Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - When Life's Not Working, Don't Try Harder. Change Your Situation Instead. | Angela Duckworth

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

How the people, places, and things around you can bring out your best. Plus, why willpower is unreliable, why AA works for so many people, and where to put your phone.  Angela Duckworth is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance and the recently released Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best. In this episode we talk about: Why willpower alone rarely creates lasting behavior change, and why changing your situation is often the better move The Gallup study showing where teens keep their phones predicts their grades How to identify what's actually within your control versus truly fixed Angela's own marriage crisis during the 2008 financial collapse, and what saved it Why "trying harder" can sometimes make a bad situation worse, not better One reason Alcoholics Anonymous works for so many people in recovery How reaching out to strangers for advice can change your entire career path Why surrounding yourself with the right peers matters more than we admit Related Episodes: Angela Duckworth's first appearance on our show Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel Additional Resources:  Angela's new book Situated This episode is sponsored by: BiOptimizers: Head to bioptimizers.com/happier and use code HAPPIER for 15% off your order. Notion: Learn more about how Notion can support your business at notion.com/happier. Square: Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/happier! #squarepod Fitnexa: You can learn more about Fitnexa SomniPods 3 at go.fitnexa.com/n6PD9i, and use code HAPPIER10 for $10 off your order. To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. As many of you know, I am very interested in, perhaps too interested in, the topic of success. And when we think about success, we often think about things like hard work or luck or smarts or emotional regulation. But I think quite infrequently, I'll speak for myself, do we think about your situation, like the people you're surrounded by and your physical location, turns out there's a bunch of research to show that your situation matters a ton. So how do you influence your situation? That's what my

guest is going to talk about today. Said guest is Angela Duckworth. You may know her from her huge bestselling book, Grit. She's got a new book out called Situated. She is also a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Angela Duckworth, welcome back to the show. Dan, it's good to be with you again. You made a big name outside of academic circles. You already had a big name in academic circles when you wrote a book called grit. You gave a TED talk on it. You published a bunch of research on it. Chapter one in this new book, which again is called Situated, is called, I believe, beyond grit. So what's that all about? I studied high achievers from my very first day of graduate school and my first preoccupation with them was everything that they have in their heads that makes them different. You know, who wins multiple gold medals over multiple Olympics? I mean, who takes home the Grammy, the Oscar. And I really wanted to know psychologically what is different about their mindsets, their habits, the way they organize their goals. And I still believe in all of that, Dan. I still believe that

there is an inside game to achieving your potential. And I wrote a book about it. I tried to write down responsibly everything I knew about what I had learned from these achievers, not just by interviewing them, but by doing, you know, large-scale longitudinal research. Then I became interested in, as you said, everything that's around a person that is equally a common denominator of achieving your potential. And that, it turns out, is actually harder, I think, to think about, to write about, to study. But there is a great deal of research, including my own, that shows that the situations we are in powerfully shape everything we do think and feel. And I think if there's one maybe non-obvious take-home of this book,

it is that you can change your situation. We're often taught not to think about our circumstances because we should look inside for what we can control. And I want people to look inside and outside for what they can control. When you say situation, what are you referring to specifically. Well, what I'm referring to is everything, Dan. So, so, you know, what chair you're sitting in, the light, what's within reach, what's out of reach, everything physically around you, like if you were filming a movie, you know, what are the props, what is the scenery, what are the cost, I mean, every physical detail. And then also every element of your social situation, like, who are those people? What are they doing? What are they saying? What are they?

saying. And even at the, you know, level of greatest abstraction, I mean your culture, you know, like, are you in Philadelphia? Are you in Philadelphia in the summer? Are you in San Francisco? Are you in Singapore? So I think these aspects of your situation are so all-encompassing, everything from like, how far is your cell phone from you right now? Do you have a water bottle near you to, like, are you in an individualist culture right now or not? I mean, it's all your situation. And And, you know, I know it might seem like some of those aspects are changeable, some of them not. I'm going to make the perhaps provocative argument that everything about your situation, you have some agency to change if you think it can be improved. We'll get into that for sure.

Tell me a little bit about exactly what the research shows, though. Let me begin with the problem of self-control. That's something that I started working on also on my first day of graduate school. school. Self-control and grit sound like the same thing to a lot of people. They're not. They're close cousins, I would say, but they're not exactly the same thing. Grit is passion and perseverance for years and decades, you know, really striving to achieve some meaningful and especially challenging goal. Self-control everybody needs, no matter how ambitious they are, because everybody needs to, you know, get to bed at a reasonable hour, you know, eat this, not that, get some amount of physical activity, do their taxes, floss their teeth. And self-control is doing what is better for you, not just 50 years from now, but even five minutes from now, and foregoing some temptation that is instantly rewarding. Self-control has always been a problem for humanity. I would argue in the modern era, we have fashioned temptations that humanity has never dealt with before, like, you know,

the infinite scroll, ultra-processed food, and so forth. So self-control and grid are not the same thing, but they are close cousins because they are both about, you know, living a life that you want to lead. When I talk about the power of the situation, much of that goes back to my research on self-control, showing that when somebody uses willpower to force themselves to eat a banana as opposed to like opening a bag of chips or to put their phone down 30 minutes before they usually put their phone down to go to bed or to stay off their laptop during a very boring meeting, you know, knowing that like there's something on their laptop, which is frankly more interesting to them at the moment than the very boring meeting. You can do all of the above

using willpower, just forcing yourself to do it. That's when your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain, which is most recently evolved, it's, you know, right behind your forehead. It just forces other parts of the brain to do what you're, you know, what you're in, you you intend to do and to resist impulses that are more instantly gratifying. But what research shows, including my own, is that that is an incredibly fragile and fallible faculty, that yeah, you could do it. Maybe you could do it once. Maybe you can do it twice. Nobody eats right, exercises right, goes to bed on time, manages their emotions and so forth in the long run by using their prefrontal cortex to tamp down on unwanted impulses. Instead, what research shows is

