The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 237: AJ Jacobs - The Power of Irrational Confidence (Life As An Experiment)

Episode Date: December 25, 2017

The Learning Leader Show Episode 237: AJ Jacobs - The Power of Irrational Confidence (Life As An Experiment) A.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, lecturer and human guinea pig. He has written four New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor and a dash of self-help.  He is also editor at large at Esquire magazine, a commentator on NPR and a columnist for Mental Floss magazine. He is currently helping to build a family tree of the entire world and holding the biggest family reunion ever in 2015. In addition to his books, Jacobs written for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and New York magazine. He has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, The Dr. Oz Show, Conan and The Colbert Report.  He has given several TED talks, including ones about living biblically, creating a one-world family, and living healthily. "It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting." Show Notes: Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence: Self delusion -- Optimism helps you do incredible things.  Acting "as if" "It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting." Great curiosity -- "I'm curious about everything... Even things that don't interest me." Why he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica Why the "good ole days" actually sucked -- Studying this made him very grateful for being alive today The practice of radical honesty and how it got him in trouble -- He was forced to tell the full truth at all times Can be good or bad Gratitude -- Common among the greatest achievers -- be thankful for everything. "When you're grateful for something as small as the elevator door opening, you're much happier." It's All Relative -- Building a world family true.  How we are related.  How he is related to President Barack Obama... It helps with perspective and tolerance... We're more tolerant of people we are related to The Global Family Reunion event Why his experiments drive his wife crazy -- The year of living biblically -- Why it was so hard to follow the exact words of the Bible Harvard studies -- If we share DNA, people are more open to help one another Why we need to get out of the echo chamber Typical day -- stretch, treadmill desk, write and walk at the same time, walking keeps him alert Importance of "walks with wife" -- raises serotonin Batching activities -- Phone calls It's lonely as a writer... AJ needs to speak with other creatives often: "I need to bounce ideas of of others in between the alone time" Doing "Skype" lunches.  He eats lunch with friends over Skype Best advice he's heard: From George Clooney -- "When I get up to bat, I don't think Am I going to hit a home run? I think, where will I hit this home run?" -- The importance of irrational confidence.  Delusional optimism is helpful. Stage presence (when speaking) -- Why you "owe it to the audience" to think "you're the baddest dude on the planet" and will deliver for THEM "When I got up to bat, I didn't think, "Am I going to hit a home run?" I thought, "Where will this home run go?" -- George Clooney on the importance of self confidence Social Media: Read: It's All Relative Follow AJ on Twitter: @ajjacobs Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12

Perfectionism is just the enemy of productivity. Just know that you can always go back and change it, always go back and throw it away. But otherwise, I feel I would be paralyzed. This episode is brought to you by Gusto. Gusto is making payroll benefits and HR easy for small businesses. Modern technology does the heavy lifting, so it's easy to get things right. PCMag and fit small business have called Gusto the best payroll for small businesses. Gusto saves you time.

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Text learners to 4-4-222. in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world to discuss the latest trends and topics in the space of leading and serving others, text learners, to 4-4-222. Now, on to tonight's featured leader with one of the most interesting people in the world. It's A.J. Jacobs, author, journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig. He's written four New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor and a dash of self-help. He's appeared on Oprah, the Today's Show, Good Morning America, CNN, Dr. Oz, Conan, and Colbert.

A fascinating talk. A few of the topics we got into. The importance of self-delusion and how it can help you. Then why the good old days were actually horrible. Then his year of living biblically and writing about it, a book that people from all over the world loved. then how understanding we are all related can make us more tolerant. Again, this dude is fascinating. I think you'll get a lot out of it. It's A.J. Jacobs.

AJ, man, pumped to have you on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thank you. I am delighted to be here. It's been years in the making. We were just talking how we've had an email string going on for years. And so I'm excited now that we're making it happen, man. I know. Well, it's good to build up the anticipation. It is. It got me even more excited. And you have more work come out since we started talking. So I'm excited to talk about that too along with some of your previous work. So, but I have to ask you because you're, you always when I've heard your interviews or I read your writing, you give the most thoughtful and thought provoking answers. So I'm not trying to build you up too much. Just like, you know, that's very stressful. Just to, yeah, I know, just to add stress. But let's see how you do. So I'm, I'm curious though, because you experiment, you study. you write and you're thinking and you're noticing things.

