The School of Greatness - 87 The Truth About Intelligence and the Many Paths To Greatness with Scott Barry Kaufman

Episode Date: August 22, 2014

"I think educators have a misguided view of how we realize potential and what these tests are actually measuring." - Scott Barry Kaufman Please come visit us, find the show resources and connect with the School of Greatness: www.lewishowes.com/87

This is episode number 87 with Scott Barry Kaufman. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, everyone?

Thanks so much for tuning in today on the School of Greatness podcast. I'm your host, Lewis Howes, and I'm thrilled you're joining me today. And I've got Mr. Scott Barry Kaufman on, who is the author of a book called Ungifted, Intelligence Redefined, The Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Paths to Greatness. And just that title alone made me intrigued to learn about what the many paths to greatness are, since this is the School of Greatness podcast, right? So Scott is an interesting guy and he regularly gives keynotes and workshops on the development of intelligence, creativity, and human potential. He's also the scientific director of the

Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He also got his doctorate in cognitive psychology from Yale University in 2009 and got his master's degree in experimental psychology from Cambridge University in 2005. So he's a very accomplished individual, done a lot of research on the many paths to greatness. So I'm very pumped to dive into this. And he talks about some of the challenges that we face or some students face growing up, some children face growing up in school, and how they're labeled with a certain dyslexia or ADHD or autism, how these students are labeled based on their IQ in school.

And he talks about how broken he feels like this is and actually how some of these students who are labeled with learning disorders are actually some of the most incredible entrepreneurs and most successful athletes and artists and designers and all these other things out there because they use their imagination and their creativity in such ways that the classroom kind of stifles and brings down in certain ways.

So I really connected with Scott and with this message and with the book and what he talks about, just because I had such a big learning disability growing up. And I'll mention that here in just a second. But I'm very excited to bring him on. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into this episode with Scott Barry Kaufman. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We've got a new guest on today.

His name is Scott Barry Kaufman. What's up, Scott? Hey, how's it going? Going well, man. And I'm glad we finally got to connect. It's been a few months. I actually found out about you, I think think a couple years ago. I think you were writing something about greatness or something. And I was like, Oh, I want to learn more about this guy. So we finally connected. We just realized we have like 1000 mutual friends. And so I'm glad you're on the show and here to provide your wisdom

to the world. So thank you very much. And the topic I want to talk about today is greatness, obviously. It's what I talk about a lot. But you've got a book that was very interesting to me when I read the cover. And it says, Ungifted, Intelligence Redefined, The Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Path to greatness. And you are a psychology professor, but also just a researcher. And you study a lot more than I've ever studied in my life. And you research a lot. So you've got like these data that backs up what I try to just talk about

from my own experience and from other people's experience. But you've got like real research, real data that backs up everything that we're about to cover here, which I find fascinating. So I'm excited to dive into what you've learned over the years. Yeah, me too. And a lot of this stuff has also been afforded by my personal experiences and lots of things that I went through have definitely influenced the research that I do. Now, why did you want to research this topic in the first place? Oh, man. You know, I've always been obsessed with questions like what does it take to get to the highest levels of achievement? Why do people differ from each other?

I remember being really young and always wondering. So I was not in the gifted classrooms. I had an auditory learning disability when I was really young. I remember always wondering, what do the gifted kids have that I don't? I think I used to do like, I was like, I really want to be able to study this someday. I want to know, what is it to these people that reach highest levels of greatness? What are the ingredients? I feel like I've learned so much through my own personal experiments as well as experiments

on others. Yeah, I read that about you in your cover of the book where you're talking about that. And we have that similarity. I was always in the special needs class. I remember I went to, when I was in elementary school, I was always in like the extra study hall class with like four other kids. And, you know, I was like the only average kid, everyone else was in a wheelchair. Right. Or it was like, it was like something like that. I was always like the kid who just couldn't learn anything. And then I went to a private boarding school when I was in eighth grade. And I remember they tested, they tested all these different things when I was there. And I had a second

grade reading level when I went to eighth grade. I remember this. I couldn't really read ever. And it was, I still have challenges spelling. The one class that I actually focused on in high school was typing. I remember I was like, I think this computer thing is going to be important one day. And I was only typing with two fingers at the time. So I was committed to doing every class, learning it, how to type properly. And now I can type probably like 90 words a minute. That's the thing. That's the thing is that people compensate so much through setbacks and especially being

told or having low expectations not not all people rise to that occasion a lot of people can really cause them to uh to go further and further behind but there's some people where that kind of stuff definitely fuels them to kind of want to prove other people wrong and they end up 50 steps ahead dude it was the it was the worst school was the worst for me i remember so i had a second grade reading level so they put me in like these advanced, or these reading classes to kind of catch me up, and these spelling classes.