that people change their situation. If you have a really bad habit of snacking between lunch and dinner and you try to force yourself not to snack between lunch and dinner, you might get it right once twice, but you won't get it right in the long term. However, if you work in an environment, there are no unhealthy snacks to be found. There's like a lot of friction between you and an unhealthy sign. Oh my gosh, there are all these like amazing healthy snacks like fresh fruit or, you know, whatever, that is going to be a much better strategy. So the insight is that you can wait until your impulses are very strong. You can force yourself to resist those impulses, or you can put yourself in a situation where those impulses don't even develop. And that is what many psychologists,

including me and our academic work would call situational self-control. So a lot of the research that I'm relying on in this book, draws from the self-control research and in particular the strategy of changing your circumstances before unwanted impulses have time to develop. So specifically, how could we put this to work? And you mentioned a few strategies in there, but let's go a click deeper in terms of how we can change our physical environment so that we're not, you know, super distracted or eating food we're not actually hungry for or might make us feel like shit. I do think that one of the temptations that all of us have, you know, some personal experience with fighting, the battle of not being on our phone when we ought not be.

And I'm not saying that we should never be on our phone or that everyone equally struggles with this. But I think all of a sudden I'll speak personally. Like, I used to think I didn't have any problem. My now 91-year-old mother painted this giant portrait. of me. She's an artist. And when she told me about this portrait of me, she was very excited because it's really an enormous work. I mean, it's, you know, like the size of a garage door. And when she unveiled it, I was disappointed we'd be putting it lightly. I mean, this picture that she painted of me is me, you know, my hair is in my face. I'm staring down. There's all

this artwork around me, sculptures, paintings, in the painting that she painted. But I'm ignoring all this beauty because I'm staring at my face. phone. And so I said, mom, you know, I, I have to ask you, like, why did you paint me in, you know, hunched over? And she was like, oh, but sweetie, that's, that's the way you always are. So I'll speak personally, because apparently I am on my phone more than I even realize. And I, I do recognize it's a problem. You can try not to be on your phone. That's willpower. You could just say, like, you know what, I got to, you know, I got to, like, get off this right now. Or you can, you can, you can, try some other cognitive tricks. And Dan, I know you've studied mindfulness. You've interviewed many,

many scientists who study ways of reframing or reappraising the situation. You might say, like, you know, I'm going to look at that phone and I'm going to think of it as, you know, a temptation or as evil. I'm not going to look at it as a portal to the universe. You can do a lot of mental gymnastics, and I think they all have their place. But you can also take your phone. And as my best friend, one says like throw it across the room or place it gently across the room. In my research, when I've surveyed teenagers in America, one study leaps to mind because I did it with the Gallup organization. So it's truly a representative sample of teenagers in America from middle school through the end of high school. When we ask them where they keep their phones when they're

studying, there's a range. Some keep the phone very far away, like in the next room altogether. A great deal more keep it somewhere closer. And they're are five graded steps and the closest is like right next to me. The screen is up. The sound is on. Don't want to miss any notifications. And when we match that to academic performance, what we find is the farther the phone, the higher the GPA. In other words, if you use your situation for you, not against you, right? Like that friction of having to get up and go into the next room, I mean, you can do it and maybe you will do it, but you're going to do it a lot less than like literally just looking down, you don't even have to move. And so physical phone placement is,

I think, one of the very easy ways you can introduce yourself to the notion of situational agency, that you have agency. It's your choice how you set up your personal space. As you mentioned, the power of situation goes beyond your physical surroundings or where your phone is or whatever is also the people you surround yourself with. What if your boss is an asshole and you really have no choice. There's no other job available. This is the situation you're stuck in. How do you, what do you do about that? This hypothetical example, which, you know, isn't unfortunately hypothetical to a lot of people listening, you know, that is an example, I think, of the limits of situational agency, right? You know, famously, for example, in romantic relationships,

like don't try to change that other person, right? Like, you know, there are limits to what you can do. You can't wish that that person were different and you can't force that person to be different. And I don't think you can change, you know, your boss's way of giving feedback or their lack of clarity when setting the agenda for the next week or their poor temper and so forth. So I think you, you know, come up with a very good counter example, if you will, to situational agency. However, I do think there are still things you could do. For example, your boss is not the only thing in your situation. You might call up a beloved mentor. You know, maybe you had a former boss who was, frankly, a lot more patient, a lot more kind. Maybe they planned. Maybe they plan.

better. And that person is also part of your situation, especially if you choose to go see them or have coffee and ask for advice about how to handle this, you know, terrible circumstance that you have at work. You can also ask other people who are in that team or that company, you know, how are they managing? Your peers, I think, are a very overlooked aspect of the situation. And you usually can change your peers in the sense of, you know, the people that you spend the most time with at work who are at the same levels you, right? So not your direct supervisors or even their supervisors, but more the people who are, you know, just like you, trying to figure things out at the level or at the station that you are in. And are any of these things miracles? I don't think so. But in those

conversations, maybe you will find a way to a different boss. Like in those conversations, perhaps you will find your way to an entirely different workplace or some other way to to improve things. So I think it's a great example to bring up, Dan, because I think you're right to point out that there are aspects of the situation that you don't control. At the same time, let's not let that blind us to features a situation that we can control and that we can proactively use to solve our problems. With summer winding down and all of us returning to our routines and some of us returning to school or returning our children to school, this feels like an appropriate moment to hit reset. And I don't mean like a full, comprehensive, panoramic reset of everything in your life, just like small, marginal changes you can make in your life that can make a big difference.

