March 17, 2021 • 56 mins
How often do you stop and check-in about how you’re tracking with your career and the job you are in? How do you know you're not blindly following a career path you’re going to regret years down the track?
Organisational psychologist and best-selling author Adam Grant says we should all be scheduling life check-ups.
A life check-up is just like scheduling an appointment with a doctor, even if you don’t suspect anything is wrong.
By putting a reminder in your calendar twice a year to review where you’re at, you’ll be more likely to see the vital signs before it’s too late.
He also shares his hacks for effective remote collaboration and the benefits of setting up your own ‘challenge network’ and how to start one.
Connect with Adam here: https://www.adamgrant.net/
Take the Think Again quiz here: https://www.adamgrant.net/quizzes/think-again-quiz/
And grab a copy of Think Again here: https://www.adamgrant.net/book/think-again/
Visit amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a short monthly newsletter that contains three cool things that I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co
CREDITS
Produced by Inventium
Host: Amantha Imber
Production support from Deadset Studios
Episode producer: Jenna Koda
Sound engineer: Martin Imber
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We go to the dentist for a checkup once a year,
and we have an annual performance review at work each year.
But yet how often do we stop to do a
life checkup? Have you ever done an audit where you
consider if you're in the right role and if the
organization you work for is still the right fit. Organizational
(00:22):
psychologist Warton professor and best selling author Adam Grant says
we should all be scheduling life checkups. He spent years
hearing from his past students who'd graduated from business school
and walked into great jobs, yet they were miserably unhappy.
They'd been promoted and were making lots of money, but
(00:42):
they hated their jobs and they felt trapped. Adam's schedules
a life checkup twice a year to ask himself, have
I reached a learning plateau? What do I want to research?
Do I need to rethink my approach to teaching. A
life checkup is just like scheduling an appointment with the doctor,
even if you don't suspect anything is wrong. My name
(01:10):
is doctor Amantha Im. I'm an organizational psychologist and the
founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how
I work a show about how to help you do
your best work. So let's hear about how Adam first
came up with the idea to do a life checkup
and what his own process for doing them looks like.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
The genesis of it is.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I kept having these students who would graduate from Wharton,
and then they'd contact me a couple of years later
and say, you know, I really hate my investment banking job.
But I've already spent a couple of years, and I'm
about to get promoted, and he'll be my third promotion,
and I'm making all this money, and I think I.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Could have walked away a year or two ago, but
now I can't.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
And then I started getting calls from students who said, actually,
I'm miserable in my job, and I should have walked
away a couple of years ago, but I didn't, and
now I feel trapped and I don't want to I
don't want to undo the few years that I've already invested,
and I feel like I would have to start over.
(02:17):
And I had enough of these conversations that finally I said, well,
why don't you put a reminder in your calendar twice
a year to do a checkup, and they're like, what
is it a checkup? The same way that you go
to the doctor even when it seems like nothing is wrong.
Why don't you do the same thing with your career
to ask yourself? Is this still the job that I want?
(02:38):
Have I reached a learning.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Plateau or a lifestyle plateau? Is this culture toxic?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
And I don't want you to do that every day
because then you're just gonna be stuck in analysis paralysis
and you'll never give the place a chance. But if
you do it a couple of times a year, maybe
it'll save you from getting trapped in.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
A place that you don't want to be.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
And they've reported back that it's helpful, and a lot
of them still do it a decade later. So the
question is do I take my own advice? What do
you think?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I think you should take your own advice. It sounds
very sensible, do you think so? I think?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Sorry?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And you know what it reminds me of actually, before
you go into how you've taken your own advice, it
reminds me of what Chip and down Heath wrote about
indecisive around setting tripwires for decisions.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Yes, you know it's funny that I think the tripware
principle is useful whenever I think about it as a tripwayer,
I don't want to trip on a wire that sounds
really unpleasant. Whereas a checkup, yeah, you know what, I
need to do that in order to stay healthy. So
I don't know, maybe it's just a question of framing
or semantics, but I found the checkup idea appealing in
(03:46):
a way that a trip waiter sounded a little bit dangerous.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So what did I do?
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I would say, you want to know about my most
recent career checkup, right, I'd love to Okay, so I
think my most recent one actually can I'm I'm just
going to look at my calendar here, So.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
You're booking meetings with yourself in your calendar, so you
remember for the life checkup.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
I have a reminder of my calendar to pop up
twice a year for a checkup. Cool and one is
one is usually in It pops up in July to
do a rethinking of my teaching approach and what content
I'm going to cover that semester. And then I have
another one that pops up in January, which is, okay,
what do I want to be working on in terms
(04:30):
of research and writing and podcasting. So I don't know
if there's a recent one that's that good of a story.
So can I tell you about a pivotal.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
One, of course?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So I can actually give you two if you want,
and you can choose. One is the checkup that led
me into podcasting, and the other is the checkup that
led me to right think.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Again amazing, Tell me about both.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
So twenty seventeen, I published my third book, and I
was doing a lot of speaking and a lot of interviews,
and I felt like I'd become a human jukebox.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
People.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
They knew what songs I could play. They would tell
me which one to play. I would give my performance
and I would learn nothing because I was basically covering
the same material as last time, and a lot of
the same questions would come up from different audiences, and
I felt like I was stagnating. You know, I don't
think the audience saw it, because each performance felt fresh
(05:33):
to them. But like, how many times am I going
to do the same talk? And at first I said, Okay,
I'm going to do the same thing on stage that
I do in the classroom, which is I'm going to
throw out twenty percent of the talk each time, and
that way it'll stay new. But it was still the
same topic and I was still stuck to the topics
that the audience was asking for, which was largely typecast
(05:54):
based on what work I'd put out there. And then
I had a checkup come up. It was I think
this summer of twenty seventeen, if I remember correctly, and
I said, okay, I need to start learning again. How
am I going to make that happen? And I had
just launched into some conversations with the TED team about
ways that we might be able to collaborate on something
(06:16):
that's more dialogue than monologue, and we sort of stumbled
into this idea of doing a podcast and I thought, oh,
this would be such a fun thing to do. I
can go to the most interesting workplaces on Earth and
talk to some of the most fascinating people, and my
goal is to learn, and then I could share what
I've learned on the back end. And that's why I
(06:36):
host work Life, and it's probably a big part of
why we're having this conversation.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Now, Wow, that's so cool, And tell me about the
one that led to think again. Because I'm always so
fascinated in terms of the choice for the next book,
because essentially it's like committing to at least a three
year plus relationship in terms of research and writing and
editing and pr and hey, you know it's off the
(07:00):
back of it.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, and there's no checkup that can rescue from it.
You're stuck with it, whether you like it or not.
You know, it's funny. Actually, one of the reasons I
was so excited about doing work Life and I guess
the podcast enterprise more generally, was I felt like, after
writing I published three books in four years, I felt
a little bit constrained in the sense that I felt
(07:25):
like I could only I can only write about or
speak about topics that were bookworthy, And sometimes I just
wanted to explore something that was a little smaller, interesting
and important, but it wasn't necessarily one big idea that
deserved the whole book. And so podcasting was a great
way to shake things up a little bit and say,
all right, you know, I'm really curious about whether we
(07:46):
could eliminate hierarchy and create organizations.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
With no bosses.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
And I don't have a book's worth of questions in that.
I think it's you know a narrower topic, but I
think it's really funny, cool. I'm going to do a
podcast episode about it, and I did. I had a
blast doing that for a few seasons, still having a
blast doing it now. But I also started to feel
an itch that I was not taking on really grand questions.
(08:11):
That forced me to do a lot of rethinking in
a big way, which is something that a book requires.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
And again I had a check up come up.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I think it was January twenty eighteen, and I thought, Okay,
I've been doing a lot of learning.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
When am I going to do my thinking? And that
led me to say.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Okay, I think it's time to write another book. And
then I actually analyzed the patterns in the tweets that
I had done that were getting the most interest, and
I noticed that a lot of them were about being
open minded and questioning our opinions and assumptions and even
letting go of some of our expertise. And that led
(08:51):
into Think Again.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So here we are, and on the topic of rethinking
things and learning. You talk about in Think Again, setting
a weekly time for rethinking and unlearning, and I'd love
you to take me through an example of what you
do during this time. How structured is it? Are there
questions that you ask yourself, like, what would I observe
if I was a fly on the wall?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
You'd be really bored? Ammthha.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I doubt that.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I'd just be sitting there, you know, occasionally typing things.
And sometimes I'll do it on the elliptical or when
I'm taking out the garbage, but most of the time
it's in front of my computer. And they have a
couple of different routines that I've tried so far, though
this is still a pretty new practice for me. I've
been doing it less than a year. So one version
(09:37):
of it is I go through old ideas that I've produced.
It might be an academic paper I wrote, It could
be a chapter from a book. It might be a
social media post, it could be a podcast episode, might
be a TED talk, And I ask myself, Okay, is
there something here worth rethinking? And I cringe a little
(09:57):
bit when I do that, because I think a lot
of my work is at least mildly embarrassing. I'm like, well,
I guess it was the best I could have done
at the time, but it was so it was so
pedestrian and oversimplified and I have a much richer view
of the topic. Now, I'm like, Okay, I can either
be embarrassed by that, or I can say maybe I've
(10:17):
grown and that. That's one routine that I've come to appreciate,
if not enjoy, just to say, all right, let me
let me revisit my old work and see if there's
something I've already rethought or something I should rethink when
I look at it with the fresh eye of somebody
who hasn't seen it in a while and kind of
forgot that I produced it.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
So that's one What else are you doing in that
time to provoke rethinking and unlearning?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So another thing that I've done is I've reached out
to people in my challenge network and said, Okay, this
shouldn't always be an independent activity.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It doesn't. We don't do all of our rethinking in
a vacuum.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I think we do most of it in dialogue or
at least in interaction with other people. And so I've
picked the people who are my most thoughtful critic, and
sometimes I'll just shoot them a note and say, hey,
what do you think I should rethink?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I've heard you talk about your challenge network a few
times and I'd love it if you could explain how
it came about, like how you set one up and
the logistics of how do you utilize it and how
can other people set one up?
Speaker 3 (11:19):
So I think of my challenge network as the It's
the perfect compliment to a support network. Everybody has a
support network, right, group of cheerleaders who encourage you and
build you up. And I think obviously we need them,
especially when we're discouraged or down. But I guess I
benefited more from a challenge network those thoughtful critics who
(11:42):
have very high expectations of me and see a lot
of potential in me, but also are fearless about telling
me when I've fallen short of it. And we'll highlight
the gap between where I am and where I want
to be. So I'll give you, I guess, a taste
of how I've done this. This is very how I
work talking about how I work.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Look at that correct aligns with the name of the show,
so I think that works.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I'm so sorry to be so literal, Amantha, But how
I work my challenge network is When I was writing
Think Again, I had a couple of different practices for it.
So one was I have a research lab called the
Impact Lab that I've been, i guess, running since two
thousand and three. And I told them we were going
to meet probably every other week, and I'd have a
(12:27):
chapter draft for them to read and eviscerate, just tear
it apart, tell me everything that's wrong with it, and
we would meet and I'd ask them, if you have
comments in advance, send them so I can digest them
up front.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
If not, just tell me.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
What you think is wrong with each draft once we
sit down, and my favorite practice with the group is
to say, let's just start out. We're going to go
around the room and give the draft a zero to
ten rating. No one ever gives a ten, and that
has two effects. Number one, it motivates them to coach me.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
They might be pretty shy about criticizing my work coming in,
but when they say four and a half, great, tell
me how it could be better. I'm aiming for a
ten here, And then they're not worried that they're hurting
my feelings. They realize this is going to help me.
