Something You Should Know - Discover How to Be Luckier in Everyday Life & A Proven Way to Make Better Decisions

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

People who travel a lot have to come up with their own travel hacks and secrets in order to stay sane! Several of the people who work for CNN and travel as part of their job, put together a bunch of really great tips and tricks they have learned from years and years of traveling – often by learning things the hard way. We begin this episode by sharing these great travel secrets so you can put them to use on your next trip.  http://www.egyptindependent.com//news/20-biggest-travel-mistakes Can you learn to be lucky? The idea sounds weird – right? Because luck is just a matter of random chance. Or is it? Karla Starr, author of the book, Can You Learn to Be Lucky? https://amzn.to/2Q8Eb0j as looked at the science of luck (yes there is such a thing) and joins me to explain why some people just seem to be extremely lucky and what you can do to improve your luck.  Could it be true that overweight people live longer? Since like forever, we’ve all been told that being thin is what helps you live longer. But there does seem to be a loophole in the theory. While it’s not a reason to let yourself go and gain a lot of weight, having a few extra pounds can be beneficial and I will explain why. http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/02/being-overweight-is-linked-to-lower-risk-of-mortality/ You make a lot of important - even life-altering - decisions in your life. But I bet you were never taught HOW to make a decision. Well, it turns out how you make those important decisions really matters. And there is a way to improve your chances of making the right decision if you have a better understanding of the decision making process. Steven Johnson, author of the book Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most https://amzn.to/2NlgWl9 explains how you can make the RIGHT decision. This Week's Sponsors Glip. Get a free Glip account at www.glip.com/something care/of Vitamins. For 25% off your first month of personalized care/of vitamins go to www.TakeCareOf.com and use the promo code SOMETHING  Hoka One One. Get free expedited shipping on your first pair of shoes by going to www.hokaoneone.com/SYSK and use the promo code SYSK Hotel Tonight. Download the app Hotel Tonight to your phone and get $25 off your first eligible booking. Realtor.com. Start your next home search at www.Realtor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, some really great travel tips from some serious frequent flyers that will save you time, money, and make you less crazy. Then, can you learn to be lucky? There are actually strategies that can make you luckier in life, like making sure people perceive you in just the right way. So the way that people perceive you does have a huge influence on your luck. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that when we think that people are treating us well, we feel better about ourselves and it makes us more motivated to do things. Then, being overweight has a lot of drawbacks, but it may actually help you live longer. And when you have a big decision to make, how you make it means everything.

There is this interesting research, really, that has looked at how we make these kinds of decisions. And through that research, a number of interesting new strategies have emerged for making them. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right?

Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future.

Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something You should know. Fascinating intel.

The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. I'm sure you understand what I mean when I say I love to travel and yet I hate to travel. Because I love going places, I just hate the process. Because it can get so difficult and so disappointing sometimes. And probably no one knows this better than the staff at CNN who travel all over the world a lot.

And with experience comes knowledge. So here are some of the biggest travel mistakes the CNN people have made so you can avoid them. The first is overpacking. According to a recent survey by Travelodge, two-thirds of travelers typically return from a trip with at least six, six unworn outfits. So plan on wearing everything twice and see if you can do with less. Not buying something as soon as you see it. Oh,

I've done this. You think you're going to see it again, so you'll buy it later, but you never see it again, and then it's gone forever. Make sure you check your cell phone if you travel abroad, because you could get clobbered in charges. Here's a big mistake that the CNN people don't make anymore, and that is taking the super shuttle to or from the airport. It's been called the worst... I love this. It's been called the worst $20 you'll ever save. You're waiting on the curb for a ride in a sweat-soaked van, and you risk being the last one dropped off on a nine-hotel run. That's actually happened to me. Your time is worth more than that, so take a taxi or take an Uber. Not tightening shampoo caps all the way.

Surprise! Caps can loosen and things do leak. Fearing street food. Americans tend to be pretty wary of street food at international destinations. And while no one wants to get sick on vacation, why travel all the way to Thailand or Mexico and not sample the local cuisine? It turns out that the local people don't like food poisoning any more than you do. So if they're in line, consider the place vetted and assume you're going to be fine most of the time. Here's another big mistake. Using a credit card to get cash. This is the

fastest way of paying through the nose for the privilege of paying through the nose. After all the transaction fees, exchange fees, ATM surcharges, and interest on your money, you will feel robbed. And that is something you should know. So I'll tell you a little something about me. I've always thought of myself as a pretty lucky person. Not that I haven't had some bad luck. A few times I've had some really bad luck. But overall, I think I've been pretty lucky. I've been at the right place at the right time with the right people enough times that I consider myself pretty lucky. But why, I wonder? Why am I lucky when other people aren't lucky? Well, good luck may not just be chance.

