people are actually stuck in

relationships and jobs financially stuck

becoming much lonelier as a species but

there is a way to get unstuck and we're

going to find out right now Adam alter

New York Times best-selling author and

psychologist this episode is for people

who are stuck in their careers

relationship or any aspect of life and

how to become unstuck the career model

for how we live our lives professionally

is broken as you specialize you have

less Variety in what you do and there's

a massive Rising loneliness and

depression and anxiety and part of the

reason for that is we don't share our

stuckness and they also have no idea how

common it is so what is the relationship

between perseverance or knowing when to

quit research basically shows that it's

a good idea to persevere beyond the

point where you say this is hard and I

feel stuck how long you should do that

is another question and the best example

of this is an idea known as the creative

Cliff illusion and it's this illusion

where you that's when the good stuff

comes if you persevere how do you teach

someone to be that kind of person there

are two things one thing is

I remember reading about the studies

where people would rather take an

electric shock than to sit idly on their

own it's a brilliant study they've tried

it already so they know it hurts but

it's so reversive to just sit with our

own thoughts for even half an hour

two-thirds of them go and start playing

with this machine so what we found is

that we don't pay enough attention to

what will be good for us and that's

often when we get stuck what we need to

do then if you want to be able to get

unstuck quickly the best thing you can

do is

have you ever been stuck

are you stuck in an area of your life

right now

I think you are and I say that because I

think to some degree we all are some of

us more than others and that is exactly

why I had to have this conversation with

Adam alter the guy that literally wrote

the book about being stuck and how to

know if you are and maybe most

importantly of all how to get unstuck

Adam is a master of what he calls the

art of the Breakthrough which is really

looking at why some people fail why they

get stuck and why others don't he's also

a genius when it comes to marketing and

psychology he's the professor of

marketing and psychology at one of the

top schools in America he kind of just

knows why people do what they do and how

to help them do something else how do we

know if the decisions we're making in

our life right now in all the areas of

our life are the right decisions or the

wrong decisions Adam has scientifically

backed answers to all of these questions

he is refreshing he is positive and he

is full of just as many important

questions as he is valuable

life-changing answers I feel so much

richer for having this conversation with

Adam and I know you will too

enjoy

[Music]

