The One You Feed - Stories of Finding Meaningful Work with Dan Heath

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

In this episode, Dan Heath shares incredible stories of finding meaningful work from guests on his podcast. With his unique writing experience on how to shape environments for better decisions, motivating emotional desires for change, and differentiating between self-regulation and self-control, Dan offers valuable insights into finding meaning in whatever work you do. In this episode, you will be able to: Create a supportive environment to make better decisions that align with core desires Find bright spots in the context of change that focus on positive outcomes to learn from Discover ways to find meaning and fulfillment in your work Learn the concept of narrow framing in decision-making, highlighting what's most important in your life To learn more, click here! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rather than wallowing in my failures, I'm saying, when have I not failed? And what can I learn from the lack of failure that might allow me to not fail more often? It's a very, very simple idea, but I find that a lot of times people skip right by it in favor of self-flagellating. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.

We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF,

and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms.

Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. or wherever you get your podcasts. hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dan Heath, an American bestselling author, speaker, and fellow at Duke University's Case Center. Dan,

along with his brother Chip, have co-authored four books. But today, Eric and Dan are going to talk about his amazing podcast called What It's Like to Be, in which he explores the world of work, one profession at a time, and interviews people who do what they love to do. Hi, Dan. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Eric. Glad to be here. I am excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your new podcast, which is called What It's Like to Be. And it's conversations with different people in different professions about what it's like to be a dog trainer or an archaeologist or an FBI special agent.

It's fascinating. And we're going to also talk about some of the great books you've written over the years. But we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent, and they say, well, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops,

and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent, and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, this may sound a little weird, but that parable reminded me immediately of a metaphor. And it's the metaphor of the rider and the elephant, which comes from the psychologist Jonathan Haidt and actually was central to my book with my brother Chip called Switch. Just to back up for a second to explain that, one of the core findings of modern psychology, I know this is something you've talked about on your show, is that in our brains, we all have two independent systems, one called the rational system and one called the emotional system. And I think we've

all had experience when these two systems start fighting with each other. Like, you know, the rational system comes up with the brilliant idea to lose 10 pounds or to save more for retirement or to exercise more or whatever. All makes sense on paper. It's good for us in the long term. And then meanwhile, we also have an emotional system that, you know, craves those Oreos in the pantry or feels like sleeping in a little bit and not getting up and jogging or really wants that new iPhone and forget about retirement savings. This is a very, very familiar dilemma for all of us that these systems don't always align. And so that's what came to mind when I heard the parable is thinking about the distinction

between the good wolf and the bad wolf and the rider and the elephant. And I think it actually, they're not the same thing, even though that's what was triggered for me by the parable, because I spent so much time thinking about the rider and the elephant. I don't think it's as simple as saying like the rider is the good guy and the elephant's the bad guy. I think it's actually much more nuanced than that. I think we can be very rational and do great evil. And I think that emotional driven decisions, which is the elephant's turf can often be some of the wisest ones that we make. It was just fun for me to think about kind of comparing these two different versions of a duality that we all kind of live with and have to navigate between.

I love that. It's one of my favorite analogies that Jonathan came up with. And I think he borrowed it from, you know, Buddhism, where, you know, the Buddha talked about taming the mind is a little bit like taming an elephant in some regard. And I think what's so salient about those two things and the insight to me, and I think what's so salient about those two things and the insight to me, and I think it's the insight that you talk about in your book, is that if you only rely on that rational system, it's going to lose, right? Because if the elephant really wants to go somewhere, there's not much that a rider sitting on top of it is going to do about it. That's right. That's right. The scale difference is one of the central features

of the analogy. Like we think that the rational part of us is in charge because, you know, the writer is ostensibly holding the reins and setting the course. But as you say, if those two disagree, like who's your money on? Yeah, I love that. Listener, as you're listening, what resonated with you in that? I think a lot of us have some ideas of things that we can do to feed our good wolf. And here's a good tip to make it more likely that you do it. It can be really helpful to reflect right before you do that thing on why you want to do it. Our brains are always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call reward

value. Basically, is this thing worth doing? And so when you're getting ready to do this thing that you want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps to make the reward value on that higher and makes it more likely that you're going to do that. For example, if what you're trying to do is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to remind yourself of why. For example, I want to exercise because it makes my mental and emotional health better today. If you'd like a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that

feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. A lot of making lasting changes in our behavior is about getting the elephant to want to go the same direction that the rider is going. And briefly, what are some of the key strategies that people might think about when the rider wants to go one direction and the elephant wants to go the other? What are some ways of bringing those two into alignment? I think there are kind of two key strategies. of bringing those two into alignment? I think there are kind of two key strategies. And one is something I suspect you've talked about a hundred times on your show, which is, I think one of the things that people immediately clue into from the analogy is don't trust willpower, where in the analogy, you can imagine the writer trying to physically restrain the

elephant from going some direction. You can just, in your mind's eye, see the absurdity of that. strain the elephant from going some direction, you can just, in your mind's eye, see the absurdity of that. That's willpower. And I think willpower is fragile and fickle and often weak. And so, I think when we have a rider-elephant disagreement, often one of the best things we can do is alter our environment in a way that resolves or at least partly alleviates that tension. So, you know, that resolves or at least partly alleviates that tension. So, you know, a trivial example is if you're on a diet and you really like Oreos, like you could fight that day-to-day temptation of, no, I'm not going to have those Oreos today. By golly, you know, I'm serious about this diet.

