Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Gossip Well & The Importance of Taking A Pause

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know. If you don't hold hands with your mate, listen and discover why you probably should. Then gossip. Yeah, it can be nasty, but gossip also serves us well. We are, in fact, interested in gossip about other people of our same sex that are close to us in age. We also found that we like dirt about powerful people and rivals, because this is the stuff that we can use to get ahead.

Starting point is 00:01:01 Also today, romantic rejection. Why does it hurt so much? And if your work day is so busy you don't have time to think, you may want to restructure your day. How? By doing things like having permission to take a pause. When you pause to recuperate or think or oxygenate what you're doing, everything that you're touching is amplified in its output. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings

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Starting point is 00:02:21 It is really one of the few acceptable public displays of affection, and couples who hold hands may be doing themselves a lot of good in the process. Research shows that physical intimacy of any kind improves any relationship, but it also turns out that people in stressful or threatening situations remain calmer and cope better when they hold hands with their mate. It also seems to have a beneficial effect on pain and can lower the level of stress hormones that can do damage to your immune system. Even monkeys know the importance of hand-holding. Monkeys have been observed holding hands in reconciliation after a fight.

Starting point is 00:03:06 And that is something you should know. As you know, people gossip. It's just kind of what people do. And when you say the word gossip, it does seem to have kind of a negative connotation to it. Gossip is really talking behind someone else's back. It's tacky. It's not the classy thing to do. And yet we all gossip to some extent. And it may in fact be a positive thing that offers real benefits. Frank McAndrew is one of the leading researchers on the topic of gossip.

Starting point is 00:03:43 And he is a professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois. Hey, Frank, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks, Mike. Happy to be here. So maybe before we start talking about gossip, we should have like a working definition here. What is it? Well, it is a word that gets misused a lot. And I'm always entertained by people who claim that they never gossip. But people who are in the gossip business usually define it in the following ways. First of all, it's talk about a person. And it has to be an individual that isn't present at the moment.

Starting point is 00:04:18 So if I'm talking to you, I can't really gossip to you about yourself. It wouldn't qualify as gossip. Thirdly, it's usually information that we can make some kind of judgment about. We can approve or disapprove of the information that we're talking about. And finally, by definition, it's fun. We can't resist it. Nobody ever says, oh, I've got to go and gossip with my friends now. It's just inherently entertaining. And it does seem that if you get more than one person together, meaning two or more, gossip will ensue. It seems like it will almost always happen. Well, absolutely. The thing that probably matters the most to most of us in our lives are other people.

Starting point is 00:05:06 What are other people doing? What are the implications for me? What are these other people thinking or saying about me? So social talk is really the most entertaining and important talk. And some have argued that it's one of the reasons we have language in the first place so that we can keep up with each other. Well, when you describe it that way, that we're, you know, keeping up with people, it sounds very benign. But when I think of gossip, there's a nastiness to it. There's a

Starting point is 00:05:33 negative connotation to it that isn't just keeping up with other people. It's, you know, talking about people behind their back, usually not in a very nice way. Is that fair? Oh, it's very fair. Whenever I talk to people who find out that I'm a gossip researcher and that they hear that I sometimes say gossip isn't all bad, I get these frowns. And the problem is I think people define gossip in a very narrow way. They only think of it as negative talk. And interestingly, they often define it as something that other people do. If they're talking about somebody, they're expressing concern, you know, Mary, oh, bless her heart, or they're sharing important information. They don't think of it as gossip. But in fact, most gossip is actually pretty benign. It serves a very valuable social function. For example,

Starting point is 00:06:27 one of the things that makes you a good citizen is that we know that other people are monitoring what we're doing and that they're talking to other people about it. So if you're at work and you're tempted to sort of slack off and let other people pick up your share of the load, one of the things that makes you be a good citizen is the fear of having your reputation sullied. So in some ways, it's a way of keeping people in line. And it also creates a bond of trust. If I share some sensitive information with you, what I'm saying to you is, I trust you with this. I do not think you're going to use this information in a way that's going to come back to hurt me. And that creates a bond between us.