from an academic standpoint who are you

I am a professor of marketing and

psychology so I'm very interested in

business but also interested in the

psychological side of it so how do

consumers behave how do they think what

do they buy how do they spend their time

and money and other resources

I'm incredibly interested and curious

about

all of your books specifically

this book here

anatomy of a breakthrough and also your

your first book drunk tank pink

because this book helps people to get

unstuck why did you decide to write a

book called anatomy of a breakthrough

and you know what writing books takes a

huge amount of time and effort and

you're a man that has many things he

could be doing so why was this so

important that you chose to write about

it it's something that I've been

thinking about in some form or another

for years literally I'd say 25 years I I

I've been stuck a lot in my life and so

even before I became intellectually

interested in the topic it was a factor

that had had a big effect on the way I

was living my life and I wanted to

understand whether there was maybe a

road map that I could present to other

people that would help them get unstuck

but I think the real answer is there was

some research that I was doing in I

think this would have been in about 2005

and I found this really interesting

cultural difference in how people

anticipate or expect change in the world

and so what we found is that people in

the west people in places like the US

Canada the UK Australia New Zealand they

tend to be blindsided by change so if

you give them five days in a row and you

show that it's been rainy for five days

or sunny for five days they anticipate

that that's going to continue and they

think the same about the stock market

and other other variables that can shift

or stay the same but but if you do that

with people in East Asia Japan South

Korea China when they see a pattern

that's gone a particular way for a while

they think that it's about to change and

what that does is it means that they're

much more Nimble in the face of change

whereas in the west people tend to be

blindsided by it and it makes us

especially slow at coming to grips with

the idea that the world's changed and we

need to Pivot in order to get unstuck

can you give me you know the the most

popular examples

of being stuck that my listeners now

could relate to yeah I've been running

this survey for about five years on

people all around the world asking them

with that definition of stuckness are

you stuck in some way and I find that

people usually within about 15 seconds

start typing a response which means that

stuckness is very top of mind and their

responses vary so some of them are

financially stuck they want to be able

to save or they want to be able to earn

more money some of them are stuck in

relationships some are stuck in jobs a

lot of them are stuck quite narrowly in

Creative Pursuits like I'm trying to

learn this piano piece I'm trying to

learn this new art technique I'm a

filmmaker and I can't come up with

creative ideas I'm a business person and

I can't figure out what my next venture

should be so there's a there's a very

broad range and I find that almost

everyone in at least one respect with a

bit of time comes up with something they

say I'm stuck in this way and then they

can express it is there a trend in who's

getting stuck more often yeah so I have

a pet Theory I think um the kind of

career model for for how we live our

lives professionally is broken for most

people I think what happens is as you

specialize you're supposed to get more

and more narrow in what you do and you

have less Variety in what you do and

that's how you get stuck is by doing the

same thing every day and there's a huge

amount of evidence for that in all sorts

of different areas Actuarial science for

me at least very quickly put me into

that little pigeonholed spot where I

felt I was getting trapped and it was

only going to increase and so the thing

I've done ever since is to try to create

as much Variety in my professional life

as possible because then if you don't

like aspect number one but you have nine

other aspects to your job you can go and

do that for a little while and so

bouncing around I think is critical for

getting unstuck often very smart people

get very very interested in very narrow

topics and that's that's essentially the

definition of a PhD is you spend a huge

amount of time becoming an expert in a

very narrow area

and I think that's fine for a PhD itself

but if you're going to make a whole life

out of doing that I think if you're a

Restless intellectually curious person

you're going to get stuck really fast

you almost become a victim to being good

at something in life don't you because

you get promoted and promoted and

promoted up in that direction and your

label whatever it is doctor dentist

lawyer becomes reinforced by your own

success at that thing and you can get 10

years down the line at something and go

how the [ __ ] am I living next to the

office I'm a lawyer it's doing law 14

hours a day what happened to that violin

I used to play and we become you're

right we become really narrow

individuals and when you think about

what a human is we're so multifaceted

especially when we're younger yeah we're

doing all of these things it's a real

shame I also think what happens is you

get promoted and it does get narrow but

it also changes so the thing that you

were really good at is no longer the

thing that you're doing and a lot of

what happens in promotion especially

professionally is you become a manager

and you manage people who do the thing

you love instead of doing the thing you

love and so that's how you get stuck as

well is by by being promoted out of the

thing that got you passionate about what

you were doing and being told no instead

you're going to watch other people do

the thing you love now you suddenly have

to be a people manager which some people

like doing but a lot don't and so that's

also inherent in the kind of

professional models that we have in

hierarchical organizations

this happens by

I guess in part by being a bit

unconscious about

what you want yeah and you just kind of

take what you're given so you take the

promotion and you take this and you take

the the relocation to this place and how

do we prevent that happening I I think

that's the job of people who write about

these subjects right and that's kind of

what I saw as as the mission for this

book was to try to say you know if you

don't want to be stuck or if you want to

be able to get unstuck quickly there's a

set of questions you can ask yourself

and let me just lay them out for you

here they are in fact the last thing in

the book is a hundred ways to get

unstuck it's just a digestion of all

these ideas and I think those are

questions that people don't often ask

themselves you're right there's a sort

of accidental

way that we live our lives and we take

what's given and if someone says here's

a promotion you hear that word and you

grab onto it and you you write it as far

as you can but um I think it's it's easy

to be a little bit mindless about where

your life takes you and and sometimes

that's fine but in a lot of cases it's

not and

book tries in in the book I try to

distinguish those cases from from each

other like when should you let life lead

you and when should you be a little more

purposeful

on that exact point I've mulled over the

last couple of weeks this idea that

there's kind of two narratives that

Prevail in our lives kind of two

instructors one of them is this external

narrative it could come from your

parents or society's expectation of you

taking that promotion or thinking that

that job is a admirable job for you to

take so you take it that's the external

narrative then the other narrative

if I can call it that is how you feel

yeah and I think we're we're conditioned

to care more about that external

narrative because the rewards seem to be

more aligned with the external narrative

than like how you feel because if people

really were orientated by how they felt

in that job in that relationship in that

City whatever in that course at

University

um they would make significantly

different decisions but we always it's

almost like we've tuned out of that yeah

I I think the problem is that humans

don't know how they feel in isolation as

well if I took you and put you in a room

for a week and said you can have food

and water and you can have your thoughts

and I took you out of after a week and

said so what are you thinking like

what's real what's not real what do you

believe what are your preferences and

values you'd struggle it's there's a lot

of really interesting evidence that if

you isolate humans they don't really

know what to do with themselves so those

external forces that there's a kind of

permeability between what I'm feeling

inside my head and thinking and what

these other forces are suggesting to me

so I think I think it's totally true

that we don't pay enough attention to

what will be good for us separate from

what other people think we should be

doing but I also don't even think many

of us know the answers to those

questions not all the time but about a

lot of things like I know

deep somewhere I know that I love to

draw that I mean I'm at peace when I'm

drawing and painting I haven't done that

for a really long time I'm too busy to

your point of being too focused but I

know that that's something that

preference wise I love doing

but then the question should I make my

career and my life about that the only

way I knew how to answer that was by

speaking to lots of people who said it's

very difficult to become an artist

here's the path it's probably going to

be hard to make any money

so keep it as a hobby but but knowing

just based on my feelings what to do I

wouldn't have known what to do as a

young person and so I think that's

that's part of the problem is that it's

not just that we're

silly for kind of paying attention to

others it's also that I don't even know

if we know in isolation without those

inputs what the right kinds of paths are

you said about putting me in a room and

leaving me with my thoughts that sounded

like hell it does yeah and as you I

remember reading about the studies where

people would rather take an electric

shock

than to sit idly on their own yeah and

they tested people and they said would

you rather take an electric shock or sit

here for a couple of minutes on your own

and people took

it's a it's a brilliant study I mean the

way they set it up is brilliant because

they get you to sit in this room and

they do it with men and women they're

mostly college undergrads and they say

to them you're just going to be sitting

here for half an hour there's a little

machine in the corner it delivers

electric shocks they've tried it already

so they know it hurts it doesn't feel

good and they're told you know you can

sit with your thoughts or you know the

machines there if you want to go and use

it which is a bizarre thing to say to

people and they sit there for a while

and time passes

and uh the vast majority of them go I

think it's two-thirds of them go and

start playing with this machine it's so

aversive to just sit with our own

thoughts for even half an hour that we

need stimulation even if it's negative

stimulation

and you wrote a book about this this

subject matter about addiction and

screens and all of these things this

sort of incessant need for distraction

that we seem to have developed what was

your biggest sort of takeaway in

learning from that process of putting

that book together

the biggest thing for me was I'd always

imagine that addiction and the need for

this kind of stimulation was a sort of

personality thing like you you either

have that personality or you don't but I