And every day you walk by them in the pantry and I mean, eventually you're going to cave. Or on the first day of your diet, you could just throw away the Oreos and remove the temptation entirely, which is a way of escaping the weakness of willpower. So that's kind of an environmental strategy. In Switch, the book I was talking about earlier, we call that shaping the path as distinct from the rider elephant stuff. We can shape our environment, which in turn shapes our behavior. I think the other thing that's a little trickier but powerful is we've got to

motivate the elephant. You know, if your rider wants to do one thing and the elephant wants to do another, can you find a way to tap into that kind of core, visceral, emotional motivation? And I think the error we make, especially in organizations a lot of times, is we think that we're going to motivate the elephant with a cascade of information. You know, like if we just shovel enough data and information and charts and graphs and data at people, well, by golly, you know, their elephants are going to snap in line and it just doesn't work that way. What motivates the elephant are our core emotional desires. And it need not be anything selfish. I mean, there's a lot of powerful emotions that aren't the analogy of eating the Oreos. I mean, we're motivated by doing what's best for our kids,

and we're motivated by patriotism to our country, and we're motivated by, you know, the desire to feel proud of ourselves 10 years down the line. But those things are coming from a wellspring of emotion rather than information. Yeah, I've been right in the center of this for the book that I've been working on. And in the scientific literature, there is a distinction made between two terms, and one is self-regulation and one is self-control. And self-regulation is considered the entire process of everything that you would do to sort of move you towards your goal. And then self-control is that moment when you have to make a choice, right? Where we would call in willpower. And as you've said,

the overarching insight is do everything that you can do to minimize the amount of time that you're going to need to use that willpower. There is still a place that we all need to use it. Absolutely. Yeah. No matter what we do to shape the environment and motivate ourselves, there's still a point where we're going to be faced with a decision and what can we do or not do to make the right decision. But the more we can fix all that, the better, right? And all these other strategies. And I've been thinking about this idea with motivating the elephant, which is, you know, how do we move from half two goals to want two goals, right? You know, how can I take something that I, you know, think that I have to do,

and how do I make it something I want to do? And as you said, it's really relying on our emotions. The other reflection I've had based on something you just said there is that, you know, the last five years have made this shape in the environment thing so much harder, because now you don't have to have Oreos in your closet because they're five minutes away on your phone. DoorDash is right there. Bring you a truckload of Oreos. You want weed delivered. You want alcohol delivered. It's just a different world in

that way. It's a click away. And I think that has made this shaping your environment conversation more difficult than it certainly was when you guys wrote your book. I think that's probably fair to say. And I'm working on a new book that's coming out next year. And just to share one little tidbit, I did at one point a survey of people who were setting New Year's resolutions. So I, you know, I reached out to them in late December as they were kind of articulating their resolutions. And then I tried some different ways of getting them to kind of kick the tires on those resolutions. Like, is that definitely what you want to do? And what if you think about it this way? What if you think about

it this way? And one of the things I learned was a lot of times we have this instinct to go for the measurable thing or the most visible thing. Like this one woman's response stuck with me where she'd had a lot of very serious health problems. Like she had long COVID and breast cancer. I mean, just kind of a mess. Even simple day-to-day activities could absolutely just demolish her, erase her heart rate. And so she was having to do a lot of adjustments. And meanwhile, she has two young boys who really crave her attention. And so she had set an initial resolution to get in better shape. I mean, it was like a classic exercise, New Year's resolution. And then through the prompting of the survey, it was like, well, what is the goal of the goal

is essentially what we were asking. Like you're articulating a goal to get in better shape. What's the goal of that goal? And she was very clear eyed about the reason this is important is I want to be a better mom. I want to be able to attend to my boys. I want to be able to play with them. I don't want to have to be the mom that's laying down on the couch when they would love to hang out. And so then this was the crucial bit. We asked her, what are some alternate ways that you could reach the goal of the goal without doing that initial goal? In other words, how could you be that better mom that you aspire to be without necessarily like doing more sit-ups or jogging or whatever she was planning to do? And it was like just a door was opened that she hadn't imagined

before. And all these ideas come pouring out and she's like, well, you know, we used to sit on the front porch at night and read books and we could do that again. And we used to play board games and then we sort of got out of the habit, but board games are nice because that's something I could do. Even if I have to lay down on the couch, like I can still be part of the game. And she ended up buying these Harry Potter Lego kits. It was like all this really tangible, beautiful stuff that realized her true mission in doing all of this stuff. But it was like it was just out of her grasp until she was really poked and prodded about it. And I just found that fascinating. Yeah, I love that.

I mean, that is such a great spin on it, right? Because oftentimes, you know, I've done a lot of one-on-one coaching with people around behavior change. And we'll ask, well, why, right? You say you want something. Well, why do you want it, right? Which is the goal of the goal that you just said. But I love this idea of, in addition, pivoting and saying, are there other ways to get to that goal besides the path we have articulated? I think that's great. That's a really beautiful story.

