June 24, 2020 • 32 mins
“People can get better at anything.” That’s the reassurance Geoff Colvin offers us in today’s conversation. He’s Fortune Magazine’s Editor-at-Large and the bestselling author of Humans are Underrated. His science-based advice for navigating “the learning zone” can bolster anyone working through a career reset in these uncertain economic times. @geoffcolvin
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
And what we're hearing, by the way, from employers is
that these are the skills that they need most. We
read all the time that, well, employers want tech skills, right.
Tech skills are great, highly valuable, but the skills they
want and are having trouble finding are the skills of
in person relationship. Thanks for joining us on the road
(00:33):
to somewhere where we talk about exploration, adventure, major life
change and transformation is about not necessarily knowing where we're going,
but having faith that the journey will be worthwhile. I'm
Lisa Oz, I'm Jael Herzig and Lisa, one of the
things I've always admired about you is that you are
not only whip smart, but you are an enthusiastic, constantly
(00:56):
curious learner. I feel like you're always on that learning curve.
You're you're very comfortable there. Well, I have a lot
to learn because I have not figured it out yet. Yeah,
but you're very fearless about it. Yeah. Well I well,
thank you. I will I will take that as a compliment.
(01:16):
I like to learn. You, on the other hand, impressed
me because you're actually really amazing at taking what you've
learned and putting into practice. It's true. But like the
I would say, the last three years of my life
have since I transitioned out of a magazine career where
I felt like I kind of knew what I was doing,
(01:38):
and it's it's just all been about trying to reapply
that knowledge and also get more comfortable in the learning Well,
that's what our guest calls the learning zone, the learning zone. Yes,
our guest is a master at the learning zone. He's
a business journalist and broadcaster. He's heard daily on see
(02:00):
S Radio Network and you guys will hear that beautiful,
mellificlous way in just a second. He's the best selling
author of Humans Are Underrated and Talent Is Overrated. And
he's the senior editor at Large at Fortune Magazine. And
his name is Jeff Golvin. Jeff, thank you so much
for being here today. Thank you, thank you now so
(02:23):
all right, So, one of the things that we were
talking about, um, after reading your book, is this learning
curve to which Joe was alluding, Um, can you unpack
that for us? Yeah? Absolutely, And it's a great way
to start because it's a really important concept. The whole
idea of the book is that people can get better
(02:44):
at anything, and that in fact, all of the great
performers of this world, the people who seemed superhuman to us,
whether it's a great opera singer or a basketball player
or a violinist or an executive, they seem beyond normal.
They probably weren't. They probably did it the same way
(03:07):
everybody else gets great, which is by this process that
the researchers call deliberate practice. And what that means is
constantly being pushed just beyond your abilities. That doesn't mean
way beyond your current abilities, because then you are lost
(03:29):
your your you can't do anything. At the same time,
you're not allowed to remain and do whatever you do
within your current abilities, because then you don't grow. The
key is pushing you yourself or being pushed just beyond
what you can do now. And one way to think
of it, one way to envision it is three concentric circles.
(03:54):
The inner circle is the comfort zone that's doing what
you already no. The outer circle is the panic zone.
Spent time now we all have doing one thing or
another right, that's where you're being pushed so far beyond
what you can do that you have no idea of
(04:14):
how you should approach In your panic. It's the middle zone.
That's the learning zone, where you're pushed just beyond, and
that's how you get better. As you get better, of course,
the learning zone moves right because then you have to
be pushed to do something new that is just beyond
what you're able to do. But the world's great performers,
(04:37):
no matter what they do, have basically done that process.
They've followed that path typically every day for years or decades.
That's what makes a world class great performer. Okay, well,
I am not a world class grade performer at anything. However,
(04:58):
um let me me tell you how I struggled through
something that felt hugely challenging for me. So when I
was the editor in chief of a magazine, one of
the nice things that came with it was a lot
of support staff. There were a lot of people there,
most of them way younger than me, who were there
to maximize my productivity by solving little problems that were
(05:19):
in my way. Many of them were technological, so I
was perfectly functional on email and a few other you know,
basic tech platforms. But you know, no, I was no,
I was no great shakes, and they would just figure
it out for me or or find workarounds for me,
because the most important thing was that I got a
lot of work done, and they didn't want me struggling
(05:40):
with the Google doc. They just wanted to get that
thing out of my way. So then I'm cut loose
from the magazine industry and I'm faced with my laptop
at home every day, and it was just nothing but challenge. Moreover,
I think we all know that with tech challenges like
forgetting your sword or I mean, so many expletives deleted
(06:03):
when I talked about this stuff, we all get really
frustrated with ourselves. So I put myself to the task
of just figuring it out. One of the things, by
the way, I discovered along the way, and it was
quite a light bulb moment for me, is that all
those times my assistant just seemed to within ten minutes
know the answer to some tech thing. You know what
she was doing, She was googling it. She was just saying,
(06:26):
what do I do when Google docs, you know, won't
do X or Y literally in plain language. So anyway,
that was kind of a revelation to me because I
realized that even she who seems supernaturally talented, was just
comfortable figuring things out. So, Jeff, how have you personally
used all of this research and information that you put
(06:48):
together for talented is overrated? What if you? How has
it changed how you pursue things you're interested in, or
your goals or your work in a few ways. One
which may be surprising is that, even though I've been
writing for a living for most of my life, I
really started thinking differently about writing. In other words, I
(07:09):
thought about specific elements of what I do and how
to get better at them. In other words, I started
thinking about let's and some of this was very detailed,
because that's what happens after you've been doing something for
a long time. So, for example, you know the very
first words of an article, you know, not just the outline,
(07:33):
but the very first words on the page. What are they? Uh?