became absolutely convinced by not only

by the book and what I was researching

but by understanding how many of us fall

prey to these devices that this is

universal it's just about being human

that if you know how to push the right

buttons in a human you can turn that

human as you can with rats and monkeys

and other animals into into a bit of a

fiend for whatever the thing is that it

needs and the people who design the

platforms that we use are so good at

that job and they have so much data to

to perfect what they've done that

ultimately the platforms they design for

us are are like crack they're very very

difficult for us to resist

you talk about in drunk tank pink how

people behave differently when they're

in the presence of others and I found

that really really curious could you

just give me a flavor of the some of the

studies and insights you gained from

that because that kind of links to what

you're saying there about how living

behind screens might Decay our Humanity

a little bit Yeah well I think part of

it is just that the best versions of

ourselves come out when we're around

other people

um we are much much more likely to be

civil and decent to other people when

they're around when we see them and when

we spend time around them that kind of

shared social Space is really important

it's also really interesting when we're

around other people

um we we tend to default to the thing

that we are most like likely to do in

any moment so there's a lot of good

evidence with this like if you if you

take a champion cyclist you put him or

her on a bike a stationary bike

that person will go faster in the

presence of other people than alone and

there's something about this kind of

they call it latent energy this is a

very old psychological study that talks

about latent energy that is liberated

from us when we're in the presence of

other people so if you're trying to

learn something new you know you imagine

you're in class at school and there's a

teacher who's staring over your shoulder

that's terrible because we don't really

know how to take on board new

information we're just overwhelmed by

the cognitive load of that experience

but if it's something you're good at you

will be extra good at it in front of

other people there's something about

being energized by others so if I work

out with someone then I'm more likely to

You'll lift more you'll run faster and

so on yeah pretty reliably

in that book as well um before we get on

to being unstuck there were some other

things that I found really curious I was

Keen to ask you about

um this is your that was your first book

drunk tank pink you see how

our names have a huge bearing on our

outcomes across various facets of our

life yeah that's quite it's quite

shocking to me because my name is

something that we don't choose and it

seems to be so simple and slightly

irrelevant yeah

yeah it's it's true I mean there are

lots of different ways names influence

us

um one of these little demonstrations

that I do when I give talks on this

subject is I'll I'll present the letters

of the Roman alphabet the 26 letters

that we we understand to be the letters

in the English language and I'll ask

people to think about their three

favorite letters

and then I say now put your hand up in

the room if one of those at least was

the first letter of your first name

middle name or last name and almost

every hand goes up so these are letters

who has preferences for letters it's a

bizarre thing to have to answer but we

do and it's because this that these

letters are such a strong expression of

who we are it's a it's a part of our ego

that's contained in the letters of our

name and so even that alone shows the

power of names over us that they are

such a strong reflection of who we are

and our identity uh so that's the first

thing and you find interesting effects

from this actually if you look at the

Hurricanes that we name in the U.S

or that you name around the world in

other places you get much more donation

Aid if the hurricane name matches your

initial so they found that when

Hurricane Katrina came through and

devastated New Orleans people whose

names began with a K donated way more

than people whose names didn't begin

with a k the same for a whole lot of

other hurricanes with other initials the

other big thing is the ease with which

people can pronounce your name so that

seems to have a really big effect on all

sorts of outcomes if people can

pronounce your name there's this kind of

sense of familiarity it's if that's the

the breaking of the ice happens over

that first pronunciation of your name

obviously the easier it is to say the

name the less anxiety you have about it

I guess the more smoothly that breaking

of the ice goes and there's a lot of

evidence from some of my own research we

looked for example at how quickly people

rise up through Law Firm hierarchies how

quickly do they become partners

and there's a period in the middle of

careers in like the about the 10th to

the 20th year of a career for a lawyer

where there's a premium you're much more

likely to become a partner several

percent more likely to become a partner

earlier if your name is pronounceable

and I think what's what's happening

there is

if I'm a partner at a firm and there are

a lot of young Associates and I'm trying

to put together a team if there's

someone with a name that's easy to

pronounce and someone whose name I'm

anxious about pronouncing I don't know

how to pronounce it I will default to

the one who's easy to pronounce I'm not

trying to be rude about it but in that

moment it just seems easier it's the

path of least resistance and that's how

humans act much of the time is there not

an element of um discrimination and

Prejudice associated with that because I

think if a name was easier to pronounce

it's probably familiar it's therefore

probably culturally popular they're

probably like me you know like a Jack or

like a Stephen

but if it's a a name that I've not seen

trying to figure out causality here it

could be because they're foreign you

know my mother I always think about this

my mother's from Nigeria and she could

have given me like a traditional

Nigerian name right but she called me

Stephen and I think

you know I was also born in Botswana in

Africa um I think had she called me

something else my life probably would

have been quite different in all honesty

and I worked for four years on

phones doing like telesales yeah and

when you call up and your name is

Stephen in the UK and you sound like I

do yeah I think any Prejudice someone

might have had because of the color of

my skin or where I'm from

um

vanishes is there any evidence to

support that yeah so there are two

things one thing is absolutely the

Prejudice that goes along with having a

foreign sounding name uh and there's

evidence for example in the United

States there's a study where thousands

of CVS were mailed out and applications

for jobs either with a traditionally

white name or a traditionally black name

as we think of them in the United States

based on the demographic naming Trends

and especially for the ones that were

kind of in the middle of the pack not

especially strong and not especially

weak there's a huge premium to having

the traditionally white name so there's

a lot of prejudice that goes on with

naming but also in the studies we did we

went out a partial out this specific

effect of fluency of how easy it was to

pronounce so we restricted our analysis

in the one case to just white lawyers

who were born in that particular country

and so you find the same effect even

there that the white lawyers with white

names that were easier to pronounce

tended to do a little bit better but

you're right I think a huge part of it

is prejudice and discrimination what

about our environment our surroundings

how does that have an impact on how

we're feeling in our behavior from from

what you learn writing your first book

yeah so I focused a lot on uh physical

environments things like natural

environments the power of nature to to

replenish Us in general which which

sounds like a kind of non-scientific

idea but there's a huge amount of

science to this idea that

if you happen to spend a lot of time in

urban environments and then you go to a

place where you have say a running

stream or win through the leaves on a

tree or something like that it's deeply

replenishing it it has all sorts of

amazing psychological and emotional

effects I was also very very interested

in the effects of of the weather and of

colors around us and how those shape our

our experiences of the world so there's

a some of it's not all that surprising

but uh you see even in baseball matches

in the United States when the game is

being played on a warmer night there is

more aggressive behavior you see huge

rises in crime things like that on hot

nights

um and then with colors you know that's

really the centerpiece of the book I'm

colorblind so I've always been

fascinated by color but the title of the

book drunk tank pink is specifically

about this color that is used to paint

the inside of jail cells in some places

and it's a color that's supposed to

pacify people it's like this bright

bubble gum pink color and they've found

quite a lot of evidence for the last 30

or 40 years now that there's something

about this color that does seem to calm

people down at least initially pink it's

bright bubble gum pink yeah

and it sedates people briefly and then

they go then there's a backlash effect

but yeah oh really yeah they found that

if you leave people in there for too

long apparently there's a backlash yeah

hitchhikers should wear red

yeah this is uh this is a research

looking at how how essentially

attractive we are to other people

depending on the colors we're wearing

um and the the early studies were done

on online dating platforms where you

have the same picture of a person and

you you photoshop the shirt they're

wearing this is true for men and women

and it doesn't matter whether they're

trying to attract men or women but

there's something about the color red in

particular that's really attractive to

humans and actually to other animals too

um and when you see the color red it

inspires a kind of approach oriented

behavior so where you might have passed

that person by if you're thinking about

dating apps and you're swiping there's

something about the color red that's

that slows you down and attracts you and

in the context of hitchhiking it has a

similar effect especially when you you

have a heterosexual male driving and you

have a woman wearing a red shirt you get

a very strong effect so if I'm trying to

find a girlfriend or a boyfriend

you're saying

make sure they're not wearing red make

sure they're not wearing red well if

they're wearing red you've got to ask

yourself am I attracted to the red shirt

or am I attracted to the person whereas

if they're wearing another color it's

much more likely to be an unbiased

unvarnished opinion of them but if I

want to attract the opposite oh if you

want to attract wear red yeah okay

that's useful to know yeah

I am not single but um

yeah oh but even for your partner this

is probably why Conor McGregor's has

this famous saying where he says it's

red panty night all right so when he

wins a fight he I think he said it on

the microphone to Joe Rogan he said oh

it's red panty night tonight which means

that him and his wife are going to be

intimate yeah yeah but red is always for

whatever reason in society been

seductive hasn't it's always been as it

relates to lingerie I wonder if lingerie

sells are more in red than others

quick one before we get back to this

episode just give me 30 seconds of your

time

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thank you thank you so much back to the