Like I still have trouble spelling today. And the simplest words I spell like letters backwards for some reason. One of my friends was like, he thinks I'm dyslexic, and I don't even know if that's true or not, but I wouldn't be surprised. Just say, just like conceptualize that as creativity right right so there's no need for a label there you go there you go so i and it's uh it's interesting because in private school i went to this private boarding school and i don't know if they do this in public schools or not but i want when i went

in high school to this private school you the grade card after every semester, they would rank us where we stood in the class based on our GPA, and I was always in the bottom five. So we only had like a couple hundred students in my grade, but I was always in the bottom five, and I always saw that number. And a couple times, I was like second to last. And it was just the worst feeling knowing that no matter how much I studied, no matter how many advanced classes or tutors I had, like I couldn't comprehend the information. It was so challenging for me to read and remember what I just read a paragraph before and like tie

it into the next story. And it was always been a challenge for me. So this is really interesting to like dive into this information to realize that like hey i'm not an idiot i'm not still and i wasn't stupid growing up i just learned differently and i had other talents and that's what i want to talk about here which so i'm really excited that you wrote this book yeah let's talk about this and um what is the you know so i'm excited to hear about why you're inspired to write about but what is the key to understanding the development of greatness that's something oh well i'm not sure that that asking that what is the key is is the best uh the best way to develop greatness i think the best way is to recognize there are multiple paths

to greatness and that's kind of one of the big uh points i wanted to make in that book is that every person kind of needs to find out for themselves what their unique value is in this world and what what unique package of personal characteristics, including their motivations, their cognitive abilities, like are you a very verbal person, are you not, are you a visual spatial person, and figuring out what kind of environments and niches would be best for you. But what I've discovered in looking at people who really reach those highest levels, they didn't necessarily have all those stereotypical markers that we use to predict potential when you're young.

This includes, you know, I wrote this article recently about what predicts MBA success, for instance. And people would be surprised to know that like so many of the things that talent scouts go through and do are just not predicting greatness whatsoever within those sports domains. The researchers looked at this. You know the NBA Combine? You know how they do this? They have all these prospective NBA players test for their agility, test for their height, their general athleticism. Yeah, the combine.

So it finds out that's completely non-predictive. It's like a really worthless thing. It shows their athleticism, but it doesn't show their teamwork, their leadership, their emotional intelligence, their ability to bounce back, all those things, right? Exactly. Mental toughness, all the things that really are the most important things for differentiating those at the very top versus those that aren't. Yeah, that's right.

Right. Well, you know, everyone talks about, at least when I was growing up in school, everyone was talking about IQ. And can you talk about what is IQ, just so people that don't know, what does it stand for? What's its purpose? And is it even effective because it kind of sounds a little bit about what you just talked about yeah so if we could fast

forward like 50 10 years from now and have this conversation i would say iq stands for imagination quotient because that's what i'm working towards in my own nice yeah that's like what the imagination is trying to do is come up with a whole new test. But we live right now, 2014, the IQ, everyone knows intelligence quotient. It's supposed to be this measure of your general cognitive ability. Think of it just like you go and you do the physical fitness tests. You have to run with the eraser back and forth or you have to do the chin press up or run 500 meters etc etc and you can take an average of all those physical fitness tests that most of us had to

take in high school and i bet i bet you kicked ass on that right i do pretty well yeah you did yes the physical and you get like a rough idea of someone's general physical fitness right by the way i went to high school with kobe bry Bryant and I did better with him, better than him on the eraser one. I got the all-in-one thing for this. That's like my one thing. No, within that sports domain. He kicks

my ass and everything else. But anyway, yeah. So you get like this general rough index. And so the same kind of logic is used with IQ tests is that we make people maybe like, what's your vocabulary? What's your mentally rotate objects in your mind? Put these blocks together or what pattern comes next? Then you just take the average and that's supposed to index your general intellectual functioning.

