Something You Should Know - The Problem With Following Your Passion & Understanding Small Data

Episode Date: December 26, 2019

There is something about flying that makes you feel – lousy. Since a lot of people are flying this time of year, this episode begins with a discussion on why flying in an airplane makes you feel so uncomfortable, what you can do about it and how everyone else feels exactly the same way. http://www.menshealth.com/health/feel-better-when-flying/slide/6 I bet you have heard the advice “Follow your passion…” or “Do what you love and the money will follow…” While that sounds great, it may be some of the worst advice you will ever hear when it comes to making a career choice. Cal Newport author of the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You (http://amzn.to/2nGmhpZ) has investigated this advice – where it came from and why it is such a bad idea. Perhaps you have heard of Big Data. Well there is also something called “Small Data.” And small data is a big deal according to Martin Lindstrom who is considered to be one of the world’s top brand-building experts. He is author of the book Small Data (http://amzn.to/2n64AkK) and he explains how small data works, how you collect and interpret this data and how it has helped many organizations focus their marketing better. In fact, small data brought LEGO from the brink of bankruptcy to becoming the number one brand in the entire world. When I say, “Chinese food take-out container,” you know exactly what I mean. It is that small cardboard box with the metal handle that all Chinese food is packed in. It is actually an engineering marvel. It is one piece of cardboard folded in such a way as to be leak-proof. And yet there is nothing Chinese about it and it is not used in China at all. It is a fascinating story worth hearing. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/magazine/the-chinese-takeout-container-is-uniquely-american.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 was 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. 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. Today on Something You Should Know, why do you always feel lousy when you fly on an airplane? I'll explain why and how you can feel better. Then, why the advice to follow your passion you should probably ignore. The message I try to get to people, especially young people, is that there's no one job you are meant to do. So the

pressure is off. And you can turn your attention to, given the jobs available to me, how do I cultivate those into something I love? Also, did you know the Chinese takeout container isn't Chinese at all? And then there's a lot of talk today about big data. But small data can be more important. It's what helped turn the Lego company around. In 2003, the Lego company was completely struggling to survive. In fact, they were close to bankruptcy. Today, they're not only the number one toy manufacturer in the world, they're also the number one brand in the world. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or 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, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays, and welcome to Something You Should Know. This is the time of year when a lot of people who don't fly a lot

fly for the holidays. And have you ever been in that position where you look around and nobody else on the plane looks as miserable as you feel? Well, here's the good news. If misery loves company, they feel the same thing. Because when you fly, it messes with your body and it makes you feel funny.

And it's a kind of feeling that you don't feel any other time except when you fly. For one thing, the dry air ruins your skin and makes it harder to breathe because it saps moisture from your lungs. And the air, the pressurized air, makes you feel bloated and gassy. Even though the air in the airplane is pressurized, the air pressure is still much lower than what you're used to at ground level. That lower pressure causes the gases in your gut to expand, and that makes you feel bloated and gassy.

Gravity makes your feet swell. When you sit, gravity causes fluid to pool in your legs and feet, and when you sit for hours on a plane, it can make you feel very uncomfortable. So get up once in a while and walk around to pump that fluid out of your feet, or at least stand up and stretch. And not everybody has this, but I sure do, is when the plane lands, the descent makes your head and ears ache. If you have congestion in particular, that pain can be quite severe. The good news is it stops as soon as you land. So everybody on the plane is just as miserable as you are.

And that is something you should know. How many times have you heard the advice to follow your passion? Or do what you love and the money will follow? And it sounds good. I mean, how can you go wrong by following your passion or do what you love and the money will follow. And it sounds good. I mean, how can you go wrong by following your passion? Yeah, well, but wait a minute. It turns out there are some flaws in that advice, serious flaws actually, and it can end up landing you in the wrong job or the wrong career or worse.

Here to discuss this is Cal Newport, who's really studied this whole idea of follow your passion. His book is called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And welcome, Cal. Start by explaining what's wrong with this whole follow your passion, do what you love, and the money will follow theory, philosophy? Follow your passion is greatly oversimplified advice. Most people don't have pre-existing passions they can follow. What makes people love their work is a way more complicated set of factors. So where did that come from? Why is that such a pervasive belief now, do you think?