episode so getting getting to the topic

of being unstuck then which is what the

anatomy of a breakthrough is all about

what does it feel like when someone is

stuck so how do I know if I'm stuck what

is there an emotional sort of you know

sensation yeah it's an interesting

question so it's it's subjective you

know if you're Stucky you can feel it

because you could be in the same

situation and not feel stuck I'll give

you a good example of this I had a

conversation with Malcolm Gladwell who

was telling me about his dad who is a

math professor and his dad was trying to

solve a math conundrum for 30 years

by external definitions he was stuck for

30 years because he couldn't solve this

math puzzle which is a common experience

for math professors I imagine but he

loved it he didn't think of himself as

being stuck that for him was the process

that was why he went to work and why he

kept doing what he was doing and so you

know I if I thought about being stuck in

something and not making meaningful

progress objectively for 30 years the

idea drives me crazy but for his dad for

Malcolm's dad that that was something

that was really appealing he really

enjoyed that process and so I think a

lot of of dealing with being stuck at

first is getting your head around what

it means to be stuck and figuring out

that usually it's not as big a deal as

it seems it might be and once you come

to grips with the emotional part of it

you can usually bring some sort of

strategies and actions to bear and and

to start to move yourself I'm convinced

of that and that's that's why I wrote

the book because I think there is a way

to get unstuck in almost every case

what is the in your view the

relationship between perseverance

becoming unstuck or knowing when to quit

yeah I mean there's a there's an amazing

cottage industry on both sides of that

spectrum of books that are being written

that I think are excellent books that

make the case for for both of those ends

of the spectrum you've got Angela

Duckworth's grit which is all about

sticking through and and continuing on

and I think anatomy of a breakthrough

leans in that direction and then you've

got Annie Duke who wrote the book quit

which is about quitting the fact that

we've got so many options all the time

most of us why would you keep doing the

thing you're doing if it's not working

out for you you should probably do

something else now they're both very

sophisticated thinkers they wouldn't say

you should always persevere or always

quit

but it's a great question how do you

know when you are stuck that it's time

to persevere versus time to quit and I

think it's worth thinking about a the

opportunity cost so what are you leaving

behind is there something else that's

very obvious that would be an easy thing

to jump to that would require leaving

behind the thing that's making you stuck

and if that idea seems really appealing

as it did for me when I was doing

Actuarial science and wanted to jump

away from that then you should probably

consider moving on but the the research

basically shows that almost always

it's a good idea to persevere beyond the

point where you say this is hard and

it's not feeling good and I feel stuck

how long you should do that is another

question I think one of the the guides

that should should be useful in

determining that is to ask yourself

if there's an end state that I'm trying

to approach am I getting closer to it

across time you know if I'm I'm learning

a new skill is the Delta between where I

am and where I'd like to be shrinking

over time the gap between those two

shrinking or is it staying the same or

is it even getting larger and if it's

staying the same or getting larger then

I'm probably not getting closer and

that's that's a good a good indication

that I should probably quit it's time to

move on I've thought a lot about this

and in my last book I wrote a chapter

about quitting and I was trying to

figure out why I appear to be quite a

good quitter I'm well known for quitting

school my first company my second

company

um university after one lecture and this

is the quitting framework I try to draw

up okay I'm gonna just slide it across

the desk and please ask me if you've got

any questions

so there's two kind of routes you can

get on the quick framework is it are you

thinking of quitting because it's hard

you're running a marathon it's the last

mile of the race it's hard but it's

worth it yep so if it's hard and it's

not worth it quit if it's hard and it's

worth it stay the course

um going down the other side it's that

could be a relationship a place you're

living the job you have as an actuary

whatever yeah um

so so this this framework seems to me

unassailable in other words there's

nothing I can't imagine that anything

here could be disagreed with because it

makes total sense and it's nice and

Broad it's it's nice and Broad right

yeah you can imagine any situation being

folded into it I the other thing I quite

like about it is that uh this

distinction between it's just hard and

it sucks is is very Central to a lot of

the ideas in in my book and I think if

something sucks it's emotionally

unrewarding and you hate it and you're

grinding through it

most of the time you should quit and and

you have here this one limb to your

model that says if you can make it suck

less continue on very often yeah right

talking to your boss right exactly and

so there's there's Great Value in asking

that question but uh it's just hard part

I'm focusing on because a huge part of

this book is about how hardship is the

first step in making something good yeah

good stuff happens when things are hard

and because we're human and we have been

evolutionarily I don't know pinned into

the situation where hardship is seen as

a problem like we're using too many

resources don't do something that's

harder than it needs to be we're very

used to that it's not true about

everything we do but it's true about

enough things that we misinterpret

hardship or hardness for being a problem

whereas in many domains the good stuff

only happens almost every time after it

gets hard

um in in many domains for human growth

and otherwise in your book you talk

about how

you know you kind of debunked the idea

that young people

um start the best most culturally

valuable

companies we tend to think that it's

like 21 year olds in their bedroom that

are starting all the great

tech companies for example but you show

that

a couple of failures is actually seems

to be correlate with success yeah

and there's a you know that whole

section felt like a bit of narrative

shift

yeah I mean it was it was a it was a big

thing for me that um

you know one of the ideas that's very

prominent in my field is this

availability heuristic it's this idea

that you pay a lot of attention to

what's most available in the world this

is an old idea from uh from Danny

Kahneman and amosversky behavioral

decision researchers and um the thing

that we see a lot of is very successful

young people because they're interesting

they're fascinating stories so you you

you're interested in them and a lot of

the biggest companies I think are run

especially tech companies by quite young

CEOs or people who began when they were

young

and so we fixate on them and they're

available in our minds we see

documentaries about them we read about

them all the time

but they're they're vanishingly rare and

so what you find is that the the age to

begin a company if you want to maximize

success if you look at the age of the

CEOs who tend to be very very successful

we're talking like mid-40s that's The

Sweet Spot mid 40s even into 50s and the

the thing that distinguishes a 22 year

old from a 45 year old is as you said

partly failure that by the time you're

45 you've doubled how long you've been

alive you've had a lot of time to fail

and to come back from that and so if

you're still creating companies you've

learned something along the way but also

your life is deeply Rich at that point

in a way that it isn't necessarily as a

22 year old you've got a lot of other

stuff going on good stuff and bad stuff

maybe and maybe complicated stuff but

all of it is kind of adding a spice to

the mix that I think makes your ideas

thicker in some way and and makes you I

think better at making certain

calculations that maybe when you're

younger you don't have all the

information for and so that's what you

find who's more creative young people or

middle-aged people or old people it's

interesting so

young people and I'm thinking especially

about kids because I have a

five-year-old and a seven-year-old

um they are phenomenally creative and in

part they're creative because they don't

accept anything they're curious about

everything my kids will not ask a