beautiful story. I've started thinking about that in my own work is just, I think we often get satisfied too quickly with like whatever way we have of measuring what we're doing and what we're accomplishing and learning to insert a little tire kicking stage where you're like, are you sure? I mean, is this goal going to get you to the goal of the goal? Or is this just something that's easy to measure? Something that's easy to cross off on a to-do list? Is this something that feels good in the moment, but three months or three years from now won't lead you to a place of satisfaction, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah. I mean, one of the major frameworks for change out there is the catchily titled trans-theoretical model of change. So it just rolls right off the tongue, often known as the stages of change model. And its insight is that there's more to change than just jumping in and making the change. And that,

you know, you start off in sort of a pre-contemplation stage where you're not even really thinking. It's barely on your radar, right? And then there's a contemplation stage where you're sort of weighing, do I really want to do this? But then there's a planning stage. And part of the planning stage is making a plan and getting people together. But both the planning and the contemplation stage, there's a lot of what you're talking about there, which is like, well, why do I want to do this? Do I really want to do it? What conflicts in life is this going to cause? Like what opportunity costs is this? If I'm going to do this, I'm not going to be doing that. And, you know, it's just a lot of time really thinking through all these things instead of just jumping right into action. And it's pretty

clear that this upfront work makes it easier to make a change. And even in your case, it may modify what the change you actually want to make even is. In Switch, one of the things that I found most useful in my own life and in working with organizations is a very simple idea. My brother and I, our favorite thing is simple ideas that for whatever reason are not in wide adoption. And I think this is one of those. We call it finding the bright spots. It's to say, whatever it is you're trying to do, chances are you're already hitting that goal or that aspiration in some perhaps limited situations in your life right now. So I was a lifelong procrastinator and it was actually a surprisingly big hurdle to doing my work as a writer. But even as a serial procrastinator, there were times when I didn't procrastinate.

Right. Those are the bright spots. serial procrastinator, there were times when I didn't procrastinate, right? Those are the bright spots. So it's like bright spots are anytime you have a difference in performance, a difference in outcomes, by definition, you have bright spots, the most positive moments in a field of mixed data. And the question is, what can you learn from those? Not are they a good thing or a bad thing? They're obviously a good thing. And we're obviously aware when we do a good job, but the next step is to really reverse engineer what allowed us to succeed. And so, you know, in my own case, I started learning things like, well, you know, if I get into email, I'm doomed, right? It's just like a distraction machine. So I figure out various ways to shape my path to keep that at bay. And, well, I do better in the early morning.

Well, I do better in coffee shops. And all that stuff is coming out of bright spots analysis. Rather than wallowing in my failures, I'm saying, when have I not failed? And what can I learn from the lack of failure that might allow me to not fail more often? It's a very, very simple idea, but I find that a lot of times people skip right by it in favor of self-flagellating. That's a great idea. And there is usually something to be learned from those. Are you able to share at all what the upcoming book is, or is that still all under wraps? It's still a little bit under wraps, but I will say this, that it's another book about change.

Okay. So Switch came out in 2010. Yeah. And Switch is fundamentally about behavior change. So Switch came out in 2010. And Switch is fundamentally about behavior change. It's so, it deals with a lot of different kinds of change, organizational change, personal change, societal change, but it's through the lens of how do we change behavior. This book is different. This is more coming from a perspective of operations and strategy and systems. So I almost think about them as kind of sister books, you know, both dealing with change, but from different altitudes.

Got it. So let's change direction now and talk a little bit about your new podcast, What It's Like to Be. Why don't you tell us about it? I sort of gave my little spiel on it, but you tell us about it. Yeah. So What It's Like to Be is a show where in every episode, I interview someone from a different profession. So a cattle rancher or an ocean lifeguard or a professional Santa Claus, or, and I just pepper them with a hundred nosy questions about what they do all day. I find that I just have an almost excessive curiosity about what people do and their jobs. And there was this one Thanksgiving dinner I had with my wife's family. And I remember looking around the table and I could have told you if there had been a pop quiz, like what each person did, like their profession and probably their employer name.

But for many of them, I didn't have a clue how they actually spent eight or nine hours a day when they were doing their thing. Like there was just a black hole where a concrete understanding of their work was. And so I thought, wouldn't it be great to have a show where you kind of have an excuse to be nosy and to talk to people and, you know, what is it that makes a welder really mad? And, you know, who do meteorologists fight with at the office? And, you know, what's like the moment of triumph for a mystery novelist? And it's just been an absolute pleasure to work on. It's really fun to listen to. I think you told an origin story about there being a plumber coming to your house, right? And you wanted to ask him all kinds of questions.

And you just were like, well, but I'm kind of an introvert and it would be a little bit weird, but I'm the same way. Like I see somebody doing something and I want to ask all kinds of questions that I'm like, is that even appropriate to ask? You know, I mean, I'm digging for the weird stuff here, you know, because there's weird stuff in every job. So yeah, it's really fun to listen to. And the list of things that you have are great. I mean, professional Santa Claus is great. FBI special agent. What it's like to be an archaeologist. Like, I've always wondered about that.

Dog trainer. Lots of great ones. I remember the archaeologist. One of my favorite parts of the show is getting into job specific jargon. Like the archaeologist said, a lot of times, you know, people will ask me, you know, did you dig up any shards of historical importance today? And he was like, no, no, no, no. Shards are glass and glass doesn't last. What we find are sherds, S-H-E-R-D-S.

And that means like little pieces of pottery that have been broken over the years. One of my stock questions for guests is like, what's a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know? And what does it mean? The welder, his phrase was drag up. And you'd have to hear it in his voice. I mean, he has just absolutely one of the most enthusiastic, like he could have been a character in a TV show. He's just such enthusiasm and such a distinctive voice. But he says drag up is it means you quit. just such enthusiasm and such a distinctive voice. But he says, drag up is, it means you quit. So he said, he went to his boss one day and said, I'm dragging. And the boss was like, what? He said, I'm dragging up. And his boss said, I don't know what you mean. And he said,