You know? Do they grab the reader? Or do they
begin to convey from the very first what you want
to do? And once you think about that, you know,
you start to get better at it. Um the way
I quote people, uh just and it's very uh detailed
(07:56):
and kind of workman like, But exactly how you place
the quotes and break them up? I started thinking about that,
and there's a million things like that your editors must
love you as an editor. Basically, what you're saying is
you started to edit yourself and make sure that you
hand it in work. Yeah. It was continually and and
(08:18):
since we're both in the magazine business, it's worth noting
that I spent fifteen years at Fortune as an editor,
so I do come with a different mindset and a
different pair of eyes than most other writers do. But
even at that I started thinking differently about all these
(08:40):
little elements. At the same time, another part of my life,
I realized, you know what, golf, I'm just never gonna
be good. It's just I'm not. I I could if
I wanted to spend the hours. You know, I know
the steps, But when I look at my life as
a whole and where I want to spend my time,
(09:02):
it's not on that. Okay, So I I it was wonderful.
I was liberated. I still play from time to time,
but I realized, Okay, I'm as good as I'm gonna be.
And you know, it's a great experience. You're out in
a beautiful place, usually on a beautiful day, and you
know it's fun. So don't beat yourself up for being
(09:25):
no better than you are It's okay, that was a
great thing. What I spent so much time though in
the panic zone? How could I have handled that better?
How could I have gotten out of the panic zone? Right?
It's such a common situation, and there are a few
thoughts on that one. In an awful lot of cases,
(09:48):
it does help a lot to have a teacher or
guide or mentor of some kind who's been through all this,
because they know what the next little step is for you, right,
they can tell you exactly what to work on next,
(10:09):
because well, for two reasons. One they've seen it all,
so they know what the right progression is, and two
they're not you. In other words, we all need somebody
to observe us and tell us honestly where we stand,
because most of the time we're not really qualified to
do it for ourselves. I mean, we can never see
(10:31):
ourselves the way somebody else sees us, and we don't
have the knowledge that that other person does. And so
you know, there's a reason I hired just have found
a friend or somebody who you know. I mean, you know,
a lot of us already kind of have that tech tutor,
(10:53):
namely our kids, because they know um. But other there
are plenty of other options. You know, you can find
somebody who knows a little more about whatever it is
you're working on, and you know it does actually take instruction.
I mean, you know, to use Excel. It's it's not
going to come to you intuitively. But but getting someone
(11:17):
who can help tell you where you need to push
for the next thing makes a huge difference. Yeah, I
should have gotten some help. When we come back, we're
gonna actually get some help in the areas we need
it most. Before the break, we were chatting about learning
(11:46):
curves and how to become great at something um and
I just wanted to transition a little bit because we all,
we all put time in at work, right whether or
not we become phenomenal at our jobs is debatable, but
I think a lot is it my I'm postulating that
we can use the same techniques that we would if
(12:07):
we want to be great at something. Often the things
that we value most are families, our personal life, our
personal growth are things we don't give the attention to.
We're putting the hours in at work, maybe, but we
all there's something more important than our jobs. For most
of us, can the same techniques of deliberate practice be
applied to our personal lives. They absolutely can, And I
(12:29):
think I could guarantee you that everybody who was listening
to what you just said is nodding their head because
we've all lived that, right, We've all experienced that. So
can it be applied to our personal lives. Yes, it
absolutely can. The steps remain the same. But the question
(12:52):
on the personal side, which actually makes it much more
difficult than on the work side, is that it it's
all about relationships and emotion and things that are frankly
harder for us to think about and assess realistically for ourselves.
(13:14):
That's what we're talking about. Earlier, you know, someone else
to look at you and tell you, uh, and you
know you can do that if you know, if your
relationship with various family members is such that you can
have that talk and say, look, I really want to
know what should I be working on? What would you
(13:35):
like to see? You know? What could I do better?
If you can have that talk, then you've got your
your diagram, has it where you've got your pathway for
what you've got to work on? And then it's the
same thing. What's the first step and is it the
same for let's say it's not relationships you want to
(13:56):
work on, but a personal passion. Yes, oh yeah, absolutely so,
just staying outside of your comfort zone, outside of your
compe absolutely, always pushing and and what people find is
when they do that, each step is a little more detailed.
They make finer and finer distinctions about whatever they're doing.
(14:17):
So they start out with broad goals, you know, just
I want to get better at such and such. But
after that, each one becomes a little finer because you're
becoming better, more knowledgeable, you understand more about what you're doing,
and so your goals become more precise. Then you know
(14:38):
better what you should do to reach them. Another what
I'm telling you is the process gets better, it gets
more powerful with every step you take. And what do
you do at the beginning when you're just really suck
at something towel? Well, that's the temptation, right And frankly,
(14:58):
I mean that really is it? And it's a great
question because when you start is there most things? Is
there no message in there? You just don't belong in
this space? Well here's the real question on that. I think,
do you have the passion to keep pushing yourself down
(15:19):
that road? For as long as it takes to be
really good, and maybe you don't, and that's okay as
long as you see it, acknowledge it, and accept it.
