The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 166: Charles Duhigg - How To Create Habits Using Mental Models

Episode Date: October 9, 2016

Episode 166: Charles Duhigg - How To Create Habits Using Mental Models Charles Duhigg, is a reporter for The New York Times, and the best selling author of multiple books, including  The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. They about the science of habit formation in our lives, companies and societies. He's worked at the Times since 2006. His latest series focused on Apple and was named "The iEconomy." It won a Pulitzer prize for explanatory reporting in 2013. He studied history at Yale and received an MBA from Harvard Business School. He's appeared on This American Life, N.P.R., The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and Frontline.  Details on his newest book, Smarter Faster Better: a fascinating book that explores the science of productivity, and why managing how you think is more important than what you think—with an appendix of real-world lessons to apply to your life. At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key productivity concepts—from motivation and goal setting to focus and decision making—that explain why some people and companies get so much done. Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics—as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters—this painstakingly researched book explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don't merely act differently. Episode 166: Charles Duhigg - How To Create Habits Using Mental Models Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "Lorne Michaels creates  psychological safety." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Common themes of sustained excellence = Creating a habit of thinking deeply It's possible to be busy all the time and never accomplish anything Having "contemplative routines" -- Habits, priorities.  Michael Lewis is a great example -- He's always finding great stories There is a diversity in how people succeed It's very easy to be reactive -- The brain prefers this The most successful people take time to think -- Needs in life change The art of pairing stretch goals with SMART goals.  Structure.  Write this down Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Timeline Every morning creates a new to do list -- Stretch goals are most important There are practices in order to be productive and practices to be happy 2 Categories What you have What is going to happen Mentals Models -- The stories we tell ourselves prior to the event happening "what are all the things that could possibly go wrong on this flight?" Nurses in a NICU -- Very easy to be overcome with details Saturday Night Live Everyone gets to speak in equal proportion People show each other who is listening There is a psychological safety in their approach Lorne Michaels forces this safety The power of story telling "There is a diversity in how people succeed.  That's why thinking is so important." Continue Learning: Read Chris's Book: Smarter Faster Better Follow Charles on Twitter: @cduhigg To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 073: Jay Bilas - World Class ESPN Basketball Broadcaster, Toughness, Fixing The NCAA Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Charles Duhigg on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by Daor Design - Daor Design will help you build your brand like nobody's business. Most of their work falls into one of four categories: Logo Design, Print Design, Web Design or Digital Marketing. They pride themselves in being a trusted, valued resource for their growing family of clients.

Essentially, our brain has like a limited bandwidth for sort of decision making. So if we're asking our brain to simultaneously focus on what's important and to make decisions about what is important, it's not necessarily overwhelming. We do that all the time, but it will just detract from our ability to focus and make good decisions simultaneously. And so the act of visualization, which is essentially building a mental model, that act just simply allows us to kind of pre-decide so that we don't have to, we don't have to tax our brain quite as much in the moment. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk.

Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. What an intelligent, featured leader tonight. It's Charles Duhigg, reporter for the New York Times, two-time bestselling author, also won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013. His books are titled The Power of Habit, and most recently, smarter, faster, better,

the secrets of being productive in life and business. A few of the topics we got into. How to pair stretch goals with smart goals. Then the power of mental models. Some incredible stories go along with it. And then what Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team and how that relates to Saturday Night Live. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado,

it's Pulitzer Prize winning author Charles Duhigg. Charles, man, I've been a fan of you for quite some time. time now. Big, your work has impacted me in a big way. So welcome to the Learning Leader Show. Thanks for having me on. I have a question around, since you know, you write about habits, you write about ways to obviously improve, be more productive in life and business. I'm curious through all of your work and studying that you've done through the course of your career, what are some of the common themes or characteristics of leaders and people who have, you've done, sustained excellence over an extended period of time?

