Something You Should Know - What Makes Someone Credible & How to Finish What You Start

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Starting point is 00:00:31 Today on Something You Should Know, why you should smile now and more often in the future. Then, what makes something credible or believable? Is it the message or the messenger? We're often told that in order to get, you know, our message heard, in order for someone to believe us, we need a good case to make. But what we're finding is who delivers the message is sometimes even more important than the merits of what's actually being said. Also, why you might want to resist that urge to drink milk straight from the carton, and understanding how you decide what your priorities really are.

Starting point is 00:01:10 And I follow Gandhi's quote that action expresses priority, which is super painful for a lot of people, Mike, because when you look over the last two weeks or you look over the last month and you look at your schedule, those are your priorities. Whatever's on there is actually what you're doing. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start

Starting point is 00:01:46 conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. 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. Are you a smiler? Are you smiling right now? People who are generous with their smiles are considered more likable and approachable than people who frown or wear a blank expression on their face, according to a 30-year study by the University of California at Berkeley. Just as we smile when we're happy, it turns out that the mere act of smiling makes us happy. When we smile, our body recognizes out that the mere act of smiling makes us happy. When we smile,

Starting point is 00:02:46 our body recognizes that there's an absence of threat and our whole body relaxes. It slows down our heart rate, tamps down the production of the stress hormone cortisol, and it may temporarily reduce blood pressure too, which boosts our overall health. Smiling can help you live longer as well. Scientists studied and found that Major League Baseball players from 1952 who wore full-face genuine smiles on their baseball card pictures lived longer, around 79.9 years, compared to players who only partly smiled or didn't smile at all. They live five to seven years less.

Starting point is 00:03:27 Smiling can make us look younger too. So for a lot of reasons, smile. And that is something you should know. Have you ever wondered why you're more likely to believe some people and less likely to believe others? What is it that makes some people and less likely to believe others. What is it that makes some people more credible or appealing or likable? This is such a fascinating topic because we like to believe, or I like to believe, that I'm a good judge of character, that I can tell when someone is believable and trustworthy and worth listening to. But there's a lot going on under the surface.

Starting point is 00:04:11 Stephen Martin has been studying this for quite a while. He's a researcher, a visiting professor of behavioral science at Columbia University, and he's the author of a new book on the topic called Messengers, Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, and Why.. Hey Stephen, welcome to Something You Should Know. Well thank you Mike, it's good to join you. I love this topic because I have long thought that there's something to this whole idea of why we listen to who we listen to. How did you get interested in this? I've been working in the behavioral sciences and persuasion sciences for a number of years. And we often kind of get together our organization in little lunchtime meetings, and we talk about situations that occur in everyday life that just don't seem to make sense. So one of them is this situation, I think, that many of us will have faced where you have an idea and you go tell someone about

Starting point is 00:05:02 that idea, maybe a colleague at work or a friend or a neighbor. And they look at you in that strange way as if you're talking crazy. And then you find out a couple of days later that someone else has come along with the exact same idea that you've had. And those same people are now enthusiastically embracing it. And we kind of thought, well, that's interesting, isn't it? That someone can say something and it'd be dismissed. Someone else can come along and say the exact same thing and it'd be accepted. It can't be the content of the message. You know, we're often told that in order to get, you know, our message heard, in order for someone to believe us, we need a good case to make. But what we're finding increasingly, I think, in society is who delivers the message is sometimes as important, and actually in certain

Starting point is 00:05:53 cases, Mike, even more important than the merits of what's actually being said. And that intrigued me. And so we started looking at it a couple of years ago and unearthed this trove of research. And if you had to boil down that trove of research into a couple of sentences or a generalization, what is it? I think the generalization would be increasingly looking and sounding right is often more important than actually being right. Well, and I think we all sort of know that on a fundamental level of, you know, if someone were to tell you something and they're dressed in rags and their speech isn't particularly good, it isn't going to hold much water with you versus if a guy in a beautiful suit and, you know, was very articulate said the same thing. I mean, we all have a sense that that guy's going to be

Starting point is 00:06:42 much more persuasive than the other guy, but it's more than that, right? Well, it is. And that's a really neat example. You know, when you say those words, we have a sense, that's what a lot of the research that we've uncovered and studies of our own have actually found, that some of the inferences that we're making in deciding who we should listen to and who we shouldn't are occurring within milliseconds. You know, there's a feature or a characteristic of a messenger that just seems to connect with us in some way. And we almost instantaneously start to believe and want to listen to what they have to say, again, regardless of its truth or wisdom. So that have a sense that you've just used, that terminology is exactly right.