Starting point is 00:07:06 So there are a lot of positive functions of gossip. And if we're talking about information that's positive, if you and I are discussing our co-worker Joe and we're wondering if he's going to get that promotion that just opened up, that's not negative information about Joe, but we're gossiping. I think what people immediately do is they go to that dark place where they think of gossip as just your making up information that's negative for the sole purpose of stabbing somebody in the back so that you can get ahead. And I'm not denying that gossip can be used that way, but that's not all that it is. Since you're a gossip researcher, what do you research and what do you find? I mean, what is there new to know about gossip? Being something of an evolutionary psychologist, when you see something that seems to be universal

Starting point is 00:07:57 and that people do everywhere, you think that you're on to something about human nature. So if there was something adaptive about gossip, we ought to be able to make some predictions about what kind of information we like, what kinds of people we like to hear it about, who we would spread it to. So I set up some very simple experiments where we basically asked people, we'd give them samples of different gossip stories and ask them to rate which ones they'd want to read more about, which types of people they'd want to read them about, who they would tell them about. And to make a long story short, as you might expect, we are in fact interested in gossip about other people of our same sex that are close to us in age. We also found that we like dirt about powerful people and rivals because this is the stuff that we can use to get ahead.

Starting point is 00:08:49 On the other hand, we like good information about allies, friends, relatives, because that's stuff that we can use to get ahead. So we're drawn to information that we see as being useful to us. And unfortunately, that is often dirt. Yeah. Well, it seems to me, it's interesting that you say that, because a lot of gossip seems idle. Like it's just gossip for gossip's sake and, ooh, did you hear about Betty? And, oh, Bob did this. And there's no real usefulness to it. It's just, ooh, did you hear? No, and there may not be any usefulness in the immediate situation. But by engaging in this on a regular basis with people, you're sort of greasing the skids for other people to trust you with information that might be more important and useful down

Starting point is 00:09:39 the line. So what you're really doing is setting up the channels and maintaining the relationships that keeps you in the network. And that's one of the reasons why gossip is just inherently entertaining. It's fun to talk about Bill and Betty, even if you're just kind of engaging in idle chit-chat, because you never know where that's going to lead next. It's just a very engaging sort of thing. But isn't there gossip that is basically used as a weapon? Absolutely. And a lot of damage is done by that.

Starting point is 00:10:08 And the whole social media world that we live in now with Facebook in particular and Twitter are ways of spreading gossip on a scale that we're just completely unprepared to deal with. I'm talking about gossip so far as if, oh, it's this wonderful thing that keeps society humming, but there's no doubt about it. It can be used as a weapon. And in fact, the stereotype has more than a grain of truth to it. Females are more likely than males to use gossip as a weapon, to ostracize their rivals, to destroy their reputations. It's not that women are nastier people than men. This just happens to be their style of aggression. Males are much more likely to come up and punch you in the face or

Starting point is 00:10:51 engage in some sort of physical violence. But it's called relational aggression. Women use this kind of tactic to deal with people that they want out of their social circle. Is most gossip negative? No, I think most gossip is positive. And many studies that have been done on gossip in the last 20 years indicate that most of the talk that people engage in that can be classified as gossip is harmless or even positive. There is certainly an element of negativity, and it can be used in a disruptive sort of way. But when I see offices or workplaces that try to set up no gossip rules, I think you might as well ask people to stop breathing as to ask them to stop gossiping. It's just so much part of who we are. It's kind of a showstopper when it comes to conversation. Right. Because sooner or later, almost, well, I don't know, almost any, but many

Starting point is 00:11:51 conversations slip into gossip, or at least gossip becomes part of the conversation. Absolutely, it does. It's hard to imagine a conversation that you're going to have for more than a minute or two, where another person doesn't come into the topic as part of the story. As you said in the beginning of this discussion, you can only gossip about someone who isn't there. And what so often happens, and I guess where the meanness of gossip comes, is when you talk about someone behind their back because they're not there and then they hear about it. And then that's what really causes the pain. Yes, it does. And one of the things I've done when I've written about gossip is to describe it as a social skill rather than a character flaw. It's not that it's good or bad necessarily to gossip, but it's bad to be a bad gossip,