Good luck may be the result of something or some things that you do. Carla Starr almost died in a car accident a while back. The insurance company said the cause of the accident was an act of God. Was it? Or was she just unlucky? That started her on a journey to explore the whole subject of luck. The result is a new and fascinating book called Can You Learn to Be Lucky? Hi, Carla. Hi, thanks so much for having me.

So, I'll just start by asking you to cut right to the chase here. What is it, in a nutshell, that makes someone luckier than someone else? So much of this breaks down to motivation and attention. So people who have higher scores of optimism or resilience or just daily happiness are really, really skilled at constantly focusing their attention on good things in life. So if you have two people, right, they go out into the world, 10 different things happen to them over the course of the day.

One person who is more prone to seeing the good things will think, oh, they'll be so energized by those five good things that happen during the day, and they'll be really skilled at just kind of forgetting or conveniently sweeping the five bad things under the rug, whereas someone else might go out into the world and experience those same ten different things, but they won't be able to shake their attention away from those bad five things, and they'll think, this always happens to me.

You know, oh, I can't believe this. Oh, what's the point? So what ends up happening over time is that this creates, like, two completely different trajectories about how people engage with the world, right? When you think that bad things are going to happen, why me, blah, blah, blah, you start thinking, why bother? Whereas if you think that good things are more going to happen, why me, blah, blah, blah. You start thinking, why bother? Whereas if you think that good things are more likely to happen, you're more likely to do things and try and just keep going,

and they win, and those are the people who end up winning. So it sounds like a lot of this, behind this, is self-talk, is what you're telling yourself about what's going on in your life, and that focuses your attention. Absolutely. It focuses your attention. It focuses what you expect to happen. And there's so much literature in neuroscience and psychology explaining how people's expectations influence their perception. It's very fascinating to see, especially when people expect bad things, because fear grabs our attention so much more than any other emotion.

I mentioned at the beginning here that I've always thought of myself as lucky, but do you think most lucky people self-identify that way? That lucky people would say, yeah, I'm pretty lucky. Things seem to go my way. I mean, I've seen it both ways. I've seen people who say, oh, I'm pretty lucky. Things seem to go my way. I mean, I've seen it both ways. I've seen people who say, oh, I'm really lucky. But then, you know, you look at their life and yeah, they have a good life, but they're just really good at focusing on the positive things and practicing gratitude. Gratitude actually is a very good, reliable way

of increasing our happiness because it does just this. It makes a habit out of focusing on the positive things in life. So Richard Wiseman came out with this book called The Luck Factor a few years ago. And one of his suggestions was that he would make people write down lucky things that happened to them over the course of the day. Now, these people also reportedly saw an increase in how lucky they were over the course of the study. But since then, all of these studies and gratitude journals and happiness have shown that it's not necessarily that more lucky things happen to you. It's not necessarily that more good things happen to you.

But what ends up happening is that you build a habit of noticing them and paying attention to them. And paying attention to something is what gives it value. And like you said earlier, it's so common for people to pay attention to the bad things because we're programmed that way. One bad mistake and you're out of the gene pool. Most of the time in people's days, you know, everything will go right, everything goes well, but one bad thing happens and it's so easy to ruminate on that one bad thing, or it's so easy to have a boring day and nothing good happened, but you know what? You know what happened on a boring day? Nothing bad happened. And that's a good thing. When nothing bad happens, that's a good thing.

Right. People don't always appreciate that. One of the factors you say is really important in being lucky is how other people perceive us, yes? So the way that people perceive you does have a huge influence on your luck. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that when we think that people are treating us well, we feel better about ourselves and it makes us more motivated to do things. The way that people treat us is obviously super important because it's giving us a cue. Oh, these people are treating you well. I should keep going.

I should keep doing this. Or if people give you negative signs, you know, this thing isn't quite working out, we'll stop. What I think ends up happening is that people can often mistake one person's opinion for an objective fact. I think everyone can relate to this, right? You're not the first person picked during gym class or something like that happens. So then what ends up happening is you start developing this narrative in your head of like, oh, I must not be good at sports. I must not be good at sports. And so then you kind of end up not really engaging in that aspect of that area of life anymore. You go to art class and maybe the teacher gives you a B and you start thinking, oh, I'm just not good at art. So it's these kinds of things. It is, it's the way that people treat you that ultimately influence our motivation. And that is really what you need to keep getting lucky.