You can actually track the occurrences of the phrase, follow your passion, in English printed literature. It really has its heyday in the 90s and 2000s. Before that, you don't see it showing up that often. So it's actually a relatively new idea, not some Iron Clan fact that's been around for decades. And it certainly sounds good, doesn't it? I mean, it just has that feel about it that, you know, if you do what you love, the money will follow. That's, you know, that's another way of saying that, I guess. And I think it resonates with people, even though, as you're about to tell us, there isn't a lot of facts behind it. I think the advice confuses two things. It is good, obviously, to feel passionate

about what you do for a living, but that's a different proposition than saying following your passion is a good idea. Because following your passion implies that the passion exists in advance, which just isn't true for most people, and that's where we get into trouble. And I've heard that from people. You know, my passion might be ballet dancing or something. I mean, I can't follow that into a career. I just like to go to the ballet. The message I try to get to people, especially young people, is that there's no one job you were meant to do.

So the pressure is off. You don't have to figure out what am I meant to do. And you can turn your attention to, given the jobs available to me, how do I cultivate those into something I love? Which is a much less stressful, much easier challenge than finding your one true calling. And how does that look? How is that quest different? And what do you do to get there as opposed to just trying to think, well, what do I love to do? So here's what I found.

When I sat down and dived into the life stories of dozens of people who do love their career. The core, nine times out of 10 of this love for their career came from them becoming very good at something rare and valuable. That skill, that rare and valuable skill is like an elixir for loving your job. It gives you a sense of mastery and competence. It also is your leverage to shape the career in the direction you want. So it's skills that lead to passion, not following your passion to skills. So give me an example of what that looks like.

So for example, I interview a database developer. And it's not that she had a passion for database developing, but as she got better and better at this highly technical skill, she gained more control over her career. And she was able to shape a career in which she worked as a highly in-demand freelancer maybe six months out of the year. And the other six months, she could go and travel and see her family for six weeks at a time in Asia. She went and got her pilot's license.

In other words, she used a skill that she developed to build a career she loves, a career that she can feel passionate about. But it was the skills that got her there, not some match with a pre-existing innate predisposition. I remember hearing the advice from somebody, and I remember this because it just, it happened to be true for me, that a lot of the time, if people can't think of what their passion is, think what they liked to do back when they were about 12 or 13 years old.

Have you heard that before? I've heard that advice, and I don't buy that advice, because again, it goes to this idea that we were meant to do something, and that's how you end up happy in work. This is not what the evidence shows from the scientific research. It's not what the evidence shows when you go out and talk to people who love what they do. Passion is something that is cultivated over time. It is not nine times out of ten something that exists before the work. And you may have loved something at 13 years old that doesn't even exist anymore,

or you may have loved it as a 13-year-old, but you're actually, as an adult, not very good at it. I mean, there's a lot of reasons where that advice kind of just falls apart. That's right. We need a more complicated notion of the passion we're going for in our careers. The hobby or interest of a 13-year-old is not the same thing that, say, someone who is 50 years old and has a very engaging, fulfilling career feels, right? The passion we're going for is a more sophisticated thing. It's not every morning you jump out of bed singing. It's more of a sense of fulfillment that you have competence and impact on the world that you're making a difference.

It's a much more complicated combination of factors, and it's something that's cultivated over time. It's not the sort of fairy tale of, I love being outside, so I think of lawyers as falling into this category of maybe when they were young, they loved the law and they developed the skills to be a good lawyer. And now they're a lawyer and they absolutely hate it. They hate being a lawyer. where people think they're headed in the right direction and then find out the same thing with people, say, who are going to be, you know, who love photography and think they've developed that and they're really good at it. Well, being a photographer and running a photography business are two very different things.