Starting point is 00:12:48 and it's to your advantage to be a good gossip. A good gossip is actually usually a popular person. They have a reputation for knowing stuff, but sharing things very discreetly. They can keep secrets when you need them to, and they're part of the network. Bad gossips are, there's two different types. One is the type who just instantly blabs any new information that they've gotten indiscriminately. They don't care who's listening and who isn't. They just come out with it and they can't keep a secret. And then the other kind of bad gossip is the one that is using it as a weapon, almost like a dagger that they're keeping hidden under a coat to bring out at a moment's notice and do damage with it. So you want to establish your reputation as being a good gossip rather than a bad gossip.

Starting point is 00:13:36 And you don't want to get a reputation as the person who's holier than thou, who refuses to be part of the gossip network at work, for example. Because if you go to work and just announce to people, I'm not going to be part of this, what you're saying to them is, I don't trust you. I don't want to be part of your network. And this isn't going to really win you many, very, very many friends in your workplace. My guest is Frank McAndrew. He is a professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois, and we are talking about gossip. as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks

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Starting point is 00:15:00 Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. with gossip and who seem to steer clear. When they hear gossip, they leave. They just don't want to get down in the dirt because often it seems that it just does no good, that no good will come from this, so I'm going to not participate. That's right. And the key is to distinguish between doing that selectively when it is negative, nasty, dirty stuff versus just extricating yourself whenever any kind of lighthearted social conversation comes up. One of them is going to work in your favor. The other one is not. about, oh, Betty did this thing, or she wore that thing, or Bob, you know, had too many drinks and did this thing. I mean, it's hurtful. I mean, the only, what's the point of bringing it up other

Starting point is 00:16:14 than, you know, you and I are going to bond over the fact that this guy's an idiot? Well, certainly the person who's being talked about as an idiot is never going to think it's good, but it can serve positive functions for some people. So imagine yourself getting a new job. You're a young person right out of college. You're starting to work in an office. There are a lot of things people don't tell you right off when you start a new job. How formally should you dress? Is it OK to use the boss's first name when you're talking to him or her? When five o'clock comes around, can you just leave? Or are you supposed to hang around a little bit longer? So by tuning into the gossip network and hearing what's being said about people

Starting point is 00:16:58 who engage in behavior A or behavior B, the new person is getting socialized into the rules of the group. They're learning how to be an employee there. So yes, if Joe's an idiot and we're talking about what an idiot he is, maybe that's not really doing anything for you or I, and certainly not for Joe, but it may be serving a positive social function for some of the people involved. Often you hear when people hear that they are being gossiped about, they will say to the person, if you have something to say about me, have the guts to say it to my face.

Starting point is 00:17:38 Don't go around my back and gossip. Is that a legitimate request? Well, it depends upon what the information is. But a lot of times the gossip is you're talking about something the person already knows to be true about themselves. What you're trying to do is alert other people to the dangers perhaps that this person poses. So if somebody is a cheater or an undesirable social partner in some way or other, you want to put people on alert about that. If you're in an office where there's a guy who sexually harasses female employees, going and saying to his face, you shouldn't be doing this, probably isn't going to change his behavior, but you at least want to

Starting point is 00:18:22 give a heads up to some of the people who may be potential victims if you have reason to think that they're in danger. People who are known as gossips, is it because they do it too much or they do it incorrectly? And how much is too much? What are the parameters? What are the rules of gossip? Yeah. And I think that goes back to the question. I don't think it's a question of too much or too little as much as a question of doing it well versus doing it poorly. So the person who gets labeled with that tag, you're a gossip, is often the person who's engaged in a lot of mean-spirited backstabbing, or they're just cluelessly going around saying inappropriate things about people for no good reason. Those are the people that we would refer to as gossips. The person who's doing it well stays under the radar, and we don't