question without a follow-up or five or

ten or Twenty follow-ups right nothing

is okay until we've explored it to the

ends of the Earth and that's amazing and

that's why kids learn so much so quickly

they take nothing for granted there's no

such thing as common wisdom to a kid

right you can say everyone does it this

way and they'll be like why but you say

that to an adult most of us say oh okay

we assume that what's the done thing the

way the herd is behaving is that way for

a reason even though often it's just

accidental or it's just the easiest

thing or whatever

and so I think very very young people

are tremendously creative because they

push back a lot but one of the really

interesting things for me in this book

is that I found people from Young

adulthood all the way through to very

old adulthood

um

very later in their lives who are

experimentalists by Nature they take

nothing for granted and they constantly

question and so they are way more

creative because they ask more questions

but then they then they say okay so here

are 10 options how do I know which one's

the best I'm going to inhabit each one

for two months and then you know in in

two years I'll know the answer and they

they do this serially and some of them

become Olympic athletes even if they

don't physically have the stature for it

because they're so good at finding new

techniques I talk about one of them in

the book some of them become business

Titans because they say that everyone

else is doing this thing and assuming

it's right here's a different thing

that's way better and I know that

because I've tried all the other options

and and they they end up being really

successful because that Curiosity that

you have in childhood when you carry it

over into adulthood it's kind of like a

superpower and so I I think um it's more

about the questions you ask than your

age I I couldn't agree more and it's one

of the most the things I I constantly am

trying to figure out how to get my team

when you said to me that there's a group

of there's a certain type of person that

just continues to keep asking why is the

age I was like can you introduce me yeah

because I'd love to hire them because

that's exactly you think about what

Innovation is at its core and it's that

that reject that kind of rejection of

convention yeah and that harder road

which is to try and reason up from first

principles per se yeah um you mentioned

an athlete yeah who are you referring to

yes there's an athlete Named Dave

burkhoff he was a an Olympic athlete in

the 1988 and 92 games

uh 88 in Seoul and 92 in Barcelona he's

a backstroke swimming swims 100 meter

backstroke and then some of the medley

races and I spoke to him for a while on

the phone to understand his experiences

because he um

he he doesn't look like a lot of other

backstroke swimmers they tend to be very

very tall the average world record

holder is six three to six four so quite

tall he's about 5 10. which is a big

difference in in professional Avenues if

you're thinking about it Olympic

athletes and um when he was when he was

a student in the mid 80s he was at

Harvard which is not a place you really

go if you're going to be a champion

swimmer it's a place you go for

intellectual experiences but it's not

the best athletic School generally

speaking but he had a coach there who

encouraged him to be curious to ask a

lot of questions and burkhoff was

naturally like this so he he would say

to his coach why would I why do I need

to swim that way like why don't I try

like 10 other ways to swim let's tweak

my technique in all these different ways

and see what works best and what he

ended up doing was he discovered that

you swim about 80 I think it's like 88

faster when you're fully submerged under

the water than when half of your body is

above the water and half is below which

makes total sense from a physics

perspective but most backstroke swimmers

the way they swim is they push off the

wall

and the minute they do that their body

starts to fight for oxygen because

they're under the water and so your

instinct is to pop up as quickly as

possible but if you can train yourself

to deal with the oxygen deprivation

you stay underwater for longer and you

swim much faster so burkhoff developed

this technique called the burkhov blast

off it was known as where he would swim

underwater for the first 40 meters of a

hundred meter race so 40 percent of the

race almost half of the almost a full

lap of the Olympic pool and then he

would come up there and then he would

keep swimming and he broke World Records

he wasn't the best swimmer in terms of

his physique but he was the best swimmer

strategically and he had spent years

experimenting to find this technique and

then of course all the other athletes

saw the same thing and they started

doing the same thing and so it became

more competitive but in the interim he

won gold medals at two Olympic Games

he won a bronze he was the world record

holder multiple times so you know that

questioning led someone who in certain

respects at least physically shouldn't

have been the world record holder to be

just that the question I ask is how do

you teach someone to be that kind of

person how do you teach someone to be

more experimental and to be more Curious

and to ask why more because just from my

observation from what I've seen over the

last I don't know 10 years in business

and I think about all the teams I've had

and all the people we've hired which is

more than a thousand

some people just have it yeah some

people just have a almost like a

cognitive but default towards being

curious about the possibility of a

better way and then some people

regardless of how many times you you ask

for that behavior or you might ride it

on the wall or you might say that it's

our values they just don't naturally

demonstrate that Curiosity

yeah I mean there's an individual

difference variable that you're

describing that's real and and with

every construct when we talk about a

desirable human trait there's going to

be variance right creativity uh

addictive personality and so on all of

these things are going to vary on a

spectrum some things that are educable

you can you can sort of teach them you

can make people better at them so if

you're at a three out of ten you can

become a six out of ten or maybe even a

seven out of ten uh this curiosity

question though I think

and I say this as an educator I think it

can be taught and I think that's

essentially what we try to do a lot of

the time that's my course I teach a

marketing course it's maybe three months

long if you only come out of that course

with one thing it's to know the right

questions to ask you know if you're in a

business and you're trying to promote a

product or an idea or to create a new

product I want you not necessarily to

know the answer but at least to know

what the questions should be and so I

think it's the job of Educators the job

of books the job of whatever information

you get in the world to train you in

that direction and so if I were going to

say there's one thing we should train

people in a business context you know if

you have a new employee

it's certainly the on on the job stuff

is important you know like learn the

skills that are important to this

specific job if there are technical

skills but the most important General

skill

know the right questions to ask and

constantly ask so here's one way you do

that is you say I want you to to look at

this thing whatever this thing is

um it could be it could be your

framework that you showed me the

quitting framework I would take everyone

who I'm considering hiring

and as a diagnostic tool I'd have them

look at it and say tell me one thing

that's not right with the framework or

that you think could be improved

do it again now give me a second thing

what about a third thing and if they

can't do it the first time coach them

through it work work through it with

them but don't just do it with your

framework do it with

find 10 ad campaigns say imagine you're

the chief marketing officer at this

company what's one thing you could do

differently that maybe isn't better but

at least is worth asking let's ask that

question

and and if you do that enough times

everyone becomes more Curious it becomes

the Habit that's the way you interact

with the world so I think it to a large

extent can be taught that's the that's

kind of the thing I I was reflecting on

is do you have to even tell someone to

look at the framework and then find

something better because I'm in search

of the person that looks at the

framework and goes Steve I found

something better

those people are amazing they are they

do exist they do exist and I found some

of them and that's that's Dave burkhoff

right no one said to him you have to