Yeah, this is what I think is more useful about the way I think about building a compelling career, because I say what you do is you get good at something valuable and then you leverage it to get the type of general traits in your working life that resonate with you. That is going to have a much higher probability of success than this more simplified view of, oh, I like this. Let me go do it. Then I'll love it. The research says people love their jobs not because it matched a pre-existing interest. They love their jobs because it has traits like autonomy and competence and impact

and creativity. And running a photography studio doesn't necessarily going to get you those traits, for example. Being a lawyer is not necessarily going to get you those traits. If you think about these general traits that make people love what they do and how to get them, you're going to have a much higher probability of ending up happy than following this sort of simplified script of, I like this, therefore I'll love my career. It sounds like you're saying, you know, you'll sort of stumble into something, but how do you make it a little more deliberate than that? So different people, as they get into the workplace, pretty quickly see what type of general traits in their working life resonates with them. I talked to this young Harvard professor who has a very intense career, but for her, having an impact on the world was very important. And she leveraged her skill to be able to tackle big deal, important problems, fighting major diseases, these sort of things.

Typically, people get a good sense pretty soon in their career for what general traits resonate with them. And once you know that, then you can go about systematically developing skills that are important in your field to use as your leverage, your leverage to gain those traits into your working life. But do you find when you look at the people that you spoke with and just from your sense in general, that it was that deliberate or people just kind of fell into something and it clicked? Well, what was deliberate for them and what the important thing to be deliberate for anyone is, is that they wanted to get very good at what they did. They might not have known in advance how they were going to leverage that skill

once they had it. So there was some stumbling and some serendipity there. But the core thing they went for is also the title of my book, To Become So Good They Can't Ignore You. That's the elixir that's going to grant you, one way or another, probably not in a way that you can predict, but one way or another, a working life that is really meaningful to you. I'm speaking with Cal Newport. He is author of the book So Good They Can't Ignore You. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. 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. 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. So Cal, do you think this advice of not following your passion necessarily in order to find a career that you love applies just to people starting out, or does this also apply to people who are maybe in midlife looking to switch careers? So I think it can happen at any point, right? I wrote the book. I was thinking about people in my generation, people who are early in their careers, but I'm getting feedback from early readers that they're finding relevance because it just helps them at that point clarify something they know

because they've been in the job market for years. But it just helps them clarify and put into a framework what they already know. This is what's important. Here's how you get to it. Here's what doesn't matter. Sometimes it's just helpful to hear that so you know where to put your energy. I've never really heard this explained this way before, and yet if this is truly the path to success, you would think this would be in every high school curriculum and college curriculum that, you know, this is what you, this is kind of scientific data that shows that this is where you need to go.

I find it scandalous. I mean, there is little more important in terms of someone's lifetime satisfaction than their career and what they get out of their career. That's one of the major factors in living a life you love. And yet we're content in this society with just the simplest slogans thrown at this problem. And if you push back against these slogans, people will say, oh, you're just saying give up on passion, you shouldn't love your life, and you're sort of drowned out. I'm trying to fight back that we need a more complicated conversation about this issue because few issues are more important to our lives.

I'll say. I mean, it's really ridiculous when you think about it. You're right. I mean, these cliches of follow your passion, you know, do what you love and the money will follow. You know, they're just cliches that don't really mean much. You can actually trace where the phrase follow your passion came out of. It's somewhat random. It was Joseph Campbell's follow your bliss idea, which was picking up steam in the early 1980s at the same time that Richard Bowles wrote What Color Is Your Parachute, which introduced people to the idea of trying to choose a job first and then go after it. These things collided in the cultural zeitgeist somewhat randomly. Out of there,

follow your passion tumbled out. It's random. It's not some Zen cone or advice from the Greek philosophers. It really is an artifact of our culture that should not have the place of significance that it has right now. Do you have a sense, is there research that tells us what percentage or any kind of data about how happy or unhappy people are doing what they do? Well, so what you can see, for example, is the U.S. Job Board's Job Satisfaction Survey, which they do annually. And the last survey they did showed that we have this long trend from the 80s of U.S. job satisfaction going down. More importantly, the job satisfaction among young people is as low as it has ever been measured, and it's as low as

has ever been measured in any group by this survey. And as the director of the survey is careful to say, this downward trend goes through business upturns and downturns. So it's not just bad economy. So in the exact 20-year period that we've been insisting on following your passion, job satisfaction, especially among the people who listen to this advice most young people, has been going down, which tells me this is a failed experiment. Do you know if a lot of people follow the Find Your Passion advice? I mean, has that become the guiding light for a lot of people?