Starting point is 00:19:20 think of them as a gossip. We think of them as a good social companion, a good team player. And that's where you want to be if you can keep yourself in that zone. something nice to say, don't say it at all. You're not much of a gossip then, because it does seem that so much gossip is that stuff under the rug that people don't talk about because it isn't real nice. That's right. And I don't think it's as important to be the person who spreads gossip, but you certainly need to be tuned in to the gossip network. When I talk about this as an evolved human trait, I use the example of the societies that we evolved in through most of human history. We lived in relatively small groups, maybe 150 people or so. To be successful in this group, to achieve status, to get mates, to be able to hang on to allies, you had to know what other people were up to. You had to know who was sleeping with whom. You had to know who had

Starting point is 00:20:32 powerful friends and allies. You had to know who had access to resources. And if you were unconcerned with those things, if you just didn't care, you didn't do very well. You got left behind. We're the descendants of busybodies. The people who were fascinated by what was going on behind the scenes with other people are ones who did well. They knew when there was an opportunity to exploit. They knew who they could trust and who they couldn't trust. And people who weren't interested in gossip, people who just were out of the loop, fell behind. So I say we're descendants of busybodies because by definition, our ancestors were successful enough to keep passing those genes on and here we are. person know that other people think of them as a gossip? Do people know what they're doing? And usually when somebody's labeled a gossip, it's not a compliment. It's somebody who's,

Starting point is 00:21:32 you know, got their nose in everybody's business and they're talking about it behind their back. Do they know they're perceived that way? If they've been bad enough at it that they've been labeled a gossip, my guess is they probably aren't aware that other people are gossiping about them for being a gossip because we do use that as a negative label. You never use that as an adjective for somebody in a complimentary way. Now, I think there are people who are aware that they're kind of gossipy and they may sort of playfully or self-deprecatingly say about themselves, oh, I'm a terrible gossip. But I think people who have a really bad reputation are probably walking around oblivious to the fact that other people think about them this way.

Starting point is 00:22:14 It does seem that there's like two kinds of gossip. There's gossip about people we know, people we work with, people we work for, but people in our circle. And then there's celebrity gossip, and people seem to be real into what are celebrities up to. So what's going on there? What's going on there is our brains are unprepared for mass media and celebrities. Celebrities didn't exist in the world that we evolved in. If you knew a lot about somebody, by definition, that was a socially important person. It was somebody that was in your life, that had an effect on your life, and what they

Starting point is 00:22:57 did mattered to you. Well, in the 21st century, we live in this world of celebrities where we know an awful lot about these strangers. You probably know a lot more about a great many celebrities than you do about your next door neighbor. And this tricks our brains. Consciously, we know these people shouldn't matter to us. But the fact that we know a lot already feeds the beast. It makes us want to know more.

Starting point is 00:23:27 We can't help ourselves. And we develop a one-sided, what's called a parasocial relationship with these people. They don't know we exist, but we sure know a lot about them. And so I think this fascination we have with the lives of celebrities is kind of a byproduct or an accidental side effect. But there is kind of a side effect of that. You and I have never spoken before today, but I think we could probably go out to lunch together and sit down and talk about Donald Trump or other politicians or movie stars or people that we sort of know in common. I guess you can think of them as friends-in-law. And so they provide a

Starting point is 00:24:06 segue into real relationships with real people in your life. Well, I certainly appreciate the explanation and the depth you went into about gossip, because I think most people, like me, think of gossip as relatively unnecessary, pretty nasty, and something that people probably shouldn't do. But clearly, there are benefits to gossip, and it's good to hear both sides of the story. Frank McAndrew has been my guest. He is a leading researcher on the topic of gossip, and he is a professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois. Thank you, Frank. Thanks, Mike. Best part of my day today. Thank you. fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit FlyPorter.com and actually enjoy economy. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