Starting point is 00:07:35 And is it subjective or objective? In other words, do I have my own criteria for who I'm more likely to believe, or are there objective criteria that make someone believable to everyone? Well, essentially what our research finds is that there are certain innate characteristics that a messenger is able to signal to an audience that immediately puts them in a position where they're more likely to be listened to. And those innate characteristics are largely divided into two groups. There are society's hard messengers, and they're the messengers that typically an audience would see as having some sort of status over them. And as a result of that elevated status, they're more inclined to be listened to.

Starting point is 00:08:22 And there are messengers, in in contrast that are softer. They have a connectedness with their audience. And it seems to me that increasingly what we are using to determine who to listen to is, are these cues? Does this person have some form of status? Do they have some sort of connection? And as a result, that might incline me to infer all sorts of things about them that will increase the chances that I'll listen to them. So you've identified exactly what these traits are. So let's go over them. Our research finds there are four hard messenger traits.

Starting point is 00:08:56 Those messenger traits are socioeconomic position, so someone standing in society. Competence, which is a messenger's ability to be able to convey that they are an expert or they have some perceived expertise. Dominance. Dominant messengers are the kind of personalities that want to win at all costs. They're not interested in collaboration. They're interested in just winning. Everything is a game where the victor wins the spoils. And the fourth hard messenger trait is physical attractiveness. The idea that a messenger who has features of beauty and attractiveness is more inclined to be listened to. The four soft messenger traits, the first is warmth. So this is a messenger's ability to show that they have some similarity and connection with their audience. They don't seek

Starting point is 00:09:54 to exert their status. They communicate their benevolence. The second is vulnerability. Certain messengers who perhaps don't have these hard traits are able to be listened to by expressing or signaling some sort of vulnerability they have, some weakness. That allows us to connect or an audience to connect with them. Trustworthiness is the third. Trustworthiness is essentially an audience's perception or confidence in predicting that a messenger has their best interest at heart. You know, confidence is, trustworthiness rather, is our confidence in predicting others' future behavior. And the final one is charisma. And charismatic messengers are those communicators who are able to, you know, essentially mobilize whole groups of people behind a unifying vision or goal.

Starting point is 00:10:48 They use overt hand gestures. They have what psychologists call surgency, a very clear positivity to their communication. So those are the eight traits, four hard, four soft. So give me some examples of how in real life this works. One of the examples, a pop star, you know, someone that's rich and famous, has that socioeconomic position, starts to communicate via WhatsApp and Facebook information about health, you know, whether or not you should vaccinate your child, whether or not you should get a flu jab. And people start to believe the evidence that they are hawking, despite the fact it's contrary to all the established medical evidence. So there's an example of how someone's position

Starting point is 00:11:33 in society inclines audiences to listen to them, regardless of the fact that their information is, in this instance, just fake. And there is, I think, somewhat of a backlash. I mean, you often hear people make fun of celebrities who speak out on social issues, not because they know much about those social issues, but because they're celebrities. But they're probably celebrities that we don't necessarily like or see some sort of connection with. That's the key there. There's a tribalism to this as well, Mike. You know, there's a study that actually my co-author, Joseph Marks, ran in his laboratory

Starting point is 00:12:12 where they had people come in and they presented people with information. And sometimes the information came from people that they saw as similar to them. And sometimes they were presented with information, the same information, but from someone that was dissimilar to them, but was an expert. And the experiment was really looking at when we're presented with information, are we more inclined to listen to someone who is similar to us, but wrong, than someone who is correct, but dissimilar to us in that instance.

Starting point is 00:12:47 And what he found in the research was that actually people are much more inclined often to believe fake news and falsehoods, provided it comes from someone that is actually similar to them. So that's really concerning and unnerving if you think about it, that we're using these tribal cues to determine who we should listen to, regardless of its truth or wisdom. Has that always been, or is this more of a new phenomenon, or is it changing, or what? Yeah, I think there's probably been the case that it's always been there. But one of the things that I think is certainly now clear to us is that it's increasing