Well, I think the biggest thing that we find, the researchers find, about why some people are more successful than others, is that they seem to have habits that push themselves to think more deeply, right? You know, one of the things about sort of modern day life, and this is true of sort of this economic revolution that we're living through, is that it is possible to be busy every minute of the day and still get nothing really important done. You could spend an entire day replying to emails and responding to other people's requests and sitting in on meetings and at the end of the day or the end of the week, realize you did not do anything that actually aligns

with your deepest goals. And so the people who are most successful and most productive, what they tend to do is they tend to have what a psychologist call contemplative routines, these habits that are part of their life that push themselves to think more deeply about things like their priorities and the choices that they're making. And they think about how teams work together or how to push themselves to self-motivate. This thinking more deeply is really like the killer app throughout history of why some people are more successful than everyone else. What you just said made me think a lot of Cal Newport's work and deep work. Have you in Cal talked about this? Yeah, I haven't spoken to Cal about it, but I'm a little bit familiar.

with his work. Yeah. He actually said something similar about that because he wrote the book called Deep Work and also So Good They Can't Ignore You. And some of it during my preparation stages for this conversation, I think I was noticing that there are some similarities between what you guys talk about from a Deep Work perspective and the need to do that, specifically when it comes to focus. When you think of people who have sustained excellence or maybe a single person over an extended a period of time. Who is the first person that comes to mind? It has sustained excellence? Yes.

I don't know. I mean, I don't think there is like one person who comes to mind. Like there's clearly like a lot of people who do really impressive work. You know, in the writer's community, I think Michael Lewis is seen as this person who consistently finds really great stories and writes them in amazingly compelling ways. You know, within academics, there's obviously a number of people, David Bryan Davis, for instance, who studied the history of slavery in really, like, new and really exciting ways. I don't know if there's one person who comes to mind, only because there's such a diversity of how people achieve.

And that's really important, right? Like, the thing that you consistently learn is that there is usually not one rule for how people succeed. There is not one kind of, you know, life hack that does everything. That's why thinking is so important is because by thinking more deeply, even just half an inch more deeply than everyone else, what you're really doing is you're pushing yourself to not look for like one trick. You're pushing yourself to think about what this particular situation requires. If we know that, why do so many, in some cases, really smart people fail at simply thinking of taking time to do that work instead of. of being busy all day replying to email?

Well, like, what's an example of that? Because I don't know that there are really smart people who do that. Really? Okay. Interesting. I'm thinking of maybe mentors in either, I don't know if you could speak to some of your examples, but I'm thinking in my life that I would deem them intelligent people, but for whatever, maybe they've got good grades in school. And so some would deem them intelligent or smart because they're able to pass test and with flying colors.

But then when it gets to real life, they don't do quite as well because they're scattered. They're not focused. They're not able. Even though they realize how important it is to do those things, they get caught up in life, so to speak, and they're not able to get important work done. Well, I mean, I think that the people who we tend to think of as smart are the people who tend to do get important work done. But I think in general, I mean, I think we all fall prey to this, right?

It's very, very easy to be reactive, right? In fact, we know that cognitively that our brain basically prefers being reactive to proactive. We prefer to have like a to-do list. And if we have a to-do list, actually, one of the things that we know from neurological studies is that our brain will actually look for the easiest tasks to do and tend to focus on those, or at least the tasks that we can accomplish most quickly because we get a reward from checking it off of our to-do list. But in general, the people who are most successful are the ones who think about what productivity really means to them. And this is an important distinction because very often when people ask, you know, for smarter, faster, better, I spent a couple of years looking at the most productive people and the most productive companies and trying to determine what they did differently from everyone else.

And what came through was that there was not one consistent answer. In fact, for people who, besides coming up with these contemplative routines that push some of the people. themselves to think more deeply. Even the most productive people, they tend not to use the same system of productivity throughout their entire life. In fact, they tend not to use the same system of productivity for more than, you know, at most like a couple of years. And oftentimes, it's like six or seven months. And the reason why is because our needs in life change. So to answer your question, there might very well be a time when someone says, look, the most successful I can be right now is replying to emails, and that's fine. If they've made a conscious decision to do that,

but in general, the people who are most successful are the ones who say, rather than just what is easier, what seems automatic or what feels productive, let me push myself to think about what will actually move the needle, right? If I am, what are my stretch goals? What are the things that I most want to accomplish? And then they write those stretch goals at the top of their to do list to force themselves to think about their priorities and really focus on what they ought to get done. And you talk about the best the best to do list strategy is as pairing stretch goals and smart goals, which are specific measurable, achievable, realistic, and then timeline meaning have a timeline for getting those done. Can you share more the process of