And so that's what we're focusing on right now over on my app, 10% with Dan Harris. This September will be joined by Diana Winston, who's the director of UCLA's Mindfulness Center and the author of a book called The Little Book of Being. The LA Times has called her one of the best known mindfulness teachers in the country. Once you hear her, you will understand why. And you can practice live with Diana right inside the 10% with Dan Harris app, starting on September 8th. And then later in September, we'll be dropping a brand new meditation challenge from Diana, all in the theme of resetting. more on that in just a couple of weeks. For now, though, if you could use just a little bit of a reset and you want to hang out and meditate with me and Diana and many other folks, you can sign up for my app at danharris.com.

We will be right back. I guess what's coming up in my mind is that there are, depending on what your circumstances are, you're going to have varying levels of agency. You know, like I'm, let's face it, a wealthy white man. and I have a lot more choice about my surroundings than a struggling young single mother. And I think it's just worth saying that out loud. I'm not sure. How does somebody who has less agency take advantage of what you're pointing at? I think I have to put myself, I mean, I'm not a wealthy white man, but I am a wealthy Asian woman who has been educated at the, you know, most selective schools.

And, you know, I have this memory, by the way, of being in college, and I had my plastic cafeteria tray. And I was just, like, you know, shoving along the metal rails and, like, thinking about whether I wanted banana bread or not that day. And the Harvard student in front of me turned around. He was taller than me, so he had to look down. And he said to me, you lead a charmed life. And they turned back around. And then we proceeded and, you know, got our food and sat down at our different tables. And I don't think he was just saying that because of all the aforementioned characteristics, Dan, I think I have been especially blessed. I sometimes feel like, for whatever reason, like the universe has rolled out its red carpet for me. You know, like, oh, yeah, those famous psychologists who would be amazing to talk to. Right, but I actually got to talk to them. And now they keep wanting to talk to me. Like, this is amazing. So I am extraordinarily privileged in ways that are obvious and in ways that are not obvious.

I think. And I have, I think, therefore, more agency over my situation than most people. And so again, I think it's a very important point to bring up and to discuss seriously, like not in a glib way. I think if you acknowledge that agency about our situation is maybe universal in that we all have it, but certainly not equally distributed, it does. raise the question, well, what does somebody who has less agency do? And I say that you have to do what anybody has to do, which is to look at your circumstances and, you know, they're like two columns, like the things that you can't change, and maybe that's a very long column. And you can write down all of those things and kind of acknowledge those limitations. But then see whether

the other column, which is here are the situational factors. in my life that I can change and to see if that's not an empty column. You know, when I mentioned phones just now, I did that partly because, well, in my research with Gallup and separate research, I mean, there are very few human beings who don't have some ambivalence, some struggle with their phone. I started with that because, you know, it's something we all understand. I also started with that because where you put your phone is something that you don't have to have any kind of privilege, really, to decide. right? And so it was an accessible example, I hope, of something, which is a bigger, broader point. When you begin to ask yourself about, for example, people, you know, the people that you spend time with, well, you don't have complete control over that. You might have a, you know, horribly toxic workplace environment. You might hate your boss. Your boss might hate you. You may not love those teammates. You may not like the culture of the organization you've joined. And you may not actually be able to immediately change those things. But is there any,

way that you could change the amount of time that you spend so that those few people that you do find in your social network who bring out your best. You feel like you're more confident around them. You feel like you're kinder around them. You feel like you're smarter around them. Could you spend a little more time with them in some way? Could you ask to be on a project that one of those people is running? Could you have a group of people that you haven't even met yet. Like, I'll give you another example. If you want to start an exercise habit, you can do what many people do, which is will themselves to do it or even resolve in a New Year's resolution kind of way to do it. I think one of the smartest things a person can do is to find another person or two or

three and to do it together, right? Like train for a marathon with another person or with a team, you know, have a gym going habit with a group of friends. I think in these ways, you will find maybe not infinite power over your situation. But when you start to look for things you have control over and start to just ask yourself a simple question, you know, is there a place or are there people with whom and around whom I can do what I want to do more easily? I think we will find more than the null set. That's the claim. Now, that makes sense. We have to start where we are. Let's acknowledge that life is an unfa. fair. And I just go back to what you said about you can make a list of things you can't change

and a list of things you can. And the can't list might be incredibly long. And yet there will, as you said, there will still be things you can change. I think in your book you tweak the serenity prayer along these lines. Am I right about that? Yeah, the serenity prayer is so beloved by so many, including the more than two million members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I have to say, that this prayer, which goes back to roughly World War II, written by a minister named Reinhold Niebuhr, it has many forms. So there are many slight variations on God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So there are many riffs on this, you know, profound little prayer that at least in one of my articles that I was reading about this in the

history of the prayer, he written in the backseat of a taxi, I think, you know, going to a sermon that he wasn't entirely sure what he was going to speak about that day. The reason why that's so powerful, I think, for members of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that, you know, when you talk about, you know, the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, that is a starting point, I think, for many people who consider themselves addicted to alcohol or to other substances or activities. But that second line, you know, the courage to change the things I can, that really is, you know, the first column, the second column, right? Like, you know, we should have surrounding about things we can't change. We should have courage to think about the things that we can. And then, of course,

the wisdom to know the difference. You remarked, Dan, that in the book, I annotate it. I give it, you know, my own subtitles. I think when we think of the first line, the serenity to accept the things, we cannot change. For most people, they think about all the circumstances that they cannot change, where they were born, maybe members of their family, the communities that they feel like they cannot exit, those are all outside of them. When they get to the second line, the courage to change the things they can, then their attention goes inward. I can change my attitude. I can change my mindset. I can change my assumptions.