But it's very difficult to tell somebody at the beginning
you're just lousy at this, forget and go do something else,
because it's just not the case. I mean, the only
(15:42):
exceptions would be in sports. You know, there are certain
physical attributes that can pretty much disqualify you. Right, if
you're a guy in your five ft two and you
want to be an interior alignment in the NFL, someone
should tell you it doesn't matter how much you practice.
Right if you're seven ft tall and you want to
(16:03):
be a gymnast, that's not gonna work either. Just stop.
But aside from that, really, um, there aren't any limits
that are inherent and observable going in. How important in
this process of continually learning and achieving is the concept
(16:26):
of rest because I know, like when I am skiing,
if I'm in full panic mode, I don't learn anything.
But then sometimes even though I'm pushing myself, pushing myself,
it's when I can stop doing things that are outside
of my comfort zone and then just enjoy a couple
of slopes without thinking about it, that I actually see
what I've learned sit in my body. Is that is
(16:47):
rest a big part of the learning process. It is
what you've said is very insightful, and the research supports
it absolutely. Stopping and reflecting on what you've done is
crucially important. And I I wrote about that in the book.
And later the guy who for years was the teacher
(17:09):
and coach of Tiger Woods said, that's exactly what he does. Um.
And he he was kind enough to mention the book
in his book, but he said, look, that's what what
I was describing. That's what Tiger Woods would do. He'd
hit a few balls on the driving range there and
the practice range, and then he just stopped and he
(17:30):
just look out out where he hit them and say nothing.
And the teacher eventually asked him what he was doing.
He said, I'm just thinking about what I did. That
is crucially important. And running yourself hours and hours a day,
it becomes completely useless after a relatively short amount of time. UM.
(17:55):
A violinist once asked one of the all time great
violin teachers, how many hours a day should I practice?
And he said it depends, But if you're focused an
hour and a half a day is fine. That's all
you need if you're intensely focused on what you're doing.
So how do you develop focus? How do you how
(18:17):
do you how do you channel that? It is something
that develops. In other words, when you start out at
anything that you're trying to learn, you probably can't focus
for an hour and a half, let alone anything more
than that. And what happens is you focus for as
long as you can, and it may be fifteen minutes,
but as time goes on, you will get better and better.
(18:41):
It really does build and you shouldn't be discouraged if
initially you can't focus on this for very long. But
this is one of the things that distinguishes the great
performers from the average performers. There was an interesting experiment
where they looked at people who were taking us singing lesson.
(19:02):
When they looked at people who just sang as a hobby,
you know, just saying for fun, they thought of the
singing lesson as be fun, you know, and it was
a kind of a an occasion and a kind of
a release, and you get to talk to the teacher
and stuff like that. Then they asked professional singers how
they felt about a singing lesson. To them, it was
an exhausting ordeal, but they knew they had to do it,
(19:26):
but they were so intensely focused on what they were
doing that it was draining to them. That's what separates
the great performers from the average ones. But but the
great ones started out average. That's what's important to remember.
Most of us and most of our listeners are not
going to be it's higher Woods or you know, violent
(19:52):
violin virtuoso. We just want to be better at the
things we do. Is not afraid to try and not
afraid to try? Is there? Yeah? And we don't want
to just do one thing. I don't want to just
play violent and not do anything else. Well, you know,
like not even be able to make a sandwich. So
is there a way to to modify this deliberate practice
(20:12):
so that you can spread it out to more areas
of your life and not be so narrow in its discipline. Well, yes,
it's a decision that everyone has to make. And this
is really really important because once you read about how
Tiger Woods became as great as he is or any
other great performer, what you realize is, Okay, it's a pathway.
(20:34):
And the great news is it's available to everybody. It's
available to you and me. Okay, it's available, you can
do it too. But then you have to decide how
far down that road do I want to go? Because
the world's greatest performers have done what you were talking about.
They have focused so totally and intensely on that one
(20:58):
thing that there's sometimes not much else in their life. Right. Uh,
And you don't have to do that, you know, you
can decide I don't want that. I'm not gonna be
one of the all time grades, but I'm gonna be good.
I'm going to be better than I am. There's an
(21:20):
incredible story in the research about these three daughters of
a Hungarian couple some years ago who were raised to
be chess players. They were from from childhood, from they
were raised to be great chess players, and one of
them became one of the world's all time great chess players,
(21:42):
but another one, and they all became great, but one
of them, at the age of twenty two or so,
just gave it all up. And she was asked, well,
how come, and she said, I wanted a life And
there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with saying
I want a life, so I'll use these uh deliberate
(22:05):
practice principles to get better at what's important to me.
But I'm not going to devote myself utterly to any
one of them and give up the rest of my life.
You know, I'll be good and it'll be great to
you know, be better than I am. It's a decision, though,
a decision that we all have to make. Well, when
we come back, I want to talk about how be
(22:28):
just being human is great. Before the break, we were
chatting um with Jeff Colvin about just how how we
excel um maybe in a specific career or just in
(22:51):
life in general. You point out that there there are
qualities in just the fact that we are human that
makes us irreplaceable by machine. Because I know a lot
of people are concerned about the new AI taking over
and humans becoming irrelevant. Why why will we never be irrelevant?
We will never be irrelevant as long as there is
(23:14):
not an indistinguishable humanoid robot. And Hollywood loves this concept.
Of course, there was a TV series called Humans that
included these indistinguishable humanoid robots. You couldn't tell if they
were real people or not. Uh, if that ever happens,
(23:36):
I don't know. But if we're a long long way
from that. Until that happens, however, people will not be
replaced because ultimately, we are hardwired. It is in our
brains to want and to value in person, face to
face interaction with other humans. There is nothing like it.