pairing stretch goals and smart goals? Yeah. So when most people write a to do list, what they do is they use it as an external memory aid, right? They just write down a list of things that they want to get done. And what we know is that, As I mentioned, your brain will focus on the things that are easiest, the things that you can get done the fastest. In fact, about 15% of people will actually write down on their to-do list something that they've already accomplished because it feels so good to cross it off and sort of feel that vicarious thrill of productivity. But that's using a to-do list as not for productivity, but for mood repair, right? It's using it to make yourself feel better. And so what's more important is to use your to-do lists to structure your to-do list in a way that pushes you to think about your priorities.

So what researchers say is that at the top of your to-do list, you should write your stretch goal. And your stretch-goal can be like the most important thing you want to get done this week or this month or this year. But something at the top of that list so that every single time you look at that list, you are reminded, this is actually the number one most important thing. This is what I ought to be focused on right now. So if you just spent the last, you know, 20 minutes dealing with emails and you look at your to-do list and it says at the top of the list, my stretch goal for this week is to get that memo done that I've been putting off for two months, then it'll hopefully prompt you to think to ask yourself, why am I spending time on email when I really need to do this memo?

That's what I need to focus on. The problem with writing a big stretch goal, though, is that it can feel overwhelming, right? It can feel like, I mean, the reason we've been putting it off for two months is because it kind of scares us a little bit. it. So the question becomes, how do we translate a stretch goal into something that's really tangible into a plan? And how do we do that really efficiently? And one of the methods that researchers recommend is what you mentioned is smart goals. So it only takes about 45 seconds to do this. You just write down S, it's S-M-A-R-T. S, specifically, what do I want to get done first? M, measurable. How am I going to measure whether it's a success or not? A, let me just make sure

this is achievable. This is something I can actually do. R. Have I set up, to to be realistic about this. If I need to write that memo, do I have my computer open? Have I turned off my email so it won't distract me? Have I closed the door to my office so that no one's going to come in and interrupt me? T, what's the timeline? Is it going to take an hour to write this memo? Is it going to take the rest of the day? Have I set aside that time? It only takes like 45 seconds to do these SMART. But then I actually have a plan. It seems so much easier to start because I know what the first step is. Let's say maybe you can help me with this. sometimes doing these live riffs, I've received emails that are helpful for others.

Let's say my stretch goal, Charles, based on speaking with, you know, 160 plus of the greatest leaders in the world like yourself, is to write a book compiling everything that I've learned over the last 18 to 24 months. Okay. How can, and I'll tell you, I have done a pretty good job of letting other. things like preparing and recording this podcast and writing articles and other things speaking get in the way of sitting down and blocking out time and writing that out. So how could we create a stretch goal for me to get this done? Okay, so let's say the stretch goal is writing a book, right? And let's just come up with the first step in a smart context.

So specifically, what's the first step for that? Is the first step in outline? Is it a proposal? like what's the, what is the first step specifically that you want to get done in, say, the next three days? I would think that writing a proposal is necessary to get that process started, or getting it done, which has already been started. It just hasn't been finished. Okay. So specifically, so specifically what you want to do is you want to finish the proposal.

Correct. Okay. So M measurable. So what is the definition of success for that proposal? Getting it done. Well, but that's not a definition of success. That's not something we can measure, right? Because it's a truism that if you, if you want to get done, like what we need is something we can measure. Does it need to be 10 pages? Does it need to involve, does it need to be something that just captures, you know, these seven ideas that you think are important? Does it need to be something that is ready to be submitted to an editor? What is the criteria for success? I would want it to be ready to be submitted to an editor. Okay, and what exactly does that mean? Does that mean, like, do you have a length in mind?

Do you have, like, a scope in mind? I have a format that has been sent to me by other authors who have published books. Maybe I would even be interested after we're done here of seeing your process as well. Okay, so measurable means that you've satisfied this one format that's been provided to you. Okay, achievable. Is this something that you can actually do? Like, do you believe that you have the capacity to write a, to write a proposal? Yeah, definitely.