Starting point is 00:13:27 in its intensity. And I think the primary reason for that is that we're just inundated with information. There's so much for us to pay attention to. There's so much information that's directed to us. We simply don't have the time and the mental resources and capacity to work out who is telling the truth and who isn't, who we should listen to and who we should not. And so I think increasingly, Mike, what we're doing is we're using these characteristics, these messenger traits, you know, how rich and famous someone is, how dominant they are, how trustworthy they may be, in certain cases, just how dominant they are, how trustworthy they may be. In certain cases, just how attractive they are. To quickly determine whether we can and should pay attention to someone or whether we

Starting point is 00:14:11 should just ignore them and get on with our busy lives. Yeah, well, I'd like to talk about attractiveness because it does seem that we're more likely to pay attention to somebody who's beautiful. Stephen Martin is my guest and the name of his book is Messengers. Who we listen to, who we don't, and why. 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

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Starting point is 00:15:16 Melissa and Doug. The play is pretend. The skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. So Stephen, let's talk about attractiveness, and I assume by that you mean objective physical beauty, as well as how people dress and how people groom themselves. But it does seem that we're more likely to believe those people, we're drawn to these people. Why are we so taken by that? Well, we're taken by it because attractive, and we're talking about physically attractive messengers here now, have what we call in psychology, mate value. They essentially are attractive to us because we see that there's

Starting point is 00:16:00 some evolutionary quality to being with them, to being in some form of relationship. And that seems to have, you know, spilled over into modern day life. You know, there are individuals in society that have been genetically blessed at birth. And as a result, they are afforded an advantage in life, the attractiveness bias. We see it in recruitment, for example. You know, as much as they try not to recruit as a human, and they'll often be more inclined to look towards a more attractive applicant than a less attractive or an average-looking applicant, even when their skill sets are the same. So it's an inherent bias within us. And that's how it plays out in everyday life. You know, we look to attractive messengers. So no surprise that they're often used in advertisements. And what's really

Starting point is 00:16:50 interesting is that we can even put a price on attractiveness. So economists have estimated that being born attractive is worth about 10 to 12% in additional earnings over a lifetime. How important is confidence? It seems to me that if a person sounds like they know what they're talking about and acts like they know what they're talking about, I'm more likely to believe they know what they're talking about. You're exactly right about that. When we see a messenger or a communicator that has confidence,

Starting point is 00:17:28 it's pretty easy to then start to infer that they have levels of competence as well. Because if you're competent at a task or knowledgeable or expert about a subject, it kind of makes sense make sense that you would speak confidently about it. And so we see that. We see that connection. We hear someone speak confidently, and we start to make all these inferences that they're probably more competent. But that's not necessarily the case sometimes. So I think you're exactly right about that. That competence and confidence connection is a very real one. So explain how trustworthiness works in this. It's pretty hard sometimes to work out accurately who we should pay attention to and who we shouldn't. And so if we see cues of trustworthiness in an individual, that might incline us to listen more to them as well. And trustworthiness is an interesting one because

Starting point is 00:18:33 sometimes communicators and messengers are able to increase our perception of their trustworthiness by admitting drawbacks and weaknesses about the things they're talking about. They signal that kind of weakness. And as a result, we make some sort of inference that the very next thing they're going to say is more truthful, more trustworthy. So that's an interesting one to me. But what's particularly interesting is this idea that I do think that we often fall into the trap of confusing trustworthiness with truthfulness. They're clearly not the same thing. And we found in the research, Mike, situations where messengers can actually lie outwardly to an audience, and their trustworthiness levels to certain groups actually goes up in those instances.

Starting point is 00:19:27 So we do confuse those two. If you know some of this stuff, if you know any of this stuff, does it help you overcome it or it just is what it is? It's a really good question. The answer I'd like to give is that knowing more about these traits will defend you all of the time. But I can't really give that as an answer because the fact is, you know, we are, you know, so overwhelmed with information that a lot of this, you know, a lot of these traits are, you know, we rely on them so much that we often don't notice

Starting point is 00:20:06 them. So I'd like to think that, you know, if you, you know, read a little bit more about these traits, perhaps read the book or even do the test and find out what type of messenger you are, you can defend yourself. But I'm skeptical that you're going to be able to defend yourself all of the time. But knowing a little bit about these traits, a little more about these traits and how they operate and how we often fall foul of certain messengers in society, I think that's got to be a good thing overall. So we draw conclusions, we make assumptions, judgments about people based on just one of these single traits? Based on a single trait. As a result of seeing that trait,

Starting point is 00:20:46 we start to think, well, there's probably lots of other things I don't like about this person or wouldn't believe about this person. So, you know, a classic example, when we meet someone, maybe in a cocktail party or at, you know, a conference, and we come to learn that the person we've just met knows someone that we also know, and we like that person, it's very easy then to think, well, because this person knows someone that I like, this person's probably likable too. So you've got that kind of halo effect that's actually going on.