And the other effect that has is it motivates me
(13:25):
to be coachable. If you just told me, here are
the three things that I thought were terrible in your draft,
I'm sure, and I've done this many times. I would
have some defensive impulses like, wow, I made that choice
for the following reasons, and I don't think you've really
thought this through when you tell me this draft is
a six. All of a sudden, I don't care what
(13:45):
I disagree with you on. I want to know how
I can make it a ten in your eyes. And
so I become much more coachable and open to feedback
after that. So I did a bunch of that with
my students, which was invaluable, and just rewrote multiple chapters
from scrap multiple times.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I love that idea of scoring things out of ten,
and I feel like it all also takes it away
from it being a personal critique. It's more like, well,
let's focus on the number and how we can get
that closer to ten. It's interesting. So I got onto
the book humor seriously from your amazing reading recommendations that
you do. I think once a quarter you do them.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah, I've started doing them quarterly, and I hope you
haven't regretted read the books that I've put on them.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
They're all brilliant, and I must say I loved Humor Seriously.
It was one of my favorite reads over the summer
down here, which I guess is your winter and.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
I, oh, I'm so glad have you had Jennifer and
Naomi on the podcast yet.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
I actually interviewed Naomi yesterday and she was amazing, and
I was asking her just how does she make her
writing so funny? I mean, Humor Seriously is probably the
funniest business book that I've ever read. And she described
what I kind of likened a human network, kind of
like your challenge network, but essentially she will give the
draft to a bunch of comedy writers and ask them
(15:04):
to find and markup opportunities for humor, which I thought,
that's that's so fascinating. For making your work funny out
such a novel approach.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
I think it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
And when you gather a group like that for feedback,
right in Hollywood, they call it notes like I'm going
to give you notes, and I love how non threatening
that is because there's no judgment there. These are just
my notes, and they might have been margin notes. They
might be little notes from me to you on what
I thought you could improve or where you missed an opportunity.
(15:35):
But they're just notes, take them or leave them. And
so my student group is one place I think that
ends up being just an incredible source of new ideas
and constructive criticism. The other thing that I did was
I reached out to a bunch of the people who
have given me the best challenging feedback over my career
and I said, Hey, you may not know this, but
(15:55):
I consider you a founding member of my Challenge network.
And then I had to blain what a challenge network was,
but I said, listen, if you ever hesitate to give
me real feedback because you're afraid you're going to damage
the relationship, don't. The only way you can damage the
relationship is by not telling me the truth.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And I've gotten much better feedback after that.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
And so I just recorded a new TED talk around
think Again, and I went back to the Challenge Network
and I said, Okay, here's my draft. Tear it apart,
give me the zero to ten rating, tell me what
you do you would do differently. And I think the
version I recorded was the thirtieth draft, after throwing three
complete drafts away and starting over entirely.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Wow, I actually wanted to ask you about designing keynote
presentations because in Think Again, there are so many different
great strategies for helping people think again, and I was
curious as to how you apply those strategies when you
are constructing a keynote presentation, and particularly one that's off
the back of Think Again. So can you talk about
(16:59):
some of the strategies that you use to help think
Again with the design of a presentation?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So, I don't recommend doing a typical talk like a
TED talk, because the challenge of doing a TED talk
is you have a constrained window of time and so
you want to make every second count and it's much
shorter than a keynote you would normally give. Right, So,
I guess I think about a typical keynote speech is
probably in the thirty to forty five minute range.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I would say, is this sweet spot at most events.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And my vision for that is to start out by asking,
what's the core insight that I want to convey. There
needs to be a big idea that you take away,
ideally one that intrigues you or surprises you or makes
you think again. And then something that I was resistant
to doing for a long time, but I'm regretting having
not done it sooner now that I've finally embraced it
(17:53):
is not just to ask what I want the audience
to rethink, but also what I want them to feel.
That was something I learned from my TED coaches, who said, look,
I understand that you want to shift people's understanding, but.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
People are moved through emotion.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Well, long story short, I realized that's the way that
I've done a lot of my rethinking is through emotion.
And so I decided that I wanted to surprise people
and entertain people and fascinate people, and let me think
about the best ways to do that. And then once
I'm clear on the big insight and the key emotions
(18:28):
that I want to create from there, it's just a
matter of saying, Okay, what are the major studies that
I want to highlight or pieces of evidence, and what
are the stories that I think would best illuminate those,
and now let me sequence those. So there's a nice
mix of stories and studies and then some audience interaction
to get people thinking and participating and not just sitting
(18:49):
there passively listening, but actually processing the material and applying
it and experiencing it. And then I basically get on stage,
and I have a bunch of slides that are images,
and I talk, and I have my points, and I
hope that the studies and stories end up about the
right length of time.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
That's my process, what is yours?
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I think I start with the question, with the time
that I've given, how can I be most useful to
the audience, Like how can I serve them best? And
then like, presumably I've got a theme that I'm working
with or a particular topic, and then I think, okay,
to serve them best, like what are the let's say,
for a standard length keynote, what are the five best
(19:35):
things I know about this that I think can really
have a significant impact in the people's lives that I'm
talking to. And then from there I'd get more into
the mechanics of going, okay, well, each point needs some
kind of a story or some sort of interactive activity.
And now, obviously for the last year I've just been
(19:57):
doing virtual keynotes. I haven't seen a live audience since
February twenty twenty, So I think that's my process and
trying to go, oh, what's the best story I can
tell here to really land this point and connect with
people emotionally and then the other thing I think about,
and I was actually talking about this with Naomi yesterday
in the interview, is that one of my really early
(20:18):
coaches around giving presentations would always say, Okay, make it funnier,
make it funnier, insert a joke here. You need more
laughs here. And so I also think about laughs per minute,
Like I'll go back over a presentation that I've given
and I'll look at how many laughs I'm getting per minuted,
and where there's maybe a flat period of two minutes,
(20:40):
I'll be like, oh, I need to inject some humor there.
So I think that's my process loosely.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
That's fascinating. Okay, I have a couple of questions for
you on this. Yes, let's start with the last point.
So I have done the same thing for a long.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Time, have you.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yes, I've I had a target like, okay, at least
one laugh per minute, otherwise this is not entertaining enough.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I'm so reassured to know that you do this and
I'm not some weird.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Aerre Oh no, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
And I've started to rethink it though, And I wonder
what you think of the rethinking here. So what I
realized was I mean part of the reason that I
want to make the audience laugh is I just I
love to be entertained, right, I love to laugh, and
so I think we all enjoy giving the things that
we love to receive. And that's fine. But I also
(21:32):
realized at some point that I'm drawn to laughter because
as a shy introvert who used to be terrified of
public speaking, I still look at the audience for signals
that they're with me, and laughter is really the only
reliable cue that I'm having an impact in real time. Right,
They're like, well, let's let's take some alternative emotions. So
(21:55):
if you inspire people, they don't go ooh.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I wish they I did, though, that would be great.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I mean, if there was an involuntary human response, like
a vocal burst for inspiration, that.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Would be helpful, right, Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I mean occasionally people will, in very rare circumstances though applaud,
but that's not a norm in most talks, and it
would be sort of disruptive, I think if it happened regularly.
I think when people have moments where they're surprised, right,
they don't gasp out loud. And so I started to
think that maybe I was over indexing on laughter, that
(22:31):
I was using humor as a crutch to feel the
audience's energy, as opposed to saying, okay, there's a range
of emotions that I want to cultivate here, and yes,
I want to make the audience laugh as often as possible,
but I don't need to do that in every minute.
There are moments of gravity that should be balanced out
by the levity in different parts. But can you imagine
(22:53):
if Martin Luther King Junior got on stage for his
I have a Dream speech and say I want to
have I want to have at least a laugh for
a minute, A.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Wrong term for.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Trying to dismantle a racist set of institutions. So I
wonder what you make of O this.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I love that it's almost a sense of relief. I
feel to go, oh, I don't have to be so
had on myself to really push for humor, because sometimes
it comes naturally, but other times it's a real struggle.
And it's also, just, let's face it, like a bit
of a hassle to go, well, you know, look, I've
got all the points and these are solid points, and
(23:34):
oh god, now I have to be funny. So I
like that I feel like it takes the pressure off,
but also it's going to lead to a better outcome
in terms of going, Okay, what is the most I
guess useful emotion for the audience to be feeling in
order to really internalize the idea that I'm trying to
(23:54):
get across to them. So I'm going to try that.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
I think that's a great way to capture it. And
I think I guess it goes to one other thought
on this before I ask my other question that you
were listening for me. I think that sometimes in the
best talks, the audience is so absorbed in the story
that telling a joke would jolt them out of it.
You're kind of ruining their flow experience. And there are
(24:20):
times when you're telling a story that's powerful enough that
they're transported into it right They're the protagonist. They're waiting
for the complicating action or the resolution. And so I've
sometimes found that when I'm telling, especially a personal story,
I'm like, Okay, I'm putting myself out here. I'm being
a little vulnerable right now, let me make a joke
(24:41):
to lighten the mood. Like no, I need to suspend
that temptation, like I don't. I'm not going to eliminate
it all together. I am going to make fun of
myself at some point because I feel like that will,
especially if I'm talking about something that went well for me,
That'll prevent me from coming across as arrogant, and it'll
be a way to project the humility that I aspire
(25:01):
to live with. But I'm at least gonna postpone it.
I'm not going to let myself go for the easy
joke right away.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Now tell me your second question before I take back
the host role from you.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, no, no, I prefer to be the one asking
the questions here. After all, I want to keep learning.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
So I think it's interesting when you talked about what
your goal is and your talks, you said that I
want to be useful to the audience and I want
to have impact. And I wonder how much of that
is because you do so much speaking on innovation, which
is around a set of practical challenges that the audience
(25:41):
is grappling with. Because I guess just give a little
context for why I was wondering. I was thinking, what's
the alternative to useful and impact? And I think it's
novel and interesting or at least that's one alternative. And
so I wonder what's behind the desire to help as
opposed to just to intrigue and spark curiosity.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. It's funny because for me,
I think of novelty as that's just a hygiene factor.
In terms of like marketing speak, it's just a cost
of entry, like you have to be novel otherwise people
can probably just find the information online somewhere and likewise
being entertaining in some way. Again, it's like that's just
(26:22):
a cost of entry to be a good speaker. And
then in terms of being useful, I think it probably
comes back to being quite similar to you in terms
of growing up being very introverted and shy, and even
just raising my hand in class to ask a question
made me incredibly nervous. And I feel like if I'm useful,
then that gives me permission to be there. It gives
(26:44):
me permission to speak and for people to listen to me.
So I think that's where that comes from.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
That resonates.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
It's very similar to how I felt in a lot
of situations because when I heard you say useful and impact,
I thought, well, okay, that's language that I often use to.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Feel like I matter, right, Like what am I doing here? Well?