(24:02):
We are hard wired that way in more ways than
we know, or most of us know. For example, when
people are in person interacting face to face like we
are right now, right, the pupils of our eyes dilate
and constrict in sympathy with each other. Neither one of
(24:25):
us is consciously aware that it's happening, but it's happening,
and it is creating trust. The researchers have shown this.
It builds trust. We do other things that happen only
in person, face to face. Our brains literally synchronize. They've
wired people up to measure brain activity. You know what
(24:48):
parts of the brain light up when two people are
looking at each other having a conversation. The brains literally synchronized.
The same parts of the two brains light up at
the same time. If they have the same conversation, but
back to back, the synchronization disappears, but if you do
(25:08):
it over like FaceTime or zoom or something. The trouble
with FaceTime and zoom is that you're not looking straight
into their eyes. You're looking at the monitor, which is
usually a little below or above the camera, so you
aren't making absolute direct eye to eye contact, and so
it doesn't happen now. That day may come when the
(25:29):
technology gets to the point where we can do that,
and that will be great, but it's still real humans,
right face to face. We love this, okay. It makes
us happy, and no technology is going to it doesn't
matter what technology does. That's built into us. It's baked
(25:53):
in the cake and we're going to be that way.
And what we're hearing, by the way, from employers is
that these are the skills that they need most. We
read all the time that, well, employers want tech skills, right.
Tech skills are great, highly valuable, But the skills they
want and are having trouble finding are the skills of
(26:15):
in person relationship. And in fact a lot of younger
people today are not so good at those skills. But
this is what really builds trust and that will never
be replaced. How can you get better? Uh, One way
(26:36):
you can get better although this is a remedy that's
probably a little much for most people. Put away the screens. Okay,
there was some really interesting research where they took a
bunch of twelve year olds and took him out of
school for a week, took him up to the San
Bernardino Mountains outside Los Angeles, beautiful, beautiful place, and they
(26:57):
spent a week going on high having picnics, fishing, playing games.
In other words, pure heads. Yeah, but not for them. Yeah,
well what they used to we that's right, because they
had no screens. That was all taken away from them
for a week, no screens. Now, they used a standard
(27:19):
psychological scale of empathy to measure them before they went
on their week away and again after on their week away.
Their empathy was significantly higher after just one week without screens.
Researchers have been measuring using these same scales the empathy
of college students for decades. It peaked around two thousand,
(27:43):
has been declining pretty steadily since two thousands. Well, all
you can think of is that that's when people started
to really spend more time looking into We were getting
more and more and more empathetic because we were evolving. Yeah,
at the forces of evolution. We're taking us in that direction,
(28:04):
it seems so. And then technology and screen life started
to sap that energy, so that you know, it's kind
of a long way of answering your question, how do
we get better? Well, one way, and I recommend this highly.
Always communicate at the highest richest possible level. In other words,
(28:27):
we all create that. We all make the sin of
emailing somebody who's two doors down the hall, right well,
I mean, and we see kids today sitting at a
table texting, and they're texting each other right well. Increasingly
people in my office everyone brings a laptop into a meeting.
And some of that is that you can look at
(28:49):
their ship. We're sharing screens and you want to be
able to see it, and it's hard easier to see
it on your lab or whatever. But what we all
know is that for a certain percentage of the time
that depends on the person, they're not looking at the
shared screen at all. You know, they're answering emails and
they're doing something else. And so there are increasingly places
that have rules where you know, you just can't do that. Uh.
(29:13):
It's it really is something that has to be worked
on in today's environment, And we're not going to give
up the technology, right, We're not going to give up
our phones. They're great, you know, they're wonderful things. But
we need to communicate in person, face to face whenever
we can. If we can't, well then you know, a
(29:34):
video chat is better. Can't do that. A phone call
if you can't do that, email, if you can't do that, texting,
which is the least rich form of communication, one of
the ways we communicate as people that you say is
essential and machines can't quite do it yet? Is storytelling?
Why is storytelling so important? Again, it's because our brains
(29:59):
really are wired to respond to stories. And the research
on this is fascinating and there's lots of it, but
you don't need the research. Just think about yourself. Whenever
we hear facts, we immediately, without trying or even knowing it,
we immediately start to put them into the form of
(30:19):
a story. And now we don't think in the tables
of data. We think in stories. We learn things from stories. Uh.
We will arrange random facts into a story even if
there isn't a story there. If we want to know
whether we should do something, invest in a certain way. Uh,
(30:45):
do any you know, buy a house in a certain
place or whatever. There's a lot of data available and
you can get data on all of these hard decisions
in your life. But if you have a friend who
had an experience with what you're talking about and they
tell you the story, right, we're nodding because we all
know that will overwhelm all the data. If you want
(31:10):
people to remember something, if you want to change people's minds,
if you want to inspire people to action, tell them
a story. Great advice. Thank you so much for sharing
with us today. It's been my pleasure. Thank you for
(31:31):
having me and everyone. Find his articles at Fortune dot
com and more on Jeff Colvin's work at Jeff Colvin
dot com. You can also connect with him on Twitter
at Jeff Covin. The Road to Somewhere is recorded in
New York City. Make sure you share, subscribe, rate, and
(31:52):
review us, and let us hear from you. Where are
you on your journey? Connect with us on Instagram and
Twitter at pod to Somewhere. Email us at Road to
Somewhere at iHeartMedia dot com. Special thanks to our producer
Alicia Haywood. Thanks for joining us on the Road to Somewhere.