I can change my goals. So I can't change what's outside, but I can sure change what's inside. And that's going to make the difference in my life. The annotation that I would suggest is that the things that you cannot change are sometimes outside you. Frankly, sometimes they're inside you, like a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, which is not something you can. change because you're not going to change your 23 pairs of chromosomes. You're not just unable to change the outside. Sometimes you're unable to change the inside. And equally, when it comes to

carriage to change the things that you can change, you should look inside, but you should look outside too. So I think this habit that we have gotten into, I think as a culture of looking outside for the circumstances you can't change, inside for the things that you have agency over, is a mistake. I think there's agency inside and outside, and there are limitations to agency inside and outside. You mentioned AA. I don't know much about AA, except for secondhand from folks who are in various recovery programs. I find it, and again, this is all secondhand. I find what I hear to be incredibly impressive. And one thing I believe I've heard as a little mantra in the recovery community is people, places, and things. In other words, if you want to control,

the people, places, and things around you in order to reduce the likelihood of relapse for whatever you're struggling with. That seems to go right at your central argument in the book. People, places, and things was a working title at one point for this whole book. Like, what are the people, places and things, you know, the objective realities of your life that you might tweak, that you might change so that you can lead the life you want? I will say this about the recovery community. It's certainly not a community where everybody agrees on exactly the right prescription for managing an addiction like alcoholism. Some people in the AA and the broader recovery community might say that, you know, be wary of relying too much on people, places, and things because you ultimately have to change your attitude towards alcoholism. There's this expression like pulling a geographic.

And it's used usually dismissively as like you cannot run away from your problems. If you move to New Jersey or even if you move to Ocean City, New Jersey, where the laws prohibit the sale of alcohol, you know, you might think, well, great, in Ocean City, New Jersey, I won't be an alcoholic because I can't buy alcohol. And the members of the community who would say, look, don't try to pull geography. you can't run away from your real problems, they will follow you wherever you go, even if you move to Ocean City, New Jersey. And if you haven't dealt with, you know, your anger problems or your, you know, your marriage problems or your identity problems, they will follow you. And sure enough, drink will follow you too. You will find it. I believe that the person places and things advice, that you should think about the persons, you know, the people around you, the things that

are around you, the places that you live, you know, I, I would say that it may not be a magic cure, but I think living in a dry town like Ocean City, New Jersey, certainly tips the scales in your behavior. There is actually research that Wendy Wood, who is, I always think of her as the Queen Bee of Habit research. So in the academic community, Wendy Wood is, you know, the pioneer in the research on habit. It was, you know, her study that's widely quoted that nearly half of human behavior is habitual. So she has studied addiction and good habits also. And she points out that even living closer to a store that sells alcohol in a liquor store, like that's a risk factor for developing alcoholism. So absolutely, it's not a magic wand.

I do think you have to resolve your own problems, but why not make things as easy as possible, live where things are going to be easier, put objects around you that are less tempting in ways that you're going to regret, and absolutely the people around you. When I got into the research on Alcoholics Anonymous, because I think, Dan, that there is no more psychologically wise organization in humanity's history than alcohol. Anonymous. I got curious about what the scientific research said. I mean, how can it be that a circle of folding chairs in a church basement is like the most effective and enduring cure or treatment for alcoholism? I, you know, found my way to Harvard Medical School where a lot of this research has taken place. And one of the findings is that what happens when you join Alcoholics Anonymous is that you replace your peer group. Your peer group may have been other people who are drinking the way you've been drinking.

And with the introduction of this entirely new social network into your life, you have people around you who know exactly what it is like to suffer as you've been suffering, but are on a journey. And they ask you to join them if you was like. And so that is, again, a way of replacing the people who will, you know, tell you more about how they've replaced the things and how they've gone to new people. places. So people, places and things, I think, would not have been a terrible title for the book. Not at all. And just to pick up on the people part of it, you know, I often say that life is better in the carpool lane. And I believe, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, that that's an evidence-based assertion. What we know about the quality of a human life is that based on, you know, the Harvard study for adult development and other studies, is that it is largely determined by the quality of

your relationships, not only the quality of your life, but the length of your life. And then further, just on habit change or general human behavior change writ large, I guess the term of art, and again, you'll correct me, is a social support. The people, you know, doing it with other people who share your goals and values is immensely powerful. So A.A. is tapping into both of these things. You are on firm ground, Dan, and, you know, whatever terms you want to pull out, social support is, actually I think very often how scientists refer to a life where, you know, it's not you as some individual. He was trying to like solve every problem that you as an individual have. But you, you have this, you know, paradigm shift or you don't think of like Dan Harris. Dan Harris in

relation to these other things. But like Dan Harris as part of something larger than Dan Harris. So you're part of an organism. You're part of a family. You're part of a family. You're part of. of a team. And you do your part. So hopefully you do everything you can do to advance the goals that are important. But you're no longer thinking of yourself in isolation. And you're also on firm ground, Dan, to talk about the power of relationships to improve your life. And I think the Harvard study, which is, you know, very important, has made a lot of contributions to that finding or that conclusion. I want to mention a more recent study, which is that when you look at how people spend time in America. And much of this research has been done by scientists who didn't start this survey,

but who just used the data from the American time use survey. One of the findings from Dunnigan Focke, who is a postdoc in my lab, but he did this research prior to joining me, is that you can code what everyone is doing on any kind of dimension, you know, are they eating, are they resting, are they playing a game, are they watching, you know, whatever it is that you want to ask the Americans what they're doing. Like, whatever it is, they're happier if they're with another person. Whatever it is, all functions of life. And so what that suggests is that life is better in the carpool lane. And the reason why I think that's not an obvious observation is that we are spending less time in the carpool lane. If you ask the question, like, how can my situation be better?

