The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 239: Dan Pink - The Scientific Secrets Of Perfect Timing (When)

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

Episode 239: Dan Pink - The Scientific Secrets Of Perfect Timing (When) Daniel Pink is the author of six provocative books — including his newest, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, ...to be published in January 2018. His other books include the long-running New York Times bestseller A Whole New Mind and the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into 37 languages.  If you'd like to listen to the first time Dan joined me on The Learning Leader Show, CLICK HERE. Dan's TED Talk on the science of motivation is one of the 10 most-watched TED Talks of all time, with more than 19 million views. His RSA Animate video about the ideas in his book, Drive, has collected more than 14 million views.(from DanPink.com) (Photo Credit - HOW Design) The Learning Leader Show "It's like brick laying.  I show up every day and I hit my word (count) goal.  Day after day after day.  Every day." Show Notes: Dan's book writing process: "It's like 1930's football... One short play at a time." Brick laying, very laborious... Get in office by 8:30 and hit the writing (word count) goal every single day... Day after day after day after day... Write 700 words a day, every da "I show up and hit my number, every single day" Combining research with interesting stories -- work in chunks, have research in a Word doc, and the book in a separate doc. Review, go back and forth Go through the (printed out) research, highlight, underline, review a lot If you do this every day, it adds up Why write about this topic? The topic of When As a writer, you must pick a topic you are VERY interested in... You spend years on the project (research, writing, speeches) "I wrote this book because I wanted to read it" How to know if an idea is worth exploring? "You don't... But when you share it with others, does it create curiosity in them?  Do they ask follow up questions?  If they do, you may be on to something" The 3 stages of our days Peak - Analytical work, smart Trough - The afternoon "Bermuda Triangle" -- A bad time to make decisions Recovery - A creative time Why lunch is the most important meal of the day -- This is a time where you need to leave what you're doing, go outside, go with a friend, disconnect from work, don't look at your phone, need to recharge Breaks are enormously important - Social breaks (with friends) are better than solo breaks Napping for 20 minutes in the afternoon is very helpful Drink a cup of coffee, set you iPhone for an alarm to go off in 23 minutes, lay down with an eye mask.  If you fall asleep in 5 minutes, you get an 18 minute nap, and you wake up and the caffeine starts to kick in Why NBA players who get more "touches" have more success than others... Scientific evidence supports this The importance of endings... How we end things: Energize - More 29, 39, 49 year olds run marathons than any other age.  People want to end on a high note Encode - Evaluate and record experiences - How something ends is very important. Look at Yelp reviews -- People remember the experience for how a meal ended more than anything else Elevate - People prefer rising sequences. Dan's favorite tip:  When sharing good news and bad news, always START with the bad news, and end with the good news We are very intentional about who, what, why... why aren't we intentional about WHEN?  We should be... "We are very intentional about who, what, and why.  We aren't intentional about WHEN.  We should be." Social Media: Read: When - The Scientific Secrets Of Perfect Timing See why over 396,000 people follow Dan on Twitter: @DanielPink Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You know, Ryan, you know this better than some people as a former athlete. You know, athletes know this. Athletes know that when you train, you don't go full stop all the time. You have to have some breaks. And I think those of us who are white-collar athletes need to get that message. Most of us, though, have been indoctrinated in the belief that we just need to go, go, go, go, and breaks our sign of weakness and sloth when, in fact, breaks are what professionals do. This episode is brought to you by Gusto.
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Starting point is 00:01:34 Welcome to the Learning Leader show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 4-4-2-2. Tonight's episode, my featured leader is the great Dan Pink. He's back for round two, author of 6.5.
Starting point is 00:02:00 bestselling books, including Drive and to sell is human. His most recent book, which we discussed on tonight's episode, is titled When, the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. Really enjoyed
Starting point is 00:02:16 this talk. A few of the topics we got into. Why We Shouldn't Make Important Important Decisions in the Afternoon. Dan details his process for writing a book for anyone who is a creative. You'll love that part. And then the science behind taking naps.
Starting point is 00:02:33 It describes the most important meal of the day. It's not what you think. Ladies are knowing, this one's so good with Dan Pink. Dan, it's great to have you back on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. Ryan, it's great to be back. I still get notes on a regular basis about our first conversation. We talked about the email I received from Drew Brees and moving the chains.