But from your perspective, when you've, as you look around and you lift your head up and you do make some experiments and you have conversations with other insightful people, what have you found are the most common themes of those who have sustained excellence? That is a great question. I would say one common theme that comes to mind is self-delusion because I find that I need to, I'm not necessarily optimistic by nature, but I find that to really do something, if you're an entrepreneur or writer or anything, optimism really helps. So I have to sort of convince myself to be optimistic. So I'll give you a couple examples like one is I was writing this book about health, and I'm no expert.

My books are I take on a topic I know nothing about, and then I dive in and try to. learn everything. But it was very stressful because it's such a big topic and I'm totally out of shape. So I would wake up every day filled with despair. But then I would act as if I knew what I was doing. So it was a lot about acting as if. And I would call and set up interviews with experts and I would call my publisher and say, well, when the book comes out, we should have a big party and we should serve kale martinis or Brussels Sprout martinis. So I acted, I pretended like I was doing great and after a couple of hours, your brain kind of catches up with your actions and you do start to feel more confident. And, you know, there's a great quote that I wish I could

take credit for, but it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. So I really believe that. And I've seen it when I talk to other, I don't know if they're leaders, but people who are really excellent at their job. I remember talking to the comedian Mike Berbiglia, who is very fun. I don't know if you know his work, but very, very successful. And I asked him a similar question, and he said, yeah, the chances of his succeeding in comedy, this very hard business, were so slim that he had to delude himself, for years thinking, all right, well, I am going to succeed. There's no doubt in my mind.

Because if he hadn't deluded himself like that, then he would have given up. So that is one thing I see. And of course, just as a caveat, it has its downsides. If I deluded myself that I could be an NBA player and just kept thinking that for the rest of my life, that would not be a happy life because I'm never going to be an NBA player. But so you have to balance it a little with with reality, but at the end of the day, I do think it's a very important skill for leaders, for anyone. So you've written about the fact that your life, living your life as an experiment, and you have these really interesting books, including the year of living biblically, one man's humble quest to follow the Bible as literally as possible. And I was fascinated to hear, to read this and to hear your stories.

And I guess I'm curious as to what is it that makes you want to do some of these crazy experiments and then document them for all of us to learn about? Well, I love learning. I definitely, I'm very curious. I once interviewed Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy. And he had a great quote that it makes no sense, but it still resonates with me. It's that he said, I'm curious about everything, even things that don't interest me, which I thought was nice. And I think that's true. Well, even if you start, any topic can be interesting.

Like stucco, the history of wicker chairs can be interesting if you dive in and go deep enough. But anyway, I love to learn. And so I thought one way to learn is to actually live it. And so I lived by the Bible to learn. I knew nothing about religion. But I decided to follow all the rules of the Bible, the Ten Commandments, Love Your Neighbor, but also don't shave the corners of your beard. I didn't know where the corners were, so I just let the whole thing grow.

So I looked like ZG Top or the Unabomber. The Bible says stone adulterers, so I tried that. I used small stones, so I didn't get arrested. but I find it's a very good way to learn about something. And I will say, I think it's a good way to live, even if you're not writing a book about it, I think that it's how you discover new things, is how you keep your mind fresh. And it doesn't have to be wearing robes and sandals and having a huge beard. It could just be trying a new toothpaste every week or trying a different word processing.

software. It could be anything. Just making little experiments to see what makes your life better. Isn't CBS now creating a sitcom based on your work in that book? That is true. Yes. It comes out in January. It's about, yeah, it's based on the year of living biblically. And it's a guy who I went to the filming of the pilot. And they do have the scene where my character, Stones an Adulterer. And so I got to keep the, the foamy stone as a souvenir. Wow, that is incredible. I love the fact that your work then is being adapted into other areas.