Okay. So we're at least focusing on something that's not, like, insane. No. So are realistic. So realistically, what do you need in order to get this thing done? Do you need, so you definitely need some time, right? You need, like, how many hours do you think you need? That's a good question.

I could probably, depending on some of the research, it could be, I don't know, 20 hours. Okay, so let's say 20, you got it aside 20 hours for this. Do you need that, can you do that at home? Or is your family going to be driving you nuts? Okay. Okay. And you got, and do you have like all the research material you need or do you need to go get more research material? There probably is some research that still needs mine, but the bulk of it is done for sure.

And do you need to do interviews, stuff like that or you've got everything? If I told you I'm locking you in a room for 20 hours starting tomorrow, like would you have the stuff you need to realistically get this thing done? The bulk of it, the bulk of it. The bulk of it. Okay. Okay. And so timeline. So you're not, I'm not going to lock you in a room for 20 hours, right? And you do have a life in addition to this. Right. So, so let's say it's going to take you 20 hours. How many hours a day can you spend on it? Two. Okay. So by that token, it's going to take 10 days. You're probably not going to have 10 straight days. So let's say over the next three weeks, you need to schedule right now 10 days with two hours apiece. And the timeline is that in three weeks, that thing is done. Right? So,

And there you go. And look, did we perfectly forecast what this process is going to be like? Probably not. Maybe it's going to end up taking you longer in three weeks. Maybe you find that it takes more than 20 hours. But the point is that, like, you've been putting this off because you don't have any definition or plan around it. It just seems like a big thing that you need to get done. And now you actually have like a plan.

Like you're going to, over the next three weeks, you need 10 days with two hours per day where you can close the door and just work on this thing. and like you might find halfway through, oh, actually I need like an extra 10 hours. So I need to schedule that in. I need to change the T on my smart plan. But the point is that you actually have a structure that allows you to start figuring out what to do next. And we know from study after study that like figuring out what to do next, figuring out like what the first step is and then the next step, that is actually a huge part of simply getting something done. Yeah. So I assume based on you learning these processes.

that you implement them as well for your work. Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. How has that changed your life? Well, so one of the things I do is that every morning I actually write out a brand new to-do list, right? Instead of just carrying over my to-do list from the previous day, I sit down and I write at the top of my to-do list, what's my most important goal for today, for this week, and for this a month?

Do you have it for today? I actually do. So for today, the most important goal for today is that I need to put together this presentation for this week is that I need to put together this guide for the New York Times where I'm a reporter. And for this month is that I need to start some research on the next book project. And it's actually at the top of my list. And the reason why I rewrite that every single morning is because it might very well change from day to day. I might learn something that makes me think, no, no, no, I've got actually, there's something that's more important.

And so this contemplative practice of writing a to-do list every morning, which only takes like basically like a minute and a half, the contemplative practice of doing that, the contemplative routine forces me to think about my priorities and make sure that I'm not just like relying on some priority that was established three weeks ago that it no longer is valid. And then under that, I just really quickly will jot out like a smart plan for all three of those stretch goals. And then, you know, I have like a bunch of other little small stuff, right? Like, you know, go get some money for the nanny or remember to set up. that one babysitter or something like that. And that's at the bottom of the page. And that actually

rolls over from day to day. I don't rewrite that every single day. But the point being is that because it's at the bottom of the page, like if I need a procrastination break, if I need to take like 10 minutes off, I look at that list at the bottom of the page. And it's like, go book the tickets. And I'll take 15 minutes and go book tickets for our next vacation. But the stuff at the top of the page, the stuff that I'm looking at every single day, that's my stretch goals. Those are the most important things. And so as a result, I'm doing the things that actually matter. Instead of getting caught up in this busyness of replying to emails and doing things that just feel easy instead of being important. Have you heard of the five-minute journal? No. It's five-minute journal

something I write in and friends of mine that one of the guys who created it. I think it's, it's catching on now. But the basic premise of the five-minute journal, you take five minutes in the morning in five minutes at night and you write in it, but you write three of your goals for the day. But also, in addition to that, you talk about three things that you are grateful for. How does that play into your process? Because yours seems very tactical. Let's get these things done. Here's exactly what I'm going to do.