Starting point is 00:03:02 Moving the chain. Moving the chains. The talk I had with Dan Pink about moving the chains. And it sounds like, based on what you've got going on, you've been moving the chains, a new book coming out. I know you were in deep work mode for a while, as we've been emailing for a while. But, man, what's been going on? Well, I've been trying to write this new book. And I really do think that the secret to writing a book is it really is moving the chain.
Starting point is 00:03:28 The way I write the books, though, it's sort of like the way I move the change is. sort of like 1930s football, you know, like Bronco Nogerski without a helmet, just mashing through the line and getting, you know, two and a half yards per down and getting 10 yards and then, you know, getting that first down and looking up and realizing you have a cracked skull and a broken nose, but then setting for the next play over and over again. So a little dramatic, but I really, since that conversation, I've become a firm believer in the, I'm going to call it the hawk, not the brief. the hawk the theory of living the chain.
Starting point is 00:04:06 Well, thank you. That's pretty cool. Describe that to me, though. I wasn't a plan on going there because I want to dive into your new book. It's called When, The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. But your writing process, I'm fascinated by a guy who's written some of the greatest books I've ever read, and millions of others have read them as well. What is your process to put a book together?
Starting point is 00:04:29 Yeah, it's very laborious, at least for me. I'm not saying this is the right way to do it. Okay. This is just the way I do it. For me, writing is very, I almost look at it like bricklaying. And so what I do when I'm in writing mode is I will come to my office in the morning, you know, usually at a certain time, not like insanely early, but not super late. You know, maybe like 8.30. And what I will do is I will, you know, have a number that I have to hit,
Starting point is 00:04:57 basically a first down, all right, that I have to hit in that morning. So it's usually, and it's not a massive number, say 500 words, 600 words, 700 words. And what I will do is I will turn off my email, turn off my phone, and I will not do anything else until I hit that number. And now sometimes, not very often, it happens quickly, 1030. Other times, more often, it does not. I don't get it. It's painful. It's like 1230, 1.30, even far later in the afternoon.
Starting point is 00:05:36 But I do that every, I try to do that every single day. Show up, hit my number. Show up, hit my number. Show up, hit my number over and over and over. And that's how I, that's the kind of the grinding, laborious way that I, at least I do it. So your books are full of really detailed, research mixed with incredible stories, which the best books are written this way. And they're, they're quite hard to do. So when you have this, this unique combination of stories with,
Starting point is 00:06:13 with research, how does that apply? I mean, do you have a bunch of notes on the side? Do you have your research in one tab and your, your, whatever, your Google Doc or your Word Doc or whatever you used to write in? Like, how, what's it look like at Dan Pink's desk when, when you're combining these stories with the research. Yeah. Well, again, I take it piece by piece. So what I will, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, what I will have done ahead of that is I'll have, let me try to make it concrete here for a second. So, you know, because it'll be easier, I think, for your listeners. So, so I have this book that I work on this book called When.
Starting point is 00:07:07 It's about the science of timing. And so let's say, I have a chapter on breaks, say. And so what I would do on that is I will have a massive, literally a paper folder of research on breaks. This happened to be a giant paper folder on the research on breaks. And what I will do is I will go through that research once and read every paper, underline stuff. And then I'll go back again and read the most important ones again. And then I will take the most relevant underlines and highlights, and I will put them into a separate word document, to basically retype them into a separate word document.
Starting point is 00:07:52 And then I will have that up on my screen alongside with the text of the book that I'm writing, if that makes sense. So, yeah, that's how I do it. So here's a thing. It's like, it's not, I can't emphasize how much. Again, it is for me. Other people are, you know, faster, more fluid, more adept, quicker writers than I am. There's no question about that. But for me, it's that, you know, that's very systematic, laborious process works for me.
Starting point is 00:08:24 And the thing is that if you do it every day, it adds up. You know, it's like, and again, it goes back to bricklay. If you lay, you know, 13 bricks every day, that's not that impressive. But if you do it every day for six months, you've got yourself a ginormous wall. And that's my approach to it. I love learning the process behind how great stuff gets made. So forgive me for those few minutes of diving in that area. I want to get into this actual book because I'm very appreciative of your team, sent me a copy, again, called When, the scientific secrets of perfect timing.