question whether the way everyone swims

the back stroke is the best way

uh and I found a few people like that

but they are vanishingly rare there

aren't that many of them who really make

that their kind of life's philosophy

experimentalism as a philosophy but

there are some a lot of them actually

end up going into Academia and into

science because they want to know they

want to know the answers yeah they just

want to know they're curious to the ends

of the Earth but

for the rest the other 99 of people who

aren't like that I think you can lift

them all up from a three out of ten four

out of ten to a seven or an eight maybe

not a nine or a ten

but if your whole Workforce is people

who are seven or an eight out of ten on

curiosity it's much better than having

the most theater three so I think you

can move the needle a little bit and

those that small minority tend to

provide so much value for the

less experimental majority yeah you know

like because I I think about we have

this group and all of my companies

called Ever Changing landscape and the

whole point of the group is when we see

something changing in the world or you

know might be a new update to a platform

or something within our industry has

changed it could be an update or a

feature or whatever

take it from where you've seen it and

just share it with the rest of the

company and you see in these groups that

we have that it's really a small cohort

educating everybody else so let's say

there's 100 people in the slack Channel

yeah I'd say there'd be

five people that were super prolific and

there'd be 15 that were kind of you know

yeah kind of doing it and then you know

then it'd be another 30 25 that do it

sometimes and then there's kind of a

solid 50 that don't ever do it and they

don't seem to have that sort of Natural

Curiosity I always think as a CEO I need

to like find more of that five percent

because the the disproportionate value

they can add by finding as I said to you

before recording this podcast just a

tiny tweak that changes our trajectory

is profound here's here's my advice on

that I think I think you're exactly

right about the distribution and we see

this in a lot of cases uh I talk in the

book about the 80 20 rule the Pareto

Principle that most of the gains come

from the small minority and so on and we

know that like if you're a business

often the vast majority of your sales

come from the tiny minority of customers

and so on so we know this is true

and in the Casio where you say 50 of

people are not doing the work on the

slack Channel

you could break that 50 down into I

think two broad groups there's one group

that's just

the way that kind of person approaches

life is to just not be very motivated

and there's nothing there's not much you

can do about that part right if they

come to work because they see it

entirely as an extrinsic

reward for their time that they come and

they get paid and that's just what

they're doing and it's a day job

you're never going to teach them to be

curious but there is a group of people

in that 50 and I I think it's probably

sizable especially at a company like one

of your companies

those people want to be better they want

to do a better job at this they maybe

don't have the skills today but if you

show them they will latch onto it and

they will get better at it and it's the

the most important thing you can do as a

as a leader in organizations is to not

just find the people who are talented

versus not talented but to find the

people who don't yet have whatever you

would consider to be the talent and to

separate them into those who really want

to be their talented ones and those who

just actually don't care that much

they're just there to do the bare

minimum

and that's where I think you're pouring

your your attention and education into

that that first set of people who are

motivated is key do you think you can

teach someone to be curious about

something because I wonder you know

people go home and they choose what they

watch on YouTube and what they read

about yeah and what they consume on

Netflix that kind of seems to be the

purest indication of what they're

actually curious about the stuff they

they dealt lean into in their free time

so we've got some people in our team

even here that are you know here now

that when they go home they're learning

about cameras and how to shoot video

video and all those kinds of things

um and then you might have someone in

the same team that goes home and just

wants to watch keeping up with

Kardashians you know it's soft it's

quite obvious I think everyone could

agree that the the first person who has

a Natural Curiosity towards the subject

matter outside of their professional

Pursuits is going to achieve more in

their professional Pursuits so could you

and you know I have to pref have to

provide some Nuance here that it doesn't

matter if someone goes home and watches

keeping up with Kardashians they'll be

useful in other ways because they'll be

getting sort of creative insights

outside of the industry like you said

but I do believe that those that are

curious about the thing they do

professionally will go the furthest yeah

so I think with curiosity in general if

you like if I I don't know much about

cameras I just have my phone and I use

it as a camera that's about all I know I

just push buttons

and so I'm not that curious about them

but if you give me

let's say the most educated camera

Consumer in the world is at 100 if you

take me from zero percent where I am now

to 10 or 15 percent

I then know enough to start to develop

curiosity part of the problem with being

a novice is you don't even know what's

interesting about the thing like if you

if you don't drink red wine

and then you at some point you start

drinking you're like oh there are

different varietals that's interesting

oh even within that varietal it turns

out there's a difference between Napa

and burgundy or whatever and as you get

more knowledgeable about the subject the

nuances become interesting to you

because they mean something like I I

this happens with music all the time

like if you love a kind of music

especially if it's the kind of music

that most people don't listen to

you try to show someone else that music

and you play your two favorite songs

they'll be like they both sound the same

it's the most frustrating thing as

someone who likes something a lot who's

really passionate and it's true for art

and movies and whatever else so

everyone's like yeah whatever it's like

it's same same it's all just part of the

genre

but once you develop a taste for it and

you get curious and you get into it

that's when you start to see the real

life of it and so I think you're the job

of someone who wants others to be

curious about a topic or to develop

Curiosities is to make them not the zero

percent to make them at the 10 or 15 or

20th percent that then prompts them to

want to figure out the rest

because you don't get there from zero

you talk about maximizing and

satisficing you believe there are two

outlooks on success this is part two of

your business um your book The the heart

section and it there seems to be some

kind of through line between

experimenters and non-experimenters and

maximizes and satisficing yeah

satisficing yeah that's right yeah so

this this idea it's an old idea it's

about 70 years old now but it's the idea

that um broadly speaking when you make

decisions or make choices you can be

either a maximizer on one end of the

spectrum or a satisficer a maximizer is

someone who says about everything I need

the very best I need to spend a lot of

time and energy figuring out the best I

need to produce the best if I'm choosing

what food to eat or what job to have or

whatever everything's got to be the very

very best I'm going to maximize I'm

going to make it as good as it can

possibly be and I'm going to bring the

resources required to make that happen

satisfices of people who say

you know there's a level that's good

enough it's not perfect but it gets over

the bar and it's going to be a different

bar for different things if it's an

important thing the bar gets raised and

it'll it's lowered for less important

things but as soon as I find an option

that's good enough I'm going to take it

and then move on with my life

and then there are people who are kind

of in the middle who say about some

things like my partner that I choose or

if I'm going to choose what job to have

or which which country to live in those

are really important whether to have

kids those are important questions I'm

going to maximize on those everything

else

not that important at least relatively

speaking I'm going to just find a good

enough option and what you find is that

people who satisfy us

tend to be much happier oh [ __ ]