And the gratitude portion of it is almost a mindset to your outlook on life. That it's hard to be, as many others have said, it's hard to be hateful if you're grateful, right? So you want to practice that part of. of your brain the muscle and your brain to be grateful and happy for what you have. How do you think that plays within what you do? I mean, I think that is, so let's draw a distinction, right? There's practices that we develop in order to be productive, and there's practices that we develop in order to be happy.

And it's important to sort of recognize the difference there. Both of those are really, really important. But when we focus on sort of gratefulness, that's not because it makes us more productive. that's because it makes our life more pleasurable, right? It makes life worth living because life is not just all about productivity. Now, here's one of the things we know is that I think it's great to remind yourself of what you're grateful of. And we know from a lot of the happiness studies that that will actually make you more content and more at peace. And that being at content and at peace helps you figure out what your goals actually are, right?

Like what you actually want to get done with your life. Now, what's interesting is that when we look at these practices that people use to reflect on themselves, one of the sort of oldest ones and the ones that's received the most study is prayer, simply because prayer has been such a part of human group activities and individual activities for almost longer than anything else. And there's a number of studies on meditation as well, but prayer really has been studied far more. And what's interesting is that prayer tends to break down into two categories. There is the type of prayer that allows people to reflect on what they have and allows them to essentially try and work through, do I have enough?

Am I happy with what I have? Am I sufficiently grateful? And then there's another category of prayer which tends to be focused on what is going to happen in the future, which is really about a planning activity, right? So prayer is actually one of the best contemplative practices that we know, whether we call it prayer, meditation, or just taking a walk and sort of thinking about life, this act of allowing yourself to think is very, very useful because it's usually a structured time when we force ourselves to think a little bit more deeply

about our lives, about the choices that we're making. Now, what's really interesting is if you look at the evolution of prayer, and this is true of meditation as well, is that 300 years ago, prayer used to be an almost exclusively solitary activity. You did not go into a church in order to pray. People tended to pray on their own. And then there was essentially the codification of prayer as a lead activity, which is to say that there was someone at the front of the room, a priest or a monk or someone who would give you some type of intention to pray on. So they would read a piece of scripture or they would share part of the Quran, a sutra from the Quran, or they would.

would share some type of piece of Buddhist learning and ask you to reflect on that. And the reason why that's important is because much like the smart goal process that we just went through, one of the things that we know about contemplative routines is that when they have a structure around them, they tend to become much more powerful. Because if a contemplative routine is purely just enjoyable and relaxing, it tends not to push us to think about hard things. things. But if we have some type of intention, like for instance, a passage of scripture or a Confucian ideal that we're being asked to reflect upon, it oftentimes pushes us to think more deeply about a specific question, which otherwise we might avoid because it's a hard

question to answer. Really interesting, fascinating. You know, as I mentioned, I have a ton of notes from your most recent book. smarter, faster, better. It's incredible. Not only the content, but the, in the manner in which you write it makes it both an educational as well as an entertaining read. Not many people can write that way. I'd love to learn your writing process, but that might be for another conversation. I think now I'd like to dig into more, specifically mental models. This has been a topic that's come up lately. I've read some articles about it and then obviously read your work on it And specifically the stories that you share, whether it's an airline pilot going through something that would have, you know, wrecked a plane for most or even the difference in the way a nurse looks at a baby in the NICU, could you share from a mental model's perspective your viewpoint on how this is, I mean, as a pilot in this story that you share, he says, you can't delegate thinking.

computers fail, checklists fail, everything can fail, but people can't. We have to make decisions, and that includes deciding what deserves our attention. The key is forcing yourself to think as long as you're thinking you're halfway home. So I'd love to expand on the mental models approach and some of your research that you've learned through putting this together for your book, Smarter, Faster, Better. Sure. So mental models are really, really interesting because they're essentially how our brain decides what to focus on and what it can safely ignore.

What's a distraction? And one of the things that we know is that the people who are more productive than others, they tend to have more robust mental models. Their mental models are a little bit more detailed than everyone else. And one way of thinking of a mental model is that a mental model is basically a story we tell ourselves about ourselves as our day proceeds. So a lot of what we know about mental models comes from studying people like firefighters. Like, why are some firefighters so much better than others? The best firefighters, when they walk into a burning building, they tend to start telling themselves a story right away about what they see.