Starting point is 00:09:02 And you talk about the fact that we don't take when as seriously as we take questions of what, but we should. So why this topic, why this book now? Because I know from speaking with many bestselling authors, when you decide to write a book, especially a Dan Pink style book, you have to dive deep in this topic for years. Before the book's written, the book gets written, and then afterwards you're going to give speeches about it, I know. So why this topic of the scientific secrets of perfect timing? Yeah. Make your point. for writers out there, aspiring writers,
Starting point is 00:09:42 if you're going to write a book, you have to pick something you're really, really interested in. Because you live with it for a very... And so I end up becoming extremely important in deciding what to write about. Now, I chose this particular one. I'll give you some more of the backstory of this. I actually, what I do is, for my books,
Starting point is 00:10:03 is that I have various files of ideas and things, of books that I, you know, and I go back and I sort of through those ideas maybe every six months or so. And what typically happens is that most of the ideas are horrible. They're embarrassing. I would never want anyone to even know that I have the idea.
Starting point is 00:10:17 And I'll prune those. I'll prune those. But over time, a few ideas will stick around. And what I'll do is I'll take the ones that I think are most promising, most interesting. And before I even write a book,
Starting point is 00:10:29 I'll write a book proposal, maybe a 30, 40-page document, laying out what the book is, why it's important, who will read it, et cetera, et cetera. And for this particular book, I actually wrote two book proposals
Starting point is 00:10:40 before the Wend book proposal and put them aside because I didn't think they were good enough. And when I turned to the Wend book proposal, which was not initially like, it was sort of a hazy idea. When I turned to that, I realized how interesting the topic was. And the key point here, Ryan, for me, is that truly I wrote this book because I wanted to read it. I found myself making all kinds of Wend decisions in my life. everything from when in the day should I exercise. When should I, you know, even like when should I, when do I know a project is worth pursuing or when is it worth abandoning? You know, even mundane things like, you know, should I give questions of sequence?
Starting point is 00:11:24 Should I be the first person to pitch an idea among a group of competitors? Should it be the last person? Should I give the bad news first? Should I give the bad news? And I realized that I was making all these decisions. I was doing it in a completely haphazard way. And what I wanted to do is make these decisions myself in a smarter, more systematic way. And as I started looking at some of the research, I said, whoa, wait a second, there's a lot of research out here.
Starting point is 00:11:49 And I could use this. And so truly, you know, I wrote the book because I wanted to read it. And I read it. It's pretty good. I have, too. That's good. So there's so many questions when it comes to timing. And I'll dive into a few of them.
Starting point is 00:12:06 then you can expand a little bit maybe with the story or some of the research behind it. So specifically, you mentioned about when an idea is worth pursuing. A lot of people have ideas. I've talked a lot about going on walks and how idea creation happens during walks. And the best way to find a great idea is to have a ton of ideas. And then eventually, as you said, you get rid of the garbage or some of the embarrassing ones. Right. And so how do you know when an idea?
Starting point is 00:12:36 ideas worth pursuing? You don't. You can't, you can't, you can't, you can't know that with any, you know, with 100% certainty, but what you can, you know, some, some things that you can do, at least some things that I do are this. Number one is that, you know, there are ideas and there are ideas. There's, there's an idea that you can articulate in a sentence, but, and that's important. But if you're going to write a book, you have to be able to explain that idea, expand that idea
Starting point is 00:13:05 in much greater length. And I actually think that writing that out, doing that book for at least for me, doing that proposal is important in understanding is this a good, a viable idea, and is this something I want to spend a few years working on. And for me, the process of writing is often the process of figuring something out.
Starting point is 00:13:26 That's why I do this proposal before launching into a book. The worst thing to happen would be to say, hey, I'm going to write this book, find a contract for writing a book, and then do that work. and then discover, wait a second, this book is crap, or this is something I'm not interested in, then you're stuck. So I think that I'm a big believer in writing to figure stuff out. The other thing is, I think there's a social aspect to it as well.