So where do you think this curiosity comes from? Is it from your upbringing, your parents, siblings? What is it that has just created this innate curiosity within you? That's a good question. And I'm not sure. I think partly it's that I do realize that anything, any topic, almost any topic can be interesting once you get into it. And that, that I think, helps because you just got to stick with it for a little bit. That's what I tell my kids, they don't believe me. But when I'm helping them

with homework, I'm actually, I like reading their textbooks. I like learning new. I just learned about the cattle drives of the 1800s. I knew very little about them. But I think it is a very useful skill and you can cultivate curiosity. Again, maybe with a little self-delusion. Say, you know, pretend, hey, act as if this is really interesting. Like when you're talking to someone, act as if you're fascinated by them and you eventually will become a little more interested. You may still, your eyes may still glaze over sometimes, but you will have a better life if you try to be interested in other things. What about your Hummel quest to become the smartest person in the world? And you attempted that by, I believe, reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, the entire

one. That's true. A to Z. How long did that take? And what was the process there? That took about a year and a half. And I started because my dad was, he loved reading, he loved learning. And when I was in high school. He started to read the Encyclopedia Britannica, and he didn't quite finish. He made it up to like a boomerang or Bolivia, somewhere in the bees. And I thought, well, maybe I should try to finish what he began and remove that black mark from our family history. So I did, and I knew I was going to write a book about it. So I document the book, sort of the, it's a combination of like the most interesting facts, weirdest, craziest stuff I learned, but also. Also adventures like going on who wants to be a millionaire and how it affected my home life.

My wife started to penalize me $1 for every irrelevant fact. I inserted it into conversation. So it was definitely an interesting year and a half. I will say one of the big takeaways for me is it made me so much filled me with gratitude, made me appreciate my life so much more because when you read about history, although all the whole sweep of human history, you know, the good old days were not good. The good old days sucked. They were heart, they were disease-ridden, they were smelly, they were dangerous, not to mention, of course, racist, sexist, homophobic, the whole thing. And I'll just give you, there are hundreds

of examples of this, but I remember in particular reading, about the, it was called the tobacco enema. So this was a couple hundred years ago. If you had a stomach ache, they would, you would go to a doctor and they would literally take a hose on one end and then tobacco smoke on the other. And you know, the phrase blow smoke up your ass, that's what it was. They thought that this was how to cure their ills. So that's just one small indignity that you had to face in olden days.

And it made me realize with all our problems, and we have a lot of them, we are just in a much better. We're very lucky to be alive right now. Some of your work can be controversial at times, and I've seen multiple people write about this one, an article called, I think you're fat. And it was an experiment you conducted with, I believe, with radical honesty. So it was a lifestyle of total truth telling, which I believe there's a therapist who promoted this style of living. And you share both the pros and the cons of telling everyone the full truth at all times. What did you learn from that experiment?

That was one of the greatest and worst couple months. of my life. Because as you say, I did this experiment. It's this guy in Virginia, a psychologist who believes not only should you never lie, but he goes further. He says, whatever's on your brain should come out of your mouth. No filter. So this, as you know, if you have a fantasy about sleeping with your wife's sister, you've got to say, tell your wife and tell her sister. So in some senses, it's absolutely dreadful and I'm lucky to still be married. I never, she doesn't have a sister, so I never use that in real life. But let me give you one pro, an example of a con, and then an example of some pros and how it changed my life. It did change my life for the better

in some ways. So the cons would be like we went to a restaurant and my wife saw these friends of hers that she had seen since college and she said, oh, hello. And they said hello. And they said, oh, we should all get together and hang out and have a play date with our kids. And I said, you seem nice, but I never want to see you again. Because that was what was on my mind. And that's what I had to say. And of course, they were horrified. My wife was horrified.

I was horrified. And I mean, we never did see them again. So there's that. But in some ways, it's hurtful a way to live. But the pros are a couple of things. One, it doesn't have to all be mean. You know, you can be radically positively honest. So I remember one day I was thinking about my first job and my boss who was great.

So I was like, you know, if I'm being totally honest, I should tell him what's on my mind. So I called him and told him what a great mentor he was and to thank him. And it was a little awkward, you know, because like I hadn't talked to him in 10 years. but it was also very lovely and I hope he enjoyed it and I definitely felt better afterwards. So there are ways to be radically positively honest that are good. And the other advantage I have is I find it very freeing that when I screw up, I'm much more honest than I used to be. So I don't say, you know, try to deflect it. I'm like, you know what?

I screwed up big time. I'm sorry, this is what I did, and this is how I'm going to try not to do it in the future. And that, I think, is a very freeing and good way to live. It seems to me a commonality between a few of these, whether it's your studying history and the way people used to live in the myth of the good old days or when you're being radically honest is the fact that you're realizing gratitude and why you should be grateful for some of the things that we're all fortunate to have, and that seems to be a common theme. Oh, yeah, that is a huge common theme.