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Starting point is 00:26:28 On any given day, particularly a work day, it would be difficult to go very long during that day without somebody telling you how busy they are. Everybody's busy. I'm busy. You're busy. There's a lot of busyness going on. And we, or many of us, have a tendency to jump from one busy thing to the next without barely catching our breath in between. And therein lies a missed opportunity. Those times in between things, according to Juliette Funt. Juliette is a speaker and advisor to Fortune 500 companies. She's founder and CEO of the Juliette Funt Group, and she's author of a book called A Minute to Think. And she believes that those moments in between tasks and meetings and projects, those moments can be golden if you treat them right. Hi, Juliette. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:27:26 Thanks. So glad to be here. So I think people have heard of the concept of white space on a page of text, that text is easier to read and more likely to be read if there is a lot of white space rather than cram as many words as you can on a page. And you take that concept of white space and apply it to time. So explain what you mean. Sure. The idea would be, let's say you have the Zoomaholic lifestyle that we've all been living and you have back-to-back meetings. If you look at your physical, your actual calendar, you'll see colors. You won't see any white. You'll see blocks

Starting point is 00:28:04 that come right up against each other. But if there were white space on that calendar, you'll see colors. You won't see any white. You'll see blocks that come right up against each other. But if there were white space on that calendar, if there were a five to 10 to 15 minute slice interlaced in between those meetings, everything that has been stressing us out would be less. We would have time to think about the meeting proceeding, the meeting that follows. We might have time to take a humane bio break or have a snack. And we would be different in the next interaction that we showed up in because we would have been able to refuel before we dug in again. And so something as simple as space between meetings or even shorter space before answering a question, before walking in the door

Starting point is 00:28:44 when you've just driven up and you're rushing in from work. These little moments interlaced through the day amplify and accelerate everything that we do. Why? What happens in those little spaces between the things? What do we know is going on? And it sounds good, but what's really happening? Sure. Well, we can look at it from a visceral point of view, a neurological point of view, there's a lot of different sides of it. So from a visceral point of view, if you have every listener out there, just take a minute and just, they will realize that from a recuperative angle, they've probably been craving that at least for the last 18 months, maybe longer,

Starting point is 00:29:25 but we're all desperately just in need of permission to just take a minute. It's like if you're in the gym lifting weights, you do 10 and then you take a rest and then you do 10. You don't do 150 in a row and then take a break, which is how we work. So there's the recuperative angle, which is very important, but there's also the creative and strategic angle where in those breaks, we're doing what scientists have noticed is disconnecting from the primary task and then reconnecting to come back to it with more focus and activity in our default neural network. In fact, you can see this. If you looked at an MRI scan during a moment when someone was taking a supposed pause, there's all this activity that has been scientifically

Starting point is 00:30:11 linked to insight, to introspection, to memory and creativity, all in a moment where it kind of seems like we're doing nothing. And the greatest leaders, I can rattle off stories of people who take this kind of thinking and transition time for granted, and it amplifies what they do every single day. Well, and the flip side of that, and I think everyone has experienced this, that when you're working on something, maybe up against a deadline or something, and you're really trying hard to get it done, the harder you work, the worse the work, that you really need to get away to take a break. And that's where the ideas come. Right.

Starting point is 00:30:54 And it's that there's a very famous writer, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, wrote the book called Flow, which is about when we get in that creative flow state. And he said the one thing that differentiates people who can easily get into flow is how much uncommitted time they have left over for novelty to appear in their mind or in their day. And as creatives or innovators, this is what we want, certainly. But that time in between also has a really, really strong impact on the culture of work. And there is no time in history where it's ever been more important to think specifically about that. Because we're in, this is the most spectacular opportunity for redesign in companies we've ever been in. All the car engine parts have been taken out. They're on the driveway. We're examining everything. We're redesigning work. And so we also now can insert this spaciousness, this oxygen into the way that

Starting point is 00:31:48 work works all day long. And maybe we could make work not the most miserable part of people's life. By doing things like what? By doing things like having permission to take a pause. When you pause to recuperate or think or oxygenate what you're doing, everything that you're touching is amplified in its output. I'll give you an example of one of the wonderful examples of space is this gentleman named John. John is a security guard at a company that prides itself on patents. They do a lot of innovations. They have a lot of patents. He's a security guard, but he also happens to be the guy who leads the company in the recorded amount of innovative patents. We talked about how his day is 95% uncommitted time. He is not hampered by the