So they walk into a room and they say, okay, what I expect to see in this room is I expect to see like the flames are going to be big in that corner and there's a staircase over there and I expect to see the staircase have a lot of flames on it because stairs burn faster than other parts of a building. And so as a result, when they walk into that room and they're telling themselves that story and they look at the stairs and the stairs have fewer flames than they expect, It makes them think to themselves, okay, pay attention to those stairs.

There's something going on there that might be worrisome or that I just need to pay attention to. And I can ignore the other corner because it looks like basically exactly what I expected. Or think about when you walk into your office in the morning, right? There's all these distractions. There's your phone is buzzing in your pocket. There's emails waiting to be responded to. There's people knocking on your door asking if you can come to a meeting. What we know is that the people who are best, executives who tend to be most successful,

they tend to visualize or tell themselves a story about their upcoming day that's just like half an inch more detailed than everyone else. So most of us say, okay, I've got a meeting from 10 to 11 o'clock. What the best executives will do is they'll say, okay, I have a meeting from 10 to 11 o'clock. And like if I just imagine what's going to happen, like, it's going to start with Jim bringing up that dumb idea he always brings up. And then like Susie's going to disagree with him because Susie always disagrees with Jim. And you know what, at that moment, if I come in with my idea, I'm going to look like the peacemaker. Everyone's going to think I'm brilliant. So they just like tell themselves a story about what they expect to occur that day.

And the reason why that's really powerful is because our brain relies on that narrative to decide in a split second, pay attention to this. You can safely ignore that. The same way that the fireman walks into the, or the firefighter walks into the burning building and says, pay attention to the stairs. That other corner I can safely ignore for right now. So building these mental models, getting into the habit of telling ourselves stories about what is going on as it occurs, that is really, really powerful in terms of preparing our brain to decide what to focus on and what distractions we should not allow to consume us. Does that relate or how do you feel it relates to visualization, I'm sorry, visualization prior to an event, whether that's just, Jason Day closing his eyes and holding his left glove before he's about to hit his next golf shot and doing it every single time, visualizing the path of the golf ball when he hits it or maybe an Olympic gymnast visualizing their floor routine. How does that relate to what you're talking about?

It's basically the same thing, right? What they're doing is they're building a mental model. It's much easier. Essentially, our brain has like a limited bandwidth for sort of decision making, right? So if we're asking our brain to simultaneously focus on what's important and to make decisions about what is important, it's not necessarily overwhelming. We do that all the time, but it will detract from our ability to focus and make good decisions simultaneously. And so the act of visualization, which is essentially building a mental model, that act just simply allows us to to kind of pre-decide so that we don't have to, we don't have to tax our brain quite as much in the moment. Instead, we free up that bandwidth to focus instead of considering alternative scenarios.

And that's really, really powerful. What about the, I love the stories that you use and telling it, specifically the nurses. I found that to one fascinating. The research that went into it for you, how basically two nurses in the NICU could look at the same baby and one could notice maybe a number of different potential issues with that baby. And another one could say, oh, well, the baby's breathing and they're eating okay. So I think the baby's fine.

Can you share that story in more detail? Yeah. So I think the point there, and this is research that was done out of Ohio, is that it's very easy to become overwhelmed by details. So there was a situation in a NICU where a researcher went in, a woman named Beth Crandall was trying to figure out why some nurses were so much better at picking up on early warning signs of problems with infants. And these nurses who are like super nurses,

the other nurses would refer to them as having ESP because they would just glance at a baby and everyone else had been looking at this baby, but they would glance at a baby and they would say, like, something's wrong. Like that baby, all of its vitals might look just fine, but there's something wrong with that child. And even before anyone else knew that there was a problem,

they would be able to somehow detect that this baby was getting sick. So Beth starts talking to these super nurses and asking them, how do you do that? And what she discovers is that each nurse is in this habit of telling themselves a story. Now, they would tell themselves a story about each baby as they walked past it.