I'm leaving. I'm out of here. You didn't come off the cheddar. So I found something better, dog. It's like, I'm getting to look through a peephole at different people's lives and what brings them satisfaction and what makes them mad and what stresses them out. And that's the gist. I'm wondering if in that guy's case, if that's actually a welder term or just something he just made up. It's entirely possible. That's a lucky read. Yeah. Story. I don't know. I'm going to fish here a little bit for lessons out of these. And they can be lessons that you've heard of in multiple ones or ones that you've pulled out of individual ones. But one of the big things is like meaning at work. Right. And we've all seen scenarios or heard stories of the janitor at the hospital who thinks his work has a ton of meaning

because he gets to make a clean place and that aids people in healing, right? And then we also know people who it doesn't matter what you tell them about their work, they just think it's meaningless, right? Even if it might have some degree of meaning. So in talking to all these people, have you been able to pull out any threads of how we can find more meaning in the work that we do? I tell you what, yes, I have come to appreciate, I used to kind of half roll my eyes at that janitor in the hospital story, but I think I don't have quite the same eye rolling circumference anymore because I've heard a lot of that kind of sentiment from people in a way that I believe, that in a way, the meaning is in the eye of the beholder. And one of my favorite examples is the very first episode of the show is a stadium beer vendor who

spent over 30 years just walking the stands of stadiums, most frequently the baseball stadium in Baltimore, and absolutely adored it. And I remember when we booked that interview, I was thinking, oh, well, this will be fun. Maybe we'll hear some weird, nerdy details about how many beers can you carry and what it's like to sell and what sells best and maybe get some drunk stories and it'll just be a playful, fun episode. But it wasn't. It was a reflective episode. It was a soulful episode because of, you know, this guy was at a point in his career right at retirement where he's looking back and he's thinking about the choices he's made and he feels really good about them. And it was

just beautiful. He told me, you know, one of the things I had no idea about was at least for this stadium, you tended to work the same stands. So, like, he had an area that he worked game after game after game, which meant in turn, he had a community. I asked him at one point, I said, you know, how many people do you think you would recognize, you know, and know their names on the street from working these stands? And he said, over a hundred. Yeah. Wow. I was like, oh, he knew multiple generations of families. And he told stories about, you know, people who had gone into the program because they had

problems with alcohol and, you know, working through that with him. And let me see if I can find this quickly. He had this quote that just absolutely blew my mind. He was talking about his relatives' reaction to this work. And, you know, sometimes they might be skeptical. Oh, here it is. Here it is. He said, I had relatives that said, man, you squandered your life. You had so much potential to do so many things. And I said, this is him talking, no, I didn't. I've had a great life. It gave me a lot of free time. I worked very, very hard. I never missed work. I never complained, very hard. I never missed work. I never complained about the job.

I kept my nose clean and I loved it. Could I buy a brand new car? No. Could I get a big house? No. Could I take vacations to the Caribbean or fly to Europe? No. But could I have a good life?

The answer was yes. A very, very good life in my mind. And I loved what I was doing. And I know for a fact that I brought something good to the ballpark and that the people brought something good back to me. I mean, it's beautiful. Isn't that gangbusters? I mean, wouldn't we all like to feel that way at the end of our career? Like we know we did something that mattered, that brought something to others, that we took something away. That was the moment when I realized this show wasn't just interesting, but I think it's getting at some really important themes. It was like the

moment when I doubled down on it. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

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or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week Buying Power column.

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a beer vendor inside of us that sees our job as meaningful and the community that we make in a good life. And we all have the beer vendor inside of us that thinks our job sucks and we could have done so much more and why aren't we in Europe? And he's clearly exhibiting a choice there in how he sees things. I thought too about the ocean lifeguard episode in a way was similar. It's a guy who'd spent 30 plus years as a beach lifeguard in Southern California, you know, where you really have to be skilled because a lot of surfers, a lot of big waves. What I was thinking about was, you know, I write business books and so I'm in,

you know, a lot of business meme circles. And there's been one meme over the past few years that's been about drawing boundaries and don't get yourself too invested in work and don't get your identity too tied up with what you do. And it's almost like the mental model is that work is fundamentally exploitative or extractive. And so you have to kind of put up fences to keep it from encroaching on what's special about you. And it's not that I think that's wrong. I mean, I think there is truth there. And I've experienced that truth.

Like I've been in times where I was too invested at work in an unhealthy way. But there's a counterpoint, too, which is when you listen to this Ocean Lifeguard talk, I mean, his profession was absolutely central to his satisfaction in life. He's met his wife through the work. His kids grew up in the waves with him. His best friends are all lifeguards. He's had a band that plays music for 30 years, all lifeguard. He's had adventures. It's too simplistic to think of work as being extractive when you talk to people like this

who have found so much meaning in their work. I couldn't agree more. I have found that narrative to be one that is, like many things, partially right. As you said, yeah, there is some truth in the fact that if we're not careful, work can consume everything else. And depending on who we work for, we may have to be more or less careful. But you and I both know that working for ourselves that that same thing can happen, right? In doing your own thing. And yet, at the

same time, I think it's very reductive to think of work as only something that takes you away from the meaningful moments of life, right? The other meme around this is nobody on their deathbed said, I wish I spent more time at work. Well, maybe and maybe not. Like, again, I think that's a little bit reductive because work is, for most of us, where we spend a big chunk of our time, and it is a big chunk of how we put value into the world. And to say that that's not important is to cut off a big part of our life in a way that we don't need to. And so, like many things, I think that that meme is partially right and partially wrong. And it's a matter of finding some sort of balance there that works where I do get value personally from my work. And I also have things that are not my work. It's not the whole of my life. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think of the

conversation I had with Larry Jefferson, who became a professional Santa Claus. I didn't even know there was such a thing until I met Larry. But not only is there one, there are many professional Santa Clauses. There is a Santa Claus school that you can attend. And the thing that's fascinating about Larry is he spent 20 plus years in the military. This is a buttoned up, disciplined, organized guy. And he gets to the point where he can retire and he says, you know, what do I want to spend, you know, the next couple of decades of my life doing? And he says, this. I mean, can you imagine the look on some of his military brethren's faces when he told them he's going to Santa school?