Available on the i Heart Radio app on Apple Podcasts
(32:12):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
And what we're hearing, by the way, from employers is
that these are the skills that they need most. We
read all the time that, well, employers want tech skills, right.
Tech skills are great, highly valuable, but the skills they
want and are having trouble finding are the skills of
in person relationship. Thanks for joining us on the road
(00:33):
to somewhere where we talk about exploration, adventure, major life
change and transformation is about not necessarily knowing where we're going,
but having faith that the journey will be worthwhile. I'm
Lisa Oz, I'm Jael Herzig and Lisa, one of the
things I've always admired about you is that you are
not only whip smart, but you are an enthusiastic, constantly
(00:56):
curious learner. I feel like you're always on that learning curve.
You're you're very comfortable there. Well, I have a lot
to learn because I have not figured it out yet. Yeah,
but you're very fearless about it. Yeah. Well I well,
thank you. I will I will take that as a compliment.
(01:16):
I like to learn. You, on the other hand, impressed
me because you're actually really amazing at taking what you've
learned and putting into practice. It's true. But like the
I would say, the last three years of my life
have since I transitioned out of a magazine career where
I felt like I kind of knew what I was doing,
(01:38):
and it's it's just all been about trying to reapply
that knowledge and also get more comfortable in the learning Well,
that's what our guest calls the learning zone, the learning zone. Yes,
our guest is a master at the learning zone. He's
a business journalist and broadcaster. He's heard daily on see
(02:00):
S Radio Network and you guys will hear that beautiful,
mellificlous way in just a second. He's the best selling
author of Humans Are Underrated and Talent Is Overrated. And
he's the senior editor at Large at Fortune Magazine. And
his name is Jeff Golvin. Jeff, thank you so much
for being here today. Thank you, thank you now so
(02:23):
all right, So, one of the things that we were
talking about, um, after reading your book, is this learning
curve to which Joe was alluding, Um, can you unpack
that for us? Yeah? Absolutely, And it's a great way
to start because it's a really important concept. The whole
idea of the book is that people can get better
(02:44):
at anything, and that in fact, all of the great
performers of this world, the people who seemed superhuman to us,
whether it's a great opera singer or a basketball player
or a violinist or an executive, they seem beyond normal.
They probably weren't. They probably did it the same way
(03:07):
everybody else gets great, which is by this process that
the researchers call deliberate practice. And what that means is
constantly being pushed just beyond your abilities. That doesn't mean
way beyond your current abilities, because then you are lost
(03:29):
your your you can't do anything. At the same time,
you're not allowed to remain and do whatever you do
within your current abilities, because then you don't grow. The
key is pushing you yourself or being pushed just beyond
what you can do now. And one way to think
of it, one way to envision it is three concentric circles.
(03:54):
The inner circle is the comfort zone that's doing what
you already no. The outer circle is the panic zone.
Spent time now we all have doing one thing or
another right, that's where you're being pushed so far beyond
what you can do that you have no idea of
(04:14):
how you should approach In your panic. It's the middle zone.
That's the learning zone, where you're pushed just beyond, and
that's how you get better. As you get better, of course,
the learning zone moves right because then you have to
be pushed to do something new that is just beyond
what you're able to do. But the world's great performers,
(04:37):
no matter what they do, have basically done that process.
They've followed that path typically every day for years or decades.
That's what makes a world class great performer. Okay, well,
I am not a world class grade performer at anything. However,
(04:58):
um let me me tell you how I struggled through
something that felt hugely challenging for me. So when I
was the editor in chief of a magazine, one of
the nice things that came with it was a lot
of support staff. There were a lot of people there,
most of them way younger than me, who were there
to maximize my productivity by solving little problems that were
(05:19):
in my way. Many of them were technological, so I
was perfectly functional on email and a few other you know,
basic tech platforms. But you know, no, I was no,
I was no great shakes, and they would just figure
it out for me or or find workarounds for me,
because the most important thing was that I got a
lot of work done, and they didn't want me struggling
(05:40):
with the Google doc. They just wanted to get that
thing out of my way. So then I'm cut loose
from the magazine industry and I'm faced with my laptop
at home every day, and it was just nothing but challenge. Moreover,
I think we all know that with tech challenges like
forgetting your sword or I mean, so many expletives deleted
(06:03):
when I talked about this stuff, we all get really
frustrated with ourselves. So I put myself to the task
of just figuring it out. One of the things, by
the way, I discovered along the way, and it was
quite a light bulb moment for me, is that all
those times my assistant just seemed to within ten minutes
know the answer to some tech thing. You know what
she was doing, She was googling it. She was just saying,
(06:26):
what do I do when Google docs, you know, won't
do X or Y literally in plain language. So anyway,
that was kind of a revelation to me because I
realized that even she who seems supernaturally talented, was just
comfortable figuring things out. So, Jeff, how have you personally
used all of this research and information that you put
(06:48):
together for talented is overrated? What if you? How has
it changed how you pursue things you're interested in, or
your goals or your work in a few ways. One
which may be surprising is that, even though I've been
writing for a living for most of my life, I
really started thinking differently about writing. In other words, I
(07:09):
thought about specific elements of what I do and how
to get better at them. In other words, I started
thinking about let's and some of this was very detailed,
because that's what happens after you've been doing something for
a long time. So, for example, you know the very
first words of an article, you know, not just the outline,
(07:33):
but the very first words on the page. What are they? Uh?