Starting point is 00:32:39 typical tasks that we call work. That liberty, now he's a very creative, smart person, but that liberty brings him to a different level of contribution. And the punchline of the story is two different times he was promoted from security into innovation, and two different times he went back to security. Because in innovation, he kept being assigned all this work that was getting in the way of him being able to think, and he just couldn't produce the same results. He's a security guard who has more patents than anybody else? Yes, more than anyone else in the innovation department. And it's a Fortune 200 company.

Starting point is 00:33:17 It's not a small potatoes organization. He's a brilliant guy, but could the argument be made that the amount of liberty and open time that he has to be thoughtful is amplifying that process? I believe so. And John is not the only story. There's all sorts of leaders. If you look at Phil Knight from Nike, used to have a designated chair in his living room that was only for daydreaming.

Starting point is 00:33:41 And Jack Welch, who everyone thought of at GE as this driven, hard-driving, workaholic guy, he spent an hour and a half every single day, he called it looking out of the window time. And he would do that old-fashioned thing that many of us remember, feet up on the desk, staring out a window, concocting, cooking, dreaming. We have no respect with that thoughtfulness posture anymore. And it's almost shameful. You have to hide around the corner like a smoker to think these days. But that tells you a little bit about how much we value thoughtfulness. But there has to be a balance between that and productivity. You still have to get the work done. We can't all just look out the window and daydream all day because then

Starting point is 00:34:25 nothing happens. Yeah, that's not, that's, well, that's not the live problem that I see and empathize with every day at work. But we do have to understand the difference between activity and productivity. And this is a critical delineation. If you and I sat in a room all day long in a conference room, let's say we put out Danish and we sat and we thought and we thought and we didn't really do very much. But eight hours later, one of us had a spectacular idea. That would have been a very productive day, but it wouldn't have been a very active day. And in corporations and companies, even entrepreneurs who have that busyness gene in them, we're over-indexing on activity and checking off boxes and moving in action.

Starting point is 00:35:03 There's plenty of that. We're never going to have a risk that there's not enough of that. But this other element must be present. And our dream is to insert it in small, manageable sips throughout the day, not to have eight hours in a row of ponderous window time, but just to have some, just to be able to step back and have some objectivity about the work that we're doing. Because you hope what will happen. Well, I don't hope, I see what happens. We've been doing this work for many years in corporations. So there's on the level of the plot, if you did kind of plot and subplot, the plot is that work becomes more efficient because people think before they act. So we see

Starting point is 00:35:45 measurable results in improvements in productivity, increased strategic thinking time, reduction of stress in the workplace. All sorts of different things happen when people don't have to be on a maniacal treadmill every minute. But then the subplot is really what moves me is real people sitting in real desks who have had their chests compressed for so long can just breathe again. They can take a minute to think about an idea or maybe remember why they do the work they do and reaccess that meaning, that vision inside of them. This work was supposed to be fun in a lot of different ways that it isn't for a lot of people. So when somebody listening to you says, okay, so how do I do this? Like,

Starting point is 00:36:33 do you structure this basically downtime into the day? And then do you force yourself to do it? Or do you just let it happen? I mean, what do I do different? In the course of the day, the training wheels protocol that we teach is called the wedge. So if you imagine I'm holding my fingers like a triangle going up, the wedge is a little portion of open time. It could be five seconds, a minute, 10 minutes, a wedge inserted in between two activities that without it would have been connected. So think about, we talked about between a meeting and a meeting, a little wedge, between a fire drill and diving into it, between getting an email that hurts your feelings or worries you and responding, between being asked a question and answering. These are all moments where tiny oxygenation opening,

Starting point is 00:37:27 opening can occur. And we want to really take those breaks when we're taking the longer wedges, when we maybe are taking our lunch or where we're really taking some thoughtful time. We want to do it in a way that supports, for instance, we talk a lot about, about eating, just eat when you're eating lunch. If you're not with other people, try to abstain from watching something or listening to something and just allow that to be recuperative white space time. It doesn't have to be a lot. This is one of the most important parts is you can start with literally if we did, I won't waste your time, but if we did 15 seconds, you'd be shocked at how long that felt to just let there be some openness. And you're hoping, like, how do you know it worked? So what's going to be different now?