Starting point is 00:13:52 When I am contemplating an idea, I will run it past people and see what they say. And what I found there is that the test is usually not people saying, that's a great idea or that's a terrible idea. people saying, hey, that's really interesting. What about Babbidi-Bah? I wonder if Babbidi-Bah. And so if they start, if they say, if they're intrigued by it enough to start asking questions, that to me is often a sign. Wait a second.
Starting point is 00:14:17 People are actually interested in this. So why shouldn't we make important decisions in the afternoon? Ah, okay. So this book about timing, what it shows is that time of day, among the things that it shows is that time of day has a huge effect on our mood and our mood. performance. And in general, what it shows, looking at some really cool research in here, whether it's from, you know, Daniel Connaman, the Nobelist and Alan Kruger, the former economic advisor to President Obama doing one kind of research or these two Cornell sociologists
Starting point is 00:14:53 doing this big data analysis of 500 million tweets. Twitter, yeah. What it shows generally is that we proceed through our days. We have three stages of our day, basically. A peak, a trough, and a recovery. A peak of trough of recovery. Most of us go through them in that order. People who are night-all tend to go in the reverse order. Peak trough recovery. And it turns out that we're better at doing certain kinds of work at certain kinds of day. In the peak, where we're most alert, we're better doing analytic kinds of work, writing a legal brief, analyzing data, things that require vigilance. During the rebound, which for most of us
Starting point is 00:15:34 is later in the day, late afternoon, early evening. We don't have that same kind of vigilance we have during the peak, but we have, you know, our mood has improved a little bit, and we're not, and we have a kind of a looseness that allows us to do creative conceptual things a little bit better. Now that middle period, the early to mid-afternoon is a trough, that's generally not good for a lot. And some of the evidence on what happens in these afternoon trough is really alarming.
Starting point is 00:16:01 If you look at kids standardized test scores, some great research out of Denmark on this, kids standardized test scores are systematically lower when they take standardized tests in the early afternoon than if they take them in the morning. Now, that's a big deal since we're making decisions about education policy, even about individual kids' lives based on these scores, and time of day is what's driving some of the results. If you look at the world of health and medicine, it's terrifying. Surgical errors more common in the afternoons than in the morning. Anesthesia errors three times more common at 3 p.m. than at 9 a.m. If you look at auto accidents,
Starting point is 00:16:36 auto accidents peak at two times during the day, between 4 and 6 a.m., not that surprising, but also between 2 and 4 p.m., a little bit more surprising. So over and over again, we see this afternoon period is kind of a bermuda triangle of our days, where our performance often will dip considerably if we don't take some steps to prevent that, particularly breaks. Breaks and timeouts are a very good way of averting the dip that afternoon trough. We can't eliminate it because we have to do stuff in the afternoon, but we can take some affirmative steps to make sure that we don't fall into the abyss. This is why lunch could be the most important meal of the day.
Starting point is 00:17:20 Yeah, well, there's some very interesting research, believe it or not, on lunch. The research on breakfast, to my surprise, because I'm a breakfast eater, the research on breakfast, and I always sort of had this kind of a very American notion of, you know, breakfast is important and it's a sign of, you know, good character and all that. The is that a lot of the research on breakfast is a little dicey. I mean, it doesn't really, you know, some of the studies aren't that good, and some of the research is sponsored by zero companies. And so it's not conclusive.
Starting point is 00:17:56 I'm not saying breakfast is bad for you. I'm saying that the research showing breakfast is the most important meal the day is that's not quite locked down. However, in the last few years, there's some very interesting research on lunch. And simply going to lunch, leaving your desk, not having a sad desk lunch, but leaving your desk, going to lunch, taking that break, is a great way to boost productivity, boosts, repel some amount of exhaustion and increase creativity and even productivity. And one of the things that shows up in this research is about the science of breaks more generally, that breaks are enormously important. They are more important than we realize.