As you know, with general physical fitness as well, is that some of the greatest athletes have a lot of, they've developed very, very specific adaptations to that specific sport that make them stand out. It's not the general fitness that necessarily matters the most, but that specific skill set and expertise that you've mastered. Mad Fientist Sure. So do you think it's effective then or is it pretty much worthless? Dr. Justin Marchegiani I don't. So I'm not anti. I'm not like trying to say they're

worthless. But I think the way that they are used in the school system to hinder opportunity, we are effectively letting way too many students fall between the cracks, then I can give you so many examples. So you were wearing disabilities because with dyslexia, schizophrenia, behavioral disorders, et cetera. There's so many multitude of reasons that could cause someone to do poorly in a little testing session with like a psychologist. We have to focus and a psychologist said, what's the one correct answer? You know, and all these conditions, they're so anxiety provoking. There's so many reasons why you could score low in this kind of environment. And then the school concludes, oh, well, this student is not doing well in school because of their low intelligence.

What I've been trying to tell, I'm not trying to say that those tests are useless or they're not important information, but I'm actually trying to, I would really like to change, like, what is the first thing that we think of when a student is well-achieving? And it's not, let's pull out the IQ better and see if they're stupid, if that explains it. Instead, I want to look at so many other factors first, like engagement, effort, environmental support, family background. Like, what are the students' priorities? And, you know, like, is the student living in an environment where everyone's getting killed all around them? You know, like, that seems

surviving seems to be more important than doing well on an IQ test, you know, for that person. There's just so many, like, people, I think, educators, lots of them just have such a misguided view of how we realize potential and what those tests actually are measuring. Right. Okay. And I don't know if this cues into my next question, but on page 6162, you talk about the neurodiversity movement. Can you talk about what that is? Yeah, absolutely. So people, you know, with all sorts of different ways of thinking, and I include people like dyslexia in that and So let's take dyslexia as one example. Or autism, right? Autism is another one.

People whose brains are wired in a way that causes them to maybe have some difficulties in one thing. But often there's usually hidden gifts to that. So what we know in the dyslexia literature is a lot of entrepreneurs, especially those who create their own businesses, have over-representation of dyslexia. They've learned to compensate maybe for their difficulties in the written word with personal skills, with doing, with action. And they also, people with dyslexia, tend to have advantages when it comes to mentally visualizing things. And you can see how that would be really important for sports as well, right? You have to mentally visualize the next steps you're going to go through, mental rehearsal it's called. So there's lots of benefits in that.

So you go through all these kinds of things that have been traditionally labeled as learning disabilities or mental illness. You go to autism you see people often are overrepresented in lots of technical they're very good attention to detail they tend that very good at pattern spotting patterns and things and so what this neurodiversity movement is all about is that a lot of these people who have been labeled in a very negative way like you, you know, that you have autism and it's like framed in this kind of negative aspect, they're just like fed up with being treated as though that's the totality of who they are and what they can do in life.

And actually, there's a lot of research suggesting that if you look at this person in different contexts, and that's something that really interests me is like what are we capable of doing. There's some contexts where I look totally stupid and like no social skills. Like you stick me in like a really loud thumping like dance club or whatever and I'm like really not that smooth. But like if I'm in my element, if'm in a conference academic conference you know or something like that where like i feel comfortable around people then i then then my more natural social skills come out and and that's just an example but people um you know context really matters right right you know what you're just saying really speaks loudly to me

about being able to mentally visualize in sports that's that's kind of what i felt like i was able to do all the time was see what was going to happen, see what I wanted to create, visualize the whole game in my head before the game started and really see the outcome. And then also having a creative mind as an entrepreneur. I feel like I was so frustrated growing up. And I don't know if anyone else listening felt frustrated in school

and has seen it as an opportunity for something else, whether it be in business or, you know, social skills, I really had to develop being able to connect with people because I didn't feel like my intelligence was strong enough to actually, you know, get anything done through books or through, you know, book smart things. So for me, it was all about connecting with people, being engaging, having a big heart, opening myself, listening, and creating that type of connection with people as opposed to sitting down and writing papers

or doing research or something like that because I just couldn't focus. I couldn't even comprehend it. Well, that's actually a really good example, the whole focusing thing. So ADHD is another big one that people have a fundamental misunderstanding about ADHD and why context matters. So a lot of students, they're actually very creative students, and they just want to do a project or they want to express themselves.