So in this one particular case, this woman named Darlene, she had been walking past this crib for the last couple of days, this bassinet. And every time she walked past this bassinet, the baby was crying. Right. And for most nurses, when a baby is crying, it means something is wrong. And if the baby stops crying, it means that baby is doing okay. And in fact, the nurse that was taking care of that baby, She had been monitoring all of the baby's vital signs.

You know, things were a little bit off, but you're in a NICU. Everything is always a little bit off. And this baby had been crying for a couple of days, and finally it stopped crying. And the nurse is supposed to be taken care of it. Thanks to herself, oh my gosh, thank goodness. This baby finally has stopped crying. But Darlene, the super nurse, she walks past this baby. And in her head, she's thinking to herself, you know, I have a story about this baby.

And the story about this baby is every single time I walk past, it's crying. and you know babies cry that's okay and i always check in to see why it's crying and it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong but but the baby's been crying and this time i'm walking past and that baby isn't crying it's doing something different from what i expect it doesn't line up with the story inside my head about that child so she stops and she looks at the child and she realizes that like everything looks fine with a kid except that it just it keeps on not fitting the the story in her head Like, the child had been previously, like, really stubborn, right? They had tried to soothe it.

They had tried to do stuff. It would cry. In fact, it would cry harder the more you touched the baby. That was the normal thing. That was the story inside Darlene's head. But this time when she picked up the baby, the baby kind of grimaced, but it didn't make any noise. It didn't start crying. And she would, she looked at its tummy, and its tummy was like a little bit harder than she expected.

Again, she had a story inside her head of what a child should. look like. Now, from most outside observers, it looked like this baby was doing just fine because it used to be a crying baby and now it's a quiet baby. But to Darlene, Darlene said, no, no, no, no, it doesn't matter that it's not crying now. What matters is it doesn't line up with a story inside my head anymore. I was telling myself a story about this baby and this baby is acting completely different from what I expect. That's a warning sign to me. It doesn't matter whether this baby is crying or not crying. We need to figure what's going on. And it turns out that the child was at the early stages of whole body sepsis, a whole body, basically inflammation and infection that

is oftentimes causes death if it's not treated right away. So even before they get the labs back, Darlene tells a doctor, start this baby on antibiotics immediately. Something is wrong. It just doesn't line up with a story inside my head. But that's how great nurses and great athletes and great executives, that's how they comport themselves, is instead of saying, I'm just going to look back and I'm going to look at like, you know, that oxygen saturation is fine, and this baby was crying, and now it's not crying anymore, and that must be a good sign because a silent baby probably means it's happier. Instead, what they say is, let me forecast what I think should be happening.

And it's going to be different between each baby. But if what I think should be happening, if reality is different from that, that means go pay attention, go see what's going on, figure out, is that a signal of a problem or not? again, fascinating stories and your work's full of them. Can you explain the principle that explains why Saturday Night Live is a hit show? Yeah, so that's actually a completely different type of issue. So that focuses on teams, why some teams are more successful than others. And one of the things that we know is that the most successful teams, they tend to have what's known as psychological safety.

And there was actually an excerpt from the book in the New York Times Magazine about this. Yep, it's great. And it was based on looking at Google. For many years, Google tried to build the perfect team. And initially, they thought that the perfect team was reliant on putting the right people together, right? Maybe like people who are friends away from the conference table or introverts and extroverts. What they figured out that who is on a team matters much, much less than how a team

interacts. If you have the right culture and norms on a team, the right behaviors, then almost any team can be successful. and the right norms, there's two that are more important than anything else. The first is that everyone gets to speak in a roughly equal proportion. This is known in psychology as equality and conversational turn-taking. The second is that in addition to letting everyone speak up and encouraging everyone speak up, is that people show each other that they're listening,

or they engage in ostentatious listening behaviors, where they do things like they repeat what someone just said, or they say, like, what I hear you saying is this, or they pick up on nonverbal cues and they say, Jim, you know, I haven't heard you say anything in a little while, and it looks like you're not that into this conversation. Can you tell me what's going on inside your head? When you have those two behaviors, people all speaking up in roughly equal proportion

and people showing each other that they're listening, you get this thing called psychological safety. And psychological safety studies show is the single greatest correlate with a team being effective as a unit. And so Saturday Night Live is a great example of that. When you think about it, Saturday Night Live should have been a disaster. it's all these comedians, right? Who, like, comedians are not people who are particularly, like, get along very easily.