You talk about how important first impressions are, and you give the example of really attractive people. When you meet really attractive people, you perceive them differently, you treat them differently. So talk about what happens when you meet someone very attractive. We all kind of, even without realizing this, we grade them on a curve. We give them the benefit of the doubt. We laugh at their jokes a little more. They seem a little funnier.

We kind of want to be friends with them more. We'll give them more chances. And then what ends up happening is that they end up feeling better about themselves and they feel this greater sense of social inclusion and that people will rate them more highly. The cool thing is that about 50% of the variation in whether or not we view people as attractive is based on quote unquote grooming, which is just how much you make of what you have. So it's not just your facial structure that you were born with. It's are your clothes good?

Are they nice? Are they clean? Do they look professional? It's your skin, your hair, your grooming. Are you in shape? All of these things are entirely under our control. There's so many other aspects of first impressions, like first impressions, if you go on someone's website, right? How good their website looks, whether or not it was professionally designed, whether or not it has some interesting things on it. You know, how many times have we gone on a website of a restaurant or a business

if we want to hire a contractor or even a therapist, and we make all these assessments about this person's quality, the quality of their work based on the quality of their website. First impressions are really just packaging, but whether or not the packaging actually matches or is any indication of the quality of what's underneath is just kind of a crapshoot. But I think the important thing that I've learned with studying everything about first impressions is that I think I was unknowingly kind of unlucky because I was just focused on the stuff underneath the packaging. And I was thinking, it's all glitz.

It's all glamour, that's all superficial. I'm not going to put any attention into that. But whether or not you put any attention into it, into making a good first impression, or making your clothes a little nicer, standing up a little straighter, people are judging you regardless. So it makes sense to put in something of an effort. I'm speaking with Carla Starr. She's author of the new book, Can You Learn to Be Lucky? Think for a moment about all the teams, groups, and organizations you belong to. There are teams at work, the Neighborhood Watch, the PTA, plus your friends and family, the kids' sports teams. Well, what if there was a better way for all the members of those teams to communicate and share?

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Visit glyp.com slash something to get started. Go to glyp, that's G-L-I-P, GLIP.com slash something to sign up for a free GLIP account. GLIP.com slash something. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation.

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And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors,

and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. So Carla, talk about how friends affect your luck and how your friends can make you luckier. Your friends are so, so important in your luck.

I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that, I'm sure you've heard of the term homophily or like attracts like, birds of a feather flock together. I think that people end up becoming friends with people who have similar attitudes, similar goals. But a lot of times I think that people unknowingly cut themselves off from certain lucky opportunities or certain things that might make them more successful because of peer pressure, essentially, or conformity. So a lot of times, you know, your friends might want to go out, then they would give you this peer pressure, come on, come on, stop working, let's go out. You know, but maybe your best interest would really be sort of like just finishing your project. So I think a lot of times people kind of can cave into peer pressure and not do things that would really maximize other aspects of their life.

Well, and the thing that you talk about that I find really interesting is this idea that we tend to gravitate towards people like us, but that if we have people in our lives who are friends but who are not like us, who are parts of other social groups, that that helps us be more lucky. Can you give me an example of that? Say you're a musician, but you also have an interest in web development, right? So some of your friends are musicians, you go out there, and then, you know, some of your friends are programmers, so every now and then you'll get together with these guys.

What ends up happening is that you get these two overlapping sources of information. So therefore, if any of your musician friends have some kind of tech need, you're going to be the go-to guy. If any of your computer friends have any questions about musicians, you're going to be the go-to guy. So in the book, I have this story about this entrepreneur, Derek Sivers. He was actually, he's a musician. He went to the Berklee School of Music, and then he moved to NYU, and he started getting interested in web development and computer programming. He was the go-to guy when all of the musician friends had any kind of tech need. So one of his friends asked him to help put up a website where he could sell a CD

that caught on. His other musician friends said, hey, can you add my CD to that website? That just took off. So he created this company for $500. And then years later, he sold CD Baby for I think $22 million. So our friends can increase our luck, mostly if they don't know each other. If all of your groups of friends know each other, then you're just getting redundant information. You're not going to get as many opportunities. So yeah, I think that was a really, really fascinating find. Talk about timing and appearing towards the end and how that impacts your luck. We see this effect in everything from American Idol to the Olympics.