it's not just whether you're going to pick these people or that people, it's that you are also going to pick people at all. Because Americans in particular, but around the world, we're spending more and more time with no people around us. And in one analysis of the American Time U Survey that Donegan cannot take credit for, this was done by a Princeton sociologist, and I apologize, I can't remember the name of the author. he looked at the data in the American Timing Survey over the last, you know, decade or two, and found that the number of minutes that we spend inside the home versus outside the home, for any reason, work, play, et cetera, has skyrocketed to something like an hour and 50 minutes a day that we are spending inside versus venturing forth, you know, beyond our own roof. And so I think one of the ways that we should be observant first and then perhaps agentic if we choose

is to ask, you know, how much time am I spending with any other person? And then, of course, which people am I spending it with? That's crazy. So the amount of time we're spending alone indoors has skyrocketed. And it's not just the pandemic. Dan. I was like, oh, the pandemic. No, no, no, that's why it's so important that the trend began before 2020. You know, there has been a rising tide of time spent alone. And I don't know, I think Bob Putnam, when he wrote the landmark book Bowling Alone, now more than 20 years ago, I think when he looked at trends in this country that preceded social media, that

preceded the COVID-19 pandemic, that proceeded, you know, remote work as a practice that is common, you know, he really put his finger on it when he said, we are spending more time alone. We are retreating from society, if you will. If you think about what society really is, society is, you know, a community. And I think that some of the things that I mentioned may have exacerbated or accelerated those things, but I don't think they're all like in the last few years. I think that you have to look at how this country and many other countries have changed culturally in the decades I've been alive. I'm 56 and I think this country is different from when I was born. In the meantime, as we've become more isolated, we've become, and I believe I'm right about this, more anxious, more depressed, more lonely, more addicted, more likely to take our own lives than we've ever been since we've.

started keeping records. Kind of all the good things are like sex is down, reading is down, you know, spending time together, there's on, helping other people in our family, outside of our family is down. Yeah, the trends are not great. And I am an optimist by disposition, like you, I think. No. No, are you not an optimist? Which I was. Wait, what? What's not Dan Harris fundamentally was like looking for the silver lining. Wait, wait, update my Dan Harris beliefs. I mean, I, I, uh, No, no, I think by nature I'm anxious and pessimistic. And so I'm doing this work as a way to override my nervous system, which is on a hair trigger for a threat.

Oh, interesting. I'm reading a biography of Lincoln right now called Lincoln's Melancholy, which I recommend to you if you haven't read it. But Lincoln apparently also was maybe not blessed with a super sunny optimist. temperament, but then sort of made his life about fighting it and using it for the betterment, I guess, of his community, even more than himself. I am not like Lincoln. I don't think I am a melancholy person. I think I'm like, you know, like a bunny rabbit, really, like temperament wise. So take it from the bunny rabbit. Like, I look around and I think, you know, every time I go through an airport, Dan, and, you know, we just talked about privilege a moment ago. If you're in an

airport, you have some privilege, right? Because, you know, flying's not cheap and you're going somewhere. So we're not talking about, like, abject poverty, but I'm still depressed when I walk through an airport because every human being, no matter their age, they could be like 95 or five months old. I feel like every human being, it seems, is on a screen. And when you're on a screen, you really are alone together. So there are some, you know, worrisome trends that whether you're an optimist or a pessimist, I think if you're a realist, I mean, you just have to, you know, look at these things. And I think looking at the default settings of society, you know, what is the default for the situation? Like, what if you just relax and just like kind of like, do what

everyone else is doing? Eat what everyone else is eating. Watch what everyone else is watching. Do whatever one. Like, I don't think these settings are great. I don't think they're great for most people. This is a bit of a non-sequitur, but you mentioned marriage earlier and you do a brave thing in your new book, which again is called Situated, you talk about your own marriage. You're certainly under no obligation to do that here, but let me check in with you. Are you cool talking about what you wrote about? Yes, I am. And not only am I comfortable, Dan, I have the permission and maybe even the enthusiasm of my

husband and my daughters, who are young women now, but I never told them about the things that I ended up writing about in the book. And only when I finished the draft of the chapter did I like push it across the table. I was like, read this. I'm like, ah, I'm busy. I'm like, get on busy because you're going to want to read this before like many, many other people do. So I'm very comfortable talking about the problems and also the solutions that my husband and I encountered together. Well, I'm glad you are.

I think it's a service that you're willing to talk about. stuff. And so you hit a little bit of a rough patch in 2008 after and during the financial crisis. How does what you went through and how you handled it, how is it relevant to the core thesis of this book, which again is that you have agency to change your situation as a way to change your life? One reason I think that we overlook opportunities to change our situation is that we're so busy doing something else, which is just trying harder and just trying harder, not changing situation, but just trying harder in that situation, is what got me and also my husband, Jason, through the first decades of our lives with great success. You know, neither of us were

smartest kids in our schools. Neither of us were like reliably selected into the gifted and talented programming. Nobody said, oh, you know, watch out for that one. You know, they're a prodigy. But man, we worked hard. And when we met, and I think we were in our mid-20s, we sort of recognize each other. We were like, oh, you're a striver. Like, you also get through life by trying harder. And when we got married, I mean, it was a real fairy tale romance. I mean, the head over heels doesn't even begin to describe, I think, how each of us felt about each other. You know, the kind of try-harder philosophy was still going strong. It was like, great. Now I'm going to try hard to get tenure at an Ivy League school.

and you try hard to be a real estate entrepreneur. And, you know, we'll have these, like, beautiful kids. And then we'll try hard to be perfect parents. And, you know, try hard to get our workouts. I just try, try, try, try. And I will never take back my avowal that trying hard is part of success. Because it is. I mean, there's just no way around effort in the equation of achieving anything,

whether it's raising a great family or doing well professionally. But one of the reckonings that really, you know, hit us sideways was that we found ourselves in a situation, and it is around 2008. I know so little, Dan, about the economy that when I made the very, very first draft of this chapter and showed it to Jason, again, not only his endorsement, but it's encouragement, I think I got the year of the financial crisis wrong and gently pointed out that, you know, anyway. So I'm doing what I'm doing as a professor. or he's doing what he's doing in business. I'm obviously a little bit oblivious, but we really did. We worked harder and longer.