And the thing about Saturday Night Live is that if your sketch goes on, someone else's sketch is getting cut. So particularly in the early seasons, Saturday Night Live could have been a disaster. There had been a number of other comedy shows that had been disasters. But the reason why Saturday Night Live worked and the reason why it's worked for 40 years is because Lauren Michaels forces psychological safety. If you sit in on a meeting with Lauren Michaels, executive producer of Saturday Live, he will force you to speak up.

You can't make it out of that room without that guy forcing you to talk. And what he does is he listens ostentatiously. So anytime someone says something, he says, like, that's a great idea. What I hear you saying is X and Y and Z. And other people, they start nearing that behavior. They start doing the same thing.

So John Belushi says to Dan Aykroyd, like, what I hear you saying is this thing. and picking up on nonverbal cues. Lauren Michaels creates psychological safety, and that's why Saturday Night Live became such a hit. It was a fascinating story. It feels like maybe even like the New England Patriots in a way from a sporting perspective.

Regardless of who they plug and play, they find a way to get it done, even if some of their superstars are out or missing, and I've been really interested to see why teams are successful. I mentioned it earlier, and I just wanted to, I can't end the conversation without asking you briefly, Charles. And I know we've bounced around a ton here, but that's just because of my note-taking process when studying all of the great work that you've done.

But your style and your writing process is unique. And there are a few others I've read that I really enjoy that right similar to where you will, maybe I don't know the proper way to phrase other than say you will leave a story on edge and then start telling another story and then come back to the conclusion of a previous story. I think of Shane Snow in the book Smart Cuts, and there are others who do this.

But where did you learn that style of writing? Well, so I've been a journalist for almost 15 years now. So I spend a huge amount of time thinking about storytelling and thinking about. And I think I just learned it from reading, a lot and what I like. You know, my basic philosophy is that there are some really important ideas in this world, but if it's not interesting and entertaining to learn them, then nobody does. And more importantly, you end up forgetting them. So you have to embed ideas in stories.

And the stories I love the most are the stories that like, where it seems like, you know, death and disaster is right around the corner. And I don't know how the hero is going to work their way out of it. So that's why I tell stories about, you know, planes that are on, that might crash into the ocean or or FBI cases where someone has been kidnapped and they're trying to rescue the victim or or you know poker games where someone learn someone's playing for two million dollars is because by creating this the suspense and by telling a story it just becomes so much more interesting and entertaining to learn the idea when you when you bounce back and forth between stories and leave kind of kind of leave you on edge and then go to another one Do you initially write all of the stories out and then when you're structuring it for a book or an article, you will change it afterwards? No. No, I write the chapter. I write the chapter linearly. Like, I write the chapter as it's read. Interesting. Interesting. Because I mean, I have very extensive outlines. Yeah. So it's not as if it's not as if there's, I know where the chapter is going before I start writing.

it. Yeah. But, but yeah, no, it's not, I, I have to,

I think sort of the artistry of writing, it compels, um, less cutting and pasting than, then sort of just writing things out

and then trying to figure out to fix them together. Yeah, I, I, I, just fascinated by the, the process of putting

together great work. And I think that's, those are some of the things that I think about is how some of the great minds, Pulitzer Prize winners, put together, their great work. work to be digested by other people.

So like you said, we can learn it and retain it and remember what was said. And your method of storytelling is fascinating to me. And it certainly helps with retention of the information. And so Charles, I just want to thank you and acknowledge the fact that I appreciate you doing that. And thank you for being here on The Learning Leader Show. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? If they just Google Charles Duhigg or smarter, faster, better, or the power of habit, my site will come up and the books are sold on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and any bookstore that you go to.

So, yeah. Great. Well, thanks again for being here, Charles. I really appreciate it. Love learning directly from you. And I certainly want to continue this dialogue as we both progress, man. Thanks for having me on. All right.

Thanks. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over. but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12.

Thanks again and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show.