It is. And for my generation, Generation Y, it is definitely the guiding light, and it's causing huge issues with anxiety and chronic job hopping, because people in my generation show up at a job, they don't love it immediately, because work is hard, especially when you're in the entry level. So they feel this must not be my passion. And they either start hopping jobs or they just feel bad or they daydream about the grass being greener on the other side of the occupational fence, all three of which leads to a very unhappy working life. So my generation is obsessed with this advice and is causing problems. Your generation has also been accused of not being very dedicated and easily jumping from place to place because you don't want to work hard.

Right. I actually published an article about this on the Harvard Business Review's website. And what I claimed in that article is that the problem my generation is having is not that it's entitled, but that it's been misinformed. We've been told our entire lives that you're supposed to follow your passion. So of course, when we get to real work, and we don't feel passionate every day, we feel something is wrong, and we lose our motivation. My solution then is what we need is a more sophisticated conversation about how you build compelling work. We have to get rid of the slogans and have a nuanced conversation. My generation is ambitious, it's ready to work hard, but it needs some direction about how to invest that energy to get the reward they're looking for, which is a meaningful, satisfying career.

Well, but there are people, I mean, I include myself in this group of people who found their passion early, who love what they do. I've never done anything else. I still love everything I do about it. And I think people look at me somewhat with envy. Often they say so, that, you know, I wish I had been so fortunate to find what I wanted to do early in life and loved it every step of the way. The point that I think is important to make is that there are some people who do know in advance what they want to do.

But this is small. This is maybe one out of ten people who end up loving their life. The other nine out of ten people cultivate the passion for their work and end up in the exact same place. So there's no reason to be worried if you don't have a clear passion. You're in the majority. It's something that you can develop, that you can cultivate. You don't need it in advance. And it's a more likely route to the same destination as opposed to the other one, which I took, which is really probably just more luck than anything else. That's right. And people who, like you, have a clear passion aren't the people who are looking for career advice. It's pretty simple. If you love something that can be matched to a career, you're not browsing the career shelf at Barnes & Noble.

It's the rest of the people that are struggling and need some guidance. And the good news is this approach to become so good they can't ignore you and leverage those skills is a very consistently successful approach. Well, and it's more scientific and a lot less woo-woo about following your passion, which just doesn't really mean anything. It's really, when you pull it apart, it's kind of a meaningless statement. It's almost tautological. I mean, it's saying, in essence, hey, it's good for what you do to be good for you or something, right? It doesn't tell us much. I mean, and that's why when you

look in the scientific literature on workplace happiness, you hear about the importance of autonomy and the importance of competence and the importance of relating to the people you work with. And nowhere in the literature do you find if you match the work to a preexisting interest, you're going to have a higher satisfaction. That just doesn't show up in the scientific literature. Last question, though. If you're trying to figure out what you want to do,

and you decide, okay, well, I'm not going to try to figure out how to turn my love of football into a career, these things that cultivate, these characteristics that cultivate what you end up doing, how do you find them? Here's the advice I give. When it comes, for example, to choosing a job, many jobs will work. Just make sure that you like the people, you like what they do,

and it seems interesting. Once you're in the job, if you want to know what skills to develop, look to the stars in your field and get down to the brass tacks and say, what do they do well that other people don't? And that will tell you what skills are valuable. And then when you want to know how to invest those skills once you have them, well, that's where the self-reflection comes. What type of general traits resonate for you? Do you want lots of autonomy in your life? Do you want lots of impact in the world? Do you want creativity? Do you want to be seen as a master? See what resonates. Those three pieces come together and the result is a working life

that you love, something that can be meaningful to you. And as we head into the new year, maybe this all takes a little pressure off people who are looking at what career they should go into, what kind of work should they do, or what kind of job should they switch to. That it's not so much about your pre-existing passion. You have other ways to figure out what career is right for you. Cal Newport has been my guest. He is author of the book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. 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. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus we share our hot takes on current events.

Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from, but am I wrong? And finally wrap up your week with fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to don't blame me, but am I wrong on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. You can tell a lot by looking at the data. Big data is a thing.

Big data tells us stuff, and it can tell us things about what's popular and what works and what doesn't. But then there is small data. And they can tell us things about what's popular and what works and what doesn't. But then there is small data. And while big data can tell us a lot, small data can tell us even more. Martin Lindstrom is considered to be one of the very best brand-building experts in the world. And his book, Small Data, is a New York Times bestseller. Thanks for joining me, Martin. And start by defining what small data really is. Well, Mike, small data is what I define as seemingly insignificant observations

you pick up in every day. And that could be everything from how you place your shoes to how you hang your paintings on the wall. You have to remember, most of the stuff we do every day is subconscious. And I'll just give you one example. And you have to be honest now, right? But have you ever tried that your remote control is flat for battery? So you squeeze extra hard to get the battery to work. If you do that, that's really a piece of small data. And small data tells you about your emotional state, whereas big data is really an accumulation of enormous amount of data, but they do not tell anything about how you are as a human being.

And really, it's when you combine the big data, the correlations between a lot of data points, and small data, the causation, the reason why we do things, you get the full picture. When you look at this small data, then you can then extrapolate, you can come up with ideas because this, if you know what to look for, this small data is telling you something. Absolutely. Let me give you an example. I mean, 2003, the Lego company was completely struggling to survive. In fact, they were close to bankruptcy. They've learned based on big data that the instant gratification generation had arrived. And because of that, they would have no time and patience to build a Lego castle over six or seven hours. So Lego changed the size of the Lego blocks back to big, gigantic building blocks rather than those tiny bricks. And the sales went down 31% during 2003.

Now, they went into panic and a small outbreak of group at Lego decided to move in with consumers in their homes. And they end up in this home of an 11-year-old kid. And as they sit on the floor, they ask him one single question. They ask him, what are you most proud of? And this kid pauses for a second and he points at the shelf where there's an old, worn-down pair of sneakers, and he says, that one. And, of course, the Lego team is completely perplexed. They're thinking, well, why didn't he answer a Sony PlayStation or Nintendo or something?

No, he didn't. An old, worn-down, smelly pair of sneakers. So they ask him why. He said, well, I'm the best skater in town, and if you're really good at skating, you slide down the skateboard exactly at this angle and you show the wear and tear on the sole. And this is my evidence. If you see this ankle, this wear and tear on the side of my sole, you know I'm the number one.

And that was the moment where Lego realized that the instant gratification generation was not true. What was true is that if you can make a kid become passionate and spend a lot of energy around it, they will spend hundreds if not thousands of hours of fine-tuning even the side of an ankle of a sole to prove their number one skateboarder. So out of that, Lego changed the entire strategy and in fact went back to the tiny bricks. And they teamed up with Hollywood, created one of the most successful Hollywood movie times, movies of all time, the Lego movie. And today, they're not only the number one toy manufacturer in the world,

they're also the number one brand in the world, beating the apples of the world. And this is an example about how a small piece of observation, a small piece of data, what we call small data, is really turning around an entire organization. I'm not sure I follow. I'm not sure I get how the shoes lead to the Lego movie. Well, in many ways, it's very simple because the Lego movie is all about storytelling. The issue today is with young kids that don't have a lot of fantasy and not as much as they had in the past.

A lot of the entertainment we receive every day is pre-manufactured entertainment. As soon as we have five seconds for ourselves, we go into a boredom mood. We're bored and we inject ourselves with some entertainment from our smartphones. And that is what Lego realized. So as you sit with this box with a lot of bricks in it, they did not realize that through the investigation, have enough creativity to create things. You needed to infuse creativity into it. So really, on one hand, you could say the movie became the enabler to infuse storytelling into those bricks. So it's not just ordinary plastic bricks. So these plastic bricks are fantasy fantasy materials which can create this new castle.