I kind of want to go to Santa school now. That sounds pretty awesome. That was just like, wait, it was like a record screech moment. Wait, there's a Santa school? Okay, tell me about that. What do you do in Santa school? Exactly. One of the funniest things about it was a lot of it was very tactical. It's like, well, they have to learn about different kinds of insurance that you need when you're holding people's kids on your lap. Wow.

Insurance. The tentacles are everywhere. Yes. But back to the point. I mean, here's a guy who just consciously, intentionally shifted his life to providing these beautiful, warm moments for kids. And you think about someone like Larry, and you think about the deathbed moment, like, I don't think it's crazy to think he might have, you know, wished he had one more afternoon,

you know, at the mall to make 50 kids day. Exactly. It's a great illustration for what I was trying to say there. Let's go back to the hot dog vendor for a second, though, because I think he's an interesting case. And, you know, a question I often have, and this is just pure speculation, right? But you've worked in the areas relating to psychology for quite some time. Again, business, but lots of psychology views on that. You know, somebody like that, that hot dog vendor. I mean, to what extent do you think we can take on that attitude? And to what extent do you think that certain people just have the ability to have a rosier view of things?

I think it's both of those things and a third thing, which is fit. Like, I think that Howard Hart, the stadium beer vendor, I think that he was a glass half full guy just in his bones. stadium beer vendor, I think that he was a glass half full guy just in his bones. And I think, you know, if he'd end up working in a oil change place, he probably would have been a charming guy and made a lot of friends there too. But I think that this environment kind of elicited the best of him. And I think that's been something, I definitely don't have any answers here, but it's just been interesting to see what a snap there is between certain people and the professions they choose and how little we invest, you know, as a society in helping people find that snap. Kids in high school, it's like they're learning advanced math of the kind that probably 1% of the people listening could even do, you know, complicated algebraic matrices and things you're never going to see again in your

life. And they probably couldn't name 20 professions if you put them on the spot, you know? It's like these fundamental things about the world, like what is it like to do these jobs and what kind of personalities do you need to do these jobs? And what kind of relationships do you have in these jobs? Are they kind of short and transactional like it is with the professional Santa Claus? Or are they long-term relationships like a piano teacher has with their students where they might be together for 15 years? And what are the dynamics of those? And what does it say about what kind of work you might seek out depending on how you're wired. And we basically do none of that to help people understand themselves and understand how those characteristics of self

might snap to or not different kinds of trades. That is really compelling because we don't. I mean, and how are we making career choices? I mean, it's usually pretty ill-informed. I remember my brother Chip and I, I keep bringing up my brother. He was my co-author for four books, so that's why he keeps coming up. We wrote a book called Decisive about making better decisions. And one of the things that stuck with me most from that book was what we call ooching, which is a word we stole from a company that coined it. Ooching meaning trying things rather than just guessing about them. So on the career front, what made me think of it was I talked to this college student who was a senior in college, had been an accounting major, thought he was good at math.

And I think maybe one of his parents had done the work. And so it was just one of those things where, OK, well, good enough. I'll just do that. And made good grades. And as a senior, they go on like a field visit to an accounting firm. You know, he walks into this place and he looks around and kind of soaks up the vibe and instantly in his gut, he knows, oh man, no, this is no, I do not want this. I don't want this life. I don't want to be in a place like this. And think about, I mean, he's a senior, you know?

Yeah. He's done the work. He's on the cusp of graduation. I came away thinking that is a systems failure right there. Like it should be impossible to make the mistake that he made. And I blame the system rather than him. If you're training for a trade, day one is visit the fricking accounting firm. You know what I mean? My wife went to physical therapy school. I mean, here's how you fix this. This is not like some fantastical idea of mine. When she went back to graduate school for physical therapy, as part of her application, she had to show evidence that she'd done a hundred

observational hours, meaning like she was a shadow for a real working physical therapist for 100 hours. Now, that's how you do it. Because when you show up on the first day of grad school, you know, about to plunk down 50 grand a year, there's no mystery about do you know what you're getting into? And so I think things like that, we can add so much value for people just by helping them get little taste. It's like the sampler spoon of ice cream at the ice cream parlor. Get little tastes of the path that they're headed down. Yeah, that's fascinating because my initial reaction would have been upon hearing that, like, well, why are you making it so hard for somebody to get a degree in something, like to even get

started? But framing it from the perspective you just did, it makes complete sense, right? It's not so much that we're trying to keep you out. We're just wanting to make sure you really want in. Yeah. And so if I were the education czar for the economy, that would be one of my first practices is to make sure everybody gets an early taste of the thing that they're studying for, training for, or what have you. I mean, it's not rocket science. Yeah. In the conversation you had with the crisis PR manager, right? Somebody who gets called in when an organization is in some sort of crisis. He said something that really stuck with me. And I just want to see if you want to elaborate on it a little bit. And he was talking about how often what he's trying to do with these companies is get them out of debating who is right in a situation. So let's say they've had an employee who's acted poorly and it's gone public and, you know,