So if you go in the beginning of the competition, if you're one of the first competitors, the judges unknowingly are comparing your performance to whatever image they have in their mind of the ideal performance and what the performance should look like, because that's the most accessible information that they have in their mind of the ideal performance and what the performance should look like, because that's the most accessible information that they have. And then as the night goes on, the judges start seeing all the other performances, and they kind of start getting a sense of, okay, what's really out there? And that's what they're implicitly judging subsequent performers on. So by the time the last few performers get up there and sing or

do their ice skating routine, you know, the judges realize, hey, this is it. You know, these are the last few guys. What ends up happening is they end up paying attention to the aspects of the final performances that are unique. They're able to say, wow, this was the first person we've seen all night who did this triple flip or whatever. But the funny thing is the people who went first may have had something that was just as unique and just as special. But because the order was flipped, the order of presentation, the judges were never able to say when they see the first person performing, wow, this will be the only performance we've seen, we will see all night,

that will have this one unique thing, right, this one jump. No one else will ever do this jump again for the rest of the night because they don't have that information. So the first performers are getting compared to this perfect idealist in the judge's head. And then over the course of the night, the image or the most accessible information in the judge's head is replaced from the ideal things that they would want to see to what they've actually seen. So by the end, the last people to go, they get lucky, and they end up getting higher scores. But in real life, though, when you go on a job interview or you date someone, you don't know where you're showing up, and you can't really control in what order you're showing up. If you're the first date or the first job applicant or the 10th.

This is one of the reasons why flexibility is so important and so underrated, and why I appreciate it more as I do research, and also just as I get older, and as I see all these different things in life that have happened, and how a lot of times when we get an opportunity, we might not really be able to appreciate it in full context and realize like how special it is. So much of luck, the last two words in the book are say yes. Right. Yeah. Well, that's probably really good advice because that opens you up to the opportunities. You never know what that'll lead to. I mean, how many, you know, lucky stories have I heard that they'll hinge on something like, you know,

I wasn't really thinking about going out that night, but then I went anyways. And then I met this person and then we got along. And then a few weeks later, they invited me to a party. And that's where I met, you know, my husband or my new boss or the guy I started my, you know, my company with. And everybody has one of those stories. You know, everybody took a train and on that particular train, there was a guy sitting next to them who started a conversation and some magic happened. Everybody's been there. One of the things I love is that I really, I didn't write about at all, really.

I didn't write about relationships that much. But I ended up interviewing so many stories about people, about matchmakers and online dating apps. Inevitably, these stories, they all hinge on luck. They all hinge on chance, right? There's no singular method of finding a life partner or finding a spouse. So much of it is just, yeah, I went out with this person, I did this, right? It's all these, yes, it's giving yourself more options, giving yourself more opportunities. Well, as I listen to you, I mean, you're talking about, well, you're talking about the science of luck, which in many ways is the science of life, of how life works and how you

make use of opportunities and all. But it doesn't necessarily sound or seem scientific because life isn't, you know, scientific in the way we live it. It's surprising to me to hear myself see these things that kind of sound like they're coming from the secret, you know, just focus on the good things, walk toward the light, show gratitude. But really, these things actually matter. There's this third wave of cognitive behavioral therapy called ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy. And the whole point of the therapy is that our actions, they change our emotions, they change our behaviors, they change our thoughts.

And I think that a lot of times people get caught up in this whole, you know, magical thinking thing. Before they can do anything, they have to just completely change the way they think. But it's the other way too. It's acting in a certain way. You know, if you act more confidently and you do things that increase your confidence, like focus on good things, hang out with people who support you and want the best for you. This can increase your confidence and that can increase your motivation. And then you can take that energy and apply it to other areas of your life and sort of branch out. Well, I like how you talk about luck because it makes luck not just, you know, random chance, but it really makes it something you can work at and get better at and get luckier.

Carla Starr has been my guest. The book is called Can You Learn to Be Lucky? It appears the answer is yes, and there's a link to her book in the show notes. Thanks, Carla. People who listen to something you should know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about

a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly

about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show,

we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. How do you make important decisions?