And as you create that story around it, suddenly you kickstart the imagination of the kid. And that means they actually have time and passion to build for hundreds of thousands of hours, right? Right. Well, and that's why kids don't just build Legos. They build Star Wars Legos. And they build... Exactly. Yeah, that's what you're saying.

I see. Well, that makes a lot of sense. And who hasn't, you know, who hasn't stepped on a Lego in the middle of the night? I mean, they're everywhere now. So Lego certainly has come back from the brink of disaster to, as you say, the number one brand in the world, are they? Yeah. And I think in many ways this shows the ride of not just that a brand, the fact that a brand is not doing well does not mean it's a bad brand. It may be that you have just not adopted the brand to our times.

And most importantly, today companies get incredibly blind based on big data alone. I'll give you an example. One example is a major bank here in the United States which just recently noticed an enormous drop of people keeping their bank accounts. They basically were just signing up and then they would leave straight away. And they thought it was because the interest rate was too high and the fees were too high and whatever it was. So they decided to send out a letter

to all the customers and say, hey, we're changing our rates. Just before they did it, one clever guy said, why don't we ask those consumers, right? So they started to pick up small data. And what they realized was, in fact, that the reason why people were leaving the bank and stopping that bank account was not because the fees, it was because they were undergoing a divorce in most of the cases. In fact, in one third of the time, there was a divorce involved. And when you're undergoing a divorce, you have to split your accounts. And guess what?

One person has to stay and one has to leave, but most people were actually leaving. So what they realized was that they just had to send out a letter and saying, hey, if you're going through a divorce, as we noticed right now, we actually can help you through the divorce and establish two bank accounts. And then they keep two customers rather than losing both of them. And this is a very, very good example about how big data quite often blinds us because we jump straight to the conclusion based on correlations which actually are false. Well, there was a big assumption made there that it was the fees

that had nothing to do with it, but I guess that's the assumption people would typically make, that whatever seems obvious is the reason, and let's just act on that without really knowing if that's the reason. Absolutely, and this is the issue right now. We're lazy, you know, and we are lazy because we're incredibly busy. We sit behind our screen and we believe, fundamentally believe we can run the consumer through a remote control. And you can nail down the concept of love in a spreadsheet. And I'm pretty sure, Mike, that you didn't choose your wife based on a spreadsheet analysis. Well, today companies are doing that. And that's where I'm an advocate for infusing the human dimension into this. And really small data is all about being able to see those human dimensions when you visit a home. I mean, I've been in more than 2,000 consumer homes across 77 countries over the last decade. And what happens is you start to see dimensions and opportunities which people just don't see through the big data.

And that's really the reason why I decided to write the small data book, because I feel we need to wake up, because that is where the opportunities are. It's not just to analyze data. It's to understand why the data is the way they are. But how do you know if you're interpreting that small data correctly? Well, you don't. You don't. But you don't know if you interpret the big data correctly either. But what we've learned over the time is that this is like any other piece of exercise,

that you need to get used to this way of thinking. And the first step you have to take is to change your own personal behavior if you sit on a company side. Now, let me just give you an example. And, Mike, you have to be honest here. If you sit in a bar and you're waiting for someone and the person hasn't shown up in time, what's the first thing you're doing? Pull up my phone. That's right. And you'll do something with it, anything with it, so you don't look like a complete loser, right?

And that is a problem because the issue is there's three consequences out of this. The first is we don't connect with people anymore. You don't talk to people around you anymore. And we see that in bar environments when we do studies in bars. People don't talk with each other anymore. They watch the screen. Two, you don't observe things anymore. And three, which is even worse, we never get bored anymore.