Starting point is 00:18:36 You know, we didn't realize in many cases the importance of sleep until the early last 10 years when the science of sleep started emerging. And we realized that being sleep-supprived is really, really bad for us. It's bad for our health. It's bad for our performance. And I think what we're discovering now is that the science of breaks is where the science asleep was 10 or 15 years ago, that it's showing that breaks are enormously important for our physical health, psychological well-being, and professional performance. And we know something
Starting point is 00:19:06 about what kinds of breaks are most important, too. We know that social breaks are more effective than solo breaks. So, you know, doing something with somebody, taking a short break with somebody else is more restorative. We know that nature has this incredibly powerful role in restoration. So going outside is better than being inside. There's a lot of good research on the importance of full detachment. So not, hey, going out for a walk with your buddy, but looking at your phone the whole time, but actually leaving the phone behind. So breaks that involve movement, that involve nature, that are fully detached, that are social,
Starting point is 00:19:41 end up being quite important. And to the point now, again, going back to my own experience is that every day I have a break list, a list of breaks that I take to make sure that I am performing at my highest level. And also, I've read this somewhere. I hate that I forget who does this, but these senior leaders and companies would, they would schedule whether it's important negotiations or meetings with people in the afternoon,
Starting point is 00:20:17 and then they would take a two to three hour nap before the meeting. While the other person may be, and this is to try to create some sort of advantage for themselves, I'd be curious for the science behind this, Dan, from your point of view, where leaders, whether it was a tough negotiation or conversation, that they were almost rigging the game by taking naps for two to three hours and then having the meeting at three o'clock, right, right in the middle of that Bermuda triangle where people struggle, right? in the trough area. But for them,
Starting point is 00:20:49 it didn't feel like a trough because they were, one, having a break, they were taking a nap. It almost felt like the morning to them in a way versus their competition as they saw it.
Starting point is 00:20:57 It was the worst part or worst time of the day for them to make decisions. Yeah, there's some good research on napping. That two or three hour nap is kind of long. Yeah. And what the research shows
Starting point is 00:21:10 is that you can actually get a lot of bang for a relatively limited buck that naps about, about 20 to 25 minutes seem to be the sweet spot. If you have a two to three hour nap, you're going to incur what chronobiologists call sleep inertia, which is a fancy word for feeling groggy. So if you can take a two-hour nap in the middle of the day,
Starting point is 00:21:30 when you wake up, you're not going to be ready to go at that moment. You're going to have a deficit that you're going to need to climb out of before you can get the benefits of the nap. With a 20-minute nap or so, you can get a lot of the benefit without any of the deficit. it. And that seems to be the sweet spot. And in fact, there's also this practice that seems to be especially effective. It's one that I use periodically is what's called a napachino, where you take, you have a cup of coffee right before your nap. You set, this is what I do. So have a cup of coffee.
Starting point is 00:22:03 Then set your phone alarm for, phone timer for like 23 minutes. I always think, I happen to pick 23. It's like, you know, 25 is fine. I pick 23. So much. So much. phone alarm for 23 minutes, then I lay down, often with headphones and an eye mask, and try to go to sleep. And what I found is that you can actually, especially if you start doing this more regularly, you can fall asleep pretty quickly. And so what you end up with is a full-fledged nap for maybe, you know, let's say you fall asleep in five minutes, you end up with a 18-minute nap. That's a great length nap for restoration. You wake up from that nap, you don't have that sleep deficit, And the caffeine is then starting to kick in.
Starting point is 00:22:47 And so that seems to be the ideal length for a nap. What about people who work in an office? Yeah, I think it's hard. There are some places that are installing nap pods and things like that. There are companies like Zappos, for instance, other kind of grubier high-tech companies have places for employee naps. You know, you can, you know, if it's, if it's hard or socially look down on to do with your office, I think the better thing to do is just take a certain kind of break. So go out for a 15 minute, go outside for a 15 minute walk without your phone.
Starting point is 00:23:24 Go out for, you know, 15 minute walk outside without your phone with a friend and talk about something other than work. That's going to have a big restorative, that's going to have a big restorative effect. I think the key thing here, what we know from the science of timing. And this is, you know, again, you talked initially about why. I wrote this book. I wrote this book because I wanted to read it. And one of the things that I learned from writing this book and reading it is change my view, is I have a totally different view of Bricks.
Starting point is 00:23:52 I was somebody, I had this kind of both, I don't know, hyper-masculine, hyper-puritanical view about breaks, but I would just power through. And I saw breaks as a deviation from performance. But breaks are actually part of performance. They're not a deviation from it. They're an essential part of performance. And I think, you know, Ryan, you know this better. than some people as a former athlete.