You know? Do they grab the reader? Or do they
begin to convey from the very first what you want
to do? And once you think about that, you know,
you start to get better at it. Um the way
I quote people, uh just and it's very uh detailed
(07:56):
and kind of workman like, But exactly how you place
the quotes and break them up? I started thinking about that,
and there's a million things like that your editors must
love you as an editor. Basically, what you're saying is
you started to edit yourself and make sure that you
hand it in work. Yeah. It was continually and and
(08:18):
since we're both in the magazine business, it's worth noting
that I spent fifteen years at Fortune as an editor,
so I do come with a different mindset and a
different pair of eyes than most other writers do. But
even at that I started thinking differently about all these
(08:40):
little elements. At the same time, another part of my life,
I realized, you know what, golf, I'm just never gonna
be good. It's just I'm not. I I could if
I wanted to spend the hours. You know, I know
the steps, But when I look at my life as
a whole and where I want to spend my time,
(09:02):
it's not on that. Okay, So I I it was wonderful.
I was liberated. I still play from time to time,
but I realized, Okay, I'm as good as I'm gonna be.
And you know, it's a great experience. You're out in
a beautiful place, usually on a beautiful day, and you
know it's fun. So don't beat yourself up for being
(09:25):
no better than you are It's okay, that was a
great thing. What I spent so much time though in
the panic zone? How could I have handled that better?
How could I have gotten out of the panic zone? Right?
It's such a common situation, and there are a few
thoughts on that one. In an awful lot of cases,
(09:48):
it does help a lot to have a teacher or
guide or mentor of some kind who's been through all this,
because they know what the next little step is for you, right,
they can tell you exactly what to work on next,
(10:09):
because well, for two reasons. One they've seen it all,
so they know what the right progression is, and two
they're not you. In other words, we all need somebody
to observe us and tell us honestly where we stand,
because most of the time we're not really qualified to
do it for ourselves. I mean, we can never see
(10:31):
ourselves the way somebody else sees us, and we don't
have the knowledge that that other person does. And so
you know, there's a reason I hired just have found
a friend or somebody who you know. I mean, you know,
a lot of us already kind of have that tech tutor,
(10:53):
namely our kids, because they know um. But other there
are plenty of other options. You know, you can find
somebody who knows a little more about whatever it is
you're working on, and you know it does actually take instruction.
I mean, you know, to use Excel. It's it's not
going to come to you intuitively. But but getting someone
(11:17):
who can help tell you where you need to push
for the next thing makes a huge difference. Yeah, I
should have gotten some help. When we come back, we're
gonna actually get some help in the areas we need
it most. Before the break, we were chatting about learning
(11:46):
curves and how to become great at something um and
I just wanted to transition a little bit because we all,
we all put time in at work, right whether or
not we become phenomenal at our jobs is debatable, but
I think a lot is it my I'm postulating that
we can use the same techniques that we would if
(12:07):
we want to be great at something. Often the things
that we value most are families, our personal life, our
personal growth are things we don't give the attention to.
We're putting the hours in at work, maybe, but we
all there's something more important than our jobs. For most
of us, can the same techniques of deliberate practice be
applied to our personal lives. They absolutely can, And I
(12:29):
think I could guarantee you that everybody who was listening
to what you just said is nodding their head because
we've all lived that, right, We've all experienced that. So
can it be applied to our personal lives. Yes, it
absolutely can. The steps remain the same. But the question
(12:52):
on the personal side, which actually makes it much more
difficult than on the work side, is that it it's
all about relationships and emotion and things that are frankly
harder for us to think about and assess realistically for ourselves.
(13:14):
That's what we're talking about. Earlier, you know, someone else
to look at you and tell you, uh, and you
know you can do that if you know, if your
relationship with various family members is such that you can
have that talk and say, look, I really want to
know what should I be working on? What would you
(13:35):
like to see? You know? What could I do better?
If you can have that talk, then you've got your
your diagram, has it where you've got your pathway for
what you've got to work on? And then it's the
same thing. What's the first step and is it the
same for let's say it's not relationships you want to
(13:56):
work on, but a personal passion. Yes, oh yeah, absolutely so,
just staying outside of your comfort zone, outside of your
compe absolutely, always pushing and and what people find is
when they do that, each step is a little more detailed.
They make finer and finer distinctions about whatever they're doing.
(14:17):
So they start out with broad goals, you know, just
I want to get better at such and such. But
after that, each one becomes a little finer because you're
becoming better, more knowledgeable, you understand more about what you're doing,
and so your goals become more precise. Then you know
(14:38):
better what you should do to reach them. Another what
I'm telling you is the process gets better, it gets
more powerful with every step you take. And what do
you do at the beginning when you're just really suck
at something towel? Well, that's the temptation, right And frankly,
(14:58):
I mean that really is it? And it's a great
question because when you start is there most things? Is
there no message in there? You just don't belong in
this space? Well here's the real question on that. I think,
do you have the passion to keep pushing yourself down
(15:19):
that road? For as long as it takes to be
really good, and maybe you don't, and that's okay as
long as you see it, acknowledge it, and accept it.
But it's very difficult to tell somebody at the beginning
you're just lousy at this, forget and go do something else,
because it's just not the case. I mean, the only
(15:42):
exceptions would be in sports. You know, there are certain
physical attributes that can pretty much disqualify you. Right, if
you're a guy in your five ft two and you
want to be an interior alignment in the NFL, someone
should tell you it doesn't matter how much you practice.