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Like I want to be helpful, okay, and I want
to justify that my time was well spent and then
it benefits other people. And then I started thinking one
of my biggest frustrations as a speaker is you don't
really know when you've been useful like that. Getting real
feedback about your long term impact is challenging. I've thought
(27:24):
about how do you measure it? This is a hard problem,
and so I think I've shifted a little bit away
from that just knowing how ambiguous it is to say,
all right, if I can create a performance that people
find to be a thought provoking experience, then I can
know at the end that I sort of succeeded, as opposed.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
To wondering like was this useful? Did I have impact?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
And so I guess I'm giving myself a different out
than the one you've chosen.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, I like your questions to me, and it's really
interesting hearing your process. I know that when I do
the edit for this interview, I'm I'm going to rethink
again when I can, you know, really focus and have
the time to consider it.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
We think again, that sounds like a sequel that I
will not be rating.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Definitely.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Now.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
When I was preparing for this interview, I reached out
to Rev, who is a collaborator of yours, Reb Rebel,
and someone that introduced me to I think two and
a half years ago, shortly after I first had you
on the show.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Was two and a half years ago, Yeah, two.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
And a half years ago, Yes, a long time ago.
And Reb and I catch up every few months, and
that's been wonderful. It's fantastic. And I said, what do
you reckon? I should ask Adam about basically delegating my
prep work to Rev, and he said, you should ask
him about remote collaboration because pre COVID you were doing
(28:49):
a lot of remote collaboration, and obviously now in the
last twelve months, I'm imagining that you've done a hell
of a lot more. And I'm wondering what one or
two strategies that you find really help to elevate the
effectiveness and the outputs from collaborating remotely.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
So Burstina is a place to start. This is researched
by Chris Reedal and Anito Wooley, where they studied remote
software teams and they found that there are two kinds
of communication patterns in remote collaboration. One is high frequency,
relatively low intensity, like we talk every day or we
(29:29):
have emails kind of going every hour. The other is
the opposite. It's low frequency, high intensity. We don't talk
for a week, and then we have a two hour
jam session. And they wanted to know which model is
more productive and more creative. And whenever I present this,
this is something I've been talking a lot with founders
(29:49):
and CEOs about, whenever I present it, they say overwhelmingly,
over eighty percent of the people I've asked have said,
you want high frequency, you need to stay in touch,
you need to be on the same page in order
to work effectively with people. And the data showed the
exact opposite, that the more productive and creative remote collaborations
are low frequency, high intensity. And what seems to be
(30:13):
going on there is a couple of things. One, when
people are communicating only intermittently, they actually have time to
get their own individual work done and to move ideas forward.
And two, when they do then come together to collaborate,
they're working with much better material and they're also more motivated.
(30:34):
I thought that that meant, okay, they're going to be
excited to build on each other's ideas. But the data
tell a slightly different story, which is that it is
energizing to know that other people are there waiting to
respond to you. And the pattern of burstiness is the
sense that the collaboration is literally bursting with energy and ideas.
And the way you get that you don't need to
(30:55):
be in the same physical space to get that. What helps, though,
is being in the same temporal space right having your
calendar synced so that there are at least some hours
here and there where you're online at the same time
and you can actually work together in real time. And
that The part of the reason this resonated with me
is it's how I've collaborated since gosh, at least fifteen
(31:18):
years ago, when at a mentor Jane Dutton, who would
work on papers with her former students. So Jane was
at the University of Michigan where I was in grad school.
Her former students would graduate and go across the country
or to another continent, and they would stay in touch,
or they'd have occasional phone calls and occasional emails, and
then they would fly in and they would do a
(31:40):
three day blitz where they just deep dive on a
project and they sit side by side writing and they
basically spend every waking hour together and then they go
off and they don't interact that much for a month
or two. And you're really getting the best of both
worlds in that model of independent thinking and then collaborative contribution.
And so that's a mon for how I structure my
(32:01):
remote collaboration.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Do we really need face to face collaboration to optimize
problem solving and creative thinking? I mean, there's so many
businesses here in Australia that are insisting that people go
back to the office. We're not in lockdown here anymore.
But do we need it? Like, is there something special
that we get from face to face collaboration based on
the research, that we just can't get from virtual collaboration.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
That's not the answer I was looking for, Adam.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
It's the only empirical answer I have right now. What
I can tell you is this seems to be true
in pairs and also in teams that trust builds faster
and it also builds deeper when people are face to face.
But what do we take away from that, I don't know.
Does that mean we are evolutionarily wired to need to
(32:56):
be in the same physical space as other people in
order to trust them, that we need to be able
to potentially touch them. Is that just how we've always
done it and so we're most comfortable trusting under those circumstances.
Or is it the case that up until now, and
maybe not until three years from now, the technology just
(33:17):
hasn't been there, and so virtual has been just an
awful proxy for face to face. And when we get
to the point where we're kind of lifelike holograms, maybe
face to face becomes irrelevant. And maybe for some people
touch is important and for others it's not. I don't know,
but I don't think there's anything about human psychology that
(33:39):
leaves me convinced that we have to be physically in
the same room to trust each other and collaborate effectively.
I think there are aspects of being physically colocated that
maybe grease the wheels of trust a little bit and
make it easier. But I think that gap is going
to shrink as technology gets better, and also as we
get more comfortable but really trusting people that we've never
(33:59):
met face to face.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, I know that Jane Dutton was one of your mentors,
and she's obviously very well known for writing and researching
about high quality connections. I'm curious as to how you
use her work when you're collaborating with new people in
terms of I guess fast tracking human connection.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Well, Jane does a rapid high quality connection exercise where
I've been using this in class for years, ever since
she had me do.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
It as a student.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
She says, just pair up with someone that you haven't
met in class yet, or if you've met everyone, like
somebody you don't know well, and then you each have
a minute to try to build a high quality connection
with the other person, and it's stunning to see how
quick it happens. People are often amazed by their their
intuitive social intelligence when it comes to finding strategies to
(34:51):
do it, and I think the strategies that seem to
work are backed up by decades of evidence in psychology.
One is self disclosure, where you know where people make
themselves vulnerable and what that actually That helps the person
who's sharing as much or more than the person who's listening,
because when I tell you something personal about me, then
(35:14):
I am signaling to myself, well, I must trust you otherwise,
Why the hell did I just tell you that? What
am I thinking? This is a dangerous decision here? I
should probably rethink it. So that happens a lot. There's
a lot of people searching for uncommon commonalities, you know,
things they share that are rare, and people bond in
those ways. I think though, for me, the key ingredient
(35:35):
there is that the exercise is set up so that
you just erase uncertainty that the other person wants to
connect and knowing that I'm going to talk to you
for a minute and we share a goal of having
a high quality interaction, it dramatically lowers anxiety. And it
also it leads people to do Oh, I guess the
(35:58):
goatmans would call them like they're bids.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
I make an offer, a gesture to say, hey, I'm
seeking your friendship or your trust, and I know you're
going to reciprocate, and you're eager to do that, and
then it kind of spirals from there. It's like when
the beginning of a first date goes really well and
you stop questioning whether the other person likes you. So,
I guess this is all to say, I've tried to
think about these principles in some of my new virtual
(36:24):
collaborations to like I've just tried to put it out there, like, Hey,
we're going to be working together. It's important to me
that we trust each other. And so I'm going to
tell you something that I don't normally share. And then
I'll try to come up with something that I normally
would hesitate to share, but I think is something that
if I am going to trust someone, they ought to
know about me. So like I'll maybe start with a
(36:45):
simple one, like I am chronically late.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I apologize events for it.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
I'm trying to get better at it, but not always
making progress. And then I might go into something a
little bit more personal, depending on what topic comes up,
and say, like I've written whole book about rethinking, and
I've noticed there are certain situations where I get really
stubborn and strong willed to the point that I worry
I'm close minded, and I'm trying to get better at
(37:12):
flexing in those situations and delegating, and I hope you
can help me do that.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
You mentioned that you ask someone that is often late
because you get into flow and you don't want to
break it. And I experience that. But what I do
is I set the stopwatch on my Apple Watch so
I don't lose track of time. And I'm a really
punctual person. I'm often early. But I want to know,
do you recommend that I be more selfish with my
(37:38):
time and not do this and be late to things
like you are.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
I don't know that I would wish my faults on anyone,
but I do think there's a method to the madness here.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I think, yeah, I want to lose track of time.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
If I'm in flow and I was late to something
and it wasn't an emergency and I can make up
for it, it's totally worth it to me. And I
guess I don't see it as being selfish, because I'm
usually working on something that's gonna reach somebody else or
that's going to help someone else, and so I guess
I see it not as selfishness, but more is refusing
to be a slave to the social construction of clock
(38:20):
time and not privileging the person that I thought was
going to get my time at this one point over
the other people who are priorities for me too. So
I don't know, I reject the premise. I don't think
it's selfishness, particularly if other people know that sometimes you're
running late. And I'll tell you, I don't meant that
I'm thrilled when people are late, like great, I have
(38:40):
more time to work, thank you. At minimum, I can
catch up on some emails or write a little post
that I'm delinquent in doing. And so I've just never
understood why people reify this fiction.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Of a clock into something much bigger than it is.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
That's great, I'm going to see if I can reframe
my thinking. I know that I'm going to struggle with it,
but it maybe does require a rethink.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I think. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
I mean, I think this is probably something that different
people have different preferences on.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
But I am surprised.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
I remember when I wrote I must have tweeted about
how being late is not necessarily disrespecting the person who's
waiting for you. Sometimes it's respecting that person who's sitting
in front of you. And I was surprised at how
many people responded with some version of moral outrage, like
(39:36):
being late is not a violation of an ethical principle,
it's just you taking time more seriously than I do,
Like I take my commitments to people and projects seriously,
not to a clock or a calendar.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Such a good way of looking at it.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
It makes some people frustrated, but like, okay, if it
really frustrates you, you should not schedule appointments with me,
and you will be happy.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Hey, there, it's nearly time for a little ad break.
But can I ask a favor of you? If you're
enjoying how I work, I would be so grateful if
you could hit pause on this episode and pop into
Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this from and
leave a review. You can do this through scrolling down
to the bottom of the show notes and clicking on
the stars, or running a comment. Aside from the warm,
(40:26):
fuzzy feelings, this will give both you and me. It
helps other people find out about how I work. So
thank you in advance. Okay, Adam Grant will be back
after this short break and we're going to be chatting
about how being a magician, which Adam is, has influenced
his work in psychology. Now, something I imagine, in terms
of sharing things about you that a lot of listeners
(40:48):
probably wouldn't know, is that you're a magician, and I
think that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
The nerdiest thing in my life. For sure. You think
it's cool, gotta love it totally.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like my idea of a great night out is going
to the Magic Castle in La Amazing.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
So I want to know how does.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Magic influence the work that you do as an organizational psychologist.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
The biggest thing that magic did for me was it
taught me to appreciate the element of surprise. When I
was performing as a magician regularly, that I could do
the same trick like, let's say, I'm going to have
you pick a card. So one of my favorite tricks
that I learned early on was I have the audience.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Pick a card.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
I actually I put the cards on the table and
I say, look, I don't want to influence your choice.