Starting point is 00:24:14 Athletes know this. Athletes know that when you train, you don't go full stop all the time. You have to have some breaks. And I think those of us who are white-collar athletes need to get that message. Most of us, though, have been indoctrinated in the belief that we just need to go, go, go, go,
Starting point is 00:24:33 and breaks our sign of weakness and sloth when in fact breaks are what professionals do. That's a great point. And if you, I think anybody could think, back to the times when they had this slog through the entire day and how they probably hit that trough and unfortunately stayed in it with if they didn't take a break. Another, another fascinating part, the reason I'm bringing this up. So I recently gave a speech at Centerville High School for their leadership development. He's actually the basketball
Starting point is 00:24:58 coach. His name's Brooke Cups. They're fascinating guy, really smart. And Brooke listens a lot I know. And if he is, I say hi. But Brooke told me that he's big on getting team touches. And so you talk about this. There's a lot. of research on this. Totally. The secrets of group timing. So when it comes to NBA teams, there's research that shows how often a team touches like high fives or fist bombs, chest bumps, is an excellent predictor of team
Starting point is 00:25:25 performance. What's, what's the, can you talk me more about this research when it comes to team touches and how this could maybe apply not just in the sporting world, but in everybody's world? Yeah. So this is some interesting research on the science of how do groups time, how to, group synchronized, whether it's a rowing team, whether it's a choir. There's certain kinds of group endeavors that require groups to be in sync and in time together. And one of the elements that
Starting point is 00:25:55 help groups synchronize with each other is a sense of belonging. And there are different ways to foster belonging. You can do it with certain kinds of dress. You can do it with one of the things you see is that are very well synchronized often have almost like a secret language, secret code, certain lingo that they use. But there's some interesting research on touch, as you mentioned, Ryan, from the NBA. And it looks like touch is a form of belonging. Now, in a workplace setting,
Starting point is 00:26:24 obviously you have to be, you know, cautious about that. But there is something about, for some of these teams, you know, these kinds of organic, spontaneous, you know, high five, fist months and things, that seemed to both simultaneously reflect and foster a sense of belonging. And that sense of belonging is integral to teams being able to synchronize. Notice after free throws, whether the player makes it or misses it, all the teammates always go and give them a high-five or tap them on the back.
Starting point is 00:26:58 And I didn't fully understand that until I saw some of your research that you have in this book to say, oh, this makes more sense. I bet some of these coaches have really, and Brooke told me about it, I have really understand this better that those touches are important. Yeah, I think so. I mean, part of it is, you know, any kind of a ritual. And there have been some people who have criticized that. Some old-timers have criticized.
Starting point is 00:27:22 Like, what are you giving the guy, you know, slapping five with that guy who just missed a free throw? It should be shunned. I don't agree with that. And, you know, again, the way that – and basketball is an interesting sport because it does require a lot of synchronization in a way that, you know, some of the sports, say, like baseball, that doesn't necessarily. because you have five players who are almost constantly on the move and in this very fluid kind of process. So they have to be well-time to one another.
Starting point is 00:27:50 And that sense of belonging, which is fostered by language and a sense of affiliation and touch can be really powerful. How about endings? I know they can really affect how we remember an experience and how it could potentially propel us and create momentum. What's the research say at the importance of how something ends and how we could use this to better our lives? Oh, endings are enormously important. So endings have four big effects. Number one, they help energize us. So when we're nearing the end of something, when we see the finish line, we often kick a little harder.
Starting point is 00:28:29 This is why there's some really, really interesting research showing that if you give people, say, some really interesting research showing that people are most likely to run a marathon more likely to run a marathon at age 29 than they are at 28 or 30, like twice as likely to run a marathon at age 29 than they are at age 28 or 30 watt because a decade is coming to an end so they're more energized. People who are 49 or three times more likely to run a marathon than people who are 50 because they're coming to an end. So that energizes them.
Starting point is 00:29:00 You get people a gift card and they only have two weeks to use, then other people a gift card and they have two months to use it. The people who have two weeks are more likely to use it than people with two months, which doesn't make any sense. The other group has four times as much time to use it, and yet they don't have that ending as salient, and so they're less likely to move. So that's one thing that endings do.