trying to get them out of like who's right and into a framework of what's best, what's the best thing to do here. And I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict. And there was a phrase they used to use in the recovery programs, which was, would you rather be happy or would you rather be right? And that kind of came to my mind when I heard that, but this is a slightly different application, but tell me about him sharing that and kind of what it brought up for you. This was a fascinating conversation because I think I have to be honest, like when I was about to sit down and talk to him, I think my mental model was largely the one that he kind of mocked a little bit in the episode, which was we think of people who do PR and especially crisis PR as being spinmeisters. They're word artists and they're going to say just the right phrase or chain together just the right group of sentences or stories to kind of get you out of the jam that you've created as a company

or as a person. And I was really struck and impressed actually by the way he reframed that. And he said that actually you rarely can communicate your way out of a crisis. There is no stream of BS that's going to like absolve you of some dumb thing that you've done. Rather, it's what do we need to do to your point about what's the right thing to do at this moment? And then let's talk about that thing. He gave a bunch of examples of there was a health system and one of the employees of the health system had said just some ungodly, hateful thing about LGBTQ folks on social media. I mean, it was just like beyond the pale, really hostile. And their first instinct was to kind of like sweep this under the rug and,

you know, release some kind of corporate boilerplate. Interestingly, one of the side themes of this episode was how a lot of what holds back like a normal human response to some kind of failure is fear spawned by lawsuits. So, you know, this health system, they know this employee has done something terrible, but they're afraid to say anything about it because the saying of what was terrible about it may expose them to some kind of lawsuit. And so Chris, this PR guy, he's the one, I mean, the guy we might've thought as a spinmeister, he's the one on the phone with the CEO saying, He's the one, I mean, the guy we might've thought as a spinmeister, he's the one on the phone with the CEO saying, hey, you personally have to come and talk about this. Like you've done the wrong thing.

You can't put the wine back in the bottle, but you can deal with it. And if you make the right moves here, I mean, that employee's got to go and you've got to go talk to the people who are outraged rightly by this. And if you do the right things and then talk about them, we can take a lot of the sting out of this painful mistake. And I just thought that was really different than what I expected and really compelling. I wanted to pause for a quick Good Wolf reminder. This one's about a habit change and a mistake I see people making. And that's really that we don't think about these new habits that we want to add in the context of our entire life, right?

Habits don't happen in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life that we have. So when we just keep adding, I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what we're not going to do in order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for you to think about where is this going to fit and what in my life might I need to remove. If you want a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. It reminded me a little bit of like, if you get a good marketing person

to work with you, right? The thing that they will tell you is I can't market a bad product. We've got to go back to the thing itself that you've created and make sure it's good. A not so good marketing person will tell you, yeah, I can sell that I can make, you know, but ultimately, it's not going to really be that successful if the underlying thing isn't any good. And this crisis PR manager was sort of saying the same thing. We have to deal with the actual problem, not what we say about the problem. Now, what we say about the problem is important, right? In the same way that what we say about a good product is important. But if you skip that very first step, it's likely to backfire. This PR guy actually represented the family of Elizabeth Smart.

Some of the old timers listening, me, will probably remember that name. This was in the early 2000s. It was just an absolutely horrific case where a 14-year-old girl, Elizabeth Smart, was abducted at knife point out of her bedroom. I mean, in a suburb in Utah. I mean, bedroom. I mean, in a suburb in Utah, I mean, just the kind of thing that just never happens. And spent about eight or nine months in abduction as people hunted frantically for her. This is one of these cases just blew up nationally. It was on the news every night. This was the era of Larry King. And it was like every other night, Larry King's doing an Elizabeth Smart show. And people are calling the family, for profile stories and it's just overwhelming to the family. Like the worst thing has happened to them. And then, you know, the media is coming out of the woodwork. And of

course the media's job is to milk you for more, right? And so very quickly the family members start to lash out at the cops. Well, that's a bad idea because the cops are one of your best allies in this situation. So anyway, they bring in Chris to kind of be the funnel to defend the family and to try to rationalize their approach with the media. And so one of the things that happens early on, you've got all this media attention, this kind of frenzy, you know, imagine having to fill up Larry King Live with an hour with basically no new facts, right? Because the facts are coming up at a glacial pace. They don't know where she is. They don't know who did this. There's nothing. And so what fills the vacuum is ultimately conspiracy theories. And so, you know, within the first month, one of them comes

out, well, one of the smart family, like an uncle in the smart family must have been involved. And there were like a couple of supposedly suspicious details. And so Chris, I mean, imagine being like the advocate for this family and they know this is false. And the worst thing has happened to them. They've lost their daughter. They can't find her. And now like the spotlight, the finger of blame is being pointed at them. I mean, talk about a stressful situation.

Chris told me that he basically wore down five or six teeth during this area because at night he was just grinding and grinding and grinding. So anyway, he eventually kind of combats this story just by doing some of the things we've been talking about, just being very open about it, letting the truth speak for itself. Even in these situations where you would think that our sympathies and our empathy would be with this family and we would kind of give them some space. No, I mean, they still needed an advocate in their court. And fortunately, the story has, I guess, an amended happy ending, which is she was eventually located. They figured out who had abducted her and she came home after just a horrifying experience. But listening to Chris talk about what that meant for him, you know, as an outsider, he wasn't part of the family. But in a sense, he became part of the family because of all that time and all of that stress.

Yeah. I mean, that's just, that's tragedy compounded upon tragedy, right? Like the fact that that family had to go through that. And then they've got to hire a PR manager to man. I mean, it's just insane that we as a culture do that. Yeah. I mean, he's got Tom Brokaw and Connie Chung like calling his phone, like peppering for interviews. I mean, he actually wrote a great book about the experience, which goes through the whole case and in greater detail than we have time for here. whole case and in greater detail than we have time for here and i consider myself sort of kind of part of the media but it's hard to come away from that book with a rosy view of the way things work

there was just such a feeding frenzy around the whole thing that just was not a good look I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

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Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections.

Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Have there been other things that you have learned from doing these interviews that, broadly speaking, again, have sort of caused you to think differently about aspects or elements of work? I think one of the things that's striking to me is how, I don't know if I have the language to talk about this yet, but it's almost like some jobs scratch one itch and some jobs scratch multiple itches. So what I mean is like the forensic accountant that

I talked to, it was one of my favorite episodes. I mean, it was one of those things where the more you hear about this job, the more you're like, gosh, that would be a fun job to do. Just trying to untangle, you know, people who've committed fraud or embezzled funds from their organizations. What are the clues you look for? And it's kind of a toolkit that you can use again and again. And I would contrast that with something more like, in one case, I interviewed a TV meteorologist. And in talking to her, her name was Lacey Swope in Oklahoma City, which is like the big leagues for TV weather because they have some nasty weather there. that her job has these two just completely dissimilar aspects. Like on one hand, there's a lot of serious science involved in meteorology. I think more than I realized, like she's kind of conjuring her own models and she's getting all this data from national sources, but she's also tweaking it based on what she's observing in the atmosphere. And she's looking like three levels up in the atmosphere, you know, to see like what are the underlying factors that are brewing and causing the weather

we can observe. And so there's this science aspect. And then there's also this aspect where she's got to get on camera and be like your wisecracking daughter or, you know, someone that you like to see on TV, like someone that you want to spend time with every morning when you're, you know, sitting around the living room or whatever. And those things could not be more different. Like if you were solving for one or the other in exclusion, you would need very different kinds of profiles. And that's happened several times with the show where it's almost like something I'm watching for now is like, is this a split personality kind of career or is it a one personality kind of career? And it's just gotten me thinking about back to

this theme of, are we helping people discover the kinds of careers that are going to fit them and give them a lot of satisfaction? Like that's one of the things we should be screening for is if you have one of these very ambidextrous style personalities or skill sets, you're a performer and a scientist, that's hard. And you've got to really pay a lot of attention to, can I find a career that scratches both itches? Or do I need to figure out which itch is more powerful and just serve that one because I can't possibly get both? Or one's a career and one's a hobby or whatever. But that's just been something I've enjoyed thinking about. Yeah. I have a family member who in high school was both really, really into ROTC and really, really into theater.

Whoa, that's not a Venn diagram intersection you see very often. Totally. And so far, the ROTC side has kind of won out career wise. But I'm kind of curious. He's still he's still young, you know, younger. So I'm curious how that might play out over time. Cause yeah, like you said, as soon as you started talking about that, like two distinct sides of a personality, I was like, Oh, that makes me think of him. I remember years ago, this was during the decision-making book we were talking about earlier.

I talked to this guy who he worked in security at a university in the Pacific Northwest And his decision, I was sort of doing some decision counseling as part of the research for the book. And his decision that he was trying to make is whether he wanted to drop that and go back to school to get a master's in counseling. It was like a classic, like two-itch situation. He had this kind of rigid analytical mind and he was good at it and he was good at security, but he also felt kind of unresolved or unfulfilled because he had this other instinct that was much more empathetic and human focused and nurturing almost. And so, you know, one of the things we were talking about is, is this going to be a win to just go from one side of the spectrum to the other? Or are you going to,

as soon as you make that switch, are you just going to miss the other side you've just left behind? Like, are you going to have to solve for both ultimately to be fulfilled? And to what extent can you solve for both career-wise or do you have to solve for both like career and hobby? Like, I mean, there's multiple ways to sort of take that apart. So one of the things we were playing around with, back to the notion of ooching we talked about earlier, I'm not too presumptuous in these situations. Life is complicated and I didn't know this guy very well. So I was hesitant to like dole out advice. But the one thing I felt strongly about was, before you quit your job and enroll in a master's program, it's going to probably set back your net worth a hundred grand

over two years. Like, you've got to make sure this is it. Like, you've got to ooch. You have to find some counseling situations to observe or test out. And that was something that I felt pretty strongly about. Absolutely. Yeah. I often think of an analogy where it's like with things like that, you're standing at the beginning.

You're like a trailhead that's heading into the forest. And, you know, up about seven feet, there's a turn to the right. And, you know, you can't see what's around that turn, but you really want to know. But if you just keep standing there, you will never know what's around that turn. Once you take a few steps, now you can see a little bit further and you can then go, okay, that looks interesting. I'll keep walking or, you know, bear around the turn. I better retreat. But I think where we get paralyzed is we stand there trying to see something that's impossible to see from the vantage point we have.

Well said. And that's kind of what you're describing here with this guy, right? Like he can't see what it's like to be a counselor unless he goes and is in that situation a little bit. Amen. And I think that the error people make so often is that they think they're doing that work by thinking about it. Like I imagine he spent a lot of hours like imagining himself as a counselor and, well, I'd be good at it because of this and I have this trait and I really enjoy this. And I just fundamentally don't think that works. I don't think we're good at imagining what we're going to feel like in

situations that we haven't experienced before. And that's why there's wisdom and just don't try to predict something that you can know. Like you're saying, don't predict something that's around the corner where you could just peek around the corner and take a look. And I think that we can often learn more about ourselves, not by thinking or cogitating, but just putting ourselves in new situations and then observing what happens. You know, how do we feel? Does it feel like a click? Are we kind of instantly engaged or are there aspects of it that we never could have imagined that might be a pretty good deterrent to doing any more of that? I mean, I think there's only one way to find out and that's to do it. Yeah, absolutely. Back to Decisive. Decisive is a book about making better decisions. And