Right if you're seven ft tall and you want to
(16:03):
be a gymnast, that's not gonna work either. Just stop.
But aside from that, really, um, there aren't any limits
that are inherent and observable going in. How important in
this process of continually learning and achieving is the concept
(16:26):
of rest because I know, like when I am skiing,
if I'm in full panic mode, I don't learn anything.
But then sometimes even though I'm pushing myself, pushing myself,
it's when I can stop doing things that are outside
of my comfort zone and then just enjoy a couple
of slopes without thinking about it, that I actually see
what I've learned sit in my body. Is that is
(16:47):
rest a big part of the learning process. It is
what you've said is very insightful, and the research supports
it absolutely. Stopping and reflecting on what you've done is
crucially important. And I I wrote about that in the book.
And later the guy who for years was the teacher
(17:09):
and coach of Tiger Woods said, that's exactly what he does. Um.
And he he was kind enough to mention the book
in his book, but he said, look, that's what what
I was describing. That's what Tiger Woods would do. He'd
hit a few balls on the driving range there and
the practice range, and then he just stopped and he
(17:30):
just look out out where he hit them and say nothing.
And the teacher eventually asked him what he was doing.
He said, I'm just thinking about what I did. That
is crucially important. And running yourself hours and hours a day,
it becomes completely useless after a relatively short amount of time. UM.
(17:55):
A violinist once asked one of the all time great
violin teachers, how many hours a day should I practice?
And he said it depends, But if you're focused an
hour and a half a day is fine. That's all
you need if you're intensely focused on what you're doing.
So how do you develop focus? How do you how
(18:17):
do you how do you channel that? It is something
that develops. In other words, when you start out at
anything that you're trying to learn, you probably can't focus
for an hour and a half, let alone anything more
than that. And what happens is you focus for as
long as you can, and it may be fifteen minutes,
but as time goes on, you will get better and better.
(18:41):
It really does build and you shouldn't be discouraged if
initially you can't focus on this for very long. But
this is one of the things that distinguishes the great
performers from the average performers. There was an interesting experiment
where they looked at people who were taking us singing lesson.
(19:02):
When they looked at people who just sang as a hobby,
you know, just saying for fun, they thought of the
singing lesson as be fun, you know, and it was
a kind of a an occasion and a kind of
a release, and you get to talk to the teacher
and stuff like that. Then they asked professional singers how
they felt about a singing lesson. To them, it was
an exhausting ordeal, but they knew they had to do it,
(19:26):
but they were so intensely focused on what they were
doing that it was draining to them. That's what separates
the great performers from the average ones. But but the
great ones started out average. That's what's important to remember.
Most of us and most of our listeners are not
going to be it's higher Woods or you know, violent
(19:52):
violin virtuoso. We just want to be better at the
things we do. Is not afraid to try and not
afraid to try? Is there? Yeah? And we don't want
to just do one thing. I don't want to just
play violent and not do anything else. Well, you know,
like not even be able to make a sandwich. So
is there a way to to modify this deliberate practice
(20:12):
so that you can spread it out to more areas
of your life and not be so narrow in its discipline. Well, yes,
it's a decision that everyone has to make. And this
is really really important because once you read about how
Tiger Woods became as great as he is or any
other great performer, what you realize is, Okay, it's a pathway.
(20:34):
And the great news is it's available to everybody. It's
available to you and me. Okay, it's available, you can
do it too. But then you have to decide how
far down that road do I want to go? Because
the world's greatest performers have done what you were talking about.
They have focused so totally and intensely on that one
(20:58):
thing that there's sometimes not much else in their life. Right. Uh,
And you don't have to do that, you know, you
can decide I don't want that. I'm not gonna be
one of the all time grades, but I'm gonna be good.
I'm going to be better than I am. There's an
(21:20):
incredible story in the research about these three daughters of
a Hungarian couple some years ago who were raised to
be chess players. They were from from childhood, from they
were raised to be great chess players, and one of
them became one of the world's all time great chess players,
(21:42):
but another one, and they all became great, but one
of them, at the age of twenty two or so,
just gave it all up. And she was asked, well,
how come, and she said, I wanted a life And
there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with saying
I want a life, so I'll use these uh deliberate
(22:05):
practice principles to get better at what's important to me.
But I'm not going to devote myself utterly to any
one of them and give up the rest of my life.
You know, I'll be good and it'll be great to
you know, be better than I am. It's a decision, though,
a decision that we all have to make. Well, when
we come back, I want to talk about how be
(22:28):
just being human is great. Before the break, we were
chatting um with Jeff Colvin about just how how we
excel um maybe in a specific career or just in
(22:51):
life in general. You point out that there there are
qualities in just the fact that we are human that
makes us irreplaceable by machine. Because I know a lot
of people are concerned about the new AI taking over
and humans becoming irrelevant. Why why will we never be irrelevant?
We will never be irrelevant as long as there is
(23:14):
not an indistinguishable humanoid robot. And Hollywood loves this concept.
Of course, there was a TV series called Humans that
included these indistinguishable humanoid robots. You couldn't tell if they
were real people or not. Uh, if that ever happens,
(23:36):
I don't know. But if we're a long long way
from that. Until that happens, however, people will not be
replaced because ultimately, we are hardwired. It is in our
brains to want and to value in person, face to
face interaction with other humans. There is nothing like it.