Starting point is 00:38:15 How am I going to feel differently because I did it right? It's like, like oxygen or like a nutrient that you've been missing, consistent use of white space will make you less stressed. It should make you more focused. It will actually make you more productive because you're using moments to decide what you do next at work instead of just doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. So you'll get lost in far less rabbit holes of unnecessary work. In teams, which is how we do a lot of our work, we also see measurable results in that low value category that I mentioned. We see less emails, we see less meetings, we see shortened or reduced reporting. These flurries of nonsense activity in the workday largely come because we're just not thoughtful about what we're

Starting point is 00:39:05 assigning or choosing or touching. You slow things down and you add some white space and the way that work is selected becomes different. And we have lots of data to show those changes in real teams in real time. It seems though that what often happens in an office is like, you know, let's say you plan out five minutes in between meetings to do your white space sing, if that's the verb, white spacing. White spacing, yeah, sure. Well, let's go with it. But so after the first meeting's over, what often happens is Bob comes up and says, hey, Juliet, you got a minute? And then that five minutes gets eaten up with Bob telling you, you know, what he did on his weekend cruise. And there went your white space.

Starting point is 00:39:53 Well, there definitely will be moments like that. But what most people experience is they don't have the five minutes in the first place. So when Bob says, do you have a minute, that means they're just going to be five minutes late to their next meeting and rushing in and frenzied all the time. They also, in case they like Bob, would miss the beautiful opportunity to slow down and have a human moment with Bob. And to hear, actually hear, did you swim with the dolphins? And what was the cruise? And did they have those big platters of food? And that is part of what fuels us as interpersonal teams is being able to be with each other and not have the, what is that yolk they put around the oxen where they're just pushing them through the, I'm probably getting this all wrong, pushing them through the rice field

Starting point is 00:40:35 every single second. The beautiful open time also leads to the ability to be interpersonal with each other and many find that a benefit. So you've been doing this, because I can imagine people listening thinking, well, this all sounds great, but where's the evidence? I mean, where's the proof that this really is helping, not just wasting time? And you have the evidence, yes? Yeah, there's lots of studies that show, I mean, we could go into some of the ways. One of my favorite ones is that there's a study that shows that we experience something in white space called beneficial forgetting, which is a term that I just love. disentangle itself from the thing that it was doing before and come back again with a fresh perspective. So many people are working on problems at work. We can't seem to get this product to sell, and we can't seem to get this channel to work, and we can't seem to develop

Starting point is 00:41:34 this relationship. When they take a moment of time, studies show that this beneficial forgetting allows them to come back stronger. There's also a wonderful study where they put four different people into groups and they had them do a repetitive task. Only one of the four groups had the ability to take very small breaks during the period of the work. And they were the only one whose productivity and output was consistent by the end of the 50 minutes that they were working. So in terms of the gray, we say gray matter likes white space. That's absolutely been proven. But all you have to do is take a human being. I mean, there's a woman in the book named Mindy. We call her the peanut butter manager because she works with a jar of peanut butter on her desk all day long because she can't give herself the liberty of taking lunch.