Starting point is 00:21:17 And of course, that also works in reverse. We might meet someone at a cocktail party, find that we have someone in common that we dislike, that I dislike, it's very easy for me then to make some inference that I dislike this person. So not only are we using these traits in a singular way to determine who we should listen to or not, once we see one of them, it's very easy for us to then start to make all sorts of inferences about other things about them as well that have nothing to do with that initial trait. That's the really interesting and surprising thing here. Well, as soon as you said that, it just makes all the sense in the world because, yeah, if I meet somebody and we both know Bob,

Starting point is 00:22:01 well, now I like you better because you know somebody I know. And I like Bob and you like Bob, so now I like you better because you know somebody I know and I like Bob and you like Bob so I must like you. Yeah but if you dislike Bob? I don't like you much either. I don't know you don't like me much either, exactly. So how can you, if you can, how can you take this knowledge that you have and then become more appealing, more attractive, more trustworthy? How do you do that? Some of these traits are innate. So it's kind of quite difficult to make yourself considerably more physically attractive. Dominance, which is another one of the hard traits,

Starting point is 00:22:42 seems to be a dispositional personality trait. But there are certain things that we can do that increase and, importantly, increase in a, you know, a legitimate way. You know, so it's not about, you know, pulling the wool over people's eyes and unethically manipulating people. But there are certain things that we can do. So it's possible, for example, to become more charismatic. There are certain things that you can do. There's training you can undertake to become more charismatic. And we know from the research that charismatic messengers are more inclined to be listened to. There are things we can do to ensure that our competence is properly signaled. You know, I did a study in London a few years ago where we got real estate agents to arrange for their expertise to be introduced before they spoke to a client rather than them talking about their expertise to the client directly.

Starting point is 00:23:39 So it's pretty hard to be, you know, in a position where you say, well, I'm an expert. This is why you should listen to me. But if someone else does it, then that seems to be in a position where you say, well, I'm an expert. This is why you should listen to me. But if someone else does it, then that seems to be fine. That elevates people's perception of your competence and your trustworthiness. So there are certain things that we can do. But I think it's also important in balance to also point out that there are certain things that are just inbuilt here. You know, dominance, for example, as I said, is largely an innate characteristic attractiveness too. And when you meet somebody or you watch somebody and

Starting point is 00:24:16 you see somebody and one of those things grabs you, one of those eight things grabs you, is that your anchor now? Is that, that is now who I think this person is? And is it hard to move from that? That's exactly what's happening there, Mike. Yeah. Because in that short period of time, when you meet someone, you want to be in a situation where you can say, is this person on my side? Am I going to benefit from knowing this person should I be listening? To them are they a threat to me? You know does it make sense for me to listen to them to follow their advice to engage with them? These are really really difficult questions to answer and so we will use one or other of these traits to very very quickly

Starting point is 00:25:01 often within milliseconds decide Whether or not I listen or whether I ignore. So it sounds like, from what you're saying, that when we are trying to make an impression, make a presentation, make ourselves likable, whatever, it isn't really who you are, it isn't what you say, It's how you're perceived. It is. It's all about perception. You're exactly right. There's lots of examples we found, both in the book and in the research, where it's the perception of a characteristic that's actually carried sway. Here's one bizarre example. There was a report in an American hospital where an individual patient who was complaining of a painful ear, a middle ear

Starting point is 00:25:58 infection this patient had. And so the nurse called the duty doctor. The doctor came and examined the patient, saw that the patient had an inflamed middle ear and prescribed some anti-inflammatory eardrops. And you think, okay, there's nothing strange about that whatsoever. Seems like a perfectly rational course of treatment. Except the doctor then on the prescription pad, instead of writing fully, place three drops in the patient's ear, abbreviated the word right. And the abbreviation in medical terms for the word right is simply the letter R, capital letter R. So the prescription pad now reads, place three drops in patient's R ear or rear.