(24:02):
We are hard wired that way in more ways than
we know, or most of us know. For example, when
people are in person interacting face to face like we
are right now, right, the pupils of our eyes dilate
and constrict in sympathy with each other. Neither one of
(24:25):
us is consciously aware that it's happening, but it's happening,
and it is creating trust. The researchers have shown this.
It builds trust. We do other things that happen only
in person, face to face. Our brains literally synchronize. They've
wired people up to measure brain activity. You know what
(24:48):
parts of the brain light up when two people are
looking at each other having a conversation. The brains literally synchronized.
The same parts of the two brains light up at
the same time. If they have the same conversation, but
back to back, the synchronization disappears, but if you do
(25:08):
it over like FaceTime or zoom or something. The trouble
with FaceTime and zoom is that you're not looking straight
into their eyes. You're looking at the monitor, which is
usually a little below or above the camera, so you
aren't making absolute direct eye to eye contact, and so
it doesn't happen now. That day may come when the
(25:29):
technology gets to the point where we can do that,
and that will be great, but it's still real humans,
right face to face. We love this, okay. It makes
us happy, and no technology is going to it doesn't
matter what technology does. That's built into us. It's baked
(25:53):
in the cake and we're going to be that way.
And what we're hearing, by the way, from employers is
that these are the skills that they need most. We
read all the time that, well, employers want tech skills, right.
Tech skills are great, highly valuable, But the skills they
want and are having trouble finding are the skills of
(26:15):
in person relationship. And in fact a lot of younger
people today are not so good at those skills. But
this is what really builds trust and that will never
be replaced. How can you get better? Uh, One way
(26:36):
you can get better although this is a remedy that's
probably a little much for most people. Put away the screens. Okay,
there was some really interesting research where they took a
bunch of twelve year olds and took him out of
school for a week, took him up to the San
Bernardino Mountains outside Los Angeles, beautiful, beautiful place, and they
(26:57):
spent a week going on high having picnics, fishing, playing games.
In other words, pure heads. Yeah, but not for them. Yeah,
well what they used to we that's right, because they
had no screens. That was all taken away from them
for a week, no screens. Now, they used a standard
(27:19):
psychological scale of empathy to measure them before they went
on their week away and again after on their week away.
Their empathy was significantly higher after just one week without screens.
Researchers have been measuring using these same scales the empathy
of college students for decades. It peaked around two thousand,
(27:43):
has been declining pretty steadily since two thousands. Well, all
you can think of is that that's when people started
to really spend more time looking into We were getting
more and more and more empathetic because we were evolving. Yeah,
at the forces of evolution. We're taking us in that direction,
(28:04):
it seems so. And then technology and screen life started
to sap that energy, so that you know, it's kind
of a long way of answering your question, how do
we get better? Well, one way, and I recommend this highly.
Always communicate at the highest richest possible level. In other words,
(28:27):
we all create that. We all make the sin of
emailing somebody who's two doors down the hall, right well,
I mean, and we see kids today sitting at a
table texting, and they're texting each other right well. Increasingly
people in my office everyone brings a laptop into a meeting.
And some of that is that you can look at
(28:49):
their ship. We're sharing screens and you want to be
able to see it, and it's hard easier to see
it on your lab or whatever. But what we all
know is that for a certain percentage of the time
that depends on the person, they're not looking at the
shared screen at all. You know, they're answering emails and
they're doing something else. And so there are increasingly places
that have rules where you know, you just can't do that. Uh.
(29:13):
It's it really is something that has to be worked
on in today's environment, And we're not going to give
up the technology, right, We're not going to give up
our phones. They're great, you know, they're wonderful things. But
we need to communicate in person, face to face whenever
we can. If we can't, well then you know, a
(29:34):
video chat is better. Can't do that. A phone call
if you can't do that, email, if you can't do that, texting,
which is the least rich form of communication, one of
the ways we communicate as people that you say is
essential and machines can't quite do it yet? Is storytelling?
Why is storytelling so important? Again, it's because our brains
(29:59):
really are wired to respond to stories. And the research
on this is fascinating and there's lots of it, but
you don't need the research. Just think about yourself. Whenever
we hear facts, we immediately, without trying or even knowing it,
we immediately start to put them into the form of
(30:19):
a story. And now we don't think in the tables
of data. We think in stories. We learn things from stories. Uh.
We will arrange random facts into a story even if
there isn't a story there. If we want to know
whether we should do something, invest in a certain way. Uh,
(30:45):
do any you know, buy a house in a certain
place or whatever. There's a lot of data available and
you can get data on all of these hard decisions
in your life. But if you have a friend who
had an experience with what you're talking about and they
tell you the story, right, we're nodding because we all
know that will overwhelm all the data. If you want
(31:10):
people to remember something, if you want to change people's minds,
if you want to inspire people to action, tell them
a story. Great advice. Thank you so much for sharing
with us today. It's been my pleasure. Thank you for
(31:31):
having me and everyone. Find his articles at Fortune dot
com and more on Jeff Colvin's work at Jeff Colvin
dot com. You can also connect with him on Twitter
at Jeff Covin. The Road to Somewhere is recorded in
New York City. Make sure you share, subscribe, rate, and
(31:52):
review us, and let us hear from you. Where are
you on your journey? Connect with us on Instagram and
Twitter at pod to Somewhere. Email us at Road to
Somewhere at iHeartMedia dot com. Special thanks to our producer
Alicia Haywood. Thanks for joining us on the Road to Somewhere.
Available on the i Heart Radio app on Apple Podcasts
(32:12):
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