And that was in the Bible experiment as well. You know, the Bible says that you should be thankful for everything. So I took that literally, and I pressed the elevator button, and I'd be thankful the elevator came, and I'd get in the elevator. I'd be thankful it didn't plummet to the basement and break my collarbone. And it was weird. It was a weird way to live. How would you, like, did you say it in your head?

Would you say it aloud? Would you write it in your notebook? How would you be grateful for it? Yeah, I would say it in my head or out loud. It does help to say it out loud. You look a little bit like a crazy person. I mean, now you can pretend that you're talking on your wireless earbuds. But, yes, so just to say, thank, you know, I'm so thankful that this elevator arrived

because it makes you realize there are hundreds of things that go right every day. and we focus on the three or four that go wrong. I think that we are evolutionarily programmed to focus on the bad things because there are advantages of that back in caveman days, but it's not a path to happiness. So it's much better to find. And actually, my next book that I'm supposed to be finishing in four days, and I'm going to miss the deadline, sorry if my publisher is listening,

but it is all about gratitude. I take one of my great pleasures in life, which is my morning cup of coffee, and I try to thank every single person who made it possible. And I go wide. So I thank the barista, but I also went to Columbia and thanked the farmers who grew the beans, the truckers, the people who made the tires for the truck,

you know, the people who got the rubber for the tires. So on and on. And you can do this. And, of course, I could spend the rest of the truck. of my life thanking people because you can for my one cup of coffee because if you go if you think of it broadly enough you know hundreds of thousands of people were involved in making my little cup of coffee oh i like that so do you actually travel around to go and personally thank those people i did i went to columbia and i thank the farmer and i they they let me do some coffee bean picking apparently

i'm terrible i suck at at bean picking they told me because i you got to to pick the cherries that are a certain color red, and I was going too yellow or too green. So I need some practice there. But yeah, it was really interesting to see how much good. And it also made my life better in little ways. Like, you know, when I drive, I'm not a very good driver, but when I do drive, I hate when trucks pass me. You know, you can't see.

You're afraid they're going to veer into you. And it's just so irritating. But that's a very privileged point of view because if there were no trucks, then I wouldn't be having my coffee. I wouldn't have Amazon Prime. All these wonderful things in my life are because of these pain in the ass loud trucks. So it's just made me a little more less annoyed about trucks. I'm like, you know what? Trucks aren't so bad.

They make my life better. Huh. I like this way of thinking. I always try to think of how people who are listening could implement this in their lives. And so I think from the first part of this conversation, it's very easy to deduce this practice and method of being grateful constantly for everything and how that could impact your life. And I've had other people on who have written a thank you know today for 365 days and they've talked about how that could impact their lives. So I think gratitude is an important message. But I want to shift gears a little bit, AJ, because there's some of your most recent work that I want to talk about.

And the reason I want to talk about it is because you and I are distant cousins. We absolutely are. We are. You are family. I feel very close to you. So do I. And even though we don't get to see each other all the time, but we're distant cousins. And so I want to talk about the fact that you, a couple things in regards to your latest book titled It's All Relative, talking about your family and our family.

Can you share what it was that made you want to write this book called It's All Relative? Sure. And this does definitely have some practical takeaways. So I'll just give the background and then give some thoughts of how it's changed my life for the better. It started because a few years ago I got an email out of the blue from this guy and he said, you don't know me, but I'm your eighth cousin. And I thought, of course, okay, this guy is going to now ask me to wire $10,000 to his bank in Nigeria. I was very skeptical, but turned out he was legit. He really is my eighth cousin,

and he's part of this group of people who are building a family tree. It's not a family tree. It's a forest. It's hundreds of thousands, millions of people on the same family tree, and it's growing exponentially. And in about 10 years, if it keeps going, all seven billion people are going to be on the same family tree. And it is, it is just wild to see. And it's because of these breakthroughs in DNA. It's because of the breakthroughs in sort of collaborative online work. Like Wikipedia meets a family tree, thousands of people working on the same one. And it connects people in sort of a six degrees of Kevin Bacon way. So Barack Obama, for instance, is my fifth great aunt's, husband's father, wife's seventh great nephew. That is the literal verifiable fact.

Not that he's returned my calls or come to Thanksgiving, but it is, it is nice. So I like this for two reasons. I dove into this and wrote all about it. I mean, one is it is a little bit of a perspective changer along the lines of the gratitude because it makes you a little more tolerant of other people. I call it the Judge Judy effect. I always hated Judge Judy, the TV personality. I just thought she was so obnoxious. But then I checked, and she's like my sixth cousin.