And boredom or time for reflection is the foundation for creativity. So the issue we have today is that that muscle, so to speak, metaphorically speaking, which really enables us to be creative and see and observe things around us is really falling apart right now. So you need to go through that exercise of opening up your eyes and start to see things. Guess what? As soon as you go through that, you will notice things which you've never seen before. And then I have what I call a 70-step process I'm taking all our clients through, which really in a very simple way is vetting those observations and those insights you're learning and very quickly assessing if this is right or wrong, which is what I'm describing in small data. But in the end of the day, it's not that tricky. It seems like it is, but in the end of the day,

if I can talk to your personal experience and your instinct quite off your right, the problem is we're disconnecting our instinct today. We don't believe in it anymore because we don't train our instinct. To kind of give people a sense of how this works, could you run through some examples and don't go deep into them, but just I'd rather have quantity rather than quality here, just to give people a flavor of all the ways that small data works. Well, I'll give you a good example. I'm in North Carolina right now and we work for a supermarket chain called Lowe's Foods. And one of the things we discovered were when we went into the communities, the communities are dying.

And we noticed that people are sitting on the phone, but they never really talk to each other. So out of that, we developed what's called the community table, which is in the middle of the supermarket chain. And today, Lowe's Foods is one of the fastest growing supermarket chains in this area. It was one small piece of data which really was converted into a big idea. Or it could be that you, for example, I'll give you another example from the post industry.

We realized in the post industry, and this is in Europe, in Switzerland, that these people using the post, they kind of loved the post, but they felt they were letting them down. And they felt they were letting them down because they're closing all those post offices. And the post offices were really the essence of what the community was standing for. And if there's nothing left in the post office and that's closing down, there's not a lot left. So what we did was to turn it around and said, hey, why don't we employ older women, which actually have not a lot to do, but they're very passionate about the community and let them become their own post office owner. And they literally did that.

Today there are tens of thousands of women over 65 years of age in Switzerland which are running their own post office from their own apartment. They have a little kid that just falls out every morning, and then they are a post office manager, and they're actually doing this on a volunteer basis to keep their community alive. This was a small data observation made in homes in Switzerland. So these are examples about you find a little nugget, you basically verify it.

Quite often you do that by using big data, and then you convert it into a big idea, which you then implement. Do you ever find, though, that you have pieces of small data that either contradicted each other or conflict with each other, and you're kind of wondering, well, you know, which is right? Or when you know how to look for this stuff, is there just like a spotlight on it for you that maybe I don't see? I think the spotlight gets clearer and clearer. It's never 100%. But this is an iterative process. It's a little bit like how you develop computer games,

that you develop a beta version, you send it out, you learn from it, you send it back again, and you come up with another version, and it becomes better and better, just like Microsoft and Apple is working in their software development. But I would say one thing. It is, yes, you have a lot of conflicts in the beginning, and you'll be confused. But I have to tell you one very surprising thing.

We know today that if we do 20 or 30 really deep consumer insight visits, quite often the picture on the wall is very clear, even for people which have not done this before. And in the process we work with, we always engage our clients. We always have the client with us, sitting next to us. And they're shocked. They're shocked to see the reality because they've never been into a home of a consumer before, a person which they don't know and they're talking about something different. But they're also shocked by realizing after 20 visits how clear the answer really is painted on the wall. So yes, you will have a lot of conflicts in the beginning.

And then it gets clearer and clearer and clearer. And then don't forget, you actually can use big data later on to verify if you're right or wrong. You just need a hypothesis first. You need to know what to search for. You need that needle in the haystack. And that's really small data. But you can't just start with big data and just say, well, let's find a hypothesis because you have billions of data points. And that's really what we're talking about here.

It's like it takes two to tango. And that yin is really the big data and the yang is the small data. You said you've spent a lot of time in people's homes over the last decade or so. What is it in people's homes that you look for? And what are you trying to decide and find out from looking around and sniffing through people's houses? Well, the first thing which is really important is that people think that if you live in a community and you live in that culture, you understand it better. Actually, that's completely wrong.