But instead, they get the label ADHD because they have trouble concentrating in the classroom. But research shows that students with these attentional deficits, I'm putting quotes in the air right now, quote attention concentrating in the classroom. But research shows that students with these attentional deficits, I'm putting quotes in the air right now, quote attention deficits in the classroom, if you get them absorbed in something that's personally meaningful to them, they actually are better at concentrating than everyone else on this planet. So there's another case where if you look at someone in one narrow context, you can conclude that person can't concentrate or shit.

And then you put them in a situation where they are in the flow state, which is something I study a lot in the field of positive psychology. And suddenly they have a better ability to get into flow. Yeah. I mean, yeah, just to go back to my example, like, you know, I couldn't wait till practice started at 3.30 every day after school was done. Like I just couldn't wait because I knew then I'd be able to focus all my energy and attention. And I was in the flow and in the zone.

And I was listening to the coaches. I was taking the feedback. I was applying what I learned instantaneously. And I bet if there was a great student who wasn't as great as an athlete, if you put them in the context of a sports practice, maybe they wouldn't be able to focus. Maybe they'd have ADHD in that context. That's right. So it's,

it's interesting that we judge and put this criteria based on just the classroom and then make them, you know, seem like a bad child if they can't focus in the classroom or a bad student. When really they could be a great student in a different context, like music or sports or language or something, you know? Exactly. I like that. Everything you're saying is speaking clearly, a great student in a different context, like music or sports or language or something. Exactly right. I like that. Everything you're saying is speaking loud and clearly to me right now.

You talk about studies that show intrinsic motivation and how it decreases steadily starting from about third grade. You talk about this on page 98 on the book. Again, this book is heavily... There's a lot of research in this book. So you might want to do some skimming and checking out the intro first and kind of checking through chapter by chapter then reading it all out at one sitting.

Just for me, it was a challenge, but it was lots of great information. No, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. I had to get that book out of my system and I had to get all the research out there, but I'm actually really excited about the new book I'm working on, which is coming out at the end of next year, which is written with a journalist, Carolyn Gregoire of the Huffington Post. And it's going to be about creativity, but it's going to be written very much more for a general audience. I like that. So, yeah.

I like it. But you talked about on page 98. Intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation decreases steadily after third grade. So can you explain what is intrinsic motivation and why this happens and how to stop the decrease? Well, I wish I knew. We need to change the whole educational system basically if we want to stop that. But the thing that's interesting to me is when you look at little kids, they come in,

we come into this world naturally motivated to understand the world around us for curiosity. We are wired to assimilate knowledge about this world and we really actually want to. It's not something that we have to be told to do. But it's funny, the second we start enforcing that it's a requirement, we lose interest in doing that. We have it backwards in terms of just how much control we really need to have over students in order to have them have intrinsic joy in the learning process. You do see the steady decline after third grade in that intrinsic sort of, I would love to learn for the sake of learning, intrinsic motivation. You see this increase in extrinsic motivation and I'm doing this for rewards.

That's one time in our life when parents are telling us, you do well in school, honey. I'll give you a lollipop or whatever. You're like, oh, I really want that lollipop. It really shifts. It's funny because parents and teachers, as well-meaning as they are, they really are getting in the way of that intrinsic joy learning process. It gets worse and worse. It steadily gets worse. By the time we graduate high school in 12th grade, like virtually every student is like, I hate learning.

College, I remember college, like the only reason I went to college was to be able to play sports and I could not wait to be done. It's not like I ever studied. Which sports did you play in college? I played a lot of football, basketball and track. Yeah. And it was like, you know, I wanted to be interested in learning, but it was like, there was nothing that I was interested in college and learning.

There was maybe one or two classes on leadership or sports psychology that I was like, okay, this is cool. And now it's like, I can't wait to learn more and more now that I'm out of the school setting. It's like, yeah, I want to learn this. I'm reading these books. That's why I'm doing the podcast to interview people because I'm like, I want to learn from everyone else who's way smarter than me and take it all in. But it's in a different context and a different setting. Absolutely. You've returned to H5 in a good way. Exactly. That's great.

That's interesting. Okay. So we lose the excitement of life basically because we're forced to. I don't know about life. That's too bad. We learn the will to live. We learn the will to live after five. Yeah. We lose the excitement of learning because we're forced to is what you're saying. It's because we're putting this structure that doesn't allow for really creative learning.