And rational or not, it shifted my perspective. And I'm like, you know what, she's not so bad. She's probably nice on the inside. This is just her shtick, and I should be a little more understanding. So it was an interesting shift, and I think I try to hold that view as much as I can, even if I disagree with people. So that was one. And the other that might be more irrelevant to your audience is that it is the ultimate social network. It is hilarious in how well it were.

It's like LinkedIn times 10, because if you go on these websites, and I can tell you what they are and figure out how you're related to people. This is how I got a tremendous amount of publicity for this event I did, called the Global Family Reunion, where I tried to reunite the whole family. But I would look up a producer at ABC or a reporter at USA Today, and I would figure out how they were related to me. Then I would write them a note and say, you know what, you may not know this, but you're my seventh cousin, and I'm doing this event and I'm wondering as a family member,

would you be willing to write it up? And 30% of the time, I think it freaked people out and they're like, stay away from me forever. But a surprisingly large number of time, people were intrigued. They're like, oh, my God, that is so weird. What a connection. I can't believe it. So just finding this connection between people, it's, it's. a great way to network to link up.

I was looking through some of the stats and this one, I'll pull a few out. So Iceland's population is interbred so much that they have an iPhone app that allows potential dates to see if they are cousins. That is insane. That's crazy. Because they have the name system. It's hard to tell who, what family they're from. So there is a high danger of sleeping with your cousins.

And so they have this, I think the slogan is like bump phones before you bump body parts. And, yeah. In the app before you bump in bed. There you go. That's it. So, yeah, just be careful if you're in. Well, I guess most of us are not Icelandic, so that we would be fresh meat. But, yeah, that is, I mean, family is such a fascinating.

It's so, it's changed more in the last 20 years than it's changed. in centuries, just with gay marriage, surrogate marriage. I mean, DNA of three parents, can you imagine? They just legalize that in Britain, where you can get the DNA of a third person and to get rid of some of the disease-ridden DNA. I mean, it's just going to get weirder and weirder and I happen to like it. I think it's fun to, you know, have this grand buffet of different types of families. I think that some of my more conservative cousins are going to continue to be freaked out. But I find it to be overall a good thing. What do your close family members, like, what do they think of you? You have this distinct voice that I find I love. I think

It's pleasant and it's interesting and you're so thoughtful and curious. And I think everyone's probably saying, I wonder what AJ is going to do next. I know I do. What does your close-knit family think of you and your actions and experiments and all that you do? I think it's a mixed reaction. I think something, some stuff my life genuinely likes. With the Bible book, for instance, I do think I became a better person in some ways. I'm less, I'm still self-centered and greedy and covetous and all that, but I'm less.

I've been able to curb it a little, and I try to be kinder and think of my neighbor. So in some ways, I've gotten better. But in other ways, these experiments drive my wife crazy. Like, for instance, in the Bible, it says that in Leviticus, you cannot touch a woman during her time of month, her period. And if you take Leviticus really literally, it says you cannot sit on a seat where a menstruating woman has sat. So my wife found this offensive and sat in every seat in our apartment while she was missed. And so I had to stand for the entire year, which turned out, I later did a book about health, as I said. And standing, of course, is much better for you than sitting.

So she was kind of doing me a favor. So you read the Bible word for word all the way through and then we're able to remember it all that closely. I mean, how do, and most people can't do that. How were you able to remember it so you didn't say, oh, I slipped up. I didn't follow it exactly. Oh, no. Well, I slipped up all the time. I mean, you've got to get used to failure and imperfection.

I think that's a big part of my life. But, yeah, I had a list of, I printed out a list, you know, 70 pages, over 700 rules. And I would just carry it around and do my best. But, of course, yeah, always breaking rules. trying. And part of it was to show there was sort of two main thrusts. One was that we should not take the Bible literally. And people who say the world was created 5,000 years ago or that homosexuality is an abomination because the Bible says it. And, you know, well, it's like, well, what are you going to do with the fact that the Bible also says wearing clothes made of mixed fibers? That's an