There's this kind of assumption, I guess, that we make decisions by sitting down and thinking about them. Your parents probably told you at some point, you know, you really need to think about your decisions. Well, like, how? What's the process? I don't know. No one ever taught me the process of making decisions. But when you think about it, if you don't have the right process, how do you come to the right answer? That's what Steve Johnson set out to discover. Steve has a new book out called Farsighted, How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most. Hey, Steve, welcome. So what kind of decisions are we talking about here? So they're really, broadly speaking, two kinds of decisions, right? They're decisions that we make day in and day out, thousands of times a day, simple things that aren't very complicated.

But then there's another class of decisions that may happen a dozen times in your life that are decisions where the consequences of the choice kind of reverberate for years, for decades. And they're decisions like, should I change career? Or decisions like, should I move from the city to the suburbs? Or business decisions about, should we launch a whole new product line? And those are decisions that involve, by definition, they involve all these different variables and different factors and sometimes have competing value systems at play in them. And they involve unpredictable futures. And so they're very hard to make. And what it turns out is that there is this interesting new body of research, really, that's developed over the last 20 or 30 years that has looked at how we make these kinds of

decisions. And through that research, a number of interesting new strategies have emerged for making them that don't guarantee you success, because of course, these are very unpredictable things, but that the evidence shows can make you actually better at making these long-term decisions, turn the odds more in your favor in making them, but it involves a kind of practice or a routine or a set of habits. So the implication from what you're saying is that the way we go about making these decisions now is flawed, there's something wrong with it, but how do we typically do it? How do we, how do most people attack these decisions? Well, the normal way we do it is, the simplest way is we just kind

of go with our gut. And, you know, we don't really think about it. The most advanced tool that most people learn in their lives as a mechanism for making a decision is the kind of ancient art of the pros and cons list. One of the stories that the book begins with, actually, is kind of a funny one about Darwin in the late 1830s, right as he's in the middle of hitting upon the theory of natural selection, he has this other big idea in his mind, which he's trying to figure out whether he should get married. And in his scientific notebooks, there's this hilarious page

where he effectively writes, in the middle of all of his jottings about evolution, he writes this pros and cons list with two headings, you know, not marry and marry. And he writes down all the good things and bad things about both options. And it's really funny because some of them are a little bit dated. Like one of the advantages for not marrying is that he will be able to maintain the clever conversation of men in clubs, which I think is kind of funny. But one of the things that I find so striking about that is that effectively, like, you know, that's a technique that's been around for, you know, 200 years or so. And that's the one that most of us know. So the science of decision-making for most people has been stagnant for two centuries. But in fact, there are these other kind of techniques and other approaches that make us much more nuanced in being able to approach these decisions.

Well, is there something wrong with the pros and cons list? I mean, is it a flawed system? It is flawed on a couple of different levels. Here are a couple of the problems with it. One, when you first, if you just sit down to write down the pros and cons, there are invariably a whole host of variables that, or factors or attributes of this choice that you haven't thought of yet. And a lot of the strategies that I talk about in the book are strategies to kind of trick your mind into perceiving the things that haven't occurred to you yet

about this very complex situation or the things that might happen in the future that are hard to predict because the future is hard to predict. And so if all you do is just write the pros and cons list and add up one column and add up the other column and make your choice, you're not going to see and factor in all these variables that take time to perceive. The other problem is that some pros and cons matter more than others, right? You know, Darwin had clever conversation of men in clubs on one side, and then he had, you know, romantic companionship and children on the other side.

And however clever the conversation was with the men, I think he probably valued the romance and the children more. But unless you have a mechanism for weighting, that's the kind of technical term for this, the different attributes or values, this value is important, but not nearly as important as this value. The list is not going to reflect, just adding up one side and seeing which is longer is not going to effectively really represent what's at stake in the decision. And then the last thing that I would say is a pros and cons list presupposes you have one option in front of you, right? And there's been a lot of great research into particularly business decisions that people have made. And it turns out that when people only contemplate one option,

when it's just a kind of what they call a whether or not decision, should I do this or not? Those decisions end up being much less effective in the long run than decisions where the participants took time to discover new options and actually went through a process in the decision-making process, a phase in the decision-making process, where their primary goal was to come up with other options. They weren't trying to make the choice. They weren't trying to evaluate the choices. They were trying to see if there were other choices available to them. And when you have more options, even if you end up choosing the one you started with, you tend to be more sophisticated in your ultimate choice. You have a wider range of kind of options on the table.