Totally. And there's more to this story. In that same chapter, I talk – actually, that chapter is called Passion. And intrinsic motivation is different than passion. So what I talk about later in that chapter is how if we – so the difference between just being like motivated intrinsically, like, oh, I really am motivated to learn that and I love to learn that is that you've integrated it into your identity it's not just like i um play basketball it's like i am a basketball player and everything

you do like once once you make that commitment of i am a basketball player like everything you do in life feeds into that everything the learning is not like an effort anything that seems relevant at all to that you you immediately assimilate. And it doesn't – through this flow process, not necessarily effort. And so that's what harmonious passion is. Well, that's what passion is, is integrating into your identity. But then you can integrate this activity and identity in a healthy, helpful way or a very obsessive way. So obsessive passion is when you've just when you have to do it at all costs and you've tied your entire ego

up into this one activity so much and you just constantly persevere. That can lead to burnout and well-being. People who are harmoniously passionate about their activity uh they feel actually feel good about themselves when they're engaging it's it's it's a core part of their identity but they feel as though their their self is becoming more complex like they're they're growing and learning and every and other sides of them it's like it reaches out to other sides of their self making them a more authentic complex human being and that in a lot of ways is the greatest feeling any of us could ever have on this planet in addition to maybe positive relationships with others right right you

mention studies that show that inspiration is not just an elusive and divine gift can you explain this idea that inspiration can be captured and manipulated? Sure. Yeah, so there are researchers who have started to take this very elusive idea of inspiration. You know, the Greek thought that, like, you breathe the muses into us, right? And it was a very, like, very divine sort of connotation, inspiration. It was a very divine sort of connotation, inspiration. But what you can do is you can take people and have them go about their day,

and you can have people like page people every now and then and measure how inspired they are in that moment when you've randomly beeped them on their pager or whatever or on their iPhone. And then you can have them take various tests to see what caused that inspiration. And in a lot of ways, it's like looking at before and after pictures. What do people look like before they're inspired, and what do they look like after they're inspired by something? And through all this research, they found that inspiration has some very specific characteristics. Like inspired people all seem to have some strong commonalities. So one is inspiration is to be spontaneous.

It's something that you encounter a certain stimuli or something in the world, and you're like, boom, that's it. I see new possibilities for my future. I have a vision for my future that I didn't have before. I'm going beyond myself. You also have this approach motivation where you suddenly, your body and mind, everything wants to go towards that vision in your head at all costs, whatever the obstacles. And it's sort of this like transcendence aspect where you've definitely, a lot of

the self-serving concerns you used to have don't matter as much anymore and things take on new meaning. And the things that are the best predictive of inspiration are things like open to experience, like being open-minded to your environment, your experiences, and engaging yourself in lots of different things and challenges that you wouldn't normally put yourself in those situations. challenges that you wouldn't normally put yourself in those situations. Inspiration changes not just those things I was talking about, but also it increases your flow in an activity. And lots of good things. What I've become convinced – you know the Edison thing like what is it?

Greatness is like 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. Right. That's actually bullshit. Like, we've done the studies, okay? And it's wrong. Actually, inspiration is far, far, far greater predictor of creativity. Patent inventions, they looked at inventors and patents and everything. It's far, far greater predictor than effort. Isn't that interesting?

Let's say it one more time. Oh yes, inspiration is a better predictor than effort when it comes to the creativity. Effort and inspiration predict different things. So effort predicts technical merit and getting completion, getting things done done but inspiration is far far better predictor of actual like creative ideas and genius level ideas and um and moving things forward for a field and um yeah so it really that that is a crucial under um studied uh underappreciated variable i think interesting interesting you have this page uh on page what is this 295 where you talk about we're moving right along we are moving along man yeah you got this definition

of intelligence and uh talking as we're talking about intelligence a little bit um all these different people who who have given their definition of intelligence, this cool illustration that I thought was pretty interesting, some of the great minds that we've had in the world. And I was just curious, what's your definition of intelligence? Oh, boy. Well, this is something that part of my dream dream one of my dreams was to redefine intelligence ever since i was a little kid i was like we really need a more expansive definition if you look at the way intelligence has been defined over the past hundred years by various researchers something that seems to lie at the core of it is adaptation to your environment

like can you adapt to the environment the thing that the thing though is how do we measure it well iq tests well how is iq test really measuring your is it your adaptation to a very specific narrow environment like abstract puzzles and things like that but it's not uh not really measuring your ability to actually um adapt and and change and and i think strategies your ability to devise alternative routes to get into the same path, I think that counts as intelligence. I also think we need to take into account, in addition to ability, we need to take into account personal goals. Looking at the context of what is that person's goals. If someone does not care about doing well in a physics

class and they are failing physics class and we call them stupid just based on that information alone i don't think we're getting a good assessment of their intelligence at all um and also um engagement engagement process i felt was lacking from any current theory of intelligence so you know how i didn't actually tell you exactly what intelligence is i'm sort of saying like these are the characteristics that it takes. Sure. I defined it in the book. It's the dynamic interplay of ability and engagement in the pursuit of personal goals. And I call it my theory of personal intelligence. Oh, I like that.