Starting point is 00:26:43 That makes no sense whatsoever. But this is a doctor, and the doctor is a competent messenger. That's what we're trained to believe. They even have the stethoscope and the white coat to prove it. And so that's exactly what the nurse does. The nurse perceives that to be the right thing and, you know, asks the patients to basically adopt the position and administers these drops. It makes no sense whatsoever, except when you consider it in the context of these messenger effects. When a competent messenger or someone perceived to be competent speaks, what would otherwise make no sense whatsoever, you know, suddenly becomes something that might need to be paid attention to. So,

Starting point is 00:27:30 so you're exactly right. It's, it's about perceived traits. They don't necessarily have to be real. We just spot them and we act accordingly. Well, it's so interesting because I think we like to think that it's our message that is most important, that if we have a strong message, people will believe us, listen to us. And clearly there's so much more to it than that. Stephen Martin has been my guest. He is a visiting professor of behavioral science at Columbia University, and his book is called Messengers, Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, and Why. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks for joining me, Stephen.

Starting point is 00:28:09 Thanks, Mike. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert, as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. 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

Starting point is 00:29:04 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.

Starting point is 00:29:36 Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. I bet there is something you've always said you want to do, something you've wanted to accomplish, but for whatever reason, it never seems to get done. Which is interesting when you think about it, because why would you tell yourself, this is something I want to do, and then never do it? Yet, I suspect we've all done that. Here to discuss why we do that and offer some

Starting point is 00:30:06 advice on how to finally get it done, whatever it is, is Charlie Gilkey. He's the founder of Productive Flourishing, which is a website that helps people start finishing the things that matter to them. He's author of the book, Start Finishing, How to Go from Idea to Done. Hey, Charlie, so what's going on here? Why do you think this is such a universal experience? Why are we not doing the things we say we want to do? I think we all have a metaphorical or physical drawer where we put stuff we really care about and we don't return to it.

Starting point is 00:30:40 And the counterintuitive thing about it is a lot of times the things that matter the most to us are the things we're most afraid of doing. Well, why is that? Why would you be afraid of doing something that you want to do? It's very closely tied to our identity, or at least we make it about our identity. So if we fail at it, then what does that say about us, Mike? Like we so closely tie our identity and who we are in the world with the outcome of the thing. And so we're afraid of the case that the project might fail because it says something about us as people. Now, contrast that with things like taking the garbage out or changing the dirty laundry or

Starting point is 00:31:19 things like that. Like no one has a mini existential crisis about that. We just do it or we don't do it. But there's this really meaningful work that we continue to put off precisely because we're afraid of like, what if it doesn't work? And we're also afraid of if it does work, which is also odd, because many of us have stories that if we're successful with the thing, then we're going to harm people or it's going to wreck our relationships. Or that, you know, we have some version of the success versus virtue myth. We see those in like the starving artist myths and things like that. Or for some of us, it's if we do it well this time, what if we're not able to do it again? What if we're not able to live up to that first success

Starting point is 00:32:01 and then we fail after and we fall really far? So it's a really weird thing with this type of work, Mike, because we're afraid of failure and we're afraid of success. So we shoot for the middle to where we neither really fail nor neither really succeed. But some people do it. Some people go for the gusto and they accomplish what they set out to accomplish. So what's the difference? I think part of the difference is comes more down to courage than it does like competencies. It's not the amount of degrees or not the amount of letters behind your name. It's about whether you're going to show up and, you know, sometimes be vulnerable, sometimes risk failure to get it done. But I think also it's people realize that living a life where they're always putting what matters off to them, even if they fail at doing the things is worse than trying some things and failing. So what's the approach then? What do you, I think everybody could listen

Starting point is 00:33:00 to what you described and say, yeah, I've been there or I'm there now. So how do you get out of that place? I think we first want to talk about the gap that's between the stories we tell ourselves about the lives that we want to live and the day-to-day reality that we actually live. So we think that we're going to be, if you're a writer, you think that you're going to be that person that sits down and writes the books and get them out the door. If you're a podcaster, you know, you think you're going to have the show or if you think you're going to be that person that sits down and writes the books and get them out the door. If you're a podcaster, you know, you think you're going to have the show. Or if you think you're going to be a really powerful manager or really powerful leader, that it's going to look a certain way. But then we show up and it's all of the daily firefight.