There were times that he was working 100 hours a week. I felt like I was doing the same if I counted the hours that I was working, plus, you know, shouldering, you know, many of the parenting responsibilities. And frankly, it just stopped working. I mean, the wheels were falling off the bus. You know, the harder he worked,

it's not like his company started to do better. Like, it was not doing better, even though he was, you know, putting in ungodly hours. My own research. it's like I woke up earlier, tried harder to do each study, and they just kept failing. And we had a breaking point in our marriage, really because of me. I mean, I had this husband who was never home.

I mean, when he was home, he was exhausted. Oh, was kind, but he was miserable. And I had this, you know, workaholic, miserable husband who was never home. And I felt like, you know, trying harder wasn't working. And I, at that point in our marriage, girls were, you know, very young, you know, beginning of elementary school, I think. I thought the solution was to just give up and to get divorced. And I thought maybe I'd be happy that way. And, you know, every child, you know, deserves a happy mother.

What we discovered, and it took a while in a lot of therapy. was that if you try hard in a no-win situation, you know, like 100 hours isn't going to do it, but neither is 110 hours, you know, like we had to fundamentally shift. Let me be very specific about what that meant because in the abstract, it's like, okay, you change your situation, but what does that even mean? Jason stopped working 100 hours a week. He also not only subtracted hours from his work week, he added in mentors. You know, something he hadn't done until that point in his career is to reach out to more seasoned veterans of real estate development and in this crazy economic crisis, ask for their advice. He created an advisory board. I know young people talk about having a

brand and so forth that can make our eyes roll into the back of our heads. But one thing I think young people ought to do is what Jason did during that crisis. He had this advisory board of mentors who would convene about every six months and give advice on the problems that Jason was encountering at work. It was this game changer because it wasn't just Jason Duckworth trying to figure things out. It was Jason Duckworth in the company of these, you know, more experienced seasoned business people who only wanted the best for Jason Duckworth. I'll give you a tactical change on my end. You know, when I was failing in these studies, you know, one of the people, you know, one of the things that made it even harder was that they were just my ideas. I was executing. And

what I do now, Dan, and began to do at that point, was to not think of myself as Angela Duckworth, psychologist, like Angela Duckworth, individual inventor and genius. But Angela Duckworth, part of a chorus or a team who, in collaboration with a bunch of other people who are trying hard, like, we're going to get something done. And what I have found in my research is that I am dramatically better as a contributor to a team than I am as a solo performer. So all I do now is team science. I mean, when I work with economists, like they're better at the things that they do and I'm, you know, making my contribution as a psychologist, et cetera, et cetera. And the final thing I'll mention, Dan, is that we went to therapy.

And I know that that is a whole long conversation. I'm happy to have as much of it as you want. I am not trained as a clinical psychologist, but I also was not raised in a family where you go to therapy. So it was with great apprehension and reluctance that I began seeing somebody to talk about my problems, that Jason began seeing another person to talk about his problems. And the two of us went to go see a third therapist to talk about our problems. And when we, you know, applied effort, less effort than we had for it. But in this new situation with an advisory board and collaborators and therapists and, you know,

finally opening up to our family so they could be the Calvary that came in at critical times, it changed everything. And so I still believe in effort. I will never not believe in effort. But one of the great Achilles heels of people who have spent their whole life getting where they are because they are strivers is to ignore the power of the situation and to forego the opportunity to put yourself in a situation where all your effort is paying off. Let me pick up in what you just said that you still believe in effort. You know this. Your emphasis on grit has garnered some pushback, especially from people who say it's kind of unfair to focus on perseverance and hard work when you've got a lot of low-income people in a very inequality, in equal society who, you know, can try as hard as they want, but the deck is

stacked against them. And so I'm just wondering, like, is part of this new work you've just produced motivated by responding to those critics in some way? I mean, I'll be honest. I don't know if it's motivated by responding to those critics, but I hope it does respond to those critics. I won't say that I got a lot of criticism, then it made me think harder than I decided to address it. It's more that the critics had a point. And I do think I was right to try to write a book about one thing. A book about everything is a book about nothing. So in grit, I focused on quality of effort, quantity of effort, the difference between effort and talent, the mindsets that incline you to put in effort, the kind of practice that experts do. I don't think that was a mistake because I

I didn't want to write a book about everything or nothing. I wanted to write a book about something. And I think the psychology of effort is a worthy subject, especially if you, you know, write yourself out of, you know, the game, you know, early on because you're not talented. But where the critics are right, I'll give you a story. I'm just a vignette. I remember sitting down at a conference. It was somewhere in California.

Maybe it was in Stanford or something like that. And there was this sociologist there. Now, I'm a psychologist. I study the individual. Sociologists do not take the individual as the unit of analysis. They're studying societies, groups, culture. I sit down next to the sociologists that I had never met before. But you know how it is. The norm in these little meetings is like you're friendly and you ask people what the best salad is on the buffet bar. And wow, this woman was so angry at me. She was practically shaking. And I had to ask. I was like, I'm sorry. Have we met? No. but I know your work on grit. And I said, well, I'd love to hear what you think. And she said in so many words, I think it is racist.

I think it is classist. I think you're ignoring from your state of privilege the realities that the majority of people in this country and elsewhere have to reckon with and a pull yourself up by your bootstraves mantra is inaccurate and irresponsible. And I want to say that that perspective has legitimacy. And here's what I would say to you today, Dan. I think that she was right, that there are situations in which effort doesn't pay off.