abomination too. Why are you not obsessed with wearing polycotton blends? So part of it was to show the Bible has some great parts, a lot of compassion, but it should not be taken literally. And part of it was just to see if I could do this moral makeover. The parts of the Bible I agree with about being more compassionate and being less covetous or less gossipy, can I do that and I was as I say able to do it somewhat I mean and a lot of a lot of the progress was made by what I talked about right at the start which was pretending pretending to be a better person and eventually become a little bit of a better person yeah I think you're quote act it's easy to act your way into a new way of thinking instead of think your way into a new way of acting and so your act as if I think of the

movie boiler room I don't know why I guess that quote just came up act as if those guys are selling over the phone and that That's the advice, the more tenured brokers we're giving to the young guys, that it could be helpful. And it sounds like you've instituted that. And it's actually helped you because I think that's the whole point of this, too, AJ, is for us to learn from your experiments and your experiences so that it could better improve our journey as we're looking to lead better lives, have a profound influence on others and help them, really.

And it sounds like a lot of your work has made you better in that regard. Yeah. And it's funny. I had not focused on the boiler room. I saw it a long time ago. But obviously, it's a tool that can be used for good or bad. You can act as if you're a good person. Or you can act as if you're a total scam artist and become a better scam artist.

So I guess the lesson is it's a tool. And hopefully it's a tool to be used for the good. So you do these experiments, but then you also write about all of them and publish them in articles and books. and you've done that for many years now. What is your process, your creative process for writing and putting out great work? Well, thank you for saying it's great. Some is hopefully good. Some sucks.

And that's part of it is being okay with knowing that, well, I once did an article on creativity, and I interviewed all these experts on creativity and these professors. And they talked a lot about it's a numbers game. and Mozart wrote some terrible symphonies and Picasso has some bad paintings out there so you just got to produce a lot and know that some of it's going to be good and some of it's not.

So you can't be too precious. So that was one. And another is I do get writers block quite a bit and one of the methods I use is it relates to what we were just talking about. acting as if I will just start typing. It doesn't matter almost what the words are. I'll start typing.

There's a pigeon on the window ledge, and it's trying to eat the stone. And just the action of moving my fingers over the keyboard, it clicks. It gives me something, some sort of motivation, some sort of momentum. And eventually I'll start writing semi-coherent message. sentences. But I know that it can take a while. I know that the first half hour, hour, maybe two hours of writing are going to be thrown away, but that I have to start doing something or else I'll just sit there in front of my blinking cursor for the entire day. So the friction, as James Clear told me, is at the beginning for you. You've got to get going and

create some sort of momentum, even if it's not good in your mind. It creates some sort of momentum and then realizing you're going to get to the state at some point that, okay, this is the AJ Jacobs work that I'm used to or I'm even better than I was on my previous book. Right. Exactly. You've got to accept that not every word is going to be stellar and be okay with that. Yeah, perfection. I tell my kids all the time.

Perfectionism is just the enemy of productivity. Just know that you can always go back and change it, always go back and throw it away. But otherwise, I feel I would be paralyzed. I want to go back real quick to the part of it from It's All Relative that I think could be helpful that I want to maybe we can pull out a little bit more. And that's in regards to a tolerance and especially today. I think this unfortunately can be lacking at times. People grab hold of their point of view and fight to the death and try to convince others as to why that's right as opposed to more open-minded. And I think it's all relative is proof that we're all kind of a mix of

races and thoughts and people and we're all technically related. And that can help, as you mentioned a little bit, help us be more tolerant of other people. And I'd love for you to discuss more when it comes to that because I'm not trying to be too high and mighty. But I do think this is important for us as we progress as leaders to be more tolerant of people and put yourself in their shoes, understand where they're coming from, their upbringing. what may make up their beliefs, that could help us all improve, I think. Well, yeah, I love to hear you say that because I do think in the last year, even tribalism has increased in this idea that I'm on this team and you're on that team, us versus them

thinking. And I think it's very harmful. And I do find it a helpful heuristic. and remember that we share 99.9% of our DNA and that we are all a mix of each other and we share, you know, a 35th great-grandparent and we should try to do him or her proud. And I do think that there's some interesting literature, some science on this, that a Harvard study showed that Israelis and Palestinians who were told that they had the shared DNA were more open to negotiating with the other. So there is some science to show that this helps. There's also the science about how, I think it was in Colorado, they took a group of moderate conservatives and a group of moderate

liberals and they interviewed them before at the start of the day and then they separated them and put them in separate rooms and had them talk about their opinions. And, Basically, the result was they radicalized. The conservatives became more conservative, and the liberals became more liberal. And the conclusion was that we really need to get out of the echo chamber. We really need to interact and talk with people of different points of view so that we don't end up radicalizing. And there's a lot of writing about how. social media has caused us to radicalize because we are in these little bubbles, these echo chambers.