I wanted to ask about one, I think, really fundamental idea in the book, and it's what is narrow framing and why do we want to avoid that? How does that get us in trouble with decisions? narrow framing. And why do we want to avoid that? How does that get us in trouble with decisions? I'm glad you brought this up because, you know, when I look back, that's probably the number one thing that I think is important about this book. And certainly the number one thing I've taken away personally. And the idea is that that's so often in life, we make what we call in the book a whether or not decision, like a decision presents itself like that security guard I was just talking about. He was deciding whether or not to go back and get a master's in therapy. Just this week, my wife and I were thinking whether or not we wanted to invest

in a repair of this pergola we've got in our backyard of sort of rotting boards and whether or not we should do that, whether or not we should go on vacation and blah, blah, whether or not we should buy this. And the point we're making in the book is that this is a very natural way for decisions to manifest. And it's almost inherently flawed because when we put those blinders on and we just consider one thing and the only decision we're making is kind of thumbs up or thumbs down, buy it, don't buy it, do it, don't do it. Like what we're missing is many things. But number one, we're accepting the frame as it shows up. And number two, we're ignoring the opportunity cost of that decision.

So one of the things, I mean, I try to take my own medicine, right? So with the pergola thing, we got this just obscene quote from, you know, contractors are so busy, they can afford to just throw out high numbers and see what happens. And so we come back with this crazy quote. And I was like, I don't want to have a rotten pergola. But that number is like, two years worth of babysitter covered dates for the two of us to go out. And when you think about something like that, the same resources deployed in very different ways. I mean, it was the easiest thing in the world. See, this is absurd because the two years worth of dates would be so much more fun and satisfying and memorable than fixing some boards in a pergola, you know, but

when you keep the narrow frame on and you're just thinking, should we do this or not? Then all these other arguments intrude like, well, we can't be someone who has rotting boards in the backyard and it would be, you know, unwise to just let that go. And, you know, I'm sure we can find the money somewhere and blah, blah, blah. The fundamental flaw with whether or not decisions is often we talk ourselves into feeling like the only real positive outcome would be a yes. And if we say no, like we've somehow disappointed ourselves or shirked an opportunity or something else. But when you can make an apples to apples comparison, we could do this or this or this. It often becomes surprisingly easy to kind of gauge what the right path is. today's episode, if you were going to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what would it be? Remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give you a tip on that. And it's to start small. It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than we think we need to. Because what that does is it allows us to get victories.

And victories are really important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good about ourselves and we become less motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure that you succeed, you build your motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. That's one of my best ways for thinking about something is not just weighing, like you said, whether I want to do that thing or not, but either from a financial or time perspective, what else could I do with that time or that

money? Because that suddenly is like, oh, wait a second. I never thought of it that way. Like, you know, I could buy this guitar, but I could also do this, or I could go out to dinner three times here, or I could buy a new guitar versus should I buy a new guitar? Like, there's just different ways of, it just opens things up. You know, I think that goes along with the general idea in decisive of just getting as many options on the table as you can early on, right? Like getting different perspectives. We just get stuck into

the binary, like relationship. Should I stay or should I go? Well, there's actually a lot of other permutations there. That's a great example. And then people often frame it exactly that way. Like should I, should I break up with this person or not? Well, there's actually a hundred other gradations in between just mindlessly accepting the things that are bumming you out and cutting the cord, you know? So, and this is not a small thing, by the way. I mean, I think that this is the phenomenon that makes corporate mergers and acquisitions such a disastrous lot. I mean, the research has been clear for decades that if you're trying to make a decision whether or not to acquire another company, the best answer is don't. And it's easy to understand why that is when you think about it through the lens of narrow framing, because what happens is a CEO gets enamored with some other company and immediately the blinders are on, right? It's like, OK, that looks promising.

You start doing sales jobs to the board of directors and to your management team. And OK, we really need this company. They're going to be the perfect add on strategically for where we're headed. You start to believe the sales pitch that you're making all the time. And then, you know, the target realizes how much you like them. And so the price starts going up and up and up and up. But it just feels too painful. Like how after all that work and all that selling, like, are you going to back away just because the price went up a couple of billion dollars? I mean, come on. You know, you end up at the end of this road with these huge and disastrous acquisitions. Like the one we write about in the book is Quaker acquired Snapple at just this almost

dot com-esque price that was doomed from the start or, you know, AOL and Time Warner or, you know, Microsoft and Yahoo and on and on. And I think that's what's going on there. If by law, when you were making an acquisition, you had to consider what are three other ways you could use that $12 billion to further your success as an enterprise, I don't think a single person would make this error.

I think if we were forced to consider opportunity cost, it just vanishes. That was something that was so fun about the decision-making book is the literature is so complicated, but often the most effective fixes were the simplest. It's like, don't make a whether or not decision, try something instead of guessing about it. And I really enjoyed that part of researching decisions. Well, I think that is a great place for us to wrap up. Dan, thank you so much. You and I are

going to continue talking in the post-show conversation. I want to talk a little bit about your, I believe it's your most recent book called Upstream. Is that correct? It is most recent. Yep. Which is about preventing problems before they happen, which is a very wise approach to things. We'll be discussing that in the post-show conversation and listeners, you can get access to that as well as ad-free episodes and other bonus content, as well as becoming part of our community and attending special community meetings by going to oneufeed.net slash join. Again, Dan, thank you so much for coming on. I've wanted to talk to you for a while now, and I'm glad to have made it happen. My pleasure. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks.

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