You choose your own card, and I have you pick
and I'm halfway across the room. I'm turning around so
that I can't see anything. I'm staring into the wall,
and you look at your card. You then shuffle it
back into the deck. And when I first started performing,
(41:52):
I would just grab the deck and I would find
your card, and you were like, oh cool. And then
I thought Okay, I'm going to add a little flourish
to it. And I learned to throw the cards up
and then as all the cards are falling from the
sky or the ceiling, to catch one card and then
I turn it around and it's your card. Ah, And
(42:12):
there's a little more suspense built. But that version of
the trick was nowhere near as satisfying in the reveal
as when I went an extra step. And that This
is a trick I do every year in class with
my undergrads. Thanks to a student innovation, all my students
get a chance to do a one minute passion talk
about something they love or something that matters deeply to
(42:33):
them to introduce themselves to their classmates, and we do
six each class, so that by the end of the
semester everyone is given one. And throughout the semester they
asked me, when are you giving your passion talk, and
I say, I'm going to do it on the last day.
And the last day, my passion talk is about learning
to do magic and how it helped me come out
of my shell.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
And then I do a trick or two.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
And so I do this same trick, except now the
way I do it is I've had you shuffle your
card back.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Into the deck.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Then I take the deck and I say, okay, Amantha.
You may not know this, but when you were holding
your card for a second, you actually transferred some body
heat into it and you warmed it up. So I'm
just gonna flip through eyes closed, I'm gonna find the
hottest card in the deck. Boom, is that yours? And
I deliberately show you the wrong card? Ah, And you're
(43:23):
like no. And I think my acting is not always
up to par, but every once in a while I
get it right. And I look kind of like shocked,
and then forlorn, and and I might I might curse,
and then and then I just I throw the cards
(43:45):
up as if I'm giving up, and then I.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Catch your card.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
And now right now you're Wow, You're You're much more
excited and surprised. And what that taught me this is
a very long story, but what it taught me was
that we can do the same thing with ideas, we
can do the same thing with knowledge. And as an
organizational psychologist, that meant that when I had a data
(44:10):
point that I thought was interesting, I needed to work
really hard to not only tell the audience what was
surprising about it, but set them up to feel surprised.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
I'm like in magic, I don't want to trick them.
What I want to do is figure out what expectation
they hold, what assumption they cling to that the evidence
I'm going to share might question, And then I want
to tell the story or reveal the results of the
experiment in such a way that they feel the same
surprise that they should, and that I don't think I
(44:43):
would have appreciated that if I hadn't done magic.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
From a purely selfish point of view. I'm on an
eight week mission where I'm trying to learn a magic
trick awake and really, I mean yeah, yeah, and i
mean wait why, Because someone asked me a few weeks ago,
what's something that you've always want wanted to learn but
haven't And I'm like, I can't think of anything. I
just like, I just do it if I want to
learn it. But I'm like, no magic. Like every time
(45:07):
I visit the Magic Castle, I'm like, oh, I want
to learn something and I want to become a member,
and I get really excited and I do nothing. And
so I learned a trick last week and it didn't
fool many people, but it filled a couple and that
was okay. And then I learned another trick, but it
involved a rubber band, and I can't find the right
(45:28):
rubber band to do the trick with. So tell me
what is the trick that I can learn that requires
little skill but it's going to have a really big impact.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
So one trick that I think is low effort high
impact is one where I guess we'll have to wait
till COVID is over. But you're in Australia, You're going
to be in a restaurant much sooner than I am.
So next time you go to a restaurant, what you're
going to do is you're going to cover assault shaker
with a napkin or like a tablecloth, and you're going
(45:59):
to to tell your friends at dinner that you're going
to make a coin disappear that you're going to put
under the salt shaker and the napkin, and then you
put the coin down, you cover it, You say, okay,
let me just make sure the coin is here. You
hold up the salt shaker and the napkin, then you
put it back down, You cover the coin, and then
you say okay on the counter three one two three,
(46:22):
the coin will disappear. Then you slam the table, you
smash the salt shaker, only the salt shaker is gone
and the coin.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Is still there.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
And then if you want, you could have the salt
shaker appear under the table, or it could just be gone.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
What how do I do this?
Speaker 2 (46:39):
After we stop recording, I'll tell you how to do it.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Oh my god, am I seeing it?
Speaker 2 (46:42):
I met that. I wanted to ask you. I wanted
to rethink your question a little bit. Hmm.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
What if instead of learning a trick a week, you
decided to learn a skill a week, a magic skill
that a magician would use.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Oh I like that, and I never would have thought
of them because I don't know enough about magic to go. Ah,
that's another way to categorize learning. So what would be
say two or three skills that if I were to
reframe the challenge that I should learn.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Well, let's just say a word about why.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
I think that might be part of what I heard
you saying was I love being in the audience for
magic and I would like to be able to create it.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yes, And I think the if you just do a
trick a week.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
At some point you're going to give up on that goal,
and that's going to be the sum total of your abilities.
So you'll be able to do six tricks right or
eight tricks, and you won't really feel like you know
how to do magic. It's like you're in the movie
The Matrix and you've downloaded six programs and you can
play those programs. Whereas if you learn six skills, you
could potentially, over time, without having to ever learn a
(47:51):
new skill, create one hundred or two hundred different tricks.
And also then there's a learning curve where one skill
could lead to another, as opposed to I'm just going
to learn a bunch of screet performances and they're all standalone.
So I guess it depends on your medium. What kinds
of tricks do you love to watch the most? Are
you a stage illusioned person? Are you close up coins
or cards?
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Close up cards, I would say would be my favorite genre.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Mine too.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
I'm better at cards than everything else combined, which is
not a brag about my card skills, it's a.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
I am in every other domain.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Yeah, So in cards, I would say, get a card
magic book. I would say the classic is dive Vernon.
There are lots of more recent ones, though, and you
could say, Okay, one week, I'm going to learn a
particular shuffle that gives me control over certain cards. The
next week, I'm going to learn a cut, the next week,
(48:46):
I'm going to learn a lift. And you know, each
of these techniques then can be used in all these
different card tricks, and sometimes, like my favorite card tricks,
I use eight or nine different skills and it's a
much more exciting revelation at the end. So I think
you could create just a whole I guess it's a
(49:06):
different way of saying it is.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
It's an investment in.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
Being able to keep producing dividends on the time you
spent learning.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Yes, gosh, I feel like this has just re energized
me towards this magic goal that I have. I'm totally
going to adopt that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
Thank you trying it at your own risk.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Now, I know I've only got a few minutes left
with you. I did want to ask you a question
about parenting, because I know you do quite a bit
of writing in this area, and you've written two children's
books with your wife Alison, which myself and my seven
year old daughter have.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Loved and oh, thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
That's so good. And I want to know what are
like two or three questions that you think are really
good questions to ask our children every day?
Speaker 2 (49:48):
What are you trying to teach them?
Speaker 1 (49:51):
I guess what I was thinking about is I read
that article. I want to say it was in The
Atlantic where you talked about the importance of raising people
that are kind. And this is something that I think
a lot about with my daughter Frankie, and so, for example,
every day, and I think it was inspired by that
article that you wrote. I asked her what's something kind
that you did? And sometimes She'll say, I don't know,
(50:13):
And other times I'll go, well, what's something kind that
someone did for you? And how did that make you feel?
And that's literally a daily conversation that we have. So
that's what made me want to ask the question because
I was curious, what are some other things that you're
doing with your kids to praise them to be really good, decent,
kind human beings.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Well, one that I actually learned from our ten year
old daughter, Elena is she taught our seven year old
son Henry to every night ask us a question.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
M and vice versa.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
So we read a bad time story and then when
it's time to turn the lights out, we each ask,
what's your question? I think it's a beautiful way to
encourage curiosity. But also teaching kids to ask questions is
one of the most basic building blocks of nurturing kindness
and a sincere interest in others. And so I think
(51:06):
asking your kids what questions do you have? Or what
question do you have today? What do you wonder about?
What puzzled you, what intrigues you, what do you not understand?
Speaker 2 (51:15):
What do you not know?
Speaker 3 (51:16):
A great way to get them to take an interest
in others and also an interest in learning.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
That is so cool. I'm picking my daughter up from
school in three hours and I'm so going to be
asking her.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
That it's fun.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
She might say nothing, and then you can ask her
a question and model the behavior, and it becomes fun
to say, Okay, who can.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
Think of a question we've never asked before.
Speaker 3 (51:38):
So it's almost it's become like a nightly challenge to say,
all right, we've gone through you know who's your favorite superhero?
And you know why is Pluto no longer a Planet's
Let's come up with something really novel.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Now, I've got three final questions for you, and let's
treat them as rapid fire questions. So first, I want
to know what, like the last time I had you
on the show. I remember I asked for it was
your favorite research study that you've read recently, and you
gave me a great one around how meetings and not
batching meetings wastes a great deal of time. And I
want to know what's your favorite research from say, the
(52:12):
last year, that's made you rethink something.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
For a long time, I've believed that the reason we
get so many narcissists and leadership positions is organizations are
designed to reward people who kiss up and kick down
and who who project confidence as a false signal of confidence.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
And I've had to.
Speaker 3 (52:33):
Rethink that because there was a fascinating Dutch study that
came out this year showing that narcissistic leaders are even
popular in elementary school classrooms ages seven to fourteen that
I think the original The data were hundreds of kids
(52:56):
in twenty three different classrooms, and in twenty two of
those classes rooms, then most narcissistic kids were more likely
to be nominated as leaders, and they also rated themselves
as better leaders even though they weren't any better at leadership.
And I guess what I've rethought there is I thought
this was a problem with our workplaces, and now I
think it's a much more fundamental problem with the way
(53:18):
that we teach, the way that we organize both kids
and adults into hierarchies, the way that we put a
premium on confidence instead of humility. And so I think
that we need to counter the preference for narcissistic leaders
much earlier than I thought before.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
That is fascinating. Tell me you read so many books.
What is a book that you've read in the last
year that made you rethink something and that you'd recommend
that other people read as well.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Oh, there are a lot of those.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
I think Untamed by Glennon Doyle is an easy one, though.
Glennon is I think one of the most gifted writers
on earth. And I shouldn't even say gifted because that
suggests that it just came to her natural, when I
know she's worked extraordinarily hard to have such a brilliant
and poignant voice. And one thing that I rethought based
(54:12):
on reading her book is my view of happiness.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
There's a line that stopped me in my tracks.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
I think the exact quote is being human is not
about feeling happy, it's about feeling everything.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
What a great quote.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Yeah, I mean the book is full of observations like that,
and it really made me pause to say, well, what
am I doing here? Am I limiting my range of
experience by pursuing happiness? And am I encouraging other people
to make the same mistake.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
My final question for you, Adam, is a very easy
one for people that want to consume more of what
you are doing and also get their hands on a
copy of Think Again. How should people do that?
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Oh, it's extremely kind of you to ask.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
I would say the easy way is to go to
Adam grant dot net. There's a free quizy you can
take to figure out your style of rethinking, and a
discussion guide for the book, and a bunch of other
information that may or may not be of interest.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Amazing, And people can subscribe to your newsletter there as well,
which is one of the newsletters that I get that
I actually look forward to receiving. It's always just awesome. Oh,
thank you, pleasure, Adam, Thank you so much for coming
on the show again. It's just such a highlight and
privileged to chat to you, so thank you so much,
my pleasure. That is it for today's show. If you
(55:37):
enjoyed it, why not share it with someone that you
think would also enjoy it. And next week on How
I Work, I am very excited to have Naomi Bagdonus
on the show. Naomi teaches humor, yes, of course, on
humor for Stanford Business School, and we get into the
(55:57):
mechanics of how to telligence and how to just be funnier.