And I think that there is some truth to that. So, yeah, I would say making sure to read points of view that you disagree with, but even more, talk to people that you disagree with and try to have a civil conversation and see if you can make any headway, because that really is. I think just talking is really the only solution. Yeah. What's maybe a broad question, but I'm still curious. What's a typical day it look like in your life? I would say for me, I need, if it's going to be a writing day, not every day is a writing day, but if it is going to be a writing day, but if it is going to be a writing day, I do need a three or four hour stretch to do it because, as I say, I need that warm up. I need to know that that first half hour is disposable.

So there's that. And I also, for my health book, I did buy a treadmill and sort of jerry-rigged a desk on it. So I do try to write and walk at the same time, even if it's just emails. Because there is some good science on how walking keeps you. alert, keeps the serotonin up. Because if I am sitting at my desk too long, I will literally fall asleep on my keyboard. That is a danger. I've found something that my wife and I have put into practice is where we go on walks, just us too, where we have children and a lot of responsibilities, but we've set aside time to regularly go on walks and sometimes they're quite long. And we have both

come up with some of our best, most creative ideas, things to do, whether it's for this podcast or other aspects of our life. And I know this may seem like a, I don't know, a weird topic for people, but I think if people instituted it could help them, what is walking? How can that, I'm sure you've studied this. And I, I, if I'm a little bit flying blind here, but I would imagine you have, what can walking do for people, especially creatives or people who are trying to be more creative. Well, I love that you say that because it's odd. I just had a walk with my wife yesterday, and it's really productive. And so I love what you say. And from the health book, I did read some literature on how it keeps you more alert. And the evolutionary biology theory is, you know, if you're a

hunter and you have to be walking for days, tracking the, you know, the elk that it raises your serotonin and keeps you more attentive. So I am all for that. I love that idea. And I actually, I've done a couple of walking meetings. I want to do that more. So instead of going to lunch with someone, just take a walk with them. And there is also further evidence that walking in nature is particularly good.

Somehow, you know, we were evolutionarily designed to be around trees and grass and plains. So going for a walk in the park might even be better for you. then just walk in the streets. Yeah. So you usually will need a three or four hour block with knowing the first 30 to 60 minutes of that block of writing is going to be tossed away. What else? I also, I do try to, this is nothing new, but to batch activities. So if I have a bunch of calls trying to do that all in the same hour, as a writer, I am often alone.

and I do think that that is just terrible for your psyche. I mean, I think the sounds flip, but I think I know why all these writers committed suicide, like Hemingway and Sylvia Platt. It's just depressing being in a room by yourself. So I do try to make an effort to have that hour or two where I'm calling people or talking with them because I think creativity, you need both. You need to be able to bounce ideas off each other. And then you also need the alone time, like Susan Kane talks about the importance of quietude, quietness.

But I do think some of our best ideas come from interacting with others. So I do try to have talks with people. And actually, it's funny that we're on Skype now because since I work alone, sometimes I will set up what I call a Skype lunch. So I'll order in and my friend will order in and then we'll talk over Skype or FaceTime and it's great because you know you don't have to wait for the check. You don't have a waiter coming to ask, you know, everything okay.

Yeah, no, we don't need that. And it saves time on the commute. My friend who's very tech savvy actually will do backgrounds like a Parisian cafe. and I highly recommend the video chat lunch. I love it. It's a great idea. We've given a ton of advice throughout this whole talk, AJ.

Is there anything I may have missed? Is there this nugget of advice that maybe you were given that you've implemented that's helped you or that you'd like to give to potentially someone who's ambitious in their career wanting to grow within a company or maybe they're venturing off on their own? Is there something you could share with them that could possibly impact them? Well, let's see. I mean, this is a little bit of a repeat of what I said started with about sort of having confidence. But it calls to mind.