I tend to say if you're too close to the forest, you can't see the trees. I was spending time with a good friend of mine, Paco Underhill. He wrote a book called Why We Buy. And I was back in my native Denmark where I'm born originally. And he said to me as we're walking on the streets in Denmark, Martin, people walk very unstructured in Denmark. I never thought about that before. But he was right because I was too close to my own forest to see the trees. So the first thing you do when you move into a community and you do research is to talk to the community leaders. You go and have a haircut at the hairdresser. You listen to the gossip.

You go to the church leaders. You go to the soccer club, whatever you do. And there you hear their point of view, and that suddenly will form the foundation for your further investigation. It's one of the Cs in my seven C's process. The second thing you do when you go into the home is actually to look for what's missing, not what's there, because it's what's missing quite often which is showing an out of balance. And the whole trick to this process is to figure out where we are out of balance,

because it's the out of balance which are reflecting the gap for a new brand or new product or a new service. So if I, for example, feel overweight and I can see that in the way I stack my fridge or the way I place my cooking books or the way I have trays in my bin, then I know, well, there's a need for a slimming product here. Or it may be I feel that I have a midlife crisis and I can see that in the way I dress, in the music I'm listening to, and in my man cave. So in many ways, you're looking for outer balances and outer balances quite often is visible

based on what's missing rather than what's present. Something that caught my eye in the press material that came with your book, that we're slowing down, that the new fast will be slow. What's that about? Well, I think we have two different tracks. And you probably have realized that when you are buying stuff online, if you buy routine purchase, you want it to happen in seconds.

In fact, you prefer not even to do it. So if you buy your standard grocery products while the Coca-Cola's of the world is just going into the basket as a routine purchase, and that has to happen very quickly. And then you have the other side of the story, which really is, I would like to indulge myself in experiences. The numbers of people going to the farmer's market is up 17% this year. The number of people going to concerts is up 21% this year. The number of people going to the theater is up in UK 28% last year. We're going to cruise ships like never before because we want to have time where we can reflect, where there's no cell phones around us and where we feel like a human being again. So you would have two different

tracks. One is a fast track with routines and one will be almost a dramatically reversed slow track which is helping us to feel we're a human being again. Because here's the issue. We do not undergo transformation processes anymore. And let me just explain that for a second. You wake up in the morning. The first thing you do is to grab your phone. And yes, you use the alarm clock as an excuse for using your phone, but really you are checking your emails straight away. Then you're

on your phone for work in bed. You're on your phone for work at the bathroom. Listen to this. This is crazy. We did a study recently in New York City. One third of all young kids from the age of 12 to 18 years of age are on the phone in the shower. So you're on the phone, on the bathroom, you go to the bathroom, you go to the breakfast, you're on the phone, you're on your car, you do work in your car, and then you work, you're doing private. There is no transformation anymore. It's almost like we have one theme, which is just being online,

connected the whole way through, so we never disconnect. And we never transform from one mood state to another. That's the reason why we don't shut down our computers anymore. We don't reboot them anymore because we don't reboot our brains anymore. And as we don't reboot our computers, we get slower, and so does our brain. So we're craving increasingly right now for breaks and for transformation moments.

And that's the reason why we escape to those holiday destinations. And that's the reason why slow is the big fast. Well, what I like about this conversation is it makes you think about things in a whole new way and think about things you've never really thought before. And that's what you're really good at. Martin Lindstrom has been my guest. The name of his book is Small Data, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Whenever you get Chinese takeout, no matter what restaurant you go to,

it almost always comes in that same Chinese takeout box. And that box has a really interesting history, and it is pretty much an all-American story. The way the box is folded was inspired by Japanese, not Chinese, Japanese origami. In 1894, Chicago inventor Frederick Wilcox patented what was then called the paper pail. It was a single piece of paper brilliantly folded into a leak-proof container fastened with a wire handle. Fast forward to post-World War II when people moved to the suburbs, the convenience of Chinese takeout food became very popular, and many restaurants used that paper pail as the best way to package the food.

Then, in the 1970s, an American graphic designer painted a pagoda on the side of the box and an Asian-inspired thank you on the top flap. Since then, that container has become the Chinese takeout container, even though it has never been used in China. And that's the podcast today.

I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening 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,

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