Bridget Terry Long, who was for a time the dean of the government, graduate school of education at Harvard, and a very distinguished economist by training. You know, she said to me, when I was, you know, talking to her about her own story, she has a bit of an American, you know, like Rags to Rich's story, and her parents are very hardworking, and they had a great amount of social mobility and economic mobility in her lifetime. Her parents had moved her to a suburb of Chicago, and when her father took a new job, I think it was at Xerox, He, like, put the pin of a compass to where his work was. And then he drew a circle, the radius that he thought was a reasonable commute.

And then systematically, the family visited every school in that circle to find the very best school for Bridget and the family. And so she really understands, I think, at many different levels, you know, what opportunity and lack of opportunity are. And from her own experience, I think she would say that hard work does pay off more. in certain zip codes and in certain classrooms and in certain stations of life or, you know, the role you're born into. That is why I think it is important to talk about the situation. Where I may differ from some is that when I talk about the situation, and I'm sure a lot of people will criticize me for this too, but I will say boldly that we shouldn't only think about aspects of the situation that are beyond control. It is equally important, I think, for any

person, whoever they are, their privilege or their lack thereof, to just ask what they can change. Because assuming that somebody born into a low socioeconomic status, community, or family that is not privileged in any way that the word means, it's almost always that there's something they can change. Not everything. Not as much as the, you know, people like you and me, maybe, Dan, but something. And maybe that is the optimist in me, but I do think there's agency if we look for it. Is there something about your openness to these critiques that jibes nicely with the thesis of your new book?

Like, one way we can boost our mental strength and odds of success is to be open to and indeed even surround ourselves. with our critics, not in a self-flagellating way or a masochistic way, but really as a way to, you know, make our ideas and workflows and processes bulletproof. You know, Dan, I first of all don't want to paint myself as a saint-like, you know, always open to criticism. Like, what a good point. Let me go write this down and then reflect. Like, I'm as defensive as the next person.

I could be as small-minded as anyone. I think it's been helpful for me to understand the research. I mean, human beings do not learn without feedback. And the most valuable feedback very often is not what you're doing right, but what you're doing wrong. Actually, both kinds of feedback matter. One thing I have observed, because in the position of somebody who studies greatness, I get to study people who have a lot of power, fame, and money. And one thing I've noticed is that when you just spend time with those people, they are typically surrounded with people who tell them that everything's great. You know, like there's just not a lot of tension, friction, or criticism. And the very wise ones recognize that. And they do what you're, I think, suggesting, which is they intentionally place themselves shoulder to shoulder, you know, nose to nose sometimes with critics. Because who's going to give you the feedback on what you have missed or gotten slightly

wrong or very wrong other than somebody who identifies themselves as your opponent as opposed to your advocate. So I think the more privileged you are, the more difficult it is to do exactly that. Maybe the more urgently we need that. For me, I will say that I probably should get more criticism than I do. I get like 10 emails in my inbox that say, I loved grit and here's why and thank you for every one that says like, I don't like this message and I think you're wrong. Maybe it's 100 to 1.

But the value of that one is priceless. And I guess the question is like, do I have the courage to read it? Or respond to it. So this book, I do think, was a way for me to widen the aperture to point out

what I think a lot of critics have usefully and correctly pointed out. They may not like that I have pointed out that there's an agency element to this. So maybe I'll get another, you know, sociologist who sits down next to me at a meeting and is still shaking with anger. Maybe a different kind of anger. But it is important. And this topic, Dan, I think is overlooked.

I mean, if you want to talk about ratios, I think there are 100 books on like how you can change the inside game of your thinking for everyone that talks about how you as an individual can start to change your situation. Let me pick up on something you mentioned earlier about your husband in the, the wake of the financial crisis, reaching out and surrounding himself with mentors, because this seems simultaneously really important, but also touches on a subject we've been weaving in and out of throughout this conversation, which is privilege. Mentors are incredibly important. I'd love to hear you say more about that, but not all of us know the right people to create an advisory board. So, yeah, how would we go about doing that if we're not super well connected? You know, Jason, I have to say, was privileged to have a father who was also a real estate developer who was still alive at the time of the financial crisis and was, you know, rather beloved in that community.

And so that did open, I think, doors that wouldn't have been opened to somebody else. We're on theme here if we're talking about privilege. Many of my mentors I met through my very first psychology mentor, Marty Seligman. You know, when your PhD advisor is the father of positive psychology and the author of learned optimism and, you know, the ideator behind many, many important discoveries in psychological science, you find that the doors are open when you introduce them yourself as their student. So how do you do it if you don't have, you know, that kind of network already? well let me tell you about some emails that I've gotten, Dan. They come sometimes completely out of the blue from strangers that I've never met. So it's not like my aunt says that you could talk to me or, you know, your old college roommate while I happen to be their nephew. You know, these are emails that reach me. I mean, sometimes I'll be completely honest. I try to make my email address relatively obscure on the internet because I'm, I am an inbox zero girl. And the more widely my email is circulated, the longer it takes me to get to inbox zero.

But these individuals sometimes introduce themselves to me with no personal connection. And nothing more impressive other than to just share with me what they're thinking. I'm thinking of when I just got the other day. A young man named Miguel, he wants to be a real estate lawyer. I don't even know what that is, Dan, but I think I could figure it out from real estate and lawyer. he's of Cuban descent. He has, you know, a very strong connection to his human, Cuban heritage. He has these sort of business ambitions that are related but separate from real estate law. He writes to me this very, um, um, beautiful note. And at the end, you know, he says, like,

thank you so much. You just wanted you to get this. I wrote back. I will also say that if Miguel asks for a conversation, the answer is yes. There is this way that you can meet completely strangers, which is to ask them for what the Hollywood producer Brian Greaser calls curiosity conversations. Will every Dan Harris write back to your email and say, absolutely, I will spend 15 minutes talking to you about whatever you want. And however, I can be helpful for those 15 minutes. And not every Dan Harris is going to write back to you.