I write for Esquire Magazine, and I once did a profile of George Clooney, who is, you know, as charming as advertised, delightful man. But I asked him a similar question, and he said, so I'll steal his answer. He talked about how in high school, he was on the high school baseball team, maybe it was college. But he said, when he got up to bat, he wouldn't think, am I going to hit a home run? He would think to himself, all right, I'm hitting a home run. Will it be to the left, to the field, right field, center field, let me choose. And even though you're still going to get out two-thirds of the time, that confidence will raise your batting average. So, you know, the whole delusional optimism that we talked about in the beginning, I think that that is a really,

important tool for entrepreneurs. As long as you have some reality to back it up, as I say, I could do that all day, but since I'm a terrible baseball player, I would still be batting like 80. So have some reality checks, but do, if you're really going to succeed, I think it's important to tell yourself, you know what, this is going to happen or else you'll just curl up in a fetal position. It's funny you say that, AJ. My dad and I have talked about your rational confidence, specifically when it comes to giving a speech, because my dad is one of the most,

maybe the most humble person I've ever met. But he says, and we both are asked to give talks up on stages sometimes in front of a lot of people. And he says, look, being humble and having humility is absolutely necessary, except for one brief moment right before you're getting ready to walk up on that stage, you say to yourself, I am the baddest dude up here. And I'm getting ready to go kill But in a way, it sounds funny and it's weird, but it actually works. Like it really does. You can build up a little bit of that George Clooney type confidence to go up there and just kill when you get up on stage because that's what they're paying you or that's what the audience deserve. So you've got to you owe it to them to think that way once you're doing it.

Now, I don't think you should think that way about yourself all the time. But I think there are there are brief moments where you got to think you're the baddest dude in the planet and you're going to go up there and kill. and it sounds very familiar to where am I going to hit a home run or how many points are we going to win by, not if we're going to win when you're playing a game. Those types of thoughts, I think, can be helped. What does your dad do? Well, he led a thousand-person sales organization for 30 years, and now he's in the great world of semi-retirement where he just goes and still gives talks but doesn't formally work for

anybody anymore. It just works for himself, so it's pretty cool. What kind of sales did he do? Uh, information based, uh, technology sales. So yeah, they were, they were, he was leading, yeah, about a thousand people for, for many years. And, uh, he's, uh, my number one mentor. I go to on a daily basis. We talk about that. And that's something he told me as I was, you know, sometimes you get a little nervous. I'm sure you do. You get up on stage and you're a little nervous and you're, you're thinking about like, how am I going to do? And he's like, hey, man, that's not the time for

that. Like, you use that and know that it's time to roll. It's time to roll because you owe it to that audience to do it. Well, I love that second part, too, that you owe it to the audience, because I do find that a major motivator. It's like, you know, I've had a, I've been very lucky. I've had a good life, but trying to do things, keeping in mind my kids or other people, you know, as I've gotten older, I've gotten a lot sappier. And that now motivates me. Before, if it's all about me and I fail, like, then it's devastating. But if it's that I'm trying to make others people happy, then it takes some of the pressure off. And it's like, you know what?

I'm just doing the best I can. And I'm trying to help in any way I can. So if I fail, I can know that I was doing it for a greater cause. And that I think is very motivating. Yeah, I love it. Well, AJ, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming on. It's good to have my, finally have my distant cousin on the show.

I would encourage everyone to get, it's all relative adventures up and down the world's family tree by A.J. Jacobs. And it's been so much fun to have this conversation. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? AJ Jacobs.com or follow me at A.J. Jacobs or my Facebook. But yeah, I loved talking, Ryan. And by the way, have you done an episode with your dad? I have. I have. Check out episode number 200. And I think you'll like it. He's gotten a lot of good response from which I'm very happy. He deserves all of it that he gets. So there's been a lot of people have said,

hey, can you set up a lunch with your dad? You know what I said? Sure. Of course. Of course. So it's, I think you'll like it. I appreciate the kind words. He will too. Of course. I'm going to check it out. Awesome. All right, man. Thanks, AJ. I really appreciate it. Sure. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks again to AJ for joining me and thank you for listening. If you enjoyed it, I'd love it if you would rate, subscribe and review, write a review in Apple Podcasts, iTunes Apple Podcasts. It would really help spread the message, rate review and subscribe in iTunes Apple Podcasts.

Thanks again for listening. I cannot wait for the next one. See you guys next week. This episode is brought to you by Gusto. Gusto is making payroll benefits and HR easy for small businesses. Modern technology does the heavy lifting so it's easy to get things right. PCMag and fit small business have called Gusto the best payroll for small businesses. Gusto saves you time.

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