You just end up with better outcomes. And all of those things are not there in the traditional pros and cons list. So what is the better way to approach these decisions? Well, there are a lot of different elements. Initially go through what I call the mapping stage where you're trying to catalog all the different variables and try and come up with new options, which we kind of discussed.

In that stage, it's incredibly valuable to actively seek out a diverse range of opinions and kind of feedback or inputs on the decision. One of the big themes of this book is the value of diverse groups in making collective decisions, right? If it's a group decision, you're much better off with an eclectic mix of people who are making the decision or at least giving you advice on the decision if it's your own choice. And that diversity can take the form of gender diversity, ethnic diversity, but also professional diversity, diversity of background, intellectual expertise, whatever you want to call it. Homogeneous groups, like-minded groups,

just tend to come to decisions too quickly. They tend to, they fall victim to kind of group thing. So you want to get a diverse group of people, get a bunch of different perspectives and have them shape the decision. Diversity always leads to better outcomes, whether that diversity is intellectual expertise or background or gender. And then once you've identified a number of options, make predictions about how those different options might play out in the future. There's a technique called scenario planning that people use where they actually, it's a really almost a storytelling art where you try and imagine alternate futures for all the options art where you try and imagine alternate futures

for all the options on the table. And both imagine positive futures and negative futures. If this decision fails, how is it going to fail? And then once you've done all those different exercises, that's when you can go back to that kind of updated version of the pros and cons table, do a weighted version where your values are actually kind of analyzed with a little bit more attentiveness to which values are more important to you. But if you've gone through those exercises, you're going to make a better decision in the long run. But it does seem that no matter what decision you make, there are so many things that can happen in the future. You could have made the best decision in the world, but as a result, you

were on a plane that crashed or, you know, you got hit by a truck. But if you hadn't made that decision, you'd probably still be alive. So maybe that wasn't such a good decision. I mean, there's so much out of your control that this almost seems like, yeah, it helps, but it doesn't necessarily help a lot. I guess I would disagree with that. I think it makes a meaningful difference and again you can kind of go through these

studies, this is all stuff that has come out of experimental science for the most part and so there is evidence that these things do increase your likelihood of a good outcome so to take it to the most kind of simple level it's like a weather forecast, if it says that it's 80% likely to rain, yeah, there's a 20% chance that bringing the umbrella is a waste of time, and that will happen one out of five times.

But you still are better off bringing the umbrella. You're still better off. If these are going to improve your odds of a better outcome, why would you not do that? The future is unpredictable on some level, but if you can give yourself a better chance of anticipating the future outcomes, I think that's an option that most of us would want to take. Good answer. Good rebuttal to my question. There you go. Well, interestingly, you said at the beginning, you know, that we have two different kinds of

decisions. And one is, you know, do we get chocolate or vanilla ice cream? And one is whether we get married or not. But there's a lot of decisions in between there that, are you saying that it wouldn't apply? No, I think the kind of mid-level decisions that some of these exercises are useful, it's just, you know, do you really go through three distinct phases? Do you bring in, you bring in your kind of team of rivals to consult on the decisions and diversify your influences? You might not go through all of the different stages. But I definitely found in my life, having written this book and thought about this for the last eight years I've been working on this book on and off, I do approach those kind of mid-range decisions with a little bit more of a technique than I used to

because these strategies are just in my head now. Right. Because it does seem that most of us don't, that we make those mid-range decisions. And maybe that's a part of where the problem is, is they're not so important that they get a lot of attention, but they're not insignificant either. And maybe they need more attention. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I think that's right. And by the way, this is something that we really need to think about in terms of our education system, all right? I think this is a big, one of the things I've become increasingly convinced of is that we should teach decision making in, you know, it should be a required course in every high school. Why wouldn't you,

no matter what you do with your life, whatever career you go into, whether you have a career or not, you're going to be helped by having better decision-making tools at your disposal. And, and there's such interesting studies and multidisciplinary research. You can learn about a lot of different, you learn about brain science, you can learn about psychology, you can learn about history, you know, you can pique your kind of intellectual curiosity. But in doing that, you are actually learning a skill that 100% guaranteed you will need to use. Well, it's so true. When all through your life, you have decisions to make, people say, you've got to decide. Well, how? No one ever told me how. I just, you have to decide. It's very much like throwing darts on a dartboard.