Starting point is 00:33:44 It's all the daily firefights, the daily challenges, the commutes, and just the stuff that seems to not be nearly close to that vision that we have for ourselves. And I think everybody knows that. You think, okay, so I'm going to do this big thing, but then life gets in the way. Life does get in the way. And like I was saying, in that gap, in that distance between that vision that you have for your best self and your day-to-day reality are five different things. And these are universal things, Mike, that show up in different ways for different people. So they are one, competing priorities. We want to do X and we want to do Y, but we can't do both X and Y and we get stuck, right? The second one is head trash, which is just the label that I have for all the stories, the self-limiting beliefs, the cultural baggage we pick up that tell us who we could be, who we

Starting point is 00:34:26 shouldn't be, what we should do, so on and so forth. The third is no realistic plan. All three of those words are super important. No plan and a plan that's not realistic can keep us from getting that. The fourth is too few resources of whatever type. It could be the story, if I had more money, then I would do it, but I don't have the money, so I can't do it. If I had more time, then I'd be able to do it. Or if I had the right connections, if I had the right something, you're always missing something. And if we had that something, then we'd get to our best work, which is that what I call that work that really calls to us to do. And then the fifth one is poor team alignment. And by team, I don't just mean your work team. I mean the people in your life, your partner, your family, your friends, your community that help power your work and go

Starting point is 00:35:09 that forward. Like if we don't really set a strong vision for ourselves and articulate that with the people around us, it's no wonder why people aren't helping us and sometimes getting in the way. So those five things show up. And to get clear about how people do it is I think they start intuitively working through those different things. They start figuring out what their priorities are. They start figuring out that head trash that's keeping them from taking those bold next moves. They start making a plan. They use what they have to get what they need. And they get the people around them aligned to help them get where they're trying to go.

Starting point is 00:35:43 This all sounds good, but where do you start? How do you begin when you hear yourself in the description that you've made and think, okay, well, yeah, all right, let's fix this. Where's the starting point? I want to start counterintuitively for many people. For many people, they'll choose to do some of the easier things first and build up some momentum and then start tackling some of the harder things, the bigger, bolder dreams. And I actually want to reverse it and start with that idea that's nagging at them. And in conversations with people, I've been doing this for a decade and some change. Everyone's got that thing that they're hiding away. There's always something to really pull that to the forefront. And the first thing with that is to really figure out why it matters. And not just from a sort of cognitive thing.

Starting point is 00:36:29 I think a lot of us go to start thinking about the project and start thinking in sort of very lofty cerebral ways. But I want it to tug. I want people to figure out what will happen if they don't do it. Where's the pain and that sense of regret and longing? And if you can't find that with your project, it actually doesn't matter to you as much as you think it does. So find that thing where you can really feel that sense of pain, regret, or frustration if you don't see it forward. And then it's starting to break it down into smaller

Starting point is 00:37:01 parts. It's kind of like that closet of doom that some of us will have where we just keep piling stuff in the closet and it gets so overwhelming to even open the door to start to look at anything that we don't even want to open the door. And the problem is, is we've made the closet this insurmountable thing, but any of us can open the door and pull one thing out. And just because we've chunked it down and we've made it accessible. And so I would think that's, that's the first place to start is find something that truly matters to you and then break it down into something that you can start moving on in the next week or two. And I'm going to be very specific here. Think about a chunk of the project that you can get done in two hours.

Starting point is 00:37:40 Why two hours? Two hours is long enough for you to make some meaningful progress. It's findable in your schedule somewhere. We all have two hours somewhere in a week. And third, it's not so long and so onerous that we can continue to put it off're talking about of they have something they say they want to do, but they never do it. And that maybe they don't really want to do it. Maybe it's more of a wish than it is a goal. That it's just, yeah, wouldn't it be nice if I wrote the great American novel? But there's really no intention of ever really doing it. Yeah, I agree with you. And that's where I want people to be super clear about the difference

Starting point is 00:38:31 between an aspiration and a priority. We can have all the aspirations we want. We're not going to do a lot of them, and that's fine. And there are things that really truly matter to us. And I follow Gandhi's sort of quote that action expresses priority, which is super painful for a lot of people, Mike. Because when you look over the last two weeks or you look over the last month and you look at your schedule, those are your priorities. Whatever's on there is actually what you're doing. And if you want to do something different, it's not just about having a different item on the bucket list. It's not just about, you know, wishing and ideating about it. It's about changing your schedule so that whatever you're wanting to do