Starting point is 00:29:20 Endings help us in code. This is really powerful. And when I say in code, they help us evaluate and record experiences. And so how an experience end has a disproportionate effect on how we remember it and how we evaluate it. This is really important in consumer businesses. So how transactions end is hugely important to customers' overall evaluation.
Starting point is 00:29:46 You can see this in Yelp reviews, where if you go to a Yelp review, say, for a restaurant, a huge number of them will talk about what happened at the very end of the meal. They made an error in the check. They gave me an unexpected dessert. And so endings help us encode. Endings also help us elevate because given a choice, we prefer rising sequences to declining sequences. This is why you see, this is, you know, I'll give you the perhaps the most practical tip from this book, or my favorite tip from this book because it changed my own practice, is when you say to somebody,
Starting point is 00:30:19 I've got some good news and some bad news, which should you give first? I typically would give the good news first to be a nice guy to push it in the blow. But that turns out to be completely wrong. You ask people what they want, and most people want the bad news first and the good news next. Why? it goes back to our preference for endings. We prefer endings that elevate. We prefer rising sequences to declining sequences.
Starting point is 00:30:43 And so you're much better off giving the bad news first and then the good news, because that's what most people, those are other people's preferences. And so, again, I think the key here and all this stuff is just to be conscious of these things. And for me, at least, you know, the idea that midpoints have an effect is a new concept to me. And now I'm more conscious of midpoint. The idea that endings are profoundly important is a relatively new concept for me, and I'm much more intentional about that. And I think that's really the key idea in all of it, is that, as you were saying at the beginning, Ryan, we do take seriously these questions of what. What am I going to do? We do take seriously these questions of half, of how am I going to do it?
Starting point is 00:31:25 We take seriously these questions of who. Who am I going to do it with? But the when questions tend to be check and order. We think that, oh, it doesn't really matter that much or it's just about fate and circumstance when in fact they have a material effect on much of what we do. There's evidence showing that even like within the space of a day, the time of day explains about 20% of the variance on workplace task between people. So 20% of the variance between individuals on workplace tasks.
Starting point is 00:31:58 is due to time of day. So that doesn't mean timing is everything, but it means it's an awfully big thing. This is great, man. I can talk to you for hours, but I know we got to take off here, but I found one of the parts near the end quite interesting that you used to believe
Starting point is 00:32:17 that timing was everything. Now you believe that everything is timing. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's because these wind decisions are embedded in everything that we do. And we've been largely unconscious of them. That is, and it goes back to my earlier point. We haven't taken them seriously.
Starting point is 00:32:35 We're very intentional about what we do. We're pretty intentional about what we do. We're pretty intentional about how we do it. You know, that's why we take classes and we learn and that all that. We're fairly intentional about who we do it with. But when it comes to when we do it, we just say, ah, it doesn't really matter. And my point in spending two years researching this is that it actually matters a lot. And if you're conscious of it and you understand the science, you can make systematically better, smarter, evidence-based when decisions.
Starting point is 00:33:06 And if you do that, you can see not a total transformation, but a definite boost to your mood, a definite improvement in your performance. And to me, and what's great about it is that it's a fairly easy win because the evidence is very clear and there's some very specific practical things you can do. Great stuff, Dan. I appreciate it, man. Where would you send my listeners to learn more? They can go to my website, which is www. www. Danpink.com. It's all kinds of groovy stuff there. And check out the book, When, which is available at any reputable bookseller, online or offline. When, the scientific secrets of perfect timing.
Starting point is 00:33:51 Thanks again, Dan. And it's cool to go round two with you and certainly want to have around three, four, five, six in the future, man. This is great. Well, we'll keep moving the chain. That's my goal. I love it. Thanks, Dan. All right. Thank you, Ryan. I love talking to Dan Pink. I always learned so much from him. And I love his new book, When The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. It was a lot of fun.
Starting point is 00:34:16 Thank you to Dan for joining me. And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed it, I'd love it if you would subscribe, rate, and write a review in iTunes Apple Podcast. Subscribe, rate, write, right or view at iTunes, Apple Podcasts really helps spread the message. I'd be grateful if you did that. Thank you so much. Excited for the next one. I can't wait.
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