my work is there, like, my friends are there. So you can

Starting point is 01:33:12 make a very long list. But what Stephen Levitt wanted to say in his research was there may be actually times where you actually make both lists, like the list of reasons to stay and list of reasons. And actually, the lists are equally long. And maybe you intellectually realize that the list of reasons to go is longer, right? And status quo bias is the irrational, like steadfast clinging to the things are. So he has a flip the coin experiment. You know, you flip the coin, its heads, you change, and it tells you stay, right? But for anything that you're trying to decide. So he has people do this experiment, but they get to decide what they're flipping the coin for. And some people are like, should I get a tattoo? Like, should I break up with my boyfriend? I mean, these are literally

Starting point is 01:33:57 things that people wrote down. One of the items was, should I move? So there are a great number of people in this experiment who, when asked the question, like, what is a life decision you're struggling with? really don't know whether you should change or stay. I don't know if I should move, right? So in this experiment, he flips the coin for you. There was like literally this electronic coin and he was like, heads change. You're moving. Tails or, and you didn't, you know, feel in the like, should you get the tattoo? Yes. You know, like, should I not get the tattoo? So, so in his data, the one thing that people are most reluctant to follow the advice, heads change is where they live. So when you talk about like, okay, living, you know, it's different when you grow up in the United Kingdom than here. It's different when you grow up in Philadelphia than Austin. I think the biggest change you can make in your life is to change your zip code. The biggest change is change the culture of where you spend 24 hours a day because when you change that, you change your mentors and your peers and your physical environment. But it's the one thing that people are most reluctant to do. And I think people should do it more. The Economist magazine,

Starting point is 01:35:06 which is, it is British, is it not? I believe it is. It seems like, okay, this is how little I know about the world, but we subscribe and my husband reads it. When the Economist magazine put out their guide to big life decisions, they said, based on economic research, and it's true, the single highest effective thing that you could do to change your life is to move to a zip code with greater opportunity,

Starting point is 01:35:32 to a neighborhood. And yet research from Steve Levin, others would suggest, like, it's the one thing we don't want to do. So you moved here. I did. And like, it was terrifying. And was it no, it's completely terrifying. And why did you do it then? Because I was sick of the UK. You know, I'd met a million people running nightclubs and I had a handful of friends, which was great. But my friendship exposure to conversion ratio was not, it's not fantastic. My funnel wasn't funneling in internet marketing speak. I was seeing so many people and I fell out of place. And I was like,

Starting point is 01:36:04 You didn't have your tribe then. No, I was really, my exposure to people was high. No one can say that I've met more people. I've shook more hands in person than most people except for like international diplomats. Right? Yeah. So I'd really done the thing. And I felt like I'd kind of completed a lot.

Starting point is 01:36:21 And the UK, there's many things. I have to do the fucking throat clearing of like, well, it was very nice with this thing, all the rest of it. It's wet and cold a lot. I wasn't, I didn't feel like I fitted in from a cultural perspective that. Was it because you had. Paul Poppy like ambitious or is it like more than that? That feels a self-aggrandizing which this in itself is a British, I've got British syndrome happening right now. It's happening right before my eyes. What I will say is that ambition is not curated. You're ambitious and so when you

Starting point is 01:36:51 fit in here. I very much so. I feel more apart from in terms of the accent, I feel more at home in the US than I have for most of my opinion. And why Austin? Because it is currently the center of the universe for podcasting. It is. By the way, what the hell? I think apart from L.A., it's got more people in the top 10. In fact, it might have the most number of people in the top 10 of anywhere. L.A. will be close because Jay and Stephen are there and maybe Alex. And Dax.

Starting point is 01:37:20 And Dax. I don't know whether Dax was in the top ten last year. He might have been. But anyway, it's got a great community of people here. Everyone's a cultural refugee from somewhere else, which meant that social groups hadn't had a chance to ossify. Interesting, there's a lady called Tracy Viencourt. You might not be interested in this, but it's kind of cool. The reason that bullying exists in schools more than exists anywhere else is because the amount of time that social networks have had to be in stasis

Starting point is 01:37:49 and to ossify, like you get to stratify out where the pecking order is. Whereas if there's too much migration. If there's like too much mobility and so forth, you don't get this like, yeah. company that people work at for life. People come, people go, so and so forth. To people that stay. Right. Then you have like the same kids for 12 years. Bingo. That's why bullying exists. Yeah. And Austin is basically a passing point for a lot of people. You know, they've been here for one year or three years or six years or something. But no one's been here. No one was born here. Like there's basically nobody in Austin that lives here was born here. I have not met anybody who's like, except for the mayor. I think she was born here. But like, but okay. So if you want to be a great podcaster, go to Austin.

Starting point is 01:38:33 If you want to be a great artist, like don't try to do it in the middle of, well. Probably for the best. I was going to say like a few. Like Kansas, right? Like so this is a thing. That's why the power of moving, right? And you're the rare person who moved. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:38:45 And the escape velocity to do it is quite high. It's really gravity is heavy when you're doing that thing. It's operationally difficult. There's lots and lots of friction. It's scary. You're going to go to this country on your own. Doesn't it suck at the beginning? It's, well, I mean,

Starting point is 01:39:01 almost certainly it's got at the very beginning. The excitement for me was so great. I was like, oh my God, I'm actually doing the thing. Okay, okay. Was enough to get me over that. I'm interested in, obviously, you've been through the burnout thing. New book, congratulations. It's very, very wonderful.

Starting point is 01:39:17 And you've taken a topic that's important and made it interesting and accessible. What are you going to curse yourself with after this? Not another book. I'll tell you what I think is on the horizon for me as a research scientist. And I did put my heart and soul into this book, but I am a scientist. So I think the seismic changes in technology, phones, social media, AI, everyone's talking about it. But as a behavioral scientist, I can't say that I have seen anything that's changing the way we spend time, the way we do or don't socialize, the way we exercise, the way we exercise, the way. the way we do everything, religions that's greater than the things that are happening right now with AI, with screens.

Starting point is 01:40:07 Human life doesn't look like it did 50 years ago or even 20 years ago. So I'm going to study that. I won't write a book about it. But I feel like I've done my work. I've done the inside game of success. And now I've done the outside game of success. And now I just want to understand how in this new world people can be successful. Unreal. Angela Duckworth, ladies and gentlemen. Where should people go to check out everything you're doing? I have no idea. I'm not very good at influx. You are horrendous at influence. I don't know where to send people. Have you got a website? What's the website? I have website. I'm a website. It's Angela Duckworth.com. Wonderful. And the book is called situated.

Starting point is 01:40:45 Fantastic. And it is available. It is available everywhere. Fantastic. That's it. All right. Appreciate you. Goodbye my beauties. That was so fun. You're the best. Awesome, awesome. What does a sunny getaway with Air Canada sound like? Sunny Jamaica moves to its own rhythm. Rio comes alive long after the sun goes down. Philippines slows everything down. And just when you think you've heard it all,

Starting point is 01:41:13 there's Sunny Lima. However you imagine your sunny escape, Air Canada can take you there. Book hot fairs and vacation packages today. Nice travels

Modern Wisdom - Willpower Expert: The Secret To Effortless Discipline - Angela Duckworth - #1158

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