Starting point is 00:39:09 shows up somewhere on that schedule, whether you plan it out or whether you can look and say, you know what, I spent two hours on Saturday working on it. The other thing that I would say is like, it's all right to not to have these things that other people want or that we picked up from our culture, not be a priority. If it doesn't matter to you, like honor that. There are other things to do. And I'm going to be, I'm going to pause here because I think a lot of parents and caregivers don't really acknowledge how much a priority it is and how big of a project it is to raise kids and care for elders and care for, you know, siblings or whoever they're caring for, those end up being their priorities through action and then sometimes word. But when

Starting point is 00:39:51 they make plans for themselves, unfortunately, I see a lot of them like not really honoring how much time, energy and attention that takes, which makes me think. One thing that I really want people to think about is that in my language, a project is anything that requires time, energy, and attention. And anything, anything that requires time, energy, and attention. So caregiving, moving across the United States, getting a degree, whatever. There are all these things that happen in our personal lives that we think they're in the background, but they're in the foreground when we look at how much time, energy, and attention it's taken. And the benefit of thinking about it that way, Mike, is that one, we can accept that we're doing a lot more than

Starting point is 00:40:37 we're giving ourselves credit for. And two, it helps debug that head trash of us not getting things done. Like we're just not productive. Very rarely is that actually the case. What's actually the case is we have a lot of this stuff of life that are projects that are taking the time, energy, and attention that's displacing the amount of time, energy, and attention we can put on other projects. Yeah, well, I'm sure that's true in a lot of cases. But often when I think when people say, you know, if only I had more time, I just need more time, I could get more of the important things done. When in fact, if they were to examine how they're spending their time, there probably is time in the day to get to those things if they prioritize differently. But the fallback position is that I just need more time. I don't

Starting point is 00:41:27 have enough time. People say that, but then they get a full day and squander it, right? Or they get a full week and squander it. And partially it's because the story is exactly as you said, if I had more time, like that's my problem. It's just time. But then when it's this work that really matters to them, they have the time, but then they don't have the courage or they don't have the clarity about what they want to work on or they haven't chosen something that actually matters to them. And so they use that time and they squander it. The second thing is because we're so over committed generally, the first thing we do when we get some time is sleep or rest or do nothing just because we're tired. And that's completely normal. And I actually encourage people to do that. It's like,

Starting point is 00:42:07 maybe your project that you do on this time off is actually just recover, actually take care of yourself, get some sleep, read that book, sit by the pool. Like that counts as a project to me. And I, because again, requires time, energy, and attention. And maybe it's not just about this continual push to do more and achieve more and succeed more and push more, as opposed to, you know, say, I'm in this human body that's tired and worn out. For the next three, four days, I need to sleep, I need to get in a hot tub, I need to do nothing just to recharge so that I can go back to this life that I live. So when it does come to the big project, though, the thing that you've always wanted to do that you haven't gotten to the great American novel, whatever it is that you say you want to do, but you don't get to, where, if you have some advice, where do you get the motivation to do that?

Starting point is 00:43:02 There are two different ways to find motivation. Well, there are multiple ways, but there are two obvious ways for our conversation. One is to find motivation about the outcome. And that's a very valid way of doing it. You want the goal or you want the outcome of it, so you're willing to do it. And a lot of times when we're getting started with a new project or we're getting started with a new habit, we have to focus on the outcome. So I'll stick on going to the gym and working out, right? If you haven't been doing it for a while, the first few times going to the gym are not pleasant, right? There's not a whole lot of process joy and going and sweating and feeling out of shape and all the stories that you have around that. But the outcome is worth it to you, so you can make yourself do it. There comes a certain point, though, to where we can look at

Starting point is 00:43:43 the opposite side of it, where we can find the things that actually light us up or make us come alive while we're doing it. Now, I want to be clear here. A lot of the things that make, that light us up and make us, you know, come alive may not be the like things that make us feel happy in that moment. Um, so in this particular conversation, um, you know, though I'm having fun or though, though it's joyful for me in a way, I'm also nervous, right? I could have phoned it in and not done this today. But there's enough of the joy, there's enough of the motivation about the process itself I've done is that it's we don't need a productivity system. We don't need accountability buddies. And we don't really procrastinate about eating ice cream, right?