Not every Oprah Winfrey is going to write back to you. But I think you send out 10 of these emails that introduce yourself and make a very humble request for five minutes, if 15 seems too much, with your cell phone number and just why it is that you think that would be so helpful, I will be shocked if you get no positive replies, particularly if you shoot slightly more to the level of people who probably don't get 100 emails a day like that. But I think the power of that is illustrated nicely, but by an email that my husband got, I don't know, five or more years. ago, young man played football at a local college, was interested in getting into real estate,

didn't know anything about it, asked very politely for a quick conversation where if Jason would be so generous, he would love to learn about Jason's own path. Jason took the call. He liked this guy, whose name is Colin, so much that by the end, Jason heard himself saying, do you want to come work for me? I mean, oh my gosh, let's see. I don't have a job. How about for the summer? That summer internship became a longer internship and now Colin is working with Jason full time. So I'm not saying that every fairy tale ends this way. But you don't have to be famous. You don't have to be wealthy or super educated to send a polite note to someone that you want to make a connection with. I guarantee that somebody, if you send out enough of those notes, will reach back and say yes.

We have this new closing segment that I want to get to in a minute. But before I get to that, let me ask you this. Is there something you were hoping we would get to in this interview that we have not yet? You know, we could talk about like Victor Frankel, if you want, or Maslow. But no, I mean, I think every conversation, Dan, is like it's best to be whatever it is. So I personally don't feel like the goal of this conversation is to like give the readers or the listeners. as like a complete outline. So, you know, I think this has been great. Really, really fun for me. That's not the right word. But I, yeah, I think it's been great. Let's do this little segment that we're

calling what's good, where we talk about like something, you know, could be a book, could be a, you did mention a book about Abraham Lincoln earlier. It could be a TV show, could be a song, could be, I don't know, some new little habit you've integrated into your life that you think is worth recommending. Tony Morrison. Tony Morrison is good. I just, I just, Spanish Song of Solomon. Tony Morrison is the kind of writer. I would not consider myself literary enough as a reader to read Tony Morrison. When I was a freshman at Harvard, the book that we were all supposed to read was beloved by Tony Morrison. I read that and I was like, what? Like, is this baby alive? Or is this not? What? Like, I just, it was too hard for me.

But a few months ago, maybe weeks, actually, I was riding down the elevator. from my publisher's office at Simon & Juster to the lobby of Rockefeller Center in New York City. And the young editor who happened to be also riding the elevator with me was introduced in about two seconds as, oh, by the way, this is the promising new editor we have. Elevator doors shut. So I'm turning to this young woman who's decades younger than me. And I said, okay, well, if you're the most promising young editor here, what should I read? And she said, Tony Morrison.

I told her as we were descending down. I was like, you know, floor 22, 421. I was like, I am not good enough as a reader to read Tony Morrison. She thought for a moment. She said, start with Song of Solomon. Got down to the lobby, and I just finished it two days ago. And it is a beautiful book. I won't say that I completely understand it, but I decided to start at the beginning and read it again.

It is a beautiful, beautiful book. It is a beautiful, beautiful book, which we don't have a lot of time to talk about. This is, I think we've done this segment now like three or four times and every time the person, the guest has recommended something high-minded and I've replied with something not at all high-minded. So I'm going to keep that tradition going. Oh, also Trader Joe Spanacopoda. How's that for lowbrow? Trader Joe Spanacopoda. Amazing. I love sneaking in a supplemental recco. And so, yes, that's awesome. Trader Joe's Spanacopeta. Yes. Dolly noted.

Make sure you cook it enough. You know, put it in the oven, make sure it's really brown, let it cool, don't burn yourself. It would be a good accompaniment for what I'm about to recommend, which is a new, well, I don't know if it'll be new by the time this airs, but a new as of this recording, a docu-series on HBO called Monsters of God. Wait, what's that about? It's a crazy docu-s. I love, I loved, I loved doing this as a journalist when I was a journalist, and I love watching what I'm about. to describe when somebody, when you dive into a subculture. And this is by the guy who made Tiger King, which was on Netflix and got huge during the pandemic about a guy who was doing what I found

to be some pretty abhorrent things with animals and became known as a Tiger King and then went off to prison. Anyway, he now dives into, in Monsters of God, into the illegal reptile trade. And if you're sensitive to the plight of animals as I am, there will be some things in there that bum you out. But mostly it's just an incredibly well-made dive into a world populated by beautiful animals, but really quirky, unusual, kind of broken human beings. And like I said, the filmmaking is incredible, and I highly recommend it. Monsters of God. Okay, noted. And documentaries are my favorite genre.

Dan, I hope that's not too highbrow to say. But, you know, documentaries are like pizza. I mean, how bad can they be? There's like a base level, which is pretty good. My son was watching it. My son's 11 who was watching it with me and my cousin Andy who was staying with us. And he was complaining about how he hates documentaries. What?

Yeah, I know. But I agree with you. And maybe because I kind of was in the documentary business for so long, essentially. I love watching them. especially music documentaries, but I'll take reptiles. He'll grow into it. He's 11. Let's give him a little time. Yeah. Yes. For now, it's Marvel. Angela, such a pleasure to talk to you. Just please remind everybody of the name of your book and your prior book or anything else you want people to know about before I let you go.

Dan, the new book is called Situated. Find the people and places that bring out your best. I have really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much. Total pleasure. Great job. It's always great to talk to you. I want to thank everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer.

Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Kashmir, is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one quick ask before I let you go. Head on over, please, to Dan Harris.com to sign up for my weekly newsletter. Every Monday, I drop a little bit of goodness into your inbox. Mondays, especially Monday mornings, can be super stressful. So that is when I drop in one useful nugget that you can operationalize in your life immediately, either from ancient wisdom like Buddhism or from modern science.

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