So if you're keen to hear about that, hit subscribe
or follow wherever you're listening to this podcast from and
you'll be alerted when that episode drops. How I Work
is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
The producer for this episode was the marvelous Jenna Coda,
(56:21):
and thank you to Martin Nimba who did the audio
mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise.
That's all for today and I'll see you next time.
We go to the dentist for a checkup once a year,
and we have an annual performance review at work each year.
But yet how often do we stop to do a
life checkup? Have you ever done an audit where you
consider if you're in the right role and if the
organization you work for is still the right fit. Organizational
(00:22):
psychologist Warton professor and best selling author Adam Grant says
we should all be scheduling life checkups. He spent years
hearing from his past students who'd graduated from business school
and walked into great jobs, yet they were miserably unhappy.
They'd been promoted and were making lots of money, but
(00:42):
they hated their jobs and they felt trapped. Adam's schedules
a life checkup twice a year to ask himself, have
I reached a learning plateau? What do I want to research?
Do I need to rethink my approach to teaching. A
life checkup is just like scheduling an appointment with the doctor,
even if you don't suspect anything is wrong. My name
(01:10):
is doctor Amantha Im. I'm an organizational psychologist and the
founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how
I work a show about how to help you do
your best work. So let's hear about how Adam first
came up with the idea to do a life checkup
and what his own process for doing them looks like.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
The genesis of it is.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I kept having these students who would graduate from Wharton,
and then they'd contact me a couple of years later
and say, you know, I really hate my investment banking job.
But I've already spent a couple of years, and I'm
about to get promoted, and he'll be my third promotion,
and I'm making all this money, and I think I.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Could have walked away a year or two ago, but
now I can't.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
And then I started getting calls from students who said, actually,
I'm miserable in my job, and I should have walked
away a couple of years ago, but I didn't, and
now I feel trapped and I don't want to I
don't want to undo the few years that I've already invested,
and I feel like I would have to start over.
(02:17):
And I had enough of these conversations that finally I said, well,
why don't you put a reminder in your calendar twice
a year to do a checkup, and they're like, what
is it a checkup? The same way that you go
to the doctor even when it seems like nothing is wrong.
Why don't you do the same thing with your career
to ask yourself? Is this still the job that I want?
(02:38):
Have I reached a learning.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Plateau or a lifestyle plateau? Is this culture toxic?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
And I don't want you to do that every day
because then you're just gonna be stuck in analysis paralysis
and you'll never give the place a chance. But if
you do it a couple of times a year, maybe
it'll save you from getting trapped in.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
A place that you don't want to be.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
And they've reported back that it's helpful, and a lot
of them still do it a decade later. So the
question is do I take my own advice? What do
you think?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I think you should take your own advice. It sounds
very sensible, do you think so? I think?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Sorry?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And you know what it reminds me of actually, before
you go into how you've taken your own advice, it
reminds me of what Chip and down Heath wrote about
indecisive around setting tripwires for decisions.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Yes, you know it's funny that I think the tripware
principle is useful whenever I think about it as a tripwayer,
I don't want to trip on a wire that sounds
really unpleasant. Whereas a checkup, yeah, you know what, I
need to do that in order to stay healthy. So
I don't know, maybe it's just a question of framing
or semantics, but I found the checkup idea appealing in
(03:46):
a way that a trip waiter sounded a little bit dangerous.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So what did I do?
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I would say, you want to know about my most
recent career checkup, right, I'd love to Okay, so I
think my most recent one actually can I'm I'm just
going to look at my calendar here, So.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
You're booking meetings with yourself in your calendar, so you
remember for the life checkup.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
I have a reminder of my calendar to pop up
twice a year for a checkup. Cool and one is
one is usually in It pops up in July to
do a rethinking of my teaching approach and what content
I'm going to cover that semester. And then I have
another one that pops up in January, which is, okay,
what do I want to be working on in terms
(04:30):
of research and writing and podcasting. So I don't know
if there's a recent one that's that good of a story.
So can I tell you about a pivotal.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
One, of course?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So I can actually give you two if you want,
and you can choose. One is the checkup that led
me into podcasting, and the other is the checkup that
led me to right think.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Again amazing, Tell me about both.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
So twenty seventeen, I published my third book, and I
was doing a lot of speaking and a lot of interviews,
and I felt like I'd become a human jukebox.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
People.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
They knew what songs I could play. They would tell
me which one to play. I would give my performance
and I would learn nothing because I was basically covering
the same material as last time, and a lot of
the same questions would come up from different audiences, and
I felt like I was stagnating. You know, I don't
think the audience saw it, because each performance felt fresh
(05:33):
to them. But like, how many times am I going
to do the same talk? And at first I said, Okay,
I'm going to do the same thing on stage that
I do in the classroom, which is I'm going to
throw out twenty percent of the talk each time, and
that way it'll stay new. But it was still the
same topic and I was still stuck to the topics
that the audience was asking for, which was largely typecast
(05:54):
based on what work I'd put out there. And then
I had a checkup come up. It was I think
this summer of twenty seventeen, if I remember correctly, and
I said, okay, I need to start learning again. How
am I going to make that happen? And I had
just launched into some conversations with the TED team about
ways that we might be able to collaborate on something
(06:16):
that's more dialogue than monologue, and we sort of stumbled
into this idea of doing a podcast and I thought, oh,
this would be such a fun thing to do. I
can go to the most interesting workplaces on Earth and
talk to some of the most fascinating people, and my
goal is to learn, and then I could share what
I've learned on the back end. And that's why I
(06:36):
host work Life, and it's probably a big part of
why we're having this conversation.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Now, Wow, that's so cool, And tell me about the
one that led to think again. Because I'm always so
fascinated in terms of the choice for the next book,
because essentially it's like committing to at least a three
year plus relationship in terms of research and writing and
editing and pr and hey, you know it's off the
(07:00):
back of it.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, and there's no checkup that can rescue from it.
You're stuck with it, whether you like it or not.
You know, it's funny. Actually, one of the reasons I
was so excited about doing work Life and I guess
the podcast enterprise more generally, was I felt like, after
writing I published three books in four years, I felt
a little bit constrained in the sense that I felt
(07:25):
like I could only I can only write about or
speak about topics that were bookworthy, And sometimes I just
wanted to explore something that was a little smaller, interesting
and important, but it wasn't necessarily one big idea that
deserved the whole book. And so podcasting was a great
way to shake things up a little bit and say,
all right, you know, I'm really curious about whether we
(07:46):
could eliminate hierarchy and create organizations.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
With no bosses.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
And I don't have a book's worth of questions in that.
I think it's you know a narrower topic, but I
think it's really funny, cool. I'm going to do a
podcast episode about it, and I did. I had a
blast doing that for a few seasons, still having a
blast doing it now. But I also started to feel
an itch that I was not taking on really grand questions.
(08:11):
That forced me to do a lot of rethinking in
a big way, which is something that a book requires.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
And again I had a check up come up.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I think it was January twenty eighteen, and I thought, Okay,
I've been doing a lot of learning.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
When am I going to do my thinking? And that
led me to say.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Okay, I think it's time to write another book. And
then I actually analyzed the patterns in the tweets that
I had done that were getting the most interest, and
I noticed that a lot of them were about being
open minded and questioning our opinions and assumptions and even
letting go of some of our expertise. And that led
(08:51):
into Think Again.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So here we are, and on the topic of rethinking
things and learning. You talk about in Think Again, setting
a weekly time for rethinking and unlearning, and I'd love
you to take me through an example of what you
do during this time. How structured is it? Are there
questions that you ask yourself, like, what would I observe
if I was a fly on the wall?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
You'd be really bored? Ammthha.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I doubt that.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I'd just be sitting there, you know, occasionally typing things.
And sometimes I'll do it on the elliptical or when
I'm taking out the garbage, but most of the time
it's in front of my computer. And they have a
couple of different routines that I've tried so far, though
this is still a pretty new practice for me. I've
been doing it less than a year. So one version
(09:37):
of it is I go through old ideas that I've produced.
It might be an academic paper I wrote, It could
be a chapter from a book. It might be a
social media post, it could be a podcast episode, might
be a TED talk, And I ask myself, Okay, is
there something here worth rethinking? And I cringe a little
(09:57):
bit when I do that, because I think a lot
of my work is at least mildly embarrassing. I'm like, well,
I guess it was the best I could have done
at the time, but it was so it was so
pedestrian and oversimplified and I have a much richer view
of the topic. Now, I'm like, Okay, I can either
be embarrassed by that, or I can say maybe I've
(10:17):
grown and that. That's one routine that I've come to appreciate,
if not enjoy, just to say, all right, let me
let me revisit my old work and see if there's
something I've already rethought or something I should rethink when
I look at it with the fresh eye of somebody
who hasn't seen it in a while and kind of
forgot that I produced it.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
So that's one What else are you doing in that
time to provoke rethinking and unlearning?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So another thing that I've done is I've reached out
to people in my challenge network and said, Okay, this
shouldn't always be an independent activity.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It doesn't. We don't do all of our rethinking in
a vacuum.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I think we do most of it in dialogue or
at least in interaction with other people. And so I've
picked the people who are my most thoughtful critic, and
sometimes I'll just shoot them a note and say, hey,
what do you think I should rethink?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I've heard you talk about your challenge network a few
times and I'd love it if you could explain how
it came about, like how you set one up and
the logistics of how do you utilize it and how
can other people set one up?
Speaker 3 (11:19):
So I think of my challenge network as the It's
the perfect compliment to a support network. Everybody has a
support network, right, group of cheerleaders who encourage you and
build you up. And I think obviously we need them,
especially when we're discouraged or down. But I guess I
benefited more from a challenge network those thoughtful critics who
(11:42):
have very high expectations of me and see a lot
of potential in me, but also are fearless about telling
me when I've fallen short of it. And we'll highlight
the gap between where I am and where I want
to be. So I'll give you, I guess, a taste
of how I've done this. This is very how I
work talking about how I work.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Look at that correct aligns with the name of the show,
so I think that works.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I'm so sorry to be so literal, Amantha, But how
I work my challenge network is When I was writing
Think Again, I had a couple of different practices for it.
So one was I have a research lab called the
Impact Lab that I've been, i guess, running since two
thousand and three. And I told them we were going
to meet probably every other week, and I'd have a
(12:27):
chapter draft for them to read and eviscerate, just tear
it apart, tell me everything that's wrong with it, and
we would meet and I'd ask them, if you have
comments in advance, send them so I can digest them
up front.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
If not, just tell me.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
What you think is wrong with each draft once we
sit down, and my favorite practice with the group is
to say, let's just start out. We're going to go
around the room and give the draft a zero to
ten rating. No one ever gives a ten, and that
has two effects. Number one, it motivates them to coach me.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
They might be pretty shy about criticizing my work coming in,
but when they say four and a half, great, tell
me how it could be better. I'm aiming for a
ten here, And then they're not worried that they're hurting
my feelings. They realize this is going to help me.