Oh, really? Awesome. I do like that. Yeah. Yeah, Lewis Howes likes my theory. That's interesting. That's a different way of looking at it. Thanks.

Yeah, I just felt like from a practical point of view, intelligence really should be a personal thing. So say it one more time, your definition. Yeah, the dynamic interplay of ability and engagement in the pursuit of personal goals. So ability and engagement, as far as I'm concerned, are never inseparable. Our ability and our skills, you can look at it as our skills, grows depending on how engaged we are in what we're doing, how much effort we put in, how much time and care we take to develop those skills. So they're inseparable. So that's why I say dynamic interplay. They're always working together and they're always changing each other. They're mutually reinforcing.

And then in the pursuit of personal goals. So if you really want to see what someone is capable of intellectually and creatively, I'm saying at the very least, give them a long period of time to engage in something that's personally meaningful to them and develop and master those skills. If you don't do that, I would say don't even start trying to measure their intelligence. Yeah, because you give them something that they don't care about, it's going to be hard to measure. Absolutely. They're not putting their full energy, their full effort, their full flow state into

that understanding and learning and skill set. Therefore, you're not going to get their best performance. So you say that as though like, yeah, duh. And the thing is, you get it, but you'd be shocked at the current education system we have, the public policies that are in place. Everything is designed to do basically the opposite, to lower student engagement, to prejudge ultimate potential without giving people the resources or the opportunities, etc., etc.

I can go down the list. It's like a laundry list of the opposite of things we should do to actually get the best intellect and creativity out of people. Yeah. It's a challenge though. You know, I don't know if there's any perfect system or any perfect system that we could create because obviously there's gotta be some type of structure and learning for kids growing up. You don't believe in anarchy?

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's gotta be a better way, or there's got to be a way we can prove this, obviously. And hopefully, whoever figures this out, I'm going to be sending my kids to that type of school with that type of learning. But even the new way, there's not going to be a perfect structure.

Some kids are going to be struggling somewhere, some way, I'm assuming. So that's the challenge is like, how do we figure out a solution that works for everyone? That's a win-win for everyone. Totally. I actually do work with an educational reform movement that I think is going in the right direction.

What are they doing? Yeah, so they're called the Future Project. And what they've done is they've hired a full-time position in the school called the Dream Director. It's like not your guidance counselor who will say be realistic if you have a dream, position in the school called the dream director. It's like not your guidance counselor who will say be realistic if you have a dream, but the dream director is someone you go to and you're like, I would like to cure cancer. I would like to be in the NBA. Whatever the

goal is, no matter how high in the sky or how small. The purpose of the dream director is to help them take whatever steps necessary to start getting closer to that goal. They pair them up with a mentor from the community. They work on a significant project. They meet once a week. This can start freshman year and go all the way through up to graduation. And the thing that I've noticed about a lot of these kids, they come with low self-esteem and maybe they're failing.

There's classes and things. And the thing is they don't have to cure cancer in high school. That's okay. You don't have to accomplish that dream. The point is you believe in that child, that you believe in that person, that that dream is worth taking seriously. You just take the dream seriously and you help teach them the skill set of what it takes to really enact goals. These are the skill sets that I, this is the kind of education I envision is one where we equip people to learn how to fish, right? You know,

that old expression, you know, I like that. I really like that approach. And because, you know, the student is going to figure out whether the dream is actually possible or if they can see it as a possibility at some point in their life along the journey. If they have a mentor in fifth grade who's an NBA player and you're playing basketball and you're having this passion for it, that's what you really want to do. You know, once you get to high school, you start playing more, you're going to see like, okay, can I compete? Am I the best or am I horrible? And is it something I'm still passionate about every day, even when I suck? So you're the student I would think would be able to be self, uh, you know, well, I don't even know what the word is, but self-determination, I guess. Yeah. They'd be able to figure out for themselves if, if yes,

I want to continue this or if no, I'm going to go on a new path. And at least I've learned the skills of what it needs to do to achieve my achieve my dream and my goals by taking this process on this one dream. So I think that's a really cool process. I mean, that's what I teach all of my students is like, if you want to achieve something, if you want to be great at anything, you've got to have a mentor who's the best at it already, or one of the best that you can learn from and pick up those skills that no one else can teach you by yourself or by yourself. So that's definitely a cool and that's called the future project. Yeah, it's called the future project.