Starting point is 00:42:23 And this is the way she worked for a very long time. She's just one person that many, many will see a mirror in that just when she gave herself permission to make work not a grueling marathon all day long, that her headaches disappeared, that her errors in client process procedures in her team started going down, that things got better. And people just have to try it. It's like one of those

Starting point is 00:42:51 free Costco samples. Once you taste a little space, you'll want more. Well, this whole conversation, I think, makes you stop and think why we go to work in the first place. It's not to go somewhere and be busy all day. That's, or maybe that is why some people go to work, but that's probably not the best definition of work. Well, we go to work to make a contribution. So yes, busyness is, I would say it's a form of an enemy that we do fight in our work. I'll also say it's something that I've struggled with my entire life. And I think it's a form of an enemy that we do fight in our work. I'll also say it's something that I've struggled with my entire life. And I think it's probably why I'm so interested in this work. I was told that when I was seven years old, I wrote a story called I'm Busy Forever and turned

Starting point is 00:43:36 it into a song. And so it's been a very long time. And my raw state, naturally, if I didn't have these tools, is that I would just keep moving and probably not be very thoughtful about what I was touching. And that speed would also detract from my ability to be a mom and human and all sorts of other things that I care about. So I'm in the trenches with people and my experience, you asked me for proof, is my own personal proof is that when there is space that the whole day feels very different. And you determine the amount of time in your white space, how? I mean, how is it? Sometimes it's a minute, sometimes it's five minutes. Because of what?

Starting point is 00:44:17 So the productivity gang wants to have very prescribed rules. People say, should there be timers and how many times a day? It's a little bit like learning to watch your own hunger and understand the difference between hunger and craving and satiety. I'm going to get that one wrong, but being satiated. The white space time that you should take is as much as you need to feel better. So for some people, that is 30 seconds once in a while through the day. For some people, obviously we have a lot of executives who take an hour because they think that they can't do any thinking time that's deep and rich and valuable and less than that. And everywhere in between, what we want to be doing is approaching it from

Starting point is 00:45:02 two angles, the intellect and the visceral. From the intellect, you could look at your day. If you screen shared your calendar right now and I saw your calendar, I could see if there was enough white, just looking for the actual white on the calendar. And if there wasn't, I'd be able to guess with enormous certainty whether your day would be flexible and fluid or whether it would feel pressed and rushed and stressful. That's the intellectual side. So we look at our calendars, we go, oh, I need a couple white slices in here. And then the visceral side is we're sitting at our desk and we're just having that feeling, wow, I need an espresso or I need a candy bar, I'm going to check my email to have the dopamine goose me up here. And instead, often we just need to take a strategic pause.

Starting point is 00:45:49 Well, it does seem to make sense. I mean, anybody who's had those days where you're just going from one thing to the next and you don't have time to breathe, you can imagine how that day would go differently if you plan those white space breaks in between all the events. Juliette Funt has been my guest. She is a speaker and an advisor to Fortune 500 companies.

Starting point is 00:46:14 She's founder and CEO of the Juliette Funt Group, and the name of her book is A Minute to Think, which, by the way, was nominated for the Next Big Idea Club, which is curated by Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Dan Pink and Susan Cain. And you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Juliet. Thanks for being here. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for having me. If you've ever had someone reject you, break up with you, someone you were in love with, well, you know it can mess with your brain. In a study, researchers looked at brain scans of subjects who had recently been rejected by their partner and who were still in love with the person

Starting point is 00:47:02 who rejected them and hoped that they might return. What they found is that romantic rejection stimulated the same parts of the brain as cocaine and other addictions. In other words, romantic love acts much like an addiction in the brain. And this helps to explain why behaviors by people who have been rejected, like stalking, are often difficult to control. The good news is that time definitely heals the hurt. After a period of time, the subjects were shown photos of the person who had rejected them, and those parts of the brain that showed so much activity before had quieted down. And that is something you should know.

Starting point is 00:47:45 If someone ever asks you to recommend a podcast or ask what podcast you listen to, I hope you'll tell them something you should know and ask them to give a listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you.

Starting point is 00:48:16 In Don't Blame Me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong

Starting point is 00:48:39 in our lives. Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong. But wait, there's more. Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong? And don't miss Fisting Friday, where we catch up, chat about pop culture, TV, and movies. It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. So if you're looking for a podcast that feels like a chat with your besties, listen to Don't

Starting point is 00:49:00 Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

Starting point is 00:49:30 During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others,

Starting point is 00:49:52 in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Gossip Well & The Importance of Taking A Pause

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