And the other effect that has is it motivates me
(13:25):
to be coachable. If you just told me, here are
the three things that I thought were terrible in your draft,
I'm sure, and I've done this many times. I would
have some defensive impulses like, wow, I made that choice
for the following reasons, and I don't think you've really
thought this through when you tell me this draft is
a six. All of a sudden, I don't care what
(13:45):
I disagree with you on. I want to know how
I can make it a ten in your eyes. And
so I become much more coachable and open to feedback
after that. So I did a bunch of that with
my students, which was invaluable, and just rewrote multiple chapters
from scrap multiple times.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I love that idea of scoring things out of ten,
and I feel like it all also takes it away
from it being a personal critique. It's more like, well,
let's focus on the number and how we can get
that closer to ten. It's interesting. So I got onto
the book humor seriously from your amazing reading recommendations that
you do. I think once a quarter you do them.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah, I've started doing them quarterly, and I hope you
haven't regretted read the books that I've put on them.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
They're all brilliant, and I must say I loved Humor Seriously.
It was one of my favorite reads over the summer
down here, which I guess is your winter and.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
I, oh, I'm so glad have you had Jennifer and
Naomi on the podcast yet.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
I actually interviewed Naomi yesterday and she was amazing, and
I was asking her just how does she make her
writing so funny? I mean, Humor Seriously is probably the
funniest business book that I've ever read. And she described
what I kind of likened a human network, kind of
like your challenge network, but essentially she will give the
draft to a bunch of comedy writers and ask them
(15:04):
to find and markup opportunities for humor, which I thought,
that's that's so fascinating. For making your work funny out
such a novel approach.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
I think it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
And when you gather a group like that for feedback,
right in Hollywood, they call it notes like I'm going
to give you notes, and I love how non threatening
that is because there's no judgment there. These are just
my notes, and they might have been margin notes. They
might be little notes from me to you on what
I thought you could improve or where you missed an opportunity.
(15:35):
But they're just notes, take them or leave them. And
so my student group is one place I think that
ends up being just an incredible source of new ideas
and constructive criticism. The other thing that I did was
I reached out to a bunch of the people who
have given me the best challenging feedback over my career
and I said, Hey, you may not know this, but
(15:55):
I consider you a founding member of my Challenge network.
And then I had to blain what a challenge network was,
but I said, listen, if you ever hesitate to give
me real feedback because you're afraid you're going to damage
the relationship, don't. The only way you can damage the
relationship is by not telling me the truth.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And I've gotten much better feedback after that.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
And so I just recorded a new TED talk around
think Again, and I went back to the Challenge Network
and I said, Okay, here's my draft. Tear it apart,
give me the zero to ten rating, tell me what
you do you would do differently. And I think the
version I recorded was the thirtieth draft, after throwing three
complete drafts away and starting over entirely.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Wow, I actually wanted to ask you about designing keynote
presentations because in Think Again, there are so many different
great strategies for helping people think again, and I was
curious as to how you apply those strategies when you
are constructing a keynote presentation, and particularly one that's off
the back of Think Again. So can you talk about
(16:59):
some of the strategies that you use to help think
Again with the design of a presentation?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So, I don't recommend doing a typical talk like a
TED talk, because the challenge of doing a TED talk
is you have a constrained window of time and so
you want to make every second count and it's much
shorter than a keynote you would normally give. Right, So,
I guess I think about a typical keynote speech is
probably in the thirty to forty five minute range.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I would say, is this sweet spot at most events.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And my vision for that is to start out by asking,
what's the core insight that I want to convey. There
needs to be a big idea that you take away,
ideally one that intrigues you or surprises you or makes
you think again. And then something that I was resistant
to doing for a long time, but I'm regretting having
not done it sooner now that I've finally embraced it
(17:53):
is not just to ask what I want the audience
to rethink, but also what I want them to feel.
That was something I learned from my TED coaches, who said, look,
I understand that you want to shift people's understanding, but.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
People are moved through emotion.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Well, long story short, I realized that's the way that
I've done a lot of my rethinking is through emotion.
And so I decided that I wanted to surprise people
and entertain people and fascinate people, and let me think
about the best ways to do that. And then once
I'm clear on the big insight and the key emotions
(18:28):
that I want to create from there, it's just a
matter of saying, Okay, what are the major studies that
I want to highlight or pieces of evidence, and what
are the stories that I think would best illuminate those,
and now let me sequence those. So there's a nice
mix of stories and studies and then some audience interaction
to get people thinking and participating and not just sitting
(18:49):
there passively listening, but actually processing the material and applying
it and experiencing it. And then I basically get on stage,
and I have a bunch of slides that are images,
and I talk, and I have my points, and I
hope that the studies and stories end up about the
right length of time.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
That's my process, what is yours?
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I think I start with the question, with the time
that I've given, how can I be most useful to
the audience, Like how can I serve them best? And
then like, presumably I've got a theme that I'm working
with or a particular topic, and then I think, okay,
to serve them best, like what are the let's say,
for a standard length keynote, what are the five best
(19:35):
things I know about this that I think can really
have a significant impact in the people's lives that I'm
talking to. And then from there I'd get more into
the mechanics of going, okay, well, each point needs some
kind of a story or some sort of interactive activity.
And now, obviously for the last year I've just been
(19:57):
doing virtual keynotes. I haven't seen a live audience since
February twenty twenty, So I think that's my process and
trying to go, oh, what's the best story I can
tell here to really land this point and connect with
people emotionally and then the other thing I think about,
and I was actually talking about this with Naomi yesterday
in the interview, is that one of my really early
(20:18):
coaches around giving presentations would always say, Okay, make it funnier,
make it funnier, insert a joke here. You need more
laughs here. And so I also think about laughs per minute,
Like I'll go back over a presentation that I've given
and I'll look at how many laughs I'm getting per minuted,
and where there's maybe a flat period of two minutes,
(20:40):
I'll be like, oh, I need to inject some humor there.
So I think that's my process loosely.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
That's fascinating. Okay, I have a couple of questions for
you on this. Yes, let's start with the last point.
So I have done the same thing for a long.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Time, have you.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yes, I've I had a target like, okay, at least
one laugh per minute, otherwise this is not entertaining enough.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I'm so reassured to know that you do this and
I'm not some weird.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Aerre Oh no, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
And I've started to rethink it though, And I wonder
what you think of the rethinking here. So what I
realized was I mean part of the reason that I
want to make the audience laugh is I just I
love to be entertained, right, I love to laugh, and
so I think we all enjoy giving the things that
we love to receive. And that's fine. But I also
(21:32):
realized at some point that I'm drawn to laughter because
as a shy introvert who used to be terrified of
public speaking, I still look at the audience for signals
that they're with me, and laughter is really the only
reliable cue that I'm having an impact in real time. Right,
They're like, well, let's let's take some alternative emotions. So
(21:55):
if you inspire people, they don't go ooh.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I wish they I did, though, that would be great.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I mean, if there was an involuntary human response, like
a vocal burst for inspiration, that.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Would be helpful, right, Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I mean occasionally people will, in very rare circumstances though applaud,
but that's not a norm in most talks, and it
would be sort of disruptive, I think if it happened regularly.
I think when people have moments where they're surprised, right,
they don't gasp out loud. And so I started to
think that maybe I was over indexing on laughter, that
(22:31):
I was using humor as a crutch to feel the
audience's energy, as opposed to saying, okay, there's a range
of emotions that I want to cultivate here, and yes,
I want to make the audience laugh as often as possible,
but I don't need to do that in every minute.
There are moments of gravity that should be balanced out
by the levity in different parts. But can you imagine
(22:53):
if Martin Luther King Junior got on stage for his
I have a Dream speech and say I want to
have I want to have at least a laugh for
a minute, A.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Wrong term for.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Trying to dismantle a racist set of institutions. So I
wonder what you make of O this.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I love that it's almost a sense of relief. I
feel to go, oh, I don't have to be so
had on myself to really push for humor, because sometimes
it comes naturally, but other times it's a real struggle.
And it's also, just, let's face it, like a bit
of a hassle to go, well, you know, look, I've
got all the points and these are solid points, and
(23:34):
oh god, now I have to be funny. So I
like that I feel like it takes the pressure off,
but also it's going to lead to a better outcome
in terms of going, Okay, what is the most I
guess useful emotion for the audience to be feeling in
order to really internalize the idea that I'm trying to
(23:54):
get across to them. So I'm going to try that.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
I think that's a great way to capture it. And
I think I guess it goes to one other thought
on this before I ask my other question that you
were listening for me. I think that sometimes in the
best talks, the audience is so absorbed in the story
that telling a joke would jolt them out of it.
You're kind of ruining their flow experience. And there are
(24:20):
times when you're telling a story that's powerful enough that
they're transported into it right They're the protagonist. They're waiting
for the complicating action or the resolution. And so I've
sometimes found that when I'm telling, especially a personal story,
I'm like, Okay, I'm putting myself out here. I'm being
a little vulnerable right now, let me make a joke
(24:41):
to lighten the mood. Like no, I need to suspend
that temptation, like I don't. I'm not going to eliminate
it all together. I am going to make fun of
myself at some point because I feel like that will,
especially if I'm talking about something that went well for me,
That'll prevent me from coming across as arrogant, and it'll
be a way to project the humility that I aspire
(25:01):
to live with. But I'm at least gonna postpone it.
I'm not going to let myself go for the easy
joke right away.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Now tell me your second question before I take back
the host role from you.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, no, no, I prefer to be the one asking
the questions here. After all, I want to keep learning.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
So I think it's interesting when you talked about what
your goal is and your talks, you said that I
want to be useful to the audience and I want
to have impact. And I wonder how much of that
is because you do so much speaking on innovation, which
is around a set of practical challenges that the audience
(25:41):
is grappling with. Because I guess just give a little
context for why I was wondering. I was thinking, what's
the alternative to useful and impact? And I think it's
novel and interesting or at least that's one alternative. And
so I wonder what's behind the desire to help as
opposed to just to intrigue and spark curiosity.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. It's funny because for me,
I think of novelty as that's just a hygiene factor.
In terms of like marketing speak, it's just a cost
of entry, like you have to be novel otherwise people
can probably just find the information online somewhere and likewise
being entertaining in some way. Again, it's like that's just
(26:22):
a cost of entry to be a good speaker. And
then in terms of being useful, I think it probably
comes back to being quite similar to you in terms
of growing up being very introverted and shy, and even
just raising my hand in class to ask a question
made me incredibly nervous. And I feel like if I'm useful,
then that gives me permission to be there. It gives
(26:44):
me permission to speak and for people to listen to me.
So I think that's where that comes from.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
That resonates.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
It's very similar to how I felt in a lot
of situations because when I heard you say useful and impact,
I thought, well, okay, that's language that I often use to.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Feel like I matter, right, Like what am I doing here? Well?
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Like I want to be helpful, okay, and I want
to justify that my time was well spent and then
it benefits other people. And then I started thinking one
of my biggest frustrations as a speaker is you don't
really know when you've been useful like that. Getting real
feedback about your long term impact is challenging. I've thought
(27:24):
about how do you measure it? This is a hard problem,
and so I think I've shifted a little bit away
from that just knowing how ambiguous it is to say,
all right, if I can create a performance that people
find to be a thought provoking experience, then I can
know at the end that I sort of succeeded, as opposed.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
To wondering like was this useful? Did I have impact?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
And so I guess I'm giving myself a different out
than the one you've chosen.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, I like your questions to me, and it's really
interesting hearing your process. I know that when I do
the edit for this interview, I'm I'm going to rethink
again when I can, you know, really focus and have
the time to consider it.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
We think again, that sounds like a sequel that I
will not be rating.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Definitely.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Now.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
When I was preparing for this interview, I reached out
to Rev, who is a collaborator of yours, Reb Rebel,
and someone that introduced me to I think two and
a half years ago, shortly after I first had you
on the show.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Was two and a half years ago, Yeah, two.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
And a half years ago, Yes, a long time ago.