Okay, I choose, you know, chocolate over vanilla. Well, maybe that's not a big decision, but still, that's kind of the process we use. Pick one. Just pick one. And think about all the things that you were taught in high school that you have never used in your life. That's right. Like not once, right? So why not teach something that is both intellectually rich and filled with lots of different forms

of knowledge from many different fields, but that is guaranteed to be applicable to people's everyday lives as adults? Well, it does seem that, and you correct me if I'm wrong, that what you're saying is that anything you do to spend some time to really think through your decision is going to help make a better decision. And the more you do, the better your chances are. Yeah, I think just solo deliberating, mulling without any structure to it is fine, giving yourself more time. But you might also end up getting kind of just locked into your own convictions, right? There's a lot of danger of confirmation bias and kind of overconfidence that people have when they don't challenge their assumptions, when they don't bring in people who have different perspectives,

you know, all those kinds of exercises that we've been talking about. So yeah, taking time to think and mull and not just live in a kind of split second world, that's great. I mean, that's fine. But I think you also want to use these kind of extra techniques that get you in a sense outside of your own head and your own biases to see whatever the problem is that you're wrestling with with fresh eyes. What I'm having trouble grasping here is, because I don't know what the research was or is, how do you decide when a decision is a good decision? Do you wait 20 years and decide? And how do you research the road not taken? So on some level, that is the subjective art. Some of the studies that I look at in the book are really very clever. So one of the great ones

is this study that Philip Tetlock did in terms of predictions that people made about the future, where he went and interviewed all these alleged experts who were pundits and television personalities and opinion writers and so on, and asked them kind of long-term questions about the future, right? Like, what is going to happen to the economy in five years? What is going to happen with Russia in five years? Whatever. And then he had the audacity to go back and five years later, figure out how well they did with their forecasts. And it turned out most of them were worse than the, you know, proverbial dart-throwing chimp. They were worse than random.

But there was a subset of people that he did look at who were actually better than chance and were what he called super forecasters, who were really good at anticipating these complex outcomes. And he basically kind of graded them on their success in terms of making these predictions. And a lot of their techniques are techniques that we've talked about, that they're eclectic in their interests. They draw upon a lot of different fields. They don't look at situations from a single vantage point. And that's what enables them to be open to new possibilities in the future and to see the future with more clarity. It's not,

you know, they're not clairvoyance. They're wrong some of the time, but they're better than most people in being able to see the outcomes in these complex situations. Well, but it does seem that there's a difference between predicting the future and making a decision that those are not necessarily the same thing. And what I mean by that is what I said before is how do you ever know what would have happened if you chose something else you can't research the road not taken so you'll never know if this was the better decision yeah that's why it's it's useful i think to to trust some of the

studies of these things so you will never know, but you can feel more confident that you actually did look at the options with an instance of kind of a program or routine that has a track record and empirical track record of, of success in the studies that people have done. Cause it is, it is a decision is about predicting the future in a very real sense, right? You're choosing in a complex decision, you're choosing X over Y because you think in five years that X will be better than Y in the outcome. So prediction is very much bound up in that process. You'll never really fully know what the alternate scenario was, but you can presumably feel

better about the choice that you made because you know that you made it with a method that has been studied and researched in a kind of controlled environment. Well, it is sort of odd when you think, you know, there are phrases like, this could be the biggest decision of your life, or this is going to be the biggest decision you ever make. And no one ever teaches us the process of making it. They just tell you to make the biggest decision of your life.

So it's good to hear that there is a process that can help you make better decisions. My guest has been Steve Johnson. The book is Farsighted, How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most. And I have put a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Steve. Hey, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. You know the phrase, a few extra pounds won't kill you? Well, it may be truer than you realize.

Despite the focus we have on being thin, it turns out that overweight people may actually live longer. That somewhat surprising conclusion comes from a review of over 100 previously published research papers connecting body weight and mortality risk among 2.9 million participants. Now, this is not a reason to just let yourself go. The researchers concluded that it's possible that overweight and obese people get better medical care, either because they show symptoms of disease early or because they're screened more regularly because they're at risk. There is also some evidence that heavier people may

have better survival during a medical emergency such as an infection or a surgery. If you get pneumonia and lose 15 pounds, it helps to have 15 extra pounds to spare. And that is something you should know.

I hope you'll follow us on social media. We post additional information on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, information that you think you might hear in the show, but, you know, we can't fit it all in, so we post some interesting stuff over there. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook,

where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent VB Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer,

unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolph Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator.

Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Redolph Buntwine, wherever podcasts are available.