Starting point is 00:44:49 Or your favorite dessert. It's there in front of you. You do it. We actually need the system to not do it. There's a little bit of insight in there. It's like if you're really dreading to do something or if you're procrastinating and you're not getting to doing something, one of the reasons you might be procrastinating is fundamentally you don't either want the outcome and you don't like the process

Starting point is 00:45:08 of the thing that's in front of you. Then you get to have some conversations about how little you need to do it or whether you need to do it at all. And I'm going to mention, or I'm going to roll back to something you said earlier, in that sometimes we choose to do a project and we find it really doesn't matter to us. I think too few people really lean into the grace of just deleting a project or dropping a project that they decided to do three years ago. Because whoever they were three years ago needed that project for a reason that they don't need now. So maybe when you were looking for a job three years ago, you needed that degree. But in the job you have now, you don't need that degree. You got the job, right? You don't want it anymore.

Starting point is 00:45:48 But, you know, we hang on to that internal commitment that we made to get the degree or to do the thing when sometimes it's not really relevant for us anymore. And so just giving ourselves the grace of looking at all of those aspirational projects and being like, you know, that actually isn't relevant for me right now. I don't need to do it. I don't want to do it. Just exit off. Don't pick it up. Don't try to pull it out of the closet. Don't mess with it. Just let it go and move on to the stuff that matters for you now. One of the things that I've noticed in my own life and I'd like to get you to comment on is momentum and starting a project.

Starting point is 00:46:22 It does seem that any project, starting it is the hardest part. And then if you can stick with it, the momentum tends to build. And momentum is just the cumulative progress. It's the inertia of a project. And, you know, projects kind of follow the inertia of physics. Like a project in motion, it's easier for it to remain in motion and a project that's stuck is easier to remain stuck. And I think because of some of the myths and stories we tell ourselves about, if I had more time, I could work on it. We end up in this period to where we'll work on it one week and then three weeks later, we'll pick it up again. And then we'll work on a little bit and then we'll drop it for three weeks. And that is an incredibly frustrating emotionally, um, experience, but it's also not very effective. It's a way better to take, you know, imagine that you

Starting point is 00:47:11 had that full day to work on and you slotted it to work, you know, every three weeks you're going to work on a full day. Far better to take that same amount of time and find, you know, two hour sessions for those three weeks and keep it moving every week, then to have those fits and starts partially because of just the ramp up time that it takes to mentally and emotionally get back into that project and figure out where you were and what you need to do next. And there's just a lot of inefficiencies in just that. And the other thing that we forget is if we're playing the long game with our best work, it may not seem like much to be putting, you know, two, three hours, excuse me, two or three blocks of two hours a week on a project. But over 52 weeks, it's huge. It's more than what most people are doing, right? So when you look at

Starting point is 00:47:59 those people we want to be, a lot of times it is them spending six, eight hours a week spread out in really focused time, pushing those projects forward and just sticking with it consistently. Very few, at least that I've seen, very few writers and musicians have that sort of weekend binge where they do all the work as opposed to they're always creating, they're always pushing things forward. They're always working on things. And that's the beauty of it. It goes back to it's on their schedule every day, every week, And that's how it's getting done. Well, I think there's a lot of wisdom in what you've said, including cutting yourself some slack when you don't get to everything because you can't get to everything. But when you do

Starting point is 00:48:39 have something important, some good ways to get to it and get it done. Charlie Gilkey has been my guest. He is the founder of Productive Flourishing, which is a website that helps people start finishing things that matter. And he is author of the book, Start Finishing, How to Go from Idea to Done. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Charlie. Thanks a lot, Mike. Okay, who hasn't taken a drink straight from the milk carton in the refrigerator? And while it may be convenient to do it at the time, it's actually pretty gross how many germs it spreads, and it can actually make your milk spoil faster. In a study, there were eight times the number of bacteria in the carton of milk that had been drank from directly compared to the carton where the milk had been poured into cups,

Starting point is 00:49:31 and this was only 10 days after first drinking from the carton. Now, that bacteria won't necessarily make you sick, but if you do have a cold or the flu, you could give it to somebody else who drinks that milk. What that bacteria will do, however, is cause the milk to deteriorate faster and go bad. So resist that straight from the carton swig and tell other people in the house to do the same. And that is something you should know. You know, one thing you could do that would really help us grow our audience is tell someone you know about this podcast and suggest they give it a listen. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:50:14 Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? 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. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and

Starting point is 00:50:52 lower pitched in cooler temperatures? You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying.

Starting point is 00:51:04 I'm so sorry. You win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Starting point is 00:51:27 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.

Starting point is 00:51:51 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

Starting point is 00:52:09 to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - What Makes Someone Credible & How to Finish What You Start

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