And Reb and I catch up every few months, and
that's been wonderful. It's fantastic. And I said, what do
you reckon? I should ask Adam about basically delegating my
prep work to Rev, and he said, you should ask
him about remote collaboration because pre COVID you were doing
(28:49):
a lot of remote collaboration, and obviously now in the
last twelve months, I'm imagining that you've done a hell
of a lot more. And I'm wondering what one or
two strategies that you find really help to elevate the
effectiveness and the outputs from collaborating remotely.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
So Burstina is a place to start. This is researched
by Chris Reedal and Anito Wooley, where they studied remote
software teams and they found that there are two kinds
of communication patterns in remote collaboration. One is high frequency,
relatively low intensity, like we talk every day or we
(29:29):
have emails kind of going every hour. The other is
the opposite. It's low frequency, high intensity. We don't talk
for a week, and then we have a two hour
jam session. And they wanted to know which model is
more productive and more creative. And whenever I present this,
this is something I've been talking a lot with founders
(29:49):
and CEOs about, whenever I present it, they say overwhelmingly,
over eighty percent of the people I've asked have said,
you want high frequency, you need to stay in touch,
you need to be on the same page in order
to work effectively with people. And the data showed the
exact opposite, that the more productive and creative remote collaborations
are low frequency, high intensity. And what seems to be
(30:13):
going on there is a couple of things. One, when
people are communicating only intermittently, they actually have time to
get their own individual work done and to move ideas forward.
And two, when they do then come together to collaborate,
they're working with much better material and they're also more motivated.
(30:34):
I thought that that meant, okay, they're going to be
excited to build on each other's ideas. But the data
tell a slightly different story, which is that it is
energizing to know that other people are there waiting to
respond to you. And the pattern of burstiness is the
sense that the collaboration is literally bursting with energy and ideas.
And the way you get that you don't need to
(30:55):
be in the same physical space to get that. What helps, though,
is being in the same temporal space right having your
calendar synced so that there are at least some hours
here and there where you're online at the same time
and you can actually work together in real time. And
that The part of the reason this resonated with me
is it's how I've collaborated since gosh, at least fifteen
(31:18):
years ago, when at a mentor Jane Dutton, who would
work on papers with her former students. So Jane was
at the University of Michigan where I was in grad school.
Her former students would graduate and go across the country
or to another continent, and they would stay in touch,
or they'd have occasional phone calls and occasional emails, and
then they would fly in and they would do a
(31:40):
three day blitz where they just deep dive on a
project and they sit side by side writing and they
basically spend every waking hour together and then they go
off and they don't interact that much for a month
or two. And you're really getting the best of both
worlds in that model of independent thinking and then collaborative contribution.
And so that's a mon for how I structure my
(32:01):
remote collaboration.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Do we really need face to face collaboration to optimize
problem solving and creative thinking? I mean, there's so many
businesses here in Australia that are insisting that people go
back to the office. We're not in lockdown here anymore.
But do we need it? Like, is there something special
that we get from face to face collaboration based on
the research, that we just can't get from virtual collaboration.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
That's not the answer I was looking for, Adam.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
It's the only empirical answer I have right now. What
I can tell you is this seems to be true
in pairs and also in teams that trust builds faster
and it also builds deeper when people are face to face.
But what do we take away from that, I don't know.
Does that mean we are evolutionarily wired to need to
(32:56):
be in the same physical space as other people in
order to trust them, that we need to be able
to potentially touch them. Is that just how we've always
done it and so we're most comfortable trusting under those circumstances.
Or is it the case that up until now, and
maybe not until three years from now, the technology just
(33:17):
hasn't been there, and so virtual has been just an
awful proxy for face to face. And when we get
to the point where we're kind of lifelike holograms, maybe
face to face becomes irrelevant. And maybe for some people
touch is important and for others it's not. I don't know,
but I don't think there's anything about human psychology that
(33:39):
leaves me convinced that we have to be physically in
the same room to trust each other and collaborate effectively.
I think there are aspects of being physically colocated that
maybe grease the wheels of trust a little bit and
make it easier. But I think that gap is going
to shrink as technology gets better, and also as we
get more comfortable but really trusting people that we've never
(33:59):
met face to face.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, I know that Jane Dutton was one of your mentors,
and she's obviously very well known for writing and researching
about high quality connections. I'm curious as to how you
use her work when you're collaborating with new people in
terms of I guess fast tracking human connection.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Well, Jane does a rapid high quality connection exercise where
I've been using this in class for years, ever since
she had me do.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
It as a student.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
She says, just pair up with someone that you haven't
met in class yet, or if you've met everyone, like
somebody you don't know well, and then you each have
a minute to try to build a high quality connection
with the other person, and it's stunning to see how
quick it happens. People are often amazed by their their
intuitive social intelligence when it comes to finding strategies to
(34:51):
do it, and I think the strategies that seem to
work are backed up by decades of evidence in psychology.
One is self disclosure, where you know where people make
themselves vulnerable and what that actually That helps the person
who's sharing as much or more than the person who's listening,
because when I tell you something personal about me, then
(35:14):
I am signaling to myself, well, I must trust you otherwise,
Why the hell did I just tell you that? What
am I thinking? This is a dangerous decision here? I
should probably rethink it. So that happens a lot. There's
a lot of people searching for uncommon commonalities, you know,
things they share that are rare, and people bond in
those ways. I think though, for me, the key ingredient
(35:35):
there is that the exercise is set up so that
you just erase uncertainty that the other person wants to
connect and knowing that I'm going to talk to you
for a minute and we share a goal of having
a high quality interaction, it dramatically lowers anxiety. And it
also it leads people to do Oh, I guess the
(35:58):
goatmans would call them like they're bids.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
I make an offer, a gesture to say, hey, I'm
seeking your friendship or your trust, and I know you're
going to reciprocate, and you're eager to do that, and
then it kind of spirals from there. It's like when
the beginning of a first date goes really well and
you stop questioning whether the other person likes you. So,
I guess this is all to say, I've tried to
think about these principles in some of my new virtual
(36:24):
collaborations to like I've just tried to put it out there, like, Hey,
we're going to be working together. It's important to me
that we trust each other. And so I'm going to
tell you something that I don't normally share. And then
I'll try to come up with something that I normally
would hesitate to share, but I think is something that
if I am going to trust someone, they ought to
know about me. So like I'll maybe start with a
(36:45):
simple one, like I am chronically late.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I apologize events for it.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
I'm trying to get better at it, but not always
making progress. And then I might go into something a
little bit more personal, depending on what topic comes up,
and say, like I've written whole book about rethinking, and
I've noticed there are certain situations where I get really
stubborn and strong willed to the point that I worry
I'm close minded, and I'm trying to get better at
(37:12):
flexing in those situations and delegating, and I hope you
can help me do that.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
You mentioned that you ask someone that is often late
because you get into flow and you don't want to
break it. And I experience that. But what I do
is I set the stopwatch on my Apple Watch so
I don't lose track of time. And I'm a really
punctual person. I'm often early. But I want to know,
do you recommend that I be more selfish with my
(37:38):
time and not do this and be late to things
like you are.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
I don't know that I would wish my faults on anyone,
but I do think there's a method to the madness here.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I think, yeah, I want to lose track of time.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
If I'm in flow and I was late to something
and it wasn't an emergency and I can make up
for it, it's totally worth it to me. And I
guess I don't see it as being selfish, because I'm
usually working on something that's gonna reach somebody else or
that's going to help someone else, and so I guess
I see it not as selfishness, but more is refusing
to be a slave to the social construction of clock
(38:20):
time and not privileging the person that I thought was
going to get my time at this one point over
the other people who are priorities for me too. So
I don't know, I reject the premise. I don't think
it's selfishness, particularly if other people know that sometimes you're
running late. And I'll tell you, I don't meant that
I'm thrilled when people are late, like great, I have
(38:40):
more time to work, thank you. At minimum, I can
catch up on some emails or write a little post
that I'm delinquent in doing. And so I've just never
understood why people reify this fiction.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Of a clock into something much bigger than it is.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
That's great, I'm going to see if I can reframe
my thinking. I know that I'm going to struggle with it,
but it maybe does require a rethink.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I think. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
I mean, I think this is probably something that different
people have different preferences on.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
But I am surprised.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
I remember when I wrote I must have tweeted about
how being late is not necessarily disrespecting the person who's
waiting for you. Sometimes it's respecting that person who's sitting
in front of you. And I was surprised at how
many people responded with some version of moral outrage, like
(39:36):
being late is not a violation of an ethical principle,
it's just you taking time more seriously than I do,
Like I take my commitments to people and projects seriously,
not to a clock or a calendar.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Such a good way of looking at it.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
It makes some people frustrated, but like, okay, if it
really frustrates you, you should not schedule appointments with me,
and you will be happy.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Hey, there, it's nearly time for a little ad break.
But can I ask a favor of you? If you're
enjoying how I work, I would be so grateful if
you could hit pause on this episode and pop into
Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this from and
leave a review. You can do this through scrolling down
to the bottom of the show notes and clicking on
the stars, or running a comment. Aside from the warm,
(40:26):
fuzzy feelings, this will give both you and me. It
helps other people find out about how I work. So
thank you in advance. Okay, Adam Grant will be back
after this short break and we're going to be chatting
about how being a magician, which Adam is, has influenced
his work in psychology. Now, something I imagine, in terms
of sharing things about you that a lot of listeners
(40:48):
probably wouldn't know, is that you're a magician, and I
think that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
The nerdiest thing in my life. For sure. You think
it's cool, gotta love it totally.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like my idea of a great night out is going
to the Magic Castle in La Amazing.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
So I want to know how does.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Magic influence the work that you do as an organizational psychologist.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
The biggest thing that magic did for me was it
taught me to appreciate the element of surprise. When I
was performing as a magician regularly, that I could do
the same trick like, let's say, I'm going to have
you pick a card. So one of my favorite tricks
that I learned early on was I have the audience.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Pick a card.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
I actually I put the cards on the table and
I say, look, I don't want to influence your choice.
You choose your own card, and I have you pick
and I'm halfway across the room. I'm turning around so
that I can't see anything. I'm staring into the wall,
and you look at your card. You then shuffle it
back into the deck. And when I first started performing,
(41:52):
I would just grab the deck and I would find
your card, and you were like, oh cool. And then
I thought Okay, I'm going to add a little flourish
to it. And I learned to throw the cards up
and then as all the cards are falling from the
sky or the ceiling, to catch one card and then
I turn it around and it's your card. Ah, And
(42:12):
there's a little more suspense built. But that version of
the trick was nowhere near as satisfying in the reveal
as when I went an extra step. And that This
is a trick I do every year in class with
my undergrads. Thanks to a student innovation, all my students
get a chance to do a one minute passion talk
about something they love or something that matters deeply to
(42:33):
them to introduce themselves to their classmates, and we do
six each class, so that by the end of the
semester everyone is given one. And throughout the semester they
asked me, when are you giving your passion talk, and
I say, I'm going to do it on the last day.