Is there a website or? Absolutely. Yeah, the future project.org. Nice. And there's lots of videos and stories about these huge transformations. You know, you really hit the nail on the head. You're like, let the students figure out for themselves that's something they want to do. The whole point is we shouldn't be prejudging potential, especially before age 18. That's

the thing that we just shouldn't be in the business of doing that. Yet education is in the business of doing that with college applications. Mad Fientist So crazy. Man, i could talk about that for a while um i love the sentence in page 247 that you have it says we are all capable of extraordinary performance the key is finding the mode of expression that allows you to create your own symphony and I just thought that was such an, a great way of saying it, that we're all capable of extraordinary performance. The key is finding our own mode of expression that allows us to create our own symphony. So, and this is

tying it all in to kind of what you've been talking about, which is not forcing it, doing something that you don't like, or the mode of expression that doesn't work for you. But finding something that you're so driven and passionate about. And you're capable of, you know, getting into the flow, the only way to straight, create extraordinary performance, in my mind, is to step out of your your mind, step out of your ego, step out of your image, conversations, your survival strategies, and step into flow, which is obviously what you've been studying for a while as well. And I don't know if you would piggyback that or not, but I think that the only way to create any extraordinary performance is to be in flow.

Absolutely. My money's on flow over, a lot of people talk about deliberate practice. Is that talent? Talent is overrated? Does he talk about that? Yeah, and outliers. And Calendars Erickson has spent his whole career studying deliberate practice, which is a very deliberate mode of practice where you're learning from your mistakes,

getting feedback from mentors and pushing yourself in a very intentional, deliberate way. But the interesting thing is that my colleagues have done a summary across various different sports or various different domains, like in business and sports and music and education. And I found that deliberate practice actually explains a much smaller amount of the differences in altered performance than people tend to think. People want to be shocked by just how more important other forms of practice, like flow and play.

I think play gets a bad rap. And I'm going to lego in a couple weeks in denmark and i'm going to be giving a talk on the importance of play and child development and creativity and it's just hugely i think it's just as important as deliberate practice you know well i think play and flow go together i don't think you can't you can't be in flow unless you're letting go of the conversation of the end result. I think when we think about how are people judging me in my performance? How are people thinking about me?

What am I saying? What am I doing? How do I look? We're not playing. We're not worried about what it looks like or who's watching or what they're thinking. That's when we step in the flow and such a powerful moving. And it's the most inspiring thing when you see it in other people, you're like,

wow, that person is having fun. They don't care. They're just like outrageously expressive and out of their body. Right. It's such a cool experience to witness and to do yourself when you're in it. Absolutely.

You know, there's some fields where you, you can wear the flow more on your sleeve than others like dance, you know, we're like, wow, present full, but it's still, You know, there's some fields where you can wear the flow more on your sleeve than others, like dance. You know, we're like, wow, prison flow. But it's still, you know, the same phenomenon. Have science and sports and whatever it is. Yeah, math, everything. Yeah.

Absolutely. It's crazy. So this was cool. I mean, so much of this book really resonates with me. And I think it's just because a lot of it is answers the, you know, the questions I had growing up and the questions that I have now and everything about learning and about why it was so challenging for me and why I've been able to adapt in other areas and be successful in some areas and not as successful in other areas. So it's, you know, the perfect book for me to like justify where I've come from, where I'm at now. you know the perfect book for me to like justify where where i've come from where i'm at now um and you talk about um let me tell me if you remember this i don't know if you remember this part in the book but you say uh the question is what lies at the heart of the highest creative achievers and you give three uh keys as the, and they all work with me.

I'm like, yeah, that's what I do. So I don't know if you remember these three keys, but I can read them off if you don't. Yeah, please read them. Okay. So you said there's three keys that lies at the heart of the highest creative achievers. So the most creative people in the world

who have achieved the most, the three things they have is drive, persistence, and love. And I don't remember if you remember. Did I say that in the book Ungifted? I'm pretty sure you did. I don't know the page number here, but I have it here. Maybe it's not in the book and I got it somewhere else from you. But yeah, three things of the highest creative achievers is drive, persistence, and love.