not at no the the key is to I mean if

you maximize on everything I think it's

paralyzing the key is to know when to

maximize and so if you satisfy us a lot

of the time and say let's be honest I

don't need to status to maximize on

everything

then then you're that's the way to do it

is to know to be able to distinguish

between the two so if you're a chronic

maximizer about absolutely everything

there's a lot of evidence that you're

likely to get stuck on small unimportant

things

depression is that um a trait of

maximizes yeah absolutely High achieving

yeah I mean so what what ends up

happening is it's the same as

perfectionism that's basically what it

is it's the it's the choice-based

version of perfectionism where you never

live up to your own standards which on

the one hand produces very good things

because you're always looking upward and

trying to get better on the other hand

it's paralyzing and exhausting and to

live your entire life that way in every

aspect of your life is problematic Mo

gauna who came on this podcast talked

about how we're happy when our

expectations are met and we're unhappy

when our expectations are unmet and from

what I ascertained from what you said

there maximizers have such high

expectations that they're often unmet

which causes unhappiness yeah accurate

100 yeah that's exactly right my thesis

my um PhD thesis was on expectations and

on on how important it is when

expectations deviate from or when when

reality deviates from expectations it's

almost never about the objective thing

you know like two people could have

exactly the same thing and feel totally

happy one could feel totally happy with

it the other could be devastated by it

it's all about what you're used to what

you expect how high your standards are

so I I think that's that's a very

powerful human element in in these

calculations when you're talking about

experimenters these are people that go

in search of nuances and ask why our

experimenters typically maximizes

because on the other side of the coin

satisfices

um they kind of accept it so they might

be the people that would accept

convention conventions answer for as

being yeah I'll just do what has always

been done yeah I think so I think

there's some overlap but the thing about

the people that I found were

experimentalists constantly asking

questions it was rarely about trivial

things it's not like they went and said

I'm going to go to the supermarket today

and get a chocolate and I want to

experiment I want to I want to eat every

chocolate in the supermarket over the

next year so that I know for the future

which one's the best they don't do that

they say hey I'm a swimmer I want to be

an Olympian how do I get to be an

Olympian I'm going to maximize the hell

out of that and so it's it's about

finding something that's really

important to you where it's worth being

an experimentalist but it would be

paralyzing to do that with every aspect

of your life I I think it certainly

wouldn't work for me

life crises

um we're talking about age a second ago

and I've got a I've got two friends I've

got one friend that's 29 and another

friend that's 39 and they're going

through what appears to be on the

surface of Crisis yeah and when I read

your book about how you call it the nine

ending crisis yeah it all made sense

what is that yeah so

this this is some research with a

colleague of mine Heller hirschfield

who's also a very good friend at UCLA

and when we were he was at NYU at the

time we we went we were sitting in his

office and I said to him you know

um I ran a marathon when I was 29. I've

never run another one I but I ran one at

29 and I remember thinking

I have to show myself as I approach 30

that there's meaning to my life and

purpose I need a big goal I need to

train for something and I thought that

was a really interesting human instinct

like it was a very productive one I ran

a marathon which was not a bad thing but

we were talking about and he said to me

it seems like maybe at these ages where

there's a nine at the end of your age

and you're looking down the Specter of a

new decade that it pushes you to kind of

audit your life you ask yourself is my

life meaningful is it what I want it to

be are there gaps that I need to fill is

there something I need to do and so we

started to find these big data sets that

had some evidence where we could see

what ages people were at and looking at

their decisions and we found all sorts

of really interesting behaviors when

people were 29 39 49 59 you get this big

rise in Marathon running so I wasn't the

only one there's an over-representation

of marathon runners especially

first-time marathon runners who have a

nine at the end of their age if you were

already a marathon runner you run your

fastest marathons in general when you

have a nine at the end of your age

um there's also some stuff that's not so

good so you see a massive rise in

infidelity so we found evidence that

there's an over-representation of people

at those ages who are seeking out

extramarital Affairs you even see a rise

in suicide

so that doesn't mean everyone who's got

a nine end at their a nine uh ending age

is at risk of that but it shows in

general that we we sort of hunt for

meaning and so the midlife crisis idea

that maybe when you approach 40 there's

going to be a big crisis there that may

be true but we also found this kind of

cyclical decade every decade you get

this this sort of miniature nine ending

crisis

I was the in the best shape I've ever

been in my life when I was 29. that was

the year that was the year I got closest

to having all eight ABS 30 has it been

great not as great

so I was wondering as you said that if

uh what happens when

the year after you know if 29 is often

some of our most productive achievements

or Affairs yeah does that means 30 40 50

is when we we chill a little bit it

varies a little it's funny so what you

see is it's sort of like a wave and the

peak of the wave is at nine but there

are some people who it only Dawns on

them when they actually hit the zero

ending age some people it starts at the

eight ending age it's really when you

get to like

34 35 36 44 45 46 right in the middle of

the decade when you see the the trough

for all of these kinds of behaviors

we're sort of most in our lives and

doing our thing and not really

questioning as much which I mean we

found that fascinating that that just

the accident that we happened to count

using a base 10 system means that every

10 years we we Zoom back and ordered our

lives in this way

it's such an intro because it doesn't

the number is such a an irrelevant thing

in the context of your physiological

Health your metabolic Health but symbols

symbols matter and you talk about

symbols in your first book as well yeah

and we don't appreciate how much symbols

sway our life in fundamental ways do we

yeah no that's right that's true and and

I think you know even these numbers are

symbolic they have symbolic meaning for

us it's something when you say I'm in my

30s it's different from saying I'm 28 or

29. even if it's just a year apart or

even a few days apart and it's the same

with what it means to be in your 40s

it's symbolic for a time of life and and

certain expectations about what that

time of your life is supposed to be and

so I think that's what happens we talked

about expectations that you you're

suddenly in your 40s or your 50s or your

60s and then you say what does that mean

and where here is where my expectations

are I should have the following things

maybe a certain amount of money a

certain career status maybe a partner

maybe kids

and then do you have those things and if

you don't

then you get this kind of acting out

Behavior some of it productive that

tries to remedy the problem perhaps you

try to get fit and run a marathon but

sometimes for some people it's not very

productive Behavior I know this more

than most because I started in business

at 18 and you can imagine

um when I was on BBC News night

and they introduce you and he's only 18

years old my business is making zero

money yeah but they were just blown away

because of expectation of what an 18

year old should be doing and then I had

that throughout my career and he's only

25 and he's got a thousand and he's only

20 and then he's only 29

and then it's stuff Stephen is an

entrepreneur

and I'm like listen one day has changed

and suddenly no one's Introducing Me by

my age he was 29 and 30. the

expectations of a 29 year old running a

business and how big that business might

be and how many team members and revenue

versus the 30 year olds you go huh you

better be a billionaire or else we're

not going to mention his age I'm in my

early 40s and it's the same thing as an

academic you know if you're a professor

in your 30s that's you're young and then

you hit suddenly one day you're 40 and

they're like ah yeah you're a professor

whatever

when you wrote about symbols in your

first book what were some of the most

sort of surprising things in terms of

how powerful and inspirational they are

with us to us without us even knowing uh

well you know as a marketing Professor

I'm very very interested in how symbols

play a role in branding and in conveying

ideas really succinctly I think that the

the simplest way to convey an idea is

with an image and the images that are

the most powerful are often in symbolic

form a lot of them are very negative

images that we get from symbols they're

associated with ideals that we don't

like for example

um you know like uh something like a

swast sticker is a it's a terrible

symbol the way it's used or has been