And the last day, my passion talk is about learning
to do magic and how it helped me come out
of my shell.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
And then I do a trick or two.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
And so I do this same trick, except now the
way I do it is I've had you shuffle your
card back.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Into the deck.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Then I take the deck and I say, okay, Amantha.
You may not know this, but when you were holding
your card for a second, you actually transferred some body
heat into it and you warmed it up. So I'm
just gonna flip through eyes closed, I'm gonna find the
hottest card in the deck. Boom, is that yours? And
I deliberately show you the wrong card? Ah, And you're
(43:23):
like no. And I think my acting is not always
up to par, but every once in a while I
get it right. And I look kind of like shocked,
and then forlorn, and and I might I might curse,
and then and then I just I throw the cards
(43:45):
up as if I'm giving up, and then I.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Catch your card.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
And now right now you're Wow, You're You're much more
excited and surprised. And what that taught me this is
a very long story, but what it taught me was
that we can do the same thing with ideas, we
can do the same thing with knowledge. And as an
organizational psychologist, that meant that when I had a data
(44:10):
point that I thought was interesting, I needed to work
really hard to not only tell the audience what was
surprising about it, but set them up to feel surprised.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
I'm like in magic, I don't want to trick them.
What I want to do is figure out what expectation
they hold, what assumption they cling to that the evidence
I'm going to share might question, And then I want
to tell the story or reveal the results of the
experiment in such a way that they feel the same
surprise that they should, and that I don't think I
(44:43):
would have appreciated that if I hadn't done magic.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
From a purely selfish point of view. I'm on an
eight week mission where I'm trying to learn a magic
trick awake and really, I mean yeah, yeah, and i
mean wait why, Because someone asked me a few weeks ago,
what's something that you've always want wanted to learn but
haven't And I'm like, I can't think of anything. I
just like, I just do it if I want to
learn it. But I'm like, no magic. Like every time
(45:07):
I visit the Magic Castle, I'm like, oh, I want
to learn something and I want to become a member,
and I get really excited and I do nothing. And
so I learned a trick last week and it didn't
fool many people, but it filled a couple and that
was okay. And then I learned another trick, but it
involved a rubber band, and I can't find the right
(45:28):
rubber band to do the trick with. So tell me
what is the trick that I can learn that requires
little skill but it's going to have a really big impact.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
So one trick that I think is low effort high
impact is one where I guess we'll have to wait
till COVID is over. But you're in Australia, You're going
to be in a restaurant much sooner than I am.
So next time you go to a restaurant, what you're
going to do is you're going to cover assault shaker
with a napkin or like a tablecloth, and you're going
(45:59):
to to tell your friends at dinner that you're going
to make a coin disappear that you're going to put
under the salt shaker and the napkin, and then you
put the coin down, you cover it, You say, okay,
let me just make sure the coin is here. You
hold up the salt shaker and the napkin, then you
put it back down, You cover the coin, and then
you say okay on the counter three one two three,
(46:22):
the coin will disappear. Then you slam the table, you
smash the salt shaker, only the salt shaker is gone
and the coin.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Is still there.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
And then if you want, you could have the salt
shaker appear under the table, or it could just be gone.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
What how do I do this?
Speaker 2 (46:39):
After we stop recording, I'll tell you how to do it.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Oh my god, am I seeing it?
Speaker 2 (46:42):
I met that. I wanted to ask you. I wanted
to rethink your question a little bit. Hmm.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
What if instead of learning a trick a week, you
decided to learn a skill a week, a magic skill
that a magician would use.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Oh I like that, and I never would have thought
of them because I don't know enough about magic to go. Ah,
that's another way to categorize learning. So what would be
say two or three skills that if I were to
reframe the challenge that I should learn.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Well, let's just say a word about why.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
I think that might be part of what I heard
you saying was I love being in the audience for
magic and I would like to be able to create it.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yes, And I think the if you just do a
trick a week.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
At some point you're going to give up on that goal,
and that's going to be the sum total of your abilities.
So you'll be able to do six tricks right or
eight tricks, and you won't really feel like you know
how to do magic. It's like you're in the movie
The Matrix and you've downloaded six programs and you can
play those programs. Whereas if you learn six skills, you
could potentially, over time, without having to ever learn a
(47:51):
new skill, create one hundred or two hundred different tricks.
And also then there's a learning curve where one skill
could lead to another, as opposed to I'm just going
to learn a bunch of screet performances and they're all standalone.
So I guess it depends on your medium. What kinds
of tricks do you love to watch the most? Are
you a stage illusioned person? Are you close up coins
or cards?
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Close up cards, I would say would be my favorite genre.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Mine too.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
I'm better at cards than everything else combined, which is
not a brag about my card skills, it's a.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
I am in every other domain.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Yeah, So in cards, I would say, get a card
magic book. I would say the classic is dive Vernon.
There are lots of more recent ones, though, and you
could say, Okay, one week, I'm going to learn a
particular shuffle that gives me control over certain cards. The
next week, I'm going to learn a cut, the next week,
(48:46):
I'm going to learn a lift. And you know, each
of these techniques then can be used in all these
different card tricks, and sometimes, like my favorite card tricks,
I use eight or nine different skills and it's a
much more exciting revelation at the end. So I think
you could create just a whole I guess it's a
(49:06):
different way of saying it is.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
It's an investment in.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
Being able to keep producing dividends on the time you
spent learning.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Yes, gosh, I feel like this has just re energized
me towards this magic goal that I have. I'm totally
going to adopt that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
Thank you trying it at your own risk.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Now, I know I've only got a few minutes left
with you. I did want to ask you a question
about parenting, because I know you do quite a bit
of writing in this area, and you've written two children's
books with your wife Alison, which myself and my seven
year old daughter have.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Loved and oh, thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
That's so good. And I want to know what are
like two or three questions that you think are really
good questions to ask our children every day?
Speaker 2 (49:48):
What are you trying to teach them?
Speaker 1 (49:51):
I guess what I was thinking about is I read
that article. I want to say it was in The
Atlantic where you talked about the importance of raising people
that are kind. And this is something that I think
a lot about with my daughter Frankie, and so, for example,
every day, and I think it was inspired by that
article that you wrote. I asked her what's something kind
that you did? And sometimes She'll say, I don't know,
(50:13):
And other times I'll go, well, what's something kind that
someone did for you? And how did that make you feel?
And that's literally a daily conversation that we have. So
that's what made me want to ask the question because
I was curious, what are some other things that you're
doing with your kids to praise them to be really good, decent,
kind human beings.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Well, one that I actually learned from our ten year
old daughter, Elena is she taught our seven year old
son Henry to every night ask us a question.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
M and vice versa.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
So we read a bad time story and then when
it's time to turn the lights out, we each ask,
what's your question? I think it's a beautiful way to
encourage curiosity. But also teaching kids to ask questions is
one of the most basic building blocks of nurturing kindness
and a sincere interest in others. And so I think
(51:06):
asking your kids what questions do you have? Or what
question do you have today? What do you wonder about?
What puzzled you, what intrigues you, what do you not understand?
Speaker 2 (51:15):
What do you not know?
Speaker 3 (51:16):
A great way to get them to take an interest
in others and also an interest in learning.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
That is so cool. I'm picking my daughter up from
school in three hours and I'm so going to be
asking her.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
That it's fun.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
She might say nothing, and then you can ask her
a question and model the behavior, and it becomes fun
to say, Okay, who can.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
Think of a question we've never asked before.
Speaker 3 (51:38):
So it's almost it's become like a nightly challenge to say,
all right, we've gone through you know who's your favorite superhero?
And you know why is Pluto no longer a Planet's
Let's come up with something really novel.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Now, I've got three final questions for you, and let's
treat them as rapid fire questions. So first, I want
to know what, like the last time I had you
on the show. I remember I asked for it was
your favorite research study that you've read recently, and you
gave me a great one around how meetings and not
batching meetings wastes a great deal of time. And I
want to know what's your favorite research from say, the
(52:12):
last year, that's made you rethink something.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
For a long time, I've believed that the reason we
get so many narcissists and leadership positions is organizations are
designed to reward people who kiss up and kick down
and who who project confidence as a false signal of confidence.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
And I've had to.
Speaker 3 (52:33):
Rethink that because there was a fascinating Dutch study that
came out this year showing that narcissistic leaders are even
popular in elementary school classrooms ages seven to fourteen that
I think the original The data were hundreds of kids
(52:56):
in twenty three different classrooms, and in twenty two of
those classes rooms, then most narcissistic kids were more likely
to be nominated as leaders, and they also rated themselves
as better leaders even though they weren't any better at leadership.
And I guess what I've rethought there is I thought
this was a problem with our workplaces, and now I
think it's a much more fundamental problem with the way
(53:18):
that we teach, the way that we organize both kids
and adults into hierarchies, the way that we put a
premium on confidence instead of humility. And so I think
that we need to counter the preference for narcissistic leaders
much earlier than I thought before.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
That is fascinating. Tell me you read so many books.
What is a book that you've read in the last
year that made you rethink something and that you'd recommend
that other people read as well.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Oh, there are a lot of those.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
I think Untamed by Glennon Doyle is an easy one, though.
Glennon is I think one of the most gifted writers
on earth. And I shouldn't even say gifted because that
suggests that it just came to her natural, when I
know she's worked extraordinarily hard to have such a brilliant
and poignant voice. And one thing that I rethought based
(54:12):
on reading her book is my view of happiness.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
There's a line that stopped me in my tracks.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
I think the exact quote is being human is not
about feeling happy, it's about feeling everything.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
What a great quote.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Yeah, I mean the book is full of observations like that,
and it really made me pause to say, well, what
am I doing here? Am I limiting my range of
experience by pursuing happiness? And am I encouraging other people
to make the same mistake.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
My final question for you, Adam, is a very easy
one for people that want to consume more of what
you are doing and also get their hands on a
copy of Think Again. How should people do that?
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Oh, it's extremely kind of you to ask.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
I would say the easy way is to go to
Adam grant dot net. There's a free quizy you can
take to figure out your style of rethinking, and a
discussion guide for the book, and a bunch of other
information that may or may not be of interest.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Amazing, And people can subscribe to your newsletter there as well,
which is one of the newsletters that I get that
I actually look forward to receiving. It's always just awesome. Oh,
thank you, pleasure, Adam, Thank you so much for coming
on the show again. It's just such a highlight and
privileged to chat to you, so thank you so much,
my pleasure. That is it for today's show. If you
(55:37):
enjoyed it, why not share it with someone that you
think would also enjoy it. And next week on How
I Work, I am very excited to have Naomi Bagdonus
on the show. Naomi teaches humor, yes, of course, on
humor for Stanford Business School, and we get into the
(55:57):
mechanics of how to telligence and how to just be funnier.
So if you're keen to hear about that, hit subscribe
or follow wherever you're listening to this podcast from and
you'll be alerted when that episode drops. How I Work
is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
The producer for this episode was the marvelous Jenna Coda,
(56:21):
and thank you to Martin Nimba who did the audio
mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise.
That's all for today and I'll see you next time.
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