Yeah, I think that's definitely the triumphant trio. Triumphant trio. I like that. I mean, it really is. You look over and over again, and you even look at, there's the famous studies by Bloom in 1985, published his book on prodigies, and these kids that by before the age of 12 like why were they like a professional level how did that happen and he he found lots of things that looked like talent um were things that these kids spent um even the first 10 years of their life um you know

intensely driven um persistent um and um passionate about passionate about those things. And parents and teachers just kept throwing more and more resources at them because they showed these things at an early age. But the thing I want to emphasize in this book is that this is a process that can be set off at any time in your life. I've written stuff about late bloomers. And just because it's not, I don't see life as a zero-sum game. Just because you may not have displayed

those skills or those passions when you're really, really young and gone up that curve doesn't mean that when you're at any age, there's no limit, that you can find something that inspires you and sets off that learning curve.

And that's something that I really wanted to emphasize in my book. I like it. I like it. Well, Scott, I could talk about this for a long time, and I want to actually bring you back on at some point and really dive into the topic of flow, if that's what you've been studying for a while as well, because I'm fascinated with this. I'm actually doing a workshop in Los Angeles next month,

a free workshop called Step Into the Flow, where I believe I've been diving into flow a lot in my life in the sports world and in the business world and when I'm speaking on stage, but I've never been able to capture how to translate it into exercises that people can take on for themselves to step into at any moment in their life, whether it's going into a job interview or giving a presentation or doing a sales pitch or anything. So I'm working on developing these exercises that people can apply at any time to step into the flow for themselves. And so I'm experimenting with it. That's why I'm doing a free workshop just to kind of experiment. So I'd love to talk to you more because I would love to learn more from your research and tap into your incredibly creative mind.

Well, thanks. But it sounds like I have a lot I could learn from you. Well, I would love to couple with your research of what you're learning and figure out ways to create exercises for people to do it, not analyze it and think it, but actually, okay, now what can I do from what we've learned in your research? I think it'd be really powerful.

Thanks. That's really important stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So before I ask you the final question, um, make sure everyone go to Scott, Barry Kaufman.com.

I'll have it all linked up on the show notes. I'll tell you what the link is here in the outro in just a second. The book is called Ungifted Intelligence Redefines the Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Paths to Greatness. Not just one path, but the many paths to greatness. You've also got a couple of other books, right, Scott? That's right. You write for Psychology Today and a few different other magazines.

Actually, I moved recently over to Scientific American. My blog is called Beautiful Minds at Scientific American. Nice. Beautiful Minds. Okay, cool. You've written for Psychology Today and a number of other places, right? That's right. Absolutely.

And you're still a professor at New York, is that right? No. So actually, I started this new job at the University of Pennsylvania. Okay, cool. Now, and I'm a scientific director of the Imagination Institute. Perfect. I love it. I love it.

And yeah, learn more about Scott over at scottberrycoffman.com. I appreciate it. And the final question is, what is your definition of greatness? Oh, no. What a great one. It's a great question. It's what I ask all my guests at the end of the show. So this is perfect for you since your book is on this.

Sure. You know, I think at a very statistical level, greatness is being able to have some sort of accomplishment, do something that is at the very, very highest end of that bell curve, like top 1% of doing something. And it could be anything. It could be like, but, you know, it could be any sort of mastery skill set. But I think there is a difference between expertise and greatness. So I don't think it's just that.

So that's one thing is being able to have a skill set that puts you very high on that curve. But I also would define greatness as the second component ability to action, not just the ability to have that skillset, but to do something that moves that field in a direction that no one has ever seen before. I love it. Scott Berry Kaufman. Thanks so much,

man, for coming on. I appreciate you and the, the research you're doing, the studies you're doing to forward education and the growth of humanity really. So thank you so much for everything. And I can't wait to have you back on sometime soon about your next book

and talking about flow. Thanks, Lewis. I really appreciate being on the show. There you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to go check out all the show notes over at lewishouse.com slash 87 to learn more about Scott, to learn more about his books on greatness, and to get links to his social media, to his website, and all the other cool stuff that he's got going on. Make sure to check it out.

Share this with your friends over on Twitter and Facebook, Google+, and post a picture on Instagram where you are listening to the show. Just tag atlewishouse or hashtag schoolofgreatness. And you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. you