used for the last almost 100 years now

um but the amount of meaning that's

conveyed in those symbols is is

tremendous

um and so it's

there's a there's a sort of terrible

power to symbols they can shape behavior

in all sorts of ways one of the studies

I did

um looked at people who were religious

versus not religious and then showed

them a religious symbol and then asked

them to do a behavior that was either

going to be done honestly or dishonestly

we were essentially measuring whether

they were going to behave honestly and

for those religious people seeing that

symbol kind of clicked something for

them and they became much more honest

so in general they might have had an

honesty level of 50 but you show them

that symbol even subtly in the

environment around them and suddenly

they become much more honest so these

these things are constantly swimming

around us and and gently nudging our

behavior in different directions

it almost reminded me a little bit of

the um the thing you wrote about in that

book about how when people are shown a

picture of eyeballs at like a free snack

bar where they can take what they want

they're much more honest about their

decisions because eyes again in a way

are a symbol yeah they're a symbol of

the tribe maybe yeah of being watched of

feeling like you're being watched I

there's um there's some really

interesting evidence from this uh

looking at um using eyeballs to get

people to behave better so if you have

an image of a pair of eyes looking at

you just disembodied just the eyes you

don't see any of the rest of the face

you find that people behave much more

honestly they're much less likely to

steal something you see shoplifting

rates go down the the best use of it

though I think is

if you say you're a chocoholic you love

chocolate but you don't want to be

eating it but you also want to have a

little bit around every now and again

one thing you can do is you can have a

little cupboard in your in your kitchen

where the inside of the cupboard you put

a mirror and that's where the chocolate

lives so you open it up and every time

you reach for the chocolate you have to

stare into your own soul

and so the eyeballs whether they're

yours or somebody else's just just

having to look at yourself not just

metaphorically but literally as you do

something it brings out your better

angels and there's a lot of evidence for

that in in various psychological studies

one of the things that stands in the way

of acceptance is this question which a

lot of people ask when they get stuck

which is or when they have a life Quake

which is why me why did this happen to

me yeah and that

relinquishes our sense of personal

responsibility it makes us a victim to

to the situation

um which we might objectively be a

victim however you want to Define it to

a situation but it doesn't seem to be

conducive with um getting out of it no

it doesn't and you know the interesting

thing is if you go to people who are at

the end of their lives they're on their

Death Beds and they know that the end is

near and you say to them did you ever

have a why me situation did it did

something happen in your life at any

point where you had cause whether you

did or not you had cause to say why me

you know this felt unfair

hundred percent of them will say yes

that's another case where we feel

isolated in those moments we're like why

me the implication of that is it's me

but not someone else their turn will

come we will all have these moments that

are really hard to deal with some of us

have had them already some of us will

have more of them in the future but they

are Universal and so the the best thing

you can do I think in those moments is

to just kind of recognize that it's okay

to be sad and pissed off and to struggle

with them but also there's some comfort

in knowing that actually this is just

what it is to be human everyone has

these moments you're not unique in

responding that way and you're not

unique in experi in experiencing that

situation in the first place it's

privileged as well as you write about in

your book it's a privileged response to

have yeah that you don't see across

other cultures as readily yeah it's

privilege and it also I think reflects

the sense of agency we've got from

becoming essentially masters of our

worlds in ways that were not true for

most of human history you know we

as science and medicine goes we're

living longer we're generally a stronger

species we can do a lot of incredible

things we can move spacecraft to other

planets you know it's it's ridiculous

the number of things we can do

and so as a result of that we kind of

assume that that's the kind of control

we should have over every aspect of Our

Lives if we can do big things that are

amazing why can't we do small things

that are amazing and uh that's not the

way the world works and we mistake that

General sense of human control over the

world especially as we move away from

religion and become more more secular

we develop that sense of privilege and I

think cultures that that don't have that

to the same extent or that's still Hue

to religion more strongly you have much

more of a recognition that hey to some

extent I'm kind of at the mercy of

whether it's the gods or however you

want to describe it and that makes you

more open to the idea that you don't

have control is that less westernized

culture so cultures with less money yes

that's what that's why the privileged

aspect comes into it because I think the

West

where we are more

expectations again isn't it it comes

back to almost everything yeah it's a

huge huge part of The Human Experience

we all need to lower our expectations or

have realistic ones yeah yeah

there's going to be so many people that

are listening that are that realize that

you know they objectively realize that

life comes in seasons

and but the the difficulty comes is when

one of those Seasons ends yeah and we

kind of resist the ending and a lot of

people I think will feel stuck when a

seasonal chapter of life one of those

life Quakes you know I guess the start

of a life quick I guess is one when one

of those Seasons ends knowing from a

intellectual from a strategy standpoint

how to deal with it in that moment

because when a season of life ends

there's so much uncertainty and fear and

you you can't always see the season to

come

um and that's where a lot of those

feelings come from he talked about

acceptance being a key

um path forward but is there anything

else I really want to make sure we've

completed that is there anything else

that we can do to ex to be better at

transitioning from one season of life to

the other yeah I so I love this

philosophy from uh the the rock musician

Jeff Tweedy the front man of the band

Wilco who's also a writer he writes he

does music he's a renaissance man

um he talks about that feeling of being

stuck and and sometimes it's in

transitions but also it's it's when

you're chronically being forced to come

up with new ideas if you're a creative

and I think this applies to to

Transitions to new periods as well he

talks about this idea that you know for

decades he has had to wake up and his

bread and butter is to come up with

creative songs and to write good

passages that will then become part of a

book

that is asking a lot of people but what

he does is he recognizes that Above All

Else

action is going to move him forward when

you feel stuck action even if it's

slightly sideways it may not be exactly

where you want to go but the mere fact

that you're acting gives you feedback

that you're not stuck that you're moving

in the right direction

and so he talks about Lo at least

temporarily lowering your expectations

to the ground and so he talks about

pouring out the bad ideas if he's

writing a song he'll say what's the

worst musical phrase I could write right

now or what's the worst line for this

book let me come up with three of the

worst lines ever and that's easy to do

because you have no expectations it's

not maximizing or satisficing it's just

like the bare minimum

and when you do that

you get the ball rolling you show

yourself that you're not stuck and so

then what follows that as he describes

it is the good stuff that's when you get

your good ideas because the you you know

the wheels are being greased and you're

moving forward and I think that's true

in transition periods that we spend a

lot of time agonizing there's a lot of

dealing with the emotions which is fair

there's a lot of time strategizing

but just acting is tremendously

liberating even if the action itself

doesn't bring measurable rewards in the

short term I was thinking as you're

saying that the con within the context

of dating so you've just come out of a

horrific divorce you're sat at home on

your own you can't even remember how to

date yeah and you're going to try and

find someone that is as appealing as the

the person that's just dumped you or

divorced you and they're hard to find so

you just procrastinate you kind of sit

in the misery and that's where you feel

stuck yeah if I apply the philosophy

you've just said to bad ideas first what

I'd actually do is I'd just go on a date

yeah and I'd say listen this is not

going to be the husband but we're going

to start getting some practice and we're

going to start getting out there and

putting my makeup back on and whatever

and getting out there into the market

and you take you take a bad date just to

get the ball rolling it's accurate yeah

I mean a lot of people do that that's

that's the philosophy of the rebound

right that uh oh yeah yeah but but I

think that's right I mean I think from